Within Earshot

Today in entertainment history...

On this day 48 years ago, The Flintstones premiered on ABC Television. They're the modern stone-age familyyy. But not too modern, it seems. Apparently the show was sponsored by Winston Cigarettes, which resulted in some pretty blatant product placement.  Check out the clip below, which depicts Fred and Barney enjoying a leisurely smoke break while Wilma and Betty do chores around the house.

In the Flintstones' defense, it would be another million years before scientists would discover all the health risks of smoking.  It turns out that a whole rack of barbecued brontosaurus ribs is also pretty unhealthy, and can flip over your foot-powered car if improperly delivered by the drive-in waitress.

My spidey-sense is... non-existent

Stepping backwards off the roof of a tall building creates a most peculiar sensation -- not terror per se, but a close relative of it. You know those corny trust games in which you fall backwards into the waiting arms of a partner at camp or some corporate team-building workshop? Rappelling off a building kind of like that, except there's no one standing behind you, and if you fall you don't just hurt your bum; you die. You've got to trust that the ropes affixed to your harness will indeed keep gravity at bay. To my great relief, this is exactly what the ropes did last Friday morning when I rappelled down the TD Canada Trust building in Kitchener as part of an Easter Seals fundraiser.

Everything went OK, obviously, because I'm writing these words now instead of being spatula'd off King Street. I wrote a column about it for the paper, which you can read here if you like.  The photograph that ran with the column depicted me smiling and looking relatively calm.  I prefer the picture they didn't publish, shown at right, which depicts me just seconds before taking the plunge. If the photo included a thought bubble, it would contain the words "Don't barf, don't barf, don't barf."

Sleight of many hands...

This Sunday, the Princess Twin Cinema will host the Battle of Ontario Magicians IV, in which 20 illusionists, mentalists and prestidigitators from around the province will compete for supremacy.  It's kind of like a freestyle rap battle, but with a far smaller likelihood of gunplay. The event is being hosted by A Kind of Magic, a Waterloo hocus pocus emporium where I could spend hours and hours and hours blissfully watching the staff demonstrate tricks. I'm a bit of a magic nerd.

Sunday's "Battle" will surely feature some noggin-bogglers, since all the magicians will be trying to upstage one another. I hope someone does a variation on the trick shown in the video below, because I can't for the life of me figure out how it's done. (Don't worry if you don't speak Japanese -- the trick speaks for itself)

The Wedding Singer(s)

What happens when the owner of a cool record shop and a prolific singer-songwriter fall in love?  They get married, duh. And who do they get to play at their wedding? Well, pretty much everybody, actually.

Such is the tale of Mark Logan, proprietor of Encore Records, and roots-folk chanteuse Lynn Jackson, who got married a few weeks ago.  Since they are fully immersed in the local music scene, they invited a cabal of scenesters to jam at their backyard wedding party. Among the KW veterans who joined the jam: Paul MacLeod, Mike Alviano, Dan Walsh, Alfie Smith, Ryan Allan, Ian Smith and others.

The wedding was a relatively private affair, so Mark and Lynn have assembled the all-star line-up once again to perform a public show at The Boathouse this Saturday night. Fittingly titled The Wedding Band, the group will play an unrehearsed, unscripted jam with the feel of a backyard party. It'll be kind of like the wedding, but with no need to bring a gift (unless you wanna).

Music to all ears...

There are a couple of very cool concerts happening in town tonight, including the Canadian premiere of a orchestral piece composed by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood.

- The K-W Symphony should please classical buffs and hipsters alike with its concert at the University of Waterloo Humanities Theatre, titled Electronica.  The show features a performance by Californian DJ Mason Bates (a.k.a. DJ Masonic), and the Canadian unveiling of Greendwood's orchestral piece Popcorn Superhet Receiver. Parts of the piece could be heard in the fantastic film There Will Be Blood, which Greenwood scored.  For a taste of what the piece sounds like, check out the streaming audio at the bottom of this page.

- The Boathouse hosts a show tonight by Tom Wilson of Junkhouse and Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. Wilson was once a guest speaker at a class I took at McMaster University. He was hilarious and foul-mouthed and straight-shooting.  And his music is cool too.  His latest musical project is known as Lee Harvey Osmond (a fantastic monicker), and features some veterans of the Canadian music scene.  They've made a some very peculiar music videos, my favourite of which is below:

Look out below!

For reasons I no longer fully comprehend, I agreed to participate in the Easter Seals Drop Zone event tomorrow. This will require me to rappel, SWAT-team-style, down the outside of the TD Canada Trust building in downtown Kitchener.

This scares me. I'm wouldn't say I'm afraid of heights, per se. I've been skydiving and hang-gliding, and enjoyed them immensely. What scares me is my own chronic ineptitude with ropes. My skydiving and hang-gliding adventures were done in tandem with a qualified instructor who did all the important work; I was just along for the ride. Tomorrow, it will be my responsibility to operate the rope-release doo-dad to descend, and I suck with ropes. They befuddle me. In Cub Scouts I could never figure out how to tie even the simplest knot. I've never successfully climbed a rope ladder. And once I had to retrieve an errant canoe after I failed to successfully tie it to a dock.

So the thought of lowering myself down a big office building by manipulating ropes other perplexing gadgetry worries me. I've been assured that a trained instructor will control a backup rope attached to my harness, should I accidentally send myself into a plummet. But still, I suggest you do not stand directly beneath me tomorrow morning.

The event is for a fantastic cause -- helping kids with disabilities -- so I'll gladly swallow my fears and take the plunge. And I would be extremely grateful if you'd pop by the Easter Seals donation page and throw in a few bucks toward their noble work. 

Hangin' with Mr. Cooper

Getting a phone call from Alice Cooper is an odd experience, even when you're expecting it.  He called me last night, right on time, for our scheduled interview.

"Hi," Alice Cooper said. "How are you?"

"Fine," I said. "And you?

"Great thanks!" Alice Cooper said.

And on it went, cordial and chummy and breezy, which was a tad surreal, considering Alice Cooper is the reigning patriarch of shock-rock. It's not like I expected him to recite demonic incantations over the phone or anything. I've heard interviews with him before, and he has always come across as an intelligent chap with a good head on his shoulders (except after his onstage guillotine beheadings, of which he has endured thousands).  I guess I just didn't expect him to be so gosh-darn nice.  His grammar was impeccable, his diction was crisp and he seemed genuinely engaged in the conversation.

You would think that by now -- after 40 years in showbiz -- he'd get tired of doing media interviews, talking about his stage antics, his alter-ego, the infamous chicken incident, and so on. Nope!  He just chatted away, soliloquizing on this and that for 20 minutes or so. For a guy who is cited as the primary influence on a generation of shock-rockers -- from Ozzy Osbourne to Marilyn Manson to Gwar -- he's almost absurdly un-shocking.

Of course, he'll turn on the shock, and the schtick, when he plays Centre in the Square on Oct. 14 (stay tuned to The Record for the full story). He insists his current show is the most theatrical one he's ever done, which is saying something.  "It'll be lots of fun," he said in his gee-whiz tone.

Then his manager signalled for him to quit yakking on the phone, so Alice Cooper bade me farewell. "Thanks a lot," Alice Cooper said. "Take care!" 

Weird.

 

The Sigur Ros afterglow...

I'm still all aglow after attending last night's Sigur Ros concert at Massey Hall in Toronto. If you've heard Sigur Ros before, you'll understand why I'm aglow. You'll understand how the band's ethereal music can uplift and inspire, energize and enrapture.  I can't think of a concert I've ever seen that would top it.

If you haven't heard Sigur Ros before, you really must. The Icelandic four-piece is most often described as "post-rock" or "dream-pop," though neither label comes very close to encapsulating their sound. The best I can come up with is "shangri-la magnifi-rock." I suggest you watch this lovely video for thier song Hoppipolla, and try to come up with your own descriptors of their musical genre:

So what's the genre? Post a comment and be creative.

P.S. I would have liked to post the band's newest video for the song Gobbledigook, since it's a fantastic song and served as the final joyous encore of last night's concert. But I fear I might get fired if I embed the clip 'cause it's jam-packed with naked people. They're frolicking au naturel in the wilderness, private parts blissfully a-flapping. So I shan't post the video itself here, but if you're not prudish or easily offended I suggest you check it out on YouTube instead.   

Are Canadian sharks friendlier than the rest?

If all goes according to plan, I will be surfing in the chilly waters off Nova Scotia by the time you read this post.

Surfing is the perfect sport, and here's why: it's fun even if you're terrible at it, which I am. In fact, surfing is the only sport in which screwing up is arguably more fun than succeeding.  This is not even remotely true in, say, golf.  Sure, carving a gnarly wave is tons of fun. But so is getting tossed by that wave like a lone sock in a washing machine (unless the wave is a humunga-cowabunga).

The only thing I don't enjoy about surfing is the possibility -- slim as it may be -- that a shark will orally amputate one or all of my appendages. Sometimes this happens to surfers, and it never seems pleasant. I have no idea what kind of sharks, if any, lurk beneath the surface of the seas off Nova Scotia. So for the sake of my mental well-being, let's assume there are only card sharks and pool sharks.

So until I write again, hang-10 and whatnot. If you want to see some skillful surfing off Nova Scotia (i.e. the calibre of surfing that I won't be able to perform), watch this.

Taking theatre out of the theatre...

The problem with live theatre is that it usually happens in a theatre.  This requires some pretty thorough suspension of disbelief. Your brain must overlook or re-interpret the many unreal contrivances of theatre (the stage lighting, the inauthentic setpieces, the hundreds of other theatre-goers sitting around you) to become engrossed in the play's make-believe world.

Site-specific plays, on the other hand, all-but eliminate the need for such subconscious mental gymnastics.  Take, for example, the plays of Unhinged, a festival of site-specific theatre that kicks of tonight in locations around downtown Kitchener.

Here's the basic formula of Unhinged: a play set in a bathroom is staged in a bathroom; a play set in a bar is staged in a bar; a play set in a parking lot is staged in a zoo.  Just kidding. A parking lot.

Simply put: the plays will be happening in the places where they're supposedly happening. Brilliant!

"I really like that organic idea that a play is set where's it supposed to be set," artistic director Paddy Gillard-Bentley told me for a story in yesterday's Record. "Maybe there's more of a voyeur aspect, in that you're privileged to see it, rather than expecting to see it."

Shows run tonight through Sept. 27; tickets are available at the Unhinged box office at 156 King West (half a block from City Hall).

Here's a little taste of what's to come: