Rest Assured

Thunderstick

2010-10-21T10:15:00.000-07:00

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.

Dream

2010-10-18T09:20:00.000-07:00

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.

BSS

2010-10-15T21:07:00.000-07:00

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.

Creepy

2010-10-13T21:34:00.000-07:00

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.

American Apparel going down the tubes

2010-10-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

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?

Xiao Dao

2010-10-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

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.

Women of East Germany

2010-10-06T09:25:00.000-07:00

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.

Worst ad...

2010-09-22T16:56:00.000-07:00

Consumerist.com has a worst ad in America contest going on right now. freaking hilarious.

as is this... and this...and this... and this

and this is totally subtle.

Warehouse

2010-09-14T21:27:00.000-07:00

I'm working in a warehouse right now, lifting and carrying fake greenery. It's the girliest warehouse to work in, and everyone dealing with the stock are in fact girls. But those 10 foot fake palm trees are stcuk in buckets of cement, and after two days of hauling buckets of cement, not to mention other large, heavy things, my body is in a state of shock. I'm so physically exhausted right now, I can barely lift my hands to type. But I like the work. There's something satisfying about being this extended. My arms are covered in big purple bruises and scratches, as are my legs. I know I've pushed my body as far as it'll go. As a Joe-job between gigs, I like it.

2010-09-12T09:46:00.000-07:00

We had to put our little chihuahua down yesterday moring. We got the call at 7AM letting us know that he had gotten worse, and walked hand-in-hand in the sun the few blocks to the vet. I made sure he could see and hear me as she injected the meds into his little IV, and told him he had been a very, very good dog, and that we loved him very much. His eyes focused long enough to look at me, then he lifted his head to Michael, who was holding him. He lay his head back down, his eyes unfocused, and he was gone. Suddenly it was Paco's body, but no Paco. He looked like a limp, taxadermied version of himself.

We had had him for four years, and the three of us were a family. He sat on my shoulder at the base of my neck as Michael drove us to do errands. He curled into a ball and pressed himself into my stomach every night. He sat on my lap as I worked. We had a game where, instead of waiting at my feet to be picked up, he jumped onto the chair next to my desk. I rested my feet on the chair and extend my legs so that he could climb across. It was treacherous, his Indiana Jones moment every morning, and we both celebrated when he got to my lap safely.

I didn't understand how much pain he was in those first two days of his illness. I wish I had. I'm trying not to think of this as a failing of empathy on my part. About six months ago, I was seriously ill with what I thought was swine flu but was probably a nasty infection. Michael was out of town, so I was alone in the house. I couldnt move for 16 hours, and Paco lay next to me the entire time, liking my hand or resting his chin on my arm. He knew. Why couldn't I have known when he was sick, and done better for him? I feel disconnected from the instint that should have kicked in and said "This is bad. This is serious. Take him to the freak'n vet." I did eventually, but it was a day later, a day too late. This is not helping though. Time to just remember him and the joy he brought us.

2010-09-07T08:01:00.000-07:00

Long time no post. Hi there! Wedding was amazing, better than I could have imagined. The only sun that weekend broke through as I started to walk down the beach-aisle, and hid back behind a cloud twenty minutes later. That kind of good. A couple examples of the lovely- my six-year- old niece singing "All You Need is Love" into the mic at the reception, and 150 people joining her, swaying back and forth. My mother and father speaking to each other for the first time in 26 years, and not in a mean, hostile way. Seeing my step brother and half-sister for the first time in ten years. He now looks like Jerry Garcia, and she looks amazing.

The honeymoon was amazing! London, Paris, Berlin and Istanbul. I should have kept notes, should have kept a diary, but I was so in it, and exhausted, that I simply experienced it without much reflection. But holy crap did we take in a lot of culture. Just stuffed ourselves with it. Saw gallery space in newly conceived ways. Plays, dance, music, almost every night. Three freaking works by Shakespear alone. Tiring.

Highlights- In Berlin, at the Tanz im August festival, Hela Fattoumi doing a VERY controversial dance piece (Manta) about the burka. Bums were waving, she flashed us her wigg-ed bits, the movement was constrained and crippled; small, arthritic gestures until she threw the thing off of her and escaped. Very critical. We had seen Bertol Brecht's house that day, and it got me thinking about dangerous art. What is the art that one risks their lives to do now? What does dangerous art look like now? It looks like Manta.

Also in Berlin, the Boros collection, a fine collection of contemporary art housed in a WWII bomb shelter/location of legendary 90's underground raves. They only allow 13 people twice a day on the weekends, and it's booked solid months in advance. You're only allowed access through a tour. But Michael, God bless him, thought we should try anyway, and we slipped in. My favorite- Olafur Eilasson, Anselm Reyle, Kitty Kraus, who was also part of the Younger than Jesus show at the New Museum in NYC. There was some bullshitty pieces that you know they threw way too much money for in the pre-2008 bubble. A couple of the YBA's seem to represent a time now gone. But the Boros' asked the artists to reimagine the pieces for the gallery, so there's this great relationship between the pieces and their scary Nazi, concrete-walled, drug-fuelled environment. It was totally incredible.

Now back to life, back to reality. Unemployed. Job prospects not looking too good. No work out there right now. Chapters?

Last Day of Work

2010-04-05T15:16:00.000-07:00

Finished my last day of work today. They have decided that they probably won't need another story producer in four- six weeks, after I have recovered from surgery, so this is it. Dim Sum with the bosses on Wednesday, another contract done.

I can't speak for anyone else, but every time I come to the end of a contract, I feel like I'm starting from the beginning again. Each deal memo completed is another chance to jump off this crazy train and go back to school for nursing, or art history, or to get a joe job washing dishes and just concentrate on writing. Although if you have to washes dishes ten hours a day, I doubt anyone could concentrate on much. So here I am again. It's spring, I'm unemployed, and I have this vague feeling that things could be different.

But for now, I'm giving myself a break. I don't feel like stressing about what I'm going to do. I've been told by doctors not to. And, for me, a surgeon's warning is what it takes to keep myself from finding something to worry about, honing in on it and setting the cloud of bees in my head to attack it. So for now, my mind is just going to be here now and not somewhere in the hazy future where I'm unemployed and presiding over a slipshod wedding.

Date Night

2010-04-04T10:01:00.000-07:00

Went on a date-night last night with the fiance. He's leaving on Tuesday to the Banff Center for a workshop of his new theatre piece, and can't be here for the surgery or until about ten days after. He feels terrible about it. And I wish he could be here, and hate when we have to spend tons of time apart. So we went on a date-date- we cashed in our $50 gift certificate at Joey Restaurant.

I don't know why it's not Joey's Restaurant, but it's not. It's Joey Restaurant. Ever so slightly annoying. But despite this, the food was good, and it was fun to people watch - like the 16 year olds waddling past on high highs that were way to high for their walking-in-high-heels skill level. They looked like baby ostriches in gold sequence tops. Very cute.

We drove to Gas Town to go dancing. I suggested the Lamplighter, and we gave it a shot. Huge line-up at 10PM. Everyone inside looked very conscious of the fact that they were inside the Lamplighter. I guess its the Place to Go, or it used to be. It's has now become way too popular to be the Place to Go. But there are those that still think that it is. And there's a certain self-consciousness that hangs in the room at the Place to Go. so I was totally happy not to get in.

We went to a divey place to play shuffleboard instead, and everoyne there, all under 30, was right in the middle of a drug deal. They all were giving suspicious hand shakes. Every single one of them. Everyone I happened to glance at had mini black holes for pupils and were chewing on gum like they had been ordered to by a general who was going to kill them if they didn't do it vigorously.

And then we tried Honey, even though Saturday is their "off-night," it was juuust right. The music was good in that pop, "Ah-just-wanna-dance" kind of way. There was hardly anyone there, but everyone who was there was on the dance floor (well, after I deflowered it by doing the foxtrot.) There was a group of gay hipsters with their gorgeous hag. There was a man who looked like an orange with sticks poking out for arms and legs. There was a couple out on a date, the guy being the biggest fan of dancing this side of Granville. He was awesome. He looked about 90 pounds, and he probably worked as a sales manager at Best Buy. And he had gelled his hair and put on his good, white stripped shirt for the night, and his shiny shoes. He looked as if he had taken salsa dance classes at some point, maybe by himself, just because it was the funnest shit around. And he cut it up. At the Lamplighter, he would have felt too self-conscious, due to the douches staring and laughing. But here, he felt totally free to have at 'er. He moved his feet every which way, kept the beat, closed his eyes. There was something old-timey about it, the way he enjoyed it. like he should have been on a dance marathon, or going to the church dance not because he was religious, but because it was the only place to jive to good live music. I wanted to go back and retroactively slap anyone who every made fun of him.

Over at the gay hipster pod, they were beautiful and gay. And then there was one dude, wearing a Roots Canada hoodie and mittens, who just didn't get it. He looked so self conscious and uncomfortable, I just wanted to go over there and give him a hug. Those are the people I usually relate the most to, but he was out of control. He kept rubbing up against the gorgeous hag in an attempt to dance "crazy". She was obliging. But it was awkward.

And then there was Mike and I - sharing fizzy virgin juice drinks, joking around, giving each other dance lessons, me demanding that he dance as if in a sequence from a musical set in a club named Honey, having an amazing time together before he leaves for a long time.

Bed Ridden

2010-04-01T08:13:00.001-07:00

I haven't posted in so long. Jeeze.

So next Friday I go under the knife. I'm having a short rib removed, which is weird to say because usually they are on a plate. But there's a vein wrapped around one on my left side, and last year it caused a massive blood clot to form along my shoulder, which came scary-close to killing me. So I had an angioplasty and have been taking rat poison to thin my blood ever since.

Since then my day-to-day has been totally normal except for occasional discomfort, a prohibition on intense exercise and the fact that, if I accidently got pregnant and failed to notice in the first few hours after conception, the baby would have an 80 per cent chance of extreme mutation. For me that was the worst part of it. Accidental pregnancies happen.

Anyway, on Friday they are removing the offending rib through a key hole incision in my armpit.

Yesterday, the fact of what's going to happen struck me, and I got nervous. But I think it's purely instinctual, to be repelled by cutting and digging and the drawing of a piece of me out. I asked if I could keep the rib, and they said no. I asked them how on earth was I going to create my new gender if they weren't going to let me keep it, and they told me I'd have to figure out a plan B. Suggestions?

I'm going to be bedridden for four weeks, and can't even touch a computer. I'm already preparing a list of books I'm going to read - finally reading Stark and White from cover to cover. The new Zadie Smith came in the mail the other day, which made me clap my hands and jump up and down. I might try a new genre I haven't read before, like sci fi fantasy or something. Any reading suggestions? Any genre suggestions?

I'm going to watch Important Television Series. The BBC just came out with a list of the best TV shows of all time. I've already seen the singing detective, but am only on season four of The Wire. I'm so watching the rest of the Wire in a two-day marathon. Any other suggested watching?

It's kind of like a bed-vacation, but where it hurts to breathe. Or so they tell me. I'm not allowed on the computer, but the surgery is on my left arm, so I'm going to try and get a few two-finger-typed posts in. A day.

Vancouver's Insane Live Music Venue Laws

2010-03-08T14:16:00.000-08:00

I'm writing an article right now on Vancouver's lack of live music venues, and have to say, this city is effed. It is literally legally impossible for someone to open a live music venue that is not either a restaurant or a sit-down theater. And the ones that do exist keep getting torn down to build condos. Where are their licenses going? No one knows.

It is virtually impossible to open a venue off of our Entertainment District, which is basically one street. If you want to open something off of Granville street, you need a Restaurant Class 2 license. In other words, if you want to play live music, you need to feed 100 people a night. You could get a cabaret license, but successfully winning one off of Granville is almost impossible. The application processes for a liquor license (and who would want to go to a gig that didn't serve booze) is arbitrary, expensive, complicated and approval is unlikely.

One of the reasons for this mess is that the three families that own the Entertainment district have very talented lobbyers, that for years have convinced city council that to open a venue anywhere else would mean lawsuits and complaints and a lessened ability to sell high priced condos.

Now, though, the city is introducing a pilot project to reshape their venue by laws. By early 2011, they're going to offer the province a proposal as to how they should change the by-laws, so as not to completely kill off live music in Vancouver. But it'll be slow going.

2010-02-28T16:00:00.000-08:00

Forget all that - Canada deserves some heated patriotism right now. Go Canada!

Olympics

2010-02-27T12:10:00.000-08:00

I've never seen anything like it - I don't think anyone has, in Canada at least. Literally thousands of people flooding the downtown streets so overwhelmed by their sense of patriotism that they can't contain it. Screaming, chest-pounding patriotism; oceans of red and white; young dudes wearing nothing but the Canadian flag and Dickies, their faces painted, breaking into the anthem every two seconds. I hate to be a downer, but being on Granville last night made me uneasy, in part because I was the only one sober.

And maybe sobriety is unpatriotic, because there was something ominous about the fist-pumping, howling patriotism on display last night. There's too much history of bad behind it. It's a baby-step from jingoism, from exclusion and group-think and a sense of the un-Canadian. At the same time, it's like, let the kids feel a sense of pride in their country. why not? As long as they're not beating on immigrants. It's very Canadian of me, actually, to be weary of too-outwards of an expression of this.

But I always believed that one of the reasons Canadians didn't display their patriotism in such a fanatical way was because of a collective distaste of it. We see what happens south of the border and are a bit repelled. I feel like something really changed with these Olympics. Like one woman said on TV, Canadians are finally allowed to express the pride they feel for their country. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Olympics

2010-02-13T14:39:00.000-08:00

There's a collective feeling that bringing the Olympics here was a big mistake. A corporate orgy, a bankrupt city. A Coke-a-cola truck leading the torch across the country with it's bass turned high. No snow, tragedy, the bad design of sledding track, rain, mud. One billion dollars in security alone. Six billion dollar bill that we'll have to pay $4000 each to settle up. But, i have to say, those opening ceremonies were beautiful, inspired, and I felt proud of how we as a country were being represented.

Yes there are the political questions of our tendency to prop up our native cultures for international consumption when we need to look like a diverse nation, but then once the revelry is done, implementing policies that might not be the best for first-nations people. But, still, it was gorgeous and inclusive, and not only did we have a slam poet wrap up the cultural event, we had freak'n punk fiddlers. The prairie segment embodied that particular feeling of being on the plains beautifully.We were reminded why kd lang, who borrowed her suite from David Byrne, rocks. Yes, there was the awkward moment of Gretzky waiting for the sliding doors to open as he help the torch, only to get into a pick up truck and be chased by random dudes. And, yes, one of our props had erectile disfunction. But you have to be pretty cynical not to be at least partially impressed by what they accomplished last night.

Here are my pics from last night revelries... and here's my favorite coverage so far - Brian Lynch is telling it as he sees it, but keeping his mind open.

Outsider Art

2010-02-06T20:24:00.000-08:00

There's a story in the NYT's about the Outsider Art Fair that's happening in New York this week. In discussing what makes this kind of art "outsider," they mention Canadian painter Holly Farrell, who had quite a presence at the fair. You can see her paintings here. I think they're lovely. Pretty, simple, and well-executed. I guess what makes them outsider art is that there doesn't seem to be much more to the message than, here are the things in my world, and I'm going to paint them. They're not self-referential, or aware of the texture of their own paint, or anything like that. Each object is useful, and prized for its utility. They are simply pictures of things. It's like she's saying, I'm going to honour the small things that make up my life by painting them. But I don't know. The objects takes on a haunted quality (and some are just cute.) The washstand and the white chair are eerie. They're from a life that happens outside of the frame that you can only guess at. But in the end, they're simply pretty pictures of things. I go back and forth on it. Does a painting need to be more than a shiny vase in front of an attractive pattern? It's good enough for me, but then it's also just decoration. And what's the difference? What does it need to say to become Art?

But it's interesting, the idea of what makes outsider art "outsider." I guess obsessiveness, mental illness, a child-like quality, a disregard for the rules of the art world, a turn away from the conceptual. I went to the American Folk Art Museum in NYC when I was there in September and it was an amazing experience. They had a whole wall of Henry Darger, of quilters and muralists and sculptors, all otherworldly, all beautiful. But a drawing made 20 years ago could have also been made 100 years ago and also five years ago. There was something timeless about the pieces I saw, similar to how folk art seems to remain consistent. But I could very well be wrong about that.

Push Festival

2010-01-29T23:10:00.000-08:00

Tonight went to see a New York based group called the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma do a piece called Poetics: ballet brut. Four average people taking a series of about twelve clumsy movements seemingly observed in coffee shops and street corners, and knitting them into a cohesive piece, to songs like You Can Dance if you Want to. The message is that anyone can create dance, that it's not just for the trained. Many long moments spent staring at each other, then staring at the audience. Many long moments simply holding a hand behind their head, or putting their hands on their hips. And as soon as it got to be unbearably boring, they brought you back and did something cool. But there were definitely self-indulgent parts, when the message was too hit-over-your-head, when the charm of watching untrained hipsters jump around the stage was simply annoying, when you wanted there to be some display of grace. But that's the point as well - our reactions to observing "bad" dance. But the ending is all worth it.

Class resumes

2010-01-22T17:02:00.001-08:00

I taught my creative writing class today for detoxing addicts. It had been a while - I had lost my three classes every six weeks gig due to being suddenly employed. But now I work from home, and have been begging for my spot back. No can do, but I am subbing once and a while. To my surprise, M, a music writer I had hung with back in the day through others worked at the facility and joined our class. My first exercise got off to a shaky start - they didn't quite get the rules, and I started making self-conscious quips that exposed my insecurity in the situation. A round man, round stomach, big round blue eyes, a round red face, a round, soft demeanor, who told us straight off that he had heard awful news earlier that day, reassured me. "No, this is great. Let's do this!" You write a sentence then fold the paper over, then right another sentience that the person next to you can see and they write a sentence, ect. Anyway, a half hour later we unraveled our creased papers, and laughed at farting goats and dying Santa's.

I find that there are starting to be types. The round man was the guy who always reassures me in what I do, wants me to like him, and wants me to feel comfortable as I'm obviously a fish out of water. And there's always a guy that resents me.

Next up,they had to write about the first time they drove. A man with a face like a fox, who was covered with a thin coat of sweat and obviously fighting back shakes, wrote and wrote and made us wait. He read his out loud then stared down at the paper for a second, smiling at the memory, and also smiling at what he had wrote. We all congratulated him on having a neat story to tell.

Another guy, a series of gashes on his face, wanted to rewrite his, wanted to skip his turn. I was like, "OK," and was ready to move on, but fox-face encouraged him, "K'mon man, read it, it's ok." He relented, and read his out loud, self-conscious, telling it as he went, not making much sense. When he was done, I smiled at him and moved on, thinking that my "that was awesome" would sound fake and patronizing. But M said it, and the guy looked at him and laughed and said "Yeah it was crazy!"

When the class was over, and we were moving the tables back, I started to feel my blood pressure drop - it happens every once and a while where my fingers and toes get ice cold, and I start to shiver. "Is it just me, or is it cold in here?" I asked the room. "It's just you," said the man with the gashes, bluntly, like something falling on my foot, and looked at M and raised his eyebrows.

I totally accept that I'm from another world from these guys. For some reason, when I get into that room I go all flakey. Round man, of course, thanked me, and told me it took his mind off of the terrible news of this morning. Gash just left without looking at me.

The last night of Chanukah

2009-12-28T06:47:00.000-08:00

I was thinking of converting to Judaism and in the process Michael had contacted a rabbi he had met a few years ago. That rabbi had left, but the new youth rabbi (they're supposed to be the most open minded of any congregation) invited Michael over for the Orthodox service and then Sabbath dinner. After having a quick burst of a mini-fight on the white stone steps as the men in suits brushing past us pretended not hear, we kissed and made up and entered the building.

After hanging our coats, we approached the doors to the closed off, place-of-worship part of the synagogue. "Usually there is a place for women at the back," Michael told me, and we walked through. First thing I notice is a rabbi bounding towards us with his hand stretched out in front of him. "You must be my guests," he whispered as he pushed us back out the doors. "Hello hello," he continued once he had pushed us out of harm's way. "So good of you to come. Women's entrance is that way."

Myself and about a dozen women had box seats to a service about electric light on the Sabbath. Is it wrong to turn on the electrical lights on the day of rest? What about turning on an electric stove? On the Sabbath, one cannot change the status or stare of any material. What if you asked a trained monkey to start pedaling a bike that started a generator that would then bring electricity to an element?, the rabbi asked. What then?

By the end of the talk/service, I had learnt that if you live in a building with a key swab, you need to ask a non-Jewish neighbor to come down and let you in, and that turning the lights on prior to sunset and leaving them on through the night is the best way to avoid uncomfortable situations.

After service we walked the half block to the youth rabbi's two-bedroom apartment, in what looked like subsidized housing blocks. There was a group of us that had meandered over; a doctor as thin and long as a blade of grass with his silent, culture-shocked girlfriend, a round-cheeked family therapist, two teenagers. The rabbi's wife, bustling about the apartment, looked as if she had just stepped off the kibbutz, strong and stalky in a long cotton skirt with her hair back in a scarf. The family therapist's wife was there as well, in the same scarf and skirt, with two young girls under each arm. Her face seemed chiseled out of stone, with a roman nose at a long angle, and eyes that were sharp and deeply set. We all sat around the table, recited prayers then sang. The rabbi's wife went to get the bread. The doctor, sitting across from us started humming and tapping the table with his hand. Mike and I leaned in to each other and cracked a few jokes about our ignorance of gender placement in the area of worship. The doctor kept humming, louder now.

"I guess I'm your non-Jew in residence," I said. "If I choose to swab you in."

"You can be my monkey for a day."

"I'm not going to be your monkey."

"You'll have to turn on the elements at least."

"You never turn them on anyway. Everyday's the Sabbath for you when it comes to the stove."

"LA LA LA LA LA LA LA," said the doctor, staring at us and now pounding on the table.

The rabbi sat back down after grabbing something from the kitchen. He began slamming his hand against the table too, humming and swaying from side the side.

"Oh," Michael said, and whispered "I forgot. We're not supposed to talk between the first prayers and the breaking of the Halla. Ooops."

We were dutifully silent as the dinner guests swayed and hummed and pounded the table until the bread was passed around. They read from the prayer book, and broke into song. The therapist had moved to Vancouver from the US only three weeks ago, and his wife had only flown in the night before. She seemed tired and barely ate. They were staying there at the rabbi's apartment until their move in two weeks. The doctor wanted to practice medicine for rural populations. The rabbi sang. Lots of laughter. I had this flash of what it would be like to have a framework through which to see everything, one that would unit all the dangling strings of my life, but one that brought laughter and community and God. I felt as if I had had a glimpse of how shallow my life was, constantly skidding on the surface of whatever it was that I was interested in that week. For a second I felt hollow.

With dinner over we cleared the table and started a game of kibbits, which had to do with numbers and dominoes. I found my way to the bathroom, and caught a glimpse of the therapist's wife curled up on a mattress on the floor, as if tucking herself into the rectangle of light from the doorway. When I came back from the bathroom (All the toilet paper had been pre-torn into little squares so that no one would have to change the shape or status of any material) the rabbi's wife and the therapist were standing at the head of the table and the mood had changed. "What if we got the neighbor from the first floor to come and do it?" she was saying. "Would that be allowed."

"I guess so, but I advised against this from the beginning."

"I'm a non-Jew. I can help with any Sabbath situation you might have," I said, kind of in a jokey way, which I immediately realized was totally inappropriate.

"Carrie, there's something you have to do. It's serious," Mike said, a little pale.

"We have a couple of text messages on her cell phone. We can't even touch the phone on the Sabbath, so could you read them for us?"

"Sure, of course, and I walked over to the phone with the therapist.

I picked it up. Two messages. I opened the first.

"Im sorry to say Mom died tonight at 7:30 tried to call yr not answering."

"Oh my god," I said.

He nodded and thanked me and began to cry. He went into her bedroom and shut the door.

I walked back to the table and the rabbi stared at me. "She's dead," I told them.

All we could do was stare at the dominoes in silence.

After a minute, the rabbi's wife said "She had been dying for a long time. She was very ill."

"I told them to wait until after the Sabbath," said the rabbi. "There's nothing she can do except grieve in private until Sunday."

"Maybe that's a good thing," I said. More silence.

"It's your turn," said one of the teenagers, and we continued our game.

Rosanne

2009-11-29T08:42:00.000-08:00

Remember the show Rosanne? Remember how revolutionary it was, a funny and smart. The episode where Becky farts in front of the entire school, but her date STILL comes and picks her up, in emblazoned in my memory.

schborgsie schnisie

2009-11-19T09:23:00.000-08:00

schborgsie schnisie

Love it. I have this urge to rent all of the Muppet movies tonight and watch them back to back. I watched Muppets take Manhattan last night, and got soooo exccited when the Seasemie Street gang made a cameo at the wedding. I had forgotten about that. I love watching the real people interact with the puppets, making the puppets even more real, and the people more puppety.

Bad Genes

2009-11-19T00:54:00.001-08:00

My boss said something today about how this scientist, very well-respected she reassured us, has shown that negative thoughts actually re-shape out genetic make-up, that bad thoughts make us sick on a genetic level. So we shouldn't have negative thoughts, is the logic I guess.

Maybe that's what the downtown east side is, the place where all of BC's negative thoughts go, because they have to go somewhere. Mud piles of negative thoughts composting in the streets. Sopping bad thoughts hanging from the trees. As long as they're out of the way.

I can see how positive thinking helped us evolve as a species. That go-get-'em attitude. Evolution's path is probably lined with the corpses of our early Sextons and Woolfes. Still is, I guess. Someone has to think the negative thoughts for a society that refuses to do so. Who gets stuck with that job?

No, thinking positive is important and necessary and keeps things in harmony and is the word of the ancients. As they say in BC, it's all good.

City Council

2009-11-17T22:14:00.000-08:00

I went to a city council meeting tonight, the first I've been to in Vancouver, the public forum doesn't count. I sat in the wrong area the whole time, with the press and the signed-up speakers, totally oblivious that I was in the wrong area. I started to get embarrassed and then realized that I was going to city council meetings for fun, and am past being able to get embarrassed for things like that.

Anyway, it was a specific public meeting about building an apartment building in the Vancouver neighborhood of Dunbar, a community curled around the outskirts of the really rick area of Vancouver, Point Grey. Many residents have been there 20, 30, even 60 years, and would never be able to afford to buy a house there now. But many are urban professionals, lawyers, professors, living in two-story post-war houses under A-shaped roofs, lush, BC gardens spilling out of their front yards. The Knox Unitarian Church has a giant plot of land in the neighborhood, and in order to keep itself out of the red (their halls are near-empty on Sundays,) they have agreed to sell a lot of their land to the developer of a proposed apartment complex for seniors. In exchange for that sale, the developer would build an annex for the church on that land.

Many/most of the residents of Dunbar are opposed to this proposed seniors home. Eleven years ago, a committee of residents got together and created a "Dunbar Vision" document that outlines what they wanted and didn't want for their neighborhood, and it was ratified by council.

This seniors home is technically five stories. No building in the area can be higher than three except seniors homes. It is over what that document outlined in terms of density, except in the case of seniors homes. In other words, if that building wasn't a seniors home, there's no way in hell it would ever get approved.

Also, that annex is going to force a very high brick wall onto the periphery of a few peoples back yards. and they want to put a playground on its roof. The whole building is going to block the sun and dwarf many houses along its street.

So what makes it a seniors home? You have to be 55 or over to live there. That's it. There is nothing else special to the design of the building, including the width of doorways for the inevitable wheelchairs, communal space, library, care attendants, a common kitchen, nothing that actually makes it a seniors home. And if you're under 55, you can pay a fine of an undisclosed amount to an unnamed company that will exempt you from that rule.

It was pretty apparent what the residents thought. The developer (the idea that he was foreign skirting around the edges of their comments) was going to sell his condos for $1.5 million each after having found a way to bust through the laughable "Dunbar Vision" and resulting bylaws for that hood.

It's sometimes boring and uncomfortable at public forums such as these (see last post.) But everyone was amazing tonight. One 90 year old woman walked to the podium and gave a tongue in cheek relaying of what the developers had proposed. "There are plenty of bike racks in the plans for the front this so-called seniors building. Because that's what we seniors need. Bike racks."

Another woman spoke, in an accent that hinted at long-ago Britishness, to all of the points in an astoundingly articulate and thoughtful way (she was the chairwoman of the Dunbar Vision Committee for a reason I guess.) She made the point that there is no law or regulation higher than city council that would force a landlord to stick to an age restriction on a building, making that building a seniors home. It happened to another building in Dunbar - they went back to council and asked that that amendment be changed, and council approved it. This developer can do the same.

The woman sitting beside me, wearing a bright pink scrunchy in her hair and pants that looked as if they were made out of upholstery, was nervous all night. She kept crossing out lines of type on a crumpled piece of paper, then writing them back in. Finally her name was called. She had what sounded like an Eastern European accent. She told council that she had watched as traffic became more and more dense in that neighborhood over the years, and how kids were having too many close calls with cars. That was one reason why she didn't want the thing to go through, the high traffic density.

The other was that in order to build it, they were going to tear down her home, and she had no where else to go. She had been on a waiting list for a co-op, the only other thing she could afford in this city, for nine years. Because her two children are different sexes, by law she needs to find a three-bedroom apartment, and that will be impossible. She is a single mom with two kids in Vancouver. She knows her options.

Pink Floyd the Wall LIVE STAGE ADAPTION

2009-11-08T11:44:00.001-08:00

Pink Floyd the Wall Live On Stage was so f-ing awesome. It was a Rushmore-esque, jazz-hands interpretation of the mother-blaming, angst-ridden epic. The wall was made of Styrofoam, and got nudged rather than torn down; the Mother lost her voice so silently gestured her part while someone sang her lines backstage. I saw my high school theater exercises incorporated into the choreography. Two "roadies" changed the sets by walking the furniture in front of the actors. Long minutes passed when no one was on stage at all. The school kids did clumsy jazz circles as they sang "Another Brick in the Wall." In other words, it's the best night of musical theatre I've had in a really long time. The only thing about it that wasn't so-bad-it's-good was the band. They totally rocked it, got every note of the album, brought it all to life. That album rocks, the movie doesn;t exactly hold up. But the stage adaptation will live on forever.

Support your municipality

2009-11-07T16:06:00.000-08:00

Right now, the City of Vancouver is $50 million in the hole. By law, municipalities aren't allowed to run a deficit, so they have to find a way of balancing the books. The city has been holding a series of public forums for citizens. What they want to know is kind of basic. Would you rather cut services or raise property taxes? They assume that people don't want property taxes raised more than 2%. But this means services are going to have to be trimmed.

Last night, I went to the open forum in my neighbourhood. Yes, that is now how I spend my Friday nights. In a small, back room of the Kensington Community centre, myself, an elderly couple, three men with obvious mental illnesses, a librarian, and a couple of blue-collar types listened to the power point presentation. The talk was conducted by two city councilors, and half way through, a slightly tussled Mayor Gregor Robertson tip toed in. He had biked the 40 minutes up hill from downtown. Basically, the city is $50 mill in the hole, they have trimmed as much "fat" as they could, which accounted for about $20 mil of that. They need to do something. They need to hear from us.

The councilors looked tired and as if they were going throug the motions. Periodically through the power point, various angry citizens, mostly the three representing the mentally ill, interupted to make a point about what the city was doing wrong. The councilors were respectful, nodding their head and asking people to save it for the end.

The power point illustrated for me how hugely important the mechanism of municiple government is. Water, garbage, libraries, community centres. One woman commented that since the recession, and Vancover has been hit bad, demand for community services has risen sharply. People depend on these services when times are rough. But it's when times are rough that the city cuts their funding. The councilor shrugged. She knew, but that's why we were all there - to find a solution. It was a bit depressing that more people wouldn't turn up for something so important. It felt good to be in a forum where our officials HAD to listen to what we had to say, no matter how rambly and whack-job it was.

One man with a pronounced stutter started to give a speech on loopholes in municiple serivce charges, and how they're related to the work of Hobes. I turned around and recognizedhim immediately. It was William Lim, a bird-like man with a white monk's crown of hair and his pant legs bound up in reflector tape. Back when I was a kid, he was a Ph. D student of my step father's, a Chinese poet who would send boxes of real holly to us for Christmas, and leave poems composed in Chinese script on our fridge. By the time he got to the erosion of democracy in his speech he paused, and said "you want me to sit down now, don't you?" Everyone laughed, because we all kind of did.

After writing out my comments, I turned to leave. I realized I had forgot my helmet and turned back to look for it. "Looking for this?" the mayor asked me. "I'm looking to buy a helmet. Is this a good one?"

"Haven't had to test it yet, sir, luckily for me," I replied.

Mayor Robertson went on to tell me that thhis was a typical croud for the open houses they had been putting on, how disappointed he was. He thanked me profusely for coming. I think he was truely appreciative that I wasn't a 65 year old man with a chip on my shoulder.

Mayor Robertson has been enacting real change within city hall, and it seems as if he's been paying a price for that. There's been an old guard in for 50 years now, one that doesn't question where election funds come from, one that turns a blind eye to conflict of interest and suspicious transactions. Vancouver may be one of the most corrept municipalities in Canada, with no real regulation or oversight. The province has approved a look into municiple election reform, which is sorely needed.

I'm starting to have a bit of empathy for city politicians. They opened up the floor for recommendations, no one came, but when they make their decisions, the general public are going to get all up in arms. Why not be a part of the entire process rather than only indulging in anger once the decisions have been made? Mayor Robertson talked about how the province and the feds have cut billions in community servcies and expect the coty to pick up the slack. But the cities don't get any bigger of a piece of the tax pie.

As I walked out, William Lim ran out of the room calling my name. We exchanged numbers. Gerry still had a few of his poetry books from twenty-five years ago, and he wanted them back.

Yay BC!

2009-11-04T12:34:00.001-08:00

Gordon Campbell's Liberals hate poor people. And those who work to save people's lives. And people who make art. Oh, and the mentally ill. But we've got a $500 million roof on the sports dome, and the Olympics are in 100 days!

2009-11-03T09:52:00.000-08:00

Adrian Mole is 40! Holy crap!

Rainbow Brite

2009-11-02T15:40:00.000-08:00

It makes me sad that dimply, five-year-old looking Rainbow Brite has been made over into this. Why do all representation of girls have to be sexualized? Where oh where has our innocence gone?

Creative Writing Workshop

2009-10-30T18:15:00.000-07:00

I lead a writing workshop for people who are going through drug detox in the Downtown East side. The quality of the work that comes out of our little hour-long exercises is impressive. One man, a quite, brick-wall of a dude with a long face and shaved head, wrote a an poetic piece in response to a photo I had brought to class. But another dude, who didn't participate in the class himself but walked through the common room with his ears perked, was angry and disrespectful.

"That picture looks like testicles."

"Ha, it does," I said.

"How would you know?" I couldn't think of anything to say. He responded for me. "Science class?"

I didn't even realize he was being so before Brick Wall leaned in and apologized for his behavior. "That's alright," I responded. "No, it's not," Brick Wall said. And it dawned on me that this guy had been purposefully disrespecting. Well, whatever. I can leave that place, and he can't.

There's something really satisfying for members of the workshop I think about writing a piece and then hearing our response to it. They read their work out loud, and we react. Seeing that people are directly effected by what they write is a really positive experience for people in recovery I think. One woman, jittery and scabbed and overly polite, smiled broadly when we all applauded her work.

On another note, here's Rick Salutin's response to the new CBC news. What the hell is happenign with that network?

On another

Police State

2009-10-29T09:59:00.000-07:00

Here's an article about the police state BC is turing into. As well, two citizens are taking the city to court, claiming the bylaw restricts their freedom of speech. In response, the city has claimed they will amend the wording of the bylaw, and that police will not be allowed into private residences, and that there will be no $10,000 fined for the signs. Maybe. They'll probably just wait outside on the street until the people come out of their homes and not give them a fine but arrest them right there on the sidewalk.

And here's a picture of my dog...

Yawp

2009-10-28T10:16:00.000-07:00

I went to see a movie recently, and in the line-up of pre-movie ads was this campaign. It was lovely to hear Whitman's voice boom out in surround sound in the dark, the scratch of the vinyl popping all over the place. And the ad was beautifully shot. But the contrast of 80-pound models looking over their shoulders quizzically and Whitman's words, the sense of art that's supposed to rise in us, is just funny now, kind of archaic.

Here's America:

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,

Chair'd in the adamant of Time

First blog

2009-10-27T07:48:00.000-07:00

I'm posting this blog as a way to get out of my own head and share some of the things I'm interested in. Warning: there will be discussion of wedding paraphernalia. I'm getting married in July. It's going to be right outside of Tofino, on Vancouver Island, now home to this. Romantic.

I may have had swine flu this weekend. I had all the symptoms, and a friend of mine suffered through it a few weeks ago. It started with a dry cough, and continued with three days of a very high fever. I drifted in and out of sleep for a couple of days, sweating through my clothes. I had a headache like I've never had before in my life, and the coughing rattled my swollen brain around in my skull. It wasn't even the Victorian hallucinogenic fevered sleeps. Just drooping in and out of consciousness.

Michael dodged the swine bullet: He was gone for the weekend, so I was left alone to sweat through the sheets. My best friend brought me groceries, left them on my doorstep, rang the bell then rode away. Totally don't blame them - get your flu shot, folks.

After a day or so I dragged myself to the TV and threw myself in front of that. We don't pay for cable, but a few stations are beamed in anyway, MTV being one of them. Peak Season, a reality show I worked on last year, was in perpetual rotation. Peak Season's a good show and all, I'd even say crackalicious, but it was kind of like a layer of hell. Thank god for the Comedy Network.

It started last Wednesday, and only now am I fully recovered. Not bad, for a flu that is actually killing people, which is awful and terrifying.