Musical Interlude III

Kind of like the year-in-review, tabloid edition. (Break)

Musical Interlude II

This one is courtesy of Les Hommes Sans Chapeaus, sort of. (College Humour)

Rosie LaRose's Tuesday Top Six

YOU MIGHT NOT BELIEVE IT TODAY, BUT … the 2000s were the warmest decade on record. (United Nations Climate Change Conference)

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION? Under the Bush administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had all the regulatory power of a traffic cop at the Indianapolis 500, thanks to corporate lobbying and a general belief that environmentalism gets in the way of progress. Which is why the EPA’s new threat to Take Global Warming seriously should be taken with not just a grain of salt, but the whole shaker. (New York Times)

THEY’RE REALLY FNUC’ED THIS TIME When a student records a grade of two incompletes and a did not finish, they’d be on academic probation at the very least. So what happens when a college records the same record? (L-P)

AND THE BIG FOOL SAYS TO PUSH ON The Globe and Mail’s editorial board tears a strip off External Affairs Minister Peter MacKay’s bungling coverup of Afghani torture (G&M). But you can’t question why Canada is complicit in torturing Afghanis who may or may not be involved with the conflict without wondering what we’re doing there in the first place, right?

STANDING PATS One of the Regina Pats’ defensemen stages a walkabout (Rod Pedersen) and their top bantam draft pick can’t choose between Regina and … Weyburn? (L-P). Trouble in paradise … again.

WHAT AWAY TO GO More about Matthew McConaughey’s father than you really, really want to know – NSFW (holytaco.com).

Musical Interlude*

This courtesy of a Department of Eagles video for their song "No One Does It Like You" which was directed byPatrick Daughters and Marcel Dzama and premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York this spring. (YouTube)

*Thanks to John Hampton for bringing this to my attention.

A Funny Joke For Your Cold Co-Workers

It's -33 degrees today. Bleah. Everone is cold and sad. But you can help. Here's how to make your frozen associates laugh and forget their shiveries in four easy steps:

1.) Identify a frosty co-worker, and run up to them as if to provide emergency assistance.

2.) Lean back, reach for your fly as if to unbutton/unzip it*, and bellow in a heroic voice: "DON'T WORRY, I'LL WARM YOU UP WITH A HOT STREAM OF URINE." Draw out the "I'll" a little when you say this (for comedic verbal effect).

3.) Wait for the laughter to EXPLODE. You're soooo funny!

4.) Repeat often, all day long.

*This joke probably works better for boys than it does for girls. Humour is well-known for its sexism.

Pick of the Day: Rezidents

We couldn't squeeze a review of Rezidents, which runs at Neutral Ground (203-1856 Scarth) until Dec. 19, into prairie dog, but I dropped by the gallery the other day and would definitely recommend checking the show out. It's co-presented by Sakewewak Artists' Collective and includes work by three Aboriginal artists-- Terrance Houle, Jackson 2bears and Peter Brass.


In the summer of 2008, I interviewed Houle about a residency he was participating in that was based in north-central Regina. What he ended up doing was creating a series of photographic vignettes in the neighbourhood using miniatures. The one pictured above is titled Pray for Me. There's three others in the show including one that, with football season having just ended, is particularly timely. In the foreground, it shows a dozen green-clad revellers, while Mosaic Stadium looms in the background. The vignette, from my perspective, comments on the irony of what amounts to a holy shrine in Regina (and Saskatchewan in general) being located in neighbourhood that, outside of game day, most Reginans (and Saskatchewanians in general) avoid like the plague. And when they do deign to visit, how many of them, especially if they've been drinking before and during the game, are rude and condescending to the people for whom the neighbourhood is home?

Of Mohawk ancestry, 2bears currently lives in Victoria. His contribution to Rezidents consists of two video projections (still from one pictured above). Schematically, they resemble Canadian flags, with red bands on the outside edges and white interiors. Instead of the expected maple leafs at the centre, however, there are two images of a young Mohawk drummer. Projected atop the "flags" are texts commenting on the simmering territorial and jurisdictional disputes between Mohawks and Euro-Canadian authorities in Ontario and Quebec.

According to bio material I was able to access on Peter Brass, he's a Saskatchewan artist who holds a degree in English from First Nations University of Canada with a minor in film studios. In his video Bobsledding, two young men join a third man for a housewarming at his new residence (pun perhaps intended). During a night of beer drinking, card-playing and charades Brass explores paradigms of masculinity that exist among inner-city urban youth. Similar themes would seem to be in play in a second video of his in which a young man dressed partially in clown garb roars across the open prairie on a motorcycle.

Neutral Ground is open Tuesday through Saturday 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Dec. 12 at 8 p.m. there'll be a reception/Chirstmas party at the gallery.