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The Shebeen Club presents …

April 10, 2006 / Monique

The Shebeen Club is a Vancouver’s literary meet-up group. Each event is organized around a theme. I enjoyed attending these events, however, I have been unable to attend since August due to conflicting schedules. I’d love to attend this month’s event but yet again I am out of town. What sad twist of fate is this?

Here’s what I said about the Shebeen as I headed out the door for the last event I attended:

Quote:
07/20/05 Link to original post

Iím off now to Shebeen for a Hemingway evening. Shebeen is a Vancouver whiskey bar, accessible from the Irish Heather. It is only open for private functions, and for those willing to creep out the back door of the Irish Heather into Blood Alley.

In the early days of Vancouver, Blood Alley was the location for a number of butcher shops. Public executions were also held in Blood Alley Square. Your choice on the roots of the name.

Speaking of doors, you go through the alley and look for the red door. Unmarked …

The Hemingway event was fantastic. Each meet-up has a literary theme that extends to the special drink and food item on offer.

So if you are in Vancouver on the 18th, attend the Shebeen Club’s Crime Night. Here are the details

Who: The Shebeen Club presents Jeremy Hainsworth, crime reporter extraordinaire
What: My Life in Crime!
When: 7-9pm Tuesday, April 18th, 2006 (3rd Tuesday each month)
Where: The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather, 217 Carrall
Why: Voyeurism runs deep, baby! Find out what it really takes to do this job. It’s not all fedoras and dive bars.
How much: $20 before April 14th, $25 thereafter
Paid to: Reservations and media inquiries: lorraine.murphy@gmail.com.

Admission includes a criminally good dinner/drink combo!

The skinny:
Putting the “laughter” in “manslaughter.” With patented black humour, Jeremy will lead us down the dark and twisted alleys of a crime reporter’s life. From paperwork to prison visits, we’ll become one with the sordid underbelly of Vancouver. It’s Blood Alley, so we’re halfway there! Jeremy will also be discussing (and bringing a copy of) the publication ban on the Pickton trial. Dress: Clark Kent, Lois Lane, or Raymond Chandler. Ann Rule doesn’t know how to dress!

Bio: Jeremy Hainsworth is one of a handful of journalists writing for the international media from Vancouver. As B.C correspondent for the AP, he has had the dubious honour of covering the ongoing hearings of alleged serial killer Robert Pickton and the Air India terrorism case. He has freelanced for Reuters, was senior crime reporter for The Calgary Herald, senior editor of Sterling News Service (his office was below that of Conrad Black’s partner David Radler), and managing editor of the Dawson Creek daily paper where he covered his first murder from seeing the body to the release of the convicted youths. He has a diploma in journalism from Langara and a BA from UBC. His work has appeared in many of the world’s major newspapers on every continent except Antarctica where penguins cannot read.

Meet & Mingle from 7-7:30
Listen & Learn from 7:30-8
Wistful reminiscences of hookers with hearts of gold from 8-9

From Idea to Air: Making Radio with Tod Maffin

April 9, 2006 / Monique

I was one of 20 lucky contestants awarded the chance to hang out with Tod Maffin all day Saturday at the CBC. Tod was volunteering his time as part of a fundraising effort for Multiple Sclerosis. He was offering us a full-day workshop “From Idea to Air: Making Radio and Selling it to CBC”. In exchange we were making a donation, or not, to the MS Society.

The workshop was fantastic. It was very practical, and surprisingly the pitch steps are quite similar to the submission stage for manuscripts in a publishing house. Tod is a fantastic speaker and if you’re interested in radio documentaries or producing podcasts, you should definitely attend one of his workshops: www.todmaffin.com/speaking

The ebook for the workshop is also available for purchase from Tod’s site. It is packed with amazing notes: www.todmaffin.com/ideatoair/.

As I mentioned, Tod was donating his time as a fundraising effort for his wife Kim, who has MS. It was a surprise to hear Tod say that MS is a young woman’s disease and that Canada has one of the highest incidences of MS in the world–this has something to do with vitamin D deficiencies, although I may not have understood that correctly. According to the MS pamphlet MS is the most common neurological condition affecting young adults in Canada. Age of onset is between 15 and 40 years, and affects twice as many women as men.

If you’d like to know more about Multiple Sclerosis, check out Kim’s MS blog, it’s www.restperiod.com. She also does a podcast about multiple sclerosis at www.mspodcast.org.

Now because Tod makes his living giving workshops, I’m not going to post my notes, but I did have some interesting thoughts during this adventure in the bowels of the CBC. The first was that the pitch stage is very similar to the submission stage in book publishing.

In radio:
– Listen to the program you want to pitch your idea to, listen to it more than once.
– Find out who the senior producer is, or at least someone with “producer” in their job title
– When you pitch that person, it is a 2-3 paragraph pitch, which includes what I call the hook–the one sentence description–and then a summary of what the documentary is about, who it’s aimed at and what’s it’s going to say.

There are more specifics in Tod’s ebook, and I don’t think I’m giving anything away here. The basic point is do your research. The second point is be brief, be brilliant, be gone. Don’t send a full script, don’t send a resume and long list of credentials. You’re gauging interest. If the producer is interested, then you can present the longer version. The challenge is that no producer has the time to read through hundreds of pitches in a week and do their job. You have to hook them. The only way that will happen is if it is relevant to their program–you’ve done your research–and they get it right away–in 2-3 paragraphs you’ve conveyed the idea.

This is true for submitting a manuscript.

In book publishing:
– Look at the publisher’s website, look at their catalogue. Read some of the titles that they give a full page to in their catalogue or prominent positioning on their website. In particular, make sure you’re looking at a publisher’s originated list, not the titles that they distribute or that come from their multi-national divisions. Really do your homework.
– Find out who to send the manuscript to. Don’t assume that the editor listed in an outdated book on the writers market is still at the organization.
– When you send your query letter, this is your pitch. You need the one sentence hook and the 2-3 paragraph description of what the book is about, who it’s aimed at and what it’s going to say.

There are of course more specifics in the plethora of books on query letters. The basic point, like with radio documentaries, is do your research. The second point is be brief, be brilliant, be gone. If the publisher’s guidelines say don’t send a full manuscript, don’t. The query letter is about gauging interest. If the publisher or editor is interested, then you can present the longer version. The challenge is that publishers receive hundreds of query letters and submissions a month. You have to hook them. The only way that will happen is if it is relevant to their publishing program–you’ve done your research–and they get it right away–in 2-3 paragraphs you’ve conveyed the idea.

Following these basic steps will put you into the top 10%. They seem simple, but they are the basic steps that most people don’t follow.

From idea to air — from idea to book.

In the News

April 5, 2006 / Monique

I know this has already gone around the web. I didn’t actually see it, but the 6 pm news reported it last night so it must have come from the web, right? Anyway, this morning, April 5, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 am, the time and date was

01:02:03 04/05/06

Ok, I told you that story so I could tell you this. I was reminded of the funky number pattern by an email newsletter I receive from Peter Morgan, http://www.Morgan-News.com

Peter is my human filter for interesting things in the news and Olympics 2010. And there’s always a fun footer.

Today’s This just in footer: New report says “TV is gooder then books.”

See, it’s all related to books.
Thank you for taking this little mind journey with me.

Oh CBC, Our Home and Native Blogs

April 5, 2006 / Monique

CBC Arts & Entertainment has a great round-up of awesome Canadian arts and culture blogs. I say awesome because I do in fact read many of these bloggers. But I have to call out one in particular, which I believe I’ve mentioned before: Drawn.ca

Quote: Here’s what the CBC’s Matthew McKinnon has to say:

Drawn! The Illustration Blog
Who: An international squad of seven bloggers who really, really like illustrated arts. The Canadian contingent (who each maintain separate, compelling blogs of their own) comprises John Martz, Patricia Storms, Matt Forsythe and Jay Stephens.

Day jobs: Martz is a freelance illustrator and designer/animator; Storms is a freelance cartoonist, illustrator and designer; Forsythe is a writer, illustrator and comic book creator; Stephens is a childrenís magazine cartoonist.

Online since: March 2005

Blogs about: Drawn!ís bloggers scour the web to find the worldís finest illustrations, cartoons and graphic novels, then post sample images with brief critiques and links to their creatorsí websites. They also point to interviews with some of their favourite artists. Consider Drawn! a public service in the name of beauty.

Typical post: ìWowzers. The most difficult thing with posting a link to Igor Olejnikov is choosing which image to use here. Each piece is [a] lush, expressive masterpiece. Donít miss the little ëpreviousí link on the bottom of the pages ó they lead to more and more illustrations.î

Truly, if you like art–pop art or high brow, there’s something here that you’ll enjoy.

Van “The Man” Porter

March 31, 2006 / Monique

Van “The Man” Porter is selling an instructional video of the Orange-Coloured Sky routine. I have a copy in my possession and love it. It’s only $40 CDN for you dance fans out there, and you can buy it from www.vantheman.ca.

For non-tap dancers, there is also a cool clip of Van dancing with a jazz band at the Vancouver Tap Dance Festival.

Here’s the link:
http://www.vantheman.ca/html/clips.htm

Dance On

March 26, 2006 / Monique

When I was younger I used to watch Janet Jackson videos and imitate the dance moves. I wasn’t the only dancer to do that. My entire jazz class one year knew so many of the steps that we created an entire rip off of Miss Janet.

Now, I want to imitate this penguin:
Happy Feet on YouTube.com

On an unrelated dance note, I was just thinking my ballet shoes need to be replaced and wondering if there wasn’t an altar to lay them upon. They’ve been good shoes.

Darren posted these photos of Sergei Diaghilev’s Grave on Flickr. Maybe one day I’ll take them to Venice.

Book Publishing Business Article

March 21, 2006 / Monique

U.S. News & World Report, www.usnews.com, had an interesting article on publishing in their print edition on March 13.

“Publish or Panic: The credibility of books is in a million little pieces. The Web is stealing readers. But publishers are fighting back.”

There’s a lot to say about this article. The first is that it is saying too much. The message of the article is a bit lost on me, there’s commentary on the “truth” of memoirs, there’s fear mongering about the loss of 20 million potential readers and the National Endowment for the Arts 2004 study, there’s a bit on print on demand, the Da Vinci Code lawsuit, the copyright lawsuit over Google digitizing the world, book sales and long tail hooha, an expose of Harper Collins’ giantess vs. Soft Skull’s blip on the radar, ebooks and ereaders, and blooks. That said, there were some interesting bits. Have a read.

Book Review of Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow

March 19, 2006 / Monique

I just finished reading an advance copy of Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow. It is by Faiza Guene, a child of Algerian immigrants, who grew up in the public housing projects of Pantin, outside Paris. This is her first book and I believe she wrote it as a teenager, she’s now in university.

Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow was originally published in French and this is the translated version. There are a couple of references to North American TV that I hope are the author’s original references and not the translator’s attempt to Americanize it for a US audience. That aside, Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow is a brilliant insight into the teenage mind, the mind of a girl who is bullied because of her not-right, bargain sale clothes, her learning skills, and her poverty. This isn’t just the story of an immigrant experience in the Paris projects, it’s the story of growing up and the displaced teenage years. I particularly enjoyed the Paris references though. The current student protests and the riots last summer make a little more sense to me–the volatility, the insecurity, the pressure of those on the fringe.

Laila Lalami of MoorishGirl.com reviewed it and said, “moving and irreverent, sad and funny, full of rage and intelligence. Her voice is fresh, and her book a delight.”

Here’s an excerpted quote from Amazon.ca
He thought I’d forged my mom’s name on the slip. How stupid is that? On this thing Mom just made a kind of squiggly shape on the page. That jerk didn’t even think about what he was saying, didn’t even ask himself why her signature might be weird. He’s one of those people who think illiteracy is like AIDS. It only exists in Africa.
–from Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow

I really like the cover of this book, check it out on Amazon.ca.

Ruckus Dance–77 Awesome Minutes

March 18, 2006 / Monique

I was very excited about going to see Brock Jellison’s new work 77 Minutes. It is part of the Vancouver International Dance Festival, I saw him perform a similar style of piece last year, and Brock is one of my favourite Vancouver tappers. When he was running classes at Harbour Dance, I tried to make every Sunday. It was a physical and mental workout for me. The steps were fast and the music was hard. But Brock can also be a sweet guy and he’s fun to dance with, “lively” doesn’t do justice to describe his personality.

My first surprise of the evening was opening the program to find out that Brock also composed the lyrics and score for the evening, along with Kristian Naso. Holy cow. Brock is always chirping away some song, but I never thought of him as a singer. I recognize that all of my friends are talented beyond belief but it is starting to be a little daunting. What am I doing?

The Globe and Mail does a good job describing the premise of the piece.

Quote: The story goes like this: After the Third World War has decimated humanity and self-expression has been outlawed by the powers that be, a band of maverick artists proposes to “dance like it’s their last night alive, because it is,” Jellison says. The authorities arrive on site 77 minutes after the first illegal display of moxie, ready to kill.

Brock describes it as a “dance-ical” and the show certainly was dance opera, dance rock show, dance musical. I still can’t believe that Brock sings most of the show.

Here are the highlights that I recall, and I’d certainly like to watch the show again:

1. Brock does a great job. I’m incredibly happy for him. It’s been many many months of work. And the show kicks ass. James and I agree that it is the best dance we’ve seen in Vancouver in a long time. I know many of the dancers also dance with The Source, which is fine dancing too. My only small critique, because I want to balance my gushing, is there are a couple of moments where I wondered if Brock’s voice could have been a little stronger, but those moments were few and far between, and the raspy, rocker sound in those moments really worked anyway. Overall, his singing was great–little bits of Weakerthans, Martin Sexton, the score from Rent … if I was more musical, I could draw better comparisons. My point is that it was a professional performance.

On to the choreography. There were big wow moments in the show, and magical, soft, oooo, moments too. Brock’s choreography in particular is hard-hitting and the style is instantly recognizable to me. There are signature steps where I think, yes, that’s true Brock Jellison. He has a distinct style, it is beyond Tap Dogs and I don’t want to compare it to anyone else. It’s Brock and it’s loud and rhythmic.

2. Deanna Teeple is the other vocalist and is utterly amazing. She belts it out, and the moments when the vocals are the most prominent part of the show, she stands as the star.

3. The band. Also very strong. A cool little bass riff in one of the early numbers. Awesome and eerie guitar in the siren/bomb scenes. The music fit with the show and pulled the audience along–not that we were kicking and screaming, but in the scenes where the dancers are being repressed and are kicking, the music is really screaming. There’s also one number with the whirling tubes that the Weakerthans use. That was one of my favourite pieces. It is mostly a grungy, body percussion piece, but that human music mixed with the instrument music is great.

4. There were lots of numbers that I loved. In particular the ones that were high energy and had all the cast on stage. But there were a couple duets and solo pieces that stood out as well. I don’t know all the dancers, but these are the songs I recall enjoying: Welcome to the Rest of Your Life, Mr. Devilman, Freedom Song, Goodnight my Love.

Mr. Devilman was a fantastic tap number with one guy and a group of girls. He was all pimped out and they do him in in the end. But the tap was fast and the dancers certainly caused a ruckus. Loved it.

Freedom Song, I remember thinking this song sounds really good.

Goodnight my Love was a beautiful duet. Very soft and magical.

I wish I knew the names of all the dancers and could call them out properly because there were some huge jumps and turns that the guys performed that were incredibly strong. The women were also really powerful. There was a baton section. Who knew baton would come in handy. It was one of my favourite parts of the show. This one girl in a circle of body percussion performers, twirling this baton. It was not cheerleader/sequined in any way. It was tough. Sasha and Melissa are two people who I’ve taken classes with, I love watching them dance. There was a cirque du soleil type of piece that displayed incredible strength. A bomb goes off and throws all the dancers to the ground and they are all piled up. Out of the rubble appears this tiny girl, lifted into the air. The balance was so controlled. For those who watch ice dance and pairs figure skating–there are those moves that defy gravity, where the female is balanced over head or her entire weight is supported on the guy’s lap. These were the moves. One of the best was a pause where the dancers looked like the letter “K”. The guy was holding the girl off the ground. Her top foot was hooked around his neck and the other was hip level. Both her arms were outstretched. (James and I are going to go home and practice–although I shouldn’t joke, the strength of both dancers was amazing. And there were these gymnastic moves–handstands and flips–that she did all on the palms of his hands. WTF.

Amazing amazing amazing.

You can see why I’m not a dance critic. Full gushing, and too many uses of the word “amazing”. Find another adjective!

Congratulations Brock. You rocked.

SFU Master of Publishing

March 16, 2006 / Monique

I’ve spent a couple of intellectually stimulating days with the SFU Master of Publishing students this week. I’m an alumni of the program and was invited to chat with the technology class. The discussion Monday was on this article by J. Esposito called “The Processed Book”.

It’s interesting from a theoretical point of view. The processed book is defined as the electronic text of a work that is published in a network environment. It acts kind of like a wiki, whereby users can annotate the text or run scripts off the text to generate reports on patterns, such as word frequency. The original text remains intact, but the user can add on.

The five aspects of a processed book are described at length in the article but their use or validity is unexamined. The rest of this post is about my thoughts on the article and the author’s statements. Feel free to bail out now.

Here’s my summary of the five aspects of the processed book:

1. book as portal: User is able to click through to other source info, i.e., a dictionary, footnotes, bibliographies.

2. book as self-referencing text: Computer is able to generate for the user reports on word frequencies, for example, or develop thought clouds or other patterns in the text.

3. book as platform: The book can “call” other resources, for example, a mention of Ariel Sharon could link to a set of web sites with further information. I’m not clear on the difference between portal and platform here, but the idea is book as platform eliminates the need to investigate other source materials independently.

4. book as machine component: Book is written for a machine-audience, is readable by search engines, could generate sales data and future sales predictions and other reports based on word frequencies or popularity of similar texts.

5. book as network node: The processed book is plugged into a network–a network that equals all the parts, such as the tools or add-on services–i.e., word frequency reports–which make the processed book appear more valuable than a regular ebook, which does not allow the user to annotate the text or run reports off the text.

There are a couple of huge holes with this article but I understand and see the value in theory. Scholarly research could benefit from this type of model. Various contributors to scientific journals, for example, could contribute research or peer review reports. I also see an application for text in this format for publishers who produce electronic catalogues. A team of sales reps could annotate book descriptions with their sales handles or key points they want to express to a client.

But the holes. The holes.

Who will invest the resources into producing a processed book? What’s the business case for doing so? What value does a processed book really offer to a user?

I kept thinking of Neil Postman while reading this article–“what is the problem this technology is trying to solve?” Why do we attempt to turn human nature into an efficient, countable machine?

I thoroughly enjoyed the high level discussion this article generated about ebooks and processed books, user/reader experience, the future of books in general. In that respect, this article does it’s job. It generates discussion.

There are a couple of authoritative statements in the article that are unaddressed, mind you. Rhetorical glissades, as I like to call them. Rhetorical glissades are those wide-sweeping statements humans like to make, those unqualified or unquantified statements, like “property crime is on the rise.” Oh yes, we think. Heard something about that in the news … must be true.

So here are the things I take issue with in the article:

Esposito describes the traditional notion of a book as the “primal book”, an embodiment of a thought, generally by one author, typically bound in a physical package or 4″ x 6″ or 7″ x 9″. What data supports this? Are there are more books by single authors than by multiple authors? Are most books printed 4×6 or 7×9?

Esposito, in pitching the value of book as portal, suggests that in a processed book you could look up every entry in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. Who determines what source materials are referenced? Can there ever be an unbiased selection? Would it ever be necessary to look up every entry? Does that really provide value?

In book as platform, Esposito says that a book placed in a library’s collection has the potential to cannibalize retail sales. What? Why would anyone think that library sales cannibalize retail sales? Where’s the data to support that notion?

In book as machine component, he suggests that text to speech technology could give the reader of a processed book the choice of reading or listening and that TTS could destroy the $2 billion US audio book business as the rights to a book’s text and audio will converge. Really? Would that happen? I don’t know anyone who’d like to listen to the Bell Mobility computerized sales agent–putting em-pha-sis on the right syl-la-bles–read them a novel vs. a person reading with spirit and intonations.

He also suggests that publishers could make predictive decisions about what to publish based on book sales or titles with popular word frequencies. Would publishers really use that type of data to drive decisions? Think of all the Da Vinci Code by-products that already exist, do we want to replicate that on a larger scale?

Ok, so it goes on like this, there are more things to pick apart, and of course I’ve done exactly what Esposito has done and I have not linked to the pages in the article with these references or linked to supporting data for my queries. Sloppy academic, that I am. I’d like to go back and do that for you so my arguments are solid but the article appears all on one page and I have no clue how you reference quotes within a long scrollable web page. Here’s the article link again. And, blog-time is Monique time. I don’t want to interfere with my work-life balance to debate the merits or demerits of this article any longer than I already have.

I’ll leave you with this parting quote from the article, the ultimate goal of the processed book is “to inform a generation of robots, not to make the world more machine-like but to make machines more human.”

I’m sure there are many good reasons to do that, and many examples of how that could work for books, but they’re not leaping out at me. If you made it this far down the ramble, please let me know if you have any follow up thoughts. Tap the inner academic. Go for it!

So Misguided