n: vb: the spice of imagination
I took Lung and Nicole to a film shoot at the Burrard Street secret stairs last week, where we took a ton of pictures. The sound inside was beautiful, like the ocean on a rainy day, but heard through a megaphone, crackling and thrumming and incredibly comforting, and the light was so perfect it was almost unreal. I’ll post more pictures later, as I get to them.
Life progresses, salted with the exhaustion fall-out of CanSecWest, which was most of my last week. Getting up early, staying up obscenely late, helping where I could, dropping dead into the social scene, making people smile, checking badges, keeping certain people sane. I missed most of Tronapalooza, the big party on Thursday night featuring quadcopters and the actual machines from Flynn’s Arcade in Tron, but still managed to get back in touch with most of my interesting people, plucked from the anonymous sea of perpetual t-shirts and black CanSec branded pull-overs, so even though I didn’t tag along to Whistler this year, I’m satisfied with how I spent my time. Also, this year’s best misused skill: spatial dynamics! It took me fourty minutes, but I was able to weave bottles together well enough to fit approximately $2,000 worth of alcohol safely and comfortably into one hotel fridge.
(Far more sane than the year before last, which was “Dexterity! Using an obscenely sharp sword to snap the top off of champagne bottles first thing in the morning, on little to no sleep.” Yes, there were some casualties. Apparently katana slice through aluminum like water.)
Today: Walking away from tsunami and related nuclear news, and instead doing laundry, some spring cleaning, sewing a button back onto my coat, building a photography site for Lung, and generally preparing for my trial day of work tomorrow.
“A kiss would do it.
One sprinkle of milkwhite salt
and I’ll break like bread at your table.”
– S. Sloat
Uncertain about my weekend away, I find everything I wanted to write about draining away, replaced by the landscape outside the train windows. There is a large, strange boat abandoned on part of the shore, a hulking, rotten thing, the discarded corpse of a predator. Every time I see it, I want to visit. Climb upon its ribs, explore the depths of its throat. The house near it, that of a witch. Driftwood, black paint, sorrow. Somewhere a hand-painted sign, STAY AWAY. The water is smooth today, enough to reflect the sky, a strange illusion of clouds and occasional threads of blue. Soon it is replaced by green farm fields dotted with tiny isolated homesteads, the tracks swinging in-land. A bridge, blue herons, the shock of a log yard with violent wood-chippers, the elegant, golden spray of chewed material gouting from the top of a long metal tube, propelled by a quick, vicious conveyor belt and the hunger of consumerism. Touch it and you’d lose your hand. (It scares a child sitting behind me). Next, a dense, sputtering flock of birds swarming like massive bees, a horror of movement next to a small white farmhouse, paint peeling in antique strips as potentially old as the magenta hot-rod rusting out beside it, fins pointed to the sky like a prayer.
The closer I travel to Canada, the more everything is gray. The more the trees I like, honest, naked, are replaced with depressing evergreens. To another set of eyes, the view might be spectacular – inspiring, pristine nature of the sort usually found only in magazines – but if it wasn’t for my lover in Vancouver, I would be certain that I’m traveling the wrong direction, towards failure. My home behind me, as if I am running away.
The skeleton of a blue whale presides over the 3rd annual “Bake a Cake for Darwin” event at Vancouver’s Biodiversity Museum.
In an effort to prod myself out the door more often, I’ve started scouring the city for events again. The next trick will be to actually go to some of them. (Ex. I intended to hit up the PuSH opening gala last night, but spent time with A. then Lori instead. Fail? Not fail? Still social, though stayed in. Tough call.) That said, here’s some good ideas I’ve chalked in, but haven’t solidified yet. Who’s in?
Tuesday/today
7:00 + 9:30pm – Half Price Tuesday, The Green Hornet by Michel Gondry at The Rio. $6. (With A.)
7-9pm – PuSH: Boca Del Lupo‘s free La Marea, Gastown, zero-hundred block of Water Street.
Wednesday
8-11pm – Jack and Martin from Maria in the Shower, an intimate duo show at The Helm restaurant, 1180 Howe Street. (With Jess.) Company bailed, stayed in.
Thursday
12pm-6pm – PuSH: Iqaluit at the Woodward’s Atrium.
7-9pm – PuSH: Boca Del Lupo‘s free La Marea, Gastown, zero-hundred block of Water Street. (With Beth.) Went to Bin 942 after for delicious tapas and killer chocolate fondue. Holy hell, I had forgotten how completely magical a raspberry tastes. There are no words.
9:30-late – EXCISION (Dubstep Invasion Series) at Gossip, 750 Pacific Blvd. $25.
Friday
9-late – Isaac’s Freaks & 45’s Formal birthday party. (With Tony & ?.)
12am – City of the Lost Children midnight movie at the Rio, (subtitled). Admission is $8 or $7 in costume. Stayed at the party.
Saturday
8-12am – The Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra with Jess Hill at Cafe Deux Soleils. $10-15 sliding scale at the door. (With Tony & ?.) (Sold out before we arrived).
8:30-12am – Stay Wet: An anti-celebration of the 82nd anniversary of the Dry Bill, featuring The Furniture, Blackberry Wood, Antiparty, and The Brass Action at The Railway Club.
9-12am – Karaoke at the Main St. Legion, 3917 Main Street. (Added to this list by request.)
10-2am – SinCity at Club 23 West. (With Tony & A.)
Sunday
2pm – PuSH: 46 Circus Acts in 45 Minutes, UBC Frederic Wood Theatre. 2pm. $12.50 General, $5 Kids under 12, $25 Family of 4 (max 2 adults). Box Office 604.822.2678 Went to brunch with Tony and A., then for hot chocolate at Cocoa Nymph.
3pm – Day for Night: Full Moon in Paris by Eric Rohmer at the Waldorf Cabaret.
Boca Del Lupo, one of Vancouver’s most spectacular theater companies, has a free outdoor show for PuSH this year, La Marea. It starts tomorrow:
A man has just had a motorbike accident… An insomniac tries to get to sleep… A couple has their first kiss… A man stands on a balcony escaping the party that rages on behind him…
When strangers walk past you on the street, do you ever start imagining what they are thinking? Where they come from? Or what they are doing there at the very moment you glance upon them?
At night and in real time, moving from the pavement to illuminated windows, from balconies to café terraces, La Marea presents nine different stories—intimate snapshots that bring the zero hundred block of Water Street in historic Gastown to life for the opening of the 2011 PuSh Festival. These fictional scenes are repeated over the course of the evening in shop windows and on street corners, where audience members can observe the characters’ inner thoughts through projected subtitles.
"It’s an adventure… like a visit to a film set, without the camera crew getting in the way. This isn’t just a play in multiple episodes, it’s an experience touching on the beginning of love, the end of love, and everything in between." – Montreal Gazette
January 18-22, 7pm – 9pm.
Outdoors / Site-specific.
The zero-hundred block of Water Street in Gastown (between Abbott St and Carrall St).
Second Level Wizards Awesome Events Society, a Vancouver not for profit society, is hosting their second H.P. Lovecraft-themed convention and film festival. Join us for a live performance by local Cthulhu rockers The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets with Scythia folk metal, short films from around the world, live burlesque performance by Little Miss Risk, the inaugural Miskatonic Middleschool Annual PTA Bake Sale, (Bake Sale proceeds to BC Children’s Hospital Foundation), and the world premiere of the ‘Thickets newest music video 20 Minutes of Oxygen.
What: Cthulhupalooza II Lovecraft Convention & Film Fest
When: Feb 19 2011. Media Welcome (Event Begins 7PM)
Where: Rickshaw Theatre 254 E Hastings St.
Details: Tickets are $15 at the door and online at secondlevelwizards.com.
Celebrate your enthusiasm for forbidden tomes, ancient space gods and eldritch cake by joining us on Feb 19. Prizes for the Miskatonic Middleschool Bake Sale competition are provided by our generous sponsors, entrants should contact us to register at info@secondlevelwizards.com and for rules and regulations. Roaring ’20′s period costume welcome. It’s tentacular!
Check online at www.cthulhupalooza.com and www.secondlevelwizards.com for more information on Cthulhupalooza II, registration, vendor tables and other details. Sponsored by Kerberos Productions.
Tony is in town for a long weekend this week, released from Microsoft’s gray walls by U.S. Thanksgiving, a holiday that celebrates giving the locals smallpox blankets. Or something. Wierdos. Anyway, quite handily, this weekend is one of my favourite Vancouver events, the East Side Culture Crawl!
So! Great!
*does a little dance*
Also, tonight is APHRODISIA, a dance party/alt local fashion/art show at W2, curated by Ash Turner and hosted by Crystal Precious.
And, for those with tickets and a word in, tomorrow is Global Warming.
Dear annoying man who always bombs around my apartment with an offensively loud dirtbike at inappropriate hours,
It is two:twenty in the morning. You do this a lot. It is always a problem, but right now especially so. Please stop. There are three inches of snow on that cobblestone street. Today you are waking the neighbors and you might die. Though you are apparently a terrible human being, I’m sure there are people who would be sad if you were dead.
Thank you.
Signed,
the girl who always wants to steal your fucking spark plugs.
edit: I just confronted him. he was out getting smokes, in this snow, without a helmet, with a stoned passenger, who also had no helmet. he might maybe seem nice, but dude, really?
Seattle’s big post-burn arty dance-party, Seacompression, is this weekend, so I’m off to Seattle today, back on Monday. Last year we arrived late and missed most of the shows, but we’re hoping to ride-share with someone this year and have a better time. (Also, this time we’re wearing much warmer clothes, just sayin’.) Due to my dislocated ankle and other injuries, it’s been maybe an entire year since I’ve gone dancing, so it’s going to be extra exciting to get out there and shake some groove-thing.
Also for those in Seattle, Cherie has a book signing tomorrow at the Northgate Barnes & Noble at 6 p.m. Y’all should come down and meet one of the princesses of pulp and support a local artist by buying a copy of her newest novel, Dreadnought, sequel to her run-away steampunk zombie success, Boneshaker.
Vancouver is hopping this weekend too. Tonight is the Fullmoon Steampunk Extravaganza, (w. The Gentle Infidels, Darker the Sky, Corset, and our very own DJ Spaz), from 7 p.m. – 2 a.m. at Century House on Richards st, and tomorrow is this year’s Work Less Party Party Halloween Party Masquerade Ball, from 8 p.m. – 2 a.m. at the Japanese Hall, 487 Alexander Street.