paperandglue.net

Roller derby made its triumphant reemergence in Winnipeg on Saturday, and in a big way. The bout between the Winnipeg Murder City Maidens and Thunder Bay’s Babes of Thunder played to a capacity crowd of 2000 (TWO THOUSAND!) at the Convention Centre.

Let’s just consider this feat for a moment. Getting two thousand people out a) in Winnipeg, b) in February and c) during the Olympics is a pretty awesome feat. Alas, I was not one of those 2000. Jeff Monk was, though, and he stopped by my office today and we talked about the event and how “every punkette in the city was there” and that the energy in the room was positive and amazing.

There are a lot of factors that contributed to this incredible first success from the WRDL. Obviously, roller derby has been growing in mainstream profile over the last number of years, with lots of ink spilled on the subject as well as a (rather excellent) Major Motion Picture last year. But it’s not just that. The women of WRDL have been hard at work getting ready for this for two years, building their skills and their marketing savvy. I mean, this organization has local youth-oriented top 40 radio station HOT 103 on board, as well as our daily paper of record, the Winnipeg Free Press on board as sponsors. What’s really put the WRDL over the top, though, is the fact that its participants are very involved and present in the existing indie/underground community — a blanket term I’ll use for the combined spheres of music, art and culture here in town. If you’re in any of those communities, or heck, if you sometimes shop for vintage clothing, you’ll recognize at least one face in the MCM team photo. And that counts for a lot in the age of Facebook  and viral marketing.

So congratulations to the Murder City Maidens on not only their victory in competition on Saturday (apparently the Babes were thoroughly whipped), but on the achievement of building something like this in a city where so many lofty ideas never get off the ground.

Leif Norman took some great shots, and he said I could share them with you here.

Portage ‘n’ Maim

More pics behind the cut!

Read the rest of this entry »

The closer I come to the March Video Scrapbook, the more I’m certain it will be the final one. (In this series, at least.) I’ve been making these things every month for 11 months now, and I’m looking forward to a day when I don’t feel the need to whip out the camera at every pretty face or streetscape. Not to say those in my circle of influence will be safe from the prying video eye. But hopefully they’ll be less frequently invaded.

In this video: hearts, gluten-free cream puffs, riverwalking, warming shacks, lady musicians, buses, crafts, a creperie, snow, trains, sushi, live radio, polka dot balloons, moms and a drag queen.

One more to go!

Previously:

• January Video Scrapbook

• December Video Scrapbook

• November Video Scrapbook

• October Video Scrapbook

• September Video Scrapbook

• August Video Scrapbook

• July Video Scrapbook

• June Video Scrapbook

• May Video Scrapbook

• April Video Scrapbook

This week I finally buckled down and started to teach myself to crochet. Now, I’ve crocheted for years, but only on an intuitive level — I didn’t know many stitches and I couldn’t read patterns. The siren call of the granny square was too much to resist. My pledge to refrain from purchasing new craft supplies this year and work through my stashes instead has propelled me in the direction of the ultimate stash-buster.

Above is a photo of some of my early progress. Given the limited size of the granny square, I decided it was wasn’t worth the effort to frog the early products, and thus I can illustrate my progress. Misshapes are quite c

She’s the oft-misunderstood, oft-hyperbolized neo-folk darling who defies categorization due to her unconventional instrumentation (harp), more unconventional voice (squeaky) and still more unconventional disregard for standard pop/rock song structure and subject matter. Her first album, The Milk-Eyed Mender, was a compendium of short songs about yarn, seashells, devotion, regret, and imagination. Her second album, Ys, was a five-song collection where the shortest track clocked in at 7:17 and the longest at 16:53, each of them reveling in a rich orchestral background produced by Townes Van Zandt, each of them long enough to fully develop Newsom’s poetic ideas, against a landscape of leafless trees, talking circus animals, and astronomy lessons.

Now we get Have One On Me, billed as a triple album (available in LP and CD), out today on the label that’s been with her from the start, Drag City. Earlier this month, three tracks were prereleased on the Drag City site, and they were awesome (“‘81,” “Good Intentions Paving Company,” and “Kingfisher”). I especially loved “Good Intentions Paving Company” for its soulful edge, with the trademark piano riffs, backing vocals and organ of a previous era.

I’ve had a while to come to grips with the fact that Joanna Newsom is going to be super famous, now. I’m OK with that, though I’m not looking forward to the expanding criticism she’ll face for things like her visibility in the fashion industry or her famous comedian boyfriend. When people come across a young, prodigious musician early in her career, they tend to make her in the image they want, and they want her to stay twee and nubile and childlike. Joanna Newsom doesn’t owe us anything.

You can listen to Have One on Me in its entirety on NPR Music. It’s not usually my style, but in Ms. Newsom’s case, I’m waiting until I have the artifact in my hand, after a trip to my neighbourhood record store.

>>> dragcity.com

Cross-posted to stylusmagazine.ca

So, Stacey was over last night and we were working on stuff, stuff which diverted into an impromptu creative writing exercise that created an imagined controversial and religious-themed southern Manitoba art installation, and thus, an imagined Mennonite name. Stacey told me about how her mom went to high school in Winkler and was the only non-Mennonite in her class. This personal history blossomed into a present-day game where our friend Cam would play a game with her called Shout Mennonite Names!, getting her to announce random Mennonite-sounding names (first and last) on request.

Naturally, this game took on a life of its own. That life included Cam’s boyfriend, Steven Cochrane, making a generator website of the same name.

The site came about in February of 2009 when my boyfriend (who lives in Winnipeg), told me about a game that some of his friends had devised, in which players take turns shouting plausible-sounding Mennonite names at one another. I can only assume that they came up with this in February of another year, when the Winter Crazies were at their peak.

Not being from Manitoba (or, indeed, any other place with an unusually high concentration of Mennonites), my own knowledge of Mennonite nomenclature was far less intimate and far less ingrained than that of the company I keep. I could muster a “Menno Wiebe!” or a “Harry Dyck!” but after that I was more or less tapped out. Still, I wanted to play along, so I wrote a simple PHP script that would randomly combine entries from two lists of common Mennonite given and family names.

The above is from the “What?” section of the site — be sure to read it, because Steven’s work is done with due dillegence and references. He’s got sources.

I myself am not Mennonite, though my ancestors literally lived in villages neighbouring Mennonite ones in Russia. Close, but no cigar. In modern-day Manitoba, being Mennonite is no longer necessarily a religious affiliation — it’s an ethnic one, though of course the Mennonite religion is still alive and well, with several denominations and hundreds of churches in our province alone. I’m trying to quantify why a site like this is so fundamentally entertaining, but I can’t. Maybe it’s just that I’ve grown up in a place where the name “Dyck” (pronounced “dick”) is so commonplace as to not be worth a snicker, where two people named “Friesen” can get married and no one assumes they’re anything but very distantly related. It’s a peculiarity of Manitoba, and I enjoy it.

My pal Mama Cutsworth is a DJ who also has crafty tendencies. “Drop the Needle” is a name she hatched years ago, but now she’s got the event to go with the moniker — a monthly series of music + craft nights at the Lo Pub!

This is the second installment. Unfortunately, I was out of town for the first (though, to be fair, so was Mama C — it was a very last-minute thing she threw together before taking off for NYC for a holiday), but we’re both back in full action for Drop the Needle: the Book-Binding Badge.

Chantale Maynard will drop the book-binding knowledge; I will curate a special set of craft-related music.

Here are the details per Mama C:

Drop the Needle is Winnipeg’s new monthly crafting and DJ party at the Lo Pub!!!!!

This month, learn how to make hand-bound books with paper, needles and thread with artist Chantale Maynard while Mama Cutsworth plays the night’s soundtrack! We’ll have a curated music set with Jenny from CKUW’s The Book of Right-On at 7:30!

We kick off each party around 7pm and feature a mini workshop with a local artist between 8 and 9. Live DJing begins a bit later, dancing and prizes topping off the night!

Bring your friends and your own projects to work on too – any form of handicraft is welcome! Embroidery! Collage! Puppet making! We’ll have desk lamps on most tables to light your crafting. For this workshop, we will provide some materials, but we will send out a note to all attending soon regarding materials.

SUNDAY, February 21st
Lo Pub, 330 Kennedy street
Doors are at 7, the workshop begins shortly after.
Admission is 5 dollars.

Drop The Needle is brought to you by Mama Cutsworth, Kerri-Lynn Reeves, Sew Dandee, MAWA, Kustom Kulture and UMFM 101.5

If you have a business that is interested in sponsoring future Drop The Needles or have a crafty prize to donate, contact sarah at mamacutsworth.com

>>> Facebook event

>>>mamacutsworth.com

>>>thebookofrighton.com

« Older Entries