You may have heard “Suddenly I See” on heavy rotation in 2006, but what really turned me on to KT Tunstall’s work is the foot-stomping song “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” from that first album, “Eye on the Telescope” (released 2005). Check out her live version here — she shows her singing/songwriting/performing chops on stage:

On the strength of that song, I checked out the rest of her repertoire: two albums thus far, with this year’s release titled “Drastic Fantastic”. And it is fantastic, indeed. I purchased both albums!

Tunstall does have her own sound, although I don’t know if she deserves to be relegated to the pop section of iTunes since her guitar hooks and riffs are much more rock ‘n’ roll. And I have no idea where the comparisons to Dido come from, because I have a lot of Dido’s music and their voices and songs don’t sound anything alike. Even when Tunstall goes down-tempo, she’s still more like a folksie Chrissie Hynde than any one of a number of pop princesses floating about these days. Not that Dido is part of that group, but she’s still an orange to Tunstall’s apple.

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a crappy-cam picture of the comedy lineup

The House of Fielding’s been rather hectic lately, since the conclusion of the Morocco trip. Haven’t had much time to process photos, write, or even do laundry — and we all know I’d rather do the first two things before I’ll do laundry. Last night I joined a second group in the Toronto Short Film Project, and hopefully if we can iron out the script we drafted in our first sitting, we’ll be shooting sometime next week. Wednesday is set aside for filmmaking, and Thursday was all about comedy!

Just before the trip, I heard a bit of Jean Paul’s standup comedy routine on CBC Radio to promote Accents on Toronto 6. His piece was hysterically funny (to me, anyway), and I bought tickets for the show just before I left for my trip.

Here’s the lineup of performers:

Dini Dimakos: http://www.dinidimakos.com
Jean Paul: http://www.jeanpaul.ca
Nefarious Black Roses: http://nefariousblackroses.com
Arthur Simeon: http://myspace.com/bishopcomedy
Richard Ryder: http://richardryder.ca
Frank Spadone: http://frankspadone.com

A bunch of us got something to eat near the hall before the show and made a whole evening of it. I think opinions differed on who had the best routine, but I liked all the standup comics (Nefarious Black Roses were more performance artists) and thought they were worth every penny and more of the ticket price.

host Kenny Robinson

This song brought me into the city on the final leg of my weekend drive (950 miles / 1528 kms), and I love its catchy chorus and retro 60s feel. (It’s a remake of the Etta James song.) I’ve said for years that if I could re-exist as someone else, I would be a black woman with a killer voice. I grew up in Winnipeg with lots of West Indian kids, and I loved the way they moved and talked. Call me crazy (you won’t be the first — or the last!), but when I used to smoke I liked waking up to a deep, husky voice like Tina Turner’s. Too bad it took cigarettes for me to achieve this effect.

Jully Black is a Toronto native whose star is rising, and so it should — she writes songs for other musicians as well as her own, and her bio is an inspiration to read. “Seven Day Fool” is the only song on her newly-released album, Revival, that she didn’t pen herself. I hope Ms. Black goes far, far, far in the music biz, she deserves it.

Earlier this year, Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki went on a tour across the country to, as he puts it, “… tap into basic concerns that Canadians have about the environment, and then bring those messages to Ottawa.” One of those issues is about the threat to the environment that plastic bottles pose in terms of pollution, potential health hazards of plastic, and to raise awareness of the need to support a healthy local water supply.

February 1, 2007: Buying Bottled Water is Wrong, says Suzuki

If you want to hear Penn & Teller’s version on the debate, you’ll find it compressed into 12 minutes and 45 seconds in the YouTube video. If you’re not already familiar with their, um, occasionally colourful choice of language, consider yourselves warned.

Technorati tags: Penn & Teller, YouTube, bottled water, David Suzuki, environment

(Apologies for the nausea-inducing jittery video.)

You’ve probably seen this already, somewhere, since the story was first published online in July. But in case you haven’t and you’re wondering if it’s just another urban legend, this story is entirely true:

Seagull becomes crisp shoplifter

A seagull has turned shoplifter by wandering into a shop and helping itself to crisps.

The bird walks into the RS McColl newsagents in Aberdeen when the door is open and makes off with cheese Doritos.

The seagull, nicknamed Sam, has now become so popular that locals have started paying for his crisps.

Shop assistant Sriaram Nagarajan said: “Everyone is amazed by the seagull. For some reason he only takes that one particular kind of crisps.”

The bird first swooped in Aberdeen’s Castlegate earlier this month and made off with the 55p crisps, and is now a regular.

Once outside, the crisps are ripped open and the seagull is joined by other birds.

In related news, I can’t believe how many dancing seagull videoclips there are… this one’s my favourite, for the music:

This looks amazing! Check it out:

How to Knit Marzipan at Vegan Yum-Yum

And why would you WANT to knit marzipan, you may ask? Why, so you can create these:

photo by teenytinyturkey

I’ve talked about Cairns, Australia, numerous times before on this blog, but I’m going to mention it again to plug my friend Steve Savage’s latest (ad)venture, Cairns Unlimited.

I spent six crazy months in Cairns, but I didn’t own a camera while I lived there, all I’ve got are really low-quality prints from a disposable camera and whatever other photos people gave me — like the bungy pics. It was during the days before the internet took off, so most of the information available for the area was cobbled together from word-of-mouth, brochures at tourist info centres or bus stations (if you could get a hold of them), and guidebooks. Basically, it was a major hassle compared to what you can research and reserve these days with a computer connected to the internet.

Steve and Maria packed up their lives in Madrid and shipped kit-and-caboodle to north Queenland to set up Cairns Unlimited, and are keeping a blog about their latest discoveries. Steve’s a native Queenslander who’s travelled around the world a few times, and Maria’s ready to leave inland Spanish life to set up shop by the tropical beaches of northeastern Australia. Together they’ve set up this company to promote the region through their portal and provide an online resource for the area’s attractions. If you’re headed in this direction (once you see pictures, you’ll see why it’s so popular) or you’re just curious about north Queensland, check out the site:

Cairns Unlimited is a registered Queensland business, a home grown enterprise, run by a small but dedicated team of proud Queenslanders. The massive resource that is Cairns Unlimited was developed in response to the very real demand for a genuine one-stop, comprehensive online guide to Cairns and surrounding areas, a site where visitors could research, plan and book every element of their Tropical North Queensland holiday!

airing — for a photo project I did two years ago, with David’s help

One of the things I’d really like to get back to doing on a more consistent basis is letter-writing. (Kim: I owe you a letter!) Who am I kidding, I can’t even keep up with email. Anyway, I’m working on it.

Before I bought my first computer in 2000, I would write a lot more and, with all that practice, my handwriting was somewhat neater. These days, my fancy pens gather dust and the most I might write is a cheque once in a while. I do an atrocious amount of crossing out and re-writing, too, which is why I carry around one of those correctable tape pens! < --- nerd alert!

Anyway, what am I doing typing this up when I could be writing a letter, you might ask. I wanted to plug The Modern Letter Project, a project initiated by a Brooklyn writer of a blog I read from time to time.

Putting the snail back in mail: An international pen pal project for the modern world.

I think it’s a great idea, and if you are also a fan of “real mail”, you might want to check it out.

This site makes me laugh. I know more than a few passive-aggressive people — maybe you do, too.

It’s probably the comments more than the actual posts that I find funny, especially regarding situations involving roommates. If you’ve ever lived with people other than your family, I’m sure you can relate to some of these notes submitted to the site. Or, maybe it IS your family.

What people will do to avoid confrontation — i.e., write long, elaborate messages on paper or by email — is amazing. Sometimes it’s necessary to write a note, because meeting face-to-face for a frank discussion isn’t easy to arrange or downright impossible. But I’ve witnessed all sorts of behaviour in lieu, such as door-slamming, hogging the telephone, and righteous indignation played out with stomping feet. Yes, by adults! One person even withheld a $25 reimbursement from me, money I completely forgot about, thereby rendering the act of withholding all the more ridiculous. (Because oh man, not having that $25 was keeping me awake at night.)

The classic example of a passive-aggressive note is where a skewer of words is followed by a smiley face. Or two. The classic work example is, as I overhead one office person say, prefacing the sentence with “Kindly”, as in “Kindly provide details as to how you arrived at these figures.” A euphemism for “WTF were you thinking?!?!” I overheard another person say whenever he sees the word ‘kindly’ he knows he’d better get his arse in gear and get it done asap.

Wording letters just right is an art form, I suppose. And nobody does it better than the legal community as far as articulating hostility in as many shades as possible, the “cease and desist” letter at the far end of the spectrum of aggressiveness. However, most people aren’t bankrolling a legal team to do their dirty work for them, so the end result is often a hastily scribbled letter, maybe a Post-it note. At the moment I can’t recall ever writing a note to get someone’s behaviour or actions to change. I figure, if I did and by some miracle someone kept it and sent it to this website, I’d get busted instantly because I gave the internet a handwriting sample!

So I’m not going flying (edited) this morning, it’s too windy Ah well, at least I got one flight in.

Through a link to my site, I discovered why the QEW was closed on Saturday morning. Directly from the Hamilton Spectator, mistakes* and all:

Saturday, May 19, 2007 | Updated at 5:58 PM EDT

QEW car accident leaves two seriuosly injured
By Dana Brown

Niagara-bound traffic was snagged for hours this morning after a two-vehicle collision at the QEW and Fruitland Road.

OPP said the crash happened around 4:15 a.m. Two people were trapped, but were rescued and police closed a chunk of the highway as they investigated the crash.

One of the cars rolled over, OPP said.

Four hours after the crash a tan-coloured car remained on the Fruitland on-ramp, flipped on it’s roof. The driver side of the car appeared to be partially crushed.

OPP said two people suffered serious injuries, but had no word about the extent of those injuries.

As the morning got moving, traffic starting thickening on the service road as people tried to avoid the mess. Some highway drivers already headed for the kilometres-long back up actually to turn around and drive the wrong on the road to steer clear of the scene.

The highway was reopened around 11 a.m., but the ramp stayed closed for some time after that.

* People of Hamilton! Don’t accept this standard from your newspeople! Errant apostrophes, headline with spelling errors, whole words missing… this article was an affront to my internal spellchecker!