Curkyland

Several years ago, certain friends of mine nicknamed me "Curly." Yes, the name "Curly" was apt, and at the very least a term of endearment I was willing to tolerate. Then, after an intoxicated texting typo, I suddenly became "Curky."  My complaints that "Curky" sounded like a creepy clown/puppet/children's t.v. show host fell on deaf ears, and the name stuck.

But anyone who met me after 2007 might be shocked to know that I was not always curly. From the age of 12 when I got my first conair hair straightener (with optional crimping attachments of course), I furiously battled my natural curl. I blow dried, I ironed, I brushed, I cried, I ironed again. I literally pulled my hair out. Then, around the age of 18, I started to embrace my natural curl. AND IT WAS THE GREATEST MOMENT OF MY LIFE. My hair and I went from being mortal enemies, to BFF4EVA.

However, as with any relationship, my hair and I have had a couple rough patches in the last few years. Notably when I got a $30 haircut in Halifax. I left the salon horrified and ashamed, looking like I was going to my graduation portrait, Class of '86 (the 1980s were a hairstyling dark age).  Since this traumatic incident, I've accepted that curly hair (BECAUSE IT IS AWESOME) is more difficult to cut, and generally requires a more skilled and usually more expensive hairdresser.

Happily, in Toronto I have found the wonderful Curl Ambassadors. A hair salon that caters to follically curvy people like myself.

Reasons why I love the Curl Ambassadors:
1. Their name
2. Conveniently located at 159 Harbord Street
3. They play motown allllll the time
4. There are free jelly beans
5. I can pretend I am a housewife in the 50s when I'm sitting under the hairdryer
6. The first time you go they make you a Curl Map to teach you how to style your new haircut
7. The first time you go you get a gift certificate to use at your next visit
8. It is a hair salon just for curly haired people!!!!

I get my haircut with Keina, and it runs me about $90 with tip (eep!) but so worth it:

some of my Curlspirtation:

Barhopping

Last night Caroline and I went on a barhopping adventure at College & Bathurst. Here is a brief review of our exploration:

Destination 1:  
Bistro 422- 422 College Street
- dive bar
- $12 mixed drink pitchers (we had the long island iced tea)
- busy- students, early 20 somethings
- bathrooms = sketchy, really sketchy
- left after a bar patron threw up
- I'd go back for the cheap drinks

Destination 2:
Cloak and Dagger Pub- 394 College Street
- dive pub
- mixed drink $5.50, 24 taps, $12 pitchers
- DJ- playing retro and punk
- mildly busy with older punk rockers
- bathrooms= clean, and with a full length mirror
- left after man was staring at us for 15 minutes
- I'll probably go back on Tuesday for Bluegrass

Destination 3:
No One Writes to the Colonel- 460 College Street
- lounge
- huge Mojito $8
- DJ- played Robyn
- busy- mid 20s to early 30s (hipster-ish) crowd
- left when we had to catch the subway
- I'd go back for happy hour drinks

Mojito!

Dickens with a Twist

Last weekend Claire and I went to see David play violin with the Counterpoint Community Orchestra at St. Luke's United Church (353 Sherbourne Street). The concert was a tribute to Charles Dickens in honour of his 200th birthday. I won't pretend to know anything about classical music, but we thoroughly enjoyed it. Also, the selections from the musical "Oliver!" were a delight! whe-e-r-re iissss looovvvee?

I was also excited to discover that St. Luke's is a Langley and Burke designed church. Sadly, the interior was in pretty bad shape. I'd love to go back in the daytime and get a better look at the exterior, from what I saw it looks like an interesting mix of both Gothic and Romanesque revival styles.

St. Luke's (photo from Wikipedia)

So you want to be broke? - Your guide to living the indie musician life

I decided to start a new series as part of this blog, giving advice on surviving life as an ultra indie musician, based on my experiences with The Miss Bennets and based on my 10ish years (OMG) of obsessively following and supporting independent Canadian musicians. I hope someone out there finds this useful or at least entertaining. Lets Begin!

Chapter one: Finding sweet musician digs

Our lovely 100 and something year old apartment in Halifax

Finding the perfect pad is hard enough for a regular person, but if you're a musician its even more of an uphill battle. First of all, you have no money. This makes it difficult to put down first and last months rent on an apartment and generally being poor limits how nice a place you're going to find in any city.

Man choir

I didn't watch the Grammy's. I definitely can not sit through the several hours of ego parading, self- congratulating, and god- thanking "musician" acceptance speeches. But I did watch clips afterwards, so YAY to Adele, in my opinion the one of the only true artists at that level of fame. Also yay to Bon Iver and haha to all the ignorant masses who didn't know who he is and called him "Bonny Bear," really?! There were actually some good performances, although wtf to Niki Minaj, that girl is terrifying, what was that shit show? How can you call something a song when there is no melody?

Seeing the Beach Boys perform was super endearing. Brian Wilson looked confused about being on stage again but also really excited. The overall lead up to their performance with Maroon 5 and Foster the People was pretty cool. Mike Foster definitely didn't do his best vocal performance ever, which is too bad because he has a great falsetto, but I think he was affected by stage- fright because he had somewhat of a terrified expression on his face.

The Beach Boys in their hay day were a magnificent group and Brian Wilson is one of the greatest songwriters in pop music ever. Their harmonies are unreal, and have influenced our music to a degree, particularly in our song "I'm too young to have your baby, baby." I love love love female pop harmonies, but I reallllllyyy love man- harmonies. It is my not so secret dream to one day have a all-man backing choir, bearded and dressed in PLAID. yessssss! So in that spirit I thought I'd share a selection of my favourite Man- choirs (for lack of a better term).

Bon Iver manages to consistently create new and wonderful ways of performing this beautiful song. This example is so simple yet wonderful. When we went to Claire's parents oceanside cottage and recorded "Ballads from the Boudoir," after a long day of hard work, we would relax in the evenings listening to "For Emma, forever ago" light the fire, and sit in the rocking chairs reading. Just thinking about it now makes me feel sooo relaxed and cozy, siiigghh.

Speaking of a cabin on the sea, I love this video of Stan Rogers. Stan Rogers is one of the greatest Canadian songwriters and his rich baritone is swoon-worthy. Stan tragically died in a plane crash in 1983 at the age of 33. I love this video, because these guys look like they're just getting drunk and having a time! Sea shanty's are the freaking best! This maritime tradition inspired our song "Sailor," which also has probably my most favourite fiddle part that Claire has ever written.

Ahh The Band, my greatest love of all time. Levon Helm is an incredible songwriter who is still going strong. His album "Ramble at the Ryman" just won at the grammy's. His voice is just delectable, and personally I think he was quite the babe in his day. Here is a clip of "The night they drove old dixie down" from the masterpiece film "The Last Waltz" directed by Martin Scorsese.

And for good measure, here are the Beach Boys in their prime. Just listen to all those vocal layers, bom bom bom, oooo, help me Rhonda etc.

Kick-ass Chicks

Yesterday I went to see my friend Erica aka Tess D'urb-Evil, play with her team Chicks Ahoy! in the Toronto Roller Derby season opener, against the Gore Gore Roller Girls. It was a killer game, fast paced, high scoring, lots of hits, spills, curse words, and penalties. The Chicks prevailed in the end, woo hoo!

The halftime show featured the Cowgirl Choir. Unfortunately, I missed their whole set waiting in the bathroom line and then the beer line.

If you've never seen a roller derby game you NEED to go. Tickets are only $12 if you purchase in advance at an outlet (I recommend this rather than buying online bc if you have a paper ticket you don't have to wait in the super long line) There's beer and pizza for sale at the games, and you can bring your own chair or get there early and grab a seat on the bleachers.

Pub Quiz

source: Clintons.ca

I'd been on the lookout for a good quiz night for sometime when we decided to check out the trivia at Clinton's Tavern in Korea Town back at the beginning of January. While we had a really good time, due to a rather publicly embarrassing incident we had to wait several weeks before returning to the bar, in the hopes that they would forget us.

It all began when Claire was at the ROM doing work for her internship. She was digitally cataloguing items from the Greek and Roman collection. On this particular day, she was handling male fertility amulets. This included various small metal items such as men with big shlongs that some ancient dude would have carried around with him in the hopes of fertilizing his ancient wife's eggy. Fun times! One of the amulets was actually just a set of bronze testicles you could hang as a pendant on a necklace.

Flash forward to Monday night trivia and we were all discussing the possibility of bringing back this ancient genitalia jewelry. (I mean really, the hipsters would jump ALL OVER this trend) We started brainstorming names for our new gonad jewelry line and eventually settled on "Scrotumulet" a combo of scrotum + amulet. A short while later we had to write down a name for our trivia team so we put down Scrotumulet, figuring there was no way we would win that night anyways so it didn't matter what our team name was. Little did we know that part of the Pub Quiz includes reading aloud all the team names (each team cheers when their name is called). We weren't sure how the host would pronounce Scrotumulet, but we thought it would just sound like a gibberish word so we'd be fine. Unfortunately, the host read Scrotumulet as "SCROTUM MULLET" to which he added, "Presumably a bad experience one of you ladies had..."   !!!! Not surprisingly we didn't cheer for our team name.

Pub quiz is every Monday night at 8pm (doors at 7) It fills up really fast (last week ppl were turned away at the door) so get there early! We are currently recruiting for our team, we need someone who knows sports and someone who was alive in the 80s.