The September Arts and Events Flood

Ami­tai Mar­morstein and Celine Stubel
in Legoland
“Mor­mons are creepy.”

I don’t know what it is about Sep­tem­ber. Pam and I have duti­fully tried to keep up, but there’s just so much going on! I’m way behind in post­ings, so here are a few things just to get caught up.

The Fringe
We went to three plays (just a frac­tion of the num­ber pre­sented), includ­ing Dar­ren Barefoot’s charm­ing roman­tic com­edy Bul­loxed. Bul­loxed, as you can read from the blog about the play (but I include here so you don’t have to go hunt­ing for the blurb) is:

Set in Dublin, Ire­land, at the height of the dot-com boom, Cana­dian com­puter pro­gram­mer Jack is struck by love and a God-awful pain in his ‘bol­locks’ at pre­cisely the same moment. While he may have found the woman of his dreams, dis­cov­er­ing the source of tes­ti­cle pain is, well, more sen­si­tive. Will a clash of cul­tures and the nag­ging feel­ing that things just aren’t right kill the romance for good?

Is it pos­si­ble to have a roman­tic com­edy about tes­ti­cle pain? As it turns out, it’s not only pos­si­ble, but Pam in par­tic­u­lar (per­haps because she felt less empa­thy?) found it extremely funny. It’s a shame that some sub­jects are so tick­lish that the cen­sors would never let them through for a stan­dard sit­com or even movie, unless it were an inde­pen­dent film. After all, pain in the groin area is some­thing that many of us guys have expe­ri­enced at one time or another. While the whole tes­tic­u­lar agony thing was the ‘hook’ for the play, the play is more of a dat­ing dance, between a fiery Irish girl and geeky Com­puter Pro­gram­mer. I felt par­tic­u­larly proud as a new­comer to Canada to get the joke when Jack and Aoife enter into a scene singing the theme song to ‘The Lit­tlest Hobo’, which I learned out about via a “Cor­ner Gas” episode only a few short months ago. While I felt the whole story could have gone on a bit fur­ther, the fact that I wanted more was prob­a­bly a good sign. Per­haps Dar­ren will write a big­ger play next year.

A few nights later, we caught short but intense mono­logue called ‘Troia’ about the intern­ment of Ital­ian Cana­di­ans dur­ing World War II (not dis­sim­i­lar to what went on in the US with the Japan­ese dur­ing the same time period). Again, I felt it was too short, and per­haps even could sense a screen­play in there some­where. (My pitch to the pro­duc­ers: Think Snow Falling on Cedars meets Moon­struck and set it in Ontario).

Finally, our favourite play(and picked as one of the best of the fes­ti­val and repeated this week­end): Legoland. Legoland was the name given to the out­side world by two home-schooled chil­dren on a BC Com­mune (their par­ents get impris­oned for grow­ing pot, wouldn’t you know), Penny and Ezra Lamb. Their story was part cau­tion­ary tale (part of Penny’s ‘Com­mu­nity Ser­vice’), part kalei­do­scopic Amer­i­can Road trip, and part ode to every out­sider kid you’ve ever known (or ended up being). It was a scream, and as we left the the­atre, we knew that we’d seen some­thing really extra­or­di­nary. The actors, Ami­tai Mar­morstein as Ezra and Celine Stubel as Penny, were so per­fect for their char­ac­ters that if some­one ever turned the play into a movie, they would have to cast them in the same parts. Next year, per­haps we’ll triple our num­ber of plays attended again. Nine plays in 10 days? Well, some of them really are just 20 min­utes long.

The Blog­ger Meetup
Last week was the Sep­tem­ber Van­cou­ver Blog­gers Meetup. Sev­eral of us spent a few hours on a rainy evening chat­ting, eat­ing and drink­ing, in about that order. While we talked about a range of sub­jects, includ­ing how to blog about your some­one with­out them know­ing about it, are reli­gious peo­ple actu­ally dan­ger­ous (in these days of sui­cide bombers and Chris­t­ian theocrats, not a triv­ial ques­tion), how to make a liv­ing dri­ving traf­fic to web sites, and how we all make deci­sions about our lives. I think that Isabella Mori, our Meetup Leader, found a really nice meet­ing place in Cen­tury, an old bank that is now con­verted to a restau­rant and bar on Richards (about 2 blocks from where I work). The place is both cozy and impres­sive . That may be hard to imag­ine from the sound of it, but the high ceil­ings, leather fur­ni­ture and dim light­ing, along with friendly staff, a well-stocked bar and tasty food (I had crepes filled with BBQ Duck, Oax­a­can cheese and herbs — a lot of fresh tar­ragon, I think) all made it a win­ner in my book. It was a lit­tle noisy, but I’m happy to have found a new place to meet and take refuge on those dark and wet nights that will be on their way here soon.

Speak­ing of the sea­sons, fel­low blog­ger MJ men­tioned that she had read and partly agreed with my char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Vancouver’s pendulum-like swing between the city of the mind (fall,winter) and city of the body (spring,summer). She did point out, how­ever that not every­one can com­pletely go all-mind in win­ter and all-body in sum­mer, par­tic­u­larly those like she who are fans of win­ter sports like ski­ing and snow­board­ing (how could I for­get that stuff?). So I guess the city does not split the year so neatly. Nev­er­the­less, this last week­end we got to…yet another Arts Event:

The Word on the Street
On Sun­day late morn­ing we headed over to the Library, for ‘The Word on the Street’, their annual book and mag­a­zine fair. Booths around the library (and in that sort of mini-mall on the inside) as well as ‘The Word Under the Street’ in the base­ment hosted all sorts of lit­er­ary and lit­er­acy orga­ni­za­tions, writ­ers, poets, and other speak­ers. Pam and I were lucky enough to hear ‘The Hockey Sweater’ (a story that is so cen­tral to Cana­dian cul­ture that an excerpt of it is actu­ally printed on the 5 dol­lar bill!) read by the warm and funny author of the tale, Roch Car­rier, who is also one of the most cel­e­brated Que­bec writ­ers in Canada. It was made into an ani­mated short in 1980 (with M. Car­rier nar­rat­ing) and is now con­sid­ered a clas­sic of Cana­dian lit­er­a­ture. Pam was very touched by this cute story (no spoil­ers here — go and read it your­self!), and we both felt like we had got­ten one step closer to being Cana­di­ans. We also col­lected a ton of stuff, includ­ing books, pads, free mag­a­zines and var­i­ous tchochkes.

In a few days, Pam and I are going to take a lit­tle break, via a trip up to Whistler to take in some more of those BC vis­tas that put us (and our now more active minds) more in per­spec­tive. Man does not live by plays, con­ver­sa­tions and books alone.

PS: One of the rea­sons this post is really 3 is the fact that I’m spend­ing a fair amount of time get­ting ready to move this blog. Yes, I man­aged to get the domain ‘loudmurmurs.com’, and am think­ing about mak­ing the leap to Word­Press, which I installed and worked to cus­tomize a lit­tle ear­lier today at that domain. It seems none too soon, as I’ve been hav­ing a really hard time post­ing this — Blog­ger has been incred­i­bly flakey and slow lately.

If all goes well, I’ll be mov­ing to the new URL and blog­ging plat­form in Octo­ber. Stay tuned for a new look and new location!

More Canonical Menus...

Matt and I got to talk­ing about the sim­i­lar­ity of menus in some of the chain restau­rants around Van­cou­ver, namely the Cac­tus Club, Earl’s, Joey’s and Mile­stones, which led him to make this post, which had me ROFLMAO.(If you don’t know that acronym, it means I was amused).

Not to be out­done, I think there are other chains around here that have sim­i­lar menus, but these are the Cof­fee Houses. With the excep­tion of a few inde­pen­dent cof­fee houses sprin­kled here and there in the city (the Wicked Café being one of my all-time favourites) most of the cof­fee that is served in Van­cou­ver comes from the chains: Blenz, Seattle’s Best, JJ Bean, the higher-end Caffe Arti­giano, and of course, Star­bucks. The menu I’m talk­ing about here is not the cof­fee drinks, but instead the cakes, pas­tries and other items served along with the cof­fee. I could include that most Cana­dian of Insti­tu­tions, Tim Hor­tons, but for now I’m going to assume that although they do serve a lot of cof­fee there, it’s mainly to accom­pany their donuts. The same goes for Bread Gar­den, Bojan­gles and the count­less smaller chains that I can’t think of at the moment: the cof­fee is to accom­pany the other items on their menu, not the other way around. How­ever, if you could cre­ate a menu for the typ­i­cal Van­cou­ver Chain Café, let’s say Best JJ Blenziano-Bucks, it would look some­thing like this:

Best JJ Blenziano-Bucks

Oat cake that is prob­a­bly also good as a build­ing mate­r­ial
Fudgie Brownie thing
Dry as a bone Scone
Blue­berry Bar
Date Bar (just like Blue­berry bar but drier and ‘health­ier’)
Chewy Marsh­mal­low Treats Square (for the 4-year old in all of us)
Cin­na­mon Roll
Molasses Cookie
Mac­a­roons
Chocolate-dipped Mac­a­roons
Pump­kin or Banana Bread or Lemon Pound Cake (some­times avail­able in Reduced-fat ver­sions)
Cof­fee Cake
Very Dry Blue­berry muffin

Get the feel­ing the menu is mainly about sugar? I wish one could get ‘savory’ items at one of these cafes, like a plain crois­sant, ham and cheese crois­sant or a spinach crois­sant (like they had in Boston’s Star­bucks but appar­ently not on this coast). I also wouldn’t mind a Cor­nish Pasty, a soft pret­zel or maybe even pou­tines. (All right, maybe not those). Did some­one decide that cof­fee needed some­thing sweet with it, or are these other items beyond the stor­age capa­bil­i­ties of a Best JJ Blenziano-Bucks Café.

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines

Sep­tem­ber has always been my favourite month of the year, and not only because it is the month of my birth. When I lived in the North­east, it was always the time of lots of blue skies, crisp, cool air, and that spec­tac­u­lar fall foliage. It was always a seri­ous month, deal­ing with the end of things, and per­haps even thoughts of mor­tal­ity. My mother has always vehe­mently been a Spring per­son, asso­ci­at­ing her birth month with rebirth, new blooms, the end of win­ter, more com­fort­able weather (although often not quite yet), and longer days. Nope, not for me. I’ll take a Fall walk in Ver­mont with the smell of wood fires over a muddy trek through a gar­den that’s maybe get­ting ready to get going.

These days, I can’t say that I love Sep­tem­ber quite as much. Van­cou­ver doesn’t get those flashes of color in the trees and the air isn’t all that dif­fer­ent, although you do have to start wear­ing a coat again. Instead, what’s in evi­dence is the switch back to the city of the mind from the city of the body. I’ve talked about Vancouver’s yearly pen­du­lum swing between the hedo­nism of the spring and sum­mer months and intel­lec­tual and artis­tic pur­suits of the fall and win­ter months. This is not unique to Van­cou­ver; my par­ents, who spend a lot of time in Paris, talk about ‘la ren­trée’ (From the web site understandfrance.org):

For the French, the year does not begin Jan­u­ary 1^st! It begins in Sep­tem­ber and the begin­ning of the year is so unpleas­ant that it ruins the Sum­mer vaca­tions (no won­der the French need so much vaca­tion dur­ing the rest of the year). It is called “la ren­trée”, like in schools. Just imag­ine : in Sep­tem­ber, you receive the tax bill, kids start school and it is the period of the year where, tra­di­tion­ally, many strikes take place, par­tic­u­larly trans­port strikes (train, metro, etc.). It takes a few months to recover, then Christ­mas comes (noth­ing spec­tac­u­lar) then the “sol­des” (sales, more inter­est­ing), then Feb­ru­ary vaca­tion (very appre­ci­ated), then Easter vaca­tion and the won­der­ful month of May, with its “bridges”. Then it is time to plan Sum­mer vacation.

I’d say for Van­cou­ver, it’s more like ‘le réveil’ (the reawak­en­ing); a time when you no longer spend the long after­noons that stretch into the evening at the beach or sit­ting in the park (or hik­ing up Grouse). Even though the sum­mer did have some the­atre, includ­ing the suc­cess­ful ‘Bard on the Beach’, there are now sev­eral fes­ti­vals and con­cert sea­sons that are all set to begin. This past week­end, we made another short visit to the PNE (hardly big brain food, but after all, we were just get­ting started). I think I’ll always think of the PNE as a sort of farewell, to sum­mer. After that, The Van­cou­ver Fringe Fes­ti­val, which includes 10 days of enter­tain­ing and some­times chal­leng­ing evenings of the­atre, mostly on Granville Island stages, starts in 3 days. Just 11 days after that, the 25^th Annual Van­cou­ver Inter­na­tional Film fes­ti­val, includ­ing some 300 shorts and fea­tures from over fifty coun­tries (and a quar­ter of the films this year are non-fiction — which I guess means Doc­u­men­taries in most cases). At the end of the month, the Van­cou­ver Sym­phony Orches­tra opens their sea­son with Strauss’s Ein Helden­leben. So as you can see, every­thing starts up, and not quite in the way that the French do it.

I’m a big cul­ture vul­ture, so I’m thrilled that this is all hap­pen­ing, and if it is in part because it’s not going to be so nice out and the sun is going to set ear­lier and ear­lier, then, so be it. My mind is tired of being on vacation.