VANCOUVER -- I am talking to a giant jockstrap. The jockstrap is positioned beside a throne on the stage of Molson Canadian Hockey House. Sitting on the throne also talking to the jockstrap -- which, did I mention, is also talking? -- is actor and comedian Seán Cullen. It's the first night of showbiz at Hockey House. Did I mention that the jockstrap is also a francophone, and prone to swearing and fits of comic outrage? 

Unofficially, the Hockey House was launched a few days prior with a concert by Bryan Adams, which I enjoyed, further deepening my suspicion that I've been overcome by the anodyne of this event, a sporting lotus eater here on the wild west coast.

Still, it feels good, although if the event has a downside, it's that it has worn down our national song into the repetitive drone of a ringtone. 

While the venue has posited itself as an ostensibly thriving entertainment beacon, it's also the place where large hairy men in hockey sweaters go to drink expensive beer and murder their country's anthem. 

Hockey House is an enormous structure bolted between BC Place and GM Place. Inside, it's heavy on Van Halen lighting, enormous television screens locked to endless goal-scoring reels and drinks that can only be purchased by tickets spat out of a row of debit machines. 

It's a grand venue made more ostentatious by its proximity to the Saskatchewan pavilion -- a throbbing orb lit by prairie images that float across its rind -- and Quebec House, which is square and white looks like a child's snow fort. Both of these venues also have live music. At Quebec House, I saw Malajube perform. When I entered the Sask orb, a blues guitarist was soloing and playing Foxy Lady.

There's very little that's modest and tavernesque about Hockey House, starting with the ticket prices -- $100 per day -- which, it turns out, have failed to barrier Vancouverites, as well as visiting sporting tourists, from passing through its doors. The entire event is sold out, which says something -- perhaps unflattering, perhaps not -- about what Canadians will pay to watch a giant talking jockstrap.

While Hockey House is the only place with a talking jockstrap, there are lots of other places with music. One evening, I had the choice of seeing either a paid show featuring Anvil at the Venue, or the great Chicago band, Wilco, performing at David Lam Park for free. In the end, I chose Wilco, although Anvil's appearance was probably more emblematic of the Games themselves.

The Scarborough band's remarkable comeback mirrors that which a lot about Vancouver 2010 represents: an overlooked and self-destined Canadian band that relentlessly -- if guilelessly -- demanded to be heard above the world's fray. Besides, they're funny, unself-conscious and, in their own way, culturally transcendant. Greater Canada can point to health care, gun control and diplomacy as the land's successful tenets. But the survival of Anvil's Lips Kudlow was the year's most inspiring story. 

The Wilco show ended up being a triumph in its own way. Before the Games started, there were concerns the IOC's corporate presence might overwhelm the events, but Vancouver, it turns out, is no Atlanta. In fact, at David Lam Park, sponsors were seen falling on their own swords. Despite steady rainfall, the concert-goers -- 8,000 of us -- decided to stand outside getting wet rather than seek refuge in the Coca Cola pavillion, which lingered like an unwanted guest over the course of the proceedings.

And if the VANOC signage hanging across great banners flanking the stage were meant to draw masses of people to its green and blue branding, the crowd's attention was either focused on the bands -- along with Wilco, Default and Carlaphone also performed -- or two adjacent video screens, which played Olympic broadcasts in real time. In one instance, they showed the final ten minutes of Canada's 18-0 drubbing of Slovakia in women's hockey. 

Despite the lurid score and grotesque imbalance of the teams, I looked down to see two preteen girls and their parents' staring at the game, hearing the names "Rebecca" and "Caroline" and watching them chase pucks that inevitably tickled the back of the net. As a boy, it was easy to identify with countless hockey male players. But for these girls, it was a new and precious reality, one that would have been unthinkable in past times.

 

My appearance on the Sean Schau came after cameos by Luc Robitaille, Elizabeth Manley and Jeffrey Buttle, easily the strangest opening acts I've ever followed. For a few minutes, Seán and I joked with the giant talking jockstrap, and then the Barenaked Ladies' Tyler Stewart joined me on drums for a song. Back in 1992, Tyler had been there when my band, the Rheostatics suffered our most tragic gig ever, opening for his band at Pacific Coliseum. 

At the outset of our show, our drummer loped onto the darkly-lit stage, only to shut down our guitarworks. We stood there for ten minutes before the electronics were reset. Emotionally upended, we played accordingly, and afterwards, sat in the dressing room with our heads in our hands, feeling distraught and defeated.

The Rheostatics are no more and the Ladies themselves have experienced a myriad of changes, the least being the loss of their co-front man, Stephen Page. Yet, at Hockey House, as in Vancouver, the Games worked to balm these insecurities. On Sunday night, the Ladies played a rousing set, and despite the presence of Canada's jerk of the Games -- an idiot in a Joe Sakic sweater who decided that his job was to stand at the front of the crowd and yell "You suck!" whenever Seán grabbed the microphone -- we played as loudly and as hard as we could. I found myself channelling Lips Kudlow, hollering into the microphone, understanding that this was my national anthem, and that now is the time to scream.