I Want Your Text

Big news in Canada today for cell phone users.  Two of the country's major carriers are about to implement a new charge for receiving a text message.  Currently, the charge is 15 cents for each text message you send.  But soon you'll also get dinged the same amount for receiving a text message.  Based on the astronomical rise in the popularity of text messaging over the past 5 years, this will become a 1 billion dollar ... yes, BILLION dollar pie for carriers to get a bite of. 

As a result of this story, The Province, one of Vancouver's daily newspapers, had a bit of an eye-catching headline today.  For some reason it struck as kinda hilarious so thought I'd just post it for anyone not in Vancouver right now.  You can see what Vancouverites are seeing today in our newspaper boxes as we walk the streets on a sunny and very warm summer day.

OMG! GM @ GM (place)

It appears as though I'm right on track to relive the 80's as much as possible in the course of one short week.  That fact is thanks to me and the gang checking out a couple of live concerts by superstars from that big hair era.  Make that, Big Hair-a. 

Not only did I manage to catch Cyndi Lauper and the B-52's last week, I also saw George Michael at GM Place last Friday night. We took advantage of an Actual. Ticketmaster. Sale. which had tickets for George Michael available for 25 bucks! When was the last time you got to see a major recording artist performing live for less money that it takes to fill up your gas tank? Of course, thanks to Ticketmaster's "convenience" fee, the final price was $40.

By the way, Ticketmaster, I've yet to hear a plausible definition of just what exactly is a "convenience" fee. Is it for the convenience of allowing about 2 minutes on your website to decide if the seats which your software finds for me are appropriate for my requirements, not to mention worth an exorbitant sum before your site hits timeout and I'm forced to perform a ticket search all over again?  Or is it for reducing the number of physical ticket outlets so that ticket buyers are forced into virtual hell? Or is it for…

Anyway, I imagine '25' was the magic number for the ticket price because the tour is titled "25 Live" to celebrate GM's 25 years in the recording biz. I've actually seen (and met) George Michael before, but that was a long time ago and I gotta be honest… I definitely didn't expect he'd have the kind of pull he used to have, but sure enough GM Place was packed to the rafters (which, conveniently, is precisely where our tickets placed us).

Thanks to the beer (which is $7.50 a serving), I kinda lost track of exactly how long the show was but it felt like it was way over 2 hours (plus a 20 minute intermission). The show was high energy and a lot of fun actually.

What was really impressive was the fact that the crowd was so into the show. Let's face it, Vancouver audiences can be pretty reserved (read: lame) in their response to live performances although lately I've seen some rather lively audiences at the Adele and Mika shows. For George Michael, everyone at GM Place was on their feet from the floor seats - all the way up to the nosebleeds.

The set list was just hit after hit after stinking pop hit. When you hear all his songs in a row like we did at the concert, you can realize just how prolific his career has been thus far. He played ancient Wham! tunes like Careless Whisper, A Different Corner, Everything She Wants and I'm Your Man. He also played pretty much everything off of the Faith album except I noted I Want Your Sex was nowhere to be heard. There was also lots of 90's tunes like Too Funky, Fastlove and Praying for Time (that's the one he did on American Idol this past season).

I think one of GM's best tunes is Freedom. After two encores, that song was the final song of the night. It was a definite crowd pleaser. Here's a video of it which is shot pretty much from the same vantage point we had for the show. At the end of the clip, you'll see production credits - those were actually displayed live on stage as the show came to a close. Never seen that before. Anyway, here's the clip - enjoy...

Btw, GM Place is also home to the Vancouver Canucks who we hope will be able to pull out all the stops this coming hockey season. If you need tickets for hockey games or concerts in Vancouver, check out Tickets Tonight at 200 Burrard Street, right beside the Canada Place cruise ship terminal and convention centre.

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She Still Bops

Kinda feels like summer has arrived for good in Vancouver.  Not only is there a good amount of sun lately, but the live music scene has picked up in a way that happens only at this time of year ... with outdoor shows and festivals.

You might already know that at the end of July, the first Pemberton Festival kicks off with some pretty cool acts like NIN, Coldplay, Interpol, Jay Z, Vampire Weekend, Metric, Chromeo and LOTS more (it's a 3-day blitz). 

It's all going down just a couple hours north of the city - and if you've never seen the Pemberton Valley, this would be the *perfect* time to check it out because it's pretty amazing up there -  big mountains, big sky, big fun.

Another summer outdoor festival is the True Colours tour.  It hit Vancouver last Wednesday at Deer Lake Park in Burnaby (an eastern suburb of Vancouver for anyone just getting to know this area).  The True Colors tour is one of the newest music projects spearheaded by Cyndi Lauper and is named after her hit song from way back in 1986.  The annual tour was inaugurated last summer in the U.S. and this year Vancouver was included on the itinerary.

The show features a considerably varied line up of talent representing a fairly diverse selection of artists.  The line up in Vancouver included Nona Hendryx, Joan Armatrading, Rosie O'Donnell, Carson Kressley, Margaret Cho, The B-52's, Sarah McLachlan and, of course, Cyndi Lauper was the headliner.

The whole purpose of the tour is to raise awareness of human rights, specifically for the gay community.  A portion of the ticket sales goes to non-profit partners and additional fundraising is enabled through merchandise sales and online auctions.

About the actual venue… somehow I've never been to Deer Lake Park before, but am I ever glad I went!  It's a great outdoor venue for a concert because the parkland you have to sit on to see the show (for some insane reason, chairs are not permitted) is on a gentle slope toward the lake itself.  The stage was setup at the bottom of the slope so the sightlines are all good because nobody's big, fat head gets in your way.

Deer Lake Park is also basically adjacent to the Burnaby Village Museum and the Burnaby Art Gallery so there's definitely more than one reason to go check it out.

Although I had a really brutal case of sinusitis that day, I wasn't about to give up a ticket that cost me $70.  Turns out sitting on a blanket outside watching a concert was the same as sitting in the park across the street from my house with my iPod for company.  I got through it alright except for going through an entire box of Kleenex during the show.

Here's a clip of Vancouver's Sarah McLachlan and Cyndi Lauper performing Time After Time:

 

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Krazy! is as Krazy! does

A few years ago I made a couple trips to the Hermitage Museum while in St. Petersburg, Russia. Entire galleries within are each dedicated to one master. A gallery for Renoir, a gallery for Matisse, a gallery for Picasso… it's pretty amazing. So last summer when the Vancouver Art Gallery presented its highly anticipated show From Monet to Dali, I was pretty stoked to check it out because my then-recently discovered regard for fine art needed a fix.

Imagine my surprise upon learning this year's really big show at the Vancouver Art Gallery is as much a collection of European modernist art as Wreck Beach is nature's runway for lumberjackets, cowichan sweaters and Ugg's.

This year's show is:
KRAZY! The Delirious World of Anime + Comics + Video Games + Art

("My, what a long title you have")...

I finally got a chance to get over there and check it out. It definitely ain't no collection of paintings and sculptures by guys with last names built to adorn the hard covers of coffee table books.  Instead it offers something completely different, totally new and, I think, pretty darn fun for Vancouver…

 

Now, really… when was the last time you sat down at a table top PacMan game and played doubles with a competitive pal? The instantaneous nature of forming an addiction to power pellets is astonishing and all-consuming.

But that's not all the KRAZY! has to offer. No, siree. There's modern and contemporary comic displays, manga, anime, graphic novels, sketchbooks, storyboards, animation cels, films and video. You can even sit down and create your own masterpiece once the inspiration surrounding you proves futile to resist. Just like what happened to these pretty girls, Vikki and Vivian…

I found KRAZY! to be eye-catching, yet not entirely awash in color. The curious aspect of my imagination was very intrigued by what was around each corner; ranging from early 20th century comics... 

If the calendar age of some of the works in KRAZY! didn't prove to occasionally rival the age of the building they're found in, it would be an almost defiant notion to curate essentially tech and youth-oriented pop cultural icons in a space like the Vancouver Art Gallery. 

The building itself turned 100 a couple years ago and is the former BC provincial courthouse.  On the contrary, PacMan hit the market only in 1980 (the same year as CNN, The Empire Strikes Back and Who Shot J.R.?).

Other than this summer, the Vancouver Art Gallery is generally filled with fairly traditional classic temporary and permanent collections by Carr, Warhol, Kahlo and O'Keefe.

All told, I really responded to KRAZY! and definitely plan to go again (yeah, I know how that sounds).

And if you like to get interactive with your art in Vancouver, do like the locals do and go a little crazy for art's sake...

P.S. Her name is Nicole. Yes, she is my friend. No, surprisingly the exhibit was not named in her honour.

Look Out Be...luga!

Three and a quarter hours is how long it used to take for the Red Arrow bus to travel between the two different cities my parents lived in for a short time while I was growing up (a process, incidentally, in which I have quite a ways to go before anyone would consider it complete).

So… Mom in one place, Dad in another.  On weekends my brother and sister and I would settle in for round trip passage on the coach line service so we could go visit our father who was three and a quarter hours away (btw, Happy Father's Day goes out to good 'ol Dad today).

Eventually Dad returned to our city and those delightful bus trips came to an end.  It's been quite some time since "3 and a quarter hours" held any significance for me, but I couldn't help but be reminded of it last Tuesday.

That was the day I watched and waited for 3 hours and 17 minutes as a pregnant beluga whale named Qila (pronounced: KEE-lah) endured labour and then, finally, gave birth to bouncing baby girl at the Vancouver Aquarium!  Qila's labour began at 1:11pm and finished at 4:28pm.

Ever witness a beluga whale birth?  There's lots of words I could use to describe this rare, amazing event.  But maybe I'll just leave it at that... rare and amazing.  You can add more words of your own which I'm sure you'll have no problem doing once you see for yourself what I'm talking about...

...here's a 69 second video of the beluga whale birth, as it happened here in Vancouver on Tuesday, June 10, 2008:

Quite the sight, doncha think?!

As you can hear from the audio, the beluga baby's birth elicited a boisterous response of cheers and applause from the people who saw the birth happen.  There was about 250 people who watched from both the underwater viewing gallery and up outside at water surface level.  They were just simply in the right place at the right time (if you like these sorts of things, that is).

After the calf swam to the surface to take its very first breath, members of the Aquarium's veterinary and animal care teams went in the beluga pool, wearing wet suits, and quickly lined the perimeter of the animal habitat to help the little gaffer avoid swimming into a solid surface. 

But the newborn beluga quickly got the hang of her environment and then everyone removed themselves, teeth chattering, from the beluga pool.

The baby beluga whale has yet to be named although she's probably the most unforgettable thing I'll see this summer in Vancouver.