Live from the Creative City Cabaret

If you listen to urban guru Richard Florida, the cites that will be urban powerhouses are going to be the ones that attract creative types and keep them there. So how about combining debate and performance ahhts in one show, as at the Roundhouse on November 8? Why Not? 24 hours's Ian King liveblogged the event.

9:01 -- Where my net conection at? Gotta bug Shane and Allyson about this!

9:13 -- ,,, and the cabaret is opened by a flute 'n taiko combo that's moderately well-received by the several dozen spectators here at the Roundhouse.

9:17 -- things are finally underway, with host Ryan introducing himself as Barack Obama, a joke that fell flat. The first group comes from COPE, with council candidate Ellen Woodsworth and school board candidates Alvin Singh and Jane Bouey.

COPE is poking fun at itself as a 40-year-old party, stuck in the old days. There's too much truth behind that joke, because when you see a crowd of COPEsters, the first thing you notice is that it's oh so old and oh so white.

Alvin Singh asks the crowd, "Are you suffering from ED?" Electile dysfunction, a joke only half as old as COPE itself. Obligatory drug warnings follow.

Do not take COPE of you own a Hummer: huge laughs.

Do not take if you're embarrassed to make deicsions in private. (But, we note, COPE general meetings are closed to outside observers. No other party does that.)

9:21 -- The COPE Cadman beard commercial, in the style of Powerthirst (YouTube it) is drawing huge rounds of laughter.

9:27 -- David Cadman is up, singing "The Times, they are a Changin'", redone with a climate change theme, which got a couple of bits of clapping right before he decided to talk.

9:28 -- DC has used the word "shit" twice in ten seconds. Finally starting to talk like your correspondent. It has to be said, though, that he's being funnier tonight than he's been in nearly a decade of public life.

9:30 -- ... and now we're on to sewage. algae, and generating energy from waste. A treat for the geeks, and well-received from the audience.

9:31 -- DC: Stockholm runs all its trucks on ethane generated from sewage. And the crowd goes wild! No, it doesn't! It's engaged! They're asking followup questions! Screw poetry, we're into making fuel from slime!

9:35 -- Perpetual candidate Scott Yee describes himself as a cereal rapist. Now you know how those flakes are frosted! The off-colour jokes are falling flat with the crowd. Err, the remaining jokes include observations about men and women being "Anti-bush" and uh, things being finger lickin' good.

9:37 -- Chris from LRM shows some mercy on Yee, declaring there will be no questions.

9:39 -- Laura MacDiarmid, ex-NPA Parks commish running to get back in the game, does herself an acapella take on Patsy Cline's "Crazy." As L. MacD notes, it was redone by her "sistah" k.d. lang, a reference that may have confused the host.

Audience Question: If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?
MacD replies as "Weeping willow", noting its majestic branches and great canopy.

She says that in the future, she'd push more support for local artists from Vancouver parks projects.

9:45 -- Menard Caissy is to gin, but did not earn any brownie points by giving a shout to Stephen Harper. He's gonna sing some sort of song called "Stay," but which one? Dozens of indie votes are riding on this!

9:47 -- Oh. This is painful. Must. Get. Beer.

9:58 -- Back from a break and a beer. Gölök Z.L.F. Buday's performance is a bit tilted, but it's holding the audience, right until this line about why he enjoys Guinness: "I like anything that gives good head, is black, and doesn't talk back." And there's the hook!

10:02 -- Here comes Betty Krawczyk, the 80-year-old perpetual protester grandma running as the Work Less Party's mayoral candidate.

10:04 -- It ain't Riverdance. It's Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock 'n Roll." Baise moi. She's got the audience hooked.

10:08 -- Why hello, Marc Emery! No need to give you, gentle reader, an intro. Mile a minute about the DEA declaring him the Number One drug trafficker in North America.

10:10 -- It's the economy, stupid. Forget bike lanes, it's credit crunches that matters. Now on to pushing against cameras and cops, which Emery claims

10:12 -- Emery says that his Monty Python and the Holy Grail sketch doesn't mean anything to any of us. Here comes the audience question: Whatcha gonna do? Emery's response: fewer cops, no cameras, and read my positions.

10:14 -- Audience questions for Betty the K. She's not much on the alleged $100-million loan to Millennium for the Olympic Village. Not much on the lack of disclosure. Oh, and there's lots of boilerplate.

10:16 -- Here comes NPA council candidate Sean Bickerton! Says the Republicans on running their 2006 congressional campaign on opposing gay marriage was one of the inspirations for his return to Canada.

<reads a poem of Republican fuckups>

... and the crowd gives no small applause.

Audience question: tautology about privatization. SB is against privatizing what's public. And if he were a Dr. Seuss book, he'd be Green Eggs and Ham. Bickerton likes his pesto.

... and I've gone for another beer.

10:29 -- Jamie Lee Hamilton is on. The Independent parks board candidate, spurned by the NPA, has monologued the audience, and determined there might be more right than left in the audience. She thanks the audience for letting her work her mouth which has earned her a good living. Or not such a good living, depending on your perspective.

10:35 -- Independent candidate Bill Ritchie has done a multiple-character performance which was modestly well-received. So why does he want to run? Turned out that he found out the requirements to run after advising a young independent and went with it.

10:38 --  the Vision Vancouver group is up!.Vocalizer Heather Deal -- a Bacg Choir member no less --  is introing the group, accompanied by some guitarist named Gregor Robertson. Probably a Cortes island Hippie. And Geoff Meggs.

Oh fuck! It's "The Elements" by Tom Lehrer! They do have a sense of humour, Now theyre slowing down so that Robertson can play it... and then trying to redo it to intro their candidates on all three slates.

Gregor Robertson's skills in response to an audience question include watering plants and playing the tuba. Neither of which were demonstrated tonight! Heather Deal can sing all matter of Bach, and Geoff Meggs, well, uh... Your correspondent notes that Meggs is skilled at dirt-digging and the use of metaphorical blunt objects.

10:46 -- the finale, as it turns out, is going to be Peter Ladner's performance. After a bit of stalling, here he is. Ladner is singing a ditty about the life of a homeless man who's a fixture in the West End.

10:50 -- Ladner has gotten some of the strongest applause of the night. He's breaking into a second tune about how pols are blamed for every annoyance. Appropriately, it's called "Because of You." SUVs, Wreck Beach Towers, homelessness, grow ops... a laundry list.

10:53 -- Yes, politicians are human. Remember that, kids -- but only after they're given their well-deserved slagging.

10:54 -- and Betty the K brawled back over the Olympic Village loan. PL's response: "We did it because it's in the best interest of the city." Says it's because it's to get it built on time, with 200 units of social housing.

10:56 -- Have you acknowledged a mistake? First time that question's been asked today? Answer: when he was 19, PL saw a drug propaganda film from the RCMP, and replied that in his workplace, there were 30 people who smoked pot. This was the incident where he revealed that Vancouver Sun staff did dope and were not crashing and burning. He was fired the next day.