Yesterday I got a media release from the Belfry, summarizing their AGM and reporting on their last year’s work. It reminded me that they’re also currently one of the most financially stable and successful theatres that I know of.

They have an huge subscriber base of 6700 people for a theatre that only seats 277. Their average attendance for their mainstage shows last season was a mind-boggling 92%. They recently extended their production runs from four to five weeks when many Canadian theatres are reducing theirs to three.

I’ve always been an keen observer of arts funding and economics, and so was interested to see where the Belfry got its money from. And, as regular readers know, I love a chart. I produced a couple. The first shows where the Belfry’s revenue comes from:

The second shows the blue chunk of the big pie–private fundraising:

I asked Mark Dusseault at the Belfry about why ‘gaming money’, funding from BC Lottery Corporation, is under ‘private fundraising’. He explained that there were various reasons: government accounting practice, no peer review process and the way the money used to be doled out.

When gaming was originally set up we (staff and volunteers from the theatre) had to go and work the events. We spent a couple of days a year either at a bingo parlour or casino. We were, in essence, fundraising. We had to apply to participate and there was no guarantee as to how much money we would make (or lose).

I actually remember doing this once at a casino for some Vancouver theatre company.

The green slice is public money from sundry agencies: Canada Council for the Arts, CRD Arts Development and BC Cultural Services are the biggest contributors. Their entire budget is about $2.3 this year.

Where Does the Money Go?

I suppose the other question is how is that money spent?

I don’t have any great insights into these numbers. I just wanted to explore them a little, and make pretty charts. Do you have any insights?

On the basis of a study of the architectural elements uncovered at the site, the researchers have been able to determine that the mausoleum, among the remains of which Herod’s sarcophagus was found, was a lavish two-story structure with a concave-conical roof, about 25 meters high — a structure fully appropriate to Herod’s status and taste. The excavations there have also yielded many fragments of two additional sarcophagi, which the researchers estimate to have been members of Herod’s family.

There are some photos of the dig on this slow-loading FTP site.

And today, scientists confirmed that they’d identified the remains of 16th-century astronomer Copernicus.

Researchers said Thursday they have identified the remains of Nicolaus Copernicus by comparing DNA from a skeleton and hair retrieved from one of the 16th-century astronomer’s books.

The findings could put an end to centuries of speculation about the exact resting spot of Copernicus, a priest and astronomer whose theories identified the Sun, not the Earth, as the center of the universe.

A hair from one of his books? That is seriously CSI. If you follow the link, they’ve got a ‘facial forensic reconstruction’ of the man. He looks a little cross-eyed.

Given my relocation to Victoria and busyness, I’m taking a year off from the organizing committee. We’ve got a schwack of great new organizers this year though, with fresh blood and ideas. I’m planning on attending the conference and volunteering on the day. I may try to organize a panel or something, time-permitting. I’ve been kicking around some ideas about the social media sphere and maturity.

It is thrilling to see how our little conference has grown since its humble origins in 2005 (website only sort of works).

• Remember SaveKaryn.com? She parlayed her debt-ridden slackerdom into a book deal, and now she’s written a novel, too.
• For some reason, portraits of 5000 iPods from around the world are less exciting than they used to be.
• Good to see that the Goldberg family is still doing well.
• Jewelry created from the carbon remains of your loved ones.
• A great database of childhood beliefs.
• And one link to my own site. I was really unimpressed with Ryan Adams in concert back in 2002.

Today Statistics Canada released data on divorces across the country in 2005 (the newest year available, presumably). Using their handy data manipulation tool, I generated this chart:

So which province has the highest divorce rate? As you can see, it’s Alberta. I’m ignoring the northern territories, because the sample size is pretty small (Nunavut suffered all of 10 divorces in 2005).

Is Alberta a Red State?

What gives? Why are there 27% more divorces per capita in Alberta than in Saskatchewan? Is this like the US, where so-called conservative red states have a considerably higher incidence of divorce than blue states?

Here’s one thesis: people marry younger in Alberta, and the younger you marry, the likelier you are to get divorced. That’s disproved, though, because Saskatchewan has the lowest marriage age (27 for women, 29.3 for men) in the country as well as a low divorce rate. That’s the red state theory–earlier marriages combined with lower socio-economic standing and less education. Stereotypes aside, I don’t think those factors apply to Alberta.

Here’s another idea that sounds plausible: compared to other provinces, Alberta has a low immigration rate. New Canadians, particularly those from Asia, are less likely to divorce.

Why do you think Alberta has the country’s highest rate of divorce?

Incidentally, while looking through some Statistics Canada research, I found this chart. The rate of divorce is apparently highest for those married about 4.5 years. After that there’s a long decline (to quote Neil Young). Once you hit 40 years of marriage, your odds of divorce are roughly two in 1000.

Brilliant! The Blinding Enlightenment of Nikola Tesla is an explosive, extradimensional and alarmingly theatrical exploration of one of the most formidable inventing minds of the past one hundred years.

The story, set in turn of the century New York, chronicles the career of Nikola Tesla, the inventor of alternating current, whose work in the field of electricity ushered-in the modern age.

The show was terrific. It’s the second Electric Company show I’ve seen, and they produce what feels like the most contemporary kind of theatre. It’s lively and detailed and a little provocative. The company draws on all the tools at its disposal–dance, song, gorgeous projections, clever staging–to render a satisfying if ephemeral vision of Tesla’s life. The show was exceptionally well-rehearsed, and the performances, staging and technical aspects were all a delight to watch.

In one scene, Tesla and Edison have a kind of singing and dancing duel at the World’s Fair. In another, Tesla walks among human-sized pigeons whose physicality is extraordinarily bird-like. The piece de resistance is a hilarious rendering of what early film looks like–all silent, flickering and performed at about double speed.

Plenty of Telling, Too Little Showing

One side effect of all this on-stage action is that the few ‘regular’ scenes feel banal and talky. This is probably reinforced by the play’s portrait of Tesla as an hermitic automaton. Very little character gets revealed–nobody really undergoes a change, in the classic dramatic sense. Two supporting characters thus feel pretty moot. In truth, I’d be happy to dispense with them, so that we just experience the dream-like story and stage magic for 90 minutes.

I also wanted a clearer explanation of Tesla’s inventions. The play takes pains to tell us just how extraordinary and ingenious the man was, but pretty much fails at showing us what he did. There’s plenty of talk about alternating current and direct current (wondering illustrated, I might add, with Slinkies), but nobody establishes why one is better. There’s passing mention of other inventions, but we’re mostly expected to take Tesla’s genius as a given. I’m not disputing that genius. But I do think it’s the play’s burden to explain it clearly.

My final complaint is that “Brilliant” was strikingly similar to “Studies in Motion: the Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge” (I wrote a short post about it two years ago). That’s not surprising. They’re both biographical studies of difficult, creative inventors working in the first half of the twentieth century.

All of these are minor criticisms. “Brilliant” has already played in Vancouver (though I gather the Belfry’s is a ‘revamped’ production). But if you get a chance to catch the show, I heartily recommend it.

Alas, the Nerd Bias Reigns Supreme

Incidentally, Tesla’s Wikipedia entry is proof that the online encyclopedia has not beat the nerd bias. I checked a bunch of other Wikipedia entries for towering figures–Ghandi, Mandela, Picasso among others–of the 20th century. Not one of them had an entry as long as Tesla’s.

Disclosures regarding my relationship with the Belfry: I just figured I’d take a shot at this. Let’s see…in my final year of university, I did an independent theatre history study course and wrote a history of the Belfry Theatre. So, you know, I’ve always felt a little indebted. I have written a couple short pieces that, years ago, were presented in the studio theatre there (also, indebted). I have friends and colleagues amongst the Belfry’s artistic staff. Our tickets to the show were comped, because Julie and I have done a very little ad hoc consulting for the Belfry. We seriously considered the Belfry as a venue for our wedding…the list goes on and on.

Today, via Andre on Twitter, I heard about goodsense, a new network focusing on “the best, brightest, and most credible green websites”. One of the founders is Colin Brumelle, who used to work at Bryght (now part of Raincity Studios).

They haven’t got a list of publishers up yet. This seems fairly crucial, so I’m going to email them and enquire about that. Regardless, I think that such a network might be able to weather the economic downturn better than most.

UPDATE: I got a prompt response from goodsense founder and CEO Adam Wood: “We’re just finalizing our list of publishers and expect to have one we can share publicly in the next couple of weeks.”

The righteous indignation is pretty thick. Amy Gates characterized it as an attack on ‘babywearing’ (a term I hadn’t heard before). Jennifer says the ad “is offensive and extremely disrespectful to moms”. And, as you’d expect, there’s plenty of chatter on Twitter.

After watching the ad twice, I can’t understand what all the fuss is about. Is the problem that Motrin suggests that carrying a child in some kind of wearable attachment might result in pain? That seems like a legitimate possibility. If a backpack or shoulder bag hurts your back, then why wouldn’t carrying a kid?

Is there some massive anti-baby-wearing conspiracy that I don’t know about? Are the nation’s pram-makers secretly funding anti-sling propaganda?

I’ve also read a lot of criticism of the ad’s thesis that “wearing your baby seems to be in fashion”. That sounds accurate to me. Every celebrity magazine I see at the grocery store features famous women and their babies. Frequently the celebs are ‘wearing’ their baby. If these magazines reflect current trend, then it’s fair to say that “wearing your baby seems to be in fashion”. Let me put this question to my older readers: is baby-wearing more popular today than it was twenty or thirty years ago?

Does Your Kid Hurt Your Back? Try Our Pills

The whole thing strikes me as a heated over-reaction to a totally ordinary advertisement. The rage from the mommy blogosphere implies that no mother ever suffered any pain from wearing her baby, and that the very notion is somehow abhorrent. When I compare this with the recent breast-feeding plus H&M issue, it pales in comparison along any axis.

Importantly, the ad doesn’t advocate a particular approach to child-rearing. It just says “hey, if your back hurts from wearing your kid, try our painkiller.” What am I missing?

In any case, it could make a nice fresh case study for the book we’re writing. We have a pending chapter tentatively entitled “Damage Control”.

UPDATE: Motrin posted an apology (direct link to the image) and promised to pull the ad. I’d excerpt it here, but it was posted as an image, not text. On the other hand, the image file is called ‘marketing_message.jpg’. If they had gone with text, that message might reach more people.

UPDATE #2: Here’s Seth’s take on Motrin’s response. He thinks it’s a “carefully crafted non-statement of a committee”.

UPDATE #3: Refreshingly, the Queen of Spain says “what happened this weekend went from smart, powerful activism to Palin-rally lynch-mob.”

UPDATE #4: I don’t think it’s very funny, but technically speaking here’s an excellent takeoff on the Motrin ad (thanks to James):

Both issues matter, but one matters a lot less in my worldview.

In any case, tomorrow I’m getting out to vote in my local election. That’s because our personal trainer, Nick Baker, is running for city council. He’s a thoughtful guy, and makes sense on the issues that seem to matter to Victorians:

I applaud the efforts made by the city to handle the homelessness problem, but it feels like too little, too late. The emphasis on homelessness, while definitely an important issue, neglects or even directs blame to the wrong people for the mess our downtown has become. Drug use and addictions need more aggressive tactics to rid our streets of the drugs and crime. by focusing on providing safe detox centers with ongoing rehabilitation, we can save lives and money.

Debating strategies for combating drug addiction has also made working out slightly less miserable.

Nick’s also got a Facebook page.

On the Vancouver Front

I spent some time trying to identify the major differences between Peter Ladner and Gregor Robertson, the two leading candidates in the Vancouver mayoral race. I’ve met Mr. Ladner, and he seemed like a savvy, straight-up guy (and apparently a former editor of Monday Magazine). He gave me a straight, non-politcal answer to a question I asked about (of all things) landfills. A bunch of my peers advocate strongly for Mr. Robertson.

Looking at their platforms, I’m having a hard time picking between them. I don’t have a vote in Vancouver, so happily it’s academic.

Who are you voting for, wherever you live (assuming, you know, that you live in BC)?

Didn’t Blenz used to eschew crazy Starbucks-esque sizing? What’s with ’supremo’?

Incidentally, this post shows off the new site design’s ‘light box’ functionality. If you click the above photo, you should see a kind of pop-up thingie that shows you a bigger version (speaking of the tyranny of size). I hope it’ll be handy for instances when I want to share a big image. The cup lids aren’t example a great example, but you get the idea.

UPDATE: At least, that’s what it should do. The light box thingie doesn’t seem to be working at the moment–I’ll trouble shoot as time permits.

UPDATE #2: Yeah, that works for me now, too. Don’t know what’s up with that.

In this frenetic, multifarious media landscape, and with more families where both parents work, I wondered about the longterm prospects for these shows. Who’s watching them? I guess there’s always the young and the old, and TiVo for keeners. Plus, TV has experienced an extraordinary leap in quality (in every respect–storyline, acting, budgets, HD video, and so forth), where-as I gather the soaps have remained the same.

I went looking for an article on the state of the daytime soaps. I found this New York magazine piece, which blames reality TV for the soaps’ decline:

The villain in this piece is the reality show. When veteran soap-opera producer Mary-Ellis Bunim created The Real World for MTV in 1992, soap opera’s exclusive grip on emotionally manipulative programming began to loosen. “They’re closer cousins than most people realize,” says TV historian Ron Simon. “If you look at the Internet chat boards for soaps and reality shows, the audiences are asking the same question, ‘Why is the character doing this?’ They’re both a way to measure your own life.”

How far have soap opera ratings fallen? This Wikipedia article has the answer. In 1998, the top show, “The Young And The Restless”, averaged 7 million viewers a day. Today, it receives just 3.6 million viewers. That’s a serious drop. And what’s particularly interesting is that the numbers have been in slow decline from the very beginning. In 1952, “Search For Tomorrow” averaged 16.1 million viewers, at a time when the US had roughly half the population it has today.

Apparently one way soaps have cut costs is by firing a lot of costly veteran actors. That seems to make sense. If this trend continues, I wonder how many daytime soaps will be around in 2018?

In the film, Christiansen plays David Rice, who discovers as a young man that he can teleport. The rules of this power are a little fuzzy, but he seems to be able to ‘jump’ to any place he can picture in his mind’s eye. Another ‘jumper’ in the film is able to transport “about two tons” of stuff, both organic and inorganic with him. David, of course, starts robbing banks.

Lying in bed with a slight fever, I wondered what legal jobs a teleporter might be good at. Here’s what I came up with:

• Personal bodyguard - He can instantly teleport his client of out harm’s way.
• Courier - When you really need it there by 10:01am. This also applies to human transport.
• Mercenary or spy - Obviously there are lots of possibilities for stealthy incursion and sabotage.

That’s all I could think of. Do you have any ideas?

Playboy Enterprises Inc. disclosed in a Wednesday regulatory filing that upcoming cost-cutting measures will include eliminating 55 jobs at the Chicago publishing and entertainment concern.

In the Securities and Exchange Commission document, Playboy said that a plan to reduce annual costs by $10 million is being increased to $12 million “in light of current economic and media conditions.”

In fairness, there’s more to Playboy than a magazine, but the news got me thinking about the 55-year-old periodical. I don’t know that it’s in any serious trouble. According to Wikipedia, it’s got a circulation of 3 million, down from a high of 7.1 million in 1972. That’s still better than, say, Maxim (2.5 million), Esquire (700,000) or Details (500,000).

But let’s imagine that the magazine is struggling. I got to thinking about what radical action I’d undertake to right the ship. The first thing that occurred to me: get rid of the naked women.

“But,” says the VP of Marketing, “the naked women are our brand! They’re what differentiates us from Maxim et al!”

Nay, I say. Nudity stopped being a differentiator some time in the mid-nineties, when the web became a den of inequity and rife with porn. As any web surfer knows, there’s all forms of nudity to be found for free on the web, from the gentlest erotica to the weirdest fetish. The same is true for periodicals, obviously. There’s Hustler, obviously, but even mainstream magazines like Maxim are often exactly two exposed nipples away from precisely mimicking the images in Playboy.

So, I’m unconvinced that anybody really buys the magazine for the pictures anymore. They buy it for the fantastic essays, interviews and short fiction.

Personally, I’d feel still feel a little sheepish buying an issue of Playboy and a lot sheepish reading it on the bus. Maybe Playboy ought to drop the naked photos altogether, and focus on what really differentiates them from the herd?

I didn’t have a lot of grand plans for the redesign. Mostly I just was tired of the old design, and thought it was high time for a new one. Plus, I wanted to broaden the main column space a bit, make the site widget-ready, implement threaded comments, get all the static pages into WordPress and tweak sundry other bits and pieces.

One Mashed-Up Header

I am particularly pleased about the way the header graphic came together. Regular readers may recall that, back in March, I ran a competition on Pixish (now defunct, sadly) to get a new header graphic designed. It looked like this:

That was designed by a guy named Sam, who lived in Brighton. It combined a photo that Roland took of a film lot directional sign (that really said ‘DB’–no Photoshopping required) with a photo of me that Phillip took at BarCamp.

I handed the header graphic to Tzaddi, who tweaked it and built out the rest of the site’s aesthetic. In early previews of the site, people weren’t keen on that photo, so we replaced it with one that Scott Beale took at Gnomedex.

The header is the happy result of an ad hoc collaboration between five people and powered by Creative Commons. Plus sixty4media did the installation and upgrading of WordPress, so I suppose that’s seven people.

Feedback Welcome

I welcome any and all feedback. I’m pretty happy with the aesthetics at this stage, but I’m open to suggestions. If you spot anything that’s funky aside from the obvious, feel free to leave a comment. And do let me know if you have an opinion on what belongs in a site’s sidebars.

The middle of the film takes place in the then small town of Calgary, Alberta. It features all the archetypes of the Canadian historical epic: the orphaned daughter, scorned by the townspeople; her young brother, denied the chance to go to war; the town drunk, played by a fat-suit-wearing (I hope) Gil Bellows and the shell-shocked veteran returned from the front. It’s all horse rides and hobble skirts while Paul Gross’s character falls for the aforementioned orphan, played by the lovely Caroline Dhavernas.

But, of course, sacrifices must be made, and the film ends predictably with the muddy, bloody Battle of Passchendaele.

From the CBC archives, where’s there’s a great short radio documentary about the battle:

On Nov. 6, 1917 Canadian troops captured Belgium’s Passchendaele ridge, ending a gruelling offensive that had begun on July 31, 1917. The Battle of Passchendaele is remembered for its atrocious conditions, heavy casualties and Canadian valour. Canadians, instrumental in securing victory, earned a total of nine Victoria Crosses for their courage.

It’s not Saving Private Ryan, but if you (like me) can’t get to a ceremony today to honour our armed forces, present and past, you could do worse than to watch Passchendaele and think about their sacrifice.

Well, some of my faith in the US is restored this morning. Senator Obama’s election to the White House is an extraordinary gesture of hope that ought to resonate around the globe. His acceptance speech was yet another example of awesome oratory. Let us hope that President Obama governs the way Senator Obama campaigned.

Of course, there were a few disappointments last night. California voted ‘yes’ on proposition 8, effectively banning gay marriage in the state. This exit poll is particularly shocking, indicating that 70% of African-Americans voted ‘yes’ on the issue. I should really learn more about the rationale behind referendums. Why do we (and the US much more than us) have them, and under what circumstances?

Likewise, Alaska probably re-elected an 84-year-old convicted felon (who thinks the Internet is ‘a series of tubes’) to the Senate. He’ll be the first person ever to be re-elected to the Senate after being found guilty on criminal charge. As someone said elsewhere on the web this morning, stay classy, Alaska.

Hey Julie,
My wife (and soon to be born child) is just getting started with her “birth process” so I will not be able to look at this stuff for a few days :)

Heh. I gather that birth process can take a while, so the father might as well be answering email in the meantime, eh?

I spent the past weekend in Obama, and awesome doesn’t even begin to describe how awesome it was.

Obama, a fishing village on the Sea of Japan, has transformed itself into a hotbed of Barack Obama activism. Although, I suspect the people of Obama are rooting for Obama not because they like his politics, but because they like his name.

The charming portrait of Obama featured in the flags and posters that line the town’s main street looks like it was sketched in about five minutes.

She includes plenty of photos, including this crazy clay statue.

Let’s ignore, for the moment, that ’sprinkler’ is not a verb. Does this really matter to their buyers? I’d imagine that their target demographic would be empty-nesters and young professionals, most of whom have lived their entire lives in ‘unsprinklered’ accommodation. Is the omnipresence of sprinklers going to convert them to buyers?

Maybe I’m just biased. In our Yaletown apartment, a neighbour’s sprinkler-related mishap caused a flood.