Who's Up For A Spot Of Poacher Hunting?

Hunters in eastern Russia have killed one of only seven female Amur leopards left alive in the wild. Already the world's most endangered big cat, the loss brings the species closer to extinction.



[S O U R C E]
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The Day Blenz Saved My Life

(The following Unsolicited Testimonial/Unabashed Whoring is offered to my readers as a public service.)

To tell you the truth, it was beginning to worry me.

Day in, day out, the endless numbing fatigue, the apathy, the absolute dread about doing anything or going anywhere...

Feeling like that would worry anyone, so imagine the effect it was having on a first class worry-wart like me. Then yesterday while waiting to meet a new friend (hey John!) I had a coffee. As I was sipping away I started thinking back to the last time I'd had coffee. I honestly couldn't remember.

For the record, if you can't remember the last time you had a coffee, it's been too long. I don't know if that's actual science, or merely empirical anecdote, but there you go...

That coffee was so good, I had another. Then I had to have a cup of tea. Or rather, it took a cup of tea to coax me off the ceiling of the Blenz, where I was perched and hooting.

Eventually I did get to sleep last night, and when I woke up this morning (too early, thanks to a call from work), the sun was shining and the world seemed shiny and new (like a virgin, even).

I didn't even mind the last-minute schedule change. Partly because I was expecting it, but mostly because of the miraculous, life-saving qualities of Blenz coffee.

Blenz coffee - it's good for what ails you. Try a cup today. Better yet, try two.
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As Usual, I Blame The Tories

Canada's Governor-General Michaelle Jean has recently cancelled events citing "fatigue".

We here at the Pop Culture Institute can only hope Her Excellency isn't ill; Jean's predecessor is twenty years older and didn't cancel events, despite a fairly major illness while in office. Likewise, the Lady she represents still does over two hundred engagements a years despite being nearly forty years older.

I'm just saying...

[S O U R C E]
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Father of Pop To Be Bronzed

Manhattan will add to its already burgeoning inventory of honorific public art by erecting a statue of Andy Warhol in Soho's Father Fagan Park. Presumably this means Chelsea will get the one of Joe Dallesandro for the Tomb of the Unknown Hustler.

Congrats from the Pop Culture Institute to the Father of Pop Himself.

[S O U R C E]
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Now Showing - Lily Savage on "Parkinson"

My friend Doug came over this evening, and, as will happen, I got to surfing around YouTube. In one of those happy accidents one gets while 'Tubing, we ran across this.



I don't think I've laughed as hard at anything since the last Tory Budget Speech.



Damn! I've always enjoyed watching a bit of drag - anyway, it sure beats the Hell out of doing it - but this nearly did me in. Since Doug and I were laughing so hard the first time, after he left I had to watch it again to see what I'd missed.
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Crusader Causes Conservative Conniptions

He said he'd do it, and now it appears that he just might do it.

Having just picked myself up off the floor from the mere possibility that a politician might actually (gasp!) keep a campaign promise, it looks as though New York governor Eliot Spitzer is prepared to introduce a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in that state.

Whoops! There I go again. Having just typed the words I reread them and once more hit the floor.

Even though I am highly skeptical of most politicians, that's only to be expected from a bitter, cynical person such as myself. This may come as a surprise to some of you, but it's a well-known fact that politicians lie, and even when they tell the truth they do so with an agenda. Nevertheless, Spitzer seems to have integrity, which thus far his actions have demonstrated.

Of course, this is by no means a fait accompli; even if it passes, a very large if, its opponents will never stop trying to overturn it, stooping to any depth to do so. Rather than dwell on that, though, I suppose I can allow a celebratory mood around here for awhile. If I must.

Do not mistake this for complacency, you haters out there. Oh no. It's just that I do need to lighten up occasionally so that my head doesn't explode.
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French Election Cage Match: Sarkozy vs. Royal

It's a landmark election today for the Fifth Republic (though this is only the runoff); for the first time France appears ready to elect a President born after World War 2, and whichever of the front-runners succeeds it promises to be a first.

Will it be Segolene Royal, a Socialist and a female, or will it be Nicolas Sarkozy, a centre-right child of Hungarian immigrants?

Either way, voter registration is reported as being high, and voter turnout may yet surpass the all-time high (just shy of 85%) from the 1965 contest, in which the incumbent Charles deGaulle defeated Francois Mitterand (who was eventually elected in 1981 and served the longest presidential term yet - 14 years - as a Socialist). Just FYI.
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Now Showing - David Campbell's "Earth Song"

In keeping with the theme, here is another video from my friend David Campbell.
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Happy Earth Day

Really, though, don't you think every day should be Earth Day? Huh? Well don't you?

Actually there are two, and this is where it gets confusing.

The first ever Earth Day was proclaimed by San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto on March 21st, 1970.

Earth Day, by UN decree, was first observed on that day in 1971.

The second, by an act of Congress sponsored by Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson, was first celebrated April 22nd 1970. It's a start, I guess. Two down, only 363 to go. So for now it's duelling Earth Days, y'all!

As UN Secretary-General U Thant said in 1971: "May there only be peaceful and cheerful Earth Days to come for our beautiful Spaceship Earth as it continues to spin and circle in frigid space with its warm and fragile cargo of animate life."

Amen.
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Daffodil Named NYC's Flower

3 Million daffodil bulbs were planted in New York following 9/11, so it's only fitting that the daffodil be named the city's flower. They're also the floral emblem of Wales and my personal favourite as well.



I've published this photo before, but it's one of my favourites, so I thought I'd publish it again.
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And Now For Something Completely Different

Okay, so I'll be the first to admit I've been a little squirrelly the last couple of days. Call it a combination of spring fever and righteous indignation. Despite this, I managed to make a little friend yesterday. At the very north end of Fraser Street there's a sort-of park, with stair access to Great Northern Way below, and who should I meet there but this curious little fellow.

He was a very obliging model, being very still and holding this pose as I inched forward several times to take it. Then a very raucous seagull came by and ruined it all. North Fraser is cat country, so squirrel sightings are rare. That's what made this one so serendipitous.
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Tories Are Stupid: Report

A new report released today by the Pop Culture Institute proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Canada's Conservative government led by Stephen Harper are a bunch of idiots.

The report was prompted by a Tory report that said adopting the Kyoto protocol would destroy the economy. Despite the massive savings in energy costs and corresponding increase in profits which corporations would realise in doing so, those same corporations seem unwilling to spend a dollar, even when its investment could earn them a hundred in the short-term. Not to mention, you know, saving the planet.

The PCI report goes on to say that the best way to reduce the amount of methane and hot air in the environment would be for corporations to take the money they are currently using to buy themselves a Tory government and spend it on recycling, alternative energy sources, and public transportation.

Sending the Tories packing after the next election would also be a boon to composting, as what the Tories use for brains is considered especially good for this.

The PCI report was written in crayon, and contained several naughty doodles of current Environment Minister John Baird doing something to the former holder of that portfolio, Rona Ambrose. However, those responsible for drafting the report can't draw very well, so it's difficult to to tell exactly what.
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Genug with the Meshuggeneh

What a blood-soaked few days it's been here at the Pop Culture Institute, what with all the killing and shooting. I mean, it's all been on the news, but still...

Here's the problem in a nutshell (in a nut's hell?), and it's not anti-depressants, or guns, or bullying; it has nothing to do with immigration, either. It has to do with the fact that some people seem to have the opinion that it's okay to kill people. If you banned all guns, you'd still have people bashing each other's brains in with baseball bats. It seems that some people will go to extremes to justify what is wrong wrong wrong, namely killing.

I may be going out on a limb here, but the Pop Culture Institute is ready to take a stand. We do not advocate the killing of anyone for any reason other than in self-defense, and in that case it had better be cut-and-dried, er, open-and-shut. Yeah, that's okay. Not pre-emptively, as in war, either (which we also oppose).

Just to be perfectly clear, self-defense does not mean someone gave you a snotty look at the mall so you're allowed to push them down the escalator, nor does it mean your girlfriend cheated on you so that somehow gives you the permission to garrote her for it. Self-defense means kill or be killed, and they started it. I mean, they're standing there with a knife in their hand saying "I'm a kill ya!" And even then you'd better have witnesses, video from half a dozen cell phones, and a signed confession.

Otherwise, don't fucking kill people! How hard is that to understand?

Okay, I'm done now, and I feel much better.

Thank you.
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It's 4/20 Y'All!

This is the first year in five I haven't celebrated accordingly, in keeping with my new standard of sobriety. Not to worry, I'm not all preachy about it, like some people who quit and act like they're all that because they did. I just decided that it was getting in the way of my writing, since it tends to de-motivate me. I've wanted to be a writer forever, so the solution was obvious.

Plus, there's no way my life right now is at a place where I want it in a holding pattern, so it's no smoke for me until it is. Not to mention what it does to my syntax, which is already somewhat tortured, or, if you prefer, complex. Just so you don't think I'm all virtuous, there isn't a moment when I don't think about smoking it, I just don't.

Willpower, after all, is a verb; it's something you do, not something you have.
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Fighting Hate Thought

Finally, finally, finally...

Professional hypocrites who are too eager to punish people like Don Imus for saying things like "nappy-headed hos" are starting to examine those who say far worse far more often, namely hip-hop artists. Al Sharpton is a prime example of someone who will leap down the throat of any white person who utters the N-word but remains mum when Beenie Man sings a song about how all fags should die. I'm not even gonna mention Tawana Brawley, though I'm fairly dying to.

The Pop Culture Institute is unequivocally opposed to censorship, even that imposed upon the very worst hate speech. Punishing someone for saying a terrible thing doesn't stop them from thinking it, only from saying it. Instead of releasing the hatred and aggression inherent in such speech - which may, it is true, encourage others to acts of violence - it festers inside them, which may indeed result in a much larger crime at a later date.

Hate speech is the result of disordered thinking. Inaccurate assumptions, left unchecked, easily become the truth. Peer groups - whether they call themselves a posse or a congregation - have a way of forming around this sort of affinity. Hate thinking, naturally, cannot help but express itself, which is where the vicious cycle is given release. Those on the receiving end of this hatred will inevitably react, rather than understand, and the cycle continues, without relief.

I've always liked hip-hop, despite the dismaying profusion of hatred in its lyrics, mainly because not everyone does it, and even those who do it don't do it all the time. For those who do, though, their hatred can be considered a road map to relieving itself. A rapper who has bad luck with women is likely to think badly of all women, when in fact he's just surrounded by the wrong kind of women, namely the kind who cast aside all morality when faced with a wealthy, popular recording artist who feels entitled to getting whatever he demands, including sleazy behaviour from scantily clad women.

Similarly, a muscular black rapper like 50 Cent seems to be displaying his ignorance when he demonstrates fear of a stereotypical gay man, a 150-pound mincing white guy. In every way, Fitty has the upper hand here. There are no gangs of hairdressers terrorizing Harlem, and there never have been, and there never will be. Oppressors have a funny way of believing that those whom they've oppressed, given the upper hand, will act in exactly the way they've been treated. It simply doesn't happen.

I think it was really Eminem who brought about the current scrutiny, for which he will one day be as lauded as he once was vilified. His were the first hip-hop lyrics really scrutinized by the mainstream media (with the possible exception of 2 Live Crew), a fact which he frequently bemoaned in his music. It's a tad disingenuous, but it's also entirely ingenious.

Eminem knows exactly what he's doing, and hides behind that trailer park persona of his because it's a well-known fact that young men, when they're smart, usually get called fags, and as everyone knows, a fag is the worst thing you can be called. He will win a GLAAD award yet, you mark my words.

If you meet someone who, for whatever reason, you don't like, you can simply ignore them. Or you can choose to use the opportunity to examine your own prejudices. Does that person express something in their person which you dislike about yourself? Lashing out, whether using words or fists, does nothing. It may alter their behaviour, which is common result of terrorism, but it doesn't make you feel any better, nor does it make the "problem" go away; there'll always be another and another who produces the same reaction, since the real problem isn't them it's you.

The real irony is, if you hate fags so much that you're willing to assault or kill one, rest assured you will be caught and sent to jail and that will be eye-opening, to say the least. If that's what you're really after, there are places to go for that which have the added benefit of not having to deal with the police. At least not the on-duty ones.

It's high time for this debate. Oprah Winfrey, who has recently been criticized for turning her back on the black community, has simply turned her back on the more negative aspects of her communtiy in favour of the more positive ones, and to take her role in the larger community of humans, especially those who refuse to define themselves in terms as narrow as skin colour. She's to be commended for enjoining the debate now. Similarly, Bill Cosby has drawn fire made for comments critical of black men - comments that might have been better directed at himself first, given the bumpy few years of scandal he's endured - but at least he's gotten people talking.

So thank you, Michael Richards and Don Imus, for providing the tipping point. I have a feeling that by the time everybody's put their two cents into this one our society will be a much richer one.
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Photo Essay: Rail Yards

In the past year I've taken a couple of thousand shots of tags both large and small around the city, focusing on those that are unique or poignant. In the past six weeks my work has taken me to the rail yards between Terminal Avenue and Great Northern Way in Vancouver, and while there I've had the chance to photograph these.

They don't resemble anything I've ever seen produced locally, even among the fine examples in the Grandview cut between Commercial and Clark Drives or in a similar rail cut beside Granville Island. I can only assume they are the work of writers in Toronto and Montreal. Plus, I like the unifying element of the box cars. Below are seven of my favourites.














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RIP Kitty Carlisle Hart

The arts community has lost a tireless advocate in Kitty Carlisle Hart, who died yesterday of pneumonia.

She attained the height of her fame from appearances on "To Tell The Truth" between 1956 and 2002, but also appeared on stage and screen; as recently as earlier this year she performed a cabaret act at Feinstein's at the Regency.
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Ghost Town Haunts New South Wales

Until recently, the biggest tourist attraction in Adaminaby was the Big Trout (pictured).

In 1957 the government of Australia moved the entire town of Adaminaby in New South Wales and drowned the old townsite in a hydroelectric project. End of story... Or is it?

Fast forward 50 years, and suddenly the old town begins to reappear. Spooky!

I don't know why this story caught my eye like it did; maybe it's the Australian angle, the historical poignancy, or the global warming parable. That or it's a slow news day.

[S O U R C E]
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A Shining Star

I actually took this picture a few weeks ago, and was saving if for a day like this, when anything else I might care to write seems frivolous and empty.

I've lived in Vancouver almost nine years now, so long that I don't even get allergies in the spring any more, and I've never seen a sea star within city limits. I'd never seen a purple one before, either. This day I was walking along False Creek and happened to see a dozen of these purple ones and a half a dozen of the more common orange ones in a sheltered piece of foreshore near a marina.

When I lived here before, in 1990, False Creek was so dirty you wouldn't have seen this. First, the animal wouldn't have been there, and secondly, if it had it wouldn't have been visible as deep as this one was, about a metre down. I didn't even need a polarizing filter to capture this one, the water was that clear.

It's easy to say that things are dirtier and more violent and in every way worse today than they've ever been, but now I don't know. To give myself a little perspective, I was reading about an even worse school attack than the one at Virginia Tech which took place in Bath, Michigan in 1927, in which a man dynamited a school and killed 45 people, most of them children.

Talk about your good old days.
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Books Wormed - Pete Hamill's "Downtown" and "Five Points" by Tyler Anbinder

Despite having so little time for anything else lately (like sleeping or eating) I've actually been doing quite a bit of reading. So much so that I finished two books in one day. Feeling quite virtuous, I then proceeded to get carried away, and read an entire issue of The New Yorker, a six-week-old copy of the Georgia Straight that I'd already read six weeks ago, and the instruction manual for a fire extinguisher.

Never let it be said that Daddy doesn't like him some readin'.

The first book I finished was actually brought to my attention by James Mullin, my book enabler, er, dealer. Seller! My book seller... When he handed me this one I snatched it away from him so fast there was a concern he might need a blood transfusion to help him recover from the paper cuts.

Ah, Manhattan... Or as I like to call it "The Holy Land". Mr. Hamill gets it just right, or at least I assume he does. I've never been to New York, but reading this one made me want to go even more, if such a thing is possible. By turns elegiac, puissant, and erudite, "Downtown" is everything a travel book should be, including written by someone who knows what they're talking about because they've lived there forever, without being as needlessly sesquipedalian as I can be.

I loved how he took well-known places, set them in a particular 20th century context, then finished them with some frisson of personal yet utterly relatable anecdote. More than a travel book, it's a time travel book. Not only did it make me want to go there, it made me want to go there 20 years before I was born.

Plus it reads like poetry crossed with chocolate. At 280 pages, I wanted it to go on and on...

Covering roughly the same territory (geographically, at least), albeit 150 years previous, is the thick and juicy "Five Points" by Tyler Anbinder. I love nothing better than wrapping my hands around a great big history book, especially one which throbs with insight and pulses with life. Fortunately, I'm not one to sublimate, nor would I dream of exaggerating. Not in a million years.

Having previously read (and adored) "The Gangs of New York", Professor Anbinder's take is still thrilling, despite all the accuracy which, sadly, is lacking in Herbert Asbury's landmark 1928 publication. Twice as long as "Downtown" I was so enthralled by "Five Points" I read all the end notes and the index. Where Hamill's book is a rich, fulfilling dessert, Anbinder's is a steak.

To any student of conurbation, such as myself, New York City is the ultimate paradise on Earth. Although London is a close second - the cradle of the modern world, if you will - Manhattan is it's playpen, the nexus of everything, a gleaming pinnacle... I'd say more, but I'm afraid if my reverie rises above a certain Woody Allen-esque pitch Mr. Gagne dials up Bitch-Slap-o-Gram, and the next thing I know there's a knock at my door and a eight-foot tranny with a delivery for me.

So yeah, y'know, read 'em, don't read 'em... Whatever.
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