Geek movies of 2014

We’ve had three super-hero movies so far this year. As I am somewhat a geek, a quick rundown on how they were:

Captain America: The Winter Soldier – I was never the biggest fan of the first Cap movie, The First Avenger. I thought once he became Cap the movie got pointedly less interesting. I loathed the musical number and thought more time should have been spent showing how he was a legend during the war. And Bucky’s death wasn’t well done.

But I heard rumbling in the geek community that The Winter Solider was going to be something special. And they were right. It’s up there with the first Iron Man and Avengers for Marvel Studio movies.

Very loosely based on the Ed Brubaker/Steve Epting storyline, it features Captain dealing with spies, conspiracies and the costs of freedom. I’ve never been the biggest fan of Cap in the comics. He tends to be handled badly more often than not. But the run with Brubaker as writer (and a series of top notch artists) got to the very heart of what makes him work – that he’s a deeply principled and ethical man who often struggles trying to make those beliefs work in a world that doesn’t always share them.

He believes in the American Dream, even when so many seem to have forgotten it. The fact that he’s a pain in the ass to people who use patriotism as a scoundrel’s defence his part of his appeal.

And that’s what we have in The Winter Soldier. Cap standing up to those who believing they’re being patriotic, but are just committing crimes with the flag as a defence. In some ways, this is Marvel's The Dark Knight. Of all the Marvel movies so far only Iron Man really comes as close to having some darker and more serious themes.

But let’s not get too deep here. Yes, there’s a story here about privacy violations and sacrificing freedom for security that’s timely. But that would get boring quickly. It’s also a great action movie, with a good sense of humour and a spectacular supporting cast.

It works not because of any slavish devotion to a particular comic book storyline (I love The Winter Soldier story arc in the comics, but if you’re expected it up on the big screen, you’ll be disappointed). But they do get to the heart of what makes the character work and the themes the comic book writers were working with and putting it on the big screen. Which is why it works.

Amazing Spider-Man 2, on the other hand…

Look, this is a mess. If there was ever a franchise that you would have thought would have learned lessons about streamlining a story and not having too many villains, it would have been Spider-Man, given what a mess Sam Raimi’s third movie was. And yet, here we go again.

There are too many villains – Rhino (admittedly a small part), Electro, and Goblin. There are too many plots – will Peter and Gwen stay get back together despite his promise to her dying father, will she go to Oxford, what’s going on with Electro, what’s going on with Harry Osborne, what’s the secret of Peter’s parents.

Only the plots with Peter and Gwen are remotely interesting. Jamie Foxx is terrible as Electro. Just twitchy over-acting all over the place. The dude playing Goblin is just meh with the worse hair you will see in any movie this year. The plot with Peter’s parents (well, father. His mom might as well not be in the movie) literally goes nowhere. If it was cut, you would not have missed it, at all.

And really, when you have two leads with as much frightening natural chemistry as Garfield and Stone why are you not putting them on the screen as much as humanly possible? The best scenes in the movie are the two of them – her trying to get out of OsCorp Building and Peter distracting security with a bit straight out of Buster Keaton, and Gwen saving the day and reminding Peter that she is, in fact, a lot smarter than he is.

Stuff like that makes having to deal with the rest of the movie so bloody frustrating.

But here’s the really frustrating thing…geeks and movie people have a hard time realizing that what works on the page doesn’t always work on the screen. A lot of The Winter Soldier comic story, which features the Red Skull, cosmic cubes, a power mad Russian general, would not work on the screen. But they realized it and took the heart of the story, and tweaked it into a story that would work.

I heard that the studio routinely has Marvel comic writers come out to retreats to take a look at the scripts and solicit their opinion. It works.

But this…this feels like it was reviewed by marketers and consultants. I wonder if they had a single Spider-Man writer, like Brian Michael Bendis of Dan Slott, offer their opinions. And then there’s the big story twist…

Spoiler

…that Gwen Stacy dies in Spider-Man’s battle with the Green Goblin. It has to be in the movie because it’s a critical part of Spider-Man lore and I’m sure the marketers thought the geeks would be pissed off.

Except…

It’s a terrible Spider-Man story. It really is. It was shocking in the early 70s, but that doesn’t make it good. Stan Lee hated it and thought the writer made a mistake. They basically killed off Gwen because Peter Parker was doing ok at the time – job, university, friends, hot girlfriend – so he needed to suffer and get some character development. So let’s off the girlfriend.

You can almost forgive it given the time it was written, which was the early 70s. Killing a girlfriend to make the male lead suffer and have some character growth…well, what was wrong with that? Today, the writers would be pounced on. They have a term for it in comics…fridging. It comes from an awful Green Lantern story where a villain breaks into a new Green Lantern’s home, kills his girlfriend and stuffs her in the refrigerator.

But in those comics they had years of taking Peter Parker and, yes, making him suffer, but also making his life a bit easier. This was a shot to knock him back. In the comics, over a 10-year period, there is a degree of twisted logic in killing Gwen.

In the space of two movies, Peter Parker’s parents abandon him, are killed (maybe. No bodies = no death) and then he finds out they might have been traitors. His selfish behavior gets his Uncle Ben killed. He indirectly gets Gwen’s father killed during a super-hero fight. So I think Peter was doing good for character defining moments and making sure he has to struggle.

Killing Gwen was stupid in the comics (interestingly, Bendis brought back Gwen in the Ultimate Spider-Man series, where she’s a fantastic character) and really, really stupid in the movie.

Sigh…

I tend to buy comic book movies on blu-ray as a matter of course. I doubt I will buy this one. As frustrating as Man of Steel was, this one is worse. It’s just a mess…

X-Men: Days of Future Past – Speaking of beloved comic book storylines…this one ranks second in X-Men lore only to the Dark Phoenix Saga (both by Chris Claremont and John Byrne). A story featuring Kitty Pride sent back in time from a disastrous future where mutants are hunted and imprisoned by Sentinels to stop the one event that lead to the creation of that future.

Given how it feels like every third movie, and every second comic book, features time travel, it doesn’t seem like much. But in 1982, when the comic came out, it blew minds. The image of Wolverine and Kitty Pryde in front of a wall with posters featuring X-Men who were either dead, captured or still wanted is iconic and been duplicated in dozens of covers since then.

It is a beloved story story (amazingly, only two issues. These days it would be a 12-part storyline with 30 crossover books). So trying to replicate on the big screen is going to push some geek buttons. Thankfully, it works. If The Winter Soldier was trying to aim for a 70s conspiracy thriller vibe, and if the Amazing Spider-Man 2 was a marketing exercise trying to sell toys and launch new movies for Sony to play with, the DofP (I'm not tying that out 20 more times) is, oddly, the most purely straight super hero of the bunch.

Wolverine has to travel back in time to 1973 to prevent a dystopian future where mutants are all but destroyed by mutant hunting Sentinels. Specifically, he needs to stop Mystique from murdering Boliver Trask, the Sentinel program creator, an act that leads to the Sentinel program being kicked into overdrive.

Look, it has the usual X-Men tropes about the majority fearing the minority (in the 60s it was blacks, but it's also been for immigrants, gays, and other groups). But there's a hell of a lot of fun in there. The "Time in a Bottle" scene with Quicksilver in the Pentagon is not only the best two minutes in any X-Men movie, it might be the best two minutes of any movie you'll see this year. It's that much fun. It also has a ton of fun little Easter eggs buried in the movie for comic book geeks (my favourite was Quicksilver casually mentioning a guy his mom used to date).

It also does the time honoured comic book tradition of retcon/rebooting. If you basically think there has been only one good X-Men/Wolverine movie in the past 10 years (First Class) and that X-Men continuity is a mess (it is) then this manages to the neat trick of fixing all of that and relaunching the franchise. If you hated X-Men: The Last Stand and think Brett Ratner is the anti-Christ, then you're really going to love this movie.

On top of that, it has parts or cameos by pretty much everyone who has ever been in the X-Men movies, great action sequences and good acting. Really, if the X-Men movies have been fortunate in anything, it's that they've managed to get some of the very best actors in the business to come in their playground.

There are still a few more comic book movies coming out this year. There's Guardians of the Galaxy (no clue), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (bad feeling), Transformers (almost certainly awful) and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (bad feeling), but it's going to be hard to top DofP and The Winter Soldier. Which is fine. I just hope they're not as bad as the last Spider-Man.

Last Five

1. Hitsville, U.K. - The Clash

2. Laurel - Goldfrapp

3. Don't know nothing - Maroon 5

4. Goddess on the prairie - Hot Hot Heat

5. Tower of song (live) - Leonard Cohen*

Weather, dumps and journalism awards...

So a few things...

1. Welcome to June, which in Iqaluit today means you got intermittent snow flurries, winds gusting up to 80 km/h and general suckiness. Today's snow, by the way, continues the current streak of consecutive months with snow in Iqaluit to 22. The last time we had a month that didn't have at least one day of flurries was August 2012.

And I understand...Welcome to the Arctic. What else are you expecting? Still, this is the time of the year where it does start to wear on you a little bit. Or, as my wife said when she got into the car at lunch time, having clearly not enjoyed being smacked in the face with snow being blown at high velocity "Someone needs to get Mother Nature some candy and flowers and get her laid. Because this weather is bullshit!"

So yes, someone is ready for vacation now. I tend to take a slightly more pragmatic view. Along with the snow, there was also rain. So if you take that and mix in the high winds, it probably did some serious damage to the sea ice.

Because while the weather might be pissing Cathy off, I'm done with the sea ice and would like to see that gone. So if high winds and rain can break the back of that, I'm a happy man. For those curious, here's a satellite photo of Frobisher Bay on May 31, just to give you an idea of ice conditions...

2. I haven't written anything about the Iqaluit dump being on fire because, well, it's about two weeks old right now and been covered by CBC, Nunatsiaq News, Huffington Post, the National Post and god knows who else. The fact that there's a twitter account on the dumb has somehow become worthwhile news as well. And for the record, because I've been asked, no, I'm not the person behind @yfbdumpcano.

I will admit I was one of the first (but not the first) people on Twitter to call it the dumpcano and get a laugh out of it. Because the dump is one fire...again ("We'd have to update the 'X number of days since the dump caught on fire', but it's currently burning" was one of mine, I believe), local officials called it a volcano, all but ensuring things were going to get deeply silly.

And it's an easy enough thing to be silly about...when the wind is blowing the right way. So far, about two weeks into this, most residents have been lucky with the smoke blowing either down the bay (hunters were using it as, I kid you not, a navigational beacon when coming back to town) or out over the park. We've only had one bad day so far at our house where the prevailing wind blew our way. It was...unpleasant. I have friends in the Plateau Subdivision who have had to endure it more often. They're not happy.

They're really not happy when city officials say they're not going to try and put it out and that it could last for months. So we'll see. It's grumbling right now. If this is still burning in July, well, I think things could start getting unpleasant. As in pitchforks and torches unpleasant.

One of the things I used to hear all the time, when we first moved here, when something went wrong, or something you would take for granted elsewhere in Canada wouldn't work or happen here would be "Well, it's the north." I always thought that was a bullshit, lazy excuse. I could be wrong, but I think people are become much less tolerant of that excuse, especially as the territory, and the city, continues to grow.

3. Way back in my journalist days I got nominated for, and won, several community newspaper awards. Now as a serious journalist you're supposed to downplay the importance of these things. Wave them off as silly, unimportant things. But I remember being over-the-moon thrilled that I won a bunch of these. First of all, I don't often win things, so winning an award for my professional work was pretty damn cool.

Secondly, when you're starting out as a journalist and trying to make a name for yourself, let's face it "award-winning journalist" looks good on the resume. And finally, I recall one of the awards came with a $500 prize along with the wooden plaque. Given that I was making less than $20,000 a year at the time, that $500 was very much appreciated. It paid my rent that month.

Since those first awards I've also been on juries who decide winners, so yeah, I've seen some of the articles newspapers submit for awards consideration. Much like it's best not to see how sausages are made, behind the scenes for selecting an award is often not pretty either.

I mention all of this to put the following in a bit of context. Last weekend I won a Newspapers Atlantic award in the category of Best Speciality Column. I should note I haven't really been a journalist since 2005 and my current profession makes me winning a journalism award actually pretty damn funny.

I'm not saying this award is as good as winning that first award, because it's not. But it's still pretty awesome and put a big smile on my face when I got the news Monday morning. You better believe I'm hanging that bad boy up in my office, just for the looks it's going to get.

The column, by the way, is a summer series featuring travel stories. I did a dozen of them last year for The Packet in Clarenville. I did them because I find I quite like, and I'm getting half decent, at doing travel writing. Plus, my former (as opposed to old) editor/boss/friend Barbara Dean-Simmons asked nicely if I would.

I can never say no to Barb, even when she's threatening to murder me with cameras, softball bats, hockey sticks, iMacs or whatever else she has lying around. I like to think that's a sign of loyalty for everything she's done for me and my career. Others might use words like "idiot" or "masochist."

But hey, it's nice. And I am trying to do a little more freelance travel writing. Not having any luck so far, beyond The Packet, but perhaps the kind of words of the judge might help. "...travel writing offers an antidote to the guidebooks and the hype of tourism brochures. His wry, no-nonsense take on where to go and what to see and do makes this column as entertaining as it is informative."

Cool.

Last Five
1. It's all right (baby's coming back) - The Eurythmics*
2. Cover me (live) - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
3. Another travellin' song - Bright Eyes
4. How insensitive - Diana Krall
5. The water - Feist

A mom story

Mom and I, Christmas morning, 2012

So, in honour of Mother's day, a story about my mom. And not one that involves her nearly killing me on a Florida interstate.

First, please note that in the above photo that we appear to be about the same age. This is not due to any photo manipulation or anything along those lines. Despite having 20 years on her, my mom looks like she could pass for my sister. Indeed, occasionally I suspect she has tried to do that.

She looks that young because I suspect she's a supernatural being and just hasn't gotten around to telling me yet. Anyway, the above photo was shot on Christmas morning, 2012. You'll note that it was obviously shot in a cosmetics department. That's because mom's a cosmetician and she was working that morning.

Let us pause briefly, just for a moment, to contemplate what kind of greedy corporate assholes open their store on Christmas morning....all right, back to the awesomeness that is my mom.

So mom was working cosmetics on Christmas morning. When I found out about this I was pretty deeply pissed off. Aside from the fact the store was open on Christmas morning, I would have thought 30+ years of seniority would buy you Christmas morning off. I grumbled about this to mom a couple of times and she just shrugged it off.

Anyway, Christmas comes and I drive out to the store to see mom. I understand it's not exactly opening presents in the living room, but I wanted to spend some time with her. And once again I express by disgust that they have her working Christmas morning.

(By the way, there were people in the store. And more than one. To crib a Patton Oswalt line, it was like a Tom Waits song in that store.)

This is when she patiently had the following conversation with me:

Mom: Craig, I volunteered for this shift.

Me: What? Why?

Mom: Because a lot of the girls have young families at home and I didn't think they should have to give up their Christmas morning to come into work just because they didn't have seniority. You don't need me on Christmas morning, but it's nice for them to see their kids open their gifts. That's why.

And that's why my mom is awesome.

By the way, they'll be carting her out of that cosmetics department on a stretcher with a sheet covering her when she's 100. I'm only exaggerating a little. First, she loves her job. Loves it. She threw out her back a few weeks ago hefting a turkey, of all things, and kept going to work despite being in obvious discomfort and her staff telling her she should take some time off. Nope. Wouldn't do it. Said she'd just be bored at home.

Did I mention she has 300+ sick days?

She loves the women she works with. Loves her customers. Has more energy that me. She has more energy now than I did when I was 20. No idea where she gets it from. And everyone loves her. There are women that travel across town just to shop at her store because they trust her that much. TV news anchors in town buy their make-up from her. Danny Williams mom used to go there all the time. Only one she trusted, she used to say. Most of my friends love her more than they do me. (True, by the way. Awkward, but true.)

And she's apparently up for a National Lifetime Achievement Award. She told me about it in a deadpan sort of way.

"Well, apparently you qualify to win the award after you've been a cosmetician for 25 years. I guess they figure not too many last that long anyway..."

She's been at it for 34 years, by the way. I'll bet $100 she'll be celebrating her 50th anniversary as a cosmetician as well.

So here's to my mom. Happy Mother's Day.

(Did I mention she worked today? Of course she did...)

Last Five
1. Putting up with the Joneses - Spirit of the West*
2. Court and spark - Norah Jones and Herbie Hancock
3. The lady and the tiger - They Might Be Giants
4. With arms outstretched - Rilo Kiley
5. The rocky road to Dublin - The Chieftains with the Rolling Stones

Out on the land...

Iqaluit is not a big place. It’s bigger than when we first arrived here back in 2005, mostly courtesy of the Plateau subdivision, but it hasn’t suddenly become Toronto or anything. Plus, there’s the whole “no roads out of town” thing. So if you’re feeling claustrophobic you have limited escape options. There’s no driving to the next town for a break. You either suck it up and deal with it, hop on a plane and go somewhere or you hop on a ski-doo/boat and get out on the land.

I’ve always gone with options #1 and #2. I like living in Iqaluit, but the place does make you want to get out for a break every now and then. Until my recent trip to Vegas, it had been more than nine months since I was last outside of Iqaluit. Tell that to Inuit and they shrug their shoulders. Tell that to most qallunaat and they’ll nod their head sympathetically and say something like “Yeah, that’s a long haul.”

Going out on the land, either via ski-doo or on boat has never really been much of an option. When people ask I always why I don’t go out on the land more I always say, “I’m a search and rescue party waiting to happen.” Big laugh.

I’m not kidding.

Look, the name of the blog is “Townie Bastard”. I’m probably slightly less of a bastard these days, but certainly no less of a townie. I have no land skills. The last time I went camping was in 2002. Cathy and I decided to go camping in Atlantic Canada for a couple of weeks. It was as much a cheap vacation as it was a test to see if our new relationship could handle camping together in arduous campsites that occasionally didn’t have shower facilities.

The Middle of Nowhere, Nunavut

We’ve been married almost nine years, so it worked out for us. Haven’t been camping since, though.

I love cities. I love New York, San Francisco, Sydney, Edinburgh and Rome. I like the outdoors, just not to stay out there for weeks on end. You know, as a day trip. That sort of thing.

So the whole idea of me hopping on a ski-doo, go blasting out the sea ice, finding some frozen river to zip up and hang out at a cabin for a weekend and ice fish and do whatever….no. Just…no. I understand it appeals to many and I’m happy for them. Just not for me.

I have zero land skills. If the ski-doo breaks, I’m screwed. Odds are I would get lost, even with a GPS. Plus, you really do need to have a gun with you, just in case you run into a polar bear. I don’t like guns. I went to a firing range once, back in 1995. I was told that under no circumstances should I ever try and fire guns again. I’m perfectly all right with that.

Still, it had been awhile since I was last out on the land. Last time was, I think, in 2008. Might have been 2007. A group from work hopped on ski-doos and went out on the land. There was ice fishing. My boss head shot a Ptarmigan from about 100 feet. I have no idea how he saw the bird let alone do a head shot. I asked. He shrugged his shoulders. Was also probably thinking “qallunaat” with a sigh…

It was a fun enough day, but the fact I went six or seven years without needing to repeat it should give you some idea. Perhaps it was being towed on a komotik by a ski-doo for hours that did the trick. Riding in a komotik is like hopping into a bumper car ride at an amusement park. It’s fun the first five minutes or so, but loses its appeal after the second or third hour…

But I got the chance to go out last week. I figured it was about time to go out again. It was going to be about a 90 minute ski-doo ride where we would do some ice fishing and maybe build an igloo. I was not looking forward to the komotik ride, however.

That’s when I was told there were extra ski-doos and I could drive one if I wanted.

To her credit, Cathy immediately recognized this as a bad idea. To my credit, I also recognized this as a bad idea. However, it did not stop me from hopping on the machine. Cathy, wanting to show some faith in her husband, took her life in her hands and got on behind me.

Me on a ski-doo. Notice it is not tipped over or exploded.

Ski-doos aren’t toys. I haven’t driven one since was about 10 years old. It was on my grandfather’s farm/campground. Driving around some open fields and flat gravel roads with my dad nearby is one thing. Ski-dooing in Nunavut it something else. Those people who tell you that something you haven’t done in awhile is just like riding a bike? Liars.

Plus, there’s the whole “People can get really fucked up on these things” aspect. A local guy nearly got himself blown up real good a few weeks ago during a race. Wrecked his machine hitting a bump doing around 130 kmh.

Still, I figured I would give it a try under the premise that the only way to learn to do something is to actually do it. I skipped the whole “and perhaps you should learn to do it on a trip less than 90 minutes each way.”

Which explains why I tipped the ski-doo after driving it for five minutes. Cathy was unimpressed, but bravely got on the back with me again. There were other tipping incidents on the way out. Three in total, I believe.

In my defence, it was not total incompetence on my part. I mentioned to the outfitters, once we got to our destination, that the ski-doo seemed very determined to veer to the left. I thought it was just bad driving on my part, but they spent 15 minutes fixing one of the skis and lo and behold, she stopped veering to the left all the time when we headed back. There were no tipping incidents. Considering it was my first time on a ski-doo in decades, I think I did pretty well, over all.

As they say back in Newfoundland, "nar fish". She even did
the fishie song with no luck.

And was it fun? Sure. There’s a certain joy of blasting across sea ice doing 40 (never was sure if it was mph or kmh. It felt like mph, but what do I know…). I was less thrilled with having to navigate tricky (for me) little paths through the ice when we got close to shore. And my arms were hurting for days afterwards from fighting to get the ski-doo to do what I wanted.

And look, it was stunning when we got to the frozen lake many kilometers away from town on a brilliantly sunny day. It was +1C, and with all the layers we had on (it’s easier to lose layers when you’re warm than to magically find new ones if you’re cold and didn’t pack them) we were sweating more there than when we were in the middle of the Mojave Desert last month.

So yes, out in the great outdoors, ice fishing (didn’t catch anything, but neither did anyone else), enjoying  the quiet and the beauty….it was great.

Then we rode back to Iqaluit and now I’m good for another couple of years. I bet there were people I went out with who were back on their ski-doos the next day. The outfitters I spoke with couldn’t conceive of doing anything else. An office job? It would kill them.

I like the outdoors, but I feel no urge to be out there all the time. Which is perhaps an odd thing given where we live. I have a cousin in Calgary who told me that a ski-doo would be the first thing he bought if he moved here. I know people who moved here months ago and have been out a dozen times. Different things for different people.

I can appreciate the beauty of Nunavut. The view out our window is one of my absolute favourite things in the world. I would miss it horribly if we moved. But I apparently don’t need to be out there to appreciate it. From a distance works just fine...

Last Five
1. She's gone - Hall & Oates
2. In a world called catastrophe - Matthew Good
3. The reason why - Ron Sexsmith
4. Sawchuk - Ron Hynes
5. I am a man of constant sorrows - Soggy Bottom Boys*

Leaving Las Vegas

So, an update just to prove that this blog isn’t dead, merely on life support.

1. We’re in the middle of my favourite time of the year in Iqaluit. From the first of April until around the May 24th weekend is when Iqaluit is in its glory. The temperatures warm up so that it’s around 0 to -15C, which is quite comfortable, especially after going through a winter of -40C. The daylight is back and when it shines on the ice and snow, it is glorious, especially at sunset. Iqaluit is never more beautiful than it is right now.

2. Our annual sealift is done again. We did it much earlier than normal this year. Previously we did in at the end of June, early July and our items would arrive in early September. However, because we had a day to kill while travelling over Easter, we decided to do it then.

And full props to Cathy. I think I take for granted sometimes just how good, and how well-organized she is at this. Right up until I hear other people spending days doing their sealift and never being sure how much to buy and inevitably buying too much of one thing and not enough of another. Cathy is a ninja at sealifts. We landed in Ottawa at 8:30 on a Friday night, were in Wal-Mart by 9 pm. Next morning we were at Home Depot at 9, Costco at 10 and Ikea by 1. By 4 pm we had everything boxed and left at TSC, ready for shipping to the North.

Even for us, that was fast. But Cathy is that well organized it makes doing sealift a breeze. I’m not saying there are moments where we didn’t want to kill each other (You trying spending thousands of dollars in a condensed timeframe with a deadline and see if you don’t snark at your partner occasionally), but that was as quick and smooth a sealift as we’ve ever done.

Now here’s hoping the ice in the bay melts and we get our stuff on the first boat at the end of June.

3. The other big thing was our recent vacation in Las Vegas. Normally I try and write about these things as they’re happening, but the combination of doing a lot of running around and fighting a vicious head cold prevented that. At the end of most days, I was normally so exhausted, and coming down from the Advil Cold and Sinus I’d been pumping into my body all day, that all I could do was sleep.

It was a good vacation. I’m not going to write in-depth about it here because I’ve had the terribly clever idea that maybe I should pitch some of this to newspapers. I quite like travel writing and now that I’ve been nominated for an award (my editor and good friend, Barb, submitted my travel writing from last year to the Newspapers Atlantic Awards. I find out if I win at the end of May) I figure maybe that gives me enough extra pop to get noticed. However, a few random observations from Las Vegas:

· Normally we take our Easter break at St. Pete’s Beach. Florida is crazy. Las Vegas is a whole other level of crazy. It is a melting pot of crazy because everyone in America and around the world comes to Vegas and encouraged to behave like lunatics. Florida has local crazies and snowbirds fleeing winter in Canada. No contest.

· I thought nothing would ever beat Rome for the number of women I saw in ridiculous high heels. Congrats on the crown, Las Vegas.

· On our Friday night there, I watched a drunk blonde, tottering on five inch heels, use her left hand to keep her micro mini skirt down to merely indecent levels while texting using her right. She did all of this while walking the marble floors of the Bellagio. I fully expected her to go arse over kettle at some point, but she didn’t. Fortune favours the foolish, I guess. Or blondes.

· I saw more Minions on Sunset Strip than I did in the last Despicable Me movie. Any urge to spend money to get my photo taken with them disappeared when I saw the sweaty, over-weight middle age guy underneath the costume.

· I do kind of regret not getting my photo taken with a Las Vegas show girl. Cathy was all right with it, but I never found the right flashy, yet kind of classy, that I was looking for.

· However, I would have given money to punch one of those skeevy arseholes giving away cards for strip joints and hookers at every corner on the Strip who would “twack” the card loudly as you walked by. After the 100^th time you become slightly homicidal.

· I do not understand how there can literally be a dozen or more Gucci stores on the Strip, and yet I never actually saw a human being shopping there.

· I did accidentally go to a high end watch store and try on what I thought was a very nice watch. Was told it was $15,000. You would have thought it was radioactive I got it off my wrist that quickly.

· Yard-long margarita glasses with a strap so it can hang around your neck, leaving your hands free for other things. Las Vegas has mastered the art of drinking to excess in public.  I'm astonished George Street hasn't imported the idea.

· Walgreens sells Jack Daniels. It’s good that you can get your booze and hangover cures at the same spot. 

· $4.50 for a 500ml bottle of water at the Bellagio. Not quite the price of the “Holy Water” (4 Euros for 300 ml) we bought outside the Vatican Museum, but close…

· The Downtown Las Vegas Experience? Kind of skeevy. The newly opened Container Mall on East Freemont…all kinds of awesome.

· The High Roller, the new 550-foot tall Ferris wheel  just off the Las Vegas strip, is cool, but over-priced. Which means it fits in perfectly.

· If you’re in Las Vegas for a week it is a moral imperative that you get the fuck out of Vegas. Go out in the desert and cleanse yourself for a few hours. Red Rock Canyon Park is 40 minutes outside of town. Go.

· If you decided to leave Las Vegas and go to the Grand Canyon, splurge and do the helicopter tour. Do you really want to spend 16 hours on a bus to go and spend a few minutes at the actual Canyon? Or do you want to spend three hours flying over desert, through the canyon and landing just above the Colorado River?

· Best song to watch at the Bellagio Fountain? Con Te Partiro or Viva Las Vegas. Worst? My Heart Will Go On.

· There is no casually walking down the Strip at night. There is elbowing through the hordes, to get to the next overpass (built presumably because one too many drunken jaywalker got pulped at an intersection), then repeat.

· Distances are deceptive. What looks like it should take 10 minutes to walk will probably take 20.

· For the love of God, do not drive down the Strip, especially if you’re in a hurry.

· We met very few people who were born in Vegas. We did meet a lot of people who moved there for work and couldn’t wait to get out.

· April is a good time to visit. Temperatures are in the high 20s and nice. Apparently in a few weeks time Vegas becomes hell on Earth.

· You can smoke in casinos. After almost a decade of not smelling cigarette smoke inside public places, it’s quite an unpleasant shock.

· I’d love to spend a day hitting the Bellagio, Caesar’s Palace and the Venetian with someone from Italy. Just to watch their head explode.

· Having said that, the best Italian food/pizza, cappuccinos and gelato I’ve had outside of Italy I got in Vegas that week.

· 84% of people go to Vegas gamble at least a little. Cathy and I were in the 16%. We didn’t bet a cent. Don’t worry, between food, shopping and shows, Vegas got its pound of flesh from us.

· Speaking of which, me and a newly opened Lego Store is a dangerous mix.

· I found The Walking Dead Video Lottery Terminal much funnier than what should be reasonably considered funny.

· Casino VLTs are like an archeology lesson of formerly popular movies and TV shows. Do I really need to gamble at a Sex and the City VLT? Or Howie Mandel’s digital voice asking Deal or No Deal?

· People gambling on the casino floor at 8 am on a Monday morning are some of the saddest looking humans you will ever see.

· Did we enjoy Las Vegas? Sure, it was a lot of fun. Are we going back anytime soon? Nope. Las Vegas is the antithesis of a relaxing vacation. It’s expensive, packed with crazy people and unrelenting. We’re going to Hawaii this summer. We’re looking forward to doing nothing but sit on a beach for three weeks.

Last Five

1. Implosionatic - Hot Hot Heat*

2. Road to somewhere - Goldfrapp

3. If I had a cent - The Hives

4. Seven Seas of Rhye - Queen

5. Crocodile rock (live) - Elton John and Billy Joel

My 12 albums

There’s been a thing going around Facebook where people pick their 12 favourite/most important to them records. And rather than just listing them and that being that, I figured I’d offer up a few thoughts. Oh, and this at this moment. Ask me again in a year’s time, it may be different.

I have nearly 11,000 songs on my iPod, which probably means close to 1,000 records. These are the 12 that stick with me.

In no particular order:

1.       Bruce Springsteen (Live 1975-85) - I listened to Springsteen before this record, or course. You couldn’t grow up in the 80s and escape Born in the USA anymore than you could escape Thriller or Synchronicity. But this is the record that made me a fan. A lot of Springsteen’s music pre-Born in the USA was more “my parents” music. Born to Run came out when I was five. But listening to this, the raw energy of the live performances, the storytelling, it’s what made me a fan. ‘Promised Land’ may be one of the greatest live songs I’ve ever heard.

2.       Bruce Springsteen (Tunnel of Love) - No critic would argue this is his best album, but it’s my favourite. The sheer balls of following up Born in the USA with this is amazing. I remember a lot of people being disappointed and put-off by it. But there’s so much emotion, honesty and beauty in this record in which he struggles with the idea of love and marriage. I liked it when I was a kid, but I think I’ve only grown to appreciate it more as I became an adult and got married.

3.       Tori Amos (Little Earthquakes)-  I used to be entertainment editor of the muse and everyWednesday I had to beg people to take tapes and review them. It was free music, so you wouldn’t figure it would be hard, but the labels bombed us with crap. My friend JaapTuinman took a flyer on this tape, figuring it wouldn’t amount to much.

The next day he came back, grabbed me, dragged me into one of the offices and wouldn’t let me leave until I listened to it. Mind-blowing. Amos has been hit and miss with me ever since. There are times I’m convinced she’s trying to sabotage her career by putting out deliberately weird/bad stuff. But this…man. I’d never heard anything like ‘Me and a Gun.’ And lest you think this is an Important Album it also has the quiet, heartbreaking beauty of ‘China’, the kinky fun of ‘Leather’ and the propulsive ‘Precious Things’. For all the “I put my man in his place” pop divas of today, nothing you can sing will top Amos’s searing “Just because you can make me cum doesn’t make you Jesus.”

4.       Liz Phair (Exile in Guyville) - Another record I remember exactly where I was when I first heard it; at a house party at 3 am with Chris Myrick and Lisa Pretty. Chris whipped the CD out of his bag (he was wont to do that) and insisted on listening to it. Again, wow. I’d never heard anything quite so raw. ‘Fuck and Run’ sounds like it should be shocking, but it’s just quietly sad and still catchy.

Phair has taken crap over the years for going commercial and never trying to follow-up on the potential of this record. Fuck ‘em. She managed to create one of the best records of the 90s. And if her follow-ups were only pretty cool (Whitechocolatespaceegg is actually pretty damn good) instead of awesome, well, that’s not a bad legacy.

5.       Ani DiFranco (Living in Clip) - Pretty sure my friend Mireille Sampson is responsible for this one. She’d been raving over DiFranco for ages and I saw this at a CHMR sale and snapped it up. It’s funny, but her regular albums leave me cold. But this double live set is just so much fun, with tons of energy and bounce. She’s an engaging stage presence and it comes out clearly in the record. I mean, the story about Anne Frank, of all things, still cracks me up 20 years later. 'Gravel' and '32 Flavors' are standouts.

6.       Wonderful Grand Band (Living in a Fog) -  I heard this once, and I’ve never been able to verify it, that the year this record came out, there was only one other record in Atlantic Canada that sold more copies – Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Look, it’s not a great classic of music, but the band and the TV show was beloved by Newfoundlanders. It gave us comedians Tommy Sexton and Greg Malone. It gave us Ron Hynes. And while some of the music is standard 80s rock music, ‘Babylon Mall’ is still a funny historical artifact, as is ‘U.I.C’. The title track is just as funny and weird as it ever was . It also gave us “Sonny’s Dream’ and any list of greatest Newfoundland songs that doesn’t have that in the Top 5 is pretty much invalid.

7.       Figgy Duff (Weather Out The Storm) - The record that got me hooked on celtic music. The title track was virtually impossible to miss in Newfoundland simply because there was a music video! And NTV played that sucker to death. It doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s a spectacular song. It also helps that Pamela Morgan has one of the finest voices in Newfoundland music.  But the album also has the dramatic ‘Henry Martin’, the fun ‘Yankee Skipper’ and other great tracks. Surely on the short list of greatest Newfoundland records.

8.       The Chieftains (An Irish Evening: Live at the Grand Opera House, Belfast)) - The Chieftain got huge for awhile there in the 90s during the celtic music boom. I remember picking up The Long Black Veil with all the guest musicians, and quite liking it. When at a CD sale at Dalhousie I picked up this live album for $5. I promptly fell so deeply in love with it I bought nearly their entire catalogue, including their really obscure imports that I paid a ridiculous amount of money for on a poor student budget.

Listening to the Chieftains is like listening to a celtic symphony. There are times when I can’t believe what I’m hearing. The interplay and dance with the instruments is mind-blowing. Then to duplicate all of that live, with joy and energy and dragging in guest musicians…it’s an astonishing trick to pull off, and they do it with style. Oh, and they completely steal ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ from The Who on this record.

9.       Spirit of the West (Save This House) - Ah, the sound of the early 90s and being in love. This is that record for me. I mean, Labour Day is close, simply for ‘Political’, but this is the one. I’d actually lost it for years on an iPod crash and downloaded it again recently and it was like being hit by a tidal wave of memories. I mean, I know ‘Home for a Rest’ is almost a cliché at this point, but damn it, it really is a fun song.

10.   The Pursuit of Happiness (Love Junk) -  Ah, the sound of the early 90s and being bitter, depressed and single. It’s the soundtrack of male despair, angst and self-loathing, but done in a phenomenally catchy way. The single ‘I’m an Adult Now’ obviously gets all the attention, which it should. It’s a cult classic. But the rest of the album is great. And it holds up pretty well, even if I thankfully can’t relate to the songs quite as well as I used to.

11.   Neko Case (Furnace Room Lullaby) - The first time I heard Neko Case was on CBC’s Definitely Not the Opera. I liked the song, and back then I was basically impulsive enough that if I heard something I liked, I bought the album (no iTunes to sample back then, kids). The used CDs stores in town did a good business off of me.

When I listened to all of Blacklisted, I thought I made one of my habitual impulsive music mistakes. It was way more twang that I’d expected and I didn’t care for country music. But there was something about it. I kept listening and it finally dawned on me…Case has the best voice in music. The twang has decreased over the years, but the power and elemental beauty of that voice has lost none of its pop. She might have done better since, but this one is still a gem.

12.   Tom Waits (Closing Time) - Tom Waits feels like a grown up moment in your musical development. You’ve been listening to all these musicians and thinking they’re great. Then someone sits you down and goes, “Yes, that’s good and all, but now you’re finally ready for this.” And they put on a Tom Waits record. Maybe it’s Swordfishtrombone, or Heart of a Saturday Night or Nighthawks at the Diner or something else. For me, it was Closing Time. It’s a classic, through and through. My wife hates his voice. To me, the voice has as much character as the people he sings about. That voice has been through the stories he sings about.

In its own way, Waits voice is as beautiful as Case’s for registering emotion (I would kill for a duet between the two). He’s also at the very top of the finest songwriters in music. I think it was Peter Galgay who sat me down and said, “you’re ready for Tom now”. I’ve always owed him one for that.

Honourable Mention

The Pogues (If I Should Fall From Grace with God) – ‘Fairytale of New York’ is still the greatest Christmas song ever.

U2 (Achtung Baby) – The record that made me realize that U2 is actually a good band and not a bunch of pretentious  wankers. Some of you will find that sentence ridiculously funny.

Sean Panting (Lotus Land) – Honestly, my favourite Newfoundland musician. Cathy says I have a man crush on Sean. Probably.

Ryan Adams (Gold) – ‘New York, New York’ got a ton of attention because of 9/11. The rest of the album is better than that song.

Robbie Robertson (Storyville) – Pure storytelling and atmosphere.

Matthew Good Band (Beautiful Midnight) – I played ‘Hello Time Bomb’ to death. It’s the record that got me hooked on his music.

Josh Ritter (Hello Starling) – I saw him open for Kathleen Edwards in St. John’s. The first time I saw a musician outright steal a show from the headline act.

Joel Plaskett Emergency (Truthfully Truthfully) – To this day, I do not understand how that album did not explode everywhere and that Plaskett isn’t a household name across North America. His showcase performance in St. John’s for the ECMAs in 2003(?) is one of the best I’ve ever seen.

Garbage (Version 2.0) - Come for ‘Push it’, stay for ‘You Look so Fine.’ Fall in love with the idea of Shirley Manson singing it to you.

The Gaslight Anthem (Great Expectations) – The best variation, but not slavish imitation, of Bruce Springsteen out there right now.

Colleen Power (Face and Eyes) – Great lady, fun music. And ‘Newfoundland Weather’ is clever as fuck.

Blue Rodeo (Five Days in July) – The album that made me realize that Blue Rodeo is one of Canada’s greatest bands. I didn’t like them before this record. Clearly I was mad.

The Black Keys (Brothers) – I literally smacked my head, hearing this record for the first time almost a year after it came out and went “how the hell have I not listened to this already?”

Neil Diamond (12 Songs) – Diamond is a cheesy, karokee joke, right? That’s what I thought until I heard this. The fact he didn’t spend his whole career recording more music like this is a tragedy.

The New Pornographers (Mass Romantic) – It’s like a wall of beauty slamming into you with the force of a tidal wave. Some of the greatest pop music Canada has ever produced, neatly condensed into one record.

Re-changing direction

When people complain about the north pretty much the top of the list is the cost of flying here and out. Everything that is expensive about the north – food, building materials, supplies – spring outs from how much it costs to simply move people and things from the south to the north.  If there’s a solution to this problem a great number of smart people have spent a lot of years unsuccessfully trying to figure it out.

That means there’s now an informal social contract between northerners and the airlines. It goes something like this.

1.       We are going to bitch and complain incessantly about how much it costs to fly here and to transport food and be more than a little suspicious that you are somehow finding a way to gouge us silly, although there is ample proof that’s not the case. We’re also probably going to remain loyal to both of you (Canadian North and First Air) even when another airline comes into the market (Hello Air Canada’s doomed attempt a few years ago) for…reasons.

2.       In return, northern airlines will agree to the following.

a.  Offer up seat sales several times a year so that people rarely actually pay the $2,000 return flight to Ottawa, and instead end up paying something closer to $1,300.

b.  Offer up discounts to pretty much every major employer in the city. That includes Government of Nunavut civil servants, teachers, nurses, federal employees, Inuit organizations, etc.

c.  Offer discount fares to beneficiaries.

d.  Give away probably hundreds of plane tickets a year for various charity fundraisers or sports tournaments. I know the curling club routinely gets anywhere from 4-7 tickets per year.

e.  Give us half decent meals on the flights, along with “special coffees”.

f.  Give us 2 pieces of luggage which can hold up to 70 pounds each, so that when we’re coming back north, we can stuff it with extra supplies.

If you break this contract, there will be consequences.

Canadian North decided to test things earlier this year. They broke the social contract and dropped the baggage allowance down to 50 pounds per bag. The reason given is that this brought them more in line with how things are done with other airlines in North America. I believe Canadian also has an agreement with Westjet where you can check your bags straight through to your final destination instead of picking them up in Ottawa and having to check in again. WestJet probably wasn’t enjoying having to deal with these extra heavy bags and not getting some extra money for it.

Let’s say Canadian North’s plan did not fly well. I’m reasonably active on Twitter and to say there were howls of outrage would be an understatement. The other indicator of outrage and frothing-at-the-mouth in Nunavut is Nunatsiaq News comments section. Reaction there was, if anything, even more extreme.

I’m not sure what Canadian North thought would happen with this. That people would hate it, sure. But I guess they must have thought First Air would jump at the chance to lower their baggage allowance and follow suit. The two airlines are practically peas on a pod. When one announces a seat sale, the other matches it…often within minutes.

So when Canadian North lowered baggage allowances, First Air did…nothing. For days, nothing. Then they announced a pretty nice seat sale, just to put the extra screws to Canadian North. So, for a pleasant change of pace, there was actually some competition for customers in the north. I still think most people expected First Air to sweat Canadian for a few weeks and then lower their allowance as well.

But it never happened. I went to the airport to pick up Cathy on Sunday (she was down south for some professional development). Canadian landed first and a trickle of passengers disembarked. First Air landed about 10 minutes later. Easily double, maybe triple, the number of people got off the plane. I imagine that was just a snapshot of what they’d been dealing with since their baggage policy went into effect on February 1.

So on Thursday, in a reversal of policy, Canadian brought back the old baggage limit. I’m always glad to see customers punishing businesses when they do something like this. Pity more people didn’t take this step when US and other Canadian airlines began doing this kind of thing with baggage. Then again, that’s a much more complex issue than what we face here.

The other interesting thing Canadian did yesterday was announce a new weekly flight: Iqaluit-Halifax-St. John’s. There’s a sizeable east coast population in Iqaluit so that news was greeted warmly. Granted, I don’t think it will save much, if any money. But it will save time and be convenient. If it does well, they’ll expand it past its once a week during the summer event. That would be nice. I don’t think you could do it daily, but twice a week, all year round…I think that could be manageable.

I mentioned to friends and family in Newfoundland they can come for a visit now. They pointed out the flight is still over $2,000. So I guess they don't love us quite that much.

People have short memories for this kind of thing, so I imagine Canadian will be forgiven, and offering up the east coast flight will more than soothe some frayed tempers. But it was interesting to watch while it was going on…

Last Five

1. Desire - Ryan Adams

2. So distant - Matt Mays

3. The book I write - Spoon

4. I could say - Lily Allen

5. Up on Cripple Creek - The Band

Two years later

So, an anniversary of sorts today. Two years ago today I went to the gym for the "first" time. I put the quotes in there because I have been to the gym before in Iqaluit, but it never stuck. Three (months) and out is how it usually went.

But it stuck this time. I'm sure I've written at length and tediousness about my decisions to lose weight and get in better shape, so I won't subject everyone to it again. But it was two years ago that I walked through the doors of the gym and resolved to do the following:

1. Lose 80 pounds.
2. Keep going to the gym at least four times a week.
3. Eat healthier, eat less.

So, how'd I do?

1. Never really came close to losing 80 pounds. At my best I lost 67.2 pounds and I manage to do that in about 10 months. That meant I dropped from 250 pounds down to 182.8. Which is pretty spectacular, if I do say so myself. But most of 2013 was spent holding around 185 and not getting any lower. Then, as much as out of boredom and frustration as anything else, we had a bad few months in the fall, so I bounced up a bit more. I'm currently hovering around 192 pounds. I'm trying to get back down to around 185, which I think is a good weight for me. I am desperately trying to never go above 200 pounds again.

People will tell you that weight doesn't really matter, it's taking care of yourself - exercise and diet - are the important things. And they're right. Trying to get to 170 pounds was a pure arbitrary number that I drew out of a memory of standing on the scales at my (then) girlfriend's house. It's the last time I remember standing on a scale from my time at MUN. So figured that was a good number to shoot for.

Cathy thought it was unrealistic. Cathy, as is the case in most things, was right. I've actually been under 170 pounds twice in my adult life, but as both of those occasions involved me being stupid (soccer injury that earned me 15 stitches in my mouth, unable to figure out food in Korea) I thought it would be best not to aim for those goals.

And really, it was pure bullheaded stubbornness that got that much weight off. I didn't follow a diet plan, I didn't start Weight Watchers, I didn't go in with a tailored exercise regime. Just pure force of will, a little luck, and a lot of stubbornness. What worked for me probably wouldn't work for others. But I'm glad I got away with it.

2. When I went to the gym today, I checked. It said that in the past two years I've been to the gym 368 times. I think that's lowballing slightly and it wouldn't surprise me if there were times they forgot to sign me in. Divide that by 104 weeks and you get a total of 3.54 times a week of going to the gym. And again, there have been many weeks where I simply wasn't in the territory to go to the gym or I was sick (although that seems to happen less these days, which is nice).

So I'm ok with that number. And I go for at least an hour each time. 30 minutes on the elliptical (I can't do the treadmill. It kills my left knee) and 30 minutes or so of lifting weights. The intensity level is also much better. I used to do 15 minutes at level 8 on a wussy elliptical and it would kill me. I could do about 10 sets of lifting 80 pounds and that was it.

Now I can do 30 minutes on Level 20 of the elliptical and burn over 600 calories (hit my personal best of 602 calories today, which made me happy). I can now also do three sets of 10 on the weights at 170 pounds, which also makes me happy. And that's on a few of the things I do there. But you've got to keep pushing these things...

3. I eat better, but still not as good as I could. Cathy and I simply aren't great cooks. I think we could both eat fantastic if someone else would just cook for us. We're both adequate cooks, but the fact that we both try to beat the other to the punch at lunch time by asking the other what they want for supper (the first person asked has to pick. Much swearing normally results).

We're better than what we once were, when we would routinely be eating pizza, nachos and macaroni and cheese (all in one week, mind...), and hell, I eat yogurt and fruit for breakfast, which is nothing short of astonishing. But yeah, I can do better.

But man, there's only so much will power to get you through a day. I really believe that. And I spend so much of it just making sure I keep going to the gym, and keep moving (really need to do that FitBit review one of these days), that the food does suffer a bit.

Still, one of the most important changes is accepting that this is going to be the rest of my life doing this. This is never going to be "well, I did this for two years so I can stop now." Noooooo. My little lapse this past fall shows how quick the weight will fly back on if my diligence slips.

So anyway, I'm pretty happy with my results, two years later. Certainly better than being 250 pounds and on my way to my first heart attack. And given my family history, that's exactly what I was on my way towards.

Last Five
1. Dark angel (live) - Blue Rodeo*
2. The vanishing breed - Robbie Robertson
3. One flight down - Norah Jones
4. My heart is broken - Ryan Adams and the Cardinals
5. Come as you are - Nirvana

Pride

It's a story I've told many times, and probably more than once on this blog, but once upon a time, there was a relatively naive university student who joined the campus student newspaper. He quite liked it, but about six months in, the paper decided to put out their annual Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual supplement right around Valentine's Day.

The lad had only recently met a few out of the closet gay people, who seemed pretty cool and he was evolving nicely from the knee-jerk "huh huh faggots" mindset that way too many Newfoundland high school students had at that time. It's not that he was a bad person, just ignorant. But he'd had his mind changed, in a good way. So why not put out a supplement that might reach other people and change their minds? And along the way provide some information on safe sex that might help some young GLB people be safer?

To say the supplement was not greeted...warmly, would be an understatement. Engineering students threw bundles of papers into the garbage. Students tried to force their way into the campus office to confront staff and shouted profanities. A petition was launched to shut the paper down (it received almost 2,000 signatures). It was one of the lead stories on CBC News that evening. The university's president spoke to the local daily and stated that our actions could result in higher tuition fees for students, which while complete bullshit, certainly made the paper more popular.

And all that, all of that, was just a fraction of the crap that gay people in the province had to endure in Newfoundland and Labrador at that time. That naive lad grew up in a big ass hurry, especially manning the phones, where he was routinely cursed on and told he was an embarrassment to his family (his folks, to their credit, asked if he was all right. He said yup. They said no more about the controversy, but were supportive of staying with the paper and fighting).

That was 23 years ago (Christ I'm getting old) and even the crap that I went through, which was nothing compared to what friends went through, is even less than what GLBQ people have to endure in Russia right now. That's why I was astonished, and pleased as hell, when the City of St. John's took the lead in Canada in flying the Pride Flag the day of the Opening Ceremonies to the Winter Olympics. I never thought I would see the day, but I'm glad I did.

I was also pleased to see other cities across Canada follow St. John's lead. And while I was watching all of this unfold online on Friday, a simple question went out on Twitter to local Iqaluitmuit..."Hey, do you think we could do something similar here in town?"

And so went the cry...and very quickly things happened. A Pride Flag was found (honestly wasn't sure there was one in town) and donated by a very good friend of mine. A city councillor on Twitter said he would be happy to bring to the City Council building and get them to hoist it up the flag pole.

And then, at 2 pm on Monday, this happened...

If you read as much news as I do, there are days you have your faith in humanity shaken quite a bit. I read a story today about a city in Florida banning homeless people from having blankets to keep warm at night. So there's that.

But then you have moments where you get to see the Pride Flag hoisted in Iqaluit and watch a good friend get pretty misty about that happening. People cheered and the world didn't end. In fact, it probably just got a tiny bit better.

Totally worth not being able to have proper sensation in my hands for an hour after taking these photos.

And yes, things suck in Russia for GLBQ people. But 23 years ago I watched a university campus lose its mind over a gay safe sex supplement. So who knows what will happen in Russia in the future. We can only hope that in a few years, hoisting a Pride flag in St. Petersburg gets the same kind of reaction it got in Iqaluit on Monday.

Last Five
1. Anger is beauty - Hawksley Workman*
2. No son of mine - Genesis
3. Here, there and everywhere - The Beatles
4. No future shock - TV on the Radio
5. Constructive summer - The Hold Steady