[NON BLOG] Choir, and

I stayed up last night practicing for the upcoming medley of French standards. Said medley includes Françoise Hardy's "Tous les garçons et les filles", a rather nice angst song: "oui mais moi, je vais seule, par les rues, l'âme en peine/oui mais moi, je vais seule, car personne ne m'aime."

I haven't heard Hardy's version, but I have heard the Eurythmics' version, an intermittant B-side in their early years that actually got released as a single in 1985. It's a good cover of a French-language song by an Anglophone band, much better than Luscious Jackson's 1995 cover of Gainsbourg's "69 année erotique". Annie actually pronounces the consonants well, and enunciates the syllables decipherably. Their version is much quicker than the version we're playing with this afternoon, though.

3 o'clock at Zippers today, if anyone's interested. Tickets are $C10 at the door.

[NON BLOG] Singing and the Arcadian Court

The performance at the cabaret has been over for some seven hours now. The most charitable thing that can be said about the performance is that it was my first one, and I had fun and that's the important thing.

Before the performance, the boyfriend and I went to the Arcadian Court for dinner. A rather posh restaurant on the 8th floor of the Bay, Stephen Smith notes in his review of Atwood's The Blind Assassin that the Arcadian Court once played a very prominent role in the organization of Toronto high society. As I looked around the cavernous hall--up Thomson Collection was stored over 1989-2004, around at the other diners taking advantage of the brunch and the food menu--I took brief and inadequate stock of the changes (in the Arcadian Court's shedding of its former art deco, in Torontonian society).

[BRIEF NOTE] On the Need to Have Selective Membership

Via Positive Liberty:

Phobia Watch: Via Farkleberries comes a stunning example [of] disproportionate response: Dennis Rader, the alleged BTK serial killer, may remain the president of his church council. But just a couple of denominations away, a lesbian may not serve as a minister. ""We are not going to cut him off," said Rader's pastor. "He is still a part of the body of Christ -- and that is something some people will have a hard time hearing." No kidding.