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Oh! Holy crap! This has nothing to do with books, or Toronto, but it does have to do with artistic genius, perhaps the greatest comedic genius of our time: Carol Burnett. Monday night at 9 PBS will air an American Masters dedicated to The Great One and her work. My favourite was when she used to put oranges into an extremely de-elasticized bra and swing them wildly to and fro. The woman knows from funny!

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/...

Nobody call me Monday at 9. And don't call during America's Next Top Model on Wednesday either. (Because, um, that's when I do all my reading of GREAT CANADIAN LITERATURE!! Which perhaps one day I will even post something about. But not when Heros is on.)

Dangit, I missed the IV Lounge reading series last night. I always mean to go, and I almost always miss it. Instead, I made the mistake of going to Winners, and Winners, as usual, exhausted and defeated me, so I had to go home. They were playing Christmas music at Winners. I needed to buy gloves because it is getting cold out. It took me about an hour and a half; cost a weeny piece of my soul.

And yet I know I will return to Winners.

Anyhoo! Go here for upcoming IV goodness: http://www.alexboyd.com/ivloun...

I'm still new to Toronto, so I'm trying to do as many Toronto-y things as possible. I experienced my first of Louise Bak's quarterly Box Salons last night, on all hallows eve, at the Rivoli. What a good idea this is--a mish mash of music, video, literary readings, performance poetry. I particularly enjoyed the poetry, by Moheb Soliman. It reminded me of a reading I attended at the March Hare in Newfoundland, by Irish poet Paul Durcan. Very different kind of writer, but Durcan's a bit of a perf-poet himself--that is, he didn't read from his work, he recited it, brilliantly, expressively. This sort of experience, when it works, makes me think maybe all poets should be performance poets, to an extent. When it's good, it's pretty electrifying.

In 1999, my fabulous then-roomie, Mariko, recommended I read a slim blue book about an impetuous teen named Tracey. We were both writing thinly-veiled novels about our melodramatic teen years at the time (Thank *god* I didn't publish mine - Bottle Rocket Hearts is not an autobiography by any stretch:, but M.T.'s first novel was definitely amazing enough to be published) Anyway, this EMERGENCY of a girl called Tracey spoke to me. I still re-read it every time I have trouble getting inside the head of a new character.

I mentioned to everyone I met this week (and on the Now blog) just how much I loved hearing Elyse Friedman read a short story at the House of Anansi 40th Anniversary party at the IFOA. I spend a lot of time at literary events making sure my dates have enough alcohol and are kept entertained during the boring bits, and Elyse kept us both spine-straight and clutching our guts.

Thanks to Patchy Squirrel List-serve for the reminder! I will definitely walk out my door and across the park for this one:

ELYSE FRIEDMAN BOOK LAUNCH
___________________________________________

Thursday, November 1, 7:30 pm.
Type Books, 883 Queen West
Free.

Elyse Friedman's Long Story Short (Anansi)

Very short reading. Libations/Merriment

For this year's Nuit Blanche, my poems, along with poetry by Emily Pohl-Weary and Emily Schultz, were made into animated films by local graphic artists and shown on the TTC subway screens. The project was called Words Travel Fast and curated by Sharon Switzer , as part of Art for Commuters. I'm pretty excited that you can now see all of the films on the site.

The life of one Zoe T. Leroy has been a bit hectic this week. I went to Montreal and had a fantastic time reading with Neil Smith, author of Bang Crunch and Jon Paul Fiorentino, author of many things, for the Blue Metropolis reading series. We pulled the car up across from the venue and noted that Drawn & Quarterly publishers have opened a store on Bernard street, also called Drawn & Quarterly, and it's a pretty little store with exciting new graphic novel smells. When I lived in Mile End ten years ago, there were no such cool cafes and arty spots. The whole trip made me consider moving back.

Hey guys! I've been in Montreal to promote Bottle Rocket Hearts and am now off to Toronto to prepare for the 30th anniversary of Between the Lines tonight - our party is at the Gladstone at 7:00 p.m. and I hope you can join us. My internet access has been sporadic - in fact, this is the first time the hotel wifi hasn't kicked me off after 34 seconds. I will update tomorrow with details about my week.

ZW: Why a literary journal on Facebook? How did you come up with the idea?

1. It was one of those things that I thought up and then assumed had to already exist somewhere, because Facebook is such an immense environment. As it turns out, FB is vast but also surprisingly empty. It's not really seen as something that could contain its own culture, merely reflect the culture happening beyond it. That was the assumption I wanted to challenge.

ZW: Did you anticipate it becoming this popular?

2. Is it popular? It's a big world and we're just a little island. I thought it would grow a little slower than this, but I never doubted that there were people "out there" looking for something a little meatier from their resident timewaster.

ZW: What are you hoping to accomplish?

"The truth is that the book and newspaper businesses share the same dreadful fear: that people will stop reading. And the fear may be well-founded. Across the country, newspaper circulations are down — and this is clearly part of the reason for the cuts to book sections. At the same time, the book business increasingly relies on an aging customer base that may not be refueling itself with enough new readers.