My first attempt: Little Mountain, Nat Bailey and the new Olympic curling centre

Inspired by the way some newspapers are using the web to tell a story I decided to try my hand at internet video. This doesn't really have a narrative and is basically me dumping my photos into iMovie and imperfectly scoring it with a Fennesz song but I kinda like the way it turned out.

The greater issue though is the arrival of the Olympics, the lack of housing in Vancouver and, in particular the plans for the demolition of the Little Mountain homes. These plans, to turn Vancouver's oldest housing project into mixed social and market housing, comes at a time when homelessness is going up and there's a great deal of insecurity around joblessness and closing shelters.

The rumours are that despite no plans to start the development until after the 2010 Olympics, residents have been evacuated early so the site can be used as a parking lot for a nearby venue. Photos of the curling centre are at the end. I actually managed to take photos of the game from an upper level of the, yet unfinished, curling centre's fire escape.

The Best Zambian Music Video?

About three months ago while taking the TAZARA train to Dar es Salaam this video played on the TV in the lounge car and I was subsequently heart broken. Keep watching cuz it gets really good around the the 3:20 mark and then there's a giant pumpkin.

But hey, Zambian music isn't all Autotune love songs (well mostly). There's some great Youtube videos out there of a ZNBC show from the eighties showing performances of the classic Congolese influenced stuff. I'm trying to get a hold of a song that, I think, is an old-school house remix of the vocals from this song:



The song I'm thinking of was playing a lot in the Lusaka clubs for the last year but the DJ at Alpha bar had no idea what it was called. All I know is a a cab driver telling me that it was an old Tonga song. If anyone knows what it's called, or has an mp3, please please please email me.

Bandwagon Jumped

I could watch Dambisa Moyo all day... no, really, there's over 40 different interview videos of her on Youtube by every possible network. I'm embedding Riz Khan's interview from Al Jazeera cuz, as a radical Salafist, it's my favourite. Well, mostly I just like his intro music. Plus this one has that Bottom Billion dude on it too.