"Why Helen?"

Hey! If you read more than just this blog (gasp!) you might be interested to know that I'm in the latest issue of India's first (and only) queer periodical, Bombay Dost.


It's a three-page spread with pictures, featuring an article I wrote about Bollywood film idol Helen...or at least the mythical version of Helen that I adore. If you're interested in getting a copy, you can order the issue (number two) online.

It looks great and the article is lots of fun, even if you wouldn't know Helen of Burma from Helen of Troy.

"A Big Gay Storm" Gets Some Big Gay Attention

I just noticed that a whole bunch of people were suddenly subscribing to my YouTube channel. That "Big Gay Storm" video I made last week was ratching up the hits, and by following the links I discovered -- wow! -- that I topped a Queerty "Top 10 Gathering Storm Parodies" list!

And our winner for the best NOM parody goes to Ms. Muffy St. Bernard. Leave it to the drag queens to come up with a wholly original take on the ad. This is everything that a good parody ad should be: It's a delightful send-up that is not only wildly entertaining, but also drives home its message by utilizing the comic power of leopard print and tiny, dirty pillows.

I mean holy cow, that's pretty cool, though maybe I should clean my pillows next time. Thanks, Queerty!

Guelph-Squared

Now that my shoulder pain has momentarily ebbed to a dull throb (more on that in a bit), here's an overview of "Ten Days of Fear," also known as "Two Days In Guelph."

March 20th was the Guelph Queer Equality Drag Show. Performing at this event meant driving to the University of Guelph Campus Centre, in the dark, in the co-op car which I have only previously driven in once. Besides being a well-attended and well-promoted show during which I dare not screw up, it was also an experiment in car operation AND my first drag show since my shoulder injury...a "test" of my recovery so far.

There are so many wonderful -- WONDERFUL! -- things about the car co-op, but you do pay a small price. Besides the money you expend for actually taking the car out, you also need to go through a "ritual" before and after using it, which involves a complex series of key-and-passcode stuff, and a bit of paperwork, and then figuring out the state that the LAST person left the car in.

Whoever used the car before me had left the parking brake on, and I was delayed for ten minutes pulling various levers trying to find it, until realizing it was exactly where it was when I used to drive in the early '90s: between the front seats. By the time I'd disengaged it and closed all the hatches that had opened during my exploration, I then needed to back the car out onto busy Park Street, and I've never been particularly good at backing up.

So needless to say I was already frazzled by the time I left the city...and then I realized that, contrary to co-op protocol, the car DIDN'T have at least half a tank of gas in it, so I'd need to stop at a gas station on the way home.

All this was on my mind when I arrived -- mostly uneventfully -- in freezing cold Guelph. Fortunately the hospitality was top-notch and there was even a paid bar, so I got through my numbers quite well, thank-you-very-much. Here's a picture from "They Don't Know," taken by M.S.:


The show in general was AMAZING. Somehow, whenever Guelph organizers put together a show, they always manage to find top-notch performers in a wide variety of idioms. So we saw a fantastic (and spunky) drag juggler, and a full-on performance by Green Go, and Alberta folk singer Amy Bronson -- who you should DEFINITELY see next time she performs -- and...

The Nigel Gough dance troupe. Just about every time a do a drag show in Guelph, Gough has prepared a hilarious routine that sends the crowd absolutely wild. I have managed through the years to avoid needing to follow him -- NOBODY wants to go on after Nigel -- but more on that soon.

Anyway, the GQE drag show was a huge success, and I even got a little mention in the campus newspaper:

Popular drag queen Muffy St. Bernard graced the audience with her presence, travelling from Kitchener to perform at the show. Muffy put on a fun and sexy performance, teasing the crowd with her playful yet classically conservative antics.

"Classically conservative?" I'm still wondering what that means -- it sounds euphemistic -- but it may mean that my "antics" aren't of the over-the-top-sexy type, but they still have a playful "coyness" that evokes '40s musicals. Or maybe that's just what I WANT it to mean.

Anyway, as much fun as I was having, I was unable to forget that I needed to drive back to Kitchener...and I was absolutely white-knuckled all the way. Besides pumping gas in a crinoline at 1am -- YOU try to make sure the gasoline doesn't drip on you in such a situation -- I spent the whole time thinking "I'm a terrible driver, I'm going to get in an accident, I suck." By the time I'd reached Kitchener I was a nervous wreck, and actually pulled into TWO DIFFERENT DRIVEWAYS before discovering the one I was supposed to use.

In short, my show was good but my driving was awful.

So I spent all week flirting with driving schools, and grilling co-workers about their driving techniques. Workmate Dave -- who put up with the worst of my whining -- walked me through the typical back-up steps, and in doing so he put his arm across the imaginary passenger seat and turned his head around.

"Why are you doing that?" I asked.

"Because that's the only way to back up," he said...and it was a REVELATION. I don't think I was ever taught to actually LOOK BEHIND ME while backing up...I've always just looked in the rearview mirrors. Dave revealed that if he was driving behind me he'd probably want to shoot me in the head.

In the meantime I was getting ready for the NEXT show: the Gender Martini on March 25th, ALSO in Guelph. I would be ending both sets...and in the second set I was FOLLOWING NIGEL GOUGH.

First off, you can't end a set with a whimper; the song must bring people to some sort of closure. It cannot communicate that somebody is coming up next, it must say "That's it, you're satisfied, now go get a drink!"

What's more, if you're following a fantastic slam-bang performance like Nigel Gough and his troupe, you should not try to "one-up" them by doing anything even remotely like they did. If you don't think you can BEAT the previous performer, your best bet is to do a complete 180 and subvert their expectations.

I was still mulling over these things when the night finally arrived, warm but rainy. I got into the co-op car and did the paperwork without feeling any stress whatsoever. I immediately located the parking brake and disengaged it. I put my arm across the back of the passenger seat, shifted into Reverse...

...and backed effortlessly out onto Park Street! It was perfect! Now that I had discovered the secret of backing up, nothing could stop me!

To further allay my driving fears I was also taking drag stand-up artist D. to the show (I'm not protecting her identity, that's actually "D.," as in "D. Licious"), and she served as my navigator and company. We arrived at the eBar and were once again enveloped in sweet hospitality, and I found myself back in the same "green room" that I'd been in the last time I perfromed at the eBar.

This was me at the eBar in 2004:


...and me in exactly the same place five years later:


In other words, if you've got a good joke, keep using it.

The show was PACKED. We actually needed to be escorted onto the stage to get around the clustered crowd of event-hungry people. Again, Amy Bronson was amazing, and so were the other performers I managed to see (but whose names I've forgotten): the hula-hooping burlesque queen, the trio of dancers from Toronto, Mr. Gough and his dancers on a significantly smaller stage, Victoria Park triumphant as always.

Since it was a "Gender Martini" I decided to end the first set with "Love is the Darndest Thing," a bizarre reflection of love and resentment by Betty Hutton ("...what every young girl wants is wedded bliss.") This number requires Schnapps the Seal, and it always either succeeds brilliantly or flops terribly.

Thanks to a professional puppeteer who coached me after the last time I did this song (at Zelda's), I tried holding Schnapps as though he were a real animal -- as opposed to "a thing on the end of my arm" -- and I took her advice to let him behave independently of my own actions...and it worked! It was gratifying to hear the crowd laugh not just at the absurd lyrics, but also at the upstaging antics of Schnapps.

In order to shift gears and try to "blow out" after Nigel Gough in the second set, I resurrected Dalbello's "Gonna Get Close To You," which I think worked passably well as a way of closing things down.

Unfortunately both of these numbers require shoulder-destroying outfits. I was lucky to have lots of help in the back room getting them on and off, but by the time it came to drive home my shoulder was already aching in a "now you've done it" sort of way. When D. and I found ourselves totally lost on the way home -- due to an attempt to be clever about our route -- I learned what workmate Dave has subsequently said so wisely: "You cannot fight Guelph."

So for the last few days my shoulder has been in agony, keeping me awake all night and requiring constant icing; getting in and out of those outfits, plus waving my arms around on stage, plus driving 60km, have set my rehabilitation back a bit. Fortunately my MRI has finally been scheduled for May, and guess where I have to go to get it? GUELPH.

But there's fun stuff to look forward to. The entire Gender Martini show was recorded and eventually I'll be able to relive it...the best way to evaluate and improve your performance is to watch yourself on stage (so said Miss Drew eight years ago, and it's true). I was also mysteriously interviewed outside the eBar's theatre by a man who promises to post it to YouTube...one of the benefits of driving a car is the inability to drink more than a token amount, so I expect my conduct was better than usual (perhaps "classically conservative" even)?

In summary, the shows in Guelph were even better than expected -- and the bar is really high for these shows to begin with -- and I had a wonderful time, and I met wonderful people. But judging by my shoulder's outrage I don't think I'll be doing any drag shows at Club Renaissance any time soon...

UPhold's "Roade" Available Now!

My new CD ("Roade") is available on CD Baby here, if you'd like to listen to some samples and/or buy it for yourself! I'm particularly happy with how this one turned out...it's been a long time coming.

The second half of the CD ("On Your Way Out") is dedicated to Eric Little, who long-term readers of this blog will remember. I still don't know the how's and why's of his death but I certainly miss him. Finally releasing "Roade" brings some measure of closure to me.

This is the first time I've dealt with CD Baby, and my experiences so far have been good. If you plan on using their distribution services yourself, however, keep in mind that they can't market you digitally without a UPC. If you don't want to spend a ton of money on your own code you can ask CD Baby to buy one for you...but it costs $40. Weigh the pros and cons for yourself, and consider the future of the independent CD-R.

As for the digital distribution aspect, I see that they're gradually sending "Roade" out to various companies, but it apparently can take up to three months for the product to be fully registered. So Napster, Lala, and Amazon, here I come!

PS: If you do plan on ordering it, do yourself a favour and take advantage of the $5.00 sale...it's a great way to hear new (and desperate) artists cheap!

Joy For the Very, Very Specific

There was a time when people with very specific interests might spend their entire lives looking for stimulation.

But those days are over! Thanks to the quick and widespread content-sharing capabilities of the internet, you can immediately find an extensive group which caters to your every whim and need.

It is my personal mission in life to fulfill as many of these needs as possible, while still maintaining a shred of decency. For instance, this picture has lead to a flurry of hits from a group devoted to "yellow clothes":



Their mandate is simple: "Yellow clothing. No nudity." And that's exactly what its 71 members get.

Far more popular (and predictably so) is this picture of me wearing cheap plastic handcuffs, which is frequently added to "women being handcuffed" pools like this one (work-safe last I checked, but I guarantee nothing for the future).



Otherwise, besides a terrible picture of me posing with a teacup dog, it's little surprise that pictures of me wearing boots often turn up in searches. Those whose photo collections contain a suspicious number of boot-shots (again, think before you click) seem particularly happy about this "broken boot" picture.



My point? I guess I think that human sexuality is a wonderfully diverse thing, and it's lots of fun that I can pull a "double-fetish" now and then without ever even trying (though when Vanilla set up the handcuff shot she wisely predicted it would be popular).

How to Find a Muffy

I love my web stats. They tell me exactly how people find out about me, and compile for me all those words that I should use more often in order to increase my web traffic: "boobs," "muff," "stockings," "thick ankles," and -- I kid you not -- "jumper pants."

But other than telling me how to attract attention with word-porn, my stats tell me what my most popular posts have been. My scary movie list is forever popular (and increasingly so as Hallowe'en approaches) and the list of breast-euphemisms in my Benny Hill evaluation makes it a perennial favourite. People frequently visit my Sgt. Pepper's movie review as well, for reasons that I'll never understand.

Enough about my blog...how do people find my now (mostly) static website? Usually through Indian blogs which reference my reviews (or ebay auctioneers and forum posters who steal my screenshots). By looking at my site stats I see that most people find the website AFTER they've discovered the blog, and not the reverse.

Here's a selection of the some of the most popular Google searches that bring people to my site (edited for interest and respectability): "muff," "crotch," "Wumpus," "skin disease," "Return of the Living Dead Workprint," "little pre teenagers," "girl crotch," "crotch girl," "leopard disease," and "weird skin disease."

If I can find a way to work a "crotch disease" into my web repertoire, my traffic will go through the roof!

Then there's my Flickr site, which inspired this post to begin with. For two years my traffic has remained at a steady average of 150 hits per day. But look at my hits during the past month:

My Flickr views have jumped tremendously during the last two days! The somewhat gradual rise indicates that word-of-mouth or web-propagation is involved, but the more detailed Flickr statistics provide no clues; just that 10% of my two-year traffic has occurred during this week alone, and that these viewers arrive directly at my Flickr profile instead of at a specific picture.

I assume that a Flickr user has featured me in some capacity, and that he or she (or more likely "he-she" given the people who tend to feature me) has a lot of visitors who have followed the lead. These people are FLOCKING to the "Daily Muffy" adventures, which is really cool because I wish more people would see them.

All that considered, what are the most popular Flickr pictures? Anything that involves "boots" apparently (like these two), or plastic handcuffs, and for some reason this picture has always gotten lots of views.

So what can we take from all of this? Mainly that internet traffic is a fickle and unpredictable thing, and that people who do web searches are usually looking for kink. Hmmm.

New Facebook, Old Facebook...

(This is an "old lady rant" and only reflects my love of simplicity and brevity; if you're the kind of person who LOVES comet cursors and mile-long webpages, this post is not for you).

Wow! If you're concerned with the American and Canadian elections, forget that stuff! You SHOULD care about the new Facebook layout. Oh wow, what a tiny tizzy, and the amusing online activism of clicking "Join" in order to commit yourself to...err..."protest."

Okay, let me speak as though I were talking to the entire world. Give me my tiny, outdated blog soapbox: folks, Facebook has to change because you put too much CRAP on your page.

Really.

When you install a thousand applications on your page it takes forever to load...and when it DOES load it's an ugly mess. If you didn't put 1001 things on your page, I wouldn't need to spend an hour trying to find your "wall."

When Facebook was developed, I'm sure that nobody expected the taste-slaying appetite for more and more applications. You put that stuff on your page and then you totally forget about it. It loads quickly on YOUR computer because it's already cached...but when I need to load it it takes forever.

So suck up the new Facebook, sweetheart. If you REALLY want to know what kind of vampyre your friend is, click the "applications" button. The rest of us are only concerned with your email and your mini-feed...if that.

My Latest Facebook Friend Wannabe: Taygun Kuşçu!

Recently I mentioned an interesting Facebook phenomenon, wherein I receive "friend" requests from totally unknown men from far-off lands who CLAIM to be interested in women, but whose friends are all transsexuals with their legs prominently on display.

I present a typical character, Taygun Kuşçu.



I certainly don't begrudge a fetishy person looking for sex -- we all have our quirks, and I'm the one wearing tights after all -- but it's the "interested in women" thing that continues to baffle me. And I don't feel bad posting this guy's profile because he has tried to contact me based on the most tenuous information. Also his hair is unpleasant.

More Pictures from Guelph Pride 2008

The MC at the Guelph Pride dance was the always wonderful Emily Szabo, and she put some pictures of the event on the Magic 106.1 website. I won't steal them because they're available for all to see!

An Interesting Facebook Phenomenon

Every once in a while on Facebook I am deluged by "friend requests" from mysterious men. The only friends I have in common with these people are a small group of the sexier drag queens and she males in Kitchener and Toronto. I look at their profiles and see that ALL of their friends are attractive she males in provocative clothing, usually with their legs in the air. There is a definite trend. My own profile picture (of me kissing a hamster) seems slightly out of place.

What's most fascinating, however, is that these men ALWAYS list themselves as "Male, seeking women." I can't help wondering if they are being flattering to the people they're stalking (assigning them an unreserved female gender), or if they're so closeted that they can't even admit they want to have sex with men...even though the only people who will ever see the profile are the very men they're trying to have sex with.

This is actually sort of fun for me. I try to keep my list of Facebook friends small, because I don't view friends either flippantly or as objects to be collected. Usually a friend request is an agony for me, because I'm torn between only accepting "real friends" and not wanting to hurt or reject anybody (or burn any bridges). So I sit there pondering the Accept and Ignore buttons before just giving up and making a new Facebook friend.

These mysterious men with their conflicted desires are the only Facebook friends that I can easily -- even gleefully -- reject with the understanding that they are not IN ANY WAY friends of mine. This is a form of power that humans have been reveling in since sex took on the glittering sheen of weaponry...and like all weapons, it should only be used against those who don't really care about you.

Zsa Zsa Becomes Famous for Her Strength and Her Bum

I always knew that Zsa Zsa was destined for super-stardom, but I wasn't quite sure how until now:

News article with Zsa Zsa picture.

(I'm not sure how NowPublic works exactly, so the picture of Zsa Zsa's butt might not be the secondary image when YOU look at the page).

Playing the Game Episode 7: "Wolf"

Shameless, happy self-promotion! Episode seven of the WebTV series "Playing the Game" is now online...and I'm in it! See for yourself (it's not R-rated, but you probably shouldn't watch it at work):



(For a much higher-quality version go here to the official site).

I think this turned out very, very well; the story is lots of fun, the narration is suitably chirpy, and Mitch's camerawork -- one long shot, for most of the episode -- shows not just his own skill but also the amount of work we put into "getting it right." And kudos to Delirium Clothing for the "Freedom Turkey" outfit that I'm sporting!

Yes, believe me, we did this over and over again. The first few takes I recall as being particularly sedate, but as we went along things got more frantic; I think this is from one of the middle takes, before we lost control and I knocked over the bar.

Even though it's a "silent" film, Steve Hutton did in fact record our mostly-improvised lines "for a DVD extra." Yikes!

"Our Past Present" Reviewed by Heathen Harvest!

Over at Heathen Harvest there is a wonderful review of "Our Past Present," the split CD of material by Jim DeJong (Infant Cycle) and myself.

Like other reviews of the CDs it points out the "distinct yet complimentary" nature of the two styles, and again the UPhold segments are referred to as "cinematic." I particularly like this description:

All the tracks on here are suffused with an eerily expectant atmosphere coupled with a velvety and suffocatory claustrophobia, as if presaging some unforeseen disaster just about to spring itself onto the unfortunate victims.

I like to think I have a velvet approach to suffocation, so this is a great compliment. I really DO care about my musical victims.

The review is very positive, and coming from such a great webzine it's a particularly nice boost for my state of mind!

Facebooking

Okay. I've spent a few weeks on Facebook and I think I have a good sense of its pros and cons.

First of all, it IS a wonderful way to keep casually in touch with people, usually in a cute and noncommittal way. You can find out what people are up to, remind them about upcoming events, share pictures with them, and basically take care of all the stuff that you'd never bother calling or emailing about.

The thing is, some people are VERY ACTIVE within Facebook. They're constantly posting updates, adding applications, and joining groups, and every time this happens you are notified about it. Not coincidentally, the people who do this frequently tend to be the people I am only tangentially friendly with, so I spend my Facebook sessions being bombarded by crap from people who I care little about.

And I'm automatically distrustful of these applications I'm always prompted to install. I doubt there's any security risk involved, but in my opinion they're just useless clutter that I'll never use anyway. Why do I need a special application in order to get a pleasant message from somebody? Why don't people just send me a nice email, instead of forcing me to install a "good karma" application?

I suspect the answer is because the applications are one step further removed from regular human interaction. If somebody sends me an email saying "you're hot," I am generally creeped out. But if they prompt me to install a "you're hot" application -- and I know that all of THEIR friends are being prompted to install it as well -- it stops being a REAL message and becomes something else, like a happy wave or a drunken "cheers."

Obviously there are many different ways of looking at Facebook; some people see it as a vibrant community, some as a lifestyle, some as a networking tool, and some -- like me -- as a way to maintain casual contact. And since I'm bad at keeping in contact this is a good thing, but I REALLY don't want to be reminded every time somebody I barely know is washing their hair.

"Playing the Game" Is Now Online!

Hurray!

Last summer I took part in the filming of Steve Hutton's latest project, a Web-TV series of interrelated shorts called "Playing the Game." After meticulous post-production the show is now going online with a new episode available every week.

You can see high-quality versions of the first two episodes here.

To put things into honest perspective, I'm only in episode seven ("Wolf") and I have a non-speaking role...though nobody speaks in that particular episode anyway (except for the narrator). It was a particularly bizarre shoot and I can't wait to see how it turns out!

How I Got My Soul Back From Bollywood

I used to watch a lot of Bollywood movies and then write elaborate reviews about them (which were well-received at the time and which I still get lots of praise for). I genuinely loved the films, for reasons which I described (sort of flippantly) in an L.A. Weekly article. My most likely route to long-shot recognition and fame was probably through Bollywood fandom, if anything.

Why did I stop enjoying the movies? Here's a list!

1. The novelty wore off. What at first seemed to be revolutionary and unconventional turned out to be only "different from Hollywood." I had to eventually admit that I loved most of the plot twists only because I hadn't seen the films they were duplicated from, and not because the writers were geniuses.
2. The medium was changing. New Bollywood films were looking more and more "MTV," and were moving away from those novel elements that I loved so much to begin with. This sullied my idea of Bollywood as a whole.
   
3. It sank in that I could never really be "part" of the Bollywood machine, except as a curious outsider who would always remain awkward and comparatively clueless.
4. The appreciative emails and "write reviews for our website" offers were not, ultimately, worth any money.
5. The very small romanticized ideas I had about India were gradually eroded by Jai Maharaj and his ilk.
6. I gained prestige for being critical, so I also gained criticism of my own critiques.
   
7. Us cozy members of "Bollybob" became too busy to regularly meet, and our semi-annual get-togethers were no longer cozy.
8. I increasingly felt like I was focusing only on the "kitsch" value of the films, mainly because a kitschy review is more fun than a serious one.
9. Bollywood was becoming "hip," thus removing the joy of appreciating a gem that your peers are unaware of. And all because of "Ghost World."
10. I could no longer enjoy the movies since I had to watch them with a notebook in hand, jotting down plot points and ideas for the inevitable review. I felt I NEEDED to review the movies.
    
11. Writing the reviews (and taking the screen shots) took an awful long time, and that is the most significant point of all: when a non-paying hobby becomes a gruelling chore, JUST STOP IT.

I still love ELEMENTS of Bollywood, and someday I'll be able to go back and love the movies again (see below for ruminations about "going off" the things you cherish). But until then, the thought of yet another predictable 3 1/2 hour comedy/melodrama featuring an abused mother, a boys vs. girls dance, an over-complicated plot shot over several years, a snake, and a scene in a tacky nightclub makes me feel tired.

The Perils of Automatic Web Harvesting

By now you've probably noticed that when you type a search request into Google, you are often directed to spontaneously-generated pages that pull together bits of information about that search term. These automatic web harvesters are not usually meant to fulfill your search request...they are only there to lure you in so you can see the attached advertisements.

I don't usually notice these sites and I've gotten pretty good at NOT clicking on them, but this morning I did a search for "Creepy Pedro" and got sent to this page. It's run by "Pipl," the most "comprehensive people search on the web," and automatically populates its database from stuff it harvests off the web; newspaper articles, trade papers...and those "Creepy Pedro" radio plays I wrote so many years ago.

The subject of the page is "Bernard Hiller," a real-life acting teacher. Three of the "Pipl" links point to legitimate sources of information, but the fourth points to the "Camp Creepy for Kids" play, wherein a (fictionalized) James Bernard insults a (totally fictional) person named "Hiller Black."

Since "Pipl" obviously has a problem with punctuation, it includes a quote from the play as one of the "quick facts" about the totally real Bernard Hiller: "Hiller was always a bit of a copycat, wasn't he..."

I assume that people don't go to "Pipl" for their research reports or resume checkups, but even so it thrills me to know that some guy out there is being slandered in a supposedly authoritative database, entirely because of a Creepy Pedro radio play that has nothing to do with him. Ahh, serendipity. Pedro would be proud.

(PS: Some new Creepy Pedro movie reviews are in the latest issue of Genxine...download your copy today!)

Catching Up With (Happiness)

Sometimes you get an hour of total bliss, when everything comes together. You're finished work, you're looking forward to the year's first snowstorm, you have a DVD you're looking forward to watching (episodes of "Monty Python's Flying Circus") and a book you're enjoying (John Barth's "Once Upon a Time"). As if that wasn't enough, the songs you're working on are -- in your opinion -- the best things you've ever done (tentatively titled "Road to Avondale" and "Little Bit Out") and somebody just positively reviewed your latest CD collaboration with Infant Cycle:

St.Bernard’s four tracks give instead the idea of a mini-movie, as instruments, field recordings and pre-existent voices lead our brain towards the nowhere of significance. At one point, I was so mesmerized by the apparent nonsense of certain repetitions, I couldn’t decide if what I was hearing was too simple to accept a description or just nullifying my thoughts; one’s left even more anguished in the final minutes of the disc. Music that is intense and uninviting at one and the same time but, this notwithstanding, we all know that - aesthetic pleasures or not - if something stimulates a reaction, then it means that it’s good enough.

I am oddly complimented.

An additional "catching up" point: if you like the "Daily Muffy" episodes (or you didn't know they existed), another oldie (from 2003) is getting underway. St. Mark and I try to defeat SARS in Toronto's Chinatown, and then tackle West Nile and Mad Cow as an afterthought.

National Velvet and the Muffy Online Heelprint

I was obsessed by the Canadian band "National Velvet." I loved them to death. I recorded every interview and little bitty scrap I could onto VHS tapes that I still (happily) have with me today.

Long after they'd faded from the Canadian music scene, somebody started up an online National Velvet fanclub. I was unable to visit their one-off reunion concert, but I DID manage to contribute to the group by recording a "National Velvet Care Package"...a VHS collection of videos, interviews, and other oddities that I sent to five (or maybe four) people. One of them had promised to record the videos onto a DVD and send it back to me, which (as is so often the case) never happened. Oh well.

Why do I mention this now? Because I was just doing my annual YouTube check of National Velvet videos, and suddenly there are four of them online...all from the VHS I sent out! There's something strange and sort of exciting about this, seeing something that I put together appear elsewhere as though I had nothing to do with it. It means the videos are getting around. It means that people still like the band. I admit that I don't like the fact that I'm not credited for compiling these rarities, but I'm still glad that they're "out there."

So here's "Change My Mind," probably my favourite National Velvet song. Maria Del Mar kicks butt (as always). At the time I remember that there were two contenders for "coolest Canadian female vocalist." When Margo Timmins (from Cowboy Junkies) won, us fans were outraged. But Margo was pretty cool too.


UPDATE: It actually appears that these videos WEREN'T digitized from my original "care package." The guy just taped the same Much Music spotlight that I did, many years ago.