SketchFest Vancouver

Been a bit of a busy week for me this week, so I haven't had a chance to rave about the great comedy I saw at SketchFest Vancouver last weekend, produced by Pink Vixen Productions - Morgan Brayton's baby comedy show.
But small is one thing this show ain't... it is filled with BIG talent! Blackout Broadcast is a Vancouver staple of sketch comedy. Their whole bit is three announcers reading the radio program...then came Bucket: a recently formed comedy duo of Paul Bee and Charles Demers. They sure make use of that liberal arts degree ...to get laughs. Very smart, great delivery...and even some wonderful physical comedy. Bucket really kicked ass, just hope that Charles doesn't kick the bucket, seeing as most funny fat sketch artists die in their prime (their line, not mine!) I expect we will see a lot more of these two ... hope so!

Then there was Killing my Lobster all the way from San Fran! The four of them packed up to make the long journey North - very international! They seem to be getting quite the reputation as funny folk. They do some great physical comedy and a great song bit about High Heels.
But you haven't seen physical comedy until you've seen Cody Brian - another international sensation, this time all the way across the wandafuca (?) Bellingham! I would hate to have been a stage hand after these guys though...they fling water, clothes, food and a whole slew of objects as well as themselves all across the stage with each sketch. They have a keen sense of props and make belive...They are a treat to see, but don't sit in the first row!

...oh those poor stage hands - what could we do without those volunteers. Sketchfest is all volunteer run, under the guidance of our lady of the Pink, and whomever she has recently snagged. Morgan is great at picking amazingly talent and putting one hell of a funny line-up. She was the Manager of the Van Int'l Comedy Festival in 2004 - which was my first not-for-profit-gig, where I met some of the coolest people I know.

No doubt one of the greatest joys of volunteering for these events are the people you meet. They really make the show - in many ways. Our volunteer Coordinator was Rebecca Hales - what a Dynamo! Sure we will be seeing her on the red carpet at some point. She is a writer who works at the Vancouver Film School and is able to manage a whole slew of projects and volunteers with a chipper manner in 6 inch heels. Good luck sweets in all your endeavors.

Nowadays I have become a full time volunteer again!. Jut got on the Board of Directors of Out On Screen. I am also the Prize Coordinator of the Bingo For Life at Oasis. More on that later.

A Simple Curve

Craig and I just attended a Canada Screens evening which is a new program being run at the Vancity Theater of the VIFF Centre where they spotlight one Canadian film every month www.canadascreens.firstweeendclub.ca. Check them out! They are doing real good work. Despite the great reviews and awards, the film is in limited distribution and might not make it on the screens for long, it just got pulled from Toronto but it is breaking records in Nelson, BC.

We saw A simple Curve: a belatedl coming of age story of a young man who lives in the last hippie heartland in Canada - and maybe the world. Set in the majestic mountains of the Kootenays in south-eastern BC where small towns are beaded along the valley highways that were once so popular among the fleeing US deserters in the 60’s and are still popular today with self absorbed young granolas and counter culture folk who congregate there to live off the land and the grid. It’s a very mature and funny portrayal of rural life in a very special part of the world.

Caleb, played by Kris Lemche of Joan of Arcadia, a 27 YO guy still living at home, is contemplating his future in the economically stagnant backwater town where he and his Vietnam draft dodging widower father, who had pitched his commune tent there once, operate a non-lucrative woodworking shop. Their financial hardship is only heightened by his fathers’ idealistic approach to the craft that defies business sense and economic realities. They live a meagre but wholesome lifestyle but Caleb is faced with the challenge of carving out a living so he can start his own family in his native town.

As one retiring captain of a cross-Atlantic ship said to a young couple emigrating to BC from Scotland: “You can’t eat the Mountains!” Making a living in the country can be difficult, but the high fibre diet of nature is quite good for the soul.

Enter rich developer uncle. A renounced-hippie who rekindles the alpha male head butting of the yesteryears with the father who challenges our young hero to make his Sophie’s Choice.
With a witty and well written script, and a great cast, the film depicts the wonderful relationship of father and son who each have something to teach the other as they reach across age and cultural gaps that separate the older hippy from the young Gen Xer.

Huge stunning vistas of the rolling forrests and valleys also add a flavour to the film that is unique. Life in the Kootenays is very special indeed, not only can you have all the sexual partners of you ever had under one roof at one time, but it’s a place where time stands still, where mountains, lakes and forests murmur the wisdom of the ages, where teeppee dwelling urban-expats congregate to commune with nature and live the simple life.

Your urban-narrator was once such a pilgrim in the late 90’s, and to this day I remember the effect that landscape had on me. I noticed on my return trip from Montreal in 2005 where the sight of the once familiar skyline filled me with nostalgia and charged my batteries. Apparently everywhere that this film was shown, there has been someone who was from the Kootenays who attested to the authenticity of the movie…a great backdrop for a beautiful story of people who have to leave their home and loved ones to be able to find peace.

I think this film might make a great TV series though. Given the desperate need of the CBC to marry tender dramas with CanCon, coming of age stories in obscure Canadian locations are de rigueur nowadays ...which can be made even more dramatic were you to add the rednecks and pot growers, who were absent from the casting call, into the equation. However, the filmmaker, who is originally from the Slocan Valley, thinks that it would be stretching the story too much; but overstretching a thin story down to an even thinner veneer is a not-too uncomfortable reach for Hollywood producers, which means that we might see a carbon copy of this film, specially with the recent attention that the deserters of this current war are getting.

Great and Small

Last Saturday I was treated to a view of Saturn by one of my neighbours who had set up a telescope in the Co-op grounds (apparently you can borrow a pretty fancy telescope from any of the astronautic societies when you become a member -what a deal). What I saw through the little lense was a miniscule grey orb surrounded by those unmistakable rings (just like this pic)...fleeting out of the viewfinder at a steady speed. When I saw the planet, I started getting nausea as if I had vertigo... it looked so real, and so far!
I have always been awed by the stellar bodies of outerspace, but I can't quite get a grasp of their proportions. I am fascinated by the sheer size and number of these things that live in neighborhoods whose addresses require whole blackboards of equations and a few PHD's to pin point - out there in the unimaginable emptiness of space where even light takes decades to travel. I never really can get a real sense of scale on them - I mean, how do you visualise millions of light years?
Though I am able to pick out a few of the planets and constellations out of the night sky, nothing compares to the sheer number of lights that can be see when you are out of the reflective light of the urban centres. When I was living in the country, I was amazed at how bright the night sky was with its shimmering of lights from worlds that seem to go on forever. Looking up at them, sometimes I would feel like I was going to fall down...
I don't take much notice of the stars nowadays as I go on in my day to day; I forget their greatness in my routine. But what an impression they make when you see them live...really adds a sense of perspective to life. When you think of their sheer vastness, how can you not help but feel small - and insignificant!
In Douglas Adams' Restaurant at the End of the Universe, there is a torture machine which can break even the strongest of wills by simply showing the torturee the huge size of the universe in comparison to them. When compared to how unbelievingly huge the universe is, one person's will just doesn't stand a chance - the survivors of this torture machine end up as vegetables.
I do wonder how come I felt nausious as I saw the little planet - it must have been a kind of circuit breaker - meant to self protect (though I could easily have fallen and hit my head on a planter) It was a very visceral reaction for sure and it was different from seeing a picture, that little image had a scale that I could grasp. Well check this out for size.

"A handful of sand contains one millions grains of sand, one thousand handfuls make a billion. there are one hundred billion individual stars within our galaxy, and there are at least 50 billion galaxies in the universe...there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand in every beach on earth" - The Planets, BBC. (NB: they are reffering to stars, not planets!)

Check out "The Planets", it's an 8 part series done in 1999. It's very thorough and informative, and there is no shortage of "whoa!" moments in it ...and great graphics.
or check out the NASA site...http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html?skipIntro=1
- if you have read this far, then I might be able to get you copies of the Planets - just ask
...more to follow - I smell a sequel!

Brian Jungen at the Vancouver Art Gallery

Last Tuesday night, Jody and I treated ourselves to an evening of culture at the VAG. I was dying to see Brian Jungen's work for a while now, and a rainy night was as good an excuse as any to visit our Art Gallery. His use of modern matertials to recreate native artifacts is awesome. I was having an experience - communing with art and history... Jungen's use of everyday items like plastic chairs and sneakers to create objects that reminisce about history, art and native culture is nothing short of amazing.
In the main foyer of the Gallery, you are greeted with a huge white sculpture reminiscent of a Dinosaur skeletons hanging high above you, made from plastic lawn chairs. There are a few of these sculptures, all paleontological in reference though the creatures look more and more mythical.
The other things that caught my attention were the native masks made from Michael Jordan Nike sneakers. The craftsmanship is exceptional and simple at the same time - some of the sneakers had been altered so little to look like a Haida mask that it really makes you think... or the two storey Tepee made of Italian black leather couches...The whole exhibit is very thought provoking. The juxtaposition of materials and products charges these items with a meaning that transcends their conventions. When you consider that the dinosaurs who ruled the world 300+ million years before humans were on the planet, are now nothing more than bones and fossils of which plastic chairs are made by the millions which in turn will survive humans for another 300 million years ...Wow!
There are a few ways of approaching Jungen's art, there is no shortage of meaning that can be ascribed to it, which is what makes his work great art.
I think it was Jean Luc Goddard who once said (Art is the process by which objects acquire humanity. I don't think he was thinking of A.I, but rather that old idea that the physical world has its limitations in which people transcend when they are effected by love, music, compassion, spirituality - a la Plato and Wittgenstein.
Hope you can see this exhibit - it's worth it.
More on the greatness of life and the insignificance of being later as we visit Saturn