The Peep Diaries

Last week I added my 1000th friend to Facebook, a move tinged with equal amounts of irony, optimism, skepticism and pragmatism. But let’s save that for another time. Right now, I want to report on my conversation with my new friend.

As you may recall, I promised to get in touch with my 1000th friend and take him or her out to lunch. Alas, my 1000th friend turned out to live in Baytown, Texas, not far from Houston. So instead I called up Marie Angell and we got to know each other over the phone. And instead of buying her lunch, I’m going to send her a tailor made gift package.

I really enjoyed talking to Marie and getting to know her. We had much more in common than I might have imagined, given the random circumstances of our acquaintance. A bit on those random circumstances: Marie became my friend after reading an article I wrote about a failed Facebook party. She looked me up on FB and sent me a message and added me. I asked her: “Did you think I would write you back when you messaged me?” “No,” she admitted. “So why did you bother?” “I’m a ham,” she told me. “I like to express my opinions.” I like her already!

Marie is a parent. She’s got a 16 year old daughter and an 11 year old son, as well as a grown up 22 year old stepson who plays drums in her band. Marie home schools the kids, so the first present I’m going to include is for the kids – a copy of my book for teens, The Big Book of Pop Culture: A How-To Guide for Young Artists. I asked Marie about home schooling and she told me she basically practiced “child led learning”. They don’t have a fixed schedule or tests, though she says she’s making sure that they learn “the basics.”

Next we talked about Marie’s band. Check out The Snake Charmers here. It’s a blues band and it’s a family affair since her husband is the bassist and her stepson is the drummer. There’s also a guitarist they met through Meetup.com. Marie is the singer, keyboardist and wrote all the band’s songs for their upcoming release, which she hopes will be ready in December. I’m planning on buying a copy for sure. I asked Marie how the rest of the band felt about her being the only lyricist and she told me that, “My husband has an engineering background and our guitar player Larry is a chemist so he’s not a word guy either. Eric our drummer is a word guy but his words are psychedelic 60s lyrics that make no sense. So somebody has to put the words there.”

I think, though, that Marie’s being too modest. She is, after all, a published writer. Another point of connection between us is that she writes short short stories also known as flash fiction. She says it’s a hobby and that once she won $20 and another time she got her hands on a $10 Amazon gift certificate. She sent me two of her stories and I think they’re pretty good — they showcase her keen sense of humour and her charmingly understated irony. I’ll include one at the end of this post.

Finally, I asked Marie about the US election. She didn’t vote for Obama because she always votes Libertarian. I looked it up and saw that their candidate for president got 56,398 votes. I asked her how she felt voting Libertarian in a state that always goes Republican. “I’m so accustomed to always losing,” she told me, “I don’t think about it anymore.” Love it! I’m also an optimistic pessimist with a stubborn streak.

Anyway, I was really surprised by how much we had to talk about and how well we got along. Marie is just a really cool person. For all the skepticism I have about FB and social networks, the one fundamental fact is that they bring you in contact with people you would otherwise never have had the chance to meet. We ended our talk agreeing that we were both Internet addicts, and promising to keep in touch. She said that if I ever make it to Houston she’ll buy me lunch, but as far as I’m concerned, I still owe her. In the meantime, since she likes flash fiction I’m going to send her my book of short stories (which is mostly short shorts). Since she’s into music I’m going to make her a mix CD of my favourite Canadian bands and performers. And since she’s a libertarian with an alternative streak, I’m also going to include the last 5 issues of my magazine Broken Pencil, the guide to zines and independent culture. Enjoy all that stuff Marie and thanks for being my 1000th friend!

Hi everyone…I’ve got a piece in the New York Times Magazine that comes out tomorrow. It’s already online here. It’s my formal write-up of the Failed Facebook Party. Give it a read and let me know what you think! Best, Hal.

ps – pick up the Sunday Times on your way to Canzine, and you can tell me what you think in person! I’ll be there all day, from 1-7.

Wow, it’s been a while since I updated the blog. So lots to tell you about. The main thing right now is that Canzine is coming up fast. It’s this Sunday. Canzine is the annual festival of zines and alternative culture my magazine Broken Pencil puts on every year. This is one of the best lineups we’ve ever had: 200 zines registered, 6 readers, 6 comedians…if you’re in Toronto or nearby this weekend, I heartily recommend you check it out. It is awesome. Complete times, place, and schedule for the day is here.

Also we still have some spots open for the One Two Punch Pitch event happening at Canzine. For this spectacle, contestants get two minutes to pitch a book idea in any genre or format. Then the three judges – myself, Michael Holmes of ECW Press, and literary agent Samantha Haywood – each have 1 minute to respond. The best pitch wins a Broken Pencil prize pack worth $150 and, who knows?, maybe even a request to see that manuscript in somebody’s in-box pronto. To sign up for this, email your pitch to canzine@brokenpencil.com.

So that’s it for now. After Canzine I promise to get back to regular blogging and update everybody on the Peep book, new articles, and the general ups and downs of my existence. See ya Sunday I hope!

I’ve been waiting all month. The newspapers reported they were coming. But tomorrow’s Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, and I never got one. So where’s my Rosh Hashana card, Stephen Harper?

Apparently over the last month or so Jewish Canadians have been getting a happy new year card from the Harper family, mailed from his Calgary constituency office. (For anybody reading this who isn’t in touch with Canadian politics, Stephen Harper is the Prime Minister of Canada and he’s running for re-election.) Apparently a few people have complained, but politically it seems like Harper knows exactly what he’s doing. A large percentage of the Jewish community who might vote for Harper live in the suburbs (often hotly contested ridings that swing between Liberal and Conservative), tend to be more religious than the average Canadian. In other words, courting the Jewish vote makes sense.

From a Peep perspective, what we’re seeing more and more of is the creation of detailed databases that allow precise targeting. For some, this is benevolent, for others this is chilling. It would be less chilling if the Conservatives were willing to say how they managed to assemble a list of Jews in Canada, but when asked by the opposition Liberals in Parliament, they refused to answer. Pundits have speculated that they merged several different publically available databases with some kind of ethnic surname dictionary. Or maybe they utilized their door-to-door canvassers, asking them to note Jewish households that have, like mine does, the mezzhuza hanging outside their door.

Either way, governments and businesses now have infinite cheap computing power and can compile incredibly detailed, complex lists of citizens based on race, religion, income, and more. And either way, I’m still waiting for my Rosh Hashana card. I live in downtown Toronto in a riding that has gone Liberal for the last fifty years. If I didn’t get a card because Stephen Harper isn’t wooing me to vote Conservative, well that’s just plain pathetic. If I didn’t get a card because I slipped through the database cracks, then I guess I should be relieved but for some reason I’m not. I want my card. Am I going to have to wait until Hannuka?

Happy New Year to all my Jewish friends!

Some Jewish guy who did get his Happy New Year card from the Harper family.

Hey I’m going to be at Word on the Street on Sunday. Word on the Street is a giant festival of books and magazines and readings held every year in downtown Toronto in and around Queen’s Park. My magazine Broken Pencil will have a booth there so drop by. We’re gonna be hawking a truly impressive subscription deal you can’t get anywhere else. We’ll also be handing out hot off the press Canzine festival fliers and posters and otherwise just hanging out and chatting and meeting people. I’m going to be there all day and selling a bunch of my books too! So come by and say hi if you’re in Toronto.

Okay I’m a little bleary from last night’s festivities. Me and W. went to Rosedale. The President of the University of Toronto’s house, to be specific. It’s big. Really big. The occasion was an award I was getting, along with 80 or so others – the Arbour Award for Volunteer Service to the University. I drank red wine and we chatted with various people, many of them in the seniors demographic. I think, in fact, I might have been the youngest person to get the award, which I say only to point out that most of the people being recognized were retirees, so I don’t know what that says about me. Anyway, it was cool to be recognized and fun to go to the Prez’s house and, more importantly, great to have a babysitter and be out on the town with W. After the ceremonies and several more glasses of red, we decamped for a bite to eat. We ended up at the Golden Turtle, a Vietnamese restaurant near our house, and an excellent spot for a late dinner. I had their amazing herb wrapped beef on rice noodles. Yummy. Anyway, we don’t get out that much together and I don’t get too many awards (there aren’t too many awards for being a smart-ass I don’t think) so on this day of collapsing global economies (there goes my $334 investment in the stock market) I thought I’d be cheery. Enjoy it. It won’t last.

Tomorrow night I’m hitting the town solo, attending not one but two literary events so if anyone in Toronto wants to hang out with me, drop by. First I’ll be going to the double launch of new books by Daniel Allen Cox and Ivan Coyote. I blurbed Cox’s book, a novel called Shuck. It’s the wry and tender tale of a sarcastic gay street hustler. Great stuff. (Gladstone at 7:30) After that I’m gonna hop on my bike and drop by the Toronto launch party for Freehand books at Clinton’s. Freehand is a new Calgary based literary publisher. They’re launching their first ever Fall list and they have reason to celebrate. One of their novels, Good to a Fault, has been included on the Giller Prize longlist, quite an amazing feat for a small press that launched, like, yesterday. Anyway, I’ll be over there around 9pm (it starts at 7:30 at Clinton’s on Bloor Street).

Hey everyone, I’ve been neglecting the blog a bit, I know. But I’ve got a lot of stuff to put up here, so hopefully I can make up for it. I’ve been furiously writing and editing and thinking on matters Peep, which, at the end of a day that seems to end really quickly, leaves me with no energy to blog. But enough excuses. Here are some pics from my ongoing Back Alley Surveillance project. Someone upstream is washing their car. Oh the excitement!

It’s starting!

Here comes the foam!

Dude spares no soap!

Oh the humanity!

Things are getting back to normal. My allergies are killing me (ragweed) so I’m confined mostly to the indoors but I console myself by continuing to survey my back alley. Here are a couple of shots. Me and W. were both in my office last night with the camera feed on screen and she said, “Nothing every happens but I can’t stop looking at it.”

the entrancing alley at night

the allure of the alley by day

Tuesday night I attended a night paying tribute to 30 years of the bookstore Pages on Queen Street, downtown Toronto. It was a surprisingly enjoyable evening, considering that there were 15 speakers (including me!). There's a sense you get of the history of a place as well as the way people and places intertwine and take on new and important meanings for random strangers. It's the way community is created and the way culture happens. For me, Pages was one of the first places to prominently stock my magazine Broken Pencil. And it was one of the first places to carry my books. If I hadn't had that support, maybe I would have given up a long time ago? Who knows. Anyway, just wanted to put that out there especially in light of various attacks on cultural institutions currently going on by the Canadian government in power (hopefully not for too much longer). The truth of the matter is that culture is fragile and little things make a big difference. The money doled out to artists is a pittance, but it's a pittance that matters the way seeing my book in the window of a bookstore for the first time mattered.

For those wondering where I've been, if there are such creatures wondering such things, I had a week of computer/tech problems and then a week at a cottage. Now I'm back and planning to resume normal blogging operations. Feeling slightly overwhelmed by all the things I have to do, should be doing, etc. etc. Tonight I'm going to be at the Pages Books birthday party event at the Gladstone Hotel, if anyone is going to be around and wants to come by and have a drink. I'll tell ya more about it tomorrow maybe. For now, I'm back, at least physically. My mind still feels like it's basking in the summer sun.