Vancouver Gay Pride Day Parade! Fabulous!

These are some photos I took at 30th Anniversary Vancouver Pride Society's Pride Parade, which started around noon yesterday at Robson and Thurlow, headed West down the hill to Denman street, following Denman to Pacific where it finished at Sunset Beach, which is where we were.

No, I am not gay, nor was I even interested in going to this thing. My wife really wanted to see it. But I'm glad I went now, it was pretty fun and this year was the biggest one ever. We were there for 3 hours and it still wasn't finished. We finally left because I had to take a piss so bad I couldn't hold it anymore.

You could see pretty much anything this year: sailors, freaks, people painted in rainbow colors, animals dressed up, drag queens, the whole lot. There was even full frontal nudity, tits, cocks, you name it. I really didn't think it was necessary for these fat balding men to parade naked with their ballsacs hanging down, kind of disgusting really. One guy didn't really even have a dick, it was more like a set of balls with an almond stuck on, it was so small. What does parading naked have to do with gay pride?

I can't believe how much time, money and effort went into making this happen. It was quite amazing. This is by far the biggest damn parade I've ever been to. But just way too long. I was exhausted by the end of it. We were planning on attending the Powell Street Festival afterwards but we were just too beat.

If you visit Vancouver Pride Society's Facebook page, there's tons more pictures.

The New Place

This is me in the new apartment. Now that we have some furniture and got our stuff shipped from Japan, it's starting to look like a real lived-in apartment.

The apartment itself is not too shit hot, there's a lot of stuff that needs to be fixed. My wife and I have re-caulked the bathroom around the tub and sink. I don't think this place has been cleaned in about 100 years. There was a ton of shit that I vacuumed out of the heaters. It was truly disgusting.

And also, our landlord is a total crackerhead who I have to constantly bug to do minor repairs. He's a wasted of air. A typical Vancouver slumlord. Let's the building go to hell and keeps jacking up the rent, expects everyone to do their own repairs at their own expense. This building definitely violates several building codes. The doorknob on the side door is missing, so anyone could cut themselves on it. The side door doen't even have real glass, its just that cheap Plexiglass. A loud fart could break it. There is broken glass outside, there used to be a skylight on the top floor where we are, but there is just an empty hole covered with a fucking wooden pallet. That cannot be legal can it?

There's numerous other little things: shower knob is not screwed in, the drywall around the sink is all damp and needs to be repaired, doors won't shut properly. etc etc. All this for the low low price of 1,100 dollars!!! Yes, this is pretty much what you get now for 1,100 bucks. If you want a 1-bedroom where everything actually works and things are kept up, you're probably looking at more. It's ridiculously expensive now.

It's not all negative though. Getting used to the place and the people living here, who all seem to be very nice. And the location is very good. We're just 2 doors down from the famous NAAM, a very tasty vegetarian eatery that's always packed. There's also a good Indian restaurant just a block away, lots of grocery stores within 10 minutes walk.

There are some annoying things though. We're in the back of the building, so we get a lot of noise from the trucks coming to unload shit. Most of them are food trucks, delivering stuff to the NAAM. We also get the odd time where this guy in the building next to us gives us a sampling of his favorite classic rock tunes from about 4 in the afternoon, sometimes lasting 5 hours or more. At top volume. We were coming home from the Safeway on Broadway, once we hit around 6th, we could hear the music pumping out of his apartment.

Yesterday, we also had the privilege of some fine entertainment from some of the local homeless drunks. Just 4 guys and 1 woman sitting in a vacant parking lot just a few doors down getting completely shitfaced. Started out pretty harmless, drinking, laughing, having a good 'ol time. 3 or 4 hours later, they were all pretty erased, and I guess the woman had hit the dude's brother or something, so the dude freaked out and started hitting her, calling her a stupid bitch and just trailing off in to some drunken fuckjhhgffkdkikskfcokkgaaaaaaaa talk before 2 residents nearby told them to leave or theyd call the cops. Funny shit.

Vancouver. Doesn't matter where you live, there's always entertainment.

Julia Allison

How do American white trash fuckin' bitches like Julia Allison get famous? Just by posting stupid crap on her blogs everyday and rubbing shoulders with famous people to make her LOOK like SHE's famous. Ha. Ha.

Pick up the new WIRED magazine and read all about her. The front page article says "GET INTERNET FAMOUS (Even If You're a Nobody)" - Julia Allison and The Secrets of Self-Promotion.

The sad thing is not so much her, but the sad sacks who eat this shit up and visit her sites all the time. She has quite a fan base, and what does she do? Absolutely nothing. She's famous for being famous, another Andy Warhol type schmoozer with a big greasy ego. But at least Andy Warhol did something, he was a pretty cool designer sometimes. Julia just exists.

If you're a follower of lame-ass lampshades like her, you need help. Start with getting outside once a day and get some sun instead of masturbating to pictures of Julia sitting in her posh NY apartment.

Fuck a star!!! Fuck a star!!! Fuck a star!!!

The Greyhound Bus Killer

Everyone must know about this story by now, so I don't need to give you a history lesson. All I can say is that this will be an interesting case indeed. Is it even going to go to trial? Just finish this fucker off, that's what I say.

Vince Li stabbed Tim McLean 50 or 60 times and there were 37 other passengers on the bus. To stab someone 50 or 60 times and then behead them must take quite some time. And it just recently leaked that he was cutting a few pieces off of Tim for a little snack as well.

The 'eyewitnesses' as I've seen them described elsewhere did absolutely nothing. How much more did they plan to witness before they actually stopped witnessing and start intervening? Watch him play cards with the remains? Would any number have actually moved them to intervene?

I'm not calling myself Superman and I can honestly say I wouldn't know how I would react to a situation like this, maybe I'd run like a little girly too, but between 37 people, it seems like they could've come up with some kind of game plan and enough initiative to overpower this dumbfuck.

They should send this sick fuck to Iraq or Syria and let them deal with him. Under Canadian law, this guy will probably get 10 years, or go to the crazy house for awhile, since it was recently confirmed that he HAS had quite a history of mental illness and paranoid schizophrenia.

What WILL most likely happen is that you won't be able to take a Greyhound bus (or any other bus for that matter) without being frisked by security and getting all our stuff checked. One lousy shit goes nuts and everyone has to deal with the consequences. Canada and the U.S are supposed to be "free" countries. I'm not sure i know what that means anymore. Freedom is just a made up word, really.

This is off the topic, but I just heard a disturbing piece of news from my friend. Last month a US court ruled that border agents can search your laptop, or any other electronic device, when you're entering the country. They can do it to anyone, they can hold for as long as they want and they are not obliged to return it. What the fuck does that mean? I've heard that some people have not had their laptop returned after almost a year. Freedom. Ha.

Another other odd thing about Vince Li's case is that he's been charged with 2nd degree murder. Stabs a guy 50-60 times and decapitates him, cuts some pieces off to chew on. OK, what the fuck would you have to do to get 1st degree murder? Fuck the body, drag it around for a week, piss on it then kill 'em again? Geez. Me thinks there's a big problem with the Canadian legal system.

Hmmmmm. This is a curious case indeed.

Chris Ware: The ACME Novelty Library

Chris Ware. I like his stuff a lot. ACME Novelty Library. I like this comic a lot.

The ACME Novelty Library (red hardcover, pictured) is a great feast of material from Chris Ware's ACME Novelty Library comic, collecting just about everything that isn't already collected in Jimmy Corrigan or Quimby the Mouse, along with strips that ran in The New Yorker and other periodicals. This includes the Big Tex, Tales of Tomorrow, Rocket Sam strips, preliminary strips for Rusty Brown, his next graphic novel, and the fat naked Super-Man, which is truly bizarre. Also included is all the impossible to read text pieces, fake ads and a selection of mini papercraft models from the comic. These have all be resized and re-laid-out over 114 oversized (15" x 8.5") pages.

At first glance his detailed geometrical layouts look like they were computer-generated using Adobe Illustrator but Ware works is almost exclusively old school, employing actual drawing tools (remember those?) such as paper and pencil, rulers and T-squares. He does use a computer for coloring however. He's definitely in a class of his own, not just a comic artist, he is an amazing graphic designer w/ a truly eclectic style reflecting his love of early 20th century American aesthetics. And a pretty warped sense of humor to boot.

If you just thumb through this book, you can't really get a sense of his true genius, you have to drink this book intensely. Once you start getting into this book, it's incredibly intense. I'd say you definitely can't read this in one sitting. I know the ads and text are hard to read, but they are well worth the effort. Some of them are pretty hilarious. Chris Ware has hit a new level of depravity with this stuff. You don't just merely read one of his graphic novels, you are inhabiting his unique world as soon as you lay your hands on the book. Some of the fake ad pages will take you almost 10 minutes to read 1 page because the text is so small.

If you're new to Chris Ware, this would be a perfect pace to start. It's a bit of a here-and-there assortment with the general themes being tragedy, pointlessness, hopelessness, despair, quiet horror, nostalgia, self-loathing and obsession with a healthy dose of self-depreciation throughout. If you are suffering from depression, I seriously wouldn't recommend this book. This is probably not bedtime reading either, this one needs to be just nibbled at, a few pages a day is enough.

I also recommend the Quimby the Mouse and Jimmy Corrigan collections. This book is highly recommended for people who are seeking something different in a comic rather than the usual Superman / X-Men fare. You should be able to find in most decent bookshops as it's published by Jonathan Cape with the ISBN 0224077023. Or, of course, discounted at Amazon. The other pictures are just some cover shots from some of the original Acme Library graphic novels.

Enjoy!

Welcome to Vancouver!

I was out taking shots in the lovely part of town and got this off-the-cuff idea to do a few simple fake ads showing the darker side of Vancouver in all its' glory. Junkies, needles and trash! Oh My!!!

Vancouver: First observations on moving back.

Well, this is my 5th day back in Vancouver and I'm finally settling back into the groove again, despite not having a place yet to call my own. I have found a place over on 4th Ave. which is pretty old, but great location. I cannot believe how damned expensive everything here is now. Rent is higher than shit. You're lucky if you can find a crummy basement apartment for under 1,000 bucks a month. We're gonna be paying 1,100 bucks, which is way too much for the apartment itself, considering the condition it's in, but we're paying more because of the location. Safeway 2 blocks away, library is a few blocks away, organic food shops, fresh fish shop, great restaurants, cool shops, including Zulu Records, about one of the only good record stores left in Vancouver. The other being Scratch, which is pretty good but not great.

I went to A&B Sound and they have hit rock bottom. I used to remember A&B being the best store in town. Now it is complete shit. They have nothing now. Just a top 40 store now. And Bob Bell is still there. Poor Bob. Still hanging in there. HMV is not much better. But at least they have an OK DVD selection. Looks like I'll be using mailorder from here on in. That's one thing I'll miss about Japan, tons of great record shops.

There's still tons of assholes bumming change, some of them the same people I saw 10 years ago. Fuck. Like, have some respect for yourself and do something, anything. Some of these buttsteaks actually get mad if you don't give them change, like we're supposed to be responsible for their well-being and financial support. I don't mind helping people at all if they're going to make an effort to help themselves. If not, forget it.

OK, the next thing is this. Why the hell does every second person have their Starbucks EXTRA DAMN LARGE coffee while they're walking? This is not just in the morning, but all hours of the day. Do you people realize how ridiculous you look? Stop supporting Starbucks for chrissake. It seems like everyone is under a permanent Starbucks spell. Don't be a slave to their shitty coffee and fake atmosphere, support another small privately owned coffee vendor. Sheeeeeesh. What would be the % of people who have their personal XL coffee containers? Pretty high I think. Nothing wrong with drinking coffee, but when I'm out walking, I can't avoid being bombarded with that damned ugly logo.

Next is all the development that's happening. Who the hell is designing some of these new buildings and apartment complexes? They look embarrassing. I've never seen so many tacky buildings in one city. Some of these places are going up so fast using cheap materials, they'll start falling apart in 10 years.

That's most of what I've noticed since I've been back. Not to sound all negative. Vancouver really IS a beautiful city, if you removed all the super arrogant egos (and there are many of them) and all the damn panhandlers and junkies, we might just have something. Half the people in the city look like they're either in a permanent Starbucks coffee trance or wigged out on coke and heroin.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Blackberry cellphones are gay. And turn off your stupid ringtone when you're taking public transit. It's rude and no one wants to hear it.

This a recent re-issue of the self-titled album from Lurker of Chalice, otherwise known as Wrest aka Leviathan, originally recorded in 2005 w/ 1 bonus track (Track 7).

It was rumored that the recent Leviathan album "Massive Conspiracy Against All Life" was going to be a Lurker of Chalice album at one point, but I think they are quite different projects and "Massive" sounds more like a Leviathan thing than LoC. Of course there's going to be obvious similarities in terms of some of the vocal work and the speedy black metal parts, but LoC has a more gothic, ambient feel to it that is even more twisted and depressing than Leviathan.

Much of the work on LoC is very slow and dingy, like "Minions", one of the best tracks on the album. The bass is much more present on LoC than Leviathan, there's more prominent use of synth used and some of the chant-like vocals that you will hear throughout the compositions, I've just never heard that kind of creepy delivery on a Leviathan album. Everything just feels a bit more doomy and experimental, lots of obscurely layered guitar work that makes for some really nice ambience as opposed to the riffomania of Leviathan albums. There's also a lot more samples, used to cool effect. This is simply a very different beast than Leviathan and I think I enjoy this more than I do most Leviathan albums. Wrest is a force to be reckoned with in the black metal scene and the metal scene in general. Everything he does is new and fresh, not to mention, some of the darkest music ever put to tape.

This album has something to offer for all fans of extreme metal and experimental music in general, so give it a try, I think you won't be disappointed, but YOU WILL BE scared.

The World of Golden Eggs

I, um…..maybe I'm just not hip with the times or maybe I'm just too old too understand these new fangled young people's shows, but this show is just messed up and horrendous, NOT in a good way.

Leave it to Japan to produce a messed-up animation show such as this

This complete waste of time (known as the World of Golden Eggs) is a MTV Japan show, and it’s taken entertainment to a new low.

The animation style is just plain bad, I know it's bad for bad's sake, but i mean, c'mon, it's bad to the point where it's just creepy and not interesting at all. The animation is flat, the characters are flat and the stories are just dumb. Even a 2-year couldn't be entertained by this junk.

The voice-overs sound too fast, like everyone's on speed or something, of course it's in Japanese so maybe you wouldn't know the difference anyway.

The whole thing just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, kind of like after you see a dead dog on the highway that's just been run over.

Check it out for yourself, there's tons of this shit on YouTube. It's an extremely popular show here in Japan, and I think it's getting more popular in the West now too, and for the life of me, I can't figure out why. This is just plain dogshit. If I drew a face on my cock, and gave it a name and a characteristic voice, then filmed it's adventures, it would be more entertaining than this cocaine-induced trip.

What happened to the good 'ol days of Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry?

Attik Noise 5

It's about damn time! Been waiting 7 years. Can't wait to get my hands on a copy of this. This is the info taken directly from Attik's site:

"NoiseFive will have 250 pages of exciting print design, on 9 unique paper stocks and 14 different print process finishes. With a limited print run of just 5,000 copies and a never seen before ATTIK 22 year retrospective it's set to be a bestseller.

Published in Summer 2008, NoiseFive will be available to purchase directly from this site, or through ATTIK recommended bookstores across the world."

Will I be buying this? Fuckin' rights! I own all of them except "Noise 1 (aka: Bob)" which is just a 16 page brochure which was reprinted in miniature form in the back pages of Noise 2. I hope this will be better than Noise 4, which was kind of disappointing. This one's a home-grown effort and Attik will have much more control over the printing of this one, so it should be good. Judging from some of the samples I've seen, it looks pretty cool.

Check out the blog and see some info and pics from previous editions here.

I love these books. I own many design books and these are best ones I have, without question. I pick up something new every time I look at them.