Monthly Archives: March 2010

Win a Date with raincoaster

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Shakespeare Got to Get Paid, Son

Only your taste (or is that “tastes”?) can say whether a date with raincoaster is a prize or booby prize. As you know, we’re all about the boobies lately around these parts. These specific parts, that is.

My parts are superfine, if somewhat bruised lately, just ask anyone who’s seen them, which includes you if you clicked on the link (you just went back and did that, didn’t you?). And they and the rest of me will be going (thanks to an invite from the generous and omnipotent Rebecca Coleman, publicist to…productions successful at getting pimped out on raincoaster.com and Twitter) to the West Coast premiere of Eugene Stickland‘s play Queen Lear at Presentation House Theatre. Want to come as my date? It’s easy (unlike me).

All it takes to win is to post the comment that I think contains the funniest literary joke. Tasteless is extra points, Shakespeare is extra points, King Lear is extra extra points, tasteless King Lear jokes posted by Kenneth Branagh are an automatic win. Sorry, boys, I have a weakness for blustery Irishmen.

Queen Lear at Presentation House

Queen Lear at Presentation House

Life Lessons and Sh8kspeare: Queen Lear

NORTH VANCOUVER, BC: Presentation House Theatre, in association with Western Gold, are pleased to present the West Coast premiere of Eugene Stickland’s Queen Lear. The older generation has much to teach the younger generation about theatre… and life. Or is it the other way around? Queen Lear runs March 25-April 10 at Presentation House Theatre.

An accomplished aging actress, suffering a dearth of decent roles for older women, is cast in the title role in an all-female production of King Lear and, terrified that her memory will fail her, employs a young girl to help her memorize her lines. Text messaging meets iambic pentameter in this amusing and touching story about courage and the strength of spirit. Both women struggle with fear, loss and challenge, illustrating how time and experience both separate and unite them. This new play, featuring celebrated actor Shirley Broderick, newcomer Jennifer McPhee, and acclaimed cellist Peggy Lee, is not to be missed.

Western Gold Theatre produces outstanding professional theatre that expands horizons and enriches the lives of mature artists and their audiences. The company offers powerful role-modeling, creative opportunity and active engagement to a rapidly growing senior population and provides inspiration to diverse generations of theatre lovers. Artistic Director Colleen Winton is particularly interested in creating mentorships between senior artists and emerging artists and sees this play as a wonderful opportunity to celebrate what the generations have to teach each other.

Queen Lear is part of The Third Street Theatre series. Founded in 2005 by Artistic Director Brenda Leadlay, The Third Street Series is the banner under which Presentation House Theatre (PHT) presents and produces a professional season of plays. The vision for the series entails a fusion of accessibility and artistic risk, in order to achieve a season that is appealing and marketable but challenges and educates our audiences about new artistic practices.

Queen Lear previews Thursday, March 25, and opens Friday, March 26 at 8 pm. It then runs nightly (Sunday evenings and Mondays dark) through until April 10. There will be weekend matinees on Saturdays at 4, and Sundays at 2. All performances are at Presentation House Theatre, 333 Chesterfield, North Vancouver (3 blocks from the Seabus). Tickets are $24 for Adults, $22 for Students/Seniors. All tickets are $2 more at the door, and $2 more on Friday and Saturday evenings. All seats for the preview are $12.

For tickets or more information, please call 604.990.3474 or email boxoffice AT phtheatre.org.

www.phtheatre.org

We’ve done this sort of thing before, so you know how it works: no complaining that it’s arbitrary because…well…this is a dictatorship, and when in the history of the known universe have I ever hesitated to be arbitrary? Deadline is noon Friday, and don’t expect me to phone you: mah Jeebusphone has gone AWOL. I’ll hit you up on email or Twitter.

You know what to do, so do it in the comments. And for god’s sake, clean up after yourselves when you’re finished!

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Pole Dancing: Raising the Bar

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Pole Dancer Jenyne Butterfy raises the bar

No word from the sponsoring federation on whether or not this talented performer won the US National Pole Dancing Championships, but surely it’s gotta be hard to beat a woman who can shoot light out her ladybits.

Related, more flexy dancer.

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Promises, Promises

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marriedtothesea.com

Yep, that’s the way this scam works.

Every downturn in the economy causes several things. Maybe even more than several. But the one that annoys me because it shows that not even people who are paid to write and get printed on actual physical paper have anything even approaching an institutional or professional memory:

The fact that every frakking newspaper on the planet comes out with the same faux-callow retread: OMG, Post-Secondary Schools Are Like Totally Ripping Off the Unemployed.

Yes.

Of course.

It’s what they’re for.

Far too many of them anyway, and if you doubt that, you can take a quick browse through Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream.

Which doesn’t make my decision to apply to grad school any smarter or dumber than before, for lo, I am a terrible snob, and I wouldn’t go to some podunk Potemkin College. There are only three schools in the world who seem to be offering the opportunity I’m looking for: one in the UK whose name I can’t remember, Stanford, and Simon Fraser University, which happens to have the new school of Communication, Arts and Technology just about a ten minute walk from my apartment.

And of these, SFU is the greatest, because it’s the most wide-open, the most affordable, and smack-dab in the middle of a community to which I am connected up the proverbial wazoo. I’m not connected to them literally up the wazoo because I don’t like them that way, okay? Okay.

I’ve been told that Stanford has a program for deserving people from out of the country with whom they want to work, and I’d like to think I’m one of those people, they just don’t know it yet. And the UK would be nice, and I’m pretty sure I could use BoJo’s webguru as a reference, and I can easily get an EU passport, what with having been born in France and so on. And god knows, I haven’t got enough paperwork in my life, so here goes a round of rooting through online prospecticusses and presumably interviewing, because when you’re the scholarship applicant, they’re not gonna take a shot in the dark: they want to look in your actual eyes and see if the retinas match with anyone on the Ten Most Wanted list.

Especially if you’ve indicated a preference for distance learning, a desire to collect professors’ home addresses, and you’ve listed a cabin in Montana as your address.

As if that weren’t enough, I’ve also taken on a major role with the Social Media Club of Vancouver, and I’m applying for more paid blogging gigs, as well as upping my post frequency on True/Slant.

Which is basically all my posts tagged WorkLife Balance are ALSO tagged Speculative Comedic Fiction.

Next up, figuring out how to apprentice myself to this guy. I spent a significant part of last year trying to convince local hotels this would be a good idea in advance of the Olympics, to no avail. Obviously, the man has mad hotel-persuasion skillz.

Promises: hmmm, isn’t that the name of a rehab center?

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St Patrick’s Day Quote o’ the Day: the Fuckin’ Irish

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Irish Porn

As opposed to the Fightin’ Irish, who are generally football teams at Catholic high schools, which makes them predominantly Filipino, Chinese, Korean, South American and Italian, at least in this city it does, and it’s always a cheap laugh when I see them on the bus in their team sweatshirts. But am I being racist, or are they?

Hmm.

In any case, to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day here are the three most brilliant quotes about the Irish since Dave Allen died and went to…nowhere? Wherever he went, I’m sure he had a bit of apologizing to do, particularly after the bit about the Pope jousting with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Quote the first, from Departed screenwriter William Monahan, via Susie Bright’s Journal, whom I used to read all the time in Mondo 2000 and so on and which blog I only stumbled across because she posted a link to my blog on Facebook. See, being referrer-stat obsessed has a payoff!

I’m Irish. I’ll deal with something being wrong the rest of my life.

and Quote the Second, from the same source:

What Freud said about the Irish is: We’re the only people who are impervious to psychoanalysis.

and Quote the Third, from my boss, the Manolo, who says he doesn’t have an Irish bone in his body. Still, he’s got our number:

If Darby O’Gill = Uncle Remus for Irish People, then the Pogues = N.W.A. for Irish People.

Amen to that!

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Unicorn-less Unicorn Chaser

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I don’t know about you, but I could use a good unicorn chaser after that last post. What about some nice pastrami and a side of Michael Caine‘s mojo?

Or maybe you believe in the power of Boombox?

Well, I’m not sure that one will work; youtube’s farked up their layout so much I’m no longer able to tell if a video is embeddable or not. If it’s not, well, that’ll only depress me more. Gee, thanks Samberg.

SHATNER!

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