Guess Who I Met Last Night!?

Last night I wound up drinking from 5:30pm onwards and heading to the 20th floor of a friend of a friend's apartment building to watch the fireworks. It was a stunning spectacle from China as there is currently a fireworks competition going on in Vancouver with Canada, the US, and China vying for top honours. I haven't gone to the Celebration of Light (formerly known as the Symphony of Fire) for a while as I don't like dealing with the massive crowds some of whom can get rude/violent. It's been relatively quiet and calm this year, however.

Canada started off the contest last Wednesday with a Godzilla-themed display, while the USA countered with a fireworks theme of Love. Last night, China's theme was the Olympics and it was just gangbusters! The sky was brilliant with reds, greens, blues, golds, silvers... From the moment it started to the moment it ended, it was non-stop explosions of light in the evening sky.

Afterwards, I met up with some friends and went down to Celebrities (gay bar) as Vancouver is currently also in the midst of celebrating Pride, culminating with the big parade this Sunday! What better way to party mid-week than to go clubbing, get drunk, run into your boss' boss, and then meet the legendary transgendered icon Amanda Lepore!!! She was the special guest of the evening and did a performance for everyone, which brought the house down! Afterwards, people lined up for photos and as I didn't have my camera with me, I just went and told her how awesome she was and to thank her for being here. She was a total sweetie, which the organizers of the event also attested to.

Happy Pride everybody!

Vancouver Art Gallery

The recent exhibit KRAZY! at the Vancouver Art Gallery could have you cooped up for days if you're not careful. The exhibit is a study on comic books, anime, manga, and video games. Given enough time, you could spend all day reading all the comic strips they have framed up on the walls, sitting and going through all the graphic novels at a rest station, or taking a breather and playing some video games including an old school original Pac Man arcade machine. An interesting exhibit with lots to see and do, especially for folks who don't normally go to the art gallery but are interested in this genre of pop culture.



Meanwhile, two floors up, a new exhibit has just opened, featuring Chinese artist Zhang Huan. His pieces were more on the creepy and shocking side, with photographs, videos of his live performance installations, and painting/sculpture. One photo that stood out for me was of the artist doing a live installation inside an outhouse in Beijing, where he sat naked for an hour on top of the toilet, covered himself in fish juice and let flies cover and attack him.