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August 17th, 2009
08:45 am - Self Doubt
The Fringe ended over a month ago, but I forgot to post a picture of the character I played in Rock Time 2009!
This is Self Doubt. I had the best time with this adorable (and mean!) little guy. As soon as the lights come up on him, everyone in the audience would coo...until he started to talk and then they would gasp in shock at the cruel things he says to Mick.
He has plaid pants and no shirt. I miss him.
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June 29th, 2009
12:18 pm - The kind of girl you can't send through the mails
Usually the mail coming just means that you finally have to pay up for some crap that you bought last month. But sometimes (today!) the mail coming means that you are a proud recipient of an Ontario Arts Council Arts Education Project grant!
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June 26th, 2009
11:31 am - Rockland: just be yourself and you'll get there
Do you know what starts on WEDNESDAY??? The Toronto Fringe Festival starts on Wednesday! This best possible time of year is even better than usual this year, because I will be appearing in a kick-ass glam rock puppet musical for kids called Rock Time 2009 at the Palmerston Library Theatre. Here is a sneak peak of some of the puppets you will meet:
This is Mick. He is the star of the show. As you can see, he is working very hard to learn his lines!
This guy thinks he is hot shit just because he has articulated hands and polka dot undies.
This is Sammyneemoi. She's only visiting Planet Earth for a short time, but as you can see, she is having a whale of a time.
Come see ROCK TIME 2009! Bring some chilluns, or just your own youthful enthusiasm. You won't be sorry.
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June 10th, 2009
03:54 pm - Follow the bouncing ball!
If you're in Toronto you should really get your butt down to BCE Place or Brookfield Place or whatever the hell place it is now and then you will understand why everyone who sees this awesome art installation compulsively takes seven million photos of it because it is just really freaking rad. Just go. Red balls! Hanging from the ceiling!
It's really fun to mess around with in Picnik, too:
See? Oh, and my favourite:
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June 2nd, 2009
10:14 am - Fake Sushi From Vietnam
Sometimes your sister visits from Montreal. And someone has given her a DIY-felt-sushi-making-kit from Vietnam.
And the box appeals to your sentimental side in broken English.
So you sew a salmon roll at midnight.
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June 1st, 2009
01:22 pm - Where it's at.
Here.
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May 27th, 2009
08:59 am - Rockland! There is music everywhere!
Some Things a Cat Will Do When You Are Trying to Design and Paint a Giant Canvas E-Mail For a Fringe Puppet Musical
1. Sniff at your hand.
2. Bat at your pencil.
3. Attack your pencil.
4. Bite your pencil.
5. Dive at imaginary ripples on the canvas.
6. Burrow under the canvas.
Things a Cat Will Not Do When You Are Trying to Design and Paint a Giant Canvas E-Mail For a Fringe Puppet Musical
1. Help.
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May 26th, 2009
12:06 am - Rice is nice
I spent the past couple of weeks surrounded by quite a lot of rice.
The delightful British theatre company Stan's Cafe came to Toronto for the Harbourfront World Stage Festival with their awesome, rice-heavy show Of All the People in All the World, and they hired several local performers to help them put the show together and wander around wearing labcoats. I was lucky enough to be one of those performers.
In The Rice Show (check out more pictures of rice piles here), each grain of rice represents one person. Piles of rice are used to demonstrate various statistics, from the massive (the population of the U.S. - 303,000,000) to the bitty (number of people who have gone over Niagara Falls and survived - 10). The show packs a visual punch, and offers a different way to envision, for example, the number of people in North and South America who live on less than $2 a day. It's not all depressing stats - there are also silly things like the population of Pie Town, New Mexico (2,900), and the number of people fed by the world's largest pumpkin pie.
Over the course of two weeks, I touched more rice than I ever thought possible. I carried and scooped and swept and weighed and measured and counted. I explained to several children that not all kids in the world have the access to health care that they do and therefore go unvaccinated and die from diseases like polio. I erased footprints.
I met some truly lovely folks and got a brief glimpse of Canada through the eyes of a visitor. How often do you get to hear a trip to Niagara Falls recounted with childlike wonder by two grown men?
I'll miss you, Stan's Cafe. Please come again soon.
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April 20th, 2009
02:03 am - There beneath the blue suburban skies
If you read the book Street Gang on the train, here is a thing that might happen.
You might reach the chapter in which the author recounts the creation of the episode where Big Bird learns about death and how Mr. Hooper isn't ever coming back.
You might now find that you have a conundrum.
For this episode always destroys you, even if you're just reading about it in a book that's full of questionable sentence structure. It's so heart-wrenching because watching it is like learning about death for the first time.
Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, considering that you love a good cry. You just went to look up the video clip on YouTube so you could happily bawl your face off.
However, ViaRail's terrible assigned seat service has put you at a four-seater table with a trio of idiot UFC-loving dudes whose sole desire is for it to be twelve hours later so they can be shit-faced and watching two large men in negligible clothing jump on each other.
You don't really want to cry in front of dudes like that. But Mr. Hooper! Are you really going to not read a chapter about the greatest episode of a children's tv series (or ANY tv series) ever, just because of some dudes whose collective IQ is lower than your bra size?
Of course not. You're going to read about how the grown-ups remind Big Bird that being dead means Mr. Hooper is never coming back and you are going to bawl your face off in front of three 19-year-olds in droopy pants and you hope it makes them damn uncomfortable.
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April 14th, 2009
12:30 pm - How to live without it
Poutine with the cast of Spring Awakening made me feel old.
In other vaguely meat-related news, I made bacon cupcakes today. As an experiment. And to retire bacon from ever being put into foolish contexts ever again. This is the last time. I swear.
(In case you are concerned for my soul, I also made non-bacon cupcakes. They are banana/white chocolate/toffee cupcakes. You wish you were in my kitchen, probably. I don't blame you.)
(Yes, it's still Passover. Yes, I am the worst Jew EVER.)
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April 6th, 2009
April 2nd, 2009
March 29th, 2009
February 19th, 2009
February 17th, 2009
January 30th, 2009
January 22nd, 2009
09:16 am - In someone else's life where Maria is a wife
Hey, I have a story in the Star! My Star cherry has been popped. Rude!
Anyway, go read it or whatever. But mostly go see those two shows. They are going to be good news.
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January 20th, 2009
January 10th, 2009
12:26 pm - Very Little Brain and large words Bother me
My lovely fashion designer friend Brook asked me to model her new spring collection for a photo shoot on Sunday. You don't get to see pictures of that right now (but they did turn out ok, considering I am most definitely not a professional model, thanks for asking). Right now you get to see a picture of the serious bear rug that Brook has in her studio (it's not actually hers, and she's trying to get rid of it, so if you want a bear rug with which to terrify everyone you know, drop Brook a line).
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December 26th, 2008
12:10 am - Up on the rooftop quick quick quick
Dear Zeitgeist,
For 2009, it would be so great if bacon could just go back to being a delicious breakfast meat (that sometimes also appears in sandwiches, salads, and occasionally wrapped around a shrimp or a scallop) instead of this annoying pop culture Thing that is added to everything including websites. No more scarves, bandaids, or wallets designed to look like bacon - they are ugly. Creative expressions of your unique love of bacon are stupid. Everybody fucking loves bacon, including vegetarians. Please tell the hipsters to take their meme out of my bacon. Thank you.
Merry Christmas!
Alison
PS: While you're at it, could you please tell the internet that the word is "sandwich", not "sammitch"? Good lord.
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