The Aquarium

Nestled in Stanley Park, the Aquarium is the place to commune with our aquatic brethren. It’s perfect for any weather, with both an outdoor arena full of larger mammals (they have beluga whales!) and a large indoor labyrinth of fish and frogs. However, you can only stare at the octopus stuck to the side of the tank for so long, so go and check out the 4D movie theater as well.
Oh, and did I mention that they have a Spongebob movie?! Just don’t step on any of the 50 five-year-olds in there with you.

H.R. MacMillan Space Centre

Legal friends planning a Friday night out on the town? Now you can have a late night too, with the Planetarium laser shows! They offer Radiohead, Pink Floyd, AC/DC and Gorillaz shows on Friday and Saturday nights. Just like your bar-hopping buddies, you will get to experience surreal sensory imagery, dark rooms and loud music, with the added bonus of no hangover in the morning. There are also fewer small children around at 9pm on a Friday night, so you will feel less like a giant intruder and more like a rebel going against the party flow.

Wreck Beach

Located near the Vanier dorms at UBC, this haven for nudists and students alike (and sometimes student nudists) may be chilly in the winter, but there’s always the possibility of a campfire and guitar session. Some students use this space to party in once the elderly disrobed depart, but as a law-abiding student you will obviously refrain and content yourself with the splashing of the waves and the happy knowledge that many, many, many, many steps back up the cliff to campus await your sober self.

Regardless, the gleefully subjective approach is relatively new to the study of history, which still struggles to accept that there can be more than one true way of understanding the past. What better medium to deliver history a much-needed swift kick in the ivory tower than comics—one of the few pop art disciplines still in its ascendancy?

Enter Kate Beaton, whose largely Canadian history-themed webcomic Hark! A Vagrant manages to strike the perfect balance between academic legitimacy and adolescent silliness. Pierre Berton it is not, but Beaton is pretty clear that her work should be seen as non-canon. It’s like adapting a popular book to screen: someone will complain no matter what you do with the source material, so what’s the point in being fussy about an inserted poop joke here and there? As Beaton points out, revered historian Thucydides probably didn’t call Herodotus the “Father of Fat Butts,” but “You’ll never take my [history] degree away! I hid it.”
While Beaton tweaks history to make room for jokes, other web cartoonists tweak jokes to make room for history. Steve LeCuillard, who bills his Robin Hood send-up Much the Miller’s Son as “hysterically inaccurate” explores the forest hero’s legacy through the eyes of a misanthropic merry man, Muchlyn. David McGuire, meanwhile, makes space in the setting of Ancient Greece for Phobia, a rogue Amazon warrior, and her son Gastro. And some talking cuckoos. And time-travelling 21st century nerds.

Both comics carry something of the look and feel of the classic “historical” comic, René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo’s Asterix, which loosely follows the adventures of the Gauls as they are invaded by Rome.

Asterix was doing years ago in print what the new generation of cartoonists are doing online today: building a historical vocabulary among people who wouldn’t ordinarily be expected to care about what happened in the distant past. Like Goscinny and Uderzo, LeCuillard and McGuire are building their cartoon worlds with the understanding that in the same way the “real” world is a product of our collective imagination, “real” historical figures and backdrops, as we know them, are just lovingly-rendered cartoon characters themselves.

I suppose history purists could say any learning that does take place when reading comics is mostly anecdotal. But then, so is history. If the cost of serious, objective knowledge of the past is that we occasionally have to laugh at ourselves, it seems to me that the future of our past is in good hands.

The work he does along with his wife, ninja IX, ranges widely in topic, matter and form. Naturally, when The Ubyssey heard that jerm was planning a move east to Toronto, we caught up with him to talk about art, inspiration, home, and just what that IX stands for.

Ubyssey: Your wheatpastes have become a staple of Vancouver hotspots and alleys alike. Do you remember the first to go up in Vancouver? Is there a special message that you’d like to be your last before the move?

Jerm IX: The very first one was just a small box label sticker that read JERM, months of branding that followed before I kicked out the wordplay and poetry. The piece that changed it all was the cascading confession. I never looked back from that moment. Street art officially became my therapeutic release and the skeletons started pouring out of the closet. I’m hoping to create an open letter of sorts to Vancouver as my final piece before I go.

U: Street art and urban exploration often go hand in hand – what’s your favorite ‘spot’ in Van? Which is the craziest you’ve managed to reach?

J: My favorite spot is the vacant lot beside the American Hotel on Station Street. This spot has been in a constant state of transformation since I arrived in Vancouver in 2004. When I put [the] “Cascading Confession” up for the first time it was at that spot. The wall it was pasted to eventually burned to the ground, and that was an amazing feeling. I remember thinking ‘if only the burden were so ephemeral.’ Fences went up and it became a hooker spot. A graffiti artist from Montreal slipped in a pile of human feces while bombing. I’ve smoked at least 50 joints there. Now it’s being gentrified into more yuppie condos and will soon cease to exist as my favorite spot. The craziest height I managed to hit was definitely a giant JERM INC.  banner on the back of a sign at the Peak of Whistler Mountain. The roof of The Bay was memorable also.

U: Considering the “Banksy wasn’t here” collaboration you did with visiting artist Vegas, fostering local talent must mean a lot to you. Who are some of your favorite street artists/graffiti writers in Vancouver? Who would you name as one to watch?

J: I love it all. The smallest scribble on a dumpster that wasn’t there yesterday excites me. The transformation of public space is much more fascinating than the art itself, from my view. The act of getting up is an assertion of self and a claimed ownership of your community. I respect everyone that touches down. One to watch? Open5—this kid’s energy is infectious.

U: Your art and music have a big influence on each other. What do you hope to do differently in Toronto—is your focus changing towards more of one or the other?

J: Definitely not. My street art campaign will be expanding across the country, albeit with a brief hiatus to enjoy a frozen Ontario winter. And I will be returning once or twice a year to Vancouver to continue recording music with my homies, as well as decorating. What I hope to do differently in Toronto is reconnect with our families and in the not-so-distant future have a child of our own.

U: Any big projects coming up for ninja IX and yourself?

J: I’ve got a couple of pots simmering but I’ve learned that to talk about an idea before you achieve it diminishes it substantially.

U: One last question—what does the IX stand for?

J: N.I.N.E. are ninja IX’s initials. 9ine is a code, never to be cracked. 9 is almost perfect, but it’s not, and it never will be. IX is biblical. As in, jerm 3:16 For jerm so loved Vancouver that he gave his only begotten art. IX is who we are.

Intrepid Theatre General Manager Ian Case. Photo courtesy of Intrepid Theatre.

The head of the Victoria Fringe Theatre Festival says he expected a rejection of his company’s request for provincial funding. What he didn’t expect, however, was an insult.

On June 17, Ian Case, General Manager of Intrepid Theatre, received the rejection of his request for a $45,000 Community Gaming Grant­­–one of several provincial grants available to community programs. Case said that when the theatre company applied, it fit the criteria. Intrepid runs the popular avant-garde Fringe Festival, as well as several other theatre programs around Victoria.

The rejection, from the BC Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch, read: “Fairs and festivals that do not reflect the community, regional or cultural characteristics of a community are ineligible for a grant. Your programs do not appear to fit within these criteria.”

“We were shocked,” said Case. “The Fringe Festival is about 75 per cent local or BC based in terms of the number of performances and shows. It is highly reflective of both our community and the province.” The 2009 Fringe Festival drew 23,000 attendees, and starts its 24th run on August 26.

Other arts groups share Case’s disdain. “The assertion that festivals ‘do not reflect the nature of the community’ is absurd,” said David Jordan, Executive Director of the Vancouver Fringe Festival in a statement to The Ubyssey. “Intrepid Theatre are without a doubt pillars of community in Victoria.”

With arts funding at an all time low, Case said that he had prepared the company for belt-tightening, cutting all grant money out of the budget. But when Fringe appeared to be eligible for the new Community Gaming Grant, he applied. His indignation is not at the denial of funding, but at the insult attached to it.

Case is troubled by what he considers the poor treatment arts groups have received from BC Gaming, the branch of the Ministry of Housing and Social Development that oversees gaming policy in BC. He cites the lack of criteria given in the rejection and the lack of transparency in Gaming’s grant-writing process.

“The entire Gaming Funding Branch is really a closed-door bureaucracy,” said Case. “Gaming analysts make the decisions on their own. They are not representative of the different sectors that are asking for funding.”

Case also says that the arts community has enjoyed a constructive relationship with the BC Arts Council, another organization that distributes money set aside by the legislature to arts groups. The council uses a peer-reviewed adjudication process for distributing grants.

“So many people look at what you have done and what you’re going to do and make a decision based on that,” said Case, “rather than one person sitting in a cubicle in an office somewhere.”

The BC Arts Council had $10 million cut from its operations in the last budget. Earlier this week, council chair Jane Danzo resigned her position in protest, saying the council board no longer “have a voice independent of government”, according to a report in The Vancouver Sun.

Funding the Fringe

Like many professional arts organizations in BC, the Victoria Fringe Festival relies partly on provincial grants to fund its operation. In 2008, grants from BC Gaming totalled $61,000 of their $260,000 budget. But with cuts to arts funding in the Liberals’ 2009 Budget, the Fringe lost $35,000 in provincial money.

Since Intrepid applied early this year, BC Gaming, which distributes revenues gained from gambling to community programs, changed the grant eligibility requirements for arts programs two times. In March, arts and culture organizations aimed at “adult audiences” were cut out of funding, with a special exception for “fairs and exhibitions, arts and music festivals and museums operated by non-profit societies,” according to The Vancouver Sun. Intrepid’s programs fit within these guidelines at the time, Case said.

In May, however, the requirements changed again, pulling gambling money from non-profit arts groups. According to the branches’ revised eligibility criteria, fairs and festivals that are currently eligible for grants include “regional or local community heritage celebrations, fall fairs, rural fairs and cowboy days.” Performing arts festivals are listed as ineligible. Arts and culture organizations that are aimed at youth under 18 are still eligible for this grant.

A spokesperson from BC Gaming told The Ubyssey that allocation of gaming grants has been prioritized due to cuts. Grants for public safety, health and social services as well as youth programs and parent advisory councils will receive priority in the grant-writing process. Adult arts festivals are ineligible because they do not meet all of the required criteria, like involvement by community members, suitability for all-ages, focus on the community and regional or cultural characteristics.

Tough Decisions

With the loss of the provincial grants, Intrepid has few options that don’t involve cuts to programming.

“We don’t have the capacity to turn to corporate sponsors and say ‘hey, cough up 61,000 dollars,” said Case. “We can’t turn to our donors and say you have to make up the shortfall. The loss of funding means the loss of art. It’s a very simple equation.”

Because of the cuts, Intrepid has had to scale back programming. Less established programs that rely heavily on provincial money do not have the ability to make such cuts, he added. The size of Uno Fest has been reduced, as has the company’s presenting series, to ensure that the Fringe Festival, their flagship event, is left intact.

“We will protect that program with everything we’ve got,” said Case.

Idyllic as it is, though, this agrarian paradise serves a practical purpose. Through a combination of water, sun, soil and hard work, it manages to feed residents of both the campus and the surrounding community.

While many vegetables are available year-round in supermarkets, the Farm follows a different schedule. This year’s production began in May, and employees estimate it should continue into mid-October. Everything sold is organic and locally produced—meaning that it is closely tied to the cycle of the seasons.

“Every week we have different things coming to the market,” said Vanessa Perrodou, the market manager. “Something like peas are an early season product. We have those early on, in June and July. Now that we’re into August, pea season is over.”

The changing seasons affect more than the food growing on the Farm, though. The arrival of the school year typically sees an influx of new volunteers and customers.

“Each week, about twenty per cent of the people coming to the market are coming for the first time,” said Perrodou. And making the hike down to the Farm provides benefits that go beyond the gastronomic.

“Our market’s a little bit different [from] all the other farmers’ markets you can go to on a Saturday. It’s more of a destination. A lot of people come out here for the day, to walk around and to have a picnic. They can see our chickens, and take a farm tour at 11.”

Perrodou added that the Farm Market aims to match its prices with local grocery stores and other farmers’ markets. She notes that it is not always possible to meet the low prices of national chain stores that import their produce from outside the country, but by paying a little extra, the customer gets a product that can’t be found in Safeway, Superstore or Costco.

“It’s about as local as it can get… Especially if you’re living on campus, you really can’t get food that is sourced more locally than our farm,” she said. “The freshness and the quality of our food is unprecedented. You basically can’t get fresher produce or a more quality product in a grocery store.”

The UBC Farm Market runs Saturdays from 9am to 1pm. Market sales on campus take place in front of the UBC Bookstore on Wednesdays, from 11:30am to 1:30pm.

Visit the Farm this Saturday, August 21, for their Summer Harvest Festival. Events run from 9am to 1pm and include food preservation tutorials, tours of the Farm and free tune-ups from the UBC Bike Co-op. Visit http://www.landfood.ubc.ca/ubcfarm/ for more information.

Spices and lentils abound in this cuisine, but the humble injeera forms the backbone of any Ethiopian dish. Injeee-what? Say it with me: in-JEE-ra.

Injeera is made from teff flour and has a taste not unlike sourdough bread. This is due to the fermentation of the teff flour in water for at least two days. After the batter is fermented, the injeera is cooked on a large clay slab over high temperatures immediately before serving. The result is a light spongy flatbread, a cross between sourdough and crepes.

Injeera functions, similar to Indian naan or chapatti, as cutlery. The majority of Ethiopian dishes are eaten sans utensils. As Girma Bekele, an Ethiopian expatriate living in Vancouver, demonstrates : a piece of injeera the size of the palm is held in the right hand and used as a scoop to hold the dish.

While injeera is the backbone of any Ethiopian cuisine, the body consists of an almost equal number of vegetarian and non-vegetarian options.

One popular meat dish is doro wat—ground chicken in red pepper paste spiced with cayenne and paprika and served with a hardboiled egg. Doro wat serves as a good introduction to Ethiopian food due to its universal appeal.

For those who are feeling less inhibited, alicha, a turmeric and chili pepper-infused goat dish, is a spicier alternative.

An Ethiopian restaurant is a great option for vegetarians and vegans alike. In fact, most non-meat recipes do not contain any animal by-products. One such dish is alecha, carrots and potatoes fried in canned tomatoes with turmeric. The turmeric complements these two root vegetables nicely and the result is a more flavourful concoction than its northern cousin, the boiled carrots and potatoes.

Vegetables aside, there is no lack of vegetarian protein in Ethiopian eats. There are several dishes mainly composed of lentils, including berberé stew, a dish of lentils in a tomato-based gravy, and dal, a yellow split pea dish with—you guessed it—turmeric.

While Ethiopia is on the opposite side of the world, it is possible to enjoy its flavours in Vancouver. Two places I would personally recommend are Harambe, at 2149 Commercial Drive,  and Axum, at 1279 East Hastings Street. While these restaurants are a trek from campus, they are worth the 40-minute bus ride on the 99 B-line. The prices are good, and there are shared platters for up to four people available for around $10-$14 per person.

Combined with the cultural ambience, these restaurants act as teleportation devices, giving customers a taste of Ethiopia without the $2000 plane ticket. U

Bolongaro is one of several columnists whose writing will appear in this space every issue, with topics ranging from university life to comics to the outdoors.

Born Ruffians
Say It

While I wouldn’t say that Say It quite compares to Born Ruffian’s first album Red, Yellow, and Blue in overall quality, I would say that it’s definitely worth a listen and that UBC students are lucky to have them playing Firstweek this year.

Born Ruffians haven’t changed the formula for their songs in the last two years. Luckily, there isn’t anything worth changing. Luke LaLonde’s quirky singing matches their off-kilter style of indie rock. The album starts out with the stellar “Oh Man,” which has some great melodies, then transitions into “Retard Canard,” a fun little pop tune. However, about halfway through, the band seem to lose interest in what they are doing. The last few songs are hardly worth mentioning. While the album promises bang but ends with fizzle, it’s worth checking out, even if you have to pretend it’s only an EP.

Bombay Bicycle Club

Flaws

If this album wasn’t so good, I’d have been able to repeat the word Flaws throughout this review, which everybody would have found amusing because it’s the name of the album and also a word that indicates something is bad. Which it is not.

On their first album, BBC stuck to their rock’ n’ roll guns. Flaws is  a lot more introspective and melancholy. Singer Jack Steadman’s vocals are as emotive as ever, and it seems that his guitar work has only gotten better. The song “My God” in particular really shows off his skills as both a songwriter and a musician.

But with an all-star cast tackling David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play with gusto, this production lives up to the hype.

Glengarry Glen Ross follows the fortunes of four real estate salesmen over two days, as they make do in a world that consists of getting leads (names of potential buyers) and trying to close them (selling the property). The plot revolves around prime leads—the “Glengarry” leads—stolen in the middle of the night. Inception this is not, though: Glengarry Glen Ross is a character ensemble piece, first and foremost, showcasing the depressing, cynical, dark side of professional sweet-talkers. There are but two sets, four scenes, and little in the way of fancy visual effects. The focus is on the script, and the actors delivering it.

And boy do they deliver. The central focus of advertising has naturally centered on McCormack, who plays Ricky Roma, the cocky, charming, successful salesman. While bringing in a big Hollywood star to sell tickets for a play is nothing new, this isn’t stunt casting—McCormack cut his teeth with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival over twenty years ago, and he plays Roma with the testosterone and slickness needed to make the part soar.

But the emotional focus of the play is on Shelley Levene, a poor man’s Willy Loman. He hasn’t made a big sale in years and is the very embodiment of the word “desperate”. Veteran character actor Gerard Plunkett (Da Vinci’s Inquest, Snakes on a Plane) gives Levene a blustery yet paper-thin veneer of confidence that is alternately funny and tragic, in a performance that pays homage to but never imitates Jack Lemmon’s Levene in the 1992 film adaption.

Mamet’s trademark rapid-paced, staccato, expletive-laden dialogue is always a treat to listen to in the hands of experienced actors, and this is no exception. No, there’s no Alec Baldwin monologue in the stage version of the show, but this performance of Glengarry Glen Ross will certainly close the deal with audiences this summer.

Glengarry Glen Ross is playing at the Stanley Theatre until August 22.

Meet Maggie and Ian. They are two middle-aged people in Interior BC who have been married many years and are looking to uproot themselves from their heritage home. It seems there could not be a more boring plot line. However, the performance is chock-full of delightful surprises. Chairs are turned into violins. Suitcases morph into beautifully lit buildings. Seeds are poured over the entire stage floor and throughout the play are swept into shapes to tell stories, mimmic landscapes, and even act as a makeshift dining table. Every prop serves an intricate and symbolic purpose. No movement of the actor’s finger or toe is without meaning. And it all ends with chubby chicken, champagne, and a surprise from their heritage house.

Meet Maggie and Ian, their ancestors, and share in the life they have built together.  Kenny and Cadger weave in and out as actors and narrators, even putting the entire performance on hold to hand out the remaining champagne to audience members. You will laugh at the painfully boring conversations, during which Kenny and Cadger remain enthralling and hugely inventive. This duo have whipped the mundane into something powerful.

The House at the End of the Road ran June 25 and 26 at The Cultch. For more information, visit innerfishperformance.ca

While Kurosawa’s work stands alone, you don’t need to look hard to see his influence on film the world over. Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars is but one example of this. Its plot and iconic “Man with no name” are taken straight from Kurosawa’s 1961 work Yojimbo, with its itinerant ronin figure wreaking havoc in every scene. Show a Western audience 1958’s Hidden Fortress, and they’ll immediately recognize a few obvious parallels with that small film franchise called Star Wars.  Indeed, George Lucas has consistently acknowledged Kurosawa’s influence on his films, and has praised his work throughout his career. Along with Francis Ford Coppola, Lucas helped finance Kagemusha, Kurosawa’s first great triumph of his later period after depression and a suicide attempt following the critical failure of his first foray in colour with 1970’s Dodes’ka-den.

Kurosawa died of natural causes in 1998, after a career spanning nearly six decades and thirty features, ten of which can easily be called classics.  Last March marked the centennial of his birth, and to commemorate the life and career of one of cinema’s greatest craftsmen, Vancouver’s non-profit film society Pacifique Cinematheque has devoted almost two months to “a comprehensive retrospective of Kurosawa’s films,” which showcases “his major masterpieces and mature films,” for the seasoned cinephile and neophyte alike. Additionally, the society will be exhibiting “rare prints…of Kurosawa’s early works.”  The series launched June 17 with the perennial favourite Rashomon, and maps a rough chronology of Kurosawa’s career, ending on Tuesday, August 10 with his last and most personal films, which, with the sumptuous visual acumen of a studio trained artist, celebrate a life devoted to beauty while exploring the deep uncertainties of human existence.

Some of the most interesting showings juxtapose Kurosawa’s many stylistic modes. The June 21st screening featured the jidai-deki, or period film, Throne of Blood, set in medieval Japan, paired with the noir-inflected Stray Dog, which unfolds in the sweltering, westernized labyrinth of post-war Tokyo. Both showcase Toshiro Mifune, the lead actor that appeared in 16 of Kurosawa’s pictures, in two strikingly divergent roles. Throne of Blood is a retelling of Macbeth and the most faithful of Kurosawa’s Shakespeare adaptations. Stray Dog, on the other hand, released eight years earlier sees a younger, clean shaven Mifune playing a modern detective in search of his stolen pistol, who over the course of the film discovers what’s really lost is the idealism and simplicity of prewar Japan. In its search to establish a stable moral foundation in an increasingly nihilistic world, Stray Dog betrays a spiritual debt to Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  Kurosawa also adapted Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot into a feature film of the same name in 1951, which is offered by the Cinematheque as part of its exhaustive tribute. Stray Dog, though perhaps less of a technical breakthrough than Throne of Blood, displays Kurosawa as a complete master of his visual resources as well as of the techniques of traditional storytelling, prefiguring the triumph of his later work.

This unique cultural event held in the heart of downtown Vancouver is a summer essential for anyone concerned with the art of film, or those who want to witness the development of one of the greatest artists of the last century. In the sheer breadth and spiritual poignancy of his work, the medium will likely never witness another figure like Kurosawa, which is why Martin Scorsese rightly praises him as “one of the greatest treasures of film history.”

The Kurosawa Centennial runs through August 10th at Pacific Cinematheque. For more information, visit cinematheque.bc.ca