I think this could be my favourite documentary ever Allen King’s Skid Row. Everything from the pacing, the voices, the wooden streak in it. There’s one shot in particular or series of them that I must go through and isolate. Here it is, completely here

Stupidity documentary here – riveting. (Not sure if it’s viewable outside Canada. If not will hunt for links)

In the pew for Hugh

Wonderful tense momentito outside Vancity Cinema last night at the Hugh Brody event. A man threw an absolute conniption at the ticket window, over what I am not entirely sure … Hugh was basically mobbed with viewers wanting to attend his film 1919 in a cinema the size of a square cutlery drawer. It’s a great cinema, as long as the city does not turn up.  I love, being short, the enormous chairs, bit like going on holiday in first class cabin of a plane with the blessing of no take off, nor landing.

The display was worthy of an anthropology study. Not least when a man in the queue behind me was selected to go into the cinema with the greeting “are you on your own? it’s your lucky night.” Selected only cos he was a male alone! No further qualification! I had to search google images to ensure that the male who collected him was not Mr Brody. No he was not. But Mr B was spotted further up the pavement in another ticketty transaction with a bearded male.

Next time I attend Vancity or Hugh mob I am going to wear my testicles. The set that extend down to my ankles, so there can be no mistake.

God save us … The Globe & Mail now have a feature called “send us a picture of the book you’re reading”, along with “where are you reading?”. Every time another step away from any actual reading! The number of reviews has been reduced since the section was collapsed. Engaging features chopped and gone. And the belly expands with old puff. Like an interview with Martin Amis. Has the world any need of such a thing? This one at least featured a cat, with a considerable amount of other old guff. His teeth are no longer compensation for it.

LRB: On thanatophobia and Vancouver

My first blog contribution to the London Review of Books Blog can be read here:

Things to Do in Vancouver When You’re Dead

A Saturday morning, the first in my 40th year, I’m at the Mountain View Cemetery for ‘The Final Disposition Forum: De-Mystifying Death, Funerals, Cemeteries and Ceremonies’. I’ve come to face my fear of being buried in Vancouver, where I’ve lived for the past decade. I arrive late, the film A Family Undertaking has already started. On screen a set of cold-looking turned-out feet. The acoustics are terrible. But the feet are a good set, the ubiquitous final set. I am reassured, when my moment comes, I too will have a set of absolutely dead feet.

Cortazar’s Hopscotch has to return to the library. This is a problem for the two of us. His Hopscotch is/was to become my scotch hop. My hopping has been scotched by the new/old couches and the fine tuners on the cello and the violin end biteen that threatened to break and the hip that didn’t break

and
and
and

A 1,3,7,5,9er.

BC Provincial Govt in its greatest hour has cut funding to children’s dental check ups and increased funding to treatment. So rather than prevent kids needing dental work with twice yearly checkups they are now going to pay for the cavities and root canals induced by the lack of check up and cleaning. Who exactly do these people consult when they come up with such mind boondadoodle ideas?

This impacts most the children who live in poverty, as their diets affect their dental health. It’s curious how little word and complaint there’s been about it. One piece in the Globe quoting the Strathcona Clinic.

It’s all very stupid because if you could actually get the children into the chair, which it appeared under that program you could … that in itself was a great achievement.

More profundity from hockey commentator — an auditory world I intermittently inhabit with my males — this time “the promised land” and I had “faith” invoked about whom? Indeed, yes, the fallen saviour Roberto Luongo.

I really miss that late night show from years back Art (?) who had all the alien/werewolf conspirators on. He was thrilling in comparison.

The quantity of these uninhabited ghost estates (I had noted them in rural Ireland gouging into the land and tacking themselves onto villages) and the matter that the bulldozer may now visit them … Jeeeesus. Squint left, squint right — how’d we end up here again? Really wish they’d uploaded the RTE documentary on this last night. Hearing about it, and grabbing bits of it here and there. Just plain batty. And yet we saw it. It was happening everywhere you looked. And yet? And yet if NAMA owns them, then they belong to the tax payer and should be streamlined into social housing projects. The strange thing about them was you’d look at them twice and wonder who’d want to live in them, but you’d never contemplate there wouldn’t be anyone to live in them.

I remember the original stab at affordable housing during the boom years produced only completely unaffordable housing.

Not so useful

The manner in which hockey commentators on radio 1040 resemble evangelical orators, except the quotes include spectacular insights such as … this is a team sport and other majowling nothingness. In hoover terms they are the bagless variety. Dust and apple pips whipping around in a cylinder.