Christmas, First Light

Advent Calendar Surprise

I came home from the library today to find the most wonderful package in my mailbox. Direct from England, courtesy of my friend Charlotte, an advent calendar! While visiting last month, I complained to Charlotte that I couldn't find the old-fashioned advent calendars I had as a kid - they are now all filled with cheap chocolate. And I hate cheap chocolate - if Godiva produced advent calendars, then we'd be talking, but no such luck.

But now I have a cool snowman advent calendar (that even plays music) and I got to open thirteen little doors today to boot. It's feeling more like Christmas already.

Rocking with the Rheostatics

2am this morning. Me rocking out to the Rheostatics at the Horseshoe Tavern, so close to the speakers that half of the experience is feeling the music, so close to the band you could touch them, so oblivious to how late it is, how hot it is, how loud it is. Awesome.

I saw the third of ten consecutive nights that they play at the Horseshoe - if I didn't have a huge work deadline this week, I'd be going again. (Photo taken from last year's Winter Nationals stint at the Horseshoe.)

Brighton Pier: Two Photographs

These two photographs were taken from the window of the flat I lived in earlier this year in Brighton. A little colour on this seriously grey Toronto winter day.

Can You Feel The Love?

Everyone knows that I unabashedly love Oprah Winfrey and there was a time in university when I couldn't sleep unless I spent my nightly hour with Dave Letterman. So last night I stayed up and watched Oprah make her first appearance on Letterman in sixteen years. She was all gorgeous and nervous, he was all cute and serious for once...I could feel the love. Staying up late totally screwed up my sleep schedule, but it was worth it.

A Peaceful Wine Rack

Tonight I went to the One of a Kind Christmas Show and picked up a beautiful and very unique piece of furniture. Boites De La Paix takes old US army munitions boxes and restores them into useful, peaceful articles of furniture - standing wine racks (like the one I purchased), bookshelves, kitchen pantries, and CD holders among other things. My box dates from the Vietnam War and was shipped from Alabama in 1970. More about this great couple who create these beauties in this Gazette article.

Winter Lands in Toronto

Wall and Piece

I've blogged previously about my love for Banksy. While I was in the UK, I picked up the brand spanking new book Wall and Piece and it's truly fantastic. I particularly like the quote on the back cover:
"There's no way you're going to get a quote from us to use on your book cover" - Metropolitan Police Spokesperson

I Love Boxes

And so does Rachel Whiteread.

While I find installation art interesting, I love all of Whiteread's work that involves boxes. I collect them and her exhibit, Embankment, at the Tate Modern was wonderful. You can see the actual installation of the work here.

Epitaph for George Dillon

One of my favourite theatre venues in London is the Comedy Theatre, where on Wednesday I caught the matinee performance of Epitaph for George Dillon. Starring the striking Francesca Annis (who was just as brilliant as she was when I saw her in an Ibsen production a couple of years ago) and Joseph Fiennes, it was an interesting play for a couple of reasons.

There was an audible gasp from the female members of the audience when Joseph Fiennes walked on stage and though he's a fantastic actor, I couldn't get past the fact that he was kissing his sister-in-law on stage. While the play was written before Look Back in Anger, it didn't premiere until two years after the latter play's great success. It seemed to me like a warm-up for the alienation and asphixiating nature of the social climate of the 1950s that we all now recognize as being classic John Osborne. But there was something also a little different - whether this was due to the fact that the play was co-written by the largely forgotten Anthony Creighton or to the inexperience of an emerging voice is unknown. An interesting academic paper maybe, but I'm a little busy at the moment.

Edvard Munch By Himself

Just returned from a whirlwind six day trip to London. So many people to see, so much art to view, so many shops to hit (not to mention the actual reason for my trip - a Ph.D review). One of the exhibitions I went to was the above mentioned Edvard Munch By Himself at the Royal Academy of Arts.

The exhibit is primarily of Munch's self portraits, of which there are many. I had no idea, in fact, that Munch was such a prolific artist. The brushstrokes actually remind me a bit of Lucian Freud's self portraits, which is maybe why I liked the exhibit so much. However, Munch was certainly not a jovial fellow. Sickness, despair, paranoia, loneliness and death are generally the focus of much of his work. Even a still life painting of flowers was entitled "Flowers of Pain". Not a show for the depressed, but as usual the Royal Academy assembled a great display of Munch's work.

Death by Latte

Every Saturday morning, I swing by my local Starbucks and pick up a grande caffe latte to have while I read the paper. It would take 136.50 Starbucks Grande Caffe Lattes to kill me.