Inventory: A family affair, burlesque, hockey night in Canada, and the Big Apple

I can't believe the past week. We wrapped up the first half of our MPub second semester, the Olympics are here, and the lunar new year is here. This weekend, 30 family members descended on my grandma's house from all over the world to celebrate Chinese New Year. Some of them, I haven't seen for more than a decade. It's surreal to think that this might be the last time that we all get together in one room. Our families are getting bigger and we're also moving to different countries and continents. Before, you could contain us in Toronto and Vancouver.

We've been catching up, throwing down, and filling up. Last night, some of us went to see an Olympics women's hockey match between China and Finland. The Chinese goalie was incredible. She blocked all but 2 out of 48 shots on goal. And while the Chinese team only got 4 shots, they scored one shorthanded.

I'm now detoxing from five days spent eating greasy food, sugary treats, and far too much imbibing. But the party is winding down. My brother's already left and my uncles and cousins are leaving over the next few days.

On Friday, I'm heading to New York to meet my future colleagues at the O'Reilly Tools of Change conference. The wonderful Ms. Katerina Ortakova is going to be my partner in crime, as we learn about the ultimate in geekery: books and computers.

I'm also looking forward to going to the New York Public Library's main branch on Bryant Park and spending a dorky hour touring the building; it's going to be a bibliophilic orgasm. Also, a meeting is in the works to spend some time at the Esquire offices in the Hearst building.

No more posts until I'm back in Vancouver but follow me @megan_lau for the latest. I will blog a lot about what I'm eating, it is always one of the huge highlights of being in the city (suggestions, anyone?).

When I get back, I'll be working with Sad Mag to put together Issue 3, our black and white issue, featuring cover girl and burlesque superstar Crystal Precious. It's going to be sexy, beautiful, and revealing.

................

Vancouver events you can't miss:

February 19: Queerbash No. 4 at the Wise Hall. This is Vancouver's wildest dance party (it looks a little something like this). Queer Bash is a queer focused dance party and a non-profit with a emphasis on fun, art and community. This month's theme is Gamers vs. Flamers: "Techno Nerds. Torch-bearers. Flaming Queens. Video Junkies. Muscle Marys. Celebrate or Condemn those Games by being as queer as can be."

For more info, see the Queerbash blog

March 19: Sad Mag Party No. 3 at the Anza Club. Cheap beer, Vancouver's finest undiscovered performers, and creative folk come together for dancing, celebration, and free magazines.

More info to come in March.

The Olympic Clean-up

Hubert Chan: "For those who don't pass through the area much, a few weeks ago, the wall murals on Beatty Street (between Georgia and Dunsmuir) were painted over by a graffiti clean-up crew hired by the city. Why? The fucking Olympics. The parking lot there is slated to be an Olympic entertainment venue, so the city felt the need to eradicate any semblance of culture and personality in the area before we showcase our city to the world. So this morning on my way to work, I was very happy to see someone had spray-painted a response: the Olympic rings, with the statement: 'WITH GLOWING HEARTS, WE KILL THE ARTS.'"

A picture of the original artwork which was

commissioned by the Steve Nash Foundation in 2007 and were created by 16 artists under the direction of Milan Basic.

can be found on the Georgia Straight website.

Photo credit: Trevor Lupick, Georgia Straight

Ravishing Beasts

Nothing to do this weekend except work. Also managed to check out the Museum of Vancouver - which is totally awesome! Who knew they had all the city's old and icon neon signs?

The museum's fairly recent rebranding by Kaldor makes the whole institution so much more accessible to young people. Yes, I thought, sans serif fonts speak to my generation.

No really, quite a fabulous job done. The whole move to capture a new audience is working well. They've managed to take Kaldor's aesthetic and meld it into their current and upcoming exhibits (Art of Craft looks fun too). The current feature exhibit, Ravishing Beasts, is in fact, ravishing. It's the first showing of the museum's taxidermy collection. The scale, the staging, is like a magnificent film set... with a little bit of hipster old-library/apothecary/lab-fetish thrown in. I'm interested in buying the lion. It's for sale, they say.

The Straight wrote a lovely piece about guest curator Rachel Poliquin and the exhibit:

"Discovering the vast, forgotten collection prompted guest curator Poliquin—a Vancouverite fresh out of a post-doctoral history fellowship at M.I.T. who’s also writing a book called Taxidermy and Longing—to mount a decidedly contemporary show that would raise the kinds of questions she had about the practice. “I grew up in Vancouver and I never knew this taxidermy collection existed. And I think it’s a wonderful allegory for taxidermy itself: it was hidden away not because people hated it so much but because they were not sure about it,” she explains. “Hopefully, this show allows people to think about it. Taxidermy is no longer something just to look at but to think about.”

"Exploring the bowels of the institution, where the animals and birds were carefully lined up on shelves, all packaged in blue boxes with clear plastic coverings, Poliquin admits she felt emotional. “There were just rows and rows of these little animals. I think it’s sad to ignore these creatures once you’ve made them your responsibility,” she says. “There’s hardly any information now about them and who they came from and how they got here.”"

The exhibit will inspire questions, and maybe extreme emotions. Either way, an interesting, off-the-beaten path way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Ravishing Beasts closes Feb 28

More:
Ravishing Beast blog by curator Rachel Poliquin

Hey, cool!

The following map (reblogged from CBC.ca) shows works to be on display as part of the Vancouver Biennale 2009-2011

Instructions: Click on the markers in the map or in the list to the right for more information. Drag the map to look around or zoom in and out to get a closer look.

Restaurant Critics are Kooky

UPDATE: Missed this earlier... Bruni's free pass at publicity from the Times's Magazine. A Sunday cover story: "I was a baby bulimic, July 19, 2009"

Also, food critic Frank Bruni of the New York Times has a new book, Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater, detailing his life as a restaurant critic, a former bulimic, compulsive eater, and a lover of food.

New York Magazine's Grub Street blog has all the details (they saw the advance proofs).

Publisher's Weekly published an interview with the soon-to-be Times's Sunday Magazine critic-at-large , including the first official picture of Bruni - ever!

P.S. Has anyone read The Soul of a Chef?

"I feel like I’ve been sick of Lululemon since it opened"

TRUE:

"Whatever the truth of the matter, the episode is a sign of a company run by fast-moving free-and-fuzzy-thinkers, who grant huge autonomy to their store managers while passing down bizarre corporate materials like the Lululemon Athletica Success Chakra, an eight-point wheel of instruction enumerating the routes to “wealth,” “long-term human relationships,” and a “superior immune system.” The first piece of advice is, “Determine your aptitudes and turn them into money.” There are also helpful nuggets about avoiding soft drinks, forgiving your parents, and having a cigarette now and then. Overall, it doesn’t really make any sense, but it’s the essence of Lulu: good karma and great cash flow."

—

New York Magazine: How Yoga Brand Lululemon Turned Fitness Into a Spectator Sport

From Mel- having grown up in the city that spawned this absurd yoga leviathan I feel like I’ve been sick of Lululemon since it opened. Probably because, like your more pretentious forms of vegetarian/veganism, I hate any “lifestyle” that presumes a spiritual or ethical superiority while really being all about privilege.

The comparison hinted at between Starbucks and Lululemon is perfect, except that Starbucks really opened up the whole arena of designer coffee and made way for all those local sceney coffee shops populated by tattooed hipsters who sneer at the megabrand that granted them the audacity to charge me $4.00 for a coffee in the first place. Lululemon, on the other hand, seems to still be a singlular kind of creature with no emergent simulacra on the horizon yet, like a corporate platypus. I shudder to think what might evolve from the concept of designer fitness + spirituality (designer spirituality + fitness? Choose your own ordering)

from your beauty must be rubbing off (a.k.a. the ever-wonderful Michelle)

Fireworks really suck

In less than three weeks, mayhem will take over Vancouver as the HSBC Celebration of Light continues the tradition of bringing drunken yahoos into the shores of English Bay and Kits beach to watch bright explosions in the sky.

Admittedly, as a young impressionable woman, I have taken part in these beach-based celebrations myself and indulged in libations on the sand. However, I hate the long waits for the bus, the third-world-like public transportation options, and the general chaos that accompanies it. My least favourite part of the whole affair though, are the actual fireworks because they are pretty much meaningless and the incongruent response both confuses and frustrates me to no end.

In the summer months, the Celebration of Light is possibly the only event that manages to unite Vancouverites. It bears no relation to the culture and arts that the city's artists have to offer (like the jazz festival or the MusicFest Vancouver) or showcase anything else Vancouver should truly celebrate. Instead, we are offered a pyrotechnics show and we lap it up. This is embarrassing.

Inspired by similar affairs throughout the US for Independence Day, Troy Patterson's article "Fireworks Really Suck" perfectly sums up my feelings about the coming pandemonium:

The professional fireworks display is an exercise in pomposity, aggression, triumphalism, and hubris. The pyrotechnician—and, more importantly, his patron—intends to ornament the night sky beyond the powers of God himself. He means to inspire awe for little purpose other than to demonstrate his power. The first great fireworks nuts in the Western world were Peter the Great (who put on a five-hour show to celebrate the birth of his first son) and Louis XIV (who, with a specially equipped sundial, used them to tell time at Versailles). Fireworks are imperialist and, as we used to say in school, hegemonic. That they are popularly believed to be populist entertainment does not say much for the populace.

No way were all men created equal. According to some of the country's top statisticians, exactly half of them are below average, and that is the segment of the population most likely to get too excited about fireworks. Other species highly intrigued by bright lights include moths and venison. Hearing people hoot lustily at a crossette or chrysanthemum, I assume that they are the same sort who lined up at bear-baiting pits back in the day and, in modern times, watch Howie Mandel reality shows.

...there is more satisfaction in watching actual stuff explode—cars, volcanoes, toasters, what have you—than in witnessing explosions that produce only bombast. When fireworks blow up, the only things up-blowing are the fireworks themselves.

Touché!

More reasons why fireworks are stupid

"One thing that Vancouver has been particularly adept at doing is obliterating it's own history."

--Reid Shier, director of Presentation House Gallery, in "Nostalgic poster exhibit revisits Expo 86," Vancouver Courier

Vancouver Votes

Attn: VANCOUVER RESIDENTS

Coming off the crack-y good high of the US Presidential election, small town politics look feeble and sad. Today Vancouver votes and the whole process could not be more of a farce. The major issue of the day is the 'leak' of information about the in-camera deal to bail out the 2010 developments on the waterfront. This is major but our city is facing so many more problems with no commitment to solve them - or solutions, really.

Admittedly, I'm not casting an educated vote today. How would I have time to look through the profiles of all the candidates? There are 15 people running for Mayor (not to mention the menagerie of characters running for councilor, parks board and school board), including Marc Emery, the "Prince of Pot." Aside from Peter Ladner and Gregor Robertson, the two supposed front runners, no one else has received ANY face time from small or major news outlets. The even worse thing is that none of the candidates seem prepared for 2010. In what is to be called a major pipe dream, Furlong is calling for all businesses to give their employees vacation and lend VANOC their employees for the duration of the 2010 games. NO, that is what GM is doing right now in Brampton and Oakville because they don't have enough work -- giving their employees "time off" (or laying them off).

In any case, I guess this is my civic duty so I'm walking up to the polls now. I'm going to stick to the NPA for calling our house once a day for the past 10 days, and putting all sorts of crap through our mail slot, including air fresheners. No, I'm not going to "Get Fresh with Kim Capri." This looks like unwise, environmentally unfriendly spending to me. I'm not going to trust my tax-payer dollars with them.

Go on, go vote!

Who is this guy?

Jordan Clarke is a Vancouver film artist and I am digging his videos.
Does any one know anything else about him?

For West-side kids (especially Kerrisdale alumni), this one is for you:

.

Jordan Clarke on Vimeo