About Author: Alix MacLean

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Alix MacLean also blogs at Alix Reads Too Much

Posts by Alix MacLean

1

End this now, L.A.

By
Alix MacLean
– June 8, 2012

I have finally mustered up the mildest bit of enthusiasm for the Stanley Cup Final. It’s frigging June. This is getting ridiculous.

Game 5 is tomorrow night. The Kings almost swept New Jersey, sweet Christ, I wish they had. I’m still recovering my hockey-watching mental energy from the triple overtime game between Washington and the Rangers a month ago. I can’t take much more of this.

So what happens when the Stanley Cup final consists of two teams you don’t care about? Last year was half fun: both teams were villains in my books, and a whole city was destroyed. This year, I’m rooting for L.A., just because, ugh, I want this to be over. I know nothing about their team except for the fact that Jonathan Quick has the best/funniest name for a goalie, they have great beards, they have purple on their sweaters, and…?

My prediction: Kings in 6. I’d like to think they will finish it tomorrow night, but I’m wrong a lot.

If you're a hockey player and you don't look like this, you're doing it wrong.

0

About that hockey game last night…

By
Alix MacLean
– April 26, 2012

Thanks Boston fans, for keeping it classy after a devastating loss in OT to the Washington Capitals in Game 7. I watched the game. Caps outplayed them for most of the series and last night. Pretty straightforward.

Oh, but a black guy -who happens to be a good hockey player and a really nice person- scored the wining goal. It didn’t go over well.

Here’s just a taste:

We lost…. To a hockey playing nigger…. What kind of shit is this

There were hundreds of these, apparently. Yikes.

0

Levon Helm is not long for this world

By
Alix MacLean
– April 17, 2012

Earlier today, Levon’s family posted this:

Dear Friends,

Levon is in the final stages of his battle with cancer. Please send your prayers and love to him as he makes his way through this part of his journey.

Thank you fans and music lovers who have made his life so filled with joy and celebration… he has loved nothing more than to play, to fill the room up with music, lay down the back beat, and make the people dance! He did it every time he took the stage…

We appreciate all the love and support and concern.

From his daughter Amy, and wife Sandy

Total bummer. We had some Levon love around B&S last year:

Dirt Farmer is Levon’s first solo album recorded after beating throat cancer. He was diagnosed in 1998, underwent 28 radiation treatments, and was never supposed to sing again. Through it all, he hosted his Midnight Ramble concerts in the barn on his property in Woodstock, N.Y., playing drums, mandolin, and guitar before trying to sing again for the very first time on January 10th, 2004. In the liner notes for Dirt Farmer, he says his voice is “over halfway back”, which is pretty modest. He sounds excellent on Dirt Farmer and its 2009 follow up Electric Dirt — a little grittier, which is like Barry White being a little bit smoother. It can only be a good thing.

So Levon’s voice is better than ever, and he’s still a musical misfit on the drum kit. Critics loved these two albums, both won Grammys, and Levon is charging 150 bucks a head for his Midnight Ramble concerts. One could almost assume (and sincerely hope) that all is well in his corner of Woodstock.

I will miss this guy. My favourite drummer, one of my favourite singers, an American original.

Hopefully, wherever he ends up, there will be a hootenany on par with this (video can’t embed), minus the acrimony and awfulness.

0

How to Get Someone to Buy Your Book

By
Alix MacLean
– March 19, 2012

Heidi Julavits apparently has a new book out. It looks pretty neat. I’m thinking about reading it.

Then I read her Book Notes on largeheartedboy. If you don’t know what those are, find out immediately. It’s pretty much writers making the soundtrack to their books/writing process. Prepare to lose your whole day going through the archives.

“I Found a Reason” by Cat Power

When I die, and a doctor performs an autopsy on my body, and that doctor removes my heart and holds it to her ear, this is the song she’ll hear.

Perhaps you know me well enough by now to realize that this statement has a) made me fall on the floor weeping with envy, and b) made me listen to this song on repeat all morning. When I pick myself up out of the puddle I will go buy this book.

0

Gross.

By
Alix MacLean
– March 2, 2012

I figured I would pop out of thesis-induced hibernation to just point to this… absurdity? That’s not the right word, that’s Rick Santorum’s cop out. The fundamental grossness of this? The cowardice? Still haven’t settled on a word that fits this particular situation.

Anyway, just in case you still thought, somewhere deep down, deep deep deep fucking down that you could be a woman in America and care about women’s dignity and respect, and also be conservative, let me point you to this:

Some Republican groups, meanwhile, have also responded to Limbaugh’s comments.

Rae Chornenky, president of the National Federation of Republican Women, told CNN the controversy has become “a sideshow, turning attention from the main issue.”

Asked if she would repudiate the talk show host’s remarks, Chornenky said: “I don’t want to discuss that. We are working hard on keeping our Constitutional rights protected.”

Frances Rice, chairwoman of the National Black Republican Association, also declined to comment directly on Limbaugh when contacted by CNN.

The chairwoman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, Alci Maldonado, argued the issue was about freedom of religion from government interference.

“This is really not about contraception, a private matter,” Maldonado said. “Liberals are confusing the issue.”

CNN also contacted the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, but did not receive a response.

I’m not at all surprised that the Republican women’s groups have nothing to say on this particular subject. Doing a great job, guys.

Happy fucking Friday everybody.

0

Mini Book Review

By
Alix MacLean
– February 14, 2012

Read this right now: The Antagonist by Lynn Coady.

I can’t remember the last time I was this blown away, this crumpled, this inside-out over finishing a book. Coady’s last novel, Mean Boy, in 2006, maybe.

The Antagonist is about hockey, the Maritimes, pent-up masculine rage, fathers and sons, douchey guys in university, violence, loneliness — a coming-of-age novel that is somehow both quintessentially Canadian and placelessly universal.

I don’t have time to write a longer review, but here is what other critics are saying:

Globe and Mail: “One could open a review of Lynn Coady’s new novel, this week long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, by saying it’s about a hockey enforcer. Certainly her protagonist, given the recent deaths of three real-world hockey “hit men,” arrives with a macabre, if accidental, timeliness. But The Antagonist is a full-bodied work of fiction, and to say it’s about an enforcer is like saying The Catcher in the Rye is about a prep-school student – true, but absurdly reductive, especially since this is a novel that is all about how it feels to be categorized, dismissed, reduced by the very people who should know you best.”

National Post: “Watching Rank come to terms with his past is one of the novel’s great pleasures. What begin as harassing, mocking emails to his former friend — veiled threats, wisecracks about Adam’s weight — soon evolve, almost unintentionally, into a traditional memoir, as the reader learns more about Rank’s troubled childhood (he’s the adopted son of an overbearing father and a mother who died in his youth), his university career (he earns a hockey scholarship but quits when the coach wants him to intentionally injure opposing players) and, eventually, what he’s become”

Rabble.ca: “The book is the anti-buddy film, the anti-villain, the anti-hockey novel we all quite possibly could use. I say quite possibly because I’m puzzled by the fact that the water cooler rep of this book is “the hockey book” despite how hard Coady has worked to make this possibly the most unique take on what it is to be a man raging against a man and trying to use mind over matter.”

0

It’s frigging cold.

By
Alix MacLean
– January 20, 2012

Here is a great Canadian song by NQ Arbuckle about being cold, among other things.

Here’s another NQ Arbuckle song about people actually DYING in the cold. It’s sweeter than you think. So sad it’s not on Youtube.

09 Young Lover, Strong Swimmers

Happy Friday, everybody. Stay warm.

3

Shit just got a whole lotter sadder.

By
Alix MacLean
– January 13, 2012

Here I was Wednesday, lamenting how it couldn’t get any worse to be a Habs fan.

And then last night happened. Aside from our rather unspectacular play against the Bruins, our BEST PLAYER got traded in the MIDDLE OF THE GAME?!?!?!?! The arguable one valuable player we had to make any deals with got traded to the Calgary Flames. And here comes the really sad part: for a guy who is currently serving his SECOND suspension in a month, a no-class goon that Calgary has been looking to dump for awhile. Wow. Just wow.

Here’s where it gets really shitty. Mike Cammalleri makes somewhere in the neighbourhood of six million a year. This douchebag goon makes three million – there were a few other pithy little draft picks thrown in and some poor sap from the AHL, but still we are very much on the losing end in this one. It reminds me of the time we traded Halak – then the hottest goalie in the playoffs to St. Louis for Lars Eller, two buckets of chicken and a ride to the liquor store.  So let me check GM Pierre Gaulthier’s math of this one: if you keep up this logic of trading six million for three million – or in the case of Scott Gomez (who desperately needs to be traded), seven million for a bag of Doritos and a wheezy basset hound (his current trade value) – you will quickly get to zero.

I would like to say I’m done with this goddamn team, but that will never be true.

1

Carey Price’s puppy-dog eyes: A Habs fan’s lament

By
Alix MacLean
– January 11, 2012

Holy Jesus, it’s a sad time to be a Montreal Canadiens fan. The team is in shambles, fights are breaking out in practice, our interim head coach can’t speak French and Francophone protesters are up in arms, our captain has been injured for several months and now appears to be re-injured and we can’t win a jeezeless game. Our record is 16-19-7, and we are 12th out of 15 in our division. Yuck.

It’s also a sad day to be Carey Price. Last night his former backup goalie-turned-rival-turned-usurper came back for his first game in Montreal on the opposing team, the St. Louis Blues, and got a pretty sweet shutout. He was also named first star of the game and got a standing ovation from Montreal fans.

I am fascinated with the dynamic between two young, talented goalies on the same team (the Washington Capitals from 2009-2011 come to mind with Varlamov and Neuvirth battling for the starting role until Varly got sent packing to Colorado). Montreal had an interesting couple of years with all the back and forth between Price and Halak. And even though Halak got unceremoniously shipped off to St. Louis, it still sucks to be Carey Price. Montreal fans like to turn on, well, anyone and everyone, when shit gets bad. And although Carey Price has not been near our biggest problem so far this season, he isn’t as hot as he could be. To say that people have high expectations for him would be an understatement –one of his early nicknames in the Montreal media was Jesus Price. The poor guy also has the saddest eyes of any goalie I’ve ever seen. He looks like a kicked puppy.

 

What’s it going to take for this team to turn it all around? I have no idea. Firing the General Manager would be a good start. They will probably all get turned into paraplegicstomorrow night when they play the Bruins, so does it even matter? Still, I refuse to bear the indignity of not making the playoffs. That would be too much for my sad little Habs fan heart to take

Interjection by Ben: Not making the playoffs will break your heart? Honey, try being a Raptors fan.

1

The definitive top fives of 2011: Books!

By
Alix MacLean
– January 3, 2012
Until starting grad school in September, I read A LOT of books for fun. Since then, I’ve read a lot of books to try not to fail. I write down all the books I read each year in a truly hideous Eiffel-tower-themed purple journal. These five were the best.

1. Big Girls Don’t Cry – Rebecca Traister. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. It is the anti-Game Change. Traister looks at women in the 2008 election in a no-bullshit, non-sensationalist way. A key finding: progressive guys can still be totally sexist assholes.

2.The Imperfectionists - Tom Rachman.  A linked short story collection about various folks working at a failing newspaper in Rome. Great stuff. Elegant. Deeply sad.

3. Swamplandia! – Karen Russell. I have raved about this book to anyone who will listen. It’s just awesome. And dark. And swampy.

4. The Borrower – Rebecca Makkai. A book I did not expect to like, but very much did. About a librarian in a small town and an odd little boy. See? Sounds kind of twee, but definitely isn’t.

5. Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music  - Edited by Nona Willis Aronowitz. Ellen Willis was the first popular music critic for the New Yorker in the late 60s and early 70s,hired when she was only twenty-six. This collection complies her best music writing, and holy moly, is it ever good.

Honorable Mentions: Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon (only got around to it this year, liked it a lot); The Game by Ken Dryden (best hockey book, probably best sports book of all time); The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot; Revolution by Deb Olin Unferth

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