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3 4 1. The First Weekend Club’s Canada Screens Series presents an advance screening of Brigitte Berman’s documentary Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, and Rebel Aug. 19 at District 319 (319 Main St.). The Academy Awardwinning filmmaker will also be on hand to answer all your probing questions. More info at www.firstweekendclub.ca. 2. Legendary roots musician Alejandro Escovedo and his band The Sensitive Boys get twangy at Venue Aug. 19. Tickets at Red Cat, Scratch, Zulu or www.ticketweb.ca.
3. Brooklyn’s The Hold Steady stick to what they do best, pumping out beersoaked anthems about small-town living, good girls gone bad and the redemptive powers of rock and roll Aug. 19 at the Vogue Theatre. Tickets at Red Cat, Zulu and Vogue Box Office. 4. Check out works such as Julia A. Crucial’s “Young Prince Eating” at Elliot Louis Gallery’s Emerging Artists Exhibition. Curated by Lynn Ruscheinsky, the exhibit’s opening reception takes place Aug. 19, 6:30-8:30 p.m. More info at www.elliottlouis.com.
kudos & kvetches Discordant musings
For something called the Harmonized Sales Tax, or f*$@ing HST for short, it sure has struck a discordant nerve for many people. We’re not so much choked about the tax as we are about the way Gordo and his Liberal clan slipped it into the books, lobotomously thinking the denizens of this fair province would believe that the HST wasn’t even a kernel of an idea before the last provincial election. It oozes greaseball tactics. We’re a naïve bunch—we believe it when people tell us we look 25—but even a newborn isn’t naïve enough to believe the hogwash that spilled out of Gordo and Finance Minister Colin Hansen’s mouth regarding the timing of the HST’s birth. We accept that the discordant sales tax is here to stay and since we like to look on the bright side of life, we’re revelling in the Wham Bam Vander Zalm sideshow and the current court case at the B.C. Supreme Court over the legality of the über-democratic anti-HST campaign. More than 700,000 people did sign a petition to extinguish the tax after all. We’re also chomping at the bit to see Liberal MLAs
squirm as the Zalmster puts them in his sights for recall campaigns if his anti-HST petition goes down in flames at court. What still riles us, however, is how all the pro-HST businesses insist it’s the next best thing since sliced bread for them—that part we believe—and how prices will eventually come down for consumers. It’s happened in other provinces, they argue. Great, but why can’t the pro-HST camp provide specifics on items or services where consumers are paying less than before the HST was implemented in those provinces. We’re waiting…
Tweeting from Pyongyang
Regular readers of K&K know we’re all about the Twitter. That and hand lotion, videos of piano-playing cats and novocaine-fuelled weekends in cosmopolitan Nanaimo. That’s why we’re stoked to learn North Korea, that starving, terror-supporting, brutal dictatorship, has joined Twitter. We’re stunned. We thought North Korea had eaten its remaining cable lines.
As of this writing, @uriminzok has posted 11 tweets. Here are our favourites in the order they were posted: • Long live Kim Jong-il, Dear Leader! Long live the memory of Eternal President Kim Ilsung! Long live the Democratic Front for the Reunificat • ion of the Fatherland! Long live the memory of Eternal President Kim Il-sung! Long live the youth vanguard to build a great prosperous and p • owerful nation! • Sorry, getting used to 140 characters. Researching decadent tweets of other countries for tips. • Long live Kim Jong-il, Dear Leader, FTW! #kimjongildearleader • Nuclear program running smoothly. The great people will have power and peace. ; • Justin Bieber, why did you cancel your tour dates here? Fail Justin. #justincute • Saw Russia @ the cafeteria. We used to be BFF. They were w/ China. Bitch. • Had coffee with the imperialist aggressor U.S. They are kind of hawt. LOL! #invadeusnow
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