Author Archives: kennethattheatrepublic

Florida, May 24. The 24th of May Is the Queen’s Birthday If you don’t give us a holiday We’ll all run away   I grew up with my grandmother reciting that once a year. It’s the Queen’s Birthday, up in my homeland. Not that anyone for a thousand miles around here would know or care.Continue reading “The Kennedy Space Center(re)”

Orlando,  Saturday, May 21.   When I called my pal Sean when I got across the border, I told him I couldn’t wait to simply sit and talk to Americans. One of the great pleasures in being here is to get a chance to feel the pulse of these (in the real sense) republicans.  Continue reading “What I came South for”

Orlando impressions: Good Folks   First, everyone drives everywhere. Rather like suburbs anywhere on earth, the only way people can realistically get around and do their daily tasks is to drive. From my billet to the Orlando Fringe is a fifteen-minute haul down the I-4 freeway, which like every freeway in the States that I’veContinue reading “From Florida”

ECONOMIES (after a day at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria)   We made five shillings a month Ordinary seaman, bosun did better And when we seen them natives and their canoes We thought, how’d they get the time to carve all that cedar That takes time you know and naught to eat but driedContinue reading “ECONOMIES: a poem after visiting the Royal BC Museum”

The Hunger that Arises from Watching The Games I am somewhat shy to report that I could not resist the last installment of The Hunger Games, a series of films that showed real promise in the second chapter. That film’s premise, like the first, included a really good idea at its core. It is anContinue reading “Hunger in The Games”

In the aftermath of the Paris killings, the Facebook world has been, as is only appropriate, afire with opinion, speculation, ire and sympathy. I do not have the kinds of Facebook friends (I’m happy to report) who leap to make bigoted statements about Muslims, or to publicly indulge in revenge fantasy.  I am, however, surprisedContinue reading “Response to an Act of Religious Warfare”

Rebel Without A Cock: Trainwreck, directed by Judd Apatow, written by and starring Amy Schumer Watching the bourgeois heart that is revealed beating at the core of this mediocre film is like watching that tiresome James Dean “classic” for the first time. You have the same bewildered sense of trying to find the rebellious streakContinue reading “Rebel Without A Cock: Trainwreck”

Two Kinds of Tomorrow On Mad Max: Fury Road, the critics have spoken: it’s okay to like diesel-powered gas guzzling trucks spewing smoke across the desert while bands of apes (some of them female!) shoot, stab, club, gouge, crush, disembowel, and otherwise murder one another in the name of Saving the Girls (as long as,Continue reading “Tomorrowland and Fury Road… Virtue is SO yesterday”

Cuba in February (2) “My grandfather went to that factory every day for five years, and he oiled that machinery.” This is the story of a grandfather who was a tanner by trade, and having arrived in Cuba from Europe, he worked hard, and in spite of fierce competition, and because of his honourable businessContinue reading “Cuba in February (2)”

Why I am voting for the NDP in the coming Alberta election. I am a lifelong leftist. It’s something that I learned on my parents’ knees, so to speak.  They were the son and daughter of Alberta pioneers who suffered terribly when capitalism spectacularly crashed in 1929, and were active enemies of European fascism inContinue reading “Why I’m voting for the NDP in Alberta’s election on Tuesday”