Music Video Monday: Ke$ha + Star Trek

I can’t stand auto-tuned pop music, but when set to clips from Star Trek, it’s almost fantastic.

TWIG Notes XXVII

Another week, another week without blogging. Here’s the rundown.

- Last Sunday was the first game (preseason) at Empire Field, the new and temporary home of the BC Lions. The weather was a cloudy and somewhat chilly seventeen degrees. The stadium’s certainly going to be fun for the summer months - provided summer actually arrives - and in a way it’s too bad that next year the Lions will be moving back into a cavernous dome. Empire Field holds just under 28,000, which is a perfect size for a CFL game. Our seats are literally about twelve feet from the field, which is a hell of a lot closer than at BC Place. The Lions lost, but whatever, it’s the preseason. For the record I predict a 10-8 record for the Leos this season.

- Also: photos from the Lions game are on Flickr. Includes shots of cheerleader bums. Fair warning.

- I’m in desperate need of a vacation, so I booked a night at Whistler for Canada Day for my ladyfriend and I. I only thought of this because some friends of ours took me to Whistler for an afternoon on Saturday, where we wandered around for a couple hours, ate some delicious fresh pasta, then headed home when the rain started to pour. Again, it sure would be nice if summer came soon, so our two days in Whistler aren’t spoiled by rain.

- After not winning a G.D. thing on Lotto Max tickets the last two weeks, I’ve given up on that lottery. Instead, I spent money on a different lottery! Tax for the stupid, my ass - I’m totally winning the PNE Prize Home this year!

- As soon as I finish writing this blog entry, I’m canceling my subscription to GQ. No more fashion advice, no more articles about the best pub food in America. Somehow I’ll be alright. I hope.

To be The Man, you gotta read The Man

Of all the celebrity look-a-likes you could pick for me (out of, you know, three or so) I’m quite happy to hear I look the most like tennis superstar Andre Agassi. A couple of weeks ago I nabbed his autobiography, Open, from the library. It was a one week loan, since it’s still in high demand, so I polished it off in five days. It was a pretty fascinating read, about a kid who’s forced into a sport that he hates by an overbearing dad, yet is driven to succeed because wanting to be successful is what drives him. And yes, he admits to wearing a hairpiece from about age 18 (his mullet days) and experimenting with crystal meth. But his accomplishments are amazing: the oldest man to be ranked number one in the world; the only man to win a Golden Slam (all four grand slam titles plus a gold medal); he won 26 straight matches at the Australian Open, which still stands as a record; and he opened a tuition-fee private charter school in Las Vegas, in the worst part of the city, for disadvantaged kids. Plus he married both Brooke Shields and Steffi Graf.

The fact that Agassi lives in Vegas has given me another goal to strive for, whenever we end up going: to get my photo taken with my doppleganger.

Good Rockin’ Tonight

Saturday night the ladyfriend and I headed to the Malkin Bowl in Stanley Park to see Metric, one of the hippest hipster-rock bands in Canada right now. It was the first outdoor concert I’d been to since seeing Garbage at the now-demolished Plaza of Nations. Thankfully yesterday was the one sunny and warm day of the week, and the Malkin Bowl is a pretty  nice venue: a large bandshell opening onto a grassy field and grassy hill. We got there early enough to snag a good spot on the hill, where we lay down a blanket and took in the show. Everyone in attendance was well behaved, and our hilly spot gave us ample opportunity to watch people file in, wearing neon Ray-Bans and fedoras and pretty much any other hipster duds you can think of.

As for the band, they rocked. Their set was tight, and most songs were from their latest album. Probably the nicest surprise was the lead singer, Emily Haines, who danced and sang around the entire stage with a smile on her face: no serious rockstar attitude from her, which was nice. Granted I haven’t been to a ton of concerts, but the moment the frontman or frontwoman for a band starts taking his or her job - entertaining people with music - too seriously, it decreases the fun factor. So it was good to see a band where the singer clearly loves being on stage and singing.

Wordmangling

From time to time, during conversation, it’s fun to combine two words that usually don’t belong together. Technically this is called a portmanteau. For instance, my yearly birthday party is called a Horsetravaganza. Sometimes I call people Buttminster Fuller. You get the idea.

Lately I’ve seen the word glamping in magazines. What’s glamping? The word means glamorous camping, but it’s essentially camping for pussies.

Here’s what one Google search results describes glamping to be:

During a typical glamping trip, for example, the tents are often designed with bright designer colors and materials, not the olive drab canvas tents of yesteryear. These tents can be rigged for electrical power, which means occupants can operate appliances, reading lamps and climate controls. Forget about smelly sleeping bags placed on rocky or insect-infested ground, as well. Those who have gone glamping may sleep on full-size air mattresses, or even regular spring mattresses provided by the outfitters.

Now you have to understand, I’m not exactly Grizzly Adams when it comes to the great outdoors. I’m not going to scale a mountain and sleep on a rock and fight bears and grow a wicked beard. But I do enjoy simple camping in a tent, with a fire, roasting hot dogs and eating baked beans, reapplying sunscreen and mosquito repellent every hour. Camping isn’t glamourous, and it’s not meant to be. This is why the word glamping makes me sick with rage. It’s taking a simple act of sleeping outdoors and making it acceptable for the tanning-salon, high heels set. The type who couldn’t live without a hair dryer and a cell phone. Glamping might as well be hauling a mattress out onto a patio and calling it a trip to the great outdoors.

There’s other mangled words that I find annoying: Recessionista, a person who embraces the spirit of being poor by being thrifty when buying stuff. Never mind that in recessions people lose jobs and homes, and instead co-opt the misery and shop shop shop! Or metrosexual, which means something along the lines of a guy wearing nice clothes and being excessively groomed, but is basically a euphemism for ‘dressing like you’re gay’. Nothing like perpetuating the stereotype of gay guys being impeccably dressed - as though that’s the one thing gay guys should be remembered for.

What I Think About the HST

I’m happy about the Fight-the-HST drive’s success. It’s nice to know that people in the province aren’t always apathetic about politics. From what I understand, the campaign is close to collecting more signatures against the HST than the number of votes the Liberals had in the last election. Or something like that. I don’t like the HST and wish it had never come about. Consumption taxes, applied to everything, are bad ideas, because they make the cost of living more for people who are already having trouble getting by.

However, I haven’t signed the petition, for a few reasons. One, the provincial government is not going to repeal the HST. BC is getting almost two billion dollars from the feds for implementing the tax - there’s no way in hell the province is going to say ‘no thanks’ to that kind of cash, whether it’s political suicide or not. Two, the only opposition party (the NDP) are still led by that lame duck leader Carole James, and the party itself has no official position on the HST. Would they repeal it if they were elected? Who knows? My bet is no. I hate the Liberal party but I also don’t like the populist stance of the NDP, which only seems to vocally oppose anything without having an actual platform. Finally, governments are running out of money. They’ve lowered income and corporate taxes so much over the past two decades that they need to scrape for as much revenue as they can, and the HST is just the start. The fact is, if we’re going to enjoy a relatively high standard of living in this province and country, it’s going to cost us.

What would I want to see instead of the HST? I’d be okay with restoring the GST to 7 percent. Steven Harper made a big mistake in lowering it (again, a populist move rather than a rational one). And as for BC politics, I’m hoping that the momentum from the HST drive will carry over to recall campaigns.