LIFE IMITATES ART IMITATES THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL

in retrospect, it seems callous to have ever imagined anything but the best of futures for the backyard chickens. two of the original brood were lost in a bloody midnight raid in november, and their eventual replacements have been tormented alongside their adopted sisters by the backyard rat ever since. the egg and chickenfeed bounty has now encouraged another rat to join the game, and the two of them won't be foiled by any efforts to close the tunnels they've dug under the walls of the chicken run. they dig around every concrete slab, and only one of the hens (the most timid otherwise) isn't scared of them. it's not clear whether or not the rats live underground, but they spend their afternoons popping out from a hole in the middle of the yard and running to wherever it is they've dug an access route to the run and taking whatever they can find. whether it was the clumsy chickens or the rats that did it themselves, the feed dispenser had been spilled on sunday and the rats had a veritable feast. unfortunately for spectators, the only chicken with any fight didn't seem to have it in her to stay vigilant at the spot where the rat tunnel opened on to her turf.

that, however, was understandable since another sister of hers had been taken last monday, and not dragged away like the one hen that went completely missing on that night in november, but stopped dead in her tracks by fear. a neighbor's off leash pitbull had torn down the sides of the run for the second time in two weeks just a few days earlier, and the added shock must have been too much when a racoon started hissing and rattling the roof of the run so soon after. we found the body when we went to collect the ladies into the carrier for a night inside after realizing that no amount of shooing was going to keep the raccoon away once we went to sleep.

she went in the freezer with the pants, shrouded in a vinyl bag from powell's. it would be a shame and an insult not to eat her after such demonstrated courage, so she spent yesterday, the day of the rat feast, on the dining room table -- but not to be eaten just yet. she's now lying in state in the refrigerator, where she was moved from the table just before midnight. the friend of ours who knows how to pluck and gut fowl can't come over until wednesday, and he says that she'll need to defrost.

HEAR YE, HEAR YE! THE FINEST IN MUSIC JOURNALISM

4:30 p.m. text message: "do you want to go, please?"

"i was going to poop out." yesterday afternoon, nothing seemed more appealing than going home to watch "i killed my mother" -- and maybe get lucky with the staff schedule and set the ball rolling for a go for broke ironic summer date at the bar at the convention center red lion. "what time?"

"i don't want to go before 10."

"ok i'm in." because, for some reason, later seemed better, even though ten o'clock would mean having to completely abandon my dvd plans, trading xavier dolan for bright eyes.

at just past ten o'clock, travis was waiting in front of the crystal ballroom. we collected our stickers from the box office. "where do the cool kids put these?" disinterest: "where we can see them."

beer is more expensive than liquor at the bar. mcmenamins thinks too much of itself. the last time i came to the crystal was for a metric show in 2009. i'm not allowed to pay to get in this place, so i pay for drinks. just like at metric, we didn't know anyone in the crowd, which was remarkable for portland, and which means that the crowd doesn't live here. "no one listens to bright eyes anymore." by which she also meant that everyone listens to bright eyes. the two men who were standing along the railing behind us must have been conor oberst's best friends, because they only used his first name. they also seemed to know how soon the set was going to start based on the music playing during set up. well, i thought, if bright eyes sounds anything like "these boots are made for walking" then i'll probably have fun.

bright eyes does not sound anything like "these boots are made for walking," which i had expected, except that i did expect a little elliot smith. "no. not at all," i got once the show had started and i asked after my incorrect assumption (that i suspect she had something to do with). i didn't know anything about music until last night.

the rasta man who was freak dancing next to conor's best friends was smoking pot from a one off pipe between every song, and with every song was less abashed about blowing smoke over our shoulders. we had to move. luckily, the view was better from farther back near the bar.

"ugh. why are encores mandatory now?"

"yeah, that set was over an hour. i would be impressed if they didn't come back out."

show goers at the crystal ballroom do a mandatory bleacher stomp on the spring loaded floor to call for their mandatory encores. later last night, i was convinced that the floor had done something unkind to my back.

the encore was nostalgic. bright eyes knew much more than i did about music until last night.

lights up. goodnight, travis. i liked the fourth song, i think. "which one was that?" "i was asking you."

later, backstage: "ok. i don't know if we're staying. let's just feel it out after i say hello. and you have to act really gay. but be nice."

"got it. no problem, i'm having a good time."

i know the layout of the crystal ballroom and i don't know where i thought the loft would be, but i expected the party to be in one -- and that maybe andy warhol would be there. i didn't know anything about music until last night.

"hi, i'm nathaniel." nathaniel got caught up on what he'd missed since the last time he was in portland. the bottle of tequila on the table across the room was empty, but there was beer on ice right next to us. and half and half, although i didn't see any coffee. the room that wasn't a loft was small for the number of people inside.

"i'm moving back to brooklyn at the end of the summer, but he's staying here."

"yeah, we're planning the summer around our divorce."

"so you guys are enga--?"

"yes he is gay."

"have you met our bassist?"

"this is andy." "hi, andy." "hello." "i kind of expected andy warhol to be here." "i think he's gone." "yeah."

i didn't expect there to be beds on the bus, but again, i didn't know anything about music until last night. the last time i was on a tour bus, emily haines asked me if there were any way we she could sign my underwear without my taking off my pants. i guess i only know that one band. i don't remember seeing beds.

people on the bus were friendly, probably because they were listening to billy joel. they liked my boots, which i couldn't blame for my back. that was definitely the floor.

we got off the bus and then got waved back on. second encore. back off the bus. we didn't want to go to arcata. the ride home was much shorter.

late, but not much later: "tell my barista that i'm moving at the end of the summer if you go to coffee before i do tomorrow."

at the coffee shop this afternoon, she didn't remember saying it. "check your journal for april 10 at around three-thirty in the morning."

i was eight minutes fast, but sure enough it was there:

"april 10, 2011, 3:38 a.m.
going to sleep annoyed."

GOODBYE VANCOUVER, LINGERING MEMORIES

the wine gums still haven't been unloaded, but we should really start thinking about doing the exchange: it would be wonderful to have some coffee or beer for sitting under the cherry blossoms on the riverfront. back in vancouver, i heard that the city was selling the trees to residents for just thirty dollars each in an effort to keep residential streets full of their blossoms in the spring. (death is waiting in the wings for many of vancouver's currently flowering cherry blossom trees, apparently.) but then the more i stare at the pile of candy the more i think that i should just go down to the "give pizza a chance" cart between 4th and 5th on sw stark st and get people souvenirs from there. nothing is more canadian than pizza by the slice on a ruffle edged paper plate. and if you don't know that, you're not one of us.

THIS IS THE TIME "WHERE" I WANT TO SING

the anniversary of vancouver's incorporation is not, in fact, the 5th of april as i erroneously wrote in my reflections on my stroll through douglas coupland's city of glass. the correct date is the 6th which, although it was not the day on which i looked through the book, was the day of the actual writing. that's light irony at best -- and heavily overshadowed by my incorrect and now completely nonsensical anecdote on the suicide of kurt cobain. so we were all duped by the globe and mail, which, four days after april fool's, ran a nostalgic column by a former resident in celebration of the city's birthday, but did so the evening before the day itself and without any mention of the proper date. it would seem that non-canadians just aren't supposed to know about canadian history. writing that, however, reminds me that canadians don't seem to be supposed to know about canadian history either. aside from some scattered plaques, the city of vancouver (outside of chinatown, that is) doesn't seem to care about its past. just ask around. according to coupland, however, vancouver's municipal esprit de corps is fostered by a collective desire for renewal and future opportunity. also known as "the terminal city," vancouver represents to itself the furthest thing from "old" canada. or it could really just be the pot smoke, which rises regularly the start of the morning commute and which vancouverites incorrectly call smog, having only experienced that phenomenon visually through television. either way, to hell with the past. vancouverites don't live there.

so i wouldn't be wrong to dismiss my error as ultimately inconsequential. (no one in vancouver seemed to care.) even more, i should probably celebrate myself for having come a step closer to understanding the diversity of the majesties of canada. if only. unfortunately, as i was stewing over the foibles of my amateurish research and my frustration with the globe and mail, ligia oancea herself was serenading a crowd of lightly ironic vancouverites at the biltmore cabaret. in celebration of the birthday of her adopted home, ligia performed her now northwest-famous ode to vancouver as part of a local talent contest. ("Ligia's soul is uncapturable. It would take a spirit bear trapper (in a fur coat) to track and trap that.") i can forgive myself the date confusion, but missing ligia's performance can't be so easily overlooked. then again, i won't put it past canada to have intentionally deceived me to test my commitment, in which case i wouldn't be surprised if i were stripped of my cultural exchange credentials and politely escorted back to square one (but on employment insurance, of course). that would be a shame, for sure, the worst possible insult after the pain of missing the show. but i'll have more than enough chances to get back and brush up. i never remember to buy ginseng (british columbia is a principle north american producer), and so far no one has seen me hard enough to write about it to the paper. at least it's the nature of the end of the line that you'll get there if you just keep riding.

HOW TO (GROW UP AND) FULFILL YOUR DREAMS; or, BY SEA, LAND AND AIR WE PROSPER

the rain that the experts predicted for all of this week hit hard on monday, but since then the weather in portland has been relenting. whatever transgression i committed to lose the internet in canada seems to have been of local interest only, or at least it doesn't seem to have been so grave as to have offended the gods northwest-wide, because their normally obdurate challenge of april showers (our groundhog's shadow gauge of whether winter will last until july) has so far been forgiving. other than the passing of a short but fierce storm late this morning, the skies have been clear, and as a result, i was able to take a leisurely walk to powell's yesterday afternoon without much fear of getting wet going or coming back.

i usually dawdle at the bookstore on weekday afternoons to wait out the heavier rains, but yesterday, despite knowing that it might have been better to enjoy the outside before it got wet again, i still stood and read. it might turn out that i was too easily dismissive of douglas coupland. the nickname "city of glass" for vancouver is most probably attributable to the coupland book of that title, a kind of memoir as guidebook originally published by the vancouver native in 2003, and the book that i spent my dawdling time at powell's yesterday reading, the day, it so happens, of the 125th anniversary of the incorporation of the city of glass.

april 5th is also the anniversary of kurt cobain's suicide -- the better covered of the two events -- but it's unlikely that cobain chose the date (if he chose that particular date at all) as any sort of tribute to vancouver. if we're to relate cobain's death in any way with that city, it's probably best to assume that the motivation was defiance. that's the sense you get from reading city of glass, anyway. as far as coupland tells it, relations between the emerald city and the city of glass have always been strained. the two cities are just a few hours from each other by car, but from the page on seattle in coupland's book it sounds like their residents, aside from once yearly official visits, regard each other generally with disregard.

after reading that page, i almost felt sorry for seattle. the chip on vancouver's shoulder regarding its neighbor to the south isn't so unlike the one that portlanders share toward that same place. while seattle has to combat rivals from both sides, vancouver and portland can double their strengths in bonding over a mutual grudge against their (justifiably or not) more famous sibling. maybe all the stress is what makes it so much less exciting there. or maybe it's existential ennui. seattle, so famous so easily isn't the wisest thing to be. we understand what you're going through a little better now, but -- yes, but still -- wouldn't it be easier to step aside? give it a rest, i think they say.

on the cover of the first printing of city of glass coupland admits to leaving vancouver for most of his twenties to travel in search of a better city. by his own admission, he didn't find one. conversely, portland has a reputation for being overrun with transplant twenty-somethings. smart and enterprising ones: we know how to cross our t's and claw some eyes for that dish washing job. unfortunately, the dream isn't forever, and as much as the lifestyle will get old, so will we, which keeps us mindful of our eventual ostracism from the best parts of the culture at thirty-five. just like the title of coupland's book echoes the pristine triumphalism of life in vancouver, the title that chuck palahniuk chose for his memoir as travel guide to portland, fugitives and refugees, is a perfect description of the character of the rose city's it generation (not to be confused with the IT generation of seattle). plus, the brooklyn wars can't go on forever. the whole country is well past weary of those, and we'll all have to find a way to move on.

so was the dream an illusion? maybe coupland did find the finest city in the world right at home: no highways, a closely regulated and thriving housing market, mountains (you'll hate those, brooklyn), the ocean, a sky train...and opportunity -- in style. there might be better places waiting to happen, but a marriage-for-work-visa plan would be infinitely more oppressive to execute in budapest.

CITY OF GLASS, KIDS ARE ON THE GO -- PART OF THE WHOLE TRUTH

the internet had been inspired by the successes of vancouver's municipal strikes and wasn't providing even basic services for the first three days of the month. non-canadians couldn't get access, anyway. at first i thought that perhaps i'd offended the city's sense of territorial and intellectual independence with my fervor for searching out foreign authors at its used book stores without much of an eye to local writers (maureen medved teaches at ubc, but the tracey fragments was done in toronto). but, after (re)reading the first twenty pages of hey nostradamus! i remembered that i had in fact read the entire novel, my copy of which i was given by a friend of a friend on my first visit to vancouver after asking for suggestions on sampling native literature. so i had read douglas coupland, but i must not have thought much of hey nostradamus! -- which is to say that, although i do now remember that i've read it, i don't at all remember my reaction and i don't plan to finish it again. maybe, then, that doesn't count as putting in the effort, and that's why i was penalized. at any rate, the internet was down at castle vancouver for anyone without a canadian mobile contract.

offended or not, it's also possible that vancouver wanted me to take a different look at it this time around, to experience it without a digital filter, in which case the city was itself at odds with the visions of mr. coupland. embracing that, i understood that vancouver could, indeed, be different, and i only wish that i'd not been so shocked by the disruption of my recent habits of production as to forget to keep a notebook in my pocket. (alas, i hadn't brought a bag other than my weekender.) as a result, i'm left still experiencing a gradual yet uneven -- and, worst, unrecorded -- flow of recollections from my trip. and hence, the "details" i would have liked to have already described might not come back to me until after the most effective framework for their description has already been used and published, although other descriptions will certainly have been influenced by even unrecollected details, while whim and imagination will have worked their magics on the entire lot.

it came to light on the night before our arrival in canada that caroline had allowed herself to fall into a marriage contract without once having experienced the unique delights of a pig in a blanket. things were bound to escalate from there. although she herself wasn't necessarily hungry for a piggy, she couldn't help but continue to share her story the more it met with disbelief, which in turn continued to drive the excitement of her listeners. she wasn't necessarily hungry for a piggy -- none of us were, necessarily -- but her story definitely got us thinking. the rest of the residents of the city seemed to be experiencing something similar but under the more general influence of a spring fever, so it was (albeit a bit ironically, because that's where everyone else was) lucky that we conducted our affairs in town, because the rules are different, and differently binding, at the campsite. (everyone knows that, but the allusion to the detail of a joke about camping should conjure an at least humorous mental possibility for pigs in blankets.)

not directly, but as a result of the lingering effect of caroline's story, a later conversation turned to the subject of certain tandem activities, which after the application of slur, delirium and frustration produced the phrase that won saturday night. it was no surprise that the night ended with two chairs on top of the trashcan fire, and although quoting the phrase will completely misrepresent what happened in the hours before the chairs met their ends, it did humorously resonate with mine and caroline's experience at elysian coffee where we stopped for decaf americanos before leaving vancouver on sunday. we'd hoped to see a certain barista. unfortunately, the coffee pullers working that day were not one of them anyone we recognized. we did, however, see the employee that greeted us at the alibi room the afternoon before (and well before the phrase). a date with the parents. two dicks, one mouth. can i say that on television?

MY PLACE, MY TIME: VANCOUVER 2011

stranger than fiction: you can't make this stuff up. who could have predicted that seattle, unbidden, would have shown up to the cascadia future planning conference, no less welcome for its unexpectedness, but not unexpectedly disappointing for its failure to contribute anything productive to the conversation. leo chow's father just died. the least you could do for the proprietor of the oldest ironic (not to mention iconic) no nonsense bar in british columbia is agree to the push-up contest. you want to compare literature? that's my other show. (and it's on right after this one.)

none of solder and sons, albion or criterion books had a copy of death in spring. nor did they have used copies of europeana or the tracey fragments (and you know that we would have found ms. medved to get a signature if we'd have found that book). criterion is awfully organized and the plays section is small. i was happy to sift through the fiction piles on the floor that more or less corresponded alphabetically to the books on the shelves behind them, but i couldn't stand the scoffing that i got when i asked if the unsearchable section of plays had any sarah kane. he asked if he could help! macleod's didn't have any of the titles i was searching for either, but it is where kate beckinsale shops.

we would have had time to go to spartacus books on e hastings, vancouver's stylier answer to the black rose collective here in portland, had it not been for horseshoe bay -- but how couldn't i show caroline "where mountains touches the sea." that's vancouver. and despite the tendency of the commission to raise the bar at the bar on its nights out, standards are standards, and there's a reason we're here.

that reason, it happened again tonight. those gastropubs on water and alexander aren't half bad. they're wonderfully charming, in fact. i meant to give all the details, but tonight gave itself over to portland's corresponding responsibilities. i'm groaning as i check the clock. thank you, vancouver, for reinvigorating our faith that the real world can be just as tantalizingly distracting as the digital one.

compete? maybe. but do what you can to show your best. that's a weekend at the jewel of the west coast.

the old atsui gallery (i was never able to find it open) has been renamed fukai. heat or depth? which should we prefer? foster? that was a central focus of the accords, and i suppose i can delay narrating the specifics until their resolution.