Wired News will henceforth no longer be capitalizing the “I” in “internet.” Rather, it’s just the ‘internet’ now. I tried to make this move about 5 years ago but was (and I have since been) rebuffed at every turn. Now, though, I have ammo: the definitive style guide is with me.
Like many Canadians
of a certain age, Sarah McLachlan’s songs have been a constant throughout my adult life. I’ve always had more respect for her talents than been a true fan, but nevertheless, I’ve managed to see her perform a few times – back in the early 90s in Toronto, up at Blue Rodeo’s St-Jean party in Piedmont in the mid-90s, and here in Montreal a couple of times. That whole time, I maintained that her work would come across just as well if not better if she lost some of the precision, control, and “etherealness” in favour of more rocknroll.
Last night, I saw Sarah at the Bell Center and although it was definitely a “Sarah show” I was really happy to note that they brought the guitars (two to three of them throughout) way up in the mix, played with some feedback and re-arranged a lot of her classics with much heavier edge. McLachlan’s material has always had an oddly angry core, but the 36-year-old-mother-Sarah, coming off an extended hiatus, played anger not as the slow burn of desperation but the anger of an adult woman, confident in herself and her talents like never before.
That’s not to suggest that the show last night was some sort of way-past-due riot-grrl moment or anything. The nice thing about adult women performers – and this has almost always been true of Sarah – is that emotions come with perspective and proportion. Sarah and her band, luckily, didn’t overdo it. There were some lovely quiet moments and pseudo-acoustic parts of the set, which were made even more powerful by the dynamics of the more rocking arrangements they brought on tour this time around.
On duck and duck fat:
Dean Allen cooked some duck the other day and wrote about it in his inimitible fashion about 10 days ago in Textism. “Now, for the browning, youll need quantity of fat for the pan; oddly enough the ideal fat for browning duck is duckfat. Rendered duckfat is right below butter and cream in the canonical hierarchy of reasons why a fat-free diet is for knobs. I once read some words about how its rich in good cholesterol and anti-oxidants or something, but its so good Id use the stuff even if it were guaranteed to make your toes turn blue.”
Supporting Daring Fireball
by John Gruber might have led to the quickest ROI that I have ever had from giving money to an online publication. Obviously I’m not calculating ROI, but in terms of the “give money, get more good things to read soon” equation, he’s doing a fantastic job (and I have a great tee to boot). The article prompting this outburst is today’s piece on the iPod: Why 2004 Won’t Be Like 1984.
It was gorgeous here Sunday,
and, like it did for Ed and Martine, it turned into Market day for us. We were up at the Jean Talon Market for quite a while – first we had breakfast at Le Petit Alep, a Syrian place on Jean Talon itself, and then we cut through the SAQ (bought some nice bordeaux on the way through) to get to the market itself.
As Ed says, the market in 2004 is a great thing because it’s pretty much the only place you can get fresh vegetables that were actually grown in soil within 100km of here. But you have to keep your wits about you, because the vendors there aren’t snobs about it – they’ll sell you produce trucked in from California if they have to.
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