Throughout his career Lang’s explored the genres of country, folk, jazz and roots rock. On this tour, and on an album or three before this, he’s teamed up with a couple of  University of Victoria music grads Jeff Poynter (clarinet) and Alex Rempel (string bass) to explore the genre of western swing jazz.

Tonight’s show should get going at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15. To give you a taste of what it will be like here’s the trio playing “I Lost My Gal In The Yukon”:

“Disney didn’t pay us enough. Would you like to finance our vanity projects?”

James Franco makes seven million dollars per movie. Yet he expects you to finance his artistic whims.

Following the example of Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas, Bret Easton Ellis and Zach Braff, James Franco has joined the crowdfunding trend by requesting 500,000 dollars to shoot ten stories from HIS OWN BOOK Palo Alto. The level of self-involvement is off the charts, as some of the rewards include a painting by James Franco, dinner with James Franco and a James Franco’s yearbook, signed by James Franco.

The trend is troublesome. Sure, without crowdsourcing, the Veronica Mars movie would be dead in the water, but Franco has advantages most filmmakers lack (Ellis and Braff get a passing grade only because their clout has diminished significantly over the years). IndieGoGo and Kickstarter are fantastic tools for wannabe artists competing for your attention in a leveled field.

Franco is basically using his sway with audiences to finance a vanity project, while protecting his personal fortune. It must be mentioned, Publishers Weekly said of Palo Alto: “The author fails to find anything remotely insightful to say in these 11 amazingly underwhelming stories.”

2 ALSO Northern Gateway pipeline boosters make their case for that thing.

3 ASTHMA IN SASKATCHEWAN Here’s a story on it.

4 STEP ASIDE, ROB FORD: THERE’S A NEW MAYOR IN TROUBLETOWN I’m a little late with this but whatever. Yesterday we learned that Montreal Mayor Michael Applebaum faces 14 charges including inappropriate shenanigans and conspicuous malarkey. Here’s the latest plus an editorial in the Montreal Gazette. Applebaum was appointed by Montreal City Council last fall after the previous mayor resigned amid allegations of hinky hijinks.

5 STORIES FROM AMERICA After, what, almost 12 years of war, the United States starts direct talks with the Taliban, the U.S. Supreme Court nuked Arizona’s racist voter ID law and a top spy defends spying on civilians,

6 A WARNING FOR THE WIFE CHOKER Multimillionaire art collector Charles Saatchi was given a police caution after he was photographed with his fingers around the neck of his wife, celebrity chef Nigella Lawson. I wonder how many times this happens every day to women who aren’t stalked by paparazzi.

SUPERFIT ARMY SUPERMAN I offer this without comment:

What does this have to do with Regina in general, and this Dog Blog pick-of-the-day in particular? Well, Sled Island runs June 20-23 this year. And with bands heading to Calgary from parts east and south of here, enterprising local promoters are hosting a mini-music festival of their own featuring some Calgary-bound acts and some local bands that will also be making the trek  to Cowtown which they’ve cheekily called Toboggan Island.

Shows will be held today at the SCES Club and Exchange and also at 11 Hooks Studio at 1422 Scarth St. Here’s how the line-up breaks down: Code Orange Kids, La Luna, Monomyth, Wizards, Birch Hills and Nap Eyes at 1422 Scarth St. at 5 p.m. Rehashed, White Women, Severed Legion, Bermuda Love, Lords Kitchner and FPG at SCES Club at 8 p.m. Burning Love, Weak Ends, the Faps, the Jump Off, Black Thunder and Pandas in Japan at the Exchange at 8 p.m.

To close, here’s the video for a 2012 song by the Pittsburgh hardcore band Code Orange Kids called “Flowermouth (The Leech)”:

Montreal’s Reversing Falls got Jamie Thompson, formerly of the Unicorns, to drum on some songs. But not all! For a bunch, they trio’s sticking with the drum machine they’d lugged around live. Why not get him for the whole thing? Dunno! Lucky, it doesn’t sour the proceedings. For the record, the first time I listened through the record I didn’t even know about the drum machine and I didn’t notice.

The band’s more about the overpowering dynamism of the guitar work — lead, rhythm and bass included. They’re all propulsive leaders of the melody, never wanky, never boring. Singer Tyler Crawford mostly stays out of the way vocally, more part of the overall fabric than front and centre. He’s never met a line he didn’t want to repeat two or three times, but they all strike the right note: a touch disaffected with just enough plaintiveness to avoid getting whiny.

You can listen to all of Reversing Falls’ self-titled record at their Bandcamp page.

Leonardo Di Caprio has never interested me much as an actor. His inability to disappear in character bothers me. Di Caprio’s partnership with Martin Scorsese has introduced the greatest American director to the newer generations, but still has to deliver a classic (The Departed, you say? There are five better Scorsese-De Niro collaborations I could list).

That said, the first trailer for The Wolf of Wall Street looks awfully promising. Instead of a brainy drama (as most approach to the subject have been), The Wolf appears to be a portrait of undiluted debauchery, a mix of Caligula with… well, Wall Street. Jonah Hill and Matthew McConaughey are at hand for the proceedings and they seem genuinely unhinged.

If nothing else, The Wolf of Wall Street will become the first Martin Scorsese movie to feature midget-throwing. I want to see this now, alas, it won’t open until November 15th.

[Sunday afternoon. The Ring Road. Thunderclouds knit their brows together in the terrible but beautiful face of the sky. STEVE, AMBER, PAUL K and AIDAN speed away from the Galaxy Cinema, where they've just watched the apocalyptic stoner comedy This Is The End.]

STEVE: So… not bad.

AIDAN: A lot of demon dick jokes, though.

STEVE: I don’t know if I’d say that. I only counted two demon dick jokes.

AIDAN: That’s a lot.

Past sources of inspiration for the fundraiser include New Orleans and New York. The gallery is located in the Neil Balkwill Civic Arts Centre at 2420 Elphinstone St., and on June 22 it will be hosting another fundraiser in the series. This time the focus will be on Spain. As far as quality food, drink, music, art and whatnot goes, the country doesn’t exactly have a lot going for it, I know. But hey, it’s for a good cause. So get out there and support the gallery.

Feast For The Eyes goes June 22 from 8-11 p.m. at the gallery. Tickets are $40 advance and $45 at the door. For tickets and and additional information call 306-522-5940.

So instead I’m going to show a couple of upcoming trailers for some sci-fi films. The first is director Neill Blomkamp’s (District 9) Elysium. It looks like Blomkamp borrowed a bit of the plot from the brilliant manga Battle Angel Alita. The poor live on Earth in squalor while the rich live above Earth in a crime free, disease free society called Elysium. Matt Damon is trying to break into Elysium. It looks pretty good.

Next is Joon-ho Bong’s (The Host) first English language film Snowpiercer. It too is about class struggle in the future. After a failed attempt to stop global warming has resulted in a massive ice age, the remaining human population all live on a train that constantly travels around the Earth. The elite live at the front of the train and the poor at the back. Naturally the poor decide to fight back. It’s opening in South Korea this summer. Unfortunately The Weinstein Company has the America distribution rights so who knows when the film will get released here. Hopefully sometime next year.

Christian and broader spiritual values have been, and continue to be, present in the work of many different musical artists from Elvis Presley to U2. But in the last 20 years or so there’s been a rise in acts with an explicit Christian/evangelical focus where the creation and performance of music becomes an act of worship and a way to spread the word.

Self-identified Christian groups span a range of genres from country and pop to hip hop and metal. In this documentary, Ludwig (who describes himself as an atheist punk rocker) goes on tour with two evangelical hardcore bands (Messengers and Sleeping Giant) and attends the Cornerstone Christian Music Festival in Illinois.

Christcore screens tonight at 7 p.m. at the RPL Theatre. Ludwig will be in attendance for the screening. Here’s the trailer: