Shut up, Canice » Friends

R.I.P. Cynthia Brouse

caniceleung — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 17:48:11 +0000

Going into fourth year, we had been warned by older students that our copy editing and fact-checking instructor Cynthia Brouse was a little strange — her obsession with Paul Gross, an (overly?) honest admission to the previous year’s group that she lay somewhere between fag hag and celibate — but for a nascent feminist such as myself, totally intriguing. Of course, it turned out that I loved her. She had a dry, self-deprecating sense of humour — sometimes flapping her hands around when she really got into whatever story she was telling. Her Miss vs. Ms. rant and meticulous copy editing symbols resonated with my inner semiotic nerd. She ribbed me for falling asleep in many of her classes, but she forgave me when I turned in decent results on all my copy editing assignments.

When it came time before fourth year, my eligibility for the editorship of the Ryerson Review of Journalism was in the air because of my concurrent editor’s position at McClung’s. Until that point, I don’t think anyone had ever run a student publication in addition to running the RRJ masthead, because of the amount of work it involved. But she vouched for me, a tardy, narcoleptic girl who slouched in the back row, and for that I’m really thankful, because I’d likely be on a radically different career path and in a less stable job if it wasn’t for her seal of approval.

I last saw her at the National Magazine Awards last year, when she received a much-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award. Got a couple words in with her outside the bathroom, while I sat on a couch stuffing my face (so elegant!) with mini slider burgers. By that point she was bald-headed and walked with some difficulty, but she seemed genuinely thrilled to be there, not just to accept her own award, but to see that her past students (self included) and many colleagues had been nominated. When she accepted her award later that night, she read from her prepared speech too fast, and flapped her hands, and was self-deprecating as she accepted her award on behalf of all the copy editors and fact-checkers in the industry.

I don’t do much copy editing or fact-checking these days, but her little “Are you checking sure?” voice always comes to me instinctually. Her brilliant blog chronicling her treatment (her cancer reappeared around the same time my dad was going through his treatment) was immensely comforting and helpful to see how it was from a patient’s perspective. Maybe that’s why I got so teary when a friend called me when the news: my dad’s cancer is in remission, which makes it all the more difficult to understand the random nature of the disease… who it takes, who it spares.

My childhood best friend, the Cantopop superstar

caniceleung — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 03:16:24 +0000

From left: Mom and me, Ellen, Jamie, circa 1994?

You’d think the title of this post is an exaggeration, but I’m not lying. Her name is Ellen Joyce Loo. See? She even has a Wikipedia page.

When I was nine, we were three — Jamie, Ellen and me. We shared one of those best friend necklace sets you could buy at Ardene’s; ours were puzzle pieces that fit together. If I’m not muddling memories, mine said “Best”; Jamie’s “friends”; Ellen’s “forever.” Not too long afterwards, Ellen moved to Hong Kong.

Of course you eventually forget these things; you forget about people. A few years back, my mom mentioned that Ellen was now a musician in Hong Kong, in a band called at17. Oh, that’s novel, I thought. Didn’t think much of it, because I don’t remember Ellen being particularly musical — Jamie was that stereotypical Asian kid whose parents enrolled her in Kiwanis competitions and made her practice four hours a day. Ellen and I were just tomboys with bowl cuts that fucked around playing Lego and Power Rangers, or whatever. I remember she had a raspy voice.

Then at dinner a few weeks ago, at some hole in the wall in Scarborough, I noticed her on the television screen. It was at17 in concert, but a karaoke version with her vocals blanked out. They were playing in a huge 10,000-person stadium on a round stage. Like friggin’ U2 — and even U2 don’t have their own karaoke disc.

That’s Ellen on the right, with her bandmate Eman Lam, via xooob.com

So apparently they are a big deal. I downloaded some stuff, and they don’t suck. They even write their own music, which, if you know anything about Hong Kong Cantopop, is an extreme rarity. The band’s Wikipedia page describes their music as folktronica; the term sent my sister and me spasmodic laughter, but it does seem oddly fitting. Lots of acoustic guitars; folky, harmony-heavy vocals; sometimes veer into bossa nova and jazz sometimes; layered with pop beats. Alas, they also throw in breathy Mandarin ballads, which is, like, basically a requirement to be a Chinese singer.

Here’s one of their songs. My grasp on emotive Cantonese words is weak, and when it’s set to music my comprehension is straight-up atrocious, so I don’t really know what they’re saying:

at17 – Never Been Kissed (Acoustic)

Oddly enough, Mark McKinnon, the Chinese correspondent for the Globe and Mail, wrote a feature on Beijing’s burgeoning music scene not too long ago. It’s funny — for the longest time Hong Kong and Chinese music was known for being completely homogenous, and now bands are playing SXSW.

Like most everything else in China, the music scene moves at hyper-speed. When I was in Hong Kong for the summer of 2005, I found only one indie music store — it was a little basement hole in Tsim Tsa Tsui, around the corner from the Star Ferry, that sold mostly metal, punk and rock CDs for ridiculous import prices. I knew of one metalcore band, King Lychee, which is made up of ex-pats and locals and has now been around so long they’re considered a grandaddy of Asia’s metal/hardcore scene. There were no straight-up hardcore bands.

When I visited Shanghai in December, my boyfriend and I looked into catching a show while we were there — most of the bands are in Beijing, but oh, there are a lot more of them now than there were in 2005. They have lots of hilarious Engrish names, such as “Unregenerate Blood.” (My doctor sister says in medical terms, this would mean they have a congenital blood disorder in which they lack plasma to produce blood, or something.)

Anyway, so it just goes to show how out of touch I really am with my second home, and how quickly the arts scene there has matured. Ten years ago, no Hong Kong musicians wrote or performed their own songs. They were gussied-up vocalists with photogenic looks and the physicality of lithe little fawns. Ellen seems like the kind of girl I’d still be friends with: her band is named after a Janis Ian song; she published a book of photography (shot with a Revue 35CC); her favourite actors are Cate Blanchett and Maggie Cheung (張曼玉); she covered “Hallelujah” in the style of Jeff Buckley:

The Penultimate Last Show

caniceleung — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 00:01:46 +0000

Spent a good few days in the Maritimes for Risky Business’s last three shows. Here is the second-to-last one at the House of Dogs, the unofficial abode of Haligonian hardcore alumni. For more, go to Former Transformer.

A Waste…

caniceleung — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 17:58:50 +0000

An absolute, total, fucking waste. I didn’t know Charlie Prinsep all that well, not even enough to know his last name, but Charlie, first known to me as the larger-than-life Shiznaz on the BFSSFG. I knew him peripherally, through mutual friends, sort of in the same sphere but never cementing anything I’d call a friendship, just the occasional exchanage of small talk and a smile. He regaled the Toronto Fixed thread with recaps of his encounters with cabbies. I remembered his butt-ugly commuter, the camo shorts, a fixture at every Critical Mass. And this, a full-face helmet rescued from the garbage heap and transformed into his Halloween costume last year:

The vision…

The realization.

Quite possibly the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. If his online personality was any indication, and from the few conversations I’d had with him, he was probably the brightest guy on the whole forum, with a sense of humour that bordered on offensive or outrageous – but it always made you laugh. He hauled ass on his bike with the best of them, and was well known for his collection of various funny bikes (of the pursuit and fixed BMX varieties?!). This summer, he decided to go on a solo bike tour of epic proportions, which he named The Double Cross.

He was on his way home to Toronto, after passing safely up and down the West Coast and through Western Canada. He died on the Trans-Canada highway halfway between Calgary and Medicine Hat, Alberta, struck from behind by a drunk driver. May your days in heaven be rubber side down, traffic-free, always with the wind at your back. You will be missed.

A manifesto.

caniceleung — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 17:02:08 +0000

I never thought myself a fearful person, but once in a while, I am shaken. On Saturday night my good friend Jason was hit by a car edging out from a side street as he rode west on Queen St. He was on his way back from Toby’s Disco Inferno alleycat (though he had already dropped out when the accident happening, thus ruling out any reckless cycling in the equation). As he approached Trinity Bellwoods, the car gunned out suddenly, sending him over and across the hood. He dislocated and broke his right shoulder in three places, and the driver did not stay at the scene. Presumably he either panicked, or saw that Jason got up on his own two feet (hardly an indication of being ‘okay’) and sped off momentarily. A group of pedestrians walking by helped him off the street, jotted down the license plate, and called an ambulance.

This particular moment bothers me, because at the moment Jason was hit, I was probably absentmindedly twiddling my fingers at a checkpoint across from every Toronto hipster’s favourite joint, The Boat, waiting for the last racer to come through. I would sign his manifest, and he would pull a frantic U-turn and head back in the direction he came from. Twenty-one of the 22 racers pulled through my checkpoint. The other guy manning this checkpoint, Paul, called Toby to find out whether this guy was coming at all. Toby says, I dunno, I have no idea who it is. I waited until 12:30 a.m., but decided to pack it in when I figured any rider as slow as this mystery racer wasn’t worth waiting for any longer. So I made my way west on Queen, passing by a crowd of onlookers staring, probably as Jason was being loaded into the back of the ambulance, lights flashing into the darkness of Trinity Bellwoods at night. I hesitated for a moment, knowing how awful it is to ride that section of Queen, and presciently, feeling bad because it was probably some poor cyclist that got hit.

In the last month, I have seen many of my friends explain other stories… how one cab clipped his handlebars and sent him tumbling onto the road before speeding off, close calls and arguments; that night, in fact, another rider in this race clipped the back of a car after it suddenly U-turned. On the ride home from the alleycat, a cab swerved into me. At the next red light, I nearly smashed in his windshield with my lock after he told me I ought to be riding in the gutter, and he would have no reason to signal or check his blind spot before turning if I had been there in the first place.

It wasn’t until Sunday that I got a call from Drew, worried after Jason never showed up at his place the night before. Several hours later, we would find out he was at St. Mike’s recovering from surgery.

Which leads me to think, really, if any amount of altruism in this fucked up world and saving one gallon of petroleum at a time in the name of curbing global warming makes any difference at all. Being drenched in sweat, bumped, having doors opened on me, honked at, bullied into street curbs, breathing noxious fumes from the tailpipes of assholes, secure in their bigger faster stronger vehicles… Is any of it worth the risk?

It’s not, but for the illusions of weightless, unencumbered flight, the fleeting moments of tailwind and abandoned, buttery smooth stretches of asphalt at 3 a.m., I’ll deal with it.

Word of Mouth portraits

caniceleung — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 06:42:43 +0000

Some shots of J-school classmates from the past few weeks.

www.wordofmouthcrew.com

Warning: Do not hold lit fireworks.

caniceleung — Tue, 23 May 2006 03:34:25 +0000

Jon and I celebrated the Victoria Day long weekend (and mourned our separation due to my impending visit to New York – which, by the way, I settled into on Sunday afternoon quite well) by buying fireworks.

I also picked up a Canon 5D body at a ridiculously good price of $4030, and now owe my parents a buttload of cash. Just messing around, the first shots:

Cheryl

Fireworks:

Messing around:

Err…

Jon’s house

As you can see, my EF-S lens has caused some vignetting. I’m rather partial to it, so I made no attempts to crop it out. Most of these photos have not been colour adjusted (except for the b/w ones), just to attest to the lovely improvements on the 300D.