It’s a mad world, and getting madder all the time. Two new buzz words I learned today:
Drunkorexia means restricting your food intake so you can drink more without gaining weight.
Pregorexia means restricting your food intake as much as possible while pregnant, so you can stay as thin as possible, and make like you are having a celeb pregnancy.
Flurries of activity on the Vancouver municipal election front from Frances Bula and the Tyee.
Olympic venue reincarnation The current uses and misuses of past Olympic edifices from Mental Floss blog.
A very special sponsor Taser International via its Canadian Distributor, M.D. Charlton Co. Ltd., will be a platinum sponsor at the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Montreal this month.
Not the Darkest Knight I found this YouTube over at dlisted today, and thought I’d share it, as a memento from a gentler, more innocent time.
I’m off to Vancouver Island for a few days, and won’t be posting again till next week. Enjoy your weekend.
Will He or Won’t He? David Emerson, that is. Apparently he might run in the next federal election. And then again, maybe not. Those Conservatives should get their stories straight.
Kim Capri’s “holy ground” Vancouver councillor Kim Capri explains why she voted against a 16-unit townhouse development in sacred Shaughnessy.
World’s Best Convention Center A bunch of convention centers got together and elected Vancouver’s as the Best Convention Center in the Whole Wide World. For this year at least.
Jordan River Standoff The Capital Regional District may sue Western Forest Products to prevent the sale of 20,000 acres of former-tree farm lands to a private developer. Our government in Victoria says its hands are tied, and Western Forest Products says it can manage forest lands however it wants. Forests, apparently, are not as sacred as Shaughnessy.
HokeyHockey News Roberto Luongo will soon be back to his pre-game lobster linguine at Cioppino’s. As for Sundin, expect his decision the day before training camp starts. Even if he plans to spend the winter hunting in the Swedish wilds.
All is not Lost for Radiohead Fans Their upcoming Vancouver show may be sold out, but David Suzuki and his foundation have a contest going. Radiohead are asking their fans to travel to their shows using environmentally transportation (i.e., carpooling, taking public transit, hoofing it), and the David Suzuki Foundation wants to know: “What tip would you give Radiohead to become more eco-friendly while on tour?” Details of the contest, and a possibly NSFW photo are here.
PS this hand-coding business takes a long time.
BC’s fearless premier was inspired by the Summer Olympics opening ceremonies, and wants the 2010 opening ceremonies to be equally inspiring, both to Canadians and the rest of the world.
He’d like to feel everyone knows “a little more about Canada as the opening ceremonies close.” And the best way to achieve that lofty goal, of course, is to hire an Australian to coordinate the spectacle.
Will he be equally inspired by Beijing’s brilliant cash grab of charging a fee to locals who can’t afford tickets to an event, just to walk around outside the venues?
We may be in much better shape financially than the denizens of Beijing, despite the steep costs and looming overruns for venue construction, security, traffic restrictions, and “non-Olympic” projects like the convention centre, the Canada Line, and sweeping boulders off the Sea-to-Sky Highway.
This is because local hotel rooms will be in very short supply and we have the opportunity to suck blood cash out of Olympic tourists. An average home will command $400 per night per bedroom, with conveniently located and more luxurious properties going for upwards of $3,500 per night. No doubt this windfall ease could some of the post-Olympic spiralling taxes and diminishing property values pain.
Vancouver may get a sort-of Christmas present this year, when the cut-and-cover construction part of the Canada Line construction is supposed to be finished. We may be able do drive up and down and across Cambie Street with a minimum of fuss again, but don’t expect sidewalks right away. Over at Cambie Village, says Leonard Schein, they’ve been waiting for theirs to be finished since last November.
And if none of this moves you, maybe August 21 will. It’s going to be National Sex Day. At least on Facebook.
Pammy Does Dubai She’s a 41-year old girl with her own banal reality TV show, and she’s been developing a luxury condo project on her grandmother’s waterfront property in Ladysmith.
For her next trick, she’s developing an eco-friendly hotel in Dubai, without using any fossil fuels. Rumour has it the hotel’s kitchens will only serve ersatz meat.
Gordo Does Beijing. The BC Canada Pavilion at the Beijing Summer Olympics may have failed to impress the locals, though we have sold them some Whistler Brewing Company beer. Not bad for a $14.7 million investment.
With Gordo over there busily schmoozing and partying for the next week, maybe we can sell them even more beer, or some of our raw logs.
If things get too stressful for him, what with all the smog and oppression, he can always have a special night on one of those extra-thick mattresses that have been designed to help Canada’s athletes win medals.
Housing Equity Shrivels and Dries. How ugly will the real estate decline get? Will it be a wobble that will slow discretionary spending without pushing BC into an Ontario-style recession lite? Will it be a sharp and stinging 10% price drop? Or will it be a hell-to-pay 35% loss in value?
The good news is Vancouver housing may eventually become affordable. Unless the termites get there first.
Everybody Wants a Hummer. Drug dealers have apparently re-purchased their seized SUV’s at a government auction. Who else could afford the gas?
Are You Bored with Beaches, Mountains, and Farmers Markets? Fret not. You can experience the thrill of 600 exhilarating slot machines at the new, unimproved Hastings Park den of iniquity.
43,557 sex and drug spam comments have been deleted from this blog so far. (Thanks, Akismet.)
Two unrelated stories:
2. It will be illegal to carry buckets of excrement on Denver streets during the Democratic convention.
It’s not as gross as it sounds, but it is kind of crazy and sad. Brenna McKinney missed her pit bull, Booger, so much after he died from cancer, that she sold her house and had five clones of him cooked up by RNL Bio, a Korean bio lab. The commercial cloning company has big plans for commercial cloning, including camels, presumably for heartbroken Bedouins.
The balcony may be permanently closed as critics Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper have both elected to leave the Disney-syndicated TV program “At the Movies.”
Disney has reportedly decided to take the program in a new direction. Ebert said that direction sounds “more like a pilot for a new entertainment show, not a continuation of the traditional format” that Ebert pioneered with the late Gene Siskel on Chicago PBS back in 1975.
Ebert takes with him the copyrighted “thumbs-up, thumbs-down” verdict. Disney cannot use the thumbs in future programming. The thumbs had been noticeably absent during the most recent weeks of “At the Movies” while Michael Phillips has been sitting in for Ebert, who is still unable to speak after cancer surgery two years ago.
Roeper has hinted that he may”proceed elsewhere with my ninth year as the co-host of a movie review show that honors the standards established by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert more than 30 years ago.”
This is hopefully not-so-sad news. Mr. V. and I have been enjoying Siskel, Ebert, Roeper, and the recent guest hosts including Phillips, A. O. Scott, and Aisha Tyler for many years. Roeper’s contract with Disney does not end till after the taping of the final show on August 16 and 17. For now, he is not providing any information about his plans.
Ebert has stated that the thumbs will return. Long live the thumbs!
Perhaps because of its unfunny, tasteless July 21 cover, New Yorker reporter, Ryan Lizza, was not given a seat on Obama’s press plane.
Not long before the cover hit the streets, New Yorker editor, David Remnick, went out for lunch.
