FYI:

The Shebeen Club: Gonzo Vancouver!

When: 7-9pm, Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

Where: the Shebeen, 7 Gaoler’s Mews, behind the Irish Heather, 217 Carrall Street, Vancouver BC

How Much: $15 includes dinner: limited to 40

What: mingling, door prizes, eating, drinking, fornicating!

Who: Heather Watson (Civixen), Gonzo Journalist and founding columnist at Terminal City

“We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-coloured uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.”
Hunter S. Thompson
Well, we probably won’t have that, but we will have a great introduction to indigenous Vancouver Gonzo journalism with the hyperkinetic and internationally infamous Heather Watson, alias Civixen (http://www.civixen.com/ and http://cvxn.tumblr.com). Coming at you straight down the Mojo Wire at 95 miles per hour, it’ll be an evening of raw, uncut literary power. Bare-knuckling her way up the ladder from the wide open frontier of the Wild West to the mean streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Heather has seen it all, done most of it, and has a damn hell solid alibi for everything else.

Bio: Heather Watson created the satirical op/ed column “Civixen,” which became a source of enjoyment and irritation for political bright lights and dim bulbs alike (including the current mayor) in the four years it ran in two local alternative newspapers. Besides a brief tenure as editor-in-chief of the 30,000-circulation Gonzo-inspired Terminal City (now sadly defunct), Heather Watson also presented a popular seminar on Gonzo Journalism at the request of the Western arm of the Canadian University Press in 2006. She is a published poet, a produced playwright and her essay “Vancouver Today” is featured in the Time Out Guide to Vancouver. In addition to a few years at Vancouver’s éminence grise of independent bookstores, Duthie Books, some of her more surreal side jobs have included voice-over and motion capture for a video game and six years spent hand modeling toys from Star Wars figures to Barbies in dozens of TV commercials.

Meet and Mingle 7-7:30
Listen and Learn 7:30-8
Drown Sorrows and Vow to Buck the System 8-9 or, really, the rest of your life.

Or so suggests best-selling author Barbara Ehrenreich in her blog. Naturally, being a writer who would rather chew off my own fingers one by one than resist the impulse to write when it comes upon me, and being a big Barbara Ehrenreich fan, I was perplexed; and when so perplexed, it’s best to go to the text…

Everyone has a book in them, at least everyone who writes to me seems to have a story waiting to be packaged between hard covers and peddled on Amazon: The mother trying to support an autistic child on $6.50 an hour, the army medic who’s seen how military health care goes wrong way before Walter Reed, the inner-city school teacher who digs into his own pocket to pay for pencils and glue. These are all potentially great stories, but I have one piece of advice: Don’t write a book. At least not yet.

I’m not saying this because I want to keep the wildly lucrative business of book-writing to myself. First, it isn’t wildly lucrative; most of the royalty statements I’ve received over the course of my career have been in the negative numbers. I consider a book — or an article — a success if it earns just enough to allow me to go on to the next one.

More to the point, most books don’t start as books. They evolve from humbler efforts such as magazine articles, doctoral dissertations, even op-eds or blogs. If you find yourself saying “I could write about a book about it,” start by writing something far shorter. If you can’t get that published — as an op-ed, for example — you’re not ready for a book. Correction: you may be ready, but an agent or editor isn’t going to pay much attention to an entirely unpublished writer.

Read the rest on her blog, which I’m adding to the blogroll now.

For all those writers, publishers, editors, bloggers, and journalists out there. Forget the office party and come drink with The Shebeen Club tomorrow night at the Irish Heather!

We’ll be upstairs in the Reading Room this time, at the Irish Heather in Gastown, 217 Carrall Street in Gastown, from 7-9pm. No cover, order off the menu and enjoy the best damn gastropub in the West!

Twas the day before Tuesday, when all through downtown
The email went out inviting Shebeeners down
To the Heather on Tuesday the 19th: tomoz!
For a drink and a nosh and tales of Santa Claus.

We’ll have a fun evening, no lectures to hear,
From seven ’til nine, just a-drinking our beer!
With Lorraine with Grinch earrings and a Santa hat,
You can come as you are, or all dressed up in spats.

And down in the kitchen arises a bashing
The chef is meat grilling and potato mashing.
Order straight off the menu and pay what you nosh
Tear into the butter, and the whiskies quite posh.

“Now Writers! Now Students!
Now, Publishers many!
Come, Poets! Come, Bloggers!
Come, Booksellers, merry!
To the Reading Room of the Heather
At the top of the stairs!
Now party on! Party on!
Don’t put on airs!

We’ll read Chrismas stories, and tell our tall tales
So drop in for a bevvy; I’ll tell about the old jail.
The Heather was lockup in decades gone by
So come down, serve your time drinking Guinness and rye.

From their email newsletter:

We know it’s October here in the office when Brent buys a broken industrial refrigerator for $200 from an old man who tells him to leave the Freon on the street “at night” and then gestures at the rest of us and says “don’t let them know you did it.” This actually happens every year around now. Brent’s going to use it as a large cupboard. We don’t know where the refrigerators go at the end of the month–does Brent dismantle them? Does the old guy come back after Brent’s checks bounce? Is he selling us the same refrigerator year after year?? It’s something we need to think through, when we get a chance.

Meanwhile, through the end of the month, we’re discounting all available back issues of McSweeney’s–the last ten issues are all 25 percent off. So if you missed the comics issue, or the cigar box, or the one that came with Robert Coover playing cards, or any of the equally excellent others, now’s the time to get `em. You can find them here.

If any Shebeeners are interested, we can do a carpool. Please drop me an email or put a comment on this blog entry and I’ll organize it.

Lorraine

The Powell River Festival of Writers annual Fall Fest is coming up fast.

Nov 4, 9:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. at the French Club, 5110  Manson, we will gather for a full day of inspiration. For only $40, you will learn from the best in their fields:

Daniel Wood, “Writing Non-Fiction That Sells”
Sheila Munro, “How To Write Your Memoirs”
Wayne Lutz, ” What Self-Publishing Has Taught Me”

Author bios, registration forms and  details on the writing contest to win your registration can be found at: http://www.festivalofwriters.com/

Call or email me if you have any questions and please pass this on to your friends.
Join us for the pure pleasure of being surrounded by authors, their ideas and their books.

May each day bring new inspiration into your life.

Barb Rees/President

Powell River Festival of Writers
#14-7624 Duncan St.
Powell River, BC,V8A 5L2
Phone: 604-485-2732
Toll Free: 1-866-373-2607

From Lois Peterson’s Surreywriters list. Note that this is not paid writing work, which is, of course, how I came to hear about it:

On Sunday the Province will lanch the Sunday Serial Thriller, a 12-part mini-novel set in Vancouver.

The first and last chapters will be written by Daniel Kalla, with the the other chapters contributed by Province readers.  Prizes to be won include a trip to Mexico.

Complete details, and the first instalment, appears in the Sunday Province.

from Vanity Fair via Gawker. But yes, they really SHOULD do the New Yorker (and some Canuckistan terrorist such as myself really SHOULD do The Walrus…hmmmmm).

In any case, the skanky demi-coverwrap innovation, paired with the chubby, self-satisfied, Winnebago-driving Rotarian-pandering-to, blowhardy Weekly Standard makes this the perfect target.

For the National Lampoon. Vanity Fair, how did it come to this?

Still. Funnee.

A Vanities Cover-Flap Public Service

By ANDREW HEARST

Magazine publishers often send their newsstand editions into the world with “cover flaps” that tease the contents within. This is a handy way to pique the interest of passersby. But a cover flap can also be useful as an agent of mischief and lighthearted political agitation. Inside the October 2006 issue of Vanity Fair is a fake flap you can attach to a copy of The Weekly Standard. Simply get your hands on a copy of our October issue, turn to page 272, and follow the instructions below:

1. Cut and fold where indicated.

2. Hurry to a newsstand. Pick up the latest issue of The Weekly Standard. Wrap folded page around spine of magazine.

3. Return magazine to rack.

4. Step back a few paces and observe.

I know, I know. But wait for it. I mean, have you seen him lately?

Can’t be long now.

From The State That I Am In, via Gawker, who said “three more years? We can hardly wait” or words very much to that effect that I am too lazy to look up.

Future Perfect
Sep 5, 2009 5:46 EDT 

TEHRAN, IRAN (AP) - Christopher E. Hitchens, the celebrated journalist, essayist and literary critic whose over 30-year career spanned styles, continents and political ideologies, died today during a combined Allied air strike on a reported insurgent stronghold on the outskirts of the city. He was 60.

Hitchens, whose well-read works ranged from tabloid-like coverage of American culture to almost academic books on the nature of politics and religion, was in the region at an American Air Force base in neighboring Kuwait as part of his “Glorious War Tour” while promoting his most recent book Regan: Grace in Crisis.

After emigrating from his native England, where he received a degree at Oxford University, to the United States in 1981, Hitchens worked for a wide variety of publications including The Nation, The Independent, Spy, Vanity Fair and Shock. Hitchen’s style and focus was almost unavoidably political and inflammatory, usually consisting of reasoned, if inordinately impassioned attacks on various ideologies (fascism, liberalism, Islamism) or public figures (Noam Chomsky, St. Teresa of Calcutta, Henry Kissinger). In one of political literature’s more discussed sea changes, Hitchens, once a liberal Trotskyite, publicly converted to a personalized form of neoconservatism in response to various grievances with the foreign policies of the first Clinton administration. His altered stance was only hardened after the terror attacks of September 11th, 2001.

Recent months had seen him softening his position on liberalism and openly supporting President Clinton’s current campaign in Iran.

During this, his third trip to the region in as many months, Hitchens had been seen enjoying his free time in the company of pilots and loading crews of the 4404th Air Expeditionary Wing stationed here at Ali Al Salem Air Base. It appears that last night Hitchens managed to convince the crew of a B52-H to take him on board for it night mission over the pockmarked edges of Iran’s former capital.  

While details remain unconfirmed, it appears, through a released night-vision photo, that Hitchens climbed atop one of the larger conventional warheads in the B52-H’s bomb bay only seconds before the crew released its payload on target. The Air Force has launched a full investigation and an unnamed Defense Department official stated on the condition of anonymity that he expects the crew to face disciplinary charges calling the incident, “an egregious lapse in battlefield judgment.”

Hitchens is survived by his wife, Carol Blue, their daughter Antonia, and two other children, Alexander and Sophia, from a pervious marriage.

via Kitsilano, James’s Up in Ontario blog, to be specific.

Seems that old church/state separation idea doesn’t go over big with the bigwigs at the Times Colonist.

Visit the site to read James’s take on it, along with the original article, plus the breaking news from Sean Holman.

A snippet from Up in Ontario:

Smith wrote a column raising questions about the value of visiting some well-established Victoria tourist destinations and suggested some alternate, free attractions. Tourism industry representatives sought and got a meeting with the Times Columnist publisher, Bob McKenzie, and a day later Smith was sacked.

Now, a commenter on Up in Ontario has objected, saying the story had no place being published at all, as it was an opinion piece. It may or may not have been slanted, but the Times Colonist is no stranger to slants and, as I pointed out, if the tourist attractions are overpriced, that in itself is news. If free attractions that are interesting are available, that, too, is news. And the decision about whether or not a story belongs in the paper rests with the editors, not the local business capos.

As was put very well by a journalism prof on Public Eye Online:

In an interview with Public Eye, associate professor Klaus Pohle, a specialist in media ethics and newspaper management at Carleton University’s school of journalism, said it wasn’t surprising publisher Bob McKenzie declined to comment on the situation, explaining “I would be totally embarassed to admit” to cancelling such a contract just after meeting with “the vested interests in Victoria…It’s a terrible conflict. A terrible conflict. And it sends a terrible message - not only to the journalists at the paper but to the other media and the readers and the advertisers. It sends a message (to the advertisers) that I can interfere anytime. And that’s a very, very dangerous situation to be in.”

Sure Victoria is a small town, but it’s got at least two horses, and so is too big to be indulging in these Pottersville-type shenanigans, particularly in a CanWest Global publication. Or are they planning to take this strategy national?

[first posted on raincoaster]