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Photo by hopeful hero on Flickr

Last week we teamed with our sister sites in Toronto and Montreal to launch a contest to prove once and for all that Vancouver is the best city in Canada. The thing is - so far we're being proven wrong.

The way the contest works is each city has a nominee in one of 97 categories. Brunch, bike organization, hockey team, rep cinema, yoga studio and local magazine are just some of the categories to vote in. Currently, we're leading 10 categories which puts us a distant third to Toronto (65) and Montreal (22).

I first heard the news of the elusive BC sextuplets on Global News a couple nights ago. They were pretty proud of themselves for having this BREAKING NEWS, which was actually "reports" from two unnamed "sources". Tabloid-style journalism, yeah!

Sure, thinking of six babies being inside a womb at the same time is pretty weird. But as journalists, what gave Global the right to lead with a story whose subjects were very obviously non-compliant? All the hubbub eventually led to BC's Women's Hospital holding a news conference where they gave out two crumbs of information. The babies were born about 3 months early, and the parents are Jehovah's Witnesses. Aside from being excellent fodder for Jehovah's Witness jokes (now we know the watchtower will be adequately manned, those parents sure will be Awake! now, etc...), that's pretty useless information as far as journalism should be concerned. Nevertheless, the Vancouver Sun ran three stories about the sextuplets and still, the parents are obviously refusing the spotlight.

So the Vancouver bus driver's union wants to crack down on bus driver assaults. Hefty reward for information that leads to a conviction? No way. Wasting your time, dudes. The solution lies on the No. 2 bus that heads out of downtown around 5:15pm on weekdays. The solution? A trivia game with chocolate bars as prizes.

I pretty much like taking advantage of any way I can be thoughtful without actually having to do anything. Like today being Buy Nothing Day. Doing nothing is a political statement? Sweet! Finally I can justify not wanting to stand up and move. I can sit on my couch and grumble about how bad consumerism is and I'm given every right to say I'm actually doing something progressive.

So in the spirit of all talk and no walk, here's my latest stroke of genius. The thousands of Vancouverites who've been drinking bottled water all week have likely produced a pretty hefty collection of empties. Some charity around here needs to pull itself together and spearhead a bottle drive.

Vancouver-based Memphis finally played a show in their hometown last Thursday night. After a postponed show in August, I was getting a bit antsy to see them. Another offshoot of the Broken Social Scene mob, Memphis is headed by Torquil Campbell, more recently of Stars. His Stars bandmate Amy Millan has been doing her own thing, and Memphis is Torquil's own thing, along with Chris Dumont. They've got the mellow dreaminess of Stars, but Torquil steals the show with very obvious and genuine passion for what he does.