MONDOmagazine

Fortunes divined with incredible accuracy and a convenient amount of vagueness.

Aries
(Mar. 21- April 20)

Feelings of nostalgia will conspire to envelope you, but don’t give in. Renewing old acquaintances from high school will only remind you how little you’ve accomplished in the last decade, and you will find that The Goonies has not held up well under the scrutiny of time.

Taurus
(Apr. 21- may 21)

These days you can’t help but suspect that you possess some kind of dormant super power, but have never figured out what it is or how to summon it. Hours spent trying to move small objects with your mind will be ones of folly, and it is well-advised not to even try. Though you do indeed hold incredible powers that few could even dream of, you have never marshalled them because you have never been in a situation that forced you to drag them up from the depths of yourself. You are a meek person who leads a common life and would only abuse your powers if you ever discovered them. The only thing that stands between you and unimaginable villainy is your superhuman laziness. It alone is your one true gift.

Gemini
(May 22-June 21) This is the month when the feeling that you are spinning your wheels is the most acute and palpable. You feel that your big break is always just around the corner, but the fates keep it from you with selfish cruelty. At the best of times you feel like a paper cup tossed on the ocean, aimless and thrown by the waves of the universe. Now is the time to start putting even just a little bit of effort into making your own luck, and stop sitting around reading horoscopes and waiting for the stars to do it for you.

Cancer
(June 22-July 22)

All signs indicate that you will be diagnosed with some form of cancer. I know it’s ironic, but that’s just the way the universe is.

Leo
(July 23-Aug 22)

As always, your strong Leo qualities will serve you well in the coming month. You are dynamic and self-assured, determined and sure to achieve any goal that you set for yourself. You are powerful, quick-witted and uncommonly creative when there are problems to be solved. Above all else, you are ready to accept positive appraisals of your character, even if they are not at all accurate.

Virgo
(Aug. 23 -Sept. 23)

Things at work will be neither good nor bad, and friend and family relationships will be equal parts of bitter and sweet. You will not be favoured in love, but get laid fairly regularly and still feel that even though you do not love your significant other, you certainly could be doing a lot worse. Meaningful events will be completely absent and television programming will be sub-par. For better or worse, it is just going to be another month.

Libra
(Sept. 24 -Oct. 23)

As Saturn shifts into your sign’s house this month, the darkest of luck is sure to follow. Do not get too attached to your place of employment, for you are sure to be dismissed from it in a matter of weeks. Friends will turn to enemies, enemies will turn to violence, violence will turn to the commonplace. It is best for you to lay low this month, along with every single other person born during the month of October because the exact same thing is going to happen to them, too.

Scorpio

(Oct. 24 – Nov. 22) Vanity will surely be your downfall this month, and steps towards aesthetic self-improvement are certain to backfire. Impulsive additions to your wardrobe will be money foolishly squandered, and experiments with new makeup and trimming pubic hair will more than likely result in calamity and chapping.

Sagittarius
(Nov. 23 -Dec. 21)

The unexpected is the only thing you can expect now. Do not be at all surprised should you find yourself shot with a crossbow in the next couple of days.

Capricorn
(Dec 22 -Jan. 20)

Good news! Sweet fortune smiles upon you and things are sure to get better! In the days to come you will finally secure the promotion you’ve been working so hard for, you will reconnect with your estranged father and also inherit significant sums of money from several Libras who are doomed to die this month.

Aquarius
(Jan. 21 -Feb. 19)

Summer is finally here, but don’t let the sunshine and lush foliage hold too much influence over your actions. A strong draw to return to nature and reconnect with the organic should be resisted: you will only find yourself crashing through brambles in High Park and will lose one or both of your shoes. Pisces
(Feb. 20-Mar. 20)

Things are finally falling into place for you! In weeks past you have been biding your time, making compromises and holding out for your one big break. This is sure to pay off soon, as the long skinny block finally descends on your Tetris screen of life. Don’t turn it sideways!

Heroes brings all the geeky boys to the television, and it’s all like “damn right we’re better than your crime/hospital show”

By Daniel Taylor

I don’t watch much television. When I do, I certainly don’t tune in for current shows that I’ll watch week to week. If you find me in front of the television, I’m probably watching an old Simpsons rerun I’ve seen a thousand times before, or seeing how our boys are doing overseas. I don’t follow programs consistently or with any great measure of interest, and if I see ads for shows like 24 or Lost, shows that I know I’d get sucked into if I only gave them the opening of one episode, I generally avoid them for fear of just that. So it’s a strange thing that I find myself here in MONDO’s television section, ranting and raving about one of this season’s big hits, boasting about how I never missed an episode and looked forward to it every week. But I did, and here I am.

God help me, I never had a chance. When previews and ads started coming out for NBC’s Heroes last fall, I made a point to watch the first episode and like a moth to a flame or a thirsty kitten to a toilet bowl, I was doomed from the first commercial and never looked back. From then on, I became dead to the outside world for an hour at nine o’clock every Monday evening.

You see, while I don’t care much for this modern television, I’ve always enjoyed the finer pleasures of a good comic book, and old time shows like Quantum Leap and Star Trek, of which I’ll admit I’ve seen most episodes. It’s a big tough world when you’re drawn by your very nature to stuff like that, because it’ll get your ass kicked every time. If you try to talk to someone about an issue of The Uncanny X-Men or a scene from an old Star Trek episode, you will be ridiculed and slapped around. If you force yourself through an episode of Grey’s Anatomy so you can chat it up with the cool kids, you’re denying part of who you are and starving your soul. Sometimes it is very hard when you like nerdy things.

Heroes did something very special for people like me who, despite being well-rounded individuals who have never been to a convention and have never felt the slightest urge to go, just so happen to have a couple of Star Wars action figures kicking around. Heroes gave us a show to watch that was cool to us, but was also a show that everyone else would be watching too.

Creator Tim Kring came up with a great idea for a 23-part comic series, then turned it into a slick, dynamic television series full of good-looking actors and cool camera tricks. Watching Heroes‘ debut season is exactly like reading a good comic series: small story arcs build upon one another week by week to produce the larger story that unfolds throughout the season. As the respective stories of the characters (each possessing their own unique super powers) develop, they eventually overlap and bring the entire story together. At long last, a sci-fi show to be proud of, a comic book you don’t have to tuck into your backpack when the cool kids walk by.

As I watched each week, I became certain that this is exactly what Heroes was supposed to be: a source of geeky pride. Spotting Marvel Comics super creator Stan Lee is a treat that I thought was reserved for Marvel movie adaptations. But his momentary cameo as a cheerful old driver beckoning Claire Bennet onto the bus gave me something to smirk knowingly about. As did George Tekei’s appearance as Hiro Nakamura’s father, Kaito (complete with vanity license plate “NCC-1701″). And when one of the show’s most menacing villains, the enigmatic and unseen Mr. Linderman, was finally revealed, who could it be but Malcolm McDowell? “The man who killed James T. Kirk!” I chortled while my friends looked on in confusion and annoyance.

Beyond the superpowers that many of the show’s characters possess, even plot itself is driven forwards by a comic book. When Hiro discovers 9th Wonders, a comic book that predicts his adventures that lead towards a nuclear disaster in the heart of New York City, he begins using it to determine what he should do next. In this way 9th Wonders not only predicts the heroes’ destinies but helps shape them as well. Heroes, cleverly enough, is a comic book show whose central plot device is actually a comic book.But while the Heroes‘ creators have tailored a show for comic book fans to enjoy, it has plenty of action and character development to keep it on the same level as the best dramatic action shows out there. Unlike many comics, the show’s characters rarely fall into tidy divisions of good and evil, and one of the great joys of the show is trying to discern the heroes from the villains. Even as the final four episodes arrived, I could only make a few certain statements:

Hiro Nakamura, a space-time manipulator led by a conviction to his own destiny and far and away the show’s most endearing character, was fighting on the side of good. Claire Bennet, whose accelerated healing factor makes her nearly invincible, is certain that she can save the world if only she can figure out her role. Sylar, who kills other heroes to gain their powers, is clearly evil. Beyond these few, it is nearly impossible to say for sure who’s on which side. Characters introduced as shadowy figures step in to save the day time and again, and even the central protagonists wander into darkness on a weekly basis. The translation of a comic book narrative into a weekly television programs wasn’t without its shortcomings, however. Trying to keep the respective quests of twelve main characters and a host of supporting roles straight became somewhat wearying at times, and the various subplots caused the overall story to lag at some points. With so many different stories going on at the same time, certain tangents seemed to be tacked in to draw out the plot, while other characters didn’t see enough stage time. It also meant that some characters were ignored for entire weeks at a time, and an episode without Hiro or the ever-more-powerful Peter Petrelli felt lacking.

The show was also plagued by two significant hiatuses in mid-season, which did nothing to help the plodding speed that the plot often took. The only thing harder than keeping a dozen stories straight is doing so after a six-week break. This can hardly be seen as a fault of the show, but it certainly made it harder to enjoy.

Despite this, Heroes saw an excellent season full of dark twists and touching moments. It’s a unique standout in a sea of crime and hospital dramas, and its success is a sign that television fans just might want to watch something they haven’t seen before a thousand times. What’s more, it took the best parts of comics and brought it to mainstream television with a fresh spin on old archetypes and abilities. And perhaps most importantly, it gave me at least one show to look forward to over the summer. That never happens.

Liberating the uke from annoying Hawaiian sing-alongs.

By Daniel Ian Taylor

Montreal’s Sister Suvi have accomplished plenty in their short lifetime as a band, most recently the North American tour that closed with their Wavelength show here in Toronto. In addition to amassing a collection of catchy and off-kilter songs, they’ve also done what few dare to do: they’ve rescued the much-overlooked ukulele from music’s kennel of forgotten underdog instruments and have gone on to feed, groom and nurture it into the admirable canine, capable of winning the Kentucky Derby. In the midst of their tour, Sister Suvi printed off MONDO’s questions and answered them in the car as they wound their way through the States and back home to Canada.

MONDO: The first thing that struck me when listening to the band was instrumentation. The ukulele goes a long way towards defining the band’s sound with the tone it creates and the chord phrasings that get used. Was the band built around the instrument, or is it a layer that is added to the songs? Are songs typically written on/for the uke, or written on guitar for it to be added later? Apart from helping to give the band a unique sound, do you ever feel limited by it, or that it dictates the feel of a song you’re working on?

Merrill: Well, Patrick and I started the band as a duo of nylon-string guitar and tenor ukulele, so it’s always been a part of the sound. The uke was particularly problematic when Nico came in with drums; we did a lot of work to figure out how it would even be heard in a louder context. We cut a bunch of songs from our repertoire that weren’t working anymore. We’re still figuring it out, and trying to make sure that the uke is never there arbitrarily, but only if it adds to the whole sound. Someday it might stop working, at which point I’ll break it into a million pieces and set it on fire, live, onstage. Be there for that show.

Beyond the instrumentation, I was also drawn in by the band’s use of rhythm. It comes across not only in the drums, but the instrumentation, and even the vocals. There’s a lot of creativity in the rhythmic presentation of the lyrics, and it adds as much to the songs as the melodies that are being sung. Does rhythm carry a special importance when you’re composing?

Merrill : Yes, rhythm is of utmost importance to me, especially since playing instruments is a relatively recent thing for me as a musician, as opposed to singing. I often use the uke as a percussive instrument rather than a melodic/harmonic one. I also have experience in arranging for vocal ensembles, in which there is great attention paid to the intersection of varied poly-rhythmic parts. So I tend to view the voice, even when singing lyrics, as a percussive texture. Sometimes I derive lyrics rhythmically instead of conceptually, so that might be why they come across as bizarre and nonsensical at times.

Does the band get put on hold when Patrick is needed with Islands?

Patrick: Merrill has a solo project called tune-yards with uke and looping pedal. It’s sort of a mixed blessing to have other commitments, because it means the time that we have for this band is sacred. When we can dedicate a month to Sister Suvi it means a lot to all of us, and it’s something we look forward to and cherish.

Nico: I also play with a number of other bands in Toronto, including Pterodactyl, God’s Gift to Yoda and The Lost Boys.

Though I’ve never seen you live, I’ve been to YouTube and that is close enough. It looks like a lot of fun. Do live shows rate way above recording for you, or are they about even?

Merrill: Live shows are where our focus is these days, and it’s just a completely different experience from recording. For us, being a relatively young band, it’s a priceless experience to go play our music for six people in Kalamazoo, and learn infinite amounts about listening to each other as musicians, how and when songs work or don’t work, and how this music can sustain us on a pretty grueling DIY tour.

Montreal has had a lot of success in recent years with bands and artists reaching lots of international success, but it’s also brought a lot of attention to acts whose music isn’t as immediately accessible. What’s your take on the Montreal buzz from the last few years? Any Montreal acts you feel have been passed over?

Merrill: Montreal is an ideal city, in many ways, for artists; as with a lot of cities which have been overlooked or marginalized economically, there’s a period of time where rents are cheap, food is cheap, and small art and music venues pop up all over the place. Montreal is also a small city, so pretty much everything is walk-able or bike-able, and there’s a culture of people going out to shows, and appreciating not only the headliner but the whole bill.

It makes sense that a lot of great bands have come out of this scene, and also that they end up being bands that have had a freedom of experimentation, using atypical instrumentation, collaborating with visual artists in the creation of a total band aesthetic, etc. We’ve been really lucky to reap the benefits of the city. If you want to talk about overlooked, you should talk first about the entirety of the Francophone music scene in Montreal.

Patrick: Probably 75% of what goes on in the city is in French and has been exempt from coverage in the hype over the last couple years. It’s also worth acknowledging that a huge portion of the musicians representing Montreal to the world over the last couple years are actually from English Canada and the States. This has to do with the magnetic pull of the city’s culture, and isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but should definitely be looked at. Anyway, a few bands making great music that haven’t gotten much press are Torngat, the Coal Choir, Alden and Adam, Sharcut and Is That the Sound of My Voice?

Maybe I should have asked this question first because it’s been the one occupying my mind the most, but oh well. Will there be puppets at any upcoming shows?

Patrick: Incorporating puppetry into what we do has been a long-time ambition of ours, but the spatial constraints of touring in a Chevy Prizm have killed that dream for the short term. We’ll see though.

Sister Suvi can be found at myspace.com/sistersuvi

Eighteen Years is a Long Time to Wait for Something You Hate to Go Away.

By Daniel Ian Taylor

This week the NBC phenomenon Heroes returned to television, which is something I’ve been giggling and wringing my hands and chattering about since the show went on hiatus over a month ago. I’m so pleased that there’s a show that I can follow from week to week with genuine anticipation and glee, and I feel compelled to write this week’s column about what a fantastic program it is.

But that will have to wait for another week, because for the moment my commentary is needed elsewhere. With great powers of mordant observation come great responsibility, and so I must turn my irritated gaze back to the children of the world and portion out the stern retribution of which the gods have made me a loyal steward.

But first, in the interest of bouncing a single stone of the neck of one bird and into another, I offer an anecdote relating to this week’s episode of Heroes as means of sauntering casually to my point:

I always go over to my sister’s house each Monday to watch Heroes, because it enhances the whole experience significantly. My sister and her fiancé are both young professionals, and as such they have become very respectably domestic over the last several years. They have a nice apartment with hardwood floors and comfortable furniture and big windows and a nice view of the park. They have different kitchen appliances that do different things and two coffee makers and enough dishes to host dinner parties every now and again. They have more than one bottle of wine in the house at any given time.

Central to the heightened viewing pleasure of Heroes Mondays, as I’ve come to think of them, they have a flat-screen plasma television and one of those little High Def boxes and surround sound.

So needless to say I’d rather go there to enjoy my favourite television show, because they feed me dinner and let me stretch out on their big comfortable couch and drink one of four different kinds of coffee, which is considerably better than watching the show on my 80s television with the wood panel sides whose screen changes colour if you step too heavily on the floor. There is no surround sound at my house, or high definition, or delicious home-cooked meals. I don’t even have a fucking microwave.

As young professionals with lives that are falling nicely into place, and lemon zesters and wine glass cabinets and Tivo, they also have a cat. This is a fine cat of strong pedigree, who has had a good kittenhood and loving parents to raise her and lots of little toys to play with. She, too, is doing alright for herself, and has had every opportunity to do so.

That being said, she is a complete fucking asshole. She seems to have decided that two friends is all that she needs, and anyone else who comes into the house should get the hell out or be prepared to tuck their pants into their socks and spend their visit looking over their shoulder. As I’m a frequent guest there, she hates my guts.

As I was waiting for my nice dinner to be prepared and my favourite television show to come on, Turtle, which is what they have named her, was treated to a rare opportunity. After weeks and months of waiting for the moment to arrive, much like I had been waiting for my television show, Turtle found herself delightfully close to my face, which she has no doubt been waiting for quite some time.

Needless to say, she landed at least four good shots before being subdued, drawing blood from my upper lip, nose, temple, and the back of my neck, coming quite close to blinding me in at least one of my eyes, which I’ve become almost certain was the aim of her attack. As I covered my face and pitched off my seat, something occurred to me.

Now my editors are becoming concerned as they always do when I am approaching my word limit and have not yet come anywhere near anything resembling a point. Well, fuck them. I come to my point now not because they want me to, but simply because I have arrived at it.

The point is that I have now realized that I am a cat person in the same capacity that I am a people person. I like them, they are very nice and often fun to spend time with, but some of them are just assholes.

Sometimes nature and nurture and genetics and all the rest of it just goes flying out the window, and a cat or a dog or a human being is just a douche bag, just because.

And I’d like all of you out there in the internet to take this into consideration when you think about having children. Despite all you do, regardless of the upbringing you provide for your child, you may just end up with an asshole. Just because.

Couples are often seduced by the idea of the first few years when they think about parenting. They think of that squishy little amalgam of DNA, that sparkly eyed creature that is part me, part you, and then the decision is made. We’re having a baby. Oh, we just must.

The key to responsible planned parenthood is to think beyond the first eight years. This is typically when a child gains a sense of identity and confidence, when it begins to really develop its own character. Unfortunately, they’re still novices at having a personality, and they aren’t very good at it. Ask any grade four teacher. Nine-year-olds are, with nearly no exceptions, complete dickheads. They wipe their noses on your shirt and call you things like “poop nose” and make farting noises with their armpits. It sucks. Nine-year-olds suck.

Sometimes they get better. But sometimes they don’t. Don’t even start me on teenagers. And then you’re stuck with this little thing running around your house, wrecking your things and eating your food and making noise just for the sheer hell of it. And you can’t turn it out of the house or hit it or drown it because that’s frowned upon.

So just consider it. I feel like people thinking about parenthood think about the joys of coddling a baby, of throwing the baseball around in the back yard with their son or watching their daughter’s dance recital, the pride of seeing them graduate and get married. But before you dive into all that wonderful stuff, think long and hard about the possibility of your child turning out, for no particular reason, to be an asshole. It happens every god damn day.

And just like an asshole cat, you’re stuck with an asshole child until they turn eighteen. One dies and the other moves out and only calls when they want more of your money.

And when you let it off, will you make sure it’s in a soundproof container?

By Daniel Ian Taylor

I don’t go to McDonalds much anymore. I realise why they felt that they had to add a healthy smart choice value menu or whatever the hell it is. But it’s just not McDonalds anymore.

When I want a wholesome sandwich that is low in trans fats and carbs and all the other things I have never understood or cared about, I’ll go to Quiznos or Subway or some mom and pop operation that could actually give a good goddamn about my patronage. When I want to knock a week off the end of my life, spare my future self a few thousand raspy breaths through the ol’ oxygen mask, I go to McDonalds.

Or, I went to McDonalds, at least a lot more often than I do now. After decades of delicious deferred euthanasia, suddenly they’ve decided that they want to help me, they want to make sure I’m taking care of myself. Or they at least want to give me the choice. They’ve still got all of the old standbys I’ve always loved alongside their fiesta wraps and croissandwiches and alfalfa salads, or whatever. I don’t even know what’s on there anymore. I turn away in disgust when I look at today’s McDonalds menu.

You’ve lost your way, McDonalds. You were so caught up in your profits and your billions and billions served that you strayed from the path you were forging so courageously. It could have been you. You could have held my hand as I stepped through this veil of tears. Now it’s going to be DuMaurier and Canada’s Wonderland funnel cakes and loose women.

I wanted it to be you.

Oh well. Not all is lost. Though no longer my sweet angel of mercy, some of the things I’ve always loved about McDonalds have yet to fall silently into the fog of avarice and healthy living.

They still sell chicken nuggets by the 20 pack. They still make me feel smarter than I really am as they furrow their brows and struggle with how much change they’re supposed to give me from a ten. They still put bacon on whatever the hell I want them to, so long as I’ve got the extra 80 cents.

And they still have the Play Place.

My sweet lord. I fucking love it. They could go vegan and I’d still eat at McDonalds if they kept the Play Place. It’s just so perfect. Apartheid for kids and families. Give them a bunch of tubes and slides and little bridges to run around on, some tables for their parents to sit at and eat and talk about how bloody brilliant their kids are. And then seal it off with 2 inches of soundproof glass. My heart swells just thinking about it.

This is what I’ve been talking about, people. This is how our lives should be all the time. This is Progress. A big aquarium for children, one they’ll absolutely beg to go into. When they terraform the moon and only let MENSA members up there and weapons are forbidden and disease and sadness are but a fading memory, there’s going to be a children’s section with a low-gravity ball pit.

Nowadays they’ve even got videogame consoles in there for the little hamsters. All the better. A bunch of little shoeless zombies all lined up in a row, tilting their heads and lolling their eyes, completely sedated.

But the best part (and regardless of how healthy they manage to make a double big mac with cheese and double extra bacon, this will bring me back to McDonalds time and time again), is when it is “Time To Go.”

It’s always “Please Mommy, just five more minutes. Just five more.” I remember it well. I was the king of five more minutes. But sooner or later the good times have to end and you have to go back to your home that doesn’t have a Gamecube or a plastic slide or a carousel. Some children can handle this with grace and dignity. They put their shoes back on, and they get in the van and they go away. I like that.

But some kids will whine and scream and throw their French fries against the glass. They’ll run and hide in the tube slide, kicking at their father’s face as he tries to wrangle the little buggers with arms that just aren’t quite long enough. They’ll throw their shoes into the ball pit thinking that this will save them, that maybe they can live here forever if their mother can’t find their shoes, eating fries and McFlurries for breakfast every day.

And this is why when I go to McDonalds, I sit facing the glass at the closest table I can get, hauling on a litre-and-a-half of fountain coke, jawing mouthfuls of the biggest, greasiest hamburger that my health-conscious friends behind the counter will allow me to purchase, pounding my fist on the table and crushing the two apple pies I’ve ordered for dessert, laughing harder and louder than you’d think a man of my size is capable of.

Correct Change, Hooters, Spam, and All-Nighters.

Using correct change By Miles Baker

When I buy anything I try to give exact change, or as close as I can get.

You’ll often see me ahead of you in line scrounging through my right pocket, failing, scrounging through my left pocket, fumbling with my keys and then finally producing a dog’s breakfast of change. Then I’ll count it and hand it to the person behind the counter.

Every now and then I’ll make an error in the math and the cashier will have to ask me for more change. And then the process repeats. I’ll do this for as long as it takes so that in the next place I won’t have any change and won’t have to fumble with it then. I’m sorry to those behind me, but I don’t want to have a leaf, sail boat, or beaver in my pocket. I’ll take that moose because I need him for laundry — but that’s it. So be patient with me, I’ll be patient with you when you use your debit card to pay for your Honey Nut Cheerios.

Hooters By Rebecca Harrison Sure, it’s kinda sexist and demeaning and the food’s not very good – hell, they managed to ruin a garden salad – but Hooters has a certain je ne sais quoi.

Where else can you have your 20-person reservation lost because “the girls just aren’t that smart”? Or get the ever-classy chicken wing and champagne dinner? And where else can you throw a party that makes the majority of your guests wildly uncomfortable?

Hooters, that’s where!

For a kitschy good time and 150 free chicken wings (if they lose your birthday reservation) nothing beats Hooters. Hoot, hoot!

Spam By Katherine Chung

I first became aware of food-stigma in grade school, with the discovery that SPAM was a much-mocked and maligned meat. Or “meat”, as the joke seemed to be.

This created a problematic conflict of desires in my ten-year-old eyes, so conscious of shame and obstacles to social acceptability. Definitely not a stranger at my family’s dinner table, eating SPAM was a heartily-enjoyed experience. And we’re not even talking real SPAM here – a gastronomic delight that I didn’t try until years later – we’re talking inferior knock-offs. Yes, there are knock-off brands of the infamous SPAM, I kid you not. KLIK, KAM, PREM, Fancy Feast. It goes on.

Although it’s the namesake of junk email, this affordable tinned meat really isn’t so bad, and has been commercially successful for forty years to boot. Its ingredient list boasts surprisingly few basic items: pork, ham, spices, water, and sodium nitrite. (The latter keeps pork products pink, and you don’t want to know what colour the meat would turn otherwise!) How can I turn my nose up at that when I am a self-professed lover of ground beef and hotdogs? And even though I don’t generally admit to this liking of SPAM (until now!), there are many that do. There is an entire website that suggests that I am not so alone.

And so, in writing this to the world, I have publicly come to a full-circle re-acceptance of this food, and can freely carry the Monty Python banner of “SPAM, SPAM, wonderful SPAM!!!”

Staying Up All Night By Dan Taylor

The first time I got insomnia I was six years old. My father set me up on the couch with a pile of blankets and a video of the surf on the beach that he bought when we went to Florida the previous winter. “It’s soothing,” he said. “You’ll be asleep in no time.” I sat there and watched that tape six times.

Left to my own devices and no schedule, my sleep pattern always migrates from about 4 am to 2 pm, but even so I get unstoppable bouts of insomnia about twice a year. Sometimes it’s stress, sometimes it’s because I’ve quit smoking. Sometimes I just don’t know, and at this point I don’t really care. I’ve gotten used to it. God help me, I even enjoy it.

I get a lot more done during the night, it’s peaceful, and it’s somehow reassuring to know you’re experiencing a part of the day that everyone else is sleeping through. Drifting off to sleep as the sun rises, I can’t help but think to myself “Hey man, I’m living the best part of life.”

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, that shit will fuck you up! Having renounced recreational drug use as The Parasail of the Foolish Man, 2-3 days of insomnia is about as messed up as I can get without a litre of Jack Daniels’. And it’s completely free! I don’t even bother with valerian root or Sleep-Eze D anymore. Bring it on, Endless Night. This kite’s gonna soar!

On Dressing the Child.

By Daniel Ian Taylor

I’ve gotten to the age now where I can ask my father the questions that I was once afraid to ask. I was once too young, not yet ready to hear the answers, afraid to know such things. But now I am ready.

Did you love mom? Was I planned? Is Susan really your favourite or is it secretly me?

Even now, with a hardened heart of accrued disappointment and collected tobacco residue, I am sometimes unprepared for what he says. One Christmas Eve, when I was sentimental for years gone by and just a little drunk, I asked him what one memory, what single moment he would take with him from this life when the time came. Rest assured that it was so romantic, so idyllic, so positively filthy that my fingers shy away from the keys that might spell it out.

Other answers are less troubling, but no less difficult to hear. Perhaps because the answers are just what I expected them to be, and hearing them aloud finalizes it in my mind, makes it so much harder to swath myself in velvety lies and ignorance.

Dad? Why did you let mom dress me like that?

Oh, Son. Why do you think? Because I didn’t care!

That is a hard thing to know: That someone can love you enough to die for you, love you enough to set aside their own plans to raise you and guide you through life, yet not quite enough to make sure you don’t look like a complete fool as you trundle off into the world in a sailor suit your mother bought at Sears. I guess all of our fathers fail us sooner or later.

I often lay blame on mothers in this column, haranguing them for letting their children run amok at the hair salon, for hauling strollers into places they ought not to go, for screaming and crying and wringing their hands when the child inevitably wanders off and disappears into the crowded mall. You should have been watching him, you negligent twit.

But I call on you fathers now, for the sake of the children, for the sake of me having to look at them: Help dress the poor little buggers. Help pick out their clothes. Your wife or common-law partner or regrettably-fertile girlfriend is only going to mess it all up; it’s built into her.

Now I’m no Woman Biologist — and never once have I claimed that I might be — so I won’t offer any kind of theory as to why this happens. Is it instinctual? Is it hormonal? Ovarian? I can’t say for sure. I don’t even want to look it up for fear of there being diagrams.

All I know is that once the miracle of child-birthing has occurred, a perfectly normal woman, one with an otherwise keen sense of fashion and the ability to discern smart decisions for complete idiocy, loses a part of her mind.

Somewhere a gear slips off its axle, a circuit breaker flips, a spring buckles and goes sailing out her ear and into the wastebasket. A tiny man with a tiny clipboard and a tiny crowbar saunters into her head and starts pulling wires out of the walls.

So I’m going over your heads this time, ladies. If you’ve yet to have children, anything I tell you now will cease to make any sense at all once your first child is born. And if you’ve already had kids, it’s too late. You’re probably reading this as you bounce a toddler wearing a “Mommy’s Little Man” sweater on your knee. Your brain is probably systematically filtering my words right now in such a way that you don’t even realize that I’m talking about you. You probably think you’re reading the latest gossip from tinsel town. Enjoy that. I’ve got work to do.

So, Fathers of the World! Hear me! I know that you probably don’t care. I wouldn’t either. But you have to. You just have to. You have to put your foot down about the overalls with the little button-flap bum. You have to make a stand against the iron-on t-shirt transfer of grandma and grandpa. This is your legacy we’re talking about. Do you want a Barney and Friends advertisement slapped across the chest of your legacy? Do you?

And for those of you who leave the house dressed exactly the same as your son in those little matching outfits, right down to the identical ball caps and sunglasses:

I forgive you.

I know that wasn’t your idea. I know you were just sitting in the kitchen, minding your own business, reading the newspaper on a Saturday morning or a Sunday afternoon when you heard the car door slam and your wife appeared in the doorway with Winners bags hanging from each arm. I know how you felt as she crowed brainlessly “Look what I found for you and Joshua!” I know how much you hated her in that moment.

And I know how your heart sank as you turned away in disgust and caught your own reflection in the coffee tin on the counter, saw the thinning hair and the deepening grooves that time was carving across your forehead. I know you realized that you couldn’t go back to the bar scene like that, you couldn’t start doing your own laundry again, you couldn’t keep track of all the expiration dates in even the most modest of bar fridges. As much as you wanted to, I know you couldn’t turn on her like the rabid dog that you might once have been in such a moment, you couldn’t list all the hellish tortures you would prefer to putting that on and taking Josh to the park.

But it’s not too late. You can fix it. You can leave something behind that you aren’t ashamed of, something that isn’t ashamed of itself. Go get the clothes. You know what you have to do.

Modest Mouse
We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
Epic Records, 2007

By Dan Taylor

Ask Not for Whom the Brock Yowls

Nobody can tell me that someday the carbon from which my body sprang will be returned to the soil of this temporary and fleeting planet like Isaac Brock.

Maybe it’s the epically-philosophical scope of the lyrics set against Brock’s undeniably danceable guitar riffs. Maybe it’s off-kilter wisdom he doles out in the choppy shouts and barks that make him sound like a lost Muppets character. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s been doing this for five albums now, because I get a sense of permanence from the consistently-ephemeral nature of his poetry.

Somehow it’s all so reassuringly bleak. It’s “Dust in the Wind” without the suck.

We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, Modest Mouse’s follow-up to the unexpected commercial catapult Good News for People Who Love Bad News, is admittedly more of the traditional fare from the Washington quintet-turned-sextet (Johnny Marr sat in on the album and is now apparently a full band member), but hell if I care. Modest Mouse is one of my “roast beef” bands; I’ll eat leftovers for a week so long as they keep dressing it up a little differently every night.

The lead single, “Dashboard”, the most immediately-infectious of the new album’s 13 tracks (that’s what a lead single is, right?), was an early indication of how I would digest the disc when I heard it on the radio a couple of weeks back.

Modest Mouse has either ratcheted their production values even tighter, thought our intrepid young hero (Me), or this poppy new band with everything to prove sounds a hell of a lot like Modest Mouse.

Melodically and rhythmically, the album also seems to be the logical extension of where the band has been headed over its last few albums. It’s a little glossier, a little cleaner, but it’s clearly more of the same. On my first full listen through the record there were several instances in which I found myself mentally overdubbing lyrics and melodies from past Modest Mouse songs over the new tracks, which is a total asshole thing to do but I’m nothing to you people if I’m not honest.

All in all, I just don’t care. The band’s got a wonderfully distinctive sound, unusual lyrics that are equal parts of catchy and profound, and they give hope to homely indie rock kids everywhere. I’m not really going to complain that they sound like themselves, because they sound really fucking good.

Now that I’ve settled into the album some, I find myself coming back to certain tracks more than others. “Dashboard” drags me kicking and screaming and shaking my ass out of bed to get ready for work, “Parting of the Sensory” opens with me gloomily drinking coffee and ends with me dancing around with unwieldy fervor and coffee stains all over my shirt, and “Little Motel” tucks me in at night.

Maybe I’m just not deeply-rooted enough in the band’s old material to despise the new, since I only really picked up on them as The Moon and Antarctica was priming the music world for their impending launch to fame and fortune. I’m sure there’s some dude in Washington who went to all their hole-in-the-wall shows back in 1994 and hates them for what they’ve made of themselves, crying and jerking off to “Dramamine” for the 900th time. But it ain’t me. Not this time.

Of course, this wouldn’t be a review of the new Modest Mouse album without commenting on Johnny Marr’s contributions.

They’re good.

I don’t know; he’s Johnny Marr! He plays guitar very well, and he’s got a very different style from Brock’s angry chord-wrenching. Marr is a fantastic sideman and composer, the greatest Garfunkel since Garfunkel. It works.

Long story made short, I think you’ll like this album if you’re not from Washington, or so indie rock you could just die. The band’s got a broad new audience and old fans to please, and We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank does as well with this impossible task as anyone could expect. Four MONDOs out of five, or whatever unit it is we’re using these days to gauge the empirical value of art.

In Interview; candid, a little strung-out and slightly violent.

By Daniel Ian Taylor

Haligonian songstress Rebekah Higgs is touring her way ever-inland, introducing old followers and new fans to the catchy electro-folk music that has brought her fame and friendship across the East coast. Rebekah took some time this week to talk with MONDO about her new album, her cross-Canada tour, and which Canadian musician she’d most like to force-feed a sandwich and then punch in the stomach.

MONDO: Your new album is an interesting mix of acoustic and electronic elements. How did you arrive at this decision? How do you decide when to flesh out a song and when to keep it more organic?
Rebekah Higgs: The style in which we recorded the album really allowed for a lot of creative freedom on my part. Each day Thomas (Rider Payne) and I sat down with a track to work on, so each track became a little artistic project on its own. Because we didn’t have any specific ideas about the tracks before the day in which we sat down with the track, we were able to just do what sounded and felt right in the moment.

MONDO: You work in a genre where you either have to share a big part of yourself with complete strangers or get the hell off the stage. Is this difficult? Is there a division between Stage Rebekah and Everyday Rebekah? Would you avoid writing about an experience or person or moment even though it would make a kickass song?
RH: I don’t hold back when I write, and I have never been very good at separating a stage Rebekah from an everyday Rebekah. I think being honest and genuine on stage is what captivates my audience and what intrigues the listener on the record.

In my side trip-hop project, Ruby Jean and the Thoughtful Bees, I have built up a little alias for myself, taking on my grandmothers’ names Ruby and Jean and creating a stage name. I love performing as Ruby Jean and as Rebekah, but in both projects I let the music bring out what it will in me. Being real and present in each song allows the audience in.

MONDO: Canadian music still has its Celine Dions and Nickelbacks to live down. If there was a famous Canadian artist or group you could get in a dark alley and take a swing at — closed fist, one good shot in the stomach, no consequences — who would it be?
RH: I wouldn’t necessarily like to hit someone, but I would love to shove some food down Kalan Porter’s throat. He looks like he hasn’t eaten since he won Canadian Idol.

MONDO: ANSWER THE QUESTION!!!
RH: …

MONDO: …
RH: Fuck, where do I start! Nelly Furtado, Avril Lavigne, Kalan Porter, Eva Avila, Hedley. Need I go on?

MONDO: No, that will do nicely. As a touring musician, you get to see a lot more of Canada than most Canadians (excluding truck drivers and Rick Mercer), and you get to do it in a context that is both professional and social. Where does this rate on your “why I love my job” scale, and how has it changed how you perceive Canada?
RH: By the end of my tour in December my body was rejecting me. I broke out in a rash from sleeping next to a bunny, then my neck seized up from couches and lugging my 26-pound Gretsch guitar on the public transit in Vancouver. Although my tours are far from glamourous, for some reason as soon as I get home I can’t wait to get back on the road again. Being able to travel so frequently definitely ranks at the top of my list.

Touring hasn’t changed my perception of Canada; it has just confirmed what I already knew and love about this country. Our country is built on hospitality, and musicians have embraced this quality; I can tour solo and pick up a drummer or a bass player to fill in. There is still this overwhelming element of “I do this for the love of music” that keeps us all going.

MONDO: As you get farther from the coast, does it change how you approach a crowd you’re performing for? Are Toronto shows a tough sell compared to other crowds?
RH: As much as I love the Halifax music scene, I thoroughly enjoy experiencing other music communities and playing to a new crowd. The last time we played in Toronto for Wavelength, my drummer didn’t even make it past Fredericton. He started coughing up blood and we spent the night in the emergency room watching all the late night party incidents come through the hospital doors.

Despite this, my experiences in Toronto have all been great. I hope that people will leave feeling like they experienced the music with us, that the music was moving and challenging and enjoyable. I never perform the same way twice, so there is a component to the music that can only be experienced live.

Changing hearts and minds with the phonetic alphabet for a life you never imagined.

By Daniel Taylor
Illustrations by Dara Gold

In this modern world of brittle mobile phone connections, strange accents and slurred words, a little clarification is often needed. Sometimes, spelling it out to someone just isn’t enough, because even the letters you’re saying aren’t at all clear to them, and you have to remove yourself yet another degree from what you were trying to say in the first place.

Enter the great clarifier of characters, the phonetic alphabet. Many people use given names (M like Mary, D like David, etc), others use the Greek alphabet (Beta, Gamma, etc).

Perhaps the most popular and widely-accepted set is the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, which is extremely effective and a lot of fun to use. You can almost feel the air whiz of the bullets flying past your ear as you yell “Foxtrot! Echo! Tango! Alfa!” into the phone while ordering a pizza.

I have done quite a few phone service jobs in my day, and I’ve heard as many phonetic alphabets as I have complaints about cell phone rates. Everybody’s got one, and some of them are absolutely lousy, clearing nothing at all up.

“B as in Boy,” a woman said to me the other day, at which I wondered “Couldn’t that be a lot of things? Couldn’t the words be confused just as easily as the letters? B as in Boy? Or C as in Coy? Or T as in Toy? Or P as in Poi?”

Today, a man said “B as in bee” to me. I had to laugh to keep from crying.

To this end, I offer the phonetic alphabet that I have developed over several years in thankless, low-paying, demeaning, soul-crushing phone jobs. I use it in my professional life, my everyday wheelings and dealings, my prank phone calls, and it is the best there is.

Not only have I managed to suss out a set of infallible words, words that don’t sound like any other, I have also made a point of selecting words that are truly excellent in their own right. They aren’t just good words to distinguish postal codes and funnily-spelled foreign names, they’re just good words, words that I will never get tired of saying, that people will never get tired of hearing. These words that I say to complete strangers don’t just make me better understood, they make me happier.

And so, Gentle Reader: Here is a present that will ease your troubled life and warm your soggy heart. It is my life’s work. I give it to you because you are special, because I love you, because you are The One.

The Taylorian Phonetic Alphabet

Astroboy – An android made in the image of his creator’s dead son, but with rockets for feet. One of the great cornerstones of animation’s Golden Era, the 1980s, and a genuinely ghastly premise for a children’s show.

Balaclava – A toque-mask combination that is most often worn while snowmobiling or while carrying dollar-sign bags out of a bank.

Comatose – A sustained period of involuntary unconsciousness. Usually occurs after an event of extreme stress or injury, or when an actress on All My Children becomes greedy and demands a raise.

Dolphinarium – An aquarium exclusively for dolphins or porpoises. Allows for one of the great exclamations of our time, “To the Dolphinarium!”

Eucalyptus – Used in cough syrups and lip balms, and absolutely crucial in keeping koala bears, which are otherwise violent, grumpy, dangerous little buggers, in a state of adorable sedation.

Frankenstein Monster – I sometimes just use “F as in Frankenstein”, and sometimes go all out for “F as in Frankenberry”, but I find “F as in Frankenstein Monster” to be a delightful mix of effective and awkward.

Grappling Hook – Probably the only thing I have consistently asked for for Christmas every year since I was six but have never received.

Hang-Glider – A semi-cool form of transportation that becomes totally awesome when equipped with grappling hooks.

Intoxicating – Calvin Klein’s Escape and Jack Daniel’s Sour Mash, the converse pincers that I use to pluck women from a crowded bar like stuffed toys in a claw-grab arcade game: awkwardly and with frustrating, repeated failure and shouted swear words.

Jolly Roger – A no-contest winner for best flag ever, anywhere.

Kaleidoscope – Probably the only thing I have gotten every Christmas since I was six but have never asked for.

Lollipop Guildsman – An official member of the Lollipop Guild. I have never seen that movie and am now too old to watch it with any measure of enjoyment, and many people find this appalling and sad. Fuck’em.

Mastodon – The Cadillac of elephants, and at the top of my list of “When they finally get their shit together with cloning, I am totally going to eat a _________”.

Narcolepsy – A lot of fun to say and offers endless comedic scenarios, but actually a very grave medical condition with few viable cures.

Orwellian – Five years of University education in beautiful, unnecessary action. When someone had a postal code with an “O” in it I shivered a little with suppressed glee because in a minute I’d be able to show them that I am smarter than they are, even though they are the ones ordering the Chinese food and I’m the one entering things into a computer and hoping for an immediate, quick, unexpected, slightly-exotic death.

Penny-farthing – The old-time bikes with the big wheel, and another mode of transport that is improved dramatically by adding grappling hooks.

Quantum Leap – The show I am most afraid to admit I love, but am always surprisingly congratulated by others when I admit that I do.

Roundhouse Kick – By far the best of all the kicks.

Spider-man – I don’t love him as much as some do, but there will always be a place in my heart for a sarcastic geek who sometimes kind of abuses his powers for fun and profit.

Tomfoolery – A great word that is simultaneously well- and poorly-chosen. When my father would yell at my friends and I for breaking something or falling on something or falling on something and breaking it, his shouts of “Will you quit your god damned tomfoolery” would only incite further giggles from us, which, at the age of eight, are impossible to cease or even stifle, no matter how hard someone is hitting you.

Ukulele – Probably the best Christmas present I didn’t ask for but got anyway. Unlimited powers for quiet beauty and loud annoyance.

Vendetta – V used to be for Ventriloquist, but comic books change everything if you let them.

Winchester Rifle – Hands down, my weapon of choice for a zombie apocalypse or just swaggering around looking so fucking cool.

X-Ray Specs – When used in combination with grappling hooks, a penny-farthing and a Winchester rifle, people will make fun of you and then really, really wish that they hadn’t.

Yorkshire Pudding – The second-best thing about having roast beef for dinner.

Zeppelin – Another ridiculous mode of transportation, but strangely badass if painted the right colour.

There it is. If you stayed until the end, you now have at your disposal one of the greatest tools imaginable for making a shitty job a lot of fun. Use it wisely.

The monkey from Outbreak is running around the grocery store in a baby blue snowsuit and nobody seems to care but me.

By Daniel Ian Taylor

The woman who sits in the cubicle next to mine at work has two children, and she is annoyed… No…

No, that’s not the word.

She is genuinely incensed, livid, horrified that I have taken it upon myself to write a parenting column, having never been a parent myself. She thinks it’s disrespectful to parents, children, and the time-honoured social mechanism of The Family. She thinks I’m shooting off my mouth in directions I have never been. She thinks I am an irresponsible smartass with no right to be saying the things that I am saying. And she is probably right, but I am never going to let on that way.

“So we’re just supposed to carry the children everywhere we go?!” she exclaims, indignant and bewildered by my opinions on strollers.

“Yes!” I shout, accidentally knocking my stapler onto the floor as I throw my hands in the air, drawing frightened looks from around the office. “There should be some kind of obstacle course or something, and if you can’t make it through with a 60-pound bag of flour in your arms, then you don’t get a parenting licence and you’re not allowed to have kids! And it should be long, like it should take at least six hours to go through.”

She did not like this one bit, but there are a lot of things that we don’t agree on. She likes the terrifyingly warm weather we’ve been having lately, because it is easier to start her car and she doesn’t have to shovel her driveway or walk her dog in the snow.

I tell her that of course she likes it, because she isn’t going to have to live through the next 50 years, with the peak oil crisis and the melted icecaps and the nomadic bands of warring tribes and the extinction of polar bears and pandas and oh, what the hell, probably all the bears.

And she of course gets angry that I presume her old enough to not have another 50 years left in her, forgetting all about the bears and the world her children will have to grow old in, and making it about her and how she still looks good for her age and will live forever. I think that this is a predominantly female characteristic, this getting mad about being seen as old, but I would never say this aloud to her, because it is an opinion-based, gender-driven claim. And that is wrong.

She does not show me the same courtesy, however, and goes on and on about the things that I do and say and about how they are all caused by the fact that I am a man. And that is why I feel no compunction about lampooning her on the internet like this.

You shouldn’t have made those sexist comments about me in the workplace, Sandra.

For example, this week I have been quite sick with a very bad cold that I caught from — you guessed it — children. And I have been, I will admit, sniffling and sneezing and carrying on about how badly I feel. And this is, apparently, for no other reason than that I am a typical male. Evidently only men complain about their cold and flu symptoms. It’s a proven scientific fact. It’s in any medical text book worth a good god damn. Look it up!

And so. This week I’ve been sitting there, snuffling quietly and mourning the dearly departed good health of my poor little self, asking why oh why oh why, but every once in a while my sore throat and aching muscles stir a great anger in me, and I lash out violently at the thought of the grubby bastard that gave me this godless ailment. Sometimes you can pinpoint the exact moment that you contract a cold, and you think to yourself, “There it is, I’m going to be sick for a week now.”

Long story short, a child looked me straight in the face and sneezed.

So, every now and then, my coughs and groans give way to the grinding of gritted teeth and I spit angry words at the computer screen in front of me and Sandra is scarcely sure that she heard the words “filthy little fuckin’ asshole” float over the cubicle wall.

And she can’t help but ask “What is it now?” and that is all the invitation that I require to let loose on her, drawing the frightened looks from around the office that I am getting more and more frequently these days:

“It’s those wretched little fucks that gave me this awful disease!” I growl. “I hate them! I hate them all so much! Running all over the god damn place with their outstretched arms and slobbering mouths and their lolling, unseeing eyes! Like a bunch of little fucking Frankenstein monsters! Like a bunch of little Voltrons!”

“Who?”

“The big robot from Power Rangers!” I paraphrase this lazily, not wanting to explain the historical ins and outs of television shows involving robots that form together to make bigger robots to a 40-year-old woman. “And the germs are the people inside, working the levers and buttons and steering the kids wherever they want them to go! They’re like all-terrain assault vehicles for viruses to ride around in! That’s all children are!”

“They’re little people!”

“That need to be quarantined! For god’s sakes, you’re a mother! DO something about this!”

“Oh, so we’re supposed to keep the kids from leaving the house from October to April just so you don’t get sick?”

“Ideally, yes! Or at least contain them when they go out in public, so they won’t sneeze in my face at point blank range and wipe their gummy little hands all over the food in the produce aisle!”

“Like a bubble?”

“Or a hamster ball! Or just cover their hands and faces with plastic bags or something!”

“You want to tape a plastic bag over childrens’ heads?”

“If you’re not going to teach them to contain their interminable oozing? Yes! Yes I do!”

And that is pretty much that, and I am more or less left with my sniffling and muttering and occasional flurry of angry words, and Sandra says nothing more to me that day, except that I have a lot of deep-seated issues, which I’m sure she thinks is a typically male characteristic.

An interview with The Phonemes.

By Daniel Ian Taylor

In the bewildering world of Language, a phoneme is the subtle addition of a single letter that can affect a drastic change in the meaning of a word or sentence. Observe: “My ex-wife is going to kill me! I was supposed to send her my monkey, but I lost it at the racetrack.”
Here in Toronto, The Phonemes are gaining momentum with harmony-driven songs that share the same quiet understatement and stunning impact of the band’s syntactical namesake. Soon to release some new material through the Blocks Recording Club, The Phonemes took some time to discuss their band, their city and their plans for the future.

MONDO: For many a reader, this will be an introduction. How would you like to introduce the band?
Magali Meagher: Introducing Matias Rozenberg on drums and details, Liz Forsberg on bass and books and Magali Meagher on guitar and grammar. Sometimes we have special guests like Shayna on saw, James or Paige on drums, Bob on accordion or Owen on violin. As Cab Williamson once so eloquently put it, “The Phonemes are great.”

MONDO: How did the band come about in the first place?
MM: I lived in a warehouse space at King and Portland that was home to lots of cultural and political activity. Treasa Levasseur, who was my neighbour, organized a show that featured women musicians called Uteronomy. Matias saw me play and afterwards we started playing in my kitchen, he on a tiny palm-sized cymbal, and me on guitar. Liz and I have known one another since high school in Guelph and a year or so after casually playing with Matias, I asked Liz if she’d be interested in playing with me too.

MONDO: After playing in a larger band like the Hidden Cameras, how does playing with The Phonemes compare? Do you take more control over the songs and their arrangements, or is it still collaborative?
MM: My experience of the Hidden Cameras was that a veneer of collaboration existed only in the sense that Joel appropriated the combined energies and contributions of the members of his band and went out of his way to take credit for all of it. Compensation was forced and communication was stunted. Having said this, I think that being responsible for a band can be really hard, especially when your fear of having people mad at you dominates the way you operate. I’m definitely not immune to this. I’m afraid and nervous most of the time. It’s really difficult to negotiate competing needs and desires between friends. I write a song on guitar — melody and lyrics — and then bring it to the group. Once Liz and Matias listen to the song, the arrangements are a collaborative effort. Liz and Matias write their own parts.
Matias Rozenberg: Magali is a communicative, straight-up, compassionate band leader who takes responsibility over her own words and actions.

MONDO: How does the city come into the equation? Are you in Toronto specifically to play music, or do you play music and just happen to be here?
MR: My parents brought me here from Argentina as a kid and I never left.
MM: I came to Toronto for Casa Loma.
Liz Forsberg: Our unrehearsed aesthetic is the result of a lack of free basements to practice in.
MM: Yes. So if we ever sound bad it’s TORONTO’s fault. Seriously. I mean… we should probably get some people together and organize a viable shared rehearsal space. I think this sort of thing happened in Spain once. Of course, there is always that dream of the enchanted, all encompassing building: venue, recording/rehearsal spaces, art studio, roof top garden, water slide, gelatin-free jujube factory.

MONDO: Do you have a specific timeline or plans for this band?
MM: We’ve got a record coming out (likely in February) on Blocks and I will be playing those songs during a spring tour in western Canada and the U.S.A. with Jason (the dad in the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players) and Bob Wiseman. We’re also recording with Steve Kado in a few weeks for a 7″ that will be coming out as part of the Tomlab Alphabet series.

MONDO: Are there any milestones or goals where you’ll feel you’ve made it, or done what you’ve set out to do?
LR: We’ll be happy when Mini-pops puts out a version of our EP.
MM: This would be sooo good. Channel 4, are you reading this?!

MONDO: From what I’ve heard of your music, it focuses more on melody and vocal harmony than filling a room with noise. Does a smaller venue suit you as a band?
MM: I was chatting about this with Steph, who does projections for Final Fantasy, after a show we played in Edmonton. We were playing a large campus bar and the feeling of the place was distinct before, during and after the show, but it was still the same room. This is part of what is both exciting and terrifying about performing — it can be unpredictable once a space is filled with people — so it isn’t inherently about the space but the weather systems that pass through it.

MONDO: What about the show itself? What would you like people to wander away from your performances saying to themselves?
MM: Hopefully they will have received the spirit of Zoltanius in their hearts, the wisdom of Toofgog and the courage of Lakaria and will pass these messages on to the rest of the residents of Tawrana.

MONDO: Uhh…. (backs out of the room)