THE RECEPTIONISTS — AUGUST 2011
BY BRITTA BACCHUS
(Britta's blog can be seen here)

ZOMBIE WALK 2011 (or just some regular teens...)

BERNIE LYON — AUGUST 2011

THEATRE OF CRUELTY
(courtesy Hammler Schlemmer catalogue)

BERNIE LYON — 2011

OUR DICKY

BOLLOCKS TO KNOWLEDGE
Knowledge Network just gives me gas. All those cheesy English hour-longs with their decidedly long-in-the-tooth "character" actors who must overact or they'll die, and the hoary plots that are always patly resolved just before the 60 minutes are up, and the scenes at the village pub overseen by the local feisty old bag who really isn't the sarcastic old bitch she seems to be. In terms of characters these things heavily favor sprightly oldsters, irreverent priests and jumped up snobs, and the feeling seems to be that "satire" is best slathered on. You could choke on the crusty homilies and the quirky "charm" and the photogenic ruralisms. They crank this crap out by the kilometre. Not that North American television is any better but at least they don't push pornography for the genteel. Not that they wouldn't if they could figure out how to do it. It seems to be an English thing.
— Lloyd Dykk

MARY IN VANCOUVER IN JULY

MARPOLE

The Canucks' Cup run, like war, has brought us together."

Of course, the local newspapers have given the troops their marching orders.
Given the volume of Canucks "news" consuming trees faster than a biblical swarm of pine beetles over the past few weeks, the news desks must have reporters' assignments on a loop: Give me something with a hockey tie-in, and give it to me yesterday! Recipes, fashion statements, trips down memory lane, cultural events — as long as it is tinted blue and green, then it's a tie-in that's a shoo-in.

But I just about did a spit-take of my official soft-drink of the Vancouver Canucks when I read the above headline on an Doug Todd's A4 column in Tuesday's Vancouver Sun.
Curious. Todd, the paper's religion reporter, is one of the few columnists who often dips his quasi-Christian sandals into philosophical and ethical questions that our phantasmagorical culture arouses (i.e. painted Canuck faces), and does so with the closest thing a newspaper writer (as I once was) can come to an emotion like compassion. (That's when you care about things, right?)

Here, however, in tackling the phenomenon of sport, Todd makes some long jumps in logic that seem bush league.
His main thrust, as the headline declares with bravado, is that the Canucks have united our multi-ethnic city around the rallying and trademarked call, "We Are All Canucks."

Continue reading in The Mainlander

DUSK

HIKER

UNDESTROYED ROOM. 2400 COURT. NO. 212.

OLLIE

HELMCKEN

L.D.: It just seems to be a kitsch festival, with everything from the Scum [aka Vancouver Sun] running a laughable recipe for Toad in the Hole to obscene slavering over Princess Diana's grisly death.

L.B:Yeah. Stockholm Syndrome.
I'm interested in the way these emblems of power (now hollow) cast this kind of spell on the masses. Perhaps it's fevered gratitude for making concrete and visible the emblems of domination and violence that now hide in the shadows of the market economy and are buried in the obvious of the day-to-day.
Nothing's worse than the devil you don't know.

BY LEO BACHLE (AKA LES BARKER) 1926-2003
JOHNNY CANUCK MADE HIS DEBUT IN DIME COMICS #1 IN 1942

WATCHING

STAY TUNED...

COFFEE SHOP — APRIL 2011

AVAILABLE AT AMAZON.CA
AND HOPEFULLY IN REAL BOOKSTORES