Beautiful Feet

V. Wells August 2010

[We often see the bastardized version circulating via email; it was added to erroneously.] The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary, Sunday, 12/18/05. Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart: I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important? I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife. Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. If this is what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad. Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single o...

check out Chiyoko Szlavnics' website . kinda cool.

Photo by Bruce Zinger The word handle comes from a source akin to the old Norse meaning to seize or to capture; without venturing too far into the world of bad puns, I certainly had that experience last night at Opera Atelier's Acis and Galatea . Running through November 7th, this English baroque opera by Handel is thoroughly charming. Co-artistic director Marshall Pynkoski somewhat downplayed the piece, reassuring the audience that despite its shorter duration, it had received the same rehearsal and production budgets as any of their offerings, but noted that it was simpler. Well, less is more, apparently. For example, the company had the collective smarts to use synecdoche: one feather in the hair to indicate that a dancer was a bird. Why does that suffice? Because members of the Opera Atelier Ballet can convey their role through their movement alone; they don't need a 'bird costume'. The one set and lack of costume changes for the principals hleps us focus on the ...

image from cbc.ca/arts Everyone who knows and loves me knows my phobia of spelling and grammar mistakes. I made a typo in an email to my husband recently and it's been bothering me ever since. So, here, I take umbrage with a plaque on a newly unveiled statue of Emily Carr in Victoria that has flipping typo s-- yes, that's typos pluralized-- because someone missed a letter and hyphenating two words. The article expounds the virtues of spellchecking and asks why it wasn't caught there. I ask how the proof even got to the plaque-maker with the errors still extant: does no one read things before or after spellchecking? Does no one own/use a dictionary? I loved someone's online comment on the article: Don't be so harsh towards a country were English is a second language. [ sic] Touché!

There's a VERY COOL positive image camera in Berlin that takes unique life size portraits in B&W! For €290 euros ($412 CAN) you can walk into this behemoth and have it produced in ten minutes. Check out the coolness here .

I just read about an illustrator in NYC named Jason Polan whose current project involves drawing every person in New York. While this is a fanciful project, I felt compelled to check out his blog . It has jots of everyone from deliverymen to Carol Spinney. Kinda fun, in idea anyway. Except I'm not in it; guess he took that week off.

Check out this writer's blog, Gillian Wallance...watch me edit . You can also take advantage of her emailed poem of the week. I like her voice and her interests. (Sort of like I like my friend David Barker's stuff on Nouspique , which you can only find on this hyperlink, as Blogger saw fit to remove my Permalink list.....). Just sayin'.

iD Sony Centre 50 th Anniversary Premiere Engagement! continues October 2, 7, 8, 9, 2010 at 8 pm October 3, 2010 at 2 pm Tickets start at $35 iD is co-created by Jeannot Painchaud, founder and artistic director of Montreal‟s acclaimed Cirque Éloize , and hip-hop choreographer Mourad Merzouki. Since it began in 1993, Cirque Éloize has enjoyed overwhelming success marked by rave reviews, numerous awards, and sold-out engagements around the world. The company has toured extensively to the world‟s most prestigious festivals and theatres including: Edinburgh International Festival, the Hollywood Bowl (Los Angeles), Piccolo Teatro (Milan), Les Folies Bergère (Paris), Bunkamura Orchard Hall (Tokyo), Israel Festival Jerusalem, Hong Kong Festival, Sadler‟s Wells (London), Sydney Opera House, Barbican Theatre (London), Beiteddine Festival (Beirut), Chekhov International Theatre Festival (Moscow), International Cervantino Festival (Guanajuato) [ text courtesy of KL Strategic Communications ] Bu...