Down with pageants and that sort of thing.

Posted by Jeff on Dec 10th, 2017 in News | 0 comments

Four months! How have you survived four months without a post from me here? [listens through earpiece] What? Almost nobody even reads this website? Oh. [listens again] What? Jon Stewart wants me to stop stealing his earpiece bit? Oh.

I was travelling and doing stuff. I was making people laugh in Ireland and England, while freezing half to death in Scotland. I even offended a few people at one gig. Happy days. Maybe I’ll go back next year.

Did you think Hot Sauced Words was dead? You were wrong.
Hot Sauced Words may be over as far as monthly events, but it’s bringing back its annual Anti-Pageant Show this Tuesday, care of the Art Bar. And I’m one of many people who’ve been asked to read or perform a three-minute set – others being Allan Briesmaster, Myna Wallin, David Clink, Nicki Ward, Edward Nixon, Josh Smith and several more, with music by Walk on the Wire. Co-hosted by James Dewar and Kate Marshall Flaherty.

Only $5 for an evening of lovely poetry, spoken word and music, with proceeds going to the Daily Bread Food Bank. Here’s the Facebook event page.

If you’re not on the Facebook, you can see details on the right sidebar here.
If your computer cannot display sidebars… well, I can’t help you there. Sorry.

Also: If you have a time machine, I’m hosting the Art Bar on November 28.

Still doing journalistic stuff when I have time, too. This article I wrote for OHS Canada received some attention back in August:

“Weed at Work”

Also doing the occasional theatre review for Digital Journal now and then. Check out what I’ve reviewed recently at this link.

And I also write fun listsicles about Toronto events and attractions for the Yellow Pages website. Here are a few recent ones:

“Great Places to Buy Unique Holiday Gifts”
“Top Holiday Season Shows and Performances This Year”
“Thirteen Haunted Places You Can Visit in Toronto”
“Ten Places to Visit in Toronto This Fall” (Hey, fall’s not over yet, is it?)

That’s all I got for now, little guy. Keep it real.

Carry On, Vaughan

Posted by Jeff on Aug 8th, 2017 in News | 0 comments

How’s your summer? Has it been summing along well?

Summer is the time for outdoor festivals and whatnot. On the last weekend of this month, I’m going to be one of the many, many performers at CariVaughan 2017, all the way the hell up in Vaughan. Also known as Canada’s Wonderland Land.

It’s a Caribbean-themed charity event with performers of many different genres, intended to raise funds for the first Caribbean culture community centre in the York Region. The centre will have programs, activities and events to develop and support kids, teens and seniors.

Look, there’s a flyer and everything.

Also: If you have a time machine, I’m hosting the Art Bar on July 18.

And if you like picking berries, because berries are yummy and all, here’s an article I recently wrote for the Yellow Pages website:
“Places to Go Berry-Picking in Toronto and the GTA”

There. Now go play beach volleyball or something.

Achtung Infant

Posted by Jeff on Jun 1st, 2017 in News | 0 comments

Just a very tightly written update this time. I’ve been busy. More on that later.

Three events this month!
If you’re free tomorrow night (June 2), I’m doing a fifteen-minute spoken-word set at the Arts and Letters Club, at the Ad Lib Talent Show. Other performers include my friends Charlene Winger and Terry Khan, plus some Club members.

Free chips and pretzels. If free chips and pretzels don’t bring you out, I don’t know what the eff will.

The following Friday night, also at the Arts and Letters Club, I’m a cast member in Life’s WTF Moments, a series of comedy sketches written by Charlene. Come if you want to see me do a horrible Scottish accent.

Then, on the afternoon of June 24, I’ll be one of the many readers at the final Poetry & Music Salon at Palmerston Library. It’s really more of a pre-booked open mic than a real gig or feature, but I’m plugging it anyway, God damn you.

Like I said, I’ve been busy. Busy writing for money, busy writing for fun, busy supporting friends and trying to find room for having fun too. Some of the writing has been fun listsicles for the Yellow Pages website. And two of them have recently been posted:

“Outdoor Summer Music Events in Toronto”
“Outdoor Park Adventures for Kids in Toronto”

In addition, a news story I wrote for OHS Canada is getting some buzz in the Manitoba legislature:
“Widow seeking inquiry into alleged toxic exposures at Manitoba smelter in 2008”

So long. I have a date at the Rogers Centre with Bono in a few weeks. I’ll be there with or without you.

May flowers bring June smellers. Or pilgrims.

Posted by Jeff on May 2nd, 2017 in News | 0 comments

I’m writing again!

That doesn’t sound like much of a big deal, since I’m a professional journalist and editor, so I’m always writing stuff. But what I mean is that I’ve started writing creatively again. I said here last month that I hadn’t written any new spoken-word material in about a year and a half. Well, now I’ve applied myself and written two new pieces. They probably suck, for all I know, but at least it’s progress. I won’t know if they’re any good until I try them out on an open mic. One is another “dialogue” piece, one of those two-voice pieces I do (like “The Jim Show” or “Gubmint Lie to You”) and sometimes wonder if they should really be scripts or comedy sketches instead of fake poetry. The other is a really short piece of fiction that’s guaranteed to offend somebody, in the “A Love Letter” or “Cocky” tradition, which is why I may avoid reading it in public and just put it away somewhere and forget it. At least it doesn’t have the word “hooker” in it, though. Come on, that would be unforgivable.

I have other ideas, too. Ideas for short stories, even for short novels. I’m thinking of taking notes and drafts I made for another one-person Fringe show, several years ago, and reworking them into a long piece of fiction, which I imagine would be too short to be a novella, but longer than the typical short story. Would it be any good? Probably not. And even if it were, I can’t imagine who would want to publish it.

Getting started is always the hardest part for me. Once I’m in a rhythm, I can keep going on for a while if I let myself. But it’s the getting started that’s a tough barrier. Also, getting into the habit – the discipline of setting aside part of every single day to write (not counting paid work, of course). I used to be good at the latter, when I was young and had more time on my hands – before I had to make a living.
Why do I want to write fiction again? Why am I drawn back to it every so often? Broken Pencil once said that I don’t even know what fiction is. York University’s creative-writing program hammered it into me again and again, with all the subtlety and tact of a tap-dancing bulldozer, that I didn’t have what it takes to be a fiction writer and never, ever, ever, ever, ever would. The trouble is that whenever I want to do something artistic and creative – be it fiction writing, spoken word, theatre, comedy – I always want to do it my way. And my way always seems to be the wrong way. I don’t know how to conform, or maybe I just have a knee-jerk aversion to it because doing the same thing everybody else does takes the fun out of it.

“But writing isn’t supposed to be fun, Jeff! What can you be thinking? Writing is hard, hard work! It’s revising and editing and killing your darlings and learning from better writers and purging your personal lexicon of clichés and redundant adverbs! What right do you have to find fun in it?”

Then why do it?

Anyway. Enough of that. It’s spring and time for road trips.
Did you get a Discovery Pass from Parks Canada this year? Then read my listsicle for YellowPages.ca about where you can use it in southern Ontario. It’s here.

Also, if Robert Lepage’s 887 comes to your city, see the damn thing. To find out why I would make such a bold proclamation, read my review of it for Digital Journal, upon its recent Toronto remount.

And that’s the way it was, sucker.

Row, row, row your pub / Gently down to Supermarket

Posted by Jeff on Apr 2nd, 2017 in News | 0 comments

I have another spoken-word gig this week. It’s my second already of 2017 (third if you count my hosting of the Art Bar a few weeks ago). Which is kind of ironic when you consider that I haven’t written any new material in about a year and a half. Nor do I have a new chapbook or CD to launch; in fact, I still have about half a box of This Album Is NIT FENNY! copies that I’m trying to get rid of. I’ve roughly calculated that if I sell one or two more, I begin to make a tiny, insignificant profit on these things. After more than two years since its launch. Here’s hoping.

So I’m doing a mini-feature this Tuesday at the Rowers Pub Reading Series (which, ironically, is no longer at the said pub). It’s just a short six-minute set – the real features of the evening will be Jasmine D’Costa, Pamela Mordecai and Molly Peacock. I’m the special National Poetry Month mini-feature. And this brings us to the third irony concerning this gig: the vast majority of what I write is prose. (I just sort of pretend it’s poetry when I read or perform it.)
So it would have been completely understandable if this event had been happening yesterday – i.e., April Fool’s Day – but it wasn’t. But that’s okay. We’ll have fun. It’ll be a lark.

More info about Rowers at this linky-link. There’s even a Q&A section for the readers. (My answers are very short. I would have put more work into them if I’d known the other people were doing so…)

Oh, and speaking of National Poetry Month:
I just wrote and submitted a YellowPages.ca article about Toronto poetry events happening this month. Hopefully it’ll be posted soon. I thought it would have been online by now, seeing as it’s now April and two of the events I included have already passed. But keep your eyes peeled and your Refresh button clicked, and I’m sure you’ll see it.

And I’m still contributing the occasional theatre review to Digital Journal. Most recently, I saw the new Second City revue, Everything Is Great Again, and before that, it was Soulpepper’s remount of its wonderful Of Human Bondage.
Click here to be checkin’ out that stuff.

And if you really dig news stories about people getting hurt or sick on the job… you can always check out my work for Canadian Occupational Health & Safety News, some of which is posted on the OHS Canada website. Find that here.

Happy Passover, Charlie Brown!