So we've heard through the grapevine that people have been enjoying our video blogs, but are in want of actual details about our events on this tour and not just our silly antics ... WELL I'm going to start augmenting our insanely entertaining video blogs with some serious literature in the form of text bloggage (yes, just when you thought we couldn't talk about ourselves more). This is the first one ...
Winnipeg was our first stop and we had two screenings in one night at the Winnipeg Cinematheque. Aiden and Karen and friends had put up nearly 100 posters for us and we had an excellent article written by Marlo Campbell in Uptown magazine, the Winnipeg free weekly that covers culture and entertainment. Unfortunately the Tragically Hip played that night, and well, as much as we like to think we're rock stars and Wal-Mart is the foremost issue that every citizen is eager to run out and discuss, our attendance was a little low. We found out later that a real bitter film critic had also published a "review" of the film earlier that day, and editors had added insult to injury, gasoline to the fire, by giving it the title: Attention Wal-Mart Shoppers: Nothing to See Here. It was, in a word, disheartening. [we will be posting the bad reviews and our rebuttals, sent to be published, hopefully, in the letters sections of various papers, here sometime in the future] But the event was pretty excellent - nearly 100 people showed up in total for both screenings and they all stuck around to have an engaged discussion at the end. Afterward, Aiden and Karen (friends from the first tour) took us and about a dozen others out for some beers at the nearby legion. Rob instantly turned off the television with our hidden-agenda device, the TV-B-Gone.
Serge, Rob and myself went to a pub for one last beer with a local couple, one of whom is a playwright who pens works that deal with the decriminalization of marijuana and child labour, among other things. He’s travelled around the country working with youth to put on political theatre. Being privileged enough to go on these sojourns across Canada is so utterly rewarding for this alone: the chance to meet interesting citizens who are out there on the front lines challenging the mainstream and building alternatives. Before we left to go to sleep Rob turned off several TVs in the bar, some even twice.
The next day we went over to Aiden and Karen’s for brunch including Aiden's famous delicious waffles. We talked about their project, Geez magazine – a magazine that combines art, politics and religion and has the tagline: "holy mischief in an age of fast faith", which has taken off and deserves all the attention and support it’s getting (and I'm even an atheist saying this). They are the real deal: living and breathing and working a progressive committed and fulfilled life that the capitalist elite hate to see. We talked about the next stage of Wal-Town (top secret for now, dear reader...) and about our ecological footprint from so much air travel on this third tour. The Geez folks are very against air and car travel and live by their convictions: Aiden was bicycling around in the unplowed streets of frozen Winnipeg and even appeared to be enjoying it. Geez magazine is even committed to the "Lubicon Slowdown," and promise that no money for or from the magazine goes to air travel. A bit more conversation with everyone at the breakfast table (besides myself, Rob, Sergeo, Aiden and Karen, there were two other friends who’s names now escape me) including the part where Rob diagnosed the hotel people at "York the Hotel" (it’s really called that) as being Luddites because of the lack of a PDF reader on their computer, (rob, like myself, is very adroit in the art of hyperbole) and we waved goodbye to the Peg and its lovely, generous, and visionary hosts.
(I also managed to squeeze in a 90 minute interview with Aiden and Will, the two editors of Geez, about political art for future publication with Art Threat).