Verb Issue S264 (Nov. 1-7, 2013)

Issue #264 – November 1 to November 7

arts

culture

music

saskatoon

+

iron steeds

Representing SK

at the bike polo world championships

VERY WE EE EK RE

PL

SK

EA

SE

Films reviewed

RE

F

Last Vegas + wadjda

H READ & S

A

Photo: courtesy of the artist

NEWs + Opinion

contents

agent of change Sgt. Ernie Louttit hangs up his badge 4-5 / Local

iron steeds One SK team’s journey to the bike polo world championships 6-7 / Local

fiber optic future Why municipal Wi-Fi is not the way to go. 8 / Editorial

On the cover:

matthew good

Back to basics. 16-17 / cover

comments Here’s what you had to say about a civic prayer policy. 10 / comments

Photo: courtesy of the artist

culture

Q + A with Paper lions Stripping away excess. 12-13 / Q + A

another side of belle plaine

This week we visit Nagoya

Search for artistic freedom. 14 / Arts

18 / Food + Drink

sushi done right

intestinal anarchy!

Music

Aka exhibit explores link between rationality and emotion. 15 / Arts entertainment

By Divine Right, Gentlemen Husbands + Nuela Charles. 19 / music

listings Live music listings for November 1 through November 9. 20 / listings

last vegas + wadjda

on the bus

Latest films reviewed. 22-23 / Film

Nightlife Photos

Games + Horoscopes

We visited Uncle Barley’s + JT’s.

Canadian criss-cross puzzle, horoscopes, and Sudoku. 31 / timeout

24-29 / Nightlife

verbnews.com @verbsaskatoon facebook.com/verbsaskatoon

Weekly original comic illustrations

by Elaine M. Will. 30 / comics

Editorial

ART & Production

Business & Operations

contact

Publisher / Parity Publishing Editor in Chief / Ryan Allan Managing Editor / Jessica Patrucco staff Writers / Adam Hawboldt + Alex J MacPherson

Design Lead / andrew yanko Designer / Bryce Kirk Contributing Photographers / Patrick Carley, Adam Hawboldt + Ishtiaq Opal

Office Manager / Stephanie Lipsit account Manager / nathan holowaty sales Manager / Vogeson Paley Financial Manager / Cody Lang

Comments / feedback@verbnews.com / 306 881 8372 advertise / advertise@verbnews.com / 306 979 2253 design / layout@verbnews.com / 306 979 8474 General / info@verbnews.com /

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Photo: Courtesy of adam hawboldt

Agent of Change

Sgt. Ernie Louttit hangs up his badge and writes a book by ADAM HAWBOLDT

L

ittle did Ernie Louttit know it, but when he walked into that arcade on a cold December day in 1990, a ball was set in motion that would forever mark his career and change the face of policing in Saskatchewan as we know it.

It was December 4th. A few days earlier, the frozen body of Neil

Stonechild had been found by two construction workers in a field on the outskirts of Saskatoon. When Louttit (who was a constable at the time) ran into Stonechild’s younger brother Jason at the arcade, the younger Stonechild told him he had information that his brother had been beaten and dropped off in that field.

Being a consummate professional, Louttit made a note of the meeting.

The time was 4:50pm. Later, after he returned to the police station, Louttit pulled the Stonechild file from Central Records and photocopied it.

“Something wasn’t right about the whole thing,” remembers Louttit.

“When I pulled the file and looked it over, instinctively, at some level, I knew something wasn’t right. It didn’t feel right. It didn’t read right. The theory that he was walking to the Correctional Centre, it made no sense to me.”

That’s not the only thing that made little sense. There was also the lack of effort made to find Stonechild’s baseball cap (which he usually wore), and one of his shoes, which was missing. On top of that, Louttit was curious about what efforts were being put into establishing Stonechild’s activities on the night he disappeared and what kind of follow-up (if any) was being done by the department.

He took his concerns to S/Sgt. Bruce Bolton of the Major Crimes Unit, who advised him to speak to Sgt. Keith Jarvis, the officer who had been assigned to investigate into the death of Neil Stonechild. But things didn’t go the way Louttit had hoped.

“I was really excited. There I was, going to see the head investigator and say, ‘Here! Look at this’,” says Louttit. “But when I did, I got shut down pretty hard.”

Told to leave matters alone, Louttis backed off and let others in the

department do their jobs. He figured an investigation would open soon into the death of Neil Stonechild.

It didn’t happen until later — much later.

For most people, writing a book can be a long and difficult process. Thinking of stories to tell, getting them onto the page, finding the right words, the right way to present ideas — for some people, writing is like sitting down to a computer and bleeding.

Ernie Louttit isn’t most people.

A member of the Saskatoon Police Service for 27 years, Louttit has seen his fair share of things. He was the first officer to the scene of more than 20 homicides. Needless to say, he has some stories.

“Not long ago I did a ride along with Dan Zakreski of CBC, and at the end Dan said to me,‘Ernie, you’re such a good storyteller,” says Louttit.

“I thought about that, and I guess over the years I had become quite a good storyteller. The guys [on the force] were always saying, ‘Sarge, you should write a book.’”

And last August, that’s exactly what Louttit started to do.

“I was out sitting on my back deck, my wife was working, and I thought, ‘What the heck,’ and just started writing,” says Louttit. “I can’t type for sh*t, so I wrote it by hand in a notebook.”

From that point on, every morning Louttit would wake up early and write Continued on next page »

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from 5-8am. Pretty soon, he had about 100 pages written.

“I started showing them to my kids,” says Louttit, “and they couldn’t believe all those things had happened to me. That’s when I thought, ‘Okay! It’s time to get serious about this and write a book.’ So I bought a Dragon, one of those electronic dictation devices, and got to work.”

The end result was a book, to be launched later this month, called Indian Ernie: Perspectives on Policing and Leadership.

The book (which covers topics from social problems to leadership to murder pursuits) begins when Louttit moved to Saskatchewan to start his policing career, at a time when the

it was over. No counseling, no one to talk to, no one from the administration asked if I was alright. It’s just the way things were back then. There were a lot of good guys, but that’s the way things were done. The departmental values were from the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s. After that incident, I knew I had a long road ahead of me.”

A bumpy road that would eventually smooth out, thanks, in part, to the Stonechild inquiry.

In March 2001, more than a decade after Neil Stonechild was found dead, Louttit was downstairs in his house, rifling through a barracks box from his army days. He’d long since forgot-

It was inevitable that the culture of police had to explode. ernie louttit

police service in Saskatchewan had an old-school, unbending mentality.

“I wanted to start there. And at the time, there was a certain element there that wasn’t willing to change, that was resistant to change,” says Louttit. “So I wanted to start off with something to illustrate that. There was this one particular incident, it came right down to the wire. I almost had to shoot this guy.

Afterwards, I was covered in blood, the guy was in jail. There was no help after

ten about the photocopy of the Stonechid file, but when he opened the box, there it was. “I didn’t know that every copy had been purged,” says Louttit.

“Death investigations are never supposed to be purged, though. Anyway, I brought the copy upstairs, contacted the RCMP, contacted our deputy chief, and turned it over to them.”

That copy would end up playing a key part in the Stonechild inquiry — a commission led by the Honour-

able Mr. Justice D.H. Wright that exposed a relationship between the Aboriginal community and the police in which the police, at the time, abused their power, ignored evidence, and dismissed crimes against the Aboriginal population.

“It was inevitable that the culture of police had to explode. It had to go.

We had to become more professional, more accountable, more thorough, more fair,” says Louttit, who retired last month. “And the Stonechild inquiry helped lead to that. It’s no consolation; what happened to Neil Stonechild should never have happened, but it did change a lot of things. After that, there was a huge recruiting drive for visible minorities and women. Once [police chief Clive] Weighill got here and reorganized the way we do business, it really empowered change.”

Change that was seen in police departments around the province.

“When those two guys were dismissed [Csts. Bradley Senger and Lawrence Hartwig], that sent a chill throughout every cop in Canada,” says Louttit. “That made a lot of police services pull up their socks and change the way they do things.”

And even though he insists he was just doing his job, Ernie Louttit can rest easy knowing he played no small part in bringing aboutthat transformation.

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Photo: Courtesy of mosquito

Iron steeds and hardcourt deeds Saskatchewan bike polo team exceeds expectations

by ADAM HAWBOLDT

W

hen you think about polo, what comes to mind?

Elegant horses? Manicured lawns?

Wealthy people watching from the sidelines as well-dressed players mounted on horseback smack a ball down a field looking to put it neatly between the pair of upright posts at either end for a goal?

For most people, that’s what comes to mind — polo in the traditional sense.

But sometime in the early 2000s that centuries-old sport spawned a new, urban counterpart.

They called it hardcourt bicycle polo. And it looked a lot different from its predecessor. Gone were the horses, dapper players and sprawling fields.

These were replaced by battered bicycles, and players in jean shorts and tattoos who wore skateboard helmets and ripped around tennis courts or roller hockey rinks, trying to score on miniature hockey nets.

What started as a game created by bored bicycle couriers on a court in Seattle soon blossomed from a fringe underground sport to an activity played in 300 cities in 30 countries around the world. Eventually the League of Bike Polo was created and crept its way into Saskatchewan, with teams springing up in places like Regina, Saskatoon and Moose Jaw.

“It started here about three summers ago,” says Will Robbins, a member of Mosquito — the League of Bike Polo team from Saskatoon. “And in the beginning, it wasn’t pretty. There was a lot of looking at the ball and crashing into things.”

Which is totally understandable.

Think about it. Not only do you have to learn the subtle trick of riding a bicycle in tight quarters — with only one hand — you also have to figure out how to control a ball with a mallet while moving and turning.

“The skills you need for bike polo aren’t really transferable from other sports,” explains Robbins. “Those two key aspects of it [bike riding and ball control], you just don’t have that combination in other sports. So in bike polo, you tend to have two main groups or types of players. There are people who are very good with bikes. They came from the bike courier world or from downhill racing, and have tremendous bike skills. It’s second nature for them to be able to wheelie, turn and hop and keep their balance with one hand.”

Robbins’ team, Mosquito, is quite the opposite.

The tennis court at Optimist Park is decommissioned. Some time ago, it was a freshly paved surface where balls

were volleyed back and forth over nets under the hot summer sun. Those days are gone now. The surface is cracked in places, heaving in others, and generally crumbling around the edges.

This is where Mosquito play practice and pick-up games, where they have developed their own unique brand of bike polo.

“Our style of play is distinct,” says Robbins. “Partly because, unlike other teams who find riding a bike second nature, we all played pretty competitive team sports — hockey, volleyball, basketball. So understanding positioning and sorting out strategies, offensively and defensively, came more natural to us.”

The other part of their distinct style was borne out of necessity.

“Maintenance hasn’t been done at the court in Optimist Park for a long time, it’s kind of falling apart. The ball doesn’t roll very smoothly, it bounces around. So we’ve tailored our style for that surface. We play a game that’s not so heavy on one player keeping possession, because it’s hard to keep the ball at speed when it threatens to always jump over your mallet. So we pass a lot more than other teams.”

The Mosquito team, true to their name, also pester opposing teams with an in-your-face forecheck. And whatever they are doing seems to be Continued on next page »

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working, because this year they did something wildly unexpected.

Last month, about 20 miles west of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, teams from around the world met to compete in the 2013 World Hardcourt Bike Polo Championship.

There were 20 teams from Europe in attendance, a smattering of teams from Asia and Australia and South America, and 20 teams from North America. Mosquito were one of those teams.

“In North America, the league is split up into eight different regions,” says Robbins. “We’re the northern

the top nine in Cascadia, that’d be a real accomplishment for us. But we realistically didn’t think it would happen for a couple of years.”

It didn’t take a couple of years.

In the Cascadia tournament Mosquito finished ninth, earning a berth in the North American championships in Minneapolis this summer.

“In a way, it was good that we qualified through Cascadia,” says Robbins, “because it’s hard. We had to play so many good teams all the way through that by the time we got to Minneapolis we were ready to play the best teams in North America.”

With their expectations already exceeded, Mosquito went into Min-

Not too shabby for a small club from Saskatchewan that practices on a crumbling court. Not too shabby, indeed.

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We’re a small club … playing against former world champions… will robbins

tip of the Cascadia region. The last stop. Historically, Cascadia has been the hardest region to qualify out of.

Vancouver, Portland, Seattle — all the clubs that sort of invented the modern game and have the most participants in North America — play in our region. We’re a small club, out in the middle of nowhere, playing against former world champions like Vancouver and Seattle. So at the start of the season we set a goal: if we could finish in

neapolis with nothing to lose and a world of experience to gain. And they ended up finishing ninth, again, and qualifying for the world championships in Florida.

“When we got there, we had a revised sense of where we stood,” says Robbins. “Our aim was to finish pretty modest. Just being there exceeded anything we could have thought, so we figured we’d be lucky to finish in the top 20. But we ended up finishing tied for 17th in the world.”

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Fiber optic future Our city should get over municipal Wi-Fi, and move on to a fiber optic system

E

arlier this month, SaskTel officially discontinued it’s Saskatchewan! Connected network, which provided Wi-Fi coverage to Moose Jaw, Prince Albert, Regina and Saskatoon.

And while SaskTel is in the process of analyzing what they call a “new leading-edge Wi-Fi service for SaskTel customers in high traffic zones,” we believe that municipal Wi-Fi has had its day in the sun. It’s time to move beyond crappy, intermittent Wi-Fi, and on to the future: better broadband speeds, courtesy of fiber optic cables. Not only does this improve consumers’ Internet experiences, it can also provide economic growth for our city.

Look, the problems with municipal Wi-Fi are myriad. According to SaskTel president and CEO Ron Styles, “the community industry is continuously driven by ever-evolving and improving technology and the current Saskatchewan! Connected service is slow and antiquated.”

That’s for sure. Anyone who has been downtown and tried to use the Wi-Fi service since the network was launched in 2007 knows this.

But instead of trying to replace it with something similar, which will lead to the same round of problems, we think this is a brilliant opportunity for the government to do the right thing and install a fiber optic network instead.

After all, there are certain limitations to municipal Wi-Fi that simply can’t be overcome. Most people in Saskatchewan already have access to the Internet, therefore, a new Wi-Fi network would only slightly expand Internet usage in our city. It’d be, as it was before, not much more than a supplement to household and mobile connections. What’s more, as the Saskatchewan! Connected network already proved, Wi-Fi networks have a way of quickly becoming outdated, slow and inferior to other alternatives already on the market.

That’s where fiber optics come in.

Not only is a fiber optic network the most secure kind of network out there, not only do they allow for longer transmission distances and better signal rates, fibre optic connectivity is also faster. After all, it runs at the speed of light — allowing for quick and instant data transmission.

But that’s not all. High-speed fiber optic networks are also proven to stimulate economic growth. Take the case of Chattanooga, Tennessee, for example. Since introducing its fiber optic service in 2012, entrepreneurs from California to Ireland have flocked to the city with the fastest Internet in America, generating $400 million in new business investments and directly creating somewhere in the neighbourhood of 6,000 new jobs. Oh, and a 2011 study conducted by Ericsson, a multinational technology company, found that doubling broadband speed in an economy increases GDP by 0.3 percent.

Another bonus? Fiber optic networks can serve as serious competition to de-facto monopolies in the broadband business. You want proof? Since Google Fiber entered into the Kansas City market, Time Warner Cable was forced to introduce a “turbo” service that doubled its current service to 100 Mbps. Moreover, when Google announced it was planning to take its fiber service to Austin, Texas, Time Warner Cable said it would match Google’s 1GB service while providing free Wi-Fi to existing customers downtown.

But fiber optics networks don’t come cheap. The total cost of the Chattanooga project came in at around $320 million. And sure, that’s a lot of money. But don’t fret.

If we look overseas to New Zealand, there’s a good public-private model that helps reduce taxpayer costs.

Basically, the NZ government built the network and provided incentives

for the internet service providers to invest in it, such as buying back the basic network connected to the homes. A model like this helped reduce up-front costs to investors, and allowed the government to recover costs and make fiber optics a reality.

It’s time we do the same. Instead of going back to the municipal WiFi well (and building yet another network that will probably become outdated before you know it), let’s take the lead and get our city on the fiber optic grid.

These editorials are left unsigned because they represent the opinions of Verb magazine, not those of the individual writers.

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On Topic: Last week we asked what you thought about a civic prayer policy. Here’s what you had to say:

– I support prayer at civic events.

We need our leaders to be led by a higher power to make good decisions. I choose to call that higher power God but not everyone may agree with that. Should our leaders be solely led by their feelings or what turns them on? You can see how humankind can very easily be distracted or deceived. We need a godly intervention in our leaders’ lives so that we can enjoy his blessing in our lives.

– If I could ask each one who reads this note on how happy they are with the overall state of society I wonder what they would say. We have taken God and prayer out of school and never before have we heard more instances of school violence and

text yo thoughtsur to 881 Ve r B 8372

shootings done by extremely young children. School used to be a place of safety and learning and now we are even talking about arming our teachers with handguns to protect our children when our ultimate protector, God, has been told He has no place in our lives. We have taken God out of our governments and never before has our government needed more help than it does today.

Just look at our own problems in Canada and the United States as prime examples. Cities and nations previously blessed by God are seeing His hand of blessing withdrawn because of our shutting Him out of our lives. A prayer breakfast to the God who sustains us and protects us is one way of asking God’s presence in our lives and His continued blessings. Remove God and prayer from your life and you get a society which you have today.

What is this, fifty years ago when people realized how stupid it is to mix religion with politics. I guess the US hasn’t got the memo but we are a little more progresive up here.

I am pretty sure I don’t need “god” telling me if something is right or wrong and I certainly dont want my mayor or council relying on God instead of their brains and logic to make choices. I suspect this is a few of the old guard and the younger councellors are going on with it.

There are infinitely less dumb things to be focussing on than this. Come on you guys! I know you’re trying to be inclusive but let’s be serious this isn’t good for anyone.

– Attempts to legitimize religion/ superstition by wrapping it in a cloak of official recognition only shows how pathetic these prayer mongers are.

– Civic Prayer is crucial given the $19.1 billion debt the Saskparty & NDP have forced on Saskatchewan Citizens; deliver us from this evil.

– Totally agreed with your editorial. Prayers do not have a place at civic events - and it’s time to move on to more pressing matters!

– Ooooh, suggesting we do away with prayer in the government?

Continued on next page »

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OFF TOPIC – Kudos on the article about drag culture in Saskatchewan. I would have loved to hear a little more about the differences in the culture back in the day and now, and also any experiences he had had in other parts of Canada in terms of reception etc. I found it interesting that he discussed how some gay women weren’t too thrilled by drag culture, which was something I hadn’t heard of before. Very very interesting! You should do an article on that! Job well done.

In response to “Let’s be clear … Crystal Clear,” Local, # 263 (October 25, 2013)

– I like reading about how that guy got ready to dress up like a drag queen and the various tricks and tips they use. V interesting!

In response to “Let’s be clear … Crystal Clear,” Local, # 263 (October 25, 2013)

– I think that in order to really find out how matchmaking works in Saskatchewan, than Adam Hawbolt should have signed up and then written about his experiences :) In response to “Making a match,” Local, #

– I wish people would be more considerate and stop throwing out their fast food garbage by my place. Just because you don’t have to clean it up, it means that someone else will have to clean up your garbage. Let’s help each other out and pick up after ourselves.

Thanks!

– I don’t agree with how I have been treated by you but I will try to forgive you.

– The saskparty says the NDP put canada in debt another $5 billion.

How is this possible as the NDP hardly has any seats in canada?

Truth Is Power-Try It

– If the city gov’t supports prov gov’t growth plans then they should be focused on more housing better streets instead of a new stadium!

– I don’t care if you smoke, that’s your choice and you can do whatever you want with your own body obviously and I would support your right to that even though it’s not something I like to do but please don’t throw your butts on the ground or out your window.

That’s littering and birds and other small animals eat them, and it’s not good for the environment because it doesn’t brake down. So puff away. but please throw your butts out. Thanks!

– BAM BAM BAM MARGERA love his old show can’t wait to see him

– Verb! More behind the scenes pictures please I like the one of your 2 writers dressed up the same

– A universe of wealth is there for the taking among the stars. Stupid

Cavepeople greed and violence keeps us stuck in poverty on Earth.

– I’m freaking out but all will be okay in a few days :) Just need to calm down.

Next week: What do you think about bringing a fiber optic network to the city instead of municipal Wi-Fi? Pick up a copy of Verb to get in on the conversation: We print your texts verbatim each week. Text in your thoughts and reactions to our stories and content, or anything else on your mind

– Maybe the Verb should remain neutral on issues and not voice their opinions. The Verb should be for the readers should it not?

263 (October 25, 2013)

– I have tix to Chelsea Hotel at Persephone and Cohen is such a fascinating and talented figure for Canadian history. Nice hearing about Power’s motivations and thoughts.

– Come on city council- let the free market decide how many taxis we need. Time to change the taxi licensing system. I thought we elected a capitalist, pro-business mayor.

In response to “Love at the Chelsea Hotel,” Arts, # 263 (October 25, 2013)

sound off – Is it better to be right or is it better to show love and empathy?

– It is not to my benefit to stay mad at anybody.

– HAPPY HALLOWEEN BEST TIME OF THE YEAR!!!!

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Bare Bones

Photos: courtesy of Stephen Alexander Harris

P.E.I. pop quartet strip away the excess on My Friends by Alex J MacPherson

T

he four members of Paper Lions have been playing music together for almost a decade.

In that time, the Prince Edward Island guitar pop band has recorded and toured extensively, changed their name once, and suffered at the hands of their record label. Last year, Paper Lions released an EP of simple

Redekopp — stripped away the excess from their songs, leaving only the essential parts behind. Fighting the impulse to add layer after layer of guitars and keyboards allowed the band to create a record where every note has a place and a purpose.

The songs themselves are drawn from the band members’ childhood memories and experiences;

yet stunning acoustic songs.

This fall, those songs reappeared on My Friends, the band’s first full-length since 2010’s Trophies.

The new record is defined by the interplay between silence and sound. Unapologetic fans of minimalist pop, the members of Paper Lions — who were guided through the process by indie rock heavyweight producer Howard

taken together, they emerge as an exorcism of the past, an intellectual and emotional housecleaning that leaves the future wide open. I recently caught up with singer and guitarist John MacPhee to learn more.

Alex J MacPherson: It was interesting to hear acoustic versions of the songs on My Friends on the EP you put out

last year, At Long Creek. What made you decide to re-record them?

John MacPhee: Basically the way that it unfolded is that in March and April 2012, we traveled to Vancouver to make the new record, My Friends. We had run a crowdfunding campaign to help raise some funds to cover some of the costs of recording My Friends, and one of the “perks” we had promised was a bonus EP. And so when we had a weekend off in May of 2012, we took it upon ourselves to record this stripped-down EP. The reality was, at the end of the weekend we had these six songs and we were so happy with them that we thought, how can we just let this be for a hundred people? It sounds bad but we decided to give it a real release.

We were pleasantly surprised with how At Long Creek turned out. But actually it was the electric versions that were born first.

AJM: Usually electric albums follow acoustic EPs, not the other way around. Did that worry you at all?

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JM: Usually the first version you hear, that’s the first version you become familiar with and gravitate towards. I thought, I hope we haven’t hit the nails into the coffin of the full-length by putting out the EP first

certain, but I know what you’re getting at, that dichotomy.

AJM: I also want to talk about minimalism. The arrangements and structures on this record aren’t sim-

…it feels like kind of a new beginning, a new chapter in the band’s career.

AJM: After your label troubles and so on, My Friends feels like something of a new beginning for the band.

JM: I would agree. It does feel like in one sense the culmination of everything we have done so far as a band, and in a totally different sense it feels like kind of a new beginning, a new

chapter in the band’s career. Lyrically I think that’s definitely true, with us going back into our youth. Moving forward, it’s almost like we have this blank page before us. We’ve talked about what kind of stuff do we want to tackle on the next record. Really, it’s exciting, because there’s no end to what we can dig into.

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john macphee

and warming people up with these acoustic renditions. But of course a year and a half later the dust has settled on both records, within our fanbase and beyond. Both have found their appropriate homes.

AJM: Let’s talk about My Friends.

You’re from P.E.I. yet you chose to record in Vancouver. Why? JM: We left Prince Edward Island at the end of February and it was still quite cold and snowy. As we came down through the clouds into Vancouver, spring was in full bloom there and most days it was high teens, low twenties, and sunny. I think My Friend is kind of a record full of life and happiness and sunshine and vibrance. I think if we’d been stuck in wintery Prince Edward Island it would have been more difficult to practice suspended disbelief. It made more sense doing it in Vancouver for a lot of reasons, but definitely the climate was a big factor.

AJM: It’s interesting how the sound of the record contrasts with some of the darker material in the lyrics. It’s a pretty potent combination to have a sad song that sounds irrepressibly happy.

JM: Given that the songs were written from the perspective of our youth, that seems to be the way that children — and this might seem like a bit too strong of a generalization — tend to interpret darker issues in their life. Darkness still exists in children’s lives, but there’s maybe not the same seriousness, or maybe just more innocence, and that allows a bit more hope to shine through. I’m not quite

ple and they resolve in interesting, complicated ways. But they sound open and minimal, like you’re using white space as another instrument.

JM: We’ve always been fans of minimalist pop, a band like Spoon being one of the quintessential examples.

And to be completely honest, for a long time I’ve just wanted to sing.

As a singer I admire when there’s four members to the band but only three musicians and one guy singing.

We’re not there by any means, but a secret hope of mine has been to have that freedom to just grab the mic and sing, to not worry about playing guitar or keyboards. So I think we are tiptoeing further and further into minimalist territory, because we all gravitate toward that type of music but as well subliminally I’ve been shepherding the group toward that for my own personal gain [laughs].

AJM: Is it a reaction to the rise of big, dense, orchestral pop arrangements? Or is there a different appeal to the sort of minimalism you practice on My Friends?

JM: Right away I would clarify that we love big-sounding pop music and we love sounds and songs that really sound big and epic. That’s something that pretty much every producer we’ve worked with and especially Howard [Redekopp] — I’d give him props for this — has done.

He came in producing with the model of less is more. In one sense that’s a wishy-washy statement, like, oh yeah, less is more. But on the other hand it’s quite literally true: the less stuff you have going on, the louder you can turn up that stuff and the bigger it sounds.

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Another Side of Belle Plaine

Photos: courtesy of Chris Graham

A Saskatchewan singer’s search for artistic freedom

by Alex J MacPherson

M

elanie Hankewich admires k.d. lang for many reasons.

In itself this is not particularly remarkable. Many people admire k.d. lang and there are plenty of good reasons for doing so.

What interests Hankewich, who makes jazz and roots music under the name Belle Plaine, is k.d. lang’s uncanny ability to switch between genres and styles. Most singers find a style they like and stick with it. Not k.d. lang.

“She was a country singer, and a really campy country singer when she started, but nobody thinks of her as a country singer anymore,” Hankewich says of lang, who can experiment

are better-equipped to apply this idea to their own career. Hankewich grew up on a farm near Fosston, a quietly vanishing town plunked down on

with and explore different genres, cleaving to none yet making each her own. “If I can aspire to a sliver of the greatness she’s achieved, and have

I just want to be a singer, and that means singing in all genres.

Melanie Hankewich

the prairie between Saskatoon and the Manitoba border. She spent her early years performing whenever she could, developing her voice into the heady concoction of richness and

that freedom genre-wise? That’s really what I’m aiming for, being able to play on all of those boundaries.”

Among the many singers and songwriters from Saskatchewan, few

depth it is today. After finishing high school, she studied jazz in Edmonton.

She ended up working in a recording studio, but after tasting the drug that is live performance she felt listless and bored. So she moved on.

Hankewich returned to Saskatchewan in 2006 after many adventures at home and abroad. Her experiences working as a waitress in cafés and restaurants around the world became the inspiration for her debut album, 2012’s Notes From A Waitress. The record was received enthusiastically in Western Canada and spawned a series of tours that lasted through the summer of this year.

The songs on Notes From A Waitress are rooted in jazz. Hankewich wrote most of them with pianist and composer Jeremy Sauer. With a couple of exceptions, they evoke the sound of late-night standards, timeless songs that are at once familiar and eminently changeable. Hankewich’s voice, which is warm and sultry and seductive, animates each track on the record. The combination of technical proficiency and road weariness that seeps into her voice is intoxicating. As she sings, the songs are transformed into potent cocktails of love and longing.

Today, though, Hankewich is worried about painting herself into a corner. “There’s something a little bit scary about what I think about Notes From A Waitress,” she says of the record, which fuses the ragged edges of communal blues and folk to the liquid smoothness of good jazz. “I’ve been viewed for a long time as a jazz singer. I think I was playing the role of the jazz singer in some of those songs. But I don’t think that I ever wanted to be a jazz singer. I just want to be a singer, and that means singing in all genres.”

The songs that make up Notes From A Waitress have grown and evolved since Hankewich began playing them live, of course. But that hasn’t stopped her from taking time off to write a new album.

“There is this feeling that being on tour you’re always moving forward,” she says, “but at some point that momentum just took over everything for me and I burnt out. You really find a different place to be performing from when you feel like nothing to give.” At the same time, Hankewich’s moments of idleness are not moments of inactivity. She has spent the last several months dreaming up new songs and experimenting with new musical ideas, chief among them the blues.

“My priority is to just write the songs at this point,” she says. “The previous two records had really hard deadlines on them, and it was a bit like approaching a brick wall in a speeding car. That’s not an awesome way to be creative.

The job gets done and I’m very happy with the way Notes From A Waitress came out, but I’m very interested in this next record — having a gestation period that is fair to the music.” Put another way, Notes From A Waitress only showed one side of Belle Plaine. And there are many others, just waiting for the world.

Belle Plaine November 8 @ The Bassment $17/23 @ Saskatoonjazzsociety.com

Feedback? Text it! (306) 881 8372

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Intestinal Anarchy!

Hazel Meyer explores the relationship between rationality and emotion in her latest installation by Alex J MacPherson

Photos: courtesy of the artist

T

he relationship between rational thought and emotional instinct is misunderstood. These two ways of interacting with the world are often presented as polar opposites: the former is thought to be clean and clinical, the latter chaotic and confused. But the problems don’t end there. It is often assumed that rationality is thought to be the province of men, emotion the burden of women. But ideas about the way people operate are changing.

Writers and artists are challenging old assumptions and dismantling outdated stereotypes. Hazel Meyer, a multimedia artist who lives and works in Toronto, has dedicated her practice to taking on convention

phor for the movement of ideas. Meyer transformed the gallery by painting its white walls with long ribbons of viscera, bright pink folds that evoke not only the intestines, but also the folds of the human brain. “I started drawing these really large intestines, these guts, as a way of talking about the process of moving through things,” she says, “using the intestine to represent that.

Even very literally, like how when you eat something it moves through you and becomes something else.”

The exhibition addresses the relationship between thought and emotion by blurring the line between them. By conflating the brain and the intestines, Meyer is able to draw parallels between the two — and point to the importance of each. The exhibition

Why can’t something be colourful and funny … but also be really critical? hazel meyer

and forcing people to question their own beliefs.

“A lot of the work I’ve been making has been about creating these relationships that are a bit disparate at first,” Meyer says, referring to the work that led to her latest exhibition, Intestinal Anarchy! “I like to bring together disparities and create relationships through friction, through bumping them up against each other. That’s kind of how I exist in the world. That’s how I understand things best.”

Intestinal Anarchy! is an installation that uses human intestines as a meta-

also includes text fragments that create a disjoined narrative and, more peculiarly, sports paraphernalia. Slogans like “the articulate mess” hint at the contrast built into the exhibition. The sports references, on the other hand, echo Meyer’s earlier works, and also highlight the perception that instinct is somehow separate from rational thought — a convention ingrained in countless tired sports clichés.

These connections are not always apparent, of course. But that is fine with Meyer, who designed the installation to draw viewers in and give

1. “Intestinal Anarchy,” by Hazel Meyer.

Mixed-media installation, 2013.

them space to create their own ideas.

“I think the kind of work I make initially reads as funny and colourful,” she admits, referring not only to her comic book-style drawings, but also the references to flatulence pasted on the walls. “The aesthetic really is quite humorous. But once again it’s like what we’re talking about with these disparities: I see it as a way to bring people in and then deal with whatever needs to be dealt with.

Why can’t something be colourful and funny and a bit silly, but also be really critical?”

And Intestinal Anarchy! is deeply critical. The exhibition takes a swipe at gender-based assumptions. “It’s totally been a power play over women,” she says of the relationship between rationality and emotion. “I approach this very much through a feminist lens.

Even though it’s 2013, I believe that things are quite gendered.” This is the core idea behind Intestinal Anarchy!

But Meyer isn’t particularly interested in telling people what to think; she just wants her audience to examine their own beliefs. Anarchy, after all, is the absence of authority. And what better way to start than by challenging the way we think about the world?

Intestinal Anarchy!

Through November 29 @ AKA Gallery Feedback? Text it! (306) 881 8372

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Arrows of Desire Matthew Good returns to rock and roll basics on his latest album by Alex J MacPherson

T

hank god for the Pixies,” Matthew Good says with a laugh, his voice full and strong after a recent bout of bronchitis. The Vancouver-based singer and songwriter is talking about his latest album, Arrows of Desire. Good always wanted to make a stripped-down rock and roll record. After 2011’s Lights of Endangered Species, a difficult record that paired his distinctive vocal delivery with complicated arrangements and unusual instrumentation, he was ready for something different.

Compared to the intoxicating and cerebral songs that illuminated its predecessor, those on Arrows of Desire seem almost comically simple.

Instead of searching for some grand vision of the world, Good listened to a bunch of rock records and then made one of his own. “When I came home off that record I was like, give me a distortion pedal and a Telecaster,” he says. “I was listening to everything from my youth.

Listening to the Replacements and Hüsker Dü.” And of course his beloved Pixies.

There are many sides to Matthew Good, a few of which might surprise people only peripherally aware of his career. He is of course a successful musician. Since he formed the Matthew Good Band in the ‘90s, he has released ten full-length albums, most of which debuted inside the top five. (After the band dissolved in 2002, Good kept releasing records under his own name).

Good is also a passionate and committed activist. Following his bipolar disorder diagnosis he emerged as a tireless

advocate, often through the Canadian Mental Health Association. He is also a prolific writer and maintains a lively blog. When not on the road, he spends much of his time in B.C. with his family.

Perhaps more than anything else Good is comfortable with his life and his career. And that comfort allowed him to take a risk — to make a record that finds him in front of a ragged, scrappy, and extremely loud rock band.

“I made a rock and roll record,” he says. “Simple. There’s no more complication to it than that.” Good seems relieved by the thought of simplicity, though this might be a reaction to the complicated and nuanced albums that defined the last decade of his career.

do what Charles [who performs using the name Black Francis] did, that’s impossible. The first verse of that song is maybe one of the greatest first verses in the history of modern music. I can’t do that and I’m not going to try.”

What Good did instead was write a bunch of Matthew Good songs and then play them with a rock band.

Besides proving that Good can write just about anything, including a ragged rock and roll song, Arrows of Desire points to the thing that has driven its creator since the very beginning. To illustrate, he turns again to the Pixies. “If you put out [the Pixies’ second studio album] Doolittle right now, it’s one of the biggest records in the world. Hands

That’s what makes music f**king universal, that’s what makes it one of the most powerful things in the world. matt Good

Arrows of Desire marks a radical shift from the ornate and vaguely experimental sound of Lights of Endangered Species. Arrows of Desire was never intended to be anything other than what it is, and it is overflowing with references to bands that shaped its creator, both as a person and a songwriter.

“Musically, for sure,” Good laughs, “there’s Pixies all over this record. ‘Had It Coming’ was totally inspired by ‘I’ve Been Tired.’ But I’m not going to try to

down. It would slaughter everyone out there of importance and of cool. It would destroy them. And if you talk about Doolittle, it comes down to good songwriting, right?” Good has always written good songs. On some of his earlier albums, however, the sheer brilliance of his lyrics was obscured by an all-consuming philosophical idea or a series of overly ambitious arrangements. The uncomplicated and unpretentious Arrows of Desire Continued on next page »

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Photo: courtesy of the artist

gave the songs room to breathe. The title track, which opens the album, is a perfect example of Good’s ability.

The song’s thirteen lines paint a vivid portrait of an arrow soaring high above a battlefield. (Agincourt, apparently). As the guitars and drums grind away below, apathy and intent collide in the moment before the arrow plunges back to earth. It is a stunning song — and it illustrates how Good has been able to sustain a career for almost two decades. But he is extremely, and perhaps uncharacteristically, modest about his talent.

“The thing you have to remember is that those are skills you hone,” he says, pointing out that he began his career not as a musician, but as an artist and a writer. “Lyrically I come from that school of growing up listening to Simon & Garfunkel and Bob Dylan and

Photo: courtesy of the artist

Nick Drake, and then later on of course Billy Bragg. I come from the school of looking at imagery and metaphor, and there’s a way to obviously insert ambiguity, insert suggestion, and all of those things.” After a pause he adds, “the f**ked-up part about it is I actually don’t premeditate it. I just do it intrinsically. I just do.” Good’s songs are never formulaic, but more often than not they pair darkly compelling images and characters with the hint

of a much bigger idea. The songs on Arrows of Desire suggest impending doom, which is easy to interpret as a commentary on the fractured state of the world today. On the other hand, Good’s vocal delivery is so distinctive that he could sing about decorative gourds and everybody would know he was behind the microphone.

“I think I’ve been lucky, really, in my entire career to have a style that’s been pretty much my own from the beginning,” he says. After a pause: “Although maybe we can forget [my first album] Last of the Ghetto Astronauts, and pretend someone did that and just put my name on it. And maybe half of Underdogs. But I think I’ve been lucky that I’ve had my own style.” This style emerges again and again on Arrows of Desire, which includes some of the best songs Good has written in a decade.

The title track is one of them: “On a ruined wind / To see our promise right in front of you / Silver barbs to crash the heart / Those gates so irremovable,” he sings in the first verse before crashing into the chorus: “Oh we can beg, we will bend again / Oh we can beg that we will bend again / Up in thin air we lie in wait.”

These lyrics are deliberately ambiguous, and Good says he sometimes encounters wildly divergent interpretations of his own songs.

“Garden of Knives,” a five-minute mid-tempo rocker that transforms a simple guitar lick into a hypnotic celebration of simplicity, features a verse that has perplexed some of his more exegetical fans. “Just the other day,” Good relates, “this guy is like, ‘Garden of Knives’ is this heavy political commentary.’ I’m like, it’s a song about sex! It’s a song about sex, dude!”

(The verse in question goes: “My love screams / Yeah, I like the second half

/ All in-between honeycomb legs / I’ll break your back”). Stories like this are amusing, but Good is quick to point out that this is why he writes songs in the first place.

“You can take something else from it,” he say, “something that I miss, and you can apply it to your life. That’s what makes music f**king universal, that’s what makes it one of the most powerful things in the world. The thing about it is, if you’re sitting up in your bedroom by yourself and you put on an album you’re not alone anymore.”

Which brings the conversation back to the Pixies, one of the bands Good spent his teenage years absorbing into his D.N.A. In the past, Good has made records with producer Warne Livesey, who has worked with everyone from Midnight Oil to Chris Walla. They are prolific collaborators; of Good’s last nine records, seven were produced

by Livesey. This time, however, Good opted to work alone. It was probably a good choice: Arrows of Desire isn’t a garage rock album, but it benefits from not being particularly polished, either.

The album’s sound was also affected by the recording process, which Good says consisted of a bunch of guys standing around making music together. Even the gear they used was simple. Good played a variety of cheap Fenders and Gibsons, including a beat up Mexican Stratocaster he bought for $600. “It sounds awesome,” he says of the guitar. “It’s that great scrappy mid-tone thing.”

And because almost every guitar part on the album was recorded using the same amplifier and effects pedals, there is a certain continuity from one song to the next. A loud, bright, and heavily distorted continuity.

Taken together, all of these elements combine to form one of the best

records Good has ever made. Gone are the elaborate arrangements, the existential musings, the grand ideas.

What’s left is a collection of simple yet profoundly effective rock and roll songs. “It’s the perfection of imperfection, make no mistake about that,” Good says. He is talking about the rock and roll, but he may as well be discussing Arrows of Desire. Last year, Matthew Good set out to make a simple, unadorned rock and roll record, one that paired great songs with the edgy,

fractious sounds that define his generation. And that is what he did. Thank god for the Pixies indeed.

Matthew Good November 8 @ O’Brians Events Centre $35 @ theodeon.ca Feedback? Text it! (306) 881 8372

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Sushi Done Right Photos courtesy of Adam Hawboldt

Eating sushi the traditional way at Nagoya by adam hawboldt

N

ot to sound like a snob here, but there are some do’s and don’ts when it comes to eating sushi.

Sure, you’re allowed to eat it any way you see fit (this is, after all, a free country). But if you want to eat it in the traditional way here are a few simple things you should know: DO pick up your sushi using either chopsticks or your fingers. (Yes, eating sushi with your hands is okay, folks … just make sure they’re clean).

DON’T rub your chopsticks together before eating. It’s considered rude in Japanese culture.

DO lightly dip the fish side (not the rice side) in your soy sauce.

DON’T bite a piece of sushi in half and put the remainder back on your plate.

When I first walked into Nagoya I had full intentions of getting the all-you-can eat special, but after scanning the menu I opted to not eat myself into a sushi coma and went with the Sushi Combo B — tuna, salmon, white tuna, red snapper, crab, tobiko and surf clam sushi with a tempura shrimp roll.

I also ordered an extra two pieces of unagi sushi because, well, eel is amazing.

Starting with the white tuna sushi, I picked the piece up with my hands, turned it fish-side down, dunked the fish in the soy sauce and popped the morsel in my mouth. Gone was the soy-soaked rice I was used. In its place was a subtle yet delicious variation on the norm. Brilliant.

I followed suit with the rest of the sushi and by the time I got to the tempura roll (which was crispy, creamy and tasty) I became a convert to tradition.

Meal finished, I placed my chopsticks on top of my soy saucer and left, vowing to get the all-you-can-eat option next time I go to Nagoya.

DO put the whole thing in your mouth, holding the fish side down so it meets your tongue.

DON’T put wasabi in your soy sauce. Wasabi should be applied directly to the sushi.

DO place your chopsticks across your soy saucer to indicate you’re finished eating.

Remember, these aren’t hard and fast rules. It’s just the way things are traditionally done. We’re all guilty of breaking them. Heck, I barely listen to them. But the other day when I went to Nagoya for sushi I tested myself to see if I could eat sushi the “proper” way, and not fall into any of my old habits (i.e. wasabi in soy sauce, dunking my sushi rice side down, trying to cram two pieces in my mouth at once.)

And you know what? It makes the experience pretty darn good.

let’s go drinkin’ Verb’s mixology guide the japanese slipper

Ingredients

If you’re looking for a sweet, refreshing, easy-to-make cocktail that’s light on alcohol and high on fruity flavour, look no further than The Japanese Slipper.

1oz melon liqueur 1 oz Cointreau orange liqueur 1 oz lemon juice 1 honeydew melon slice

Nagoya Japanese Restaurant 1036 Louise Avenue | (306) 956 7333

Feedback? Text it! (306) 881 8372

Directions

Pour the melon liqueur, Cointreau and lemon juice into a cocktail shaker full of ice. Shake well, until the outside of the shaker is frosty. Strain the chilled concoction into a cocktail glass. Garnish with the honeydew melon and serve.

@VerbSaskatoon ahawboldt@verbnews.com

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music

Next Week

coming up

By Divine Right

Gentlemen Husbands

Nuela Charles

@ Vangelis tavern Friday, November 8 – Cover TBD

@ O’Brians Events Centre Friday, November 8 – $35

@ The Bassment Friday, November 29 – $17/$23

Toronto’s By Divine Right is one of those bands that seems to have an ever-evolving door through which members come and go. It all started in 1989 when high school friends José Contreras, Mark Goldstein, Liz Teear and Steve Berman got together to play some indie rock. In 1999 Brendan Canning (a founding member of Broken Social Scene) and Leslie Feist joined the band, then they left, and the band experienced continuous lineup changes for the next little while. Twenty-four band members and more than three decades later, and By Divine Right (with Contreras still at the centre) are still going strong, still making whimsical indie tunes that their fans adore. Check them out when they roll through town next week.

What do NHL hockey player Justin Williams and silent film actress Marie Dressler have in common? They’re all from Cobourg, Ontario — a small, lakeside town about 100 kilometres east of Toronto. Same goes for alt-rock band Gentlemen Husbands. Friends since way before they learned how to play instruments, Derrick Ballard (vocals/guitar), Ryan Hutcheson (guitar), Dan Farrell (drums/vocals) and Jed Atkinson (bass) have a chemistry that’s undeniable. Their songs — which are about love, life and small-town living — have the kind of lyrics that resonate with most Canadians. And their music, which is on the pop side of alt-rock, has enough catchy hooks and melodies to keep you coming back for more. They are opening for Matt Good next week.

Tickets at theodeon.ca.

No doubt about it, Nuela Charles is diverse. The Canadian, Swiss and Kenyan born singer’s background is eclectic, and so is her music. Whether it be pop, hip-hop, soul, R&B or jazz, this singer/songwriter (who now calls Edmonton home) creates music that criss-crosses boundaries and genres with elan and infectious ease. Her first album, A Different Kind of Fire, was nominated for a Western Canadian Music Award, and her latest release, 2012’s Aware, is equally as good, if not better. The tracks — which range from the anthemic “Take It Or Leave It” to the soulful “Unfortunate Love” — form a dark, uplifting and altogether catchy record with multiple layers and a sound you can’t help but like. This future queen of Canadian soul will be in Saskatoon later this month.

– By Adam Hawboldt

Photos courtesy of: the artist/ the artist/ the artist

Sask music Preview You’re invited to the SaskMusic Annual General Meeting and Networking Social, which will be taking place at The Two Twenty in Saskatoon on Saturday, November 30. Doors open at 1pm, the AGM will begin at 1:30pm, and the party will follow from 3:30-6pm. For more information, please email info@ saskmusic.org or call 306-347-0676 or 1-800-347-0676.

Keep up with Saskatchewan music. saskmusic.org

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november 1 » november 9 The most complete live music listings for Saskatoon.

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House DJs / 6Twelve Lounge — Funk, soul & lounge DJs liven it up. 9pm / No cover Paper Kites / Amigos — Indie rock from Australia. 10pm / $10 (ticketedge.ca) Jesse Brown / The Bassment — Feel like taking in some smooth jazz stylings?

4:30pm / No cover The Shuffle Demons / The Bassment — Three saxophones, a drummer and some crazy dance moves. 9pm / $23/$28 DJ Aash Money / Béily’s — DJ Aash Money throws it down. 9pm / $5 cover BPM / Diva’s — Resident DJs spin electro/ vocal house music. 10pm / $5 DJ Eclectic / The Hose & Hydrant — Local turntable whiz DJ Eclectic pumps snappy electronic beats. 8pm / No cover DJ Stikman / Jax Niteclub — Kick off your weekend with all your favourite party hits..

9pm / $5 cover

Mat the Alien / Louis’ — Mat’s back with beats and bass. 9pm / $15 (ticketmaster.ca) Pumpkin Up the Jam / O’Brians Events Centre — Featuring Ricky Rock, Chris Cole + more. 9pm / $10 (advance)/$15 (door) DJ Big Ayyy & DJ HENCHMAN / Outlaws — There’s no better country rock party around.

8pm / $5; ladies in free before 11pm Joe Mama / Piggy’s — A rockin’ good time.

9pm / No cover Greg Marquis / Prairie Ink — A folk/pop/ country singer/songwriter. 8pm / No cover Rock Til You Drop / Rock Bottom — With The Shoeless Joes, Eli for Short and Matt Blais. 9pm / $10 Sean Viloria Band / Freehouse — Funky reggae-infused tunes. 9pm / No cover Idle Rains / Stan’s Place — Come rock the night away. 9:30pm / No cover.

Dueling Pianos / Staqatto Piano Lounge — With Terry Hoknes, Neil Currie and Brad King. 10pm / $5 Party Rock Fridays / Tequila — Come tear it up. 9pm / Cover TBD DJ Nick Ruston / Uncle Barley’s — Come and check him out! 9pm / Cover TBD Slow Down, Molasses / Vangelis — With Sparky + Haunted Souls. 10pm / $10

David Essig, Paddy Tutty / The Bassment — One of the finest interpreters of folk/ bluegrass/country. 9pm / $17/$23 DJ Aash Money + DJ Sugar Daddy / Béily’s — These two DJs throw it down. 9pm / $5 cover Judy Collins / Broadway Theatre — An iconic singer/songwriter from Seattle.

8pm / $45 SaturGAY Night / Diva’s — Resident DJs spin exclusive dance remixes. 10pm / $5 DJ Kade / The Hose — Saskatoon’s own DJ lights it up with hot tunes. 8pm / No cover DJ Stikman / Jax Niteclub — Ladies night with the Jax party crew. 9pm / $5 cover Skylab 15 / Le Relais — Featuring J.A.D.J, Alan Flava, Digaboo + JONO. 9pm / $15 DJ Goodtimes / Longbranch — Playing the hottest country music. 8pm / $4 cover The Deep Dark Woods / Louis’ — Freewheeling, electric folk. 8pm / $21 Head of the Herd, Glorious Sons + more / O’Brians Events Centre — A Rock 102 Cuabaret. 7pm / $10.20 Joe Mama / Piggy’s — A rockin’ good time.

9pm / No cover Neil Roston / Prairie Ink — A blues/folk act. 8pm/ No cover September Long / Rock Bottom — With New Born. 9pm / Cover TBD Mike Brant / Freehouse — This DJ knows how to get a party started. 9pm / No cover Idle Rains / Stan’s Place — Come rock the night away with this talented band. 9:30pm / No cover.

Saturday 2

House DJs / 6Twelve — Resident DJs spin deep and soulful tunes. 9pm / No cover The Brains / Amigos — With the East End Radicals and The Great Shakin’ Fevers.

10pm / Cover TBD

Dueling Pianos / Staqatto Piano Lounge — With Terry Hoknes, Neil Currie and Brad King. 10pm / $5 DJ Anchor / Sutherland Bar — It’s the world famous video mix show! 10pm / Cover TBD Saturday Night Social / Tequila — Electronic Saturdays will have you moving and grooving. 9pm / Cover TBD DJ Thorpdeo / Uncle Barley’s — Spinning hot tunes all night. 10pm / Cover TBD Gunner and Smith / Vangelis — With Boreal Sons and Nick Faye and the Deputies. 10pm / $10

Sunday 3

Grieves / Amigos Cantina — With Sweatshop Union, Parab Poet, Skizza. 10pm / Cover TBD Industry Night / Béily’s UltraLounge — Hosted by DJ Sugar Daddy. 9pm / $4; no cover for industry staff Dixie Chicks / CUC — One of the biggest bands in country music. 8pm / $36.75+ DJ KADE / The Hose — Saskatoon DJ lights it up with hot tunes. 8pm / No cover Stan’s Place Jam / Stan’s Place — All music types welcome. 8:30pm / No cover Blues Jam / Vangelis — The Vangelis Sunday offers great tunes. 7:30pm / No cover

Monday 4

The Belle Game + more / Amigos Cantina — A smattering of dark-pop, indie and more. 10pm / Cover TBD Ablaye Cissoko, Volker Goetze / Broadway Theatre — World music featuring trumpets and koras. 7:30pm / $38 DJ Audio / Dublins — Spinning dope beats.

9pm / Cover TBD

Tuesday 5

Hollerado / Amigos — Indie rock from Ottawa. 10pm / $10 (ticketedge.ca) DJ SUGAR DADDY / The Double Deuce — He’s able to rock any party. 9:30pm / $4 DJ Nick Ruston / Dublins — Spinning dope beats. 9pm / Cover TBD Verb presents Open Mic / Rock Bottom — Come and rock the stage! 9pm / No cover Open Mic / Somewhere Else Pub — Come out to show your talent. 7pm / No cover DJ Carlos / Stan’s Place — Playing your favourite songs. 9:30pm / No cover

Wednesday 6

DJ Modus / 302 Lounge & Discotheque — Spinning all your favourite tracks. 9pm / No cover until 10pm; $3 thereafter DJ Aash Money / Béily’s — Spinning dope beats all night. 9pm / Cover TBD Souled Out / Diva’s Annex — Featuring the spinning talents of Dr. J 9pm / $2 DJ Memo / Dublins — Spinning dope beats.

9pm / Cover TBD DJ Kade / The Hose — Saskatoon DJ lights it up with hot tunes. 8pm / No cover Buck Wild Wednesdays / Outlaws — Come out and ride the mechanical bull!

9pm / $4; no cover for industry staff Kyprios / Rock Bottom — With Animal Nation and friends. 9pm / Cover TBD DJ Carlos / Stan’s Place — Playing your favorite songs. 9:30pm / No cover Dueling Pianos / Staqatto — With Terry Hoknes, Neil Currie + Brad King belt out classic tunes and audience requests, from Sinatra to Lady Gaga. 10pm / No cover July Talk / Vangelis — A dynamic duo from Toronto. 9pm / Cover TBD

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Thursday 7 Aidan Knight / Amigos Cantina — With Justin Rutlege. 10pm / $15 (ticketedge.ca) Throwback Thursdays / Earls — Come experience the best in retro funk, soul, reggae and rock. 8pm / No cover DJ Kade / The Hose — Saskatoon DJ lights it up with hot tunes. 8pm / No cover DJ Goodtimes / Longbranch — Playing the hottest country music. 8pm / $4 cover The Black Dahlia Murder / Louis’ — Hard-driving metal. 7pm / $21+ Rusko / O’Brians Events Centre — A night of sick beats . 8pm / $15+ (theodeon.ca) DJ Carlos / Stan’s Place — Playing your favorite songs. 9:30pm / No cover Triple Up Thursdays / Tequila — Featuring DJ Dislexic. 9pm / Cover TBD Shotgun Jimmie / Vangelis — Get ready to rock. 9pm / Cover TBD Open Stage / The Woods — Hosted by Steven Maier. 9pm / No cover

Friday 8

House DJs / 6Twelve Lounge — Funk, soul & lounge DJs liven it up. 9pm / No cover

Death to the Pixies / Amigos — A Broadway Theatre benefit show. 10pm / $15 Brett Balon / The Bassment — Feel like taking in some smooth jazz stylings?

4:30pm / No cover Belle Plaine / The Bassment — A talented singer/songwriter. 9pm / $17/$23 DJ Aash Money / Béily’s — DJ Aash Money throws it down. 9pm / $5 cover Stuck in the 80s / Buds — Tributes to the hits of the ‘80s. 9pm / Cover TBD BPM / Diva’s — Resident DJs spin electro/ vocal house music. 10pm / $5 DJ Eclectic / The Hose — Local turntable whiz pumps snappy beats. 8pm / No cover DJ Stikman / Jax — Kick off your weekend with all your favourite party hits.. 9pm / $5 Despite the Reverence / Louis’ — Appearing as a part of Metal for Movember.

8pm / $10 Matthew Good / O’Brians Events Centre — Former frontman of the Matthew Good Band doing his solo thing. 7pm / $35 DJ Big Ayyy & DJ HENCHMAN / Outlaws — Round up your friends ‘cause there’s no better country rock party around. 8pm / $5; ladies in free before 11pm

Keifer McLean / Prairie Ink — Alt-folk music from Regina. 8pm / No cover Apollo Cruz / Rock Bottom — High-octane blues. 10pm / Cover TBD Terri Anne Strongarm / Stan’s Place — A country songstress with some serious pipes. 9:30pm / No cover Dueling Pianos / Staqatto — With Terry Hoknes, Neil Currie and Brad King.

10pm / $5 Party Rock Fridays / Tequila — Come tear it up. 9pm / Cover TBD DJ Nick Ruston / Uncle Barley’s — Come and check him out! 9pm / Cover TBD

By Divine Right / Vangelis — Torontobased indie rockers. 10pm / Cover TBD

Saturday 9

House DJs / 6Twelve — Resident DJs spin deep and soulful tunes. 9pm / No cover Shooting Guns / Amigos Cantina — With Krang + Chron Goblin. 10pm / Cover TBD Heidi Monro / The Bassment — Jazz vocal styling from a Prince Albert-based songstress. 9pm / $17/$23 DJ Aash Money + DJ Sugar Daddy / Béily’s UltraLounge — These two DJs throw

down a dance party every Saturday night.

9pm / $5 cover Stuck in the 80s / Buds — Tributes to the hits of the ‘80s. 9pm / Cover TBD Tales of Bohemia / Convocation Hall (UofS) — The chamber music of Dvorak.

7:30pm / $10 (elixerensemble.com or McNally Robinson) SaturGAY Night / Diva’s — Resident DJs spin exclusive dance remixes. 10pm / $5 DJ Kade / The Hose — Saskatoon’s own DJ lights it up with hot tunes. 8pm / No cover DJ Stikman / Jax — Ladies night with the Jax party crew. 9pm / $5 cover DJ Goodtimes / Longbranch — Playing the hottest country music. 8pm / $4 cover DJ Big Ayyy & DJ Henchman / Outlaws Country Rock Bar — Round up your friends ‘cause there’s no better country rock party around. 8pm / $5 The Lost Keys / Prairie Ink — Easy listening eclectic tunes. 8pm / No cover Big City Supreme / Rock Bottom — With Moonbath. 10pm / Cover TBD

Terri Anne Strongarm / Stan’s Place — A country songstress with some serious pipes. 9:30pm / No cover Dueling Pianos / Staqatto Piano Lounge — With Terry Hoknes, Neil Currie and Brad King. 10pm / $5 DJ Anchor / Sutherland Bar — It’s the world famous video mix show! 10pm / Cover TBD Saturday Night Social / Tequila — Electronic Saturdays will have you moving and grooving. 9pm / Cover TBD DJ Thorpdeo / Uncle Barley’s — Spinning hot tunes all night. 10pm / Cover TBD Noble Liars / Vangelis — Come out for this CD Release Party. Also featuring Locomotive Ghost. 10pm / Cover TBD

Get listed Have a live show you'd like to promote? Let us know! layout@verbnews.com

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The Hangover for the geriatric set ... kind of

Photo: Courtesy of cbs films

Last Vegas a funny but uneven flick by adam hawboldt

W

hen you look at some of the movies Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline have made you can’t help but sit back and go, “Holy crap!

That’s a stellar body of work.”

Think about it. The Godfather II, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Wall Street, The Game, The Shawshank Redemption, Sophie’s Choice, The Big Chill — all terrific movies that have stood the test of time, that continue to be as good now as they were when they were first released.

So when I saw a trailer for Last Vegas — a movie the media had pegged as The Hangover for the geriatric set — well, my feelings were mixed. On the one hand, there was excitement to see these four amazing actors on screen together for the first time ever. But on the other hand, there was skepticism about the type of movie Last Vegas was.

I mean, all of these fine thespians have shown good comedic timing over the years, but for the most part (Kevin Kline excluded) their real strengths lie in dramatic acting.

Turns out, my mixed feelings were justified.

Directed by Jon Turteltaub (Cool Runnings, National Treasure), Last Vegas begins with a prologue, a flashback to when Billy (Douglas),

Paddy (De Niro), Archie (Freeman) and Sam (Kline) were kids, best friends even, who roamed the streets of Brooklyn and spent every waking hour together.

Fast forward about sixty years and we find Billy, a silver-haired Lothario, mourning the loss of

last vegas Jon Turteltaub Starring Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline + Mary Steenburgen Directed by

90 minutes | PG

This isn’t the first time Paddy and Billy have been at odds. Years ago, Paddy and Billy vied for the affections of the same girl, the girl who eventually went on to become Paddy’s wife. Despite all this, Sam and Archie eventually trick Paddy into going to Vegas. And, of course, shenanigans ensue. So too does the rivalry between Paddy and Billy, when a sultry lounge singer named Diana (Mary Steenburgen) enters the scene.

And while this doesn’t really sound like a Hangover-esque comedy, trust me, there are lots of belly laughs to be had while watching Last Vegas. There’s also excellent on-screen chemistry between De Niro, Douglas, Freeman and Kline, the kind of chemistry that tells you these guys really had fun filming this movie. But that doesn’t mean Last Vegas is a good movie.

It’s not bad, but it’s far from exceptional. Outside the hilarious vignettes and the on-screen chemistry and Steenburgen’s take on Diana,

The plot is meh … and too often the film descends into cliché. Too bad, really…

Adam Hawboldt

his mentor and proposing to his 30-something girlfriend. Naturally, she says yes. A date is set, and Billy decides to get the old gang back together for a bachelor party in Vegas on the Saturday night before his Sunday wedding.

Sam and Archie jump at the chance.

Paddy? Not so much. See Paddy’s wife has recently died, he’s in a serious depression (to the point where he rarely leaves his apartment) and, to make matter’s worse, he’s still angry at Billy for not attending his wife’s funeral.

there isn’t much that works for Last Vegas. The plot is meh, the rivalry between Paddy and BIlly detracts from the fun of the thing, and too often the film descends into cliché.

Too bad, really. With a cast like that, Last Vegas really had potential.

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@VerbSaskatoon ahawboldt@verbnews.com

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The power of the human spirit

Wadjda is an important film. Oh, and it’s pretty good, too! by adam hawboldt

H

aifaa al-Mansour is a risk taker. No doubt about. Living in a country (Saudi Arabia) where movie theatres were once banned, she became hellbent on making a movie. So she learned what technique she could from video tapes and eventually, with the release of her debut film Wadjda, became the first female director to make a major motion picture in her country.

Which, let’s be honest, is one hell of an accomplishment.

Do you know what, though? It would all be for naught if Wadjda was a terrible movie. Well, not for naught. Wadjda would still be an important film, from a social perspective. But fortunately for alMansour (and the general viewing public), Wadjda turned out to be quite a good, heartfelt little film.

At the centre of it is Wadjda (played by Waad Mohammed), a 10-year-old Saudi girl who, like the

Photo: Courtesy of koch media

local shop, Wadjda sets out to save enough money to buy it. She makes and sells bracelets at school, she delivers smuggled letters, she fake cries and will only stop if someone gives her money.

Alas! She still can’t come up with the necessary cash. So when a Qur’an competition at her school takes place (a competition with a

[Wadjda] is a sweet, moving film about pre-teen rebellion and the human spirit that’s definitely worth a watch.

Adam Hawboldt

director of the film, has a rebellious streak a mile wide. Wadjda wears black converse sneakers, is a bit of a scam artist and, more than anything else in this world, wants a bike so she can race her friend Abdullah (Abdullrahman Al Gohani) — something that isn’t allowed in her society.

But that doesn’t stop Wadjda.

Come hell or high water she wants that bike. Man, does she want that bike! When she sees it on sale at a

big-money prize), Wadjda decides to enter, even though she’s not what you’d call religious.

And on the surface, that’s what this film is about — a 10-year-old girl’s quest to buy a bike. Beneath the surface, though, Wadjda is a sincere and touching condemnation of Saudi society and the way it treats women.

At one point, one of Wadja’s classmates is married off to a 20-yearold man. The girls at her school

wadjda Haifaa al-Mansour Waad Mohammed, Abdullrahman Al Gohani + Reem Abdullah Directed by Starring

98 minutes | PG

are forced to stay inside because construction workers, working on a building close by, might be able to see them if they go outside to play at recess. This is the world Wadjda lives in, one of inequality and sexual segregation. And al-Mansour makes damn sure she points that out.

Yet for all the overt (and not-soovert) criticism of Saudi society that Wadja levies, the film never becomes dark or preachy or pedantic. Sure, the main character is beset with pressure and inequality at every turn, but she pushes on. The result is a sweet, moving film about pre-teen rebellion and the human spirit that’s definitely worth a watch.

Wadjda is currently being screened at Roxy Theatre.

Feedback? Text it! (306) 881 8372

@VerbSaskatoon ahawboldt@verbnews.com

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SATURDAY, october 26 @

uncle barley’s

Uncle Barley’s Restaurant & Pub 924 Northumberland Ave (306) 934 4224

Check out our Facebook page!

These photos will be uploaded to Facebook on Friday, November 8. facebook.com/verbsaskatoon

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Photography by opalsnaps.com

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sunday, october 27 @

JT’s

JT’s Bar & Grill 3239 8th Street East (306) 955 9393

Photography by Patrick Carley

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Continued on next page Âť

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Check out our Facebook page!

These photos will be uploaded to Facebook on Friday, November 8. facebook.com/verbsaskatoon

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Š Elaine M. Will | blog.E2W-Illustration.com | Check onthebus.webcomic.ws/ for previous editions!

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timeout

crossword canadian criss-cross DOWN

33. Protective wall 37. Bartender’s ‘rocks’ 38. Be worthy of 40. Having an injured leg 41. Turn over and over 43. Fertile workable soil 45. Place for farm animals 46. Relief from emotional stress 48. Powerfully persuasive 50. Choir member 51. Hide away 52. Periodic payment, for some 53. Trend-setting

1. Crackling noise heard on radios 2. Fuzzy surface on fabric 3. Friendly nation 4. Eagerly compliant 5. Makes accommodations for 6. Be incorrect 7. Make changes to a film 8. Make void 9. Barrel piece 11. Mature 12. Support for sails and rigging 14. Must have 17. Motor vehicle 20. Drugs in general 22. What barbers cut

25. Mark a ballot sudoku answer key 27. Kind of ticket A 29. Flamboyance 30. Pretended behaviour 31. Slide to the side 32. eBay member 33. Athlete who plays for pay 34. Like a wasp’s nest 35. Make corrections to 36. Circus site B 39. Wide-awake 42. Narrow country road 44. Temporary state of mind 47. One in prison 49. Prevent from speaking out

4 9 8 2 5 7 6 1 3 3 7 2 6 4 1 5 8 9 6 1 5 9 3 8 4 2 7 2 8 3 5 7 6 1 9 4 5 4 1 3 2 9 7 6 8 9 6 7 1 8 4 3 5 2 1 3 4 8 6 2 9 7 5 8 5 6 7 9 3 2 4 1 7 2 9 4 1 5 8 3 6

1. Give way under pressure 5. Existed 9. Drag one’s feet 10. Send away for 12. Necessary item of food 13. Primary source 15. Gesture of affection 16. Talk tiresomely 18. It comes in a roll 19. Extremely eager 21. Window frame 23. Golf bag item 24. Get well 26. Change for the better 28. Pea container 29. Bake sale item 30. Desirable thing to have

4 9 1 5 8 2 7 6 3 7 2 3 1 6 4 9 8 5 5 6 8 3 7 9 1 2 4 1 5 4 2 3 7 6 9 8 9 8 7 4 1 6 3 5 2 6 3 2 8 9 5 4 7 1 8 4 6 9 5 1 2 3 7 2 7 5 6 4 3 8 1 9 3 1 9 7 2 8 5 4 6

ACROSS

© walter D. Feener 2013

Horoscopes November 1 - november 8 Aries March 21–April 19

Leo July 23–August 22

Sagittarius November 23–December 21

Chances are you’re going to be drawn to things that are exciting and energetic this week, Aries. Go with the flow, and have fun!

You know that lost feeling, like you don’t know which way to turn next? Well, you’ll be feeling that for bit, Leo, but it will soon pass.

Kick back and enjoy the simple pleasures of life this week, Sagittarius. They’ll bring you more joy than you can imagine.

Taurus April 20–May 20

Virgo August 23–September 22

Capricorn December 22–January 19

You may do something that will land you in hot water this week, Taurus. If so, it’s best to be honest and come clean.

It’s important to remember to think before you act. Yes, it’s an old cliché, but it will hold very true in the coming days, Virgo.

Everything may seem like it’s moving in fast forward, Capricorn. Try to find a way to hit pause some time this week, and give yourself a break.

Gemini May 21–June 20

Libra September 23–October 23

Aquarius January 20–February 19

No matter how hard you try this week, it’ll seem like you’re digging a deeper and deeper hole for yourself.

Don’t worry. Just keep on digging.

The more you laugh this week, the better things will be, Libra. So surround yourself with funny, and brace for whatever comes your way.

There will be a vast chasm between how you perceive things this week, and how they actually are. Try to remember that looks can be deceiving.

Cancer June 21–July 22

Scorpio October 24–November 22

Pisces February 20–March 20

If you want to be effective and efficient, surround yourself with good people in the coming days. They’re all about teamwork.

Sometimes it’s hard to turn your thoughts into action. So why not share your thoughts and let others help execute them?

Say what you wanna say, do what you wanna do, think what you wanna think. That’s the motto for your week, Pisces.

sudoku 4 9 2 6 3 2 3 1 4 7 1 2 1 5 3 6 8 9 7 6 3 8 5 4 8 6 9 5 1 2 7 8 9 7 5 4

crossword answer key

A

4 8 2 5 6 1 3 7 6 8 5 9 2 8 3 7 6 1 2 7 6 4 3 5 1 3 4 9 5 7 9 2 9 4 1 8

B

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