Roy o' Roy

I don't mean to pick on Roy Arden. I've never met the man. I'm sure I've laid eyes on him, but I can't pretend to know him. In fact I assume I've seen him because I was at his opening tonight at the Monte Clark Gallery. The irony of which doesn't escape me.
After seeing his work at the Vancouver Art Gallery, you may recall that I ranted about the quality of art in our cities art galleries and suggested that anyone who wanted to see some interesting work would have better luck on the South Granville Rise. If you haven't been to Monte Clark Gallery, I guess I should tell you that it is in fact on the South Granville Rise. So that shows you what I know - not too damn much.
Here's to you Roy - whether I get you or not, you're a much more successful artist than I am.

AFRO ROBICS

That's what the sign said. It wasn't a big yellow sign on wheels with a trailer hitch. It wasn't the kind that people rent and park outside of their store when they are having a sale, but it did have the same style of lettering.
It was a big white sign in front of the community center not far from the parking lot where I saw Ninjas. When I saw the Ninjas, which was after I saw the sign, I started to doubt that I had seen the words AFRO ROBICS. I started to second guess myself. Perhaps it did say aerobics.
But that wasn't my first thought. My first thought, before seeing the Ninjas, was that they had lost their letter E's and thought that an F was close enough. I couldn't explain the gap and I was thinking about the gap when I saw the Ninjas, which as I've said made me question myself.
But in the end, they meant AFRO ROBICS. Who knew?

Ninjas

I was out for a run and I saw Ninjas training in the park. They were swinging swords at each other in what looked an awful lot like choreographed moves, but of course I'm no Ninja. I just feel fortunate to have seen them in the wild and I suppose, fortunate that they did not see me.

Unlikeable Characters

The Hollywood on Broadway is showing a pretty good double feature right now. Good in the sense that both films are good, but also in the sense that they are well paired. Some would say that 2 Days in Paris is a comedy and Before the Devil Knows Your Dead is a tragedy and so they aren't well paired. But I would argue that they are both about unlikeable misfits and frankly 2 Days in Paris would have been a hell of a lot better if it ended with a break up. Instead it ended, well ... how did it end? What exactly was going on in the very end. I don't know, but I wanted them to dump each other, which would not have been tragic.

Local Theater

Perhaps it is a pseudo New Years resolution, but I just don't think I go to enough live theater. Donna and I had a good run one year where we went to several shows of varying sizes and we really enjoyed it. And since then, it has always been the sort of thing one us would bring up from time to time.
"You know, we should go to more plays."
"Your right, we should."
As simple as that. Except that we don't. It is just that sort of thing we say we should do and then forget about it. Last night we tried to break that run. We went to the Vancouver Playhouse to see The Blonde, the Brunette, and the Vengeful Redhead. It is a one woman show with actress Lucy Peacock playing 7 different characters. To be frank, outside of playing a child, she does an excellent job. Her transformations were masterful. My hats off to Peacock.
So I say pseudo resolution because I didn't really think of it until after New Year's day, but I'm hoping last night kicked off a string of performances for us.

Uspset Sunday

Wow, both favourites go through on Saturday and both upsets advance on Sunday. I feel like it has set us up for a less interesting Sunday next weekend. The favourites are once again the home teams and I am now really hoping for a Brady/Favre match up.

NFL Weekend

No surprise that the betting money is on homefield advantage today. And while I can't blame them, I for one am looking forward to seeing the games this weekend. I admit I have no faith in our Seahawks. But I didn't have any faith last week either, so clearly my faith ain't required. I do have faith in Belichick, but Jacksonville did look good in Pittsburgh. Sundays games should be closer.
At this point some epic battles are still possible for the big show: Patriots vs Anyone for the undefeated season, Patriots vs Cowboys for the T.O. vs Moss show, Colts vs Giants for the Manning show. At least one of those possibilities disappears this weekend.
But I suppose what I am actually hoping for is for all the home teams to win this week, because I think that would give us the four top QBs going into next weekend all playing for the big game. That would be exciting.


NFL
Sat, Jan 12
Seattle at Green Bay Green Bay -9 1:30 PM
Jacksonville at New England New England -13.5 5:00 PM

Sun, Jan 13
San Diego at Indianapolis Indianaplolis -9.5 10:00 AM
N.Y. Giants at Dallas Dallas -9 1:30 PM

Happy Birthday

Let the festival begin. Donna's Birthday celebration begins today. While this festival has been known to stretch out over a month, there are only two days of festivity planned this year, or at least so far.

Best Ads

Time has published their top ten TV ads of 2007. Notably missing is the Mac vs PC series. A couple of their choices are questionable, but some of these are really good. My favourites are listed below. Click on them for links.
Dos Equis
Gatorade
American Express (mostly cause it's Tina Fey, alright more than mostly)
Nationwide Insurance

and best of all

Dove

Glorious HD

Watching Sarah watching our TV this Christmas, I'm afraid that the world's most expensive TV, may just have gone up in price. First it cost us an extraordinary amount, but at least it came with a house. Then it cost Dylan a renovation. Then came that damn HD box for us. Now, Sarah agrees it is better. And maybe their TV needs to be bigger.
Sorry Kevin. You may want to talk to Dylan. I think he's happier in the long run. But no, I don't know where it would fit.

What Me?

For some reason attempts to breakdance were made on our table on New Years. I can't explain it. I have trouble explaining breakdancing at all. Yet, I recall writhing on grade school hallway floors in what was an attempt at the worm.
The funny thing is none of the people pictured below recalled themselves breakdancing, so here are some photos for those who don't recall their attempts at the New Years edition of So You Think You Can Dance:

Soynogg

I have to say that Soynogg is a definite disappointment.

I'm Nuts

As a kid I was told that I was allergic to walnuts. Or at least I have some vague memory of being told that. As an adult it never really mattered much to me. You see, I don't like walnuts. Actually I dislike them. Pecans too. Which, incidentally taste an awful lot like walnuts to me.
The thing I was never sure about was whether I always had disliked walnuts and had made up a story about being allergic to them or if because I was told I was allergic to them, I had begun to dislike them. Childhood memories are to say the least unreliable.
As an adult, I doubted my sanity even further. I believed that when I ate walnuts, my throat would be just a touch scratchier, drier than normal. Not being a fan of walnuts, I rarely ate them. In fact the only time I would eat a walnut was when it was hidden in something. Something like a muffin. And what I'm about to tell is something that I know is a little crazy and so knowing that casts doubt on the rest of what I had been thinking. This is it: I like all sorts of other nuts, but I hate any nut inside a cake like found - notably muffins, because it seems bakers love to put nuts into their muffins. It is a texture thing I suppose and I don't think that is too crazy. What is crazy is that I don't like brownies even if I know there are no nuts in it.
Now obviously brownies represent the double whammy - not only are they are cake like food with nuts in it, but invariably those nuts are walnuts. Disgusting really. The crazy part is that even when I am told there are no nuts in them (which essentially makes it a short little bite sized chocolate cake and I do like the sound of a short little bite sized chocolate cake), I just have to look at them and I can't help but get the taste of walnuts out of my mouth. I'm like Pavlov's dog.

Walnuts on a Plane

I told you that, so I could tell you this:
I was flying back to Vancouver from Montreal with a bag of mixed nuts. I love nuts, when they aren't hiding in cakes. Nuts in ice cream by the way is perfectly acceptable. Salads. Chocolate. Just not cake. In fact I even like them on top of a muffin, which is far from hidden. So nuts in a bag - perfect. Unless of course they are walnuts. And or pecans, the walnut wannabe. But in this bag of nuts, I found no walnuts, nor any pecans. And if I had, I would have simply picked around them.
Having nearly finished the bag of nuts and wanting the last few tucked in the edges of the bottom of the bag, I chose, rather than to pick them out, to pour them out. Delicious. Having finished the bag, I put it away in the seat pocket in front of me and thought nothing more of it.
A short while later, I began rubbing my eyes. I suppose I had been doing it all along. I was tired. More to the point, I was rubbing my eyes incessantly. It was a strange sensation that seemed to be getting worse. Of course, denial was my first reaction. I'm just tired, I said. It will go away soon, I thought. And as I headed towards looking more and more insane, denial made way for concern.
Through red swollen eyes I read the back of the bag of nuts and in the list of ingredients I found walnuts. It was my best guess that in the powder at the bottom of the bag was at least a trace amount of crushed walnuts and when I poured that into my hand some of that trace stayed on my fingers.
No one wants to experience an allergic reaction. And the first time is probably the worst, because you don't have a sense of its limits. Now what you certainly don't want is to have that first allergic reaction on a five hour plane flight. In fact, on first glance, I would say it is the worst place to do so.
The cure was pretty simple and straightforward. I washed my hands and face and stopped touching my eyes. By the time we landed, I just looked tired and upset.
The lesson for me is a pretty easy one to live by: Don't rub walnuts in my eyes.

Muffin Attack

I told you that story, so that I could tell you this one:
I went to the art gallery the other day and on the way I bought a muffin to share. Not a muffin I would have chosen. It was chocolate chip zucchini with walnuts on top. The nuts didn't look like walnuts through the glass case. Like icebergs, they were poking through the top and honestly I thought they were peanuts. No it was the zucchini that made me doubtful, but in that regard I was quite mistaken. It is a delicious muffin. All I needed to do was pick the walnuts off the top. Not difficult.
Actually that's not all I needed to do, but that was all I did. So on my way into the art gallery, my eyes were swollen and red and I couldn't stop rubbing them. You'd think the rule - Don't rub walnuts in my eyes - would be an easy one to learn. Me, I'm still working on it.

Velodrome

I just got back from the velodrome,where I saw a series of races ranging from the clear cut - through somewhat confusing - right on to mayhem. At first we sat in the balcony, but from there we could see a small Red Truck beer garden in the middle of the oval. Getting there was a mystery at first, but soon we found a tunnel that went under the track. It was a cool event with a few nights of competition left. Although I have to admit sitting in the beer garden with our head swiveling to watch races tear around an oval was a little like NASCAR. Except of course, much quieter.

News

I was just watching the Daily Show and Al Gore was the guest. It was an old episode that I hadn't seen. Gore was talking about his book The Assault on Reason. In the discussion, he and John Stewart were talking about the blurring of entertainment and news. For example, the degree to which the news media cover the lives of people like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. And lack of coverage around politics beyond White House press releases. The result is a congress that is more concerned with raising money for 30 second sound bites than it is with debate on its own floor. With this change in debate style and medium, we have lost a lot.
To be fair the irony of talking about the blurring of news and entertainment on the Daily Show was not lost on either of them.
But as I was listening, I thought how I was a good target audience for a news agency willing to explore real global issues and yet I don't watch the news. I'm an educated professional and yet I don't engage with modern news media.
I wonder about this disconnect. I wonder if it is a character flaw of mine, a lack of concern for world affairs. I don't think that I can blame the media entirely. I can't hide behind disenchantment as if it is all their fault. Further, I am certainly not alone. Few people I know are interested, genuinely interested in world affairs.
Personally, I'm not sure if people cared more or less in the past. What is true is that many of us are acutely aware of the gap between world affairs and world interest. I suspect that it has always been there, but that we are now more aware of it. I guess my question is one of causality and direction: Are we growing more or less interested? (I suspect less or static) Are we disinterested because we feel we can't change events, that we are powerless or are we disinterested because we can sense that if we took a real interest we could make a difference and frankly that would take a lot more effort?
I have long suspected that talk shows like Jerry Springer are a modern form of public flogging - a way of confirming morality for the pack. I suppose stories about Paris Hilton are similar. Certainly they take no effort.

Happy New Year

I don't know if it was a sign of vanity, but I've never been fond of making resolutions. I don't deny my vanity I just don't know if that was why I never had any resolutions. It may actually be more about my aversion to saying anything untrue. Not that I am very honest or forthright. There are a lot of ways of saying truthful words and never saying anything honest. In the end, I tend to avoid any definitive statements. Notice I say tend. I think it has always been the latter rather than the former. Although a touch of vanity probably helped.
Well this year that's changed.
I resolve to make some resolutions.
That said my aversion to strong statements kicks in and I want to keep them to myself. So let me start with any easy one:
I will write here more often.