Glamour: Issue No. 11

n o . 11 glamour

vancouver comedy

laughing at ourselves

BLOODY BETTY

two-toned psychosis

Quarterly Conversations about Arts & Culture

5.95 ca / printed in canada

TOP LESS GAY LOVE TEKNO PARTY decked out

Thank you to the BC Arts Council for their generous support of our last issue, Vanimaux (available now).

(pg.36)

featured contributors

Rebecca Slaven is a librarian and

a writer. Her subject specialties include law, beauty, and croquet. Her format specialty is the how-to guide. These days, she mostly writes legal tutorials for Courthouse Libraries BC, but she has also written for publications such as Sad Mag, BC Living, and eHow.com. Sometimes she is funny.

But more often, she organizes funny people.

Ola Volo is a Vancouver artist whose

intricate illustrations — informed by her traditional Russian and Polish patterning and myth — address the personal, the animal, the urban, and the organic. Born in Kazakhstan, she graduated with a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Her penwork has graced walls, books, posters, and more. Her technique blends the improvisational and the precise, and places the animal along­side human in central importance.

contributing writers

editorial staff

Tyler Morgenstern Stephanie Orford Michelle Reid Neelam Sharma Rebecca Slaven Maegan Thomas

Adam Cristobal Editor-in-Chief

contributing photographers

Jackie Hoffart Copy Editor

Adam Cristobal

Lindsay Elliott Brandon Gaukel Monika Koch Shane Oosterhoff Patryk Stasieczek K. Stewart Alex Waber

cover photograph Brandon Gaukel

contributing artists sylvie le sylvie Ola Volo

Katie Stewart Creative Director

Monika Koch Designer Pamela Rounis Designer

Kristin Ramsey Copy Editor Megan Lau Associate Editor Michelle Reid Web Editor Jayme Cochrane Web Designer Robin Humphreys Advertising & Publication Coordinator Deanne Beattie Founding Editor-in-Chief Brandon Gaukel Founding Creative Director

Alex Waber is a Vancouver-based

photographer. He has been a professional photographer for four years, but he has been taking photos since he could walk.

His work has appeared in XO, This Is East Van, Out Magazine, Salon Magazine and Assignment Fashion. He can be found at the Remington Gallery, and currently takes portraits of antique cameras. He is also starting a shoot with Drone musicians in Vancouver. His favourite colour is British racing green and he is a leo.

sad mag would like to thank

BC Arts Council

Christopher Bennett The Biltmore Burcu Chandra Chinatambi Duchesse Ariel Fournier Geist Candice Harvey Marnie Hiebert Wade Janzen Kroma Acrylics Tina Krueger-Kulic (and Bogart) The Lab Francois Lalumiere Elina Lawrie Shmuel Mamorstein Alicia Faye Mizel T he Remington Gallery Emily Ross Richenda Smith S omething About Reptiles Jonathan Spooner Suzy Sabla

Bryson Sutton Carolyn Secord Ahmad Tabrizi Alicia Tobin Tyra Lee Weitman W2 Sad Mag is published four times per year by the Sad Magazine Publishing Society, Suite 534, 2818 Main St., Vancouver, B.C. V5T 0C1 Email: hello@sadmag.ca ISSN 1923-3566 Contents ©2012 Sad Mag. All rights reserved. www.sadmag.ca www.facebook.com/sadmag www.twitter.com/sadmag

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Sad Mag is feeling rather pretty in its new skin and is ready for a night on the town. It’s still the same Sad

you’ve come to love, packed with art, sass, and a hint of queering on the edges. But this winter, the magazine is a bit fresher and hopefully a smidge wiser. We’re extremely grateful for all the support that you’ve given us since 2009; as such, we would just like to look smart for you with our first full photo issue (and once again, it’s all film and Polaroid).

But a new skin inevitably comes with something of an identity crisis. This is Sad Mag’s coming of age issue wherein we explore issues of glamour and authenticity. It’s one thing to put one’s face on, but it’s another thing entirely to do so without losing a grip on one’s own identity.

In these pages, Sad Mag speaks to beautiful people who maintain a sense of self. We showcase Vancouver’s comedy elite in a series of photo spreads all over town. We peel back the skin that is Bloody Betty’s delightfully terrifying gorlesque in order to reveal Betty Draven. We talk to Rae Spoon about their latest literary performance. And we blast ourselves with Vancouver band Top Less Gay Love Tekno Party’s glitter bombs.

We’ve been around the block, and hope you’ll join us for another round.

— adam cristobal, Editor-in-Chief

table of contents

06 10 18 24 36 46

Fact vs. Fiction: Rae Spoon

Two-Toned Psychosis: Bloody Betty

Dispatches: The Rickshaw, The Prophouse, China Cloud

Vancouver Comedy: Laughing at Ourselves

Decked Out: Top Less Gay Love Tekno Party

(pg.36)

Person, Place, Thing

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FACT VERSUS FICTION Bridging in the queer performance of Rae Spoon. by tyler morgenstern photographs/ patryk stasieczeck

Through a scattered chorus of mildly embarrassed chuckles, the audience manages to stitch together an all-too-familiar refrain: “Oh you probably won’t remember me, it’s probably ancient history…”

The sing-along, led from the stage of the Rio Theatre by transgendered electronic musician Rae Spoon and Vancouverbased cellist and vocalist Cris Derksen, is to Jann Arden’s “Insensitive,” and it’s the finale to the launch of Spoon’s recentlyreleased debut novel, First Spring Grass Fire.

Though we in the audience pretend we don’t know every word, we revel in the shared nostalgia the song calls up. I remember being small, not even a teenager, and hearing the song repeated endlessly on “Lite 96, Calgary’s Light Rock,” my mother’s radio station of choice. For the number of times I heard the song, its sheer adultness never lost its novelty. It’s about sex and sweat and disconnection, lust gone cold and that terrible sinking feeling as you ride the bus home the morning after.

Lighthearted as the sing-along is, it does some heavyweight emotional lifting. It turns the darkened theatre into an intimate space of shared remembrance for the audience, a pointillist canvas made up of half-ironic, backward-looking glances and the forgotten blushes of the teen years.

That intimacy, and the temporal crossings it dredges up, vibrates on the same frequency as Spoon’s remarkably diverse career as a musician, storyteller, and performer. With First Spring Grass Fire, Spoon can add author to that list.

Hailing from Calgary, but now based in Montreal, Spoon first made their mark on the Canadian cultural landscape as a country singer, independently releasing several collections in the early 2000s. For a performer whose personal experiences of queerness and experimental pop aesthetic have been heavily covered in the music press, it seems an unlikely place to begin. But as Spoon tells me, it was simply a part of the constant reinventions that have animated their eclectic career.

Spoon’s remarkable debut novel, tracks the experience of growing up queer in Calgary. With a radically unstable narrative structure that excavates and revives memories in the hopes of imagining a future beyond the confines of the present, First Spring Grass Fire revels in the same sort of historical transgressions that pulse through much of Spoon’s music (Jann Arden covers included).

Couple this free-wheeling narrative with the fact that the heavily autobiographical text is nonetheless marked as fiction, and First Spring Grass Fire becomes impossible to pin down as a simple historical document.

“I didn’t want to put out a memoir, I wanted to have room to say whatever I wanted,” says Spoon. “I don’t really believe in fiction or non-fiction,” says Spoon.

It’s an ethos that carries over into their most recent endeavors, which similarly fixate on points of crossing and transgression.

“Gender Failure”, an upcoming storytelling, music, and performance art show developed with queer storyteller Ivan E. Coyote, for example, digs into the experience of coming up short within the gender binary and how it feels to find oneself in the in-betweens.

Spoon is also the subject of an upcoming National Film Board of Canada documentary, My Prairie Home, directed by Chelsea McMullan. Spoon calls the project a “documentary musical” that chronicles their return to Calgary after a long tour, fittingly by “blurring fiction with reality and reality with music video.”

Spoon’s career as a queer performer has been one of persistence.

They have stubbornly, almost doggedly born witness in each medium to moments of crossing, and fluctuations between fact and fiction. For Spoon, everything from high theory, to country music, to the question, “How do you cool your lips after a summer’s kiss?” is a potential bridge to something more.

“Being queer doesn’t make you any less from Calgary.

You’re not born queer and then wake up in a disco in Toronto with all the right politics. It’s a process.”

“I was very stubborn,” Spoon recalls. “I knew country singers who were cisgendered dudes and I would just go wherever they went and I didn’t care.” They recount nights playing on farms and in “shitkicker” bars in towns like Red Deer—spaces hardly known for their openness to queer art. “It was dangerous. But it’s cool to reclaim that. Especially being from Calgary. Being queer doesn’t make you any less from Calgary. You’re not born queer and then wake up in a disco in Toronto with all the right politics.

It’s a process.”

For Spoon, country music allowed two kinds of performance to intersect. To perform country music was to connect to the communities and landscapes into which Spoon had been born, while to perform gender in a queer fashion—to traverse its assumptions and live beyond or in excess of its narrow prescriptions—was a way to simultaneously subvert those same communities. In Spoon’s words, it was a “special kind of shield” or a way to “bridge the gap.”

If there is any image that characterizes Spoon’s performance work, it is this concept of the bridge and the experiences that crossing it permit. Spoon’s music, for example, has slowly but steadily drifted away from its dusty roots toward a more avantgarde electronic aesthetic, a motion that recently culminated with the release of their ninth album, I Can’t Keep All of Our Secrets.

The genre transition, as Spoon tells it, came suddenly. “I just quit one day. It was the worst business plan,” they chuckle, “being a trans country singer.” The move was hastened by an encounter with Berlin. In Germany, they recall, “it didn’t even make sense to make country music, and I’d never had a computer before. But I got a computer when I moved there, so I started to learn how to make instruments out of the computer.”

Despite this rather dramatic break, the translational space opened up by Spoon’s performative acts of bridging allows some trace of their roots to persist in a new aesthetic. As Spoon says with a laugh, “electronic music is like country music in Germany.

There, it’s like the music.”

Spoon’s artistic wanderlust has recently taken them beyond music, into the realm of literary fiction. First Spring Grass Fire,

Following pages: Lalumière photo-series by Patryk Stasieczek Model, Francois Lalumière FP-100c Instant

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TWO-TONED PSYCHOSIS Bloody Betty & the Glamour of Gorelesque by maegan thomas photographs / shane oosterhoff & lindsay elliott hair/ christopher bennett garments / david jack make-up/ betty draven

A polymorphic demon has just finished eating out an angel, literally: her uterus is strewn across the floor. Up from the darkness rises a gothic vision, flesh exposed and bloody, spiked teeth gnashing: Bloody Betty. An anthropomorphic hog joins her on stage, only to have its tongue ripped out with those gnashing teeth. If you’ve seen a show with a few red squibs or a bit of bondage, it may have seemed delightfully naughty, but it didn’t prepare you for this.

On the spectrum of corporeal performance art, Bloody Betty is on the grotesque side. She and her troupe, The Deadly Sins, have disgusted audiences for almost a decade. But Bloody Betty has an alter ego: Betty Draven, dancer, makeup artist, and horror junkie. While Bloody Betty is the official voice of the pair, Sad Mag brings you the rare opportunity to hear from Draven, the woman behind the demon.

You wouldn’t know it to look at her piercings and aqua locks, coiffed by electric shock, but Draven didn’t see a mohawk until she was 15. Growing up in wealthy, conservative North Delta, she was surrounded by normalcy. At school she killed time by doing her friends’ makeup in the cafeteria—her talent was plain.

Soon enough, the not-for-profit burlesque collective Screaming Chicken Theatrical Society discovered her makeup skills. But when they eventually put her on stage to dance solo, she didn’t fit in. She was too scary.

“I’ve been obsessed with horror movies and blood and intestines since I was a very small child,” says Draven, who remembers refusing to turn off the television when her mother caught her absorbed in a slasher flick. “Parents take note: I went to church and wasn’t allowed to watch horror movies as a child.”

But it wasn’t just an obsession with blood that sent Draven in her own direction, there were philosophical differences.

“I don’t say that we do burlesque,” she says. “Even when we do numbers without blood, I still feel it’s more performance art based. There’s no tease. Sometimes we come out already naked.

At the end of a burlesque routine, it’s the tassel twirl, the buildup is to the boobs. For us, the buildup is something completely

Nowadays, besides her own shows, Bloody Betty will appear at burlesque performances and at drag shows. She’s especially fond of the form, though it wasn’t until after she’d been performing across gender lines for years that someone told her she was doing drag. She has some fans in high places. Queen of East Van Isolde N. Barron remembers that “fate cackled with joy when we met. Bloody Betty is to the drag world what Satan is Catholicism.

We have to have her.”

Draven defines glamour as “whatever makes you feel sexy.”

I ask Bloody Betty and she agrees: “Glamour to me is anything that induces a feeling of fascination and allure. There is nothing sexier than high heels, a strap-on, a dull hunting knife, and an attitude problem. Throw in a some heroin and a mental disorder, and we have another Sunday evening at Bloody Betty’s house.”

From a feminist standpoint, this combination of sex and violence is uncomfortable—if still fascinating and titillating.

But the politics are not on Bloody Betty’s mind, and Draven is unapologetic. “We don’t try to be positive. I have performers not want to do things because they are offensive, but I feed off that. We do all kinds of stuff in the shows that won’t be accepted anywhere else. I cross every line that’s ever been put in front of me. I have no line. We try to put a twist on it to make light of it, but there’s nothing we won’t do because it’s offensive.”

Bloody Betty is even less worried. “They wouldn’t know a good time if it woke them up in the middle of the night with a double-headed axe only to smother them, then resuscitate them only so I could kill you again by chopping you into small sections that I would feed to your beloved dog.” No, there doesn’t seem to be a politically correct move in their choreography.

Draven isn’t fazed by Bloody Betty’s ravings, and why would she be? After all, the space between them is illusory. “I’m a very positive, happy, friendly person. I do really like people but I am so fascinated with the opposite. There are two people in my head that are always in combat. It’s the angel and the devil on your shoulder. If I couldn’t listen to my devil I’d go crazy. Bloody Betty is still me.”

“There is nothing sexier than high heels, a strap-on, a dull hunting knife, and an attitude problem. Throw in some heroin and a mental disorder, and we have another Sunday evening at Bloody Betty’s house.” different. There’s something else happening.” And while Draven spearheaded the “Gorelesque” trend, the term has grown to encompass shows that don’t come close to the vulgarity of Bloody Betty on stage. Bloody Betty defies classification.

In the early days, Vancouver wasn’t ready, but quiet Victoria embraced Bloody Betty. Her first show, The Blood Bath, was messy to say the least, and not just because it was 90 percent improv. “We had blood raining from the ceiling,” Draven recalls fondly. “It was sticky from the stage to the coat check 50 feet away. We had laundry bills coming in to pay for clothes that got ruined. Everything was sticky, everything was red for weeks.”

Her delight at this memory is not surprising given her fascination-turned-obsession with horror, gore, and—more importantly—serial killers. Their ruthlessness and psychosis are the ultimate inspiration for Bloody Betty. She’s read every book, watched every movie—her research is exhaustive.

“Bloody Betty is an escaped mental patient who may or may not really be a serial killer, but she definitely thinks she is. No real bodies have turned up to supply the evidence, but she believes she’s killing people,” says Draven.

When I ask Bloody Betty for her take, she waxes philosophical on murder: “[There’s a] filth and depravity that humans are capable of and responsible for but prefer to turn their backs on and call animalistic or inhuman,” says Bloody Betty. “Just because you say it’s wrong to kill or betray someone doesn’t mean you are incapable of it yourself. We are all just animals after all.

We are here to survive and only some of us do. And then some of us are executed over and over and it just doesn’t stick so we keep coming back from the dead ‘cause it’s no fun laying in a coffin with no one to sodomize.”

Studio photos by Shane Oosterhoff Fujifilm Superia 400 Live photos by Lindsay Elliott Fujifilm Superia 1600

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: Dispatches

THE RICKSHAW THEATRE 254 East Hastings

Fuji Superia 800

I felt gross. My loose-fitting cotton T-shirt clung to my body, my skinny jeans sponged my sweat, my shoes stuck to the floor, and my ears throbbed from the moaning of some band. The Rickshaw is a concrete box that magnifies the sensory concert experience to a near-unbearable intensity, and I was trapped.

I wasn’t sold on the music, but a pretty boy asked me to go to the concert with him, and I let my hormones make my plans for me.

I could taste the air, and I could taste my remorse. I went outside for a breather. My pretty friend followed.

The crisp, night air of East Hastings and Main Street — laced with hints of cigarette smoke and sidewalk detritus — filled my lungs. My friend lit a cigarette and took a long drag.

We stood in silence and gazed at the China-fied lettering of the venue’s façade. “Would you mind holding onto this for a sec?” he asked. “I gonna go pee.”

I attempted to balance the cigarette between my index and middle fingers with the casual ease of a regular smoker. After about four minutes of awkward seesawing, it burnt out. For the first time, I threw a cigarette butt onto the pavement and stomped it out. I waited for what seemed like the longest urination break known to man, only to realize that this is what it means to feel abandoned at 23.

I went back inside. — adam cristobal

“Prophouse is a cross between the living room of a kooky grandma and a rambling antique museum where they happen to serve delicious coffee and cake.”

Prophouse Café 1636 Venables

Fuji Instax

Prophouse Café hosts weekly blues nights and comedy shows, but when I last dropped in nothing much was going on. Students were tucked stealthily into armchairs, only moving to run highlighters across textbook pages or raise coffee cups to their mouths. When a coffee shop is described as “homey,” it usually means that the room has a Restoration Hardware or Pottery Barn quality — oversized leather armchairs, rustic wood furniture, mason jars. But not Prophouse. Prophouse is a genuine space for all that enter.

Prophouse is a cross between the living room of a kooky grandma and a rambling antique museum where they happen to serve delicious coffee and cake. It has a homey quality that feels more genuine and familiar, with piles of magazines slipping from shelves, mismatched furniture to go with the mismatched mugs, not-too-brightly lit despite the dozens of lamps tucked in every corner and hanging in clusters from the ceiling. Display cases abound holding collections of eclectic objects: pastel-coloured rotary phones, carved panthers, old cameras, children’s toys — relics of a time when Prophouse was an actual prophouse for

Hollywood North. I wondered, though, when looking up at the roller skates hanging from the ceiling or at the velvety panther painting over a couch, what kind of movie would require these props.

Unlike so many Vancouver cafes, you don’t feel out of place if you’re not hunched over a Macbook Air or conspicuously reading Infinite Jest. On a recent late summer evening I settled in with a group of friends at a big, round table for a round of Shadowrun character building, passing books across the table and sipping from giant mugs. Everyone else looked equally, comfortably unhip: curled up with textbooks, bending over desserts, admiring the panthers. It was close to closing, and the piano was silent, but music from the record player filled the room. When the record ended, the owner called out to the room, laughing, “Okay, what should I play next?”

— michelle reid

CHINA CLOUD 524 Main

I wondered if the China Cloud actually existed. Their Facebook page lists them as a Chinese restaurant, reviews on Yelp apply adjectives like nondescript, secretive, and discreet. Their Twitter account is bare. Of all the venues in this city, China Cloud is the physical embodiment of that band you probably haven’t heard of, and I began to form a fantasy of the place.

Scare banter online suggests that Tuesday nights were regular comedy nights — but that was posted two years ago. So, on a Tuesday night, I ventured out to Chinatown feeling somewhat audacious.

I hopped off the bus at Carnegie Hall and moseyed down Main, taking in the scenery. Scanning the street, my insides shriveled a little. There was no excited buzz in the air, no Where’s Waldo look-alikes or girls with shrill red lips milling around a door. Seeking out addresses, I was confronted by a steel

gate door with a little white cloud painted on it. I grasped one of the bars and pulled. It was locked. My phone read 9:00 p.m.

I walked back to the middle of the sidewalk and looked up.

The window above the door revealed long staircase that led up to a room in which only the ceiling was visible. The lights were on. Perhaps I was early and the show didn’t start until 10 p.m. or closer to midnight? I did mental thumb-twiddles.

Finally, keys chang-ed, the door swung open and a young dude in button-up plaid and window-sized glasses appeared.

“Is this place open tonight?” I inquired. “Uh there’s nothing going on tonight, no,” he said. I was advised to seek out events online and I made him aware of all of my attempts. “Yeah, we don’t like to advertise.” — neelam sharma

Fuji Instax

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From left: Chris Wilson, Peter Carlone, Tegan Verheul, Camiel Pell

L AUGHING at OURSELVES by rebecca slaven photographs /alex waber art direction /robyn humphreys

Many local comedians cut their teeth deconstructing Vancouver’s anomalies; the most livable city in the world with rents so high that friends have to share one-bedroom apartments, the gorgeous bodies of Kits Beach and the naked mess of Wreck, affluent hipsters being mistaken for homeless men, daily battles against crows, skunks, and seagulls against the backdrop of a lush and natural Arcadia. Vancouver comedians maintain an observational wit that extends to universal topics and holds up on international stages.

Our city’s lack of cultural institutions and prevalence of rigid bylaws challenge performers to get their hands dirty and innovate. Comedians take advantage of the lack of venues and warmly envelope their audiences in all-you-can-eat restaurants, Chinatown lofts, and formal theatres alike. Here, comedians tackle all forms of the performing arts and find inspiration beyond the conventional; these polymaths of humour create action movies, release live animals on stage, and publicly roast our mayor.

This is Vancouver: a bunch of hardworking jokesters who clean up real nice.

: Feature Ilford XP2 400

the godfather Alistair Cook is a generous man. In his own words, he is like a chef of simple cuisine who gathers great ingredients, and lets them shine. For over twenty years, he has been performing, producing, and teaching improvisation, inspiring the next generation of improvisers and strengthening the Vancouver community. Cook is the founder of the Instant Theatre Company, which now has a home at the Instant Shop on Broadway near Fraser, where he and others teach classes for newcomers and

experienced performers alike. He has also developed numerous programs that empower high school theatre students to take the stage and see themselves as more than just secondary figures to the jocks, the fashion plates, and the stereotypical cool kids. His influence reaches beyond the city as director of the Vancouver International Improv Festival, where he brings performers together on an international scale, encouraging them to share ideas and elevate their performances.

the heavy hitters Dave Shumka, Graham Clark, and Charles Demers are accommodating enough to change their pants outdoors for the sake of a photo shoot. The three joke that performers from other cities would be aghast at the general lack of dignity afforded Vancouver performers. All three are prolific stand-up comedians who are also engaged in a number of outside projects. Demers is the author of a novel and an essay collection. The Prescription Errors and Vancouver Special, respectively. Clark

is host of the legendary monthly comedy show, The Laugh Gallery. Shumka and Clark are the creators and co-hosts of the Canadian Comedy Award winning podcast, Stop Podcasting Yourself. Demers is a favourite guest on the weekly, hourlong show, which boasts listeners from all over the world.

From left: Charles Demers, Dave Shumka, Graham Clark

Fujichrome Provia 100F E-6 (expired) Styling, Tyra Lee Weitman Hair & Makeup, Carolyn Secord

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: Feature Ilford XP2 400 Styling, Tyra Lee Weitman Hair & Makeup, Alicia Faye Mizel

the golden boys Every Sunday — with the exception of Christmas and New Year’s — Ryan Beil, Aaron Read, Taz VanRassel, Kevin Lee, Emmett Hall, recent addition Caitlin Howden, and reserve member Craig Anderson dedicate two hours of improvisational rock operas, banter, and absurdist mishmash to an enraptured audience with their improv show The Sunday Service.

They even count Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson among their fans. But their acclaim now officially extends beyond Vancouver as the group won best improv troupe at the 2012 Canadian Comedy Awards and, with six nods, were tied for most nominations, including one for their monthly podcast, A Beautiful Podcast.

From left: Tasman VanRassel, Ryan Beil, Kevin Lee, Aaron Read

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: Feature Ilford XP2 400 This page: Styling, Tyra Lee Weitman Hair & Makeup, Carolyn Secord Opposite: Wardrobe Styling, Burcu’s Angels Styling, Tyra Lee Weitman Makeup, Alicia Faye Mizel Hair, Candice Harvey

the renaissance men Emmett Hall and Ken Lawson are a throwback to gentlemen of yore. As Sir Emmeth and Sir Kenneth of the heavy metal comedy band, The Knights of the Night, they tell legends of the sexiest puritanical lady in the land, total apocalypses, and the singing-less mermaid. They have also worked with audio virtuoso Pietro Sammarco on the local action-comedy film Steel Viper Force: Fiero’s Redemption.

The film’s soundtrack and theme, “Hunting for Humans,” invokes the epic themes and hooks of ‘80s action classics.

Hall is the music man and podcast producer/performer for The Sunday Service, as well as an animator for My Little Pony (yeah, that My Little Pony.) Lawson is an actor in The Movers, an improviser with the Comic Strippers and the Vancouver Theatre Sports League, and co-runs Some Assembly, a youth theatre company.

Although such versatility could easily give way to ego, the risk is neutralized by their chivalrous tendencies.

the soloists (opposite) One performer, one microphone. Alicia Tobin actively engages and enchants audiences with her passions for animals and snacks. Jane Stanton builds to a fiery comic crescendo elaborating on the temptation to pop zits and her desire for a child with an English accent. Ivan Decker questions bubble tea’s popularity, the driverless SkyTrain’s bedtime closure, and his own apparent fear of spiders. These three are funniest being themselves.

From left: Ken Lawson, Emmett Hall Next page: Ivan Decker, Jane Stanton, Alicia Tobin

: Feature Ilford XP2 400 This page: Styling, Tyra Lee Weitman Makeup & Hair, Alicia Faye Mizel Opposite: Wardrobe Styling, Burcu’s Angels Styling, Tyra Lee Weitman Makeup, Alicia Faye Mizel Hair, Candice Harvey

the new girl in town With a husky Kathleen Turner timbre, Caitlin Howden brings the audience and performer together. Whether celebrating her recent engagement, sympathizing with her regret at accidentally breaking an award, or learning how she made her shirt from a dress, audience members become her intimate acquaintances.

Howden is new to Vancouver and brings her award-winning eastern Canadian confidence and charm to the city’s foremost improv groups, including The Sunday Service, of which she is notably the first and only female member. She transplanted Ghost Jail Theatre from Toronto to Vancouver, which she co-founded with fellow comedian Ian Rowe. The show combines improvised comedy with improvised writing and, just like its creator, embraces the audience with a little edge, like a cup of mulled wine on a cold day.

the ones to watch (opposite) Physical comedy prowess is what distinguishes Peter Carlone, Chris Wilson, Tegan Verheul, and Camiel Pell from the rest. Carlone and Wilson always look out for one another, even if it means painting watercolours on each other’s bodies as a cure for hiccups or endlessly racing through the city fighting bad guys. In the past year, their sketch duo Peter n’ Chris won top honours at Fringe festivals across the country and garnered many additional accolades.

With the face of an ingénue, Verheul reads from an illustrated ABC rhyme book of crime and infidelity, and extols her Wiccan ways to elementary school students. She consistently shines alongside talented company in the eightpiece sketch ensemble Pump Trolley and improv groups Ghost Jail Theatre and Tegan and Sarah (not that Tegan and Sara). Pell has a depth of sensitivity that complements her inner teenage nerd, who idolizes porn star Jenna Jameson, and the deadbeat dad with a passion for self-defense.

Fat suits, facial hair, and fake teeth enhance her transformation without ever defining the physicality of her performances.

From left: Tegan Verheul, Chris Wilson, Camiel Pell, Peter Carlone

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Kodak High Definition 400 Kodak Portra 400 NC

Wardrobe Styling, Burcu’s Angels Styling, Tyra Lee Weitman Hair & Makeup, Carolyn Secord

the men of action Sean Devlin and Cameron MacLeod get things done. Whether Devlin reads aloud a complicated recipe meant for children, or points out that the Conservative Party won the majority with less than four in ten votes, he simplifies concepts to reveal their absurdity. He is a stand-up comedian, activist, and part of the team behind Shit Harper Did, the viral campaign that encourages Canadians to engage in political discussion. MacLeod goes to great lengths for alternative comedy, whether it’s buying a variety of expensive cheeses for a three minute sketch, or creating

a mash-up video of Dances With Wolves and Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy”. He is co-curator of comedy for the Olio Festival and helps produce shows like the roast of Mayor Gregor Robertson. MacLeod is also an executive producer, writer, and player in Steel Viper Force: Fiero’s Redemption.

From left: Sean Devlin, Cameron MacLeod

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“traditional turkish songs warped into something east of cabaret and west of gravity” A decade after their first recording “from Istanbul to Orangeville” something about reptiles presents their latest album Tövbe Tövbe. Available only at Burcu’s Angels, 221 East 16th Ave.

kroma artist’s acrylics (604) 669-4030 / suite 12-1649 duranleau st, vancouver, bc

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illustration by

Ola Volo

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like to thank burcu’s angels for being our glamour issue sponsor. burcu’s angels (604) 874-1030 / 221 east 16th ave, vancouver, bc

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n o . 11 glamour

vancouver comedy

laughing at ourselves

BLOODY BETTY

two-toned psychosis

Quarterly Conversations about Arts & Culture

TOP LESS GAY LOVE TEKNO PARTY decked out

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Top Less Gay Love Tekno Party & the Art of Glitter Bombing by adam cristobal photographs/brandon gaukel

From left: Donné Torr, Sean Tyson, Ian Bevis, Lucas Hamilton, Michael Shindler, Benny Schuetze Kodak Portra 160

“If we went to a Top Less show, we’d probably be scared in the back,” laughs bassist Ian Bevis. “We’re not extroverts. This is just an outlet.” “It’s like a birthday party, essentially,” keyboardist Donne Torr tells me. “You’re supposed to feel special on your birthday. And that’s the point of a Top Less show.”

Top Less Gay Love Tekno Party (otherwise known as Top Less) is a seven-piece Vancouver-based band comprised of Michael Shindler (vocals/guitar), Donné Torr (vocals/synth), Ian Bevis (vocals/bass), Sean Tyson (drums), Benny Schütze (vocals/drums), Kevin Fairbairn (guitar), and Lucas Hamilton (guitar). The band’s sound can broadly be described as an indie-pop twist on glam rock, though I’d hesitate to shoehorn them into a genre box. Each show runs on an arsenal of costumes, glitter, and euphoria, cumulating in an esoteric cocktail that can’t quite be captured unless you’re in the moment. Predominantly major keys undulate from the synth and speakers. Near-comically bright costumes flash on stage. Sweaty crowd members, doused in microscopic metallic bits of plastic, shimmer against the stage lights.

But when I spoke to Top Less, we were far from this netherworld.

I’m discussing the ins and outs of the band’s wardrobe with Donné Torr and Ian Bevis over a few beers at the Alibi Room.

Members of Top Less in everyday clothing are less like Britney Spears sans makeup and Photoshop, and more like Spiderman as Peter Parker. For four years, the band has performed in a variety of sartorial delights that often involve some degree of spandex, so as I glance over their ordinary Vancouverite apparel —jean jackets, plaid, and skinnies—I do a double take.

Both Torr and Bevis are adept in casual conversation with complete strangers, even if they’re not decked out. They are just as authentic in a pub as they are on stage, and I am acutely aware of the beer-induced glow emitting from my face. I’m not quite ready to betray my status as a fanboy, so I plug through the interview.

“We bought these tights today.” Bevis grins and pulls out a pair of tie-dye leggings to be accompanied by black jackets and blazing makeup. This is the band’s concert getup for fall 2012.

“Our spaceman suits might be retired for a little while,” Torr explains. “Our tights are gross.” The spacesuits in question were made-to-order concert wear. “We’re all sweaty after we play shows,” says Bevis. “And poor Donné usually tries to wash them.”

“We had short shorts. But even those are kind of gross. It’s total high maintenance.” “And Donné’s in a band full of boys.” “Yeah, have you ever been to a house where there’s a hockey dad?” Torr asks. “That’s what it smells like.”

The thought of fumbling through the DIY mechanisms of indie productions maintains a certain taste of romanticism, and even more so with Top Less. The band puts their own wardrobe together, and although their costumes are not their sole identifier, they are all hallmark. Prior to the dawn of the green hockey men, the members of Top Less donned pink, purple, and blue spandex onesies and formed a glam-rock legion of Power Rangers. Once these were wrecked post-tour, Sitka clothing gave the band their first set of pajama onesies. Top Less also donned dragon-inspired apparel to thematically appropriate the Chinese Year of the Dragon.

It’s not all just for show. These costumes serve a function that is just as internal as external. While the costumes add to the show for the crowd, they also provide support for the band. In short: these are power suits.

“I need them,” says Torr. “I feel like I need to put my superhero suit on.” “Especially since we’re all in it together,” says Bevis. “When it’s all seven of us, all dressed up like spacemen, it’s pretty magical.”

Indeed, Top Less has managed to engineer a kind of magic at their shows wherein the once-clear divisions between twentysomething subcultures are blurred. The dance floor draws a mix that is roughly analogous to the stereotypical diversity of a high school cafeteria. That might sound off-putting to some, but it is a delightfully confusing experience.

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Instead of tempered indifference between these subcultures, there is post-adolescent harmony. In theory, this notion might sound like campfire idealism, but in practice, it’s rather surreal.

This notion, along with the band’s moniker, can be a little misleading. A Top Less show isn’t exactly a place wherein Joe Frat Bro is meant to find a horn-rimmed Main Street dreamboat as a dance partner. “We’re not a queer band—yes, some members of the band do sleep with people of the same gender, but that’s not the point,” says Torr. “Anyone can come to the Top Less show,” Bevis says. “It’s not just the college kids. It’s not just the indie kids.We’re a happy band that wants our audience to be themselves, and not try to be something they’re not.”

Sometimes, a bit of glitter can work wonders.

and it ruins electronic equipment. But for most shows, we stay to clean up our own mess. I’ve definitely vacuumed a bunch of our seating before. So it’s not like we make a mess of a place and leave it.”

That being said, while venues might prohibit performers from bringing glitter through the backdoor, most venues cannot prevent audience members from smuggling glitter through the front door. Top Less has revised their tactic accordingly. On more than one occasion, the band has distributed bottles of glitter to fans within the crowd.

The glitter also carries consequences for the band’s equipment.

“It’s ruined all our shoes, all our guitar cases, all our pedals,” Bevis adds to the list of glitter casualties. Even the crevices between the keys of Donné’s keyboard sparkle to reveal metallic bits beneath the surface, and the band has lost a few synths to the material. “Glitter is a part of our lives now,” says Bevis.

Given the costumes, the glitter, and the crowd, where does Top Less’s music really live? Does a true Top Less experience begin and end on stage? Is it limited to live delivery in a concert space? Despite the band’s visual bells and whistles, there’s a certain earnest authenticity to Top Less recordings, and the band has had to capture their trademark concert vibe as a recorded artifact: an album set for release this winter. “Initially, it was hard for us to capture what our live show was about in the recording,” says Torr. “It’s often an emotional experience for us, and everyone at the show. I think that we’ve got it now, but it took us a long time.”

But in order to get there, the band had to work outside of the recording studio. Torr expresses the band’s dissatisfaction with their studio-recorded EP, and explains that Top Less decided to take back the EP and re-record it on their own terms and on their own time, primarily in Shindler’s loft.

There were other implications to this freedom. I wondered, for a moment, if in order to recreate the concert experience, Top Less had considered recording in full regalia with all the extraneous trappings. “Definitely clothing off,” Bevis laughs.

“Benny, for sure. I think he’s more comfortable with his clothing off, though. And it’s not like an ego thing, it’s not like he has an amazing body, he just likes to have his shirt off and sometimes

Kodak Portra 400N Fuji Superia 400

“Yeah, have you ever been to a house where there’s a hockey dad? That’s what it smells like.”

The last time I went to a Top Less show, I made the somewhat horrific discovery that it is impossible to leave the venue without emulating Twilight’s Edward Cullen. It’s safe to say that glitter and Top Less are kind of a package deal, and I needed an explanation. I ask Torr and Bevis about the first time the band glitter-bombed their audience. “It felt amazing,” they say.

Glitter plays a primary role in a Top Less show. It serves as a campy catalyst to the aforementioned breaking of barriers— not to mention, it’s a simple and inexpensive means for additional fun. “At first we did confetti,” Torr comments. “But then we found out that glitter actually is much more infectious and adhesive. It gets fucking everywhere.” “To embrace glitter, you have to just not give a shit,” Bevis explains. “It disarms people.

People will come to the show and take their shirts off. And then they glitter and there’s nothing they can do about it. So they just give up.” “You sign the contract,” says Torr. “There’s no pretension.”

It’s a risky business, though. Top Less’s glitter-bombs have not come without backlash. Some venues in Vancouver have outright banned Top Less from playing on account of the cleanup. “I won’t say which ones,” Torr says. “It’s a hassle,

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recorded in the nude.” “He never plays with his shirt on—ever,” he adds. “He just likes to be naked.”

It’s a question of comfort, really. In a creative space, comfort is important for people to produce the best work possible, and

waiter takes our beer glasses, I realize that Top Less would probably be a tamer version of bands already extant in Japan, and wonder if Vancouver really understands Top Less and their trappings.

But regardless of what the city at large thinks, their substantial fan base does, even to the extent that fans have whole-heartedly adopted the band’s aesthetic tropes. Torr recalls a rather poignant night at the Biltmore before a show, wherein a pack of young women stepped off of a bus decked out as their own Top Less Gay Love Tekno Party. “They were all in sequins and homemade glitter outfits,” says Torr. “And none of us from the band knew them. They weren’t our friends, or our parents… but it was obvious, and awesome. They were so excited. That was the first time I thought, ‘You get it. You don’t know us personally, and you get it.’”

And we do get it.

Kodak Portra 160 Fuji Superia 400

“To embrace glitter, you have to just not give a shit.” sometimes that requires removing oneself from the recording space proper. “I feel really comfortable working with Mike (Shindler) when doing my vocals, because we’ve been friends for so long,” Torr says. “He knows how to piss me off, but also how to evoke the things I’m trying to say. You can’t get that with someone you don’t really know who is an engineer at a music studio.” “You’re with your best buddy,” she adds. “Making art with the people you wanna be with anyway. Which is, I think, the best way to do it.”

With this album set for release, Top Less may be moving onto bigger things, and not necessarily in Vancouver. “We want to go to Japan. Well, I want to go to Japan,” says Torr. “I feel like we could do crazy shit there. Holograms? Magic?” “A Top Less show with just holograms,” says Bevis. “And us in entirely black, in the crowd.” I laugh. As our conversation wraps up and a

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: Person, Place, Thing

DAVID JACK Person

VIVO Place

David Jack knows a thing or two about glamour.

The U.K.-born Vancouverite has made his name creating clothing destined for the catwalk, the stage, and the camera.

“I’ve always had that sort of British, over-the-top flair,” says the fashion designer, whose influences include fashion houses Alexander McQueen, Thierry Mugler, and Hussein Chalayan.

The alumnus of Emily Carr University of Art + Design and Blanche Macdonald Centre primarily works on custom showpieces for performers (a panoply of drag queens, local singer Chloe Morgan, The Real Housewives of Vancouver star Jody Claman). A single dress takes at least a week to make.

Whether he’s working with lace, silk chiffon, feathers, LED lights, neoprene, or Swarovski crystals, Jack’s garments express the strength of the female body with nipped waists and strong shoulders.

Jack’s first ready-to-wear collection for women came out in early 2012, featuring catwalk models as dark, futuristic ultra-beings.

The tight, glittering eveningwear was something that wouldn’t have been out of place on Lady Gaga: it was intergalactic glamour encapsulated.

But can he translate that glamour for a population that wears polar fleece and yoga pants? Luckily, Jack enjoys a challenge.

His sophomore collection will have the same extravagant DNA, but rendered with a little more subtlety to give the pieces versatility for everyday wear, he says.

Today at VIVO, a Vancouver media arts centre and longtime fixture in the local art scene, the main gallery space is painted grey.

This latest renovation provides the backdrop for a fourscreen video installation of an orb rolling through space across the gallery wall, work by Canadian artists Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak.

At VIVO (the name stands for Video In Video Out) viewers aren’t beholden to a single screen as they would be in a cinema, according to Amy Kazymerchyk, Events and Exhibitions Coordinator at the centre. She oversees VIVO’s mostly evening and weekend exhibitions of installation art, video screenings, music, and performance art.

Since the centre was established in 1973, it’s hosted political art, sculptural installation, multi-channel projection and all manner of performances, such as the Montreal collective WWKA (Women With Kitchen Appliances), who performed sound art using kitchen appliances.“[Artists] can do theatre, dance and move around the room, and use video or media art in more of a collaborative way,” Kazymerchyk says. “The space itself isn’t necessarily determining where the audience is, where the performer is, where the image is.” “It’s pretty malleable,” she adds. “A lack of fixed seating means there’s no official stage —unless an artist decides to create one.”

Above photo by K. Stewart Fuji Instax Left photo by Monika Koch Polaroid Spectra Soft Tone Instant film (expired)

BITTERED SLING EXTRACTS Thing

Lauren Mote may be a whiz behind the bar, but there’s far more to a cocktail than the end product, according to the co-owner, mixologist and bartender at Vancouver catering and events company Kale & Nori Culinary Arts.

She and her partner in business and life, Jonathan Chovancek, specialize in creating delicious meals and drinks from complex ingredients. When Mote makes a cocktail, it’s not just about the bartender flair or even the flavour. Her cocktails are products of a months-long process of research, invention and elbow grease.

A lot of that work goes into creating Kale & Nori’s Bittered Sling Extracts. A few drops lend a drink or dish depth and surprising flavour, not to mention health benefits — Mote’s recipes are influenced by herbalism and Ayurvedic theory. She often also incorporates teas and essential oils. “It’s not just a simple hors d’oeuvre and it’s not just a simple cocktail. Each of those items goes through a very rigorous itinerary in our brains to get to that final item that we’re serving,” she says.

Mote and Chovancek make their extracts by hand from whatever fresh, local ingredients are at their peak (Cherry!

Elderberry! Crabapple and Cardamom!).

An integral part of the process is sharing the stories of their cocktails with diners, giving them an experience, not just a drink.

“It’s our job to take the consumer through that process so they can understand why we do what we do,” Mote says. “Delivering that is so much fun.” — stephanie orford

DIY VIEUX CANADIEN

Inspired by the “Vieux Carre”, 1937, New Orleans.

1.0 oz Collingwood Canadian Whiskey 1.0 oz Okanagan Spirits Canados 0.5 oz Spiced Canadian Maple “Dram” (solvent extraction) 0.5 oz Sweet Vermouth (solvent extraction) Bittered Sling Denman Bitters (solvent extraction) Stir gently with ice until well chilled and appropriately diluted.

Serve neat in a chilled old fashioned. Garnish with orange peel.

This page: An arsenal of tea for tasting; Lauren doing her thing at a recent evening of cocktails and hors d’ouevres hosted by O5 Rare Tea Bar on West 4th Ave. Both photos by Monika Koch Fuji Instax

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