So there you are, convalescing from days of seasonal festivities, slackly staring, mouth agape at the glowy computer screen on which these bits of text appear.

You could go play videogames or go bargain hunting, wallowing for deals among the frenzied pinchpennies packing their tiny Vancouver closets with post-Christmas booty.


Or you could walk among some of the city's lovely parks. That's right - walking. Like with your feet. On dirt.

Just because Stanley Park is a woody death trap doesn't mean that you, frail urbanite, are limited to sidewalks, crosswalks and the tiled floors of malls.

I'm a big fan of Everett Crowley Park - partly because it was a garbage dump for many years before transforming itself into an only-partially-controlled urban greenspace.

There are still people kicking around who remember the park before it was logged and turned into a trash heap. A little history:

The park, Vancouver's fourth largest, served as the city's main landfill from 1944 to 1967. Prior to that, it was a coniferous forest of hemlock and cedar trees with a waterfall and salmon-bearing creek. In 1944, after several decades of logging in the area, the municipal Kerr Road Dump was established, with the ravine and stream at the centre. In 1966, when the dump was finally closed, so much waste had been deposited the landfill was 49 metres deep in places.

Still, if you are not tempted by the chance to see steam rising from the ground as a result of heaps of rotting, subterranean refuse, there are other options.

Get the youngsters in your life out to the Culch for an evening of clearing their throats and flapping their lips with the multitalented C.R. Avery tonight at 8 pm..

Beatboxing - "the art of creating beats, rhythms and melodies using the mouth" can be terrible if done poorly, leaving crowds making tracks for the exit while the sound tech laments at the coming hours of draining saliva from microphones. CR is a cut above the crowd and is just as likely to wedge a harmonica between his mouth and the mic as he is to wrench your heart to a two note melody squeezed out of a battered keytar.

I'm halfway convinced CR Avery is an alien with a hidden second jaw.

I love the internet if I wans't a married man I'd try and date the internet. Sadly, that would only lead to drunken stupor and liver damage after the internet teased me and strung me along for months with endless promises of wild monkey sex that never seems to come.

It's things like the ability to listen to police and emergency scanners throughout the lower mainland (and beyond) that really suck me in. Scratchy voices saying things like "Bravo Charlie Echo - Roger" inevitably make me hot.

Down at the port of Vancouver you can watch the hustle and bustle through their many web cams that stretch from Granville to Renfrew and even a couple down at Deltaport.

For downtown views there are the cameras at Numinous.ca and the Kat Kam .

And if that's not enough action for you, there's always this series of videos of the Woodwards Building coming down.

There is a new show at the Culch.

Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes in 10 Days on Earth begs to have somebody gush over it. Immediately after the show I was all ready to sit down and spew phrases like 'poignant and giddy by turns' and 'a virtuousity of enchantment'.

Best line: "Get your head out of my ass!" - Lloyd God Allmighty

It's not what you expect of puppetry. It was nothing like what I expected. Armed with Pinnochio, the album cover for Iron Maiden's 'Number of the Beast' and that Dead Kennedys track I figured I was pretty well prepared.

I was not.

This weekend brings some of the world's best deep funk glitch packed heavy heavy breakbeat floor-stomping massive sub hum funk goodness to this, our humble village by the sea.



Lorin Bassnectar - one-man mop top beat freak armada - is throwing down tonight at Plush (750 Pacific Blvd) with DC's Fort Knox. This will be a massive show, so strap on your boogie clogs and get set to shimmy yourself into unconsciousness.

Then, on Saturday, after you wake yourself up and take a nice long bath to work all those lovely kinks out of yourself you need to haul yourself to the computer box and check the info for Twin Pulsations to find out where you will be spending Saturday night.

The mighty Lion-S of the Kootenay Pride is coming down from the mountains to drop some heavyness. Fresh back from breaking heads in NYC y'all are unprepared for this business. So good.

Also riding herd on the dance floor will be local nutters Taal Mala and Mazeguider.

Sunday will be spent in thanks and relaxation. w00!

That image up there is an ultrasound picture of the inside of my wife's abdomen. The more observant among you will notice the progeny.

In order to cope with the awesome responsibility of incipient parenthood I will be drinking my fear away at Fake Jazz Wednesday at the Cobalt, featuring The Quicksters, zarley zalapski , solar language & Cris Derksen.

Fake Jazz Wednesdays happen every Wednesday from 10 til mignight and, for the low price of three slim bills you can expose your tender aural processors to an onslaught of improvisational punk, skronk, noise and freeform maniacal soundwarp goodness. This in addition to the refined atmosphere of the Cobalt (the bar they couldn't kill) should leave you feeling minty fresh and much too tired to panic.

Also, it's the tenth anniversary for the Quicksters and if that doesn't make you want to gut a monkey then you must be dead from the nose down.