Stadium Love

I went to the Metric concert on September 17 at Metropolis. It was cool. The Stills were the opening, and they were okay. Metric's show was a lot about the lighting effects and the long, weird instrumentals with lots of synths. Not sure that's what the fans wanted, but it was interesting. Honestly though, once you've seen Karen O, no other indie songstress makes the cut. 

Dancer

My friend and I developed a taste for vegan restaurants during our trip across Canada, so we decided to go try another one out in Montreal with one of our friends. It is called "Aux Vivres", and it is on St. Laurent St. It was so good! I had tomato and cumin soup, a Thai bowl with brown rice, bok choy, grilled tofu, peanuts and peanut butter sauce, fresh apple juice, and a huge piece of chocolate and apple cake. The servings are pretty big and very satisfying!

This Fire

Craig Ferguson's autobiography American on Purpose came out on September 22nd. It is a very enjoyable read, and one can easily recognize Craig's humor throughout the book. Fans of his show have already heard a lot of his stories, but it is still a joy to be reacquainted with them. In the first part, Craig tells us of his childhood in his native unforgiving Scotland and of a few people who have greatly influenced his life, including his parents and his relatives living in New York. It makes one realize that, throughout life, we meet a lot of interesting people who become important to us. Later on, Craig recalls his days of drinking and of moving through the punk and stand-up comedy scenes. This includes his getting acquainted with the women involved in those scenes (man, he was a STUD!). After getting past drinking, Craig then moves on to his incredible journey through the show business world of America. He started with many crap jobs, wrote a novel and a few movies along the way, and ended up getting, against all odds, the position of late night talk show host on CBS. A lot of elements of this read make it highly inspirational, but they can all be summarized with this one sentence from the book: "Between safety and adventure, I choose adventure."

Don't Stop Believing

Yay, TV is back amongst the subjects discussed on this blog! And yes, I'm on the "Glee" bandwagon. Who doesn't love to watch other people indulging in the joys of show choir? The dialogs are also often hilarious. I am presently waiting for it to start. After a so-so third episode, last week's episode was very strong. The scene between the poster gay character and his dad was pretty powerful, and the Quinn pregnancy thing is seriously messed up. Also, there was a pretty great moment in the episode, which starts a bit after 1:32 in the video embedded below:

I might comment on tonight's episode later. On another note, the soundtrack to Where The Wild Things Are is now streaming online, and I'm loving it. Of course I do: it is, after all, Karen O! The movie looks like a real tearjerker... I'll be waiting for it!

That Time

I went to see Regina Spektor last Thursday at the Metropolis. It was a pretty great concert. Little Joy opened, they were cool. Regina was onstage for approximatively an hour and a half, but it felt longer, perhaps due to the nature of her songs. This is by no means a bad thing. She had three musicians with her: a drummer, an Asian violonist and an Asian cellist, who were awesome :D They stayed onstage for the first part of the concert, and after that it was only Regina and her piano or her guitar. In the first part of the concert, she played "Eet", which was one of the better moments of the concert. "On The Radio" was also awesome. She took out her aqua guitar for "Bobbing for Apples" and "That Time". "Après Moi" made me want her to sing in Russian far more often. For "Poor Little Rich Boy", she had a wooden chair next to the piano and was hitting on it with a stick all while playing. We thought the stick would break, but it made it. The encore was so great. She played "Samson", "Us", "Fidelity", "Hotel Song" and "Love, You're a Whore". I was waiting for "Hotel Song" during the whole concert and I finally got it! "Love, You're a Whore" was a country-like song, very fun. She played 23 songs in total, and the only song from Far that she didn't play was "Genius Next Door". Here is the complete setlist:

The Calculation

Eet

Folding Chair

Ode to Divorce

Machine

Laughing With

One More Time with Feeling

Blue Lips

Two Birds

On The Radio

Dance Anthem of the 80's

Bobbing For Apples

That Time

Après Moi

Poor Little Rich Boy

Wallet

Human of the Year

Man Of A Thousand Faces

Encore:

Samson

Us

Fidelity

Hotel Song

Love, You're a Whore

Your Honor

I saw The Reader and it was pretty good. However, I find it hard to believe that the main character's teenage experience would have such an important impact on the rest of his life. This movie made me think, here is yet another movie on what Jews went through in the Second World War, and it still is as horrible as ever. They are perfectly entitled to their anger, but for how long can they get away with it?

Temptation

I've read Trainspotting and I loved it. The book is pretty different from the movie, as the story does not focus around Renton and involves many other characters. To read this book, you have to be prepared to reading English written in the Scottish accent. I enjoyed reading about the lives of those petty criminals, seeing them deal with depression, learning about their views of the world and finding myself agreeing with them. The book, written by Irvine Welsh, is also really funny at times.