Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

Thursday morning’s commute was the first one this week when I didn’t listen to my favourite new cd, Twin Cinema, by The New Pornographers

which I bought second-hand for an el cheapo price at my favourite used record store: Vortex, at Yonge & Eg in Tronna.

Thanks a million to cy for recommending it to me!! Thanks another million to Bert & Frank at Vortex for actually having it in stock for me to snag!!

From the opening bars of the the insanely catchy title song, I find myself caught in this album’s embrace from start to finish. And so many of the tunes are perfect driving songs, to boot. I cannot listen to it without smiling big, without singing along at top volume even when I haven’t a friggin’ clue what the lyrics are.

…If you don’t like this album, you suck. Sorry, but that’s how it is.

Twin Cinema is only one of a dozen or so cds I bought on my recent weekend in Toronto. There would’ve been a few more, too, but I picked out a few and put ‘em in a little pile behind the desk at Vortex and then forgot about ‘em. Curse my feeble brain!!

In many ways, my trip to The Big Stink was an exercise in nostalgia… Hanging out with old friends, visiting old haunts, doing stuff I useta do when I lived there. When the eastbound 401 curved southward and I caught sight of the CN Tower for the first time in a coupla years, my heart went ka-thump. As much as I enjoy living in Sarnia (believe it or not, there is something positive to be said for the quiet, slower pace of the small city), Toronto still feels like “home” to me. I lived there for 16 years, from the time I moved there to go to school at U of T to the time I left to go back to school at Lambton College. That ka-thump even squeezed a tear outta me—my feeling for the city (or, more accurately, for the people and places I know there and the times I had—good and bad—over the years I lived there) is like that.

I feel the same pang now, as I write about it, as a matter of fact. It’s like that feeling that something’s going on right now and you’re missing out on it, y’know? Like there’s a party and you weren’t invited. (*cough* Not that that would ever happen to me. *cough*)

Man, I hate that feeling. I want those 100 options I’d have if I were standing at the corner of Yonge & Bloor in Toronto instead of those half a dozen options I have when I’m standing at the corner of London & Murphy in Sarnia. (Not that anybody would have any reason to be standing at London & Murphy in the first place… It’s like LA–nobody walks in this town.) Even if I ended up making the most mundane of all those 100 choices I’d have at Yonge & Bloor, at least I’d had the opportunity to choose something more exotic.

So. It’s Friday Night in Sarnia and while I don’t have those 100 different choices that I’d have at Yonge & Bloor, I have made one: I am going out with a friend to the late-night screening of Snakes On A Muthafuckin’ Plane. I doubt that really qualifies as “exotic”, but it’ll hafta do. And I hear it’s surprisingly good.

…Incidentally, I went back to listening to Twin Cinema on the commute home Thursday. I better be careful with it… Did I ever tell you about the time I listened to Count Five’s brilliant Psychotic Reaction for about 8 hours straight (high as a kite, natch) and then couldn’t bear to listen to the song again for years afterward? Seemed like a good idea at the time. *sigh*