Baker Baker

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Baker Baker baking a cake

make me a day

make me whole again

and I wonder what's in a day

what's in your cake this time

I saw Tori in the Molson Amphitheatre last Saturday night. It started out as being a very wet and rainy place, and I'm glad I didn't try and go to the M&G for it did not happen because of the rain.
Although I didn't get to hear the sound check, although she played none of my favourite songs from the albums (given that Icicle and Blood Roses came pretty close ~ Yes she did Icicle deary!), although she did only one b-side (Here. In My Head), although I did not recognize the covers in Tori's pianobar (wherefore I should be spanked :p ), it was still the most amazing thing ever!!
Tori solo is so much better, Tori up close is so much better, Ahoy really sucks! I had a wonderful seat, I got closer during the encores, I took great pictures apart from all the stripes on them. The Like were pretty but bland, I have attained two autographed posters from The Ditty Bops, nice grrrrrls BTW, and I got the Sweet The Sting t-shirt:

Tori's performance was absolutely fabulous, the set started out really strong with after OS Icicle, Blood Roses and Here. In My Head. She did a great improv to General Joy, Mother and Crazy were both all right. Pianobar was fab, even Cars & Guitars was bearable, then the Choirgirl songs came, always winners, they are. She did a beautiful version of Taxi Ride before TBK. The encores were OK, but not amazingly wantable, so I reeeeeeeeealy prayed to TGG for a stunning last song, when I knew there was only one left.

Then, she did Baker Baker.

I swear that woman is going to tear my soul apart one day. I was getting really depressed with not having a job, till I found a new one just two days before the concert. Guess what I'm going to be? And guess which song I downloaded (cause I didn't bring my UTP to Canada) for needs of hearing it the day before the concert?

Yep, that's right. When I got home I immediately went to The Dent for setlist news (about the covers, which were 'If You Could Read My Mind' by Gordon Lightfoot and 'Both Sides Now' by Joni), and found out that Baker Baker wasn't even originally on the setlist! She decided to play it instead of Silent All These Years! How amazingly coincidental is that (for one who has a repetoire of about 300 or more songs?) ..

Particle by particle

With the emphasis on ART. The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa to be precise. With a huge Aragog in front. She used to live in New York, but she decided to migrate North. Better for her eggs and all. Yes, she does speak Chinese.

The gallery was so huge that you could lose days and days of your life in there. It existed 125 years, therefore they had a temporary exhibition on the Renaissance painters in Florence. You know, Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael ..

Experience one of the most outstanding periods in the entire history of art: Florence from about 1500 to 1550. For Florentine artists, life drawing and expressive human form were the traditional basis of good art, and this approach crystallized during the High Renaissance in the work of Leonardo and Michelangelo.
Implicit in disegno – the Italian term for drawing – is not only the idea of skill, but also the talent required to design in a more spiritual sense, in the invention of beautiful objects of all descriptions. The active and expressive figure is paramount, especially in those works with a strong narrative content.

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There was lots about Mythology, Leda and the Swan etc. Also Christian tales of yore. This one saint who seemingly died smiling with lots of arrows in his body everywhere seemed to be very popular. Sebastian was his name. He was a Roman army dude, who healed people with cross signs, and never did die from the arrows but was beaten to death anyways later on for being a Christian. He became the Small God of the Plague in the 14th century.

Yes, so that was very interesting. We saw the masters et all.

Those were not the only masters we saw ~ this gallery has an enormous collection, amongst others Mondriaan and Jan Steen, impressionism and Inuit art, The group of seven and modernism. My favourites were as always Monet, Renoir, Degas, Gaugin .....

The best part was, I saw a Rossetti painting for the first time ever in real life! It was this painting he made intended for William and Jane's marriage, of some Dante scenes about Beatrice -->

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Faeries and Such

This is what it's going to look like -->

I really like the label, but the bottle looks like a normal whine bottle, which is really a shame. There's a rumoured special edition, only 93 made, each for 93 euros a piece, and 555 euros go to the John Bradburne Society.

I shall not have any of this unfortunately, more about that later.

Now, as for the other Faeries. So when we were in Algonquin National Park, which is basically 7,725 square kilometres of forests, lakes, and rivers, I was welcomed by a Monarch butterfly. We settled at Rock Lake, and consequently did Booth's Rock Trial. The first lake we came to was mine: Rose lake. Small, highly secluded and under constant threat of becoming corrupted by Acid Rain.

The next day, we walked another trail. This one was called Beaver Pond Trail. It showed a lot of beaver ponds, nests, and even a genuine beaver dam. No real beavers though. It also went through narrow lanes, High rock ravines and constantly crossed ancient roots. About halfway up, I met a gnome. He was sitting on a solid mossy rock, and said to me, he whispered; all this yellow makes me crave the Æons. And so I replied; say Hi to the Northern Lights for me! Then a Faery flew by, she was shimmering.

Therefore I walked on.

My Butterfly

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So when we got to Algonquin, we rode into the park, and stopped along the way at the art gallery. This gallery was not a very good gallery, as galleries go, but that wasn't the important thing. The important thing was, that when we stepped out of the gallery, and got to the bottom of the stairs, so as to go back to our travelling carriage, a creature like the following came and sat on my hand, and would not go away until I'd thrown it in the air, and afterwards, it continued to cycle round me:
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I was truly welcomed by the park!!

Got a pretty pretty garden; pretty garden, yes.

This is serious

How come, when I see a procession of military monkeys doing a synchronized thing, I inevitably get a lump in my throat and tears start welling to the surface making my eyes shiny? It happened to me again when seeing the marching in Ottawa, where eyehurtingly red costumes did a slow manballet. It happens when I see ministers on television being saluted by the entire military base in Iraq standing in long lines towards the mouth of the invader, where the minister is eventually always dwindling to, looking like a wet rag. Doesn't matter which minister, they all seem terribly incompetent. The same thing happens with openly ridiculous nationalism in voiceovers that are all to serious without pretty lights. It just brings me to the verge of crying instead of me seeing the sardonic humour in it all which I'm usually so very good at. Please, I need help! How can I make it go away? Destroy all military personnel and invite silly hippies to join the army in their own homemade flower costumes, or is it better to go after the governments and introduce utter anarchy?

Lecturetime

Well, not by me. I went to a lecture tonight. I shall have a lot of updating to do after my long absence, but the lastest thing shall come first. This happened to be a life-seeing of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Yes, after staring at her for hours on television I finally got to see the lady in real life ~ you can't believe the amount of security a damsel with a fatwa on her head can get.
Because I came with someone who was very tired we didn't stay for Submission Part I and the subsequent question round, but I've already seen Submission so that wasn't bad. I got to see Ayaan talking, as well as two other ladies, one of them being a Canadian lesbian Muslim talk show host. She was a very good talker. Made good points about honour in Sharia law. The last lady both bored me and confused me with her speech read from paper notes on political Islam, although at one point she got quite passionate which made me pay attention again. It was weird how I could have sworn she said she lost all her fellow women activist friends in three years and later she made it out to be three months.

Anyway, for any of you poor dears who have not seen Submission Part I yet, go click the several links so you can see the whole in pieces on this website. Our famous Dutch movie director Theo van Gogh (like the painters name, yes, whom I abhor) got killed over it in the only (so far) Dutch Muslim-terrorist attack. May he frothingly walk in his teeweeland.