What a remarkable thing.

In the northeastern United States and southern Ontario, there are 50 million Blackout of 2003 stories. This is one of them.

Thursday Afternoon – I’m working away, click click click. BAM. That is the sound of every piece of electronic and equipment in the office shutting down. BEEP BEEP BEEP. That is the sound of the UPS hooked up to the server screaming, “Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!”. “What the fuck?” That is the sound of me. After we figure that the power isn’t coming on anytime soon, we call it an afternoon and agree to come in a little early Friday to make up the time (yeah, okay). So we stagger out into the gross, sticky afternoon and take in the sight of people just starting to flood into the streets from their offices. In the craziest of random coincidences, I run into my friend Becky right outside my office, on her way home from work. Having no other plan of attack, we go and hang out in a park for a few hours to wait for either a) a return to normalcy, or b) the end of the world. I assume that band practice is cancelled.

Thursday Evening – Thankfully, Becky’s building has generator power to allow the keycards and elevator to work (not that we’re fool enough to try the elevator). In her place, we find that there is at least running water and some food that has to be eaten or it will perish. So we eat it. Cue some more sitting around wondering what’s going on, interspersed with climbing around on rooftops.

Thursday Night – The city gets dark. Really dark. People roam the streets, mostly just taking in the unexpected and probably not unwelcome return to the Dark Ages, having beer on patios, chatting on functioning cellphones, etc. From my vantage point, I see no signs of panic or opportunism. There is concern about not having flashlights or batteries. I find out that my apartment, besides having no power, also has no water. That is not good. It’s decided that it’s better if I just crash on the couch at Becky’s since at least there’s running water. I make a run back to my place, through the frequent pitch blackness of College St, to pick up supplies – flashlights, matches, etc. And Scrabble (Which I proceed to get my ass kicked at). The Toronto night is amazing to look at, though the emergency power in the skyscrapers down in the financial district ruins the opportunity to see the skyline in pitch blackness. And you could see stars. When was the last time you could see stars in downtown Toronto? Hello, big dipper. Been a while. Oh yeah, and I saw Mars. That was way cool.

Friday Morning – 6AM, there is still no power. Not the case at the Second Cup, so Becky has to go to work. 6:30, let there be light! The power returns, and there is much jubilation. A quick phone call home reveals that it’s not a widespread phenomenon, and my place is still electricty and water-less. There’s no reason to go home, so I spend the next six hours or so loitering in the wonderfully air-conditioned Second Cup, reading newspapers and doing crosswords. Business is crazy with people seeking their caffeine (and A/C) fix, but everyone is pretty happy and doing alright despite the extenuating circumstances.

Friday Afternoon – Power throughout the city is still being restored, my apartment is apparently still further down the list. It is stiflingly hot out. Of course, Scrabble in the park is the obvious thing to do. I get my ass kicked again.

Friday Evening – Hooray for electricity, and the opportunity to make food that it affords. The television fills us in on what has gone on in the past day, and what the next few days will hold (rolling blackouts, etc). Then the cable goes out. The electricty holds, thankfully. I get mine back, kicking some ass at Scrabble for a change, but lose a $5 bet because I don’t recognize S Club 7 on television. The Radiohead concert is officially postponed, to no surprise. I expect the rescheduled date to be in the first week of September, which is fine with me.

Friday Night – We’re going to go try and meet some people at a pub, so I finally head home (electricty having been restored in the afternoon) to get changed and grab the car. I have not showered in well over a day and a half. Nice. The change of clothes and fresh socks are very welcome. From what I can see driving through the city, everything looks back to normal, save for a single set of blinking traffic lights. I am exhausted and gross and sweaty. Sleep is welcome, if a little tough to get to since we’re being good citizens and keeping the air conditioning off.

I have to say, I’m impressed. An incident of this scale and severity, and we as a society don’t descend into anarchy. I don’t flip out from being kept offline for a day and a half. People are more concerned with getting beer than they are with looting. It was all pretty damned relaxed. This was easily the most laid back and fun state of emergency ever. It was good to have my usual routine shaken up some, the blackout was probably the most fun I’d had in a while.

As for what happens now, I’m not sure what’s going on with my weekend. I will probably try to head home and get my old bike. Our food situation will need to be assessed. With Radiohead being cancelled, I have nothing to do now. Showering should be on the agenda though, definitely. Like right now. Yuck.

np – Dot Allison / Afterglow

I went to see Easy Rider last night. Ignoring the fact that the theatre had a pretty lousy print (choppy sound and everything had this unsettling pink wash over it), it was an interesting film. I can appreciate the historical significance of it, coming out in 1969 this would have been a real clarion call to that generation – it’s a fascinating look at what hippy and drug culture was like at the time, and not filtered through the lens of hindsight. That said, I couldn’t really relate to the film on a personal level. I’m not a biker, a drug user or a longhair. But hey, it was still interesting. Killer soundtrack, though, and watching a young Jack Nicholson – already with the grin and the acting style that would become his trademark – and a whacked out Dennis Hopper was fascinating.

Aussies The Sleepy Jackson are opening for My Morning Jacket on their Fall North American tour.

The Sadies play the Horseshoe on September 13… just because.

Sloan rate the cover story in this week’s eye.

np – Blue Rodeo / Tremolo

As much as it pains me to admit it, sometimes my parents have good ideas. My mom calls me this evening and suggests that, instead of going out and buying a replacement bike, I just come home and get the bike I have at home and used all through university? I had not wanted to bring that one into the city because it’s old, banged up and I wanted to get something new and shiny. And we all know how that turned out. I had completely forgotten about this other bike, and while my knee jerk reaction was to dismiss her idea, sadly, it’s a good one. I don’t need to spend the money on a new old bike considering I’m moving in a few weeks and will have no shortage of medium-to-large ticket purchases to make, and I have the very definition of ‘beater’ in my basement. It’s still a servicable bike, I think. A Peugeot racing bike I got way back in high school, and which needs no small amount of work to get back into road shape, but that’ll still be cheaper than getting a new bike. So I guess I’ll head home on Friday and pick it up, drop it off at a shop to get fixed up and go with that for the rest of the Summer and Fall, anyway. Maybe in the Spring I’ll go for another bike, but not right now. Thanks, mom.

I happened to catch a Blue Rodeo special whilst channel surfing during dinner. It was the band, set up in a barn, running through their catalog with a handful of guest singers. Seeing Sarah Harmer singing “Five Days In May” was magnificent – I’d forgotten how much I loved this band when I was younger. I literally wore out my cassette of Diamond Mine in the summer of 93. Lost Together was the first cassette I saved up for and bought brand new. Their June 1993 show at the Oakville Waterfront Festival, which was really my first rock concert, was the night that my first band came together. An omen? Not really, we played like three shows and fell apart at the end of high school, but still. It was a damned rocking show.

I guess you could say that when most teens were pledging their Can-rock allegiance to the Hip, I went with Blue Rodeo. Like I said last week when I went on about Neil Young, Blue Rodeo was pretty formative for me, musically-speaking, as well. The country influence is pretty obvious, but they could also rock out pretty well when they wanted and above all, they wrote pop tunes. I tended toward the Greg Keelor end of things, given as he was to the more atonal and sonically adventurous songs, but never at the cost of the song (or almost never).

I don’t think it’s very hip to like Blue Rodeo these days, given that they’re pretty much a Canadian institution by now and are pretty ‘safe’, but they’re not without indie cachet. Keelor produced the last Sadies record, Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett made appearances on Jim Cuddy’s solo record, current Rodeo pedal steel player Bob Egan was Wilco’s touring steel guitarist for the Being There tour, and ex-keyboardist Bob Wiseman now plays in The Hidden Cameras. Hell, there’s not much that separates them from any other alt.country act besides the fact that they’ve sold a lot of records. Fuck the hipsters, I love Blue Rodeo.

In fact, I’m thinking that their show next week with Kathleen Edwards and The Jayhawks is looking pretty good right now, providing I’m in town.

Stories like this make be thankful I wasn’t that serious about success.

Sadism, thy name is Teague.

Jetset has released a remix EP to accompany the Dean Wareham & Britta Phillips album, L’Avventura, released not so long ago. It’s called Sonic Souveniers and features a half-dozen remixes by ex-Spaceman 3, Sonic Boom (AKA Pete Kember).

Lost Highway will release a compilation of rarities, b-sides and unreleased material in September as Lost And Found – Vol 1. Featured artists include the Jayhawks, Ryan Adams and Kathleen Edwards, with highlights including Johnny Cash covering Jimmy Webb’s classic “Wichita Lineman”, a Whiskeytown outtake from the Pneumonia sessions and an unreleased Bright Eyes song, “Trees Get Wheeled Away”. Which is all well and good, but Bright Eyes aren’t ON Lost Highway. What’s that about? A second Lost And Found collection is due in 2004.

We’ve posted some mp3s from the Lake Holiday show at Wavelength last weekend. They don’t sound bad, if I do say so myself.

np – Guided By Voices / Isolation Drills

So to expound:

I had what I considered a very good lock – a Kryptonite U-lock that cost me about $55 not more than a month ago. I lock up on a very busy downtown street, in front of an architect’s office where the fellow’s desk is right up front in the plate glass window. I would have thought that these factors, combined with the fact that my bike really wasn’t very expensive and thus, not that appealing to thieves, would have kept me safe. Guess not.

I came out of the office yesterday, walked to where my bike was locked up, and thought, “this is not my bike”. And it wasn’t. It was someone else’s beater bike, leaning against the post, unlocked. (sidenote: that was yesterday at 5pm. IT’S STILL THERE THIS MORNING, UNLOCKED. Talk about a slap in the face). Confused, dismayed, I wandered up and down the block for a few minutes trying to make sense of what had happened. My bike, and all trace of it, was gone. No pieces of the lock, it was like it never was. I had to ask myself for a minute, “did I even ride today?”, but the fact that I was carrying my bike helmet said, “yes, you did”. That was the longest walk to the subway I’d ever taken. Walking is so slow. It’s like I’ve had my wings clipped or something. Blargh.

I am cheesed about my bike being gone barely three months after I got it, and the $400 I had put into it also being gone, with nothing to show for it except my helmet and the headlight and tailight, which I can’t even mount anywhere because the brackets ARE ON MY OLD BIKE (but I can get new mounts, I checked). I’m mostly upset that the new lock which had given me a better sense of security proved so utterly ineffectual. What’s the point? But it’s not like I had grown up with this bike, or I spent the evening weeping over old snapshots of me and the bike in simpler, happier times. I didn’t, really.

So today I will go through the motions, call the local bike stores and tell them to keep an eye open for my bike on the remote chance that some chump tries to sell it. But mostly, go buy another bike. Nothing nice this time. Something used, ugly and functional. I hope that I don’t have to trade off too much comfort and quality for a sense of security, but if that’s what has to happen, that’s what’ll happen. I use it for transportation and as long as it does the job, then it’ll do. Pffft.

Postscript to the guy who stole my bike – I hope the chain breaks and gets your pants all greasy. Fucknut.

np – Fountains Of Wayne / Fountains Of Wayne