June is the Junest month, breeding / Beaches full of redheads tanned…

Posted by Jeff on Jun 1st, 2014 in News | 0 comments

It’s June, and it’s my first post since the end of February.
Not only that, but it’s a Sunday afternoon in June. There’s a song in Anne of Green Gables: The Musical that declares that ice cream is wonderful on a Sunday afternoon in June. (Also, do take note that even the most respectable have been known to eat ice cream.) Therefore, I command you to eat ice cream. Right now. As I’m writing this, pipsqueak. Now.

#amitoocanadianforyou

What have I been doing over the past three months? Well, I did a couple of cool features in the States back in April – one in the Village in New York City, the other in Amityville on Long Island. Yes, that Amityville. With the scary house and stuff.
I’ve also continued writing articles and reviews for Toronto.com and Digital Journal. Click on the links in this sentence if you want to find out where to pick berries in the Toronto area, or what I really thought of Robyn Doolittle’s Rob Ford book, or of the book about the making of The Room, or of the movie The Grand Seduction, or of Judith Thompson’s recent solo show.

Or don’t, if you don’t want to. Nobody’s forcing you.

You can also read my recent article about the Lac-Mégantic disaster last year, “Off the Rails”, which was published in March. I interviewed Olivia Chow for it, among other people.

But now it’s June, and that’s all in the past, so let’s focus on what June has in store. And it has stuff in store indeed, it sure does.

First up – next Sunday (another Sunday afternoon in June), I’m embarking to the distant, exotic land known as… Oakville.

That’s right. Oakville has a literary series. Actually, it has more than one, but the one I’m talking about is the Oakville Literary Cafe, in which I’m featuring with fellow Toronto veteran Norm Cristofoli, plus a special featurette by Shelly Sanders and an open mic. Here’s a PDF flyer for the show you can download.

The following Sunday (yet another Sunday afternoon in June), I’m returning to Plasticine Poetry Series at Pauper’s Pub. It’s my fifth Plasticine feature, but it’s also only the second time I’ll have been to the series in the past two years or so, as I’ve been trying to avoid some silly drama. Kate Marshall Flaherty, Jim Johnstone, Sonja Greckol and Marni van Dyk are the other features, and David Bateman hosts. I believe it’s also the last one that Michael Fraser is organizing, before handing the series’ reins to other folks.

And then, on June 24 (a Tuesday, which has nothing to do with Anne of Green Gables as far as I know), I’ll be appearing once again on the CIUT spoken-word radio program HOWL, hosted by Nik Beat. You can listen in online at this link: the show’s on at 10:00 p.m. EST, which is 7:00 p.m. PST or 3:00 a.m. the next morning in England.
Trigger Warning: I’m considering performing “How to Become a Deranged Leftist Reactionary”, a piece I wrote specifically to piss off the slam folks.

That’s all for now. Now get outside and enjoy the lovely day.