Weekly Stories

Biker Dudes

Across the street I see a clump of young men smoking outside a very hip bike shop on Gore. If I squint from the distance they look like a scruffy pack of orphans from the Dirty Thirties wearing their dead Daddy’s pants five sizes too big. One of them even has his Dad’s jacket that he wore during the war. The other is wearing his mother’s modest hoop earrings INSIDE his ear lobes. They’re all drinking five dollar coffees, leaning against their five thousand dollar bikes and I’m wondering, “where do they get the money to look so poor?” …

Something in the Water

Sometimes I just want to buy a chunk of land up North, raise fainting goats and chickens and grow out my leg hair. I’m allergic to water. I knew it was something ubiquitous. More specifically, I am allergic to the sulfites in the water. Never dawned on me until tonight. I’ve been allergic to sulphites since I was little and I do check processed foods for additives and such and know the usual suspects, but it never dawned on me that those bastards would stick it in my water too! Not only is it found in mineral water but also…

Link to Dave The Flooring Guy

A little Christmas video from last year! http://bcove.me/irkr9y6b This is the Dave the Flooring Guy story I told at the Flame. I’m heading into tech week with Except in the Unlikely Event of War – so forgive me if my posts are a little spotty this week. Cheers! Lucia

Mary had a Little Lamb

It was Nora’s first piano lesson today. She comes home with her little music book and looks down at my keys in dismay. “But Mommy, our piano doesn’t have numbers!” I assure her it isn’t broken, we just need to start at middle C. She doesn’t trust me much at all (what do I know? I’m a pleb. I don’t play.) …until I guide her little fingers to the spot, she presses the first keys and her face lights up with joy. Yes. That sounds familiar! She proceeds to play Mary had a Little Lamb NON STOP for the next…

Archived Stories

Working with John Mann, March 4, 2013 So, you know that musician who never wrote a song for you or even sang a ballad in your general direction in case you misinterpreted as a “love” song? And fair enough. It wasn’t meant to be and he’s a great guy and could play all those awesome Spirit of the West tunes. I know it’s fine and you wish him and the rest of them well and it’s all good now and you have some awesome CDs you still listen to. But you know what’s even better? Write a play…

No Boy Talk

A MONUMENTAL social shift has just happened! Four women got together tonight and not once did we talk about men. Unless you count our massage therapists. There was a great deal of discussion around the pelvis, but it was all about releasing the sacrum. And I don’t mean there’s an absence of love for the opposite gender here. Three uniquely wonderful men are partnered with the gals I was with and most certainly I have fine fellows around me swimming by in this beautiful sea. What I mean by “talk” is: all of us are beyond the time…

Comfort food Friend

The Algerians find a few things very strange about Canadian food: mint jelly on lamb, peanut butter, pumpkin pie and most other things that have been ground into something akin to baby poo. Asparagus lying flat and naked on a plate with nothing but lemon and butter…so plain. So strange! But when I showed them the long neck on my hard chicken, they were very pleased. “Look just like in Algeria!” Sousou took the first bite of a leg that looked like it belonged to a very tiny, very tanned, eighty year old marathon runner, and said, “Hard to…

Revelation Cheesecake

I am going to tell you something heavy. Since going on a strict elimination diet for allergies last week, I have baked two chocolate cakes, two pies, two cheesecakes, four loaves of bread and 25 calzones. Most certainly I am dealing with my restricted diet by watching others consume all the things I can’t. I got real cocky too. I told my Mom, “Nothing can stop me. I have no temptations whatsoever. Now that I’m through “the crazies”, and I’ve settled into my own home, I can tackle anything”. …except making my favourite cheesecake. You know how it goes. I…

Terrified Tartuffe

Oh, ho, it’s Halloween. Despite all the shrieking spectres, the growling zombies and the lascivious bloody vampires, the most terrified creature in the room is Tartuffe. He’s our old boy husky mutt. He’s coming on fourteen. He’s quite blind. He stays entirely still, his little blue eyes darting around, then BANG – POP! WHIIIIIIZZZZZ another firecracker- and he bolts head first right into a wall. Terrible. I know. But also…a little bit funny. So we have to keep him on a short leash so he doesn’t brain himself. “Comedy is tragedy plus time”, sayeth Carol Burnett. This event reminds me…

Ghost Tower

I think we all know the rains have come for earnest. The poor huddle low. All hunched back, no face. Spotted cardboard swells and sleeping bags are bundled up off the floor. Vancouver feels the weather in its joints: Main and Hastings, Union and Prior, Pender and Jackson. All these bender parts that have borne the most strain and worked the longest days. The streets that can say they’ve been trampled by horses. Spitter sputter on my windshield as I dodge jay walkers recklessly taking cover or taking their next hit. Their next hit might be me if they’re not…

Lucia Frangione