"Camille, Lee Miller, Gala or whatever" (Sunday April 8 2007)

Before anything else, did you listen to Southern Counties Radio this morning at about quarter to nine, to hear Alexis talking about her charity CD and South Coast Idol? Well did you? We did and we're eight thousand miles away from their catchment area. Make an effort! There was a bunny singing and playing piano, too! The things you hear on the internet, if you're not careful.

Thinking of going daily, or at least "the day something happens", with this, as Sunday evenings are becoming a bit "oh god, got to write a blog entry which will be massive". The problem is that things which were great fun at the time become chores to document if I guiltily leave them lying around in the back of my mind for a while.

A prime example of this is the visit of Dan Parkes and his partner Kathryn to this burg a couple of weekends ago. I didn't write about it then; writing about (and, to be fair, moving into) the apartment tired me out; and now it's a fortnight later and forget about how I feel, I look like a bad, bad friend. So, to redeem myself, let me say that it was a real pleasure to catch up with Dan, who was at The Creative Assembly before I got there and left not long before me, and who has spent the last two years living in Toronto, taking a career break, in the sense that he doesn't want to do more games programming and so broke out the quill and ink and wrote a novel. Ohweeey! Sounds like he didn't have bad results sending it to prospective agents, either. We ate out at the Shanghai on Friday night, and then on Saturday they completely failed to get out of bed to explore Vancouver Island, so we got a sheepish phone call in the afternoon asking if we'd like to catch a movie. We ambled over to Tinseltown for the early show of the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. They kinda hated it; Dan was apologising profusely as the credits rolled, and then he realised we'd really liked it. Well, it looked good, the script had a lot of heart, and it was much more fun than I'm expecting from Shrek 3.

So thanks for visiting Dan, and if you hate it back in England, move back here! Especially now we live next door to the Shanghai.

Where am I up to? Let's figure it's Saturday March 31 and we're off to the Shadbolt Arts Centre for the next in our Black Box series of dance performances. We did our usual trick of eating at Metropolis and catching the 144 up to the Shadbolt. Now you'll remember we liked the last show. This time: not so much. Actually this was awful. The group was called mmHOP (no not mmbop, although that would have been preferable - it stands for marta marta HOUSE OF PRIDE, of course) and comprised three women and two men dancing and talking - talking way too much - about the concept of resilience. Didn't help that the show was called "RI'ZILYENT". Didn't help that their dancing was frequently out of sync with music or one another. Didn't help that they took a break halfway through, until about three-quarters of the way through, to pass around a microphone and tell dull stories about painful personal experiences before nominating the next person in the circle to dance the relevant feeling or emotion. Most of the feelings and emotions turn out to look exactly the same when danced, but I'm pretty sure that's not a problem of dance per se, more to do with what happens when you improvise on stage and expect it all to work. The addition of graffiti by a well-known paraplegic artist (don't ask) was pretty much of a subtraction too. This was poor. Really poor. This is the kind of dance show that makes people not want to come to dance shows. Only one of the segments had any real dynamism or interest. Other than that, it was five not-very-good hip-hop dancers mostly making shit up. And there's a reason why they edit a hip-hop video to within an inch of its life.

We shuddered about that dreadful show all the way home, and although we did our best to forget it, every so often it resurfaced, like bad acid. Er, as I understand can happen.

Happy Sunday, though, for although nothing else memorable happened, we discovered our floor's garbage chute. A revelation on a par with Burge and Brook discovering our uber-fridge's water dispenser at Queen Street! It is, quite literally, a chute running through every floor and depositing garbage in a big container in the basement. This means that if you drop a bag into the chute and hold the door open, you can hear it going bump-bump-bump all the way to the bottom. It's a hoot! Now we have to find a reputable stockist for hand grenades. Little things please little minds.

And now, synchronicity strikes! And now it does it again!

Strike One! On Tuesday we caught another of the free talks at Vancouver Public Library. This was the next in the series hosted by VICO, the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra, and the presenter was Pepe, the funky drummer who we saw at the improv concert a few weeks back. He talked a bit but mostly he played... covering a range of rhythm instruments from Africa, Spain, Cuba, and elsewhere. He had a fellow drummer from Guinea and a dancer from Angola to help out. Informative, funky, and just the right length... and free! Can't complain.

Strike Two! Yesterday we went to Telus World Of Science (1), the big globe by the docks which desperately wants to be the AT&T World Of Tomorrow from Epcot, but which fails dismally. We got there at about 2pm and had exhausted its content within half an hour. Probably more fun if you're eight years old, in which case the slightly desperate sheen of "Look, kids, science!" would be less obvious. Half the interactive attractions weren't working, or were so cyclical that it hurt to figure out where you were supposed to start interacting. Anyway, we were so bored, we left and went to Metropolis for a while before returning for the 5pm Omnimax movie which had made the ticket price seem, before entry, such a bargain. Omnimax, iMax, eh, it's a big big screen. I had a headache from how crap the exhibits were, so was it a wise move to go see PULSE: a STOMP odyssey? STOMP being the percussion group from Brighton who are now a globetrotting music concern? Well, it turned out the music wrapped my head up in a warm blanket rather than pummelling it to further death. And on the plus side - here comes the synchronicity - we saw pretty much every drum-like instrument that Pepe had demonstrated to us on Tuesday.

On the super-plus side, one of the movie segments took in the rhythms and dances of Spain, specifically flamenco. And on the screen in a spectacular long purple skirt appeared the tallest flamenco dancer you've ever seen. Attack Of The Fifty-Foot Woman had nothing on this chick. What a happy panda. Sarah tells me that was my birthday present.

On a sidenote, we've eaten our second and last meal at India Gate, the tandoori up Robson from the library. The food's nice enough, but the food is good everywhere in town, so you might as well start rating places on service, and at India Gate it's slow. Sarah suggested a spoof VISA ad: "Getting your bill before you grow old and die: priceless..."

On the subject of ads, here's an interesting bit of semiotics. There's an ad for Fido, a mobile phone service - offered by Canadian phone giant Rogers, if you look real hard at the small print. (Just like Amp'd is nothing to do with Telus, no, honest, not a subsidiary at all, no, Telus is, like, the phone company your dad would use, but Amp'd is cool.) Fido has an endearing ad showing a slightly scruffy guy hugging a big faithful-looking dog, and it plays on the whole "man's best friend" trope to make you think Ahh, innit nice, must get a new mobile phone. However. There are actually several versions of this ad:

- One version, which is seen on posters in bus shelters and generally out and about on the street - has the dog more in front of the man, and they're off-centre, so the guy looks homeless. Yes, you can be down and out, but your dog will still be your best friend. Implication: no matter your circumstances, Fido is the mobile phone service for you.

- The second version, which is used in print magazines, shows the full width of the man, and the dog is more to his side - exposing the man's shirt collar and tie. Aha! He's a businessman! The real independent, unafraid-to-be-a-little-scruffy-but-still-wearing-a-nice-shirt-and-tie businessman, now you see, he uses Fido. Implication: so should you, if you want to be successful but achieve his near-zen cool.

The Fido website features a cunning half-and-half shot which exposes his shirt collar but not his tie, so you can draw your own conclusion depending on whether you're a passing businessman or one of these hippy loser freaks who believes in rights for poor people. (He said, in his unbiased way.)

They don't pick these pictures at random, y'know.

... See, I'm tired now and I still have stuff from yesterday and today to write about. And we haven't uploaded photos. Tump, tump, tump. But I get tomorrow off - ha ha! Radical is owned by an American company so most of Canada works Easter Monday but WE DON'T, LOOOOOOOOOOOSERS!!! - so we'll see about this 'blizzard of updates' thing starting tomorrow. And I bet it all unravels and I wind up updating every fortnight for the rest of my life... oi vey, my life.

Hugs and kisses (and other Hersheys products) from our overly-hot Vancouver apartment.


(1) That's Telus World Of Science, not Science World. OK, Telus clearly owns the place and pays for it, but this hasn't always been the case: the nearest SkyTrain stop is called Science World, and the official website is http://www.scienceworld.bc.ca and talks about "Science World at Telus World Of Science", which is a name fresh out of a legal department if ever I saw one. I mention this in such detail because I have the facts of it all on good authority from a mother of four who was taking her children there behind us and lecturing one of them on the importance of getting the name right. "It's not called Science World. It's called Telus World Of Science. You can't just call it what you want. That's not how it works. That's very selfish." Errrr... yeah. OK mom. In twenty years' time, or, what the hey, now, when you grumble that everything's sponsored, you might want to remember this day as the one where you practically slapped your child for not giving Telus its due.