The Bigge Idea

The Angry, Vicious Comment Boards Attack Me Once Again

2009-06-27T11:29:00.002-04:00

Addendums to my Globe Travel Piece

2009-06-24T09:37:00.001-04:00

This is my first travel piece. I learned a bunch of things, including the fact that certain things are out of your control. And so I wanted to make two addendums to my article. The first is that one of the big draws about getting married in New York was the fact that getting there via Porter is so pleasant. In my original draft I wrote:

The woman had my sympathy, since there were only two clerks processing licences that day – my fiancée and I spent less time on our Porter flight from Toronto to Newark, N.J., than we did at City Hall.

The second thing was that my original sidebar recommended two hotels:

Where to Stay
The Loews Regency Hotel (540 Park Avenue) is two blocks from Central Park and nearby to hair salons and florists. The Ritz-Carlton in Battery Park (Two West Street) is minutes from the new bureau and has a wedding concierge on staff.

Adjust yourselves accordingly.

I Love The Tofu Tagger

2009-06-01T19:15:00.004-04:00

Uses vegetable based spray paint, no doubt.

(Flickr link).

Gee Whiz

2009-05-30T10:52:00.002-04:00

As Tim Falconer pointed out, Mr. Gee is not an inspired choice to cover City Hall.

How right he is.

So, Tell Me Ryan, Why Do You Hate Toronto?

2009-05-25T13:29:00.003-04:00

Jarvis St. is a major north-south thoroughfare, with five lanes accommodating an estimated 28,000 cars daily. The route is made especially efficient by a reversible centre lane that changes to accommodate morning and evening rush hours.

This would no longer be the case under an ill-thought-out $6 million "streetscape improvement" plan to be considered by Toronto City Council as it meets today and tomorrow. Proponents of the redesign want to do away with the centre lane on Jarvis, which would leave only two lanes running in either direction. Sidewalks would be widened, trees would be planted, and there would be a bike lane.

There is a very real risk that these largely cosmetic changes would add to gridlock in the downtown core. The city's own traffic analysis indicates that travel time along Jarvis St., between Bloor and Queen Sts., would increase from eight minutes to 10 minutes. While admitting that's a large jump, on a percentage basis, staff concluded that the actual addition of just two minutes of travel time is "relatively minor."

I'm really quite comfortable with the Globe being against everything, but The Toronto Star? Really?

This makes me frustrated and angry, and it's an anger and frustration that's 10 years in the making. I want to say more, but it's not worth it -- my complaints will sound petty and stupid. I think I'll try and move to New York instead.

(link).

The Biggest Ideas * The Smartest Men

2009-05-21T21:17:00.003-04:00

Keep forgetting to blog this: about a month ago, ideaCity announced its first 21 speakers. Four are women.

You might ask yourself why I keep writing about gender imbalance in relation to idea and essay based journalism. The short answer is that a few years ago, I was an associate producer for CBC's Go. Every week, once we were close to finalizing the line-up, there would be a conference call. Brent Bambury would ask a simple question: how many women do we have on the show this week?

Invariably there would be few or none. The two main producers were male, I was (still am) male. Only Elizabeth, the other associate producer, was female. And without trying, each week we managed to reproduce invisible gender bias. It really stuck with me.

So when the Walrus relaunched with almost no female bylines, I thought back to my Go experience. Fixing the problem can be as simple as saying "how many women do we have in the magazine this month?" This is not a quota system, or some other form of affirmative action that enrages the right. It's a simple act of reminder and repetition, but it produces results.

When I Screw Up, I Regret The Error

2009-05-19T18:06:00.003-04:00

Former SCS Students In Print

2009-05-18T20:39:00.002-04:00

In the last few months some of my former U of T SCS students have had their work published. Congrats! Congrats!

Here are the associated links.

Globe and Mail, Facts and Arguments

London Times, book excerpt on pirates in Somalia

Torontoist, about art and Honest Eds

Saturday and Sunday Insight Now Reprints Web Content

2009-05-18T17:24:00.002-04:00

In a strange attempt to save money, the Saturday and Sunday Insight sections of the Toronto Star are now reprinting hefty amounts of web content in their print editions. This seems strange, when they could simply provide links to the articles on the Star's website.

Like this:

(link).
(link).
(link).
(link).
(link).

That takes only one column inch, instead of the dozens of column inches they used to reprint those same articles in their newspaper. I am interested to see how readers react to this. If nobody really notices or cares that Insight is now curating the best of the web and putting it onto newsprint, a significant chunk of my soul will wither and die.

Column on Selling Out

2009-05-09T12:15:00.002-04:00

(I'm trying my hand at column writing. Obviously not going to be doing so for free, but this was a dry-run. Enjoy or ignore, as you wish.)

The 1967 concept album The Who Sell Out was recently re-released in a fancy deluxe edition. Featuring fake radio jingles for Heinz Baked Beans and Odorono deodorant alongside real songs like “I Can See For Miles” and “Armenia City In The Sky,” it’s easy to imagine a contemporary band doing something similar – only this time with real advertisements. According to Advertising Age, alt-rock band Parachute recently reworked its single “She Is Love” at the behest of Nivea, who was planning on using the song in a TV commercial, but wasn’t quite happy with the original version.

Artistic integrity? That’s so 20th century. “In the old days we would have called this selling out,” said Robert Plant, when he accepted his best album Grammy back in February. “But I think it's a good way to spend a Sunday.” Part of the problem, of course, is that earning a living from one’s artistic integrity is becoming increasing difficult in the free (pirate) economy.

At the same time, the frequency of artist-marketer collaboration (nee capitulation) has increased because many companies (excluding the remixers at Nivea) are willing to take a more hands-off approach. Surreal, description-defying comedians Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, in a September 2008 Believer interview noted that, “We both despise advertising and marketing. You can’t avoid it, and it’s always so inane.” But even they were unable to turn down a paid opportunity to create three “anti-ads” for the Absolut vodka website. And, equally importantly, Absolut used them.

As the border between art and commerce turns fluid, the definition of selling out becomes increasingly nebulous. In a February cover story in Fast Company that profiled snowboarder Shaun White, authenticity is defined not as eschewing sponsorships, but White’s decision to lend his name to companies “he truly connects with” and managing his brand empire as shrewdly as an investment banker. In other words, selling out, but on his own terms.

The good news is that you no longer need to be a celebrity to profit from the new age of authenticity, as Nissan’s Twitter-only promotion for their latest vehicle demonstrates. Five hundred contestants are currently creating the most compelling, Nissan-friendly Myspace-ish “canvas” to try and earn as many online votes as possible. The prize? One of 50 free cars.

Like the secretive and open-ended campaigns for Red Bull and the Toyota Scion (as described in Rob Walker’s book Buying In), Nissan is comfortable enough to allow brand meaning to be created from the bottom up, rather than top down. That might sound like progress, but it’s a fickle freedom for consumers – user-generated advertising might lack the crispness of a professional advertising agency, but if managed effectively will achieve similar results.

Full disclosure: I’m part of the Nissan competition. Or at least I was. Two weeks ago I gave up trying to win, although why I was short listed in the first place remains a mystery. “To be brutally honest, I'm outside your target demographic and I find this ‘viral’ campaign fairly distasteful,” I wrote in the online application. “I can promise you that I will refuse to solicit my friends or otherwise sellout my social network in order to win a free car. If that's the sort of ‘edgy’ authenticity you're looking for, then put me behind the wheel.”

I should temper my holier-than-thou attitude with a caveat: entering the contest showed me how much work selling out actually entails. People are tattooing the vehicle on their arm, making short videos in car costume and writing songs about it. This is far more effort than I’m prepared to exert. Nothing is free, especially a car.

Given the opt-in nature of the contest, castigating the participants seems silly. If you decide to auction off your integrity for a $17,000 car, then you hurt no one but yourself, right? Not quite. Along with adding to the slurry of ad-spam in Twitter and Facebook, the Nissan promotion essentially forces contestants to monetize their social network.

Harnessing the goodwill and attention spans of your friends highlights the least-discussed aspect of converting cultural capital into filthy lucre – selling out is not simply a personal decision. The ability to collaborate with The Man in the first place is generally made possible by a community that nurtures or supports a given artist in their early stages. Which means you should think twice before you try and sell what isn’t entirely yours.

Of course, a few holdouts will always try and remain artistically untainted. The Believer contains no advertising, Maximum Rock'n'Roll continues to be punk as heck, and comedian David Chappelle walked away from many millions of dollars in order to preserve his integrity (or, at the very least, his sanity).

Indeed, selling out is a concept so culturally valuable that if it didn’t exist, we’d be forced to invent it. But like jaywalking, it’s almost impossible to prevent or police, something we know we shouldn’t do, but do it anyway. The product placement on 30 Rock might be self-aware or mocking, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s still embedded advertising for a captive audience.

On their Myspace page, the Japandroids, a two-piece rock band from Vancouver describe their sound as, “2 SWEETHEARTS STILL NAIVE ENOUGH TO THINK THEY'LL NEVER SELL OUT.” We want our car, and eat it too, especially given the state of the economy. But lest you accuse me of doing the devil’s work on behalf of Nissan, please note that nowhere here do I mention the name of the new vehicle. I might be a hypocrite for entering the contest, but a shill I am not.

Next, National Post Switches To Phones Without Fives On Them

2009-05-05T13:52:00.002-04:00

Remember that old Steven Wright joke, about having a phone without a five on it, and not knowing how long he's had the phone, because his calendar has no sevens? Hard not to think of that when one hears that the National Post won't be publishing on Mondays this summer.

(link).

I Give Up Trying to Win a Free Car

2009-04-23T22:55:00.007-04:00

You may have heard about a certain car company launching their new hip vehicle for the youth via social media only. Five hundred finalists, 50 free cars awarded. I'm one of the 500 finalists for the car.

No, really.

On Thursday, April 23rd, at approximately 11pm, I gave up:

Full text of screenshot here:

I Don’t Deserve a Cube

I say that with no false modesty. This is not an attempt to win your pity. It’s a statement of fact. I thought I would be able to create something clever and convincing, but in the past week I’ve realized three things:

• I lack the time and energy to generate something that might possibly earn me a car. It turns out that selling out is much more work than it might first appear.

• I lack the requisite (sub)cultural capital necessary to produce something hip or enticing enough to earn me a car.

• I feel icky about pestering my social networking to help me win a car. As I wrote in the online questionnaire, explaining why I might be cubeworthy:

To be brutally honest, I'm outside your target demographic and I find this "viral" campaign fairly distasteful. But then that's exactly the sort of person you're looking for, right? A free-thinking individual with a sophisticated bullshit detector who isn't afraid to speak their mind. I can promise you that I will refuse to solicit my friends or otherwise sellout my social network in order to win a free car. If that's the sort of "edgy" authenticity you're looking for, then put me behind the wheel of a cube. And yes, I acknowledge the contractions inherent in me entering the contest in the first place. But as F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

I now realize that the above answer contains a serious flaw in logic. Either I want the free car, or I don’t. Entering the contest, but refusing to play by the rules of the game, makes no sense. People are writing cube songs, running around in cardboard cube costumes – even getting cube tattoos. They deserve a cube. It’s time to admit that I don’t want a free car that badly. Or, to put it another way, I can’t afford the cost of a free car – my time, my creativity and my integrity are worth more than $15,000.

Ryan un-sells out

In Case You've Forgotten

2009-04-22T23:06:00.002-04:00

Long story, but I've been listening to a friend's iTunes collection on random for the last two months. I completely forgot about this bit of lovely from Radio Free Vestibule until I heard it again yesterday. I remember hearing this song when I lived in Vancouver. Back then, a small part of me thought the lyrics might be true. Having lived here almost ten years, I can report that they are, mostly, in fact, true.

I don't want to go to Toronto
I don't want to go
All of the blocks are square
None of the streets are twisted
None of the streets are paved with bricks
There's too many elevators in Toronto
Not enough stairs in Toronto
Not enough stairs
All of the food in Toronto is made of edible oil products
They don't have bagels in Toronto
They have doughnuts
Doughnuts made of edible oil
I don't like doughnuts
They don't have bagels
I don't want to go to Toronto
People don't have faces in Toronto
They have cigarette ads instead
They listen to your phone calls
There's a tower in Toronto that controls people's minds
It's illegal to possess brightly coloured balloons in Toronto
Illegal to own brightly coloured balloons
All of the children in Toronto must wear suits
Even the girls
Three piece suits
The buildings in Toronto have no windows
I don't want to go
Everyone lives in sub-terrainian caverns
Filled with doughnuts made of edible oil
I don't want to go
Nobody goes to the bathroom in Toronto
They have a special operation
They have it removed surgically
There's a tax on all wicker goods in Toronto
There's huge buildings with no windows
And streets with no curves
And inside you find little girls in suits
Running around with black balloons
And munching on edible oil products
The kids don't have names
They have numbers which are assigned to them at birth
They're called three hundred and eighty seven point seven
Four hundred and twelve point nine
And they all have cigarette ads instead of faces

(link).

Are These Ugly or Simply Municipal?

2009-04-13T20:20:00.002-04:00

Consider Signing up for The Freelance Writing Business (starts April 20th)

2009-04-08T21:01:00.002-04:00

Hello. If you live in Toronto, like my journalism, and are thinking about trying to freelance either part or full time, I would recommend my course, which begins April 20th at U of T SCS. A bit more information available through the link below.

(link to course and registration info).

Classes tend to be small enough so that students receive plenty of feedback, and I tailor courses based on student feedback. Please email me any questions you might have: ryan [dot] bigge [at] utoronto [dot] ca

I will return to regular programming forthwith.

Ponderous Thoughts

2009-04-04T10:30:00.000-04:00

Chris Scott calls The Book of Absolutes “ponderously titled.” He then goes on to write the following:

* “postmodern zanies”

* “emit distinct whiffs of reactionary powder”

* “He has many other devices tacked to his banner.”

* “The opening concessive clause of this clumsy sentence is a misplaced modifier of Mill's work.”

* “Postmodernists arrogate terms like relativity and evolution from physics and biology, overlooking the fact that in the humanities they are at best metaphors, at worst tendentious amplifiers of left-wing posturing.”

* “Thus, from a heterodox scattering of isms, a new and terrible orthodoxy slouches towards Parnassus, trumpeting its Nietzschean transvaluation of values from the tops of ivory (or red-brick) towers.”

* “in what may be termed the negative side of his Thomist dialectic”

Pretentious? Ponderous? Moi?

I did like this, however:

“lays siege to cloud castles”

(link).

A Well Written Novel, Except When It’s Not

2009-04-04T10:15:00.001-04:00

Here are two hallmarks of a Globe and Mail book review of a major new novel. The first is fawning over the author until reader nausea is induced:

I should admit to being a fan, to having done all the same things that people do upon first reading Fugitive Pieces. I read pages aloud. I underlined passages, went back and asterisked them, then went back and underlined them again.

And I waited for a second novel. But none came. It has been 13 years. Now, finally, like something exhumed from the distant past, comes The Winter Vault.

Has it been worth the wait?

It has.

The second is a brief burst of valid criticism near the end of the review that has the potential to undermine or even contradict all the fawning praise that has preceded it, followed by an immediate retraction/justification/rationalization:

The Winter Vault is a beautifully written though somewhat difficult book. Michaels's prose is sometimes faulted — wrongly, I think — for being too lyrical or overly poetic, the kind of thing that has no business in a novel. Indeed, we feel Michaels sometimes straining against the form of the novel, and such strain is not easily borne in every instance. A single example may suffice. Avery is watching Jean as she gazes out over the changed Ontario landscape: "Her head, he was sure, was bursting with thought" — even granting poetic licence, it is an unfortunate line.

But The Winter Vault can justify its excesses.

(link).

Kinda Big Deal

2009-03-25T12:08:00.002-04:00

Professional asshole Keen tweeted about me: (link).

My twitter and brevity piece, originally in the Toronto Star, was reprinted (with permission, all legal-like) in the very wonderful journal The Smart Set. (link). It seems to be getting a bit of traction, which is always very cool and, er, keen.

I suspect more people are reading it from The Smart Set simply because it's almost impossible to find the Star's Insight section online.

Come, Thou Book Reviewer

2009-03-22T23:47:00.002-04:00

I have many pet peeves in regard to book reviewing, and one of the larger ones is referring to the dust jacket. I cannot think of a lazier maneuver. If you have 800 words or so to talk about 400 pages of novel, why waste time talking about superficial wrapping paper. It’s akin to commenting on the trailer when doing a film review. (link) I understand judging a book by it’s cover, but not by the words on the dust jacket, surely:

* I disagree with the book jacket's assertion that it may be a “small mystery,” and I'm puzzled by the assertion in the publicity materials that its main narrator, Audrey Flowers, is “IQ-challenged.”

* It immediately becomes clear that the book jacket has failed to adequately synopsize Audrey's (and Winnifred's) adventures.

* Certainly there is much more going on in this book than the “small mystery,” or Uncle Thoby's eventual decampment for England, which the jacket describes as being the central events of the narrative.

Another pet peeve is overabundant praise:

Come, Thou Tortoise had me from Word One.

Referring to my copy of said novel, I see that Word One is: “The.”

Cue the Monty Python:

And the crowd goes quiet now as Hardy settles himself down at his desk, body straight, shoulders relaxed, pen held lightly but firmly in the right hand, he dips the pen in the ink and he’s off! It’s the first word, but it’s not a word, oh no, it’s a doodle way up on the left-hand margin, it’s a piece of meaningless scribble and he’s signed his name underneath. Oh dear, what a disappointing start! But he’s off again and here he goes, the first word of Thomas Hardy’s first novel at 10.35 on this very lovely morning, it’s three letters, it’s the definite article and it’s "the," Dennis.

(Voice of Dennis) Well, this is true to form, no surprises there. He’s started five of his eleven novels to date with the definite article. We’ve had two of them with "it", there’s been one "but," two "ats," one "and" and a "Dolores.” Oh, that, of course, was never published.

(Globe review as discussed above).

Full disclosure: (I reviewed the same book for the Star).

Men Are Sure Smart

2009-03-14T11:41:00.000-04:00

So, last month, the new, redesigned Walrus appeared. Inspired by a listserv debate, I tallied male and female bylines in the new March 2009 Walrus. Of 14 articles, one was written by a woman. That didn’t seem right to me.

So I’m pleased to report that the April 2009 issue of the Walrus does a much better job of gender equality – roughly an equal number of male and female bylines. However, there are still some hiccups, as the Editor’s Note by John Macfarlane proves:

Last year, the American magazine Foreign Policy and the British magazine Prospect co- published a list of the world’s top 100 public intellectuals — men and women whose ideas have changed the world. It included … four Canadians: New Yorker staff writer and bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell; human rights theorist and Liberal party leader Michael Ignatieff; Harvard linguist and experimental psychologist Steven Pinker; and political philosopher and Kyoto Prize winner Charles Taylor. In its year-end review, Prospect also nominated Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood, whose book Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, was a 2008 bestseller; and social critic Naomi Klein, whose most recent book is The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

[…]

Canada can claim, if not a hundred, then certainly more than six. Among others, and in addition to those already mentioned, the list would include Michael Adams, Maude Barlow, Conrad Black, Michael Bliss, Michael Byers, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Robert Fulford, David Frum, Jack Granatstein, Allan Gregg, Rudyard Griffiths, George Jonas, Tom Kent, James Laxer, Stephen Lewis, Irshad Manji, Roger Martin, John Polanyi, John Ralston Saul, Janice Gross Stein, David Suzuki, and Ronald Wright.

Not to mention Mark Kingwell, who writes a dazzling essay in this issue on the leadership of Barack Obama.

Macfarlane lists 23 brainiacs, of which three (3) are female. To put that in perspective, there’s undoubtedly a better female to male ratio in the Oak Leaf Steam Baths.

I also like that the feature (The Other Porn Addiction: Why are ordinary women exposing themselves online?) is written by a dude. Call me crazy, but I thought Ariel Levy did a pretty job with the book Female Chauvinist Pigs. Levy, by the way, is now a staffer at the New Yorker, a magazine of ideas that includes many female writers. Just saying.

(link).
(link).

I Dream of Globe Focus & Books

2009-03-14T10:50:00.003-04:00

"Genie back in the bottle" appears on page F7 and F9, used to describe free newspaper content and dual citizenship.

Jesse F. Keeler's Star Alliance Gold card remains a mystery to all

2009-03-07T11:40:00.003-05:00

~~Thanks to the April 2009 issue of Toronto Life for that bit of trivia. Turn to page 85, where The List includes a scan of Keeler's elite aeroplan card, with the name and number quite visible.~~

Whoops! 678 912 345 is a fake number. Boy do I look silly now.

Kate “Fuck & Shit” Carraway

2009-02-27T21:24:00.001-05:00

Full disclosure: I know Kate Carraway. She gave a great guest talk in one of my journalism classes last year. She’s ambitious, and writes well. She also swears like a longshoreperson. I’m no prude, but I find a little goes a long way. When swearing becomes a predictable tic or habit, it loses a lot of its power to shock or convey tone or style. But that’s just me.

In order to ensure it wasn’t my imagination, I decided to do some content analysis. My friend recently lent me a wide-screen Mac, which makes this kind of thing much faster and convenient. Anyway, as of Friday, Feb. 27, 2009, I found 68 articles written by Carraway on the eye weekly site. Of those, 29 include swearing. Decide for yourself:

* them and us
BY KATE CARRAWAY January 09, 2009 15:01
“the shunned and the shunning, the fucked and the fuckers,”

* 2008 media round-up
BY KATE CARRAWAY December 23, 2008 21:12
“You know who had a fucked-up year? Journalists.”

* A bah! on all your humbugs
BY KATE CARRAWAY December 17, 2008 21:12
“shit didn’t get shate on December 25th”

*A decade of adulthood
BY KATE CARRAWAY January 14, 2009 21:01
“A decade! Surely in a decade you’ve figured some shit out, got some shit done. Once I saw a talk show where the hot and possibly batshit Cameron Diaz”

* Aussie Rules for Canadians
BY KATE CARRAWAY September 11, 2008 13:09
“To an outsider, Aussie rules football is essentially a crazy-violent fucked-up version of rugby,”

* Bonfire of inanities
BY KATE CARRAWAY August 25, 2008 06:08
“Regularly shit on for its Rosedale-coloured glasses”
“It's shit, but fun.”
“Here, we don't value each other's social contribution enough to give half a shit,”

* CanCon 3-D!!!
BY KATE CARRAWAY January 14, 2009 21:01
“will already fuck with your head a little.”

* Duff day afternoon
BY KATE CARRAWAY December 01, 2008 15:12
“Today, the first of December, is not only a day of shitty half-rain made bleaker by the oppressive Mondayness of it all,”

* First past the post
BY KATE CARRAWAY January 28, 2009 20:01
“where anyone who knows anything doesn’t give a shit if you’re Jewish or Indian or whatever.”

* Freeconomics: how to live on $60 a week
BY KATE CARRAWAY January 07, 2009 21:01
“Dizzy shopaholics can fuck off:”
“It’s fucking gnarly.”
“It fucking sucked,” types itself before I think about it.
“Sick of apples and shitty protein bars,”

* Henry Rollins
BY KATE CARRAWAY October 22, 2008 12:10
“I ask Rollins, a committed feminist, what he thinks about the media shitstorm surrounding Sarah Palin.”

* Imperial Tattoo
BY KATE CARRAWAY September 26, 2008 16:09
“Going home on a packed Dufferin bus wearing a ludicrous, borrowed, children's raincoat, I accidentally dropped the splurgey Champagne on the downhill sloping bus floor and chased after it shouting "Shit! Shit!",”

* Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience
BY KATE CARRAWAY February 27, 2009 10:02
“(or maybe Kevin’s? Or Nick’s? I don’t fucking know)”

* Libraries need love
BY KATE CARRAWAY August 18, 2008 07:08
“Renewed, I stuck around to sneak-read some shitty magazines”

* Lustless love affairs
BY KATE CARRAWAY February 11, 2009 21:02
“the richness and radness of no-fucking friend-romances are usually undervalued,”
“Shit is not to be fucked with.”

* Mia's Munky business
BY KATE CARRAWAY December 02, 2008 17:12
“(you know, genocide and shit),”
“(Translation: "Fuck your face, Bolton.")”

* Nuit, Blanched
BY KATE CARRAWAY October 06, 2008 11:10
“It’s a smooshy clusterfuck,”
“Fuck “collective secular prayer,” for now.”
“which is loud as fuck and barred by security personnel”
“1:56: It’s fucking cold.”
“and get the fuck out of there.”
“and lose my shit.”

* Samantha Ronson holds Court
BY KATE CARRAWAY December 04, 2008 16:12
“after a too-long technical fuck-up that stalled her entrance.”

* Social hibernation
BY KATE CARRAWAY January 28, 2009 21:01
“But socialize, in the winter? Fuck it.”

* Taddle Creek tattler
BY KATE CARRAWAY October 24, 2008 13:10
“and several others that I haven't read yet because fuck, this just happened on Wednesday.”

* Ted Rogers' footprint
BY KATE CARRAWAY December 04, 2008 13:12
“Bloor Street's businessy clusterfuck,”

* The Yonge/Bloor disconnect
BY KATE CARRAWAY December 29, 2008 12:12
“north-east corner's pigeon shit-dotted concrete slab”
“where long blue construction fences have been fucking up car and foot traffic for months.”

* The art of Scarborough
BY KATE CARRAWAY December 12, 2008 14:12
“re-purposing our neighbourhood with pranks and fuckery”

* The bonfire rages on
BY KATE CARRAWAY November 03, 2008 16:11
“Modesty can fuck off, basically:”
“a few of my media-savvy friends gave me the “You’ve finally gone and fucked yourself” pity eyes.”
“not for an endlessly brutal, tail-swallowing clusterfuck.”

* The happy hoser
BY KATE CARRAWAY February 25, 2009 21:02
“Pro: Seamed hose are hot as fuck, but subtle.”

* The ladies who breakfast
BY KATE CARRAWAY September 15, 2008 13:09
“Sometimes, when our nights are full of stupid and distracting shit like work and family and relationships,”

* What a Drake it is getting older
BY KATE CARRAWAY February 11, 2009 13:02
“took hold of the city's give-a-shit classes.”
“has hosted a variety of usually shit-on artists and creators”

* What work means now
BY KATE CARRAWAY February 25, 2009 21:02
“and it’s Athenian, biblical, Shakespearean shit.”
“for coffee and cookies and shit-talk.”

* Style tips: Feb. 12
February 11, 2009 21:02
BY KATE CARRAWAY
“For a holiday that’s tangentially about fucking,”

Why I Think This Commercial Stinks

2009-02-11T20:45:00.001-05:00

Occasionally one runs across a piece of analysis so sharp and absolutely correct that it never leaves your brain. This is such an example:

But That '70s Show and That '80s Show are different. Suddenly, you no longer have to remember an era in order to enjoy its revival.
[...]
It's ironic that we've chosen our own culture's most fleeting and disposable elements as the touchstones by which we memorialize past eras. For those who actually came of age in one of those decades, these elements endure because they're rooted in a deeper understanding of the time. For example, Wall Street's Gordon Gekko persists as an Eighties-era icon because the character's oversized greed seems emblematic of the decade's Zeitgeist.
[...]
On That '70s Show and That '80s Show, however, trends, hairstyles and catchphrases don't represent anything -- they are an end unto themselves. When someone drinks a Fresca on That '70s Show, it's meant to be funny not because Fresca symbolizes something, or even because the viewer might remember drinking Fresca himself. It's funny because, well, people drank Fresca in the Seventies. Get it? The reference alone is the set-up to the joke and the punchline, all rolled into one.

-- Adam Sternbergh, March 9, 2002, Saturday Post, emphasis mine

If you happen to agree with Adam, as I do, then every time you see something like this Virgin Air 25th Anniversary commercial you have a tidy explanation for why you feel so emotionally disinvested. The huge cellphone and the weird hair and the classic videogames in the Virgin ad aren’t even tired jokes – they’re not jokes at all. They’re establishing shots, setting the historical era, but little else. Maybe the ad isn’t supposed to be funny – maybe I’m misunderstanding the commercial. Maybe the brilliance is in its ability to flawlessly evoke the recent past, in the same pornographic exactitude that Mad Men trafficks in.

But if it is meant to be funny, it reminds me of the painfully endless number of advertisements each Christmas that use the inedible nature of fruitcake as a punchline. How many times can we be reasonably expected to laugh at a joke that is premised on the equation:

fruitcake = sucks

Three times in an entire lifespan? Tops?

What was so appealing about the British version of Life on Mars was how it tried to do something clever with the clash between present and the past. My favourite being this little exchange in Season 1, Episode 3:

"Why would anyone turn a factory into a block of flats?"

“It's supposed to look nice.”

"Factories should be factories. Houses should be houses. I mean things are built for a purpose. It's ridiculous."

And, the 2009 Toronto Book Award Should Go To … Girls Fall Down

2009-02-02T11:25:00.001-05:00

This posting is meant to heap praise upon Girls Fall Down by Maggie Helwig. But first, a brief history lesson.

[L]et me describe some recent events in my neighbourhood. They're really incredible. One of the Italian restaurants on my favourite street of crowded Italian restaurants was bombed. The bomb didn't do much damage -- it went off outside, and so only blew the windows out.
[...]
There is much gossip about who or what this is all about, and I don't know what's true. [...] Whatever the case, something odd is going on. You'd think it would be rich material for storytellers.
[...]
Now here's my point: State, quickly, which Canadian novelist would be most likely to take on this milieu? Quick, now. Name a name. I cannot think of one who would be even interested in weaving fiction out of this event-filled environment. (Except me, of course, but I confess I haven't attempted the world of petty crime yet. I will try.) I can, however, think of a lot of readers who would read such stories.

-- Russell Smith, Dec 11, 2002 Globe column

[R]ussell Smith, the Globe & Mail columnist [...] Not a bad fella, but one who's prone to making some fairly ridiculous Torontocentric pronouncements from time to time.

To wit: After a bomb went off in an Italian restaurant on Toronto's College Street last December, Smith decried -- as he does every couple of months or so -- CanLit's failure to engage with the burning issues of the present day. He accused Canadian writers "of being so lofty-minded that they are unwilling to sully their hands with contact with the corrupt and superficial City." Why, Smith asked (mere days afterward, mind you), had no-one made use of this "overheated and violent and pretty great material? Quick, now. Name a name. I cannot think of one who would be even interested in weaving fiction out of this event-filled environment."

And then, stepping up to the plate, Smith wrote without irony, "Except me, of course, but I confess I haven't attempted the world of petty crime yet. I will try."

-- Noah Richler, Feb 13, 2003 NPost column

Why am I wasting your time with these two clowns, when my main point is to inform you of how blown away I was with Girls Fall Down by Maggie Helwig? An excellent question. Because while Noah and Russell were swinging dicks, Helwig quietly went off and utilized the raw material discussed above (that being the December 2002 explosion at Coco Lezzone):

On Monday night he was walking west on College, towards his apartment, with his hat pulled down to his eyebrows and his scarf over his nose, and then sirens were coming from all directions at once, and the street became a sea of red light, fire engines and ambulances and police cars all meeting at a point on the north side, a restaurant with a broken window.
[…]
Alex didn’t want to know what it was about but he was reaching into his camera bag nevertheless […] and he was packing his camera away when something came towards him out of the dark, shining and unpredictable, a fluttering thing, and before he knew what he was doing he had put out his hand and caught the string of a gold foil balloon in the shape of a star.

Then the whole cluster of balloons tied to the restaurant’s patio fence broke free and were swept up in the wind, into the bare branches of the overhanging trees, into the awnings along the street, a flock of golden stars reaching out of the damage. Alex stood in the street and held on to a string.
[…]
“A very miniscule bomb, though,” said Evelyn, poking at the casserole with a knife. “And of poor quality. Nobody was really hurt. They don’t have access to the good explosives at the low end of organized crime.”

-- from the superexcellent novel Girls Fall Down

And there, in microcosm, is a perfect illustration of gender relations: the men argue pointlessly while women actually get things done.

And, in this case, get it done much better than a man might have. Here’s Helwig on the Distillery District:

He stood with Susie in a long channel of mud, under the heavy brown-brick walls of the abandoned Victorian factories, slabs of wood laid over the wet dirt where there would someday be cobbled walkways. The sun came over the high buildings in shards of cold brightness, breaking out from a soft dense sky. It was a good day for light, slightly diffused through cloud, not too harsh.

Here and there, new businesses had already opened – a coffee shop, a microbrewery, a small art gallery. But most of the space was still inchoate, forming itself out of the memories of fallen industry, sweat and dust and darkness.

Here’s Andrew Pyper (The Killing Circle) on the same place:

Takes another turn into the grounds of the old Gooderham & Worts distillery. A few clustered blocks of Dickens’ London shoehorned between the expressway and condo construction sites. Long, Victorian brick barracks with smokestacks at their ends like exclamation points.

The past slows me down. It’s the cobblestone streets that turn anything faster than a walk into a tiptoed dance. During daylight hours, the doors on either side open into galleries and cafes, but they are locked now.

Yawn. Helwig’s version is so superior that further comment demeans us all.

For a variety of reasons, I’ve been thinking about fictional representations of Toronto lately, and I read The Killing Circle to see how Pyper would bring Queen and Bathurst and Kensington Market to life. I found his attempts at conjuring place less than successful, whereas Helwig makes the landscape her own. Pyper wrote an article for the Star last year, explaining how magical, important and mysterious his neighbourhood (Queen and Bathurst) is, and why it was the perfect setting for a novel. But like a newlywed, Pyper seems to lack critical distance or perspective about his better half, and is thus unable to articulate the source of his passion for Toronto.

If Helwig doesn’t win the Toronto Book Award for Girls Fall Down, it will be a crime of a far greater magnitude than the homicides committed by the serial killer in The Killing Circle.