---photos---dorothy-june-fraser---words---same lady---


(While I was writing this article I decided it will be the first in many installments of a weekly 'fuck you' to someone, something, gadget, doodad, concept- whatever that affects us here in the city. Unfortunately, this is more serious than I would like to start out with, but it needed to be brought to light)


I don’t write hard-hitting, "journamalistic" material usually. So, pardon me if I don’t throw in enough scare tactics, I am not CNN-trained.
I myself have not been going out too much of late, and now I am thinking it was perhaps preternatural gut feelings rather than financial and health-inspired hermitage. Why, you ask?
Well, in the past two weeks, five women I know or know of, have been drugged in bars about town. With the prospect of a serial attacker preying on people surrounded by friends and also on groups (yes, groups), I have no reason to go out and experience this wave of violence that seems to be hitting mostly in the DTES watering holes. The bars, specifically, to date, that I know of: Limerick Junction, Pub 340 and The Columbia.
Scary.
Talk about bad. This city, like others, has its obvious issues. In the area known as Greater Vancouver, we are usually in possession of the mantle of having the richest AND the poorest "per capita" communities in the country. What an honour. What a contrast, the city screams in juxtaposition We have drugs, we have gang violence and senseless death too. It's really how it goes, and the bigger we get, the stranger winds blow (...angel dust into your Jager).
I have been absolutely shocked at how many people in my circle of friends (they're probably in yours, too) have been out, enjoying themselves with friends, dancing, whatever we do. (...read more...)

Blim December 12- December 18, 2006

Tues December 12: Open Studio/ Blim Drawing
Wed December 13: Open Studio/ Level 1 Screenprinting Workshop
Thur December 14: Open Studio/ Level 2-4 Screenprinting Workshop and Open Studio
Fri December 15: Open Studio/ Bambi Gone Wild ( film event )
Sat December 16: Gocco Card Making Workshop/ The Nekaa Room ( performance event )
Mon December 18: OpenStudio/ Blim Button Workshop

Blim Call for Interest: Post X-mas Craft Swap
Video-Blim Call for Submissions
Live/Work Space for Rent
Blim Custom Printing and Button Making



Blim Gallery - December 2006
Blim presents:

EIGHTH CLIMATE 2006
A New Installation and Diorama by
Nathan Jones and Claire Madill



EIGHTH CLIMATE is a show of the work of two current fourth year Emily Carr Institute students, Nathan Jones and Claire Madill. This show focuses on a connection between forms of the unreal, found within ceramics and painting.

Nathan Jones uses painting as a contemplative process in order to gain a more complex understanding of his current interests. Currently he is interested in the conceptualization and exploration of synthetic
environments and spaces that exist in states of flux.

Claire Madill works primarily with ceramics and sculpture. Her work
takes many forms, complex, utilitarian, idiosyncratic and surreal.

Installation and Diorama runs from December 2 - December 30

Well, if you're looking for a friday night hootenanny...here it be!
The Parliament of Owls...or POO, is having their opening for the show "Repitition" at Midtown tonight.
8 PM. 438 Pender St.
At Richards.


Now, for those of you unfamiliar with POO, here's a brief and completely unimformative synopsis:
POO is an art collective started way back when (about two years ago? Maybe a little less) of which I was informed while working with some of the founders.
While ever-broadening horizons ad new members are always coming out the knotholes (I swear, I'll stop with the metaphor disasters) they manage to maintain their credo: a non-juried group with loose confines (morals?) so it acts as an inclusive collective.


What could be more interesting?
Add beer.


woot woot.

photo by Dorothy-June Fraser
(taken in the bathroom of the Vatikan in Toronto. Attack Plan R WOULD have played there, but pesky things like riots, extreme drunkeness and strip searches really screwed that up)

wordz: Christopher Jacob Recording Device

Spurred on by an obscure refrence to the Nation of Ulysses in a Joan of Arc song on my Ipod I decided to find out what they were talking about. I'm listening to the few mp3's I could find on limewire right now, they were a hardcore band from Washington DC back in the 80's and 90's.

their website is actually pretty funny, their humour reminds me of a lot of the post-situationist anarchist stuff that floats around: Hakim Bey, Subgenious, random zines falling off the shelves at Spartacus books or mouldering in the basement of my mom's place. In a more successful way they remind me of the greatest punk rock band of all time- Attack Plan R.

Who are Atttack Plan R, you ask? You've never heard them?
it's no surprise.
They recorded about 90 minutes of the hardest, baddest-core punk rock of all time and then evaporated into the vaporizer fumes of time. Attack Plan R stormed the basements of ex-urban Vancouver BC at the dawn of time (the new milennium) and without ever appearing on stage managed to play several gigs, got shut down by the VPD and almost started a riot at Seylynn Hall upstaging DOA and causing the ultimate decline of that community centre as an arena for punk rock shows and babysitting. Not to mention, gave rise to such ambigious sects of intellectuallim such as The Bowel Movement.

Anyway the Nation of Ulysses did a lot of that but not as well and in the end they broke up, but not before they released three (...read more...)

photo by Dorothy-June Fraser

Well, as silly as it is, Myspace has now been conquered.
We're there now.
So, request us!!! Free publicity for your band, art, books, movies!!!
Murdoch may own it, but there are far more evil things in this world. Well, at least one.

Here's the URL:
http://www.myspace.com/133116030



go forth, and add!

Painting By Lisa Ochowycz
http://www.lisaochowycz.ca/


*Opening Night: Friday November 24th 5-10pm
25th, 26th 11am-6pm

infotainment by Dorothy-June Fraser

The 10th anniversary of the Crawl has arrived! As for those of us who were born and bred here, I have memories of going to open studios in Strathcona from the time I was an annoying teenager; that's not just because my father used to play in a kazoo band and my mother is a hula dancer. I swear.
But for those among us who have transplanted (so many; after all, it is a port city), the Crawl is a staple of East Van. In this year's message form the Executive Director, Val Arntzen, she congratulates the festival as becoming one of the best "Visual Arts Festivals in Western Canada…"
Seeing that we have, here in Van, such a population of artists, and such a saturation of them in East Van, why not celebrate that for ten years, there's been the Crawl?
Couple that with the fact that the West Side has Artists in Our Midst in the summer, the Crawl stands out to myself at least as one of our good ol' People's Republic of East Vancouver events. The year excitement is upon me, as it is the organizers of the festival:
"…when I took over 8 years ago, we had 150 artists in 14 buildings… now we have 43 buildings, almost 300 artists and we are a non-profit society with 9 of our 10 board members being artists", said exec Arntzen.
So, any highlights and plugging you say?
I say walk it all, and not to mention, you could also the do the very chicest of chic and have a couple tallboys in your bag, to make the distance seems less, or the pockets lighter. But I have to say, it (...read more...)

By Chris Rooney

I feel like I ought to say something about the death sentence pronounced over Saddam Hussein. Perhaps this will just result in me sticking my foot in my mouth but even though the man was a genocidal tyrant and did a lot of damage to all the people in his country who he didn’t have on the payroll, it is still a fucked up and strangely tragic thing that he’s going to be hanged.

He was an asshole to be sure, but geo-politically speaking he was a dime-store thug who in the end has become a straw man for American foreign policy. In the end his trial and death will only be added to the laundry list of lies that lead to the Iraq war and continue to be used to justify North American military interventionism in the Middle East.

I bet he never would have guessed as he shook the hand of Donald Rumsfeld in that historic photograph from the 1980’s that the very same man, a chief architect in both his rise to power and his subsequent downfall, would likely be toasting his execution a few decades later, Machiavelli would be pleased.

Lastly, the things I find most unsettling about this event are it’s likely after effects. Saddam’s final words in the courtroom were chosen well:

"Allahu Akbar!" (God is Great) and "Long live Iraq! Long live the Iraqi people! Down with the traitors!" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6117910.stm

“Long live the Iraqi people”… with nothing left to him and nothing but a kangaroo court standing between him, and whatever fate is waiting for him in the afterlife, he would fashion himself into a martyr. Coming generations of militant Iraqi nationalists, angry, powerless kids more than willing to look the other way at his records of torture, the torture of (...read more...)

Friday November 4th @ Pub 340


Two Friday’s past ‘Lexis and I hopped the #8 heading due north on Main into the heart of the DTES.
Our destination: Pub 340 for some rock-your-socks-off Vancouver hardcore. Now we’ve all been to Pub 340 and know it ain’t gonna win any accolades for sound, décor, smell, etc… but they do contribute to keeping the scene alive, if nothing but for the torrents of cheap booze that fuels the punk/metal/core/whatever crowds that swarm the bar nightly. Somewhere near the corner of Cracktown and Bumville we said farewell to the meth-head on the bus, penetrated the sodden beer soaked depths of the bar and sat down scanning the crowd. The usual band of rowdies, punks, skids, goths, straight-edgers, and confused alcoholics roamed about; most pounding dirt cheap booze, while the airy refrains of Far Beyond Driven echoed high overhead.

Lifting my arms from the filthy table top we had commandeered I leaned over, “There’s something about Hardcore Kids… I though it was just a Vancouver thing but having been to shows in Seattle and NYC I keep witnessing the same phenomenon. If you look closely at an average audience at a hardcore show, you’ll find a large part of the crowd is huge high-school ex-jocks who used to beat up the thin wimpy guys who listened to Metallica. The other half is guys who used to listen to Metallica and get beat up by jocks. Now they both go to shows, drink and do too much blow readying themselves to fling their bodies together in a sweaty display of aggression while the band on stage pounds out high decibel music at 240 BPM.”
Out of breath I fled to the bar to grab a few pints. 2 pints of Pacific. 6 bucks. Fuck yeah.

By (...read more...)