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ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

LOCAL SCHOOLS CHANGE PUNITIVE PLANS P

MacEwan University Is the Latest Edmonton Post-Secondary Institution to Apply Restorative Justice Theory to Plagiarism

lagiarism, cheating, and other academically dishonest acts may seem like open-and-shut cases on campus. However, to some degree or another, the three major post-secondary institutions around Edmonton have all adopted policies that proponents hope will change this view—shifting the discussion towards fixing the harms done (if possible), and trying to ensure that the situation doesn’t occur again.

MacEwan University adopted elements of restorative justice into its academic integrity policies as of July 1. It’s the third school, after the University of Alberta and NAIT, to incorporate these practices into the language and documents that deal with punitive measures for breaches in conduct.

“There was some dissatisfaction with how some of our decisions were affecting students,” Paul Sopcak, MacEwan’s academic integrity coordinator, says. “For international students, sometimes, the consequences seemed especially harsh … A restorative approach aligns a lot more with the school’s mission.”

The majority of incidences of academic integrity are accidental, stemming from a lack of knowledge. That said, MacEwan’s efforts in this are geared to both intentional and unintentional breaches in conduct. In some cases, the perpetrator will also be asked to weigh in on what they think an appropriate punishment would be.

Prior to this, the harshest punishment an instructor at the school could give was a zero on the assignment. After that, the instructor drafts a report, and, if the student is a multiple offender, the school sets up a hearing, and additional punishments can be tacked on, like a failing grade in the course.

Sopcak says that these efforts may appear to be easier on perpetrators. Rather, he maintains, these policies will more accurately develop “more appropriate and more constructive” consequences.

At MacEwan, materials with the updated language are still being developed, though the school has since trained 15 restorative conference facilitators. Instructors can

already request for restorative facilitators when they encounter an incident, but the actual process is still under construction.

Both NAIT and the U of A have integrated similar strategies, though the degree to which social justice appears in their punitive rulings varies from school to school. NAIT, for example, has had similar policies in place since September, 2017. According to the school’s student resolution officer Craig Whitton, NAIT has a set list of criteria a student must meet to be eligible for the restorative justice approach—perhaps the biggest requirement to be eligible for the process is for a student to acknowledge that they were in the wrong.

If a student’s writing plagiarizes from another source, the student may be required to take a course on academic writing.

“Our first stop is always the restorative lens. You made a mistake, you caused harm, how can we make it right?” Whitton says. “We

know the traditional route doesn’t work. We know that if you have very specific punishments for very specific rules, some students will just work on not getting caught.

They’ll learn to fear the punishment, rather than learning why it’s not OK.” In all, Whitton’s office had 282 files last year, and around 64 percent of those went through the restorative justice process, though that includes academic and non-academic cases (a student carving his or her name into a desk, for instance).

According to Whitton, the school’s rate of repeat offenders is less than one percent.

Though the U of A’s adoption of restorative justice schemes has been the lightest, the school was the originator of the efforts in the other two. According to Sopcak, the U of A holds training sessions on restorative justice in residencies. Representatives from the other two schools attended these sessions. Though the U of A’s session sparked the discussion at NAIT, the

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polytechnic drew more inspiration from some schools in the United States, and a book called Reframing Campus Conflict Student Conduct Practice Through a Social Justice Lens.

According to Deb Eerkes, director at the U of A’s Student Conduct and Accountability office, the school has used the restorative justice lens in its residence halls since the early 2010s. However, it has adopted some of the theory’s language in its punitive measures.

“We do use restorative language when we’re talking about academic misconduct … We do talk with students about who they harmed, and what they think needs to be done to repair it, as part of our process,” she says. “But we still do the traditional ‘You’re going to get a sanction because you broke a rule.’

That’s not restorative. Framing it in this way is at least a great reminder that they’re part of a community, and not just in competition with each other.”

Doug Johnson doug@vueweekly.com

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THE VOID?

DEATH, DOULAS, AND HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND RESPECT THE VOID We Sent a Spiritual Skeptic to Talk to a Death Doula to See if One’s Demise Is Forever Doomed to Be a Wholly Spiritual Experience

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Rayne, Jake, and the looming notion of our mortality. Also it was nice out that day. / Doug Johnson

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t’s a sunny Friday morning, and we’re sitting at a cafe nestled to the East of downtown in the River Valley. Surrounded by young brunch lovers and stressed out new parents, Rayne Johnson and I sit down and talk about death.

Johnson has been a death doula for decades, taking up the title after a long history in traditional palliative care, and a shorter stint as a doula—the birth kind. Surrounded by the dying embers of summer, she takes me through a controlled, mock session where we discuss the nature of my own mortality and the stresses that come with the loss of a loved one.

The services death doulas, or end of life midwives, provide have grown more popular over the past few years—sought out by those on their way out, and their families who are left dealing with sensations and questions about death and the soul. The word doula often has the lingering scent of spirituality latched onto it—it’s a question I come here with: what do you say to ease someone who isn’t betting on pearly gates after their demise?

“I don’t like to categorize death as good or bad, there is way too much of that going around. I prefer the notion of the whole experience being focused on a person’s passage being good and fulfilling,” Johnson says, sipping her water. It’s an overarching theme of our chat.

We cover traditional therapeutic practices: like the ever-dreaded ‘If you were to write a letter to blank, what would you say?’ situation. She works to constantly ground me in my own emotional spectrum. It’s bleak, uncertain, and stressful—much like death itself—but there’s something very soothing to it.

Anyone that has been in the presence of a living being giving up its ghost knows the sensation—the absence after expiry, the blank space someone had previously occupied.

Something leaves in the moment of death, and it’s felt intensely by every person in the room. In short, having someone there to help you and your loved ones work through anguish immeasurable is a right every human being has—regardless if you have clouds and harps to look forward to, or dirt.

Johnson has some choice words for the whole thing: “There is a

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constant mentality to be the hero, and to save them [my loved ones] from their sadness or your own. But tears are not spiritual, they are constant, and they are there.”

As a death doula, Johnson’s arsenal is loaded with exercises from myriad fields: massage therapy; touch therapy and everything in between—with a consistent ethos of de-mystifying death for the patient and their families. Often, she regards the importance of tangibility working in tandem with communication. Activities where loved ones are interacting with a patient on almost every level emotionally and physically is a major part for her work, all in service of getting over the largest aspect of death that nobody likes to talk about—the fact that it’s so goddamn awkward.

“I’ve learned to witness the ‘huffy-puffyness’ of the process.

I’ve had sessions where family is stiff and awkward, so I ask them to bring up a story or memory of their loved ones to ease the experience. It’s storytelling; there’s nothing strictly spiritual about it —it all stems back to the most basic and natural way of human living,” Johnson says.

Johnson emanates ease wrapped in structure; her demeanour is professional but her outlook and tone is warm and inviting—traits that one would assume are perfect for those shuffling off their respective mortal coils. Her training is steeped in Buddhist tendencies and her life’s work often comes with notions of an afterlife, yet in no way does she believe death, or that having a death doula, has to be spiritual —if anything, she’s focused more on making death a normal part of the human lexicon.

“Death is almost in the territory that sex was decades ago, like God forbid we talk about it or something’s going to happen,” Johnson says with a grin.

In the end, my question remains unanswered, somewhat fittingly.

Not a single time during this entire experience does the notion of what comes after—if anything—come up, solidifying the fact that this service is fully described in its name: they’re death doulas, not after-death doulas.

Johnson interrupts my rants of spiritual uncertainty firmly, and repeatedly.

“It’s all about honouring what makes sense to you,” she says.

Jake Pesaruk

QUEERMONTON

WHAT CAN SOCIAL JUSTICE LEARN FROM RELIGION? When Orthodoxy Is Bad, It’s Real Bad, but Not Every Aspect of Organized Spirituality Need Be Thrown Away

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n June, the good Rev. Mark Chiang hosted an event at McDougall United where he moderated a session on listening in the aftermath of the protest at Edmonton’s Pride Parade. He invited two activists with opposing viewpoints: one a person of colour, who supports the exclusion of the EPS from the Pride Parade; and another, a veteran activist, who insists on the inclusion of the EPS in the parade.

Chiang was not seeking a resolution of two opposing viewpoints. He simply provided a platform for both sides to express their concerns, and pushed the audience to listen without judgment. The event was a success, as the charged up milieu of social media was not allowed to manifest, and instead emphasis was laid on the Christian virtue of neighbourliness.

Both activists spoke from the heart, laid out their feelings bare and allowed themselves to be in a vulnerable position. This, of course, only works in a compassionate and nurturing environment as that created by Chiang.

In an online setting, ideological posturing and one-upping each other would not have allowed

people to listen to one another.

It is precisely this reason that puts me off calls for social justice, especially when it becomes a one-sided monologue. Such an approach expects allies to act as minions in a crusade to dismantle capitalism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, or cisheteropatriarchy.

posturing than about the welfare of fellow human beings.

The adherents of such an approach have sharp soundbites.

Such a jargon is alienating, as it was developed in academic circles and is perceived as elitist by those not familiar with the terminology. There is emphasis on “checking privilege,” and “avoid-

terview for the Edmonton Journal. While I expected a push back from the religious orthodoxy, I was taken aback by the shrill opposition of militant atheists and some left-leaning activists, who were more concerned about airing dirty laundry than addressing homophobia within Muslim institutional spaces.

“Both activists spoke from the heart, laid out their feelings bare and allowed themselves to be in a vulnerable position. This, of course, only works in a compassionate and nurturing environment as that created by Chiang.”

There is every right to stand up for war torn refugees, to fight supremacism and to challenge systems that keep people marginalized. But when calls for social justice end up thought policing well-meaning citizens and humiliating friends for difference of opinions, then as in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the oppressed become the oppressors. Social justice then becomes more about ideological

ing appropriation,” and listening is often reduced to acquiescence.

Often one hears, ‘if you don’t do xyz, you are not an ally.’ Like any institutional religion, such an approach is seemingly more about power and control than about bringing people together for the common good.

My own experience with activist jargon has been unpleasant.

In 2010, I took a risk with an in-

Omar Sarwar in the U.S., recognized by various publications as one of the LGBTQ2S+ Muslims who are changing the world also identified this when he commented that some LGBTQ2S+ Muslim activists focus on every other issue under the sun, except the one right below their noses.

I have also noticed how progress in Muslim communities on theological issues is thwarted by some conservative Muslims,

who usurp social justice jargon to promote an orthodox agenda.

They paint arguments for a religiously plural, gender-equal and LGBTQ2S+-affirming Islam as “respectability politics.” For them it is more important to radically mould society to fit their worldview than to challenge the doctrines found in medieval legal manuals.

The wielders of such a language present one side as right, and appeal to the state of being perpetually oppressed. Such an orientation is not inbuilt with the view to listen to the other.

While this may be needed in the face of tyrants and dictators, it facilitates a narrative to police those with a different world view.

However, by avoiding such language and rejecting one-sided listening, Chiang was able to facilitate progress by asking the audience to listen to both sides of the conversation. His appeal remains towards values that we cherish in Islam as well: grace, patience, humility, and forgiveness—all of which arise from a position of strength instead of inner angst, bitterness, and anger.

Junaid Jahangir

DYER STRAIGHT

ISRAEL CAN’T JUST IGNORE PALESTINIANS

The U.S. and Its Main Middle-Eastern Ally Want the Issue of the Gaza Strip and West Bank to Go away—It Won’t

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ho said this? “The weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history while the strong, for good or for ill, survive. The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the strong, and in the end peace is made with the strong.” Nietzsche?

Goebbels? You-know-who?

No, it was Binyamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel and newly minted philosopher of power. He and his ally Donald Trump are on the brink of erasing the Palestinian refugees from history (or at least they think they are) and he was allowing himself a little moment of self-congratulation.

He said it last Saturday at the renaming ceremony for the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center, where Israel makes its (unacknowledged) nuclear weapons. It was no coincidence at all that just the day before, President Trump had announced that he was ending all U.S. financial support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

UNRWA is the agency that has looked after the health, education, and sometimes even the feeding of the Palestinian refugees who were driven from their homes during what Israelis call their Independence War in 1948-49. It is funded by the voluntary contribu-

tions of UN members, and until this year, the U.S. has been picking up about a third of the bill.

It has done a good job in difficult circumstances, with half of its clients living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip, and the other half in refugee camps in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Palestinians are the besteducated population in the Arab world, and since 1948 their popu-

return, no matter what international law says.

Israeli officials even insist that the Palestinians are not real refugees unless they were actually living in what is now Israel before 1948. Their children and grandchildren should not inherit their status, and are therefore not entitled to claim either the ‘right of return’ or compensation for giving up their rights.

refugees by the Romans about 2,000 years ago. If the rights of Palestinian refugees can be legitimately extinguished after the first generation, the Jewish claim becomes equally invalid. But this is just lawyers’ talk, of course.

What really matters is power, as Netanyahu helpfully pointed out, and he and Trump believe they hold all the cards. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s ‘eternal

“But even now, the Palestinians cannot simply be magicked away by some tricky redefinition of their rights, and even now there is a limit beyond which no Arab regime can go in terms of abandoning the Palestinians to Israel’s and America’s tender mercies.” lation has grown from 700,000 to five million.

This is not as fast as Israel’s Jewish population, which has grown from 550,000 in 1948 to about 6.5 million in the same period, but if all these Arab refugees were to go home, it would return the country to the half-Jewish half-Arab balance that prevailed in early 1948. For this reason, the Israeli government has always been adamant that the Palestinians cannot

You can see why Israeli governments might favour this view, since by now only Palestinians over the age of 70 would qualify as refugees. There’s only about 20,000 of them left, and they’ll all be gone soon. However, Zionists might want to think twice before elevating this way of thinking about refugees into a general principle.

The Jewish claim to Palestine is based on the idea that the ancestors of today’s Jews were made

capital’ last year, cutting the Palestinians out, and Netanyahu is convinced (probably correctly) that the rest of the world will come along eventually.

Now they are going to starve the Palestinians out. In the same week that Trump ended U.S. funding for UNRWA, he also cut off the $200 million annually that the United States gives to the Palestinian Authority (PA), the almost-puppet government that administers the

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occupied Palestinian territories under Israeli supervision. When they are all hungry enough, he assumes, they will accept Israel’s terms.

Maybe so, but there is a flaw in the grand plan. U.S. funding covered only a third of the UNRWA’s budget and even less of the PA’s.

Other countries will continue to cover the rest, and are promising to raise their contributions to replace at least part of the American contribution. The Palestinians will definitely be hungry, but probably not hungry enough to surrender unconditionally.

If there was ever a time when such a radical strategy could succeed, it is now. Syria is off the board, as is Iraq, and most of the other Arab states near Israel are so caught up in their obsession about the alleged threat from Iran that Palestine has dropped to the bottom of their priorities.

But even now, the Palestinians cannot simply be magicked away by some tricky redefinition of their rights, and even now there is a limit beyond which no Arab regime can go in terms of abandoning the Palestinians to Israel’s and America’s tender mercies. Nobody in the Arab world loves the Palestinians, but nobody wants to be the first to sell them out.

Gwynne Dyer front 5

CANADIANA

Former Miss Teen Edmonton Winner to Compete in Toronto for Title of Canada’s Best Caesar

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t’s probably not a lot of fun playing board games against Kjeryn Dakin. The Sylvan Lake resident and former Miss Teen Edmonton contestant has a bit of a competitive streak that, most recently, saw one of her creations take home the title of Alberta’s Best Caesar, a laurel bestowed last week by Motts.

“It teaches you a lot, being in pageants: a certain level of professionalism, I guess,” she says.

Dakin’s entry into the competition, called “The Little Rocket Man,” is a Korean-inspired riff on the Canadian classic. She concocted the mixture—which includes unusual ingredients like kimchi, wasabi, and mint— out of her Sylvan Lake-based restaurant, Buk Wildz, which specializes in using rustic ingredients like boar, and elk.

“I don’t like to bore people … I research and research and experiment and experiment,” Dakins says about her practice.

“Caesars are your own interpretation of them. You can put a lot of personality in them.”

Starting Buk Wildz, which has its second location opening also in Sylvan Lake, was a labour of love for Dakin. She was originally in finance, and says she was “really good at it,” but it wasn’t her passion. She spent a few years bartending and serving in her downtime to help her learn the ropes of running a restaurant—which she eventually did.

“I was 27 and I sold everything … I picked up my daughter—I was a single mom at the time, and my daughter was four—

The Little Rocket Man caesar. / Suppliedt

and we moved to Sylvan Lake,” Dakin says.

“I had $42,000 to open the restaurant, and the day I opened, I had negative four grand in my bank account.”

It was scary, she says, but it all worked out. The first location opened in 2014.

Dakin is working on a third caesar to compete in Mott’s national competition on Nov. 25 at the Toronto Food and Beverage Expo.

The business owner doesn’t want to share too much about this entry, but she does offer that it’s Scandinavian-inspired.

“Until you really see it, you’re going to go ‘What the heck is that?’” she says. “I think that’s what’s going to wow people. I’m playing a lot on my own personal roots.”

Doug Johnson doug@vueweekly.com

The Little Rocket Man 1 tbs Oyster Sauce 2 Mint Leaves 3 Lime quarters squeezed and dropped in glass ¼ tbs Scotch Bonnet Sauce ¼ tbs Brown Sugar 1 Leaf Kimchi Dash of Red Pepper Paste Dash of Wasabi ¼ tbs Tahini Fresh Ground Ginger 1 oz Vodka Motts Clamato

Rim glass with peach puree and Cajun brown sugar with salt and pepper. Muddle everything except vodka and Mott’s Clamato in glass. Add ice and top with remaining ingredients.

Garnish with pie shaped dragon fruit, a wonton chip with tuna poke, or mango salsa with a mint leaf on top.

FLINTSTONES FLAVOURS

PALEONTOLOGIST ON THE PRE-HISTORIC PALATE At Vue’s Request, Dr. Scott Persons Guesses at the Different Cuts of Dinosaur Meat

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ood but totally irrelevant news: eating tyrannosaurus rex meat would likely be kosher— and they may have tasted like turkey, paleontologists think. They’re not too sure, because the number of studies around what dinosaurs likely tasted like is—well, there aren’t any. Because: why would there be?

All the same, Vue Weekly had Scott Persons, a very patient paleontologist at the University of Alberta, take some educated guesses on the different cuts of dinosaur meat.

“It’s an odd topic,” he says. “No one, to my knowledge, has gone so far as to speculate on dinosaur flavour in scientific literature.”

First of all, despite there being totally convincing photos of Jesus riding raptors online, humans and dinosaurs never coexisted.

So, yeah, no one knows—or even knew—for sure what, say, kind of wine pairs best with ankylosaurus.

According to Persons, dinosaurs are a diverse group, so there were probably member species that tasted like beef, and others that tasted like the different parts of a chicken—some even possibly tasted like pork.

A T-Rex, for instance, would be a mixture of dark and white meat— the legs would be roughly comparable to a drumstick of a turkey.

“Dark meat is associated with slower-twitch muscles, muscles

that are more important for being active a lot of the time, better for endurance,” Persons says.

“We know now that dinosaurs, a lot of them, were just as active as birds are, so they’ll need that dark meat in its legs.”

The white meat—muscles that do less work—then, would appear in the T-Rex’s breast, near its tiny arms. That said, their arms would have a pretty substantial amount of white meat on them, despite their relative scrawny-ness.

“This is an animal that, if it wanted to, could two-arm curl a Volkswagen … There’s muscle there, but it probably wasn’t used a lot,” he says.

Persons guesses that the most coveted cut of a T-Rex would be from the tail—it would be somewhat analogous to the same part of a crocodilian. That’s where the bulk of the muscle lies.

“Dinosaur tails, just like the tails of modern crocodilians and lizards, have an attachment to the femur, the upper leg bone, and they were actually the primary limb retractors,” he says.

“It really powered the T-Rex when it took a step and pulled itself forward. That’s true for the vast majority of dinosaurs.”

Four-legged herbivores like the stegosaurus and triceratops could, possibly, have had a more beef-like taste. A spinosaurus,

P.A.L.S. - Project Adult Literacy Society Become a Volunteer Tutor–training provided palsedmonton.ca • 780.424.5514 /palsedmonton • @palsedmonton 6 dish

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which ate a good deal of fish, quite possibly had a seafoodlike taste.

But it’s still hard to guess. To some extent, the food an animal eats affects its taste—and dinosaurs ate things that aren’t around anymore. For example: angiosperms, or flowering plants, would have been rare in the Jurassic period. Rather, there would have been a lot of conifers and ferns.

“I imagine most dinosaurs would’ve been quite gamey— they were all wild animals; there was no domestication in the mix,” Persons says.

Doug Johnson doug@vueweekly.com

ITALIAN

Grillved savoy cabagge. / J Procktor

KITCHEN TIPS Alberta’s Lakes Hide a Hidden Gem, the Illusive and Delicious Burbot

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UCCELLINO IS ‘POWERFULLY DECADENT’ Reviewer Scott Lingley Coined a Long List of Phrases to Praise Downtown Italian Restaurant

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ounding the bases on all the happening local restaurants that everyone else was raving about a year ago, co-diner and I finally made our way to Uccellino, the most recent Jasper Ave. space to be annexed by the folks behind Corso 32 and Bar Bricco.

Corso is one of co-diner’s favourite restaurants so, on the occasion of our first year as Mr. and Mrs. Co-diner, we thought we’d check out their newest Italian manifestation.

Uccellino is a visual rhyme to the phrase ‘austere elegance’— a two-level space in white and muted tones with little on the walls, which somehow helps the narrow confines seem both roomy and intimate. The service is mainly attentive and seamless, everything appearing just at the moment it needs to, be it a complimentary plate of citrusbrined olives with your cocktails, a smooth procession of plates, or a top-up on your water.

With so many auteur-driven restaurants about, I’m getting accustomed to the ‘menu as impressionistic ode to food’ praxis, which Uccellino lays out in the original Italian, and in translation. The small plates’ orientation encourages sharing, and the handful of entrées are exactingly divided in two, if that’s how you want to roll.

Of course, you only have room for one order of crostini and you would gladly try the tomato and ricotta with chili and mint; or (not and) the anchovy and butter with rosemary, chili and lemon—but how can you not finally opt for the chicken liver crostini ($12)?

Crusty chunks of toasted rustic bread are entirely obscured by undulations of something richer, but also airier than mere pate, drizzled with balsamic reduction. Ridiculously velvety on the

palate, it evoked—not for the last time that night—the phrase ‘powerfully decadent.’

On the advice of a frequent patron, we narrowed our other appetizer down to the charred Savoy cabbage ($16). It’s the kind of dish that could almost make you forget meat, as the interaction of the black-edged, supple yet substantial cabbage leaves doused in roasted walnut vinaigrette, and a liberal dusting of Parmiggiano Regiano simulated the earthy, toothsome satisfaction of wellturned flesh.

Our two shared entrées arrived in discreet succession so we could enjoy them one at a time. First came the night’s pasta special ($28), a variant on the menu-featured ricotta gnocchi. I thought the server said it was made with house-made andouille sausage, but it was in fact 'Nduja sausage, a spicy, spreadable pork preparation expertly melded with the well-structured tomato sauce. I felt confident Uccellino would nail the ethereal cheese-potato dumpling the tangy sauce enfolded, and they did not disappoint. The firm nuggets held up on the fork but deliquesced on the tongue into something approximating bliss.

Likewise, I was sure the kitchen could present me with some platonic ideal of rapini, that infamously intransigent Italian relative of broccoli. Alas, it turns out rapini is one of the very few foods in the world I don’t really care for.

Uccellino did their best, but it was beyond their powers to solve my problem with its inherent bitterness. The succulent grilled sausage of lamb and pancetta ($33) didn’t suffer from proximity to it though, with the licorice scent of fennel adding a fresh note to the tender, melded meats. Co-diner left half her portion to take home

Uccellino 10349 Jasper Ave. 780 426 0346 uccellino.ca so she could fit dessert, but the packaged remainder never made it back to our table, and we forgot to ask before we left.

Perhaps that was because the magnificence of the chocolate budino ($11) left us in a stupor.

Too dense for mousse, too exquisitely creamy to be cake, this budino was the most extraordinary expression of chocolate I’ve tasted in a long time. It was the final touch to a fabulous meal that felt like a special occasion at which we were suitably spoiled— even if I’m well behind the curve in saying so.

Scott Lingley

here’s a species of game fish, lurking in almost all of Alberta lakes, and it’s one of the most delicious game fish we have—but you’ve probably never seen one.

That’s because they’re not easy to catch, despite being voracious predators. They go by many names: lawyer fish, lota lota, ling, mariah, and eelpout. But the one most commonly used in these parts is burbot.

A member of the cod family, burbot have a brown and olive camouflage pattern stretching from their massive heads to the tip of their eel-like tails. Under their chins dangle a single sensory barbel, and inside their mouths are rows of sandpaper-like teeth built for gripping prey. They’re not cute and cleaning them is a messy, slippery affair.

But trust me, it’s worth it.

While I’ve caught burbot in the North Saskatchewan River during the spring and summer, the only time I’ve caught them in lakes is in the depth of winter, usually hours after sunset. These nocturnal predators swim to the shallows under cover of night to feed, vacuuming up anything smelling of food. Vigilance is key, as well as a glow-in-the-dark

jig head with a minnow, bounced off the bottom.

As table fare, burbot are next level. The old timers I listened to as a kid used to call them poor man’s lobster, and it’s true: they taste surprisingly similar. There are three cuts of meat on a burbot: two long filets running the length of the back and tail, and a large belly filet.

During the winter, my favourite burbot dish is fish and chips. Preparation is simple.

First, heat vegetable oil in a thick pan on the stove top. Cut the filets into serve-able sizes, then salt and pepper the fish and coat it with mayonnaise.

Next, cover the fish in panko bread crumbs and place each piece in the heated oil until they turn golden brown.

For the chips, heat another round of fresh vegetable oil and cut russet potatoes into slender fingers. Place them in the oil and deep fry them until they’re golden brown. For a transcendent experience, serve them alongside the burbot and contemplate what it would take to outfit yourself so you can catch more of Alberta’s most mysterious and delicious game fish. Best of luck and tight lines!

Travis Grant, fisher extraordinaire

Happy Hour* daily from 2pm - 7pm

*well... the first few minutes of Happy Hour

VUEWEEKLY.com | SEP 13 - SEP 19, 2018

dish 7

BOOK OF MORMON

COMEDIC MUSICAL

STAR LIVING THE DREAM Kevin Clay Landed His Dream Job as Elder Price Less than Three Years out of College Sept. 18 – 23 The Book of Mormon Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium Tickets start at $45.35 Ticketmaster.ca

N

ot everyone gets to land their dream job, and for most it takes longer than six years—but after graduating in spring of 2015, former musical theatre student Kevin Clay found himself on a path leading to his big break at the end of October, 2017.

The Book of Mormon—created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone (South South Park Park), and composer Robert Lopez ((Avenue Q)—premiered Q)—premiered on Broadway in March, 2011, while Clay was still a freshman at Pennsylvania State University studying musical theatre.

“And I remember being obsessed with the soundtrack … Andrew Rannells voice, I really, really loved, and all of my classmates were sort of saying, ‘This type of show, as soon as you graduate, it will be a great show for you to

news for Price, who was hoping for Orlando, Florida. The two young missionaries receive an even bigger wake up call when they get to Uganda, where the village they’ve been sent to is terrorized by a local warlord. As the music and humour unfold, Price loses faith, and must find a new way forward. “[Price] has the greatest journey and change, and I really like being able to play that every night,” Clay says. “To be a character that has to learn something—it’s very fun to play.”

He also feels that his character carries the primary message shared by The Book of Mormon.

“I think it’s a message of pro-faith,” Clay says. “Really, at the end of the day, I think there is a lot to be said—that our show has its very brash moments, that it has its sort of ridiculous moments, but at the end of it, I think we are delivering a message of profaith—and specifically pro-community.”

Clay spends much of his time on stage playing alongside Connor Peirson, who plays Cunningham. Peirson has been with the company

[Price] has the greatest journey and change, and I really like being able to play that every night.

To be a character that has to learn something— it’s very fun to play. go in for,’ and I was just lucky enough that it has kept running all this time.”

Clay first joined The Book of Mormon’s touring cast in October, 2015 as a member of the ensemble. He did that for about a year and a half, before becoming the standby for Elder Kevin Price for six months, and then he took over as Price.

“Obviously, it was a role that I have always really wanted to play, so for that reason alone it felt very special to me,” Clay says of rising through the ranks. “But also when you’ve been with one company for a long time, it sort of felt like a growing up process almost.

There was a nice, natural progression to my journey within the show.”

Kevin Clay stars as Elder Price in The

Book of Mormon. / Julieta Cervantes

8 arts

Clay says he was attracted to the role of Price because “he is the character that gets put through the ringer.”

Elder Price begins the show as a keener, ready to head off on his mission and do something great. He finds himself paired with the not-so-fabulous Elder Arnold Cunningham, and the two are sent off to Uganda—sad VUEWEEKLY.com | SEP 13 - SEP 19, 2018

a little longer than Clay, and the two of them rehearsed as understudies together. Clay says that time has helped their performances.

“I think just sort of naturally, over the course of … three years of doing it—and really getting to know each other, and also just really knowing the material so closely—that we have this natural chemistry and ability to play off of each other, and just have our show feel so comfortable and so natural,” he says.

Clays favourite song from the show is “You and Me (But Mostly Me)”—a number he and Peirson perform together.

“I think it’s a really fun song,” he says. “It’s pretty early in the show, so it’s a great opportunity for Elder Price to display exactly who he is to the audience. He’s very peppy, he’s very happy, he’s very positive, but he also has this tinge of egocentrism, some selfishness that’s in him, that I think the audience needs to know is there.”

Clay spoke to Vue from New York, where he was spending a two week break, but he and the rest of The Book of Mormon touring cast will soon be back on the road and headed our way.

Chelsea Novak chelsea@vueweekly.com

SHAKESPEARE BETWEEN GRAVES

The Edmonton Cemetery Mausoleum will serve as a set in Thou Art Here’s poduction

TAKING SHAKESPEARE OUT OF THE THEATRE

of Shakespeare’s Will. / Supplied

Thou Art Here’s Production of Shakespeare’s Will Takes Its Audience into a Historic Cemetery for the First Time Ever

T

hou Art Here Theatre is named to represent exactly what they do: Shakespeare anywhere.

Anywhere being historic sites, bars, playgrounds, malls, and— sometimes—even in a theatre.

Their newest production, Shakespeare’s Will, is a locally written play by Vern Thiessen about Anne Hathaway, William Shakespeare’s much forgotten wife. This one takes place in the Historic 1886 Edmonton Cemetery.

“A lot of our venues have been heritage sites,” explains Though Art Here’s founder, Andrew Ritchie. “So it’s thinking about places people don’t use very often or don’t go to, and finding ways to activate it, and get people engaged in it. For this one, I walked by cemeteries all the time and

they kind of scare me. I loved walking by them in the middle of the night and I thought ‘Can a show happen in a cemetery?’”

Ritchie and Neil Kuefler created Thou Art Here out of their passion for Shakespeare, and their need to produce shows on students’ budgets. It’s also an opportunity to celebrate Shakespearian culture by breaking the fourth wall.

Audience participation isn’t necessary at this production of Shakespeare’s Will, but the roving show is still highly interactive as you follow Anne Hathaway around.

Thou Art Here has altered the play, which is written as a onewoman monologue, to instead feature five women who represent Hathaway at different stages of time. The space in the cemetery

allows the group to work with distance, which cannot usually be done in theatre spaces. It also gives five unique female voices to the character.

“This play does put his work into question,” Ritchie says about Shakespeare. “It takes away this idea of him as this godly playwright, and strips him away as more of a man. He was able to have so much respect because of so many of the sacrifices this woman made and in the end she was forgotten. That is something I think we were very interested in exploring.”

The play has heavy themes and asks daunting questions like: How will you be remembered?

The director of the Freewill Shakespeare Festival commissioned Thiessen to write the play

over a decade ago, and it has since been performed around the world by Shakespeare enthusiasts, despite being critical of The Bard himself. It brings forward a relatable feminist narrative from the depths of theatre history, and follows the movement in an attempt to remove the patriarchal lens from every story.

“That was kind of a big inspiration for the play,” Ritchie explains. “For me, a big part of the play is ‘How did she fight to be defined not by her husband, not by a man?’”

Despite these intense themes, the production is still meant to be fun. There are bits of humour, dance, and music all included in the first full production show to ever take place in an Edmonton

Sept. 18 – 30 Historic 1886 Edmonton Cemetery (11820 107 Ave) Tickets: yeglive.ca $25 Regular $15 Student/Artist Rain or shine cemetery. Ritchie explains that they work to have the venue as its own character and showcase its unique personality.

“We’re not trying to take something away from the site and pretend it’s not a cemetery,” Ritchie says. “We want to highlight that it is one, and [that] it is a space you can engage with every day if you want.”

Tamanna Khurana

ARTSBRIEF

A Christmas Carol to Change Its Tune

Tom Wood’s adaption of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol will have its final run this season, according to a Citadel Theatre press release.

in the “near future,” but for now, if you’ve never seen the Wood adaptation, you’ll have your last

The production ran for a total of 19 consecutive seasons, with Wood himself playing Scrooge when the performance premiered in November, 2000.

He went on to reprise the role for another nine years, also returning for a last performance in 2016.

chance from Nov. 30 to Dec. 23.

Chelsea Novak chelsea@vueweekly.com

celebrating years

3rd floor, 10215 - 112 Street, Edmonton, AB T5K 1M7 harcourthouse.ab.ca 780 426 4180

But even though the adaptation is being retired, A Christmas Carol will continue at the Citadel Theatre.

“We have decided to celebrate our 20th anniversary of A Christmas Carol with a new adaptation and new production, which will premiere at the Citadel in November 2019 [sic],” Daryl Cloran, the Citadel Theatre’s artistic director, says in the press release.

It’s the end of an era. / Supplied

BEYOND FORM & FUNCTION

The Ceramic Art of Benjamin Oswald . The Art Incubator Gallery

DESIGNING CONNECTION IN FRICTION

Jesper Alvær • Naureen Mumtaz • Brad Necyk . The Main Gallery

SEPTEMBER 20 - 30, 2018, OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, September 21, @ 7 - 10 pm, Curator’s + Artists’ Talk @ 7:30pm

More details about the new production will be announced VUEWEEKLY.com | SEP 13 - SEP 19, 2018

arts 9

VUEPICKS

FINAL EXHIBITION F Lock by Gemma Crowe will show at Reeling: Dancing on Screen. / Supplied

ONE LAST SHOW AT JACKSON POWER GALLERY The Gallery’s Final Exhibit Will Explore Land and History

110: Introduction to Passive House High Performance Buildings // Fri., Sept. 14 (9 am – 5 pm) If you’re unacquainted with Passive Houses, which are becoming increasingly popular for their energy efficiency, then here’s a chance to learn more. Passive House Canada, in partnership with the City of Edmonton, is offering their introductory course at a special reduced rate—thanks to the city. There are strict standards that need to be met for a domicile to be considered a Passive House, and you can learn more about what those are, and the benefits of an energy efficient home. (Chancery Hall, 3 Sir Winston Churchill Square NW, $195) // CN The 26th Annual Die-Nasty Soap-a-Thon! // Fri., Sept. 14, 7 pm – Sun., Sept. 16, 9 pm The cast of Die-Nasty and some special guests are going to put on a live improvised soap opera for 50 straight hours, and one can only assume it will be hilarious. This year the soap-a-thon is set at Great Grandma Bun-Bun’s birthday. She’s the matriarch of the Bun-Bun family and about to become the world’s oldest person. Naturally the festivities are taking place in a living dinosaur park, à la Jurassic Park. What could possibly go wrong? (Varscona Theatre, $20 for single entry, $60 for weekend pass) // CN

ᐄᓃᐤ (ÎNÎW) River Lot 11∞ Grand Opening // Sat., Sept. 15 (12–4 pm)

Construction on an Indigenous Art Park to permanently display Indigenous artwork in Edmonton started in 2017, and the park is finally ready for visitors. Celebrate its opening with speeches (ugh), a performing arts fusion by Dreamspeaker Festival Society (woot!), food trucks (yum), and an artisan market featuring Indigenous art (super cool). You can also meet the artists who created the six permanent works in the park. (Edmonton’s Indigenous Art Park in Queen Elizabeth Park, Free) //CN

Reeling: Dancing on Screen Opening Event // Sat., Sept. 15 (8 pm) For one week, Mile Zero’s Reeling: Dancing on Screen will bring 15 films to eight venues in the Boyle McCauley neighbourhood. Join Mile Zero to celebrate the launch with dance, live screenings, artists in attendance, and refreshments—and also help Mile Zero officially kick off its 2018-19 season. Reeling runs until Sept. 22, and you can see the films at Mile Zero’s Spazio Performativo, Italian Centre, Spinelli’s Cafe, Zocalo, Kafana, Kulya, and Venetian Barber. (Mile Zero’s Spazio Performativo, $15) // CN

HARCOURT HOUSE ARTIST RUN CENTRE presents

The MASTERS of POLISH SCHOOL of POSTER ART

SEPTEMBER 20 - 30, 2018

OPENING RECEPTION: THURSDAY, September 20, 630 - 10 pm @ ENTERPRISE SQUARE GALLERY University of Alberta Downtown Campus 10230 Jasper Avenue NW, Edmonton

FREE ADMISSION . Open daily from 11 am - 7 pm www.harcourthouse.ab.ca I 780 426 4180

10 arts

A preview of Marlena Wyman’s artwork. / Supplied

T

he Jackson Power Gallery is launching its final show this week. Located in the Coronet Industrial area just East of Gateway Boulevard, the gallery has made its home in Jackson Power & Electric Ltd.’s flex space, but with the Alberta oil industry suffering, that space is about to disappear.

Jackson Power is an oilfield electrical supply company, owned and operated by Laura Jackson.

Paddy Lamb is Jackson’s spouse, as well as a local visual artist.

Lamb explains that the company

Since that first show, exhibitions have generally been based on a theme, and curated by someone within the community. The gallery’s final offering, Archived Land: Terrain Archivé, follows that pattern.

The show will feature work from Lamb, BELLE//MONDO— a.k.a. Patrick Arès-Pilon and Conor McNally—Sydney Lancaster, and Marlena Wyman.

Works will include a photography installation featuring layered images from the Treaty 6

Sat., Sept. 15 – Sat., Sept. 29 Archived Land: Terrain Archivé Jackson Power Gallery Archived Land: Terrain Archivé will close on Sept. 29, and so will the Jackson Power Gallery.

Lamb says that with Alberta’s oil industry “a little bit in transition,” Jackson Power & Electric hasn’t been doing the volume of business it used to, and it will be downsizing when it signs its next

“That’s what makes it interesting is it’s different interpretations of how people react to the land or value the land.” decided to turn extra space it wasn’t using into a gallery, allowing various groups to use it for programming.

“We’ve collaborated with The Works Art and Design Festival to program various exhibitions.

Laura has worked with the Alberta Wilderness Association, the Pembina Institute, and a variety of groups that she supports,” Lamb says.

The gallery has been in operation since spring 2013. Lamb says it started with a pop-up show, where he and other artists put together an exhibit and invited their friends.

“And it turned into a huge success,” he says.

area—captured on vintage 35 millimetre Ektachrome slide film kept frozen since 1997—a video installation, paintings, and additional installations that Lamb couldn’t be too specific about.

“None of us have seen each others’ work—exactly what’s going in there—so there’s a fair amount of trust involved,” he says.

But all of the work will explore the theme of land.

“That’s what makes it interesting is it’s different interpretations of how people react to the land or value the land,” Lamb explains.

Both Lamb and Wyman have worked as archivists, so history also plays a part in the exhibition.

VUEWEEKLY.com | SEP 13 - SEP 19, 2018

lease. That means no more flex space for the gallery, and Lamb will also be losing a studio.

“I’m looking at actually building a studio, but that will take a bit of time so I’m going to be sort of transient for a bit,” he says.

Lamb says it can be hard for artists to find space in Edmonton, though he thinks there are worse cities for that.

“Places like Arts Habitat have been very supportive of finding space and initiating space for arts, but yeah, it is always difficult. It depends on what your demands are I think, but it’s definitely not an easy thing to find on a permanent basis.”

Chelsea Novak chelsea@vueweekly.com

Niobe Thompson on location in Mongolia for Equus: Story of the Horse. // Tamarra Canu

DOCUSERIES

LOCAL DIRECTOR PREMIERES EPIC EQUESTRIAN DOCUMENTARY SERIES Niobe Thompson’s Equus: Story of the Horse Explores How This Social Animal Helped Humans Evolve

W

hen you watch Equus: Story of the Horse, it doesn’t scream Alberta documentary series. For one, the first episode opens in Saudi Arabia, with writer and director Niobe Thompson meeting up with some Bedouin riders to gallop Arabian mares through the desert. In total, the three-part series took Thompson to eight different countries on three different continents—but ultimately it was an Edmonton production, which he’s quite proud of.

“I just really want to be able to remind everyone who works in film in Edmonton that this is us,” Thompson says of his series’ upcoming world premiere at the Winspear Centre. “We should be proud— [this] one little moment before the project goes out to all of Canada and then the world.”

Thompson is also an anthropologist, and with his Emmynominated series the The Great Human Odyssey he explored how humans were able to survive and thrive to become the world’s dominant species. Equus essentially builds off of the earlier series, exploring how domesticating the horse allowed humans to accomplish things and live in places we couldn’t have otherwise.

The core team for Equus was four people: Daron Donahue and aAron Munson were directors of photography—both worked with Thompson on The Great Human Odyssey—Philip Dransfeld was the sound recordist, and Thompson produced, wrote, directed, and hosted.

Specialists were also brought on when a scene called for specific tools and skillsets. For instance, Luke Campbell, who runs a highspeed camera that catches extreme slow-motion shots in 4K resolution, joined the team in Kazakhstan.

The crew’s exploits were also captured in a 13-minute mini-documentary that will be shown at the Winspear. The mini-doc shows the four-person crew travelling from the cold of Siberia to Sabel Island—a sliver of an island East

of Nova Scotia—in January, to the heat of Saudi Arabia. It also shows their shoot in the Whitemud Equine Learning Centre Association’s old riding barn, which they turned into a black-curtained sound stage to capture different breeds of horses.

“And then people in the Edmonton area, capital region, just brought their horses in, and it’s incredible the horses people have here—everything from miniatures to Belgian draft horses to Arab horses,” Thompson says.

One of the crew’s big challenges arose in Mongolia’s Altai Mountains. They needed to get a steady shot of kids racing on horseback, only their van could barely keep up with the horses to begin with, and there were no roads. So they took the doors off the back of the van, rigged up a kind of scaffolding, and attached a stabilizer arm for the camera.

“And then we drove as fast as that thing could drive—there are no roads in Mongolia, right?—so we just booted across the grass in that thing and hoped for the best,” Thompson says. “And, I mean, the results were fantastic.”

But the biggest challenges—and even in the series, they stand out as larger than life—were the reenactments. Thompson and his crew recreated an entire Botai village for one of them—a replica of a culture that existed 5,500 years ago.

“We really knew how the dwellings were built because that excavation that you see [in the series] gives us really good information about how the dwellings looked, how they were built, how many there were, how deeply they were buried into the ground, and so on and so forth,” Thompson says.

He and his team shot reenactments of the Ice Age, the Botai, and the Yamnaya—an early Bronze Age horse-riding culture. There was a lot of guesswork involved in regards to the clothing during the Ice Age and for the Botai, but for the Yamnaya, they had more information to work with.

“There are incredible burials that have been discovered all through

Western China, and the Russian Altai, and Kazakhstan from this time period,” Thompson says.

“And because these burials were in some very dry climates, or sometimes frozen, the clothing looks like it was made yesterday.”

Working with a textile company in Kazakhstan, they were able to build replica costumes based on the real thing.

All of the reenactments were originally planned to be filmed in Alberta, but wound up being filmed in Kazakhstan because it was cheaper. The location was ultimately also a better fit for the historical setting, and allowed easier access to large herds of horses.

“Because in Kazakhstan they eat horses, there are huge herds of horses,” Thompson explains. “We have huge herds of cows, and a few horses running them in Alberta, but we don’t have huge herds of horses. And so we were able to put together 1,000 horses on a grass steppe plateau.”

It took two years to film Equus and another year for editing, with six editors working on and off in Edmonton to sort through 800 hours of film and produce three 44-minute episodes. There was also post-production work on sounds and colour, and of course the soundtrack.

Composer Darren Fung had eight weeks to compose over 90 minutes of music.

“It was this big effort in the spring that culminated with a week of live recordings at the Winspear … at the end of June,” Thompson says.

“So we had the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Pro Coro—which is our best choir—and all kinds of crazy musical instruments.”

For the future, the filmmaker and his partners are planning live showings of Equus where the Edmonton Symphony Choir and Pro Coro will play and sing live, and Thompson will also narrate the film live. But before that, Equus will launch the new season of CBC’s The Nature of Things on Sept. 23.

Chelsea Novak chelsea@vueweekly.com

VUEWEEKLY.com | SEP 13 - SEP 19, 2018

Mon., Sept. 17 (7 pm) Equus: Story of the Horse The Winspear Centre $15 for adults, $12 for children and seniors

OFFICIAL SELECTION

EDINBURGH

INTERNATIONAL

FILM FESTIVAL

2018

OFFICIAL SELECTION

CPH:DOX 2018

DIRECTED BY CAM CHRISTIANSEN WRITTEN BY AND STARRING DAVID HARE

“A fascinating study of the Israeli-Palestinian divide… compelling.”

– The Hollywood Reporter

AT THE METRO CINEMA! Saturday, Sept. 15, 7 PM Sunday, Sept. 16, 1 PM *Wednesday, Sept. 19, 7 PM *filmmaker in attendance

A NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA PRODUCTION UNE PRODUCTION DE L’OFFICE NATIONAL DU FILM DU CANADA

arts 11

ANIMATED DOCUMENTARY

Wall explores the impact made by the wall separating Israel and Palestine. / NFB

WALL EXAMINES ALL SIDES OF THE DIVIDE Cam Christiansen and David Hare Pair Up to Animate the Barrier between Israel and Palestine

Sept. 15, 16, 19 (Director in Attendance on Sept. 19) Wall Directed by Cam Christiansen Metro Cinema at the Garneau 

PRESENTS

I

t’s a long, multi-layered—but mostly barbed wire and concrete—divide, four times as long as the Berlin Wall. But, on one side, many call it a security or separation fence in Hebrew; on the other, many call it a racial segregation or apartheid wall in Arabic. Some say it’s a land grab, having annexed Palestinian farmland and locked in recent, disputed Israeli settlements. To the International Court of Justice,

SEP 13 - SEP 19

NIGHT GALLERY MCQUEEN THUR @ 7:00 THE SUPER INFRAMAN SAT @ MIDNIGHT SORRY TO BOTHER YOU THUR @ 9:15 TICKETS $6 ANTIFA ITALIAN STYLE

ANTIFA ITALIAN STYLE

ITALIAN, GERMAN & LATIN WITH SUBTITLES

ITALIAN WITH SUBTITLES

ROME OPEN CITY FRI @ 6:45

THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS FRI @ 9:30, SAT @ 9:00, TUES @ 7:00 HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE SAT @ 1:00 – ENGLISH DUBBED – FREE ADMISSION FOR KIDS 12 & UNDER MON @ 9:15 – JAPANESE WITH SUBTITLES – REGULAR ADMISSION

THE ORGANIZER SUN @ 3:15

METRO RETRO / BURT REYNOLDS TRIBUTE

BOOGIE NIGHTS SUN @ 9:30, WED @ 9:00 STAFF PICS

WALL SAT @ 7:00, SUN @ 1:00, WED @ 7:00 - FILMMAKER

TRUE STORIES MON @ 7:00 GATEWAY TO CINEMA

DEADPOOL 2 TUES @ 9:30

IN ATTENDANCE

FREE ADMISSION FOR ALL STUDENTS WITH VALID SCHOOL ID

Metro Cinema at the Garneau: 8712-109 Street WWW.METROCINEMA.ORG

it’s a violation of international law.

Maybe it’s a hard front—writer David Grossman says that, to the outside, Israel seems strong, but, within, the country feels weak and embattled. So he tells English dramatist David Hare (Collateral) during a visit that’s re-animated in Cam Christiansen’s Wall (from the National Film Board) as a sombre yet urgent reconsideration of the Middle East’s most notorious, divisive, and tragic impasse.

The stark-contrast, black-andwhite animation employs silhouettes and shadows for a film-noir mood, smoking with pessimism and fatalism. It’s expressionist, adding

to the sense of unreality and conveying a jarring blockiness not only to the wall (shooting and slamming down, in one sequence, as if it’s a cartridge belt crossed with a rolling thunderclap) but to the people, too. It’s as if everyday Israelis and Palestinians are just realpolitik objects—pawns in a stalemate.

Hare, in juxtaposed conversations at city cafés and armed checkpoints, puzzles over the emotional and psychological ramifications of this state of affairs with artists, and with intellectuals, and with us.

There’s a sense of motion—trips to Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Nablus—but also of standstill. Soon,

the wall seems like a brutally simplistic metaphor for two places, stuck together, that are bristling with internal disagreements … or worse. (Chillingly, for an animated film, real-life drawings themselves can be both defiant—graffiti on the wall—or perilous, like one used in a Hamas torture-session.) This fretting, probing think-piece, pondering a horrible, hard impasse that seems so permanently temporary, suggests the only way out is to keep thinking it through—to devise, to draw up, and perhaps even imagine a breaking-down of barriers. Peace is in the idealism of the beholder.

Brian Gibson

FILMBRIEF Local Documentary Wins $50,000 Grant In August, Vue Weekly shared the story of Leven Creative, a local production company that had entered Telus Storyhive’s Documentary Edition, hoping to win funding for their documentary, MS’ed with the Wrong Girl. The results were reported on Sept. 7, and the company won a $50,000 grant for the film.

know how much we appreciate all the voting and sharing of the film idea that they did. We are proud of the campaign we put together but without their support we wouldn’t have had the great exposure which we feel helped get the funding,” Kelly Wolfert, director on the project, writes to Vue in an email.

Naturally, the team at Leven Creative was excited by the news.

The documentary is expected to be approximately 20 minutes long, and will share the story of Edmonton woman Patricia Rzechowka, who has multiple

“Project [l]ead Julia and I just want our pitch video audience to

sclerosis (MS), is a spokesperson for the MS Society of Canada, and has done an impressive amount of fundraising for MS research.

“And now we are so happy to get back to what we do best which is make authentic, compelling, character-driven documentaries and we are so happy to be focusing on an amazing, honest and open, local, fundraising ambassador,” Wolfert writes. “Patrycia and her life are the reason this film will continue to get people’s attention. And a big thank you to Telus Storyhive for creating a program to support filmmakers. Getting funding is very hard and it’s very rare to have a program that can easily fund the majority of the film.”

Leven Creative will begin production on Sept. 15, following Rzechowka on a 1,000-kilometre bike ride from Portland to San Francisco.

Chelsea Novak chelsea@vueweekly.com

12 film

VUEWEEKLY.com | SEP 13 - SEP 19, 2018

BIOPIC

Trine Dyrholm starts as Christa Päffgen, a.k.a. Nico. / Magnolia Pictures

FRI, SEPT 14– THUR, SEPT 20

THE BOOKSHOP

JULIET, NAKED

FRI & MON TO THURS: 6:45PM SAT: 1:15 & 6:45PM SUN: 1:15 & 6:00PM

FRI & MON TO THURS: 7:00PM SAT: 1:00 & 7:00PM SUN: 1:00 & 6:15PM

WE THE ANIMALS

EIGHTH GRADE

RATED: G

FRI & MON TO THURS: 9:15PM SAT: 3:45 & 9:15PM SUN: 3:45 & 8:30PM RATED: 14A, MSM, SC

RATED: 14A, CL

FRI: 9:30PM SAT: 3:15 & 9:30PM SUN: 3:15 & 8:15PM MON TO THURS: 9:00PM RATED: 14A

REEL Learning and Metro Cinema present

Starring Michael B. Jordan.

Based on a true story.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 @ 7 P.M. Metro Cinema

DARK LOOK AT AGING SONGWRITER

FREE entry for high school students and $5 entry for post-secondary students* *(must present valid student ID)

Tickets at metrocinema.org or at the door.

Nico, 1988 Follows Christa Päffgen’s Final Tour and Last Year

M

ore than 30 years after her death, Christa Päffgen, known by her stage name Nico—made famous from her work with The Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol—has finally come into hazy focus.

The darkly named biopic Nico, 1988 (named for the year she died) follows the last year of the German singer as she embarks on her final tour. Director Susanna Nicchiarelli doesn’t shy from showing the nitty-gritty of Nico’s rock ’n’ roll life.

Trine Dyrholm seems quite cold playing Nico. The 1960s pop star may have been known for her work with The Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol, but she insists in the film that her life truly began after her “experience with The Velvet Underground.”

In this film, she’s trying to rid herself of the titles like Andy Warhol’s Original Factory Girl, or Lou Reed’s muse, instead focusing on her crumbling rela-

A movie screening and post-film discussion on race, racialization and police use of force.

learning

Sept. 20, 22, 25, 26 (9:30 pm) Nico, 1988 Directed by Susanna Nicchiarelli Metro Cinema  tionship with her son, and her manic and addictive personality.

She even gets mad at an interviewer who calls her “Nico.” It’s a darker look at the songwriter’s life, but you have to wonder how much of it is hyperbolized.

The film is apparently based off the memoir written by Nico’s touring keyboardist, but I can’t really see the occurring freakouts on stage as genuine.

The film made me want to read the memoir to see if it’s based on fact or fiction. That being said, Dyrholm does an expert job at playing a believable, aging Nico.

Stephan Boissonneault stephan@vueweekly.com VUEWEEKLY.com | SEP 13 - SEP 19, 2018

film 13

No one plays the blues quite like Eric Bibb. / Arnie Goodman

WORLD BLUES

Eric Bibb Talks Style, Taking Advice from Bob Dylan, and the Upcoming Double LP Global Griot

I

t’s been a busy two years for acoustic blues troubadour Eric Bibb. His 2017 album Migration Blues was nominated for a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album (it lost to The Rolling Stones cover album Blue & Lonesome), he released Pray Sing Love—a coauthored album with his wife Ulrika—earlier this year, and he has an upcoming double LP album called Global Griot dropping on Oct. 26.

On top of all this, Bibb has been touring around the world.

It sounds like a high-strung time, and to any normal person, it would be. But Bibb isn’t your everyday kind of musician. He’s been living this life for a long time (far longer than the 67-year-old would care to remember) and he embraces it.

In fact, he finds it relaxing.

“I find it restful to be anywhere and record,” Bibb says from his home in Helsinki, Finland. “It’s not been a problem at all. I keep meeting and reuniting with wonderful players and it’s really coming together at this point.”

For his upcoming record, Bibb was able to create a sort of world, afrobeat, blues album, allowing him to experiment with genres that he has held close to his heart for years. His friend and peer Solo Cissokho, a world-renowned kora 14 music

player from Senegal, is an integral part to Global Griot.

“This record is a meeting—a real get together of these elements in a very organic and musically satisfying way,” Bibb says. “As far as I’m concerned, this is my major opus so far. I can’t wait to share it and see what people think.”

The album title comes from the French translation of the Manding (a dialect in West Africa) word “djali,” meaning musician hood. Trans-

of music culture—the blues. Ultimately, the title Global Griot is the perfect epithet for him.

In fact, Bibb has been a griot since he first started making music during kindergarten in New York City. He would sing songs all day until he got a guitar at age seven.

His father, Leon Bibb—an activist and musician who made a name for himself in the 1950s and ’60s folk scene—played songs around the house and little Eric would play his own versions.

ances. This was huge for Bibb who was absorbing the musical creativity like a sponge. Odetta—easily one of the most iconic folk singersongwriters of our time—also popped by from time to time.

“She was one of my sheroes early on I would say,” Bibb says.

“I remember painting a huge portrait of her on my bedroom wall.

So she was the first person I saw when I woke up in the morning.

This was at age 11 in 1962 or something like that.”

“The fact that he told me to ‘Keep it simple and forget all of that fancy stuff,’ that somehow must have stuck or resurfaced.” — Eric Bibb on advice from Bob Dylan lated, a griot has the responsibility of preserving the oral tradition of society through poetry, stories, and music. The history of the griots has often been compared to the medieval bards in British and Gaelic culture. Bibb spends most of his time travelling the world, meeting new people, performing, and basically, preserving an important side

“About the age of 10, I was really committed to being a troubadour that could sing. I was pretty versed in the contemporary and traditional folk music in America,” Bibb says.

His childhood home also became a hot spot for musicians to visit.

Names like Joan Baez and Pete Seeger would often make appear-

Bibb also fondly recalls getting some guitar advice from folk musician Robert Zimmerman, more popularly known as Bob Dylan.

“I don’t know if it was a direct influence—I would listen to him like everybody—but the fact that he told me to ‘Keep it simple and forget all of that fancy stuff,’ that somehow must have stuck or re-

VUEWEEKLY.com | SEP 13 - SEP 19, 2018

Thu., Sept. 20 (7:30 pm) Eric Bibb Arden Theatre, St. Albert From $48 via Ticketmaster surfaced,” Bibb says. “It’s good advice and the older I get, the more I realize that less is more.”

And to this day, Bibb keeps it simple. His music is easy to latch onto and is not overwhelmed by a bunch of musicians soloing to try and find the right riff or note. It’s blues music, but no one quite does it like Bibb. And on Global Griot, Bibb cloaks his blues talents a bit, instead, giving a few more genres the limelight. It’s a truly wonderful album, containing Bibb’s calming vocals and some of the most expert, uncommon, instrumental musicianship we will probably get in 2018. Bibb loves to collaborate and Glocal Griot is proof that it’s one of his many talents.

“There’s always somewhere higher or beyond that, you’re reaching for artistically,” he says. “It’s easy to think in terms of where you want to be instead of really listening to what you’re actually doing.

If you let go of those expectations, you can be really creative.”

Stephan Boissonneault stephan@vueweekly.com

CELTIC PUNK

SHIPPING UP: A STORY OF CELTIC PUNKS Dropkick Murphys Have Had a Long Career of Making the Working Man’s Celtic Punk

T

here is an episode of the sci-fi cartoon series Futurama in which the Harlem Globetrotters are practicing for a big game. To prepare, they clone an entire team made up of former Celtics NBA star, Larry Bird—a squad of pale, strawberry-blonde power forwards in green jerseys. And were it not for Dropkick Murphys, that would be the most Bostonian thing you could see for your entertainment buck.

They wear it proudly. Dropkick has a lot of loyalty for their Massachusetts home, draping it over not just their lyrics, but through nearly every move the band has made over the last 20 years. Dropkick’s guitarist and multiinstrumentalist Tim Brennan just returned from a show for the Boston Iron Workers Union.

“They just finished putting up a building over here in Cambridge,” Brennan says. “As a treat, their people organized to have us come down and play.

Probably played for 30 or 45 minutes for them after they finished putting up the final beam. It was a lot of fun.”

Dropkick released their ninth studio album back in 2017. 11 Short Stories of Pain & Glory was the band’s first album in four years and, true to form, it was nearly 40 minutes of the working man’s Celtic-punk.

It may also be the band’s most Boston-centric album to date. A lot happened to the city in the years since Dropkick’s previous album, and some of it couldn’t help but find its way into the music. A song like “4-15-13” references the date of the Boston Marathon Bombing, and the band even covered a Rodgers and Hammerstein showtune, “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” to discuss the opiate crisis.

“When we were writing the album, that was happening all around us,” Brennan says. “As far as friends passing away, you know, people that we knew on the periphery of our friends passing away or needing to get treatment.

I wouldn’t say that the album is about that, but there’s definitely songs that were being written while we were in the midst of that. While [vocalist and bassits] Ken [Casey] was in midst of going to something like a dozen funerals.”

But Dropkick doesn’t just write songs about tragedy, wipe their hands, and call it a day. In 2009, lead vocalist Casey founded The Claddagh Fund, a charitable foundation to raise money for under-funded non-profits and vul-

The Dropkick Murphys in all their Bostonian glory. / Supplied

Mon., Sept. 17 (6 pm) Dropkick Murphys w/ Flogging Molly Shaw Conference Centre $59.50 in Advance

nerable communities like veterans and children. The fund is named for the traditional Irish ring, which symbolizes love, loyalty and friendship.

Last summer, Claddagh hit the road alongside Dropkick when a friend of the band hopped in a van with his son and started selling merch to raise donations from generous fans.

“Selling t-shirts, taking donations, signed stuff, limited Dropkick’s merch and stuff like that,” Brennan says explaining the process. “It’s been great.

We’ve been able to raise a lot of money and hopefully do a decent amount of good.”

Brennan says that though the Claddagh Fund booth won’t be coming through Canada on this tour, there’s always a way to donate either at the merch table or online.

Dropkick Murphys began in Quincy, Massachusetts back in 1996. They took their name from an old pre-detox facility that was once run by Dr. John “Dropkick” Murphy, an osteopath and former professional wrestler.

Though the band’s Celtic influence is visible in their early work, through covers of traditional songs like “Finnegan’s Wake” and “Cadence to Arms,” Brennan says it wasn’t until their third album that the band really figured out how to write a punk song with a banjo line.

“I think around 2000 when they [Brennan joined in 2004] put out “Sing Loud, Sing Proud!,” he says. “[They] started to like really incorporate a lot of the Irish instrumentation around most, if not all the songs.

That’s when the band kind of turned into a whole new kind of monster.”

It’s been a long career, but Dropkick Murphys have time and again demonstrated that they’re more than just the music you play on St. Patrick’s Day or that band from The Departed soundtrack. They’ve got deep roots and more pride for the people of their city than any other touring group.

You can clone as many Larry Birds as you like but, you can’t match the Dropkick Murphys.

Lucas Provencher

VUEWEEKLY.com | SEP 13 - SEP 19, 2018

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A SPOON FULL OF SUGAR MAKES THE APOCALYPSE GO DOWN Rae Spoon Contemplates the Human Connection to the Land on bodiesofwater

Sat., Sept. 14 (8 pm) Rae Spoon w/ respectfulchild The Aviary $15 at doors

T

wenty years ago, musician Rae Spoon walked out on stage at the Weeds Café in Calgary, a guitar in their hand, a bunch of originals and some covers in their pocket, and instead of a PA, a stereo. It’s been a long road for Spoon, and a lot has changed along the way, but one of the biggest lessons Spoon has learned in the last few years is that DIY is the way to go.

“The DIY/grassroots scene in Canada is the only way to have a really fun, long career,” they say. “Helping put on shows for other people, having people put on shows in other towns for me, is the most satisfying way for me to play music.”

The reason for this, according to Spoon, is that it gives people who might not be represented in the mainstream music industry a chance to perform.

“Even if every organization thinks you’re not marketable, you can still put on your own show in your town and play, and people will come,” Spoon says.

“It’s actually the musicians who are around. It’s not through the capitalist lens of who’s going to make money or what’s going to be the next thing.”

Being non-binary themself, this

16 music

sort of representation is important for Spoon, and it is also one of the reasons they work with many young trans, non-binary, and queer musicians.

On Sept. 7, the 20th anniversary of their first show, Spoon released their ninth album titled bodiesofwater. The album focuses heavily on the connection between people and the land around them.

“We are in the middle of trying to protect the water on the West Coast,“ Spoon says. “The connection between being a settler, still having a connection, and taking responsibility for what is happening with the land.”

This connection with nature isn’t always nature walks and tree hugging though, and it comes out in the album. “Bioluminescent,” for example, takes on the apocalyptic possibilities of the global climate.

“There was a tsunami warning in parts of Victoria. Just the way people were talking about it—living somewhere where there’s tsunami warnings sometimes—reminded me of touring because you’re driving a lot and it’s really intense and somewhat dangerous,” Spoon says. “It was more about making peace with that—that we are living in places where this can happen or that maybe driving a lot is dangerous but we’re going to tour anyways.” bodiesofwater was recorded on

VUEWEEKLY.com | SEP 13 - SEP 19, 2018

Gabriola Island and co-produced with the help of Montreal’s Laurie-Anne Torres (known for Folly & the Hunter). Compared to Spoon’s other albums—(which range from electronic to more folky and ethereal)—this work is mostly drums, synth, and electronic percussions.

“It’s very organic. I feel like we got to record out on an island and we all hung out for several days and really got to focus,” Spoon says. “It has the most relaxed feel to any record I’ve ever made, just because it was really easy to focus and we weren’t worried about time.”

The album was released on Spoon’s own Coax Records, which they started in 2015 after their former record label took a hiatus.

“I knew a lot of people who needed a label, and a lot of people who wanted to have that community feeling in a label,” Spoon says. “I was going to have to start it for myself anyways, and a lot of people I knew—it was a good way to help them get their records in stores.”

On top of their musical career and record label, Spoon is also a published author with three books under their belt. First Spring Grass Fire was published in 2012, followed by Gender Failure in 2014, which was co-written with Ivan E. Coyote. Finally, they published How to (Hide) Be(hind) Your Songs in 2017.

Alexander Sorochan

MINIMALIST FOLK

Great Lake Swimmers recorded its latest album in a 145-year-old church. / Marina Manushenko

ATMOSPHERIC WATERS IN THE GREAT LAKES

L L I B E L B U O D

On The Waves, The Wake, Great Lake Swimmers Create a Calming, Minimalist, Orchestral Environment

Sat., Sept. 15 (7:30 pm) Great Lake Swimmers w/ Megan Bonnell Festival Place From $34 via Ticketmaster

W

e are living in a sonic age where many musicians are constantly striving for a bigger, maximalist sound. Perhaps it’s due to listeners attention spans growing thinner, but the attractive standard seems to be forcing in instruments where they can’t breathe for a gargantuan effect.

On his latest album The Waves, The Wake, Tony Dekker, of Junonominated group Great Lake Swimmers, did the exact opposite.

Instead of adding instruments to see what stuck, Dekker listened for what the song was actually calling for instrumentally, approaching each piece as a conductor would a movement.

“To a certain extent, there was a general idea for each song, but as we started adding things or more importantly, taking things away, that’s when the songs really revealed themselves,” Dekker says.

The result is a minimalist, atmospheric compendium of songs with a sonic environment the listener can easily get lost in.

It’s a brand new sound for Great Lake Swimmers, which started out as more of Dekker’s singer-songwriter passion project. The past sound lived in more of a folk-rock realm where many groups make their home.

And while Great Lake Swimmers’ haunting folk style was particular, The Waves, The Wake is a refreshing rejuvenation for the band. The album features instruments like the harp, marimba, woodwinds, and pipe organ to further flush out Great Lake Swimmers sound.

“I felt like we had brought our sound to a certain point as basically a singer-songwriter with a regular backing band,” Dekker says. “With the lead off song ‘The Talking Wind’—with the subject matter being about the wind—I thought it would be an interesting idea to make an arrangement for a woodwind ensemble. So we have clarinets and flutes in there.

So a lot of the time, the instrumentation is reflected by what’s happening in the lyrics.”

The lyrical content is often solemn, with Dekker reflecting isolation, past occurrences, and his link to nature—a theme that has followed him since he recorded the first self-titled album back in 2002.

“Thematically, you can follow the nature thread through all of our albums,” he says. “Kind of finding a refuge from our current social state or a kind of spirituality in nature is really important to me as a songwriter.”

Unconventional recording locations have also been an important aspect to a Great Lake Swimmers album. The first album was recorded in an abandoned grain silo; the

third in London, Ontario’s historic Aeolian Hall venue; the fourth on an archipelago that makes up Ontario’s Thousand Islands.

Now at the seventh album, Dekker chose the Bishop Cronyn Memorial, a 145-year-old church in Ontario.

“The church was important to the process,” Dekker says. “We basically used the space as an instrument.”

Dekker almost means that sentiment literally. The album’s sound engineer took an impulse response of the space, which consists of firing off a sonic wave and recording it back to get an accurate reading of the space and its dimensions.

“So we used that in subsequent overdubs to create our own reverb that very much matched the sound,” he says. “We used that reverb to recreate the sounds that were happening in the church on every track in the album.”

So—in layman’s terms—the real sounds of the church live on each track of The Waves, The Wake.

This means that the live show has Dekker and his band striving to reconstruct the same atmosphere of the church recordings.

“I found that if we approach the live show with the spirit of the recording by trying to keep things minimal and focus on the nuances of the songs, then we will successfully recreate the feel of the recording.”

Stephan Boissonneault stephan@vueweekly.com

VUEWEEKLY.com | SEP 13 - SEP 19, 2018

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PSYCHEDELIC BLOOD BROTHERS IN A DAZE

Calgary’s Fever Feel Yearns for the Golden Years of Rock and Roll Fuzz with Its Self-Titled

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Each guy in Fever Feel has some great hair. / Braeden Paterson

F

WE’LL ANNOUNCE ALL THE WINNERS IN THE SEPTEMBER 20TH ISSUE OF VUEWEEKLY 18 music

ever Feel’s brand of rock ’n’ roll is humbling to crowds still hoping to hear that raw sound, and their lifestyle is one that could be picked out of a Rolling Stone magazine in the 1970s: dropping out of school, touring the country, playing festivals; it’s all for the sake of that puritan rock and roll.

Between all the tours, which have included national tours across Canada and West Coast tours in the U.S., Fever Feel has kept a steady flow of original content pouring out. Their latest album combines the stories from touring and drips with remnants of 1960s psychedelia and the rock and roll music the members were always inspired by.

The band is comprised of two blood brothers, Landon Franklin (bass, vocals) and Logan Gabert (guitar), and it wasn’t until the faze of it being uncool to hangout with your brother subsided that the two found not only their blood was the same, but that their passions were too. “We found we were listening to the same thing and thinking the same way and then it (Fever Feel) just happened organically,” lead singer Landon Franklin says.

They also had organist Thomas Platt and drummer Blair Hansen join.

Before that, Franklin and Gabert were playing in bands around Calgary but never found their calling.

“I was playing country folk music, and Logan was playing guitar for other bands, and it wasn’t necessarily what he wanted to do. Someone once said to me, ‘You can be a great lead singer, but without a lead guitarist it won’t be as rock and roll.’ That’s when we joined forces and decided to make a rock band.”

Fever Feel has done that, bringing the warm fuzz and bare bones sound that has kept the genre alive even with the changing tides of what’s considered popular music. The new self-titled record is a testament to that. It gets away from single-heavy music and back to the art of the LP. Franklin says, “We wanted to make this record like one big piece of music, we even wrote on the back that it’s meant to be listened to loud, and from front to back,” Franklin says.

In wanting to make this a record to be proud of, Fever

VUEWEEKLY.com | SEP 13 - SEP 19, 2018

Fri., Sept. 21 (9 pm) Archaics, Fever Feel, and Aladean Kheroufi Sewing Machine Factory $10 Feel shopped around for engineers until finally deciding on the renowned and Grammynominated Claudius Mittendorfer (Temples, Weezer, Johnny Marr). Franklin says about Mittendorfer, “After a while your ears get tired to the songs, and having him [Mittendorfer] really brought things to life. We were looking for an engineer and liked his work with Temples; so, we asked him to do a demo mix and we really dug it. His was the best. So we went full force.”

The sky’s the limit for Fever Feel, and with a plethora of tours already under their belt and the self-titled album out on Sept. 14, the band may stray far from Canada on their musical journey, but they’ll always be proud of their roots. Franklin says, “We are proud to be Canadian, even on the record we put ‘Made in Canada’ because we are proud.”

Ryan Hook

NEW SOUNDS Passenger Runaway Black Crow Records

mentation as something to be desired. Rosenberg has never been about that. Runaway utilizes strings, banjo, horns, slide guitar, and piano.

“Ghost Town” sounds like it was recorded with a TV series in mind, the cinematic piano, slowly creeping along as Rosenberg sings of a town with a “sky as black as crows.”

Perhaps it’s a metaphor for the emptiness we sometimes feel in our souls or a literal ghost town Rosenberg has visited.

Either way, you can count on the poetic verse making you contemplate how small we really are.

Then comes the title track,

Micheal David Rosenberg— known to his fans as Passenger—has made a habit of producing bits of sonically pleasing folk-country Americana, and his latest endeavour Runaway is no exception.

The album’s tone is set immediately with “Hell or High Water,” a slow-burning, sombre track that matches well with Rosenberg’s hushed vocals. Often, many folk albums fall into the trap of becoming an acoustic guitar/ vocals-led show, leaving the other instru-

opening with a country blues riff that has your head grooving to the beat. It’s funny that Rosenberg is as English as they come—saying in interviews that he’s a huge fan of football and his favourite team is Arsenal—because his ability to conjure up imagery of the American Midwest is spot on during songs like “Eagle Bear Buffalo.”

In all, Runaway is another excellent collection of songs from the whispering songwriter that is Passenger.

Stephan Boissonneault stephan @vueweekly.com

ALBERTA-WIDECLASSIFIEDS

VUEPICKS Boots & The Hoots CD Release // Sun., Sept. 16 (7 pm) Boots & The Hoots have been supplying Alberta with some good ol’ honky tonk country for a few years now and have a third album—titled III—to show for it. My personal favourite has to be “Hobo Shower,” a cheeky number where frontman Boots Graham sings about having a “hobo shower in a truck stop sink.” It’s catchy, downtempo, and oodles of laughs. Even with a recent broken leg he got from hopping off a horse, Boots is leading the live cactus charge with this new release, so check ’em out will ya? (The Aviary, $15 via yeglive.ca) // SB

•• AUCTIONS ••

Olga Osipova // Sat., Sept. 15 (8 pm) To truly get the full experience of the jazz jezebel that is Olga Osipova, she needs to be listened to in a dark room, dimly lit by wax candles. Wine or maybe a nice cocktail also helps. You can get all of that and more at her Yardbird performance. Backed up by shining piano, sultry sax, and groovy bass, Osipova’s voice—which is on pare with genre greats like Blossom Dearie or Anita O’Day—will have you melting in your seat. (Yardbird Suite, $20 at doors) // SB

Coming Events

COMMUNITY LEAGUE DAY o Community Leagues across Edmonton o 780 437 2913 o efcl.org o Find out what your community league is doing! o Sept 15, all day o Free

1600.

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Help Someone Who Can’t!

Volunteer 2 hours a week and help someone improve their Reading, Writing, Math or English Speaking Skills.

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We have positions available for many different skills & interests. Come work with marvelous people on fun teams, get a sweet festival tshirt, and other fabulous perks!

If you have any inquiries or questions you can email our volunteer coordinator at volunteer@kaleidofest.ca We’re looking forward to welcoming you to our crew on September 14-16, 2018!

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ART CLASSES FOR ADULTS, YOUTH, AND CHILDREN Check The Paint Spot’s website, paintspot.ca/events/workshops for up-to-date information on art classes for all ages, beginner and intermediate.

Register in person, by phone or online.

Contact: 780.432.0240 email: accounts@paintspot.ca

Alberta Aviation Museum on 11410 Kingsway has meeting rooms, stage, and event hall for up to 400 people. Lots of parking and an easy access door to drive your kit right to stage.

Call: 780-451-1175 or info@albertaaviationmuseum.c om

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VUECLASSIFIEDS 130.

Leeroy Stagger // Fri., Sept.

14 (7 pm) Alberta’s Leeroy Stagger has swagger and yes, I know that’s a cheap rhyme. But it’s true.

Most artists who have 11 albums under their belts can get a little stale, but there’s something about Stagger’s on stage persona and sound that can be addicting. He’s helped reinvent what a folk rock song can sound like, and live, he’s just a wonder. (Station on Jasper, $20 at doors) // SB

MEIER - 2 DAY UNRESERVED CLOSEOUT Auction for Inner Tech Valve Limited.

Sept 25 and 26 10 AM. 530272A Avenue, Edmonton.

Complete Valve Repair, Machining and Shop Equipment.

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SAVAGELOVE I’M SO LONELY

I am a gay man in my late 50s and have never been in a relationship. I am so lonely, and the painful emptiness I feel is becoming absolutely unbearable. In my early 20s, I hooked up off and on, but it never developed into anything. I have always told myself that’s okay; I’m not a people person or a relationship kind of guy. I have a few lesbian friends but no male friends. I have social anxiety and can’t go to bars or clubs. When hookup apps were introduced, I used them infrequently. Now I go totally unnoticed or am quickly ghosted once I reveal my age. Most nonwork days, my only interactions are with people in the service industry. I am well-groomed, employed, a homeowner, and always nice to people. I go to a therapist and take antidepressants. However, this painful loneliness, depression, aging, and feeling unnoticed seem to be getting the best of me. I cry often and would really like it all to end. Any advice?

LONELY AGING GAY “In the very short term, LAG needs to tell his therapist about the suicidal ideation,” said Michael Hobbes. “In the longer term, well, that’s going to take a bit more to unpack.”

Hobbes is a reporter for HuffPost and recently wrote a mini-booklength piece titled “Together Alone: The Epidemic of Gay Loneliness.” During his research, Hobbes found that, despite growing legal and social acceptance, a worrying percentage of gay men still struggle with depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.

Loneliness, Hobbes explained to me, is an evolutionary adaptation, a mechanism that prompts us humans—members of a highly social species—to seek contact and connection with others, the kind of connections that improve our odds of survival.

Dan Savage

“But there’s a difference between being alone and being lonely,” said Hobbes. “Being alone is an objective, measurable phenomenon: You don’t have very many social contacts. Being lonely, on the other hand, is subjective: You feel alone, even when you’re with other people. This is why advice like ‘Join a club!’ or ‘Chat with your waitress!’ doesn’t help lonely people.”

The most effective way to address loneliness, according to Hobbes’s research, is to confront it directly.

“LAG may just need to get more out of the relationships he already has,” said Hobbes. “He has a job, friends, a therapist, a life. This doesn’t mean that his perceptions are unfounded—our society is terrible to its elders in general and its LGBTQ2S+ elders in particular— but there may be opportunities in his life for intimacy that he’s not tapping into. Acquaintances LAG hasn’t checked in on for a while.

Random cool cousins LAG never got to know. Volunteering gigs you fell out of. It’s easier to reanimate old friendships than to start from scratch.”

Another recommendation: Seek out other lonely guys—and there are lots of them out there.

“LAG isn’t the only gay guy who has aged out of the bar scene—so have I—and struggles to find sex and companionship away from alcohol and right swipes,” said Hobbes. “His therapist should know of some good support groups.”

And if your therapist doesn’t know of any good support groups—or if you don’t feel comfortable telling your therapist how miserable you are, or if you’ve told your therapist everything and they haven’t been able to help—find a new therapist.

ALL ALONE

I’m a fortysomething gay male.

I’m single and cannot get a date or even a hookup. I’m short, overweight, average looking, and bald.

I see others, gay and straight, having long-term relationships, getting engaged, getting married, and it makes me sad and jealous.

Some of them are jerks—and if them, why not me? Here’s the part that’s hard to admit: I know something is wrong with me, but I don’t know what it is or how to fix it. I’m alone and I’m lonely. I know your advice can be brutal, Dan, but what do I have to lose?

ALONE AND FADING “AAF said to be brutal, so I’m going to start there: You might not ever meet anyone,” said Hobbes.

“At every age, in every study, gay men are less likely to be partnered, cohabiting, or married than our straight and lesbian counterparts. Maybe we’re damaged, maybe we’re all saving ourselves for a Hemsworth, but spending our adult lives and twilight years without a romantic partner is a real possibility. It just is.”

And it’s not just gay men. In Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, sociologist Eric Klinenberg unpacked this remarkable statistic: More than 50 percent of adult Americans are single and live alone, up from 22 percent in 1950.

Some are unhappy about living alone, but it seemed that most— at least according to Klinenberg’s research—are content.

“Maybe there is something wrong with AAF, but maybe he’s just on the unlucky side of the statistics,” said Hobbes. “Finding a soul mate is largely out of our control.

Whether you allow your lack of a soul mate to make you bitter, desperate, or contemptuous is. So be happy for the young jerks coupling up and settling down. Learn to take rejection gracefully—the way you want it from the dudes you’re turning down—and when you go on a date, start with the specificity of the person sitting across from you, not what you

need from him. He could be your Disney prince, sure. But he could also be your museum buddy or your podcast cohost or your afternoon 69er or something you haven’t even thought of yet.”

YOU AIN’T UGLY

I am a 55-year-old gay male. I am hugely overweight and have not had much experience with men.

I go on a variety of websites trying to make contact with people.

However, if anyone says anything remotely complimentary about me, I panic and run. A compliment about my physical appearance? I shut down the profile. I don’t like being like this. I just believe in being honest. And if I’m honest, I’m ugly. The face, even behind a bigass beard, is just not acceptable.

I have tried therapy, and it does nothing. How do I get past being ugly and go out and get laid?

UNAPPEALING GIANT LOSER YEARNS You say you’re ugly, UGLY, but there are some people who disagree with you—the people who compliment you on your appearance, for instance.

“I’m not sure I even believe in the word ‘ugly’ anymore,” said Hobbes. “No matter what you look like, some percentage of the population will be attracted to you.

Maybe it’s 95 percent or maybe it’s five percent, but they are out

there. When you find them, do two things: First, believe them.

Second, shut up about it.”

In other words: Just because you wouldn’t want to sleep with you, UGLY, that doesn’t mean no one wants to sleep with you.

“I remember reading an interview with Stephen Fry, where he said that when he first started out as an actor, people would come up to him and say, ‘You were so great in that play!’ and his first response would be, ‘No, I was terrible,’” said Hobbes. “He thought he was being modest, but what he was really doing, he realized later, was being argumentative. Eventually, he started to just say ‘Thank you.’”

Hobbes thinks you should try to be like Fry, a big dude with a cute husband: “The next time someone tells him they’re into big dudes with beards, don’t argue, don’t panic, and don’t hesitate. Just say ‘Thank you’ and let the conversation move on.”

Follow Michael Hobbes on Twitter @RottenInDenmark and listen to his podcast You’re Wrong About..., available on iTunes.

On the Lovecast: Wait—why can’t gay men donate blood? savagelovecast.com. mail@savagelove.net @fakedansavage on Twitter ITMFA.org

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JONESIN’ CROSSWORD

Matt Jones

“TL;DR”-- some short versions.

Across

1 Playground marble 6 “Stay With Me” singer Smith 9 Point-and-click tool 14 Late-night TBS show 15 Bank offering, for short 16 “Champagne Supernova” band 17 Storage place 18 Does some present preparation 20 New pilot’s achievements 22 Wed. preceder 23 “Inglourious Basterds” org.

24 The Braves, on scoreboards 25 “I ___ Man of Constant Sorrow” 28 Country singer Travis 30 Elba who recently announced he won’t be playing James Bond 32 Australia’s Outback, alternatively 37 Becomes less green 38 Historic castle officially called “Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress” 41 Discipline with poses 42 Wound on a bobbin 43 Limp Bizkit frontman Fred 45 “Parks and Recreation” character Andy 48 Joan of Arc, e.g., for short 49 Ruling official 52 Word with Plaines or Moines 53 Niihau necklace 55 Like a government wonk, say 58 They may be receding 61 1990s cardio fad 62 For some reason it’s National Soft Pretzel Month 63 “Ambient 1: Music for Airports” composer 64 Become a member 65 Regards 66 Columnist Savage 67 Classic symbols of the theater

Down

1 “With ___ of thousands” 2 Escaped 3 Horn 4 “Break Your Heart” singer Cruz 5 Provide with a wardrobe 6 Protestors’ placards 7 Unfit for farming 8 Mario Puzo subject 9 “The Jungle Book” boy 10 Rowboat pair

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11 “Mr. Robot” network 12 Tiny drink 13 Feature of a Mariner’s cap 19 Blasting stuff 21 Fall-blooming flowers 25 2012 Affleck thriller 26 Bearing 27 Donkey relative 29 “___ the best of times ...”

31 Word before longlegs or Yankee 33 1940s-’50s jazz style 34 Strange sighting 35 Traffic caution word 36 Poker variant 38 Hype up 39 Grimm creature 40 Piece with a headline 41 PGA measurements 44 2016 Dreamworks movie with Justin Timberlake 46 Respectable group?

47 Converse rival 50 Lilly of pharmaceuticals 51 Penalized, monetarily 52 Knighted vacuum cleaner inventor 54 They offer immunity on “Survivor” 55 Highly proper 56 Wrestler John of countless memes 57 “Peter Pan” dog 58 Took in 59 King Kong, for instance 60 Vexation ©2018 Jonesin’ Crosswords

FREEWILL ASTROLOGY ARIES (March 21-April 19): Author Anne Carson describes part of her creative process in this way: “Sometimes I dream a sentence and write it down. It’s usually nonsense, but sometimes it seems a key to another world.”

I suspect you might be able to benefit from using a comparable trick in the coming days. That’s why you should monitor any odd dreams, seemingly irrational impulses, or weird fantasies that arise in you. Although they may not be of any practical value in themselves, they could spur a train of thought that leads you to interesting breakthroughs.

will be—it’ll serve you well to be affectionate and personable.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): “The idea of liberation through the suppression of desire is the greatest foolishness ever conceived by the human mind,” wrote philosopher E. M. Cioran. I agree that trying to deny or stifle or ignore our desires can’t emancipate us. In fact, I’m inclined to believe that freedom is only possible if we celebrate and honour our desires, marvel at their enigmas, and respect their power. Only then can we hope to refine them. Only then can we craft them into beautiful, useful forces that serve us rather than confuse and undermine us. The coming weeks will be an excellent time for you to engage in this spiritual practice, Taurus.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Your keynote is the Japanese word “shizuka.” According to photographer Masao Yamamoto, it means “cleansed, pure, clear, and untainted.” One of his artistic practices is to wander around forests looking in the soil for “treasures” that emanate “shizuka.” So in his definition, the term isn’t about being scrubbed or sanitized.

Rather, he’s interested in pristine natural phenomena that are unspoiled by civilization. He regards them as food for his soul. I mention this, Virgo, because now is an excellent time for you to get big doses of people and places and things that are cleansed, pure, clear, and untainted.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck,” says the Dalai Lama. Ain’t that the truth! When I was 22 years old, there were two different women I desperately yearned for as if they were the muse queens of heaven who would transform me into a great artist and quench my infinite passion. Fortunately, they both rejected me. They decisively set me free of my bondage to them.

Later, when I was older and wiser, I realized that blending my fortunes with either of them would have led me away from my true destiny. I got lucky! In a similar but less melodramatic way, Gemini, I suspect you will also get lucky sometime soon.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Don’ts for Boys or Errors of Conduct Corrected was an advice book for boys published in 1902.

Among many other strictures and warnings, it offered this advice: “Don’t giggle. For the love of decency, never giggle.” There was additional counsel in the same vein: “Don’t be noisy. The guffaw evinces less enjoyment than the quiet smile.” Another exhortation: “Don’t tease. Be witty, but impersonal.” In accordance with astrological omens, I hereby proclaim that all those instructions are utterly wrong for you right now. To sweetly align yourself with cosmic rhythms, you should giggle and guffaw and tease freely. If you’re witty—and I hope you

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LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): “Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful,” writes designer John Maeda. “The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak up,” says artist Hans Hofmann. “Simplicity strips away the superfluous to reveal the essence,” declares a blogger named Cheo. I hope these quotes provide you with helpful pointers, Leo. You now have the opportunity to cultivate a masterful version of simplicity.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Libran blogger Ana-Sofia Cardelle writes candidly about her relationship with herself. She keeps us up to date with the ever-shifting selfimages that float through her awareness. Here’s one of her bulletins: “Stage 1. me: I’m the cutest thing in the world. Stage 2. me, two seconds later: no, I’m a freaking goblin. Stage 3. me, two seconds after that: I’m the cutest goblin in the world.” I’m guessing that many of you Libras have reached the end of your own personal version of Stage 2. You’ve either already slipped into Stage 3, or soon will. No later than Oct. 1, you’ll be preparing to glide back into Stage 1 again.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): “There’s no such thing as love,” said Scorpio painter Pablo Picasso, “there are only proofs of love.” I’m tempted to believe that’s true, especially as I contemplate the current chapter of your life story. The evidence seems clear: you will thrive by engaging in practical demonstrations of how much you care. You’ll be wise to tangibly help and support and encourage and inspire everyone and everything you love. To do so will make you eligible for blessings that are, as of this moment, still hidden or unavailable.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): According to a Pew Research Study, nearly 75 percent of Americans say they talk to God, but only 30 percent get a reply. I’m guessing the latter

Rob Brezsny

figure will rise dramatically for Sagittarian Americans in the next three weeks, however. Why? Because the astrological indicators suggest that authorities of all kinds will be more responsive than usual to Sagittarians of all nationalities. Help from higher powers is likely to be both more palpable and more forthcoming.

Any communications you initiate with honchos, directors, and leaders have a better-than-normal chance of being well-received.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): One day in October 1926, author Virginia Woolf inscribed in her diary, “I am the usual battlefield of emotions.” It was a complaint, but also a brag. In fact, she drew on this constant turmoil to fuel her substantial output of creative writing. But the fact is that not all of us thrive on such ongoing uproar. As perversely glamorous and appealing as it might seem to certain people, many of us can do fine without it. According to my analysis, that will be true for you in the coming weeks. If you have a diary, you might justifiably write, “Hallelujah! I am not a battlefield of emotions right now!”

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Anthropologist Margaret Mead had definite ideas about “the ways to get insight.” She named them as follows: “to study infants; to study animals; to study [I]ndigenous people; to be psychoanalyzed; to have a religious conversion and get over it; to have a psychotic episode and get over it.” I have my own list of ways to spur insight and inspiration, which includes: to do walking meditations in the woods on a regular basis, no matter what the weather; to engage in long, slow sex with a person you love; to spend a few hours reviewing in detail your entire life history; to dance to music you adore for as long as you can before you collapse from delighted exhaustion.

What about you, Aquarius? What are your reliable ways to get insight? I suggest you engage in some of them, and also discover a new one. You’re in the flood of radical fresh insights phase of your astrological cycle.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Stanley Kubrick made masterful films, but most of them bore me.

I regard John Ashbery as a clever and innovative poet, but I’ve never been excited by his work.

As for painter Mark Rothko, I recognize his talent and intelligence, but his art leaves me empty. The music of Nora Jones is pretty and technically impeccable, but it doesn’t move me. In the coming weeks, Pisces, I invite you to make the kinds of fine distinctions I’m describing here. It will be important for you to be faithful to your subjective responses to things, even as you maintain an objective perspective about them and treat them with respect.

CURTIS HAUSER

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SAVE THE DATE!

24 R.I.P. Burt Reynolds

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