February 2010

You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February 2010.

Okay, yes, I know. I was rather harsh in my post about the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. I’m a cynic; what can I say? And I’m extremely picky and fussy about musical performances and music in general. And the ceremonies gave me a lot to moan about. So I moaned. Maybe even griped.

I went into this whole Winter Olympics thing with a distinctly jaded outlook. I’d been hearing about the lack of snow in Whistler and the possibility of the Blackcomb resort filing for bankruptcy protection, and I started thinking that the whole thing was going to be a major train wreck. To make matters worse, I then read this article by Vancouver’s poet laureate Brad Cran stating his reasons for not participating in the Olympic celebrations, and I my blood started to boil a bit. When large corporations start telling people what they can and can’t do, I get angry. Real angry.

But the whole corporate thing is fodder for a post of its own. And believe me, I will return to it.

So I wasn’t really planning to watch much Olympic coverage. I knew I’d end up seeing at least some of it, because CTV was basically suspending all regular programming except for the news and broadcasting non-stop Olympic coverage for the entire seventeen days of the games. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Well, I’m not a sports fan, but I am a Canadian, and I do love spectacle, so I decided to watch the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games last night.

I was seriously underwhelmed.

I’ll probably end up sounding like some kind of jaded cynic—and, truth be told, I actually feel like one a lot of the time—but I have to be honest here. There was a lot of stunning visual stuff going on, but not a lot of substance.

The projection of images onto the stage floor was a brilliant idea and beautifully executed, and the dancers and aerial performers were awesome, the orchestra was fabulous, the lighting and effects were great, the giant inflatable light-up polar bear was incredible, and the native costumes were beautiful. But something was missing.

Something to hold my attention, maybe? Something to keep me awake at one-bloody-o’clock in the morning when I’m starting to question why I stayed up this late in order to watch squares of wheat projected onto the floor and hear our national anthem turned into a hip-hop diva moment? Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The errant blogger returns. Better late than never, I suppose.

I do have a topic for today, but before I get to it, I feel an odd compulsion to share with you the rather bumpy and circuitous route by which it arrived in my brain. Synapses work in mysterious ways, and this is a fairly good example.

Bear with me here. The link density in this first bit will be rather high.

One of my Twitter friends, who goes by the handle @AliasGrace (and whom I met in person for the first time at PodCamp Halifax two weekends ago), has a blog entitled East Coast by Choice, for which I wrote a guest post three weeks ago. She’s had a number of guest posts over the time she’s been blogging, the most recent of which, entitled “The Death of Barrington Street?” and written by Paul MacKinnon (Twitter handle @downtownpaul), was a really interesting read.

Paul’s post mentioned a number of well-known buildings on Barrington Street, but the one that caught my attention was the Green Lantern building. Now, being the geek that I am (you knew that, right?), you’d think I’d have known Halifax had a Green Lantern building. For some reason, though, I didn’t remember the name at all. But, of course, I was tickled by it. So I went to my dear friend Google to see if I could find some pictures.

And find them I did. The Coast (our local artsy/cultural/gritty/emo/freebie newspaper) has an article about the building, complete with historical pics from the time when the building actually housed the Green Lantern restaurant. The building’s official name is the Keith building, and it currently houses Pogue Fado, a traditional Irish pub. Nice to know the green is still there, anyway.

Still with me? Good. ‘Cause I’ll be getting to the point any second now. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,