Entries Tagged 'quirky arts and misc culture' ↓

As a freelance broadcaster there are a few things that lift my feet right off the ground into a sprightly little yahoo jump, one of those things is getting a piece on the radio.

Especially if it’s on one of my favourite shows.

Here’s a few clips of just that; these guys made the rest of the no’s throughout the year seem like maybe’s.

 

 From CBC Spark Episode 98 [4:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 From CBC A New Day - Whitehorse, Yukon [5:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 From CBC's DNTO Distracted by Distractions 06/09 [4:04m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 From CBC's DNTO Pets 01/10 [5:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 From CBC's DNTO The Losing Control Show 05/10 [5:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Remember that movie with Frankie Avalon and original Mouseketeer Annette Funicello? Beach Party? Frankie got to surf (and was known as) the Big Kahuna. Whether my memory is making a mess out of the 1963 flick or not, I seem to remember the surfers were always on the look out for a huge wave; certain that this wave would be the one to make them a local legend and get their girlfriends’ wandering eyes back to adoring only them. Not to mention make’m kings at the local beach bonfire where everyone wiggles their bikini bottoms.

The Rock Out With Your Socks Out Sock Hop + Art Auction is Jordan and I’s Big Kahuna. We are hoping this soiree will make fundraising legend within our own smaller sized blanket weave of the year We Raised $13 000 for The Arthritis Society.

It is no longer the Year We Will Run a Marathon or the Year We Eloped in a Foreign Country or The Year We Danced to Queen and The Doobie Brothers for Cheap Entertainment. Nope.  It won’t even be The Year We Took a Ferry Ride to Turkey, or The Year we Adopted a Forever-Friend. No, this will be the year We Raised $13 000. It’s a feat. And we’ve been slapping our boards on waves big and small, so far raising a couple of hundred dollars at a time bringing us to 43% of $13 000. (Which is pretty darn-tootin amazing when we look at where we started from -0%!).

But the glitch and there’s always at least one, is we need to raise 75% of our goal by July 1st so we can stay a bit longer overseas after the marathon and take that boat ride to Turkey and make that wedding ceremony on November 4th. If we raise the 75% we don’t get penalized for lengthening our plane ticket (for free!) to squeeze in an extra week or two after the race. That’s $4056 bucks we need to raise in just a few weeks. So this is the time for the miracle worker, the bikini bottom shaking extravaganza, or the Big Kahuna.

And we’re hoping that Rock Out With Your Socks Out will be just the bonfire we’re looking for. (We’re also having a bake sale and bottle drive this month too).

If you’re in Vancouver and want to come the sock hop + art auction, we’d love to have ya! (And if you would just like to donate to the cause, you can do so online here).

And oh gosh, ignoramus confession time: The term ‘Big Kahuna’ is sort of like Coca Cola saying you can open happiness. “Kahuna”  is actually a word meaning “priest, magician, minister, wizard, expert in any field”, (not a huge wave you can surf). Also according to wikipedia pro surfers such as Duke Kahanamoku, have resisted the word’s pop culture lure out of respect for its original meaning. Hmm.

So, in our next big wave of fundraising, Jordan and I are looking for our “humpback“. (According to Wiktionary under Glossary of Surfing this is a big wave that is more like two waves. It’s also called “double-up”. And we sure hope this fundraiser does exactly that. Cowabunga!

Big Wave Surfing

Sarah Hyde and I recently did a CJSF 90.1fm radio show on names. Sarah renamed herself for a year and it changed her life in unexpected and great ways. That got me thinking about great people who change their names (Sarah’s pretty great). So, I thought of Mark Twain.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens ain’t a bad name, it’s actually pretty hefty in literary wit, presence and substance. So I wonder if the more flip, funny, shockingly concise and bang on “Mark Twain” in any way influenced what Sam Clemens was writing. A Twain would say: “Familiarity breeds contempt – and children.”  A Clemens? Maybe he’d finish if off with ‘and boredom’. Something reasonable that doesn’t smack you in the face with hilarity.

Most of us has overheard someone using a Twain quote. I have been the obnoxious-ex-smoker-do-gooder waiting at an intersection for a street light to change talking loudly to the people smoking with headphones in their ears about smoking “Quitting smoking is easy, I’ve done it a thousand times.” I’d say as I’d laugh tra-la-la, trying to cross the street with them. (Note, I’m not the obnoxious ex-smoker who doesn’t want you smoke near me- I actually love the smell of cigarette smoke- I just want to talk to you about how hard quitting is; plus, I miss talking to smokers. You’re usually such great conversationalists).  Smoking or not, I also throw this one in sometimes: “Golf is a good walk spoiled.”  haha-hilarious!

I dug up by way of a few clicks a webpage that shares how Mark Twain unwittingly got his name. The last radio show Sarah Hyde and I did was about ‘the secret lives of co-workers’ and interestingly, Mark Twain got his name (which is really a term for safe passage on a river boat), from a co-worker. Ah-ha! (Think of me as Jason Schwartzman’s character in I heart Huckabees, making connections where none exist!)

But it gets more exciting. Sam Clemens took his co-worker’s sometimes-alias, Mark Twain, after said co-worker passed on. I like to think of it as a fitting tribute to the man Sam Clemens/Mark Twain wrote about that first started off his incredible career as Amercia’s favourite humourist.

And really, I just love that guy.

Last week Sarah Hyde and I went undercover a la Barbara Ehrenreich (author of Bait and Switch) to expose the secret lives of those we work with. We hid our lapel mics under cardigans, wore wigs and asked them all about their hobbies- just what are they up to on the weekends and evenings anyway?

Nah, we didn’t do any of that. But we did interview people who do that.

No, not even close.

We interviewed people. Great people. And what we uncovered was sweet.

• Everyone has a secret life.
• They are usually made up of hobbies.
• And a lot of them take talent and passion.
• And they’re really not-so-secret.

We asked Journalist and although-she-doesn’t-call-herself-this-I-will, photographer Kathryn Marlow all about her Photo a Day Project.

We walked Jordan to work and found out about a guy he used to work with whose main motto in life was, ‘we work to live not live to work.’

We talk to the rocknroll librarian Tara Anderson about why librarians could all secretly be rock stars.

And Sarah does a BIG REVEAL on her own secret life that her co-workers have no idea about. I’ll give you a hint, it involved the word “Llama.”

As if I needed anymore reasons to love Sarah Hyde. It’s overflowing that love and now full up with Llamas too.

All this and more on Mouth2Mouth on CJSF 90.1fm ~ Thanks so much for listening!

The Secret Lives of Co-workers Part I

The Secret Lives of Co-workers Part II

Grace is located at 2685 Maple Street in Vancouver. It’s become sort of my daily prayer in staying playful. A reminder: This is it! This is what we’ve got and ain’t it beautiful?

Owner and creator, Wendy Williams Watt is a force -full of fun, insight, and that elusive “it” quality. (What is “it”?! It’s definitely bright (as in light and smart) and something some of us wear on our sleeves and the rest of us rub up against).

(Wait a second, does that make us some of us cats?)

(And what’s up with all the parenthesis?)

Sigh. That’s the thing with trying to describe “it”, you get cheap and feline in the process.

So, onto the short video we shot as a part of a job application. Wendy Williams Watt let us step over the threshold into a place of magic, a place full of “it” with not a cat in sight.

Maybe kids nowadays are getting more from Canadian history than I did growing up: Europeans sure loved beaver hats and in the 20th century we sure loved the Queen. (Who still wears a lot of hats, none of which are made from beaver fur, I don’t think).

While I am trying to be funny, I am not trying to be snarky. I can’t remember learning about The Quebec Act of 1774 which laid down the track lights for Quebec being recognized as a distinct society today. I do not remember learning about Residential Schools or the fact that the last one was shut down in Saskatchewan in 1996! 1996! And while learning that the longest covered bridge in the world comes from my humble home province of New Brunswick is awesome, I had little knowledge of the existence of the Tar Ponds one province over that both of my grandfathers worked with the coke ovens that created it! I grew up thinking history was sort of quaint and finished and definitely boring. How many maple leafs can one kid badly draw? Turns out, many.

So, history didn’t go deeper than getting a passing grade or watching Mom make room for my drawing next to the furnace bill on the fridge.  I wasn’t a part of it. It was was something that was done and to be memorized, not explored. Even with bristle board and a captain’s hat, history was a presentation you repeated from your text book. Something to get through before gym.

But as any short person over the age of 20 knows- history is alive and complex and full of the same issues and ideas we keep trying to gavel-slap and resolve from decades before: land treaties, a national housing strategy, a national hockey league and just what was John Chretien saying when he signed the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

And then I thought of something any first-year art college student thought of when they were six: why not draw John Chretien as a cartoon, er, cartoon history books!

There’s something about cartoons that takes the barriers of the page away. Cartoons open up the sheet of paper or computer screen in front of you like a swimming pool and invites you-tricks you-gets-you-to-jump-right-in. And the jumping right in, well, I believe that’s a key component to actively participating in civic life, flourescent pink water noodle or not.

Take Chester Brown’s Louis Riel: A comic-strip biography, for instance. I was playing Trivial Pursuit with Jordan the other day and the question was “When was Louis Riel hanged for treason?”  1885. I could see Chester Brown’s drawings. I don’t remember much of a footnote about Louis Riel growing up, and if there was one, it was more about him as a menace to the government than as a complex, compelling figure in Canadian history.

Cartoons capture that.

I’d love to read detailed cartoon accounts of Royal Commissions! How fantastically Canadian could you get? Unless your bookmark was Terry Fox’s sock, I think Royal Commission Report cartoon novels would take the ketchup chips. What would Julie Doucet’s take on The Royal Commission on the Status of Women look like? What would Chester Brown’s take on the 1996 Royal Commission report on Aborginal Peoples look like? In Canada, we royal commission the crap out of things and in spirit of democracy, this is very (slow) good. But how can we get the findings of the different commissions to reach beyond a handful of lawyers, judges and government personnel to the every day person biking to work and swearing they forgot not only their apple but their deordorant? What an incredible project Canadian Heritage could fund, cartoonists cartooning our history into our minds and hearts, the pages wide open, us readers waving a a pink water noodle around completely immersed in our country’s decisions and future. Cuz if there’s one thing I know about history, it’s not over and if there’s one thing I know about raising your fists to apathy, the first way to win the fight for both kids and adults alike: cartoons.

If you consult Canadian Living or Fishing or Art & Design you’ll find hobbies that interest all varieties of Canucks including gardening, ATV’ing, playing hockey, throwing a frisbee, walking the dog, shopping at flea markets and/or making fish cakes.

Jordan and I? Well aside from the fish cakes and getting our magazines mixed up, we don’t do any of those things. Our hobby?  Obsession.  Sometimes we find ourselves bonding over a mutual obsession and sometimes we find ourselves putting up with the other weirdo’s insistence on watching all of Dolly Parton’s interviews from 1982.

Over the years we’ve had a lot of obsessions, ahem, hobbies- throwing off our daily garb of t-shirts and jeans and sliding into our spideman suits in order to be on the hunt, prowl and look out for any little tidbit of information pertaining to our obsess- er- hobby at hand.  We’ve been trying to uncover the meaning of life through (seemingly) random internet clips, fragments of conversations, a ripped page out of a magazine and maybe an mp3 or book.  Sometimes road signs or failblog really throw us for a loop.  Anytime you’re invited over to our place it invariably ends with amazement at our findings on YouTube. I have an inkling this is why people seem to leave well before 10 p.m. Don’t they appreciate Superfriends?

“Wonder Twin powers: ACTIVATE!” We even have a handshake for this! (Not really, but we do emulate the holding-hand-high-five-freeze-frame at the end of that insufferable yet intriguing movie Tango & Cash).

Which brings me up to speed on our current hobby: The Kurt Russell Project.

I find Kurt Russell dependable; solid. Turns out Jordan does too. While I like his dancing blue eyes and unbreakable spirit,  Jordan favours his comic, everyday-man-take on the situations his characters find themselves in. Whether that’s dealing with a frozen alien or tricking a well-to-do socialite into doing his dishes and raising his kids. His bouncy dark locks and stubbly square jaw don’t hurt either.

The world is better with Kurt Russell movies in it. That is the hypothesis we’re working with anyway. His unwieldy characters are alive with quirky contradictions, fumbling humour  and take-a-stand dignity. He brings joy to the screen amidst all the violence.

So, I put forward our latest venture: The Kurt Russell Project. We’ll watch every single Kurt Russell movie ever made. This even includes the Disney ones, the horror ones and as mentioned earlier, even Tango and Cash.

Side note: I have a major allergy to horror movies, after seeing 10 seconds of one my eyes and ears turn into super-sensitive orifices that see and hear scary things everywhere especially in the middle of the night while trying to sleep.

Even when Kurt Russell is in them.

Then we rate the movies out of 10, rate his acting out of 10, wikipedia the crap out of it and discuss how it makes sense of some other thing going on in our lives at the moment or in the nation. For example, when Stephen Harper equated arts funding with expensive parties and galas it was like when Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China said, “Everybody relax, I’m here.” Watching the movie you know good ol’ Jack means well but doesn’t fully understand the gravity of the situation. So, there was no way we could relax cuz Stephen Harper was here -whether he was sitting on a piano bench or not- no way, he’d be just as inept at using the tapered bo staff as Jack Burton. And let’s face it, that’s too much of a gamble with arts funding on the line. (And “You know what ol’ Jack Burton always says at a time like this?”  Keep writing & calling your MLA’s!)

We figure our project is about 36% complete.  (He’s been in a lot of flicks!)

The beginnings of our rating system and notes on movies we've seen

If you notice under the column that says "Laurie" on the left, I may not rate the movies very high out of 10 but Kurt Russell consistently gets 10 out of 10 for his acting. Bravo!

So  far, our favourite is The Thing. Keeps you freaked out long after you have gone to work the next day and the hardest to watch was Tequila Sunrise. Two words: what happened?

We’ll post again a full updated list when The Kurt Russell Project is finished. In these pictures it’s hard to tell, but we’ve seen nine of his movies so far, (with a few we have started but not yet finished) and have consistently been delighted with his acting whether the movie has been a stinker or not.

Kurt Russell, we thank you and your art makes sense of our world.

Below is a quick synopsis of other hobbies we’ve picked up and loved or continue to love over the years.

PS:  if you want to come over on Friday night, we can’t wait to show you a Japanese exercise video and Chatroulette. What? You’ve got plans starting  at 10pm? Long sigh. Well, c’mon over before then. We’ve got cheesies.

Examples of other obsessions/hobbies: King Diamond (Jordan), Dolly Parton (Laurie), Dungeons & Dragon’s commercials for toy figures from the 80’s (Jordan), The Office (American; mutual) , David Bowie (mutual), Savage Sword of Conan (Laurie -kidding- Jordan, but wouldn’t it be really cool if that was mine?), A Taste of Thai hot sauce (mutual),  Marvel comic book postcards (Laurie then Jordan then mutual), Organizing every file on his desktop (Jordan  then Jordan hoping this will become mutual), Playing House of the Risin Sun on guitar (Laurie- Jordan wishes she’d learn another one no matter how many people have covered it), thrash metal drummers (Jordan), Shane Koyczan (Laurie), Horror movies – b movies, zombies (Jordan), Mary Lou Retton (Laurie), Cupcakes (Laurie- for some reason I felt like our Arthritis Society fundraisers would make more money with these personal little cakes, turns out, I was right, also turns out, eating 12 of them, even if only their delicious and stylish tops, will hurt you like a knife), The Malazan Books of the Fallen (Jordan), Otis Redding (mutual).

I’m not sure if this small print at the bottom of a plastic bag is comforting or creepy, but I can sure tell you this: it’s poetic.

The best April’s Fools jokes played on me were by my dad. He woke me up at 6am once to let me know it was snowing so hard outside there was no way there’d be any school…and then about 10 minutes before I had to catch the bus, he said April Fool’s! I remember scrambling to get on jeans and a clean shirt as the feeling of disappointment invaded my thoughts of freedom. I hadn’t done my French homework and planned to do it before school but once Dad told me school was cancelled I assumed the ’snow-day-gods’ were smiling down on me and I turned off my alarm.

I also remember being tricked into believing we had won a contest (my mom a regular contest-enterer) and a lot of money, that bigfoot was spotted in our backyard, that we were going on a trip to Disneyworld, that we were getting a dishwasher, that we had a new car.

The moment of thrilling exaltation at the surprise of all of these things was worth the crashing disappointment. I don’t think I was ever angry at being had, although I’m sure I whined about it to mom. Here’s the thing, I was too delighted by the stark possibility that Dad’s shenanigans shot into our regular life of routines, ill humour and doing the dishes.

My dad’s April Fool’s jokes were better than watching cartoons.

They were imaginative and believable, perfectly crafted to draw me right in, rising crescendo-excitement then poof, gone, like the one snowflake that may have fallen on the day he convinced me school would definitely be cancelled. (Did I mention he worked in the school system?) haha.

I’m his age now as when he would have been spinning some of the best tales of trickery, of course only until noon, (as soon as 12:01pm hit, the regular routines and doldrums of life marched back in).  Fast forward to this past week. On April Fool’s Day I thought with juicy delight about tricking my better half, Jordan. He was asleep and unknowing. But I couldn’t think of a “dad tale”, one that at once lifts you right outta where you’re standing into a place you’ve always hoped to be. When jordan was in the washroom half consciously brushing his teeth, a slippery idea popped into my head and I had a devilish glee about me; I was going to tell him I was pregnant!

Never in my life have I ever had the urge or strange punitive, aggressive and manipulative desire to tell a man I was dating or any man at all -even my celebrity crushes such as Jake Gyllenhaal or Conan O’Brien- that I was pregnant. Nope, never one inkling of an urge. I thought of telling them  ”hello” and “I’m a big fan of yours”  but never that I was with child especially when I wasn’t. Sure, I had dreamed of being Reese Witherspoon or Andy Richter or dating that cute bespeckled drummer I’m now engaged to, but those dreams never contained a ‘crying ball of wrinkled flesh’ as my co-host in life, Sarah Hyde once said.

So by the time the taps were turned off and I could hear Jordan wiping his beard in our small hand towel, I had reconsidered my April’s Fool prank. I was sort of amazed at myself. Did this mean I wanted to be pregnant? Or did this mean I had a horrible sense of sexist humour, bringing women’s lib back about six generations?

I quickly let the thought go like a hot turnip and considered other, less serious pranks. Maybe I could tell him we had won money (but he had been following lottery stories too closely lately and muttering how much he wants to win money in his sleep so I knew this would only be mean to lift his hopes up that high and then let them fall the length of the CN tower). I thought about telling him there was a food poisoning taint on the food he almost ate last night, so that way he would feel lucky to be alive… but ultimately that would be weird and mean to people who spent hours barfing up the contents of tinned fish. Or I could spin a yarn about an urban raccoon that has learned to play the guitar for untainted food, they do have thumbs after all.

But when Jordan came out of the bathroom and into the kitchen area where I was diligently typing and trying to figure out a way to trick him, I froze.

I was still sorta amazed about the baby thing and in awe of my dad. A simple trick, turns out, can take a lot.

First off: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU  to Zulu Records (making us legit by helping us sell tickets); Pacific Cinematheque, (the people working & volunteering there are gods and saints); Videomatica (giving us a way cool prize pack and a much needed high-five); Jordan’s mom’s (baking supplies trip or should I say mission?) and the friends who iced cupcakes late into a Friday night, with no bottom of the tub in sight.

Our house the night before the fundraiser, icing 144 cupcakes. Thank god my friends are artists, or the decoration would have consisted of a blob of icing on top.

a close up!!

the most important part to making cupcakes...(don't worry this was a staged event and no real icing dipping or licking took place).

The duds

We raised $968 in ticket/cupcakes/50/50 draw sales and $200 in donations!! That’s $1168!! Bumping us up to 32% of our total goal!  We threw in the price of the theatre and insurance and gave a little speech before the show.  We were so amazed to see people come out. That we even gave out prize packs consisting of a dinosaur, fake tattoos and a $5 gift certificate. (So, if you were wondering whether or not you’d wanna come to our next event -may the prize pack sway you over-  because we’ve got two more to hand out for next time!)

We were a little nervous first time around that we only got pictures of the cupcake table before people arrived and the film started. hahaha. So, there’s no pictures of the actual turn out or how good the movie looked up on the big screen. And let me talk about the film for a second, holy holy, how grateful we are to The White Stripes, B-side entertainment, Emmett Malloy for letting us do our own screening of the movie that turned my heart into a six-string guitar and made it weep and howl.  A few years back one of my best friends and I took a greyhound bus to try and follow the White Stripes around for a few shows. Afterwards we stood waiting beside any vehicle that looked like it could be for them just to catch a glimpse of the band that brought our souls back. I didn’t even feel foolish. I was old enough to be the mom of the kids waiting with us. (Well, a responsible teenage mom at least). I love that band and everyone who showed up on Saturday loves them too. Even Jordan’s mom left the theatre raving about the mystifying/electrifying twosome. So, heck yah!

Me really hoping people will show up

One of our two tables at Pacific Cinematheque

These swirly goodies raised us 70 bucks!

Yay white stripes loving, cupcake selling friends!

We’ll post soon about our next event on Monday, April 19th. Just know this: it’s gonna bust your case of the Monday’s wide open and pour some bowling balls’ worth of fun right in till Tuesday. 5-pin style.