Shout Out To MartinJon!

A friend of ours has begun blogging and he writes a lot about art shows in chicago. If you get a chance...head over to his blog and welcome him to blogging! Click here. right now he has a post about a new Judy Pfaff show and a review of sketch comedy. Nice work Marty!

Sex Ed, Grade One

Errggghhh...

...finally a Liberal politician was going to do something wise. Sex Education re-vamp for schools in Ontario...which is long overdue. The plan was to teach grade one students body parts with proper names.

The proposed changes outraged some religious and conservative groups who say they're not comfortable with teaching kids as early as Grade 3 about same-sex families.

Under the changes that were quietly released in January, Grade 1 children were to be taught to identify genitalia — among other body parts — using the correct word, such as penis, vagina and testicle.

In Grade 5, children were to be taught to identify parts of the reproductive system and describe how the body changes during puberty.

In Grade 7, the plan was to teach kids how to prevent unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.

I am so surprised that people have opposed the idea of introducing these excellent incentives into education for kids.

Teaching kids clear calm lessons about body parts, and natural human relations helps protect children from corrupt coaches, priests and encourage children's positive boundaries about themselves.

I believe children from an early age...should learn about their own boundaries and body because it empowers kids to feel great about themselves and not be taken advantage of from other kids or adults.

Shame on Ontario!!!! Shame on the parents!!! And shame on McGuinty for chickening out...

Related articles:

1.) CBC
2.) Catholic Schools must teach sex ed (no shit)
3.) Sex ed to begin in grade one...original plan
4.) Politics and greeed for power likely reason for change to Sex Ed innovations

Go Canucks!!!

If the 2010 Olympic hockey game wasn't hard enough on a marriage...now the Vancouver Canucks are up against the Chicago Blackhawks for the Stanley Cup.

...there are crickets heard in our apartment...

:)

Go Canucks!!!!

Random...On Desk Top...

2 Jobs 10 Pounds

I starting drinking coffee at a pretty young age. My dad was in college when my sister and I were small and he drank instant coffee all the time. I never remember proper coffee in the house unless my family were having a party and then they made percolated coffee. In the meantime, everyone used to mix up some instant coffee. I used to stay up late on the weekends listening to records with my dad while he did his homework and I was assigned making his instant coffee..and I would make myself a cup too.

The first time I had really decent amazing...mindblowing...if you will...coffee was on a school feild trip to France. Yes, for one fleeting moment I was good at a subject in school...French... and I managed to convince my parents i had to go to Paris. About 400 kids from the west coast of Canada got onto a plane and flew overnight to Brussels for a day then to Paris for a couple of weeks. On the plane trip over...most of my French class dropped LSD. No, really I'm not making this up...I was not a druggie and just remember kind of babysitting some of the kids while they peaked somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. I found their behaviour fascinating...plus, I was a rather shy kid (I know hard to believe huh?) and I suddenly was making friends with kids who we never spoke to each other previously. We got to Paris and were put up as billets in a boys dormitory in the burbs of Paris while the full-time boys school was on some kind of break. I had three room mates who lived in a small town about an hour away from me on Vancouver Island. These three girls and I proceeded to have the most amazing time in Paris. We absolutely went nuts looking for ways to get away from the group and go nuts in Paris. These three girls were looking for French boys! Of course. I was not so interested in chasing boys...but I loved being their "wing man". The first morning when we woke up...we went to a huge dining hall...and we were served baguettes, fresh cultured butter and huge bowls of coffee. Each of these three items was the most amazing food I had ever tasted so far in my life. I was utterly blown away. The butter was like salty whipped cream, the baguettes flaky, crunchy and moist all at once. And the coffee. Outstanding. In a bowl! It was so exotic to have this huge milky bowl of coffee! There were other exotic fun things about this trip to Paris, but the coffee always stands out. (my dorm friends and I spent the evenings looking for "gin fizzs" discotheques and meeting guys...but thats another post...) I also loved checking out all the coffee in various street cafes and patios on that trip.

The second most amazing cup of coffee I had was in Rome. I was a teenager and went to Rome for a meditation festival with a bunch of friends. I had never had cappuccino before and loved finding a whole world of hanging out trying different places with different elixirs of cappuccinos. I was living in Calgary at the time and if anyone was making such a coffee i sure as hell hadn't found it...it was much later that Calgary adopted the international drinks of lattes and cappuccinos. I was amazed at how much care was put into preparing and serving these coffees with little paper doilies and specially wrapped sugar and foams adorning the tops of the drinks. I was obsessed with trying as many different baristas coffee as possible on that trip. When I got back to Canada I tried to find cappucinos...finally my sister worked in a kitchen store that had a small machine and they would crank out wonderful coffees and I had to visit her all the time.

Its hard to believe there was a time in Canada when finding a cappuccino was a challenge...now every where you go you can find such beverages.

Anyways...I have a little part time job at a cafe. It's been crazy getting used to all the drinks my boss makes there...especially when I'm only part time but the last couple of days I feel I am used to the place and used to her style of brewing. We serve Intelligensia coffees which is one of my favourite brands of espresso. A couple years ago my sister called me to tell me she found a great new coffee company, Intelligentia...and I told her I had been also drinking it here when I visited Chicago.

Here is a little from Intelligensias website It all started more than a decade ago in October of 1995 when Doug Zell and Emily Mange left San Francisco to open an in-store coffee roaster-retailer on Broadway Avenue on the north side of Chicago. At that time they were simply hoping to bring great, fresh-roasted coffee to their own coffeebar with the help of a charming, but perhaps too often erratic 12-kilo roaster. Since then this has all evolved to a place they never could have imagined.

Intelligentsia now has three great cities to call home: Chicago—a city that is brooding, practical and reluctantly beautiful; Los Angeles—a city that views creativity as a birthright, is immensely vast, decidedly impractical and equally messy and marvelous; and New York—a city of paradoxes, hulking but chock full of intimate corners, timeless but achingly current, polished but decaying, worldly yet oddly provincial, all crashing together in perfect cacophony (or is it harmony?).

Honestly, we love all of these places, but for very different reasons. Straight backed-Midwesterness gives us pragmatism and self-discipline, West Coast optimism leads us to believe anything is possible, and the dynamism of East Coast is an unending source of energy. This combination provides the fuel for what we love to do: sourcing, developing, roasting and delivering the best coffee in the world.

At the end of a shift I clean up the cappucino machine soaking the brew baskets, cleaning the filters and making sure we have enough espresso for the next shift. It's a simple but very enjoyable errand. I absolutely love cappuccino machines.

See, these are the kinds of tools that make making cappucino so much fun. A tamp, a cleaning brush, a screwdriver and a paint brush!

I thought it was kinda cool that my boss also sells Cafe Du Monde coffee. I have spent many happy visits to New Orleans Cafe Du Monde and had beignets and coffee sitting at their famous outdoor setting. I've posted a few pics here at the blog...but of course i can't find them right now...too tired from work. I've had a number of little jobs and contracts in the past few weeks and I've managed to lose 10 pounds. The secret to weight loss? Eat less...and have at least two jobs ha ha!

Oh wait...here I found a picture I took at Cafe Du Monde and their beignets...

Gorillaz and Bobby Womack...

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Gorillaz - Stylo
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

I hope this video works...can you guess who is playing with the band Gorillaz and singer Bobby Womack here? You should be able to guess by their sound, and body language playing guitar and bass...

And here is the really wonderful original video with Bruce Willis and the band

Yea! Seth Aaron!

I think Project Runway is my favourite reality show/competition. And this season I loved Seth Aaron and he won! He makes really cool clothes and he only started sewing 5 years ago! Hear that Danny?

Collaborating...

collaboration |kəˌlabəˈrā sh ən|
noun
1 the action of working with someone to produce or create something : he wrote on art and architecture in collaboration with John Betjeman.
• something produced or created in this way : his recent opera was a collaboration with Lessing.
2 traitorous cooperation with an enemy : he faces charges of collaboration.



Stagg and I have been collaborating on about 20 small paintings again this week. Sometimes it goes smoothly and sometimes its a bit of a battle. I was joking with him...who is going to run out of paint first, him with his navy blue or me with my white painting out every bit of navy blue he put on the canvas. Sometimes we tell each other...I need to keep this section here or that...but most of the time we work quietly passing the paintings back and forth....each of us keeping or adding what we want. This week we both did a LOT of overpainting ha ha....but its fun...and about half a dozen are already going out the door for busking.



Is it done? Yes, it is!



What kind of music do we play while working? Well sometimes we have the tv on and this morning Rahm Emanuel (who I LOVE how could I not love the real guy Josh Lyman was based on from the West Wing?) is on Charlie Rose. Emanuel lives a few houses down from us. Well, until he went to work in the White House. He said this morning one of his future goals is to be Mayor of chicago...omg...I got tears in my eyes. I used to like seeing the Secret Service waiting outside the Emanuels house...sometimes Mrs. Emanuel would be dressed up for a party and the Sercret Service would be walking her to her ride. I would be going out of my mind enjoying the scenario if I happened to be walking by. Anyways, pretty decent interview with Rose and Emanuel this morning.

Sometimes I have to pull a painting out away from the others to see if it's "done". I'm using the plain walls and Polish glass vase to help me look at the paintings to see if they can come out of the oven...

Of Course...

I've been on a diet and Stagg lost 9 pounds!

Meanwhile...must see concert...I've blogged about the Avett Brothers many times here for the last few years...and if you're in the Toronto area...they are playing the Phoenix June 1st!

Window Seat

Tourist In Own Town

We went to pick up tickets for Brian Jonestown Massacre and just hung around outside for the whole day...wonderful!







Brisket, sausage and beer cheese soup...

Hey Refs!

During Canucks vs. Kings...Henrik Sedin Got High-Sticked By Anze Kopitar...but no one seemed to notice...not even the refs...Kopitars stick is stuck in Sedins helmet...what?

You Have 0 Friends

Thinking Ape-Book

"Two spectacular failures, separated by only 18 months, marked the end of the modern era. In July 2008, the price of oil on world markets peaked at $147/ barrel, inflation soared, the price of everything from food to gasoline skyrocketed, and the global economic engine shut off. Growing demand in the developed nations, as well as in China, India, and other emerging economies, for diminishing fossil fuels precipitated the crisis. Purchasing power plummeted and the global economy collapsed. That was the earthquake that tore asunder the industrial age built on and propelled by fossil fuels. The failure of the financial markets two months later was merely the aftershock. The fossil fuel energies that make up the industrial way of life are sunsetting and the industrial infrastructure is now on life support." Jeremy Rifkin

..."The transition to biosphere consciousness has already begun. All over the world, a younger generation is beginning to realize that one's daily consumption of energy and other resources ultimately affects the lives of every other human being and every other creature that inhabits the Earth.

The Empathic Civilization is emerging. A younger generation is fast extending its empathic embrace beyond religious affiliations and national identification to include the whole of humanity and the vast project of life that envelops the Earth. But our rush to universal empathic connectivity is running up against a rapidly accelerating entropic juggernaut in the form of climate change. Can we reach biosphere consciousness and global empathy in time to avert planetary collapse?"

I Want It Back!

I want back all the time I've stood behind someone who was slowly and ridiculously counting out their change in a line up purchasing something.

Good god...find a change machine...stop counting every nickel while people are standing in line behind you. Or some poor clerk is waiting for you to count out exactly three dollars and sixty seven cents. I hate to betray my gender...but it's almost always a woman and almost always a woman who is older....leading to the thoughts...of maybe she's a crazy cat lady (not that I should point fingers at anyone who is a cat lady ha ha guilty as charged)

But what the fuck is with counting out all that change in public? Go to a bank or a mechanical change machine women!!!!! Sheesh roll your quarters and pennies if you really must but the rest of us life is slipping through our fingers as you covet your fucking change....OR stop being so cheap and at least use it as a tip!!! Give it to a homeless person. Sheesh.

Too Tired...

to blog today...back in a bit...



:)

We Made A Deal Ages Ago, We're Soul Mates

One of the greatest shows about friendship. Ever. I got chills down my spine at this trailer...Cocktails!

Visionary, R.I.P.

McLaren saved music. He saved music for me at least when I was becoming cynical with lots of bands. Well, way back then, for six months of my life..I was becoming cynical period...and along came a designer, musician, artist, promoter, provocateur very much who was able to translate a massive ennui into a seize the day rip apart culture for those of us who felt we just didn't fit into our society. The Blank generation...Generation X, the damned and alienated are just some of the labels that Malcolm McClaren was able to interpret and reflect through music and clothing. He hung out and worked with The New York Dolls, Richard Hell, Tom Verlaine and sexy young assassins. When I saw the movie The Great Rock And Roll Swindle I saw how to live in such a terrible world and not hate it. I thank McCLaren (and of course, The Sex Pistols) for helping me learn how to think for myself...even if it seemed inpossible to experience freedom in our corporate, money-grubbing society. We could try.

McLaren would have been a master artist if he had stopped with his clothing designs, his S&M fashion with the brilliant Vivienne Westwood, Adam Ant, Bow Wow Wow but he also had a solo recording career making some of the best dance music. I wore out the album with Madame Butterfly (above) on it...in my car...at home, at the nightclub I worked at...and Buffalo Girls and Double Dutch from the brilliant album Duck Rock....were also pivotal songs for an era mixing hip-hop into nightclubs everywhere.

Thanks Malcolm McClaren for a soundtrack to my youth.