Red wine afternoons in Edinburgh.

Bus ticket through rural Ontario to urban Montreal

The second I sit down on the bus, my eyes close. Sleep has been hiding all week, now I've found it on the road. Somewhere between point a and b is a truck stop where I buy cheetos, mountain dew, and sugary lime-green candy strips. The essentials. A stomach-ache sleep brings me to my destination, 3:45 a.m.

Disoriented, I look for anything I recognize. A strip club I know! Success. The writing on the storefronts turns from French to Mandarin. Trouble. A cross-dressing bar tender stands in front of a closed sportsbar. I am lost, too. Then I spot a dead-lit red and white sign, the logo for Hennes & Mauritz. H&M, the great landmark of the Swedishized world of fast-fashion. I know exactly where I am.

I turn right, and find the long street that leads to my friend's apartment. The walk is about an hour. No bother, it's 5:00 a.m., I have time to kill. The walk is crisp; I forget the sun doesn't rise when its raining. Finally, I reach the park, nearly 6:00 a.m. As I sit down and pull a book out of the front pocket of my bag, the lights in the park ceremonisouly turn off: a sign it's finally day.

Right when the bicycles, coffee cups and strollers start to come out, I get a saving text. Alex can't sleep, is up, and buzzes me into his building. As the sun warms the morning grey sky, we both fall asleep.

My morning saviour

I bring rain to the city, every time

Sinking hope on a rainy day

Sit and be bright

On a loaner bicycle I make my way to Metropolis, and buy ticket for tonight's show

*I know I said brb just a few hours ago, but I can't quite un-wire, yet

Rainy day revelations

The grind of the nine-to-five and this city's tendency for social overdrive build up until they are too much to take. So despite the rainy weather, on Saturday morning we packed into a car and headed to the closest cottage country for what little break from urban-life a wet mother's day weekend could provide.

We played Candyland until the diet-pop in our mixed drinks dried up and we decided to make the most of the late afternoon with a much needed nap. That we couldn't sun tan on the dock was forgiven when we found a new friend, in a wet field we wandered into, in search of the full rural experience.

For the rest of the evening we took cues from the turtle, moving slowly enough to allow time for ample rest. We woke up warm, the summer sun taunting us as we headed back into the city. As I turned the key to my front door I met inevitable piles of laundry, unanswered messages, and left-to-the-last-minute tasks, and I thought to myself: it was nice to escape, for a few hours.

At the bottom of the cup: the end of the semester

It's over. No longer will my tweets read: I am going to make it through this year, if it kills me. I made it. Marks aren't in, and I'm making few promises my GPA is on the rise, but at least for now, it's over.

The last exam was essay-form, which was easily filled with Obama-speech references and Aerosmith lyrics. Then, joined by some of my closest classmates, we made our way to a pub decorated like a library, if only for irony. We put down our pens and raised our pints in celebration, hoping we could drink away at least some of what we'd learned.

Until autumn ends our summer bliss, I'll have only books borrowed from friends filling my head. Critical analysis and academic rhetoric will warp into beach paperbacks and cottage prose. I will still be up late reading, but the biline will not read Gloria Steinem, Susan Sontag or Naomi Klein.

Until the first day of September, it just me.
Me, and Bukowski.

Paradise Lost

On another rainy Monday morning, with wet hair slicked to my face and a soaked, borrowed trench dripping off my office hanger, I decide to live in the memory of a warm Friday afternoon:

We swore we had no tests to study for, no work to finish, no calls to make. We had nothing to do and even less on our minds, and we took to the park.

When we saw the street-punks, skateboarders, and hemp-clad hippies congregating in their separate circles, laying on the grass and lounged up against the chain-link fence, we realized during the first few days of sun, the park is bound to be busy.

We left that crowd, and joined another, finding a street-side patio crawling with eager twenty-somethings, rejuvenated by the sun. We drank draft beer and grazed over bland plates, and by the time we got back home, buzz on our brains, the party was at my place and the couch was on the balcony.

No one had too much to drink that night, but we did wake with Saturday morning stomach aches, swearing, that we'd had too much sun.

*Photocred: The lovely Laurence.

A brief re-cap of the weekend that was

One of my favourite ex-Winnipegers* and fellow bloggers dropped in this weekend for yet another rendition of what we call Montreal vs. Toronto: a competition of who can get into the most trouble in aa single weekend. Luckily for us, Christianity offered an extra day of of debauchery. Bless the long weekend.

On Thursday we checked out Decadence, which proved some perhaps-obvious statements I was hoping wouldn't ring true:

-The new MSTRKRFT album isn't holding anyone's attention
-Steve Aoki should consider applying for day job in the near future
-Never, under any circumstances, should you step into the high security sweat-pit that is the Guvernment nightclub complex.

But by Friday things were looking up. We had beer in our bellies by the time we made it to an over populated two-bedroom house party that spilled out the back fire escape. Until, of course, the cops were called. What is this, the Valley?

After enjoying a ring-side seat for a heated screaming match between a resident and the night's resident DJ, we resisted arrest and hopped a cab to the west end, where a most hospitable host made sure red-bull-and-vodka filled my mug to its brim until an expensive cab-ride brought us back to the city's core.

Saturday afternoon was for movie-watching, book shopping, gallery hopping, and admitting to ourselves that we maybe aren't quite as much fun as we used to be.

By the time the sun set, we were perched on my couch, watching yet another movie, sipping our drinks (slowly this time) and promising to have airplane-induced adventures by the end of summer.

Who won? We're not sure.
It was either two losses, or a tie.

*Alex Chinien is a student, freelance journalist and good friend living in Montreal. He writes a blog called Heart Attack Club, which you should check out.

Lundstrom. Photocred: TheDavidPike.

For two weeks each year fashion writers in Canada actually have something to write about.

Toronto Fashion Week. It's not New York, Paris or Milan. But it is growing each season, largely thanks to big-name sponsors like LG, which replaces L'Oreal as the title sponsor this week. And with the new name comes a new tent, erected in City Hall's front lawn, and outfitted, for the first time, with two separate floors for Toronto's fashion savvy to mingle on.

Don't expect to see Amber Rose, Tinsley Mortimer or Julia Alison parading around the tents, but Toronto Fashion Week does have its own micro-celebrities. Well, that is if you consider TFW regulars Fefe Dobson, Dan Levy and the cast of Degrassi micro-celbrities (which I, of course, do).

And microcelebs are the source of what we all know any fashion week is really about: gossip. Despite the conservative style of the great white North, every Toronto Fashion Week has a few events worthy of an excited text-message tip-off to Shinan Govani. And most revolve around your girlfriend, Robin Kay.

After the drunken speech that had many calling for her head in the fall, the president of the Fashion Design Council of Canada may keep things low-key this week. But for Kay, low-key has never been much of an option. She was caught pushing coke in the late '70's and spent 18 months trying to make stripes work. Then there was the divorce, the bankruptcy and the rehab. And finally, a job running fashion week. But Kay's sparkly clothing, messy hair and inevitable intoxication have made her fashion week's most flamboyant folly.

Tuesday night, as I sat watching the unveiling of the recently resurrected and re-branded Lundstrom line, I couldn't take my eyes off Kay. She was oddly well-behaved, which I'm hoping is an act that will end as the week goes on. Thankfully, by the time I got home a Kay-related Tweet had been posted: Kay was spotted in the tents, wearing a Tiara.

What's left to be said? Long live the queen.

Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack, I don't care if I ever come back.

In the past, I've proclaimed my love for afternoon baseball games as a thinly veiled disguise for my love of drinking in the afternoon. Baseball games are a unique social phenomena. Other than (ironically) a gay pride parade, where else can you get shit faced, take off your shirt and shout at strangers during a public day-time event?

So this weekend when the World Baseball Classic rolled through Toronto, I joined the crowd at the Skydome for an afternoon of well-rehearsed debauchery .I was joining my dad and his friend Brian on a weekend-long sports-vacation extravaganza. We already had a Raptors game under our belts and had gone endured multiple rounds of chicken wings and beer.

As we settled into our seats for a match against our arch enemy America, a young female fan in front of us waved a sign in hand-painted red and white, reading: Canada: We're bigger, and on top. Swelling with national pride and thoroughly convinced baseball couldn't get any gayer, I watched attentively until at least the fifth inning, when my attention span began to break and team Canada began to lag in runs.

Ultimately, we were no match for Derek Jeter and his band of Americans. Actually, during the whole weekend not a single home team had a winning game. I guess that's just what it's like to be a sports fan in Toronto.

That said, if anyone's up for splitting a six-pack in the parking lot and heading to the Jays season opener, I'm in.

*Disclaimer: The pops left town last night, and this blog will return to its regular scheduled content tomorrow (IE: gossip, hangovers, fashion and other art-faggy things).