Today in Vancouver

So yeah, Saturday in Vancouver has failed to suck. Made it safely up here to Chez userinfocow, with hardly any wait time at all at the border. And today, we went out on various and sundry shopping sorts of excursions.

userinfocow took userinfosolarbird and userinfospazzkat and me over to the nearby HMV–which proved to be a way more fruitful visit this time around than on the two previous visits, because this time I actually scored an album by La Bottine Souriante! Also picked up one by the Punters, who I’ve been meaning to listen to anyway by way of introducing myself to more Newfoundland music; plus, this album has the magic words “Produced by Alan Doyle” on the back, so I’m figuring that’s a strong recommendation right there. Lastly, got one by the Rankins, since I like their track on Fire in the Kitchen.

Relatedly, userinfocow also gave Dara and me a copy of userinfohsifyppah‘s very first filk CD, Steel Cage Match. Looking forward to listening to this, in no small part because “I Fell Asleep (Reading the Silmarillion)” made me LOL, and also, I want to hear “Livejournal Shanty” too.

And, userinfocow snagged me a couple of loaner copies of La Bottine Souriante albums from the Vancouver Public Library as well. These shall have to stand me until I can acquire actual copies of these albums–which I have now ordered from Amazon, since apparently Amazon’s actually stocked up on La Bottine Souriante a lot since the last time I looked. To wit, bitchin’. Or should that be bitchin-ez moi?

Anyway, aside from all this musical love, we stopped in at Little Sister’s, which is Vancouver’s oldest queer bookstore. Which was kind of neat. I walked out with a novel called Salt Fish Girl which sounded interesting to me and SFnal (it mentions shapechanging and biotechnology), even though it doesn’t call itself a science fiction novel. I told the dude at the counter that I was a bit surprised that they didn’t have Tanya Huff in their (teeny) fantasy section, given that she’s a queer Canadian author and that she has a whole trilogy of books starring a queer boy, set in Vancouver even! He thought that was cool, so who knows, maybe they’ll stock ’em. Also, they had a big black Labrador-lookin’ doggie who reminded me a lot of Sheriff, the doggie who lives along the goat trail.

OH OH OH, also, they had a magazine on the rack there with a cover blurb about an interview with the actress Alex Hedison. Wait a minute, I thought, Hedison? She did look suspiciously familiar, so I thumbed into the zine to check the interview–and yep, that there was the daughter of David Hedison, my very own Captain Crane from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. And she’s not only queer, she’s the former partner of Ellen DeGeneres! That’s some pretty high-profile queer there.

And after that, userinfocow went back to his place while Dara and Paul and I proceeded to hop on the bus and head down to the Asian-heavy community in Richmond, where they have a couple of largish Japanese/Chinese/Asian-friendly shopping mails. That was neat. Quite a bit of flashbacks to Japan there what with the layout of the stores and the sorts of stuff they sold. We snagged a couple of gifts for folks, had tasty lunch and later on tasty yogurt, and eventually staggered back to Chez userinfocow for zzz’s.

We’ll be heading to Steamworks for tasty food in a little bit, and to meet up with userinfogerimaple and possibly also userinfoelfmaid. Which should be a fine closer to a pretty fine day indeed.

4 Replies to “Today in Vancouver”

  1. I didn’t know you had two sites! Cool. :) (Love the coffee-stained header, btw)

    La Bottine Souriante rocks. I haven’t heard much of their solo stuff, but if their track they cut with The Chieftains on the ‘Fire in the Kitchen’ album is anything to go by…..!!!!

    1. Yeah, I have actually had annathepiper.org a lot longer than I’ve had angelakorrati.com. It was in fact my original site, that I set up for my personal stuff and in particular my character data and roleplay logs from back when I used to play on MUSHes. I’m in the process of converting the old site over to WordPress–so this is why about a zillion of the older posts here are all titled “Site update”. In the original version of this site, I was sorta kinda “blogging” just keeping track of the updates to the site. I decided those would be much easier to manage via WordPress.

      So now, annathepiper.org is more my “personal” blog and angelakorrati.com is my “writing” one. Both of them mirror out to my Livejournal as well as the accounts I have on other Livejournal-like systems.

      Meanwhile, yeah, La Bottine Souriante rocks. I actually saw them perform at the same show where I saw Great Big Sea for the first time–it was a Celtic festival show, with four acts total. The Battlefield Band, La Bottine Souriante, GBS, and Natalie MacMaster. LBS had nine people on the stage and this wall of sound pouring forth from their brass section. And their lead singer was this rotund guy with a heavy French-Canadian accent and a voice like 900-calorie cheesecake. It was awesome.

      I bought the one album of theirs that got released in the US, which was issued under the title Rock and Reel. Highly recommended, if you can find it. But now more of their albums are showing up on Amazon, so I will be delightedly ordering them. :)

  2. I still have yet to figure out how Natalie MacMaster can dance AND fiddle at the same time…..

    That sounds like it was one hell of a concert. :D

    I may have to see about some TBS albums as well…… :)

  3. Yeah, check out La Bottine Souriante if you get a chance! The first album I got of theirs, Rock and Reel, was originally released as Xieme, I believe–so you might find it under either title.

    And yeah, it was a hell of a show. We actually left during Natalie MacMaster’s set, because Great Big Sea had been on before her and after them, we were convinced that nobody could possibly follow her–although that’s not fair to her, as I was told that her set was quite lively. Someday I shall make amends for that and get another of her albums. :)

Comments are closed.