Day: August 21, 2008

Lung‘s other best friend, Melo, is in from Montreal this week, so last night we took her to some of our favourite places, starting with a delicious dinner at Phnom Pehn, moving on to dessert at Cloud 9, (where the food is expensive and terrible but the view is unparalleled), and ending the evening with a late night drive around Stanley Park, stopping to take tourist pictures on the seawall in the dark. I think she’s wonderful. Not only is she incredibly fun, she looks like a Russian fashion model, tall, and solid, with the sort of black cut hair and pointy-toed boots I’d expect from a Red Mob girlfriend in a William Gibson short story.

Today he’s taking her to Granville Island Market, the LuluLemon store, (she wants to shop), and possibly the Museum of Archeology. Does anyone know if there’s any Giant Sequoia trees within a day’s drive? I’m fairly certain they’re all either on the Island or down in California, but she says she read something about local ones. Apparently she’s never seen any truly massive trees before and really wants to see some trees bigger than anything else alive, as if real mountains versus Mt. Royal wasn’t enough size shock.

Tonight David and I are going to the Pay What You Can premiere of Letters from Lithuania, a Mortal Coil Performance Society production at the Stanley Park train, before catching up with them again.

Based on a true story, originator and performer Bessie Wapp recounts: “For generations, my ancestors lived in a small Lithuanian village called Varniai. Fleeing from the pogroms of Europe, my great, great grandparents immigrated to the United States in the later 1800’s. Of the large extended family who remained in Varniai, only a young mother and her three daughters survived World War II. After the war, they were reunited and the mother wrote to the only living relative she knew of, her brother-in-law in South Africa. But she didn’t hear back. Twenty years passed, and then word came from the son of the brother-in-law in South Africa. While sorting out his recently deceased father’s belongings, he had found her letters. But they were unopened: his father had kept them for 20 years but had never read them.”

And as if that isn’t fascinating enough, it features friends who are A+ performers, stilt-walking, shadow puppets, and a klezmer band on a miniature train. How could anyone say no? I don’t think there’s a better ticket in Vancouver tonight.