More Free Comics than Table space…lol!, originally uploaded by ELFSAR COMICS.

We’re poised on the edge of summer movie blockbuster season it’s clear that once again some of the biggest movies of the year are going to be based off of comic books. Iron Man, The Dark Knight and other all began as drawings on a page sold from comic book racks and newsstands. While a movie based on a popular novel will boost sales of the novel, comic books rarely experiance the same post-Hollywood bump. Attracting new readers is vital to the industry, which was why the major publishers got together and created Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) [fcbd].

It’s a yearly event and this year FCBD falls on Saturday May 3rd.  That’s this Saturday.  There is no need to buy anything, you will not be called at home at all hours of the night by Stan Lee trying to up-sell you into a Spider-Man subscription and best of all these are some really good books specifically designed to be new reader friendly.

Some stores go through a lot of trouble to make FCBD a really fun event, and worth coming in for. Elfsar in Yaletown especially seems to go out of their way every year to make things interesting. The full list of comic book stores in Vancouver that are participating is after the jump.

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Everyone of the authors here at Vancouver Metblogs have their own blogs where they also blog.  Every so often I like to go through the blogs of some of my fellow Metblogs authors [mbv] and highlight a few of their recent great posts.

• Carol Brown - carolbrowne.com ::Carol writes about attending one of the series of free concerts that have been held at Canada Place over the last few Wednesdays where she saw Kelowna band Kinship [cb].
• Ghosty - Reverb ::Ghosty has begun to take public transit and has noticed how isolated everyone seems to be as they travel to and fro [rvb].  Is it just that our iPods and mobile phones keep us from connecting to people, or is there something more to this isolation?
• Rebecca Bollwitt - Miss604.com ::Rebecca has a lot of good guest blogging up from SXSW, but to highlight a post by her I’m pointing out her list of songs that she’s listening to [m604].  I agree with her on Hospital Musicbeing the best of 2007, but Nada Surf haven’t done anything for me since I was all emo about not being cool and they released “Popular”.
• Rod - rodtempleton.net :: Rod’s got an article about The Guardian’s list of the world’s 50 most powerful blogs [rt], which apparently include the lolcats meme.  Rod notes that most of the blogs listed aren’t tech blogs.
• Jeffery Simpson - That ring of confidence :: Hey that’s me.    Picking a post to highlight is like picking one of my own children to feed to the wolves.  Sadly I’m not allowed to have children due to my ideas on the role of wolves in childcare.  My most recent post is about how my life is too dull to blog about [jks].  Doesn’t that just make you want to click that link?

Night Life, originally uploaded by *Sherry*.

My girlfriend [ls] works at a hostel in town, so she meets a lot of people who are first moving to Vancouver and looking for places to rent. It’s a hard thing to do, finding a rental in this city, with rents getting out of hand across the lower mainland this is not a renters’ market. Even if you don’t have a good chunk of money stolen from you it’s a troubling and often perverse situation

Craigslist [cl] is a useful tool for home hunters, but it’s also a tool for con artists who have been renting properties that either don’t exist or aren’t for rent. After collecting as much money as they can, usually the first month’s rent and security deposit, they vanish for a bit and then post a new ad for a new property. The annominity of Craigslist lets them post multiple listings, with no way to track them.

You’ve probably heard a version of this story, especially if you’ve been hunting for a place to live and the CBC recently picked it up [cbc]. The trouble is that in this market it has become increasingly common to pay for a rental sight unseen, and though the police are advising against it if you’ve been looking for a place to rent for awhile sometimes it can feel like you don’t have much choice. I’ve known people who have gone to view a property and been told that it’s already rented because someone showed up twenty minutes before them with a security deposit, first and last months’ rent all in cash.

Things to look for when renting through Craigslist:

- owners are out of the country and can not show the property: Being prepared with a deposit and rent when you go to look at the place is smart, but paying money to someone who is unable to show you the place is looking for trouble.

- the deal that’s too good to be true: Vancouver is expensive. If you see a rental posted that’s quite a bit cheaper than anything else be suspicious. That’s not to say that there aren’t deals out there, but be wary.

- make sure the address exists: it’s not impossible to fake a rental with a real address but if you can’t be bothered to see if there’s actually an apartment building where you’re going to be renting then maybe you deserve to be stolen from

What the?

Originally uploaded by Jeffery Simpson.

I believe this ad if for a Chinese New Year thing at the QE Theatre on Feb 9th, but beyond that I can’t really make much out. It might not even be for Chinese New Year, it might be for some sort of elaborate puppet show or perhaps to watch a young boy sing and then get eaten by an aligator.

My favorite part of the poster is the bit in the background where a UFO is using a tractor beam to steal an elephant. Or possibly the octopus hiding in the bush, as they are known to do.

I don’t want anyone to explain this to me, or translate it, because frankly it’s a special kind of beautiful the way it is.

NetNewsWire 3 beta

Originally uploaded by Jon Hicks.

So you’ve picked up Netnewswire for free [ng] and you’re wondering what to read with your new fab piece of free software. Well Metroblogging Vancouver have had RSS feeds for a long time now, but since I myself am taking advantage of the free RSS reader I figure it’s worth mentioning them again.

We have:

- Full posts [mbv]
- Full posts with no comments [mbv]
- Full posts from all of Metroblogging’s city sites [mb]

If you have a favorite author we break it down into individual RSS feeds for each blogger, just to give you full control over what gets sent to your RSS inbox.

We have:
- Carol Browne’s posts [mbv]
- Tim’s posts [mbv]
- Rebecca Bollwitt’s posts [mbv]
- Ryan Cousineau’s posts [mbv]
- Maktaaq’s posts [mbv]
- Matt’s posts [mbv]
- Jeffery Simpson’s posts [mbv]

In his book U2: At the End of the World, Bill Flanagan writes about watching Sinead O’Connor record the song “You Made Me The Thief of Your Heart” in a dimly lit recording studio surrounded by candles and flowers. It was, Flanagan noted, how he used to imagine how all of his favorite records were recorded before he became a music journalist and discovered that most of the time studios have very little of the magic to them that music fans would like to believe they have.

I mention this not because I’m pitching for a spot with Metroblogging Dublin [mbd] but because I know more than I’d like to about the recording of Matthew Good Band’s The Audio of Being, and for a long time that’s come between me and a really good listen to the album. It was not recorded in ideal circumstances, the Matthew Good Band was barely on speaking terms with one and other and broke up shortly after its release. It gets dismissed as the contractual obligatory record, or the one where everyone in the band went crazy and tried to buy the dolphins in the Vancouver Aquarium for the world’s most expensive sushi dinner (a completely untrue rumor of excess that I’m starting right now).
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IMG_0104.JPG

Originally uploaded by Jeffery Simpson.

There is a certain philosophy of music criticism that would argue that reviewing a Spice Girls concert is sort of like doing a foodie review of McDonald’s, that the product on display is so pre-packaged, manufactured and predictable that it would be a pointless exercise. Having gone to the girls’ tour kick-off last night at GM Place I figured it was for the best that I did, and allowed the review to act either as an apocalyptic warning driving some away from future tour dates, or for some or a siren’s call for others enticing them towards the shallows to catch the last gasp of the 1990s’.

Think of the things we have now that did not exist at the height of the Spice Girls popularity, before their long breakup that their record label struggled against following the departure of Geri Halliwell. We have iPods, Wikipedia, The War In Iraq II, September 11th, lol cats, cellular telephones with tiny cameras in them, the word “blog” and Paris Hilton. The Spice Girls meanwhile have been frozen in carbonite, ready to be unleashed again when the moment is right.

Or maybe not frozen in carbonite, though career wise they might as well have been. Instead they’ve been having babies, sleeping with Eddie Murphy, marrying footballers, “acting”, helping the United Nations, releasing solo albums and engaging in ridiculous reality television shows. It’s hard out there for a C-list celebrity, especially when as a group they attract A-list crowds and sell out stadiums with the sort of regularity as an act with eight times their back catalogue.

Which brings us to last night, the first show on their reunion tour at Vancouver’s GM Place and the night where tens of thousands of screaming girls went to see their former heroes (without their parents this time). The thirteen year olds for whom “Girl Power” had been more than a slogan on posters had grown ten years and largely seemed to have embraced the new girl power of Paris Hilton and her ilk.

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With David Beckham and the LA Galaxy coming into town to play a friendly game against the Vancouver Whitecaps it’s time to learn a little bit about football. So in the run up to Tuesday’s game, tickets still on sale [wc], I’m going to take this oppertunity to write about the sport I love. Today then, five things you should know about soccer.

Real Madrid at the Bernabéu

1) It’s called football

Our football, the one with the forward hand passing and the dog fights, is known as American football in the rest of the world. Soccer is football in the rest of the world. Which makes sense since a) football was football before American football was football and b) American football has more in common with rugby than football. Typically as Canadians we side with the rest of the world on things like invading Iraq, spelling colour and having a Parliment but for this we do what the Americans do. For the rest of this post, and in the future, we’ll be calling it football.

2) Forget the World Series, football is the true global game

Barcelona’s Camp Nou

In Canada we get excited when our collection of NHL professionals beat the collection of NHL professionals assembled by the eight or so other nations that give a shit about hockey. I love hockey, but it’s really a northern European sport. Russia, the Finnswegians, America and Canada are about the only people who care about it. Football is still largely dominated by the top European clubs, but it’s played on all corners of the earth. The Europeans might sign the paychecks but increasingly players are coming from Africa [yt], Asia [yt] [yt] and other areas that hockey, baseball, basketball and American football have not touched.

It’s not a new thing either. The most famous pre-Beckham footballer is Brazil’s Pele [yt], though Maradona comes pretty close [yt].

Is there more after the jump? You bet there is, and you really want to see number 4.
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It was brought to my attention today that there are paid positions posted at the Vancouver 2010 website. I’m not sure why I assumed they were looking for volunteers only. When I lived in Calgary during the build up to the 1988 Winter Olympics, there was no shortage of volunteers - all in it for the red and white Canada track suits. It was cooler to volunteer than it was to get a paid job for the big event in town. Me? I ended up working at the concession stand at one of the venues where they had figure skating. It was fun, but sad when I got all my Olympic pins stolen off my jacket in the staff coat closet. Bummer.

During the last week, I’ve built up quite a repertoire of interesting blog posts and new links from Vancouver’s bloggers. Time to close a few tabs on my laptop, so without further ado, have a look at these:

• David of Loud Murmurs recently became an “online advocate for an improved transit system in Vancouver” in a recent article for the Westender. Read about the story behind the quotes here.
• Our own Miss 604 wrote that the Surrey Reptile Refuge, open since 1992, is now closed due to lack of funding. How sad that another organization that helps unwanted pets is in limbo! Earlier this year, the Greyhaven Exotic Bird Sanctuary had to leave its home and, though open, needs to find a new location. Hopefully the Surrey Reptile Refuge will find some way to open again soon.
• Also on Miss 604, guest blogger Raul of the Random Thoughts of a Student of the Environment blog (aka Hummingbird 604) rounds up Vancouver’s Mexican restaurants. Just like sushi in Vancouver - where it’s hard to find anything truly good and not frozen among all the fake, awful sushi places in Vancouver (I lived in Japan so I can be snobbish) - good Mexican food is quite rare. There’s even a card game called The Nacho Incident about Canada’s lack of good Mexican food. From the game’s description: “As Canadians have long suspected, Mounties have been arresting anyone caught with quality Mexican food since the 1970s.”
• Malta-transplant Darren Barefoot blogged about strangers reading your supposedly anonymous blog using From the Grey Box as an example. This made me into an additional stranger reading the now less-anonymous blog too. Written about items found in a local apartment building’s giveaway box, the writer seems to be jolly and optimistic making the posts fun to read. Oh, and enthusiastic about the items. Yay for less cynicism in the world!
• Finally, Monique of So Misguided links to another Vancouver blogger, this time a local perfumer who writes about her trade. Ayala Sender writes SmellyBlog about her company Ayala Moriel Parfums. Lately it seems to be updated about once or twice a week, which is perfect as some of the posts tend to be on the long side.

Enjoy reading!

(Above photo is of a Mexican restaurant, though not in Vancouver or even Metro Vancouver. It’s in Metro Vancouver’s honourary international suburb, Bellingham. Lorenzo’s is near the Bellis Fair Mall, good enough to make the drive, and represents the good Mexican food that rarely makes it over the border.)