Archive for the 'From the Mag' Category

Issue 6 of Sad Mag is fast approach­ing! Until the release party this Thurs­day, read an excerpt from Kaitlin McNabb’s arti­cle on the Chi­na­town Casino.

In between the dis­count T-shirt store and sparse strip mall in Chi­na­town is an aban­doned build­ing once ripe with insur­ance bureaus. The doors are barred, the win­dows are papered and graf­fi­tied, and the fra­grant musk of regret lingers at each entrance. But above the cracked plas­tic awning hangs a worn neon sign. Its colour, slightly faded, still glim­mers. Its relaxed, scrawled let­ter­ing seems the epit­ome of a good time—Chinatown Casino Third Floor.

–Kaitlin McN­abb

Pho­tog­ra­phy: Krista Jahnke

Ryan Beil talks about life as an actor in Sad Mag’s upcom­ing Issue 6 but you’ll have to wait until the launch party to see Monika Koch’s accom­pa­ny­ing illustration. Here’s a sneak peek in the mean time:

Any oppor­tu­nity to act is one Beil will hap­pily take—with the excep­tion of com­mer­cial char­ac­ters that peo­ple will hate. “It was a spiced rum com­mer­cial, a clas­sic ‘I’m a funny guy and I say some­thing and then beau­ti­ful women are every­where going woo!’” he explains. “It was just embar­rass­ing, but at the same time, if MTV wanted to pay me ten mil­lion dol­lars to do the next Amer­i­can Pie movie, I would drop my pants. Life’s situational.”

- Rebecca Slaven

Pho­tographs: Tina Krueger-Kulic

Mem­bers of the Chor Leoni Men’s Choir will be giv­ing a spe­cial per­for­mance at the release of Sad Mag’s Issue 6! Check out a sneak peek of this arti­cle, in which the choir’s Direc­tor of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Bruce Hoff­man chats with Daniel Zomparelli.

“We’re a clas­si­cal choir that is focused first on the art and the music: sex­u­al­ity doesn’t come into play,” Hoff­man says. Mas­culin­ity finds a new space in the men’s choir: strong, pow­er­ful voices and hard work make a great can­di­date for the ensem­ble. “I think that any man that is com­fort­able enough to sing is pretty com­fort­able in their sense of who they are,” Hoff­man says. “I strongly believe that it’s the way that the world should be. If men sang more often together rather than find­ing out ways of killing each other, the world would be a bet­ter place.”

- Daniel Zomparelli

Pho­tographs: Tina Krueger-Kulic

Pierre Bernanose engages in bar­ber shop talk with Sad Mag for Issue 6, which launches Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 10th at the Anza Club. Check out a sneak peek of this arti­cle by Jeff Lawrence.

I attended uni­ver­sity in Paris and we locked the dean in his office. He was trapped in his office and couldn’t get out for close to a week and a half. I got caught — they sent the army, so I was expelled from uni­ver­sity. My mother was very, very upset, so because of this I came to Canada. I stud­ied to become a bar­ber in 1973, in Edmon­ton. It was an eight-month course. I was try­ing to fig­ure out what I could do with­out going to school for four years. I thought, “Bar­ber, huh? That sounds pretty good.”

- Pierre Bernanose, as told to Jeff Lawrence.

Pho­tographs: Grant Harder

The Ter­mi­nal City Rol­ler­girls will be host­ing the launch party for Sad Mag issue four on Wednes­day, August 4! Check out this sneak peek at the lat­est issue, with an arti­cle from Ana Maria Kresina (AKA Risquee Biznatch).

When I square up on the jam­mer line wait­ing for the dou­ble whis­tle, I am con­scious of the fans scream­ing in the stands, but more so, I am aware of what my body is about to do for me. As the momen­tum of the oval track pushes me out­ward and my feet slide within my tightly tied roller-skates, I can feel my left quad mus­cle sup­port­ing my body weight as I push hard with my right foot. I bite down on my mouth­guard, and I feel sweat trick­ling down the side of my face. All I can think about is how great it feels to skate.

— Ana Maria Kresina

Cover photo: Sarah Race

The Sad Mag fam­ily is so excited to offer up a fresh issue of the mag­a­zine, launch­ing Wednes­day, August 4 at the Cobalt. Check out a sneak peek from the lat­est issue, writ­ten of the­atre leg­end Yayoi Hirano by Michelle Reid.

Yayoi Hirano and I sit at a card table in an empty room, while out­side there are the famil­iar sounds of Granville Island on a week­end after­noon: ducks, chil­dren, cars faintly thun­der­ing across the bridge over­head. Yayoi is wear­ing black sun­glasses and low black heels, dressed in lay­ers of black fab­ric. She is com­posed and ele­gant, her youth­ful appear­ance bely­ing the longevity of her career as a dancer, mask-maker, mime artist, sto­ry­teller and founder of the Yayoi The­atre Move­ment Soci­ety, which is now two decades old.

—Michelle Reid

Illus­tra­tion: Kristina Fiedrich

Patrick Spencer speaks with Sad Mag about bring­ing music to the peo­ple in Sad Mag Issue 4, launch­ing this Wednes­day, August 4. Check out a sneak peek of this arti­cle by Justin Mah.

I really like old tra­di­tional folk songs: there’s a song called “Red River Valley”—it’s an old bed­time story-type song that’s been around for more than a hun­dred years. I notice when I play that song—and I play it in my own way, kind of upbeat—it doesn’t sound like an old folk song, but at the same time, peo­ple over fifty years old, for instance, will rec­og­nize it and will stop and lis­ten and will say, ‘Hey, I really liked hear­ing that, I haven’t heard that song since my grand­mother used to sing it to me as a child.’

—Patrick Spencer, as told to Justin Mah.

Photo: Jonathan Tag­gart

The infec­tious SpandyAndy will be giv­ing a very spe­cial per­for­mance at Sad Mag’s launch party for the antic­i­pated sum­mer issue! Read about Lau­ren Schachter’s inter­ac­tion with the span­dexed won­der in issue #4. Here’s a sneak peek:

He loves to shock strollers on the Van­cou­ver Sea­wall with his hyper­bolic pelvic thrusts, and even encour­ages spec­ta­tors to ban­ish their self-consciousness and get their dance grooves on in pub­lic. Spandy believes dance to be “the per­fect lan­guage,” because once you’re danc­ing with­out inhi­bi­tion, your hap­pi­ness can’t be misinterpreted—and it’s infectious.

—Lau­ren Schachter

Photo: Shane Oost­er­hoff

Marina Bychkova’s Enchanted Doll line has cap­tured the imag­i­na­tions of some of the world’s great­est com­mer­cial artists, includ­ing Mike Parker, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Nike, and Fab­rizio Vitti, lead shoe designer for Louis Vuit­ton. In this sneak peek from Sad Mag issue 4, Rebecca Slaven speaks with Bychkova about the love for dolls she has had from the start.

Bychkova pulls out a box con­tain­ing hun­dreds of paper dolls—many based on char­ac­ters from pop­u­lar cul­ture such as Scully from the X-Files, Prince Charm­ing, and Sailor Moon. “While other girls played with dolls, I made dolls. I remem­ber when [Disney’s] Aladdin came out; I made a Princess Jas­mine doll and showed it to my class­mates and all of the girls wanted one. I made like twenty of those dolls for sale and then came to school and said, ‘You want a doll? A hun­dred rubles please!’” she laughs while feign­ing to sell them from an imag­i­nary trench coat.

—Marina Bychkova, as told to Rebecca Slaven

Photo: Tina Krueger-Kulic

She wants you to be her bitch, Crys­tal Pre­cious. Pho­to­graph by Bran­don Gaukel

Sad Mag brings you sneak peeks into issue three, launch­ing Fri­day, March 19 at the ANZA Club.

“When I’m onstage, I’m think­ing ‘Every­one in the audi­ence is gonna be my bitch right now. You’re-gonna-be-my-bitch,’” she says, point­ing out a new imag­i­nary audi­ence mem­ber with each word.

“It’s all about the entrance and the exit. It has to be slow and delib­er­ate. Before I open my mouth or make any sort of dra­matic move­ment, it’s all about draw­ing peo­ple in and cre­at­ing energy around me.”

—Crys­tal Pre­cious, as told to Jeff Lawrence

Spring 2010, ISSUE THREE