Definitely one of my absolute favourite songs right at the moment. Just lovely and exquisite and poignant. A fine balance between good-humoured lightness and serious sadness. And maybe it makes me miss the prairies. And makes me mournful about lost innocence (the video makes explicitly clear the true-life story upon which the song was based). Feel free to ignore the video. It gets a little preachy, but it’s honestly not bad for a random, slapdash YouTube fan creation. Let the melody sweep you up and take you away!
A piece by Roger Ebert on Pauline Kael. (A clash of the film critic titans, in other words. Only they didn’t seem to clash that much.) Lovely little blog piece, as is par for the course from Mr. Ebert.
…especially since as a guy interested in film and writing about film, I’ve read depressingly few Pauline Kael reviews. Wonderful little archive. (And yes, Geocities persists somehow, despite it no longer being the ’90s!)
Saw Arcade Fire live in concert today (for free for some reason!)… even though it was so incredibly busy I couldn’t actually see them since I was around the corner from the main square and had to use the Jumbotron… and I got separated from the peeps I was with in all the hubbub… but I heard them and it was absolutely stellar! A night to remember for sure!
“They heard me singing and they told me to stop
Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock
“He was listening to what I like to call the wisdom of the novel. Every true novelist listens for that suprapersonal wisdom, which explains why great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors. Novelists who are more intelligent than their books should go into another line of work.”
Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel, page 158 (via bearbearpdx)
‘As she had never thought or done anything morally guilty herself, she had not that abhorrence for wickedness which distinguishes moralists much more knowing.’
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
‘I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.’
Old black Joe’s still pickin’ cotton For your ribbons and bows Yeah, everybody knows … Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful Oh, give or take a night or two Everybody knows you’ve been discreet But there were so many people you just had to meet Without your clothes And everybody knows … Everybody knows the scene is dead But there’s going to be a meter on your bed That will disclose What everybody knows’
~ Leonard Cohen, ‘Everybody Knows’
(Yup, more Leonard Cohen. So sue me. I’m in the mood for his melodies and since I now inhabit Montreal, I feel it a somewhat fitting tribute to one of the greatest Montrealers - hell, Canadians - out there.)
