Mango Pudding Blues 3.0

ROAD TRIP

Today at Mango Pudding Blues, a road trip to Toronto. Yesterday? Yesterday we bought a hundred-year-old row house in a crazy old Ottawa neighborhood.

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Wednesday, August 11, 2004

PERTAINING TO TWILIGHT

“Crepuscular: pertaining to twilight, glimmering, flying or appearing in the twilight or evening, or before sunrise, as certain insects.”

Or as the bats that flap around in the hidden courtyard here behind Mango Pudding Blues World Headquarters at dusk in the late summer under thunderous tornado skies.

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Friday, August 06, 2004

WRITING TIPS

Our free Friday tip for young writers: we at Mango Pudding Blues recommend that one ought to minimize one’s use of the words “got” and “this”. They are like little faint tea stains on the crisp white cotton skirt of your writing.

And another thing, not to do with writing at all: you ought to watch Frida, the biopic directed by Julie Taymor.

And another thing, also not to do with writing; we at Mango Pudding Blues did not enjoy the National Art Gallery’s big summer show, The Great Parade; Portrait of the Artist as a Clown. We had high hopes that it would be less silly than its title would suggest. It was not. However, we intend to wash its taste out of our eyes with a trip to see the Jean Cocteau show in Montreal this weekend. And even if that fails to move us, we will at the very least be thrilled by the company of our excellent brother and his superb boyfriend.

That is all.

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Monday, August 02, 2004

AM I EVIL?

Aside from singing an occasional glimmering Sinatraesque swing version of Am I Evil while doing the laundry*, I’ve never had much of anything to do with übermetal rock group Metallica. But that new film about the band, Some Kind of Monster, is great. And on so many levels. It’s about growing up and relationships and creative processes and unhappy multi-millionaires. It’s about art auctions and cars and guitars and parenthood and friendship and bitterness. It’s about business and betrayal and therapy and anger and love. You should see it. It’s beautiful, it’s funny, it’s sad and it’s sweet.

*I frequently sing while waiting for the washing machine to finish the spin cycle, improvising brilliantly over the E-flat drone of the motor. Or I pound out dramatic rhythmic patterns on the sweetly resonant sheet metal sides of the row of machines. On big days I do both.

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