Dan Mangan plays the Vogue theatre

Our miniature plastic dinosaur, Norman, came to the Vogue theatre on Saturday evening to enjoy the Dan Mangan concert.

Dan is a Vancouverite, and appropriately enough, played to a sold out crowd this weekend. His nine-piece band was stellar and Dan was charismatic and hit every right chord, whether it was on his guitar or on a raspy high note. He's got a natural, comfortable stage presence that makes you laugh at his jokes and want to clap along to every song. Check out the video at the bottom.

Dan Mangan performs "Robots" with much help from an enthusiastic crowd.

The winning combination

There are some combinations that really make the world a better place to live in. Peanut butter and chocolate. Popcorn and movies. Chocolate chip cookies and milk. Wicker baskets and bikes. Ice cream and chocolate sauce. Wine and cheese. But I think I found the combination that trumps any other combination known to mankind. Ben Harper and Pearl Jam. Tonight we're going to the Pearl Jam concert, with Ben Harper and the Relentless 7 as the opening act. I've been so intensely and insanely busy since the start of school that I actually forgot about this concert until yesterday. There's really no story to tell here, just that I'm excited to have a night off! However, there will surely be a great story to follow, because every time Luc and I attend any sort of seated event (concert, sports, etc), we are always surrounded by a dense population of completely bizarre people.

Speaking of bizarre, I promised a few more tidbits about my former job....please note, I was NOT a personal assistant. I did, however, spend an afternoon with the boss's wife shopping online for wedding and bridal shower gifts.

Concert? What concert?

Last week Luc and I attended the Tragically Hip concert at the Orpheum Theatre here in Vancouver. The music was fantastic, but the overall experience was irritatingly unsatisfying. It began by Luc and I arriving in the midst of the Hip's second song - they didn't have an opening band like we had anticipated, like every concert in the history of concerts that I have attended. We weren't too put off by this, we were just happy that we went straight to the venue and not to Pita Pit first like we had originally planned.

We managed to blindly grope our way to our seats in the dark of the auditorium. A slower song was on and everyone was seated - and about one minute after settling in, I had the head of the kid in front of me leaning back into my lap. No joke....the seats are that tight and he was that clueless. I "accidentally" kneed him in head (gently) and I think he got the drift...until he did it again a few minutes later. Luckily a crowd favourite came on and everyone stood, relieving me of my lap duties.

The group directly in front of us consisted of a few middle aged guys and one guy's son (the head in my lap), who was about 12 years old and delightfully round in the belly. At first their dancing was cute and funny, but three more songs into the concert and I still couldn't stop giggling. I realized that I had been watching the 12 year kid dancing like a 40 year old woman more than I was watching Gord Downie do his awkward jig onstage. Can you blame me though, the kid was way better.

Luc was seated on my right and on my left was a group of teenage girls, who had bought concert t-shirts before the concert and were all wearing them....that's one of Luc's personal favourites, the concert t-shirt wearing concert-goers. By the intermission I was more well versed in the romantic escapades of the girl beside me than I was in the set list. They were chatting and snapping pictures and being all together way too distracting. It's really my own fault, I should have been singing along and not listening to the top 5 reasons why Brad was the total worst boyfriend ever...EVER.

If this wasn't enough, two rows ahead of us was a group of guys who played musical chairs the whole time...the WHOLE TIME. Up, down, back and forth, switching seats, jumping over rows...I was tempted to break all their legs just so they would sit still. Not to mention they were smoking weed that smelled like rotten ginger. If you're curious as to what that smells like, buy some ginger root from your local market, peel about half of it, leave it in the vegetable crisper for a week or two, then inhale deeply.

It's sad, but I remember more about the people around me than the actual entertainment on stage. The music was good background noise for the circus show going on around us though.