Dreampepper

Dr. Tongue's 3D House of Stewardesses.
I didn't make a penny with my time intensive Hallowe'en post-an-hour this year, which is only disappointing when considering how much time I put into it. Last year I made fifteen dollars grocery money and barely put a lick of effort in. Lesson learned: just throw junk together at the last minute.

Alas. Alack. Whatever. I sincerely have better things to care about, (and I mean that, as apparently it's in doubt), like when will our painting get done, how hard is it to put up wallpaper anyway, what colour should that bit of wall end up, and, most importantly, how soon can we have you wonderful people over to scope out our terrific newly semi-renovated place!?

Coilhouse Magazine, Issue 01 is finally here!
I bought one, have you?


from thier site, emphasis mine:

"Get ready for 96 glossy, full-color pages of art, photography, music, fashion and literature. In this issue, the stark android beauty created by Andy Julia for our cover is counterbalanced inside by his elegant portfolio of vintage-style nudes. Coilhouse travels to Ljubljana, Slovenia (literally! we actually went!) to interview Laibach, while singer Jarboe tells war tales from her career post-Swans. Photographer Eugenio Recuenco contributes a lush 10-page portfolio and interview, while Clayton James Cubitt delivers a poignant, visceral spread (again, literally) on the topic of genital origami. Renowned science fiction author Samuel R. Delany shares an exclusive excerpt from his forthcoming novel, “From the Valley of the Nest of Spiders,” while our first installment of “All Yesterday’s Parties” digs up forgotten party photos from eras long gone, starting with London’s Slimelight circa ‘95. Fans of WZW and Z!ST will love Zo’s fashion pictorial, in which she reconstructs a Galliano outfit on a budget. Pop-surrealist Travis Louie gives us a glimpse of his inner monster, and cult painter Saturno Butto has some medical fun at the expense of Catholics everywhere. All this, and much more - including supervillain how-to’s, Coilhouse paper dolls, interviews, fashion and art await.

Readers of the blog, we have another treat just for you: the fact that the version of the magazine that you are buying here today will not be available in stores. Coilhouse will be in stores this fall, it won’t be the unique version that’s available here. On this site, and on this site only, you can get the uncensored edition. This version includes a powerful piece that was too risqué for stores to accept without problems due to the graphic (and in our opinion, beautiful) images involved. Only 1000 copies of this very limited version exist - a mere fraction of the entire print run. And that version is only available here, on this site. When we run out, we’ll start selling the censored version that will also be available in stores - so get the limited edition copy that we call the “true version of the magazine” while we still have them!"

My deepest and most sincere congratulations to Mer, Nadya, Mildred and Zoe.

Pacific Cinémathèque presents Crispin Glover for three exclusive evenings, July 18-20.

Mr. Glover will be presenting Crispin Hellion Glover's Big Slide Show, an hour-long audiovisual performance-presentation in which he narrates images from his story book series. Following will be his debut feature film, What Is It?, a mind-blowing, taboo-obliterating phantasmagoria and psychodrama which he describes as "the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are snails, salt, a pipe and how to get home, as tormented by an hubristic inner psyche."

Each evening concludes with a Q&A and book signing.

TICKETS: $20 — Advance tickets are on sale now, but are only available on-line at www.cinematheque.bc.ca.

Tickets will also be sold at the door. Box Office opens at 6:30pm nightly. Annual $3 Pacific Cinémathèque membership required. Restricted to 18+. NO PASSES will be accepted for this event.

Thanks to Warren, I've been in the number ten slot on BlogPulse, (an automated blog trend discovery system), for two days in a row now and I'm listed as the 34th most popular blog.

If I were the sort of person to use exclamation points, that would be a few of them right there.

I'm doing civil war themed pin-up photography with Spider Robinson's photographer before the garden party today. I'm not sure how that sentence came into reality, but I blame living on Commercial Drive. He's making me breakfast, then we're going to figure out how to fake vintage lingerie.

Montreal team announces advance in HIV research.

Oliver and I have found ourselves a month together held in our hands like sticky string, (fun, wonderful, but what the hell is it?). We're still being late to everything because of the trouble we have dragging our bodies from one another. I should have left the house already, but the chance at internet is too good to pass up. My evening house, my fairy-tale, it has a computer but no connection. I am cut off when the sun sets. I am directionless, trapped in warmth and white sheets, unable to find purchase in the ether. My fingers tap away on count-tops and tables, asking for information, trying to morse code the air itself. Late at night, I look down into my unemployment and try to wonder what's going to happen.

I never heard back from the people who asked me to be their company blogger, Telus didn't hire me, though the interview seemed almost perfunctory, but I have extra work again on Monday, a paid focus group on Tuesday evening, and a freelance odd-job coming from RipTown Media. The longest I've been without gainful employment, but somehow I'm keeping it all together. The utility companies are going to threaten me again soon, but I'm hoping that I can cover that by taking Robin out and about the town for a little Social Therapy.

To the people who bought mp3's off me. Yes, they are coming, and I am most dreadfully sorry it has been taking this long. My microphone died, leaving me with little equipment options. I have been using my mother's home-studio, but it's all the way across town, which can be literally hours away by bus, and I've been scrabbling so much that I haven't had a day to devote. (Some of the work has been finished, but I thought it would only be fair that everyone have to wait together. Think 'according to the principles of Mercerism.'). I'm planning on going over to her house early Wednesday and not leaving until everything is finished or the busses stop running, whichever comes first.

Apple said it will pay $100 million for a license to use Creative's patented technology in its iPod music player, settling all legal disputes between the two companies.

Greek Day is on Sunday from noon to 9 p.m. Broadway will be closed from Blenheim to MacDonald to make room for vendors, music, performances and dancing in the streets. Bring yourself and your friends and be prepared to shake some poly-rhythmic booty. Liam, Vicki and I will be going.

So the other day, Monday actually, Dominique and I did something extremely silly. We made this sign:

Dominique wrote the sign and, after attaching it to sticks, I carried it. (I lack the skills required to create something so girlish). We only got as far as Penelope's before someone stopped us. A friendly older man in a white shirt thought it was funny and insisted we go in and show the owner. Already feeling pleasantly ridiculous, we went in and let everyone read it. The owner laughed, said he wished he was younger, then told us to wait, he had just the person. The first man was then sent out to fetch someone as we assembled for a picture to celebrate our first successfully acquired "boyfriend". The man returned with Memo, a tall young fellow, who had no idea what was going on.

Memo, it turns out, has only been in Canada a month and is still learning english. We asked him if he could bowl and, with a puzzled expression, he said yes. The other men, with shooing motions with their hands, told him he was to go with us. He acquiesced, which was nice of him, and walked up the Drive with us while we laughed and explained that Dominique had been worried that no one would say yes.

Clap hands.

Our second "boyfriend" was collected at Abruzzo's, an Italian cafe in the block after Grandview Park. Francesco, a real character, who admitted a block later that he lied in answer to our skill testing question, "Do you know how to bowl?," so he could come with us. I've never met anyone so stuffed with machismo. He was amazing. Dominique describes him as perhaps "the most macho thing to walk the earth," and she may be right. He has a small tattoo of some sort of horned creature on his right arm and when I asked him what it was, he fumbled around and replied with, "Something strong, you know? Scary, and big, dangerous or a bull or something, really manly. Masculine. Strong. Fierce. Maybe like a demon thing. I don't know what it is, but it's, you know, manly."

When it came to bowling, the woman who worked there was better than all of us put together. She threw a strike from the seating area. Through pure luck, we each got a strike too, but I was bowling left-handed to save my wrecked shoulder from agony, Dominique can't stay upright to save her life, Memo had never bowled five-pin before, and Francesco took everything far too seriously. He won, actually, in spite of our group effort to beat him. No matter how poor our aim, he had some terribly encouraging comment, like "It's going to be a strike this time, I can tell." or "Oh good try. Good try. You'll get it next time." Memo was an angel throughout, grinning when we had fun swinging Francesco's words back at him, twisting them from irritating to funny. All three of us found it nerve-wracking, but silly too, how little Boyfriend #2 realized we weren't appreciating his help. There was an especially choice moment, just after Francesco realized he was in the lead, when he asked if the winner got a kiss. I think I saw Dominique's hands tighten on her ball for a moment and I know I saw Memo just freeze. Instead of looking at him to answer, I kept my face as straight as possible and answered in a level voice, "I would hope not," I said. "How painfully antique that would be. No fair at all. The winner already gets to win. I say the loser gets a chocolate bar."

But as it's now dawn on the longest day of the year, I'm to bed. This is the television to be continued...

Sunday will be the next ANNUAL CAR-FREE COMMERCIAL DRIVE FESTIVAL.



The Drive will be closed to all motorized traffic from 1st Ave to Venables from 10am to 8pm, with free entertainment from noon to 6pm. (Yes, expect the Carnival band, though fantastically, artists are welcome to perform in the street all they want, with respect to the neighborhood and festival rules).

It's a grass-roots event, entirely funded by local businesses, (word has it they turned down corporate sponsorship from Pepsi this year), and run by volunteers, with performance stages at either end and in the park, a roped off street hockey area, a contingent of crazy chopperfest types, (the Burrow-y people with the strange bicycles). Last year there was an approximate twenty-thousand people wandering about and enjoying all of it. (Which might explain why it was impossible to find anyone). According to their website, "new this year is the WORLD CUP ZONE in Victoria Park. In honour of the ongoing World Cup of Soccer, the Festival will celebrate this truly global sport and the Drive's cultural heritage with a showcase of international entertainers as well as family activities hosted by the Vancouver Whitecaps."

Last year's first-ever Car-Free Commercial Drive Festival was wonderful. Regrettably I missed most of it because I was too busy with other things, (Sunday Tea, The Mad Hatter's Tea Party at Trout Lake), but even late, the street was a sea of clearly happy people. This year I'm going to devote my full Sunday to it and run around to see as much of it as I can, camera in hand.

---

Monday, Korean Movie Mondays is showing Shadowless Sword this week, a Duelist-like, style over substance, sword-fighting film. As Duelist immediately catapulted itself into my top twenty within the first half hour, I highly recommend dropping by. Remember, if you're reading this, you're pretty much invited. Psychic lady building, 8 pm. If you don't know where to go, just say.

The Vancouver Art Gallery has switched cheap day from Thursdays to Tuesdays. This week, luckily, that's the day the Ad Mare Wind Quintet premiere music written especially for the rotunda's unique, reverberant acoustic qualities. They'll be playing new pieces by three local composers, Jennifer Butler, James Beckwith Maxwell, and Jordan Nobles.

AD MARE
7:00 pm
Tuesday, March 7

Rotunda of the Vancouver Art Gallery
750 Hornby Street, Vancouver

Admission by Donation
Information: 604-730-9449

I haven't seen the current exhibition, though I've been wanting to, (Brian Jungun being snazzy and all), so I think this will be a perfect opportunity. It's always a treat to have someone provide sonic landscapes to compliment the gallery's exhibits. Wandering the vast rooms in silence just isn't as kind.

Also, and more personally important, Theater Under The Gun is this week. What happens is that 10 to 12 theatre companies and/or ensembles are given an inspiration package that contains an image, a prop, a sound bite, and a line of text, all of which must be used in the final performance. They have 48 hours. When I worked in theater, this was one of the most twisted, intensely fun things I ever took part in. (I will carry the mental scars of John Murphy, (he of The Heretic), fucking a plant on stage to the end of my days.)

This is splendid news, because as far as I was aware, Theater Under the Gun had died this year. Chris McGregor and Trever Found, the two folk I used to know who ran it, hadn't been able to find time for it. Apparently, though, it's been taken over by two fairly-strangers-to-me, Heather Lindsay and France Perras, and they've stuck it into the new Show-Off Festival, Here Be Monsters, (here's a flyer), which is being run by Monster Theater, a group who work occasionally with my Calgary friends, One Yellow Rabbit.

Tickets are $12, unless you're interested in checking out a few shows, then a pass is $25. I'm planning on getting a pass and letting the festival take over my life for days at a time. Anyone care to join me? It starts tomorrow at Performance Works at 8pm. You'll miss the Low concert, but that's forgivable. I promise.

First time kissing a man shorter than me. First time a few things, actually. I was out with James after dinner, we'd been talking about the death of our personal industries, and we were hunting for a nightclub. Somewhere with people, somewhere with dancing, somewhere with music going on. Stairs and stairs and stairs. Different designs, different prizes. It was like a treasure hunt or playing french doors with real ones. At the top of one set of crude roughly painted steps, ones surrounded by lemurs and monkeys in some kind of imaginary tropical tree, was a bar filled only by intensely drunk under-age girls dancing saucily to Duran Duran. Another set of stairs, these ones low and mirrored, opened up into the inside of a fake airplane with red kanji characters splashed above the bar and filled with atrocious hip-hop. Another place, we didn't even make it up all the way. A song came on, something immediately recognizable from the late seventies, and it kicked us into immediate retreat. We barreled down those stairs as if the eighties hair gods were chasing us with hairspray and lighters.

Somewhere along the way, at the television music place I think, James his his head so hard that I heard it in my teeth. We poked our heads into a few places after that, a two level place playing house on top and 80's music on the floor filled with exact replica's of the strung out lead singer of The Wolf Parade, a sour booze place with choppy wooden floors and too much cigarette smoke to see through, but he'd lost momentum and it was time to head back. One more place though, one last chance to see. Red rope out front, a wicker ball threaded through with christmas lights, the foyer a strangely residential hallway with a make-shift table as the mandatory coat-check at the foot of the metal and tile stairs. This is it, I thought, but first, to walk James home.

Upstairs was a long low room cut into different areas through clever use of stairs and stripper poles. I liked how well crafted the space was. The walls were lined with dark velvet and the mood was Upscale Having Dirty Fun. It's been noted that I appreciate style. The clientele were a different matter. The VIA rail staff party collected some of the IBM staff party, migrated in earlier and now were dominant. Drunk engineers in black suit and tie who called me rude because I wouldn't drink with them. "If you were a francophone girl, you wouldn't be so uppity. I'd be kissing you right now." They kept surrounding me and trying to push shots into my hands. "Where are you from? You're here alone, aren't you?" They were entirely sleazy, but easy enough to shake off and occasionally better entertainment than the music. The music was unbelievably bad. At one point there was an audacious and painful mash-up playing made of Pump Up The Volume and the Miami Vice Themesong. It was a toss-up if the DJ was brilliant or simply brain damaged.

At the point where I'd decided that I either had to leave or burn the place down and salt the earth, things changed.