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- Liisa Ladouceur's NOW Toronto review of the Rage and Rapture tour's stop in Toronto get it entire. Brilliant concert.
- Emma Teitel in the Toronto Star is quite right to note that residents of the Beach complaining about unsightly commerce are so missing the point.
- Global News reports that mosquitos which test positive for West Nile virus have been found on the flooded Toronto Islands.
- The Toronto Islands will reopen Monday, on the first of the month, the City of Toronto announced.
- Canada Post promises that its drivers will stop blocking bike lanes with their vehicles.
- Metro Toronto describes how ESL learners in west-end Toronto are learning English via their concerns with affordable housing.
Last night, I attended the Toronto date of the Rage and Rapture tour, featuring Garbage and Blondie. It was amazing.
My photo album featuring some of my photos taken in the course of the concert is here.
[BRIEF NOTE] On being queer
Feb. 3rd, 2016 07:49 pmIn one of the Facebook groups I belong to, I discovered that there was a controversy over the decision of Huffington Post's Gay Voices, launched in 2011, to rebrand as Queer Voices.
"Queer" is not just a great Garbage song from that band's first album.
"Queer" traces its origins in a slur, a hateful word that is being controversially reclaimed. I'm a person who's fine with this: on an individual level it is one of several words I would use as a self-descriptor, and on a group level, it strikes me as elegant enough to encompass diverse groups. I, by virtue of my life expériences, have not been exposed to its use as a slur. Reclaiming it makes perfect sense to me. It helps that "queer" is much more elegant than any of the increasingly long acronyms being used to describe the diverse non-straight communities.
(What say you?)
A lot has changed since [2011] -- from marriage equality sweeping the nation and parts of the world to Laverne Cox gracing the cover of Time magazine to Miley Cyrus coming out as pansexual -- and we believe that this is an especially critical time for queer people and the queer movement to regroup and redefine its mission in the wake of these incredible, once unimaginable changes to the political and cultural landscape. We hope that HuffPost Queer Voices can be a place where discussions about where we're headed, what matters to us and how we can become the best possible, most authentic versions of ourselves as queer people -- and as a community -- can take place on a daily basis.
We, like many others before us, have chosen to reclaim "queer" and to rename the section HuffPost Queer Voices because we believe that word is the most inclusive and empowering one available to us to speak to and about the community -- and because we are inspired by all of the profound possibilities it holds for self-discovery, self-realization and self-affirmation. We also revere its emphasis on intersectionality, which aids in creating, building and sustaining community while striving to bring about the liberation of all marginalized people, queer or not.
"Queer" functions as an umbrella term that includes not only the lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people of "LGBT," but also those whose identities fall in between, outside of or stretch beyond those categories, including genderqueer people, intersex people, asexual people, pansexual people, polyamorous people and those questioning their sexuality or gender, to name just a few.
"Queer" is not just a great Garbage song from that band's first album.
"Queer" traces its origins in a slur, a hateful word that is being controversially reclaimed. I'm a person who's fine with this: on an individual level it is one of several words I would use as a self-descriptor, and on a group level, it strikes me as elegant enough to encompass diverse groups. I, by virtue of my life expériences, have not been exposed to its use as a slur. Reclaiming it makes perfect sense to me. It helps that "queer" is much more elegant than any of the increasingly long acronyms being used to describe the diverse non-straight communities.
(What say you?)
Johnny Pez' linkage to Garbage's signature song "Only Happy When It Rains" reminded me of my own fondness for the song, expressed way back in 2005.
I'd still compare Shirley Manson to Sylvia Plath, the two authors with their own lyrics angrily and hopelessly communicating their depression to their audiences, telling everything including--in a passive-aggressive style--their belief that nothing can be done to change things for the better. I'd still say that the song is a great one, on-target and lyrical and well-sung and well-performed, and I'd still say that the video is good accompaniment.
All I'd add is that I now get how this song is fundamentally a sad song.
I'd still compare Shirley Manson to Sylvia Plath, the two authors with their own lyrics angrily and hopelessly communicating their depression to their audiences, telling everything including--in a passive-aggressive style--their belief that nothing can be done to change things for the better. I'd still say that the song is a great one, on-target and lyrical and well-sung and well-performed, and I'd still say that the video is good accompaniment.
I only smile in the dark
My only comfort is the night gone black
I didn't accidentally tell you that
I'm only happy when it rains
You'll get the message by the time I'm through
When I complain about me and you
I'm only happy when it rains
All I'd add is that I now get how this song is fundamentally a sad song.
[URBAN NOTE] Great, a garbage strike
Jun. 24th, 2009 03:30 pmThe Toronto garbage strike is not pleasing many Torontonians.
I took these photos on the first day of the strike. I also remember the stench in Toronto in that summer's garbage strike. I am not looking forward to that stench this summer at all.
As garbage continued to pile up in Toronto's streets amid widespread illegal dumping, the city's top politicians said Tuesday they were still optimistic they could soon reach an agreement with striking municipal workers.
Garbage bins across the city have been stuffed with trash. Most are now filled to overflowing.
Tuesday is usually the first day of regular garbage pickup in Toronto — and the city has asked residents to keep trash in their homes for at least a week before trying to dispose of it.
But some people wouldn't wait.
Garbage bins have been crammed full, and green garbage bags filled with trash are starting to pile up on the streets.
Mayor David Miller pleaded with the city's residents not to make the situation worse.
"It is becoming clear that there is a small group of people that are taking advantage of this strike to use Toronto as their personal dumping ground," he told reporters at a Tuesday news conference.
"This is not and should not be acceptable to any of us. I would ask people to be patient."
That the striking workers and the city are negotiating is "a good sign," said Miller.
But Mark Ferguson, president of CUPE Local 416, which represents outdoor workers, said Monday the two sides were still "miles apart" from a deal.
I took these photos on the first day of the strike. I also remember the stench in Toronto in that summer's garbage strike. I am not looking forward to that stench this summer at all.
I'm disappointed in Garbage. 1998's Version 2.0 was fun, with songs like "Special" and "Trick Is to Keep Breathing." Both 2001's Beautifulgarbage and this year'sBleed Like Me left me cold, unmoved by their too-perfect electronica-enhanced alternative rock spectacle.
I do still like Garbage. Even on their later albums, they have some authentically moving songs. Version 2.0, though showing signs of the fatigue that would overtake them later, is still fun seven years later. Their self-titled debut of 1995 remains a brilliant production. "Only Happy When It Rains"? It, too, is a classic.
Garbage was assembled in the aftermath of the grunge/alternative explosion of the early 1990s, just one year after Kurt Cobain's suicide. Producer Butch Vig joined together with fellow producers Steve Marker and Duke Erikson to form a band. Looking for a singer, they saw--played for the first time on MTV--the video for Angelfish's "Suffocate Me" and were caught by the lead singer, Shirley Manson. They contacted her, brought her over to their studio and Minneapolis, and began recording.
The band produced a massive hit album and multiple hit singles. "Stupid Girl" was apparently the biggest single off of Garbage, and I do like it, right down to the catchy if depressing chorus ("You stupid girl/You stupid girl/All you had you wasted/All you had you wasted"). "Only Happy When It Rains," though, is distinctive. I remember catching the video for "Only Happy When It Rains" on Muchmusic, seeing Shirley Manson vamping in a decrepit warehouse/art installation as her bandmates smashed instruments, segueing before it cut to her trying to hide from a circle of children dressed, crouching and hiding as the almost-tactile guitars wound the song down. The visuals were spectacular; the song, thankfully, was up to the video's standards.
I've skimmed bits of Break, Blow, Burn already. I'd heard about her chapter on Sylvia Plath's incendiary "Daddy", and I wasn't disappointed. Paglia starts her analysis by calling the poem "garish, sarcastic, and profane," marrying the "personal to the political against the violent backdrop of modern history," a "rollicking nursery rhyme recast as a horror movie" (167). She ends her analysis by suggesting that Plath's peers lie not in the realm of modern poetry but rather in the realm of popular music, with Plath as the "first female rocker" with her "sneering sardonicism and piercing propulsiveness" (176).
Would I claim Shirley Manson as one of Plath's successors? Why not? Apart from the coincidence noted by The Independent that many of Manson's early songs, including "Only Happy When It Rains," were inspired by her own struggle with depression, and noting that in the song's performance Shirley Manson sets into her lyrics just two or three seconds after the song begins, her lyrics are poetic in their wordplay, exaggerating as they do the gloom commonly held to be an integral part of the alternative music scene. It's impossible to avoid the contradictions involved in "I'm only happy when it rains/I'm only happy when it's complicated/And though I know you can't appreciate it/I'm only happy when it rains." Too, the passive-aggressiveness of "I didn't accidentally tell you that/I'm only happy when it rains"--Manson's insistence that she wants the listener to know this, that she isn't telling just anyone--is delivered in the form of a confidence to someone who's concerned and, perhaps, is now too deeply implicated to save himself.
The lyrics of "Only Happy When It Rains" aren't as conscious as the Plath's "Daddy." They don't offer up any kind of solution to the crisis, and while there's a suggestion that the singer is seeking out causes for depression ("Pour some misery down on me") her motives aren't expounded upon. There is, in Manson's lyrics, only the certainty that she'll continue to despair and that the listener won't be able to avoid hearing all about her "new obsession." But then, it's a four-minute pop song: It doesn't have to do that. It just has to exist and please the listener with its hummable melodies and enjoyably complex lyrics. And it does.
I do still like Garbage. Even on their later albums, they have some authentically moving songs. Version 2.0, though showing signs of the fatigue that would overtake them later, is still fun seven years later. Their self-titled debut of 1995 remains a brilliant production. "Only Happy When It Rains"? It, too, is a classic.
I'm only happy when it rains
I'm only happy when it's complicated
And though I know you can't appreciate it
I'm only happy when it rains
You know I love it when the news is bad
And why it feels so good to feel so sad
I'm only happy when it rains
Pour your misery down, pour your misery down on me
Pour your misery down, pour your misery down on me
Garbage was assembled in the aftermath of the grunge/alternative explosion of the early 1990s, just one year after Kurt Cobain's suicide. Producer Butch Vig joined together with fellow producers Steve Marker and Duke Erikson to form a band. Looking for a singer, they saw--played for the first time on MTV--the video for Angelfish's "Suffocate Me" and were caught by the lead singer, Shirley Manson. They contacted her, brought her over to their studio and Minneapolis, and began recording.
The band produced a massive hit album and multiple hit singles. "Stupid Girl" was apparently the biggest single off of Garbage, and I do like it, right down to the catchy if depressing chorus ("You stupid girl/You stupid girl/All you had you wasted/All you had you wasted"). "Only Happy When It Rains," though, is distinctive. I remember catching the video for "Only Happy When It Rains" on Muchmusic, seeing Shirley Manson vamping in a decrepit warehouse/art installation as her bandmates smashed instruments, segueing before it cut to her trying to hide from a circle of children dressed, crouching and hiding as the almost-tactile guitars wound the song down. The visuals were spectacular; the song, thankfully, was up to the video's standards.
I'm only happy when it rains
I feel good when things are going wrong
I only listen to the sad, sad songs
I'm only happy when it rains
I only smile in the dark
My only comfort is the night gone black
I didn't accidentally tell you that
I'm only happy when it rains
You'll get the message by the time I'm through
When I complain about me and you
I'm only happy when it rains
I've skimmed bits of Break, Blow, Burn already. I'd heard about her chapter on Sylvia Plath's incendiary "Daddy", and I wasn't disappointed. Paglia starts her analysis by calling the poem "garish, sarcastic, and profane," marrying the "personal to the political against the violent backdrop of modern history," a "rollicking nursery rhyme recast as a horror movie" (167). She ends her analysis by suggesting that Plath's peers lie not in the realm of modern poetry but rather in the realm of popular music, with Plath as the "first female rocker" with her "sneering sardonicism and piercing propulsiveness" (176).
Would I claim Shirley Manson as one of Plath's successors? Why not? Apart from the coincidence noted by The Independent that many of Manson's early songs, including "Only Happy When It Rains," were inspired by her own struggle with depression, and noting that in the song's performance Shirley Manson sets into her lyrics just two or three seconds after the song begins, her lyrics are poetic in their wordplay, exaggerating as they do the gloom commonly held to be an integral part of the alternative music scene. It's impossible to avoid the contradictions involved in "I'm only happy when it rains/I'm only happy when it's complicated/And though I know you can't appreciate it/I'm only happy when it rains." Too, the passive-aggressiveness of "I didn't accidentally tell you that/I'm only happy when it rains"--Manson's insistence that she wants the listener to know this, that she isn't telling just anyone--is delivered in the form of a confidence to someone who's concerned and, perhaps, is now too deeply implicated to save himself.
Pour your misery down (Pour your misery down) x 8
You can keep me company
As long as you don't care
I'm only happy when it rains
You wanna hear about my new obsession?
I'm riding high upon a deep depression
I'm only happy when it rains (Pour some misery down on me)
I'm only happy when it rains (Pour some misery down on me) x 4
The lyrics of "Only Happy When It Rains" aren't as conscious as the Plath's "Daddy." They don't offer up any kind of solution to the crisis, and while there's a suggestion that the singer is seeking out causes for depression ("Pour some misery down on me") her motives aren't expounded upon. There is, in Manson's lyrics, only the certainty that she'll continue to despair and that the listener won't be able to avoid hearing all about her "new obsession." But then, it's a four-minute pop song: It doesn't have to do that. It just has to exist and please the listener with its hummable melodies and enjoyably complex lyrics. And it does.
