Category: Published Work

The Royal Oak Pubs are reliable. They’re always open when they say  they’re going to be open, and you can always count on getting a decent beer there.  You never have to worry about some impatient waiter who’s angrily stacking chairs, trying to intimidate you into slamming back your drink so he can leave. The Royal…

One might wonder what the Victoria’s Secret fashion show has to do with reality. One might sit around for a considerable amount of time pondering the matter, letting images drift and repeat,  until eventually falling into a flesh and lace induced stupor, only to be woken by the piercing shriek of Tyra Banks, who between her daily  talk show,…

Madonna isn’t really a musician. It’s pretty much impossible to imagine her standing alone on a stage with an acoustic guitar slung over her shoulder and seducing a crowd with her sincere interpretation of “Hallelujah.” Most of us would never dream of sitting down and listening, I mean actually listening, to one of her CDs.

It has been said that the genius of jazz legend Miles Davis was that he played silences the way that other people played notes. He allowed space to come into his music, and it was into this emptiness that an unmistakable melancholy often settled.

The Chateau Lafayette was divided into two halves. There was the tavern side and there was the escorts side. The tavern side had the best juke box in the city and was characterized by unpredictable drunks—hippies, bikers, drug venders and drug users.

When Crash won the Oscar for Best Picture back in 2004, it struck me as an excellent example of the slightly deranged and self-indulgent perspective the Academy usually brings to their voting. Not only were they championing a movie about L.A., but they were also voting for a film that suggested depth without actually bothering to deliver…

Although I grew up in Manor Park, I’ve always loved New Edinburgh. It seemed urban, almost gritty in comparison. The houses — as mismatched as laundry hanging from a back-alley lane — are all scrunched together, giving the neighbourhood an authentic, unplanned feeling. It wasn’t developed in an architect’s office, but was built from the…

My wife Rachelle wanted to see the movie Shame on Sunday. “This looks good, we should see it,” she said on Saturday night as we watched a trailer for the movie on her laptop.