Hedwig and the Angry Inch: A perfect way to wash away the aftertaste of an Albertan PC landslide (with some bright spots, actually)

To my loyal public, I have to apologise for my last post, which was probably the most boring thing I’ve ever written. If this blog devolves into a review of blogging software, all is lost, and I’ll be the first person to admit it.

Luckily, interesting things–besides new web browsers, which, I know, aren’t all that interesting–have been happening recently. Too much interesting stuff. First, it’s time for me to acknowledge the 9000-pound elephant in the room (an average adult Indian elephant cow weighs 4500kg, so the next time somebody refers to “the 2000 pound elephant in the room,” ask them where they found such a tiny elephant) and talk about the recent Alberta election.

Okay, my side lost, big time. The final tally was 72 PC (that’s “Progressive Conservative,” for you Americans, not the other PC, or the other other PC), 9 Liberal, 2 New Democrat, 0 Green, 0 Wild Rose Alliance. This despite a predicted breakout for the Liberals, who saw their seats decrease from 16. NDs lose official party status, and we now have “King Eddie” at the helm for at least four years and likely much, much longer. What’s a loyal, generally optimistic “Grit” (”Grit” is slang for “Liberal”; not sure where it comes from… and Wikipedia comes to the rescue) to do?

I try to be a “glass is half full” person, and part of that is managing the fact that I’ve been on the outside of the political majority just about my whole life, in one way or another. Even my tenure in Ontario was during a conservative government there. And I’ve survived and haven’t gone native and switched my allegiances. Anyway, here are my “silver linings”:

1. Central Calgary is now one Liberal bloc: We won Calgary Currie (my riding, south of downtown, which was already liberal since the last election), Buffalo (which comprises all of downtown proper), and Mountain View (which comprises the neighbourhood just north of downtown). I like this, since I’ve almost always been sequestered in small- or large-l “liberal” strongholds, and it suits me to live this way. Calgary had one Liberal MLA when we moved here, then NONE, then three, then four, and now five (with Varsity and McCall, in the NW university area and the ethnically diverse, immigrant-majority NE). Still a minority, but as long as I can feel with increasing confidence that my neighbourhood exemplifies what’s Canadian and urban, I’m happy. That’s positive change.

2. The Wild Rose Alliance, which was selling itself and being sold as the “real” conservative alternative, was repudiated. They got votes, yes, but did not and will probably never get enough outside of a core of social conservatives (who are in no way shape or form a majority in this province, no matter what the rest of the country is committed to believing). They had one seat in the last legislature; now they have zero, and I’m happy about that.

3. I really don’t see this election as an affirmation or a mandate for the PCs. I see it more as an expression of the willingness of the voting Albertans (more on the “voting” part in a minute) to give the Stelmach government the opportunity for a try-out. Stelmach was not an elected Premier; he became Premier when he was voted in as PC party leader last year. Now, maybe, his support will grow or erode under the auspices of a “real” administration. To be honest, and I hate to admit this publicly, I don’t despise Stelmach the same way I despised Ralph Klein and his corrupt, bullying incompetence. Stelmach did some nice things: The province-wide smoking ban for one; refusing to demean same-sex marriage for another; in American terms, he’s actually a bit left of centre. But that doesn’t mean I’m voting for him; it just means I’m not as depressed as I could be.

4. This is not a “mandate” for Stelmach for another important reason: Nobody voted. Well, 41% of voters did, and the ones that did were OLD (Brian and I saw this firsthand at the polling place- sheesh!), and old people in Alberta remember the NEP and still see “Liberal” as “poison.” Yes, they’re idiots who cannot understand the difference between a provincial party in 2008 and a federal one in 1980, but they vote, so they make the rules. I have a conspiracy theory about this: Voters who’d vote against the ruling party are TAUGHT not to vote by media, local and national, who have a vested interest–the country as a whole has this interest–in Alberta remaining conservative. This has the effect of cowing people who’d vote for change because, and we’re told this from day 1 moving here, “there’s no point.” There IS a point; strategic voting would work in the cities at least, and we CAN change this province. Albertans are no more small-c conservative than average Canadians on any any issue except maybe Kyoto (and can you blame them?); Calgarians look exactly like Torontonians on social issues (they did on same-sex marriage but the media never told anybody, because the media NEED Calgary and Alberta to accept the myth about themselves or else regime changes and poof goes cheap subsidized oil); we DO have the power. I wish more people understood this.

So go matters political. Now, Brian and I went to see Sage Theatre’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch last night at the Pumphouse.

Last night (a Thursday, mind) was, like most of its performances, sold out. The film version is one that we both love, a lot, fantastic rock score and a great story, but it was originally a play, and I was curious how it would look.

And we both loved this production! It works beautifully, despite–maybe because of–being staged in the small confines of the Doolittle Theatre space at Pumphouse. It’s basically a concert peppered with monologue, and the actor cast as Hedwig (Geoffrey Ewert) really channeled John Cameron Mitchell well, right down to his body type. He also had a great voice. In even better voice was Jamie Konchak as Yitzhak, superb singer. The animations were done by a local artist, not copied from the film, and there are a lot of local references (”Tommy Gnosis is playing at the Pengrowth Saddledome right this minute”) to keep track of. I found this a cleansing and emotional experience, and not only because there are some songs in Hedwig that cause me to lose it, “Midnight Radio” especially. It’s also because after another exercise in apathy with this week’s election and being told, again, how “conservative” we all are here, to sit through some ribald, queer-friendly theatre in a packed house felt like baptism to me.

Joining the flock

I read about the demise of Netscape today, which makes me feel a little melancholic, since like a lot of Gen X-ers, I first discovered the real value of the “world wide web” on Mosaic and then on the must-have Netscape. But now like most people (it seems) I’ve abandoned, many months ago, MS Internet Explorer for Firefox (and now that I’m on a Mac, I can’t even choose IE if I wanted to), which was created by “the Mozilla group,” which itself comprised (I think) a bunch of folks downsized from AOL/Nestcape, and so the more things change etc.

Well among suggestions for people forced to abandon Netscape are for them to adopt Firefox, of course; another (which I had to find out for myself, actually) is for them to migrate to an “internet suite” called SeaMonkey, which is great for me since it has an almost-identical-to-Netscape’s HTML editor called “Composer.” I need this for uploading my course materials to my teaching site, and it’s nice to see that the learning curve for this new product will be nice and flat.

Another suggestion for the “Netscape community” is to try a new browser (albeit one with the same “engine” as Firefox) called Flock. It’s interesting, because it integrates all these features from social networking sites–facebook, myspace, flickr, youtube, the whole damn web 2.0 social world–into the browser; this means… well actually I’m not entirely sure, but I can have my facebook friends and their status updates and such in a sidebar on my browser 24/7. How this is going to help me, I dunno, but one thing I like is that there is a photo upload applet built right into the browser that lets me (I think) upload pics to my facebook page, and even cooler is that I can create and upload blog posts from a standalone blog editor, which is what I am doing right now.

Flock also quite seamlessly absorbed my Firefox bookmarks and cookies, which is cool and which I could not do with Safari (the Mac browser from Apple- which is a superbly fast browser but with too little of the firefox bells and whistles, especially an addictive thing called Stumble Upon and its associated toolbar that everybody should avoid because it’s too much fun). So this should be an interesting test drive.

I joined another sort of FLOCK today because Brian and I went to a rally for the Alberta Liberals at Crossroads Market (link at “places I like”), which is the more depressing of the two year-round farmers’ markets in Calgary. I say “depressing” because Crossroads has–in addition to a nice assortment of fruit/veg, very good and well-priced meat and cheese sellers, and excellent little “food court” with, among other things, Turkish-style bureks–a very sad “flea market” with just the most depressing bunch of trailer-trash accouterments being sold- blankets with Harley logos, paperbacks, cheap imported garbage. ANYway, the rally was upstairs in the “Artspace,” a great art market that COMPLETELY makes the flea market seem out of place and doubly skanky, and there were hundreds of people there. Very inspiring. Do I think the Grits are going to win? Not a chance, but I do have high hopes that they’ll take more seats and that we’ll continue to evolve a meaningful opposition in Alberta.

We picked up a tonne of produce at Crossroads (Chongo’s Produce there), including big, SWEET strawberries from Cali I assume but really, really delicious. On the way home we stopped at Bite Groceteria again (note previous post about this wonderful little foodie boutique) and scored some Italian jarred tuna with hot peppers (a sample sold me, good enough to eat straight out of the jar in one expensive sitting) among other things; we then had one of the best sweet things I’ve ever, ever tasted at Nectar Desserts; ’twas a dark choco and caramel tart, which B and I split. Completely amazing. THEN we headed downtown to Caffe Artigiano for two traditional macchiatos and split a smoked turkey panino, which CA does on cranberry sourdough, a beautiful sandwich.

Great day for body and mind! And the weather continues to astound. The tulips are a good 5cm out of the ground now.

Happy March!

Blogged with Flock

Spring!

I was sitting here in my basement cave listening to the Flames-Wild game on the radio (1-0 for the good guys, early in the 2nd period) and saw a cat outside the window doing some bathroom-appropriate activity, or preparing to, so I opened a window to shoo it away, and I noticed these:

Yes, those are the very first TINY (maybe a centimetre out of the ground) shoots of tulips, on the sunny side of the house, February 24, Calgary. Calgary, Alberta. Sure, they’re 5 inches out of the ground in Vancouver (and spring is breaking out everywhere there), but this is still pretty cool.

Speaking of Vancouver, I had a great time, mostly. I had some really amazing meals- Gyoza King as noted earlier (a second visit there was just as good), some delights (with a gross ama ebi, though- raw shrimp ain’t my thing) at Hapa Izakaya, and a SUPERB dinner, a 3 course prix fixe (with an amuse bouche and a little “pre-dessert,” it was actually five courses, three full ones and two tiny ones) at Gastropod in Kitsilano. It was creative and great depth of flavour in everything; my main was a tuna belly done confit style but poached in olive oil (not “tuna fat,” which would have been interesting); it was on a bed of diced veg and black eyed peas (!!) and just shot through with a fennel broth. Appie was 3 BC oysters with horseradish “snow”; dessert was french toast made from brioche, vanilla ice cream and a little piece of real honeycomb. Incredible. Since I’d had a migraine the day before I eschewed alcohol and the $25 wine pairings, so the bill came to $50. You cannot find this sort of value in Calgary these days.

After this repast I went to see Juno. I loved it. It’s great to see a movie with a strong, young female lead that’s not a “chick flick” (not that I hate chick flicks, but you know what I mean), and not one where the lead has to be some sort of male fantasy ninja chick (cf Kill Bill) who is hot (by hetero male standards) but who fights and stuff. Juno gets pregnant and is cool. I’d want to be like her, minus the pregnant part.

If I say “Merry Christmas,” it’s not because I’ve copped to all the right-wing bullshit, just so you know.

One thing I love about having lunch, as I did today, at the Calgary Farmers’ Market is that unless you’re really lucky (or unlucky, you figure it out), you’re going to be forced to share a table with a stranger or two. I used to be really bothered by this, but I’ve had some really nice, lucid conversations with strangers and it’s almost like the scene at the film festival when people in the queues strike up these emergent, sometimes really energetic, conversations. It’s nice. There’s something old fashioned and comforting about it, like what it must have been like to eat at the big communal tables in diners way back when.

Anyway, I had a great lunch of chicken schnitzel and two knishes (mushroom and sauerkraut) from Margarita’s (no website unfortunately) and did indeed have a nice accidental convo with a nice lady who teaches at SAIT,  and on departing wished her and her friend a “Merry Christmas.” And then I thought about the unfortunate mess surrounding this expression.

If I say “Merry Christmas,” it can be taken one of several ways:

A. It is an appropriate salutation this time of year.

B. I’m a Christian and am saying it to commemorate the birth of Christ, and I expect that you’re a Christian too and feel the same as I do.

C. I’m saying this as a defiant protest against the evils of secular humanism and  multiculturalism, which are conspiring to take away our Judeo-Christian traditions and replace it with something that stripped away all vestiges of those traditions.

And for me, the correct answer is “A.” I like Christmas, pretty much, and I also like its secular and Pagan trappings. I am thrilled this time of year to celebrate the solstice and the return of light, and fortunately or unfortunately, that symbolism (with lights, I mean) has become part of Christmas. It’s as much a secular holiday as a religious one, and that’s how I choose to think of it. Go ahead and condemn me. Christmas for me has no religious meaning at all, because I’m not religious.

“But,” you protest, “you’re not celebrating the true meaning of Christmas.” Oh, shut up, neither are you. The three wise men didn’t bring Jesus an iPod, and they didn’t come back every year to deliver a Bed Bath and Beyond gift card. Regardless of its religious trappings, Christmas borrowed from Pagan traditions and it has evolved as a holiday that the non-religious and non-Christian can celebrate. And you know what? For the most part, all of these groups–Christians, the non-religious, and non-Christians–celebrate it almost identically. Christmas is both one of the most spectacular marketing successes AND failures of Christianity. Isn’t that amazing? I think it is.

Anyway, getting back to “Merry Christmas.” There’s been all this hand-wringing lately among the O’Reilly and Hannity and FOX News crowd about how degrading and “politically correct” it’s become for people to eschew “Merry Christmas” in favour of “Happy Holidays” or something like it.  I hate–I FUCKING HATE–when petulant, stupid bullies like the hate-filled ignoramuses that FOX hires pull this “politically correct” out of their asses whenever they disagree with something. I’m sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick of it. If you disagree with something, come up with a response, don’t pull out this one-size-fits-all “politically incorrect” label and act as if you’ve refuted something. It reminds me of uses of the word “racist” when I was in grad school: “You’re racist, end of discussion, I win.” For the neo-cons, it’s “You’re PC, end of discussion, I win.” This isn’t discourse, it’s not debate; it’s bullying and I just blow up when anything gets labelled “politically correct” anymore.

That said, horror stories and urban legends aside, all this complaining about the disappearance of “Merry Christmas” is complete crap. COMPLETE CRAP. EVERYBODY still says it, NOBODY is offended by it, and if Canadian Tire (or whoever) wants to be more inclusive by using “Happy Holidays” in an ad, really, is this hurting anyone?

No. There is no crisis. There is no anti-religious defamation. There is nothing going on here. AT ALL.

Thanks, Swerve!

I’m a star! A third-wave star!

Here’s the text of an article about me and my wonderfulness from today’s Swerve, which is the arts and entertainment mag in the Friday Calgary Herald. But first an attempt at a scan, which was not really possible given the weird big square shape of the mag:

A couple of corrections and clarifications first:

1. It’s “Currywurst“

2. It’s “Currie” Barracks

3. I moved to Calgary in August, 2000, not November, 2002

4. Brian was kind of hurt by my “Toronto didn’t love me” comment, so let me clarify: I adored Toronto and always will, but my life there was not the urban delight I envisioned before emigrating, mostly because sessional work forced me to be in my car, some semesters, 10 and more hours a week. All of that commuting and my status as transient in general made me feel, pretty much, on the outside looking in. Would they do this profile of me in The Star? Maybe, but I doubt it.

The cusp of a third-wave coffee insurgency

The Manzo, the myth, the legend… A portrait of the chowhound-coffee geek-sociologist-urbanist-blogger-flâneur as a full-blown Calgarian.

Chris Koentges

Calgary Herald

Friday, December 07, 2007

For a number of years, John Manzo was a ghost to me. Something between a flâneur and the graffiti artist Banksys. He left a trail of secret curry houses and sushi joints back when Chowhound.com’s “Canada board” was just a bunch of threads about Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. That was the winter of 2003, and there suddenly seemed to be more of these secret little joints than Calgary had ever had. You’d pop into some new Vietnamese sub place Manzo discovered and end up eyeing the other customers between heavenly bites. Which one was he?

I remember a packed Film Fest party in Eau Claire. I don’t remember the movie we saw, though I can vividly picture a guy at our table afterwards. He talked about currwurst in Germany. He mentioned Uptown Sushi–more than once. And then he disappeared.

“Who was that?” I asked our mutual friend.

“John,” she said.

I swallowed hard.

“Manzo?”

Another woman we hadn’t been talking to suddenly turned around. “That was John Manzo?”

My friend paused. Confused. “Umm… yeah. That was John Manzo.”

He was just under six feet, and had the build of someone who conducted his exploration by foot–yet whose goal was some unfathomable unending feast. He had a beard and glasses. I began haunting his favourite places with more regularity, hoping to catch him in the act. Uptown. The Coup. Tiffin’s. What would I tell him, exactly? You’re not alone? I’m onto you, pal? Umm…thank you?

There were other Calgary hounds with names like Yen and Gobstopper, who were collectively more poignant. On the one hand, it was that Manzo treated it like an adventure. And there was something curious about his determined defense of Calgary cuisine–Calgary culture. He had obviously lived in other cities. He was clearly very educated. Yet his encounters with the city seemed almost delusional. Blissful. He had an ability to turn this seemingly bland place into anything he wanted. This ability lies at the heart of chowhounding–of being an urbanist in a place like this–it’s knowing there is as much adventure in a strip mall as The Museums of Modern Art. You need know only how to unlock it.

Manzo came to Calgary in November 2002, when he joined the U of C’s sociology department. Before that he was in Toronto. And before that, he taught at The University of South Alabama in Mobile. There was a place called Carpe Diem across the street that roasted its own beans and served real espresso. That was the introduction. He arrived in Toronto during the 1996 Starbucks invasion. Back then, Starbucks and Second Cup were a revelation. They made all these espresso-based drinks with semi-trained baristas on reasonable quality machines. The era came to be known as coffee’s “second wave.” (Baristas describe the first as “more a caffeine and heat delivery mechanism than anything with an enjoyable flavour.”)

Before Manzo moved to Calgary, he investigated the eating and coffee. He found Beano, Higher Ground and Joshua Tree. Intriguing independents. He found Calgary was full of surprises.

During the 2001 Remembrance Day Reading Week, Manzo travelled to Vancouver. He stayed across the street from a place called Caffè Artigiano. “I’ll never forget the date,” he told me. “Everything came to a crash.”

Artigiano had begun to create what’s known as third-wave coffee. “Third wave” is a bloated way of saying: let us now consume coffee as if it were fine wine. More profoundly than wine, in fact, because now coffee will be a perfect collaboration through the chain. There will be virtuoso growers from all over the world. Importers building “direct trade” relationships, above and beyond fair trade. There will be someone who can masterfully blend all the different terroirs. Someone who can roast it. A café with machines capable of unleashing the blend. And ultimately, a barista who could unlock the potential in all of it.

Manzo would go back to Artigiano for cappuccino. It wasn’t made with foam, but silk. And the silk was poured in the pattern of a perfect rosetta. At that moment, the renowned Calgary Chowhound1 added Coffeegeek2 to his repertoire of identities.

I met Manzo at 9:30 on a Friday morning. We’d initially planned a field trip to Phil & Sebastian, which is a weekly pilgrimage for Manzo, but he sent me an e-mail that read: “There’s no way to talk to a coffeegeek without seeing his home setup.” I could describe it for you, but better you just watch the video on his blog3.

As we talked that morning, he referred to the trinity: Bumpy’s, which has replaced Big Mountain on 11th Street; Java Jamboree with its Synesso Syncra machine (supposedly just the second in Canada); and P&S, with its twee subtext and $11,000 Clover machine out at Curry Barracks–and its long, never-ending line of customers.

So many customers that P&S is supposed to open a second location downtown. So is Jamboree. Artigiano is rumoured to have three in the works. Over the summer, Janice Beaton took over Beano, which is suddenly on the cusp. And Good Earth Café draws nearer each week. Calgary stands to have more than a dozen bona fide third-wave inner-city coffee shops by this time next year. By comparison, Manzo told me, New York currently has two. Of course, if we had a nickel for every opening that never happened. But holy crap.

I don’t suggest that Manzo is the reason for any of this. I can’t honestly say what he represents. Perhaps he’s just an unrelenting voice in a subculture that has been short on such local voices. Because, more than he is a chowhound or coffee geek or university professor, he is–for me–a Calgarian. In most big cities, he’d be quite ordinary. But here he stands out. “I loved Toronto,” he told me. “Toronto didn’t love me.” A gay man who likes coffee, gelato and cheap sushi–who’d have thought Calgary would end up loving him back?

And as much as I dislike the expression–and it will surely offend his academic sensibilities–I’m going to go out on a limb and call Manzo a third-wave citizen. Someone who has been to enough places to know what makes a city a city. They know what a city ought to be constructed of.

They know how to discover its character. Such citizens once seemed rare and precious here. But in the last month of 2007, Calgary feels not just like a city brimming with Manzos who know how to unlock the true potential of here, but a place that, in return, can unlock the true potential of our Manzos.

Notes: 1. chowhound.com/boards/57 2. coffeegeek.com/forums/worldregional/canadawest 3. jfmanzo.wordpress.com/2007/11/23/espresso-esperimentation-with-my-leva