Library Voices nominated for Bucky Awards

Local act Library Voices (a few of whom are pictured above on tour) have been nominated for Best Live Act in this year's CBC Radio 3 Bucky Awards. Looking at the list, they've got some big competition, including live heavyweigths like King Khan and the Shrines, Joel Plaskett, Holy Fuck, and Elliott Brood. Now's your chance to throw some support behind the hometown heroes. Voting is open until Nov. 8 at the CBC Radio 3 website.

Last year, they were nominated for Best Lyric and Best Band Name, and won the latter. Side note: I've never met a Best New Band Name category I've liked, just because the criteria for "new" is so indefinite. Take this year's Bucky Awards, for instance - they included Montreal's Think About Life, a band that's been around for five years and two albums. The Best American Nonrequired Reading anthology, edited by Dave Eggers, has the same problem when they compile a similar list every year. It works for Library Voices, since they were a new act who had just put out their first release. But the general philosophy seems to be that old NBC slogan: "If you haven't seen it, it's new to you."

Rosie LaRose's Top six

LIVING OUTSIDE OF THE LAW On July 30, 71 days before his scheduled release, Brock Wiebe, who was convicted of sexual assault, got out of a Saskatchewan jail. But the public wasn't told – despite the Cons’ public pledge after a spate of escapes last year from the Regina Correctional Centre that they would inform the public every time there was a prisoner on the loose. (cbc.ca) So why would Corrections Minister Yogi Hughebaert be more worried about how the information was leaked than how the guy got out in the first place? (LP)

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A SCUZZBALL HAS TO MEET HIS VOTERS Republican Senator David Vitter was one of 30 Republicans voting against Al Franken’s amendment to the Defense Appropriations Act which would have withheld contracts to companies that prevented its employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court. He recently met one of his constituents – a victim of sexual assault. (Think Progress)

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT Yo Murphy, who retired after winning the 2007 Grey Cup with the Roughriders, is the head coach of the Tampa Breeze of the Lingerie Football League. The problem with coaching the team, is that no matter how successful you are … who watches the game for the football action? (LP)

‘HE CAN’T EVEN RUN HIS OWN LIFE: I’LL BE DAMNED IF HE’LL RUN MINE …’ Like a lot of people who are to the left of Atilla the Hun and following Canadian politics, I jumped the gun on reporting the possible demise of the National Post. (prairie dog) On Friday, the paper was transferred to the newspapers division of Canwest Global (cbc.ca). So, the other papers in Canwest will be financially propping up a newspaper that's bleeding red ink like a butchered sow (globeinvestor.com). And it’s a newspaper whose editors have been happily telling us how to run our lives and our governments. (Canadian Cynic)

FIGHTING THE LAST ECONOMIC WAR Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman nails it – fighting a deficit doesn’t mean a thing if a generation of people have no jobs – and, therefore, no ability to pay income and sales taxes to pay down that deficit. (New York Times)

MAKE ‘EM LAUGH Ever wonder what Pulp Fiction would have been like with a laugh track?(Uninflected Images Juxtaposed) Ever wonder if Friends would have been funny without a laugh track? Wonder no more(YouTube). Thanks, Will Dixon, my old Drama 200 classmate.

Pick of the Day: The Pack A.D.

Here's a link to a post Steve did on this band back in July. (http://prairiedogmag.blogspot.com/2009/07/pack-attack.html).

Tonight's production night for us here at prairie dog as we put the finishing touches on our bombshell Nov. 5 issue. Assuming we get done at a reasonable hour I'll definitely be checking out the Pack A.D. at O'Hanlon's Pub.

This Week at City Hall

We've a new council (well, 20 per cent new, anyway) so they won't be meeting publicly this week. Neither will any of the committees. Replacements will need to be found for Jerry Flegel on the Regina Planning Commission and for Bill Gray on the Transit Advisory Board.

Also, new councillors, John Findura and Chris Szarka, will be getting a chance to learn the ropes.

I did an interview with City Clerk, Joni Swidnicki, before the election about what a new council means to her department. So, in lieu of our usual schedule of city hall happenings, here's the Q&A on new councillor orientation...

ME: After the election, there must be an awkward transition phase for new councillors where they’re learning the ropes and learning how to interact with the clerk’s office and things like that...

SWIDNICKI: Yep. There is. There’s certainly a learning curve. We do provide an orientation and that depends to a large degree on how much of a turnover there is on the council. If it’s a case of one or two people then it’s as easy to do it almost on a one on one basis [rather than] have the full council sit for the stuff.

But we will do an orientation session. It’s probably almost a day long. We cover off such things as good governance and protocol, conflict of interest and planning. Planning is probably one of the biggest things that councillors kind of have to have an understanding of, so there will probably be an orientation on that as well.

Pick of the Day: The Creepshow

Things have quieted down a bit lately. But for the past few years, Regina has had a pretty happening rock-a-billy/
psychobilly scene courtesy of bands like the Sinsters, Bastard Sons of a Rock 'N' Roll Devil and Let There Be Theremin. The Creepshow are out of Toronto. But when they take the stage they always bring the heat.

Fronted by Sean "Sickboy" McNab and Sarah "Sin" Blackwood, the Creepshow have two albums to their credit -- Sell Your Soul (2006) and Run For Your Life (2008). Horror films are a big inspiration when it comes to song-writing, and the band is notorious for their incendiary live shows. For a taste of what the band has to offer, here's the video for "Take My Hand" off their second album. (YouTube)

Joining the Creepshow at the Distrikt tonight are the Celtic folk-punk band the Dreadnoughts (here's the video for their song "Antarctica" off their 2009 album Legends Never Die) and garage punk rockers the Hypnophonics.

Pick of the Day: Puppetry of the Penis

When Puppetry of the Penis first rolled through town seven or eight years ago I did a preview for prairie dog that entailed me attending a press conference where I, and other journalists, were treated to four "installations" by the two "puppeteers" -- complete with big-screen close-ups as happens during the actual performance.

I guess as a teenager I must have led a relatively sheltered life as I don't remember getting together with other boys, as the show's founders Dave Friendly and Simon Morley claimed to have done, to do tricks with their dicks. Genital origami, if you will.

Maybe it's an Australian thing? That country, after all, is subtropical while the climate in Canada is much colder. The obstacle that poses to boys (and men) from here being able to do tricks with their genetalia like recreating the Eiffel Tower or the Loch Ness Monster, while not insurmountable, is formidable.

Given the season, it would probably behoove the two performers featured in this touring production to ensure they're properly warmed-up before they take the stage tonight at Conexus Arts Centre (a dip in a hot tub, perhaps, or a stint in a sauna?) otherwise ...

Assuming I haven't already given you "too much information", here's a TV news report on Puppetry of the Penis. (YouTube)

Trick Or Treat

It's 5:29 p.m., the internationally-recognized official start of western civilization's annual candy grab. Do you know where your pumpkin is?

31 Days of Horror: Halloween

Well its Halloween and what better movie to wrap up 31 Days of Horror than John Carpenter's 1978 horror classic Halloween.

Spawning seven sequels, a remake and a sequel to the remake, Halloween is often credited for starting the slasher horror genre that bombarded the '80s. Bob Clark's Black Christmas actually predated this film as a slasher flick but it didn't have the same impact as Carpenter's movie had.

The story starts off in 1963 where a young six year old boy named Michael Myers brutally murders his sister on Halloween. Fifteen years later and Michael's psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) is transporting Myers when Myers escapes. Myers turns up back at his old hometown and starts stalking Jamie Lee Curtis and her friends while wearing a painted William Shatner mask.

The story is simple but effective. Carpenter creates excellent suspension here and his soundtrack is creepy and memorable. Unlike the slasher films that would later follow, the body count in this film is quite low. Carpenter wisely never directed another Halloween movie and instead moved on to make other brilliant horror movies - usually titled John Carpenter's whatever (The Fog, The Thing, Christine - even though Christine is a Stephen King story).

Saturday Morning Cartoon: Halloween Edition

Today's special Saturday Morning Cartoon is the 1953 Oscar nominated short cartoon The Tell-Tale Heart. The cartoon is narrated by James Mason and directed by Ted Parmelee who directed several Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons.

This is a faithful and creepy adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's classic short story. There is limited animation but surreal backgrounds and the point of view look to the film work excellently to create a unique style for the cartoon.

Pick of the Day: Thirst

Shane's been regaling you this month with a pre-Hallowe'en run-down of his 31 favourite horror flicks. I'm not saying that this film by South Korean director Park Chan-wook (Old Boy Trilogy) should have been included in his list. But Thirst is screening tonight at the RPL Theatre at 7 p.m. so it was a natural for my pick-of-the day. Although as I noted in yesterday's post, there is some decent music happening tonight too.

Awarded the Prix du Jury at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, Thirst is loosely based on Emile Zola's 19th century novel Therese Raquin, and concerns a priest who selflessly ministers to the sick and dying while silently wrestling with doubts about the sanctity of his faith. After volunteering for an experiment to find a cure for the fatal Emmanuel Virus, he succumbs to the disease, only to be reborn as a vampire with an insatiable lust both for blood and his childhood friend's beautiful wife Tae-ju.

Thirst is rated 18A, and is apparently the first mainstream Korean film to feature full-frontal male nudity. Here's the English language trailer. (YouTube) And if you're too busy trick or treating tonight, Thirst also plays at the RPL Sunday at 9:15 p.m.