Spent this evening multi-tasking watching the SAG awards (hosted by Idris Elba) on Netflix and King Richard (fyi I found watching King Richard on mute but with the subheadings on a pleasant treat using my different senses!).
div class="separator" style="clear: both;">CONGRATULATIONS OPPENHEIMER on the many lovely outcomes especially with such stellar competition!!!!

Christina Wong: Denison Avenue

Tue, Feb 20, 2024 at 7:00 PM 60 min Location Lillian H. Smith Room A/B/C Author Christina Wong discusses her CBC Canada Reads shortlisted novel, Denison Avenue, with former mayor of Calgary and Canada Reads champion, Naheed Nenshi. Images by the book's illustrator, Daniel Innes, will be displayed throughout the event. Denison Avenue is a moving story told through visual art and fiction about gentrification, aging in place, grief, and vulnerable elders. The book follows an elderly Chinese-Canadian woman named Wong Cho Sum who lives in Toronto’s quickly gentrifying Chinatown-Kensington Market neighborhood. After the death of her husband, she begins to collect bottles and cans to fill her days and keep grief and loneliness at bay. In her long walks around the city, she meets new friends, confronts classism and racism, and learns how to build a life as a widow in a neighborhood that is being destroyed and rebuilt, leaving elders like her behind. A poignant meditation on loss, aging, gentrification, and the barriers that Chinese-Canadian seniors experience in big cities, Denison Avenue beautifully combines visual art, fiction, and the endangered Toisan dialect to create a book that is truly unforgettable. Q&A and signing to follow. Denison Avenue by Daniel Innes and Christina Wong will be available for purchase by The Beguiling.

Ticket registration for this event is required. Register for free tickets now! *** Note: This is an in-person event inside the auditorium of Lillian H. Smith Branch. Tickets are only guaranteed until 15 minutes before the show starts, at which point we will start opening up available spots to the rush line.

Family Day long weekend

Great Falls, MT - Fast Times, Post-Punk Weirdos and a Tale of Come Home Again

- Reggie Watts

Quote takeaways:

'So far in my life, I'd always been able to develop hacks to deal with all my problems. Clever ways to game the systm, to short-circuit the simultation I was stuck in to make sure the odds were constantly in my favor. It turned me into what I liked to call a "practical optimist." Life would always serve up obstacles, of course - that was the nature of existence. But if you tried hard enough, if you acted smart enough, I believed you could always find a solution. Real life really could be one long summer at a friend's house on the shores of a Montana lake. You simply had to make it happen.
. But my worsening situation with my dad, the alienation I experience in Cleveland, it all made me start to question that faith. What if some problems were too big to solve, too intractable?
What if some barriers were so high you didn't even want to overcome them?'

'But I understood something else too. From here on out, I wouldn't run from the darkness in life. I would embrace it. Reality wasn't all summers by the lake. It wasn't all smiles and positivity. Sometimes there was no good solution. But that was okay.
In fact, it was that darkness that made life more interesting, more compelling.
Darkness, sadness, disillusionment - there was a power to it. A strength that came from simply embracing the role of the outsider.
I had never shied away from being different. If anything, the opposite. But I had typically tried to be the goofball, the entertainer, no matter which clique I was embracing. My new understanding of what it meant to be odd had a depth to it, a thoughtfullness, an openness to fiscord and disharmony. And a growing confidence in myself.
Perhaps in my excitement to try all those different groups at school, I had forgotten just how much I savored being the other - all its shades, light and dark. But now I was ready to finally find my true home in Great Falls High. A real family of friends.
A bunch of weirdos like me.'

'I have no idea. But I do know that I just discovered my two favorite drugs.
Weed and tongue.'

I really love Reggie's musical interludes (like 'She Stands', included in his novel!

'I accept my first recurring role on TV, playing the bandleader of a spoof late-night show called Comedy Bang! Bang!, and a couple years later, in 2015, I'm invited to be the real late-night show. And I'm skeptical, because I hate schedules and I'm excited about pursuing my solo career, but before I know it I'm in Los Angeles sitting in a business meeting across from a guy I just met.
He has blue eyes, dirty-blond hair, and this purs, youthful, innocent face. He's almost cherubic.
"Hey, man," I say. "You want an edible?"
He doesn't even hesitate. "Absolutely. Thank you."
He takes the weed chocolate right out of my hand and plops it in his mouth. And that's when I knoe I'll be moving to LA and working with James Corden on The Late Late Show.

From Reggie's 'Thank You's': Conan O'Brien, thanks for taking a chance on me to open for you on your Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour. I loved getting to know you and bonding with you, and I feel like we made history together. You are a good king.
Thanks to Jimmy Fallon for my first big TV appearance. You didn't know what I was gonna do, but you were cool with it, and I'm happy I didn't fail you. And a huge thanks to Toddy Levin for convincing Jimmy's show to take a chance on me.
To James Corden, thank you for trusting your instincts about hiring a Muppet for a bandleader. People were uncertain, but you let me do whatever I wanted to do, so I did, and it all worked out. I'll always remember your incredible generosity.
Special thanks to Ben Winston, the show runner of The Late Late Show for being cool in the presence of madness.
Huge thanks to Karen , my Late Late Show band: Guillermo, for being a dynamic and powerful, jovial, rhythmic force; Hagar, for your incredible musicianship and your uncommon brilliance as one of the best bass players I'll ever play with; Tim, you already know how I feel about you, but just so everybody else knows, you are one of the greatest ever; and Steve Scalfati, for taking a chance on moving from Seattle to LA for an unknown television gig. Your abilities are limitless. Thank you for being a great longime friend.
Last of all, I'd like to give a special shout-out to all the artists out there struggling and striving and thriving through it all. This book is especially for you. I know how it is to put yourself on the line for your work, and that perspective is something I'll always operate from.

Year of the Dragon

Dinner at Moon Palace #AtriumOnTheBay