If you’re in town this month and need some cheering up from the post V-day February blahs, you really ought to go see this play, (and not just because a fellow Montreal Metblogger is performing in it – ahem). The Montreal Mirror featured it this week, and Le Quatrième absolutely recommends the musical as the perfect tonic for one’s winter blues. With original live music, song, dance, and a variety of mythical creatures The Mid-Life Crisis of Dionysus could very well be the best musical theatre production of Winter 2010!

Playing at Mainline Theatre, 3997 boul. St. Laurent every night except Sundays and Mondays until March 6th. $20 a ticket, $15 if you buy a set of four. Contact 514.849.3378 for tickets or buy them online.

Here is a great and healthy idea for a holiday gift or even as part of the inevitable post-holiday feasting new year’s resolution for oneself: $30 for a yoga passport all around the city. This pass entitles you to one visit (bookable online) per yoga studio, up until September 30, 2010 (expiry date for Montreal), which gives you plenty of time to sample classes.

Seeing as Montreal has as many yoga studios as it has churches, the list of participating studios is quite extensive and even if you go to only two classes, you will have pretty much made up for the cost of the card. It’s a ridiculously great deal, and will give you the chance to try out studios you might not have otherwise tried out!

Passport to Prana
Last day today for free shipping!

Wanna work at a bookstore? Well, kid, it’s your lucky day! The Concordia Community Solidarity Co-op Bookstore (aka Co-op Bookstore) is currently looking for a Finance and Administrative Coordinator, so if you’ve got the skills to pay the bills, have a look at the requirements for the position below (which has been cut ‘n’ pasted from the job posting on the Co-op’s Facebook page, in its entirety):

Financial and Administrative Coordinator / Coordonnatrice-eur financière et administrative

The Concordia Community Solidarity Co-op Bookstore is currently hiring a Financial and Administrative Coordinator. / La Librairie coopérative de solidaritéde l’Université Concordia est à la recherche d’un-e Coordonnatrice-eur financière et administrative.

The Concordia Community Solidarity Co-op Bookstore is pleased to offer a viable alternative to the corporate structure, putting students’ best interests above and beyond our own bottom line. As a not-for-profit alternative to corporate bookstores, we are conveniently located right on Concordia’s downtown campus at 2150 Bishop. Offering both new and used books, in addition to a wide variety of artisan consignment, we also boast the largest selection of sex and gender studies titles anywhere in Montreal.

Find us on the web at co-opbookstore.ca, or on Facebook at facebook.com/ConcordiaCoopBookstore

Tasks and Responsibilities

General:

• Organizing and maintaining all financial documents
• Liaising with Co-op’s co-coordinator on the daily operations of the store
• Administrating publisher accounts
• Overseeing monthly and annual budgets
• Reporting monthly to the Board of Directors & acting as a resource person on financial and administrative matters
• Liaising with the Co-op’s accountant
• Ensuring that receipt trails and paper trails are organized and in order
• Communicating with federal and provincial governments regarding financial and administrative matters, including submitting government declarations and remittances
• Overseeing operations of the Concordia University internal Banner account
• Researching and preparing proposals to update our bookkeeping systems
• Liaising with Concordia administrative bodies and services
• Liaising with the Concordia community and the community-at-large
• Maintaining and developing office systems with other staff including archiving, filing, computer and communication systems
• Ensuring the upkeep of the office, order and organize supplies with other staff
• Working with other staff and Board to maintain a clean, organized and welcoming space

Monthly:

• Making adjustments to the budget in accordance with Board decisions
• Liaising with Co-op’s co-coordinator on seasonal and general book orders and ongoing publisher relations
• Making month-end adjustments, including inventory adjustments
• Reconciling accounts
• Completing and presenting month-end financial reports to the Board
• Invoicing

Annually:

• Coordinating year-end inventory
• Completing all year-end adjustments
• Completing year-end transactions and reports
• Preparing year-end for auditor
• Liaising with auditor
• Presenting our year end financial report at our Annual General Meeting (held in November)
• Interpret and make recommendations regarding the auditor’s report to the Board and at our Annual General Meeting

Job Requirements and Assets:

• Experience in finance within Non-Profits and/or Not-for-Profits
• Understanding of bookkeeping in a retail (inventory and sales-based) context
• Excellent time management skills, self-motivation and self-direction
• Knowledge of MYOB or similar accounting software
• Ability to work with a computer (PC and Mac), proficiency in Word, Excel, and File Maker Pro
• Bilingualism (French and English, spoken and written)
• Strong communication skills
• Ability to problem solve
• Ability to work under pressure
• Ability to work in a chaotic environment
• Interest in community-based groups and non-corporate, self-managed environments and principles is an asset
• Experience in a bookstore is an asset
• Experience in community outreach, marketing or external relations an asset

Application Details:
Deadline to apply is Friday, September 25th, 2009 at 6 p.m.
Interviews will be held from September 29th to October 1st 2009.
Please note that only applicants selected for an interview will be contacted.

The position is set to begin on Friday, October 12th, 2009, and it is a one-year renewable contract. Candidates must be available 10am-4pm Monday to Friday (30 hrs per week), including some occasional evening and weekend work. The position includes two weeks of paid vacation.

The ideal candidate is eligible for an Emploi Quebec salary subvention program.

The Co-op Bookstore has a commitment to employment equity in our hiring practices. We encourage applicants to describe the unique contributions they, as individuals with diverse experiences, would bring to the Co-op in their cover letter or resume. Please indicate clearly in your cover letter that you would like to be considered for Employment Equity.

Please submit your CV and cover letter by Friday, September 25th, 2009 at 6 p.m. Unfortunately applications without a cover letter will not be considered!

By email: coopbookstore@gmail.com
Subject line: “FA Coordinator Hiring Committee”

By Mail or in Person:
2150 Bishop
Montreal, QC.
H3G 2E9

For more information you can contact us at 514-848-7445 or email us at coopbookstore@gmail.com.

Please feel free to circulate this posting to any job-hunters you may know!

I just got home from the Silk Stocking Revue, a fundraiser event for the Montreal Burlesque Festival that’s happening this September 17 to 20, and let me tell you: it’s going to kick ass!

The fundraiser was at the Opus Hotel, across the street from the Just For Laughs Museum where the festival will be happening. The performers were all fabulous, and performed a variety of different types of numbers, including some comedic stylings from Peter Radomski and a female duo whose names escape me. Even “Esther,” the girl who was cleaning up all the costumes after the ladies stripped down, was hilarious. There was a surprise out-of-town performer from Vancouver who went by the name of Bon Bon Bombay, and she really riled the audience up with her take on the Dresden Dolls’ “Missed Me,” plucking an unsuspecting man from the audience and tying him up with her scarves as she did her doll dance around him. It was definitely one of the highlights of the evening, along with the final performance of the evening by festival founder Scarlett James, who was a vision in white feathers and thousands of crystals!

If you’re hungry for more of Scarlett before September, you can see her perform at the Bal Érotique on August 14 at Club Opera, another sexy event that’s sure to whet your whistle for more! In the meantime, stay tuned for more news on the first-ever Montreal Burlesque Festival by checking their website at montrealburlesquefestival.ca.

Matt Mullenweg, WP founder, at WordCamp Montreal (photo by Eva Blue)

After I posted my last blog about going to WordCamp Montreal, an ironic thing happened: my personal WordPress blog (buttontapper.com) ceased to exist. It’s back online, mostly, at the time I’m writing this, but a lot of my blogs have disappeared into the ether. Which I hope will serve as a warning to back up your own site weekly, if not daily, but probably won’t because, as we all know, people don’t like to do things until they learn from a bad experience.

ANYWAY, all that to say that I was going to be reporting on WordCamp on my blog, but since it got destroyed when my former hosting provider went AWOL, I ended up spending a good chunk of my weekend reinstalling WordPress, hunting down the files I’d lost, reinstalling old and new plugins, and otherwise jerking around on my site. Instead of reporting on WordCamp. I suck.

In an attempt to make up for the fact that I’ve clearly failed you all, I thought I would share some of the things I did manage to learn during my Saturday at WordCamp (Sunday was just way too hectic to make it to the SAT), and pass the wisdom of the crowd along.

The first talk I heard was CT Moore’s presentation on WP-MU (a version of which you can also find online at his website, Gypsy Bandito). He basically gave a quick walk-through on how to install the program, and an overview as to what it can do. If you’re going to be manipulating multiple blogs, whether on a single domain or across several domains, you should definitely consider installing MU. That’s what it’s designed for, as the name stands for Multiple Users. You can give admin privileges to lots of different people, let lots of people create blogs on your site, share admin privileges across multiple sites, and basically get a hell of a lot of blogs all managed under one system. It sounded pretty excellent, so I have been debating installing it on my own computer, but since I only currently own the domains for two blogs, that might be a bit overkill. Sure, I have to log into two separate interfaces, but it also helps keep them separate in my mind. If you had multiple blogs at one domain, this would probably be way more useful to you.

The second talk was actually a loose Q&A with Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress. Matt was in Montreal on vacation, so he didn’t want to give his usual “State of the Word” talk, but you can watch it online at WordPressTV if you’re curious. He’s been touring the various WordCamps throughout North America, and figured he couldn’t skip ours, even if it was during the final days of the Jazz Fest. Anyway, I thought he was super cool and had lots of good things to say about the WordPress community and how open-source software works, why it’s important to give back, and why people like Bill Gates will someday be giving their own software away for free. You should definitely watch the video, because he’s very optimistic and upbeat, and it’s nice to get that kind of perspective in a world that is so often cynical about community, and online communities in particular.

The last talk I stayed for was Brad Williams‘ WordPress security talk, which had lots of useful tips and tricks for keeping your personal site safe (with WordPress installed). I believe he said he would have all his tips online at his website, but I don’t think they’re online there yet. To summarize, you should:

• Have a secure password, that isn’t based on dictionary words (duh, but how many of us really do this?)
• Keep your WordPress files up to date with the latest plugins and WP installs
• Make a different account your admin account, and delete the original “admin” user
• Give your WordPress files a random prefix that hackers won’t be able to guess, instead of the default “wp-“

I think there were a few more tips that I’m forgetting, but those stood out as the most important and easiest to do, for starters.

There was quite a good turn-out for WordCamp Montreal, and if anybody else wants to share any insights they had or things they learned there, feel free to post those below.

If you’ve been hemming and hawing, it’s time to get off the fence! Less than 24 hours are left to buy your tickets to WordCamp Montreal, a 2-day conference on WordPress for nerds, geeks, hackers, crackers, code monkeys, designers and plain old ordinary folks who use the web’s most beloved of free blogging software. That’s YOU! That’s ME! Yes, I will be there, live and in the flesh, taking notes and (hopefully) making use of a wifi connection to share the latest and greatest with readers over on my blog.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “But Laura, aren’t conferences EXPENSIVE?” And yes, dear Montreal Metblogs reader, you are right; most conferences are expensive. But not WordCamp! No way, dudes. This one is only $30 a person ($25 if you’re a student), and that gets you two whole days of WordPress action AND a t-shirt AND a free lunch! Who says there are no free lunches in this world? Not the peeps at WordCamp.

So maybe you’re thinking, “But Laura, I don’t know anything about WordPress. I’m just a blogger with a free template. I am a total n00b; won’t they make fun of me?” Well, I can’t guarantee that someone won’t, because let’s face it: some people are just jerks. However, the goal of WordCamp is to bring new and experienced users together, to teach you some tricks, and to share information. So even if you’re the newbiest of n00bs, you’re welcome to attend. Hell, I’m not the tech-savviest gal on the planet, and I’m going, so you should too!

But like I said, there’s less than 24 hours left to make up your mind! WordCamp is this Saturday and Sunday, July 11-12, at the SAT (1195 St-Laurent). You can find the schedule online here, and a list of your fellow attendees here. To buy tickets, just click here!

Stevie Wonder (photo courtesy of Montreal Jazz Fest)

In case you miraculously haven’t heard about it by now, Stevie Wonder is coming to the Montreal Jazz Fest this year! His free concert, tonight at 9:30 at the GM stage (corner of St-Catherine and Jeanne-Mance), kicks off the festivities, and approximately 100,000 people are expected to attend.

As the Gazette reports, despite the fact that only 8,700 people attended his Bell Centre performance back in 2007, tonight’s concert is on everyone’s to-do list. If you’re planning on going, I’d advise you to get there early to grab a seat or a section of land to stand on. Otherwise, you may be hearing Lil’ Stevie from several blocks away.

For more Jazz Fest programming, check out their website at montrealjazzfest.com, and for a quick hit of Stevie Wonder, check out this YouTube video of “For Once in My Life.”

It’s not at the Fringe festival, so you may not have heard about this one, but you definitely should! Theatre Ste-Catherine presents The Funny, Filthy & Perverted Variety Hour tonight through June 20 at 264 Ste-Catherine East. Doors open at 9:30 PM, show starts at 10 PM according to the website (although the Theatre’s website says the show starts at 8 PM—confusion!).

Performers include a variety of acts from burlesque, circus, comedy, music, sketch and stand-up genres, and the line-up changes every night. Hosts and hostesses include Eric Amber, Christophe Davidson, Seska Lee & Miss Sugarpuss. Performers tonight include Amanda Connell, The Dan D Lyons, Scarlett James, Lola Lamb, Seska Lee, Michael Lifshitz and Miss Sugarpuss. Check the show’s website for upcoming line-ups!

Though it may not feel like it yet, with temperatures only in the low-twenties (that’s Celsius, for you crazy Yanks), summer is upon us. While the solstice isn’t until June 21, and you may stil be sporting a jacket in the evenings, Montrealers are gearing up for bigtime parties in this town of neverending festivals.

Wondering what to do with your bad self? Never fear! The Montreal Mirror’s Hot Summer Guide is online with plenty of festivals to check out. The Fringe Festival is just beginning this evening with their free opening night party, and shows get started in earnest on Friday. Also happening in June:

• Suoni per il Popolo Festival (through June 30)
• Nuit Blanche sur Tableau Noir (11-14)
• Festival Présence Autochtone (11-21)
• Eureka! Festival (12-14)
• Fringe Pop (13 & 18–21)
• L’Off Festival de Jazz (18–27)
• Virgin Music Festival (19–20)
• National Environmental Exhibition (19-21)
• Dimanches Salsafolie (’til Sept. 20)
• Loto-Québec Fireworks (June 13-Aug. 15)
• Montreal Baroque Music Festival (25-28)
• Montreal International Reggae Festival (26-28)
• Folk Festival on the Canal (27)

So what the heck are you waiting for? Get out there and get festive!

Fringe 2009 logo (via montrealfringe.ca)

The annual St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival kicks off tomorrow night with an opening night party featuring the United Steel Workers of Montreal and Lake of Stew. Entry to the event is free, and the location is out in the open at Parc des Amériques. The party starts at 7 PM, so be there or be square!

“What the heck is a Fringe Festival?” you may be asking. As per their website, these are the four founding principles of all Canadian Fringe events:

1) No Artistic Direction. Artists are selected by lottery.
2) No Censorship. Artists have complete freedom to present ANYTHING.
3) Accessibility to artists. Anyone can apply to the lottery.
4) Accessibility to audience. Ticket prices are kept low and 100% of the ticket price is returned to the artists you see on stage.

Additionally, many of the Fringe shows are, as implied by the festival’s name, really out on the fringes of society—whether in terms of performance material or good taste. Fringe shows often push the boundaries of what we conceive of as typical theatrical performances, and can range from dance to musical performances to lectures to stand-up comedy to drama to audience participatory events and more. There are, truly, no limits on Fringe events beyond a performer’s imagination.

For more information on all of the Fringe shows (which run from June 11-21), be sure to check their website at montrealfringe.ca, or head on down to the beer tent and check out the action!