Following Apple’s naming convention, that means they might have called their new program “iMoney”. But, I wondered, was there already an iMoney app out there?

Sadly, yes. And, yuck.

First off, it’s a PC app. Deal-breaker, and extra demerits for for ripping off the “i” naming convention in a transparently lame attempt to sprinkle a little Apple cool-factor on their typically kludgy-looking PC product. No Steve-Jobs-approved simplicity and slickness here.

Then there’s that utterly pedestrian website, with overly-precise phrasing that has a heavy whiff of “Engrish” to it: “Show all your finance easily” or my favourite: “Where am I Money?”

But hey, it’s an award-winning program! If by “Award” you mean that it works with an almost-current version of Windows. They do. The rest of their “awards” seem to be for the fact that they’re not spyware (congratulations guys!) or for reasons unknown, as none of the award logos are clickable.

Perhaps they just created this program to tempt Apple into buying them out – and taking over that name. If so, good luck to them!

I’m a big fan of Jonathan Goldstein’s CBC Radio show, “Wiretap“. So when he brought his show to Vancouver for a live performance of some of his best stories, I was there! View the entire Flickr photoset.

7 am. A little later than I’d hoped, I’m on the bus and on my way. Possible lucky break: driver says he goes right to Main Street, so my more convoluted plan of multiple Skytrains not needed.

7:05. At Main St., see the 3 bus I was told to catch. I fly across the yellow-lit intersection – and see it pull away. Damn. But, another 3 appears immediately. Joy!

7:10. In line! A few hundred people already here, so my dream of a front-row view is likely dashed, but realistically this is about as early as I’d have been here. My disappointment, though palpable, is muted.

7:15. Spoke with security staffer. Said two people were trampled when gates were opened yesterday. I’ll try for maximum fleetness when the moment arrives today.

7:29. There now appear to be almost as many people behind me as in front of me. Yes! Colbert’s stage is fully visible across the grass in front of me.

7:47. Asking another volunteer about yesterday’s “trampling”, I’m told it was more of a slipping and muddying – nothing serious. Much relieved.

7:48. Conversations around me largely inane. Not hopeful audience will make positive impression on our American visitor.

8:25. I’ve read my newspaper twice. Now realizing something: it’s cold. And, my back is a little sore. Put newspaper to good use as a buffer as I plunk myself down on the cement path. Aaah.

8:35. Someone on a megaphone down at the front of the line is saying something unintelligible… and suddenly the lineup cascades towards the field, in an organic sweep that’s rolling towards me. Shouts of “Run!” burst out, and that’s what I do, in the middle of the pack and heading straight for the stage. A moment later I’m there! No slips, no falls, no broken bones – and darned close. I made it!

8:37. We’re told it’ll be an hour till they get started, so save our voices. That’s what I plan to do.

8:40. Glad I sat down for a bit – judging from the muddy soup under my feet, I won’t be doing it again.

8:55. Tunes on the PA all have humourous double meanings: “One is the loneliest number”, “Everybody wants to rule the world”.

9:25 watching video of Colbert’s “road to the Olympics” – funny!

9:50. A weird smudge is spreading over the TV monitor, getting bigger and blacker. (I think it was due to the temperature.) Luckily the show clips still sound funny…

9:55: And here he is! The man himself! The crowd goes wild!

10:30. As entertaining as the show is, I find it just as neat to see the “process” exposed. The stage manager who came out and prepped the crowd on hand signals for when to make noise and when to stop. And once the show is underway, seeing little things like Colbert confirming the order of cameras before making his customary show intro where he whips from camera 1, to 2, to 3… or looking over his segment intro on paper, and speaking it to himself before he does it on camera. At one point he does a bit where he pretends that he’s acknowledging a “throw” from an on-the-scene reporter, but that reporter is himself in an earlier-taped segment. So he does a bunch of those, one after another, each one segueing into an introduction of a different guest. It will be interesting to see how they seamlessly integrate these different bits into the final show.

10:55. Interviewing two skiiers, he asks one about being kicked out of the Turin games for getting in a bar fight. But it turns out that happened to the other guy. So later, after wrapping the segment, hw asks the question again – this time to the right person. The skiier was a pro – he even repeated his earlier joke in his reply.

11:15. After recording his farewell for the end of the show, the crowd starts chanting for him to get up on the giant stuffed moose (as Bob Costas did yesterday). When he obliges, there’s a roar of appreciation. And suddenly, “Ride The Moose! Ride The Moose!” turns into “Don’t Get Hurt! Don’t Get Hurt!” To which Colbert says, “That doesn’t absolve you of any blame, it’s on your heads if something happens!” He repeats the show ending from up on the moose. Wonder which one they’ll use – probably the first one, as he was quite badly lit when he was up there.

11:32 Just when I’m thinking that, entertaining as this is, my back can’t take another hour… we’re done! He wraps things up and offers his heartfelt thanks to the people of Vancouver for their enthusiasm. It was a great, and very funny, experience!

The East entrance to the Jack Bell Research Centre at VGH has been, shall we say, de-contextualized by the impending construction of a new building adjacent to it.

Last night I was fortunate to have the chance to see the new play, “Scorched”, at the Waterfront Theatre. Ironically, it was due to a critique of theatre posters in general, wherein I happened to use their poster as an example of one of my points, that led in a roundabout way to me being invited to attend! (See the whole story on Rebecca Coleman’s Art of the Biz site, or my original “The Trouble with Theatre Posters” blog post.)

Now, not only am I in no way a theatre reviewer, but what shows I do attend tend to be one of three types: musicals, comedies, and musical comedies. Straight dramas, particularly one such as this which is described with phrases like “loss and emptiness” and “legacy of suffering” clearly don’t promise giddy laughs or toe-tapping melodies. And yet, by the time the lights went up, I was completely riveted. It was a powerful and memorable experience.

I did have my reservations in the early part of the show. The characters often speak in a somewhat elevated, poetic manner which, while beautiful and evocative, tended to keep me at arm’s length from them as characters for a little while. But as the story progressed, and the bits and pieces of the plot, and the mystery, came slowly into focus, my interest was always held. And almost despite myself, I began to get drawn steadily into the story until I was fully engaged. And where I wrongly anticipated that the mystery would have an ambiguous conclusion, things instead took a surprising and stunningly powerful turn, so that by the end my head was spinning with the profound and disturbing, yet unforgettably powerful, revelations.

“Scorched” is at its heart two parallel stories: a young brother and sister are attending the reading of their late mother’s will. She has passed away after five years without speaking, something that started one day as she was attending a tribunal for a war criminal from her home country. There seems to be no connection, though, to those events and her mysterious silence. The instructions given in her will – to bring sealed letters to their brother, who they didn’t know existed, and their father, who they have believed to be dead – deepen the mystery. The brother, angry and dismissive, rejects the quest, but the sister does not, and as she pursues the truth, the parallel story – of their mother’s early life of suffering, a lost baby, and traumatizing experience of war, and her surprising journey with “the woman who sings” – emerges. The culmination is unexpected and has a profound effect on everyone involved.

“Scorched” speaks to the terrible and seemingly unstoppable cycle of violence and retribution that are the source of so much conflict and suffering in the world. To that end, it doesn’t name a specific country as the location for the play’s events, and the actors, though clearly (through names and dress) referencing a Middle Eastern setting, are, or at least appear, Western and “white” (though this is of course a fluid and tricky thing to categorize by appearance). But this only emphasizes the universality of its themes. The play can be performed by actors of any ethnicity or colour and maintain its impact.

While the need for – and the difficulty of – ending age-old blood feuds is a perennial truism, “Scorched” explores this fact with a lot of depth. And while I sometimes had an issue with the heightened and poetic tone, it is almost a necessary counter to the brutal violence that is portrayed and implied at several points. And along the way, “Scorched” touches on the power of words and language – the power of reading, writing and thinking as a means of survival and of hope. In the end, the stunning revelations challenge even the most “irredeemable” of the characters to move beyond their old patterns of thinking.

The cast is uniformly excellent, with Casey Austin riveting as Nawal, the mother and heroine of the tale, seen in flashback throughout the story, and the rest of the cast nimbly portraying multiple roles (Evan Roberts takes the prize here with six different characters!). Paddy Crawford hits just the right note, with a light touch much welcome amidst the gloom, as Alphonse, the notary who is charged with fulfilling Nawal’s dying wishes. And he brings much of what humour there is to the proceedings with his constant malapropisms like “between the Devil and the Blue Danube” or “that’s a fly in the appointment”!

So, while there were no musical numbers and only a sprinkling of (mostly dark) humour, “Scorched” was an experience I’m glad to have had. If you see it – and I recommend you do – I think you’ll agree.

Visit the Theatre Inconnu website for more info, and order tickets here.

Every Saturday afternoon, come down to Vancouver’s venerable Railway Club at Seymour and Dunsmuir for a satisfying dose of roots, rockabilly, blues and country tunes from a grab-bag of the city’s finest musicians. All for a laughably small cover charge! I was down there in December of 2009 after a long absence and caught some of the atmosphere with my nifty new digital camera. Included in the night’s roster were the memorable Powell Street Slim and the unique guitar stylings of Matthew Lennox. Here’s a 2 1/2 minute sampling. Turn up the volume, and enjoy!

There’s something about many theatre posters that bothers me. They often seem to missing something important: any kind of description of the show in question.

Look at any movie poster, on the other hand, and you’re sure to see a pithy summing-up of what’s in store. Some of these have even outlasted their promotional purposes to make a dent in the popular culture, like “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” or “Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water.”

While I don’t expect a brilliant and timeless slogan, I’m surprised that there usually isn’t anything other than the basics: the show’s name, that of the actors, writer and director, etc., dates and venue.

Posters, of course, are all about the visual, and often the chosen image can help define the tone or mood of the play. But just as often, it seems to me, the visual doesn’t really tell you anything about the plot.

When we’re talking about a well-known play or show, like Cats or Glengarry Glen Ross, I can understand that name recognition alone is enough. But new works are unknown quantities. True, sometimes the title itself communicates the tone and subject of a show perfectly (see “Debt, The Musical”). But not always. With live theatre, and arts attendance in general, always a little precarious, you’d think they’d try a little harder to inform and intrigue you.

A recently spotted poster for the play “Scorched” supported my point.

While the design is very clean and appealing, and the image is strong, it’s utterly coy as to what the play is about. A stylized bird (a dove of peace?) is split into black and white halves by a diagonal line. That image, taken together with the title and the prominently displayed Middle Eastern name of the playwright, Wajdi Mouawad, suggests a drama with geopolitical overtones. But the only info beyond the essentials is an admittedly glowing quote from the CBC, which sadly is also quite generic in its praise: “A remarkable achievement. Anyone who cares about good theatre should not miss it.” High praise, yes, but it doesn’t help me get a feel for the play itself.

On the play’s website, however, is this: “Civil war in the Middle East forms the backdrop for much of the play’s action as Mouawad explores with profound insight the concepts of love, loyalty, and betrayal.” That’s great, and speaks volumes about the play. Yet it’s only on the website, the address of which is buried in tiny type at the bottom-right corner.

Now, I’m a graphic designer by trade so when I speak to issues of visual communication, I speak from experience. And I know that while posters need visual impact to succeed, a strong visual without content and meaning behind it is an empty vessel. The primary meaning of even the most beautiful, eye-catching poster is to communicate a message. And while this may be a matter of taste, I tend to find the more abstract and obscure approaches less preferable to one that tangibly represents the themes and reaches out to try and draw in the viewer.

I thought that this whole approach might possibly be due to some kind of resistance to the perceived reductivism of the all-too-familiar movie tagline, perhaps maybe even an aversion to what’s perceived as a populist or even crass approach better suited to a mass-market medium than the (in theory) more rarified world of live performance.

When I spoke with Ryan Mooney of Fighting Chance Productions, he agreed with my observations about description-free theatre posters, but assured me that snobbery was definitely not the reason. “I think it’s space. A lot comes down to what you have to have on a poster, from the people that you get the royalties from. I definitely do not think it has anything to do with elitism.”

Mooney, whose production of Forbidden Broadway is currently packing them in at the PAL Theatre, thinks that posters aren’t really the most effective means of promotion anyway. “A poster is very static and people might see it, and might stop and look at it, but more often than not they just pass it by with a glance and forget the information. Unless you have the budget to print off hundreds and thousands of them then really they’re not that effective.”

He’s had a lot of success with more up-to-date methods, from social media approaches like Facebook and Twitter, as well as the ubiquitious text message. “With RENT we had a “text this number for more info” bit on the poster and it was just my cell number and I would text people the website and phone number for tickets. It worked extremely well, and was just a way for people to get information about it.”

So as we move forward, are posters themselves going the way of the dodo? Maybe, and maybe not. My feeling is that they are a good part of an overall marketing plan, sometimes merely serving to remind people of a show they’ve already heard about through other media.

But I wouldn’t discount the power of the poster on its own to spur action. I volunteer as a fundraiser for Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter, and last year’s Walkathon saw many participants who said they took part based solely on seeing our poster – not due to some personal contact or connection with our group or one of our volunteers.

So the old-fashioned, dead-tree poster would seem to have some life in it yet. Given that fact, it’s important for everyone – particularly theatre groups who need to get “bums in seats” – to make sure their posters really speak to their intended audience.

Just returned from a screening of “The Yes Men Fix The World” at the VanCity Theatre (still playing through Thursday; click here for tickets). It’s an absolute thumbs-up from me – by all means go see it if you have a chance.

In the best guerilla-media tradition, these two merry pranksters point out the hypocrisy, treachery and evil endemic in the corporate world with only one weapon in their arsenal – humour.

Posing as corporate or government officials, they propose things that are either preposterous (a bulbous “survival suit” for profiting from global disasters), amoral (making fuel out of the victims of global warming), or so downright moral they would never happen, due to the negative effect on the bottom line (full compensation and medical coverage for the Bhopal disaster victims). The media, in most cases, swallow their carefully-planned story whole. Ironically, once they realize they’ve been duped, they often ask the duo back for another interview, where they directly discuss the point they were making satirically the first time.

The result is a curious mix of uproarious laughs and fist-shaking anger at a corporate mindset that sees anything that helps the bottom line as worthwhile – or at least worth considering.

Some reviewers have implied that the reactions of those being “pranked” is so accepting and matter-of-fact that it undercuts the humour and fails to provide the needed “punch line”. That didn’t seem to be the case to me – there were many shots of seminar attendees’ faces showing a slowly dawning realization that something was amiss. The result was a uniquely satisfying kind of laughter that rolle through the VanCity theatre audience regularly. And just as transfixing to see was the reaction of those that seemed to be accepting the Yes Men’s nonsense at face value, one corporate type saying that “if people have to die anyway, you might as well make some money.” It made for laughter of a more chilly kind to see that sort of flat-out greed caught on (hidden) camera.

As they turn their focus from corporations to the government, the film’s larger theme – that of a critique of capitalism itself – is driven home. The pursuit of profit, unfettered by government oversight, leads unsurprisingly to abuses and utterly counterproductive actions, like HUD, the U.S. government’s department charged with providing housing, actually tearing down people’s (perfectly usable) homes in New Orleans, ensuring more homelessness.

The film is well-paced and structured. After a series of vignettes that are humorous but disheartening (for the blatantly immoral corporate behaviour on display), the film ends with a delightful stunt that gives one at least a small sense of hope, imagining a world as it could be.

So by all means run, don’t walk, to see “The Yes Men Fix The World”. You’ll laugh, you’ll cringe, you’ll laugh again. And you’ll be reminded why humour is still a feared weapon among the powerful.

Have you ever looked closely at the EULA (End User License Agreement) for iTunes? If you take a moment, there’s some intriguing stuff in there. Most notably this:

THE APPLE SOFTWARE IS NOT INTENDED FOR USE IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEMS, LIFE SUPPORT MACHINES OR OTHER EQUIPMENT IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF THE APPLE SOFTWARE COULD LEAD TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE.

So, don’t run iTunes on your CAT scanner or nuclear-submarine navigation center. Because if you accidentally kill a patient by interfering with their heart monitor, or nuke half the free world with an accidental missile launch, Apple will NOT be held liable.

This bit of legalese is no doubt meant to simply plug some theoretical legal loophole, and help justify the Apple legal team’s fees, but it begs the question: how the hell could you even use iTunes for any of these things? I mean, it doesn’t even say not to use it “on a machine used for” these purposes, but specifically to use “The Apple Software” (which earlier in the EULA it is made pretty clear, it seems to me, refers to iTunes, NOT the Apple operating system as a whole), for nuclear power, life support, etc.

I guess this is all to keep our soldiers in Afghanistan from blasting “Ride of the Valkyries” on their iPods during bombing runs. Keep it old-school – use a tape deck like Martin Sheen did.

Safety first.