Scenes from a Weekend

Thrift Item of the Moment

Gladiator duel

click to enlarge

Best copper picture ever.

Record Covers of the Week

Shopping with Jessica on Saturday. Interesting selection of vinyl at a yard sale near my house – coloured vinyl, picture discs, hand-screened covers, etc.

Yard sale guy had the cutest polydactyl cat ever.

I bought:

A 7″ 45 rpm picture disk from Hong Kong of a children’s choir singing Christmas songs: Ding Dong Merrily On High, It Came Upon A Midnight Clear, Adeste Fideles, Joy To The World, Silent Night, Deck The Halls.

Side 1

Side 2

and:

Label, side B

Goosed

I drive by the Red Goose Restaurant every weekday on my way to work. It’s in a small strip mall in the the Hazeldean neighbourhood.

I’ve had breakfast there a few times in the past. This week I went for lunch.

It’s old school in a cracked red vinyl booth and basement wood paneling greasy spoon way. There’s hardly any of those left in this burg.

The food is old school greasy spoon too. I had a (processed)cheese(frozen)burger

and a piece of (nothomemade)apple pie with ice cream while I read The Sun that the friendly waitperson (an owner, I think) brought with my food. The menu also has some Korean items which I’ll have to try another time.

Curiously, each booth has sheets of scrap paper hanging from hooks. It’s not to write down your order so I have no idea what they’re for (to send love notes to other patrons?)

I’m glad the Red Goose exists, and I’ll be back (but not necessarily because of the food).

Record Cover of the Week

François Cousineau: L’initiation

I’m just not finding the records I want at the thrifts (right now I’m a little obsessed with collecting soundtracks from Canadian movies), so I’ve been forced to go to ebay. I’ve bought several CDs off the ‘bay in the last 6 months but this is my first vinyl purchase. The shipping charges are killer – in this case as much as the record. The film is a 1969 sexploitation flick from Quebec (a genre that has come to be known as “maple syrup porn”) with an excellent score by François Cousineau and vocals by Diane Dufresne and Canadian disco queen Patsy Gallant.

Links:

Radio interview (from CBC 1’s Definitely Not The Opera) with Dan Zacks about music from maple syrup porn (it runs about 11 minutes).

Canuxploitation.com article on the “maple syrup porn” genre.

Film Threat review of L’initiation

The Culling XVII: 1st Anniversary

This week marks the first anniversary of my record collection culling project. In that time I’ve listened to 2,612 albums (falling short of my goal of 10 a day), culled 459 and kept 2,153. I’m nearing the end of the vocal albums – just a few barbershop quartets to get through – and then I’m on to movie soundtracks, the section I’ve been most eagerly anticipating since I started this task.

What’s on, Patrick?

Last night’s Patrick Watson concert culminated (before the inevitable encores) with Watson donning this Medusa-like loudspeaker contraption and playing in the aisle with his bandmates on electric guitar, acoustic guitar and saw. Crazy awesome.

Book Report

Astronautical Multilingual Dictionary

A fascinating read if you’re an Italian rocket scientist presenting a paper to your colleagues in the Mexican space program (say) and you need to know the Spanish equivalents of the terms “megaparsec” or  “strap-on booster.” Others may find this book less useful. You have to already know what this stuff means because there are no definitions, just translations (English, Russian, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Czech). Published by the House of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1970. A Goodwill find.

Thrift Item of the Moment

Blue Boy & Pinky

Stencil 6

I caught these vandals in the act.

Here’s their subversive manifesto.