30
Jan
2010
Uncategorized
Nothing hits the spot quite like a bizarre, incomprehensible music video.
Yeasayer will bring their adorable brand of crazy (and their new-found dance-y sound) to the Commodore on April 21st as they wrap up a ginormous tour supporting their latest album, Odd Blood (Feb. 9th, Secretly Canadian). Tickets here.
Posted by gingerkidd at 4:14pm on Saturday, January 30, 2010
27
Jan
2010
HYPE
Posted by gingerkidd at 6:57pm on Wednesday, January 27, 2010
28
Nov
2009
Uncategorized

Get ready for Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s VECTORIAL ELEVATION (lame name, groovy project):
Anyone, anywhere, can go here and coordinate twenty 10,000-watt spotlights in Kits and English Bay for 8 seconds; patterns will consecutively come to life all night, every night of the Olympics.
“The 10,000-watt lights will move and create patterns silently from locations in Vanier Park and Sunset Beach that cover an area of 100,000 square metres and be visible within 15 kilometres of the city’s downtown core, stretching to Richmond, the peaks of Cypress and Grouse mountains and freighters and boats on the water.”
Let’s do our best to use and abuse.
Posted by gingerkidd at 7:41pm on Saturday, November 28, 2009
12
Aug
2009
WORDS
Lately I’ve been following local blog Vancouver Is Awesome, whose aim is to reflect the city in permanently positive light. They may just be permafried from snorting too much pixie dust, but whatever it is that’s making them so optimistic, it’s contagious. I often find myself thinking about what makes Vancouver awesome, and one thing deserves a mention: the alleys.
Here are three reasons why alleys are awesome (but I they only apply in suburban neighborhoods, because downtown alleys are usually the opposite of these):
1) They’re unpopulated.
2) They’re full of interesting shit that you want to take home.
3) Free off-the-vine blackberries.
I’ve had an alley addiction lately (sidewalks suck). Here’s photographic proof:

You know you have an alley problem when you come home with weird, unsexy stuff. Like an old TV or a pylon. Alcohol made it appear to be the perfect thing for your dog/ house/ project, but in the harsh light of day you realize it’s just a dirty piece of shit.
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Posted by gingerkidd at 6:56pm on Wednesday, August 12, 2009
6
Aug
2009
WORDS

Anvil Press; $45 List Price, $36 at Book Warehouse
I discovered this wonderful new book today, which maps Vancouver through nearly 100 poems centered in various locations across our grand and gritty city. Each poem is accompanied by a full-page colour photograph by Derek von Essen, and it’s surprisingly fun to read verse about places you know and love, like Gastown in “4:00 am” by Wayne Stedingh, the VAG steps in “What Jack Shadbolt said” by Trevor Carolan, Wicked Cafe at 7th and Hemlock in “Purgatory” by Christine Schrum, or taking the good old B-line in “99 Express– 8 a.m.” by Bibiana Tomasic. And this is just naming a very, very few.
Yet my favorite, hands down, is a speculative poem about what it would be like to be on Wreck Beach when the dreaded “Big One” earthquake hits, excerpted after the jump:
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Posted by gingerkidd at 7:00pm on Thursday, August 6, 2009
29
Jul
2009
FOTOS, HYPE

The first-ever Vancouver performance of La Roux, the U.K’s latest electro-star, was wickedly fun and sold out to boot. Unfortunately my view of the stage was blocked by a Large Marge, but I still ended up with some sweet head shots of La Roux, which is for the best since you really just want to look at her hair anyway.
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Posted by gingerkidd at 7:33pm on Wednesday, July 29, 2009
22
Jul
2009
HYPE
The teaser-trailer for Tim Burton’s ALICE IN WONDERLAND has hit the interweb. Enjoy the goosebumps it gives you now so that in six months’ time, when any excitement you had about the film’s opening has been faded by the unavoidable upcoming media-overdose of everything Alice related, you can look back on these introductory moments fondly.
Posted by gingerkidd at 11:59am on Wednesday, July 22, 2009
16
Jul
2009
WORDS

Photo via Vanity Fair (Derek Berwin/Fox Photos/Getty Images)
Don’t you hate falling in love with something, and then discovering that you’re just a little late in some way? Like finding out about a new band who makes your toes tingle, looking up their tour dates to see if they’ll grace our fair city, and realizing that they did play here two weeks ago but you had no idea who the fuck they were at the time? I hate that, and it’s happened again.
Today I read that Toronto’s Julie Wilson is ending her three-year literary voyeurism project Seen Reading. This was the first time I had ever heard about the blog, so I checked it out and promptly fell head over heels. In a nutshell, Wilson spies on people reading in public places, notes the page that they are on, finds the same book in a store so that she can copy down a paragraph from that page, turns the anonymous reader into a character, and creates a fictional vignette about them using what they were reading as inspiration.
Here’s a neat video of Wilson at work.
Creeping and creativity combined! Golden.
Posted by gingerkidd at 12:28am on Thursday, July 16, 2009
2
Jul
2009
WORDS

You may have heard about WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, Spike Jonze’s upcoming filmic adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book. Since Sendak’s story is relatively sparse (48 pages, lots of grand illustrations but very few words), it makes sense that when Jonze and Dave Eggers were adapting the book into a screenplay, they had to beef it up a bit with new characters and scenarios. Well, it seems that Eggers (famous contemporary novelist that he is) had so much fun that he is adapting the film adaptation of the children’s book into a 300 page novel called THE WILD THINGS, complete with a weirdly awesome “Fur Edition” dust jacket. Strange eh?
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Posted by gingerkidd at 3:41pm on Thursday, July 2, 2009
26
Jun
2009
WORDS
So I opened up a box of brand-spankin-new books at work today, and guess what was staring up at me?

AAH! Sweet Jesus. No joke, I was actually startled. Could those piercing hazel eyes be hiding the soul of an artist of literary majesty, whose debut novel might rip the veil off of humanity and make us face our deepest, darkest emotions?
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Posted by gingerkidd at 10:26pm on Friday, June 26, 2009
23
Jun
2009
HYPE
I loved this song until I saw the video, and now I’m in super-love. It’s a psychedelic/dominatrix/Carnivale/rave! I wonder where leather pasties are sold in Vancouver?
‘Scars’, the new album, is set to come out in September, with guest appearances by Grace Jones, Yoko Ono, Yo! Majesty, Lightspeed Champion, Cyndi Lauper, Santigold, and Sam Sparro. High hopes for this one!
Posted by gingerkidd at 9:05pm on Tuesday, June 23, 2009
18
Jun
2009
HYPE
Janice is one stand-up gal. There should be more women like her. To celebrate the wonderfulness of all that is womanhood, go check out some of these musical events where bad-ass ladies will be stealing the show:
June 18th, Biltmore Cabaret-”IN BETWEEN DAYS”: 80S PROM PARTY WITH DJS DAMANDA AND MISTICIOUS (SPIKE AND CAITLIN FROM THE ORIGINAL DEGRASSI)
$10: Zulu and RedCat Records

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Posted by gingerkidd at 12:35am on Thursday, June 18, 2009
13
Jun
2009
FASHION

Scuba diver from Planet Neon! The backwards fanny pack is a nice touch.
Posted by gingerkidd at 4:28pm on Saturday, June 13, 2009
10
Jun
2009
WORDS books
Summertime, emphasis on the time. School’s out, work’s hard to come by, daylight extends far past dinner. There’s lots of time to reflect on the state of the world, and the book industry feels that they have us all figured out in this department. Although my brain spends equal time oscillating between “Ignorance is bliss, pass that Corona” and “Holy shit, puppies give you cancer?!” it turns out that one look at the ‘New Arrivals’ shelf in a local bookstore opens up a whole new can of beans in the “Holy shit” department. Introducing some carefully selected stars of the current Literature of Paranoia:
SLOW DEATH BY RUBBER DUCK, Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie
Paranoia-inducing subtitle: “ How the Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Life Affects Our Health”

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Posted by gingerkidd at 2:08pm on Wednesday, June 10, 2009
6
Jun
2009
HYPE MGMT
…is how i would describe MGMT’s latest music video. Unusual= no big surprise, considering that Andrew VanWyngarden is part wood nymph or something. But cruel……perhaps, depending on the extent to which urban culture has turned your heart into stone.
The song is pretty Summer ‘08, practically a classic by now, but the video’s brand spanking new. KIDS! waaaaaaaaaAAAA!!
p.s- It’s good to be back in the Futurist fold
Posted by gingerkidd at 10:17pm on Saturday, June 6, 2009
6
Feb
2009
WORDS
Photo via www.science.nasa.gov. Actually.
Although 2009 might be Gunslingrrr’s Year of the Girlfriend, for Gingerkid (The Futurists’ unashamed crusader for nerdiness) it’s The Year of the 3D Movie. Gunslingrrr might end up getting more pussy than me, but we’ll see. WE’LL JUST SEE.
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Posted by gingerkidd at 11:05am on Friday, February 6, 2009
4
Feb
2009
WORDS
Anyone who has been in Vancouver for an extended period of time will have a story relating to “the fireworks”. At least, you’d know what “the fireworks” refer to: the annual HSBC Celebration of Light, where there are lots and lots of….fireworks, which always make up for the cheesy music that simultaneously blares across English Bay.

Photo via jeremylatham.com
Remember finding out how it feels to throw up a bottle of Captain Morgan’s behind a dumpster? or, Remember losing your friends in the crowd and sitting with that nice Korean family? or, Remember thinking “Wow, Canada can’t make fireworks for shit!” or, Remember how baller you felt watching them from a West End apartment for the first time? or, Remember missing them altogether because the entire Lower Mainland was trying to squeeze onto the Granville Bridge and your bus was moving slower than Sam Sullivan’s wheelchair? or, Remember remembering that summer fucking rules?
Well, those memories are all you’re going to have from now on, because the fireworks are cancelled this year. Proof. I seriously can’t get enough of this “economic downturn”. It’s the new global warming. They can blame the recession for the city’s increasing lameness all they want, but it’s WAY more fun to blame the Olympics, which is what I’m doing. If we can’t afford to light up the sky for a few nights with technology that was invented by the Chinese before gravity was discovered, how fucked are we going to be after 2010? Just saying.
Posted by gingerkidd at 7:03pm on Wednesday, February 4, 2009
30
Jan
2009
HYPE
I think the nerd receptors in my brain just tingled a little bit.

The Classic Regency Romance—Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!
Coming this April from Chronicle Books: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, which “features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead”.
I can’t wait to buy this book and then pass it down through the generations. Lying on my deathbed, I’ll give the dusty hardcover to my wide-eyed grandchild and whisper: “This book taught granny all she needed to know about life and love. Don’t forget to always aim for the head, and show those undead fuckers who’s boss.”
I bet Jane Austen would love the zombie remix; she was freaky like that. I hope this book starts a trend… The Catcher in the Rye and Zombies. Moby-Dick and Zombies. Of Mice and Men and Zombies. To Kill a Mockingbird and Zombies. Little Women and Zombies.
-Gingerkid
Posted by gingerkidd at 1:06pm on Friday, January 30, 2009
30
Jan
2009
HYPE
This is a sign that I am addicted to the interweb: the Coachella line-up just came out a couple of hours ago and I already know/ want to blog about it:

I went to Pemberton last year, which was ridiculously fun but got cancelled. I’m in the mood for another festival….. Coachella? I’ve never been, and don’t know anyone who’s been, so I guess for now my decision depends on the lineup. These are the acts I’m ready to dance around in joy about:
Leonard Cohen
Silversun Pickups
The Ting Tings
N.A.S.A
Amy Winehouse (cause crack is wack)
Crookers
Hercules and Love Affair
The Cure
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Of course there are tons more artists than that; for example, Paul McCartney and The Killers are headlining, I just honestly don’t give a shit about them. So…..$270? I might just start budgeting, but I’ll wait around for Sasquatch! too.
-Gingerkidd
Posted by gingerkidd at 2:55am on Friday, January 30, 2009
28
Jan
2009
WORDS
I know this has been blogged to death but…… SMOKING LAWS IN VANCOUVER ARE BULLSHIT!!!

Taken with my Macbook, outside of Cuppa Joes, 4th & Alma
I guess this table is within 100 meters of the door or something? I even just quit smoking and am still freaking pissed off about this!
My buddy Jake at Beyond Robson had something pretty interesting to say about this debacle too.
-Gingerkidd
Posted by gingerkidd at 6:56pm on Wednesday, January 28, 2009