Re-Seduced: Minnesota Fringe Festival, Day 2.

On Sunday, we once again rearranged dinner plans slightly to accommodate our theatre schedule. Also, Saturday was just a leeettle overindulgent on the food and booze front, so a later dinner was not a bad idea.

First up, Steampunk! Anyone who knows anything about me knows that a show called Robot Lincoln: The Revengeance (The Musical) is like crack tailored to my specific nerd receptors, so that was our first show on Saturday, back at the Thrust (STOLL!) stage at the Rarig Center. (See previous entry for bitching about the building, but liking the actual space.) As we waited in the traditional second of 2 lines, I tweeted gleefully about the warning sign outside the theatre (guns, strobe lights, adult language, and violence), and broke the rules about no photography (only realized that I was breaking a rule in retrospect; also I'm not sure taking a picture of my program counts as rule breaking, even though I was in the theatre) to capture the Best. Dramatis. Personae. Evar.



Sadly, the show itself was pretty disappointing. The "plot" was convoluted and there wasn't much in the way of fun dialogue. The performers were singing to taped music, which led to a lot of problems. (I feel like an utter shit mentioning that—my homeless, underfunded theatre group had to do the same with a production of Mother Courage and Her Children, and it was a nightmare.) On the plus side, the group seems to have paid a lot of attention to the design, and that paid off. Robot Lincoln's costume was terrific, and there were a number of other great visual touches.

The "love duet" between Booth and Robot Lincoln was everything I think the show could have been with more time and stability for the production. Jason Garton was terrific as Booth, and Libby Slater was hilarious as Mary Todd Lincoln (less so as "Uncle Samantha," but that character was a very sketchy).

From the Rarig Center we were off to the Gremlin Theatre in St. Paul for The Duties and Responsibilities of Being a Sidekick by The Barkada Theatre Project. Other than being a sucker for superhero stuff, we hadn't chosen this show for any particular reason, but I'm so glad we did. The show was really well written (an interesting, compact story—no mean feat with a maximum of 60 minutes), had great fight choreography, and the cast (featuring Randy Reyes, whom we'd loved in Brain Fighters on Saturday) was just great from top to bottom. Also, great pre-show and entr'acte music, even if they DID cut us off on the theme from The Greatest American Hero just when we were taking it to the bridge.

From the Gremlin back to Theatre Garage for Those Were the Days by Blue Umbrella Productions. TV themes arranged swing-choir style with a minimal, but well-done framing story? Yes please! Really great arrangements, great ensemble and solo work from the whole cast (I forgive the mishap with the Jem theme, though it is dear to my heart), fun choreography. I'm not sure I would have done the whole Eight is Enough theme, but it's not my show, now is it? Shutting up, sir.

And finally, back to the Thrust at the Rarig Center for The Smothers Brothers Grimm., by Comedy Suitcase. This was the show we'd rearranged our dinner plans for. It had some great highlights, especially the closing "silent film," but the whole show was uneven.

The framing premise involves Milton, a young boy (wonderful work by Andrew Moy) who has recently lost his comedy-obsessed grandfather, and whose parents are convinced that he is not dealing with the loss. The parents try to get him to sleep by telling fairy tales, but Milton insists on "punching them up like grandpa would." We get Hansel & Gretel as told by Laurel & Hardy. Our group was divided on this. I mostly liked it, but felt it went on a bit long (then again, it's Laurel & Hardy . . .). Next was Rapunzel a la I Love Lucy, which just felt awkward and as if there weren't a lot of there there. Bob Newhart responding to the 911 call from the Three Bears, suffered from not enough Bob Newharty goodness. Some of the interstitial stuff with the parents and lovable drunk uncle were really good, and some fell a bit flat. The epic silent Sleeping Beauty segment was epic.

I was hit really hard by the realization that my fun at Fringe was over. I'm still trying to talk myself off the ledge of crazy renewal of my involvement in theatre.

Re-Seduced: Minnesota Fringe Festival, Day 1

So, I used to do theatre, right? And then, quite a while ago, I broke up with it. Mostly. I mean, sure, I have been doing reviews, but that's safe, right? I mean, it's not like I'd go crazy and see 7 plays in two days and then desperately miss doing theatre, right? RIGHT?

Insert insane cackle here.

So I went to Minneapolis for my bunny-faced friend's birthday, and this just so happens to coincide with the first weekend of the Minnesota Fringe Festival: 168 plays, each no more than 1 hour long, running in rotation at 18 different venues. Um . . . ok, when I write that out, I don't sound like someone committed to recovery and breaking with my codependent ways . . .

BUT NEVER YOU MIND THAT.

We were set up with a 10-show pass and 3 buttons initially, and on Saturday, we were headed to Intermedia Arts for I'm Making This Up as I Go on Saturday afternoon. It was not the most auspicious beginning. The crowd was small and the sets were . . . of uneven quality . . . however, the last comedian, Mike Lester, was bizarre and quite funny.

Next, we were off to the Minneapolis Theatre Garage for Vampire Lesbians of Sodom by Brazen Theatre. I'm pretty sure I saw this show in Chicago more than a dozen years ago, but couldn't remember much about it. Having refreshed my memory, that's not surprising—it's a funny concept with a lot of potential, but the show itself is a bit ho-hum. As for the production: Its wigs were truly magnificent and Mark Hooker/Margo Caprice was fantastic as one of the titular sinners. In fact, he was so fantastic, I nearly failed to suppress my fan-girl-itude when we saw him 112 Eatery later that night. (Fear not, my pathological introversion raced to the rescue once again, and he and his companion were left in peace.)

The highlight of Saturday was definitely Brain Fighters by Joking Envelope on the Thrust stage (aka STOLL!) at the Rarig Center on the U of M's campus. As you can see from the linked photo, this building was forged in the bowels of architectural hell.

When we arrived, there was a line out the door for securing tickets (the system for multi-show pass holders was to hand over the pass for the appropriate number of punches in exchange for tickets), and then we had to trudge through the belly of the beast to wait in a second line into the theater. With no real sense of how big the venue was, we were worried—so worried that we did not get ice cream from the ice cream truck, despite my having loudly yelled "ICE CREAM TRUCK!" upon seeing it. I had tweeted a couple of pictures of the lines and made public my fear of missing the show, but the lovely Sara Stevenson Scrimshaw responded to say that we should not fear, as the theater was large.

And it was! Despite the building being ugly and having nothing resembling a plan for flow of actual people, the space was great and the show was greater. It's a three-person, all-ages show written by Joseph Scrimshaw, whom you may remember from such awesome cruises as JoCoCruise Crazy. (Can someone please tell me why Joseph Scrimshaw is not superextradoublefudgey famous?)

The script was funny and wonderfully paced. The three actors (JS himself, Randy Reyes [whom we'd have the pleasure of seeing in another great show on Sunday], and Mo Perry) worked flawlessly together and nailed the physical requirements of the story (ok, that sounds weird unless you know the plot, which involves being able to turn yourself into anything you can convincingly imagine). Oh, just go see it if you possibly can.

We'd initially had a dinner reservation that would have conflicted with Brain Fighters, but we rearranged our schedule to support our local Sea Monkey. This left us with a 9:30 reservation at the aforementioned 112 Eatery (and I would like to note once again that I DID NOT fangirl all over anyone there) and time to kill in between. We'd intended to go to Moto-I on Friday night, but we were seduced by champagne cocktails, chocolate chip cookies, yoga pants, and Ike, who thinks he is a lap dog.


The downtime between theater and dinner on Saturday gave us, as a group, time for sake and snacks at Moto-I, and me, as an individual, time to contemplate breaking and entering so that I could pet Casper the Great Pyrenees, who IS SO FLUFFY! Really enjoyed the sake flight at Moto-I (Junmai Nama Genshu was the best!), and the many yummy snacks we had that are lost to the mists of the sake flight and the Ginger Mistress.

Fear not, puppy lovers, I did eventually get to cuddle Casper (who, as previously mentioned, IS SO FLUFFY!), however briefly, before we headed to 112.
A word about 112 itself before getting to the good parts: Loud loud loud loud loud. LOUD. I wish that it weren't so loud.

We shared a bottle of a Turley Old Vines Zinfandel and continued our communist ways all through the meal. We had truly amazing scallops with oyster mushrooms, frog legs that are very nearly as good as those at Brigtsen's (I do not say this lightly), the 112 steak tartare (which kind of buried the lede, if one assumes the steak is the lede—it was weirdly chicken salad–like, and we wished we'd gotten it "unprepared"), and fried Shishito peppers (we liked Moto-I's version better). For our mains, we shared the prociutto ahi tuna (amazing), the stringozzi w/ lamb sugo (amazing fresh pasta, but the lamb didn't shine through), and the nori encrusted sirloin w/ ponzu (good . . . not great, though).

For dessert, the butterscotch budino (I don't like butterscotch at all, but this was relatively tasty), the lemon cheesecake, and . . . this is not good: I cannot for the life of me remember what I had. It was good. It was probably chocolate based. it is not on the menu they have up online. Olive oil chocolate cake! (Thank you, bunny-faced one!)

Ok, this is already a bit long, so I'll do Day 2 later on.

Songwriter's Navel: Week 16, Which Is Shockingly Late

Recording

Cat died. House guests. Sloth. What can I say?

I did not make my scheduled Tuesday night class on May 3, which was the second week of the new session (and the first due date for an assignment), but I did a make-up the following Sunday. Missing class honestly had nothing to do with the assignment, although it was a daunting one: The dreaded Sincere Love Song.

In acting, it may be that tragedy is easy and comedy is hard, but in songwriting the opposite is true: It's much, much easier to write a heartbreak song, an angry "piss off" song, or what have you, to write sincerely about something you love. Is it because we are convinced that creative people are creative because they have suffered/do suffer in a way or to an extent that noncreative people don't? (Well, that begs the question of there BEING noncreative people, but let's skip that for the moment.) That's certainly a story we hear and tell over and over again, right? But there's also the fact that it's uncool to like anything anymore. As Hodgman says: Internet = most efficient pure disgruntlement engine in history."

This isn't the first time we've had this assignment. The last time it came up, I violated the spirit of the assignment by writing a song called "Never Get to Nashville" about how the ZK is terrible for writing songs about. Which, of course, brings up the trope about creativity emanating solely from pain and drama. But, hey, it's not like I'm the first person to go to that well.

Anyway, I ended up writing my second song for/about the ZK for this assignment. Time decay is my enemy, and it looks like I took an uncharacteristically small number of notes by hand for this one. The notes I did take were from a completely different angle that was fond and sincere, but not without sarcasm, which is my preferred crutch both in songwriting and out of it. Funnily enough, though, looking at the handwritten notes, I see:

Silent, with you
Still
I am still
I am with you

I hadn't remembered until now that I had been playing with the idea of being "still with you" (i.e., "I remain with you") and "still, with you" (i.e., "I am motionless, I am with you"), but that was certainly an important initial spark for the song. I was thinking of being utterly comfortable when I'm with the ZK in general, but also thinking about the utter quiet at our friend M's country house in the Catskills, where we used to have these big, fun house parties every other summer. I had actually tried to write about the Catskills house a while ago, right after her family sold the house (and it was featured on the incredibly odious American Pickers). I'm pretty sure I burned it down in that song.

I also had notes about sleep, which is not surprising, because I really like sleep and I'm really, really bad at it, especially lately. I had "fold the day away," "sheets fall like silence upon my skin from your fingertips" ('Cause, like, dude, someone fixing the covers while you'er already in bed? Awesome.)

I think I must have written those notes well before I tried to write the song. In fact, I think I might have written them while sitting in a coffee shop waiting to head over to my songwriting codependent's place to get in a last practice before we played on May 2. When I came back to it with a more or less blank page almost a week later, the sheets/fingertips image seemed like it was going to be the end of a thought, not the beginning, and it became connected with the idea of gestures like that creating comfort/stillness/silence, regardless of place. From there, it seemed clearly that the song was more about the road trip to the Catskills, and the refrain became "It feels like home." Not the most original sentiment, but one that's the heart of many songs that I love and think are wonderful, like Ellis Paul's beautiful "Home". I swear to you, I of course realized that my song had a lot in common with his, but had not at all—until this very moment—thought about the fact that he, too, fictionally torches a beloved place in it.

The first verse and refrain behaved well for the most part. The first two lines came easily, although the second is a bit wordy to cram in. I decided to go with the four-finger "Big G" shape and a Cadd9, rather than a regular C because I'd been playing around with hammer-ons. I'm really terrible at them unless I'm using this cheater position and letting my index finger do the work. From there, the whole song musically centered itself around strings 1 and 2 fretted at 3 throughout.

The [G] sun paints its shadows on the [Cadd9] backs of your hands
I’m keeping [Dsus4] time with my bare feet on the [Cadd9] dashboard
With the [G] windows open wide we drink the [Cadd9] breeze in while we can
On the [Dsus4] far side of Ohio stumbling [Cadd9] through this one-night door [G]

And it feels like [Cadd9] home,
When the [Dsus4] sheets leave your [Cadd9] fingers
And [Em] settle on my [G] skin
It feels like [Cadd9] home

To get to the Catskills from Chicago, one drives through Indiana, then Ohio, and then the parts of Pennsylvania that are affectionately known as the Alabama in between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. The first time we drove out together, the ZK had spent very little time anywhere East of the Mississippi other than Chicago. It rained all the way through Pennsylvania. The second time we drove out, the ZK decided to drive through the night. It rained all the way through Pennsylvania. It was raining in Pennsylvania when, on a dark, winding mountain road, I learned that the ZK had this on his iPod. In fact, until we went to State College for our friends' wedding in 2007, I'm pretty sure the ZK was convinced that it was never not raining in Pennsylvania.

I vacillate wildly between liking and hating this verse. I was not and still am not happy with the triteness of the "feels like home" refrain, so I decided not to have it repeat exactly each time, but rather to use an image evoking the "home away from home" sensation. I do think my very sincere love of the fact that the ZK will sing along with me gets me some points for the assignment.

Verse 2:

Now there’s [G] rain in Pennsylvania, there is [Cadd9] always rain
Like we’re [Dsus4] winding through the Allegheny [Cadd9] sorrow
The [G] sun is just memory, hard to [Cadd9] tell the night from day
Where the [Dsus4] blacktop flickers gold on the [Cadd9] road to tomorrow [G]

And it feels like [Cadd9] home,
When I [Dsus4] sing out in the [Cadd9] darkness
And [Em] your voice joins [G] in
It feels like [Cadd9] home

With a refrain song, particularly one that's as musically repetitive as this one, a bridge is kind of a must. Surely I've talked about my hatred for bridges before? I am so. very. terrible. at them. Here, I am especially terrible. I steal from Shakespeare (and for someone who claims not to like R & J very much, I sure go to that well often enough) AND I'm cribbing from someone else's memories. We didn't attend the very first Catskills house party, because I was in Peru at the time. But Mand others have talked many times about the night they lay in the grass around the house and looked up at the stars.

[Dsus4] Lying in the grass, the face of [Cadd9] night so fine
[Dsus4] The world turns overhead, I feel your [Em] breath in [Dsus4] time with [Cadd9] mine

The third verse proved quite hard to write. I had several different concepts I wanted to cram in there, and I was having trouble figuring out what was happening, when really it was very obvious: The ZK was sleeping and I was not. Because this is what happens all the time, and honestly, my not sleeping is much, much worse when he's not around.

When your [G] head hits the pillow, you're [Cadd9] already fast asleep
While my [Dsus4] mind runs away [Cadd9] in the silence
I feel your [G] dreams rise and fall, rise and [Cadd9] fall beneath my cheek
I count [Dsus4] your heartbeats, I count the stars, I [Cadd9] count the moments I am at peace [G]

And it feels like [Cadd9] home,
In the [Dsus4] unfamiliar [Cadd9] stillness
When [Em] you are by my [G] side
It feels like [Cadd9] home
It feels like [Cadd9] home
It feels like [G] home

So there you have it.

That Province . . . Took ADVANTAGE OF ME: The Halifax Report, Day 5, pt 1

Thursday was the last day of the conference, and it was really only a half day with the most appalling excuse for 'science' packed into it.

Truth be told, I spent most of the first morning session catching up on my e-mail. As I mentioned in my first report, the Lord Nelson's lone flaw was the lack of free wireless in the rooms; fortunately part of our conference schwag packet was a login and password for the Dalhousie wireless network. However, I'd been mostly too lazy to carry the New Hotness to campus most days.

Anyway, caught up during the first session so that I was able to devote full attention to the second. It had some hoity-toity title like "The Phenomenological Post-Kantian Repercussions of How Totally Awesome it Is to Be Human," which was not confidence inspiring. Fortunately, the chair, who was also the first speaker said, "I have no idea what's up with that title . . . but all the papers in this session kinda sorta deal with humans. Let's rock and roll." (I paraphrase.) Most were good, even one by a member of the legion of our sworn codon-model enemies. (Diabolically good, because convincingly presented and completely devoid of any of the criticisms we've been leveling, which amount to: "Yes, and? What the hell difference does this actually make to anything we're looking for?"

But there was a truly appalling paper in this session. Worse, it was a truly appalling NIH-funded paper. It had ridiculously hand-waving hypotheses, a good 20 years out of sync with current literature and thinking, that were not even being tested by the data collected. True crap and very disappointing to see it anywhere, let alone at an otherwise high-quality meeting. It was especially unfortunate that this was in the last session and left me with a bad taste in my mouth. A bad taste that could only be removed . . . by shopping.

Most of our walkabouts were at night, and most nonhospitality businesses were closed at that time. This had absolutely zero effect on my drooling over things in windows. Specifically, there was a small hosiery/lingerie shop that had a to-die-for grey scarf with a skull-and-crossbones motif. Had to have it. Also had to have some superfly skull laces for my Doc Martens as it turns out. Who knew?

While I was merrily shopping, J drew the unenviable task of not only shopping with me, but simultaneously trying to sort out why the hell we couldn't check in for our flight online. We had discovered this unfortunate fact just as we discovered that the Lord Nelson really is not very smart about these Intarwebs things. (Even in their business center [which comprises 2 PCs], they required that you call down to the desk for a 45-minute key to log in. Blegh!)

As we wandered away from the hosiery store and further down Spring Garden, J scored (a) a live person at United (SPIT!) Airlines and (b) a fabulous shirt befitting Puffy D (you probably don't want to ask). Still further down the street, there was a shoe store that, at first glance, I thought was called Ka/Ks. (It was, actually, Kas Footwear, which is weird enough, and if you know why, I either pity you or scorn you as one of our legion of sworn codon-model enemies.) Some Campers totally wanted me there, but I remained strong.

Continuing on, we decided that it was probably a good idea to fortify ourselves with at least a bit of lunch. We shared a tasty enough bagel sandwich and I recaffeinated. Always a good idea.

We soldiered on past the Commonwealth's most baked library. As we were heading down the diagonal path toward the store next to Mary Jane's Smoke Shop (not a smoke-shop, a hippy clothing/jewelry/fabric/tchotchke store; ah, thank you, google, it was called The Black Market ), J took my elbow, and stepped us off to the side of the path, muttering "Rickshaw." I was just on the verge of laughingly saying, "I'd have sworn you just said 'rickshaw'," when a man pulling a rickshaw passed us by. Though slackjawed, I was able to repeat, "Rickshaw?" And being Canadian, he politely offered us a ride. We did not, however, take him up on this.

I got a cute wrap skirt and a red belly-dancing top at the Black Market. Why a belly-dancing top, other than to make all who have seen me scream, "MY EYES! MY BRAIN! HOW COULD A SUPPOSEDLY BENEVOLENT GOD ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN?" Well, (a) because it was $9, (b) because if I ever do get off my butt early enough, I want to take the Middle Eastern Belly Dancing class at OTSFM, and (c) because Puffy D was watching out for the interests of the ZK.

From the Black Market, we continued on along and down, passing the Press Gang 15 or 20 times as we made our way northeast. The most notable stop we made along the way was at Peep Show Girly Boutique (I have to tell you I loathe that article, which I'm glad I didn't see before we went in). Rather than being . . . well, anything at all like what that article purports it to be, was eerily like stepping back into the shopping fugue I experienced in New Orleans last fall. The staff were over-the-top friendly (even for Canadians), but were far from attempting the hard sell. Rather they kept urging us to have fun and look at things.

There were easily 7 different bags that I really, truly, needed to have. And dresses. And skirts. And kneesocks. And jewelry. And shoes. And then there was this completely awesome shirt that had a guy with giant mutton chops and the caption "I like boys in punk rock bands," (tragically, it did not fit). How I had the willpower to leave there with nothing more than a bright blue shaving kit decorated with the Warhol skull (I'll use it as a toiletry bag, which I honestly needed) I will never know. Probably inciting J to purchase items as gifts helped.

We'd sort of had a vague intention of going down to the maritime museum (and there just HAPPENED to be a store down there we wanted to pop into), so we headed waterfront-ward. At the store that just happened to be there, I picked up some neat little hexagonal hoop earrings and a necklace with an interesting brass pendant. We tried hard to get a luscious silk blouse for Wire Monkey Mother, but sadly, the sizers in this store were working on the "teeny, rackless" Asian sizing model and there was no room at the inn for The Girls. Pity, because that charcoal blouse was smokin'.

The outbreak of capitalism rather derailed our plans on the cultural front. By the time we got to the Maritime Museum, we realized that we'd only have 45 minutes or so to wander around. Now that might be enough to time to taken an exhibit called, simply, Pirates, but once you add in the exclamation mark, you're in for the whole day. We decided instead to walk up toward the Citadel.

There was a last gasp of running-dog-ism at a jewelry store (and I'm glad there was, as we found a great pendant for and I got a bit giftie for a friend) and then a real trek. You must remember that J and I are not used to topography at this point. It wasn't especially hot that day, but the sun was bright and the grade impressive.

We were puffing more than a little bit by the time we reached the level of the Clock Tower. WE rested a bit there on the pretense of reading the text, then made the big push up to Citadel Hill itself. We were destined to be completely culture free (there's also a charge to get into the Citadel proper, and the guards wear the fluffy hats of ultimate seriousness regarding their duty. But it was well worth the climb, as the view of the city and the harbor is absolutely breathtaking from that height.

We headed back to the Lord Nelson along a road just north of the gardens, which was not our usual route. That's how we discovered that the Highland Games were going to start without us. Curses! Back at the hotel, we cleaned up quickly and went to catch a cab for the Hydrostone Market, where we had dinner reservations at Rogi Orazio.

Our cab driver was a very chatty lebanese guy, and we bonded over pizza (he told us where to get the best pizza in Halifax and had a good handle on the fact that this was a local rendition of pizza, and a good one, rather than being any kind of attempt to imitate Pizza) and garlic. The restaurant just happened to be right next door to LK Yarns and we just happened to arrive with about 10 minutes to spare for yarn shopping. I yarn shopped, obtaining some lovely mohair in a lustrous navy color for something out of the Sublime Very Gorgeous Kid Mohair book, and another odd skein in a colorway I just couldn't resist.

Although it had felt hot during the day, by the time we sat down to dinner, it was breezy and lovely, so we sat outside. Have I mentioned that Halifax builds these boardwalks on to the fronts of their streets so that outdoor seating doesn't completely bugger up pedestrian traffic? Well they do. So as we sat enjoying champagne, a large number of extremely cute dogs walked by for the petting. We also realized while sitting there munching on awesome red pepper bruschetta and spicy, cornmeal crusted calamari (no, I'd have never thought of combining cornmeal with calamari, either, but it was fabulous) that I was staring at a wine supply store, and J was staring a brewery. Oh, and there was a massage therapist on the upper floor of the yarn shop's building. In a lesser city, this would have looked desperate.

I knew nothing about the Hydrostone Market, and J only knew that it was historic in some way, so we asked our server about it. As so many things are, the market is tied into the Halifax Explosion. The neighborhood was built on the Garden City plan as temporary housing after the explosion under the supervision of Thomas Adams. Our server thought that all the stone for the neighborhood actually came from Boston, but I can't seem to find confirmation of that, just indications that Boston and Massachusetts in general were of great help around the time, and Halifax still sends them their giant Christmas tree every year.


After appetizers, J had a soup and I had a salad, both quite luscious. For my entree, I had a fabulous mediterranean pasta dish with chicken, shrimp, bacon, sun-dried tomatoes, and olives, and J had something spicy (as a final safe indulgence in a context that would not kill his lovely wife). We had another very good bottle of wine and I could barely make a dent in my dessert, which was some kind of will-sappingly-scrumptious brownie concoction.

And then, suddenly, it was very nearly 8:30, and we needed to get back to the Lord Nelson, but quick, for our date with the pirate (who had actually called during dinner to confirm that the hike was a go for that evening). The hike and the pirate deserver their own entry, and this one's long enough, but I just have share our opening conversation with said pirate. He gathered folks up and handed out tickets, then said we'd wait a few more minutes, both to let it get a bit darker and to accommodate any stragglers. In the meantime, he said in an unmistakably Newfoundland accent, "I've got to get a coffee. I am useless on the tour without a coffee. Does anyone want one?"

Provincial Hipsters: The Halifax Report Day 4

So Wednesday was J's turn in the barrel. Although he'd been passionate about the possibility of another Tim Horton's breakfast sandwich in the afterglow of the donair, we skipped morning food and went straight to sessions, which turned out to be a poor decision, as fortification was definitely needed.

The earlier set of sessions was on primate populations genetics. It was not as exciting as I had hoped, although that speaks more to the fact that, by now, my standards were pretty high: If this had been at ASHG, with the exception of the one truly pointless, wrong, and terrible paper in this session (boy was the rage building for those horrible 15 minutes), I would have wept for joy. The final paper in this session was the exception to the rule of mediocrity. Rather than being about primates, per se, it was a very elegant experimental design to identify the sources of human food-borne infections. Furthermore, it actually had implications for public policy. Imagine, as Vince Noir would say, that!

Fortified with coffee and danish (Have I mentioned that the danish and other pastry things were, like, not just edible but actually good? All hail the SMBE organizers!), we headed for the very first time into the Ondaatje Auditorium for the all-math, all-the-time session (hiding under the guise of the Methods in Population Genetics session and fooling no one). This was pretty much the return to Texarkana for J and myself. We made it through the whole thing, but we were whimpering "Math hammer, don't hurt us!" by the end.

Oh! I've just remembered something that I think began on Tuesday. You see, Halifax is smoke free indoors, and that includes Dalhousie, of course. So, you have the usual ashtrays down by the street and the usual folks pushing the limits of the 15-feet-from-the-door rules. On Tuesday, when we were in the Methods in Comparative Genomics Session (and I was still in my suit and feeling cranky), I suddenly realized that my lungs were seizing up like mad. Before I'd even registered that I was having trouble breathing, I was in a state where it was an extremely bad idea to try to walk, particularly up the treacherous stairs of the theater in which the session was held. I realized the source of my trouble was the woman sitting in front of me: She was wearing this hideous multicolored sweater and she smelled like she'd been smoking inside a telephone booth for the last 25 years. For the rest of the conference, she was everywhere, wearing that same sweater and smelling and aggravating my asthma from incredible distances. Anyway, she was at the math!fest, so my brain AND my lungs were going all French on me.

We headed back to the hotel for lunch and decided that we'd neglected the Victory Arms Pub for far too long. You're probably thinking that this was just around the corner from the Lord Nelson, but you'd be tragically wrong in this instance: It's actually in the Lord Nelson. Neener. I had these sinfully good quesadillas, and I think J had a shepherd's pie. It was all so delicious and comforting that I didn't even care that I was being forced to watch tennis the whole while.

But we had to shake off the food coma, because it was show time for J. The session was a very good one, although it's probably inevitable that there will be some "does not, does too-ism" on the subject of selection on synonymous sites, how much difference it makes in the grand scheme of things, and other issues. Time ran a bit short on J, but he got to explain thoroughly the all-important multicolored quadrant slide.

The paper right after his was a very good one, and it was delivered by our aforementioned Gaius Baltar. He joined us along with the young woman from the previous day at the bar in the student union after the session. M (said young woman) showed us her presentation, which was quite good and, best of all, has some interesting jumping-off points for future research, should one desire to spend the rest of one's life buried in the Y chromosome.

After she departed for the banquet, J revealed to me Baltar's deep secret: He'd been working with the data from our paper and had managed to replicate the results. That might sound like no big deal, but given that it took us, 5 years of jumping through hoops to get that published, it was pretty freaking exciting for us. We had a fine time trying to decide how much Castle Dementedness we could comfortably reveal to Baltar in trying to communicate how pleased we were to hear about his results. This dance, of course, was enhanced greatly by the pitcher of beer we were consuming.

J and I learned our lesson about attending conference social events a few years back, so we were definitely skipping the banquet. In fact, we were dead set (so to speak) on doing the Haunted Hike that evening. Accordingly, we decided to have a drink and a snack before heading to the Burns statue. And, really, there was only so long that we could avoid a restaurant called Deco (we sat right under the Charnay poster), which was not just around the corner from the Lord Nelson. Goodness, it must have been at least a block and a half from there!

We had some dangerously cracklicious drinks and shared the mussels (a fabulous Thai-esque take on them, completely different from those at Tizi Melloul, but just as good) and the crab cakes. I still don't know how I had the willpower to walk out of there without the better part of their furnishings.

We dutifully arrived at the Burns statue around 8:15. There were various people waiting around, enjoying the goods from the Dairy Queen on the corner. These included an extremely cute greyhound (a rescued racer) named Samson, who must have been a very good dog indeed, because every single person there with ice cream shared some with him. He was a total sweetie pie, and I had to laugh when his person revealed that when she first adopted him, he used to shoulder check her when they were walking. She couldn't figure out why he was doing this until she looked into his racing history and realized that this is why he'd been a big winner.

We waited until about 8:45, but sadly, the square remained pirateless. We walked back over to Your Father's Moustache and checked the poster, which assured us that we had not been high in reading the specs. J put in a call and left a message. We then walked across to the gate to the gardens and asked the attendant if he knew anything about the Haunted Hike. He said that he knew the pirate well and, unfortunately, said pirate had been quite sick recently. Saddened by the lack of pirates and ghosts, we traveled water-ward again.

We made our stop in at Cows to obtain gifts for our loved ones and began to wander in search of a place to sit and have a drink. Our main requirement for said place was, basically, dark. In walking down the street we thought would contain the Economy Shoe Shop , we found that it did not, in fact, contain it. It did, however, contain The Argyle, which met our undemanding criterion. I had a G&T and noted that the Blue Jays have finally caught up with the hideous and tragic uniform trends of the 1980s.
Go Jays!

After glancing at a food menu and finding nothing especially promising (and not even a hint of oysters), we moved on, once again, in search of the ESS. Naturally, we wound up at The Press Gang. But we decided not to let it be the boss of us just yet. We turned back and really, really did try to find the Shoe Shop. But first we stumbled across Seven, a wine bar that was most definitely dark.

We had a very nice chat with the bartender, who turned out to have worked in seafood brokering for much of her life. She knew and spoke highly of DiCola's, my preferred seafood procurement facility. I had a New Zealand pinot noir that I can't really recommend, although it was drinkable enough to raise it well above the level of the best pinot noir to come out of MIchigan. J had some kind of vodka that might or might not have been blue.

There were some food items on Seven's menu that looked highly intriguing, but the kitchen was sadly closed. This was the first and most gentle chastisement we received for slutting around on the Press Gang. The worst was yet to come. In a final attempt to wind up at the ESS, we got lured into a basement bar called The Seahorse Tavern.
We really should have known better when we were charged a cover, but we pressed on. I was having trouble making up my mind on a drink and finally settled on a Black Russian. Oh, tragic, tragic mistake. The infant bartender dutifully mixed kahlua and vodka and then FILLED UP THE REST OF THE ROCKS GLASS WITH PEPSI AND ADDED A LIME WEDGE.

Thank the evil spirits that I hadn't ordered a White Russian. J was comparatively safe with his tequila, and we sequestered ourselves in the nook with the large round table that bore incredible and eerie resemblance to the book with the large round table at The Pub. Once ensconced in the nook, we had a chance to appreciate how very dire this place was. There was incredibly dire hip hop being "created" by very, very white Canadians with equipment far more expensive and sophisticated than their skill level merited. The space is absolutely fantastic (the pictures on their web page don't do it justice) and it was utterly wasted on . . . whatever it was trying to be.

We finished up our drinks but quick and dragged back into the Press Gang with our tails between our legs. S, the bartender, laughed at our travails. The owner of the PG's property also owns the ESS and The Seahorse. Apparently at the Seahorse, they deliberately mix drinks wrong so that people will stop ordering things that are more complicated than beer or wine. Aiyeeee! Someone might have mentioned that, you know!

To comfort ourselves, we asked S if he would allow us to experiment with making a sazerac on our own. Initially dubious, he eventually poured us two shots of rye, a shot of absinthe, and provided us with lemon, sugar and the bottle of bitters. We eventually managed to mix something that was a pretty passable rendition of the sazerac and patted ourselves on the back for it. Having done so (and J having consumed the balance of the absinthe), it became a good idea to have some more food in our stomachs (you may have noticed that we'd neglected to have any dinner). And so we were forced to have another half dozen oysters, prompting S to tell us that he had 12 steps he'd like to introduce us to.

We managed (narrowly) to make it back to the Lord Nelson without indulging in donair. And so we retired, the last half-day of the conference and our departure looming large.

Flowering provincial love: The Halifax Report, Day 3

I've been a dork about writing this up, mostly because I'm pretty busy at the moment. However, Halifax was such a great trip that I don't want it to get away from me. And so onward. Here, fishy fishy.


Tuesday was mostly about my poster, which means that it was rather fraught. I'd been in denial about it to the point that I had no idea when my session was, other than "Tuesday." So when Og awoke on Tuesday, sie dutifully climbed into pantyhose, makeup, and a suit. Og then rampaged quietly and internally as sie realized that the poster session was many, many cups of coffee away at 7:30 (?!??!!) PM and there was no reason in the world to be in stupid grown-up clothes.

So there was some crankiness during the morning sessions that not even a tasty Tim Horton's breakfast sandwich and surprisingly drinkable coffee could banish entirely. (Seriously, I made up for a lifetime of never having had Tim Horton's in the space of 4 days.) Crankiness was furthered by the fact that there seemed to be more presentations of interest with overlapping time slots. It's still not a bad problem to have (ASHG, for example, has precious little worth seeing, and they seem to scheduled everything one might reasonably want to see in the same 15-minute window at the far ends of the earth from one another), but we did have to make the tough decisions and the pantyhose weren't helping.

They were so egregiously not helping that I was seriously entertaining the idea of wearing my newly acquired (courtesy of the superawesome Dalhousie University Bookstore) jammie pants, which proclaim me to be both female and a goddess. However, we instead opted to dash back to the hotel so I could change into compromise clothes. We also obtained panini as big as our heads at a cafe, once again, around the corner from the Lord Nelson.

I have my suspicions that there there is some serious applied wormhole research going on at Dalhousie. This is based on: (1) the existence of an impossible number of amenities within spitting distance of that hotel and (2) the fact that no matter what street we walked down, we passed the Press Gang. When I have time to explore further, I fully expect to learn that Cheyenne Mountain is simply the coverstory location for the Stargate Project, which is really located beneath the Citadel.

Back to the campus after lunch, we headed into the bookstore building to hang the dread poster. I think it was around then that we realized just how marked for residency we really had been by Halifax. I'm not at all sure how we had missed the signs for the Annual Zombie Walk up until then. I am forced to conclude that we had, at this point, cleared some initial vetting and the Halifax Relocation SWAT team got the go-ahead to create this complicated back story for our benefit.

Poster hung, we headed to the afternoon sessions, which were sadly rather trying. Codon models are, apparently, a hot topic at the moment. Paradoxically, that makes it a particularly bad time to be someone who has been living and breathing codon models for, like, a decade. Because it's frustrating as hell to sit through presentations purporting to have done novel research when in fact that research has been pretty well-sounded out over the last, like, decade. But again, there were still some interesting papers, so it wasn't a total loss. In fact, it wasn't even really much of a loss at all. The whole day was just colored by crankiness.

We had the early evening to ourselves, and once I'd wrangled Og back into the grown-up clothes, we headed to Luxx for dinner. Luxx is, you guessed it, right around the corner from the Lord Nelson. (By now, I am sure that my gentle reader is picturing the Lord Nelson as existing on some kind of polyhedral island with nothing but corners. I'm telling you: WORMHOLES.) Luxx had a beautiful room and a nice outdoor patio overlooking Spring Garden Road, but we opted to sit inside.

The service was slightly odd. In part, this was because our server was a total newbie, but there were other strange elements, including the fact that when J ordered a kir royale, they'd only make it for him if I ordered one, too, so that the split champagne didn't go flat. Twist my arm, why don't you? We had more than decent Oysters Rockefeller to share (not a patch on Frank's, you understand, or any that I've had in the Big Easy, but tasty).

For my entree, I had pecan-crusted haddock filet in a fantastic red curry sauce. The fish was fabulously fresh and well prepared. Sadly the rice pilaf accompany was dry and rather pathetic. J had the gnocchi with shrimp, and we had the "erm?" moment again when he realized that the very saucy shrimp still had the tails on. There wasn't much on the dessert menu to tempt, and we thought we might seek out ice cream or something else on the waterfront later that evening, so we bid adieu to Luxx and headed to the dread poster session.

"Whyfore dread?" you might ask.

Under the best of circumstances, doing a poster is pretty bad: You stand there, hoping that you're successfully faking professionalism, people come by and try not to make eye contact with you as you strive to make eye contact with them in the hopes of gauging whether they'd like to just quietly take in the poster on their own or if they'd like a walk through. It's awful and uncomfortable for all concerned. Under the circumstances observed in the first poster session, that metaphorical discomfort would also be manifest in literal discomfort born of too many people in not enough space.

And then there was the fact that I hated my poster for the very good reason that is was the least visually interesting piece of crap ever. For a variety of reasons that I won't belabor, my poster was not at all what I wanted it to be. Even if it had been, the project was just something much better suited to a talk than a poster. When you mix in the fact that I have no art brain, well, you have a crappy poster.

In this case, happily, it was a crappy poster that inexplicably received quite a lot of attention. After the first 15 minutes or so, during which I radiated waves of hate at the dorks across from me who were offering people Turkish Freaking Delight.

This was the Halifax synchronicity going somewhat horribly wrong, as J and I had had a rather extended conversation about how repulsive Turkish Delight is earlier in the trip. But this does not take one iota of the bloom off the rose that is Halfiax. It's like when your TiVo is first trying to learn your tastes in order to make suggestions.

To borrow liberally from Patton Oswalt, it goes like this: Your TiVo observes that you have recorded a Western, and your TiVo wants nothing more than to make you happy. Unfortunately, your TiVo's lateral leap is in entirely the wrong direction. It has inferred from this recording that you, in fact, love horses, and you wake up one morning to find your "Suggestions" folder filled with reruns of My Little Pony and "Mustardfart Station" (© Patton Oswalt). (I'm leaving aside, for the moment, the fact that my freakishly intelligent TiVo immediately started recording things that happened to star people from Twin Peaks, just after I had finished watching the series for the first time.) Anyway, Halfax overheard us talking about Turkish Delight and it damned well produced some Turkish Delight.

Just as my poster neighbor (a very pleasant woman from Dublin who endeared herself to me early on by measuring the evening in chunks of time until pub time) and I started to commiserate about how we hate doing posters, we both started to get busy . . . ahem . . . many people began showing up at our respective posters. One of my first visitors was a fellow anthropologist who'd stopped by in anthropologist solidarity. Being someone swamped in immune genes, most of which scream with the evolutionary signature of diversification and selection, she was appreciative of attempts to identify genes (or subgenic regions) of interest with an independent variable.

Another early arrival was a woman who was actually looking for J. She's a Penn State grad student, and her opening line to J was: "I have read your paper so many times. I sleep with it under my pillow." It's good to know that the professor's 5up3r 533kr1t identity as Man!Ho is well guarded. In all seriousness, she's smart and doing good work that builds directly on J's previous research. We'd chosen poorly in the morning and missed her paper, but fortunately we would have a chance for an encore during which her secret identity as Number 6 would be revealed only when we had discovered a completely different ally in the unlikely shape of Gaius Baltar. Other drop ins included the author of the chimp paper, and a physics misfit. Almost before I knew it it, it was 40 minutes after the time we'd said we'd be bugging out of there.

But bug out of there we ultimately did, and once again into the comfy clothing before heading, inevitably, to the Press Gang. We had a different bartender on this occasion, and we decided that the presence of actual absinthe (well, the closest one can get in these degenerate times) was too tempting. We asked him if he'd give a sazerac a go and he was game enough not only to try it, but to give us a half shot of the absinthe itself to sample.

The sazerac was not a rousing success the first time out, although it's possible that the clarity of our explanation was not all it might have been. I declared the absinthe "not nearly as disgusting as I thought it would be," whereas J actively liked it. The reason for this only became clear the next night: Absinthe is, in fact, blue.

In addition to the sazerac and another drink or two, we also shared a half dozen oysters on the half shell. These were absolutely required from the moment that we realized that he was grating fresh horseradish on to them. I've already mentioned that we can stop the oyster thing any time we want to right? Right then. Normally I'm not much for adulterating my oysters, but I'm a sucker for fresh horseradish. These also game with a garlic laden balsamic that is just a fantastic idea with the horseradish and the oh-so-delicious oysters.

I don't put much stock in the nonsense about oysters being aphrodisiac. However, I suspect that they might have been implicated in the sudden literal hunger that overtook us as we left the Press Gang and wandered back Wormholeward. When that appetite met with our strong intellectual curiosity regarding what the hell a donair was and why there were 4 late-night places on the 4 corners of a single intersection, like some kind of weathervane of spiced meat, purporting to be various ranks of donair royalty. (Again, much would become clear on the next night when we realized that we were on the same street as "Mary Jane's Smoke Shoppe." [Although why people congregate at the Halifax Public Library to get decriminally baked remains a mystery.])

As J prefers to go straight to the top, we went to the King of Donair. I was not, at the time, open to experimenting with unknown spiced meats, but I was suddenly seized with a desire for a slice of pepperoni pizza the size of Smart Car. J waxed rhapsodic about the donair all the way back to the Lord Nelson. Thus endeth the second day.

Shameless Provincial Flirting: The Halifax Report, days 1 & 2

According to google maps, it's 2,608 km from the Lord Nelson Hotelin Halifax to Telecommuniculturey HQ, estimated driving time, 1 day, 2 hours. It's saying something about my deep and inevitable love for Halifax that I even want to talk about Halifax given that I am now entering into hour 15 (update: now in hour 18 [final travel time: 23 hours for a 2.5-hour flight]) of my time in Canuckian airports and it appears that by the time I arrive home, assuming no further shenanigans (and I'm not assuming that by any stretch of the imagination), I could have driven from point A to point B.

So, J and I were maritime bound for the SMBE Annual Meeting. After my traditional nuit blanche on Saturday, cursing NCBI, dbSNP, and all its evil works, we met up at scenic O'Hare International, scored the "Economy Plus" rock star seats (without paying the upgrade costs), and were on our way. The good luck associated with the lack of flight-related drama continued as we completely failed to die in a flaming auto crash, despite the fact that the driver was doing 120 kph in a torrential downpour.

After some small confusion about our rooms, we were assigned two that were exactly what we wanted, up in a sort of semi-private corner of the 9th floor. I was blown away by the view from my window of the Public Gardens until I saw the view from J's room, which happened to be the rooftop beer garden of Your Father's Moustache (something weird is going on with that website at the moment, but I'm hoping it's temporary). We tried to be good little nerdlingers and see if it was still possible to check in for the conference, but we'd just missed the end of the opening night festivities. (In all earnestness, a shame. I'd have liked to see the opening lecture, "Continents, consumption and consumers: genetic signatures of human migration.")

Due diligence done, we headed moustache-ward. Along the way, we saw and saluted a pirate in front of Robbie Burns, as one does. In the hall leading up to YFM, we saw a flyer for the Haunted Hike of Halifax and said, more or less simultaneously, "We have to do that." Also, being scientists, we intuited that the flyer's indication that the tour departed nightly from in front of the Burns statue explained the presence of pirates. You see, we were still smart at that point, our brains having not yet been eaten. Atop the 'stache, we enjoyed some absofreakinglutely kick ass fish and chips, fine fine beer, and equally fine desserts. (I had a chocolate truffle cheesecake that was, as advertised, actually truffle-y, not just chocolatey. And then this killer brownie thing.) We called it a relatively early night in the interests of Og no face planting in the dessert and/or falling off the roof.

Monday morning dawned a bit overcast, but by the time we emerged from Smitty's, our bellies full of much-needed diner breakfast, complete with crack-laden breakfast potatoes, the sun was shining and it had warmed up considerably enough that I knew I'd need to make a lunch-time run to a drugstore for knee-highs (Og packed at about 8:30 AM and left the house not long after; I suppose sie would like a pat on the head for remembering hose at all, but The Other was not in the mood to reward behavior that involved wearing full-on pantyhose underneath pants.) In the morning, we registered and picked up our superior swag bags (which actually contained pens, something that seems never to have occurred to ASHG, which also routinely saddles us with bags perhaps appropriate to carrying codpieces, but not much else). We sat in on a session about the genetics of domestication, which had a great paper on dogs and another on barley (with important implications for beer).

After the first round of morning sessions, we enjoyed the goodies provided during the coffee break (and, hello, coffee, juice and decent pastries reliably available during the coffee break? sweeeeeeet). From there, we headed to another session on tools for annotating and working with high-throughput data sets. The tools actually seem worthwhile and as if they work, which is, of course, more than we can say for NCBI on both counts. By lunchtime, we were trying to adjust to such competence and practicality in the field, and we were ready to run my, by now quite urgent, hosiery errand after having quite good food (albeit food of dubious Mexicanity) at a Mexican restaurant in the building next door to YFM.

The second of the afternoon sessions were for the graduate student award competition, and most of them were quite good: solid, important research and well presented. I admit that I was looking forward to taking the short cut to this paper about chimps having more fast-evolving genes than humans, as I've only had the chance to do a cursory read so far. The presentation was good, but I still have some concerns about the data included. The conservative approach is almost always the right one, but in this case, it's most likely to cut out genes that are genuinely evolving rapidly in humans. Still, nice papers overall.

Monday night was one of our scheduled fancy schmancy dinner nights. Our destination was Onyx, also directly across from the Lord Nelson (you could totally live at the Lord Nelson, were it not for the tragic lack of free wireless or other internet in the rooms). We had been attracted by the great rating, but worried that we were not nearly hipsters enough for this place. As you can see, the website is . . . well . . . just completely silly. Fortunately, the restaurant is not. We were both struck with an immediate need to fondle the accoutrement, from the textured silk napkins (which you could actually buy, I assume, on the hotel bathrobe principle: Everyone was taking them anyway) to the leather table runners to the real cork binders for the wine list. It was also soothingly dark and not loud (despite being on the busiest street in Halifax) (two nonnegotiable requirements for Og and J) with funky but not unpleasant music. Our server did warn us that on Fridays and Saturdays, it was strictly animal noises and whipping, so we'd come on a good night. We sucked down a caipirinha (me) and a fancy mojito-y thing (BSD) like juice as we perused the menu.

They had a prix fixe menu that, unfortunately, seemed to exclude some of the must-have appetizers. The server laughed in her friendly Canuckian way and assured us that we could have any appetizer we wanted, there was just a small extra charge for a few of the others. Rock star. We started with oysters on the half shell to share (we do not have a problem and we can stop any time we want to). I then had escargot served in mushroom caps with the most interesting sauce: kind of a mexican crema and a very light green sauce that was not quite salsa verde, but had a pleasant kick. It's not that I object to escargot as a vehicle for butter and massive amounts of garlic, but this was an interesting, very tasty, and new to me preparation. I definitely needed selections from the varied and delicious bread basket to sop up the sauces, too. J had the duck, which was sublime: It was a lesson to every dry, stringy duck slathered in nasty, jam-like plum sauce on what they should be: Perfectly done meat, not greasy in the least, with just a hint of delicately sweet sauce, all wrapped in light, flaky pastry.

For the main course, I had the seafood cannelloni. The shells were an excellent cross between a silky flour tortilla and freshly made pasta. The chipotle in the dough was smoky overall, but there was also a nice, sharp fresh chile flavor that lightened up the creamy sauce and the cheese accompanying the seafood. As for the seafood itself, it was fresh, well-prepared, and had distinct textures and flavors—no mishmash of puréed seafood and ricotta here. J had the cornish hen, which was a beautiful fusion of curry and molé. Accompanying the main courses, we scored the last bottle of the Diemersfontein 2005 Pinotage from South Africa. The cork was giving our server some gyp, which she was altogether too embarrassed about (it happens to the best of us). For dessert, we had the chocolate hazelnut mousse pyramid (me) and the creme brulée trio (J). Mine was the only thing less than great (a little on the pasty side), although it was still quite good. Judging from the inhalation of the plate as a whole, I take it that the professor had no such complaints with his dessert with which he also had a local ice wine that he enjoyed very much.

After dinner, we decided to change out of our finery and walk off some of the dinner on the water front. Based on the helpfully provided maps in our swag bags, we intuited that if we walked away from the conference, we'd be heading for water. On the way, we passed by at least three stores that I needed to check out. At the waterfront, we consulted a directory and headed for the most sticky-outy of the businesses, most of which are clustered at the north end (we and the Lord Nelson were at the south end). Along our walk, we met a very sweet rottweiler doggie and his owner, witnessed other, possibly inebriated, people trying to run up to the top of this "wave" statue," and decided that we needed to come back to visit Cow's at some point during the week. We made it already to the end by the casino before heading back south in search of a place to sit and have a drink. Most of the waterfront was rolling up its sidewalks by then (Monday night, after 10 PM), and so we headed back in the vague direction of our hotel. We came across a place called the "Golden Triangle" (not much of a web presence, it seems). We sat in the bar area, but three steps up from that was a proper restaurant, and another three up from that, an area with live music. On the able suggestion of the bar tender, I had a Propeller Bitter and, later, I did a good deed by taking the freshly pulled pint of guinness left by my neighbor whose cab had finally arrived.

Shortly after we'd come in, two guys came in, one from Wales and one from Manchester. Although they'd clearly been drinking beforehand, they got in under their own power and, for about 5 minutes, seemed fine. They ordered a couple of guinnesses as well, and then in record time, the Welsh guy was singing at the top of his lungs and pounding the bar, much to the embarrassment of his pal. Nothing more eventful than that happened, but we were somewhat baffled how he'd gone from able to walk under his own power to that hammered that quickly.

Anyway, we settled up our tab and really were virtuously heading back to our hotel when the exterior of a particular bar caught our eye. We then noticed that it was called the Press Gang, which we found amusing. We were peering inside and making mental notes for later when a man nearby said, "Don't be shy, go on in!" Not wishing to be impolite Americans, we did. As we sat down, the bartender said, "Just so you know, we're closed." We apologized and started to get up. He looked scandalized and said, "Oh, no, I can give youse a drink! Sit on down." How very Canadian. I had an IPA at his suggestion and didn't regret it (although IPAs are not usually among my favorite beers). J spelunked around their scotch list and astutely noted that they had real (well, as real as one can get nowadays, which is realer than the pernod one gets in the states) absinthe. The sazerac light bulb went on over our heads and we asked the bartender if he'd ever heard of one. He said no, but dutifully wrote down the recipe we tried to provide.

On that note, we did finally make our way back to the Lord Nelson, obtained some tasty carbonated caffeinated beverages from the vending machines, and so to bed.

Phasers Set to Weep: Lucy Kaplansky and Ellis Paul at OTSFM

I'm not sure if I'll get to (or ought to) write up a comprehensive Texarkana report, but I can start with a few observations:

• If, because it is 90 degrees by 9 AM, you make the decision to wear a microfiber tank top, rather than a proper blouse under your suit, you WILL be required to take off the jacket at airport security, and there WILL be a problem with the person in front of you, requiring you and your matronly arms to stand there, sans jacket, for at least 10 minutes.
  
• I think that if your city is hotter than hell for much of the year, climate control should be one of the core competencies of your airport. I cannot stress to DFW how strongly I feel on this point.
  
• Pink leopard-print backpacks with Superman's logo are cool.
  
• It was fascinating to learn that "No Smoking" has an entirely different meaning in the context of one of the two cabs in Texarkana.
  
• If, because it is the only other season-appropriate suit you own, you choose to wear an ivory/tan suit to an important business meeting, your pen WILL explode all over your hands before said meeting begins.
  
• All the good businessmen of Texarkana want to do is eat your brains. They're not unreasonable. I mean no one's gonna eat your eyes.
  

I'll leave off Texarkana in a moment, but allow me to say that it is not easy to get there from here. Or even to get there once you've figured out how to get there from wherever you might be. Or, once you're there, to get anywhere at all. So, yeah, Texarkana was kind of surreal. Oh, and a dry county. Have I mentioned that half of it is in a dry county? And we were in the wrong half?

Anyway, as planned, I was in fact back in Chicago by 3 PM. Starving and exhausted, but corporeally back in Chicago. After we took care of the starving part, I think I could have happily slept through until I had to leave for my bass class on Sunday afternoon, but we had tickets to see Lucy Kaplansky, so no sleep.

Ellis Paul was opening for her, and although I've heard the name and I recognized a handful of the titles of tracks I see on his website, the man himself was pretty much new to me. He's immensely tall and reminds one of Jeff Daniels without at all looking like Jeff Daniels. Of course, it's possible that I was just highly suggestible in my exhausted state, because Jeff Daniels happens to be playing at Old Town in the near future.

Anyhow, he was quite a great lead in to Lucy. He has a similarly sharp, witty, and personal song-writing style and a very deadpan sense of humor. He turned the latter on the audience, mocking us for our seriousness and for unduly emphasizing the SCHOOL in OTSFM. Out of a sense of fairness, I'm sure, he also told a story about traumatizing Arlo Guthrie by taking his shirt off in front of Arlo before a show. Oddly enough the same technique ended up getting Nora Guthrie married, though, so take that for what it's worth.

He played acoustic guitar and piano "in the key of white," as he's teaching himself and hasn't quite mastered the black keys yet. His friend, Don Conoscenti, sans shoes, also came out to play with him for a few songs (which ended up being more than half the set. The two of them obviously know one another very well indeed and delighted in giving one another shit on stage.

I'll never remember all we heard, but it was a great set. Throughout it, I was having a nagging brain malfunction about his voice, though. I knew it reminded me of someone, but I just couldn't nail it down until afterward. I am afraid to even mention it, because it's all too possible to take it wrong. Oh, all right: It's Steve Perry. But Steve Perry attached to smart songs ranging from soul raking love songs to the kind of music that makes even me want to drive: "Jukebox on My Grave," "Maria's Beautiful Mess," "3,000 Miles," "Blacktop Train," "Take All the Sky You Need," "Home," and "Alice's Champagne Palace," which I managed to love despite painful memories of racing toilets.

But then . . . THEN . . . the crowd calls him back for an encore and he starts out with the funny Arlo story. And just when he's made you feel like he might possibly be a dork within the same order of magnitude you are (and by you I mean me, you understand), he gets vindication because Nora actually asks him to take his shirt off. And when you've laughed good and hard and "awwwwed" over how Nora met her husband, you realize that you have been led down the garden path. Because all off this sillyness and sappyness is to get you feeling all good and mellow when he talks about how Nora asked him to write the music to Woody's "Gods Promise," which he wrote during the first year after his Huntington's Disease manifested. And then . . AND THEN he sings it and if you're not only me but a very very tired me whose brain has been eaten by venture capitalists, you're weeping copiously by the end and just trying, out of respect for your fellow concert goers, not to sob out loud. And let me tell you, once you've already wept a little weep during the opening act, there is no hope whatever for you during a Lucy Kaplansky set. I think you all can appreciate how diabolical this man is.

And I'm not letting a certain Dr. Kaplansky off the hook either, as she decided to start her set with "Carey" off Joni Mitchell's Blue, perhaps the most heart-rending album of all time. I'm not sure if opening with Joni is the equivalent of her content rating: This acoustic set is rated "A" for "aching." Some material may evoke images of the kind of family one only dreamed could exist and may cut far too close to the bone for sensitive hearers. Frankly, it's just as likely that someone should tell Joni that she got served.

Whereas Ellis Paul was all sly humor and wit right up until the Patented Woody Guthrie Gut Punch, Lucy, as befits her other profession, worked about equally from the folksinger's guide to dry, slightly ditzy humor and the DSM-IV. She started by pointing out one of the songs she sang early on in the set had been written for her 4.5 year old daughter. It's called "Manhattan Moon," although she admits she'd have loved to call it "Molly's Song," she already has one called "Song for Molly" in honor of her grandmother. It's a sweet, rolling little song—a lullaby with legs (wheels, really). After this innocent ditty, she "warned" us that she'd be talking a lot about her daughter. Just in case anyone got suspicious, and we should have been, she did another comparatively happy-go-lucky song, a cover of Loudon Wainwright's "Swimming Song." She also told us a bouncy, upbeat story about having done a recording of it years ago that she thought was dismal. (Ok, that's not the bouncy, upbeat part.) When she was thinking about doing it again, she actually ran into Loudon and asked if he thought their meeting was a sign that she should give it ago. he replied, "Whenever someone does one of my songs, it's a sign."

Wanting to be sure that we were well and truly on our way to trusting her implicitly, she did a few songs about her relationship with her husband. "This is Home," is actually a neat companion to "Manhattan Moon" It's a weary, longing, love song from on the road. It's passionate and filled with worry about taking love for granted and not living up to promises, and all the time it comes back to faith in the home you make.

It was probably around this time that she explained that Molly is aware that Lucy talks about her at shows.In fact, when she recently attended a day-time show, Molly decided that she wanted a say in what gets said. So when Lucy had spoken to her before the show, Molly instructed her to tell us that she'd eaten a whole hot dog. Duly noted. But she also told us that Molly has a stuffed dog and a stuffed panda bear whom she calls "my boys." True to this appellation, she parents "her boys," telling them that they need more protein, and so on. She also has decided that her boys have two daddies, Mark and Chad (just in case one took "has two daddies" to be some kind of sitcom euphemism that might star B.J. OR the bear), and she and Lucy switch off playing these roles.

During the end of this story, she'd already started strumming the chords for her next song. As she finished and was about to launch into the song, she looked down as if surprised and said, "Ooh, this song isn't really appropriate for kids." And how. "Ten Year Night," which, she assured us, is about the man who is now her husband, despite a fan's expressing condolences to Lucy that she "wasn't with that 'Ten Year Night' guy anymore," is low-down and dirty, sexy and a little angry.

Certainly I had her commentary to back me up, but to me it seemed unmistakable that this song was about the same man—or really about the same relationship—just at a different stage of the game. I was tempted to write something that implied "less mature" there, but that's not right, either. There's a certain volatility to the music and lyrics that has echoes of the early days of a relationship where you can rub each other raw, literally and figuratively, in the good and bad ways. "Ten Year Night," isn't just fond, if slightly dismissive, memories of those days. It's a driving, urgent need to say "I still feel all that and more," and to be heard:

Going eighty on the highway
We're rushing somewhere
But the way I feel tonight
It's like I'm already there
Open your eyes and look at me look at me
Open your eyes and look at me
Cause I have and hold this love for you
Before this ten year night is through
I'm telling you I'm telling you

The note she hits here obviously appeals to me. She revisited it when she played "Ring of Fire," which she also covers on Over the Hills. I think it's partly an homage to her folk/country roots (she played a little bit of Walk the Line during the show to acknowledge those roots, as well), as OtH, musically, is said to be a return to the more acoustic sound that she began with. Anyway, her version of "Ring of Fire," is smokin' sexy with the requisite edge of pain. It reminded me of the way Reese Witherspoon plays the scene when the lyrics first come to June. And I'm staggered to find several people saying that the version on the CD is "phoned in." It seems to be part of a broader irritation with "too many covers," on OTH. Given that one of my very favorite Lucy-containing CDs is Cry, Cry, Cry, a collection of other songwriters' works done in resonant, soul-deep harmonies with Dar Williams and Richard Shindell, I'm unlikely to have the "cover issue."

I think this was probably after she introduced us to her relationship with both husband and daughter that she felt that it was pretty safe to take the gloves off, emotionally speaking, and have her way with us. She started to talk about her experiences traveling to China 3.5 years ago to adopt Molly, which she also chronicled in the title track from her last CD, The Red Thread.

Although Molly has quite varied and cosmopolitan tastes at home, on the road, she is apparently insistent that they listen to "Mommy's Music," (The Red Thread CD) and "my song" ("The Red Thread" track) and nothing else. I'd never considered how much being a singer/songwriter could complicate the parenting hazard of the one, the only, the car CD, accept no substitutes. But Lucy admitted to pulling a con on Molly one day when she just. couldn't. hear. that CD any more. She told her, "but the first song is about you, Molly!" And of course she had to hear it.

To balance the "funny at Molly's expense," she gave a superficially self-deprecating laugh. I now understand that that very laugh was suffused entirely with wickedness. She informed us that she cries at pretty much everything nowadays, and yet she still somehow managed to sing the title track from Over the Hills, which . . . well, it's a song to her daughter in the future, ok? Like that's not going to be a tear jerker.

But was she satisfied? Oh no, she was not satisfied. She then, with much self-doubt, played what she had written of a song for her big brother (Spike! My hand to god, his name is Spike Kaplansky!) in the wake of their father's death. And, oh sweet jeebus, utterly without mercy, the song she wrote on the plane on the way to say good-bye to her father. And that was after she'd told the story of the lullaby he used to sing to them every night—music he'd made up to lyrics from a Golden Book that had long since been lost. Her brother (Spike!) had just happened to find a copy of the book, which he'd given to Molly as a birthday present. He hadn't known about the song, she hadn't known about the book, "And so I read Molly the book. And I cried. And I sang her the song. And I cried. And now when she wants to hear it she says, 'Mommy, sing the grandpa song and cry'."

And I haven't even gotten to the New York songs. She, of course, did "Land of the Living," which is on These Times We're Living In, a fantastic post-September 11, 2001 anthology that isn't what you think it is. But she also did "Brooklyn Train," which . . . shit . . . might very well be a divinely inspired, infinitely less pathetic song based on my delayed weeping for everything after the fact.

Do I need to tell you how much of a mess I was by the end of this? Do I need to kick each of your asses individually until you get some Lucy Kaplansky? I'd better not.

Primate-cy: Electric Boogaloo at the MIlwaukee Zoo

It was more than 2 years ago that M and I last ventured to the Milwaukee County Zoo and lost our headgear to wiley moose.

That trip was auspicious for me, because it marked the first time that I actually got to see bonobos, after multiple attempts to do so. In retrospect, it's a bittersweet trip, because it was also the first—and very sadly, the last—time I'd get to see Mitch Hedberg perform. Although I almost never reread anything I've ever written, I peeked into that entry and I'm sad that I wrote so little about his performance. His appearance that night was both a surprise and a real treat. Given how much of Mitch permeates conversations at Telecommuniculturey, he's someone that M and I really do miss on almost a daily basis.

Anyway, it's a long time since it was all happenin' at the Milwaukee County Zoo. Given that my baby brother has just matched at the Medical College of Wisconsin and will be looking for a house, most likely in the zoo's 'hood, it seems unlikely that it'll be that long before our next visit, and that's a good thing.

The holdings of the Milwaukee County Zoo are, somewhat unfortunately, superior to its facilities. And I'm not just talking about the slim pickings in the way of junk food. (Although, as it happens, only the Santa Barbara Zoo, with its repulsively healthy, avocado-featuring offerings, ranks lower.) Their signage is pretty tragic, both in terms of content and literacy (someone had added a much-needed sharpie apostrophe to "It's" on one sign, but I lacked a sharpie to remove one elsewhere; and let us never speak of the mote/moat problem). A lot of the "interactive" signs (you know, where a question is asked and you lift a flap, slide a lever, or push a button to get the answer) are in bad repair. And nothing appears to have been updated in the 2.5 years since we've been there.

In perusing their website, I see that the problems also penetrate that. For example, the Great Apes and many of the Primates are in the same house, so their organization on their list is not simply location based. Leaving aside the fact that Great Apes are a subset of Primates, making the location-based list confusing even if it were accurate, you then have the Orangutan (hint: it's a Great Ape) lumped in with the Primates. And the term "Pygmy Chimpanzee" has no place on any materials that hope to be educational.
These kinds of problems irk me but don't really have much of an effect on what I get out of a visit. For the most part.

After grabbing a bite for breakfast, we made a false start down the wrong path to the house with Great Apes and other Primates and had to backtrack to it. It was quite cold, so all the primates were indoors. There were two gorillas chilling in the indoor habitat, quite possibly the same two brothers we saw the lsat time, but I'm not sure. They weren't doing much, so we moved on to the bonobos.

The first thing that caught my eye was a nearly hairless male bonobo who sat stock still, keeping himself apart from the rest of the group. He was incredibly muscular, a feature emphasized by not being especially hirsute. He just looked out over the rest of the group so calmly the whole time that we took to calling him "The Cooler."

The second thing I noticed was that there were three bonobos as high as they could possibly get in the habitat. Two of these were adults (one male and one female, as it would turn out), and the third was a youngster. The little one was on the move, clearly wanting to get down on the floor where the rest of the action was. The adult male was hot on his/her heels and in fact sped past to cradle him/her on the rest of the way down. The female caught up with the two and elbowed the male out of the way to take charge of the little one. It gradually became clear that she'd lagged behind because she had extremely limited control of her lower limbs, and seemingly none over her feet.

We're going with the assumption that the female was Linda, the oldest of their bonobos and one who suffers from diabetes, and that she is the mother of the little guy/gal was quite possibly the little baby we saw back in '03. Unfortunately, none of the information delineating the individuals had been updated since our last visit, so this is just a guess. The identity of the male remains unknown, although I suspect he might have been the one actively pursuing the mother of the baby in '03. That guess is based on the fact that he was obsessed with both the mother and the little one, and the mother didn't seem especially pleased with or interested in his bonobo-y attentions to either herself or her offspring (and yeah, the adult male went there with the little guy, 'cause that's how bonbos roll). And just to complicate things, any and all of these bets may be completely off based on the fact that the female was sporting a truly giant estrus swelling (and seemed to have actual intercourse with at least two males), which seems out of step with the age of the little one.

So you can see that information—any information at all—on identity, relationships, health status, etc., would have been a real asset. But our confusion was probably nothing to that of the student who was parked on the floor by the habitat, clearly making notes for a school project. She was a bit surly to someone who asked her a question, snapping that she didn't work for the zoo, but we'll right (in fairness to the Milwaukee zoo, I leave my think-o intact, here. WRITE, damnit!) that off to quite understandable frustration.

From the bonobos, we powered past some cuddling mandrills and fairly sedate spider monkeys. The Goeldi's monkeys were completely uninterested in showing us their tiny baby. The two orangutans were kind of canoodling, but with their backs to us. The black-and-white colobus monkeys were looking glum, as they have every right to, and the Diana monkeys were quite huffy at my having mistaken them, based only on a very brief glimpse, for the B&W colobus monkeys.

But the siamang were all up for being entertaining. The group comprised a family: adult female, adult male, and a little one just over a year old. When we first got there, the mother was sitting on the floor, looking despondent, as the little one performed a vaudeville routine. He was trying to walk on the floor, but kept slipping all over the place. This seemed to irritate him, driving him to climb some of the vines hanging over his dear old mum so that he could kick at her head and shoulders in the universal, cross-species dance of toddler frustration. He was so bad at walking bipedally on the floor that I entertained two possible explanations: (1) He was somehow developmentally delayed and not yet strong enough, leg wise, to "walk"; (2) some particularly cruel keeper had actually crisco-ed the floor.

While mother and child were enacting this tender scene, the adult male was at the back of the habitat, looking through the grate into the interior, out-of-public space. At some point, the mother and kiddo moved back to sit near him. He seemed annoyed by the kid and, at some point, seemed to be trying to make some connection (not necessarily a bonobo connection) with the adult female, who whipped around and smacked him, once, twice, upside the head. Although her reasoning was not obvious at the time, when the whole group later moved closer to the glass, his hand appeared to be entirely covered with shit, which might explain some things.

We finally peeled ourselves away from the primates and headed off to see some reptiles and fish. I appreciate herpetological creatures in general, and M is, of course, an a fish person (and pisces), but there was not much that was particularly exciting in here. M reaffirmed his position that poisonous snakes are cheater cheater pumpkin eaters, and we reminisced about the crazy rattlesnake at the St. Louis Zoo. I was then roundly mocked for wanting to know (a) whether said crazy rattler was abnormal neurologically or otherwise and (b) just how much craziness is out there in the snake population waiting to be selected for.

We next hit the small mammal house where river otters did their cute river otter thing, which is just a smidge less cute than the sea otter thing. Most of the monkeys, including the pygmy marmoset, were completely uninterested in being seen by us. The icky, horrible bats, in contrast, were all too happy to make their presence known (and I'm still having nightmares about the one that was loping across the ceiling while upside down). The wild kitty had just been given a treat ball and was being hilariously house-cat like. The bush baby remained cute, although he did not engage in any particularly spectacular locomotive feats this time around.

Our outdoor tour was rather brisk due both to the cold and the fact that we learned our lesson about sudden Wisconsin wind last time. The short list to the outdoors:

• The peacock that was really really bummed about the closed snack bar and perpetually screamed about it.
  
• Australia was a bust because it was under construction and being painted, which might explain the sacked out roos.
  
• Giraffes look totally ridiculous indoors, but being that close, you can see them swallow, which is pretty freakin' cool. Also, their skulls are quite alien looking.
  
• The wussy polar bears went back inside almost as soon as we showed up.
  
• The black bears we saw look surprisingly like the hound, despite the fact that the hound is quite equine.
  
• The "Farm" is generally pretty lame, but we did see:
  
  
  
  • A very twitchy bird of prey being trained and demanding food about every 5 seconds (reason for presence on farm unclear).
    
  • A cow that trotted in for its lunch when called.
    
  
  
• The timber wolves that they have are just completely beautiful. They also very pointedly walked to the glass as we walked away, watching us for as long as they could see us with a look that clearly said "We don't want your kind 'round here, two legs."
  

After some lunch, we swung around the opposite side of the apes/primates to check out Macaque Island where the so-called "snow monkeys" were looking pretty miserable in the cold. Well, most were looking pretty miserable. There was one who was sitting with his legs splayed wide, his erect penis making a jaunty arch and resting on the rock between them like the proverbial third leg.

It was closing in on closing time by then, so we made one more swing through the primate house. This was quite fortunate, because we learned that the adult male orangutan "Tommy" (if that is his real name), suddenly seemed to be in possession of a bucket. We also got to witness all the bonobos going completely mental: They'd run into a deep, out of sight portion at the back of the habitat. For several minutes it would seem as if they had gone inside for the night, but moments later, they'd emerge, as if from a clown car, screaming. Over and over again they did this. Comical, yet mysterious, that's our bonobos.

The Newfoundgoodland: Great Big Sea in Milwaukee, WI

So M and I failed not once, but twice, to get special-person tickets for Great Big Sea. Nonetheless, we decided that if we added some hot bonobo-on-bonobo-on-bonobo action into the mix, we might be able to make do with pleb tickets in The Good Land.


The concert was at the Potawatomi casino, which didn't particularly thrill me (for most of the same reasons cited by Alan here, and yes, that's hypocritical, because I love a few days in Vegas). It thrilled me less when we wound up parking (thanks to inadequate signage) in the first lot we saw, and walking through 86 miles worth of construction (the entire city of Milwaukee appears to be under construction) to get there.

However, the Northern Lights Theater is actually quite a pleasant venue, and a welcome oasis of nonsmoking, to boot. It reminds me most of The Park West in layout, but I doubt it seats as many. Although we finally bought tickets a mere three days in advance, we were in the back of a comfy, high-backed booth one level above the mosh tables (presumably, these were the early release tickets) with a couple who were pleasant enough, but not overly chatty. The drinks, of course, were overpriced, but at least good drinks. The basket of fried stuff to tide us over until dinner, ditto.

The show started quite promptly at 8 PM (M and his "atoms" claim 8:02, but we spurn him), and as was the case with last year's "Evening with Great Big Sea", there were two sets and no opening band. Although there was not as strong a divide in material between the two sets as there was last year, the staging also followed the same pattern, beginning with a minimal drum kit (he had a floor tom this year, which my notes from last year suggest he did not, but I wouldn't trust me if I were you and I'm me, so pause to consider) for Kris, and everyone in front of the draped lights. Murray had a stand-up bass in addition to his amplified acoustic.

M, because he likes to be a pain in the ass, declared (jokingly, I can assure you, because you might not know from his utter lack of sarcastic voice) early on that this might be the moment when GBS would jump the shark. This was initially based on the addition of the upright bass, which Murray used with all their fancy new instruments. When Alan pulled out a banjo at one point, a mandolin (which I think we've seen him play before) at another, and his sweet, sweet electric gibson at yet another, M again gave me a significant look. And then Bob started changing instruments midsong, making him guilty, at least, of hubris.

Although I utterly scorn assertions, however in jest they might be, of shark jumping, I do note that our scruffy boys were all wearing button-down shirts and that Sean and Bob have both cut their hair and look almost respectable. Alan's beautiful rock hair remains intact, thankfully, and he used it to great advantage. In general, they all looked fitter and more rested than last year, which warms my heart.

Set 1 kicked off with "Billy Peddle" and "Go Boys Go (Chemical Workers' Song)," which they immediately followed with "When I'm Up." Although I would follow these lads anywhere (especially, as I've noted before they always tour when it's spring and the wanderlust sets in), I suppose some people might wonder why they're touring at the moment. There's no new album this year (boo!), although the plan is to record one throughout 2007 for release in time for next year's temptational tour (hurray!), so this tour is meant to feature a healthy mix of things they haven't done in a long while plus more recently released things and a handful of genuinely new stuff.

Alan's "From the Road" entry from Kalamazoo, MI, to which I linked above, says they debuted three new songs, but we only got two: "Walk on the Moon" is akin to "Ordinary Day" and feels like it could have been on Something Beautiful. I liked it a lot, but I can imagine that those who are mostly fans of their more traditional stuff will be impatient with it. The second, which doesn't yet have a title (Alan refers to it as "Here We Go Again" in his journal), is much bouncier and feels traditional, though it's new. Unless I passed out for a while, we did not get "Where I Belong," which, from Alan's description, is a real return to roots in the same vein as some of the songs off the debut CD. I'm sorry we missed it.

In terms of things that I don't think I've ever seen them perform live before, I'm dredging my memory here (there's been a zoo trip, an opera, a chocolate buffet, and a Secret Country show since then, so bear with me). It's quite likely that I'd never heard the two opening numbers live, or at least not since back in 2002 when I saw the boys live for the first time.

I'd absolutely never heard Sean do "Captain Wedderburn" live. It was not only a real treat, it served as a reminder that he doesn't always sing the songs about lying, cheating, and generally being a dawg, just most of the time. In some ways, Sean's voice has changed the most over the course of their nearly 15 years (yikes!) together, and this performance was a nice demonstration that he still has the sweet, high tenor chops he's always had and they're greatly enhanced by the more dynamic range he's developed. Sean also did "Feel it Turn" in the second set, which not only have I never seen, I am not sure I've ever heard it, because of my spouses desultory ripping practices in the past. (In fact, as I'm going through their discography, there are many things I've never heard [and I wonder about the mysterious asterisk by Something Beautiful], so I guess I'll be digging through some CDs.)

Although it wasn't new itself, the performance of "Sea of No Cares," permanently transformed the song for me. I actually quite like the version that ended up on the CD bearing that name, but I realized when I heard it performed by the guy from the Push Stars who cowrote it (with Alan on acoustic, of course) that the CD version is on the overproduced end of the spectrum. For the performance on Thursday, Alan asked us to imagine ourselves at Sean's place on a foggy Wednesday Newfoundland afternoon, surrounded by beagles. Um, yes please.

Also among the things never before heard on stage (and quite possibly never to be heard again) were: Sean's Sammy Davis, Jr., impression, which led to an impromptu rendition of "Somewhere Beyond the Sea" and repeated demands for a "Brandy McBrandy," which were eventually fulfilled, for good or for ill; Alan's leading the crowd into a medley of "Country Road" and "This Land is Your Land," which was just plain weird; and some recitative about doing casino shows more often, because they're over 21 and give the boys the opportunity to be really filthy. (For the curious, "penis" is Alan's idea of really filthy, "poo" is Sean's.)

The boys being funny and charming and adorable is nothing new at all, but they were perhaps more relaxed and playful this year than last. Last year, of course, jokes abounded about pitching a CD like The Hard and the Easy to a corporate monolith, but there was a slightly hysterical shine to their eyes. Methinks there was some joking on the square going on. In Milwaukee, they kidded constantly about the venue, which made Alan feel like a Gladiator (he kept demanding Barabbas, which got funnier each time) and Sean like a member of the Rat Pack (hence the Sammy Davis impression). Bob, as Alan noted, actually smiled and laughed on stage. Multiple times. (Don't worry, Bob, it took nothing away from the fact that you are the only human being alive who has a rock star stance and strut built up around the button accordion.)

Other comic highlights included Alan's long-winded introduction to "When I Am King." During the course of it, the band decided that the song was really more an "Alan and Friends" song, and the light man helped get this across by leaving the rest of the band in darkness with a single spot on Alan. This was all the funnier because it was meant to explain how embarrassed he was about the self-centered second verse. Also, Sean told us that he prefers a wax to a shave (apropos being "like a brother to Shave"), and Alan promised to kiss away his pain (I have no idea). Alan doesn't care about Murray's pain, apparently, because only Sean noted that they were going to have to give Murray more verses, given the amount of anger he injected into his on "Scolding Wife." (Murray suggested that they give him less anger, but this suggestion went unnoticed.) But probably the funniest thing was Alan pantomiming the role of the "Rover's" lover, raising her arms up around her breast.

Each set was a little more than an hour, and they came out for two encores. The second—an unamplified version of "River Driver" sung from the apron—was incredibly beautiful. Or at least it was once the fucking tone deaf drunk woman behind me finally recognized Alan's repeated gestures for quiet until the very last reprise of the chorus, at which point we all joined in. I'm always greedy for whatever they don't have time to play, but this show was a really great mix of things from their whole career. Sure, I'd have loved more from The Hard and the Easy, but I loved hearing things from way back on Great Big Sea and Up. I loved it all, even Alan's little screw up in "Excursion Around the Bay," and the mystery of whether or not Kris was really playing the piano accordion or just using it as an accessory.

It was a great night, and I deeply regret that we didn't follow through on my brilliant plan to high-tail it back to Chicago and catch them at the Riviera on Friday, but the bonobos, they were calling, as was the hound dog.