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Looking in the Mirror from Si on Vimeo.

Stephen Osbourne, editor of Geist Magazine and one of my favourite rabble-rousers, has posted a follow-up to his earlier post about the British Columbia Association of Magazine Publishers (BCAMP):

On September 2, two ex-directors of BCAMP (I am one of them) outlined the following complaints in an email sent to each of the current BCAMP directors, none of whom has responded:

1. Unresolved staffing dispute not disclosed to board or to the membership at the AGM.
2. President?s refusal to deal with member concerns.
3. Improper denial of member participation on committees.
4. Failure to schedule an external investigation as advised by the Mediator engaged to resolve the ?staffing dispute.?
5. Conflicts of interest: research contracts.
6. Questionable documents: A policy and procedures manual never adopted by the membership.
7. Improper procedures: minutes improperly kept; job and salary reviews not made.
8. Inexperienced board of directors kept in the dark.
9. A climate of secrecy and bad faith.

I REALLY like the cover of “It’s All Coming Back to Me” on Meatloaf’s new album.

About a year ago, I vowed never to pay for student theatre again. Between the shows I see from comps/invite and professional theatres, I couldn’t see the point of paying money to (probably) end up disappointed. But, I got a text message from a friend last week:

What are you doing after laurie s thing tomorrow? Want to go see midsummer night dream at fred wood?

My instant reaction was “no”. This is the first “big” production form the current semester’s season at UBC Theatre though, which seems to lend itself to more avant-garde productions so I thought about it:

1. It’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, my favourite of Shakespeare’s plays, and I’ve never seen it on stage.
2. The director is program chair, Stephen Heatley.
3. Their elaborate webpage is really cool.
4. The costume design looked very interesting.
5. Original score!

So off we went to the theatre. We got in a bit late and had to step over who we later found out was Stephen Heatley to get to our seats.

Characterization

The production starts with the characters introducing themselves to an intense, electronic score. Each actor has a Rubbermade bin from which they take their costumes and introduce their character(s). There is a LOT of gender switching and doubling. Theseus is played by a woman while Hippolyta is played by a man. Those same two actors portray Titania and Oberon, but they have switched genders and only slightly altered their costumes. Tr?s confusing. Confusion became a common theme, partly due to the doubling and lack of distinction between their costumes. Also, whereas the men raised their voices to play the female characters, the women did not alter their pitch at all.

I Had a Hunch

In the program, paraphrasing, Heatley says that he “had a hunch about the play”. That it could be “more dark than most interpretations”. Great. It fits well with the music. But that didn’t really happen. The play never seemed to figure out if it was dark, or incredibly comedic. The transitions between the two genres were awkward and really lacked continuity. This added to the confusion and really made the production seem hap-hazard.

Puck / Robin Goodfellow

I love Puck. Everyone loves Puck, right? I didn’t love this Puck. The actress portraying him was so physically grounded – more like an Earth Mother than a fairy. Every step she took seemed to resonate across the theatre and every soliloquy boomed with importance. And of course there was the dark/comedy confusion again.

The Players

Good lord the Players were funny. All of them had immaculate comic timing and really took over their roles. The actress playing Bottom? Holy cow you are funny! They were the perfect counter-point to the misguided darkness of the rest of the play. The only bad thing about their performance was that it ended and brought back the confusion.

The Music

The music was cool. Hats off to you, Patrick Pennefather. It was very geared for a dark play and consisted mainly of electronic noise, swelling synth pads, and some nice hollow/industrial sounding beats. But does great dark music fit well with a play that gets silly sometimes? Unfortunately not. There was one moment at the end, post the Players’ play, when the entire cast dances to the sole “happy” song of the production. It was like it turned into an acid-washed BBC production for about a minute, and then back to the dark dark dark. Anyway, I hope to hear Pennefather’s tunes in more (appropriate) productions.

Little Shop of Horrors

A few years ago, I played in the band for a production of Little Shop of Horrors. The company, then called Clipped Right Wing Productions, is partially owned by Shaun Aquiline who put on a very solid performance of Demetrius. The production of Little Shop was also “dark”, and also didn’t translate very well onto the stage. It was funny to see Shaun in another comedy show that’s been changed up.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

1. The actors were INCREDIBLE! They didn’t “read” their lines, they actually “said” them! I saw a professional production of Hamlet a couple months ago where Horatio ran on stage nose first, said his lines as fast as possible, then ran off. It was like watching William Riker without the acting talent.
2. I’m not seeing another Stephen Heatley production for a long, long time. I hope the student-directed plays later in the season have a sense of continuity. I WILL see another one this year; the actors were simply too good not to.
3. The costumes looked like dirty pajamas. Even when the actors had clothes on top, you could see rolled up dirty pajamas sticking out of pant legs and shirt sleeves. Dirty pajamas? Why?!

The Run

If you did want to check this production out, it’s running until Saturday at the Fred Wood Theatre at UBC. They have a great map system for directions.

Chick Lit

So I was at a party yesterday and ended up in a conversation with Canadian comparatist Patricia Merivale about short stories, reading lists, and my extreme dislike of “Chick Lit”.*

MG: I’d love to see the male equivalent – I don’t think ANYONE would want to read “dude lit”.

PM: Wouldn’t that just be pornography? If chick lit is all about romance and feelings, wouldn’t the male version just focus on sex?

MG: Huh…I think you’re right.

Porn

Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I’m more than positive that she’s right. It even makes sense in the male-as-normative perspective that allowed porn to exists before chick lit. I think Patricia was putting Danielle Steele-esque romance novels in the chick lit category, but I sure don’t see much difference between the two – save, of course, the covers.

If all the sex columns tell women to read porn to better understand men, does that mean men should start reading chick lit to better understand women? I hope not. I think the only distinction between literature and chick lit is that literature is well-written, “Chick Lit” is not.

Recommended Reading

I really enjoy the work of Charlotte Gill, Angela Carter, and Zsuzsi Gartner. Sadly, I’ve heard them all described as chick lit.

* Summary: What’s the point? Do we really need ANOTHER way to compartmentalize women?

I had a friend back in college who would stop wearing band t-shirts the second they gained any kind of “real” popularity. I still think that’s stupid. I’m pretty sure this applies to Facebook’s recent takeover of the UK, but I don’t know if there are “indie” social networks out there, and it almost feels like MySpace is ready for some ironic comeback. I think there’s a change coming, and I think it’s going to be really boring and probably stupid.

Sparklehorse puts on a great show.

This morning, I complained about the following:

1. My student-assistant came in when I wanted to work alone. Sadly, I even ignored him for a minute but it got too awkward since HE SITS FIVE FEET BEHIND ME.
2. My regular barista has started to ask me how I’m doing when I get my morning coffee. No talking before coffee.
3. On a monthly basis, I lose my cheques and have to overturn my apartment looking for them.

I think I finally understand why people eat Wonderbread.

Although the rest of the human race was already hurtling into a new millennium, the Z?para had barely entered the Stone Age. Like the spider monkeys from whom they believe themselves descended, the Z?para essentially still inhabit trees, lashing palm trunks together with bejuco vines to support roofs woven of palm fronds. Until cassava arrived, palm hearts were their main vegetable. For protein they netted fish and hunted tapirs, peccaries, wood-quail, and curassows with bamboo darts and blowguns.

They still do, but there is little game left. When Ana Mar?a?s grandparents were young, she says, the forest easily fed them, even though the Z?para were then one of the largest tribes of the Amazon, with some 200,000 members living in villages along all the neighboring rivers. Then something happened far away, and nothing in their world?or anybody?s? was ever the same.

What happened was that Henry Ford figured out how to mass-produce automobiles.

[...]

They still hunted, but men now walked for days without finding tapirs or even quail. They had resorted to shooting spider monkeys, whose flesh was formerly taboo. Again, Ana Mar?a pushed away the bowl proffered by her granddaughters, which contained chocolate-colored meat with a tiny, thumbless paw jutting over its side. She raised her knotted chin toward the rejected boiled monkey.

?When we?re down to eating our ancestors,? she asked, ?what is left??

- Via The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.

Wow. Some people put all their time and energy into starting up passionate grass-roots movements in an effort to make change in the world. Some people spend their time figuring out what songs Garfield would love.

- Via NYtimes.com

Wet Dogs

This morning, as I was waiting for the traffic light to change, I saw a very cute dog who was also waiting for the light. So, as per usual, I said hello and waved, but then had to fight an overwhelming urge to get down on my knees and start playing with it. It was a VERY wet dog. It nosed my leg, which I was fine with, but then the human attached to its leash pulled it back and the light changed. I think the next step was a full on head rub that would have left my hand wet AND dirty.

Behaviour

It got me thinking about my interactions with dogs. I fully believe that dogs (I actually can’t think of an animal that I WOULDN’T put there) are better living beings than humans. Better in the way that there really is no such thing as an evil dog – unless, of course, they are inflicted by disease or mankind. Thus, I feel the desire to acknowledge a dog’s presence much more than a human’s.

Whenever I see a dog, I either wink, wave, say hello, or a combination of the three. Depending on the situation, the next step is a good scratch behind the ear. If there is a human attached to the dog and they are walking, I usually stop at hello. If I’m in a situation where the dog is next to me for any extended amount of time, I will give the human an “is the dog friendly?” look, judge their reaction, then either move on the the ear scratch or leave it alone. If the dog is by itself (i.e. tied up), I first say hello, judge it’s reaction, then proceed to the next step which is showing my hand palm down. I again judge the reaction and move onto either 1) saying goodbye and leaving it alone, 2) giving it a pat/ear rub, or 3) full-on conversation, possibly playing with it, and a good body pat.

Interactions

Back in Montreal, there was a fenced-in backyard on my way to the bus stop that housed a very friendly dog. Every morning I passed by, I’d look to see if it was there. Most days it was, it would run over the the fence, get into the play bow with its tail all a-waggin’, and I’d mock play with the dog through the fence. One day, after our little play was over, I looked up and saw a human staring directly at me from inside the house. I waved, got no response, and kept on walking. I saw the dog occasionally afterwards, but not as often.

When I was in college, there was a smoking hot girl (pun intended) who was often at the same bus stop as me. I never got up the urge to actually talk to her until one day I when was walking home. She was walking down the sidewalk in my direction – it was the perfect outside-of-the-bus interaction opportunity! I started thinking what I was going to say, got my confidence up, and then said hello to her dog and kept on walking. Wait. Something went wrong here. To this day, I can’t figure out what I was thinking. I didn’t see her after that for a couple years and age was unkind. Today, I find myself wondering what her dog’s up to.

My last dog, Shaina, was a HUGE character. We got her at nine months, but she only weighed two pounds. The store wasn’t sure if she was a poodle or a bichon because her hair was so straight – turns out she was just a malnourished poodle and her hair went curly within the first month. Anyway, we were obviously nervous about leaving her alone when she weighed two pounds so we used to (we did this once) stack some old milk crates about five feet high and let her stay in the bathroom. We got home, and she was happily wagging her tail in the living room. What? I went to the bathroom, and the milk crates were still there. She either jumped over a five foot wall, scaled a five foot wall, or knocked down a five foot wall and reconstructed it before we got home. The same dog fell OFF the stairs. Not down the stairs, but completely off the side of our kitchen-to-basement steps (10). I heard the THUNK, ran downstairs, there she was: smiling, wagging her tail, but looking utterly confused about what transpired.

There’s a series of pictures from when I was about a year old. The first one is me on the floor, playing with stamps, while my first dog, Bofur, is in the left of the frame. The next one, Bofur is obscuring the view of me. The third is an accidental portrait of me looking pleased, and Bofur with a stamp on his head.

The Point is…

I freak out if a stranger touches me, but I smile when a stranger dog licks my hand.