Who wants some Pixies dust?

I’m a music fan, but I’m a lazy one. Which is to say, when I hear a song that I like, I can deconstruct why I like it (witty lyrics, soaring melody contrasting with a husky voice, kicky hook), but I’m not likely to go out and search out all information to do with that artist’s back catalogue, learn about his/her gritty childhood growing up in _______, or make a pilgrimage to said town of ______.

Some of my friends are true aficionados, who always seem to know who the latest and greatest bands are, who’s playing in town, and what the next big thing will likely be.

I’m more passive than that, getting exposure to different songs and artists as I drift through the music libraries of others, or hear stuff on the radio. In my life, I’ve probably only ever been to a baker’s dozen of live music events. I mentioned I was a lazy fan, right?

There are only a few bands/musicians for whom I make exceptions, and the Pixies are one of them.

I’m pretty sure the first time I heard them was in the Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis film Pump Up the Volume, which used Wave of Mutilation on the soundtrack. I would just kind of perk up my ears every time I heard that distinctive melody.

Kim Deal’s side project The Breeders piqued my interest too — I would play Cannonball all the time just to hear that little bass ‘doo wee ooh wee’ part (you know what I’m talking about.) Then a few years ago I went to a film festival which was showcasing loudQUIETloud, and I couldn’t get over how dysfunctional the individuals in the group are, while continuing to make fantastic music.

Which leads me to the current reunion tour, which heads to the Orpheum in Vancouver on Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011, and Wednesday, May 4th, 2011. I’m super excited about seeing the show, and thought my music-loving friends would be as well.

Turns out, for various reasons, they are not able to attend, which means I have way too many tickets on my hands.

So, Interwebz frendz, who wants to buy?

Tues May 3, Lower Balcony Left, Row 8, Seats 120-115 (six tickets in total, can be broken down in pairs.) I bought these for $75 ea, will sell for $85 ea.

UPDATE: two of these tix sold (thanks D!), four left.

UPDATED UPDATE: this four sold to J, all gonzo.

Weds May 4, Orchestra Left Centre, Row 9, Seats 35-32 (four tickets in total, can be broken down in pairs.) I bought these for $95 ea, will sell for $115 ea.

UPDATE: One pair to V, one pair to A. Thanks everyone!

Weds May 4, Orchestra Right Centre, Row 1, Seats 49-50.

THAT’S RIGHT, FRONT ROW!!!!

Bought these for $95 ea, and will sell for $135 ea.

UPDATE: Front row tickets sold, to commenter Derek below.

So here’s why I think you should want to buy these from me (of course, I’m biased.)

1. It’s the frickin’ Pixies. Get off your duff and see their show.

2. I’m trustworthy — have to be as a journalist. I have a clearly established actual and web presence. I assure you I haven’t spent the past decade establishing a public persona just so that I could have a cover identity to sell you Pixies tickets.

(This is more reassuring than buying off some random CL or Kijiji person, right?)

3. Sure, you might have the same level of assurance from established ticket resellers, but you’ll also be paying their much higher markups. Just do a quick search for ticket resellers and you’ll see the sharp difference in pricing.

If you’re interested, put in a comment below with some contact information for you, and we’ll sort out the details from there. I’d like to have these sold over the next week or so if possible.

Flying fingers, food bank challenge

Gennaro Iorio, Ned Bell, and Quang Dang looking relaxed.. © Claudia Kwan 2011

It’s not like it was a huge life goal or anything, but I’ve always wondered what it would be like to judge a competition. Would I be the Simon Cowell of the bunch, an encouraging presence, or someone out to lunch?

I had my chance to figure it out yesterday, when Sophie Lui, Dawn Chubai and I had the honour of judging a special challenge involving the Greater Vancouver Food Bank.

Loblaw (Real Canadian Superstore, Presidents Choice, No Frills, Dominion, Loblaws, Joe Fresh, etc) has just launched a Canada-wide campaign to raise $1.2 million and 1.2 million pounds of food, and was trying to figure out a fun launch event in Vancouver.

So the company decided to put on a black box challenge, similiar to what you woud see on Iron Chef — chefs are given a specific ingredient (that they don’t know about in advance) and a limited amount of time. They have to then create a dish to impress the judges.

The twist this time around: chefs Gennaro Iorio (La Terrazza), Ned Bell (Rosewood Hotel Georgia), and Quang Dang (Diva at the Met) would be using ingredients drawn from the list of items the food bank needs most — essentials like canned goods, starches, and proteins.

What could be under that mysterious box? © Claudia Kwan 2011

When the boxes were whisked away, the items the chefs had to use were revealed as canned tomatoes, canned green beans, canned pink salmon, rice, and the ‘twist’ ingredient — canned peaches.

Right away they began scribbling notes down for their plan of attack, and within mere moments, the horn was sounded — the chefs would have just 30 minutes to produce something that incorporated all of the items in a creative and beautifully presented manner.

When I’ve covered stories in the past about the food situation for those living around or below the poverty line, one of the issues I’ve heard brought up is not so much WHAT people are eating, as how it looks. ie, “poor people food.” It’s sometimes grey, or greasy, or mushy, or just generally unappetizing. And I don’t subscribe to that ‘you should just be grateful to be eating at all’ noise, so we can just shut that down right now.

No, I think that if we’re addressing a common human need — to not be hungry — there shouldn’t be discrimination on the plate. Food should be tasty, nutritious, and look good, and that applies for everyone. </endrant>

So what did the chefs come up with? Take a look!

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Holy cow, just watching the fellas hard at work made me tired — I can type in a frenzy like that, but definitely can’t cook that way.

After going carefully through the criteria and conferring with my fellow judges, the winner was… Quang Dang and his salmon cake! Excellent efforts from Ned and Gennaro too.

I do feel inspired after this. If these guys can come up with this kind of cuisine, on the fly with stuff you can find in anyone’s pantry, well surely I can do a little better with what I’m cooking up at home.

And certainly there’s no way anyone ever has to say again that something looks like “poor people food.”

ps I think I was a pretty fair judge — analytical without being overly critical. But really, with something like this, it’s a win for everyone.

Rain City Chronicler

Huge thanks to Chris Kelly of CBC Radio 3 for the audio, and Christine McAvoy for the photo that I’ve looped through.

I was honoured to be one of the storytellers at the last Rain City Chronicles night, and wanted to share my experience to encourage you to check out the upcoming event.

If you’re not familiar with Rain City, it’s a storytelling night designed around the idea that everyone has a tale to tell. It’s put together by Karen Pinchin (my lovely editor over at OpenFile), and the also-awesome Lizzy Karp (who has been responsible for some of the wicked programming the Waldorf has been putting on).

When Karen first asked me to take part, I was a little hesitant. I love telling the stories of other people, and I’ll share the odd anecdote or two at a dinner party, but I just didn’t think stories about me would be that interesting to a live audience. In my continuing quest to expand my realm of experiences though, I took a deep breath and said yes. The theme for the evening would be ‘Arrivals and Departures.’

It turned out to be an incredibly busy Tuesday. I got up WAY early in the morning to write a piece that was due, had a series of meetings on the west side of Vancouver in the morning for a new gig I was taking on, booted out back eastward to pick up someone for an afternoon event, dropped her back off, picked B up from work, picked up some goodies the Acme Cafe had kindly donated to the night, and then went to the church where Rain City was being held that night. Phew. I didn’t have time to pee, much less powder my nose.

Fortunately, one of the survival techniques I’ve refined over my years as a reporter is being as low maintenance as possible. I’ve figured out some hairstyles and makeup tricks that will last throughout even the longest of days and worst of weather without hardly any touchups at all. (I’ll share at some future point for anyone who might be interested.)

UN-fortunately, all of the scuttling around meant I hadn’t made time to plan out what I was going to say. I knew it would be something about being the child of an airline employee, and tying it back to the theme of ‘Arrivals and Departures’, but I didn’t know exactly how I was going to get there.

And while I’ve done a gajillion and one live hits before as a reporter, many off the top of my head, I’ve never rambled for seven minutes before by myself, without a host at least asking some questions to help guide the discussion.

As I and the other storytellers mingled in the green room before the night officially started, we could hear the buzz of the crowd outside. It would be a full house. I sat down in a corner and jotted down some quick notes before meeting the other speakers, incredibly eclectic and interesting all.

Thank heavens I was fourth up, not first. My heart was already racing as it was (a small part of that might have been the caffeine I had downed earlier in the afternoon in an attempt to stay alert.) Rather than staying isolated in the green room while waiting for our turn, we went and sat in the audience before being called up. I really enjoyed being able to listen to the other speakers.

There was some blipping on the audio line that I could hear (being the audio geek that I am), and the fellows running the sound happened to be sitting right in front of where B and I had parked ourselves. During the third speaker’s story, it actually sounded like one of the mics had given out, so I tapped on the shoulder of one of the techs and volunteered to do a mic change, since I was next.

Fun fact: a mic change is not hard to do at all. Somehow though, I suddenly became all thumbs after walking up on stage and being in the glare of the spotlights. With a lot of trepidation, I managed to click the replacement mic in without dropping anything, and the crowd spontaneously cheered.

That’s when I knew it was going to be okay. It was the warmest, most welcoming audience I’ve ever been around — the wave of energy was palpably positive, and as I began speaking, they laughed even at some fairly feeble sallies of mine. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it.

B later told me I did a quick reflexive thing of pushing up my jacket sleeves and tucking my hair behind my ears before launching into my story — totally unconscious. There may have been some inappropriate gestures made which don’t translate onto this audio, but you’ll just have to use your imagination.

Once I was on stage in front of the crowd, the theoretical roadmap I’d made for myself flew out of my head — something I’d meant to mention off the top I didn’t remember until nearly the end. And since I’m my own worst critic, I’m cringing at how many times I said ‘um’, and how my timing was off a little at some points — I needed to let a comment or joke breathe a little bit more before moving on. On the other hand, I’m glad that I didn’t race through at a million miles a minute, since I am naturally a fast, fast talker.

I share a moderate bit of family dirty laundry (around the 4:30 mark). I forgot Yankee. I have secrets that may improve your travel experience. You’ll have to listen to know what I’m talking about. (And be thankful that you didn’t see how drenched I was in sweat by the time I was done. I didn’t even realize it until I sat back down.)

I want to encourage you to check this out not only as an audience member, but to also potentially get up on stage yourself. The best thing about the evening is how ready people were to listen — an integral part of a storytelling circle.

Flappy McHandtalky, aka being myself

Image courtesy of fromtheeditr.blogspot.com

Sorry about not posting yesterday everyone, WordPress was acting up when I was trying to log on and then I got busy doing other stuff.

Blatant self promotion just ahead: watch the video I did with Colin and Justin!

Go on, I’ll be here when you get back. Sorry I couldn’t get the video to embed directly here, but the code provided doesn’t seem to work and I don’t have time just now to MacGyver it.

Back?

Okeydoke. I hope you had a giggle or two; lord knows I did.

I don’t really want this blog to turn entirely into a self-promotional vehicle. I’d rather it be a peek inside my head and what I’m thinking, so here’s a self critique of the video.

First, some background. To the crowd at the BC Home and Garden show, and HGTV viewers as a whole, Colin and Justin are rock stars — everyone wants to snap a picture with the design duo or ask “just a quick question” (which I totally understand.) At the same time, we were on a tight schedule to get the video done, and crowd control was something I was pondering.

I did a site survey and found these little cedar sheds that were part of an exhibit on ‘Chic Garden Sheds’ that would be perfect; this particular one was furnished, beautifully lit, and big enough for the three of us plus the person doing the filming. It also was enclosed enough that I didn’t need to worry about crowd noise overshadowing our voices — coming from a radio background, I’m always conscious of audio quality. In many ways, good sound is what actually makes for good video too.

Colin and Justin were whisked off the stage where they had been doing a presentation and brought to the shed, where I and the person shooting the video were already waiting. This of course meant that hordes of people followed them to the general vicinity of the shed. I’ve done live hits in front of big crowds before, so it’s not something I’m completely unfamiliar with, but having an audience always ramps up the nerves a little bit.

The boys are as seasoned performers as can be. I wasn’t worried for a minute about their capacity to answer my questions, nor about their capacity to be darn entertaining while they were at it, so I didn’t do any sort of pre-interview (there was also no time in the schedule for that.) I did warn them that we only had time for one take, so we would be recording as if it were a ‘live’ situation.

Looking purely then at my live interviewing skills in an exercise of self-analysis, here are several things I noticed.

I try to always be natural when on camera; I don’t like it when people seem stiff or wooden. By nature, I’m someone who talks with her hands (a LOT), makes funny expressions with her face, and also speaks quite quickly. I’ve been trying to tone it down somewhat, but don’t want to trim it out entirely, or else I wouldn’t be myself. I do realize that for people who don’t do the same things, they might seem a little distracting. In this case, I think I could have kept the hands a little more under control.

Although some might argue that it’s unprofessional to show emotion or crack up during an interview — and I would even agree in certain situations — I would say in this case it would be entirely abnormal not to laugh at Colin and Justin, since they’re hilarious. Also, since you don’t see/hear an audience, if I didn’t laugh, it might not leave enough of a gap, or time, for a viewer to potentially laugh as well.

I also want to actually listen to what my guests are saying, instead of just thinking ahead to my next question. This can be a double edged sword. I was concentrating so hard on screening out crowd noise and listening to one of the boys at a time, that I missed reactions from the other, especially when Colin was listening to Justin’s Canadian accent impression. That could have been a bit of fun.

I’d been originally told the video should be two or three minutes in length (it ultimately ended up being twice that) and had asked the videographer to give me a cue as to when to wrap it up. I think when I saw it, and realized I still had another question to go, I got a bit panicky and barged through a little bit. D’oh.

Finally, although I’d done some thinking ahead on what to ask, I committed the cardinal sin of not knowing exactly how I was going to wrap up. Thankfully Colin and Justin saved my bacon on that one! Phew, thanks boys!

Fun times indeed, as well as a good learning lesson. Here’s to hoping I’ll be doing some more of that for the Vancouver Sun in the future.

Post-Oscar party thoughts

The "Social Network" platter: chicken wings, lamb chops, and fish 'n' chips.

B has this thing about awards shows — he thinks they’re inane — and I can take them or leave them, so in the interests of general household harmony, our TV has not been tuned to the Grammys, Globes, AMAs, etc for many a year.

But for the first time in a long time, I decided to watch the Oscars, after being invited to a party at the 900 West lounge at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver last night.

After a little BBMing back and forth, my pal K and I picked out Oscar-worthy, snowproof outfits and walked up the red carpet. Inside, the pre-shows had already begun. I spotted two more friends sitting at the bar, as well as actor Matt Barr of Hellcats etc, fame, and couldn’t resist asking him about being a part of Friday Night Lights — one of the finest shows on TV, especially for a dialogue junkie like me.  I could have asked him a million questions about FNL, but didn’t want to go full fangirl on him.

K, my other two friends, and I were swiftly handed glasses of wine, and settled right down into a table with cozy armchairs. Then it was a full on dish fest about the movies, the dresses, and the hosts. (Paging James Franco: your 24 Red Bulls have not been drunken. We need you to wake up.) Anne Hathaway did a decent job, and the majority of her dresses rocked the casbah.

I’d forgotten how funny it was to be snarky with gal pals during an awards show, especially when fueled by wine and snacks. The event was also a fundraiser for Dress for Success, a cause which I can fully support.

We bought some raffle tickets, and lo and behold, K won the grand prize of two nights stay at the Hotel Van, and dinner at Griffins! Woop woop!

The awards season may have essentially just wrapped up, but I’m putting this experience in the old tickle trunk for things to remember to do next year — B may not be the biggest fan, but I think I’m a new (old?) convert.

PLAY: a gamer’s symphony

I was very lucky to take in a performance of PLAY! A Video Game Symphony on Monday night at the Orpheum in downtown Vancouver. It fused together the remarkable musical scores of the games, as played by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, with the voices of the Vancouver Bach Choir and images from the games themselves, played on three massive overhead screens.

Touring conductor Andy Brick did much more than wave a little baton around. He was a well-informed guide along the history of composing for games, encouraging the crowd to hoot and holler if they were so inclined. He also did a wonderful job of acknowledging the groundbreaking composers of the various pieces, some of whom had actually made it into town to be present for the concert.

Of course, there’s no other way to open an evening like this: you have to start off with the theme from Super Mario Brothers. Brick put a little swing into it, and you could see how much fun everyone was having. There were all sorts of scenes from the game I’d forgotten about, like how Mario can grow super huge and smash through stuff, or the part where he’s swimming underwater on a manta ray and collecting a ton of coins.

One small quibble: I would have liked to hear some of the special effects played as well. You know, like “ba-ling ba-ling ba-ling” when you’re hitting the overhead block to get coins.

Then it was into the dramatic swooping strains of the music for Harry Potter: Chamber of Secrets, Silent Hill, Civ 5 (this was actually the world premiere for this piece of music), Kingdom Hearts, and the oh-so-familiar landmark tune from Legend of Zelda.

I should add that I didn’t know all of the music, or even some of these games beforehand — I like video games but I’m far from being a gamer. The crowd was right into it though. Some serious gamers had clearly put down the Mountain Dew and Cheezies and ventured out of the basement to attend, which was quirkily neat to see in the lavish surroundings of the Orpheum. Mad props for some of the amazing costumes I saw.

After the intermission, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the music for Sim City 4, which had actually been composed by Brick. He said he had been told to make it “monotonous but not boring.” I believe he succeeded admirably, injecting some thrumming rhythms underneath riffs infused with just enough energy and fun.

The wistful strains of a violin marked the Halo theme, before we rounded the evening out with classics like Sonic the Hedghog and Castlevania, wrapping up with the theme from World of Warcraft.

The orchestra was as full as I’d ever seen it, with probably 60 or 70 musicians on the stage. At times, they were much louder than the approximately 40 singers from the choir, who could be heard straining on some of the high notes. If the VSO were to stage this again, I wonder if they could either put a microphone near the singers, or if there’s a better place to put them rather than behind the orchestra. Option B would be tough though, as the stage was so full.

All in all, a pretty darn enjoyable evening. It’s too bad it’s just a one off for the VSO, as I think it’s a great example of how it is trying to be both populist and popular, expanding the list of who goes off to an evening at the symphony.