An Excellent Day

Had an EXCELLENT day today!

First I met up with Wayne, a friend of mine who used to be a teacher of mine in high school.  We went to a reading of Nick Green's play BODY POLITIC, which was co-presented by the CLGA.

The reading was hosted by Sky Gilbert and the play chronicled the making and unmaking of Canada's first gay newspaper, The Body Politic.

It was a packed house and because of the archives connection I new several people there.  The play itself could not have been better, the cast was fantastic, it was really as Sky described it, "the Canadian Normal Heart." The play deserves a huge audience, I hope it gets it, we're talking Dora award, we're talking THE play for gay rights in Canada, the new standard, it was fantastic.  The play went back to the bathhouse raids, AIDS, men loving boys loving men, everything.  I cried, I laughed, I cried again.

From there off the the Centre Space gallery for the new Kent Monkman exhibition Miss America.

The exhibit had five new works:

 

 

With the stunning new Miss America work in the centre.

The exhibit is on until August 14 but really, go now.  It was so fantastic I kept seeing new things in Miss America every time I looked at it, I probably looked for about 15 minutes, I love it. So colourful, so much to say, and brilliant execution.  A triumph.

From there off to Glad Day Bookshop, the world's oldest gay and lesbian book store. During Pride Week they are having a live erotic photography shoot next weekend.  Whatever that is I'm going.  I went to get tickets, they said the tickets will be available tomorrow.

While I was there I saw the new book by Marcus McCann, Hard Return.

I don't know how I would have found out this book even existed without a local gay bookshop like Glad Day.  Marcus McCann has written some FANTASTIC editorials for Xtra! and Fab magazines about the modern day which hunt against sexual minorities so I had to read this.
I mentioned to the very friendly sales clerk that I would buy the book at the Proud Voices signing event at the store at 7 pm Pride Saturday. It should also be noted they're having a sale at noon that day with items either $1, $2 or $5.
Anyway, he said "Why don't you read the book, bring it, and tell him your favourite poem while you're here" which was clearly the best idea ever so I did.
I noticed they also had copies of Lake on the Mountain by Jeffrey Round:

in their display but I couldn't find any of the shelves.  They helped me find a copy and I thought it was very cool it was in a regular old paperback, not a huge expensive trade paperback, you don't see that very much any more. There is also some talk of the author coming to one of our book club meetings, and although I do have the ebook, it would be nice to have something for him to sign.
I mentioned that the version they had was unsigned and asked if they were planning to organize an event with the author.  He had already been into the store and left some book marks promoting the book.  The clerk grabbed a book mark and said he would contact the author and organize an event.  How nice was that?  Amazing staff, nice as pie.