B-side of my heart

The week in review, pogo-style.

On Tuesday, rockism was back with a vengeance. Synthetic! the critics cried. Sampled, catchy, shallow! Illegitimate, dishonest, disingenuous! I was appalled, prepared an extensive and eloquent feminist defense of G-Stef, remembered the whole contractual enslavement of Japanese girltoys thing and shelved said defense pending further analysis.

On Wednesday I found the first Bis album and a Nina Hagen EP at Encore. They also have two copies of Chicks on Speed Will Save Us All. I left all four (Pogo treasury not what it used to be), so they're totes yrs if you beat me back to them.

On Thursday the Organ broke up, three songs into recording their second album. A noticeably pained Jenny Smyth told CBC Radio 3, "Basically, we're going to keep it all private. It's kind of a sensitive subject...and I think I'd leave it at that."

On Friday I got off work, hopped into the elevator and started singing at the top of my lungs. I do all of my best singing in elevators. But only on the condition that I'm riding alone. I had just ripped into the chorus of "Sheila Take a Bow" and was really letting loose when the doors opened on the fourth floor and a woman came in, catching me mid-bellow. This never happens--I always get to go down all five floors by myself. I immediately shut my mouth, stared at the floor and enjoyed one of the more awkward and embarrassing 20-second silences of my life.

We rode to the ground floor together and when the woman got off I finally looked up, noticing she had short dyed hair and glasses and a peacoat and a purse with a clear plastic sleeve. The sleeve had a 12" record inside with IS IT REALLY SO STRANGE? across the middle. Oh, for heaven's bloody sake, I gawped. You have got to be kidding me. I ran outside until I caught up with her and blurted, Excuse me, er, your purse, blah blah blah, kind of rare single in this country blah, where did you get it, blah blah? She smiled, said re: the purse, Oh yeah, it's nice, isn't it? My friend made it for me. It originally had Donny Osmond but I switched him out.

I agreed that this was indeed an inspired idea and let her go on her way, setting off purposefully in the opposite direction so as not to seem stalkerish.

I then tripped on a pine cone and fell on my face.