June 30 July 1 events. CANADA DAY!

Saturday

Capital Tease- Back To The Grind

   Ooooh! Kick off your Canada Day weekend with some quality burlesque!

Canadian Burlesque... sexy floating maple syrup...

   The event is a throw-back to the golden days of burlesque entertainment and features Audrey Hipturn, Kitty Kin-Evil, Vixen Vega, special guest Maria Juana of the Harlettes (from the Harlettes in Toronto), and more.
    There will also be prizes from Capital Tease, Tuesday’s the Romance Store, and others.

Mavericks, 221 Rideau Street. $12.00. 8 p.m. 613-562-3941
www.capitaltease.com

Canadian Sunset Ceremonies

Things needed for this rain-or-shine event:

• loved one(s)
• blanky
• loose change
• secret street booze

   There will be donation boxes set up to benefit the RCMP Foundation. For every dollar you don’t give, they sell a horse for glue.

RCMP Stables at the Canadian Police College, 8900 St. Laurent Boulevard. Free admission, free parking. 7:30 p.m. 613-949-8133
http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca

Sunday

    Canada Day is better than Christmas. There’s no snow, reciprocal guilt-gift giving, nor familial obligations.

   Downtown is flooded with thousands of people (all being remarkably courteous to one another), it’s hot, there’s food, and there’s even a tiny — unspoken — tolerance for public boozing.

   It’s the most wonderful time of the year.   
   Whether you prefer to join the crowds downtown or on the hill, barbecue in a backyard, or leer from the safety of your front porch on this kick-ass country’s day, get outside and meet someone new (it is the easiest day to make new friends).
    Canada is so awesome.

 

 

 

   

    Elephants have very intricate and intimate social circles.
    The wandering family is headed by the matriarch; the lady-elephant who is responsible for getting everyone to water/away from lions.

   Males usually ditch the herd when they reach sexual maturity. Males will usually only approach a herd to try his trunk at mating with a cow.
 

 

    Things that the elephant family unit have in common with the human family unit:

• delegation of parental responsibilities to babysitters (including discipline)
• argue about directions
• apply first-aid training
• miss loved ones
• teaching younger members tricks of the survival-trade
• ability to self-medicate

and that’s just a few of the similarities!

   The elephant’s brain is similar to a human’s both structurally and in terms of complexity; it is designed to be prepared for life-long learning. This also explains why elephants are susceptible to such psychological conditions as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and clinical flashbacks.

   Facts!

please email RA Centre event's Manager Shelley: scarbonetto@racentre.com Politely ask to have the circus cancelled.

June 23 & 24 Events

Friday

Summer Solstice Aboriginal Arts Festival

An opportunity to experience and celebrate Aboriginal culture, art, music, and other family-oriented funtivities. It’s the festival’s 15^th consecutive year and they’re pulling out all the stops to make this a memorable event including an animal display, glow in the dark planetarium, human hamster balls, and a bouncy castle.

THIS CITY IS LOUSY WITH BOUNCY CASTLES.

   Local song bird Amanda Rheaume, Juno nominee Donny Parenteau, Crystal Shawanda (performer of this tear jerker), and others will be performing on the main stage.

Vincent Massey Park, Heron & Riverside. Free admission, donations welcome. 613-564-9494

http://nadottawa.wordpress.com

Saturday

MSMF India Food Fest

The MSMF (Manjari Sankirathri Memorial Foundation) hosts this annual picnic to raise awareness and funds for the organization. MSMF was created to promote rural community development through education, health care, and disaster relief programs.

The event is kicking off with a delicious menu: masala dosa, Idli, vegetable pakoda, chaat papdi, gulabjamun, kheer, and tea!

 

And then the music, dancing, and the variety show start happening. There will also be (for an additional charge) Henna and face painting, and something called Paan. There’s nothing quite like having blood-red spittle all over your chin to wrap up your Saturday.

Andrew Haydon Park, 3169 Carling Avenue. Free admission, donations welcome. Bring your own chair or stand like a dummy. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. 613-739-7028.

www.msmf.ca

Janelle Monáe at Ottawa Jazz

There’s so much to write about the Jazz Festival so we’re just going to focus on the amazing and adorable (sorry, Steve Martin).
You probably know Janelle from this song but you’re about to know her from this song. She’s supposed to be an amazing performer. I’ve got a big gay crush on her.

How does she get her hair like that? 

Confederation Park, Laurier & Elgin. Day ticket $49.00, Festival Pass $175.00. 8:30 p.m. 613-241-2633

www.ottawajazzfestival.com

Sunday

Blooms & Berries

It’s the fifth annual fundraiser presented by the Ottawa Humane Society Auxiliary. There are going to be vendor tables selling crafts, plant, baking, jewellery, books, and more!

The guest speaker is Ottawa personality and gardener, Ed Lawrence and will be talking about gardening without pesticides (there will be strawberry shortcake during his Q & A session). Rumour has it that there will also be door prizes.

Glebe Community centre, 175 Third Avenue. $20.00 (contact for tickets). 4 p.m.

http://ottawahumane.ca/events/blooms.cfm

All Weekend

Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival

This is going to be effing amazing. It’s North America’s largest dragon boat festival with approximately 75 000 attendees over the weekend, ceremonial activities, a beer garden, many food vendors, exhibitions, cultural presentations, BMXing, shopping opportunities, a new race every nine minutes, porta potties, and a FREE concert line up.

The concerts include PS I Love You, Hark The Herons (who I am seriously enamoured with these days), David Usher (remember?), and 12 others!

Even the Children’s Area schedule is pretty impressive with reptiles, science, magic, circus tricks, juggling, puppets, and Ottawa’s A Company of Fools! There’s even a molesty-lookin’ clown!
Mooney’s Bay Park, Riverside Drive. Free admission. Friday to Sunday. 613-238-7711
www.dragonboat.net/

   They use it to steady themselves while reaching for food, to pick up objects, and encourage a breeze to soothe their warm underbellies.

   They can even use their junk to scratch their adorable tummies.
    The elephant dong essentially does everything that a monkey can do with its tail but hilariousier.

   What’s that? Got a little schmutz on your punim? Yup, their awesome peen can just clear that right off.
    Yes, the elephant has incredible genitals.

Fact. Fun!  

RA Centre event's Manager Shelley: scarbonetto@racentre.com

 

June 16 & 17 events (UPDATED)

 Friday

Ottawa Horror and Fangoria Present Father's Day Ottawa Premiere at the Mayfair Theatre

    A $10 000 budget film for father's day. A man, obsessed with avenging his father, joins forces with a hot-headed, street-wise rascal to find and defeat the Father's Day Killer.

   Also addresses such Father Day oriented themes as unplanned pregnancy and sodomy.

The trailer (don't watch it).

Mayfair Theatre, 1074 Bank Street. $10.00, cash only. 11:45 p.m. to 2 a.m. Contact.

Facebook page

Saturday

BIA Lambs Down Park Festival

    The Carleton Place Business Association is the largest distribution centre for lamb wool in Canada. There will be hands-on demonstrations of sheep herding, sheep shearing, and spinning wool. There will also be fresh produce, tractor displays, A PETTING ZOO, and pony rides. There is also a Partytime Inflatables airbounce, but it's for kids only. Ugh, kids.
    After spending your day bonding with this industrious animal, hit up the food facilities to check out the special lamb dishes cooked up by local restaurants. Eeee.

Canadian Co-operative Wool Growers Limited, 142 Franktown Road. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. 613-257-8049.

www.downtowncarletonplace.com

Carivibe Beach Festival

    Caribbean food and drink, steel bands, masqueraders, entertainers, dance groups, arts & crafts, something called a Booty camp, and sunshine!
     God damn it! There's going to be a bouncy house here, too, but it's only for kids! This egregious and continued oversight of adults who like to bounce is enraging.

Petrie Island, 727 Trim Road. $15.00. 12 p.m. to 11 p.m. ish. 613-590-1588.

http://carivibe.com

Sunday

Father's Day Antique Car Show

   You can take a picture with a 1959 Cadillac. There will also be a barbecue, a barbershop quartet (right?!), and crafts for kids.
    No word on their bouncy house situation.

Billings Estate National Historic Site, 2100 Cabot Street. $6.00. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. 613-247-4830.

Facebook

All Weekend

Ottawa Fringe Festival

   It's a bunch of performances and shows put on to “unite artists and audiences in a fun, exploratory environment”.

   Late comers will not be admitted.

Various venues. Box Office, 2 Daly Avenue, Suite 100. $3.00 for your Fringe Pin  $13.00/show. 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. 613-232-6162.

www.ottawafringe.com

   I'll be in Orillia this weekend for Father's Day and my big brother's birthday (25 years old!). I've been working on a little project for the event and am so excited to see the family (and adopted family members, of course). Hit me up (yick. I'm too old to use that phrase) if anyone knows of a good yoga studio in the little-o.

 Father's Day 2012
a painting for my dad!
My dad is half of Ottawa This Weekend's biggest fans. For this, the day of fathers, he has an OTW-style painting of himself and three of his favourite people!

   This weekend also marked the 25th year of my big brother's life being lived (it's just like him to steal the spotlight from the daddies... ass.)
   My mom, my Jen, and I drew and cut out 25 anatomically-accurate bulldogs to stick into his front lawn. I booked it back to Ottawa before the big reveal so as to avoid the backlash. 
   Behold:

You can only see 10 here but trust me... there are 25.

I'm still waiting on pictures of their real-life bulldog interacting with these ones.

June 9 & 10 Review

   In the spirit that inspires this blog I went to one of the events from this past weekend. I give Westfest six out of seven damn-we-should-have-left-earliers.

    The weather was fantastic this weekend. It was so beautiful it was paralyzing. There are so many things to do on a day when you’re completely unencumbered by shitty weather patterns. One might find all of the opportunities for fun overwhelming and become unable to prioritize which activities would be more gratifying and end up doing nothing at all.

    This phenomenon had me showing up at Westfest long after the street performers (read: hippies) were actually done doing things and most of the crowd had migrated to the main stage. I piddled away most of the day listlessly draping myself over cool surfaces and letting the dog lick ice cubes out of my hand.

inscrutable power dynamics at the Ottawa This Weekend household

    The boyfriend and I headed straight to the main stage when we arrived on the off-chance that Steven Page would step out at exactly that moment. When he didn’t, we wove through the crowd of people and found the Stone Soup Foodworks’ food truck. I ordered their homemade lemon grass and lime soda (HOMEMADE!) which was so effing delicious that it almost made me swear in this sentence. I also had their vegan nacho/taco thing. The nacho/taco bit was round, flat, and soft and forced me to eat the food like a burrito.

don't be ridiculous.

    There were black beans, cilantro, jalapenos, and maybe something else. I dropped most of it down my shirt while trying to get as much into my mouth as I could manage in one go.

    After a quick tour around where the festival was during the day we ended up back at the main stage just in time to hear Steven Page play. He had a cellist playing alongside him and it was magical. I can’t wait to get my hands on his new album.
I really wonder how he keeps inspired after all these years..

 

come on...

    When I was about four-years-old, I was at a friend’s house (who is a little older than me and had cable t.v.) when a Barenaked Ladies’ music video came on. We listened exclusively to country music at our house so I was unfamiliar with the band.

    When I arrived home, my mom asked me what we got up to at my friend’s house:

    My mother was perturbed and my friend had to spend several minutes on the phone desperately trying to explain that the video was of a folky pop band and not an innocence-ruining display of free spirited nudity.

   On Sunday, I met some friends at Cornerstone Bar and Grill where I had the hands-down best apple crumble I have ever tasted.  

   Don’t even stay for real food (the servers are too bitchy for an extended stay). Get in, get crumble, get out. Perfect.

   After lunch, we stopped to watch a man take pictures of his parrots with people who were willing to pay. I, obviously, passed over such a cheap ploy for tourist dollars

nope.

   I don’t have the best of luck with exotic animals. I love them so much and they just want to defend themselves against me. As the man started loading his cigarette-smelling birds onto my body they started to get a little pecky. The one that was quirkily placed on my head started to pull out my hair. The man moved it to my arm where it promptly pulled down my neckline to bite at my bra strap. 
Two leering homeless men made fun of me. 

   p.s. These assholes are back. 

June 9 & 10 Weekend Events

All weekend

Westfest!

   Westfest is a street level, three day celebration of Canadian Art and Culture. It’s the largest FREE festival of its kind!

   As you wander, there’ll be buskers, musicians, gymnasts, BALLOON ARTISTS, art, and other thing filling the street. You could probably harass a street performer and get away with it. It’s a free-for-all heckle-a-thon.

   Word is the food stands and trucks are going to be fantastic. Relish Food Truck is making their festival debut. They strive to use locally derived foods and add class to regular food-truck fare. Their menu for the festival includes fried green tomato sandwiches, jerk chicken and mango salsa, homemade fizzy drinks… it’s going to be so damn good.
    There’s another food truck called Stone Soup Foodworks that’s going to be around all weekend. They also deal with local and sustainable food sources.
    I’m mostly excited for the food.
    Steven Page is going to be there on Saturday! You know, the one guy from Bare Naked Ladies...

             … oh, you know.

Canadian Dance Festival

   It’s three of the best things ever in one convenient location.

   From the NAC’s billing: “The Canada Dance Festival is committed to outrageous beauty. It presents the best in Canadian contemporary dance — dance that is daring, provocative, and highly entertaining.”
    I’m hesitant to support the festival. I sent them one of my pieces and they never got back to me

They don’t deserve such grace.

National Arts Centre, 53 Elgin Street. Various dates . Ticket prices vary. 613-947-700 x576

http://canadadance.ca/the-festival/

Italian Week (but is actually two weeks.)

           Food, loud talkers.

Around the city but mainly Preston. Opening Ceremonies Thursday at 10 a.m. until Sunday the 17^th. 613-858-9086.
www.italianweekottawa.org

June 3 Review Dangerous LIaisons

  In the spirit that inspires this blog, I visited one of the events from the past weekend. I give Ottawa Little Theatre’s Dangerous Liaisons eight out of 10 pantaloons and the crew at Ottawa Little Theatre 11 out of 10 discounted Keith’s.

   Saturday night was Dan’s birthday party at James Street Pub. It was a great time; there was karaoke, friends filling up one whole side of the restaurant, and some girl I met in the bathroom who was awesome.

    Weeks ago, a school chum invited the boyfriend and me to come see the dress rehearsal for a play on Sunday that she and the hub would be stage-handling during its season. She reserved two seats for us.

  We were on our best behaviour at Dan’s party in anticipation of sitting quietly in front of live acting for a couple of hours on Sunday.

   We continued to be on our best behaviour until 3 a.m. and even while the bar emptied out.

   When I sprang out of bed at noon the next day, my play-companion was a covers-hogging pseudo-corpse and in no condition to come to the thee-ah-taw.

   I dialed my most sympathetic friends to help me fill Elliott’s seat:

    My next attempt I thought for sure was a long shot.

    I texted the birthday boy. The night after his big birthday party. Where he rocked a sweet karaoke rendition of the classic song “Sit On My Face”.

    Theatre-folk, indeed.

   Dan, in probably an act of extreme pity or continued drunkenness, said he would meet me (he later revealed that when I said Glenn Close starred in the movie he assumed I meant Fatal Attraction... not the same but would make an awesome play).

   We respectively rushed to the theatre. I arrived slightly before Dan did looking like this:

and stupid Dan showed up showered, styled, and in clean clothes. Which was dickish.

   We made it just on time and fumbled our way to our seats.

   There’s something about being in a setting where it’s polite to be quiet that makes my limbs all movey. My lips suddenly get really chapped and I have to find my chapstick. Or my mouth will be all dry and my gum is at the bottom of my purse underneath my hangover potato chips.

   The play, however, was awesome. There were some make-out scenes that I think ran a little long. I don’t go for that sort of lewd public display.

   The actors were so enthusiastic and their costumes were fantastic. Everyone on the cast is ridiculously good looking.

You'll notice that the choice of music is a little off. Violinist Marti Bueno opened the play (awesomely) and did a wicked job of setting the tone for a period piece. However, between scenes they played Adele. Her album is full of scorned-lover work which one might think would work in such a passionate story but the poppy, 21st century sound really made it hard to stay and believe in the story.

   We were about 10 minutes in when I realised that I recognised the story; I guess Cruel Intentions is based on Dangerous Liaisons. It made it easier to follow along once I realised.

Marquise De Merteuil is Catherine and Vicomte De Valmont is Sebastian.

HOWEVER

I now know there is only one way to portray a proper traitorous cad:

   I don’t know how we’ve lived in a modern world so long without pantaloons. They offer the perfect combination of poofy comfort around the thighs and major aerodynamic action in the calf-department.

   Because we weren’t at the official show, I got a sneak peek into the after-show party that the crew and actors attend. The people who work in Ottawa Little Theatre are some of the hardest working people I’ve met.

No one is paid to be there but they all move like they are. I feel like I was allowed a little glimpse of a bigger community made out of kick ass.

Please go see Dangerous Liaisons. And then go see whatever they put on next.

It's important to support local theatre.

They have a bar.

June 5 to June 23. Ottawa Little Theatre, 400 King Edward Avenue. $25.00 (Beer $5.00) 613-233-8948. www.ottawalittletheatre.com