Summer Fun Food Drink Volume 2 Chapter 1 Smile · Wednesday June 23, 2010 by colin newell
Oil spills. Earthquake. Famine. Pestilence. Plague of locusts. And asteroids.
Pity the Planet Earth for if it had a personality it would have developed a complex by now.
It’s all out there. But you cannot dwell on that stuff all of the time. Because it will bring you down. Like it is bringing me down.
Until June the 21st when everything changes.
And so with the dawn of a new summer, it is time to begin that beloved series that my devoted reader appreciated so much last summer…
I give you Summer Fun Food and Drink – Volume 2 for 2010.
Smile.
The view from my balcony high in Rockland, Victoria, B.C. Canada.
It’s priceless. It is unspoilt. That is Oak Bay, Victoria in the distance. And the vague outline of a rainbow over the San Juan Islands – indicating a pot of gold… or at least a piece of paradise.
Living in Victoria is a little like taking your two thumbs and index fingers and making spectacles that filter out everything but the goodness. This is it. Smile.
Bob Harris, of BobHarris.com, Los Angeles and the World, 5 time Jeopardy champion and writer for CSI Las Vegas and Bones stood on my balcony recently and proclaimed… “You people are billionaires…”
And he was not talking about dollars and cents. It is a metaphor for what can be.
Bob is currently circuiting the globe writing a couple of books – one of them on the subject of micro-finance and the other on the subject of why people fight.
The photo above represents why people don’t fight.
So don’t fight it. Smile.
And welcome back to our Summer programming.
If you enjoyed last summers series you may remember this highlight – The Summer Food Fun and Drink Starbucks in decline series – enjoy.
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Rites of Spring #32 Interview and CD review - Farrell Spence · Tuesday June 8, 2010 by colin newell
Andrea and I relax over brunch with Vancouver singer/songwriter, Farrell Spence, and her long-time friend and fellow Winnipeg ex-patriot, Boyan, at Vancouver’s Marmalade Kitchen & Grill
On, quite arguably, the first brilliant sunny day of the year we talk about the subject of travel, life in Vancouver and Ireland, Farrell’s debut album from 2007, and the final few months leading up to her anticipated follow up project and second CD that she wrote in Ireland and recorded in Italy with Neapolitan
musician, Francesco Forni.
Farrell looks out onto English Bay with her piercing blue eyes and gestures at
the grandeur… “This is the most beautiful day of the year – and me with no sun
block on…”
Despite the weather forecast, a pristine teal sky illustrates the collision of
geography and architecture that makes Vancouver what it is. Farrell muses on the balance and imbalance that international living creates– “Between living in Vancouver, Ireland and spending a great deal of time in Italy and the UK, these places and spaces, people I have met and bonded with, are the fabric that brings my music together… Each city and each person contributing a puzzle piece to the bigger picture.”
So, it is no surprise that Farrell is remembered in places like Cork, Dublin
and Rome. When you are keeping company with the likes of The Paperboys and The Be Good Tanyas – the osmosis alone is going to create some crazy good music and some even better live shows.
I played Farrell’s debut album “A Town Called Hell” about a month back while
running a gauntlet of Saturday morning errands. My Honda (with its beefed up
audio system) is where I proof audio projects: The reasoning being, if a CD sounds great in my car, it will sound great anywhere – and at the same time reveal any sonic flaws that might not reveal themselves in a more ideal environment.
“A Town called Hell” is a matrix of post-adolescent angst that is, at times,
raw in its honesty and casually literal in its invitation into Farrell’s world.
I found the 10 songs on the album thematic and contiguous – not unlike some AOR
classics from the late seventies – and resonant in its ability to reach into my
memories.
Between bites of a very good brunch at Marmalade, Farrell explains… “A Town called Hell is every small town that many of us grew up in – where progress marches on, industry breaks down, jobs are lost…where hearts are broken and lifelong friendships are forged. In ‘Those Were the Days’ the lyrics step back into the time of adolescence where a sense of wonder still reigned supreme… and in ‘I Drink’ the lyrics illustrate the
visceral universality of familial fragmentation, loneliness and resignation in its
barest form.”
Up close, Farrell is an amalgam of the classic beauty and techno-geek personified.
By being hands on with virtually every stage of production during production of
her music, and knowing the tools inside and out, there is an element of clarity
that is present on every track. Her love of Old-Time Radio and (of all things)
Shortwave Radio, are things that will percolate to the surface on some songs on
the expected new album.
Farrell loves coffee and starts her day with an Americano made in a Bialetti on
her gas-range. The special relationship she holds with caffeine imbues a creative energy into her endeavors from writing music to simply rising from bed each morning.
We wrap up our lunch with a collective sigh at the spectacular weather and beauty of Vancouver B.C.‘s skyline.
Farrell continues to work on her latest project and we are looking forward to it. You can hear some of Farrell’s work over on cbc 3 – and her CD is on CD Baby
Check it out.
Rites of Spring #27 Billion dollar G8-G20 security boondoggle · Friday May 28, 2010 by colin newell
Canadian security warlord and dweeb Ward Elcock (photo at right) is the bureaucrat who is spending nearly a billion (of your) tax dollars worth of security for the G8/G20 summits and, to hear him explain it..
“Hyuk, that’s money well spent, Hyuk, hyuk, nyuk…”
Say what?
“Protecting world leaders (from nasty hippy protestors) “requires a lot of people and people are expensive,” Ottawa’s nerdy security czar told The Globe and Mail in an gushing interview.
No.
Here is what really adds the dollars to these events: Security resellers…
Take a product (like a security officer or policeman) that we are paying for or have paid for already – and out-source it to a company that normally supplies us with security products but marks up that service by a factor of 10 or 100.
Example: A mall cop or community police constable might cost 12 to 35$ an hour.
Contract a “security supplier” to provide this service and they hire the McCops and “resell” them to us for upwards of $1000 an hour. The “reseller” pockets the difference and you line the pockets of the “reseller”
Another great example of this is an “unnamed” community in Canada that is having troubles with its mega-expensive trunked police communication system – that never seems to work. The supplier (who will remain nameless – they are a trans-national telecom with billions of dollars in sales) sells an accessory product for this communications system to a reseller for $49 and the the communications-security subcontractor resells it to the bottomless pocketed police force and ultimately to a beat cop for $499. It is a great scam. And in this way, these mysterious costs sky-rocket.
Remember the term “Golden Toilet” seat that costs $10,000 in a government stores system? This is what we are talking about. It’s pure pork barrel and pure boondoggle.
With no end in site.
He denied allegations of profligacy (wasteful excess), saying that Canadian taxpayers have to understand the logistics of deploying thousands of federal agents.
Also, he said, other countries lowball their own costs.
“Nobody has written a blank cheque,” he said of Canadian spending.
No. He has written a blank cheque and signed our name to it.
Ask yourself this: Why are we re-paying for RCMP officers? Yes, there is overtime but this is an event that needs less than a weeks security.
Think about it… because you are paying for it.
Rites of Spring #25 - Pecha Kucha Night Number Two Tonight · Thursday May 27, 2010 by colin newell
Pecha Kucha (ペチャクチャ?), usually pronounced in three syllables as “pe-chak-cha”, is the onomatopoeic Japanese word for the sound of conversation. The equivalent English term is “chit-chat”.
Click on photo at left for a bigger, better, sharper view…
And the Victoria Event Center welcomes the 2nd ever Pecha Kucha night on May 27, 2010. Events coordinator, Elisa Yon has been in touch with me about doing a presentation…
On what I ask? Have to think about that.
Anyway. Going tonight to check it out.
So. What is Pecha Kucha anyway?
Pecha Kucha Night was devised in 2003 by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Tokyo’s Klein-Dytham Architecture (KDa), as a way to attract people to Super Deluxe, their experimental event space in Roppongi, a district of Minato, Tokyo, Japan, famous as home to the rich Roppongi Hills area and an active night club scene..
Pecha Kucha Night events consist of around a dozen presentations, each presenter having 20 slides, each shown for 20 seconds.
Each presenter has just 6 minutes 40 seconds to explain their ideas before the next presenter takes the stage.
6 minutes and 40 seconds. I could humiliate myself in seconds if I apply myself.
Conceived as a venue through which young designers could meet, show their work, exchange ideas, and network, the format keeps presentations concise, fast-paced and entertaining.
Young designers? That is a scratch for me. I was young about 30 years ago.
In 2004 PKN began running in a few cities in Europe, and has since become a worldwide phenomenon, now running in more than 260 cities in almost every corner of the globe. Now it is in Victoria Canada – the last event had over 200 in the audience. Click on the above photo for the big picture.
See you there!
Rites of Spring #20 The power of my shoes · Thursday May 20, 2010 by colin newell
My wife and I just spent the evening with Brit comic Eddie Izzard – arguably one of the funniest men on the planet. Maybe even beyond the planet.
We actually sat in separate seats – well, I mean – separate rows… obviously people cannot sit in the same seat while watching a comic like Eddie Izzard…
Unless they are making out or something.
We initially determined that there were no good pairs of seats left for the show – but came back when we realized that we could sit in two separate rows – not far from each other… maybe check each other out – flirt… and then go home together.
Brilliant! And it worked! But what about those shoes?
Digress. Actually when we go out on dates or weekends, I wear a pair of my Fluevogs – a very sexy shoe from an outlet in Vancouver. My Fluevogs are NOT shown in the photo above. I will get an actual shot of these 2-Tone Burgundy and Black bad boys. I mean, I do not wear great shoes to work. What would be the point? I did once and I was interrupted constantly during the day… never got a thing done that day.
It seems that even an old f*cker like me (late 40’s / early 50’s) can wear some bad-ass foot wear and pull it off. And whenever we are in the theater or cinema, someone spots these things and wants to talk about them.
Being over 6’ tall and still slim and wearing 501 jeans in a size an average 21 year old would like to be able to wear – with a Tommy Bahama shirt on top of that… and…
Without fail. Never. Ever. An evening. Where someone does not see the shoes and react as if they are a 5 month old puppy or a new baby.
Shoes for heavens sake. Shoes.
It seems a waste to wear them on my feet for all the love they get by passersby. I should strap an extra pair around my neck. That would be funny.
Anyway. Eddie was funnier than heck – and spent the entire 2 and 3/4 hour set delivering the history of everything and proving there is no God.
I am in…
Then again, I do have these shoes. That proves something.
Just not entirely clear what.
Colin Newell is a Victoria area resident, writer, singer and want-to-be funny guy… with shoes, awesome shoes.
