Filed under: art, books, comics, fake news, fashion, interviews, movies, music, news, reviews, technogeekery | Tags: Coachella, Coachella news, reviews
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-Management
Filed under: fashion, music, reviews | Tags: "That's Not My Name", Commodore Ballroom, concert reviews, Jules De Martino, Katie White, Melissa Skoda, photos, The Ting Tings, Vancouver, We Started Nothing, We Walk
-Shawn Conner, photos by Melissa Skoda
So the Ting Tings returned to Vancouver last night, and after all I’d heard about the live show I wasn’t going to miss the duo a second time (third, if you count the misfire at CMW in Toronto). This goes against my innate indie-rock snobbery, which states that if I miss a band the first time, and it gets more popular by its second go-round, I am beholden to dismiss the act as overrated. Especially if, as in the case of the Ting Tings, the show had been sold out months in advance.
The Ting Tings are not, however, overrated. What the Manchester band (most likely) is, is a flash-in-the-pan, but a great one. I can’t imagine a second album from these guys (drummer/guitarist Jules De Martino and singer/guitarist/fashion plate Katie White) living up to the charm and energy of We Started Nothing, their debut, but there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the ride while we can.
The Ting Tings circa 2009 is a lean, mean dance machine, with barely enough material to fill an hour but almost all of it first rate. Needless to say, the highlights were what anyone who’s heard the singles would expect—the title track, “Great DJ” and, for a roof-raising encore, “That’s Not My Name”. Surprises were few, but the Goth-tinged “We Walk”—one of the album tracks that demonstrates there may be more to this band than catchy pop tunes and dance beats—was a great set-opener: disarmingly dark yet punchy.
And at a show where the girls outnumbered the guys, White—in blue tights, red shoes, and funky hat pulled down over her eyes —was the evening’s hero, posing for photos to satisfy cellphone shutterbugs and bounding onto De Martino’s drum riser to play guitar in a rock-star fashion that brought cheers from the crowd. It won’t last forever, but right now at least, the Ting Tings are deservedly at the top of the indie-pop/dance heap.
Filed under: fashion | Tags: agent provocateurs, American Apparel, Bjorn Borg, Borje Salming, Dragon's Den, fashion, Ginch Gonch, Juno Awards, La Senzas, Marky Mark, men's underwear, Michael Kissinger, murse, Rick Campanelli, Rick the Temp, Sam Roberts, Saxx, T-Boxers, the Trews, Timbits, Trent Kitsch, Victoria's Secret, Y-front briefs
-Michael Kissinger
Last week I walked out of the Juno Awards swag room at the Shangri-La Hotel, slightly drunk, with three pairs of underwear in my man purse.
I’m not sure which is more of an accomplishment, the fact I can still rock a “murse” without shame, or my substantial haul of gaunch. Both are worthy of praise and reflection, but I’ll focus on my impressive underwear booty for now.
Despite inroads made by ex-Maple Leaf Borje Salming, tennis great Bjorn Borg and tighty-whitey advocate Marky Mark, men’s underwear has long been treated as an afterthought in fashion circles—the unsophisticated, slightly retarded younger brother of the La Senzas, Agent Provocateurs and Victoria’s Secrets of the world. That’s slowly changing, however.
In 2004, the Canadian English Oxford Dictionary included the term “gaunch” and its regional variations “gonch” and “gotch” in its esteemed pages for the first time. That same year, Montreal-based Ginch Gonch launched its “playful rebellion against the boring, ordinary underwear worn by most men” with loud fabric prints and saucy taglines such as, “regardless of your
inches, we cover you in our Ginches.” Shortly after that, perhaps not coincidentally, anti-sweat shop, pro-orgy clothing company American Apparel appropriated the once-ubiquitous and much-maligned men’s Y-front briefs of yore, transforming them into overpriced hipster wear.
But bright colours and irony are parlour tricks when it comes to men’s undies, as technology and design have remained relatively stagnant. Two companies are aiming to correct this gross injustice, and they’ve decided that lathering musicians and media types at the Juno Awards with free samples is good place to start, although I always assumed that people like Sam Roberts and members of the Trews preferred to go commando. Maybe it’s the beards.
T-Box, from Istanbul, began as a line of T-shirts, creatively and compactly packaged, which, according to its press bumph, allows it to be “consumed anywhere.” Hmmm. The company’s “T-Boxers” are no different, with two shrink-wrapped pairs taking up the same amount of space in my bag as a handful of Timbits would. (On a side note: former MuchMusic VJ and current ET Canada host Rick the Temp, sorry, Campanelli, kindly gave me an extra pair of his complimentary T-Boxers since extra large was too big for his eternally young and boyish figure.)
Out of the package, T-Boxers look like wrinkled crepe paper. Equally bewildering, each pair comes with a single Euro one-cent coin. While it’s fittingly European, I’m not sure that a brown penny is really the marketing angle an underwear company should be taking. Same goes for teabags.
As far as material goes, my T-Boxers weren’t as soft and comfortable as I had hoped for, and they fit a little tighter and higher
on the thigh than my ruggedly handsome frame is accustomed. That said, I appreciated the ergonomics of the packaging, and the snugness inspired me to run faster during my Sunday ball hockey game.
Saxx Apparel, on the other hand, is all about fit. Launched by Kelowna’s Trent Kitsch, who won last year’s audience award on CBC’s Dragon’s Den, Saxx bills itself as an “evolution in men’s underwear.” Built with “comfort side panels”, Saxx apparently “greatly improves men’s comfort by preventing contact and offering non-restrictive support.” Simply put: “It keeps your balls away from your leg,” as a company rep repeatedly told me and anyone else within earshot. In layman’s terms, the comfort panels isolate your junk from the rest of your body, effectively creating a pouch for your pouch.
At first I thought this would feel a little off-putting, but once I got home, sobered up and pulled on a pair of the ³Bamboo² Saxx, I was pleasantly surprised. The material was soft and the fit impeccable. In fact, Saxx fits bigger than most underwear, so a size large suited this burly, murse-toting dude just fine. As for the separation of church and state, Saxx’s side panel technology is subtle but effective, which is really what all gaunch should aspire to.
The author, with unnamed model.
Next up: the fashion resilience of men’s purses, appropriate summer footwear, shirtless dudes playing Frisbee: who’s to blame?, and why 99.9 per cent of people who eat Subway sandwiches on public transit are male.
Filed under: fashion, interviews, music | Tags: "That's Not My Name", Calvin Harris, Eskiimo, Great DJ remix, interviews, Jules De Martino, Katie White, The Ting Tings, the Ting Tings tour dates, Ting Tings T-shirts, Tom Neville, Vivienne Westwood
The songs on the Ting Tings‘ debut might sound like happy-go-lucky pop, but listen to the lyrics and you’ll definitely hear an edge, if not a chip. It’s a holdover from the two musicians’ previous experience with the music industry, when Katie White and Jules De Martino were part of a band called Eskiimo. After that group split, the vocalist/guitarist and drummer, friends dating back to pre-Eskiimo days, almost gave up on music for good. But the two licked their wounds, wrote some songs, threw a few promotional parties, and eventually pressed their own copies of a single, “Great DJ”.
The breakout success last year of that song, as well as “That’s Not My Name” and We Started Nothing, the (Sony) debut, has made the Ting Tings one of those unlikely stories that makes even the most jaded pop music fan sit up and take notice. Here’s a band whose tunes—not just catchy but smart and sassy—just about everyone likes. The chemistry between White and De Martino, meanwhile, has made the live show a must-see. De Martino called from a St. Louis tour stop, and answered our questions, kind of… but he definitely talked.
-Shawn Conner
The Ting Tings at the Mod Club, Toronto. Photo-Jessica Beach.
SC: How has the show changed as the two of you have become more adept at playing as a two-piece?
JDM: We’ve been signed to a major record label and obviously we have all these opportunities to go around the world and play all these gigs, these opportunities that open daily. But we like to keep things very much in hand. We do our own artwork, we produced our own album. The two of us onstage have an enormous amount of energy. It’s something about the energy we have that makes us feel fulfilled when we come off stage. I think the worst thing about this industry is when you start feeling unfulfilled, whether or not you’re earning any money. Selling records, going around the world, and people start saying “you can do this advert, it’s going to bring in so many thousands of pounds, and someone’s offered you this, you can stay at the penthouse suite.” It’s really easy to go, “That would be really good.” But it’s one of the decisions we’ve made, we’re a pop band but it’s kind of run like an indie band. We do everything ourselves. Sometimes that frustrates labels or the management, because they want you to be this huge thing overnight.
SC: When you started out, you were just traveling around in Katie’s Mini, right?
JDM: That’s right. Now we have a tour bus, and seven people who travel with us. Katie has a guitar tech but that’s because most of the day we’re doing promo and we don’t have time to set up. They [the crew] are really an integral part of what we do. They’re great people. Katie’s got a female guitar, she was adamant about that. Obviously in this business when you go to crew it’s all men, sitting on the bus burping and farting. So she was adamant about getting a girl to come on tour with us. She [the guitar tech] is kind of more of a boy than a girl. She lifts really heavy stuff.
SC: You had an unpleasant experience with the music industry before signing to Sony with the Ting Tings.
JDM: The last time, it went wrong in many ways. In fact it inspired semi-consciously a lot of the material we wrote lyrically. A lot of people think these are out and out pop songs, which they are, but they are written about our past experience. “That’s Not My Name” is about feeling invisible, not being heard. When we were signed as a band [Eskiimo] before, the first thing they [the record company] projected—we had a lot of talent and were making some great music—was how far Kate would go in the sense of men’s magazines, revealing herself and being sexual. I remember clearly we sat at the meeting, and she’d put together some ideas, because she’d done fashion design, and they literally pushed that aside, and focused on how raunchy Katie was prepared to be. As if the only thing we wanted was to get a record deal. I remember looking at Katie and she had her middle finger stuck up and I was thinking, “Oh no. She’s lost it.” But she was like, “Fuck you guys, I’ve spent three days putting this scrapbook together and you haven’t even looked at it. All you’ve done is come into this meeting thinking I’m gonna go in these trash magazines.” I remember we got back on the train back to Manchester, and the other members in the band were going “Katie, you’ve got to be more diplomatic.” And I was like, “No, not at all.” And two-three weeks later we got a call saying we got dropped.
SC: Obviously that experience made you determined to call the shots, from where you tour to the artwork to the merchandise.
JDM: We’ve done some wild stuff with our merch, especially when we started. We had white T-shirts and pots of paint, and we were doing our own merch after the gig, and we’d sign the T-shirts or tell people to put them on and throw paint at them, or put handprints or footprints on them. I studied fine art, and Katie got involved with a lot of fashion design students in Manchester, and she got fascinated by fashion. So she was cutting her own clothes. The funniest thing, when we broke through, there was a Vivienne Westwood dress that came through for her to wear to an event. And I was like, “Wow, that’s incredible, it’s worth a fortune, God you’re so lucky.” I’m the drummer, no one ever gives me designer stuff. And I went out and when I came back to the studio and she’d cut it to pieces. She’d put on all these little teapot doilies on it. At the time I was like, “You’re a fucking crazy bitch. You should’ve put it on eBay.” But it did look good. And that’s what she’s always done. We still try to do that. Those wallets, it takes ages to make one, we get a guy in London to make them. We’ve just said when you’ve got time, make them. We did a party in Manchester recently, and it turned into a huge paint fight. My drum kit and the guitars got covered, and they look just phenomenal, like something off the first Stone Roses record. That’s what we love doing, is having a connection with the audience, getting a reaction. We have two T-shirt designs at the moment, designed by a Swedish girl. We ran a competition, we want someone to come up with a great T-shirt. So we commission her. She started a website now, designing T-shirts. SHe was just a student. We love that, it’s so much more refreshing than going to a company that designs T-shirts.
SC: You’ve got the one album out, and bunch of remixes and a few live tracks. What would you recommend if I had a few extra bucks to download some additional Ting Tings music?
JD: Definitely Calvin Harris remix of “Great DJ” , it’s amazing. And there’s a Tom Neville remix of “That’s Not My Name” that’s good as well.
SC: What about the Live in Soho tracks?
JD: That’s just a bloody record label thing.
Filed under: fashion, music, news | Tags: 2nd Wind Oxygen Bar Rentals, Ben Sherman, Ed Hardy, jean couch, Juno Awards, Junos coverage, Karolina Jez, Kreesha Turner, Mavi Jeans, Michael Kissinger, Naked Eye Magazine, New Balance, Reach Magazine, Saxx Bamboo, T-Box, the Biltmore Cabaret, the Cobalt, the Donnelly Group, the Loden Hotel, the Loft Salon, the Shangri-La, the Sweatshop Vancouber
-SwagWhore
Welcome to the first but hopefully not last installment of SwagWhore, wherein guttersnipe reviews events based solely on the booty we’re able to procure and bring home. We’re not proud of this, but it’s what happened, and we feel we owe it to you, our loyal readers, to tell it like it is (without getting anyone in trouble or bringing legal hassles down upon our heads).
To begin with, it’s the weekend of the Junos in town, and Vancouverites are acting as if they’ve never hosted a big, empty awards spectacle in the city. Heck, maybe we haven’t. But the city has certainly bent over backwards and sideways in an uncomfortable semblance of positions we had thought more common to prison sex bottoms. The irony being, of course, that when major players like the Donnelly Group (all respect to John Donnelly, who seems like a nice guy) ask the City if it can close off Granville Street for a couple of nights the City says “Sure, whatever you say, here’s some taxpayer $$”, while small-scale operations like the Sweatshop and the Cobalt and the Biltmore, where the real future (if there is one) of any Canadian music scene really lies, struggle to stay open in the face of Draconian rules and regulations from The Man. But I digress.
The Shangri-La Hotel, the latest downtown super-tower separating the mega-rich from the rest of us, is the scene of much official Juno-type activity. It’s where the performers’ lounge is, and a swag room dominated by racks of Mavi Jeans and, literally, a wooden boat filled with products such as Saxx Bamboo men’s underwear and T-Box “beltannas” and shirts, basically cleverly packaged cheap clothing from Istanbul (not Constantinople).
Before we reached this room, however, we were given a tour of the hotel. Let’s just say it was fun to think about renting the deluxe suite until our tour guide told us the cost per night—$875. “But you get a $200 voucher for use at any one of our restaurants,” she said. Oh, then sign me up.
The weird thing about the tour was that I was on it with a couple of extraordinarily tall guys from some Calgary media operation. Both looked to be in their mid-20s and both wore T-shirts and jeans and one wore a hoodie, and they didn’t look like a tour of a high-end-boutique hotel had been on their agenda when they woke up that morning.
So after everyone gets taken on this dog-and-pony show, we were taken to the bar on the third floor, and served up one of the three specialty cocktails concocted for the event. I had the Juno Bullet, for those of you keeping track at home, which is Bullet bourbon and ginger beer. Guttersnipe fashion correspondent Michael Kissinger decided that, in the future, he might switch from rye to bourbon. Then we were ushered into the swag area on the sixth floor, then to “the library”, a comfortable lounge-type area with an open bar, and some canapes to nibble on. There, I came upon the fabled Mavi jean couch, of which I’d heard so much about from Mr. K:
Guttersnipe’s guide to all this, by the way, was our Special Media Envoy, or SME for short. None of this would have been possible at all if it wasn’t for SME, whom we’ll call Sammy for convenience. It was Sammy, for instance, who knew about the Gorilla Room.
At least, I think that’s what he called it, though once we were there I saw no reason for it to be termed as such. The Gorilla Room was a pirate swag room—that is, it was filled with folks piggybacking on the Junos but not affiliated with the event in any way. This is where the folks from Naked Eye, a handsome-looking Canadian pop culture magazine now on its sixth issue, were hanging out, along with some purveyors of ladies’ lingerie. Most strangely, when we first arrived, a girl in a bikini was standing behind a table displaying various Ed Hardy brand crap. At some point though she realized she was wearing a bikini, and put on a robe and sat down. There were no drinks to be had, so the SwagWhore posse returned to the performers’ lounge on the 6th floor to imbibe more booze and schmooze.
“The real swag’s at the Loden,” Sammy informed us. And he was right; on the top floor of the Loden, another new (well, about a year old) boutique hotel, located a couple blocks from the Shangri-La, the penthouse was divided into room after room of stuff. Ben Sherman shirts, New Balance sneakers, Skullcandy headphones, and a Vancouver-based product called a Buddha Board—an Etch-a-Sketch type of thing, only instead of a dial to make a line you use a brush and water. The marks lasts a few seconds before disappearing, to leave a clean slate. Manicures, pedicures, haircuts. (SwagWhore got one.) Also, there was a bar on the balcony, and Juno nominees (New Artist and Pop Album of the Year) like Kreesha Turner swanning in and out, and posing for the cameras.
Stylist/fashion editor/event producer Karolina Jez shows off some yellow jeans.
The Ben Sherman room at the Loden.
Somehow, we managed to leave the Loden for the Commodore, where some kind of Juno kick-off was happening. Again, Swagwhore was treated to free drinks (mostly white wine by this time) and food (sushi), along with some live musical entertainment which we didn’t pay attention to, and real live contortionists, which we did.
Speaking of live music, this was not the night for it. We passed a wristband off to guttersnipe correspondent eugene osudar, who was off to the Biltmore to see Elliott Brood. For SwagWhore, though, it was time to change hats and become PartyWhore.
(Guttersnipe would like to thank Rick McVicar of 2nd Wind Oxygen Bar Rentals and Anais with The Loft Salon for the lift and haircut, respectively; and Dez Price of No Limits, Karine LaRocque of Naked Eye, Karolina Jez and anyone else we’re forgetting for making it possible for us to walk around the rest of the night with bags full of stuff.)
Anais from The Loft, a Whistler hair salon.
Juno nominee Kreesha Turner.
Filed under: fashion, reviews | Tags: Animal Collective, Ariel Pink, Ariel Pink live, Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Ariel Rosenberg, concert reviews, Conscientious Objector, Kate Reid, Media Club, Paw Tracks, pink velour stirrup pants, R. Stevie Moore, What Else Am I Not Supposed to Do?, Who Could Win a Rabbit?
-by Kate Reid, photos by Liz Stanton
Ariel Pink sounded like his own biggest fan as he bawled his way onto the stage at the Media Club last Saturday night. He shuffled about in too-tight, pink velour stirrup pants like an emaciated, thrift-store-styled scarecrow and screeched “New world order!” at the packed crowd below. With his head down, striped shirt, and greasy, blond tresses, Pink at times looked like an eerie apparition of a resurrected (but newly vertically-challenged) Kurt Cobain. Pink shares the lo-fi, pop sensibilities of Nirvana, but his sound is a timeless, hard-to-pin-down nebula of layered noise that’s pleasing to the ear despite (or because of) the intentional muddied production values. The closest act I can think to compare him to is the criminally unknown DIY basement recorder pioneer, R. Stevie Moore. It turns out that Pink collaborated with the guy on a bunch of tracks, like “What Else Am I Not Supposed To Do?” from Moore’s latest album, Conscientious Objector, and Pink cites him as a major influence, so there you go.
In the past, Pink (born Ariel Rosenberg) has been pegged as a difficult act to translate live, and a lot of critics have hated his slapdash, unrehearsed performances. There wasn’t much to bitch about on Saturday, though—Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti sounded tight in their own loose sort of way and despite the Media Club’s craptastic sound system, Ariel Pink sounded, well, practiced. If that feels like an insult, it isn’t.
Back in 2004, Animal Collective signed Pink as the first act on their Paw Tracks label and it’s not hard to understand why. Both acts split audience members into two camps: those who love the erratic spontaneity of their cobbled-together live shows, and those like myself, who wish the songs retained some of the original form they took on the album. I first saw Animal Collective during their Sung Songs tour and could barely distinguish my favourite track, “Who Could Win a Rabbit?”, from the rest of the throbbing beats and incessant whirring that made up the set that night. Pink has taken a lot of shit for basically giving me what I ask for in a live show—a recognizable reinterpretation of his albums—so maybe audiences just need to give a proper listen to the recordings before they’re scared off by the real thing. Those velour pants were a little (ahem) blatant—beware the view from the front, ladies and gentlemen.
Beware the view from the front... and from underneath, apparently.
Some Ariel Pink songs sound so distorted you’ll feel like you need to poke a pencil in the cassette so you can reel the tape back onto the spool—then you’ll remember you buried your Walkman in the bottom of your junk drawer five years ago and you’re listening to the track on a bloody iPod.
I don’t know if Pink’s live act has improved or if critics now know what to expect after all the Paw Tracks hype, but “For Kate I Wait” is still the best track Pink’s ever recorded and I was definitely able to recognize and love it live. At one point Pink lurched into the crowd and was devoured by a sea of hungry fans, but he emerged a few minutes later—a sweaty, discombobulated mess—and hurled himself back onstage. I suppose I give Ariel Pink more leeway than Animal Collective simply because Pink’s albums sound so much messier—I expect the same jagged edges in his live performance so I was pleased he could deliver. If you go to the show expecting some eccentric pop sounds and don’t mind an artist who shows a little asscrack when he crowdsurfs, you’ll probably dig Ariel Pink—I sure did.
Filed under: fashion | Tags: Amsterdam's red light district, Camper, Carlos Santana shoes, celebrity shoe lines, Clarks, Crocs, El Naturalista, fall fashion, fashion 2009, Fergie's Fergalicious shoes, Fluevog creepers, Fly London, Footwear Buying Market 2009, Gwen Stefani shoes, Hush Puppies, Jessica Simpson shoes, John Fluevog, Metrotown Hilton, mukluks, Nanaimo, Paris Hilton, Paris Hilton shoes, Shoefly, shoes, suede boots, swag, Tsubo, Uggs, Velcro runners, WCSA shoe show, Western Canadian Shoe Association
-Michael Kissinger
Last month, my “lady friend,” as my dad likes to call her, moved back to our hometown Nanaimo to open a shoe store. Called Shoefly, it caters to the small but growing demographic of Nanaimoites who don’t wear white Velcro runners from Costco or Walmart. This past weekend I accompanied her to the Western Canadian Shoe Association’s Footwear Buying Market at the Metrotown Hilton in Vancouver. Although it can’t be blamed entirely for the unfortunate rise of Uggs and Crocs, the WCSA shoe show is where the movers and shakers of the footwear world gather and make decisions that will affect your and my feet for years to come.
What will be the next trend in shapeless suede boots? Why do some shoes smell better than others? How close could I get to the epicentre of shoe fashion without doing serious damage to my ruggedly handsome 37-year-old dudeness? Here’s what transpired over nine intensive but enlightening hours shopping for shoes with my lady friend.
The colour purple Acting as a conduit between the shoe companies and the lumpen masses’ gnarled feet, hundreds of shoe reps descend upon the Hilton every year so retailers can peruse the latest styles and order stock for the coming season—in this case, the fall.
Right off the bat, it’s a little strange. Occupying several floors, the shoe reps set up shop in hotel rooms with shoes lining the beds, window sills, television sets, the floor and portable shelves they’ve brought with them.
Outside each room, a sign tells retailers the name of the rep and the brands of shoes he or she represents. The doors are left wide open, so you wander the hallways of the hotel inspecting the various rooms and their displays, kind of like a footwear version of Amsterdam’s red light district. Retailers can either book appointments with the reps in advance, or show up unannounced. Sometimes the reps will have a person on hand to model the shoes for you, or you can try them on yourself—that is, if you’re the standard display shoe size six for women or men’s eight, of which I’m neither. There are roughly 10 women’s styles of shoes for every men’s style. There’s also a number of celebrity shoe lines, such as Paris Hilton, Fergie’s Fergalicious, Gwen Stefani, Jessica Simpson and, um, Carlos Santana. Apparently he makes a gladiator sandal that’s just as self-indulgent and bland as his music, if that’s even possible.
A few more shoe-related facts I learned: The average mark-up on a pair of shoes is between two-and-a-half and three times the wholesale price. People in the business prefer to call this the shoe’s “price point,” as in “the price point on those Hush Puppies is great.” Actually, I have no idea if the price point on Hush Puppies is great, although you’d think it would be with a friendly name like Hush Puppies. Also, some established brands, such as Clarks or Camper, “tell a story.” I have no idea what this means exactly, but judging from the price points, stories don’t come cheap.
“Purple is very hot for the fall.” I must have heard this mentioned no fewer than half a dozen times. Mark it on your calendar. Purple is going to be hot in the fall. If only I had kept those purple creepers I bought at Fluevog in 1989 after a Grapes of Wrath concert. Apparently moccasins and mukluks will also be smokin’ next season, which explains the dozens of suede slippers, boots and loafers I noticed shamelessly appropriating First Nation fashion forwardness. I wouldn’t put it past McDonald’s to come out with a McPemican by 2010.
*Swag hag* If wall-to-wall shoes weren’t enough, many of the reps and shoe companies like to celebrate their shoe-ness with shoe-related promotional swag and enticements. Shoe-shaped flower vases, plush basset hound key chains from Hush Puppies, sweet ballpoint pens from Clarks. The rep for Tsubo even had a friend bake and decorate dozens of high-heal and boot-shaped sugar cookies, which are as emasculating to eat as it sounds.
The nicest smelling hotel room I visited was Fly London’s. “Portugal leather,” a swarthy man wearing what could best be described as a riding jacket and trousers told me in a monotone voice, barely hiding his disdain for my Adidas. In the next room a woman caressed a $950 pair of knee-highs and exclaimed the oft-heard phrase of the day: “This is one serious boot.”
Down the hall, there was a line of shoes that had cinnamon-scented soles, which was really quite pleasant. Why cinnamon? Why not cumin or wasabi? I guess that’s another shoe story I wasn’t privy to. The story over at stylish and eco-friendly El Nalturalista was a little easier to understand. Handsome French Canadian shoe rep not-so-subtly flirts with lady friend in front of lady friend’s ruggedly handsome dude, and then lady friend orders 36 pairs of shoes from flirty French Canadian. The end.
When all was said and done, nine foot-filled hours flew by like eight-and-a-half. More importantly, we had booked all the necessary shoes for the fall season, with not a single white Velcro runner in the bunch. Sorry Dad. Not only that, I had become increasingly confident offering my deepest insights into heel construction, suede vs. patent leathers and the seriousness of certain patterns, textures and hues. In other short, I had grown as a dude. And come fall, with the right pair of purple mukluks, I’m going to be the hottest dude ever.
Filed under: fashion | Tags: Ayana Angel, Ayana Angel Pussy & Ass, bouncing dildo strap-ons, Candy Girl Cabaret, clitoral jewelry, dungeon decor, erotic cakes, full-body condom, Jon & Roy, Kate Reid, Liz Stanton, Peter Dinklage, Peter Dinklage 30 Rock, prosthetic pussy, Pussycat Dolls, syphilis, Taboo Naughty But Nice Sex Show, Tina Fey and Peter Dinklage, Ultimate Clit Caresser, Wild Rose Tattoo Shirts
The Taboo Naughty But Nice Sex Show arrived once again to remind us there are other things in life besides the latest Sufjan Stevens album. Kate Reid, recovering from her evening of Victoria nouveau hippiedom (see Jon & Roy review) a couple nights before, shares.
-Kate Reid, 18/01/09, Vancouver (Photos: Liz Stanton)
The Taboo Naughty But Nice sex show is your ticket to finely-crafted erotic cakes, bouncing dildo strap-ons and hanging clitoral jewelry. The annual tradeshow is a fun way to gratify (or discover) your inner kink without getting weirded out in the Granville sex shop tradition. If you have a predilection (I think I saw a vibrating version of that), Taboo has a product or position for you. Here are some highlights from the show and some choice items for your bedroom or dungeon.
Choosing the right prosthetic pussy is never easy, so allow me to suggest the Ayana Angel-endorsed “Pussy & Ass”—because like my mom always says during our family’s Tortilla Tuesday dinners, “Never settle for a plain taco when you can add some guacamole.” The packaging says it’s a “genuine cast of Ayana Angel… detailed down to every luscious curve and fold.” If sticking your thingy into a plastic facsimile of a porn star’s hooha isn’t doing it for you, maybe you’re just not into plastic vaginas, in which case I feel very sorry for the sad life you must lead.
Order before midnight tonight...
If contracting syphilis in public is your thing, head on over to the tattoo booth and get that sleeve you always wanted, or better yet, head to Wild Rose Tattoo Shirts and pull some tattoo-adorned pantyhose over your arms instead, cause there’s nothing sexier than a body sheathed in nylon. Except for maybe a full-body condom.
The Candy Girl Cabaret is Vancouver’s version of the Pussycat Dolls, which is all well and good, but the titillating twenty-minute stage show was rudely interrupted by a vertically-challenged male performer who kept butting in with casino-style crooning. While I’m all for little people love, this guy was no Peter Dinklage—he was too tall and too cheesy for such a glowing comparison, plus I doubt Dinklage would strip on stage (unless Tina Fey made a personal request—don’t pretend you didn’t notice the chemistry during the 30 Rock episode). The point is, when I wanna watch some talented ladies straddle some chairs, I don’t want this dude’s theatrical eyebrow raises distracting from the fishnets. Way to dry up my girl shorts, buddy.
One way to keep my garden watered would be to acquire the Ultimate Clit Caresser, a bit of dangly jewelry you attach to your girly bits that acts like a tuning fork. When the bead strands swing together, you feel a yayness in your happy place. The girl selling these gems recommended wearing them under your clothes as you go about your day. Perhaps this can up the morale at my grandma’s women-only retirement home. If not, it’ll at least boost the satisfaction I’ll feel after volunteering.
Come back and see us again soon!
Filed under: fashion, music | Tags: (the angels wanna wear my) red shoes, Bruce Springsteen "I'm on Fire", elvis costello pump it up, haunter, haunter winnipeg, high and lonesome whisky awards, king's head pub, nipples, Oh My Darling, pump it up, Ragpickers, Ragpickers Winnipeg, Ragpickers' all-you-can-wear sale, rasputin, ridley bent, sue foley, the Afterbeat, the angry dragons, the Braggarts, the bushtits, the Geek Street Band, the latest slander, the Quiffs, the wind ups, the wind ups cavern, ukrainian labour temple, vintage clothing, volcano suns, watching the detectives
-eugene osudar, Winnipeg
rarara/ragpickers
ragpickers
vintage clothing
and their once a year
20$ all you can (im)possibly
wear on your bones
in 20 minutes
sale/get naked
cuz some do
hundreds free/fall
slip/through the well/
coming portal
just to layer
the layers on the bare
skin/rag/pickers
this coming
saturday at high noon
the lineups of
naked freezing
goose/bum/ping
flesh
well not really
not until they’re in/through
the out/doors
and shedding
the brrrr/shiverrring
layers
ragpickers
where shows are held
upstairs
in the summer,
fringe plays
in the fall,
dress/up balls
in the spring,
ray/ging whore/moans call
and winter,
debuting the bushtits
in february
(lucky 13 friday)
another all female band
that i’m looking forward too
oh for The Quiffs!
Winnipeg's the Quiffs play a Canada Day street festival (circa 2008?).
are you into the music
a new band
of blue/ing hi/note
haunter
reminding me
of volcano suns
long ago
dancing to the subliming
playful melodics
i’m on fire
a springsteen cover
lovely
geek street band/
gotta play more than
once a year!
the afterbeat
at dylan O’s
ska/show
and dancing madly
the youngsters
joined the oldster
who (moi?) began the movement
to sweat/soak t/shirts
from first drum beats
and mike’s call to
dance
“you can all learn something
from eugene”
Oh holy fuck!
“he hasn’t missed a show
in the last year.”
dancing wic/ked/ly
that’s it
2009
rock even har/der
dance mar/tyr (croo/ked/ly)
still
saturday
sue foley
after several weeks recording
a new disc in the midst
of a severely cold winterpeg snnnnnaP!
and the show at the hammer
and sic/kle red style
ukrainian labor temple
blues/ed
acoustic and electric sets
dancing mayhem
shay/na/wes
and the courageous
few
terry said, now that’s where
i’d be, as sue played her solo
stage front
so i took that as The Cue
to forward march
and dance right in front
of sue’s sizzling solo
watching the detectives
her fingers teased
filing the fret/board
she flirts her red shirt
while i was dragging the lake
with my dancing shoes
the angels wanna wear my
(elvis costello)
dancing shoes
her fingers
blue/me
ahhhhhhhhh
way!
rushing madly
to a line/up
at the king’s head
for the braggarts
irish punk covers
dance floor dangerously
packed and jump(ogo)ing
madness
all mayhem all sweat
all nipples
“can you see my nipples?”
the drunken young man asked
nodding i,
“you’ve achieved sweaty
t/shirt hardened nipple stage.”
sunday night
blues jam
high and lonesome
big dave
and the whisky awards
bigger than the golden globes
silver/coated whiskey bottles
and certificates of honor
this is your moment
now
youngsters
l cohen
/be at the cavern
friday 23rd
for the wind ups
winding up the dance floor
roar/ing through
covers like Jam/like Police
like Alice Cooper/like Angel City
like Ramones/like Squeeze
like elvis costello/
like Clashhhhhh
like
are you listening
to the latest slander?
pump
it
up!
me!
you!
dancing!
and ridley bent
saturday night 24th
at the times changed
oh and earlier
in the day
the sale
of all sales
20 dollar$
20 minutes
rarara
rasputin!
rarara/
ragpickers!
