Last Thursday we braved the pre-storm (really, no big deal) to go out for dinner and a concert. The dinner plan had been to check out Imbibe, on The Museum premises. Only, they didn’t seem terribly interested in serving us. It was a while before anyone even told us we could sit anywhere, and as the minutes ticked by with no one offering drinks or a menu, we left. (I’m not sure they noticed.)
Fortunately, the reliable Peter Martin’s was across the street. We discovered that they seemed to have largely abandoned their “cheaper bistro” idea, going back to the pricier appetizer and entree approach. Everything very good, though. We shared mussels in cream sauce with smoked bacon to start, then I had the pork belly with excellent greens and sweet potato sides, while Jean enjoyed the lamb with side of gnochi.
Then, off to our Intersections concert across the street. This one focused on Indian music, and befitting that, some members of the orchestra—including conductor Edwin Outwater—were in Indian garb.
Not how members of the symphony were dressed, but a cool pic nonetheless
The guest performers did not play sitars. Highlighted on the first few pieces was the mrdangam, which is a type of drum. One side of it plays bass notes, the other higher-pitched rhythms. The performer, Trichy Sankaran, could play incredibly quickly.
He was joined by his daughter, Suba Sankaran, who clapped out rhythms during the instrumental numbers, but then also took over on vocals. One piece she presented was an reinterpretation of Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire”. As befitting the title of this section, she did also present some songs from Bollywood movies, although with a twist: She sang lyrics from the somewhat humorous English translation, rather than the original Hindi. (No actual dancing, but we did some movie footage in the background.)
During a lovely piece called “Maya” it occurred to me that many of us had been trained in the sounds of Indian music by the British rock stars of the sixties: The Kinks with “See my Friends”, and of course, The Beatles. Fittingly, the last piece of the evening was a great version of George Harrison’s “Within You, Without You” from Sgt. Pepper.
The concert, performed without intermission, seemed to be over in a flash. Indeed, it was just about an hour long. Just enough to whet our palate.
Pandora radio is this website / app that is, apparently, amazingly good at finding new music you will like, based on algorithmic analysis of music you already like. However, it’s never been legally available to Canadians.
Nevertheless, I have found my way through to it a few times. But I’ve never had the patience to stick with it long enough to see its amazing-ness in action. Because, of course, you have to “seed” it with information about your current tastes. This requires you rating songs it throws at you, or trying out shortcuts like naming a band you like.
I don’t have the patience to stick with the ratings thing for too long, and naming, for example, The Who, as band I like, results in a fairly unsophisticated playlist of bands like The Rolling Stones, Cream, and Jimi Hendrix, none of whom I’m that bowled over by. (So whatever it is I love about The Who, it’s not whatever musical commonality they have with those bands.)
But, then rediscovered Last.fm. Legally available to Canadians—albeit not on our smart phones!
I had actually signed up for a free trial with Last.fm a little over a year ago, but didn’t end up motivated enough at the time to switch to pay mode. However, I did allow them to continue to “scrobble” on my computer, even though I didn’t quite know what that meant. I just knew that after running iTunes to sync my iPod, it would ask if it could “scrobble” certain tracks, and I’d say sure, and it would apparently do that.
But I checked them out again recently and discovered that it has been essentially building up a profile of my musical tastes. It has lists of the artists and songs I’ve listened to most in the past year, 6 months, 3 months, or ever… Most of which are not a surprise, although the vagaries of the iPod shuffle do result in some weirdness, such as the fact I that I apparently listened to Abba’s “Thank You for the Music” more than any other song last year! (Geez, it’s not even my favorite Abba song…)
Abba, of whose music I am apparently very grateful
And then, if you pay Last.fm (a big $3 for a month), you get access to various “radio” stations based on your stats. You can use them to just listen to stuff you already own (to which I say, don’t I already have an iPod / iTunes for that?), or to a mix of your songs plus other songs they think you’ll like, or to entirely new music they suggest.
You can also build stations based on theme (like 80s music, classic rock, or dance), or other artists, which will also take into account your listening history.
I don’t believe Last.fm has the sophisticated algorithm that Pandora does. So, results are a bit uneven. For example sometimes my mix has just too frequent repetitions of weak-link offerings such Keith Moon solo songs or Queen without Freddie Mercury, or gets too heavily weighted toward female singers (maybe that’s the Abba effect?), leaving me with a testosterone craving.
A girl can only take so much Bjork…… before she needs a little Daltrey
Although The Who playlist (sigh) has too much Cream, Jimi Hendrix, and Rolling Stones.
Fortunately, though, you can always switch to another “station” if the current one is letting you down. I had great luck with “The Police” radio, for example, which seemed to result in playlist of all the 80s music that didn’t suck! And that magically seemed to improve my “Mix” when I went back to it after.
All in all, Last.fm is helping me find new (or old) music that I like, or had forgotten I like, even though I though I do have to skip forward through some tracks on the way. (I now know, for example, that Elvis Costello did a quite decent version of Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful”) For the impatient Canadian, it’s not a bad option.
Japanese documentary about the 85-year-old chef at the best sushi restaurant in the world.
She says: Jiro Ono works to perfect the art of making sushi. That’s all he’s done his adult life, and that’s all he wants to continue to do. This documentary tells his story, shows some of his food preparation techniques, and reveals the challenging situations his two sons are in, having followed their father into the same profession. The oldest is 50 and still waiting to be master chef, as his father has no intention of retiring. The younger has opened a companion restaurant.
The sushi really does look amazing and you get very hungry watching this, while knowing that anything called sushi that you get around here is not going to compare. Tuna is very much prized ingredient by the chef, and I wondered if they would touch on the over-fishing issue; they did, and in a way that made these types of chefs appear to not be the problem. (They are conscious of the issue, buy only what they need, when they need it, and with the small restaurant always to capacity and serving some of the world’s best food, nothing is wasted.)
Not that much happens in this film, and yet it’s fascinating—at least to a foodie, I suppose.
He says: We have no idea what real sushi is. And we’ll probably never find out.
I have a pretty basic Samsung smartphone that I thought I was happy with. So far, though, I’ve mostly been using it to make actual phone calls. I haven’t really taken to texting in a big way, and I don’t email from it much, because I hate typing on the damn thing. The keyboard seems too small and I keep making mistakes. It takes forever for even a short message. It’s just frustrating.
Or it was. Because thanks to Google+, of all things, I became aware that I can install an alternative on-screen keyboard on my phone. Specifically, the SwiftKey 3 keyboard. Between its very good auto-suggest and its touch-responsive design, I’m just so much faster and more accurate now. I can actually type on my phone without swearing.
I should have installed this months ago. Best $4 I’ve spent in a while (first month free).
(No compensation received for this endorsement. Sadly.)
I’m not going to call these “the best” (how would I know?), but here are ten songs originally written and recorded by men, later covered by a woman, where I think the cover surpasses the original. Not in any particular order (because I couldn’t make up my mind).
1. Working Class Hero by Marianne Faithfull
Originally written and recorded by: John Lennon
I love John Lennon’s original version, but Marianne Faithfull’s take, from her fantastic album Broken English (1979), featuring her upper-class accent and broken voice, is just darker and angrier and therefore, somehow, more awesome. Certainly better than Green Day’s fine but unexciting version on the Instant Karma John Lennon tribute CD (which is, unfortunately, full of fine but unexciting covers).
The video is a live version. I’m not sure it’s better than the studio version, but it’s good, and certainly more interesting to look at for six minutes than a static picture of the Broken English album cover.
2. Heartless by Dia Frampton
Originally written and recorded by: Kanye West
To be honest, I wasn’t sure I’d heard Kanye’s version of this until today. Having listened to it now, though, I can confirm that I like Dia’s version much more. To be fair, Kanye’s music isn’t the type I tend to listen to anyway. But when Ms Frampton did this version on The Voice, I thought it was one of the greatest things I’d ever heard. Lots of others did too, as it very nearly propelled her to victory on that show.
It’s a bit hard to find a good version of that Voice performance now. You will have to pop over to YouTube to actually see the below.
3. Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door by Avril Lavigne
Originally written and recorded by Bob Dylan
This is a probably a controversial choice, but I’ve never been much of a Dylan fan. I don’t quite get him, and I can’t get past that voice. But no doubt this is a really good song. And say what you will about Avril, that girl has a good set of pipes. She covered this song for the War Child charity, which assists child soldiers. I find her singing on it very touching. She may be a bratty 18-year-old here who doesn’t really understand the issues, but that makes her the same age as the young men (usually men) caught up in war. You may disagree, but for me, this works.
I also find the official video pretty touching.
4. Hallelujah by k.d. lang
Originally written and recorded by Leonard Cohen
And here’s the obvious, uncontroversial choice! She kind of owns this song now, complete with dropping one of the original verses (“Remember when I moved in you…”). Hearing her do this one live last year was as stunning as you’d expect. (And I also like her cover of Talking Head’s “Heaven”.)
Going with the video of her Juno performance here, as they may be when most Canadians realized what a great marriage between song and singer this was…
5. Real Men by Tori Amos
Originally written and recorded by Joe Jackson
Tori did an entire album of covers of songs by men, from which I’ve borrowed for the title of this post: Strange Little Girls. It has a dark version of I Don’t Like Mondays, a terrifying take of Eminem’s ’97 Bonnie and Clyde, an unrecognizable Heart of Gold. But my favorite is Real Men. I like the Joe Jackson original too, but Tori’s version just sounds great, and you can’t help but see a song about men’s gender roles differently when it’s song by a woman. It seems less snide and more thoughtful.
Here’s a very good version Tori did on TV.
6. Enjoy the Silence by Lacuna Coil
Originally recorded by Depeche Mode
Someone I follow tweeted that this was the “best cover ever”. I don’t think that’s so—I believe some on this very list are better—but it is a good cover, of an 80s tune I hadn’t given much thought to in quite a well. It sounds more powerful, more dramatic. And it inspired this post, which was originally going to be just a list of covers in general, until I realized most of the ones I was picking out were of women covering men’s song.
(Know what would be tough list to put together? Great covers men have done of women’s songs…)
Here’s the official Lacuna Coil video for “Enjoy the Silence”.
7. The Man Who Sold the World by Jordis Unga
Originally written and recorded by David Bowie
Bowie’s version is somewhat cerebral; Jordis brings a lot of emotion to this song, which she performed on long-ago reality series Rock Star: INXS. She said it reminded her of a friend who had committed suicide. This performance was the show-stopper on this episode of that series.
8. Sweet Jane by Cowboy Junkies
Originally written and recorded by Lou Reed
Not that Cowboy Junkies are all women (neither are Lacuna Coil), but Margot Timmins’s mellow yet sexy vocals definitely contribute a lot to the popularity of this cover. I had a few year’s gap between hearing this and the very different original, which I’m still not that crazy about. But the Cowboy Junkies’ “Sweet Jane” still has that nice groove.
The official video.
9. Crabbuckit by The Good Lovelies
Nothing wrong with KOS’s original, but you got to love the gorgeous three-part harmonies The Good Lovelies bring to this, while still retaining the lively beat. Fun group to see in concert, by the way.
Apparently they never did a video for this, so this one of those static sound types. Barely over 2 minutes long, though.
10. Darling Nikki by Chairlift
Originally written and recorded by Prince
An unlikely song for a woman to sing, which is partly why I love it. They sort of play around and deconstruct the song while keeping it recognizably, absolutely, Prince’s Darling Nikki. From Purplish Rain, once offered free by Spin Magazine, a collection of rather good covers of Prince’s Purple Rain, in its entirety.
Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow. Wealthy genius weapons manufacturer changes direction after being kidnapped in Afghanistan.
She says: I got interested in this after seeing The Avengers, because Iron Man was perhaps my favorite character in the movie. I found the Afghanistan setting and the look at the US military industrial really interesting for a “superhero” movie—gave it more depth. I was also struck by the fact that Tony Stark was such a nerd. Yes, despite being a very charming, extremely handsome, and wealthy man who therefore has no trouble attracting the ladies. The fact remains he has no friends, and seems happiest spending hours alone in his basement, playing with his tech.
The downside would be that it was a bit slow in parts, and the villain of the piece was of the bwah-ha-ha unsubtle variety.
He says: Not too bad. A bit slow at times. I really liked the character of Pepper. I’d probably give it 2 and half or three stars.
We did all our Boxing Day shopping online. We wanted a new big-screen TV for the downstairs TV room; many were on sale for Boxing Day; and you can get the same prices online as at the store. And you can often put in your order even before December 26. And they’ll bring it to you! Talking about this, though, I learned:
A number of people remain nervous about purchasing big-ticket items online.
Said nervousness is now completely foreign to me, as “online” has become my main “store” of choice for so many things.
There is a downside to it, though, in the lack of complete instant gratification. Delivery is fast, but not instantaneous. And with the TV, there was some confusion over the credit card to use, and it took a little longer than usual to arrive. Meantime, the other pieces we realized we needed to make the new TV “go” showed up: The new receiver with its six HDMI ports (versus the zero HDMI on the old one); the HDMI cables themselves; the TV mounting rack. All sitting around rather useless without a TV to pull it all together.
But hey, now they’re one big happy family. And that HDMI thing really does simplify the connections: the receiver, TV, PVR, recordable DVD, international DVD, and computer, all linked to one another in pretty short order. Where the old way, it always seemed to turn into a full-day project. Now we just have to consolidate remotes, because we’re currently juggling six of them!
Our downstairs rooms is pretty big, so we went with a 55′ screen, and I think it looks gorgeous. I thought my old receiver was actually pretty good, lack of HDMI notwithstanding, but this new one is definitely bringing out the bass in a way I hadn’t heard before (from the exact same speakers). Both DVDs can now properly render DTS and other high-quality sound streams. (Neither is BluRay—we had to leave our BluRay upstairs, where it doubles as the receiver for that TV—but that’s minor.)
And finally, finally, it’s easy to project anything from the computer onto a TV screen.
So the only issue is—there just isn’t a lot of good stuff to watch, is there? Admittedly, on TV, there was the Christmas rerun break, and now things are starting again—Big Bang, Daily Show, The Mentalist, etc And I recently discovered I have FX Canada (when did Rogers give me that?), and Louis is a pretty good show. But I haven’t been passionate about a television program in quite some time. It seems like everything really good is on HBO, which I’m just not paying for. The only new network series we really got into, The Last Resort, has been cancelled (though does seem to have a new episode tonight, but not sure how many more).
And web viewing? It’s a bit of an exercise in frustration if you’re Canadian, isn’t it? The networks have stuff, but it’s pretty limited. The American and UK stuff is blocked in Canada, unless you do some VPN shenanigans. iTunes has stuff, but it’s kind of expensive. You can actually find a surprising amount of stuff on YouTube (whole movies and shows), but the picture quality is often not that great, and you get the period “freezing”. We will be trying Netflix, finally, but we all know the Canadian selection and picture quality is more limited.
And I also know I have some sort of data cap with Rogers. That hasn’t been issue up to now, but how much web content can I watch until it is?
I may just have to turn to my (if I do say so myself) excellent collection of personal DVDs. Buffy marathon, anyone?
The companion, I suppose, to our pre-Christmas celebration is our post-New Year dinner. New Year’s Eve we go out to a restaurant; early in the new year, we make ourselves a gourmet dinner. Normally this happens much closer to January 1, but with Jan 1 being a Tuesday this year with back to work occurring on Wednesday, we put it off until the following weekend.
I actually pondered inviting other people over for it this time. But what happened is what usually does when I think of having people over for dinner: I over-think myself out of the whole idea. How much will my gluten-free friend manage to eat? (I remain fuzzy on exactly what does and doesn’t contain gluten.) Do my friends who don’t eat red meat consider lamb red meat? Does my friend who only eats read meat consider lamb red meat? Does anyone have a shellfish allergy?
Perhaps I need less complicated friends. At any rate, it was just the two of us, again. And maybe it just as well, as it turned the menu would have left my imaginary guests entertaining themselves for semi-long stretches while we were in the kitchen cooking, because very little of the meal could be prepared in advance.
Partly because I had been thinking of having guests, and you’re not supposed to try new recipes on them (not that it’s stopped me before), all of this year’s items were ones we’d made previously, though never combined in this way. While in some ways it seemed unfortunate not to try new stuff, the fact is we rarely make these gourmet items any other time of year. So why not repeat some of the greatest hits of the past?
First up: Mussels and clams, steamed in white wine flavored with lemon grass and green curry paste, then finished with cream and coconut sauce. I don’t know what it was this time, as the recipe involved virtually no added salt, but the broth tasted almost too salty. Almost, but not. Maybe from the mussels and clams themselves? The mussels were just great, though. Lovely texture, almost as if we didn’t live very far from the ocean.
I was going to serve this with the Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc it cooked in, but we ran out (the bottle had been opened before), so we had Ice Cuvee with it, which I think was better. That’s a mix of sparkling wine with just a bit of ice wine, and that slight sweetness nicely offset the salt. The playlist accompanying this course was The Beautiful Ones (that is, lovely-sounding songs).
The main course featured lamb loin chops with sides of Brussels spouts and wasabi mashed potatoes. Everything was simple to do, but the two of us having to manage timing and coordinating the three items was moderately challenging. Mostly fun, though, actually.
The lamb just had to be seared on each side in olive oil, then baked at 400. Then in the same pan, I prepared a jus of red wine and beef broth (organic). The mashed potatoes were your basic red potatoes, diced (skin left on) and boiled, then when tender, mashed with light sour cream, low-sodium chicken broth, some butter, and yes, wasabi paste (as in, the green stuff they serve with sushi). The Brussels sprouts were steamed slightly, then cut in half (Jean did much exclaiming about burnt fingers), and pan-fried in olive oil. Those were then topped with more olive oil, fleur de sel, and fresh lemon juice.
Man, this all turned out really well. The lamb was maybe a bit overdone, but still had some pink, and tasted amazing. Ms Paltrow is right, and this is a good way to prepare Brussels sprouts. And fresh mashed potatoes are great with a little zing!
We served this with a very easy-drinking 2009 Chateauneuf-du-pape. And listened to the Thoughtful playlist—songs with smarts.
Dessert was the one item that I could prepare in advance: A chocolate souffle recipe from the Epicurious website. (We still don’t own ramekins, though, so they still ended up in an assortment of custard dishes, corningware, and whatnot.) It’s basically melting chocolate, mixing it with milk, then with egg yolks, then beating whites and folding those in. And, sugar is involved as well. Then everything is placed in the ramekin substitutes in the fridge, awaiting later baking. While preparing I listed to my “Long ago and far away” playlist of songs I hadn’t played in the past year—that is, songs I didn’t listen to in 2012. New year, new songs.
The later baking produced ooey-gooey good molten chocolate warm dessert, served with port. Playlist for the eating: Love, the sweetest thing: romantic songs.
Ben Affleck, Alan Arkin, Viktor Garber. Six Americans escaped from the embassy in 1979 at the start of the hostage crisis, getting refuge from the Canadian ambassador. This movie focuses on the American ruse used to get them out.
She says: We saw this late, so I was looking out for a diminishment of the Canadian role in this, anticipating the tension of watching the actual escape, though we all know it succeeded. I found the Canadian treatment not as bad as it might have been; it was at least clear the ambassador and his wife were putting themselves at risk in this venture. And the series of check points on the way out of Iran did, indeed, quite effectively build tension.
And it is a really interesting story, that I hadn’t known before, that a faux movie was the pretext used for them being there (as Canadians), and that the American involvement was long covered up for the sake of the remaining hostages. While I’m sure the facts were “Hollywood-ized”, it’s still good to know them. Unlike the fake Argo, this Argo was a well-made movie.
He says: It kind of got on my nerves that every point of the escape was a cliffhanger, down to the plane being chased. But I couldn’t help get caught up in it anyway. And I agree that the Canadian treatment didn’t seem that bad.
Suraj Sharma, Gérard Dépardieu, Tabu. A young man leaving India with his family and their zoo animals survives a shipwreck, ending up with a Bengal tiger as a companion.
She says: I had not read the book, so really did not know what to expect from this apparently philosophical movie about a young man on a raft with tiger. How is that a movie? Do he and the tiger talk?
This sounds strange, given the premise, but the movie was a lot more realistic that I was expecting. For one, it’s not really a spoiler to say that the tiger doesn’t talk; the tiger is a tiger. And their time on the life boat is much more about the details of survival than I was expecting: how to get sufficient food, water, and sun protection, while not being eaten by a tiger. It’s certainly an odd story, but very compelling. The final riddle, of which story you believe, definitely stuck with us.
And the movie is gorgeous. My eyes are unbalanced, so I’m never sure if I see 3D as well as other people, but there’s no doubt I could see the depth in some scenes. The underwater cinematography was particularly impressive.
He says: I wasn’t sure about this one, but I ended up really liking it—the photography, the tiger story… I’m probably missing the themes, or whatever, but I enjoyed the movie.
Not sure what it was, but this year in the wider family, three of us—including me—got eReaders. Specially, various of us gave the other’s Kobos, based on the recommendation of the one person in the family who already had an eReader.
Now, I already have an Android tablet, which I had already been using to read ebooks. (Or, ebook, really, since I’ve read only one on it so far, with two more on deck.) I wondered if it would tire out my eyes to read on the tablet, but didn’t find that to be the case. Still, I was interested in the plain, eInk eReader because:
It’s not backlit (bad for sleep, so they say), but does have a built-in book light, making it better for reading in bed.
It can be read in the sun, which tablets can’t.
It’s quite a bit smaller and lighter than my tablet—which makes it (to me) not nearly as suitable for magazine and newspaper layouts—but much better to hold for reading a book.
The battery life is dramatically longer than a tablet’s. (It also seemed to charge very quickly in the first place.)
In my few days of experimentation, I found that while it doesn’t come with any books, you can wirelessly connect to the Kobo store and buy some. What I had more trouble wrapping my mind around was how you could do anything else with it—like add ebooks from other sources. (I mean legal ones, like from Google Play.)
I’m just so used to the tablet, you see, which is truly a standalone device (at least, Android ones are). I can load pretty much anything I want to right onto my tablet; no need to tether it to a PC and drag things on there. Whereas with the browser-less Kobo, I eventually figured out, you really have to connect it to a computer to do anything other than buy from the Kobo store. In fact, I actually have three desktop apps installed for this thing now: the Kobo one, Adobe Digital Editions—required for at least some of the books from Google Play, and in case I want to borrow ebooks from the library—and one called Calibre, which helps with finding and loading legal unlocked ebooks.
But enough about the technical stuff. How is it for reading?
My sister had downloaded two books within an hour of charging her Kobo. I, on the other hand, took about a day to decide what to buy first. Since they say Shades of Grey is partly responsible for the rise of eReader popularity, I got—no, not that book, since I don’t want to read badly written erotica inspired by freakin’ Twilight—but Maidenhead by Tamara Faith Berger, which is often touted as a better-written alternative to the Grey trilogy.
And due to our trip home taking much longer than expected (I won’t get into why), I have already read the whole thing. So I can confirm the Kobo Glo worked quite well. I had to read mostly in the dark, and the built-in book light was effective. I did not have to futz around with font sizes and zooming; it just worked. Navigating through the pages was simple, and I appreciated that it always gave me an idea where I was up to in the book (which my tablet doesn’t, at least not as visibly).
As for the book itself, it was incredibly engaging. I would warn that it is an erotic novel involving a teenage girl obsessed with a Rastafarian man twice her age who has a somewhat violent girlfriend, so it’s likely not everyone’s cup of tea. But it is very well-written, stimulating to both mind and other body parts. And Jean liked it, too, so it’s not just a woman thing.
Only bummer is, having given Maidenhead a good rating, what do you think Kobo’s big recommendation for me is now? Hint: It rhymes with Braids of Day…
***1/2 
*** 
***½ 
***½ 
My sister had downloaded two books within an hour of charging her Kobo. I, on the other hand, took about a day to decide what to buy first. Since they say Shades of Grey is partly responsible for the rise of eReader popularity, I got—no, not that book, since I don’t want to read badly written erotica inspired by freakin’ Twilight—but 
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