Karl Marx Cafe

Slumdog Millionaire is a Must-See Film

2008-12-19T15:15:00.003-08:00

A Life Affirming Film but you have to trek through hell to get there

I saw Slumdog Millionaire last night: the story of how a young man from the Mumbai slums finds himself on the Indian version of the hit TV show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and how he wins 10 million rupees.

Jamal, his brother, Salim, and another girl, Latika, are orphaned when their Muslim shanty town is attacked, set ablaze, and their mother killed (while the Hindu police watch and do nothing).

They survive as hustlers, thieves, beggars, and a stint as unoffical guides to the Taj Mahal.

It presents some pretty brutal scenes and situations. Any one who has kids or has had responsibility to care for kids will FREAK OUT by the things that happen to these little urchins and the dangerous environment they live in.

The reviews say the story is 'life affirming' but it's a rough road to get there.

For film buffs, the cinematography is fan-fucking-tastic; the camera work is sublime. The post-production colour correction is absolutely amazing; it's total visual candy.

For music fans, the soundtrack is filled with the latest and best Indian and Tamil hip-hop. MIA rocks the house; especially during chase scenes.

I don't know where they find these child actors with this depth of talent (like that kid in Cinema Paradiso) but Slumdog Millionaire is chock-full of them.

Great script; great acting; great directing; great soundtrack and sound-design; great editing; and wickedly great post (wickedly great!). You can't let this film pass without seeing it.

New Dance from battery opera

2008-08-12T13:23:00.002-07:00

October is for ...

Take out pencils and take note:

THE WHOLE BEAST
North American Premiere

OCTOBER 9, 10, 11, 2008
The Scotiabank Dance Centre
Tickets available soon.

The Whole Beast is a new solo work by Lee Su-Feh. In this work, the dancer is butcher, meat, cook and the cooked.

If my Daddy thinks I'm fine, I won't go, go, go

2008-08-12T10:38:00.006-07:00

My Love for Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse came to my apartment last night, just after dinner and in time for the second bottle of Riesling. She came over in the form of her Back to Black CD and we listened to its full throated Motown-inspired goodness.

It took me 40 minutes to realize I'll love her forever.

Released in December 2006 it had nestled into the #2 spot on Billboard's Top 200 list by March 2008. As the album received both critical and commercial success I might be one of the last 2 or 3 people on this planet not to have heard Rehab, the first track from the CD. (The others are likely to be Canada's Minister of Health Tony Clement and some guy named Eddy.)

The lyrics to her songs are awesomely real. Drinking too much, wanting to spend time with Ray, sleeping with her ex-BF but not loving him and wanting forgiveness when the current BF comes around and catches her in flagrante delicto (she doesn't actually use in flagrante delicto to describe the argument in the doorway of her apartment with the boyfriend, whom she loves, while her ex lays in her bedroom waiting for the storm to roll over). I got the impression of a modern day Bessie Smith or Billie Holliday; smart, talented, sensitive, passionate, difficult and full-on psychotic trouble.

Exactly the sort of woman with whom you want to smash your carefully constructed life to a thousand splinters.

So, if Amy shows up at your house, slightly drunk, with her mascara running, make sure you are fully stocked with Tangueray and tonic. Invite her in. Turn her up loud.

God, I love her.

The Rockford Files

2008-06-02T15:05:00.003-07:00

A '77 tan Firebird, a bad back, and a too kind heart

In the 1970s American television series The Rockford Files, James Garner played Jim Rockford, an ex-con turned private investigator, who lived and worked in the LA region. In fact, he lived on the beach in Malibu - in a white-trash trailer.

Rockford went up against bad people, got conned, punched, suckered until he ultimately prevailed. He rarely or ever got paid his $200 a day plus expenses.

Why bring this up? I was at CFRO FM, the community run radio station in Vancouver, BC, last Saturday for a broadcast of Redeye, our public affairs show, and came across Mike Post's theme song for The Rockford Files in a box of free records.

As I dropped the needle onto the LP I remembered that at 16 I once waved at a tan Firebird as it drove by 6th Ave, near False Creek, with the vague idea I knew this person but just couldn't quite put my finger on who. Until I remembered that it was Jim Rockford, my imaginary friend on TV, who drove one.

I don't often connect with TV characters. I did for Bill McNeal (Phil Hartman) on Newsradio (I couldn't watch the show after Hartman was killed by his wife in her murder-suicide spree) and I did for Jim Rockford.

What's the Buzz? Tell me what's a happening!

2008-06-02T12:11:00.007-07:00

WWJD on alternate nights starting July 9?

(Vancouver, BC) Theatre Under the Stars opens July 9th with their production of Jesus Christ Superstar at Malkin Bowl in Stanley Park.

The musical, by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, is the hipped up, wowie, outta-sight story of the Passion of Christ ending in the crucifixion of Jesus (or 'crucifiction' to the historical literalist or 'crucifixation' to the contemptuous condescending atheist).

Webber-Rice's play is a wonderfully wacky, musical plotting of the final days of the Son of God: chasing the moneychangers from the Temple, the last supper, the betrayal by Judas Iscariot, the trial by the Sanhedrin priests, the interview by Herod, the interview with the Roman Procurator, Pontius Pilate, and the Crucifixion.

Jesus Christ Superstar was nominated for five Tony awards in 1972 when it was performed on Broadway. It was subsequently made into a film in 1973.

For ticket information click here.

For directions to Malkin Bowl click here.

All tickets are $31 for adults, $29 for kids age 5 to 15, and FREE for kids under 5. Click here for more details.

Wanna follow a more adult, less bombastic, more theologically correct discussion of the Passion of Christ? Click here for Geza Vermes' book, The Passion (2005), published by Penguin Books. (Warning - not much foot-tapping music and certainly no memorable lyrics in the book - for that, ya gotta stick with the musical.)

See you there.

xo

MVL

DOXA - The Documentary Festival

2008-05-26T10:31:00.002-07:00

A buffet of engaging facts and popcorn

(Vancouver, BC) - Sure, life is busy. But you always have a few minutes for sitting in darkened theatres with other intelligent, engaging and attractive people to watch intelligent, engaging films about stuff.

Check out Vancouver's DOXA - May 27 - June 1st, 2008 - yeah, the documentary festival - click here for the website.

xox

MVL

A Quick Look Back and a Brief Look Forward

2008-04-02T12:39:00.005-07:00

The heart has reasons the mind knows not of

I began this blog in the hopes of having a place to put some thoughts, now and again, regarding the arts and culture as they touched my life. As a 'consumer' of the local art scene and a spendthrift on books I hoped to create a little pay-back.

The blog began to review various pieces I had seen and promote the works of friends and local artists.

However, the work-a-day world whisked me away frequently, beat me with its incessant demands, and only released me in its fickle moments when it briefly sought to pleasure itself in the ass of someone else.

But the work-a-day world and I have parted ways. For the moment. I've decided this is a good time for me to divulge in some of my own artistic projects.

These include some performance arts spaces (alcohol included) and a couple of spoken word pieces that may turn into ongoing things.

But I also want to revive this blog (I haven't written anything for it in several months - my other blog, The Red Rooster Newspaper, has had a couple of entries, as they related to the Canadian Parliament enacting of Bill C10. Go there to read a little more about it.) I really feel that a good arts community makes a livable city and community. I want to do as much as possible to foster and promote the arts scene here (and there, when relevant).

On a personal note (arts-wise) I've become infatuated with William Shakespeare and his works (MacBeth, Hamlet, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet to start). Seriously. I've been greeting my friends with, "do you bite your thumb at me, sir?" and hissing "Macbeth! Macbeth! MacBeth!". I can't help but cackle as I cook, "Cauldrons boil and cauldrons bubble!" And I dismiss things with a bored, "Buzz. Buzz." When they anger me I yell at my cats, "Get thee to a nunnery!"

Something about broken hearts and knives that leads to trouble

2007-11-16T15:44:00.000-08:00

The Audience Gasped When the Clown Turned Nasty

(VANCOUVER, BC) I saw Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci performed by the Vancouver Opera Society last night.

I can sum up the experience in two words. Fucking. Awesome.

In I Pagliacci I didn't think I'd have any sympathy for Canio (he murders Nedda, his wife, for having an affair with Silvio) but god-damned if his heartbreak didn't make me hesitate just a little.

La Commedia è finita!. No fucking shit!

And during Cavalleria Rusticana I fell in love with the music so much so that when I die I want to have 'Regina Coeli' sung en masse and everyone weeping with lovelorn heartbreak. Hey, it's my funeral and you'll cry if I want you to.

Definitely worth the time and money.

xo

MVL

SOME MEN by Terrence McNally

2007-11-16T15:24:00.000-08:00

Been there. Done that. Cried.

Raving Theatre proudly presents the Canadian premier of SOME MEN by Terrence McNally

Directed by David Blue
December 1st, World AIDS Day performance, benefiting the Vancouver Friends For Life Society

7:00 pm $50.00 including reception and special guest performances

"a lush, mixed bouquet of sex, pain, and laughs" - curtainup.com

"While two men exchange wedding vows, guests at the ceremony chart their own loves, lives and the degrees of liberation they've achieved—or not—over the years. At once a collage and a celebration, with equal parts wit and heart, Terrence McNally's play is set against the events that shaped the past century"

Tickets available through Tickets Tonight and Little Sisters Book Store

Scribbles - Raw Notes Regarding Art

2007-11-04T15:29:00.000-08:00

God may have taken seven days to create life itself - I'm slower and work on a smaller scale

These are some raw notes for an article I've been working on for months. They also form part of an argument I'm writing in support of an arts-related not-for-profit group. I lost some of the notes when my Treo (and the SD card) slipped out of my pocket during a drunken skateboarding adventure on Granville St. in Vancouver the evening of September 10th.

Art codifies beliefs

It simplifies aspects of life and organizes them so others may have measured experiences.

Art (or the artist) identifies, explains or resolves problems of society (relationships, technology, ambitions).

Art makes memorable the rules of conduct, gives insights to character, and draws conclusions that society finds useful.

Art imagines, defies constraints, overcomes, achieves the necessary place to allow the various human dynamics and urges (full) expression and (full) voice.

Art creates paradigms that allow us to perceive the invisible, to touch the intangible, step outside the ordinary, stop time, 'slip the surly bounds of earth and touch the face of God'.

Art is a spiritual activity. Only a creative force can bring art into being.

Art and Culture

People want to repeat culture - that's what culture is - an expression, aesthetic or otherwise, of a group's values, ideas or goals and ambitions. The songs they sing, their fashion, the way they decorate themselves or their environment positions them with or against ideas or values, with or against nature, with or against themselves as individuals or as groups.

To restrict this use in order to 'protect' copyright or 'control' reproduction of art is destructive to its purpose. An artist who creates a 'work' of art does not create a commercial object first but creates, rather, a new expression of the culture in which she resides. The art belongs to the community: it belongs to those who use it to express their lives or beliefs.

The commercial exploitation of the work is, and should be, protected on behalf of the artist or copyright holder. But non-commercial use is not protected , nor should it be.

The Necessity of Art

art restores equilibrium to life
art as decoration
art as investment
art as objective realism

art as a creative process - deliberately limited and isolated from life

a persons stops creating or creates on an automaticity - the willingness to create art reestablishes the willingness to create life and thus restores the feeling of being alive (hypothesis)

art as magic

art creates wordless communication between individuals

art distracts and entertains

Thomas and Melo Anfield and free agent productions presents

2007-11-04T11:08:00.000-08:00

monkeys and other new works

Opening Friday November 23rd 6-10 pm

Also open on Saturday Nov 24th 12-5

643 e 24th Vancouver (24th and Fraser)

Friends welcome

What a Queer Thing to Say - Playwright Tony Kushner

2007-08-21T07:58:00.000-07:00

98 minutes with American Playwright Tony Kushner

(Vancouver, BC) The 19th annual Vancouver Queer Film & Video Festival opened last Thursday with The Bubble, a party at Celebrities, and a few rumoured makeout sessions.

However, besides all that and never-you-mind, last night I attended the screening of Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner, the 2006 documentary by Freida Lee Mock. The documentary follows Kushner as he revisits his past in Lake Charles, Louisiana, works on creating contemporary theatre pieces (the musical Caroline, Homebody/Kabul - a piece about the Taliban and Afghanistan, written prior to September 11 but opened December 2001, and Brundibar), and as he fights and advocates for civil society, economic justice and compassion in our relationships with each other (during the 2004 presidential election he works at a polling station in Florida, he speaks at rallys, he writes theatre).

Kushner explores his relationship with his father and mother and being gay (like the character in Angels in America, Tony calls his mother from a payphone and announced to her that he was gay - she cried for six months), we see how bits and pieces of his past are woven into elements of his plays and work; we see just how important his family is to him and how stable are his relationships.

The blurb in the VQF&V guide says, "throughout [Wrestling with Angels], we observe Kushner fighting for humanism, rationaility, and compassion. Informative, thought-provoking, Kushner is one of America's leading intellectuals and a brave outspoken gay man with a vision - this is a must-see."

A couple of memorable lines from the film: (Kushner is adorably funny throughout but especially during his commencement speech to Vassar grads). Click here to read it in full. But I especially loved these lines:

Thank you for inviting me, but I worry about you. Haven't you been reading the papers? ...why couldn't you have gone for something a bit more techno-savvy, someone from the movies, Spiderman for instance, why someone from the theater for God's sake, do you want everyone to think you're gay?

And when Larry Kramer, sitting on a panel with Kushner, says to a young man in the audience: "You're the invisible generation. You don't stand for anything, you don't fight for anything that I can see." It's a great line but it can actually be said of any of the last five generations in North America.

Look for Wrestling with Angels when it comes out in the video store or when it plays on CBC's The Passionate Eye (as it inevitably will).

The Vancouver Queer Film & Video Festival continues all week until this Sunday. There's still lots to see.

xoxo

MVL

You Know You're Not Alone - Michael Franti at Malkin Bowl

2007-08-20T07:43:00.000-07:00

When the rains came people danced harder, jumped higher

Michael Franti and Spearhead played the Malkin Bowl in Stanley Park last night despite the rain. Hitting the stage at eight o'oclock on a warm August evening Spearhead lost no time in getting the crowd jumping and lifting their arms to the heavens.

And for the next two hours the energy never stopped from the stage or the crowd. Franti's music invites people to sing along, to clap, or to twist and turn like an ecstatic hippy.

At about nine o'olcok the clouds had thickened and it started to mist. The rain was so light I could only feel an occaisional drop on my bare foot but I could see the rain reflecting the multi-coloured stage lights. As the rain increased in strength and then began to pour Franti and Spearhead, undaunted, stepped forward on the stage away from the roof of Malkin Bowl and into the rain.

But as we all know, a little bit of water only destroys wicked witches of the West - Vancouverites are pretty much used to it. Everybody embraced it. Franti - Rain or Shine.

In two hours Franti and Spearhead covered most of the Yell Fire album, some of Everbody Deserves Music - they also covered some Marley and did a rocked up version of the Theme from Sesame Street - with two thousand vocal accompanists.

I was soaked through and delighted at the end of it.

Thanks Michael and Spearhead. Thanks Rick for the ticket. Hey to Linda, Laura and Andrew. Ian, call me.

Everybody deserves music, sweet music. Even the quiet ones in our family, they deserve music.

xoxo

MVL

Turiddu, you faithless, two-timing bastard! Marry me, already!

2007-08-18T19:23:00.000-07:00

Turiddu to Alfio, "bite me!"

November 10, 13, 15, 17, 2007 Queen Elizabeth Theatre

The Vancouver Opera Society presents Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni (along with I Pagliacci by Leoncavallo) in the opening performances of its 2007/2008 season.

The story:

In Sicily, Turiddu, recently returned from the army, moves in with his mother (hey, he's Italian). He discovers that his fiancee, Lola, has, in his absence, married Alfio, who makes a living doing inter-village cartage. Turiddu is disappointed but turns his virile attentions to another local girl, Santuzzo.

But Turiddu tires of her and soon starts a flirtation with his ex-flame, Lola, during one of her husband's frequent absences. He abandons Santuzzo and she is emotionally devastated and ruined (the Church has excommunicated her for being a fallen woman).

During the Easter festivities while the villagers wend their way to the church Santuzzo pleads with Lola to leave her Turiddu alone. But Lola won't have any of it and pulls away to enter church. Santuzzo reminds Lola that only those who are without sin can go to church. Lola gives praise to God that she is without sin and bounds up the steps and into church.

Santuzzo fights with Turiddu, who doesn't want his little thing with Lola ruined. They scream at each other. Santuzzo vows revenge. If she can't have him, she'll see him dead.

Santuzzo tells Alfio that he's being cuckolded by Turiddu. After the services Alfio, outraged, bites Turiddu on the ear, a Sicilian mortal challenge. He goes behind the garden to wait for Turiddu.

Turiddu asks his mother to care for Santuzzo, if doesn't return. He leaves to confront Alfio in a mortal knife fight.

A villager soon returns announcing that Turiddu has been knifed to death. Every one is sad, sad, sad. He was such a keeper, wasn't he, Mamma Lucia?

Cavelleria Rusticana (The Rustic Chivalry) was composed by Pietro Mascagni in 1889 who submitted the score to Sonzogno, a music publisher, as part of a competition he sponsored for one act operas. Mascagni's score won first prize and was soon performed to great acclaim and popularity. Its hyper-realism captured the imagination of the public and approval from the critics, who dubbed the style verismo.

According the liner notes to a copy of I Pagliacci I own, both Leoncavallo and Mascagni submitted scores to Sonzogno but Mascagni won because of both the quality of his score and on a technicality - Leoncavallo's score was actaully in two acts. But Sonzogno wisely snapped up both pieces and they have been performed together pretty much ever since and are popularily known as "Cav-Pag."

Click here for parking information

Click here for tickets.

Click here for the Vancouver Opera Society’s 2007/2008 season.

Are you afraid of clowns?

2007-08-18T10:25:00.000-07:00

Vancouver Opera announces its 2007/2008 season

November 10, 13, 15, 17, 2007 Queen Elizabeth Theatre

"Crazy Joe" Davolo: Are you afraid of clowns?
Cosmo Kramer: (nervously) A little.

I Pagliacci by Leoncavallo
First produced May 21, 1892

The Vancouver Opera Society has unveiled its 2007/2008 season.

I Pagliacci is up first. It will be familiar to Seinfeld fans from episode 49 of that sitcom, The Opera.

It's a tragic story of possessive love. A troupe of strolling players arrive in Calabria at the time of the Feast of the Virgin di Mezzagosto. Canio, the chief of the troupe, invites all to come to the performance later that evening and then goes off to drink with the locals and members of his troupe.

Tonio, the clown, remains behind to care for the donkey. Underneath his striped clown costume is a deformed body. He proclaims his love for Nedda, the Columbine of the troupe, and who is also, of course, Canio’s wife. He tries to force a kiss from her and she rebukes him.

Tonio sulks off and vows revenge.

Nedda meets with Silvio, a handsome and wealthy villager, and he convinces her to leave this life she loathes and come away with him. She agrees – "Look in mine eyes, and kiss away my sorrow."

Tonio brings Canio, Nedda’s husband, to the tryst and they arrive just in time to hear Nedda’s parting words to Silvio, "Tonight love, and forever I am thine."

Silvio slips away into the night. Canio demands to know her lover’s name but she vows to seal her lips forever.

In the second act, the villagers arrive to enjoy the performance. The players present a stock-piece domestic comedy that mirrors all that has gone on between them in the first act. Tonio plays the idiot servant and he declares his love for Columbine (Nedda) but is rebuffed with scorn. The Harlequin (Bebbe) declares his love for Columbine but is nearly surprised by the arrival Puchinello (Canio), who arrives just as Columbine is helping her lover escape. He hears her repeat the same words Nedda used with her real-life lover earlier that evening.

Canio loses his head and forgets his part. He demands furiously the name of her lover. Nedda tries to restore the play. The audience, unaware of the real situation, are amused and in good spirits. They fail to grasp the seriousness. Tonio, sour with desire for revenge, keeps Bebbe (the Harlequin) from interceding before the the situation becomes lethal.

Canio, enraged at being denied the name, grasps a knife from the table and stabs Nedda in the heart and sings, "di morte negli spasimi Lo dirai!" (you will tell it with your dying breath).

And she does. She calls out in anguish to Silvio, who leaps from the audience to the stage, and dies in his arms.

Canio stabs Silvio to death and says, "So! Tis you, then? Tis well!" He turns to the audience, "The Comedy is ended."

There it is. Fucking clowns. You are wise to steer clear of them.

I Pagliacci is performed along with Cavalleria Rusticana by Mascagni

Click here for parking information

Click here for tickets.

Click here for the Vancouver Opera Society’s 2007/2008 season.

Innocence is dangerous, says the Italian poet, it brings around the wolves

2007-05-30T18:49:00.000-07:00

I'm reading Dante's The Inferno and it's hellishly good

I'm sure you've all read Dante, or at least leafed through the illustrated version once or twice looking for nudie pictures, but I haven't. I started reading Pinsky's translation when Robert Bringhurst sneered at me for choosing such a terrible version. He said I should read it in the Italian. Yeah, easy for you to say Mr. Polyglot, award winning poet and translator, and awesome intellect - but unlike you I'm fundamentally lazy and I use my modest intelligence for worrying about getting fat, about my cats, and pissing off my neighbours with too much laughter and Matisyahu on the wicked turntable (see earlier blog posting).

And so I set Dante aside until a couple of days ago when I told a friend, off the cuff, that I would be readng The Inferno and drinking wine on my patio while on vacation. Well, what a great read it's been.

It begins, 'about midway through our life's journey, I found myself in dark woods, the right road lost'. As Dante descends into the Inferno he becomes completely dismantled. All that defines man suddenly is revealed to be an illusion; each level of hell is reserved for various illusions, self deceptions, and conceits.

As a person who is midway through our life's journey myself I will be checking under the bed for those ravenous wolves whose desires can never be sated and listen for the murmuring of those lost souls floating in a lake of shit.

And of course hanging out with ghosts and drinking cabernet by the litre.

Ciao!

MVL

The Plaintive Voice of Unrequited Lunch

2007-04-20T08:30:00.000-07:00

The Midnight Man's on tour and she's not there for him no more, no more

Avalon’s Taco

Last night I googled Avalon’s taco
and nothing came up, nothing came up
last night I googled Avalon’s taco
and this morning I wax poetic

Last night I googled Avalon’s taco
And nothing came up, so help me sweet Elvis,
I booted up and googled Avalon’s taco
And put the cap back on my hot sauce

Avalon, oh Avalon, did it never happen?
Did I never in the moonlight on the beach eat your taco?

Oh last night I googled Avalon’s taco
And came up with nothing, no nothing came up
And last night I googled Avalon’s taco
Oh, poor chorizo my.

Authorship refuted by author

copyright held by author

I mean, c' mon - he'll be gone for three days - it's not like he'll miss me

2007-04-04T17:31:00.000-07:00

Railway Club on Saturday April 7th - a simple line up while we wait for Jesus to resurrect

(Vancouver, BC) I think I might be double booked - an Easter Vigil at St. Paul's Anglican Church or an evening with my friend, A Tall Scotch On the Rocks. The Easter Vigil is probably mandatory but I'm thinking I'll head over to the Railway Club on Dunsmuir and catch RICH HOPE & HIS EVIL DOERS Hung Jury and Junior Major. It's roots rock n roll and it'll be $8 at the door.

Now, I don't want to disrespect Jesus' shtick but he's been resurrecting every year for two millennium - it might be time to go see Rich Hope and have a Strongbow with A Tall Scotch On the Rocks. I mean I can always catch the Sunday Easter service.

And, of course, if I end up going to Hell for this and burning for eternity, I don't want to hear any of you say, "Well, I told you so."

First band starts at 8PM. I'll be with the tallest smartest woman there.

And you?

xoxo

MVL

The sea refuses no river

2007-03-23T15:48:00.000-07:00

[storm] is a fabulous way to break your limbs, collarbone and heart

I spent the evening watching battery opera’s performance of [storm] at the Scotia Dance Centre. They have one performance left tonight (Mar 23, 2007) and if you have $20 it’ll be well spent buying a ticket.

Click here for a review from the Toronto Star.

Click here for battery opera’s website.

And if you’re planning on getting laid at a party at some point in the future make sure you’re competing with none of these people.

xoxo

MVL

PS: Call 604-688-8583 for tix and a membership to battery opera.

It was dark but I wasn't scared because you were there. That was you, wasn't it?

2007-03-21T18:56:00.000-07:00

I have two words for you: Sasquatch and Festival

(VANCOUVER, BC) Well, let's see. One hairy manly beast, probably the strong silent type. Twenty to thirty bands, including Bjork, Neko Case, and Bad Brains. A weekend in May where camping is involved. And the Gorge in Washington State.

Yeah, that's right. The Sasquatch Festival in the Gorge May 26 and 27, 2007.

I called and for Canadians a valid passport is not needed unless you fly in. However a passport can be gotten for $80 and a few moments of your time by going to this website. A passport might be a good idea, especially if you happen to be named Mohammad Khaled or Carlos the Jackal. (I'm not saying it's fair, I'm just saying.)

Be prepared to camp in like tents and with like sleeping bags. Unfortunately for me, I heard that only losers use RV's. Now, I'm conflicted between being a loser and being comfortable.

xoxo,

MVL

What's Your Frequency, Kenneth?

2007-03-13T20:27:00.000-07:00

Who would have thought that horse trading would lead to a new stereo system

Yes, it's true. I ignored the world as it stumbles towards oblivion and put aside the fact we're all gonna die (talk to the hand, I say) and went instead and did some Craigslist searching and then some horse trading with a local DJ. The results are my new freakin' awesome Technics sound system with a Stanton digital turntable that gave me a smile so wide it nearly ripped my head off.

Gregorian chants sound wonderful, Afghan style sitar music is brilliant and bright, The Buzzcocks never sounded better, John Coltrane's sax is the best it is ever been, Husker Du is edgy and punchy. I stood listening on the far side of the living room and then the near side. I sat crosslegged in the middle. It's been days now.

Yeah, baby, it sounds awesome. Even my brother's late 70s metal LPs sound great, and I hate my brother's late 70s metal LPs.

Come on over and bring some vinyl records, your ripped MP3s, your cassettes, or CDs. We'll get my neighbours all riled up and have a real good time.

xoxo

MVL

TREMORS Main Stage Presentation

2007-03-13T14:37:00.000-07:00

Rockabilly? Headless cowboys? A GF named Cry Baby? I'm there.

(Vancouver, BC) I'm heading out of town on Friday and but thankfully it's Spring Break at BCIT and I'll be able to slip in to see this fantastic looking play. I'll even wear a polka dot dress (unless I would have to shave the beard I'm growing). Maybe I'll just stick with my Daytons and a pack of smokes.

This is from Rumbles' website:

The Headless Cowboy
Calgary's Broken Spoke Theatre
Performance Works, Granville Island
March 14 - 17 @ 8pm
Sat matinee @ 2pm, March 17
2-for-1 Opening Night, March 14!

RAUNCHY ROCKABILLY SATIRE
Rock, revenge, and an alien named Ginger With Knives!

The Headless Cowboy is a rockabilly satire merging music and performance with the visual strengths of theatre, dance and video bringing a fresh, comedic look at a heart-breaking tragedy in a multi-disciplinary performance by three of Alberta's most sought-after artists. The Headless Cowboy explores the nature of belief in a compelling tale. The titular Cowboy seeks revenge against Dead Man who shot off his head and kidnapped his girl - Cry Baby. Meanwhile, the alien Ginger with Knives is collecting sperm samples to start a human petting zoo.

Directed by Eileen Sproule (generic theatre) and performed by Brad Payne, Kristine Nutting, Kyrsten Blair, Andrew Payne and Ian Manhire.

Tickets can be rustled up by clicking here.

[storm]'s a-coming - battery opera March 21 - 23rd, 2007

2007-03-13T14:04:00.000-07:00

limbs broken on the rack of the sea - the human spirit struggles through

(VANCOUVER, BC) The upcoming performances of battery opera's [storm] are March 21 -23, 2007 at the Scotia Dance Centre for the Vancouver International Dance Festival

From battery opera's website:

A turbulent meditation on the aching loneliness of being human, [storm] uses archetypes drawn from man’s relationship with the sea to delineate a history that is at once sacred and profane, cruel and tender. Performed by four men, the work is an evocative accumulation of raucous singing, quiet reflection and delirious dancing that provokes transformation of the ordinary into the emblematic, and the mundane into the symbolic. [storm] celebrates the power and fragility of the human body that breathes, speaks, sings, thinks, moves, dances.

Performed by Yannick Matthon, David mcIntosh, Ron Stewart, Max Murphy
choreography and direction by Lee Su-Feh
original music and text by David McIntosh
lighting design by James Proudfoot
dramaturgy by DD Kugler

Tickets are available here or by telephoning 604 662 4966.

Poncho and Lefty

2007-03-12T17:41:00.000-07:00

Momma, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Country and Western Fans

I'm not sure how it happened. It might have been Patsy Cline. It could've been Lyle Lovett's If I had a Boat or his version of Stand By Your Man (part of the soundtrack for Niel Jordan's The Crying Game). It definitely had something to do with Lucinda Williams and certainly involved Gillian Welsh. By the time I started buying recent Johnny Cash vinyl (Lost Highway Records), including his rendition of NIN's Hurt I should have finally admitted it myself: I dig country music.

Willie Nelson has been filling up my room with his The Essential Willie Nelson that includes a freakin' awesome tune by Willie and Aerosmith.

I recently special ordered the newest Willie Nelson vinyl produced by Ryan Adams.

I'm about to head on a road trip with BadMark and I forwarned him that there'll be some C&W in our mutual future. Dude was undaunted. "It's a phase," he says, "you'll get over it."

But as I listen to Willie and Merle sing Poncho and Lefty and drink Strongbow Premium Cider, I'm not so sure. What happened to me? The punk me? The acid jazz me?

I usually sign off with a 'cheers' or 'ciao' but I think I will end with 'howdy and good day to you, sir.'

Although, it could explain the pony.

xoxo

M

I missed out but you need not - Up Island at the Arts Club Theatre

2007-02-11T11:32:00.000-08:00

(Vancouver, BC) - My friend, I AM IAN, saw this production after work at its premiere and reported back to me that it was a 'broad comedy' and that he enjoyed his evening immensely. I however lost out on my tickets as I was immersed in work-related struggles. Socrates said, 'my most valuable possession is my leisure'. I concur. Go see Up Island.

UP ISLAND
WORLD PREMIERE
A quirky new comedy

BY DAVID KING
STARRING NICOLA CAVENDISH
DIRECTOR JOHN COOPER
DESIGN TEAM TED ROBERTS, MARSHA SIBTHORPE

JANUARY 25 – FEBRUARY 25, 2007 | STANLEY INDUSTRIAL ALLIANCE STAGE

“Most people stop at Port Hardy…. After that, they say it’s just hermits and fog.”

The charismatic Nicola Cavendish returns to the Arts Club in the premiere of a delightful comedy set on Vancouver Island, way up island. Meet Tory Jean, Rocky, Lorraine, Herb, and a host of eccentric characters who gather for clams and Lucky beer—and unwittingly celebrate the end of one relationship and the blossoming of another. With humour and warmth, Up Island highlights the importance of friends and neighbours in uncertain times.

And Another Thing - Every One Always Dies in the End

2007-01-10T11:49:00.000-08:00

Three More Operas in the 2006/2007 Season From Vancouver Opera

VANCOUVER, BC - The Vancouver Opera is using the supernatural creatures of Coast Salish mythology of the Pacific Coast for the setting in their new production of Mozart's The Magic Flute.

"The Magic Flute will be an exciting exploration of the intersection of two rich cultures - the musical and theatrical traditions of 18th century Europe, beautifully performed, and the ancient mythology of indigenous people of the Canadian west coast, beautifully depicted."

A New Production of Mozart's The Magic Flute
Dates are:
January 27, 30

February 1, 3, 6, 8 2007
All Performances at 7:30PM

Conducted by Derrick Inouye
Directed by Robert McQueen
Performances at The Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Click here for parking information.

Click here for Vancouver Opera's web site.

Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos is next with performances in March, 2007.

And then Vancouver Opera rivives a classic production of Puccini's much loved Tosca in April/May, 2007.

Of course you can make it to at least one of these and probably all three. I have confidence in you.

xoxo

M

What More Can a Girl Ask For? Hmmm.

2007-01-09T18:56:00.000-08:00

How about asking for a bottle of Baby Duck and a $10 All-You-Can-Eat-Buffet?

On the one hand I'm not sure if I'll go to see The Arts Club Theatre Company's production of The Optimist (too busy). On the other hand playwright Morwyn Brebner has a reputation and I think I like chicks with reputations. (Hmm, she wrote the book for the musical Little Mercy's First Murder - that's what I mean by rep - just to be clear.)

Check out the press release below:

Arts Club Theatre Company presents

THE OPTIMISTS

By Morwyn Brebner
February 8 – March 3, 2007
Previews: February 8–13

Granville Island Stage

VANCOUVER, BC—The Arts Club Theatre Company is pleased to present the Vancouver premiere of The Optimists, a wry and invigorating observation of life by award-winning playwright Morwyn Brebner. From a first date at Swiss Chalet to a quickie wedding in Vegas—what more could a girl ask for? Sin City provides the unlikely setting for a recovering gambler (John Murphy) and his young fiancée (Anastasia Phillips) to jump-start their life together. Just hours before exchanging vows, however, they are joined by two old friends from Toronto (Scott Bellis and Jillian Fargey) who have a picture-perfect marriage. As the drinks begin to flow, the quartet of Canadians bare regrets and lay their hopes on the table: “Although we’re Canadian, let’s be optimistic, for just a day.”

Morwyn Brebner, a graduate of the National Theatre School, wrote the book and lyrics for Little Mercy’s First Murder, the “musical-noir” that has captivated audiences across Canada.

Director: Rachel Ditor. Starring: Scott Bellis, Jillian Fargey, John Murphy, Anastasia Phillips.

Design Team: Ted Roberts (set), Marsha Sibthorpe (lights), Rebekka Sorensen (costumes), Andy Horka (sound). Stage Management: Caryn Fehr, Ronaye Haynes

IN BRIEF: The Arts Club Theatre Company presents The Optimists by Morywn Brebner at the Granville Island Stage (1585 Johnston Street) from February 8 to March 3, 2007 (PREVIEWS: FEBRUARY 8–13).

Monday at 8 pm
Tuesday at 7:30 pm
Wednesday–Saturday at 8 pm
and Wednesday & Saturday at 2 pm.
Tickets are $25–$36.50, with discounts for students, seniors, and groups.
Call Ticketmaster 604.280.3311 or the Arts Club Box Office 604.687.1644, or visit artsclub.com

SPECIAL PERFORMANCES
Community Matinee – Wed, Feb 14, 2 pm. All tickets just $25!
Monday Mix Lecture – Feb 19, 8 pm. Join us at 7 pm for a free pre-show talk.
Talk Back Tuesday – Feb 27, 7:30 pm. Post-show chat with the cast and crew.

xoxo

MVL

My Gentle Readers have the patience of Saints but finally enough is enough.

2007-01-09T13:22:00.000-08:00

"Back to your blogging you lazy bastard," they say (all two of them).

VANCOUVER, BC - Work has been pretty hectic and life even more so. Over the winter holidays I spent several days with the amber flu (I blame all my visiting cousins) and then a genuine flu. Some inherent physical and moral weaknesses of mine were exposed these last seven weeks, brought on by excessive workloads and too much Red Bull, which may give you wings as advertised but what they don't say is that it also makes you twitchy after too many weeks drinking the stuff.

I did see BC Ballet’s and Alberta Ballet’s co-presentation of The Nutcracker thanks to an invitation from My Girl Friday. At the performance she recalled a version she had seen as a child in which the setting had been changed from Christmas to a more universally appealing birthday party for Clara. Click here for the Royal Winnepeg Ballet’s explanation of John Neumeier’s alternate birthday version of the Nutcracker. Click here for the Christmas version of the story.

This year I was positive the Evil Mouse King and his mice were going to triumph and all would be changed. Thankfully in the make-believe world good still has the upper hand.

Jerry Lee Lewis has a new CD (and here we all thought he was dead) and vocally he weighs in at his usual welterweight and he still has the wallopping left hand on the piano. I'll get a review of his new stuff shortly.

A DVD arrived in the mail showing Elvis Presley's three appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1956 and 1957. After Sullivan Presleymania went national. I'll get a review of it to you soon. I watched the first disc last night.

The Vancouver's PuSH Festival is around the corner and I've got Vede Hille on my mind as well as some marionettes.

Reveiws of a couple of Lenny Bruce CDs, some Firesign Theatre releases, a novel or two (and completely unrelated to this blog a series of articles to write on food issues and sustainability).

So, yes, I am back to work on my blog.

xoxo

M

For those of you about to Rock! Bringing in the New Year in Vancouver

2006-12-31T16:38:00.000-08:00

The Marine Club at Midnight - you and two hundred other people party 'til 3AM

I Finally Watched The DaVinci Code

2006-12-19T17:40:00.000-08:00

And Syriana and V is for Vendetta and The Merchant of Venice and Walk the Line - ahh the joys of being crippled by exhaustion

A few years ago Dan Brown published a book called The DaVinci Code and it swept through the beach-reading crowd like a fire (or the plague, if you're one of the Vatican types). I never read the book itself but I had read the work from which Brown cribbed his ideas, Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, itself a page turner (by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln).

I have a tendency to reading religious works including several others by Baigent, Franklin, and Leigh (The Holy Place and The Dead Sea Scroll Deception to name two). It's not a fault or serious character flaw, I swear. I never go off on long-winded conversational tangents of a religious nature. But with a subject matter like this, who could blame me if I did? But I don't.

If you haven't read Holy Blood and the Holy Grail or read or seen The DaVinci Code I may accidentally divulge too much information and ruin the suspense for you or the ending (Jesus didn't die on the cross and Opus Dei is hunting down his descendants and killing them, for instance). So, here's a SPOILER ALERT.

Yes, yes. I'm an ass. Perhaps even a friend of Satan, hmmm?

I also have a soft spot for religious films. The Last Temptation of Christ (barely watchable), Pasolini's The Gospel of Saint Matthew (very nice, if a little quiet), the bombastic and highly entertaining Ben Hur, the equally entertaining Moses (although I've conflated the Heston from Moses with the Heston from Bowling for Columbine for a thunderous, "When you pull these 10 commandments from my cold dead fingers"). I recall John Huston's Genesis and story of the Ark (the film is apparently called The Bible but Huston only completed one of the books of the bible - it was the 60s and he should have done a least one more with a psychedlic version of The Book of Ezekiel).

And let's not forget, Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary.

So, I come to The DaVinci Code experienced in the story of the Catholic Church, the history of Christianity, the theories of Baigent et al, and a love of mysteries and whodunits. I think DaVinci's is an excellent film as entertainment. It's well written, very well directed by Ron Howard, excellently well acted, beautifully shot. It's a great film.

However, it's terrible theology and silly history but so was Ben Hur, Moses and Jesus Christ Superstar ("What's the buzz, tell me whatsa happening").

The film's main plot is a scholar from Havard gets embroiled in a murder mystery and tries to stay one step ahead of Opus Dei in the search for The Holy Grail (AKA the tomb of Mary Magdelan). Opus Dei are not above executing those who stand in the way of their search for the Grail. But why do they want to seize it? In order to destroy it, of course. For the Grail holds the DNA of Mary. The DNA could prove that Jesus didn't die on the cross as we long suspected but lived 'til old age and sired children who became the rulers over Europe and thus the whole foundation and premise of the Catholic Church crumbles.

Except it wouldn't because Christianity is more than a literal story. It's a complex history, a mysterious revelation of the spiritual force in all life; it's a way home for millions; an enigmatic portal into eternity. Remove the film's premise and it makes its urgency a little less worth risking one's life for or wasting all that gasoline driving around Europe. Also, if Catholics (and others) can believe in 6000 year old dinosaurs can you really expect them to quake at a few coincidences in DNA patterns. Hmm, no.

Ron Howard's choice of shots in The DaVinci adds considerable depth to the film, allowing several readings of the thoughts and emotions of the film's characters. When they are overwhelmed with the magnitude of their situation they don't have to emote³, gnash teeth, tear their garments, or rub themselves down with ashes; the director helps them. The scriptwriter, Akiva Goldsman, did an excellent job moving the story forward unexpectedly with misdirects and clever dialogue. Although I was annoyed by the film's seeming misunderstanding of the true message of hope, forgiveness and spiritual understanding offered through Christianity the primary emphasize was on the action of running here and there trying to get to the next clue before the blood crazed monk did (or the French police, or the various other players).

I would have to give the film an overall two fluish thumbs up for entertainment but a 'cor blimey - go fack y'selves' for religious relevance (while my neighbour, The Mighty Quinn, is convinced it's all true).

xoxo

M

PS: Merry Christmas! Lotsa love for you and yours!

Who says you can't put new wine in old wineskins?! I want names!

2006-12-13T11:38:00.000-08:00

The Cassette, the Vinyl 33rpm & 78rpm Records are (sort of) new again

I'm a terrible person when it comes to money. I make it; I spend it. And I spend it on books, the arts, and music. Sometimes I spend it on technologies that just aren't current. I have a turntable that I play my 78rpm records on (mostly spoken word stuff - like a 1939 version of the Christmas Carol); and some technologies degrade very quickly. The cassette deck, that fabulous thing current in the late seventies and throughout the eighties, is a piece of shit, with its noisy spinning spools and its stretching magnetic tape.

But fervent prayers, a watchful eye, and a valid credit card led me, by chance, to find a little device that will attach to my computer via its USB ports and connect any number of devices with RCA output pins. Why? So that I can input the sound waves, convert them into a MP3 file, mess around with cleaning up the sound quality (do you hear that you cassette bastards?!) and then burn them onto CDs or import them into my iPod.

Some candidates for an MP3 makeover:

In the late eighties Slash Records put out a cassette of Christmas songs featuring the likes of Louis Armstrong (Zat, You Santa Clause and a reading of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas) and John Lee Hooker (Merry Christmas Baby) and many other jazz and blues greats. I also have a collection of late 60s punk, a long out of print recording of the NBC orchestra, conducted by Toscanini, performing Beethoven's Symphonies, and Eugene Ormandy conducting Beethoven's Ninth with the Philidelphia Orchestra and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (best make-out music ever!).

Daryl Hall (of Hall & Oates fame) collaborated with Robert Fripp (of King Crimson fame) on an album that was part of Fripp's master vision for a sonic triptych. However, Hall's record company decided that the LP Sacred Songs should sit in the vault for a few years until the clamouring arty-farty crowd begin demanding it. Fripp envisioned his LP Exposure, Peter Gabriel's first solo LP, and Sacred Songs be released together and listened to as a unit.

The same will be done for a couple of funky, brilliant born-again Christian records by Larry Norman. In fact there is only one place in the city of Vancouver where I've ever found anyone who knows Norman's work. He's another candidate for conversion beyond his own spiritual rebirth.

Amid my hundreds of cassettes and hundreds of records, I'll be able to put my favourites on a hard drive and enjoy them once again.

No, no. Don't be jealous. I'll have you over for some bruschetta and wine and we'll listen to the Motor City 5 and their late 60s screams against the establishment. "Up Against the Wall, Motherfuckers!" indeed.

xoxo

M

Note to Tyrants - Never Invite Banquo's Ghost to Your Dinner Party

2006-12-05T17:33:00.000-08:00

Cauldrons boil and cauldrons bubble - Vancouver Opera's performance of Macbeth

I saw Verdi's Macbeth at the QE Saturday night. I've seen Shakespeare's Macbeth performed a little less than a dozen times, mostly horribly.

The tale of Macbeth follows him on his ambitions to become King of Scotland, prodded along by his equally ambitious wife and the misunderstood prophecies of the Weird Sisters. Sure, to become Scotland's ruler he needs to kill the current king, Duncan, ambush and slaughter his best friend, Banquo, and let loose bloodshed across the lands for seventeen long years to quell criticism of his brutal rule or to compell compliance with it. And there is the niggling detail of his scruples eating away at his certainty and integrity until he goes mad, violently asserting the rightness of his actions and obsessed of his own invincibility.

And of course, he's not invincible and by tale's end Macduff has severed the tyrant's head and thrown it to the floor.

I struggle with Verdi’s version of Macbeth. At the beginning of Shakespeare’s version Macbeth has just come from the battlefield where with vigor and integrity he has slashed, hacked and gutted the enemies of his king, Duncan. Macbeth and Banquo, shoulder to shoulder, executed a traitor who had crossed sides and betrayed Duncan and his allies. Macbeth’s character is ambitious, decisive, and determined with a highly developed sense of loyalty. This isn’t a character who can’t quite decide or act; he doesn’t need his wife to drive and compel him to success.

Macbeth’s slow descent into madness comes, in my reading of his character, from violating his soldier’s honor and loyalty to Duncan; he becomes Thane of Cawdor by executing the traitor who held that title and defended Duncan and it was Duncan who honored him.

His hesitation had more to do with his scruples; the further he slid away from his honorable profession the worse his madness became, the more violent his rule, until he is completely unable to reason except by the sword. By the story’s end he his unable to do any sort of statesmanship or politicking.

Lady Macbeth is quick to urge her husband in pursuit of his ambitions but misreads her husband’s identification as an honorable soldier and so misleads him.

Lady Macbeth (who truly deserves a name of her own in both the play and the opera - I suggest Macbetty - as in The Tragedy of Macbeth and Macbetty) is far from being free of scruples, or free of humanity or driven to bloodshed through a relentless persistent ambition; she is torn over the blood 'on her hands' and finally kills herself in despair over her misdeeds.

Vancouver Opera's presentation was uneven, as is the libretto itself. The music was well presented, as usual. But I didn't like some of the lighting effects, the colour scheme, nor the colours of the costumes. The effect was not fitting for this dark tale. Other aspects - the lighting effects when the trees of Birnam Woods crowd Macbeth for example and the chorus' costumes for the slaughter of innocents - were very well done.

I sat in the best seats in the house: Row 20 - seat 144 (dress circle).

And you? What did you do this weekend?

xoxo

M

PuSh - International Performing Arts Festival Jan 10 - Feb 4, 2007

2006-11-27T13:17:00.000-08:00

This is what you do in January to while away the post-xmas wintertime

This coming Thursday, on November 30th, the PuSh Festival announces the performance schedule for its 2007 season. While you munch on some hors d'oeurves, sip a little local wine, and chat amiably with others you can preview the schedule of performances which run from January 10 til February 4th. Or, if like me, you'll be at the opening of Headlines Theatre's Meth at exactly that moment you can download the schedule after December 1 by clicking here.

The Festival will present over a 100 performances in 14 venues. That should be enough to get you through to Valentines. And for those Craigslisters who complain that Vancouver chicks are hard to date: ahem...I'm not saying...I'm just saying...if you know what I mean.

xoxo

M

A Christmas Story - The Misadventures of a Boy with a Dream

2006-11-24T17:25:00.000-08:00

Arts Club Theatre Presents A Christmas Story - November 30 - December 30

BY PHILIP GRECIAN
DIRECTOR KATRINA DUNN

NOVEMBER 30 – DECEMBER 30, 2006 | GRANVILLE ISLAND STAGE

“You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.”

Christmas, 1938. All nine-year-old Ralphie Parker wants from Santa is a Red Ryder BB gun, and he’ll do anything to get it—including homework! Despite repeated warnings from his parents, his teacher, and even Santa that he’ll shoot his eye out, Ralphie pines for the gift that “no self-respecting cowboy would be without.” Based on the film that has enchanted many, A Christmas Story is the holiday favourite that is sure to warm the cockles of your heart.

“Story keeps its spirit on stage” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Illustrates the magical spirit of the holiday season” —Chicago Sun-Times
“Lovingly adapted for the stage” —The Houston Press
“A lively romp” —Springfield News Leader
“A charming family tale” —The Boston Globe
“As toasty and warm as a snowsuit and mittens” —The Houston Press

SPECIAL PERFORMANCES
Community Night, Thur, Nov 30, 8 PM. All tickets just $25!
Monday Mix Lecture, Dec 11, 8 PM. Join us at 7 PM for a free pre-show talk.
Talk Back Tuesday, Dec 19, 7:30 PM. Post-show chat with the cast and crew.
Family Holiday Show, Tues, Dec 26, 2 PM

Tix are $31.50 / $24.50 with Student ID / $27.00 for 65+
Tix available at Ticketmaster and by clicking here.

Arts Club Theatre site? Click here.

xoxo

M

A Paranoid's Wet Dream

2006-11-24T09:55:00.000-08:00

Thomas Pynchon thinks they're talking about him

I was looking around the vast basement filled with boxes of paper, junk, and ASCII text known as the Internet and along with some vintage porn I found an article by Scott McLemee regarding a reclusive, retiring writer whose novels often deal with themes of paranoia. Apparently they were talking about Thomas Pynchon behind his back, speculating whether or not he was lurking in the literary public square dressed as an eighty year old homeless woman named Wendy Tinasky.

The article is over a decade old but that's why it's in the basement. Click here to read it.

Then spend a few minutes reading about Scott McLemee by clicking here. The first four paragraphs reveal another member of our tribe.

xoxo

M

Evil Mouse King Seizes Power on Christmas Eve; Toy Soldiers Rally; Sugar Plum Fairy Involved

2006-11-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

Ballet BC and Alberta Ballet present The Nutcracker December 28 - December 31

Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker has been a Christmas tradition for more than a century. And while It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street are mandatory watching at this time of year you should make sure that you and yours have tickets for Ballet BC's annual performance of this beloved ballet (choreographed by Mikko Nissenen), especially if you have a little girly-girl or nancy boy. Everyone arrives dressed to the nines; last year I saw a six year old lad set the standard dressed in a velour jacket.

The Nutcracker ballet is based on the short story by E.T.A. Hoffman (or on the French revision by Alexandre Dumas, as some say) called The Nutcracker and The King of Mice. Here's the story:

The Party Scene

It is Christmas Eve at the Stahlbaum house -- A large and grand house with the most beautiful tree imaginable. The Stahlbaums are hosting their annual Christmas party, welcoming the arrival of their family and friends. The children, Clara and Fritz, are dancing and playing as they welcome their friends too.

The party grows festive with music and dance as godfather Drosselmeyer arrives. He is a skilled clock and toy maker and always full of surprises. Drosselmeyer draws everyone's attention as he presents two life-size dolls. They are the delight of the party, each taking a turn to dance.

The children begin to open gifts when Drosselmeyer presents his to Clara and Fritz. Although his gift to Fritz is quite nice, he gives Clara a beautiful Nutcracker that becomes the hit of the party. Fritz becomes jealous and, having a bit more spunk than a boy should have, grabs the nutcracker from Clara and promptly breaks it. Clara is heartbroken looking on as Drosselmeyer quickly repairs the Nutcracker with a handkerchief he magically draws from the air.

As the evening grows late, the guests depart and the Stahlbaum family retires for the evening. Clara, worried about her beloved Nutcracker, sneaks back to the tree to check on him, falling asleep with him in her arms.

The Fight Scene

As the clock strikes midnight strange things begin to happen. Clara begins shrinking as her beautiful Christmas tree grows high above her. The toys around the tree come to life while the room fills with an army of mice, lead by the fierce Mouse King. As the Nutcracker awakens, he leads his army of toy soldiers into battle with the mice. The Mouse King corners the Nutcracker and battles him one-on-one. The Nutcracker seems to be no match for the Mouse King.

The Nutcracker and his army can go on no longer and are captured by the mice and their King. Clara makes a final daring charge throwing her slipper at the Mouse King, hitting him square on the head. The Mouse King drops to the floor and the mice run away, carrying off their leader's lifeless body.

The Land of Snow

The Nutcracker turns into a Prince and takes Clara on a journey to the Land of Snow, an enchanted forest wonderland where they are welcomed by dancing snowflakes.

The Land of Sweets

The Prince escorts Clara to the Land of Sweets where they are greeted by the Sugar Plum Fairy. The Prince tells her about their daring battle with the army of mice and she rewards them with a celebration of dances.

The Spanish Dance
The Arabian Dance
The Russian Dance
The Chinese Dance
The Mirliton Dance
The Waltz of Flowers
As a finale, the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Cavalier dance a beautiful Pas De Deux.

The Dream Ends

Clara awakens from her dream and finds herself by her Christmas tree with her beloved Nutcracker.

The Nutcracker
December 28, 29, 30 • 7:30pm, 2006
December 29, 30 , 31 • 1:30pm Matinee
Tix range from $22 dollars to $72
Available at Ticketmaster
Queen Elizabeth Theatre (corner of Hamilton and Georgia), Vancouver, BC
Click here for parking information

Dear Santa

2006-11-24T07:16:00.000-08:00

Something something for your stocking

I stood waiting for a public transit bus to whisk me to the maelstrom I call work while the conversation around me consisted of 1) where to shop for Xmas gifts 2) what to buy for Xmas gifts 3) gloating from those who had finished their gift-buying in August. This led naturally to the little hamster in my head to stop plucking his eyebrows long enough to ponder: what the fuck! Is it Christmas time already!?

And, dear reader, apparently it is.

And while the celebration of the winter solstice or the birth of Christ will provoke the best of intentions from those who love you it never hurts to actually tell them in specific detail what you want and thus avoid the forced glee of receiving Madonna's latest or the penguin salt and pepper shaker set ("I know you collect penguins, dear")

And what you want could very well be a ticket to the February fundraiser for the Vancouver International Dance Festival, called Salon Rouge and presented by Kokoro Dance (warning: some of the images on their site may contain nudity).

Okay, you back?

Salon Rouge is: "a Moulin Rouge inspired evening in support of the Vancouver International Dance Festival featuring tantalizing performances, succulent appetizers, and one of a kind creations by local artisans and a goods and services auction".

The tix are $65 (and you'll get a $40 tax receipt)

Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Doors open at 6:30pm
Uber Lounge at Steamworks (375 Water St)
INFO: 604 662 7441

And for those who are hesitant let me remind you what tantalize means: "torment or tease (someone) with the sight or promise of something that is unobtainable."

Unobtainable? Not for you, surely!

xoxo

M

Headlines Theatre Presents

2006-11-24T06:32:00.000-08:00

Meth opens Nov 30th at the Japanese Hall

For those of you who prefer your theatre to be meaningful rather than just another lifestyle accessory like a non-fat no foam Starbucks latte or tinted windows on an SUV make sure you see Headlines Theatre's 2006 Main Stage Project Meth. Here's the scoop taken from their website:

What are the human factors that lead people into addictive relationships with drugs? Are the headlines in newspapers today about methamphetamine the current manifestation of the larger issues of drug addiction in our society? Headlines Theatre, in partnership with many Native and Non-Native community organizations will create an interactive Forum Theatre production to explore the human factors and root causes that lead to addiction. Meth will be created and performed by people who have struggled with meth addiction.

Meth will be created and rehearsed at the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre in Nov/06 and then will have ten performances in Vancouver at the Japanese Hall in December . The project will tour approximately 28 communities throughout BC in January/February 2007.

Meth
Forum Theatre created and performed
by people who have struggled with meth addiction
Directed and Joked by David Diamond

At the Japanese Hall, 475 Alexander Street, Vancouver
8pm November 30 - December 3 and December 7 – 10

Click here for more information.

When The Chill is in The Bone Not Much Can Warm You

2006-11-06T22:13:00.000-08:00

Werewolves opens November 4 at Performance Works

During the Second World War, with so many millions brutalized, terrorized, enslaved and murdered, the social order was effectively broken down and civilization was shown to be a thin veneer. Life proved fragile, uncertain and worthless. People were revealed to be monsters or completely ineffective in dealing with monsters.

Teresa Lubkeiwicz-Urbanowicz wrote her play,Werewolves, in 1974 inspired by a story from her husband’s past - a hovel in war ravaged Belarus, a coffin, a dead woman, and a desperate immoral gaiety, drinking and dancing around the corpse.

The play itself opens with Thrush, a fortyish man doomed to farm a thistle patch, as he builds a spring-loaded leg hold trap with sharp teeth designed to cut through a thick leather winter boot, through muscle and tendon and all the way to bone. His mother sits in a chair nearby and recalls that he was an angry child even in the womb with his violent kicks.

Foreshadowing the coming social and personal disintegration he asks her if she has noticed that he no longer bothers to conceal his dark intentions from her. When she complains she is old and tired he mocks her, challenging her to climb into her ready made coffin leaning in a corner of their chilled hovel.

And she does die and the professional mourners do come and she’s laid in her coffin and her open coffin is placed on the kitchen table. The mourners squabble and quarrel and everyone eats too much, they become drunk and licentious. No one notices that Thrush is a monster, with dark sexual appetites, not even in the end.

I kept thinking of the murders at the Pickton farm and the hungry pigs all during the opening performance of Werewolves. When the Wolf-men arrive, with their Nazi overtones, I half-expected Thrush to join up with them and run with the pack. But he doesn’t. Perhaps because they are already inside him.

Werewolves blends the emotional, physical, and spirit-world and the combination creates a magic-realism or maybe its an eighteenth century Gothic gloom. Pi Theatre chose Lubkiewicz-Urbanowicz’ play for its Emerging Artists Showcase, called Prime@Pi. The actors, stage managers, lighting and costume designers are all rightfully considered to be the up-and-coming talent pool.

Werewolves, directed by Tammy Isaacson, runs until November 18th at Granville Island’s Performance Works. Tix are $16 for students or maybe you can convince your cash-laden boyfriend or girlfriend to buy a See Seven Pass (seven plays for $87). Performances at 8PM.

Pi Theatre
Tickets Tonight
See Seven

What Are You Doing This Weekend?

2006-11-03T08:03:00.000-08:00

Other than buying a sailboat from Craigslist

The weekend in Vancouver promises to be rainy and cold. Here are a few suggestions for outings:

Kevin Bergsma, one half of Butoh a Go Go, is performing Tea with Green Tara at the Moberly Arts Community Centre. The last time I saw Kevin perform, he and Thomas Anfield danced a work in development they intended to present at a Moscow dance festival. The MACC is located at 7646 Prince Albert, Vancouver.

Nov 3. Performance at 8PM. Tix $15.

Or you can head over to Vancouver's best live music venue, The Railway Club, to see Canada's venerable psychobilly band, The Deadcats. Also on the bill are Hank Angel and His Island Devils and The Slickjacks. It's a tiny venue so get there early and drink lots. Bring an extra $20 for a couple of the Deadcats new CD. The Railway is located at 579 Dunsmuir St, Vancouver.

Nov 3. Doors at 8:30PM Tix $8 Members $10 Guests.

Pi Theatre is presenting Werewolves, a Polish play that will chill your bones. Here's an excerpt from the press release they sent me:

Inspired by a wake in a Belorussian village, Werewolves has a possessed and frightening intensity that evokes an Old World spell in its capacity to dissolve the boundaries between the physical, mental, and spiritual worlds. Realism gives way to the fantastic. A wake transforms into a wedding. Mantraps are made – and used. And these events draw not only the attendance of neighbours, but also of three frightening strangers.

Presented at Performance Works on Cartwright Street on Granville Island, Werewolves runs from Nov 2 - Nov 18.

Nov 2. Free Preview. Nov 3 2 for 1 Preview. Nov 4. Performances 8PM. Tix $20 $16 Students.

The Rocket Fins and The Grange are going to stomp on your heart with howling rockabilly at the Marine Club, located at 573 Homer Street. The night promises cheap beer (Pabst Blue Ribbon), rockabilly riffs galore, handsome men and pretty women, and glorious tattoos.

It's a CD release party for the Rocket Fins. Bring an extra handful of cash.

Nov 4. Doors at 8:30PM. No posted cover.

xoxo

M

John Lee Hooker and Canned Heat

2006-11-01T08:52:00.000-08:00

I said, "Hey, Mister Bartender"

Three years ago I spent a whole pocket-full of money on vinyl records at Black Swan Records in their then-new home in the Dominion Building at 207 W. Hastings (they may have moved their store completely on-line - read here and here). Included in my purchase was Hooker & Heat, a 1971 Liberty Record release featuring John Lee Hooker and Canned Heat. This is the man who sang One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer (later covered by George Thorogood), Boom Boom, and I'm in the Mood.

For some reason I placed it in my collection and didn't touch it until last night when I arrived home on the verge of a flu. I made myself some tea and flipped through my LPs, found it and put it on the turntable.

According to Johnleehooker.com, Hooker was born in 1917 in the American South, near Clarksdale, Mississippi, the son of a sharecropper (a tenant farmer who uses his crop to pay his land rent). He moved from the Mississippi Delta to Detroit and played houseparties, which I suppose might be similar to the rent parties we're familiar with but I'm not sure. At age 31 Hooker was introduced to record producer Bernard Besman, who recorded his material for Modern Records.

Between 1948 and his death in 2001 Hooker is said to have recorded over 100 LPs. "It don't take me no three days to make a record," he says on Hooker & Heat.

It's what I'm going to listen to when I call in sick today.

xoxo

M

Rockabilly Weekend Nov 3 & Nov 4

2006-10-31T06:50:00.000-08:00

The Rocket Fins and the Deadcats

I saw the Deadcats around Halloween last year in a show at the Brickyard that proved to be Scooter's last. This newest incarnation (brou! hahaha!) of the local Vancouver psychobilly band has seen Mick move from guitar to upright to replace the gut-bucket that Scooter brought to the mix.Friday (Nov 3) is your chance to see them perform.

8PM Railway Club, 579 Dunsmuir St, Vancouver

I saw the Rocket Fins play the Lamplighter this last July. This is a part of the review I wrote then:

Last night Stumble Records threw another "chains-on-the-wallet, cuffs-rolled-up, and-tattoos-that-say-'Mom, Cindy, Susie Forever' party at the Lamplighter with The Rocket Fins, The Farrell Bros., and The Alley Dukes. And the faithful turned out proving the local rockabilly and psycho-billy scene is alive and well.

I arrived about 10 minutes into The Rocket Fins' set and the four boys were standing in their canvas high-top sneakers cranking away with their combination of twang country guitars, growling vocals, and clickity click rockabilly drumming. Mick, the upright bass player, was pulling on his strings like he was unspooling cable by the yard.

At one point near the end of their set they let loose with a lead guitar and drum duet with Chopper making his battered Les Paul scream and kick while the drummer kept beating his toms until the room was spinning like a hurricane. And then, with the rattling of the snare drums, the song re-launched into the chorus and the room went back to normal.

It was a fucking magical moment.

The band has its CD release party this Saturday (Nov 4th) at The Marine Club on Homer Street. If the last gig I saw is any indication this is going to be a howler.

See you there?

M

Today's Fine Art Today

2006-10-17T22:34:00.000-07:00

Don't make these people cut off an ear

This isn't a long post. I have a script to read and critique and some household chores to do so I won't spend too much time saying this: Vancouverites in particular are difficult to please when it comes to fine art painting. We respect photograhers and love photographs but we force painters to create atrocious landscapes full of greens and blues under threat of starvation.

Thomas Anfield has a show starting Oct 20 and running to Nov 2. He's showing his work with several other artists and you should at least go and have a look. Bring a wallet. Prepare to make monthly payments.

The Secret Policeman's Ball

2006-10-11T08:09:00.000-07:00

I Spent the Weekend Listening to Vinyl

For some reason this year has tumbled and rolled like a convict leaping from a speeding train; I've barely had time to catch up.

CCRA has been knocking on my door - apparently they want some money but by my calculations I don't owe any back taxes - we'll soon have it out with their high-powered calculators and my abacus - and may the best person win.

I've started a new job and, while it's super fun, I'm also hurting for time to spare. Especially so when I no longer have my own office or my own computer (I'm using a spare office and spare computer - while my co-workers dream I write).

This weekend I slept fitfully, like a man in the first weeks of a coma but in the mornings I paid some bills, cancelled a lost credit card, returned some long overdue emails, and sipped black coffee. I also pulled out my vinyl and listened to The Lounge Lizards, Steely Dan's Aja, Phil Manzanera's 801 Live, The Secret Policeman's Ball, and Neil Young's Helpless.

I started reading Tim Richardson's history of candy and sweets, abandoned Augusten Burrough's latest (cruelty to a rodent) and flipped off an old nemesis with a carefully worded email that, I hope, essentially said, 'fuck you'.

Three days holiday but I'm again into hour 12 at work and I'll be here for another two.

Remind me to call Brandon tomorrow. Anyone. Please.

Peace.

M

"They sent us back to get deloused," said Lennon, explaining their lateness in arriving for their concert in Vancouver

2006-10-09T22:50:00.000-07:00

Oct 9th - Happy Birthday

For those of my friends who still care, today would mark the 66th birthday of John Lennon, a man who, while flawed, was working towards a better world and a better life. He embraced the maxim, Be The Change You Wish To See In The World.

Here are some relevant sites. Here's the wikipedia entry on Lennon. Here's the YouTube home movie of Lennon's 31st birthday and here's an article of this year's commemorative donation to MSF and the Centre for Constitutional Rights in memory of John.

Oh, and he was a freakin' awesome talent before he was gunned down in New York City in December of 1980.

Dave, you're not here with me to toss back a toast to Dr. Winston O'Boogie but I'm sure you're raising your glass somewhere at this moment.

Happy Birthday John!

xoxo

M

Spiderman Jazz Can Take You Places

2006-10-02T20:23:00.000-07:00

Lizards Walk Among Us

In 1981 I walked into a record store on Granville St, where CD Charlies' is now located. There stood the usual racks of vinyl and, near the door, a service island with listening posts: turntables and headphones. I handed the clerk a white album with a black and white picture of five skinny guys in white shirts and black ties lounging around an upright piano and he slit it open for me. It was a new release out of New York entitled The Lounge Lizards, featuring John Lurie and his brother Evan. The reviews mentioned something about the jazz being something out of a cartoon and it intrigued me enough for me to bring to the clerk and request that I get a listen.

I dropped the needle on the first track, Incident on South Street and within minutes I was shelling out 12 bucks and taking this baby home. In 1981 I was listening to Pere Ubu's Dub Housing, Daryl Hall's Sacred Songs (about which more in a later post), Robert Fripp's Exposure, and Brian Eno's Music For Films (and notwithstanding the indelible scream of "will you turn that fucking thing off!?" if I ever die in a fiery car crash with my lungs filled with the smoke from Turkish tobacco, my bloodstream electrified by bourbon, and the taste of infidelity on my lips I want Music for Films to be the soundtrack that accompanies me into the blackness.)

The Lounge Lizards were a combo out of New York and they played a style of jazz that was part Spiderman soundtrack, part Miles Davis, and part Stanley Clarke and Return to Forever. Their drummer was Anton Fier, who played like a Gene Krupa who had decided to hit his drum kit fewer times but to hit it harder. Guitarist Arto Lindsay's contribution was either the jangling noise from a badly fretted chord (imagine a box of pots and pans tumbling down stairs) or a single note zig zagging inside and outside the boundaries of the song.

The main force behind the album was John Lurie and his sax playing. Smooth, melodic and slightly menacing. Unlike a lot of jazzmen Lurie's playing wasn't introverted into itself. On each track the saxophone takes the centre of attention and tells an urban story of traffic jams, images reflected in the mirrored glass of store windows, men in suits on street corners watching men in the back seats of cabs as they drive by. The rest of the band, from Fier's drumming to Piccolo's bass playing to Evan Lurie's piano, add the rhythmic energy of a bustling metropolis. Released by Editions EG Records and distributed by Polygram The Lounge Lizards was an impressive first LP and has survived 25 years of listening.

I bought tickets to see The Lounge Lizards when they came to town that year. They played at what was then known as the Robson Square Media Centre (it now houses UBC conference rooms). The opening act was a band called Phish, and to be fair and cruel all in one breath, they were more of a 'conceptual art' piece than a musical act.

The Lounge Lizards performance showed a surprising difference in dynamics as live performers as compared to the record. Evan Lurie's piano and keyboards took over, the songs took on Evan's point of view, his melodies and his chorded percussions forcing the sax player to the outside. At one point Evan played a melodic run with heavy reverb on his keyboard and before the notes had faded he followed it with another run. You could almost see the sounds washing up the audience further and further, receding a bit before the next stronger wave reached higher.

It was as if the whole audience had gotten inside Evan's head and were listening to the music the way he heard it, a jazz song's version of Rashoman (without the rape, natch). Given the difference in their instruments, Evan Lurie's playing was more percussive than his brother's and changed the tone of the material, which was strong to begin with, into something with much more muscle.

Afterwards, I stood in the street on Robson, smoking the original Player's Special Blend and thought (not for the last time), 'that was fucking awesome.'

John Lurie and The Lounge Lizards continue to produce records and music. Click here for their website. Evan Lurie also composed music for films. Click here for a list of his credits. Arto Lindsay's sojourn in the Lounge Lizards is only a tiny part of his story. Click here for a fuller history and discography. Anton Fier's career can be pieced together here. Steve Piccolo now lives in Italy and his musical story can be read here.

Sometimes laying in hotels I get lonely for Jesus; at others I need some Rock n’ Roll

2006-09-30T15:39:00.001-07:00

An incomplete reflection on rock documentaries

originally published in The Link

I recently watched Some Kind of Monster, the documentary that chronicled two years in the life of Metallica. During those 24 months they battled their demons with the help of a ‘performance psychologist’, tried to write and record an album, suffered through a period in detox for James Hetfield, did a lot of soul searching trying to find meaning in their lives, lost their bassist (Jason Newsted) and hired another (Robert Trujillo). It’s an awesome piece of film and well worth the bottle of wine I had to share in order to see it.

It got me to reflect on other music documentaries and here are seven of my faves, in no particular order.

Gimme Shelter
David Maysles & Albert Maysles
1970
The Rolling Stones were riding high in 1969 and finding their stride as a band. Brian Jones’ death had allowed Jagger and Richards to take creative control unopposed and the leadership schism within the band disappeared. After the artistic disaster of Satanic Majesty the Stones began five or six years of producing some of the best rock music ever. In 1969 they were touring to support Beggars Banquet, their first real album as the Stones, and ever mindful of outdoing the Beatles, they decided on a ‘free’ concert in Golden Gate Park, which the city fathers nixed as dangerous. So, after some tense last minute negotiations Altamont Raceway was decided on as a site.

The Maysles brothers had produced the excellent documentary Salesmen, about bible salesmen in the American South. Their style was to turn on the camera and see what happens.

And what happened at Altamont was that a 100,000 people descended to see a free festival concert and it turned into a day-long slide into The Lord of the Flies with medical emergencies, violence, rapes, seriously bad trips, dirt, cold and all manner of unplanned for events. The bands on stage, including Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, tried to keep things going, to keep the ‘summer of love’ vibe happening but this was 1969 and the darkness of the 1970s was looming. The organizers asked the Hell’s Angels, who still had some sort of rebel cachet to them, to sit on stage and to help ‘keep order’. Instead, these hairy Gestapo fucks went ape-shit for six long hours, even turning nasty towards the bands and culminating in the stabbing death of a man in front of Mick, Keith and the boys, apparently to avenge an insult to the colours.

Gimme Shelter is a slow ride to hell. Rock and roll culture at its worst – venal, self-absorbed, useless.

Let It Be
Michael Lindsay-Hogg
1970
The Beatles are arguably one of the best bands ever, a collection of four awesome talents who were able to work together to create music that had a profound impact when it was made and whose effects resonated for thirty years. Their imprint can still be heard in Karl Wallinger and World Party and in bands like Oasis.

But the true story of the Beatles is less one of a joyous pop group sent to capture the hearts of a new generation in the 1960s and more one of four men who dreamed of becoming popular musicians and ultimately regretted getting what they wished for. Their spirits were driven into the ground by screaming fans, incessant demands on their attention, the need to live in hotels for eight months out of twelve while on tour. Ultimately they couldn’t even enjoy playing their own music because they couldn’t hear themselves.

So, after enduring the deaths of Brian Epstein and the break-up of two of their marriages and worried about the imminent disintegration of the band (Sgt Pepper was recorded with never more than a combination of any two Beatles at a time in the studio) the band decided on getting back to basics. They decided to record an album in the way they did in 1962, with all the Beatles in studio, playing live, working together on songs like they used to in Liverpool and Hamburg when it was fun.

But the project turned sour. The Beatles were in no mood for dicking around with each other. Ringo objected to Paul always telling him how to play drums (drumming was one of Paul’s conceits) and Paul punched him (you can see Ringo’s black-eye in one scene). John and Yoko Ono cleave to each other like orphans. George Harrison is aware of never getting respect as a songwriter but clearly doesn’t care. Paul tries to show leadership but ends instead by bleating over the course of the year.

They threw the resulting audio tapes and film in the vaults and let it be for over a year. The project was a wasted effort until Paul took the film footage and had it edited and then released. The ‘version’ of the film is clearly Paul’s. In revenge, John took the audio tapes and had Phil Spector give it his sound.

Despite the bad mood in the film – the boys are awesome and so freakin’ talented. Don’t watch Let It Be stoned on pot – it’s a bit of a downer that way. Instead throw it on the DVD player and crank the stereo.

Don’t Look Back
D.A. Pennebaker
1967
As a filmmaker Pennebaker has given us 40 years of brilliant documentaries including the fantastic, constantly compelling political film, The War Room, about Clinton’s run for the American Presidency in 1992.

But in 1965 he was following Dylan around England recording the man on his last acoustic tour as he was about to turn ‘traitor’ and play electric. (They actually yell ‘traitor’ from the crowd.) Don’t Look Back is a great film for any Dylan fan ‘cause it just allows Dylan to be Dylan – for those who find him brilliant… well, what can anyone say… but for the most part Dylan was then and forever afterwards a pain in the ass to people who just want to talk to him. He’s not a normal guy with whom you can have beers.

The Last Waltz
Martin Scorcese
1978
After 16 years on the road the five musicians known as The Band decided they wanted out and threw a good-bye party at the Filmour West with all their friends. Directed by Martin Scorcese, the The Last Waltz captures some awesome performances from Bob Dylan, Muddy Waters, Mike Bloomsfield, Neil Young, Ronnie Hawkins and, of course, from The Band.

The film is interspersed with interviews with Richard Manual, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Robertson and Rick Danko and includes Robbie’s recollection of Ronnie Hawkins’ encouragement to him to make a living as a musician since he would ‘get more pussy than Frank Sinatra’.

Their onstage performances are absolutely brilliant and breathtaking whether playing their own material (Up on Cripple Creek, Ophelia, The Night They Drove Ol’ Dixie Down) or playing other people’s stuff (Neil Young’s Helpless). Offstage though the members seem tired, burned out and weary, except for Robbie Robertson. They try and pull off this last concert as a true rite of passage the words of Richard Manual (“I just want to break even”) sums up their interview mood more than anything.

As a side note Robertson was the only one to experience this last concert as a passage to better things. He went on to a successful solo career, wrote music for films, and mentored other young artists, including Nellie Furtado, for the record labels. Maybe Garth Hudson did well, too. He’s been a successful session musician and is credited on a Neko Case album. However Levon Helm died of alcoholism*, Richard Manual hung himself. Rick Danko died in his sleep in 1999 after being charged with heroin smuggling in Japan.

*Actually, Levon Helm is not dead according to this website. My apologies if I alarmed Levon or his loved ones.

Concert for Bangladesh
Saul Swimmer
1972
When a famine sucked the life out of the people of Bangladesh Ravi Shankar called his friend, George Harrison, to ask about doing something to help. That something was a star-studded concert at Madison Square Gardens featuring George, Ringo, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, Dylan, Bad Finger, Jessie Ed Davies, and Leon Russell (who steals the show) and a half dozen other lesser-knowns.

The concert footage was shot on two 16mm cameras with small magazines meaning that they often had to change stock in mid-song. The resulting footage was a 16 month nightmare to cut and sync with the sound but well worth the effort. There were two concerts that night and the film is an amalgam of both.

It was the first of many celebrity charity concerts. Concert for Bangladesh is a great film and an even better album.

UK/DK
Circa1980
The punk scene and the London skinhead scene are observed, probed, interviewed and on display in this doc from the early 1980’s. It’s a great look at a movement that appeared outwardly to be fresh and original but was, in fact, the usual down and out suspects in new gear and safety pins.

The Kids Are Alright
Jeff Stein
1979
Personally, I feel The Who is the best band in the world and Pete Townsend is my all-time favourite guitar-auteur. I’ve always understood exactly the angst he wrote about. From the beginning I knew the line from My Generation had nothing to do with age but attitude (‘I hope I die before I get old’). For several years now I’ve been meaning to rework Quadrophenia into a queer film script. Keith Moon was a demented genius, a brilliant buffoon whose drumming style perfectly suited the band. Daltrey was made to sing Townsend’s swaggering, vulnerable lyrics. Roger Entwhistle was just right for Pete’s power chords and Moon’s insane drumming. My god, I’m tearing up.

The Kids Are Alright is the story of The Who stuffed into 90 minutes; a collection of footage from different sources edited together to chronicle the essence of band from their early angry days as The Detours and The High Numbers all the way to their 1977 tour; the film ends with the ‘definitive’ concert version of Won’t Get Fooled Again. I once destroyed the light globe in my kitchen in the West End, smashing it doing the windmill during the climax of that song when The Kids Are Alright was being broadcast on the CBC.

It’s only teenage wasteland, indeed.

xoxo

M

Camille Miller is in the Building

2006-09-25T06:50:00.000-07:00

A two week old conversation is oddly prescient

I met with Camille Miller at Wazubeez in order to write an article for the paper regarding her upcoming appearance at the school where I work. We talked about life (hers and mine); mine includes a guerilla style war on behalf of the arts and against the administration. She asked that I not get fired before her performance which occurs today at 11:30AM.

And now, through a combination of forces of good and evil, it appears that Camille will be my last presentation in the Great Hall. I am leaving my job as Special Events Coordinator to become the manager for the campus pub, a job that carries within it both chaos and opportunity.

Two remaining Live@Lunch performances are schedule after Camille's today but whether they come to be will be the decision of others: Chad Oliver on October 23rd and Ivan Coyote, tentatively scheduled for Nov 6.

God, The Universe, and the Resulting Brouhaha

2006-09-25T06:39:00.000-07:00

Order was never intended to fully conquer the nature of Chaos

Juan Mascaro wrote, in the introduction to his English translation of the Dhammapada, that the first great truth of Buddhism was that all is transient and therefore all is sorrow. The second great truth of Buddhism, again according to Juan, is that mankind's suffering comes from clinging to the transient. I think there are a couple of reasons for suffering in this world. I've been listening to a podcast series of Buddhist lectures from New York's Ethan Nichtern and while he is easing us into a better understanding of the basics of Buddhism I find myself standing back a bit, forever the argumentative skeptic. After a few weeks of thinking about this I'm not so sure I'm convinced that ridding our lives of 'suffering' (wrong thoughts, wrong impulses, unwanted experiences) will necessarily make them better or make us happier.

Admittedly, it's a bit of a counter-intuitive approach.

The universe, by its nature, is chaotic (at least that's my theory and I'm sticking to it). Things fall apart, they fall into confusion and perpetually disintegrate if not acted on by creative forces. It is the lifeforce (God, The Prime Mover Unmoved, the Great Mother, or whatever one calls the teeming gadzillion creative forces that seem to animate the universe) that imposes order into it, trying to ride the wave for a few glorious moments before being spilled back into the surf. And when you have competing lifeforces laying down patterns with differing intentions we end up with unexpected rivalries, or a situation where the dog eats the cat who ate the mouse. And these conflicts can lead to jealousy, anger, rule-making, and just plain grief.

And why create a world where these undesirable conditions can exist? I dunno but it might have to do with having as an inherent component that if you create a situation where you can feel pleasure you also create an opportunity to feel pain. Rick Blaine loves Ilsa Lund in Paris but loses her just as the Germans arrive and then lives bitterly and disillusioned in Casablanca. Had Ilsa stayed with Rick it would have been Victor Laszlo who would have been bitter and disillusioned (the competion for pleasure). Good can't be experienced without the chance of experiencing bad. And jealousy, while it's not super good, is not such a disaster; just knowing the components of how it works in you, where it comes from, etc allows you to experience it and then move on, sometimes instaneously. Same with anger; ditto with disillusionment. So, for me don't tell me how to avoid these emotions; I would prefer you help me understand their make-up, where they come from and whence they unfold.

I truly like this universe and while I deplore pain and suffering I also know it's only a matter of perspective; it's mostly my attitude that determines the difference between a good day and a bad one. In theory, anyway. In practice, I often prefer to change content rather than change attitude but curiously, sometimes changing attitude changes content for me. A willingness to experience bad means it often doesn't materialize or it dematerializes. Sometimes I'm a winner and sometimes I'm a loser in the competition of imposing my order in the universe. Sometimes you carry the ball and sometimes I'm running with it.

Of course this posting doesn't even address the idea of the (apparently mandatory) greater responsibility one has for all life forms, for all sentient beings, for all life but that's because I'm just way over my head on a lazy Saturday afternoon and because I'm more buffoon than Buddha.

All right. Now, seriously, you're on your own. Remember, when you wipe out there's always another wave; when you get killed there's always the reset button. And in the words of George Michaels, "there's a way back for every man."

xoxo

M

Guy Fournier Resigns From The CBC

2006-09-19T15:24:00.000-07:00

Or Was He Dumped?

A co-worker burst into my office unable to breathe from laughing so hard. "Guy Fournier has resigned," he gasped using the door to keep himself from collapsing on the floor.

The staunch (in the sense of dry and weary), proper personnel of our Majesty's Government apparently lost confidence in Monsieur Fournier to lead the national public broadcasting company and forced his resignation. This loss of confidence stems, it's said, from Fournier mocking the sexual laws of the Lebanese in a column for the popular Quebec magazine, 7 Jours (clicking on the link will take you to Le Monde's coverage of the incident). In that column Monsieur Fournier wrote that Lebanese laws allowed a man to fornicate with animals provided they were female but risked the death penalty if they were male. The controversy that erupted seemed to amuse the head of Radio-Canada.

But the Conservatives were already uncomfortable with the 75 year old when he publicly confessed in an interview that, at his age, he found defecating more pleasurable than sex.

Shit! Fuck, no! My God! This confession of M. Fournier was why my co-worker lost his usual reserve and was leaning heavily and breathless on my door.

My hope is that Fournier is a mischievous crank who enjoys pulling the tail of the watertight Harper (who, incidently, will not tolerate the mocking of the Lebanese peoples prefering to see them murdered from the air by the IDF). If that's the case I'll be sorry to see a controversial character like M. Fournier leave the public square to be replaced by a level-headed bureaucrat who will be pleased with neither shitting nor fucking.

xoxo

M

It's Like They Buried Elvis in Pet Semetary

2006-09-18T18:04:00.000-07:00

Bloodshot Bill
Trashy, Greasy, Rockin’ Billy
Flying Saucer Records

Somewhere in the early 1950’s country music went feral and became a breed of its own, called rockabilly. A mixture of mountain folk music, country swing, electric guitars and a very, very bad attitude rockabilly then went from bad to worse when it came in contact with the late 1970’s London punk scene and evolved into psychobilly.

Montreal’s Bloodshot Bill is a great example of that high energy country punk ‘billy: onstage the man simultaneously plays rockabilly riffs on his guitar, howls and squeals about booze and faithless women while keeping rhythm by stomping on the kickdrum. He’s like a wild handsome Elvis corpse risen from the grave, or ‘prison handsome’ as we decided over beers last night.

Trashy, Greasy, Rockin’ Billy has that handmade, rough-edged feel of the early rock ‘n roll records when truck drivers made them for their mothers on their lunch breaks. If you’re an audiophile with pretensions of being a sound engineer you’ll weep but if you like guitars fuelled by amps with broken tubes this greasy rocker is for you.

xoxo,

MVL

"Turn it up to eleven and rip the knob off!"

2006-09-18T17:55:00.000-07:00

Orson
Bright Idea
Mercury Records

After succeeding in angering everyone at the BCIT Safety and Security office with the bands on Orientation Day I’ve turned my attention toward alienating every one of my neighbours with two or three new CDs including this little gem from Orson, a five piece bundle of joy from LA.

Here these guys rediscover the best sounds from 1970’s guitar rock with the added low-end made technically possible by the invention of the compact disc and reworking it all into a bouncy, lively record. Bright Idea was recorded in late 2005 for a cost of $5000 and it not only got them a deal with Mercury Records it also put them on stage as the supporting act for Duran Duran earlier this year and now currently for Robbie Williams. The single No Tomorrow is climbing the charts in the UK but my favourite is the catchy title track, Bright Idea, with its tom-tom drumming and jangling rhythm guitar.

I think my neighbours like it best too since they keep rhythm by beating on their walls and floors.

xoxo

MVL

Crikey! The Nervous System Loves Red Bull

2006-09-07T07:37:00.000-07:00

I've been running around for three days. No end in sight.

The days are filled with one emergency moment after another, cobbling solutions together from odds and ends of processes and securing them with frayed pieces of tangled wits.

Oh, no. Daddy is not happy.

On the plus side (the negative being flawed, disorganized, discombobulation) I'm actually having a bit of fun. There is a bit of milk and sugar in my coffee. I think if I can hold on I can make something nice out of these experiences.

I'm off to see Curtis Santiago and the Vendetta Republic, against my better judgement (regarding health etc). But the reckless heart can sometimes find lands that others had not conceived and sometimes (on the flip side) like Steve Irwin, have his heart punctured by the nasty barbed tail of a stingray.

xoxo

M

Woody Allen's Manhattan

2006-09-03T08:41:00.000-07:00

This is Shaping Up Like a Noel Coward Play. Somebody Should Be Making Martinis.

In 1979, Woody Allen released his film, Manhattan, starring Woody Allen as Isaac Davies, Diane Keaton as Mary, Mariel Hemingway as Tracy, and Meryl Streep as Jill (the ex-wife). Michael Murphy and Anne Byrne play Isaac's friends, Yale and Emily.

The film is set in New York amongst a group of intellectuals and writers. Isaac, a 43 year old writer who works for a SNL type comedy show is dating Tracy, a precocious 17 year-old. Yale, Isaac's friend, is having an affair with Mary, a flighty anxious intellectual writer. The sexual and emotional alliances switch up and you do feel a little as if you're in a Noel Coward play. The story moves along effortlessly with some absolutely brilliant moments.

It's a charming piece by Allen, shot in B&W, a soundtrack filled with Gershwin, and every Manhattan landmark you can think of. The Twin Towers make a ghostly appearance through the haze in the first few seconds of the film. Along with Crimes and Misdemeanors, Manhattan is my pick for best Woody Allen film. It's early morning so I won't be making a martini but I may just make myself a mimosa.

xoxo

Dear Dalai Lama

2006-08-27T06:56:00.000-07:00

The Dalai Lama comes to Vancouver September 9th

He's not a real god he's just better than us 'cause he's worked at it

The Dalai Lama arrives in Vancouver to discuss various ideas, such as Happiness and Stress as Determinants of Mental Health, Connecting for Change: Corporate and Social Leaders in Dialogue, and a public talk at GM Place.

The Princess and I saw His Highness a few years ago when he was in Vancouver at the Pacific Colliseum and he is a sweet and gentle man but unless you've been living in a military barrack or are one of the founders of the ex-gay movement or are in a maximum security prison the message in his public talk was not that startling. Yeah, yeah, be the change you wish to see in the world. Cultivate happiness, etc.

Nevertheless, Tibetan Buddhism has a lot to offer this world and the Dalai Lama is worth seeing and happiness worth cultivating and bettering your inner landscape to change the outer landscape an excellent strategy. So, if you've never seen him before or are only lately embarking on a spiritual journey make your way, on September 9th, to GM place and see His Highness.

M

The Last Days of Summer

2006-08-24T19:37:00.000-07:00

Autumn cold and golden leaves and morning frost just a few weeks away

I wake up in the morning too early and find myself behind a computer or hassled by an insistent telephone or in the middle of one logistical crisis after another by 9AM. Before work there is no quiet morning read, no puttering with the patio plants whose latin names I've forgotten but whose nicknames seem more apt (Yellow belly, Agnes, Larry the Creeper, and Brother of Larry), no coaxing them to grow or muttering encouragement as I groom them.There is no walk along the water, no 'hail fellow well met' to the start of day.

The alarm clock rings and the day is started with a cup of coffee that lately turns my stomach sour and a quick shave, if I remember, and I trot to the bus to catch one of three that run along Hastings on my way to the Burnaby Campus. I can barely finish a paragraph before I'm disgorged from the belly of one public transit whale into the belly of another like some unwanted Jonah and then as soon as I walk in the door and unlock my office the world begins to roar and rattle my windows until I can't take it anymore.

I've been trying to read the 1978 novel by Larry Kramer, Faggots, between bus rides and meetings and meetings and bus rides. I opted out of seeing Tomi Swick (I'm sorry Tomi) to sit in a downtown cafe to drink red wine and eat a Cobb salad and not answer any telephone or listen to anything. I read and eventually stopped reading and just sat.

Yesterday, I telephoned the Princess. She didn't answer. I called her from the street corner where she lives. I put my Treo away, went home, crawled into bed and slept until dawn.

I am so fucking tired I could die.

Who invented this working for a living? Who invented this life? Who the fuck cares whether Adobe or Canadian Tire access their market or whether the school's demographic are properly served by its corporate sponsors?

Does anyone?

Wouldn't we all rather drink a bottle of wine and and talk about Roland Barthe?

M

Everything I know about the sitar I learned from Anoushka's father

2006-08-14T15:30:00.000-07:00

"Raga's are precise melody forms"

So begins the CD An Introduction to Indian Music, by Ravi Shankar. This introduction didn't make me an expert on sitar form or style but it did help me understand the performance by Ravi's daughter, sitar player and composer Anoushka Shankar,during her recent appearance at the Chan Centre during Festival Vancouver.

Presumably Anoushka also learned much from her father and also apparently has added her own flavours and tastes to this classic Indian instrument and melody form.

She appeared on stage with a seven other musicians playing a combination of Indian and Western instruments, including a G5 Mac Powerbook, piano, an Indian wind instrument, tablas and voice.

It's hard to describe the extent to which she blends European influences into the Indian form since I'm really just a chump with a thing for Indian music but the effect was a wonderful mixture of melodic runs up and down the sitar with its bended notes and resonating symapathetic strings, the tap-tunk of the tablas drum, the beauty of a chanting human voice and the soundscape from the G5.

It was a very relaxed and easy-going performance with Shankar clearly happy being on stage and apparently surrounded by friends (she had a mimed conversation with someone in the wings during a lull in the music, "Hello. Great to see you! No, come around the side and sit in the front. No, no, there are people you know there", etc)

Now, after a night of Anoushka, I feel a little old-skool for still listening to her father's CDs and LP vinyl.

If you get a chance to see Anoushka, take it.

xoxo

M

We Found Old Man River

2006-08-11T14:58:00.000-07:00

The Tractor Grease Festival Sept 16

A few telephone calls, some groping about blindly through Google (sorry, ma'am) and a fortuitous brain flash surrendered the contact information for Earles by the River Campground, the site for the September 16th music festival in Chilliwack.

It's apparently about a kilometre down Chilliwack Lake Road on the left hand side (not the river side) and it's a welcoming place.

Or you can find it here.

We'll see the Seams, Ridley Bent, The Dirt and many more. We'll drink some beer or something stronger and warmer. We'll burn wood and cuss. We'll become lifelong friends.

xoxo

M

And why haven't they asked us to govern the world?

2006-08-11T10:52:00.000-07:00

We have opposable thumbs too!

Liar, Liar, pants on fire

2006-08-09T11:43:00.000-07:00

If everyone experiences life differently and there are many truths, as post-modernism postulates, then is there any such thing as lying? Or if truth is relative to point of view or other truths, what is a lie? If a door is different for you than it is for me is there really such a thing as a door?

Lying is defined, right now, as stating an untruth or misrepresenting reality to another with the intent to decieve.

BadMark and I are working on redefining lying and repositioning it so that it becomes a respectable tool in the post-modernist kit.

So far, we have: lying is stating an unrealized truth. Also: lying is simply an expression of an alternate truth. Also: lying is a disimilar or contested truth.

We're on to something, baby! We're heading down to the patent offices or where ever it is one goes to protect intellectual property. May your pants never be on fire again!

xo

M

You've got exactly 86,400 minutes to catch this performance

2006-08-08T18:58:00.000-07:00

Lounge by Tonya Marquardt until August 12

July 25 - August 12, 2006
8pm Tuesday - Saturday
Vibes Lounge
555 Davie
(604) 688-5559

Tickets available starting July 1st
@Little Sisters Bookstore
1238 Davie Street
Vancouver, B.C., Canada, V6E 1N3
phone: 1-800-567-1662

And I'm sure you can find tix at the door but call first to confirm.

xo

M

Don't Trademark Pride

2006-08-08T17:27:00.000-07:00

The sign says it all

You may not be able to read the sign on the blue pick up truck (my Treo has its limitations) but it says, "Don't TM Pride". This is a community response to the efforts by the Vancouver Pride Society to trademark the name 'Pride' in an effort to control the types and number of events that occur during Pride Week in Vancouver, including the nearly middle-aged Pride Parade. I believe the quote was, "somebody is going to control the name Pride and we want the community to own it" (but don't 'quote' me on that 'cause I'm going from memory).

There was also some sort of reference to 'unscrupulous' persons putting on events and exploiting Pride.

How any public event could be unscrupulously using the name 'Pride', duping unwitting participants, is baffling to me as is the belief that trademarking the name will prevent this. And the argument that 'somebody' will eventually own the name 'Pride' is contentious and open to argument.

Leave things as is, I say, and let the community throw good or bad parties, events, or fundraisers to the level of their skill or care. The nice ones will throw nice parties, the nasties will throw parties in which feelings get hurt but so be it. The nice people will find their way amongst their own and the slim-witted and innocent will find themselves tossed about in good and bad seas as is usual for them.

I agree: DON'T TM PRIDE.

I'm sorry. Did I say that out loud?

xoxo

M

They can stay up late 'cause they don't have jobs

2006-08-08T07:43:00.000-07:00

It's music to my ears but a grind on my body

I'll be at the following shows:

Nikki Hurst at the Roxy Aug 8
The Heartfelt Apologies at the Backstage Lounge Aug 9 or Lounge at 555 Davie St. or both should the adrenal glands fire up (without chemical prompting).
Anoushka Shankar at the Chan Aug 10
The Kitchen at the Fairview Aug 12
The Art of Dying at the Backstage Lounge Aug 13 (possibly)
The Welsh Bros. at the Backstage Lounge Aug 16
Tomi Swick at the Red Room Aug 17
Mother at the Railway Aug 19

Stop watching TV, getting enough sleep, taking care of your health or whatever it is you're doing and come out to see them with me. They start late, end late but we all have to get up early.

xoxo

M

Anyone heard of a guy named Earl?

2006-08-05T00:00:00.000-07:00

The Tractor Grease Festival September 16th

So, if you go to this website (click here) you'll see that a handful of local artists have self-organized a music festival of camping and song on Saturday September 16th. The number of confirmed acts has climbed from nine (when I heard about Tractor Grease) to eleven, the last posted number.

So, I've got a pocket of money, a tank full of gas, some beer, someone to take care of my cats, a laptop computer (battery fully charged), my trusty Treo 600 (for notes, terrible pictures, and interviews), and the thrill of a road trip coarsing through my veins.

What's missing?

Oh, yeah. Where the f'ah is Earl's By the River Campground ?!

Sure, I've checked out the search engines and, while I turned up the guy who owns it (Earl Commodore), I didn't turn up a location or a contact email or number.

Now, I'll have to telephone Cameron Latimer or Brian Fowler.

Here's a little something from ~*~'s blog

2006-08-04T09:22:00.000-07:00

take me

Take me
like milk in your tea
turning
the liquid smoke dance
of two
spun one.

Dervish-cum-atheist, this time.

Copyright retained by author, natch.

xoxo

M

Vancouver Pride Weekend Tentative Itinerary

2006-08-03T13:12:00.000-07:00

Apparently, I can be found thusly:

a) Friday night - TBD

b) Saturday night - Burlesque at the Lamplighter (till midnight or so)

c) Saturday night - 4Play at Storyeum (after midnight or so)

d) Sunday morning - Brunch at the Davie Village Cafe

e) Sunday noon - Pride Parade till 2PM

f) Sunday afternoon - Oasis beer garden (Tentative)

g) Sunday evening - Angels in America Part I

h) Sunday evening - Climax with the Princess

i) Monday morning - Ah f'ah! It'll be back to work for me, hangover notwithstanding.

If I can bump into you at one, or several, of these events then we're golden.

Cheers,

M

Mon Dieu! Quelle Horreur!

2006-08-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

This is why I need a gaggle of doppelgangers who report directly to me

So, the horror of an overly scheduled Pride Weekend is still unfolding with sharp and dastardly prickly consequences. Now, upon closer inspection the Odd Ball is actually on Sunday which means that I need to choose between Angels in America Part I and a dance party for queers, breeders, sexual outlaws and pirates. I've already been accused of 'losing my edge' for sleeping on the couch last night. And since I will likely miss both the Cirque de Sade and the Odd Ball I will have to do something spectacular in order to quash those rumours. I'm not losing my edge, by the way, I'm just sophisticated in my approach. Yeah, that's it.

Tsk tsk tsk. I'll have to have a hand in organizing this Pride thing 'cause obviously we all need to make sure my needs are taken into account first.

The good news is that Friday I'm no longer working but the bad news is that I'm working on Monday with a hang-over.

Rupaul is coming to Vancouver

2006-08-03T09:10:00.000-07:00

And when were you planning on telling me?

Great! But now, I have other plans for that weekend! With promises made and arrangements in order! The loop people...it's not a loop if you don't include others.

Well, you'll just have to head over to Celebrities and catch the midnight show on September 15th, dance all night and make out like a bandit for me and then tell me all about it over strong coffee or a mimosa at the Davie Village Cafe.

xoxo

M

Heaven must be missing an angel because you are...um...how does that go again?

2006-08-02T15:15:00.000-07:00

Anoushka Shankar on August 10 at the Chan Centre

I have tickets and a companion for Anoushka Shankar's performance on August 10. Shankar is the daughter of Ravi Shankar, the past-master of sitar music, and an accomplished player and composer in her own right.

And the Chan Centre, on the UBC Endowment Lands, is the perfect venue for her. It'll be sweet.

Check out the event here.

Namaskar!

"I bow to God in you; I love you and I respect you, as there is no one like you."

M

It's one long joyous occasion and we'll miss you if you're not there

2006-08-02T10:51:00.000-07:00

If you can't get laid during Pride week, let's sit and talk 'cause that ain't normal

Click on this link here for the Vancouver Pride Society's Pocket Guide to Pride 2006.

There's lots happening and for all types and tastes. Make sure you check out 4Play at Storyeum (and if you leave before 3AM, we're starting rumours about ya!). You can drop in after you go to the Odd Ball, the dance party for Vancouver's Queers, Breeders, Freaks and Pirates. It's at the WISE Hall and they close at midnight, leaving 5.5 hours to kill before dawn.

Watch for the the YouthCO AIDS Society volunteers marching in the parade. They've grown little angel wings 'cause they're marching with Hoarse Raven Theatre.

Also, Angels in America (see posting below) on Sunday August 6th.

It'll be a long action-packed weekend but I know you can burn the candle at both ends. And if you can't I have two words for you, 'Red Bull'.

Calling all grrls! Calling all grrls!

2006-08-01T21:39:00.000-07:00

Pride is around the corner and Ms. LP has a few things in mind for you

She says:
4PLAY - Saturday, August 5th 9pm-4am
Storyeum: 111 West Cordova St.

Featuring: Spinderella (Salt 'n' Pepa - NYC), The HitGirl Collective (Seattle), DJ T, MC Brigee K. Tix $25 advance/$35 on the day. Available @: Little Sisters (1238 Davie St.), Liquid Amber Tattoo (3475 West 4th Ave), Kokopelli's (2052 Commercial Dr.)

www.gplayproductions.com

CLIMAX - Sunday, August 6th 8pm-3am
Sonar: 66 Water St.

Featuring: Wasabi (Cherry - Seattle), L.A. Kendall (Hot Mess - Seattle), Julie Hererra (Hot Mess - Seattle), Colby B (Hot Mess - Seattle), DJ T (Vancouver), DJ De Lux (Vancouver), MC Brigee K (Vancouver); Performances by: DKUnited and Firebelly. Tix $20 advance/$30 at the door. Available at: Little Sisters, Liquid Amber Tattoo, Kokopelli's.

www.gplayproductions.com

August 6th - You and me, we'll see a play and then celebrate life

2006-08-01T20:01:00.000-07:00

Angels in America Parts I & II

In 1992 Tony Kushner wrote an epic play in two parts, Angels in America Parts I & II. Set in New York in the mid-eighties the action centres on a group of men and women in the maelstrom of the AIDS crisis that was just launching, looking for meaning in the face of death, deterioration and disease.

Hoarse Raven Theatre is presenting the full play with performances ending August 19, 2006. HRT is a great local theatre company who earlier presented Headwig and the Angry Inch (bastards made me cry) at the Lotus Sound Lounge (the perfect venue for that piece).

This Sunday, August 6, is your BEST CHANCE TO SEE PART I 'cause it's also a fundraiser for YouthCO AIDS Society. So, pull some money out of your pocket and pick up some tickets. We'll see you there (unless you're going to Cirque de Sade at the Penthouse - but why? The Princess is going to be at Angels in America with me, so what's the point?)

Ciao bella and bello!

M

Do you have a moment?

2006-08-01T19:53:00.000-07:00

Is there meaning in everything?

Time has stopped, it is no longer slipping slipping slipping into the future. All the timekeeping devices in my house have either stopped or are keeping irregular hours or are oddly disfunctional. This has all occured within the last three days. Or has it? I can't tell time no more.

Seiko watch from Egypt - not working at all.

Swiss watch - losing five minutes every
hour

Cardinal watch encrusted with faux diamonds (no, mommy, they're real!) - stopped working

Wall clock above my iMac - dead batteries

Treo 600 - the time is automatically set by the wireless network and it's reading 7:52 AM when it's actually 9:23AM (according to my iMac clock automatically set by the network)

The kitchen clock - reads 11 o'clock and I'm guessing that it's losing time but it could be gaining time

Bedroom clock - not working at all

iPod and iMac are in agreement - it's 9:23AM

Aww - f'ah! I was supposed to be at work an hour and a half ago!

M

Derogatory, my ass!

2006-08-01T19:47:00.000-07:00

sweet in the pants

adj. effeminate or homosexual. This term is an extended variant of "sweet" with the same meaning. A few citations exist that seem to use sweet in the pants to mean 'cool, good, sexy,' but the usage is uncertain.

Categories: English. Gay. Sex & Sexuality. Derogatory. Slang.

Citations and other information are available at the Double-Tongued Word Wrester web site.

Write! Write! Write!

2006-08-01T19:17:00.000-07:00

And a few words more

I've been covering the local music scene and writing reviews for an on-line zine, KE-zine. Should you happen to be interested just click here and you'll be brought to the site by the little hamsters who do all the heavy lifting in the Internet. When you get there check out Music (Live).

And speaking of covering the local music scene - which of us has ticket(s) to the Tractor Grease Festival September 16? Yeah, baby, we're going camping in style with an RV, some beer, eleven bands and artists, and a baaad attitude.

First, we have to find the RV and work on the baaad attitude. And can you lend us some money for drugs? We can't go paar-teh without drugs, can we? No, seriously, I'm not sure.

xoxo

M