Archive | April, 2012

Read Of The Day: Stephen King Says Tax The Rich More

By on April 30, 2012 in U.S.A., Uncategorized

There were some big laughs in the office today thanks to a great column on the Daily Beast’s website by one of the United State’s best-known authors. A sample:

At a rally in Florida (to support collective bargaining and to express the socialist view that firing teachers with experience was sort of a bad idea), I pointed out that I was paying taxes of roughly 28 percent on my income. My question was, “How come I’m not paying 50?” The governor of New Jersey did not respond to this radical idea, possibly being too busy at the all-you-can-eat cheese buffet at Applebee’s in Jersey City, but plenty of other people of the Christie persuasion did.

Cut a check and shut up, they said. If you want to pay more, pay more, they said. Tired of hearing about it, they said.

Tough shit for you guys, because I’m not tired of talking about it. I’ve known rich people, and why not, since I’m one of them? The majority would rather douse their dicks with lighter fluid, strike a match, and dance around singing “Disco Inferno” than pay one more cent in taxes to Uncle Sugar.

If you love a great rant or just plain agree with King (and you should because he’s right and his position, if not his language, is one of wisdom and fundamental decency), check the piece out.

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Foliage Report: Monday, April 30

By on April 30, 2012 in Uncategorized

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Four In The Afternoon

By on April 30, 2012 in News, Uncategorized

1 SLICE SLICE SLICE More jobs are on notice or kaput entirely due to Ottawa cutbacks. Parks Canada was hit the worst; the Globe and Mail has all the details featuring what seems to all the world to be terribly shortsighted thinking.

Example:

At Correctional Services Canada, 17 inmate rights and redress workers received notices. John Edmunds, the Union of Solicitor General Employees, warned that prisons become more dangerous when prisoners do not feel their concerns are being heard.

2 HBO HANDS OUT TWO RENEWALS, BECAUSE YOU KNEW THEY WOULD Really, the cable channel will gives everything a second season. It takes a disaster on the level of Luck, the horse-racing show that loved horses but couldn’t stop killing them during production, to not get a second season to air on HBO. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the two series up for renewal this time around have a bunch of buzz around them — positive for Veep and mixed-but-abundant for Girls.

3 NERD PROM Well, POLITICO would like you to think that the headline item for Rick Santorum at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was his photo with Lindsay Lohan. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great. The lead story here, though, is clearly his photo with the Mythbusters guys.

4 LINGERIE FOOTBALL NEWS WON’T QUIT The Leader-Post has an interview with the founder of the Lingerie Football League, coming out to tell everyone that this is a legitimate sport in a sensationalist wolf’s clothes. “Women’s athletics have struggled. They have struggled forever to gain traction … you have to have a gimmick or a hook to bring (fans) in,” he told the LP.

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Review: House of Three at the Globe Theatre

By on April 30, 2012 in Uncategorized

Forget Zeus and his retinue of gods and godlets. For real power in the ancient Greek cosmology, look to the Moirai, or Fates. Born from Necessity and Time, the Fates rule your life. You may have dominion over your next latte, but the big issues are determined and portioned out by three women: Clotho, who spins the thread of your life; Lachesis, who measures it out; and Atropos, who snips it off. Of all of them, Atropos is the most terrifying. She’s a walking telomere with a pair of shears, ready to do her work when you step out into moving traffic because you’re so fixed on getting to that latte.

Despite their power, though, they rarely appear as characters in their own right. Most often the Fates are invoked by others, or show up as shadowy figures at the worst possible moment. They have remarkably little agency apart from the people whose destinies they attend – in other words, they have almost no story of their own. Which raises the question: what do Fates do when no one’s around? How do these mythological embodiments pass an archetypal Bechdel test?

House of Three, a collaboration between Globe Theatre and Fadadance, has a few ideas. Mostly they revolve around string, salt and suitcases. Which seems fine to me.

Heather Cameron, Misty Wensel and Fran Gilboy play the three characters of the title, negotiating ideas of relationship, art, belonging and destiny through dance. They’re also the choreographers and producers. The figures of the Fates are starting points for the characters they portray, but I would guess that they developed new ideas throughout the creative process, finding ways to deepen the characters and add to their stories.

It doesn’t take long for House of Three to find deviations and wrinkles in the source material. The three women find themselves at the beginning of the performance wearing one interconnected garment. Cameron brandishes her shears and cuts them free from each other, a move that unites notions of birth, identity and death in one handy snip.

From there the dancers begin to explore the spare set, each slowly developing an identity through the objects they manipulate. The show hits its peak with the second of three main sections, in which the three dancers create and erase symbols, patterns and mandalas by spilling salt (or sand?) on the floor. There’s something hypnotic in watching Cameron, Gilroy and Wensel drawing spilling careful circles of salt, only to draw swirling, wave-like patterns with their hands and feet.

The third section, in which the three characters dance with suitcases, feels pensive and slightly sad (or it did for me). The suitcases may indicate a literal departure, or may represent the growing sense of separation between the three – the unavoidable result of difference and the accumulation of time.

While I enjoyed House of Three, the Shumiatcher Sandbox venue presented a few problems. From my seat, a pillar obscured a vital part of the stage, with the result that I missed several minutes of Cameron’s dancing. Similar problems caused me to miss part of Wensel’s performance early on, when she took up a position downstage and promptly moved out of the line of sight of the back two rows.

But this is a very minor quibble with an otherwise wonderful performance. As with Wallpaper and Honey, the previous collaboration between Fadadance and the Globe, the result is a challenging and beautiful piece that brings dance to a wider audience.

House of Three ran from April 19-28. To buy tickets to Globe Theatre plays, visit them online.

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Webcomics What’s What: Piled Higher And Deeper

By on April 30, 2012 in Comics, Science, Uncategorized

I’m not a regular reader of Jorge Cham’s PHD Comics (which, as the title of this post indicates, stands for Piled Higher and Deeper Comics). It’s a weekly strip about life in grad school. And even though I spent more years than I like count in university and even though my wife is a prof and thus well entrenched in that life, reading tales about academia has long ago lost its allure for me.

Someone needs to write a comic strip about a stay-at-home dad who does a little freelance work on the side.

Oh wait, it’s called Adam@Home and it’s been in newspapers since 1984. Yeah, I’m not going to read that. Too few zombies and octopus attacks. I want something true to my life.

Anyway, I bring up PHD Comics — which is a great and venerable webcomic, with archives dating back to 1997 — because James Brotheridge tipped me to a comic Cham, along with Dwayne Godwin, did for Scientific American on the subject of vaccination. They cover in one page of pictures what it took me 1,500 words to say in our December vaccination article. If I’d known this comic existed, we could have reprinted that and it would have saved me a lot of time.

Click on the image below to see the full comic.


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Pick of the Day (Tomorrow Edition): Spring Prelude

By on April 30, 2012 in Dance, Uncategorized

In late June, Regina will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 1912 Regina Cyclone that cut quite a swath through the city from Wascana Lake north to the Warehouse District.

One of the events that’s being planned is called The Tornado Project. It’s a collaboration of number of public organizations, including the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Saskatchewan Science Centre, Dunlop Art Gallery and Swift Current Windscape Art Festival, and will explore the cyclone and its legacy from an artistic, scientific and historical perspective.

Tuesday night, New Dance Horizons is hosting a fundraiser at Artesian on 13th to support its involvement in The Tornado Project. Spring Prelude will feature performances by Canadian dance icon Margie Gillis (pictured), along NDH artistic director Robin Poitras. Also involved are Ramses Calderon, Robyn Morin, Theodore Bison, Richie Pollack, Daniella Beltrami, Sonia Kalburgi, Cameron Lowe, Descalso, Darke Hall 5 and more.

Doors are at 6:30 p.m., and the event will run until 9:30 p.m. Tickets are $50 and can be obtained by calling 525-5393.

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Foliage Report: Sunday, April 29

By on April 29, 2012 in Uncategorized

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Sunday Matinee: 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

By on April 29, 2012 in Film, Uncategorized

Jules Verne wrote Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in 1870. The one of the first movie versions came in 1907 when Georges Méliès made a short film about Verne’s novel. Méliès also had the film had painted it making one of the first colour films, although there are number of black and white prints available of it.

The first full length film adaptation came in 1916 when Universal Studios made this ambitious silent film. The special effects cost Universal so much that it was impossible to recover the costs at the time and prevented more Jules Verne’s adaptation for some time.

The movie takes elements from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea and Verne’s follow-up novel The Mysterious Island. A mysterious sea creature has been attacking ships in the ocean and the American naval ship the Abraham Lincoln has been sent to investigate. Meanwhile a group of American Civil War soldiers have crash landed on a mysterious island when their balloon crashes there. Back to the Abraham Lincoln, it final meets the sea creature and is attacked. It’s revealed that the “creature” is really Captain Nemo’s submarine The Nautilus. The survivors from the Abraham Lincoln are taken on board and kept as prisoners. From there the two stories eventual merge.

The film features the earliest use of underwater photography but without underwater cameras. A system of watertight tubes and mirrors allowed the camera to shoot reflected images of the underwater scenes. The effect worked extremely well. It was also one of the few adaptations that featured Captain Nemo as an Indian like he was in the novels not British like the Disney version. The film holds up extremely well and while the 1954 Disney film is movie that everyone remembers, this silent version is worth checking out.

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Baseball Could Use More Creepy Schtick

By on April 29, 2012 in Film, Uncategorized

I thought this would be making rounds more than it is, but I asked three of my internet-savy friends last night and no one had heard of this.

So here we are: the baddie from The Ring throwing the first pitch at a Japanese baseball game:

I am completely in favour of fictional characters throwing out the first pitch, doubly so when those characters come from horror movies.

[via The Vulture]

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Status Update on Stadium Seems to Signal a Change in Direction

By on April 29, 2012 in News, Regina, Uncategorized

Here’s a link to a status update  on the Regina Revitilization Initiative that I believe will be presented to City Council at its April 30 meeting. Reviewing it, several interesting points jump out.

First, negotiations to acquire the CP lands between downtown Regina and the Warehouse District are ongoing, but substantial progress has apparently been made, and the city is hopeful of concluding negotiations before the end of May.

As far as funding goes, the report notes that both the provincial and federal government have put the kibosh on funding a stand-alone sports facility. The broader scope of the RRI, which would involve the redevelopment of the old Mosaic Stadium site should a new stadium be built, might open the door to some provincial and federal involvement, but nothing concrete has been hammered out at present.

The really interesting stuff starts on page four under the heading Stadium Design Considerations. The authors of the report acknowledge that the push so far has been for a fixed or retractable roofed stadium that would qualify as a multi-purpose entertainment facility (proposed design pictured above). While there would be some initial economic spinoffs from the construction of such a facility, which was costed several years ago at $431 million, but now would surely cost substantially more, the report concludes that such facilities entail significant operating expenses and experience in other North America cities has shown that they cannot generate enough revenue to be self-sustaining. That’s why most stadiums that are being built these days, in cities far larger than Regina, are open air.

On page seven, the report turns its attention to the stadium location. Again, the authors acknowledge that the push has been to locate the stadium on the soon to be vacated CP lands, with the goal of creating a magnet for activity in the downtown area and Warehouse District. But the report suggests that Evraz Place should not be overlooked as a possible location for a new stadium. That’s city-owned property, and it could create synergies with existing facilties in the area like Brandt Centre, Co-operaters Centre, the Fieldhouse and Lawson Aquatic Centre. It would still be possible to build connections with the downtown and Warehouse District, and would also leave the CP lands and current Mosaic Stadium site available for mixed-use redevelopment.

I’m not saying that I agree with everything in the report, but it at least stays within the realm of reality as opposed to most of the pie-in-the-sky talk that’s driven the agenda so far.

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Pick of the Day: Blueprint Series

By on April 29, 2012 in Dance, Uncategorized

Since 1982, April 29 has been celebrated in the arts community as International Dance Day. It’s an UNESCO initiative, and April 29 was selected as the date to commemorate the birthday of Jean-Georges Noverre (1727-1810) who is credited with being the creator of modern ballet.

Each year, an acclaimed dance artist or choreographer is selected to deliver a global message on the importance of dance in human culture. Since 2005, the Canadian Dance Assembly has provided a message from a Canadian artist. Here’s a link to the 2012 message from b-boy Yvon Soglo (pictured). 

In Regina, New Dance Horizons is marking the day with another installment in its Blueprint Series where local artists perform small-scale works-in-progress. Taking the stage today will be Meredith LaRocque, Tanya Dahms, Traci Foster, Krista Solheim, Dr. Ann Kipling Brown and Ian Campbell.

NDH is located at 2207 Harvey St., and the show starts at 2 p.m. Tickets are $10. For more info call 525-5393.

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“The Bible Got Slavery Wrong”

By on April 28, 2012 in Media, Religion, Uncategorized

Dan Savage! He’s a Seattle-based sex and relationship columnist, a political pundit, a newspaper editor, the co-founder of the It Gets Better Project and the star of MTV’s Savage U. He’s also a super in-demand public speaker.

A few weeks back, he spoke at the U.S. National High School Journalism Convention about homophobia and the Bible, and he was pretty blunt, and a lot of teens walked out. Here’s the clip.

Thing is, I can’t see how what Savage said wasn’t true or was unfair. He didn’t say “Christians suck” and he didn’t say “religion is stupid” — he said the Bible gets things wrong. Well, yeah. It does. And sensible Christians, including readers of this blog, know this, and they live their lives accordingly.

It’s not like Savage is talking out his big gay ass. He was raised as a devout Catholic and while he’s now an atheist, he still feels a strong connection to the Church. He knows his stuff.

I guess it’s a little harder to take if you wanna cling to beliefs like “gay people are going to hell”. Well, yeah. Homophobia makes gay kids kill themselves. If a few young Christians get their feelings hurt on the way to a better and more tolerant world, tough poop.

(Via Slog)

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Pick of the Day (Tomorrow Edition): Audrey Andrist

By on April 28, 2012 in Music, Uncategorized

The Regina Musical Club closes out its 2011-12 season Sunday with a concert by pianist Audrey Andrist (pictured). Currently on faculty at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County and the Washington Conservatory, Andrist was born in rural Saskatchewan near Estevan and received her early musical training from William Moore at the  University of Regina.

Sunday’s concert goes at University Theatre at 2 p.m. Tickets are Adults $20, Students & Seniors $15, with U of R students free. To give you a taste of Andrist’s piano-playing chops, here’s video of her perfoming a composition called Arutiunian Suite with the Strata Trio.

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Regina Folk Festival Completes Line-up

By on April 27, 2012 in Music, Uncategorized

A month or so ago the Regina Folk Festival held a press conference to announce a substantial chunk of their line-up for the 2012 festival. Today, the RFF filled the remaining holes in the roster.

Added as a headliner is the Toronto group Stars which features Amy Millan, Chris Seligman, Torquil Campbell and Evan Cranley.

Other artists who will be performing include Tasseomancy (formerly known as Ghost Bees), Cold Specks (whose new CD I Predict a Graceful Expulsion I plan on reviewing in our May 17 issue), Rich Aucoin, Al Simmons, Kacy & Clayton, Julia & Her Piano, Young Benjamins, The Heartbroken, Rosie & the Riveters and comic Jayden Pfeifer.

To close, here’s the video for Cold Specks’ first single of her album called “Holland”.

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Foliage Report: Friday, April 27

By on April 27, 2012 in Uncategorized

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Six In The Morning

By on April 27, 2012 in News, Uncategorized

1 NOT DONE WITH DURANT The Saskatchewan Roughriders have signed an extension with quarterback Darian Durant, meaning he’ll be sticking around until at least 2014. Let’s hope that he stays duranble. durablant. Shoot — my punning on Durant and durable isn’t working, readers. Let’s move on.

2 MORE MORE MORE STORES STORES STORES The long-rumored Regina Target has been confirmed — they’ll be doing a $10 to $11 million remodel on the Zellers in the Northgate Mall to turn it into a location of the popular American store. This also confirms that the Southland, a mall so on the outs that they don’t even start movies at their theatre past 9 p.m. on most week nights, is getting left out in the cold. Personally, I’m not so jazzed on getting a Target up here. If it doesn’t have American Dorito flavours or any of the lovely varieties of Mountain Dew they’ve got down in the States, I’m not interested.

3 IN OTHER MALL-RELATED NEWS The CBC says a man in the Vic Square parking lot was pick-pocketed by three men who group hugged him. I’m not a fan of anyone who’ll exploit what should a pure expression of admiration like a hug. Not cool at all. This has made me so jaded at this point, I’ll only chest bump with strangers. That’s what we’ve come to.

4 NDP NETS A SHITHEAD Joey “Shithead” Keithley, to be precise. The punk legend and frontman of D.O.A. will be running for the provincial NDP in B.C.’s 2013 election. He’s run for the Green Party twice before. He’s always been an outspoken fellow, as people who saw him perform for Occupy Regina should be able to attest to.

5 SPAIN GOES DOWN AGAIN For the second time this year, Standard and Poor’s has downgraded Spain’s credit rating. From the New York Times: “‘In our view, the strategy to manage the European sovereign debt crisis continues to lack effectiveness,’ it said, even as it commended Spain’s efforts at reform.”

6 JEB NO VP From a story on POLITICO: “As George Will said on ABC’s This Week last Sunday, [Jeb] Bush as veep would mean ‘that in seven of nine presidential elections, there would be a Bush on the Republican ticket.’” What a thing to consider. The larger story is about why the former governor of Florida isn’t interested in being Mitt Romney’s running mate this time around. And then, they go on to list all the reasons why he’d make a good pick, really just teasing themselves for the hell of it.

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Pick of the Day (Tomorrow Edition): Saskatchewan Book Awards

By on April 27, 2012 in Books, Uncategorized

This is the 19th edition of the Saskatchewan Book Awards. Traditionally, they’ve been held in late November. This year, they’ve been moved to a new spring date. Outside of that, it looks like not much has changed. There’s still the same mix of categories celebrating various aspects of Saskatchewan literature (here’s a link to the short-list of nominees), along with a guest-speaker. This year it’s Montreal writer/editor Mark Abley (pictured) whose most recent book is the etymologically-themed Camp Fossil Eyes: Digging for the Origins of Words.

The SBAs go Saturday at Conexus Arts Centre at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $90. For more information call 569-1585.

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All The Rah Rah News You Can Use

By on April 26, 2012 in Music, Uncategorized

Regina’s Rah Rah dropped not one, not two, but three developments on fans today. If you’ve got a Rah Rah fan blog, you’ve been working hard all day. If you aren’t that person, then let me sum up the news of the day for you.

1 NEW RELEASES As they’ve said via press release and their blog, they’ve got a seven-inch called “Little Poems” coming out on June 12. That’ll be followed by their third LP, The Poet’s Dead, an album they recorded in 2011 with producers Gus Van Go and Werner F.

2 NEW LINEUP Jeff Romanyk has joined Rah Rah. You might remember him from his time with local act Sylvie, when he was an absolute beast on the drums.

I e-mailed Rah Rah’s vocalist and guitarist Marshall Burns to ask what Romanyk’s role in the band is going to be and how that would effect vocalist and drummer Erin Passmore’s duties. Burns says:

Erin will continue to play drums on the tunes that she has always played as well as the new songs that she plays drums on.

Jeff will play drums wherever Joel [Passmore, bassist] played drums in the past and on the new songs that he plays on the record as well as filling in keyboard and guitar parts on other “Erin drum” songs.

See what happens when your band switches instruments during a show? It starts to sound like an indie-rock logic puzzle. But that was a good and concise answer to my kinda nerdy questions. To boil it down more — Rah Rah has added another very talented person to the group.

3 NO MORE MYSPACE The band also says they will no longer be updating their MySpace page. Thank God. I’m glad they’re doing their part to end that scourge of my web browser once and for all.

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T.V. Heartbreaks To Come

By on April 26, 2012 in TV, Uncategorized

Entertainment Weekly has compiled a list of the fall 2012 T.V. pilots from the five U.S. broadcast networks. So, if having a show you like canceled after one season isn’t enough; if having some great looking shows canned after just two episodes isn’t enough; or if you obviously don’t have a heart to break and don’t get far too attached to the lives of fictional characters, then you can go look at the whole, five-page long list.

In it, you’ll find projects from established cool people who do cool things, like Zachary Levi, Connie Britton, Judy Greer and Scott Foley. There’s also projects from established producers like J.J. Abrams and Supernatural‘s Eric Kripke in addition to fellows like Greg Daniels, who managed to bring Parks and Recreation into this world but who also might be dead inside from having to drag the bloated-and-dying body of the American Office around with him wherever he goes at NBC.

My feeling is that the NBC shows have the most promise, but we’ll see where the episode orders get handed out. For all we know, The Selection, starring Friday Night Lights alum Aimee Teegarden and, based on its premise, seemingly a hair away from carrying the alternate title The CW Presents The Hunger Games: The Show, might be the smash hit of the season.

Of special interest to our offices at the prairie dog — and maybe to our Google presence, if it takes off — is a Fox sitcom called Prairie Dogs. Kal Penn, he of Harold and Kumar and White House fame, has a role. Here’s the logline:

Neil, an uncool cubicle worker, or prairie dog, at one of the coolest companies in the world, is victim to identity theft. When he discovers the thief has created a much more fulfilling, kick ass life with his identity, he engages the charismatic conman to help him reinvent himself.

Obviously, if it goes to series, we’re doing recaps and reviews on the Dog Blog, every week. Get ready to hear “You’re such a Neil” a lot around these parts.

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Foliage Report: Thursday, April 26

By on April 26, 2012 in Uncategorized

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