If I wasn't in another country right now, I might have let selfishness overcome me and kept this to myself: one of the most interesting, most open film festivals in the world is holding its registration party this Friday (July 23rd) at Casa Del Popolo. The first 120 people to sign up will have the opportunity to produce and show their own 60-second film at the festival's grand screenings in October. There is no sign up fee and no selection jury; no one will be turned away for lack of experience. Spots will be given out on a first-come, first-served basis, so all you have to do is show up early, and BAM, you're a filmmaker.

Mmmmm..... what I would give right now to walk down the street and go shopping at a farmers' market. Scotland might have every important historical source for my PhD, but it does NOT have much in the way of high quality fresh vegetables. The potatoes in Fish n' Chips and the orange extract in Irn-Bru do not count, I'm afraid to say. I hope those of you in Montreal right now know how good you have it with Marché Fermier (formerly Marché Duluth) starting its season this weekend.

I went to Iceland promising myself that I would make it through the weekend without mentioning Björk. But after finding myself at an Icelandic after party, with some guys who had spent hours feeding me whiskey and telling me about local music, I decided to be the dopey foreigner. "So have any of you met Björk before? What is she like?" "Yes," one of them said, "I see her sometimes at the twenty-four-hour supermarket. She's a strange person, not very similar to most Icelanders."

This perfectly framed my jaunt into Iceland's music scene. Despite being so tiny that you can find its biggest stars buying bread around the corner, Iceland produces a prodigious amount of world-class music, and most of the bands coming out of there sound nothing like Björk or Sigur Rós. There's no single Icelandic "sound" or "vibe" or anything like that, just an incredible number of artists playing excellent, well-crafted, often very innovative music.



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Jeremy is back! But don't get too excited - after this episode he is going on hiatus for a couple months to tend to some non-podcast parts of his life. I'm also going on hiatus for the remainder of the Summer as I complete research for the 'ole PhD. As we say our goodbyes, four more Midnight Poutine writers are coming on board to help us out and spread around the workload. Meet Luc, Gabby, Amie and Margot. You'll all get to know each other over the next few months. One thing that's not changing is our devotion to bringing you songs from the weekend's best shows. Without further delay...



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Greg is goin' solo again this week, bringing a rock-heavy selection of tunes sure to make the rain a little less oppressive. There's plenty happening if you're willing to get a little wet - and really, what's so terrible about that? It's not as if your jeans will stay soaked forever! The best thing about water is that it evaporates eventually. Well, that, and it brings life to the whole planet, so let's give water some cool points for that too. You can also go white water rafting on it, put fires out with it, and make any slide go faster with it. How about we all just chill out and take the rainy weekend as an opportunity to thank water for all the good stuff it does, okay?



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Avid readers of Amie's food posts may be wondering how our experiment with slow-cooked pulled pork turned out. Well, if the title of this entry didn't already give it away, our joint efforts produced one of the greatest foods I've ever consumed in my entire life. No exaggeration here. I really think pulled pork could be the eighth wonder of the world. Actually, you know what? Screw the Colossus of Rhodes, it was only 34m tall anyway. As far as I'm concerned, pulled pork IS one of the seven wonders of the world. I would do something pretty seriously ridiculous for a pulled pork sandwich right now.