Fantastic Pulps Show and Sale... this Saturday!

I can barely stand the suspense. Always great fun and amazing finds to be had at the Fantastic Pulps Show & Sale, which occurs one Saturday every year in the basement of the Lillian H. Smith Branch of the Toronto Public Library. The 20th (!) annual show for 2016 happens this Saturday!

A definite highlight in my year-round tradition of spelunking for nostalgic treasures of yore, this sale always gives me a big Cheshire Cat grin.

Check it out!

Click here to learn more.

List-O-Mania

I've always been an avid list maker. A list of films I've watched, and a list of films I want to watch (itself running 30-plus pages) are the most durable ones I've created (and still in progress). When I go book shopping, I often carry around a little black book containing numerous checklists, often of authors' works, so I don't accidentally buy something twice (as I am wont to do with my elusive memory).

What inspired me to write this post though, were the lists I used to keep, about a year after I graduated from college. Every month, I would make a new list of films to see or books to read, over the following 30 days. The titles would easily fill one-and-a-half sides of a three-ringed 8 & 1/2 by 11" piece of lined paper. Because I wasn't working in my chosen field, and was suffering from cabin fever, these particular lists were a ploy to inspire me out of a creative slump.

However, as life and work got in the way, it was unsurprising to find that when those four weeks elapsed, many of the film or book titles didn't have little check marks beside them. I didn't consider that as an indication of failure. It mattered more that these lists inspired me to organize my thoughts, and to continue learning about the things I was passionate about.

Flash forward to the present day. Those 30-day lists made during those turbulent times have frequently appeared in my mind. Why? Perhaps because all these years later, I am in a similar rut, and my subconscious has dredged up these images as a reminder of how to re-establish some order.

In a recent private journal entry, I made a little list summarizing all of the projects (websites, blogs, articles, etc.) that I've started and thereby abandoned over the past three years. I won't bore you with the details here, but suffice it to say, the items in this list are all over the place... just like my brain. The reason for this lack of cohesion may stem from my lack of publishing anything for over three years. Whatever the pros and cons of doing a magazine, it at least brought some order to my life outside of the nine-to-five grind.

But of all the projects I've started and stopped over the past few years, you know what one I've missed the most? This one right here. Time to do something about that.

Okay, now to start this list. This month is nearly over, so let's make it a "to-do" list from April 24 to May 31, just to add some leeway while I get back into the groove. Here we go...

(click of pen)

Saturday Nights and "C Jam Blues"

The last two years spent in Birdtown was also when I really started getting into jazz. In a small town, you took whatever you found, even if it wasn't necessarily the best representation of the genre. Well, one Saturday afternoon in the fall, I hit pay dirt. I bought a handful of jazz LPs at a yard sale from some hip people in Port Dover. A couple of Keith Jarrett's, and Miles Davis At the Blackhawk were among the titles from that haul, but the prize of the lot was Charles Mingus at Carnegie Hall. This 1970s live album has only two songs, one on each side: which I likewise recorded to a C-60 cassette. (In those days, I would usually play an LP just once- when I made a tape of it, so I could listen to the music wherever I went.)

The last two years spent in Birdtown were also in the height of a recession. The economic downturn brought out the worst in everybody- even in a small town "where nothing ever happens" there were rashes of car thefts and store robberies. As a result, I was always nervous when I worked the Saturday night shift at the convenience store. One already had enough to worry about, with the drunken weirdos from the neighbouring apartment buildings raising hell, never mind all this other shit! Well, once 11 PM rolled around, and I could lock the doors to Fort Apache, elated that I survived another Saturday night unharmed, my 11:01 ritual began. On the ubiquitous Realistic tape recorder-player would go Side A of Mingus at Carnegie Hall: a rousing 24-minute rendition of Ellington's "C Jam Blues". This would be playing full blast while I performed my closing duties (counting the float, putting money in the safe, filling the coolers, etc.). The wall of sound by saxophonists Charles McPherson, John Handy, George Adams, Roland Kirk and Hamiet Bluiett remains one of the most joyfully raucous things I've ever heard: long lines of honks and squeals like an 18-wheeler and a freight train having a love child. Mingus' sound was often eccentric, and this track especially seemed the perfect soundtrack to clean out one's headspace after several hours of the usual assortment of bizarre Damon Runyon characters from the neighbourhood; and in light of the potential occupational hazards, it also made one glad to be alive.

But you don't have to take my word for it.  Here's a sample to hear for yourself!