Wednesday, March 25, 2015

God Bless the Tobacco Industry - Episode 006

Tuesday night in the food and beverage industry is party night. The people who make and serve your food and booze play while you work.

So Tuesday night in Guelph turned out to be quite the night for folks in the food and beverage industry in Southwestern Ontario.

Surprise and private event! Free booze, free food, free rock show by one of the biggest bands in Canada right now. All paid for by the makers of Export "A" cigarettes.

Thank you for smoking.
Me and my bro! Original colour, dance club special - blue light.

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Respect For Artists in Canada - 100% Candice Episode 005

As though you didn't get enough of me this week! I recorded an episode on Monday but am only releasing it today.

Turns out I ran out of room in my Libsyn account! I didn't see that coming. Took a few days, but I fixed it so I can release episodes again. So, I guess I will start to encode my files a bit smaller - not relevant to you the standard podcast listener, you probably won't even notice.

So, I don't much remember this episode, it was a bunch of days ago. It's a bit of a ramble about the music industry and the food industry and me.

I also had an interruption about halfway through so needed to re-record the last half hours later.

What's important though is that you go listen to some Alun Piggins, you go see some live music, and you send me some of your favourite indie artists.




Cue up this video to play over the final seconds of this episode

 

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

One Hundred Percent More Candice

A couple of weeks ago I answered a Skype call from a fella I've listened to for 4 or 5 years, but never talked to, Grant Markham.

Grant has been a part of a few shows I listen to, some still releasing episodes, some not.

At the beginning of this year he decided to start a new show about getting to know people he'd never met before - The Stranger Conversations.

Since I love podcasting (aka talking), and I've enjoyed listening to Grant for years, and connected with him on a few social media sites, I got in touch and asked to be on his show.

The result was 2 hours and a bit of an amazing recorded conversation, and an extra 40 minutes or so of chatting afterward.

This is what I love about podcasting, and social media. Because I have listened to Grant for years, because I have followed his tweets and photos, because he has responded to and commented on my own tweets and photos, I already know that this is a person I like. So getting to talk in real time over Skype is not uncomfortable in the least. Our conversation was not different from any other conversation I've had with a local friend over coffee in the last few months.

Grant decided to title his show The Stranger Conversations, but in reality (at least our episode) it is more like The Old Friends Reconnecting Conversation.

It's a little long, but if you have enjoyed the episodes of 100% Candice I've been releasing, you will really enjoy this open, honest, warm conversation I had with Grant. And I hope you'll agree with me that conversation is about give and take and it's okay that Grant shares his thoughts and experiences with my while I share mine with him.

This is not The Stranger Interviews, it's The Stranger Conversations and I think it's fair to say that after listening to our conversation we have all become a closer and are no longer strangers to each other.

Follow Grant on Twitter - @insta_grants2
Follow The Stranger Conversations on Twitter - @TheStrangerCons
Subscribe to the show (and review it) in iTunes
Load up the RSS Feed in your favourite podcatcher

 

Thursday, March 12, 2015

A Podcast Homage

Last fall I started looking for a food podcast to listen to. I have very strong food values and used to do talks on food mindfulness and spirituality, food politics, and food culture. I remembered during my long days at my food store 6 or 7 years ago listening to this great program from British Columbia about their local food movement which was heavy on politics. After having been out of the food industry for 5 years I was really feeling a yen to get back into it.

So, there I was looking for podcasts, like the one I used to listen to. I asked in a number of podcasts groups on Facebook and Google+ and Reddit. I listened to and deleted many shows which were not what I was looking for. Lots of shows about wellness, body image, unhealthy relationships with food. Totally not what I wanted, and not things I could relate to, really.

I was starting to feel like I needed to create the show I wanted - a lot of love and celebration of food, how it is prepared, how it is grown, the people who make it possible for us to eat. I even had a co-host in mind.

I haven't completely abandoned the idea, but two things happened between then and now. One you all know about, the dissolution of my relationship (if I start talking about it in legal terms it might make it less emotional, right?), and finally finding shows about food that gave me what I was looking for. 

I'm still disappointed that every one of them is American, which isn't terrible, but when they do get into more of the politics and processing we have very different systems. But the celebrations of food and chefs and farmers is universal.

So, after that long introduction, I want to share the most recent episode of one of those shows I follow now, Sporkful.

Sporkful, whose tag line is "It's not for foodies, it's for eaters" is very much a celebration of food and it makes me happy to listen to it. It's part of the WNYC network which is one of the many really great public radio stations you can find all across America.

However, their most recent episode is really not food related. Their most recent episode is an amazing homage to what major media considers the best thing that's ever happened to the internet, Serial.

Now, don't get me wrong. I listened to every episode of Serial, every week. I picked it up after Thanksgiving weekend (the Canadian one) because throughout the week before they had been interviewed on three different podcasts I listen to. They had just released their third episode at that point so I really got to relive that amazing experience we don't get anymore of waiting a week after an episode of a story to think about what happened, what will happen and talk about it with other fans. They basically reminded people of the best thing we've lost about television.

I do hope their second season is as intriguing of a story, but I'm not blind, I understand the mystery of their first story is what drew most people in. I'm not sure they will find as compelling a story outside of the true crime genre. But I look forward to it.

But back to Sporkful. They just created this loving homage to Serial by creating an episode which parodies the style of storytelling perfectly. In Sporkful we follow the true crime story of Heather, the victim of office fridge stealing. I laughed, I reminisced, I enjoyed.

Go ahead, have a listen to it. If you loved Serial, like I did, you will be filled with knowing chuckles. If you only heard a bit of Serial you will chuckle at how formulaic their episodes were and how well Sporkful nailed it. If you've never listened to Serial, this might pique your interest.

And if you want a quick idea of what Sporkful is more like on a regular episode, I highly recommend the episode with Dan Savage
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100% Candice 004: Solo Book Club Meeting

Welcome to my solo book club meeting where I try to work through the many thoughts I had about the book MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend. (affiliate link for no reason because I don't expect you to actually buy the book)

In this episode I mostly talk about how men and women relate to each other as friends. I'm not sure if you read this book you will come up with as many complicated thoughts and emotions as I did, but I would love to talk to more people about it.

Do you think men and women can be friends? Do you think men and women have different types of friendships than two people of the same sex do?

Leave your thoughts here, or tweet me @cinn48

Monday, March 9, 2015

Did you know I do another podcast too?

So, you seem to enjoy listening to me talk about my private thoughts. How about listening to me talk about Canadian music?

Way back in August or September my friend Anthony Marco, on his own personal podcast Love Hate Things, mentioned the idea of wanting to do a show talking about all those Canadian radio hits which have seeped into our Canadian conscious.

As a long time fan and supporter of music and musicians (never a groupie, but what I like to call a patron and what my old friend Matthew Osborne called a superfan), I have a serious love and lots to say about Canadian music.

So, within moments of hearing Anthony on his show float the idea of talking music I was onboard.

It took a few months of not talking about it before we finally began but luckily at the beginning of December 2014 we recorded our first episode where I talked about Corey Hart's Sunglasses At Night.

We recorded sporadically, about once every two or three weeks. And last week was recording week!

So, head over to Talking is Dead and cue up the newest episode of Canned Con Cast and hear me laugh a bit more than I cry.

And because you might not know about the genius and loveliness which was Matthew Osborne, the only musician I ever hauled gear for, you must press play on this video.

 

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Episode 003: What do I do with my womb?

In this episode of 100% Candice I talk about my complicated feelings around having children.

I'm sorry if I alienate my male listeners with a bit of talk about the female reproductive system and a gross generalization about how men decide to have children.

And, celebration, I made it through a full recording without crying once! That's a win.

From now on, if you want to subscribe to my show just type http://candice.libsyn.com/rss into your podcatcher of choice and let technology do it's magic.

Now, blog readers, tell me - would you rather the Libsyn player or the Soundcloud player here?

Sunday, March 1, 2015

How do you title a podcast?

Here we go, episode 2!

I overcome performance anxiety to tell the story of the podcast title "100% Candice". Well, maybe overcome is an exaggeration.

Thank you so much to everyone on all the great feedback I got on the first episode. It was really overwhelming, honestly.

Hopefully I will soon be properly set up using Libsyn and have a proper RSS feed and get into the iTunes directory and all the other directories. It turns out if you are using Paypal to pay for your account there are some hoops to jump through. I really thought it would be sorted out by Friday, but I guess I'm waiting a bit longer...

And I promise, I will tell some fun stories once in awhile. I do have fun sometimes.

Feel free to tweet me @cinn48 and let me know if you sing along with me and Lesley Gore, "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to!"