Author: Richard Tseng

THE HELPLESS ROMANTIC: Dispatch from the Orient

This column comes to you from Shanghai because I’m still on vacation. I am embedded deep in the pearl-encrusted, dragon-swarming mists of the Far East. Of course, while old Western beliefs about the yellow horde no longer hold, new peculiarities have taken their place.

WET PAINT: Baby and Balanciaga

As we have probably all noticed at some point, current fashions often conflict. While everyone is still flapping about flats and their newly wistful attitude to life and walking, Pam Anderson-inspired monstrosities are somehow attaching themselves to all my friends’ feet.

FEATURE: Becoming Miss Montreal

Growing up in Los Angeles, I found it difficult to envision life in Montreal. It’s similar to how my fellow Canadians who haven’t been to Southern California imagine Hollywood as a strictly glamorous haunt, with California girls gallivanting in their bikinis while Abercrombie models surf to class.

FEATURE: The anti-frosh guide

Don’t get me wrong- I love Frosh. What better way to start off the new academic year than to get magnificently intoxicated on lower field with thousands of your closest drinking buddies? Frosh is more than just a spectacle of drunken bliss; the organized drinking orgy certainly contains its moments of glory: sampling of a first years’ first beer (mmm.

FEATURE: Frosh-damentals

ow. Ow. OW! Who replaced the florescent lights with pointy, pointy knives? These are the thoughts running through poor little Gordon-the-Freshman’s head the morning after his first night of Frosh week. If Gordon´s waking thoughts are any indication, he is well on his way to achieving Frosh-Success.

FEATURE: Cheap meat

This is for all the U1 students out there who are finally discovering the joys of having their own apartments. Although you might miss the glory days of Rez, you will soon realize the far superior nature of living off campus. One of the hardest things to adjust to is cooking your own food.

POP RHETORIC: My opinion is better than your opinion

It’s a conversation we’ve all had before. You’re sitting with one of your indie, Mile-End hipster friends at Bagel’s Etc. finishing off the remainder of your baked potatoes and, misfortunate as you are to be hung-over, you make the cognitively unsound decision to utter aloud, “Dude… Leonard Cohen’s music fucking sucks.

REVIEWS

Ray Lamontagne – Till the Sun Turns Black. Lamontagne’s mesmerizing debut, Trouble, was one of the most critically lauded sleeper hits of 2004, landing spots on a variety of film and TV soundtracks and rocketing him into folk-rock stardom. Since then, Lamontagne has been on a seemingly ceaseless tour schedule-dropping by Montreal three times in the past year.

MUSIC: Keeping the Klezmer beat

In 1980, when Dr. Hy Goldman first brought Boston’s Klezmer Conservatory Band to Montreal, not many people believed that the near-forgotten musical tradition of Klezmer could be revived. Roughly defined as the music of Eastern European Jewry, Klezmer had all but disappeared after the Second World War.

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