Shane Koyczan’s Short Story Long use wordplay to captivate their audience.

Courtesy of MySpace.ca

Let’s be blunt: there’s no question that this performer is not aesthetically what audiences expect to see on centre stage, spotlight beaming in on all of his glamorous imperfections. But Shane Koyczan has developed a comfort with himself that few people can pull off; a comfort that both radiates and sucks in the audience, and obliges them to listen to what he has to say: “Fuck physicality, give me some reality!”

Last night at Hugh’s Room, the band performed a sequence of “spoems” (a creative fusion of songs and poems) which could only be described as a mental workout at best. After beguiling us with his passion for words, the audience was left speechless with their complete attention focused on the unique and powerful sound being played before them.

Shane and his band put together an impressive, melodious journey through life as we know it, and life as we sometimes forget to see it: pinpointing issues at large and issues that just affect a boy and a girl rolling around between the sheets. His mixture of stand-up comedy, beat poetry, rap and folk music deserved the standing ovation his band received when the final chord was struck.

If you’re interesting in hearing this spectacular sound for yourself, they’ll be playing their last show in Toronto tomorrow at the Drake Hotel, Wednesday, July 28^th, 2010.

–Caitlin Roberts.

Talking comics and vlogging with the man who knows them best.

Courtesy of Sean Ward.net

As we pulled out our Dictaphone ready to interview daily vlogger and comic, Sean Ward, he pulled out his video camera aiming to shoot us instead. It was a classic Western duel held bang-on time for happy hour at a posh patio table along Queen East. But quick thinking isn’t his only forte; Sean has been exploring his creativity since childhood, and continuously living his dream despite all scoffs sent his way. Sitting there, aiming our technological devices at each other, he decided to fire first:

Sean: So, how did you get started in this business?

Pony: Forget it! You sold comics on the street for three years, that’s far more interesting. What was that like?

Sean: It was a lifestyle choice, really. People who have a strong negative perspective could never do what I was doing. Selling or not selling, if you just stand on a corner of Queen St. for an hour and catch how many people smile back at you or say hello back to you, you’ll understand how psychologically draining it really is.

Pony: And you do it all for these creations of yours. How did you come up with characters such as “Benny Bunny?”

Sean: I hit a slower period during the first Winter of starting the comics where I had time to develop a new concept. I just made it up as I went along, got to 48 pages and stopped. In the first story, Benny Bunny’s girlfriend gets abducted by aliens – who then send her back to Earth when they realize she’s a bunny and not a human. In the second story, he’s invited to host an awards show because he’s a rock star now…

Pony: Because of the aliens?

Sean: No. That’s irrelevant. We’ve moved on. So then Benny Bunny gets killed at this awards show and you see the ambulance taking him away. The doctors pronounce him dead, the girlfriend’s crying… The End! In the next story, called “Benny Bunny Meets God”, he meets the All-Mighty and gets sent back to Earth because his work’s not done. So then in the last story, well, that pretty much is just the lyrics to “Hey Jude” but with Benny Bunny acting them out.

Courtesy of Sean Ward

Pony: Haha I had to ask didn’t I? So where can we buy these intensely imaginative comics of yours?

Sean: You can get a few at Silver Snail, or from me directly, but largely they’re out of print. I once had a publisher who got into what I was doing, we sat down for a few meetings and stuff. But then it hit a point where he got cold feet and said: “your stuff is so darn weird, I’m not sure if anyone’s going to get it”. And I’ve never been they type to give the elevator speech to men in suits, you know? I’m just a kid who’s been drawing ever since he could tie a robe into a cape and fly around the house.

Pony: Who was your favourite superhero?

Sean: SPIDER-MAN!! I used to like Superman but he let me down. You have to keep it campy and silly and fun! That’s where DC Comics went wrong – they kept trying to paint him into this complex world with lame supporting characters like Bibbo. No, no. Spider-man is my homie.

Pony: And if you could have any superpower, what would it be?

Sean: Oh I’ve got superpowers galore! Endurance being the most useful one right now. People will mock you, especially as a comic, or they’ll constantly tell you what you should or shouldn’t be doing with your time. There’s a constructive and destructive way to look at anything, right? And it’s up to you to find the constructive way in.

Pony: Onto this daily video blogging, don’t people stare at you filming yourself all the time? Have you always been this confident in-front of a camera?

Sean: When I was a kid, I used to walk to school as if I were in a music video the entire way. Posing, dancing, and making up songs as I went. Blame it on watching too many old ’40s films but that’s what I did. I built movie sets out of my Lego pieces, shit like that. It all comes back to playing dress-up and flying around the house with my robe on. We all got teased for doing that as kids, and at some point we gave up and stopped trying to pretend. And I’m just that idiotic kid who never stopped.

Courtesy of Sarah Thomson

To check out Sean’s daily vlogging, head over to his website here, or look out for him hosting this weekend’s Toronto Independent Music Awards. For a snippet of our mutual interview, here is his video blog from that day (our awkward appearance at the end):

– Emma Farquharson

Our Bareback Cowgirl describes her steamy life behind the barn.

Courtesy of iheartit

One year ago:

She sits on the bus, her pocket mirror held up in front of her face, triple checking that she has nothing stuck in-between her teeth or that her mascara has not raccooned itself around her eyes from the rain. She’s not even sure if she’s attracted to this boy she agreed to meet out of boredom – not too mention sure if he’s obese or not as his pictures are deceiving. Yet something pushed her out the door and into the thunderstorm, and somehow she managed to make it across town to the place where they agreed to meet.

This boy, Bryce Baddy, was waiting for her on the street corner, sitting on an old green bike with high handlebars and a basket on the back. He says hello to her in a French accent.

‘I don’t speak French…’ She tells him.

‘Nor do I! I’ve just been talking to myself in a French accent for the past half hour.’ He sounds as if he is speaking to the entire street instead of to her.

‘Are you drunk?’ She asks.

He starts to ride along the sidewalk expecting her to follow along. His green and purple plaid shirt is spotted with raindrops, but the sky is dry and friendly now.

‘NO!…. Yeah. Maybe.’ His loafered legs stick out on either side of him as he nearly drives his bike into a bush.

He takes her to a park somewhere near Ossington and he plants himself against a tree. Staring straight ahead, while talking much too much and much too fast, he pulls out two beers and hands one to her, motioning for her to sit while he continues his soliloquy. He says something he thinks he shouldn’t’ve and stumbles awkwardly into his next sentence, but she stops him:

‘I like your honesty.’ She doesn’t want him to have censors.

He pauses in his speech and nods his head to himself.

‘It’s really important to me to be honest with everyone.’ He looks up at her from the strand of grass he’s been fiddling with, staring her in the eyes for the first time all night. Then he adds: ‘And I think you are fucking gorgeous.’

Courtesy of iheartit

They relocate to a clothing store launch party – mainly for the free booze. Browsing the vintage clothing items hanging from the rows of racks, gawking at the hilarious, and chuckling at the items they could only imagine wearing in public, they slowly begin to stand closer to each other than the two strangers who’d met moments earlier.

He pulls a sweater out from the cascade of hanging clothes, and they both voice their opinion about the garishly wooly garment. When she stops talking, he holds his glance and bends his neck to kiss her. Not a moment gone or in between, a kiss folded within the last item of clothing and the next, a perfect fitting. Whoever witnessed that first kiss, did not once recognize it as a first kiss, but rather one of many kissed by two people who have gotten used to kissing. A comfortable kiss.

As they stumble outside and down the side streets, making their way somewhere, he nonchalantly questions her as he zig-zags his bike all over the sidewalk:

‘So what’s the likelihood of you not going home tonight?’ His eyes stare straight ahead, not one glance at her.

‘Not likely’, she laughs.

The night is dark now and the streets and sidewalks are glistening under the streetlamps from the pre-evening rain. Her cowboy boots clomp loudly on the pavement, every step echoing in the empty street. His bike is buzzing quietly as the tires spin.

‘Hm. That’s a shame. I was really looking forward to cuddling you… and maybe copping a feel.’

She turns her head, eyebrow raised to scoff, and looks at him perched on his bicycle. He is dead serious, in the way that he felt no need to convince her that that was actually ALL he wanted to do. He really just wanted to cuddle.

‘I’ll tell you what. If you can keep me here until 1 AM, I won’t go home. My last bus will leave without me.’

‘I can definitely do that,’ he smiles.

She liked how comfortable she felt, removing her stockings while she sat on his bed at 1 in the morning. She liked the way that there was no awkward pause in the moment between looking at each other and kissing each other. She liked his kiss. She liked the thickness of his skin and the mole above his lips. She liked his hands on her hips and her cheek on his chest, the feeling of sleeping in one of his old t-shirt’s and his cat licking her ear in the morning.

She slipped out of his sleepy embrace at 7 AM, not wanting to ruin a potentially perfect date with the sobriety of morning.

– Bareback Cowgirl.

No bicycle? No problem. Say hello to free bike rentals downtown in Toronto.

Courtesy of Segway of Ontario

Everyone loves a segway – especially the Cowgirls. But sometimes one must switch to bicycle to get from A to Beaconsfield. So from today through to July 23rd, Segway of Ontario is offering free bike rentals out of their location in the distillery district (37 Mill St.). “We’re still together with our segways, but we decided to bring bikes in to freshen things up,” says Chief Fun Officer, Aaron Binder. “It’s an open relationship really – one that we hope will work.” To reserve a bike (or an EBike), head to their website here.

– The Cowgirls.