Avenue articles I wrote

I’m now a full time staffer at Avenue magazine (Edmonton), positioned as assistant editor. Excuse me, I mean Assistant Editor. I wanted to share some of my articles with those of you who are regularly keeping up with my endeavors, I mean, stalking me. That’s okay, I’m probably stalking you too.

Wish You Were Here

Edmonton’s hotels are coming up short in what they offer visitors who are disabled

Put yourself in a disabled person’s travelling shoes for a moment. You’ve just flown into Edmonton. At the arrival gate and on the DATS bus, helpful personnel give you an extra hand.

But at your hotel, the city seems less welcoming. When you were booking a room, there weren’t that many places to choose from that were accessible for your disability. Those with the most to offer put you over-budget. Availability was also at a premium; most hotels had just one or two rooms equipped as “accessible.” You booked the best you could afford.

Erotic Exercise?

Actually, pole dancing has become a popular form of high-intensity toning

When I told people I was off to take a pole dancing class, they expected me to leave the house in glass heels and return with a tub of toonies, not knowing that at the studio where I was headed, the women wear yoga clothes and the only refreshment is water.

Triple Threat

As an actress, singer and film producer, Cara Albo shows confidence onstage and in the boardroom by wearing classic cuts and vintage clothing

Cara Albo was still shy of her 19th birthday when the Edmonton-based actress and singer gained yet another title: executive producer. To get this title, Albo raised $3 million for locally based skyline motion Pictures Inc., to fund Cat’s Cradle, a feature film about a pop singer on the brink of a Britney spears-like breakdown, in which Albo also played the lead role.

Did Ahmadinejad really say he wanted to wipe Israel off the map?

No.

He didn’t.

And if I hear someone else claim that he did again I’m going to flip out. Why nobody in the US media has come forward to say that this is a misquote, I don’t understand. And not a misquote like he really meant to say “Israel must be wiped off the mat.” Or, “Isicles must be wiped off the map.” I mean they tried to translate Farsi to English and loosened both the Persian idioms and definitions to fit this second-holocaust rhetoric I keep hearing from America’s most powerful, including, yes, Barack Obama.

Real translation of Ahmadinejad quote: “…this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”

Read here for more about debunking this myth.

My first book finished after my first book

Last summer while traveling through the Middle East and staying mostly in Lebanon, I wrote my first book, The Cedar and the Maple Leaf: Stories From My Mother’s Motherland. Then, like a lazy fuck, I let it sit. I wrote every chapter but the last, and let it sit for 16 months. Then, in two days, I revisited it out of guilt and finished it.

Of course, in that time I was contracted to write what actually became my first book, Amazing Cats, about amazing cats, which is not what I thought my first (or second) book would ever be about.

This is what the first sentence of the book looks like:

This is what the last sentence of the book looks like:

Anything you say may end up in an Instant Book

Matt Prins, my pal from another gal, writes about one book a day. You might say his books are instant. He’s started a sight called Instant Books (obviously a play on the instantness of his books) where he scans and uploads the entirety of each book he writes.

I’ve known that he was writing books so instantly for some time now, in fact, while sitting in my home over beers and YouTube, he made two books right before my eyes. He’s very talented that young man.

What I did not know, however, was anything I say or do may be used in an instant. I found out Monday after reading his latest drama (or is it a comedy?) 544386-02. Only two days before he wrote and published that book, we had a passing conversation about his job and the similarities it has to a Christian Slater film, He Was a Quiet Man, in which Christian Slater’s character goes postal at the office doing the same thing Matt does in real life. Well, I guess the similarities were more damaging than I thought. Give it a read to find out how this exciting tale of friendship ends.

Do these guys look like friends, or what?

Next time, say cheese.

At my homies Josh & Geneveive’s house on Halloween, Josh pulled out an old Heavy D & the Boyz record (as opposed to a new one?). It struck me that they were smiling on the cover. But why is that even remarkable, I wondered. I realized that rappers never smile on their album covers anymore. The only one in recent memory is Common’s Be. Not only did I realize that, but I realized how delightful it is to see that. I mean, if the music is happy music, shouldn’t the album reflect that? Instead it’s always a bored or grimey face (including mine). Plus, and I know this from working in the magazine industry, smiling faces and eye-contact sell more mags. Well, mark my words: Next album–I’m smiling.

PS: This is me as Joe 6-Pack and my girlfriend as The Color Purple (and that’s my friend’s piss stain):