I looked down from my apartment balcony and saw a discarded pizza box on the pavement, flattened, no doubt, by one of the behemoth commercial vehicles that frequent the back ally. This pizza box was adorned with the boldest yellow and greens, announcing its brightness on this grey, January 23rd in Vancouver. Of these small reminders of color this winter, there will be few. Of these endless dreary days in store for the next three months, there will be countless.

I am neither unaware of, nor ignoring the recent snowfalls in the city. In fact, colorless sprawl of houses that I see when I look out my window are a loud reminder that the snow that had covered everything for the past week disappeared in one evening this past Friday. Now what?

Well, as any 5-year-plus resident of this city will tell you, you can expect a large serving of dreary, grey days between now and sometime in March. As a person who is adversely affected by weather of this kind, I am on a frequent quest for a cure for that which ails me. And what do we have? The two events marked on the calendar (three, including Martin Luther King Day, if you’re an American) during this time of year are Chinese New Year and Valentines Day. But unfortunately, both of these days carry with them an air of exclusivity. So aside from the welcoming from the 4000th Chinese year, or going through the motions of a romantic night on your calendar put there by Hallmark, there isn’t any reprieve!

I cant possibly be alone in my fear and loathing of rainy Vancouver winters. In fact, I would guess that Lower Mainland sales of Prozac begin to surge drastically starting January 2nd. A city-wide, or province-wide, or nation-wide celebration of some kind should be undertaken by those in power…oh wait. Something of that kind took place in June, and…oh yeah, now I remember.

So. There we have it. We are destined to spend winter after winter in the rainy confines of the city, and if an event is organized to help forget about this reality for one day, you can count on lunatics who are either drunk, or raving mad due to the excessive use of plastic cups at the event, will come along and selfishly ruin everybody’s day. Race you to Seattle!

There's a man who lives in my apartment building who seems quite strange. I do not consider him strange because he busies himself in a myriad of bizzare of activities, but only one in particular. Now, it may seem innacurrate and unfair to put a label on somebody because of one passtime that he or she partakes in, but i believe the nature of this one tendancy is so outside the circle of what passes as normal in this country that it raises questions about what kind of mind this man has.

On many occassions, such as a few minutes ago, i have seen this man sitting in his grey, early 90s Mazda MPV van, with the door open, reading a newspaper. This activity, in and of itself, can't really be branded as abnormal. Surely people read newspapers in cars quite frequently, and for reasons that, for the most part, make sense. People waiting at Skytrain stations to pick up friends or significant others would be likely candidates for car readers, be it book, magazine or whathaveyou. But while the Canada Line Marine Drive station is in close proximitiy to our building, it would seem easier for the person getting picked up to be able to spot his or her ride home soon after descending the escalator, and not have to walk two blocks before entering the vehicle.

There could be another explanation. Undercover police officers surely must have to do a lot of waiting, and while they sit patiently in their unmarked vehicles, reading must be a valued passtime. But, if this man is an undercover agent, he's not conducting himself in a manner that is overly clandestine, especially since the reason i started writing this piece in the first place is because i saw him plain-as-day from my ninth-story balcony. Also, this man has been present in this concrete monstrosity since i moved in here in 2004, so if he indeed is on a stakeout, there's a good chance his intended target might not live here anymore.

Despite these plausable, although rejected, explanations for catching up on the comings and goings of our world while sitting in a parked van, there is one obvious fact that makes it harder to view this one activity with anything but increasing curiousity. This man has an apartment at his disposal, and it is within only a hundred or so steps from where he parks .

Furthermore, an apartment does offer several amenities that a van, while spacious, does not. When I am while sitting on my lazyboy, reading, one aspect of my suite that I find quite satisfying is how close I am to the washroom. Secondly, there's no telling when an enticing article about the location of current speed traps, or perhaps, what happened yesterday in Burnaby municiple court, is going to suddenly make a reader very thirsty. Being able to get up and grab another Coke Zero from the fridge and return to reading in mere seconds is not a luxury that I take for granted.

So, what is it that is so damn enticing about that van? When I was a kid, my Uncle Bob had a blue van that i thought looked very cool. I do believe it had a small, circular window near the back, a feature that let you know that this isn't one of your run-of-the-mill, cargo vans. During family gatherings, I would often try to get access to the van. Usually I could coax my cousins into opening it up so I could sit in the driver's seat and pretend to navigate through the streets while i looked ever so cool. Eventually, however, I grew tired of comandeering that gas guzzler, and probably went to go jump on the trampoline. Are we to suppose that this man in his mid-60s has yet to tire of the van experience? The surrounding area of our building does not offer a trampoline to jump on, so perhaps he is content with sitting in the captain's seat for now.

avatar

After months of non-stop hype, record-breaking sales and now an Oscar nomination for best picture, I took in James Cameron's CGI-dominated 'Avatar.'

The frustration I have with the majority of action-based films is that the director's intent is to bombard the audience with special effects. Usually, this is done in order to disguise a basic storyline and mediocre acting. By laying out the film in such a way, what I believe the director is telling me, the viewer, is that in order for me to have an enjoyable film experience, the plot should be spoon-fed to me, requiring no contemplation on my part. The director seems to have a preconceived notion that the audience of the movie either has no desire to challenge itself intellectually, or has not the capacity to do so. And the frequency with which these films are being made, I lean more and more towards the latter notion.

The latest example of this is in Avatar, where acting and storyline appear to have been an afterthought. Giovanni Ribsi, who has done admirable work in the past, portrays the stereotypical corporate CEO, Parker Selfridge. Throughout his one-dimensional performance he fails to stray from his goal of removing the Navi people from their Native land, Pandora, in order to access the unabtaniem beneath the surface. In his quest, he exhibits the icy demeanor we have come to expect from fictional company presidents, and refuses to acknowledge that digging up this unabtainium will cause great havoc in the lives of the Navi. In conflict this we see the predictable drama of corporate interest vs. environmental concern that has littered the news for decades, with seemingly no effort at coming up with a unique solution to this stalemate.

What makes James Cameron's latest opus so bothersome is that his resume shows that he is capable of making films foucsing on visuals without sacraficing the quality of the story. While Alien and the first of the Terminator films are now ancient in terms of special effect technology, both of these can still be enjoyed because the strength of the narrative carries the film along as equally as the abundance of explosions does.

However the greatest example of the merging of visual delights with story and at least, mediocre acting, is Terminator 2. In what was one of the milestones of big-budget, summertime, explosion-filled mind-nummers that now innudate moviegoers annually, Cameron was able to provide a storyline that was fantastical, but engaging enough not to be ignored. With it came the best acting performance of Arnold Swartzanegger's career, which, overall isn't exactly on par with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, but an acheivement nonetheless.

Which is not to say that a central role for Calfornia's current governor in this film would have gone miles to increase its overall quality. However, perhaps a review by Cameron of how he -previously relied on other elements to tell a story would have.