When I first saw it, I was reminded of this Improv Everywhere project, in which a local band has the night of its life. As it happens, Improv Everywhere pulled off another stunt, known as Best Game Ever, which does for a little league baseball game what the Budweiser ad does for rec hockey. Lots of people have noticed this connection.

Scott from Unmarketing checked in with the Improv Everywhere folks, and they confirmed that they’d never spoken to anybody from Budweiser. As far as I can tell, neither Budweiser nor the agency that created the ad has acknowledged Improv Everywhere as a source of inspiration.

Copying and giving credit where it’s due

I’ve been thinking about antecedents, copying and credit because we recently launched Drawn to the Wild over at The Big Wild. It invites Canadians to re-imagine a frame from a Sarah Harmer video, and to contribute to wilderness protection while they do so. Some web users will recognize that this campaign is highly derivative of the great, moody The Johnny Cash Project.

On the one hand, there’s nothing wrong with borrowing ideas. After all, while talent imitates, genius steals. We all stand on the shoulders of preceding giants.

However, when you create a derivative project, it’s important to acknowledge its source. The idea of attribution is baked into the culture of the web, in back links, in Creative Commons and in retweets. It’s also consistently abused and ignored on the web, where authorship is difficult to trace and creators and copiers have few incentives to give credit where its due.

There are lots of ways that Budweiser could have acknowledged Improv Everywhere. They could do so in the YouTube video description, in earned media or on a blog post on their own site. A cynic might suggest that Budweiser’s ad agency wanted to claim complete and original authorship of the idea, as it increases their value in the eyes of their client.

For Drawn to the Wild, we prominently cite The Johnny Cash Project as inspiration on the project’s About page, as well as in our email communications with the media and our communities. When pitching the idea, were totally upfront with stakeholders about its origins. The Johnny Cash Project actually acts as a kind of proof of concept. If somebody else has been successful with something similar, then it increases our odds.

A website for the origin stories of ideas

There are lots of ways online for the creator of a derivative work to acknowledge their inspiration. However, there are no systematic ways for anybody else to highlight possible connections. Maybe the original creator has a bone to pick, or other web users want to understand and contribute to the “origin story” of an idea.

I’m imagining a website where users can post links, and drawn connections between them. This wouldn’t just be for web projects, but any sort of creative work.They might post a link to the Wikipedia article or IMDB page for Star Wars, and connect it to pages about The Hero with a Thousand Faces and The Hidden Fortress. Or they’d drawn the connection between the Bud ad and its Improv Everywhere antecedent. People could vote up the connections they agreed with, and vote down the ones they didn’t (“Two and a Half Men owes nothing to Aeschylus!”).

My friend suggested a great name for the project: This Came From That.

Do other sites already do this? Wikipedia does, in a way, though one has to establish notability and then find corroborating evidence from mainstream sources before getting such a connection included in an article. Google sort of does this, too, in that you can search for “Star Wars influences” and find some useful information, but neither site is focused on solving this particular problem.

What do you think? Should we care about tracing the origins of ideas?

UPDATE: I’m reminded that I wrote about this topic back in 2010 as well.

I watched a kind of one-hour summary of the show courtesy of a BBC4 show called What Happened Next? I guess when you’re as big and old as the Beeb, you can produce a show that’s entirely about the future of other past shows.

In any case, I really enjoyed this documentary, despite nobody being kicked off the island. You can watch the whole hour-long show on YouTube:

Pinterest.com has exploded onto the start-up scene. In the current parlance, it’s a “push-button curation” site. A cousin to Tumblr, you use Pinterest to collect images from the web and ‘pin’ them to ‘boards’. To me, it’s mostly Delicious for pictures or collages of “stuff I want to buy”.

It represents the convergence of a few trends. First, and most importantly, there’s the crunchy, Etsy, DIY movement that’s popularized knitting and other crafty practices, and is reflected in the hipster ethos. Add to that mix the maturation of online shopping, where a lot of people spend a lot of their time (particularly on tablets like the iPad) browsing online stores. Then bake in the mainstream understanding of social sharing, thanks mostly to sites like Facebook and Twitter.

I’ve barely used the site–I haven’t thought of a personal or professional use for it yet. I was wondering about it on Twitter and somebody (I’m afraid I’ve forgotten who) suggested that it wasn’t for me, but rather for “co-eds to make visioning boards for The Secret“. Ouch.

Is anybody Pinterested?

Pinterest is ripe for satire. And I wish I had a good idea about how to satirize it. But life is a bit hectic at the moment, and, as I said, I’m a Pinterest noob.

I suggested on Twitter that the satirical site ought to be at Disinterest.com, but that’s already taken by a mortgage company. Then Paula suggested Dishinterest.com, which sounds excellent to me. So I registered it.

Now what should go there? What are the characteristics of Pinterest that most deserve a critique? In my limited time on the site, I see a lot of these quotations-in-image-form that are popular on Tumblr (ironically, it’s become immediately popular to use this collage site to collect blocks of text). This isn’t a great idea, but maybe the site is just a board full of the most banal objects one can find: a pencil, a clump of dirt and so forth?

What do you think? Any good ideas for Pinterest-related satire?

I have been thinking about piracy lately, though, because I’m considering alternatives to cable television. In truth, hockey is the only thing that binds me to Shaw Cable. I’ve been poking around for alternatives to watching or recording Canucks games on our PVR.

The only legal option is NHL GameCenter LIVE (caution, autoplaying video ahead). Back in October, I could pay $169 to watch nearly any game I want on my computer, iPad or iPhone. They reduce the price throughout the year–it’s currently $119. On the face of it, this seems like a satisfactory offer. I’d rather they amortize the pricing based on the exact day I sign up, but it could be worse.

However, the fine print is pretty hostile to the average customer:

• If you want to cancel your subscription after you sign up, you have five days to do so. After that, you forfeit the entire payment.
• You only get to watch the first two rounds of the playoffs. It’s not immediately apparent, despite some diligent searching, as to how one watches the subsequent rounds.
• Because of league agreements with broadcasters, many games are blacked out. The rules around this policy are pretty inscrutable, though I did read that no games are broadcast through GameCenter in the playoffs in Canada, because they’re televised nationally. There are endless complaints from GameCenter customers on social media and online discussion forums about this practice.
• The reviews of the NHL GameCenter mobile app are not flattering. A typical review in the iTunes store reads “Huge downgrade from the 2010 version. It crashes constantly and it’s way harder to navigate than last years version.”

The NHL seems to be about 60% of the way there to a really great service that enables you to watch all games, live or recorded, over the web.

By the way, there are no current NHL (nor NBA, NFL or MLB) games available through the iTunes store. This seems like an enormous missed opportunity.

Clearly, the NHL has not found its iTunes-esque sweet spot. How do I know this? Because there are a ton of illegal ways to watch NHL games online.

There are streaming sites, usually with multiple options for streams of both the home and away broadcasts for any game, and bittorrent sites. But my favourite example is this grey-market site based in Rotterdam, Netherlands that is a generic clone of NHL GameCenter. They essentially offer the same thing as GameCenter, except with more convenience and at a moderately-lower (a year costs US $99) price point. There are no blackouts, no playoff restrictions and the site seems to be more reliable better than the GameCenter app. In short, this shady Dutch operation out-performs the NHL’s own service.

As is so often the case, when the legal options aren’t satisfactory, illegal alternatives abound. There’s clearly a huge appetite for this kind of on-demand sports content. On my site alone, more than 17,000 people have visited this site alone looking for some variation of “how to watch NHL hockey online”. Not everybody wants the all-you-can-eat package for $169, mind you, but that’s the only legal game in town.

We’ve solved online music. We’re making good progress on television and movies. It looks to me like sports leagues, or at least the NHL, still have a very 20th century attitude towards the web. What’s holding them back?

UPDATE: Coincidentally, I was poking around on my iPad tonight, looking for hockey highlights. None of the CBC, TSN or Sportsnet apps offer video highlights, and the associated sites only offer video highlights in Flash. When I visit NHL.com looking for highlights, I get forwarded to their GameCenter offering. In short, the NHL expects me to have to pay to watch video highlights on my iPad.

Of course, somebody has routed around the bogosity, and hosts a simple site for NHL highlights that runs very smoothly on my iPad.

I thought about Byrne’s “Psycho Killer” as I walked across the floor of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre’s stage last night. I was there to attend Electric Company Theatre’s production of Tad Mosel’s “All The Way Home”.

The play is unusually staged. The audience and the actors share the set, a 1915 Kamloops home. We sat on benches, in chairs and on cushions on the floor. We become part of the set, sitting at one end of the dining room table and hunker around the bathtub. Beyond us are the three bare walls of the stage, and the closed curtain that separates us from the massive, empty auditorium.

Meg Roe and director Kim Collier. Photo by Michael Julian Berz.

It’s a long play, and a sobering one. It’s also full of movement and songs, and so I wasn’t bored despite its 150 minute duration. Actors Jonathon Young and Meg Roe are the heart of the big cast, and they both turned in delightful performances. I was reminded in particular of Roe’s sweet charisma on-stage. In many ways, her work here feels like a natural extension of her excellent work as the matron in “Penelopiad”.

“All The Way Home” is an intimate portrayal of a crisis that befalls a family, and their grief in its aftermath. Thanks to director Kim Collier’s intimate staging, I was occasionally less than a foot from an actor gripped with intense emotion. It’s an odd feeling, to be observing so closely but not participating. I felt a little like the beta gorilla in the troop, averting my eyes when they got too close. I was, to borrow from Mr. Byrne, tense and nervous.

There were about 20 teenagers from Arts Umbrella in the audience, and it was fun to watch them watch the action. I rarely experience theatre-in-the-round, and it’s rarer still that I do it flanked by so many young people. You could see dreams of becoming the next Meg Roe forming (or, more likely, solidifying) in their heads.

The play won the Pulitzer in 1961, and it feels very much a show from that period. It’s well-observed, and deceivingly simple in its structure, but it doesn’t have much new to say to today’s audience. There is the tiny joy of hearing local place names (though I did wonder whether Merritt had a movie theatre in 1915).

Yet Electric Company Theatre shows are often as concerned with the ‘how’ as the ‘what’. The blend of the modern and the post-modern–the realistic set furnishings combined with the bare walls of the stage–makes for an intimate if not immersive night at the theatre. It has some similarities to their 2010 “Tear the Curtain”, but it’s much tauter and far more fathomable. Plus there’s a terrific third-act reveal that delivers a rare treat to the audience.

Tickets are sold out for this show, but hopefully they’ll extend their run or remount it soon. You shouldn’t miss it.

The Trifecta of Directorial Tricks

This is kind of a footnote, and unrelated to the review. I mentioned that there was a bathtub on-stage. At one point an actor sits on the edge of it, and I genuinely wondered if she was going to get undressed and take a bath in some unbearably cold water. That might have seriously pushed the audience’s comfort level, but you can never go wrong with water on stage. One of my favourite ever shows at Victoria’s Belfry Theatre featured water. “The Collected Works of Billy the Kid” has a trough and a bath tub, if memory serves, and there’s a peculiar pleasure in the elemental sound of it sloshing around on-stage.

In thinking about water on-stage, I thought of two other great audience-pleasing tricks. First, you can never go wrong adding a song to a play. It can change a show’s pace and endear us to a singer. I’m not sure why, but I’m never disappointed to hear an actor break into song.

You also can’t go wrong getting the actor’s to prepare food on-stage. I remember another show at the Belfry–the name escapes me–where somebody cooked an entire meal of spaghetti on a functional kitchen. It worked so well as a kind of steamy, sensuous seduction of the audience.

I’m no theatre director, and maybe these are all rote cliches now. Still, the formula for the best play ever might be a dramedy about a cooking show host/marathon swimmer who occasionally sings negro spirituals for her own pleasure.

UPDATE: I was talking to somebody about a show that had the corner of a swimming pool on-stage. It was right at the lip of the stage, and walled with plexiglass, so that the audience could see into the pool. I asked the Belfry Theatre on Twitter, and they reminded me that the show was “Lips Together, Teeth Apart” by Terrence McNally. Here’s a photo from the show:

This was the first ebook I’d ever read, as it happens. I read it on the iPad, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to include an annotated map with the text. There are some standard ‘extras’ that you get with the Kindle app–lists of characters and memorable quotes, example. The ebook actually included a section entitled “Setting & Places”, but it seems like it’s generated algorithmically, not curated by an actual human. How do I know this? The terms “Cat” and “Hyderabad Mind” (the latter is the name of a circus performer in the book) are listed as settings or places. The Kindle app notes that this content comes courtesy of Shelfari.

I was curious about the route the Oronsay, Ondaatje’s ocean liner, took. So, I plotted the locations where the boat put into port, and made a quick custom Google map:

View The Route of the Oronsay in Michael Ondaatje’s “The Cat’s Table” in a larger map

ME: Yeah, Prince is really not to my taste.

HER: But he’s amazing, what’s not to like?

ME: I acknowledge that he’s a super guitarist, a great songwriter and a fantastic showman. I just don’t care for his music.

HER: Blerg.

I find myself saying a variation of “it’s good, but not to my taste” all the time. And I often find that people seem baffled or disappointed by my response. I guess it’s because they want me to like what they like too.

But–and here’s where I sound like a you-kids-get-off-my-lawn curmudgeon–I feel like there’s been a decline in the idea of taste in our culture. Or maybe it’s a decline in a respect of different tastes.

You would think that, in a increasingly balkanized cultural landscape, people would more readily accept differences like this. But it’s my sense that the opposite is true. What do you think?

Yesterday, on the aforementioned Book of Face, somebody I know wrote the following in a conversation thread:

I usually respond ‘yes’ to any event I am invited to on FB regardless if I’m actually going or not.

When I asked her why she did this, she wrote:

Well I figure people don’t really care either way. And it’s nice to say ‘yes’ always nice to be invited. So far no one has even noticed that I do this. Sometimes it’s because a ridiculous invite (environmental event in Toronto) deserves a ridiculous response. But really the bottom line is that people don’t care about FB event invites.

This raised an obvious question for me: how seriously do people take Facebook event invitations? Where do they rate compared to an email, an invite by text message or an Evite message?

I struggled to devise a poll that asked the right thing. This poll assumes that an email invitation is weightier than an Evite, and both are more serious than a text message.

I’m particularly interested in hearing from people, say, under the age of 25. How seriously do you take Facebook event invitations?

The rise of the Occupy movement this fall reminded me of working on collective creations. Occupy Wall Street and its cousins around the world actively eschewed leaders, and relied on a community-oriented consensus model to reach decisions. This ostensibly leaderless approach got me naturally thinking about leadership.

In every project in which I’ve been involved–creative, corporate, volunteer, non-profit–there was always a person in charge. Whether or not that person had an authoritative title or anybody acknowledged it, they had final decision-making power. A group always needs to look to somebody to own big decisions. That’s what a leader is there for.

Whether we’re talking about theatre, an unconference or revolution, there’s always a leader at the heart of things. Like it or not, we’re a hierarchical species. It’s how we get stuff done.

Which is why I’ve been interested in the intentional leaderlessness of the Occupy movement. There’s a cliche about Generation Y that they were raised on teamwork and consensus building, where everybody got a ribbon on Sports Day and nobody counted goals at their soccer games. Does Occupy reflect these values? Or is it merely a coincidence? I suspect that, in truth, each Occupy protest had their fair share of leaders who, at the end of the day, drove and owned decisions.

Here’s another thing about leadership that I’ve learned over the years: most people don’t want to be leaders.

In rereading this little post, it seems like I’m rather aggressively reinforcing the status quo. A feminist reading of this post might accuse me of taking a very traditional, masculine line of thinking. I should emphasize that I’m not writing off other ways of organization, but I can think of very few truly leaderless projects. Can you think of examples?

UPDATE: A friend sent me this interesting article by Micah L. Sifry. It frames Occupy Wall Street as a ‘leader-full movement’. I’d need to read more about this idea to get my head around it. It’s a pity that, in the conclusion, Sifry demonizes traditional leadership by writing “a world of top-down leaders who use hierarchy, secrecy and spin to conduct their business”. He hasn’t earned that claim with evidence elsewhere in the article, and so it cheapens an otherwise thoughtful piece.

1. Live in a house built to my specifications
   
2. Play ice hockey (beer league will do)
   
3. Live in a third-world country
   
4. Completely research my family history
   
5. Be interviewed on the CBC
   
6. Own a dog
   
7. Own another cat
   
8. Own a hybrid or electric car
   
9. Live by the ocean
   
10. Drive across Canada
    
11. Visit Patagonia
    
12. Visit Vietnam
    
13. See a play of mine produced
    
14. Read 100 more of the books on Harold Bloom’s Western Canon.
    
15. Work as a film critic
    
16. Read Ulysses by James Joyce
    
17. Build or skate in an ice rink in the Republic of Ireland
    
18. Change careers
    
19. Hike the Cabot trail
    
20. Become passably fluent in French

I’ve recently been clearing out some storage boxes, random electronics (thank you, Free Geek Vancouver) and books. In an old notebook, I found these handwritten additions to my original 20 items:

1. Visit Israel
   
2. Visit Egypt
   
3. Visit South Africa
   
4. Plant a vegetable garden
   
5. Kayak somewhere for at least a week
   
6. Bike somewhere for at least a week
   
7. Open my own business
   
8. Not work for a year
   
9. Get a Master’s degree
   
10. Volunteer abroad for a time
    
11. Work with animals
    
12. Publish a book

Whew, that’s a measly 32 items. It’s actually pretty tricky to think of 100 things I want to do before I die. What does that say about me? Charitably, I’m a realist. Cruelly, I’ve got a pathetic lack of imagination. I’ve put my mind to it, though, and here are 18 more things. I reserve the right to include a couple that were definitely lifelong aspirations that I’ve achieved in the past few years:

1. Publish a novel
   
2. See the wildebeest migration at Ngorongoro Crater
   
3. See my great uncle Ross’s grave in Kiel, Germany
   
4. Walk Juno Beach on the anniversary of D-Day
   
5. Become a patron of the arts (whatever that means)
   
6. Catch a fish
   
7. Catch a fish using a speargun
   
8. Take a multi-day train trip
   
9. Run 5 km without puking
   
10. See the aurora borealis
    
11. Learn how to competently play jazz guitar, in the django style
    
12. Visit all of Canada’s provinces and territories
    
13. See the Sahara desert
    
14. Visit New Zealand
    
15. Visit Seychelles
    
16. Volunteer on an archeaological dig
    
17. Take some singing lessons
    
18. Spend 40 days totally alone, without any modern technology

Whew. Halfway there. And now, the complete list, with the ones I’ve actually completed. I’d better pick up the pace:

1. Live in a house built to my specifications
   
2. Play ice hockey (beer league will do)
   
3. Live in a third-world country
   
4. Completely research my family history
   
5. Be interviewed on the CBC
   
6. Own a dog
   
7. Own another cat
   
8. Own a hybrid or electric car
   
9. Live by the ocean
   
10. Drive across Canada
    
11. Visit Patagonia
    
12. Visit Vietnam
    
13. See a play of mine produced
    
14. Read 100 more of the books on Harold Bloom’s Western Canon
    
15. Work as a film critic
    
16. Read Ulysses by James Joyce
    
17. Build or skate in an ice rink in the Republic of Ireland
    
18. Change careers
    
19. Hike the Cabot trail
    
20. Become passably fluent in French
    
21. Visit Israel
    
22. Visit Egypt
    
23. Visit South Africa
    
24. Plant a vegetable garden
    
25. Kayak somewhere for at least a week
    
26. Bike somewhere for at least a week
    
27. Open my own business
    
28. Not work for a year
    
29. Get a Master’s degree
    
30. Volunteer abroad for a time
    
31. Work with animals
    
32. Publish a book
    
33. Publish a novel
    
34. See the wildebeest migration at Ngorongoro Crater
    
35. See my great uncle Ross’s grave in Kiel, Germany
    
36. Walk Juno Beach on the anniversary of D-Day
    
37. Become a patron of the arts
    
38. Catch a fish
    
39. Catch a fish using a speargun
    
40. Take a multi-day train trip
    
41. Run 5 km without puking
    
42. See the aurora borealis
    
43. Learn how to competently play jazz guitar, in the django style
    
44. Visit all of Canada’s provinces and territories
    
45. See the Sahara desert
    
46. Visit New Zealand
    
47. Visit Seychelles
    
48. Volunteer on an archaeological dig
    
49. Take some singing lessons
    
50. Spend 40 days totally alone, without any modern technology
    

I’m open to suggestions. What would you add to my list?

British Columbians and Ontarians of a certain age will remember this iconic little cat. You saw it on movie posters, in movie listings in the newspaper, and in a series of cute ‘bumpers’ before restricted movies. Here’s one of them:

Coincidentally, we’re working with Consumer Protection BC at the moment on a campaign to relaunch the restricted cougar videos. Part of their work is to classify–that is, assign a rating like ‘General’ or ‘Mature’–all the films shown in BC (and Saskatchewan, as it happens).

To accompany the videos, we helped them make this little timeline in Prezi, a cool presentation tool I use occasionally. The timeline has a ‘path’ to it, so it’s best explored by clicking the arrows in the lower-right corner, or using the arrow keys on your keyboard.

The timeline shows a recent history of movies classified as restricted in BC. I didn’t know this, but in 1997, classification categories were revised and the “18A” rating replaced “Restricted”. So, the R rating now only applies to a rare class of ‘adult’ motion pictures with “artistic, educational, scientific, historic or political merit”. Examples you might know include Requiem for a Dream and Shortbus.

Regardless of how you feel about banks and credit unions, this is a terrific protest. It’s specific, easily understandable, anybody with a bank account can participate, and it speaks a language the targeted institutions understand: filthy lucre. Admittedly, Bank of America’s assets total US $2.2 trillion, but when an industry loses 700,000 customers, meetings will be taken, and changes may be made.

I mention Bank Transfer Day because it stands in sharp contrast to the murky, apparently leaderless Occupy movement. Bank Transfer Day was started by a specific person, with a specific goal in mind. As I said in my previous post on this topic, specificity matters.

I’m not claiming that the Occupy movement is entirely without merit. As I already wrote, I hope it coalesces into something with a narrower, more achievable purview. And I hope they take lessons from Bank Transfer Day.

The show is not without its merits. Atwood’s lyrical script retells the Odyssey myth from Penelope’s perspective. She’s stuck at home on Ithaca while her footloose husband Odysseus meanders around the Mediterranean. She has a busy kingdom to run, maids to manage, suitors to stave off and a sass-mouthed son to mother. The plot, as skeletal as certain adversaries of Jason in another Greek myth, doesn’t really get started until the second act. The script isn’t exactly ripe with gripping drama, and feels a little padded out by a number of songs.

Meg Roe is luminous and regal as Penelope, telling her story from Hades. Through much of the play, her role is passive–she recounts events as a kind of Greek Stepford wife, all smiles and warmth. The supporting cast, ten women who play Penelope’s favourite maids, as well as sundry other roles, were also strong. I did wonder a bit about the decision to cast all women in these roles in 2011. It felt like a rather 20th-century, Top Girls kind of stunt casting. Colleen Wheeler was suitably gloomy and masculine when she played Odysseus, but why cast that role as a woman? Perhaps I’m alone in this, but Wheeler and Roe’s most intimate scenes were inevitably overlaid with my constant awareness that “she’s pretending to be a he”. Obviously that was Atwood or director Vanessa Porteous’s intent, but I couldn’t glean why.

Other production elements–the nautical set with a floating platform that doubled as a marriage bed, the watery lighting and the on-stage sound design and music–were all cohesive and well-executed.

And yet, I left the theatre with a case of the ‘mehs’. The director, in her show note, argues for the play’s relevance (PDF):

Nowadays, most of us don’t have maids, but, especially in our blessedly peaceable land of Canada, are we really aware of the impact we have on the “invisible ones” whose lives we touch? The people who make the clothes we buy; the people “downstream” from us, as they say in environmental circles; the people who live in countries far away, the mothers and sisters and daughters of the nations with whom we are in conflict?

That’s a dubious question to ask of Arts Club attendees in 2011. They’re locavores, crafters and sustainability connoisseurs. From Slumdog Millionaire to The Story of Stuff, few groups are more aware of how their consumption or their country’s politics impacts people in the developing world.

In short, The Penelopiad was a well-made play that wasn’t to my liking. It’s plot was too turgid, and its themes too tired for me to find it particularly engaging. As the Internet kids say, your mileage may vary. The play runs through November 20 at the Stanley Theatre.

You’ll pardon the awkward segue, but speaking of women and history, I wanted to share this video I helped write for one of our clients, Global Zero. It features Naomi Watts and Valerie Plame Wilson, the CIA agent Watts played in “Fair Game”. Global Zero is making the case that, in these recessionary times, nuclear weapons are too expensive. The world will spend US $1 trillion on them over the next decade.

I find the Canadian protests more vexing. Here’s the first paragraph of Occupy Vancouver’s ‘working statement’:

We, the Ninety-Nine Percent, come together with our diverse experiences to transform the unequal, unfair, and growing disparity in the distribution of power and wealth in our city and around the globe. We challenge corporate greed, corruption, and the collusion between corporate power and government. We oppose systemic inequality, militarization, environmental destruction, and the erosion of civil liberties and human rights. We seek economic security, genuine equality, and the protection of the environment for all.

That’s about as specific as their demands get, as far as I can tell. Personally, I can get behind opposition to environmental destruction (I fight that battle, in various forms, every day in my work), but none of their other topics really speak to me. Or rather, they’re not effective when bundled together in this catch-all, ambiguous fashion.

And that’s my key issue with Occupy Vancouver, I guess. Specificity matters. Protests are rarely successful, and the ones that are, in my thinking, are those with a hyper-specific objective. Protests opposing American participation in the Vietnam War or logging in the Clayoquot Sound identified a specific outcome and worked toward it.

My opinion of Occupy Vancouver is also coloured by my rereading of The Rebel Sell, which I first wrote about back in 2004. Last night I read a section that seemed pertinent:

We must distinguish, in other words, between dissent and deviance. Dissent is like civil disobedience. It occurs when people are willing in principle to play by the rules but have a genuine, good-faith objection to the specific content of the prevailing set of rules. They disobey despite the consequences that these actions may incur. Deviance, on the other hand, occurs when people disobey the rules for self-interested reasons. The two can be very difficult to tell apart, party because people will often try to justify deviant conduct as a form of dissent, but also because of powers of self-delusion. Many people who are engaged in deviant conduct genuinely believe that what they are doing is a form of dissent.

Are those engaged in Occupy Vancouver dissenting or deviating? Some of each, I suspect.

This ferocious moment is the inciting incident of Re:Union, the latest provocative and intellectually rigorous play at Pacific Theatre.

Playwright Sean Devine sets the main action in late 2001, weeks after the events of September 11th. Morrison’s daughter Emily (Alexa Devine) is all grown up with a child of her own, and has retraced her father’s footsteps to confront McNamara (Evan Frayne). Early in the play she says “I am the daughter of my father’s fire”, and is bent on getting the elderly McNamara to speak out against the messy conflicts the US is about to enter into.

Photo by Emily Cooper. Pictured (L-R): Andrew Wheeler, Evan Frayne, and Alexa Devine in Re:Union.

Their scenes together reminded me a little of David Mamet’s Oleanna, if only for the way a younger woman and an older, more powerful man engage in high stakes if cerebral debate in an office. These are counterpointed by flashback scenes in which Morrison (Andrew Wheeler) lectures–for he apparently taught ethics at the college-level–the audience about Kierkegaard, Hegel and the Old Testament. While these scenes weren’t dreary per se, they did ask a lot of the audience.

The performers were all very strong–their work adds up to three subtle portraits in self-doubt. In addition to a demanding, wordy script, they had the challenges of interacting with a lot of on-stage technology. This is by far the most technically sophisticated show I’ve seen at Pacific Theatre. There were projections on multiple surfaces that displayed archival footage, set decoration and feeds from on-stage cameras. Director John Langs seems very excited by the possibilities of these devices. Emily routinely speaks into a tape recorder or one of the on-stage cameras, and the director uses a complex sound design to, on occasion, affect the speed of the on-stage performances. Actors ‘speed up’ or ‘rewind’ accordingly.

This stage technology still feels fresh, but it can become a distraction from the action or a crutch for the actors or playwright. Re:Union avoids most of these pitfalls, though there are a few flame effects which feel clunky, and invite unflattering comparisons to similar effects from film and television. In truth, I was also excited to see experiments with projections. As in Tear the Curtain and, to a lesser degree, Ride the Cyclone, they seem to be coming of age in the theatre.

One tiny technical quibble: ages ago, my lighting design professor at UVic, gave me some practical instructions on pre-show lighting of the auditorium. I’m not sure why I still remember it, for I gave up lighting design quite a while ago, but he said that this particular lighting only has two purposes: to enable the audience to find their seats, and read their programs. I had a hard time doing either before this show.

I come, lastly, to Sean Devine’s script. He’s taken on challenging material here–both Morrison’s act itself and the ideologies that surround it–but mostly succeeds on the strength of the three characters he’s drawn. I did feel the play’s inertia falter early in the second act, and thought Morrison’s lecture scenes in particular could bear with some tightening up.

I also wondered if the playwright was asking the right questions of the material, or whether he’s placed the emphasis on the right ideas. The play touches on the selfishness of Norman Morrison’s act, but doesn’t explore it in any depth. Additionally, I identified a certain smug certainty in Emily and McNamara’s conversations about the Vietnam War and the forthcoming conflict in Iraq. Nobody dared to defend the righteousness of these conflicts, not even a little. I felt like Devine confidently assumed that the audience was full of peaceniks.

I was sorry that I have yet to see Errol Morris’s apparently excellent documentary, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. It would no doubt have informed by viewing of the play.

Re:Union asks a lot of its audience, but it rewards the attentive, thoughtful viewer. The play runs through November 12, and you can buy tickets here.

A very worthy topic. I actually watched an extended 8-minute trailer, which you can find on Facebook. In that video, the film expresses a theory of change based on getting more women into positions of power in politics, corporations and media. From the film’s website:

While women have made great strides in leadership over the past few decades, the United States is still 90th in the world for women in national legislatures, women hold only 3% of clout positions in mainstream media, and 65% of women and girls have an eating disorder.

Though it’s not plainly stated anywhere, the website and trailer imply that if more women were in positions of power, the despairing treatment of women in media and advertising would improve. This, on the face of it, seems like a rationale approach to the problem.

I can’t speak broadly to the issue, but whenever this solution is presented, I think of women’s magazines. Specifically, I think of magazines apparently culpable in the objectification of women–Cosmopolitan, Glamour and their sundry sisters.

These magazines have been staffed and run by women for decades. Glamour has had a female editor since its inception in 1939.

If these magazines are produced by women, then why do we regularly point to them as a source of the message that “women and girls’ value lies in their youth, beauty and sexuality”? Here are the possibilities I can think of:

• I’m wrong about how deplorable these magazines are. This seems unlikely–my own little experiment indicated that Cosmo was very concerned with sex, men and being naughty.
• Despite all the women on the masthead, the tone and content of these magazines are driven by the men who own the magazines at Condé Nast and Hearst.
• Sex sells, and in a competitive landscape, women are as likely as men to race to the bottom.
• We’ll require many women leaders in many different fields and vocations before progress can be made on this culture of objectification and sexism.
• Other reasons I haven’t thought of.

Now, obviously, achieving gender equity in positions of power is essential for a healthy society. There are many, many reasons for why we need more female politicians and executives. And Miss Representation seems like a very worthy film.

However, the ongoing popularity of Cosmopolitan, written by and for women, prevents me from completely buying the “more women in power” leads to “less emphasis on girls and womens’ youth, beauty and sexuality” thesis.

What do you think?

A Footnote on the 3%

The trailer also used the statistic I quoted above, about only 3% of women being in “clout positions” in media. That seemed shockingly low, so I wanted to learn more about it. The Miss Representation site provided no source for this quote. I did some searching, and determined that it came from a 2003 report entitled “The Glass Ceiling Persists”. The report defines “clout positions” as “clout titles as those positions that ‘wield the most corporate influence and policy making power.’ These titles include: Chairman, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Vice Chairman, President, Chief Operating Officer (COO), Senior Executive Vice President, and Executive Vice President.”

The report examined three advertising companies, 11 entertainment firms and 18 publishing companies. So, that seems hardly like a definitive analysis of the media industry. It’s a dubious statistic at best.

It’s also worth noting that the average age of a new CEO in 2009 was 53, while the average age of any CEO according to a couple of sources is about 57. Considering it’s a 2003 study, that means 2003-era CEOs were entering the workforce in the late sixties and early seventies. At that time, there were fewer women in the workforce, and fewer of them expected to become a CEO.

My point? It’s a lousy stat, and there are definitely better, equally shocking ones available. Also, we’re probably a generation away from seeing anything close to parity in these “clout positions”. On top of all the other battles women have fought, it just takes a long time to make a CEO.

]]> http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2011/10/why-are-womens-magazines-still-so-sexist.html/feed 3 http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2011/10/why-are-womens-magazines-still-so-sexist.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Darrenbarefoot/~3/2QmdRTKO60w/cleveland-dam-a-vancouver-secret-spot.html http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2011/10/cleveland-dam-a-vancouver-secret-spot.html#comments Thu, 06 Oct 2011 17:45:23 +0000 Darren http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/?p=8672 I grew up in West Vancouver, in the most middle-class corner of the British Properties. We had a schnauzer name General (for his bearing, not his commonness). We would often take General on walks into some woods near our house, and over to the Cleveland Dam. It’s the dam that holds back Cleveland Lake, a drinking water reservoir for the Lower Mainland, and divides West and North Vancouver.



I was always struck by the duality of my experience on the dam. If the water level is high, one side of the dam is this roaring tumult of noise, whitewater and mist. Yet if you walk across the dam and look north through the fence, there’s this still lake surrounded by woods.



The dam features in the climax of Douglas Coupland’s Girlfriend in a Coma, when the book’s ghostly narrator meets his friends there:

On Cleveland Dam, the park at the west end and walk to its centre, as promised, I hover invisibly above the silent spillway. The reservoir behind the dam is slightly below the runoff level and algae within the water has loaned it an otherworldly shamrock sheen. The dam’s road is smooth and glistening from a freak rainstorm and is seemingly paved with diamonds.

Lately I’ve been asking Vancouverites–new arrivals and lifers both–whether they know about or have visited the dam. Hardly anybody has. It’s not going to blow your mind, but it’s a lovely spot and will probably awe kids who haven’t seen a lot of dams before. There are walking trails on the West Vancouver side, and a park on the North Vancouver side. On a nice day, it’s an excellent spot for a picnic. Combine it with a trip to the salmon hatchery, and you’ve got yourself a rewarding Sunday afternoon out in the suburbs.

Here’s a short video I spotted which shows both sides of the dam.

Photos by mac steve and Grant Harder.

]]> http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2011/10/cleveland-dam-a-vancouver-secret-spot.html/feed 4 http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2011/10/cleveland-dam-a-vancouver-secret-spot.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Darrenbarefoot/~3/4naAURbFHDU/take-a-date-to-ride-the-cyclone.html http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2011/10/take-a-date-to-ride-the-cyclone.html#comments Mon, 03 Oct 2011 01:56:06 +0000 Darren http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/?p=8663 If the defunct HBO show Carnivale mated with Glee, their love child would be Atomic Vaudeville’s Ride the Cyclone. The musical tells the story of…ah, here, just watch the trailer:

It’s a macabre, imaginative cabaret filled with fun, clever songs and terrific performances. While the whole cast was very strong, both Sarah Jane Pelzer and Elliot Loran stood out. The production seemed very tight and well-rehearsed for an opening night. The show is full of choreography and finicky business with props, so I was struck by how smoothly the cast handled all the staging minutiae.

It’s really more of a series of delightful songs than a play or musical in any formal sense. Like a good episode of True Blood, it’s dark and sexy, but you don’t exactly dwell on its story structure or themes. The characters worry about the claustrophobia of small town life, but the show doesn’t have anything fresh to say on that topic.



I had a couple of minor quibbles with the staging–the set and props were all a little too Etsy for my taste. I’d also have excised a few date-specific details from the script. Mentions of YouTube or Christina Aguilera interrupt the timeless quality created by the fairground setting and musical choices.

It’s a great date show–90 minutes without intermission. Bringing a boyfriend or girlfriend to Ride the Cyclone would make you look a little edgy, and there’s lots to talk about after the show.

Ride the Cyclone runs through October 15, and you can get tickets here.

Photo by Fairen Berchard.

]]> http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2011/10/take-a-date-to-ride-the-cyclone.html/feed 1 http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2011/10/take-a-date-to-ride-the-cyclone.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Darrenbarefoot/~3/sBOpTGtXDOg/reflections-on-a-reunion.html http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2011/09/reflections-on-a-reunion.html#comments Mon, 26 Sep 2011 04:43:44 +0000 Darren http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/?p=8657 Last night was my 20th high school reunion. It was held in a night club in West Vancouver. That, on the face of it, sounds bizarre to me. West Van has night clubs? Or at least ‘club’, singular. Later on in the evening, there were go-go dancers.

It’s a curious experience, a reunion like this. With the exception of three or four classmates, I really hadn’t seen the rest of my 150 classmates for ten–there’s was a previous reunion–or twenty years. I spent six to 12 formative years among these people, and then never saw or, in some cases, thought of them for the next 20.

There was more hugging than I expected. There was instant familiarity with a few people, and plenty of back-slapping camaraderie and clinking of glasses. More than one person told me that I looked “exactly the same” as I did in high school. Were they being kind or just drunk?

Why do you go to a reunion? To see old friends. To compare your waist, hair and credit line to your former peers. I was also quite curious sociologically in the ordinary experiment of a high school class.

For example, of the 40 or 50 people I spoke to or about that evening, I was the only one who was both married and childless. I talked to three classmates who had four children, and several more who had three. The friends I’ve acquired as an adult are considerably less prolific. Is that because I number a bunch of artists and entrepreneurs among the latter group, and they express their procreative instincts in other ways?

Many of my classmates had left West Vancouver, but not gone very far. There’s a healthy population of former Sentinel Secondary students in Vancouver’s other suburbs–White Rock, Coquitlam, Surrey and so forth. Plenty have gone eastward to Ontario.

The evening also reinforced an idea I first read in Stumbling on Happiness: our internal happiness meter is fairly predetermined, and doesn’t actually stray very far from its initial setting. People who were upbeat and chipper in high school seemed to be the same way at 37 or 38. By the same token, if someone was a standoffish and brittle in grade 12, they hadn’t warmed much in the ensuing two decades.

It did occur to me that a subset of people in my graduating class didn’t like high school. So they’re unlikely to come to the reunion. On the other hand, they might have turned out to be the most interesting adults.

Whether you loved or hated high school, I recommend the experience of a reunion like this. It’s a rare thing.

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