Thursday, October 21, 2010

Thunderstick

If you are in Vancouver, go see Thunderstick! Awesome wicked rad. Very funny, very moving, great performances by the fantastic Lorne Cardinal and Craig Lauzon.

But why was the house half-empty? Why wasn't this show more effectively promoted ? The show has been getting great reviews. What does it take to get a little online campaign going a week before opening? Not much. My amateur writer's salon could promote an event more effectively. I didn't even see any posters up other than 8x10 fliers thumb-tacked to a cork board in another theatre. I love the work that the Firehall programs. They stage important, edgy, political theatre. I just wish they put some money/strategy into getting the word out about their shows BEFORE they opened.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Dream

I had a dream last night that I walked up to a long table and along one side of it sat a line of people stuffing down KFC's Double Downs. When I asked them how it was, they all opened their mouths and let out this "aaaahhhwwbbb" sound. I want to try one.

Friday, October 15, 2010

BSS

Saw Broken Social Scene at the Commadore last night. I was going in with some low expectations for some reason. I had seen them in Regina about eight years ago at this small club and it was so intimate and raw, I didn't think they could beat that. But they were so freaking good. Tight, incredible musicians, great live show, fantastic forays into jamming, which didn't get wanky at all. Super dancable. On one side, I had three giant football players calling out beefy holla's, singing all the lyrics. On the other side was a 50 year old couple. Tons of young bespecled artist-types. Everyone was digging it. And then went on forever! Super generous, they obviously just loved playing and stirring up the frenzied energy. They were having so much fun. There were some of the same members from that first show in Regina, and they played even better.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Creepy

I actually like neck tattoos on some people, (I'm THAT hardcore,) but not on this guy. This morning, before work at the warehouse, I was in Starbucks getting a coffee. This tall, gangly kid comes in, and asks for a bagel. The first thing I think is, he's too nerdy and awkward, too YOUNG, for those neck tattoos. The way he spoke to the barista was off putting. Not un-nice, but too loud and forced, as if he was imitating himself, rather than just speaking. Totally uncomfortable in his own skin.

At the warehouse, I'm eating my breakfast in the last minute countdown before nine, and the kid walks in. Great, I think. "Hi, I just saw you at Starbucks," I say.
"Did you recognize my trusty bagel?" "No. Your neck tattoos." "Oh, thanks!" Wha?

Later on that morning, over heard talking to another warehouse employee: "Oh, I WANTED to buy a sniper rifle. But they're $15,000! I can't afford it, so I got a bunch of them tattooed on my arm." Urg.

Later on that afternoon, at a fancy hotel- we were, in panic mode and running out of time trying to set up an event. things were a little stressed: He comes storming past me, and in front of our clients, screams: "Fuck this shit. FUCK IT. I'm leaving. This is SHIT. BAM BAM BAM BAM (in reference to the hammering he might have to do, and its loud noise.) He searches out the hotel manager and says "Fuck this corporate bullshit. You're all assholes. You're all corporate assholes" and takes off, leaving us in the middle of the job.

He didn't screw The Man. He didn't show those corporate pigs. He left me and three women, making chump change and collecting layers of rash on our arms from the ceder, with hours of more work. I hate him.

And I thank sweet baby Jesus that he can't afford that sniper rifle.

Friday, October 8, 2010

American Apparel going down the tubes

Yay! Rejoice! According to the Globe and Mail, American Apparel is dead. The Globe is probably the last outlet to catch on to this. I think it's probably been clear for a while that the company is going down. The one time I've been in a store in the past year, there were more skinny, bespectacled staff than customers, and the racks were overflowing with unsold product (product I actually kind of liked, very conservative compared to the neon catsuits.) They've had a long list of shitty things happen to them in the last little while. A employee died at their Los Angeles headquarters; they hired undocumented factory workers despite the fact that their entire brand is based on a claim to ethical hiring practices; a leaked document showed that workers were hired and fired based on sexiness, and that no one was allowed to sue for sexual harassment. Gawker actually did a really great investigative series on the company, to the point that a non-disclosure agreement was written into employee's contracts. Now their stock has gone down 90 percent, and they're closing stores. Hurrah! The reign of faux-underground teen porn and wide-rimmed glasses is over. It was nice to have comfortable, logo-less clothing for a while though. Hopefully that will stick around.

So, what's next?

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Xiao Dao

My post yesterday got me thinking about a few people I know, which got me thinking about Xiao Dao. This story's in three parts. 1) How Xiao Dao lost his leg to the Communist regime, 2) how I locked Xiao Dao in the attic with a TV full of porn, and 3) how the Chinese rep for Jimmy Walker unloaded me on Xiao Dao's doorstep.

1) In 1985, Xiao Dao lived in the apartment over us in Beijing, and him and my step-father became good friends. XD was 27 at the time, and I remember him in our ratty green chair, cigarette in hand, his half-leg, a stump that ended right above where his knee had been, twitching restlessly. He folded his pant leg over the stump, then pinned the remaining fabric to the material on the back of his thigh. XD and Gerry liked to drink and light fireworks off the balcony, or drink and talk about politics. XD looked and talked like a half-Chinese Oscar Wilde. He had a caustic wit, a frevent desire to be a capitalist, and an impressive ability to hop up three flights of stairs.

His father, Robert, had been a British intellectual and staunch Communist. He came to China and became the editor of the English Communist daily, married a Chinese pianist and educator, signed on as a member of the Chinese party. Fifteen years of dedicated service went by. Then Mao came to power and the Cultural Revolution began and an employee of his whom he had supposedly wronged ratted him out to the local for being forgein and not a devoted party member. The soldiers came to his office, made a big show of arresting him in front of his reporters, and took him away. He was placed in solitary for three years, a sentence punctuated by frequent torture sessions.

The rest of his family, his wife and two sons, were also arrested, and taken to a hotel room. The windows were covered with the same newspaper their father had edited, layers of it, so that the print barely glowed in the daylight. When it became clear they were going to be there for a while, XD's mother drew a keyboard of the sheets and taught them piano, humming the notes as they played. She delved into the deep recesses of her considerable memory and taught them everything she knew from her years in education. She kept them on a strict schedule - up at 5AM, breakfast at 6, kinesthetics at 6:30 - to keep them sane. This was harder for the older brother, Xiao Bao. We were told he left something in that room after they were finally released three years later, that his personality fundamentally changed. I remember him as being quiet, serious, not a frequent smiler, the opposite of XD.

In the last few months of their confinement, XD began to get very sick, sweating into the sheets, a throbbing pain in his leg. He couldn't find the energy to move, let alone play the sheet-piano or do kinesthetics. The first thing they did after being released was take him to the hospital, where doctors found that the cancer had spread up his leg. They immediately took him into surgery and removed it right above his knee.

I used to practice piano in their apartment, XD's mother gently keeping time with her long finger. She gave me cookies and smiled through my clumsy starts and stops. I remember down the hall from the piano there was a room that smelt like cleaning products and bitter herbs where a pale, sunken man lay in bed all day. Sometimes he would shuffle past in a brown robe, but for the most part, he was always in bed, staring at the wall. One day, there was a knock at the door, and a man asked for Robert. His wife went to fetch him, and as she helped him approach the door the man told him that he was very sorry, that he felt such a deep sense of regret for what he had done he couldn't sleep. He was a small man, but a humble man now and needed Robert's forgiveness. Robert collapsed, and was taken to bed, and died a short time after. At least this is how I remember it being told - the man came to the door, and Robert died soon after.

That's kind of a sad ending. But XD is literally one of the coolest people I've ever met. So totally funny and smart. At least there's that - at least he survived.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Women of East Germany

This is facinating - a study has found that women raised in East Germany are, well, better. They diet less, make only 6 percent less than men, compared to the West's 26 per cent. They have kids earlier and work full time and have higher-positioned jobs. They have less issues about childcare and balancing work/parenting. Younger childrearing and daycare aren't necessarily positive things in themselves, but the lack of neurosis surrounding them might be. You could argue that sending a kid to daycare at 3 months is too soon, that he needs his mom around him constantly for a little longer. But if the mom, when she does bring him home, feels no guilt, is positive and happy and fulfilled in the time she has with him, that's probably a good thing.

But it makes me think about the positives of growing up in a Communist sustem, which are never, ever talked about. We value freedom above all else, so any system that restricts it is EVIL. But the few people I've met who have grown up under communist rule; my bitchy but brilliant translator in Kazakhstan, Sacha; Xiao Bei, a former Red Guard; the poets we met in Cuba who ran the Writer's Union there; my step-father's good freind who had to build his own computer from the scraps we sent him, piece by piece in the mail. They were so self-sufficiant, such hard-workers, that talking to them made the weaknesses that come from having grown up in the West flare up like a rash.

Sacha had a mind like a steel trap and worked with a focus and energy that blew me away. She wasn't nice, which was startling because, where I'm from, niceness, especially in women, is very important. I mean, most ANTM winners climb to the top based on their "likeability." Presidents are elected based on "likeability." It's a personal softness that indicates the common touch, a relateability. You haven't gotten too big for your britches if you're still likeable.

But Sacha grew up not having the luxury of worrying about things like that. Maybe a little hardship produces personal strength, and we've constructed our culture so much around likeability, commonality, individual convenience and comfort; TV watched alone in our living rooms, ect ect, that we've lost a bit of that strength. I know very strong people from North America, of course. But culturally, comfort has taken a big lead in priorities. Comfort and freedom. Maybe that bubble has burst now, though. We're paying the price for easy luxury.