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  • Review: Lavalléville

    Last night Mike and I scored free tickets (courtesy of Véro, HEY, I can do accented characters through this website software now! Great!) to see the play she is in – Lavalléville.

    Véro has been preparing for this for about six months so I was quite excited to see what they had come up with. Lavalléville is a play written by André Paiement
    who is some big playwright from Sudbury who spearheaded some Northern Ontario theatre scene. Clearly I am not well versed in this subject matter so we could also ask Véro for a chat about why this guy was a big deal.

    This play was deemed the ‘quintessential’ Northern-Ontario play…it takes place in Lavalléville where there is no real outside contact with the rest of the world so they dress a little strange, their mannerisms are a little odd and if they do get word from the outside of the town, they are either scared or in awe of it. For example, Véro’s character plans to leave Lavalléville to a place called Montreal, Canada where she has heard that women can get paid to sleep with men; all you have to do is wear short skirts and high boots. This is quite the revelation for all those that hear this.

    The story really revolves around Diane’s (Véro’s character) wishes to leave the town and the hopes that a big-wig from Toronto, Canada will come and like what he sees in the town and invest in it (or buy it? I didn’t really catch the difference…).

    This play was over the top hilarity. The characters are in caricature mode, meaning that this is not a serious play whatsoever. The outfits/costumes were quite out of the ordinary. Véro’s hair probably stood a foot off of her head. One gentleman dressed as Napoleon while another woman dressed like Madonna (circa 80s). The energy on the stage was incredible. It was such a energetic play…usually I’ve seen plays which are introspective and subdued…this one was like watching a full-out comedy ten feet in front of you.

    Mike and I both thoroughly enjoyed the play. It was highly entertaining and it was great to see Véro (and all the others!) hard work pay off into a spectacular spectacle (please note my spectacular vernacular). Véro over-acted her part (which was planned) so she is quite the crazy person on stage. Plus we got to see her sing a solo number, dance a little around the stage and *gasp* kiss another guy. Mike nudged me during that part of the play. Heck, I knew it would happen and that’s what actors do…right? 😉

    Go show some support to Véro and the others and see Lavalléville! Tickets are $12 each ($10 for students/seniors) and it’s playing Thursday, Friday and Saturday, each week until the final showing on April 19 (which I will be at). You can find more information here:

    http://www.theatretremplin.com/

  • Create Your Own Bursary

    My friend Rob asked me a question about starting a bursary.  Recap: Rob is a good friend from back home that we lost touch with but have recently found again.  It’s like my favourite Thundercats toy has been found in between the couch cushions!

    Anyhow, Rob is a high school teacher and he is thinking about starting up a bursary.  Here’s some details from him:

    I sit on a committee that choses who gets what bursary for those that graduate. I would like to create a bursary myself and give it to a deserving student. Where you (and others) come in is setting up a criteria for said bursary. I don’t want it to be for a highest average or course specific. There are way too many of those already. I was thinking along the lines of most improved or something. The only thing is most improved in what? I have no idea. What kind of bursary would you like to see given?
    I thought I would throw this out to the masses to get a bunch of different opinions.  In terms of most improved…sounds like a good idea actually.  I know that my Great Philosophers professor indicated that her marking is subjective on a variety of factors, one being that if she sees you did poorly on the first midterm but really improved on the second midterm and the exam, then she would weigh the mark more with the improved marks because it shows that you’ve grasped the material after being scared from the first midterm.  😉  So I don’t know how bursaries usually work, are they for the entire high school term or just the final senior year?  Either way, I suppose you could easily find the most improved in terms of marks by finding the largest variance between the beginning of the (term/senior year) and comparing it to the last.  Of course, this would need to be a positive variance, we aren’t talking about giving a bursary to someone who bombed.
    I don’t think you would meet much resistance on giving out a bursary for most improved but I hope to heck that it doesn’t create this new culture in school where students who know they don’t have good enough marks to get the usual bursaries (like for being the smartest, happy go-lucky kid in school) would just fail their first test so they can come back and destroy the second test, hence, creating a spot in the running for most improved.  You gotta watch out for those students…they’re shifty like that.  And smart.

    What other ideas do we have out there for a bursary for high school students?  Share the wealth of your brains.

  • Review: Life of Pi

    life-of-pi1.jpgI just finished reading Life of Pi upon Eric’s suggestion.  Unfortunately for myself, I thought I had more to read this morning so I only brought the one book with me on the bus and it turned out that I only had three pages left.  Woops?

    Life of Pi is written by Canadian author Yann Martel.  It is mainly a novel about the life of Piscine “Pi” Molitor Patel who is a boy from India whose father is a zookeeper.  At one point, they all pick up and move to Canada but along their way the ship they are on sinks and Pi is left along in a lifeboat along with a Bengal Tiger.

    The majority of the novel revolves around how Pi survived his voyage at sea with this tiger for 227 days which is insane when you think about it.  He had to figure out how to live off the sea and not disturb the tiger who was in the boat with him.  You know he survived because in the beginning of the novel the author talks with a ‘future Pi’ who is living in Toronto.

    I found the beginnings of his journey very interesting in that he explained what happened in the first days (it’s all told from a first-person perspective) and how he dealt with the huge tiger in his boat and how he took care of himself during the time.  The rest of the novel gets a little tiresome as you KNOW he survived the ordeal so when you read about his thoughts of life at sea and the pain and hardship he went through, it got a little boring knowing that the biggest event of all (someone saving him) was right around the corner.  I definitely found myself speed reading through some aspects of the book (like when he spoke about the skies and the seas…come on, get to the good stuff!)

    However, I must admit that I am pretty upset right now as I had thought this book was non-fiction!  The tale was very gripping thinking that this actually happened to someone!  It was quite the page-turner at some points.  For those of you who have read the book, I am hoping you can see how easy it was to feel that it was real, considering the author interviews Pi in Toronto!  Now that I know it’s fiction…meh.  I don’t know…I guess it’s still a good read.  The ending is quite amazing actually.

    In the end, I did enjoy this book.  It had a very interesting section regarding religion and how Pi took it upon himself to be a practicing Christian, Mulsim and Hindu, reasoning that he loves God in all forms.  It was interesting to see how the figureheads of the religions came down on this 8 year old boy and told him he couldn’t that but in the end they left bewildered and wondering if they had it all wrong.  I’ll have to reflect on it some more I suppose…it was a page turner but I am wondering if I would felt differently if I knew it was fiction.

  • One of my Nightmares Come True

    Many times have I waited at a bus stop or at an intersection or anywhere where there is traffic.  99% of the time I am in my own little world listening to my music or looking at the birds in the sky.

    1% of the time I am highly alert to everything going on around me in fear that an out of control driver would smack me.  Let’s be honest, I’m going to think that this doesn’t happen too often.

    Unfortunately it did yesterday as a car plowed into a bus stop and killed a woman yesterday.  Horrible, HORRIBLE!  That is a scary thing to think about.

    Read here.

    On a totally unrelated note (other than the word nightmare), I had this crazy dream this morning.  I dreamed that my alarm went off and I went to the washroom and when I got there it was kind of full…of stuff.  Like furniture.  Mike had moved some stuff into the washroom for some reason.  I just said nothing and moved to the shower where I found some cases of beer (now that I think of it, I think all the stuff from the garage was in the bathroom) so I moved them.  Oddly enough I wasn’t upset but when I turned around to see the empty shower, it was FULL OF STUFF…shelves of stuff.  I flipped!  I started yelling for Mike and both he and Eric came into the scene as I was yelling at Mike.  “How could you put all this stuff in here?!  Don’t you realize that I need to go to work and to do so I need to take a shower in the morning?!  Do you realize how long it will take me to move all this stuff?”

    All along no one is saying a word during my rant and when I am done Eric says “But he had to make room for his family.  Don’t you care about his family here?”  Bewildered, his cousin Adam entered the scene (Note that Mike doesn’t actually have a cousin Adam that I know of, let alone that funnily looked exactly like Mike but a little shorter.  But they both had the same hair, glasses and beard.  I had a good laugh.) and then I apologized for the outrage saying that I didn’t know his cousin was staying with us and then I woke up.

    Strange!

  • Day 7 – A Mouthful of Seawater

    Punta Cana. Martine 336, originally uploaded by palm0014.

    We had planned to go out in these great underwater sea-doos which looked like something out of a James Bond film but in the end we decided to head out to do some snorkeling. It was a good day for it…nice and sunny, no real bad hangovers from the wedding before…all was well in the world.

    Gaetan, Vero and I headed out on a boat which brought us along the coastline to a spot with a bunch of coral so that we could snorkel. I must admit that when we first got the snorkel gear a bit of fear came over me as I found it hard to get used to breathing out of a tube and not through my nose. However, I realized that if I calmed my breathing (and fear!) down, there would be no problem.

    Until we got to the spot. It is quite choppy once you get a little farther off the shore. I never realized how choppy the ocean can be out there! Armed with flippers and a mask, we all hopped in and went for the ride. The mask took a little getting used to….it wasn’t TOO bad to breathe out of it but if a wave came on top of you then you got a mouthful of saltwater…yuck!

    At first I was swimming around some massive corral reefs in which they were very close to you…in fact the wave once smacked my knee into one (good thing it was just rock and not sharp corral!). After realizing that the waves would continue to smack me into these rocks, I decided to head to another area. I met Gaetan on the way who was having trouble with his mask. I think it kept fogging up and we figured it wasn’t tight enough.

    Let me tell you, the ocean is quite the amazing sight once you lay your eyes to it through a scuba mask. It’s really something out of National Geographic. At one point I was literally swimming with hundreds of blue fish…the size of a perch. It was like I was a part of them. They weren’t scared of me at all. I was just one with them trying to swim along. That’s another point about the ocean…the fish don’t exactly swim…they just move with the ocean waves. It’s pointless to try too hard to move against the ocean…simply flow along. I still marvel at the fact that I was alongside hundreds of fish and they weren’t moving around quickly like you see minnows move around…it was just calm and they were along for the ride.

    We stayed out there for a good 30 – 45 minutes but we had grown tired after all that time of sucking in some salt water and fighting against the waves. We headed back for the boat and Gaetan had mentioned that when he had removed his mouthpiece in the water one time, he had almost lost his teeth. I commented that it would have been funny as there would have been a fish with a great smile somewhere out in the ocean! We all had a good laugh.

    I believe we paid around $30 for this excursion and it was well worth it. We had at least an hour on the boat (which is a great ride, although I was feeling kind of sick after swallowing some saltwater) and 45 minutes out snorkeling. Some people had gone on an all-day excursion which they said wasn’t too interesting as most of the time the boat just laid anchor somewhere and stayed there for an hour. I think they would have preferred this excursion more.

    Have I already spoken about the excursions? While it cost a little extra money, I thoroughly took advantage of the location we were in and the opportunities they provided. I lucked out and had some great excursions. If I returned I don’t think I would try the snorkeling again but I would be up for a safari tour if it was a different area as well as the parasailing. The view was amazing from the parasail. Definitely worth the $200+ that we spent in total.

    We returned to the beach and grabbed a bite to eat at the outdoor eating area.

    At one point in the day, Vero and I headed down the beach to the merchants tents.  This was quite a long walk down the beach but it’s not like we had anything else to do!  When we got to the tents they sure knew how to wrangle us in with comments about how beautiful Vero is and how they have the best deals in the land.  After haggling (which I still have to learn the fine art of) Vero ended up with a ton of jewelery with larimar (the stone native to the Dominican Republic) and I had found this neat shaker percussion instrument and also a gift for my Dad.  Actually, as I write this a few months later, I realize that I have never sent my family their gifts from the Dominican Republic!  Woops!  I guess I’ll send them along with the next batch of Sopranos Dad!  I was also trying out some hats but never found one that I really liked (which is funny because two months later I found one I liked in Giant Tiger of all places).

    That evening Vero, Andreane and I headed to the Italian restaurant for a late eat. I must say that it was quite horrible. The service was bad, I got the wrong order and after we got our food served they never returned once in the 30 minutes afterwards. At one point I got fed up and we decided to leave the place. Enough was enough, I wasn’t going to spend the last night sitting in a restaurant!

    We ended up back in our hotel room and Vero and Andreane had some bad sunburns so they needed some Aloe Vero. I was doubly disappointed that night as we had left the housekeeper another $5 that morning and I came back to find that the beer hadn’t been restocked! What the heck? At various points while I was watching a movie and they were applying Aloe Vero to themselves I kept putting my cold beer on Vero. I was like the 7-Up Man!

    But at one point, Andreane was lying on her back and I put the cold beer on her stomach but she freaked out and the can tipped over her and then beer went all over her! THEN she flips out even more, jumps up, the can goes flying onto the bed and chaos reigns. There’s Andreane and the bed soaked with beer. All you could hear are screams from all over. It was quite funny. We threw the comforter out in the porch and got Andreane some clothes to wear. Vero’s aunt had heard the screams so a bunch of them came over to hang out for the rest of the night.

  • Day 8 – Day of the Lobster

    On the final day of our adventure, I had declared it to be a sunscreen-free day considering everyone else was tan and I was not.  I definitely don’t know much about absorbing some suns rays but one of the girls had told me how she started out with SPF 30 at the beginning of the week to get her body used to the sun and then moved down to SPF 5.  This explained why the sun didn’t absorb into my skin at all during the week considering I was using SPF 30.  Also, this may inadvertently explain why I am like Casper the Ghost for most summers of my life.  😉  Of course, I’m sure one of you can verse me in the ways of tanning.

    So with that, a bunch of us manly men decided to go without sunscreen for the day.  This was Vero and my first real day at the beach to be honest…we had usually done things around the resort but had never gone to the beach in the morning and stayed there for the entire day.  It wasn’t in our interest to do so…we need a little adventure during the day!

    It was clearly the wrap-up day as tons of pictures were taken of all of us and we said goodbye to the great bartenders on the beach.  I read a book for awhile and just had great fun body surfing on the waves and enjoying the sun.  Around 1PM I thought that maybe this ‘no sunscreen’ idea was a little silly and lathered myself up but the damage had been done.  I was a human lobster!  It was quite irritating and it nearly killed me on the flight back home.  I literally had to apply ice down my shirt to ease the pain.  Yes, yes, I know, I am a fool.

    Vero and I headed back to the resort and hung around the pool for awhile before leaving on the bus to the airport.  Once again, Vero’s grandmother got screwed over.  Remember she got some free spa time?  Well it turns out that there is some small print and that she would have to pay extra for the massages she received.  So when she went to check out at noon, there was a $45 charge in her name.  In the end, it was never paid because of the dispute of it all.

    However, when we boarded the bus, they needed to see some tag that the reception would give you to indicate that you have checked out.  Her grandmother had not received this tag because of the dispute over the $45.  So she went back and in the span of six hours the charge had increased to $80!  Highway robbery!  We were not impressed but what can you do?  We had to leave for the airport.  She forked over the money and we said goodbye to this place forever.  Note, if you ever want to stay in the Dominican Republic, DO NOT GO TO THE BAHIA PRINCIPE.  Not worth it.

    We got to the airport and had a bite to eat at Wendy’s (of all places in the Dominican Republic).  We saw our pictures up on a wall taken from when we first entered the airport the first time!  We didn’t really feel the need to pick up the picture but we were pleasantly surprised to see that Vero’s aunt had picked it up anyhow and sent it our way!  Thanks!

    I was in pain from the sunburn and grabbed a few drinks of Gatorade to get over the feeling of nausea.  At one point we were in the gift shop and we were contemplating picking up some mamajuana for Mike.  But then while in line I realized that this wasn’t even the duty free shop!  I hustled down to the other end of the airport to find the glorious cheap liquor which adorns the duty free shops.  We are talking a litre of Crown Royal for $20.  Beautiful.  I picked up a bottle of Crown and some Tangueray gin for Krista and headed to the cash lineup.

    In comes Vero’s uncle saying that the plane is boarding NOW!  What the heck?!  It’s 30 minutes before it’s supposed departure!  We start freaking out.  There’s no way I’m leaving this liquor behind!  Vero runs towards the other end of the airport while I wait in line.  After the booze is paid for I hightail it down the airport.  I can hear my name over the PA!  They are calling me, last call, last call!  I swear this is a bad dream!  I round the corner and find Vero looking worried around the front desk.  Everyone cheers me as I run up, give my ticket and board the plane!  All is well!  I guess the pilot just wanted to leave earlier for some reason.  I have never heard of that happening!  Case in point – look for the duty free shop BEFORE anything else in the airport!

    The flight home was brutal for me as I was sunburned but other than that, pretty uneventful.  We arrived in Toronto around 1AM and headed to the hotel.  We crashed for a few hours and then got up the next morning so that Uncle Richard and Aunt Dinah could pick us up.  Unfortunately, there were some of our crew that got on a later flight and it was actually delayed for a few hours so they didn’t even arrive into Toronto until six in the morning and they had booked a room for the night before!  So they didn’t get much use of the room and didn’t have the chance to cancel them.  That is unfortunate.

    Vero and I said goodbye to the crew as they were heading to the airport to get a flight back up North.  Vero’s grandmother actually got a ride with us to Ottawa as she had an appointment there.

    Can I say that it’s quite hard to switch your brain into another language after speaking it for such a long time?  The waitress at breakfast asked if I wanted any juice and I replied “Oui, merci!”.  Ha ha.  She gave me a look that said “I don’t speak French.”

    All in all, I personally had an amazing time down south with Vero’s family.  They were fun and it was great to actually get to hang out with them more than the obligatory holiday visit which is usually too short and doesn’t really get to see the real side of people sometimes.  I think I impressed them with my amazing videotaping work and my amazing bilingualness.  Plus, I don’t look too bad in sandals or with red skin.  All joking aside, I had a great time getting to know the family, the wedding was amazing even though we had a hell of a time at some points, and the excursions were a lot of fun.

    I can’t remember if I spoke about this already but Vero and I have realized that we aren’t beach people.  While we had fun, we can’t picture ourselves hanging out by ourselves at a beach for a week with nothing else to do.  We enjoyed coupling the beach with the excursions though.  I guess we are more of the adventurous type.  Does this mean that we would never go back down South?  No.  But I don’t think we would choose to go alone.  It would definitely have to be with a group of people and I don’t think we would ever actively spearhead that movement.  Don’t get me wrong, we had a great time…but at least this experience allowed us to realize what we don’t and do like about travelling.  Gaetan’s trip to Peru comes to mind as something great to do…a little adventure, that’s what we’re looking for!

    Cheers to the newly wedded couple!

  • Day 6 – Punta Cana – Here Comes the Bride

    Punta Cana. Martine 197, originally uploaded by palm0014.

     

    Panic time. Everything is happening today. Food eaten, pictures to be taken, multiple things to do.

    What was my mission that day? Make sure to videotape every moment of the day. I pulled out my fancy schmancy outfit for the wedding, put it in the washroom with the hot water running, realized it didn’t change a thing, and then realized that there was an iron up in the bride’s room.

    I got relegated to videotaping the women getting ready while Al got to head over to the guys room. No harm, no foul. I grabbed a few videotapes and a beer and headed to the room. Vero gave me some pointers of what she wanted videotaped as she had the idea of the wedding video brewing in her head. I got action shots of the girls fixing up their hair, ironing some clothes, etc. It was quite the tough job to just stand there and point the camera…probably the hardest job of the day. 😉

    One funny moment came when Vero’s stepmother asked for a lit cigarette to be passed to her (which is a surprise since she doesn’t smoke) and I just happened to filming in her direction but I didn’t really realize what was happening until it came into the viewscreen and by that time the damage was done. I quickly panned the camera away from her while you could hear her screaming at me “Get that videocamera away from me!” Ha ha…we all had a good laugh.

    It’s interesting to actually have all of this on videotape because it is so fresh in my mind. Unfortunately the hairdresser didn’t get the style that Anne-Marie wanted so her sisters went to work at making her hair beautiful (which they succeeded at). I can only imagine how horrible the feeling must be to know you have an hour to go until your wedding and realize that your hair is in disarray.

    We then headed out of the room, onto the trolley that took us down to the wedding chapel. A crowd has already formed and I took my place near the steps where the party was going to take place. Filming an event like this is quite surreal…you don’t really have the time to allow yourself to exist in the moment. You’re capturing it so you’re more focussed on the angle of the shot, how the shot looks in the sunlight, is everyone in focus…so I basically lived out the entire ceremony in a virtual-screen world. I didn’t mind at all, but I can see why it’s probably more beneficial to hire someone to videotape your wedding as they are not invested in the process as much. Speaking about hiring someone to videotape your wedding, you should talk to Vero in case you want someone to tape your wedding this summer (blatant promotion here).

    Smiles were had, rings were exchanged, Vero bawled like a baby (no joke! This was quite a surprise. Clearly she does not have the thick skin she thinks she has.), jokes were made by the band…it was a great wedding. The weather was great (maybe a little too great as the sun was in our eyes for all the pictures) and everyone looked top notch. We had pictures taken on the grass and I’m sure they will look great when we get a look at them.

    After the wedding ceremony I relaxed for awhile as Vero and others had gone to the beach to take some more pictures. It had stormed while they were there so they had to take cover under some palm trees. I was comfortable in the hotel room having a beer and taking a snooze.

    That night we headed to the Italian restaurant where the reception was taking place outside on the patio. It was a good setup and it was quite comfortable. The wedding party showed up and the videocamera was in full recording mode. It was a little dark on that patio so the video came out a little wonky but the only way to prevent that is to have a spotlight on the people.

    I got to sit with some of Anne-Marie and Steve’s friends whom I didn’t get that much chance to talk to before that night. They turned out to be a great time. Speeches were made, laughs were had and crazy dances were done to get the couple to kiss. The waiters were quite crazy in their own right. They would come in dancing half the time and sneaking drinks of beer under the table so their manager couldn’t see them. I thought it was quite hilarious. I think at one point the waiter came in and danced with Vero’s grandmother at one point. I’ll have to check the pictures.

    I don’t know what else to say other than the wedding went off great. After all the obligatory dances, some fun music came on and people got up to dance. The best part of the night was when out of nowhere a man appeared from the edge of the patio and jumped into the dance floor. At first we thought it was the guy from the night before at the karaoke bar but we realized it was Vero’s father dressed up in a chippendale outfit! It was quite hilarious as he danced around the area. He has quite the sense of humour which I love. Vero even mentioned that he was thinking of wearing that outfit for the entire day but Vero managed to talk him out of it.

    Only a few songs were played before they had us leave the patio. Before leaving I recorded a bunch of good wishes to the wedded couple which will end up on the video. I also took some footage for my eventual “Palmer Edit” of the trip. Let’s just say that it will probably have a little more flair than Vero’s version!

    We headed over to the discotheque for a few songs and after we grew tired of that, we headed back to hotel room for the night. A great wedding was had and I’m sure Anne-Marie and Steve as happy as they could be.

     

  • April Fool’s Day!

    I am kind of disappointed that I never really thought of anything great to do this April Fool’s Day (but the day is not over yet!).  Last year had the wonderfully planned out event of me appearing on Canadian Idol  and it got a lot of people.  My favourite person who got caught up in it was Carol who had proceeded to tell all her friends that I went to the auditions.  My name is probably known in Meaford, Ontario now (at least the female bouncer at the Royal Canadian Legion would know my name!)

    I do recall a classic story of how my friend Regan was fooled into thinking he was late for school one day.  His father changed the clocks and ran into his room and screamed “You’re late for school!” and they were in a panic and then his dad had the last laugh as he told them they weren’t late at all.  I don’t know why that story remains in my head, but it’s a good one.

    So I hope you can share your own April Fool’s stories here today!

  • Random Thought Processes from Raine Maida Show

    Review to come later. But they did an excellent cover of Billy Talent’s Try Honesty. Nice.

    – I was speaking to a gentleman last night who did not appreciate when people (who have access to the masses) express their points of view without providing a disclaimer. Examples of people he spoke about were Bono of U2 (using the forum of his concerts to express the need to help the impoverished), Oprah Winfrey (expressing views of who she supports in an election) or even Jared Paul (a spoken word artist opening for Raine Maida who expressed his thoughts on various issues around the world through spoken word/poetry.).

    This gentleman also indicated that he is fine with these people expressing their views if they add the disclaimer “You should inform yourselves of all sides of the story and not just take my views as Gospel.” He was upset that there are clearly apathetic blind followers out there that simply agree with a view because “Bono said so.”

    Discuss.

    – In this digital age, it is hard not to see the following scene: You are in a crowd and an artist is on the stage. In your direct line of view is the person in front of you holding up their digicam and you can see the artist through the viewscreen as well as seeing the actual person on stage. I thought that would make an interesting album cover…what’s more important to these people? Watching the real thing or watching the real thing through a screen?

    iplaying: Line and Sinker – Billy Talent (Billy Talent)

  • Raine Maida at Capital Music Hall

    Mike and I headed downtown to see Raine Maida at the Capital Music Hall. Raine Maida is out there supporting his solo album The Hunter’s Lullaby. While he cites influences of spoken word poetry, the album only touches upon that aspect in a few songs. It’s a more interesting album than a regular rock album from Our Lady Peace. It acoustic based, with keys, cello, good drum beats. All in all, a good album.

    We started off the night going to the Lonestar Restaurant with Krista, Jill, Meghan and Julie. Good times were had and the chicken chimichanga is pretty darn good. Palmer-approved.

    We headed over to the Capital Music Hall and found an immense line-up to get in. That was quite strange to see at 8:30! What is even more surprising is the place was PACKED when we got in. Billy the Kid was on stage at the time and she was loads of fun. I will probably pick up an album. Mike then realized there was a flux of people in the back towards the bar and we found a great spot to stand closer to the stage.

    Raine came out to introduce Jared Paul who is a spoken word artist. He was quite interesting…most of the time he didn’t use the microphone so the crowd had to hush up to listen to the words he was saying. Quite the interesting technique. At one point the crowd was losing interest so he had to switch to the microphone to keep our attention. I thought he had some interesting thoughts and I enjoyed the way he delivered them (never seeing a spoken word artist before). Mike then started a discussion about how he didn’t appreciate how people who had access to a crowd just spout out their views without saying “But inform yourselves and don’t take my word for Gospel.” This started a great debate which lasted until 3AM and in the end neither one of us had managed to convince the other so we ended on that note.

    Raine Maida hit the stage with his wife Chantal Kreviazuk on keyboards, as well as a drummer and cellist (celloist? Cello-player?). Very subdued show, as in it isn’t full out rock like Foo Fighters. But it was great nonetheless. Sometimes it’s great just to absorb the music and the words he has to say. He even commented that it was different playing for a crowd that isn’t crowd surfing or pumping their fists in the air.

    I believe he played his entire album (but I can’t remember and I pulled the setlist below from their show in Edmonton which seemed very similar, if not exactly the same) and he had a bunch of covers. First he spoke of how Neil Young had stated in an interview a few months ago that “Anyone who believes that music can change the world is naïve.” Raine found this hard to swallow considering some of the more….influential songs he has had in his past. Raine was thinking about it and blogged about it but after the days went by he realized that maybe Neil was stoned when he said it. Ha ha. They then played a great version of Ohio.

    Later on in the show they introduced a song by a Canadian band who’s singer Raine thought was cute. I really didn’t recognize the song until the chorus…it was Try Honesty by Billy Talent! It’s quite different to hear a punk song turned into an acoustic ballad. It was very moving and I realized that sometimes with punk songs, you don’t really pay attention to the lyrics. Actually, I find I don’t pay attention to too many lyrics and I’ve started to change that in the past year to help me with my songwriting craft. I recommend you go on Youtube to find a video of Raine Maida playing Try Honesty.

    Chantal also sang a Pixies cover song “Where is My Mind” which was good but I have never heard the song myself. During the encore Raine started singing Innocent and the crowd was singing along and then Raine asked us to sing louder and asked if we were just a bunch of conservatives in this town of Ottawa. The crowd definitely upped the volume on the singing after that comment and afterwards Raine remarked that he now knows how to get a bunch of people from Ottawa all riled up. I wish every artist would do that in the future!

    All in all, I really enjoyed Raine Maida’s show and I am anxious for any live material to come along. Especially if it includes one of his rare tracks called Victim of a Small Town which I had never heard before but fell in love with.

    Careful What You Wish For
    Sex Love & Honey
    The Snake and the Crown
    Victim of a Small Town (new song? I’d never heard it before)
    Earthless
    Ohio (Neil Young cover)
    The Less I Know
    Confessional
    China Doll
    Try Honesty (Billy Talent cover)
    Yellow Brick Road
    Rat Race

    Encore:
    Where is My Mind (Pixies cover performed by Chantal)
    Innocent
    One Second Chance