Chinese Broccoli

May 28: SASKATOON TO WINNIPEG

The show in Saskatoon is really really good for both Dinosaur and Awesome Color. I take lots of pictures and in the morning notice that I keep getting music stuck in my head every day, and then I'll eventually realize it's an Awesome Color song and get excited since I'll get to hear it later that day!

Up at 7:30am for a long drive to Winnipeg. I still like Saskatoon quite a bit even in the misty morning—admittedly our hotel room has a very romantic view of the bus station. And in a fabulous stroke of luck, the other good cafe in town—Cafe Sola, founded but no longer under the proprietorship of Jimmy O.—is literally two blocks from the hotel. (So is the YMCA, actually, but screw that.)

My macchiato is a little sketchy (what kind of coffee is this again? I'm too sleepy to even notice) but I grab drinks for all the coffee-inclined in the band (sorry, Michael—I shoulda brought you a tea) and also turn up the two-day-old Saturday Globe and Mail, which I'd been unable to find for purchase anywhere in Edmonton on actual Saturday. The relevance of this is that the Books section has a fresh cryptic in it! Unfortunately it's even harder than last week's (I'll have to get home to Toronto and Sasha for help.) I mail a heap of postcards outside the bus station and we hit the road.

10:20: Driving down a 2-lane road in rural Saskatchewan in the rain listening to The Who.

Out here the only food option is often A&W. And unlike American A&Ws, they don't even have seasoned curly fries. The band is eagerly anticipating their return to freedom tomorrow. In the meantime, Derek orders french fries and chocolate milk for breakfast at an A&W in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, and it costs him $5.

Derek: I didn't realize Wendy's had a little maple leaf on the sign up here.
Davey: That's how they let you know they don't have the dollar menu.

[Manitoba, and we cross into Central Time, this time for real.]

Only 2 more provinces and 3 territories left for me to see! Someone want to take me along on their tour of Newfound and Labrador?

1:50: Allison and I, amazingly, finish the Saturday New York Times crossword together. AWESOME! I high five her and whoop a little too loudly and Derek asks me politely to be quiet.

I conclude (last of everyone here) that indeed, Old Dutch potato chips have nothing on Miss Vickies, despite the former's charming tendency toward anthropomorphically rendering its flavours: a salt guy with a vinegar buddy; a cheery slice of cheddar about to leap joyfully into his friend the tub of sour cream. (Note that the Old Dutch take on this motif is infinitely more creative than the local chips of my childhood, Vitner's, which manage to make completely implausible graphic assertions like that a bag of BBQ chips is a good sax player, or that a bag of Dill Pickle flavour can shoot hoops.)

4:20 Manitoba apparently has its own version of the Rural Crime Watch. Who's watching, anyway? And...why?

We eventually roll up into Winnipeg and it takes seemingly forever to get to the downtown, past kilometre after kilometre of dismal apartment building and strip mall. The signs on the bars and grocery stores and apartment buildings are gorgeous and dated—that golden age of cursive script and art deco lettering—but other than that, this town kinda looks like it sucks. No wonder the Weakerthans are whiney. (Just kidding. I really like the Weakerthans. But they're a little tiny bit whiney.)

We find the venue, the Garrick Theatre, which is downtown kittycorner from the Burton Cummings theatre (!!). The Garrick is a converted movie theatre and the bands play in Cinema 1, where a section of the centre seats have been taken out, though the left and right sections (most of which have no view of the stage, but people sit in them anyway) have been left. The backstage room is actually the old projector booth. The cinema is also physically connected to a hotel and a swimming pool and a "fashion mall". They haven't updated the marquee for over a month (Interpol: April 20. Weakerthans: April 28.) but they're not completely lazy—they've put up a scoreboard for the first game of the Stanley Cup Finals, made out of 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of paper that they'll be updating throughout the night. In fact, someone has already corrected the sign.

I still hold out a little hope for Winnipeg to be an interesting vibrant city with weird culture hidden in some nooks and crannies, but mostly it seems like a bust, and I can't really get my head around it. Luckily some of the pressure to look around and get a feel for the place is taken off by intermittent huge downpours, which are really super fun when you carry your laptop around in a cloth bag like a moron. I eat at a divey noodle place in the Exchange District and take in the strange comingling of generic '70s and '80s office buildings and beautiful historic properties with old painted advertisements slowly fading into brick and oblivion. (A spectre's haunting Albert Street, indeed.)

I'm carrying my camera on my way back to the club when a guy suggests I take a picture of a homeless bum, i.e. him, though he then admits he has a place to stay. And also that he makes a $600 pension from his time in Vietnam, and in fact he makes pensions from both the US and Canada, but he can't remember the word for "exchange" rate because, he explains, he's not right in the mind from where the Chinaman shot him, actually I think what he said was "I'm retarded from the little Vietnamese guy shot me straight through the head". The Chinaman shot him somewhere else. His name is Walter and he was really quite nice for a little while. As I take his leave he says, "Merry Christmas! Ho Ho Ho! And I'm a Hebrew!"

Back at the bizarro Garrick Theatre, I feel totally crappy and tired and like I might be getting sick, but Awesome Color hit the stage and I run to the front to take pictures and, you know, dance. And I just feel so happy and lucky to be here, watching great music, shooting crazy amounts of photos, even getting eaten alive by mosquitos in Edmonton—I mean, I could be friends with bands that aren't crazy enough to want to take a random pal on the road, or I could be friends with a band that totally sucks—but these shows are better and better everytime I see them, and on top of it they're amazing to hang out with and so kind and laid back and funny and they ROCK! And Michael will inexplicably say nice things about me onstage even though my presence is mostly just a drag on their fuel economy and force someone to sit on a fake middle seat made of sleeping bags. (Of course, he'll also invite all of Williamsburg over to my house to eat pancakes, but that has yet to pose a serious threat.) Anyway, rest assured the amount of fun I am having has not gone unappreciated.

What Winnipeg appreciates is another story, however. Weird town begets weird show. At the end of Awesome Color's set, Derek passes his guitar into the audience for members to jam on—this all goes pretty great until some otherwise emo looking dude grabs the guitar and then tries to smash it on the monitor! Later, a random fan will buy Allison and Derek each a Budweiser, and then someone will come up to the merch table and offer us a hit of acid. All kinds of sketchy people hang around the alleys after the show and several people remark that they are surprised the van didn't get broken into, or stolen. And though it's not Memorial Day in Canada, but that doesn't stop Allison and Murph from setting off a Thunder King firecracker in the alley after midnight. No less than three Winnipeg police cruisers come by later to check it out, and ask, "Did any of you hear a loud noise?"—but of course, officer, no...we didn't hear a thing.