Artist: Brad Roberts Album: Crash Test Dude

This is the 2001 double CD released. by Crash Test Dummies front man, the forever bassy and obnoxious Brad Roberts. It was recorded live in Theodore's Wrecking Yard, Toronto,

during his 1999 solo tour of exclusive-

ly Canadian red-neck bars. Brad Roberts sings and plays the bass/bari- tone guitar while being accompanied by Murray Pulver on a standard guitar. While it may be hard to imagine most of the CTD tunes being performed so simply, it works surprisingly well. The sparseness lends a sense of rawness to the songs while new arrangements add freshness to standards we know so well.

As well, a wide variety of covers tunes are featured, with every- one from Johnny Cash to Toni Braxton represented. His slowed down version of Da Do Ron Ron is quite enjoyable and the rendition of Hit Me Baby... One More Time is far superior to the original.

The album is also full of ran- dom audience banter, which in many cases is as entertaining as the music. At his Charlottetown stop on the tour, while two patrons groped each other drunkenly on the Myron's dance floor, Roberts stopped singing the lyrics to Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm and remarked "Woah, I think he's achieved penetra- tion! You're not in your living room..." While this little gem isn't present, the album is full of audience bashing and overall vulgarness in just this fashion. Topics of his discussions include cir- Cumcision, prostitution, and giving beer to bums. This is the most enjoy- able CD Roberts has released since God Shuffled his Feet.

-Brodie MacRAE

Book: Microwaving Meats Author: Barbara Methven

- You can nuke anything. You ‘an nuke anything and I get the feeling that this book was designed specifical- ly for the chefs in the White House; they really seem to enjoy microwaving

Choice Cuts

‘microwoving Meots

raw flesh. They're ‘hungry; they're very, very, hungry.

The first layer of flesh is soft and black, full of runny juices and insulated with a thick layer of rubbery yellow gristle flowing with greasy heat-extracted-oil. On the inside, almost as if it were sectioned off from the rest of the flesh with a white-picket anti-cooking-device-fence, the portion of formerly living animal is still gash- red and pumping with steaming mam- mal blood; the cover warmly wel- comes you to the fine and delicate world of microwaving meat.

And you can cook anything from sausages to pork roasts, to turkeys, hens, and ducks! You can

‘cook whole chickens and hams -

maybe even at the same time! - and in

the contents it says that Pork and Ham

leftover instructions are on page 96. Wow! This books got it all and

_ this lady really knows what she's talk-

ing about - in the back of the book it even gives you all of her so highly acclaimed credentials as an "experi-

*

enced microwave cook and writer who. has worked on several best selling microwave cookbooks".

Golly, it must be true, she real- ly must be an ace-microwaver, because on page 122 she spreads her wacky- wisdom; the wacky-wisdom of tin-foil in the microwave. Then, even wackier but just as wise, she explains how to remove the chicken thighs so you can wrap them in plastic wrap on a styro- foam tray to defrost them in the oven - but only for "half the total time". There you are; you can now go to the grocery store, buy a chicken drumstick, and throw it with confidence directly into the oven... hey wait a minute, does that say oven? Bah, who cares! This lady is a top-notch professional microwaver, and you know that it can't be easy.

When we got our first microwave... ah, remember the time... "What does this knob with all the num- bers in minutes do? What's this little... oh, it opens the door! Neat! Hey more buttons! ... This one says popcorn, | wonder what it's function might be?"

Yes, microwaves are tough, but Barbara Methven knows what to do with them, and so does that meathead- ed president to the south; press the but- ton, cook the flesh, sit back and extract all the oil.

Complétement dégoutant. | not-so-secretly wonder whether it might not be an overly effective inside job pulled off by one those sneaky-rad- ical-anarchist-vegetarian-microwave- literature-geniuses with a Master's in the field of food non-preparational the- ory, specializing not only in killing sal- monella without cooking, but in destroying humankind's desire for the advancement of modern technology. You know the type, they walk with their legs. And when they don't have legs - not even false legs - they usually travel by means of a wheelchair, but not one of those electric self-propelling wheelchairs ‘cause that would definite- ly be inconsistent.

-Brad DEIGHAN

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