Costas Halavrezos adds a Rube Goldberg twist to our antique engine percussion series (previous instalments here, here, and here.) with this unique James Taylor concert rendition of Slap Leather: As Costas points out, the song is 20 years old, but its bittersweet lyrics could have been written yesterday....

26 February, 2011

The Brain Repair Centre at the QEII Health Sciences Centre took a magnetic resonance image of Contrarian's brain today, as part of a study on memory loss in people with Alzheimer's disease. The researchers assured me I was there solely as a control! While the machine buzzed, clicked, and roared, the kindly technicians played CBC radio through my headphones. This is what Contrarian's brain looks like while listening to Costas Halavrezos....

12 April, 2010

Maritime Noon host Costas Halavrezos has interviewed hundreds of so-talkers: "So" is the name of a great Peter Gabriel album, but I've had precisely the same discussion with colleagues about its use as a preface to answers. I first noticed the "so" tic when interviewing American academics and bureaucrats, but it has clearly become an invasive species here, with increasing prevalence over the past year. (I should start assembling the digital detritus I've edited out of interviews: so, um, well, uh.) Previous discussion of the "so" tic here and here....

23 September, 2009