With catchy songs, campy jokes and plenty of bump and grind, SHINE: A Burlesque Musical is about an infamous burlesque theatre and the family of talented misfits who try to save it from demolition… or worse, respectability.

This tassel-twirling original musical features the award-winning choreography of Screaming Chicken coupled with the acclaimed songwriting of cabaret duo The Wet Spots. SHINE will appeal to the same adventurous audiences drawn to productions such as Rocky Horror and Avenue Q.

WHAT: Shine: A Burlesque Musical
WHERE: The Waterfront Theatre, 1412 Cartwright Street, Granville Island, Vancouver
WHEN: August 12-22, Wed-Sat at 8:00 pm
TICKETS: $ 25 available from their website. Note that the musical is not suitable for under 18 years of age.
WHO: The Wet Spots/Screaming Chicken Theatre Society co-production.

My faithful readers will know that I’m a big promoter of local theatre, and that I am frequently privileged to be able to give away tickets for the plays I am invited to. This time, the organizers of Shine: A Burlesque Musical offered to give a lucky reader two tickets to opening night (August 12th, 2009). To win, simply drop a comment on this post and I will draw the lucky winner on Friday August 7th at 4:00pm and will announce it on Twitter (most possibly at #couchbeers).

Related posts:

1. Shine (Musical theatre review)
2. Bash – Latter Days (win tickets to opening night) #theatre
3. Taboo Revue Variety Burlesque Show (win tickets)

REVIEWING MY CHOICES FROM THE GUEST POST ON REBECCA’S BLOG

5. First off, I don’t know exactly how I ended up recommending Las Margaritas as one of my top five choices, given that I had a horrible experience a few months later.

4. El Rinconcito Salvadoreño isn’t right now my fave for Mexican food, but Karen Hamilton recently went there, so read her review and come back.

3. Taco Loco. Haven’t been there in months, so I’m going to hold back on my recommendation.

2. Casa Blanca. Haven’t been there in months either, so holding back on my recommendation too.

1. Sadly, apparently Tio Pepe’s was horrible for a visitor to UrbanSpoon (which is too bad because my experience was good). So, won’t make the top 5 anymore. Ooops.

SO HOW DID YOU UPDATE THE POST? THE METHOD

The first step I took was to narrow down the UrbanSpoon listings for Vancouver’s Mexican restaurants. I then looked at the listing and checked which ones I have recently reviewed to get a general feel.

So, here is the list of Mexican restaurants in Vancouver that I’ve recently visited and that I would recommend, in order of how much I like them.

THE NEW LIST

1. Salsa and Agave – Delicious. Tasty. Authentic. Inexpensive. Best place to have lunch with someone you care for (which then explains why I have been there so frequently with close friends of mine!).

2. La Casita – Inexpensive, surprisingly tasty and authentic, and they make some of the best margaritas in town.

3. Tequila Kitchen – Really authentic, very good food, upscale. A bit on the higher end in pricing, but good and very much real Mexican food.

4. Delicados – Kind of Tex-Mex-y. But filling, and quick for a cheap and good eat.

And of course, everyone and their mother have been suggesting that I go to Doña Cata. I was going to go just before I had to come to Mexico, but you can rest assured that I’ll update this post with a review of Doña Cata as soon as I go there for dinner.

THOSE THAT SOME OTHERS HAVE RECOMMENDED AND I HAVEN’T TRIED.

- Topanga Café. Don’t ask me why, but I might venture.
- Andale’s. Not sure about how I feel about this, but may visit.
- Casa de Amigos. They moved, and now there’s Chica’s (another restaurant) but I will try them at their new location.
- Poncho’s. Rebecca and John Bollwitt swear by this restaurant, so gotta try it.
- Zocalo. Even though I live literally 10 blocks away, haven’t tried it. May do it, but not 100% sure.
- Mexicali. Um, no, really not sure if I want to go there.

There were other suggestions in the Lower Mainland, so I might go to the one in New Westminster (Ole Ole I think it was called) upon my return to Vancouver. In the mean time, feel free to drop a comment and/or suggest any other new Mexican restaurants.

Related posts:

1. What Kind of Mexican Food Are You?
2. On the authentic Mexican food topic
3. My passion for Mexican food

I’ve mentioned in previous posts how much it irks me when people forget about pressing environmental problems such as solid waste. In case you didn’t know, the Vancouver Landfill is filling up (geez, I wonder why?).

People are SO intent on working on issues of climate change, that they forget that solid waste is a priority issue. It’s funny, though. If people implemented the 3 R concept (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle), I am pretty sure it would be much easier to deal with the problem of solid waste.

However, the cycle is not closed completely by applying the 3R. That’s also why I enjoy the idea that Fresh Start offers – give the recycled stuff to charity. By giving back to the local community, Fresh Start atempts to close the gap between actual closed cycles and open cycles. I really enjoy this business model, and I am sure that they will be able to implement new fresh ideas (hence Fresh Start!) in the near future.

[EDITOR'S NOTE - And here is a link to Fresh Start's blog!] Mosey over and check them out!

Related posts:

1. Fresh Start Recycling and Disposal Ltd.
2. Earth Weekend Vancouver Aquarium and Fresh Start Recycling
3. Waste Reduction Week Canada – Oct 19-25th, 2008

“A man makes a picture
A moving picture
Through the light projected
He can see himself up close
A man captures colour
A man likes to stare
He turns his money into light to look for her”

- “Lemon”, U2

My favorite job has always been the Paramount Theatre in Kelowna. I had just gotten back from a disastrous four months spent as an exchange student in France and needed to find something that kept me from returning to the grill at McDonald’s. McDonald’s had been a job that I had never been good at, always a few beats too slow and always a little too mindful of the tragic accidents depicted in the safety videos. A Big Mac never seemed worth the chance of losing a limb.

I started really enjoying my job there once I became an usher/projectionist. I liked the moderate amount of authority that the role provided, and the responsibility of having to not destroy a film print worth a few thousand of dollars. After I got it down I loved threading up a projector, because it’s not often in life I’ve had the chance to learn how to do something that such a small percentage of other people know how to do. I was good at it, though I did once melt about six minutes of Babe 2, and eventually I was even splicing the films together.

I started doing projection work at the tail end of the life of the union projectionist. With larger film platters the complicated task of seamlessly switching between reels on the fly turned into pushing one button and then sitting around for two hours. Theatre owners, which increasingly were large corporations, realized that they could pay a minimum wage idiot like me to do the same job as they had been paying a well paid union employee to do for years. When the union projectionists went on strike, I felt for them but the writing was already on the wall. My theatre was not unionized, but people who had been expecting to raise families on their careers were soon out of work.

It taught me that the job market was shifting, one day you’re a highly skilled employee and the next you’re being replaced by someone whose last job was mixing slivered onions with water for hamburgers. It’s a process I’m seeing repeated in my job at one of Canada’s largest cellular providers, as the job keeps shifting from a career in sales that was an actual career to a stop gap job for the people who couldn’t get jobs at Future Shop.

I don’t know if I’ll ever enjoy a job more than the Paramount. I loved staff shows, where we’d run a new movie on Thursday night in a staff only party. I loved movies, and for years saw pretty much every film that showed in Kelowna.

I have to say, I hope the Paramount won’t always be my favorite job. I hope to find something that I love to do, but each year that I get older it seems less and less likely. Maybe work isn’t supposed to be fun, maybe it’s supposed to be hard and annoying.

Jeffery Simpson is a freelance writer, and has written for IGN.com, the Kelowna Daily Courier, eVent! magazine, agent magazine and blogs at Metroblogging Vancouver [mbv] as well as his own personal site That Ring of Confidence [jks].

Related posts:

1. Being a superhero/comic nerd :) – Guest post by Jeffery Simpson
2. The Environmental Movement Needs You – Homer Simpson Has Already Joined – Guest post by Lotus Effect
3. All you need? Guest post by Pat Zaph

UPDATE – We are all playing Guitar Hero. I am absolutely bad at Guitar Hero. Or Rock Band? I dunno.

UPDATE – Just about everybody left. I am here with Tanya, Holly, Chris and myself. We tried Rock Band. We suck. That’s ok. We’re all drunk.

UPDATE – I just left Tanya’s. Holly, Chris and Tanya are so sweet. Everyone I met was awesome – Miranda, MJ, Corinna, Adam, Monica Hamburg, Nancy, David Drucker and wife, Rebecca and John. It’s interesting. I do care for these people, and I do so because they are part of the Vancouver blogosphere that I consider my friends. Phaedra, Keira-Anne, Richard, Jennifer, everyone… this is such a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Related posts:

1. Mandatory weekend recap
2. Launch Party Vancouver 5 – Semi-live blog
3. Weekend-ing