The Martlet

BEST VALENTINE’S PLANS

Have you forgotten to plan something extravagant for your loved one? I understand that midterms have been on your mind. Whether you’ve got to study or have a paper due, have no fear. I’ve got some great tips and activities you can do with the biggest or smallest budgets. Think outside the chocolate box.

Smaller budget

Go retro! Making a CD (or mixtape) shows your Valentine that you know them better than they thought — or that you quickly looked through their music library (just remember not to tell them that).

If the weather is fine on the 14th, pack a picnic and walk up Mount Doug with your special someone.

Alternatively, you can write a poem, hide pieces of it around your home or around town and go for a romantic treasure hunt. Nothing says “I love you” more than spending hours trying to find the words to express that love.

If your honey likes surprises, bring out their inner kid and build a pillow and blanket fort. Stock the fort with some ambient lights and his or her favourite meal, and you’re set. The dining fort can double as a sleeping den where you do more than slumber.

Just started dating? To take it down a few notches, why not head back to the first place you met and exchange gifts? Chocolate is always nice, but a knitted scarf or hat shows that you took the time and care to make their present. I also hear that a homemade candy necklace is the way to anyone’s heart.

Bigger budget

Send your sweetie a Valentine’s Day Bučanagram. For $50, your loved one will receive a jar of Bučanistanian pickles and will be serenaded by the Bučan Bučan brass band. Last date for reservation is Feb. 10, so email bucanagrams@gmail.com or head down to Regalia Boutique in Fan Tan Alley, pronto.

Check out livevictoria.com to purchase tickets for all sorts of shows happening on the 14th (and beyond). Lust Life Jazz Band will be playing at Bird of Paradise (no cover, but reservations recommended), and The Sojourners will play at the University Centre Farquhar Auditorium ($25).

For the ultimate love extrovert, I recommend you go beyond engraving a sweet word or two onto an expensive piece of jewelry. Instead, shave your honey’s name in your head for them to see. Just make sure you pay someone else to do it; don’t wield the Bic yourself.

Good luck — and have fun, my little Cupid-struck readers!

> Julie Mcintosh

WORST RECORD TO MAKE LOVE TO

It seems strange to say this about such a beautiful, soulful and well-crafted album — an album created for the sole purpose of inducing an amorous daze ­— but Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On has become one of the most ridiculous albums to have on as you and your partner attempt to get down.

While the music on the album is undeniably classic and timeless (as most of Motown is), the album is far better suited to the act of seduction, of building a mood, than it is to the act of baby-makin’.

The first and only time I attempted to put it on as my partner and I embraced, we made it through all of about one minute before it became apparent that the music, in that setting and moment, was parodying our imminent intercourse rather than stoking the fires of desire.

If you can make it through the clichéd, sexual sounds throughout the album, including the female moans throughout “You Sure Love To Ball,” and not burst out with laughter, you are surely a temple of laser-like focus, and I applaud you.

Marvin Gaye is still one of music’s all-time greats, but you might just want to keep him as an appetizer on his own plate instead of making him part of the love feast.

> Blake Morneau