We recently had the opportunity to interview up and coming actress, Aristotle reading, Lambada dancing girl next door Christine Solomon. Obviously we subjected her to the full Vancouverite Interview treatment, without any complaints. Check it:
The Vancouverite: Who is Christine Solomon? And why in god’s name did you want to be interviewed by The Vancouverite?
Cristine Solomon: Well, why not! And who wouldn't want to get interviewed by the Vancouverite. You guys rock! I agreed to be featured in the Vancouverite because you guys are exceptionally dedicated to your craft and my latest Egyptian film, Heliopolis, happens to have its world premiere in Vancouver.I am a Canadian Egyptian actress who happens to have gotten her first big break in Egypt.
TV: What are three things people should know about you, but that they probably don’t.
CS: I love chocolates! I wear glasses. And I sword fight as a hobby!
TV: Sword fight. That's what she said. Anyway, you divide your time between Montreal, LA, and Cairo, what’s that like? And what are your essential travel tips, plane reading lists?
CS: It’s a lot of fun! I very much enjoy traveling and working abroad. The difficult part of it all is that you get to miss your loved ones. As for my essential travel tips; I would say “less is more!" We tend to take our whole life with us when we travel. The key is to minimize. I can make 3 different outfits with a simple black skirt, pants or jeans. I learned how to mix and match and this is all thanks to my personal stylist. She taught me a lot. I enjoy reading short books on the plane. For example, Aristotle's Poetics is a very interesting one. A book that can make me think so I can get distracted on the plane. Have I mentioned that I have a fear of flying?!
Recently we had the sheer pleasure, well, as much as firing off some questions via email can offer, past the cool kids over at Orland Kurtenblog. Since OK's Jason Brough and Mike Halford are all about the Vancouver Canucks, then it was a perfect opportunity to ask really dumb questions about the city's favorite team. Finally the city has the blog it's underachieving team deserves.
Of course, in the process we get to hear about the Canucks prospects for the season and along the way we'll hear about Dave Nonis stuffing his face with Nachos, the idea for the Surrey Canuck Mascot, why Orca Bay doesn't care about black people, lingonberry jam, and the fact that Roberto Luongo is going to be a legend at the Roxy in about six weeks. This is everything you were afraid to ask about the Canucks this season but should just keep to yourself. Prepare yourself for hockey talk people and think of that post-game hockey bag smell too to set the, er, mood. Maybe light a few candles. Voila:
The Vancouverite: Alright boys. So what made you guys finally put on the proverbial Speedo’s and jump into the blog world and start Orland Kurtenblog?
Mike: I’ve never been overly amused by mainstream hockey coverage…I’m a big fan of websites like Deadspin, Free Darko and Kissing Suzy Kolber – they entertain by denouncing the lofty status professional athletes have in society. It’s a dynamic sorely lacking in local media circles and especially within the NHL – the game and players are so revered in Canada. In this light, it’s almost blasphemous to say certain shit, like how I think Bobby Clarke is a huge douchebag, or how Trevor Letowski looks like Scotty Hamilton. So I guess that’s what the B in KB stands for – blasphemy.
Jason: As for me, I came for the blogging, but I’m staying for the groupies. So, ladies, come one, come all to the KB Groupie Tryout, to be held at the main ballroom of the Sheraton Wall Centre next Saturday at 11am. And, remember, looks count most, but enthusiasm is the tie-breaker.
This week, we had the giddy and smutty pleasure of getting the inside dirt on Vancouver's own gossip queen Elaine "Lainey" Lui. Lainey has been keeping her smuthouding readers current with all that is good, bad, and ugly in celebrity gossip at LaineyGossip.com, and has parlayed that success (and really, can 200,000 unique readers a week be wrong?) into regular gigs at CTV's eTalk and starting next week Lainey will be joining Coleen Christie for the CTV News at 5 two times a week. That's a lot of smut!
Fresh from her trip to The Toronto Film Festival where she rubbed elbows on the red carpets, Lainey dishes the delicious smut on what her typical day is like, her secret crush on Shane West, her designs on The View's Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Orlando Blooms pathetic chin whiskers, and Vancouver's closet smuthounds.
The Vancouverite: So can you tell us the story of how exactly Elaine Lui became the “Chinese Gwyenth Paltrow” and “queen of all gossip” in Vancouver & Canada?
Lainey: Queen of All Gossip? No… I won’t own that. But I will own the Chinese Gwyneth Paltrow. And I will own the fact that I’m a lifelong smuthound, raised on gossip, raised on Hollywood fumes. It all started out as a lark – an email on the day’s entertainment headlines sent to 2 girlfriends. They forwarded it, and those people forwarded it, and pretty soon, thousands of people were reading my newsletter, crashing my mail server, which compelled me to launch the site…
Last week we had the pleasure of a knocking around a little Q & A session with the man formerly known as Waiterblog, Andrew Morrison. Morrison has parlayed his blogging into a real life career as a powerful food critic in Vancouver, writing for The Westender, Vancouver Magazine and EAT Magazine.
Now he’s hung up his apron, handed in his wine crank, sold his Waiterblog website, and is starting fresh at a new site called Urban Diner. About to launch, His new site, promises even more hot Vancouver dining action – including a resident ‘hottie’ writing about Food Porn among other awesomeness. Now for readers that follow his dining adventures, we talk to this foodie insider about his new site launching soon, his last table as a waiter, his best meal of the year – and his worst, his ultimate fantasy day of gastronomic pleasure and much more.
The Vancouverite: Okay, so how did Andrew Morrison become the waiterblog? And why are you giving all that up to become the Urban Diner? (Or are you just Andrew Morrison now?).
Andrew Morrison: I started Waiterblog on the skeleton of a lefty political blog called Times New Roman Online. This was shortly after Bush won re-election in 2004. I couldn't bear to continue writing about an administration I loathed with every pore in my body, so I shifted my focus to something that was more tolerably familiar: the restaurant scene.
I'm giving it up because there was only so much I could do myself. I had a lot of restaurants asking about advertising on the site. For restaurants, it was a good place to lay down a few marketing dollars, but I was too wary of a perceived conflict of interest, what with my work as a restaurant critic an all. I needed six degrees of separation. I talked with Paul Kamon, the former editor of WhyCook.ca, and hammered out a deal where I could concentrate on editorial and he could run the business side of things. With Urban Diner, there will be a clear division between Church (editorial) and State (advertising). If anyone asks me about advertising now I can say, "talk to Paul".
Well, it's nearly September kids. That means back to school, a new TV season, and even a new hockey season starting. Here at The Vancouverite, that means some new features. The first of which is this, interviews. This is the first in a series of interviews we're working on. To kick things off for back to school time, we thought that a discussion with Al Cabino, the Internationally renowned sneakerographer would be a good idea.
Cabino's launched a serious campaign to get Nike to make the infamous McFly sneakers from "Back to the Future II" - what he calls the "Holy Grail of sneakers" in fact, in the current issue of Lemon magazine, he's created the world's first spy sneaker, the "Puma Spy", and he's been featured in a bunch of interviews on his quest. Now with the first sneaker magazine in development for launch in late-2006/early-2007, he talks with The Vancouverite about shoes, hockey, Ricky Bobby, and more.
