Within Earshot

So long, and thanks for all the quotes...

Well, I'm out.

After nearly eight years, several thousand articles and 345 blog posts, I am hanging up my reporterly fedora and seeking my fortune elsewhere. This was a colossally tricky decision to make, because I honestly believe that being a newspaper reporter is one of the very bestest careers in the whole wide world, right up there with astronaut, movie star, bikini inspector and Bono.   Very few jobs offer the variety, the excitement and the freedom to shout profanities in the workplace with impunity as that of a daily newspaper reporter.

During my time at The Record, I have interviewed thousands of people, most of them fascinating and delightful (olympic athletes, rock stars, bestselling authors, local heroes), others not so much (David Cassidy). 

In the line of journalistic duty, I have jumped out of a plane (see right), scuba dived, surfed in "sharky" waters off San Francisco, been pummelled by an ultimate fighter, bared it all at a nudist resort, hung out backstage on Broadway, covered the 2004 Olympics in Athens, flown in an ultralight aircraft, groomed an alpaca, got bucked off a mechanical bull, played one-on-one basketball against a Harlem Globetrotter and, coolest of all, covered the Wellesley Apple Butter & Cheese Festival.  Along the way, I have gotten to know countless local artists, musicians, thinkers and otherwise-creative types who make Waterloo Region such a varied and interesting place to live. I'm grateful to have been given the opportunity to be a journalist and, amazingly, get paid for it.

I'm happy to say I'm not leaving the area. I'll be working amid the world-class scientists in Waterloo who are harnessing the weirdness of quantum physics to create the supercomputer of the not-too-distant future. Neato, huh?  So although I'm leaving The Record, I'm happily staying in the community it covers (and covers very well, he says with only a little bias).

So I shall continue to enjoy all the cool things this place has to offer, and I recommend you do too. Among my faves, in no particular order: the Open Ears Festival, CAFKA, used books at Second Look and Casablanca and KW Bookstore, Generation X video, live music at Starlight and Jane Bond and Maxwell's Music House and the Boathouse and Trepid House and The Registry, Pho Dau Bo, Dixieland Jazz at the Lanc, Asphalt Jungle Shorts, the symphony at Centre in the Square, Princess Cinemas, Ethel's Lounge and the friendly/surly service there, Tri-City Roller Girls, the Donkey Sanctuary in Guelph, Lost & Found Theatre, Encore Records, Saturday mornings at the Kitchener Market, and all the other cool stuff that is uniquely ours.

See you around.

-30-

Look who's warping into town...

It seems that after several setbacks, superstar astrophysicist Stephen Hawking will be visiting Waterloo in the not-too-distant future. The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics issued a tantalizing press release yesterday that suggested, without actually confirming, that Hawking's dicey health has sufficiently improved to allow a belated visit.

The real dirt will be dished during a press conference at Perimeter Institute tomorrow, where Hawking (via multimedia teleconference) is expected to announce the date of his arrival in Waterloo. The timing of all this is impeccable, as it coincides with the Perimeter Institute's Quantum to Cosmos festival, which is currently hosting lectures and discussions by some of the world's top scientific scholars.

Coincidentally, among the speakers in town for the festival is Peter Diamandis, a pioneer in the personal spaceflight industry who facilitated a very inspirational experience for Hawking. For a few fleeting moments, Hawking was not only freed from his wheelchair; he could fly.  Check it out.

Stephen Hawking In Space With Diamandis
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Glad? Well...

The Times of London unveiled today its Thinkers 50, a list of the sharpest business minds in the world, and Elmira native Malcolm Gladwell is ranked #2, just behind entrepreneur and author C.K. Prahalad.

Gladwell outranked Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Steve Jobs, as well as Gladwell's childhood pal and Wallenstein native Roger Martin, who is dean of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.

Gladwell is no stranger to acclaim, having written three bestsellers (The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers) and previously been named one of Time Magazine's 50 most influential people in the world.

Still, I figured he'd be pretty chuffed about his high ranking on the Thinkers 50, so I contacted him to ask for his reaction.

"This is the first I'm hearing about it," he replied. "I guess I'm honoured."

You've got to admire the guy's unflappable humility. If I was named second-best in the world at anything -- even if it was 2nd Smelliest, or 2nd Most Likely to Get Eaten By Wolves -- I'm sure I'd be more exuberant than Gladwell was.

I've just written a longish article based on my chat with Gladwell, which will run in The Record tomorrow or Saturday. Check it out. He's a really interesting dude.  Perhaps not quite as interesting as C.K. Prahalad, mind you....

Ch-Ch-ChObama!

Wonders never cease.

See this film, for Flipper's sake

It's a cruel fluke of nature that dolphins can't frown, since they've got plenty to be upset about. Instead, their snouts are curved into an ever-present smile which creates the illusion that everything is hunky-dory. It isn't, especially in a coastal Japanese town where dolphins are secretly being herded, corralled, sold and slaughtered by the thousands.

I knew nothing about the Taiji dolphin slaughter until I watched The Cove, one of the most gripping and poweful documentaries I've ever seen. The film follows an international team of activists and marine experts who covertly infiltrate Taiji's hidden cove to document the brutal and senseless slaughter of dolphins.

 It's very hard to watch at times, but I strongly suggest that you do. If you live in K-W, head to the Princess Cinema this Thursday at 7 p.m., because the film will be followed by a Q&A session with dolphin expert Leah Lemieux, whose book Rekindling the Waters examines the insidious underside of the global dolphin trade. It will be an eye-opening evening.

Dylan Schmylan

I think it might be blasphemy to admit this, especially for a music writer, but I have never given even a fraction of a crap about Bob Dylan. I'm aware of his legendary status in the history of American music, but as a listener, I just don't care. So it was with utter indifference that I learned of Dylan's upcoming gig on Nov. 7 at the Kitchener Auditorium.

Fans reportedly lined up at the Aud this morning to snag tickets to the show -- Dylan's first Kitchener gig since 1981. I know a bunch of people who have seen Dylan live, and about half have dejectedly reported that  Dylan's performance was preposterously bad.

Perhaps I just don't "get" Dylan. Perhaps I've never really given him a fair shake. Or perhaps I'm correct in my belief that the best Dylan song is actually Weird Al's palindromic spoof....

You are now entering....

Tomorrow marks the 50-year anniversary of The Twilight Zone -- one of the coolest, creepiest, and occasionally corniest shows in television history. As a kid, I was enthralled by the show, although I could usually only stand to watch it while cowering behind a chair, for fear of getting teleported through the screen into Rod Serling's demented universe. 

While The Twilight Zone is certainly is showing its age -- with outdated turns of phrase and several performances by a surprisingly handsome and slender William Shatner -- the irony-tinged writing and the film noir aesthetics are as entertaining now as they were in 1959. 

Every fan of The Twilight Zone has a favourite episode, and here's mine. It's called Time Enough at Last, starring Burgess Meredith (a.k.a. Rocky Balboa's coach Mickey, and The Penguin from the cornball Batman series).

If you've got time, I recommend find and watch the whole thing.  They just don't make TV like this anymore.

Hang 10, or at least 6ish.

As of tomorrow, I will be on a little surfing holiday on the Atlantic coast, and therefore not writing here for a little while.

I would like to say I will be surfing like this:

But really, it'll be a lot closer to this:

The Art of the Giant Dung Beetle

Have you ever seen a 30-foot-long dung beetle? I have. It was black and icky and flipped on its back, jagged legs reaching uselessly upward. It was in City Hall. Thankfully, there wasn't a corresponding 100-foot-high pile of dung anywhere nearby. The giant beetle is still there in Kitchener City Hall, presumably yearning for a big poop ball to roll about, since such is the unfortunate Sisyphean fate of the lowly dung beetle.

The enormous beetle is among oodles of peculiar and pretty awesome installations that are part of CAFKA (Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener & Area).  All over the region, local and international artists have created wonkily provocative works of art to challenge, engage and entertain onlookers. CAFKA officially opened with a ceremony last Friday at City Hall, and although the opening speeches were preposterously boring, the artworks in CAFKA are anything but. Check out a video tour of the exhibits and installations.  There's far too much cool stuff to list here, so I recommend you just get out there and explore CAFKA before it wraps up on Oct. 4. 

Also happening right now around the K-Dub is IMPACT 09, an international festival of physical theatre. The 10-day festival features theatre troupes from four continents performing original and daring plays at venues around Waterloo Region.  I recently attended a rehearsal of Edna's Archive, an original play based on the contents of a discarded box of memorabilia that once belonged to a Kitchener woman named Edna Bear. It's a very cool concept for a play, and all the other shows in IMPACT 09 look equally off-kilter and engaging.

In short, there's tons of oodles of scads of cool stuff to see and experience right now in K-W.  So get out there, or I'll send the dung beetle after you.

Bomb movie doesn't bomb

 A film that Time Magazine called "A near-perfect movie," The Hurt Locker,  is getting a special return engagement at the Princess Cinema in Waterloo starting tomorrow. It is a nail-bitingly intense action/war film that had me crapping myself (figuratively, thank goodness) for its entire duration.

I don't normally dig war flicks, especially not Gulf War flicks, and especially not Ernest Goes to Baghdad, but this one's a humdinger of a doozy. I strongly recommend you check it out, as this might be your last chance to catch it on the big screen. Deal? Deal. That is all.

The Hurt Locker - Trailer
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