Hosted By:
NXNE

When:
June 20, 2009

Where:
Free Times Cafe
Toronto, ON, Canada

Description:
Jean Caffeine NXNE showcase backed by Mike Trebilcock on guitar and Tom Altobelli on stand up base. Lots of new songs and some old ones too. Come see what this old gurl is up to these days.

Click Here To View Event

Like everyone, for weeks before the election we had been obsessively watching CNN, Saturday Night Live, John Stewart, Steven Colbert the Sunday talk shows and streaming KUT, ad naseum.  Man, am I sick of those pundits. They should get some new ones.

 I watched one of the debates on CNN a big screen in the local Greek restaurant. That was really amusing because that was the day of the Canadian debates but they had CNN on.  In contrast to the US elections, the Canadian campians are only 6 weeks. They are over in a blink of an eye.  I watched another debate at a "Democrats Abroad" event and met other Americans.  All the talk about "Joe the Plummer" was scorned and laughed at.
All that and great french fries. It was a good time

The day of the US election was really interesting here.  The CVC radio had all this stuff about the US election: interviews with Haitians in Quebec who  were excited about Obama, and an interview with a Quebequious strategist of former prime ministers who went down to New Hampshire and went door to door for Obama. Really interesting stuff.

Later went to the Bloor cinema, a cool old school movie theatre.  There was a US election event sponsored by NOW magazine where they were showing CNN and Jon Stewart/Steven Colbert on the big screen with other little performances and contests.  It was lots of fun and hugely attended.  I had to wait in a line about 20 minutes to get in. Where else but Canada would you see a woman doing a burlesque act as Sarah Palin during the commercial breaks of CNN?  When the good news of Baraks election came in, there was lots of hootin and hollerin, wet eyes and big smiles.   Hooray!

Last night we took a walk in our hood which has lots of Ethiopian restaurants.  One had all these newspaper articles about Obama's win up in the window.  For so many folks all over the world, the Obama victory has so much meaning. Seeing the reactions of others has made me tear up and/or grin many times.

Last night we went to an bunch of art openings. Some of the work was very good, some sofmoric but the scene was really jumping. It reminded me more of a music scene because it wasn't stuffy at all. There is one street, James Street that has a lot of galleries. It's kind of a seedy street but it has lots of international eateries (I took Oliver to a very run down, yet tasty real Mexican restaurant there. The meal was almost unbearable because there will some really drunk, really loud dudes there.)

The rents on James Street probably low enough for the artists to take over. There is a printmaking studio, an art supply store and several galleries and studios. I talked to one collage artist who used to live in the states. She had a fantastic studio in and old building. I told her I had been getting into collage and she reccomended a teacher who teaches close to my house.

Biziarrely, our social calendar continues today. We will be going to Toronto to meet an expat American group I found online. I hope they are not all hamburger eating Republican football fans. It's been great. After this weekend life will slow back down. Don't have much on the horizen unless I splurge and take a weekend art class in Toronto in two weeks.

This is a website of of a friend of mine. She used to live in Austin and now lives in New Orleans. Her portraits are amazing. One of them is a portrait of my friend, John Breaux's mother.

check it out :
http://www.ellenellis.com/index.html