During Nuit Blanche this year the highlights for me were three sound events.  The first you’ll hear is Sound(e)scape curated by Darren Copeland at New Adventures in Sound Art in Toronto’s Wychwood Barns Artscape venue.  The next is a segment from the storytelling event at the Barns. Finally I share an event called In Search of a Wife in Search of a Husband. First is the memoirs of the wife of the Crown Prince of Korea, and her “experiences before and after her father-in-law, King Yongjo, forced her husband, his 25 year old son, to climb into a rice chest.   The chest was then sealed and her husband died in the chest eight days later.”  Later, the letters between Hester Lynch Thrale and Dr. Samuel Johnson are read.  The exchange is from 16 days between June and July 1784.  Thrale communicates her in intent at 43 years old to remarry and Johnson reacts strongly to the threat of the end of their twenty year association.

Links:   http://www.angelusnovus.net/events.html, Hector Centeno, Andrew Stewart , Nuit Blanche Toronto 2009

Listen to it at this link:

• HotFRM 177 (31MB)

Special K and I head to downtown Toronto to star gaze during the Toronto International Film Festival.   We actually see Juliette Lewis, Marcia Gay Harden and Richard Kind.   But we have to wait a long time during which I muse about mango shakes at The Green Fusion. We then head over to an upscale nik-nak store called Teatro Verde where I read randomly from the books on display and check out the scary, spooky halloween stuff like eerie origami.   Finally we go to Starbucks and meet fake stars that people insist on taking pictures of.  Who are all the men in black suits?

Custom Motorcycle (Photo By Ninja)

Other famous people mentioned:  Jodie Foster, Laura Dern, Steve Lawrence, Donald Sutherland.  Other important links:  6 Billion Others Project, Eleven Thousand Things to be Miserable About.

Listen here at:

• HotFRM 176 – (33Mb)

Hellbound Alleee of Mondo Diablo fame gets it right on the nose.  There is no rhyme nor reason to the world and this life.  There doesn’t have to be.  But that is not the subject of this post.   I am responding to her episode number 195 of Mondo Diablo where a believer says that the number one question of non-believers is “Why is there evil if there is a god?”.  Of course it’s the number one question that non-believers asks because the answer, that normally involves how god gave us free will to test our faith, is incomprehensible. It simply does not answer the question.   This whole business of free will and its relationship to evil begs the question of god,  as Alleee points out in Mondo Diablo #195 :    “What, indeed, do we need god for if we have free will”, she asks.  What exactly would be the point?

The whole question of a free will and the fallen world is very foreign to all other non-christian religions because no other religion has this concept of original sin.   Why bother to create an Adam and Eve if they’re going to disappoint you and once they’ve disappointed you why not just destroy the world and all its sinners and start over?  Oh sorry.  Is that what is supposed to happen with the coming of the apocalypse and Armageddon?  One might argue that the ways of the superior being are not understandable to us.   Then why bother at all believing?  If his ways are not penetrable, then why should I waste one moment on it?  I’ll tell you why:  because there are only about 1.5 billion of us in the world who are self described non-believers in a god and the rest believe in one (or many), much to the  puzzlement of non-believers, who spend a considerable amount of time defending ourselves against this offense to our sensibilities called “belief in a god and all that it means.”

Alleee hits another one right on the sweet spot in that episode.  I have to say it again because I love it:  “The search for comfort is not the same as the search for god.”   These are indeed and importantly two very different things.  A god is a very terrible thing to believe in.  A “bubba meisis” as my mother would say, “an old wive’s tale”, a scary monster thing to tell your children to keep them in line.   And then we tell them that it’s ok to believe in the scary monster because they’ll be rewarded when they die by some other fabrication called heaven or resurrection or rebirth as a brahmin, or with virgins in an afterlife that they can rape with abandon.

On the other hand I would like very much to remind Alleee how she got here -  Her wonderful show Mondo Diablo, that I have been enjoying for 4 years wouldn’t even exist if it were not for someone’s belief in god.  How’s that for a slap in the face?

Globe Thistle is very soft

Hop on the Magic Bus.  Naw – it’s just part two at the Market.   More vegetables and items of curiosity.   Fantastical clocks at Arts on King,  a visit to the bank, and we discover that Charlie is a master at parallel parking.

A clock adorned with a feather at "Arts on King" Toronto

Listen to it here:

• HotFRM 175 (20Mb)

Parallel parking is about doing it at all.   Bring your own bags to the store or it will cost you 5 cents a pop in Toronto since June 1 and Charlie needs to buy one for the steak she will be making for herself.  Charlie is a slow poke like we are.

All the gay people are out with their pink bags and bicycles.  Pigs are hanging in the window. Special K reveals a TTC Scam Story.  Famous 70s Rock Stars mentioned: Alice Cooper

Listen to the show at

• HotFRM 174 (23Mb)

International Space Station (Photo from New York Times Nasa/Reuters)

On this, the summer of the 40^th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing,  Special K and I head outside the house one late evening to catch a glimpse of the space station making its way round the earth.  We are surprised by its speed, size, colour and certainly by the fact that we are actually able to view it.   We have less than five minutes to watch it pass overhead.

Scarborough Dude (Photo by Ninja)

On the first morning of Podcasters Across Borders in June, the Dude was called up for the first jolt session of the conference. This session is meant to be exactly five minutes and is intended to stimulate the mind and conversation during the break before the next longer scheduled session.  True to form The Dude expressed himself in his characteristic stream of consciousness way when the alarm sounded ending his five minutes.   We took pity on him however and gave him a precious few more moments to read a dude original poem –  irreverent yet moving.  By the way the Dude is completely NSFW : that is:  not safe for work.  You have been warned (audio of the Dude’s jolt courtesy of Whitney Hoffman).

Listen to it at

• HotFRM 173 – The Dude – Zen Master (18Mb)

I just need to understand what has happened to people’s social skills.

On Friday night Special K and I went to see a film and were amazed to be sitting beside a rather large-ish fellow who pulled out a deli-tub of corn nuts before the movie started and began to eat them. He dug his hand into the tub each time, scooping out a handful of nuts and using his fist as a funnel, closed his eyes and poured them into his upturned mouth.  This prelude was followed by fierce crunching noises as he chewed  while the rest of the audience around him looked on in a mixture of amusement, fascination, horror and derision.

Do you have any idea how a corn nut crunch sounds in a darkened quiet theatre?  He proceeded to eat the entire tub without regard for any of the other members of the audience.  Several people moved away in disgust, others were looking back at him or over at him and yet, the fellow remained oblivious and non-plussed. When he finally finished The Tub, Special K said, “Thank god it’s over”. “Oh it’s not over. Not by a long shot. I think that bag there with him is full of food.”  I don’t know if he got the message, but he was fairly silent throughout the film except that he shifted around noisily and pulled out several plastic bottles of water which he held above his head and drizzled into his throat.

I think these people believe it is actually ok to behave as though they are alone in their living rooms.

Last week Special K and I went to see the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum.   We roamed among the historical artifacts that support the scroll exhibit and we were thoroughly awed by not only the scrolls themselves but the events themselves by which these items have finally made their way to public display.

In keeping with the semi-biblical theme, a few weeks ago I saw the most charming, delightful and poignant one woman show called The Burning Bush.  In this part musical, part ode to Madonna, and part dance, the main character Barbara Baumawitz embarks on a journey to teach Kabbalah to strippers.  In the process she makes friends, makes amends for past sins, and finds her true path in life.

Tracey Erin Smith is Toronto’s own, an actor and a playwright.  She teaches the art of solo shows and works with seniors and people with cancer focusing on comedy and personal story telling.

Regardless of what I may have expected from this play, some titillating strip tease or other erotic acts, I was surprised by the journey that Tracey Erin Smith took me on.  She takes us from silly geeky awkwardness to learning how to make her dreams come true. And how to bring joy to other people. This is how she makes the audience feel by the end of the show: Joyful

In a short talkback session after the performance, Ms Smith and the director Anita La Selva answer questions from the audience and talk a little about the artistic process of this one woman show.

• Listen to HotFRM 172 – Dead Sea Scrolls and Saving Souls (27mb)

Posted in Podcast Tagged: anita la selva, dead sea scrolls, fringe festival toronto, Jackie Mason, kabbalah, M Andrew Diamond, madonna, tracey erin smith ]]> http://ninjaradio.wordpress.com/2009/07/06/hot-fossils-and-rebel-matters-dead-sea-scrolls-and-saving-souls-one-lapdance-at-a-time/feed/ 0 Ninja scroll madonna1 The Burning Bush - Tracey Erin Smith http://ninjaradio.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/hot-fossils-and-rebel-matters-171-the-living-museum-in-64-stories/ http://ninjaradio.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/hot-fossils-and-rebel-matters-171-the-living-museum-in-64-stories/#comments Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:14:32 +0000 Ninja http://ninjaradio.wordpress.com/?p=346 ]]>

It took Jowi Taylor 11 years to collect the pieces and create “Voyageur”, the Six-String Nation guitar.   It was made from 64 individual artifacts modern and ancient.  Each tell a story from the history of Canada.  A piece from former Prime Minister Trudeau’s canoe paddle, wood from the sacred albino spruce, (also known as the golden spruce),  of the Haida First Nation people, the top of Wayne Gretzky’s hockey stick, part of the cabin of a former S. Carolina slave John Ware, a piece of the handle from a championship oyster-shucking knife, and many more objects adorn and make up this guitar.  Jowi calls it a living museum because he invites people to touch it, photograph it, and of course play it.

Photo By Ninja

This episode of Hot Fossils is an homage to this living piece of history, this unique method of telling 64 wonderful stories.  Jowi Taylor gave the keynote address at this year’s Podcasters Across Borders. I attended the weekend of June 21^st.  After the keynote, Jay Moonah was invited up to play the guitar.  My show today opens with Jay and Bob Goyetche playing “With A Little Help From My Friends” by Lennon and McCartney, followed by the question period.   I have edited out portions of the question period in order to focus on the story of the guitar itself.

After the question period, I talk to Jowi and he describes additional pieces that make up the guitar case.  For those of you interested in obscure and not so obscure Canadian lore, you’ll find out about the fun fur that lines the case, pieces of the costume that Karen Kain wore during the ballet Sleeping Beauty and material from the sportcaster Don Cherry’s pants.   You can read all about the six-string nation guitar project at the site sixstringnation.com.

Photo by Ninja

• Listen to it  HotFRM 171 – A Living Museum in 64 Stories (29.2Mb)

Off to the Fromagerie for all types and ages of cheeses.  It’s our quarterly trip to the St. Lawrence Market.   Charlie is late, but when she does catch up to us, she brings along the specs for several laptops.  We invite her over to our place only to discover she’s going to bring her laundry with.   We discuss the number of expletives in the film In Bruges and Charlie informs us that Belgium is the Newfoundland of Europe.  Who knew?  Onions, Hot Cross Buns and how much weight Ninja and Special K are putting on.  Toothpicks and tear saving kitchen gadgets like onion goggles. Wind up bunnies and high bouncing balls that do not bounce. Ninja startles small children again and Charlie buys more potatoes.  Finally, Ninja is duly impressed by the Mulholland Drive California mandarin oranges.

• HotFRM 170 – Charlie is Never Boring (25Mbs)