The Daily Protagitron

Domestic Failday: Crappy Cooking and Trafalgar's Irish Ale

2012-02-17T21:24:00.000-05:00

Instead of my default domestic activity, I was going to do something different. I was going to photograph my cooking. Then I would talk about how I lost my cooking mojo, but now I wanted to experience the joys of cooking for myself again, etc. etc. Cooking brings us together. Cooking will save the world. Unfortunately, it's hard to get all poetic about food when you've just produced a big pile of blah. Or, rather, a puddle of blah, as my attempt at making the Mushroom Curry from the original Moosewood Cookbook resulted in a big pot of spicy-flavoured water. Every so often, though, a mushroom floats by at its leisure.

Frankly, I blame those hippies at Moosewood. I'm not in Victoria anymore, so I can go back blaming hippies for everything. (Though to be fair to our hemp-wearing, kombucha-raising brethren, it was my fault for adding too much water.)

At least there's beer to dull the pain! I pulled this out of the fridge, telling my roommate that "this will make things allllll better." He seemed confused. "So, you're going to add more liquid to something that's already too liquidy?" "No," I replied, "I'm going to add more liquid to me." And indeed I did. Now, I know that's not the perfect glass to be serving a brown ale like this in, but post-dinner disaster, I didn't much care. Oh, the mushrooms I had sliced and the onions I had diced. After all that, my Irish Ale from Oakville's Trafalgar Ales and Meads (who also brewed this Smoked Oatmeal Stout) was going into the nearest glass. Let's all be glad it wasn't a sippy cup. It's a nice beer, not aggressive at all, and with a flavour that's more sweet than bitter. It also seems to sometimes appear under the name Celtic Pure Irish Ale, but I prefer the simpler name. It reminds me less of Michael Flatley.

Book Pile for February 16

2012-02-16T10:47:00.002-05:00

1. Sure to be Depressing Novel: Darkness At Noon, Arthur Koestler
2. Mitford Fest Vol. 2: Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford
3. Mitford Fest Vol. 1: The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford
4. Pretty Much Close Captioned This American Life Reading: Take the Cannoli, Sarah Vowell
5. The “Dipping My Toe into SciFi” Novel: The Chrysalids, John Wyndham
6. For My Ill-Advised Homesteading Dreams: Homegrown & Handmade, Deborah Niemann

Solving Racism, One Six Pack At a Time

2012-02-13T15:22:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago, I read a little item on The Onion's AV Club about 2 Broke Girls. After being accused of racism due to the half-dimensionality of the girls' Korean boss, 2 Broke Girls would add a "hot Asian guy" to make everything better. Since then, the idea of solving all problems of racism, power and privilege with a liberal application of Preparation S(exy) has made me think. What if other famous examples of racism could be hot-washed this way?

For example, in Gone with the Wind, hire Zoe Saldana to shoot some extra scenes, where she gets in a sexy catfight with Scarlett O'Hara. Petticoats will be torn!!! George Lucas can bring the same technology he used to add scenes to the Star Wars trilogy for those special editions, except this time he'll be using it for marginally less pointless reasons.

In Breakfast at Tiffany's, all scenes featuring Mickey Rooney's yellowface could be re-edited, with the video replaced by an intern shaking a picture of Takeshi Kaneshiro, freshly torn from a Japanese fashion magazine, at the camera.

Disney's Song of the South: Digitally insert a shirtless Shemar Moore into every scene.

Maybe now Disney will let this one out of the vault!

In 300, you could find some sexy Persian and... really, 300 has reached ab saturation, and any attempt to add more attractive men would not only leave the movie as anti-Iranian as ever, but also cause some kind of rift in the space-time continuum, creating a wormhole which smells strongly of body oil.

Paperback Hater: My Reply to Emily Keeler

2012-02-12T23:51:00.000-05:00

Have book covers become too pretty? Look at books like The Eat-Clean Diet: Fast Fat-loss That Lasts Forever! and you might say no, but that doesn't stop Emily Keeler from saying yes in a recent article for the Toronto Standard. Two series in particular are too sexy for her bookshelf: Jillian Tamaki's Threads collection, and Coralie Bickford-Smith's redesigned Fitzgeralds, both produced for Penguin. I read the article reluctantly, ready to be offended. If you're a longtime reader of my blog (I think there may be six of you by now!) you probably know that I like book covers. I like them a lot. I'll point out ones I think are particularly pretty on a semi-regular basis, and Bickford-Smith's work has appeared twice. So I tried to strain the petty bitterness out of any meaningful critique I could offer on Keeler's piece, but by the end my most coherent thought was still "GIRL, PLEASE." Time has cooled my ire, though, and allowed me to expand on that emotion.

My first issue is Keeler's apparent belief that the book as design object, or even a marker of taste, dates to Penguin hiring Tamaki. But the book as fetish object has a longer history than the book as utilitarian good. The latter needed several factors to appear and collide for it to become a phenomenon. Mass production, greater literacy and more disposable income, among others. Before, people who learned to read, then found time to do so regularly were generally either religious or rather rich. Sometimes, they even farmed out the pages to professional bookbinders, who returned beautifully tooled and gilded pieces of art. This process persisted even past the automation of bookbinding. If Keeler believes The Last Tycoon is overdesigned, she may want to avert her eyes from this pyrotechnic book cover, circa 1900. And when it comes to taste, as Bourdieu said, "Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier." He also said this in 1984, 27 years before the "beautiful books" which Keeler sees as becoming "consumable objects that describe the taste of the reader who proudly, tastefully, displays them" were getting laid out in InDesign.

I'm also not sure that "The lush redesigns fetishize these books, render them décor rather than literature." Do they? Really? Are publishers the new authors, back when it was assumed that the author packed meaning into the text, which readers then decoded to find the One True Interpretation? A company may say a book's collectible in the copy, but that doesn't guarantee that it will never be read. Books are multi-functional that way. They'll always be "literature" if they can be opened, contain words, and if you're not using the highest-browed meaning of the term. The only guaranteed way of turning books from literature to décor is to strip the covers and sew the pages together in a stack, which is exactly what Restoration Hardware did in 2010, but isn't what Penguin did here. Michael Maranda might know a little something about décor though. Keeler likes his work on Selected Business Correspondence, where a "whole sheaf of letters is bound and placed in an embossed manilla folder." That sounds like an object guaranteed to become décor, if only because once you've spent $40 on it, you'll want to limit your chances of bending the letters or tearing the envelope as you stuff them back in. Perhaps it's better just to click through the free PDF online.

For the record, each of the Fitzgerald redesigns costs less than $30, and all of them will survive a few readings out here in the physical world.

RIP Whitney Houston

2012-02-11T23:59:00.000-05:00

As I'm sure Twitter/Facebook/news crawls have informed you, Whitney Houston died today. And so I'm drinking while watching her sing "I Have Nothing" over and over again. Why the sadness? Whitney was a joke for most of my life. The infamous Barbara Walters interview aired when I was 15, and I was raised to despise oversung, overproduced R and B. But when I heard Whitney's songs, they cut through all of my pretension, and even through her own melodramatic production. That voice had a direct line to my soul. Maybe not the best parts of me, but at least to every cell that cried too much, or fell in love with the wrong guy, or wanted to dance with somebody (when the loneliness calls.) It's powerful and sad, running almost to excess. That's not a criticism. That's the whole point.

Domestic Lateday: Mustard Hat, Rousse Beer

2012-02-10T22:03:00.001-05:00

Yes, many days have passed since my last post, and it's only now that I've managed to get the crochet hook out and finish putting on my Thorpe's border. I have no excuse. Oh wait, I gave blood, which would only really explain about an hour and a half of yesterday's procrastination, but never mind. I'm going to ride that excuse for months. "Oh, you're mad that I'm late? Well, I was too busy saving people with the GIFT OF LIFE." And then that person will probably be a paramedic, and I will feel like an asshole. The hat keeps my head warm, but it also makes my face look particularly moony. As with my Habs toque, I have to make sure to have a curl of my hair out for show, so that everybody knows I'm a lady. It's the tonsorial equivalent of putting a bow on the head of a girl baby.

This week's beer came down from Baysville, ON - cottage country - to spend its last days in the far-less scenic Toronto country of my fridge. It's Lake of Bays Brewing's Rousse Red Ale. I had a vague recollection of drinking Boréale Rousse by the pitcher at McGill, but at those quantities, I could have been drinking Colt .45 and still only remembered that it tasted like drunk. So I'm not entirely sure how this compares to the so-called "Québec classic" rousse. As far as I can gather, anyway, that's a style based more or less on an Irish red ale, perhaps even popularized by that same Boréale which caused me so many regrets throughout my undergrad. This one is a fine outing in its class, I suppose, a good choice to buy for any friends you're trying to wean off their 50. Kind of malty, a little spicy, but less hoppy than the packaging had lead me to expect. I hate to sound so equivocal about this beer, but maybe I'm spoiled for subtler flavours. Or perhaps I'm just disappointed because I liked their Mocha Porter so very much.

Domestic Super Bowl Sunday: Hats and Beer to Stay Warm

2012-02-05T23:39:00.000-05:00

Somehow, both of my handknit hats have disappeared over the past few weeks. I had been reduced to wearing either a black polar fleece hat with a ridiculous tassle... or a black polar fleece hat with a ridiculous Andean brim. Both were so tragic I braved frostbite rather than wear them. Then I remembered that I knew how to knit, so I could solve the problem without a trip to the mall with my debit card. It could be solved with a trip to the yarn store. With my credit card. Completely different. Definitely more respectable. One hilariously oversized ball (250g!!!) of Cascade's Eco Wool later, we almost have an earflap hat, knit according to the Thorpe pattern. Tassels and border to come.

And now, the beer. This week's option is Grand River Brewing's Russian Gun Imperial Stout. I'm drinking this against my better judgment, following a Beerfest at the Danforth's Only Café. I tried way too many beers there, including at least one other imperial stout (from Nickel Brook, if memory serves.) Imperial stouts have one of the more convoluted origin stories in beer-dom. It's a style originally brewed by a British brewery for export to the Russian court of the Prussian-born Catherine the Great. So, they're only a fraction as Russian as those clever craft brew names would have you think. But brewers are only human, and nobody can resist a good Communist pun. Imperial stouts are usually dark, rich and high in alcohol. This one is all that, with a taste like molasses and a hint of something smoky, like charcoal. It's a beer you could survive on, whether that means getting to the weekend or reading to the end of The Brothers Karamazov.

Haywire: Punch, Kick, Choke - Repeat!

2012-02-01T22:23:00.000-05:00

Does Haywire welcome Gina Carano to the illustrious pantheon of Van Damme, Norris and Segal, or is it just The Girlfriend Experience with fists? Carano, an ex-MMA fighter and American Gladiatrix, is Mallory Kane, a highly competent private contractor. And as anyone who's seen an action movie in the past forty years, or even read the news, knows what happens to the competent. They get set up. So, from the opening scene, when Mallory sits down in a roadside diner, we know things will go wrong. Coffee cups will be smashed. Arms will be broken. And more, as Mallory choke-holds her way to the truth. This involves tenderizing such illustrious co-stars as Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum and Antonio Banderas. Carano might not be able to match their acting. The further out she is from imminent physical contact, the flatter her vocal delivery becomes, until she starts to sound like Sasha Grey. But she tops them in the action. Soderbergh keeps the camera fairly steady during all of the fights, so the chain of cause and effect between motion and outcome is always clear, and the natural ability of Carano's body can be appreciated. It's worth it for those scenes, even if the story seems slight and the retro-genre-fantastic score overstates the case.

A few random notes: First, I appreciated the scene where Mallory took off her ridiculous formal heels in order to fight. Second, I didn't realize how few actresses this movie had, apart from its female star, until I started to list her co-stars. Apart from some random extras in some scenes, Mallory/Gina Carano is the only woman in this movie. She works with men, under a man, who is hired by two other men. She hijacks a car from a male hostage, and she has no mother, just a father. Perhaps the key to all this is what her boss says in an important scene - that it would be a mistake to think of Mallory as a woman. Whatever her sex, the movie shows a world in which she's somehow gendered as male, for all of her conventional female attractiveness. Finally, in a post on Haywire's trailer, a friend told me that Gina Carano is the Danica Patrick of the MMA world. Ouch. I'll concede that she may be. After all, I don't watch MMA and won't start until either the end times come or I start caring about baseball. However, even if she's not the most-skilled fighter out there, she still seems strong enough, flexible enough and muscular enough to do what she does in this movie.

Video Bin: Black Sheep

2012-01-29T21:54:00.001-05:00

I have a phobia of zombies. So you would think the zombie trend, still shuffling on despite its advanced age, would bother me. Instead, I view it as a repulsive, terrifying opportunity. Here's my reasoning. If I watch or read as much zombie media as possible, I won't be scared of them anymore. Or, at worst, I'll still be scared, but at least I'll also know what to do (aim for the head!) when the dead rise. All of this explains why I picked up a used copy of 2006's Black Sheep a few month's ago. It was a dollar. There were zombies. Rarely has research seemed so frugal. Having finally watched it, I can say that my appreciation for Shaun of the Dead is even stronger. Black Sheep is about genetically-modified sheep who turn into flesh-craving ghouls. That this movie is from New Zealand should explain the object of its obsession. And that it's about zombie sheep should also indicate that it's not a straight horror movie. It's a comedy/horror hybrid, like Shaun or Zombieland or Splice. Unfortunately, in spite of some amusing scenes of gore, Black Sheep misses something crucial. Nothing is ever seriously at stake in this film. Not even the dogs, who, having barked their orders for too many years, would be the expected early victims of a woolly vengeance. Horror comedies need to balance the humour with genuine threat. Every laugh should start out as a scream, or else they'll never be as enjoyable.

The Back-Up Plan

2012-01-27T23:55:00.001-05:00

If the rest of my life doesn't pan out, my backup plan is to open a dive bar. Not an ironically divey bar, where plaid-shirted types of a certain name - rhymes with tipster - can find their own kind. Nope, the decor will strictly be wagon wheels and promotional beer coasters. There shall be no bourbon cocktails. Actually, if you ask for anything but a rum and coke - even a gin and tonic - you'll be shit out of luck, son. Beer options will include some good ones (Tankhouse) and Molson Export, as a tribute to the bar near one of my Montreal apartments that seemed to only serve Ex. In bottles. With the decor and drinks taken care of, only the question of music and food remains. The food: I may be prevailed upon to offer you pickled eggs, or even stale nachos made in a toaster oven, but only if I like your face. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy sneaking in rotis from down the street when I'm not looking. Music will be a medley of Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn songs, because it isn't a dive bar until you can cry at the bar, shamelessly.

Look forward to Protagitron's, opening in 2014 at a questionable street corner near you!

A Thursday of Packing and High Anxiety

2012-01-26T23:54:00.001-05:00

Although this is a personal blog, a medium mostly conceived for the airing of woes, I generally try to keep my fine whine in the cellar and off my site. Today, I'm making an exception. So stop here and appreciate the cute dog if whinging gives you hives. Don't worry, crafts and beer will return next week.

This Thursday is pretty domestic, but not in a crafty way. Instead, events in my life are forcing me to contemplate what it is, exactly, that would make yet another furnished apartment feel like home. Specifically, how many books it would take. I have a desert island mentality when it comes to packing. Even if I'm just taking the VIA into Montréal, I'm convinced that I'll end up stranded in the middle of the ocean. And then I'll really regret taking that fourth book out of my suitcase, when I'm barely 50 pages into my first. And let's not forget a second knitting project. And some wine gums. I'll need sustenance on my island.

At least fixating on how many books I'm packing, and whether they'll be enough, keeps me from thinking about my real anxiety. I'm worried that I'm making another mistake. In the past two and a half years, I've made two serious decisions about where to move and where to live. And they've both turned out to be duds on the balance. I know that doesn't sound self-help book approved, and la-dee-dah-another-door-opens-when-one-closes etc etc etc, but sometimes it's just an error in judgment, straight up. Sorry that doesn't look as uplifting in raised type on a cheap paperback. That shitty track record is why I'm not feeling very confident right now. Am I making the right decision? I hope so. I hope six books will be enough for the next few weeks. Because the box is full, and I need to go.

Running Up That Hill Times Three

2012-01-25T23:57:00.000-05:00

My love for Running Up That Hill is a love without end. It's the song that I would skate to if I ever had to come up with an emergency figure skating routine for the Olympics. It's also the song I would dance to if I was ever auditioning, against all odds, for a place in the American Ballet Company, though both my toe shoes and I came from the wrong side of the tracks. Much like the rest of Kate Bush's oeuvre, it lends itself well to dramatic hand gestures, is what I'm saying. So, it shouldn't be a surprise that I usually have three versions on my iPod.

Original Recipe Kate Bush:

This Placebo Version, Which I Feel Used to End Up on TV Shows A Lot:

And The Chromatics, A Band Also seen on the Drive Soundtrack:

If I have to choose one - Really, I can't just keep two, and throw the Placebo cover overboard? No? - I suppose I'll go with the divine La Bush. I like The Chromatics now, but I know that Ruth Radelat's breathy vocals will fade away. However, I'll always be a drama kid adrift in the city, with Kate Bush's wailing to call me home. So why bother to keep the other versions? I know some people hate covers furiously, but if I liked the original then I'll usually appreciate the cover. Even if it doesn't replace the definitive version, sometimes it shifts things just enough that I'll find something I missed. And it stops me from getting bored with my favourite songs.

Book Pile for January 20

2012-01-20T19:59:00.003-05:00

This month's pile seems to have a healthy appetite. Next month maybe I'll slim down with nothing but novellas and chapbooks. From top to bottom:

1. Recently Completed Novel: Nowhere Man, Aleksandar Hemon
2. Novel that Makes Me Feel Bad I Totally Blow at Chess: The Queen's Gambit, Walter Tevis
3. Highbrow Cred Novel: Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
4. Keeping My New Year's Resolution Non Fiction: That Infernal Little Cuban Republic, Lars Schoultz
5. Graphic Novel/Brick for Beating: Habibi, Craig Thompson (seriously, this thing is thick)

Domestic Thursday: Short 'n Sweet 'n Lagered

2012-01-19T23:32:00.000-05:00

Pattern: Short and Sweet by Angela Best, in Stitch 'n Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker
Yarn: Mission Falls 1824 Cotton, "Musk"
Hook size: 5 mm

Here it is, my Short and Sweet, all finished. I was worried that this bumpy, rustic cotton yarn would create a stiff piece of fabric, and that every time I slipped it over a sundress I would feel like an extra in a Lady Gaga video. But it blocked out nicely, with just enough drape to avoid the dreaded "power shoulders." Sigh. Now I'll have to send that laserdisc player back.

Also, my mom found this awesome vintage Mary Maxim pattern. It's got a Cowichan thing going on with that shawl collar, but that diamond pattern, maybe in brightly dyed yarn, would hopefully avoid any accusations of cultural appropriation. Should I knit it? I think I should!

And, finally, beer. This is Beau's Lug Tread Lagered Ale. Beau's comes from Vankleek Hill, Ontario, and is noted for doing all sorts of endearing and/or socially-conscious things like getting home brewers to plan beers for Beau's to brew, and partnering with Operation Come Home to bring Beau's to Ottawa-area doors. The difference between ales and lagers is mostly in the yeast. Ales feed at the top, and lagers at the bottom. But lagers are also usually aged at colder temperatures and conditioned for longer. Lug Tread bridges the gap by using ale yeasts, but finishing it off like a lager. It's their figurehead product, and what you're most likely to see in bars and LCBOs. But they also make stranger brews - beers spiced with peppermint and orange peel, beers made in bourbon barrels, and beers that use bog myrtle instead of hops. Lug Tread's taste isn't quite so bizarre as those concoctions. But it's a lovely, bready-tasting ale if you're looking to bring your lite beer-loving friends over to the side of taste and decency.

Try Not to Analyze the Hype

2012-01-18T22:25:00.000-05:00

SOPA would be a terrible, terrible thing. My friend Max thinks so, and I believe him. If you're Canadian, you can sign this call to action. If you're American, sign this petition or contact your congressperson directly. The pressure seems to be working, so keep it up. Plus, it's always fun to make Rupert Murdoch angry.

The past week has been a bad one for two people. If, in fact, they are people, and not just constructs built by the online commentary-critical complex to suits its needs. In the sporting world: Tim Tebow, mediocre quarterback, Jockey spokesman, litmus test for your thoughts on religion/the universe at large. From the music sphere: Lana Del Rey. One got spanked 45-10 by Tom Brady and the Patriots, ending the playoff run of the Denver Broncos, while the other mumbled her way through an SNL appearance. I can't say that I bear any personal ill will to either of these fine young Americans - well, maybe Tebow, a little, based mostly on that Super Bowl anti-choice ad - but I was glad as the implosions played out.

In a few months, Lana del Rey generated the kind of media studies analysis Madonna writhed around for years to make possible, and Tebow hit that sweet, sweet intersection of sports, religion and the American news cycle. Klosterman wrote about him, the New Yorker wrote about him, even Canada discovered him and wrote about him, but the article was kind of awful, so let's ignore it. With both of these kids, I resented the constant churning of the explaining machine. My response to them is not a mirror of my feelings on larger issues. And why concentrate on religion, or "authenticity," when the question of whether Tim or Lana are decent at what they do should be tackled first. Actually, in Del Rey's case, WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THOSE LIPS ought to be issue number one. At the height of Tebowmania, the NFL produced photos of what Tim Tebow's babies would look like with various celebrities. Using the same cutting-edge technology the NFL has at its disposal - that is, a free site - I have created Lana Tel Bow. Because clearly, they belong together.

I majored in cultural studies, I have my license to analyze, but there's a difference between that which illuminates, and that which strives for profundity but only gets page views. Here's to getting a break from the latter.

Domestic Thursday: Mugs and Steam Whistle Pilsner

2012-01-12T19:10:00.001-05:00

It's long been a dream of mine to see the beaches of Cyprus. A less cherished, but more achievable wish had been to own a mug with an octopus on it. As they say, shoot for the moon, because if you miss, you'll land among the stars. But, as I say, aim for the octopus mug and you'll at least have something to drink from.

Although I had been stalking cephalopod-related Etsy listings for a while, they were out of my price range. So, a few months ago, I went to Play with Clay with some of the folks from the All Strung Out knitting group and painted the mug on left. But the Octomug was lonely. And I had painted him on the far side, so while others could gaze upon his tentacular greatness, I could not. Thus, the Squmug was born.

The Squmug has a submarine on its backside. I repeat, a submarine and not a fish.

This week's Ontario beer is one of my favourite choices when it comes to - MOM STOP READING - all-night drinking. As much as I like bitter IPAs and robust stouts, I can't handle a whole night of them without praying for antacids from heaven. So, when I have to make it through a whole football game, I reach for the Steam Whistle. The company only makes one beer, and that's a pilsner. Pilsners, along with their parent class of lagers, are tough to make, and I respect anyone who can make one that's well-balanced and flavourful while remaining crisp and clear. Steam Whistle is just that, with an interesting roasted grain flavour, almost like cornflakes without the corn. So, calm down, craft ale people. They're also a beer company that's pretty jacked into local culture, hosting art shows at their brewery, concerts for unsigned musicians, and so on, image-making that's extended to their excellent package design. Check out that red bottle cap. Ain't it adorable? If you want to learn more about how some Ontario lagers are made, by the way, The Grid has a handy flow chart.

Haywire and a Real Female Action Star

2012-01-10T10:55:00.000-05:00

I'm happy to hear that Haywire, Steven Soderbergh's coming attraction, will star Gina Carano, a retired mixed martial arts fighter. Supposedly. I can't verify that she was a fighter, since I'm not a big MMA fan - every time I see it in bars I hope that it's really energetic gay porn and then I'm disappointed when it's not. But I like the idea of having a female action star whose ass-kicking credentials are legit. I'm a lady who loves action movies, but that is a love nurtured despite the fact that most of their women are either damsels in distress or practitioners of what TV Tropes calls "waif fu." That is, the trope of having painfully thin starlet using her perfectly toned leg to kick a guy in the face, all while wearing heels some strippers would find impractically high. Gina Carano is clearly still a conventionally attractive, thin, white woman, but at least she's one with muscles and a winning bout record. Plus, although she takes down Michael Fassbender in a formal dress, at least it seems that she's kicked off the heels to do so. I'll buy a ticket to the movie, two if Soderbergh can guarantee that it's better than The Girlfriend Experience.

Getting Over Dykes to Watch Out For

2012-01-08T23:15:00.003-05:00

For the past few years, I've been carrying a torch for a few things: Alison Bechdel, Dykes to Watch Out For, and the notion that one day the former would go back to creating the latter. Bechdel started DTWOF in the early '80s, and continued expanding the cast and their increasingly tangled relations right until 2008. In 2006, she also published Fun Home, which was Time's book of the year and enjoyed a run as the acceptable graphic literature of the bookish set. There isn't an award for that, but if there was I think it should be called the Mausie for Spiegelman's enduring legacy to the genre. Anyway, as much as I enjoyed Fun Home, I feel that DTWOF should receive an equal amount of attention and even more critical praise. Though published in serial form - first as comic strips in alt-weeklies, then mostly on Bechdel's blog - it's more of a graphic novel than half the stuff filed as such on bookstore shelves.

I'm talking novel in the sense of those 19th century novels, where a large cast and complex interwoven plots take up a brick's worth of paper. Think Middlemarch, but with the American Midwest instead of the British Midlands, and more on lentils, tempeh and the Iran-Contra affair. Bechdel wrangles a huge number of characters over nearly three decades. They're mostly lesbian, largely queer, but diverse in race and earning potential, each one developed sympathetically. The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For collects most of the strips, so you can see the characters grow and Bechdel's art evolve, all in one convenient volume. A note about the switch: according to The Indelible Alison Bechdel, her linework thickened after she collaborated on a project for the Village Voice with Howard Cruse, whose Stuck Rubber Baby is also worth reading. She found that her drawings disappeared next to his.

Then 2008 hits, and they all stop, before Obama could even be inaugurated. I've been waiting since then for Alison Bechdel to write more, though I know she's working on a sequel to Fun Home. What did the characters think of the Obama presidency? The death of Osama Bin Laden? The extended recession? Somehow, I care more about Mo would think than what real-life columnists do think. But, almost four years later, I've decided it's time to let go. I keep on hoping Bechdel will come back and give readers a big epilogue so we know if Clarice and Toni got back together, if Mo and Sydney ever broke up, if Sparrow ever made Stuart get a real job. But I suppose it's more in keeping with DTWOF for it to end without a finish, just like a visit with friends. Read it!

Fridays Are For Five Dollar Hamburgers and Vanilla Porter

2012-01-06T22:51:00.000-05:00

So. Bars are dark. The photo of Mill Street's Vanilla Porter, then, is all about the "atmosphere." Or, "artistic blurriness." But I swear there's beer in there! Vanilla beer! Vanilla beer that doesn't like a melted ice cream cone dropped into somebody's spilled PBR. I swear. Instead there's notable vanilla sweetness, backed up by a robust maltiness. It's obviously not for purists, but why would you be ordering a vanilla porter if the purity laws of 1516 mean anything to you, anyway? Lighten up. Embrace the beershake. It goes just as well with hamburgers as the regular kind of shake.

Domestic Thursday: Dry Edition

2012-01-05T23:30:00.000-05:00

This Thursday will be a quickie, since I spent most of the day running around Toronto. Here's proof: I took this photo in RSquared on Queen West this afternoon. Pictured is my growing Short and Sweet cardi. Not pictured are the friendliest baristas I've ever encountered. All of them earned their tip, and here's a tip for you, if you've ever thought of crocheting this cardi: Check the errata. The first set of corrections points out the missing chain 2's in the written instructions, but canny folks could catch that either by looking at the chart or using common sense. The second set of clarifications is truly useful though. In one row a short chain needs to be added, and what to do with this little yarn outgrowth and why it's necessary is mystifying without this explanation. Beer will be back tomorrow. Until then I rest my weary legs and cramping crocheting fingers.

Bodies in Motion: Pina and Mission Impossible

2012-01-03T14:00:00.000-05:00

I spent hard scratch to see two films in theatres over the holidays, Pina and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. They would seem, at first, to be a pretty odd couple. They're also a pair that cost me about $35 in admission, the price of a cheap pair of pants at Old Navy, but perhaps that is a thought for another time ("Does art ever justify pantslessness???") Together, though, the blockbuster emphasizes the human body as much as the arthouse documentary on the German choreographer, both sharing a fascination with how those bodies interact with architectural space.

I can't take credit for focusing on this theme in Pina. I was too distracted by the clips of a dance featuring a hippo costume. But as my friend Richard pointed out, there was a "connection between human forms and architectural ones" running through the film. Dancers move through an empty glass building, a café with its chairs, up an escalator, and around the spare concrete room of what could be an apartment or a grain elevator. It's hard to tell just what it is, except that it's a man-made space. Sometimes it's easy to impose a traditional narrative on the movement, like, here's a couple falling in and out of love. Other times perhaps it's an abstract idea or an emotion, but trying to make narrative sense of it all feels insulting. But throughout, the body had to interact with the architecture, whether it's moving against the space or in ways the space inspires.

Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol would seem like an odd choice to continue this theme, as its budget could probably buy ten Pinas, with enough left over to clone Wim Wenders. But the highlight of the movie, and the scene that nearly justifies the absurd Imax ticket price, features the Burj Khalifa. It's the tallest building in the world, and one of its most distinctive-looking, but if you need more proof of its place in the public consciousness: It's one of the 11 buildings that make up the Lego Architecture series*. With all this cultural context, the architecture of the space the IMF team must infiltrate is already primed in the audience. And then Tom Cruise sprints across one side of the Burj, leaps, and swings back into a knocked-out window. For a few moments, it's as graceful as anything seen in Pina, the viewer reminded that collectively we can produce architecture that the individual can interact with and around, rather than push through. I was again reminded of this scene while talking with my friend**, after saying how clumsy MIGP made me feel. She pointed out that Tom Cruise and Co. were always banging into things, and for a few moments here he dangles off the edge, barely making it inside for all of his previous grace. So, in spite of Pina's sterling arthouse credentials, MIGP may just be the more interesting film when it comes to the friction people we can experience with current architectural forms- and the social structures from which they spring.

* A side note for Canadians: they're considering Moshe Safdie's Montréal landmark Habitat 67 as a future set. You can vote for it here.
** Jo, a lovely person who was at Pina too. For a sense of why she makes such a good movie watching buddy, check out her feminist critique of The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo.

Oh, hey there, 2012

2012-01-02T23:57:00.002-05:00

With two exceptions, I've decided not to do New Year's Resolutions for 2012. First, the world is ending, so who the fuck cares if I lose 20 pounds? I want to die the way I lived... with a donut in each hand. Also, although I've usually kept away from doomed resolutions like financial responsibility, I still end up missing some and then feeling all sad in January. Even if the resolution was as ridiculous as "see an octopus underwater," I still feel as though I've failed myself. And the cephalopods.

Exceptions:
1. Learn more about Cuban history. I refer to my recent tweet:

"New year's resolutions? Maybe to learn more about Cuban history, 'cause right now all I know comes from Dirty Dancing II: Havana Nights."

2. Sew more often. Because, otherwise, how will I have adorable dresses for the summer? Without a daring theft at an Anthropologie store, of course.

Also, on a more personal note, 2011 was rough. Not awful. It was completely survivable, and there were some great moments, but there was also a months-long slog from about June to, oh, last week I could have done without. So I'm setting very reasonable, cautious expectations for 2012, while furtively nurturing the hope that they'll be exceeded.

Domestic Whatever: Crochet and Uncrafty Beer

2011-12-30T21:47:00.000-05:00

I missed my usual Thursday date for these posts because I was in Toronto, seeing friends, but Friday also ends in "day", so this is close enough for me. I'm still recovering from the holiday knitting, so the needles haven't been touched in a few days except in the most minimal way. You know, stockinette socks with self-patterning yarn. Not even finished, not worth a photograph. So here's what I've been doing with hooks instead:

Short and Sweet from Stitch 'N Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker. A little, lacy cotton coverup, the perfect thing for Ontario's current windchill factor. Well, no, but I had this Mission Falls 1824 Cotton hanging around, giving me a guilt complex. It was a discontinued colour, so it was on sale, and since it was a yarn I had always wanted to use I bought 10 balls of the stuff- though the colour confounds. It's not quite terracotta, it's not really desert brown, it's the colour... of impulse purchasing. Or, according to the shade card of the now entirely discontinued yarn, "musk." It's been in my house for years, and after thinking about turning it into a drab utilitarian bag, I settled on this pattern. Not that my wardrobe largely features "musk" in any form, but I think it could find its place over a summer dress.

And this week's beer: Hop City's Barking Squirrel Lager. I found this in the LCBO and wondered what Hop City's deal was- I didn't remember seeing it on the Ontario Craft Brewers site. But it met my current beer requirements ("Anything but another IPA"), so I grabbed a can. Now, with the benefit of Google, I've learned that it's Moosehead's attempt on the craft beer market. The Creemore to its Molson, if you will, or the McCafé to its McDonalds. But I'll give even not-so-crafty beers the benefit of the doubt. Conclusions: not as hoppy as the brewery name and label promise, nor as flavourful overall as one could hope, but a respectable lager. Be wary of all that though, as I'm dealing with some leftover congestion.

When it comes to fake craft beers, I like to see major breweries offering better brews to the masses. But I would rather have them do so openly, rather than taking taps away from real craft breweries,or outshining them with larger marketing budgets. Still, I think good taste will often win out over good label design, which may be why, even two years after its launch, Hop City still has less space on LCBO shelves than Mill Street products.

What I Did On My Christmas Vacation

2011-12-28T22:38:00.000-05:00

I spent my Christmas full of goodwill towards men and snot. I got a cold over the holiday, and provided a handy memento mori to my family, as a kind of short Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. "Ye too shall wither and die," I implied, while sitting in my room going through tissue after tissue. And also reading through that olde Yuletide favourite, Joan Didion's Political Fictions. Maybe a series of icy essays about the American political climate from 1988-2000 will never replace A Christmas Carol, in spite of their flawless diction. But with Newt Gingrich threatening to bring the worst parts of 1994 into the still-innocent 2012, it was timely. My cold is nearly gone, but a strange nostalgia for Bill Clinton's presidency remains.

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-24T14:17:00.004-05:00

Pick your seasonally appropriate greeting.
Smitty and I wish you all that and more!

Domestic Thursday: Resting Mittens, Flying Monkeys

2011-12-22T17:44:00.004-05:00

Oh God, Christmas knitting. I'm ready to convert so I never go through this madness again. Anyway, here are two sets of mittens- both versions of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Mitered Mittens from The Knitter's Almanac, and both made with Ontario yarns- that were mailed out to BC a few days ago. The red ones are, once again, Briggs and Little Tuffy in Red Mix, and have longer cuffs. The whites ones are made from Upper Canada Village yarn. It's spun on-site using fleece from the village's own flock, so think of it as the fibre equivalent of last week's beer.

The pattern has you knit the hand, then make the thumb by snipping one stitch and unravelling the others. Eeep. I did it this way, reluctantly. Apologies to my friends if the thumb spontaneously explodes once they put them on. Between this and her love of garter stitch (the devil's stitch!!), I'm not sure I trust Elizabeth Zimmerman.

Pattern: Lace Cable Socks by Véronik Avery, Knitting 24/7
Yarn: Lion Brand Sock Ease in Circus Peanut
Since we're on the topic of garter stitch, these lace cable socks, with their garter stitch heels and toes, are now completed. And not a moment too soon, as most of my knitted socks are hanging by threads. Literally. Well, they're not hanging, but patches have been worn down to the polyester. Now my feet can be chipper and warm in these orange socks.

Something that may not make me warm, but will definitely make me chipper is The Flying Monkeys Smashbomb Atomic IPA. Made with Citra hops and varied malts, including Crystal malts, this is a pale ale that drinks like a bubblier version of last week's Black Creek IPA. The taste reminds me a lot of Florida-fresh grapefruit, and the assorted malts keeps things chugging along smoothly enough that the 6% AVA goes by unnoticed. Before you drink too many, check out the brewing information on The Flying Monkeys site. You'll learn just how often and how much hops were added, that is, at all possible times and in great volume. And now we finally have an answer to the question of which beer would go best while watching The Wizard of Oz.

The Iron Lady Trailer: Queen Elizabeth with Hairspray

2011-12-20T23:12:00.004-05:00

The trailer for Dark Knight Rises came out, but you already knew that, didn't you? In all the hubbub, the trailer for The Iron Lady was also released, and I'll be interested to see how well it reflects the finished product. Growing up as the daughter of a man of progressive tastes, I was raised on a steady diet of gritty British social dramas of the 1980s. Acceptable video rentals were children's cartoons... or anything directed by Mike Leigh, Ken Loach and Stephen Frears, so Margaret Thatcher was my childhood boogeywoman. As Voldemort was to other kids, Thatcher- and to a lesser degree, Ronald Reagan- was to me. So I was surprised to see a trailer that made the Iron Lady out to be the heiress to the Virgin Queen. It makes me think of the spot for Elizabeth: The Golden Age more than My Beautiful Laundrette. If a filmmaker has a different ideological bent than mine, I suppose he can find more heroism in Thatcher's story than I can, since I think of her as a viper in pearls. But any movie, no matter how conservative, that casts the Falklands War as some sort of grand, just war I find both morally and factually questionable. Not that I was any great fan of the Argentinean junta, but as Jorge Louis Borges said, the Falklands War was like "a fight between two bald men over a comb." Well, it seems that the director, Phyllida Lloyd, has chosen to add driving strings to that comb fight.

Book Pile for December 18

2011-12-18T12:42:00.004-05:00

Yep, it's that time of month again. From top to bottom:
1. Pop Business Book du Jour: Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World, Michael Lewis
2. Can Con NF: Ethical Water, Robert William Sandford and Merrell-Ann S. Phare
3. Wannabe American Sophisticate Tome: Political Fictions, Joan Didion
4. Future Novel: After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, Aldous Huxley
5. Future Future Novel: Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons

Domestic Thursday: Felting and Black Creek Historic Brewery

2011-12-15T20:49:00.007-05:00

Pattern: Winter Slippers by Véronik Avery in Knitting 24/7
Yarn: Cascade 220 in Tangerine Heather
This one's a Christmas present, so I won't say who it's for. But I'll just hint that it's for somebody who always deserves to have warm feet. And who I hope only has feet about an inch longer than mine, because she wasn't here to try them on.

Pattern: Canadian Fusion Mitts by Greenelf Designs
Yarn: Briggs and Little Heritage
These appeared on the blog months ago, or at least a quarter of the completed set did. I actually finished the knitting for these guys while still in Victoria, but loved my roommates too much to inflict the smell of wet wool on them for a few hours. So it took me this long and a move to get around to felting them. I came close to overfelting them, but I'm sure they'll relax with a few wears. And, my God, they are warm.

I like to think of this week as A Very Special Episode of Domestic Thursday, because this week I'll be talking about... divorce. No. Actually, I'll be chatting about one of Ontario's most interesting breweries and the intrigue of cask-conditioned ale. Carry on. Black Creek Historic Brewery brews them like your (great-great-great-)grandfather used to, since it's part of a historic village dedicated to life in 1860s Ontario. The brewmaster, Ed Koren, even has to dress the part, but that doesn't stop him from being incredibly friendly. You can pay the village admission price and buy growlers filled with the village-made brew, or spend a few bucks more for a full tour with tastings. Bottled Black Creek Historic Brewery ales are also available at the LCBO, but they're brewed in a more conventional manner by two other breweries, including Flying Monkeys, to accommodate the higher volume.

If you're used to drinking lager right out of the fridge, cask-conditioned ales will BLOW YOUR MIND. They're unpasteurized, unfiltered, and undergo a secondary fermentation in the cask from which your growler is then filled. Some differences: you have to drink it fairly warm so you taste the flavour and not the cold, it's cloudy, and it's barely bubbly. I brought home the India Pale Ale, since its flavour was a complex citrus instead of a hoppy roundhouse kick to the jaw. Being too fond of modern dental care and not having my XX chromosomes stop me from voting, I've never wanted to live in an earlier century. But cask-conditioned ale is one thing worth dragging into the present.

A Tribute to Alpha Flight: Fighting for Peace, Order and Good Government

2011-12-14T22:41:00.005-05:00

Alpha Flight. Northstar is on the far left, Guardian is second from the right and Puck is the little guy at the bottom.

Whatever may happen under the new Canada-US border agreement, we will still be sovereign when it comes to superheroes. You don't know about Alpha Flight? Think Captain Canuck is our only hero? Please, Alpha Flight is like ten Captain Canucks. Or at least one Captain Canuck (Guardian, aka James MacDonald Hudson) and nine other assorted Canadian stereotypes. Created by John Byrne in 1979, Alpha Flight first tried to retrieve Wolverine for the Canadian government, as they probably had to cut 30 arts grants to afford that adamantium skeleton and wanted it back. Eventually they branched out of cameos in X-Men and into their own series, which waxes and wanes in and out of existence as the circulation figures permit. They're in an off period at the moment. Alpha Flight's latest series was canceled in October. But it's a team worth looking into, to see which Canadian traits are deemed essential for consumption by our neighbours down south. These traits include, apparently, short, hairy bouncers from Saskatchewan named Eugene (Codename: Puck). I'm not sure what to make of that. But I will take pride in Northstar, aka Jean-Paul Beaubier, who was one of the first openly gay characters in mainstream comics. Although a separatist could argue that he was Québécois, and not Canadian, I will maintain that Alpha Flight is one of those rare places where the two solitudes are reconciled.

Patrick Chan And Figure Skating Drama

2011-12-11T17:31:00.007-05:00

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot

There's a lot of drama in sports, but there's no sports drama like figure skating drama. For one thing, there are sequins. Canada had some recently, when a months-old interview with Patrick Chan surfaced on Reuters. Chan said he felt unappreciated in Canada, and compared it to the support he likely would have experienced competing for China. The Canadian public... proved him correct by largely reacting with indifference. But I could have predicted the response of people who did care, like this Globe and Mail letter writer:

"His reflections on how much more support he might have if he were skating for China seem insensitive to the fact his parents were fortunate to leave an oppressive Communist regime and find a welcome home here."

This may be all the defense I can muster for someone who gets to wear a "billowy red shirt and black slacks accented with slashes of red" as part of his day job, but the insensitive thing might be comparing his thoughts on which nation claps louder for a triple lutz to ignoring an oppressive regime. The real question may be how much any country should care, or pay for, athletics programs that seem to function as the bragging chips of nationalism. But that’s a question that could fairly be asked of any amateur athlete, and not just one whose parents happen to be Chinese. Overall, this all takes away from the real news in skating: Half of the French ice dance couple was dressed like an honest-to-Set mummy for their free skate. My word.

Domestic Thursday: Socks, Tea Cozy, Winter Beard

2011-12-08T20:53:00.004-05:00

Pattern: Acorn Tea Cozy by Véronik Avery, in Knitting 24/7
Yarn: Briggs and Little Tuffy in Red Mix
I promised my friend Joel a tea cozy. About 20 months ago. First I knit one, then I knit another. I'm still not proud of the second one, which I should have really knit with the yarn held doubled to produce a stiffer fabric. But if I balance the top just so, it will still stand up and look acorn-like instead of flopping over. I mailed this to Belgium anyway, where Joel has traitorously decamped post-graduation. Hopefully he won't take this as some kind of veiled commentary on his virility, of which I am happily ignorant.

Another pattern from Knitting 24/7 that at least seems destined for greater success,are these Lace Cable Socks. I'm a little wary of the garter stitch toe and heel, but I'll give Ms. Avery the benefit of the doubt. For now. *Gives squinty eye in the general direction of Montréal.*

And here's this week's beer, the Winter Beard Double Chocolate and Cranberry Stout from Muskoka Brewery. This is the beer I was hinting about last week, the rare chocolate stout brewed with actual dark chocolate and real cranberries, along with the expected chocolate malt. The result is heavy on the caramel flavours, with a cocoa kick. I smelled the cranberry but didn't really taste it. The ABV is a decent 8%, which explains why my Mom went from disliking to loving the beer after one glass. Even if you don't want a heavy, sweet stout this Christmas, it's worth buying to hang the adorable bottle on your tree as a kind of awkwardly oversized, perhaps semi-depressing, decoration.

Book Covers I Have Loved: Eat Me, Kenny Shopsin

2011-12-07T17:00:00.000-05:00

This is one of my favourite cookbooks, and it has one of my favourite covers. But Eat Me is not the book I cook from the most. Of its 288 pages, I have made only three recipes. But it changed my life. In a world of tomes about El Bulli and Pollan-penned tracts about our diets, I was beginning to stress out about dinner. A casserole? Laziness! Buying pre-made kimchi instead of fermenting it myself? Shameful! But Kenny Shopsin, the foul-mouthed, philosophic cook, showed me the light with four letter words. You make good food, don't use shitty ingredients, find some shortcuts and don't give a fuck about the fat content.

He also came up with the idea of mac and cheese pancakes, so he's clearly a genius. And his daughter, Tamara Shopsin, shows that it's in the genes with this beautiful cover. The perfect, bright colours, the fun font, and the cut-out egg with the pull tab. It tells you not to pull, but of course Kenny would and you should too. Instead of the title and author info, you'll see a plate of breakfast.

My Team, Mon Amour

2011-12-05T20:03:00.003-05:00

This post was inspired by something ridiculous I read on Grantland. Bill Simmons got a letter from a reader who compared the Buffalo Bills to a bad relationship. And I quote (in part), "You know, the kind where you are dating a guy and he eventually becomes comfortable with you and feels like you are such a good pal he no longer has to impress you by buying gifts and taking you to nice dinners and next thing you know you are in a relationship that is so non-exciting you decide to break it off." Which made me think- what if I described all of my favourite sports teams as oddly specific and extremely detailed boyfriends? Read on to see what happens when a simile is pushed too far.

Hi, honey(s)! (Photo: Andy Lyons/Getty Images North America)

NFL
The Green Bay Packers: They're like that boyfriend you have that perfect relationship with, and it irritates everybody else. Eventually you take the irritation nationwide by being profiled in the "Vows" section of the New York Times. You'll say stuff like "I always admired his/their integrity, notably the fact that they are the only publicly owned team in the NFL" and they'll say stuff like "She was always there for me, we could collectively talk to her for hours" and then there would be a picture of you getting married in Central Park or whatever. Some years might be rougher than others, but you'll always work through your problems with a package vacation at a Sandals resort.

NHL
The Montreal Canadiens: They're like that French-Canadian boyfriend you had in university, who wore scarves really well and came from a preeminent Montreal family, but had a lot of baggage. Now and then he would have a meltdown and destroy your apartment, or maybe just a part of Rue Ste. Catherine. Every year you figured would be *the* year, but he never really brought home the hardware and eventually you stopped expecting him to. Now you dodge his calls.

NBA
The Memphis Grizzlies: They're like that boyfriend you had because you were both 10 and you thought the drawings of angry grizzly bears on his duotang revealed a tortured soul. He had a rat tail and you held hands by the chainlink fence. Then his dad got transferred to an office in Memphis right after Christmas. You're not sure what he does now, he might have been on strike for a while, but you're sure that's he's long since stopped spelling "neighbour" and "colour" with their proper u's.

MLS
The Toronto FC: They're like that high school boyfriend you dated for no other reason than geographical proximity. Eventually you broke up when you went to school in another province, and he started working at Milestones Bar and Grill.

MLB
N/A: You don't have a baseball team/"boyfriend." You hate baseball. If baseball teams have to be boyfriends, then you are an out and proud baseball lesbian.

Canada's Hollywood... is South of Wawa

2011-12-03T21:28:00.000-05:00

In the two or so years since graduation, I have lost the habit of reading academic writing. So it was no surprise that I ended up mired in the swamps of Canada's Hollywood. I checked it out expecting a breezy discussion of Canadian filmmaking, and found instead a rigorously-researched, footnoted and factchecked inquiry into the history of governmental involvement in Canadian film. There were even... tables. I shouldn't have let myself be fooled by the gold foil on the cover. I should have checked the spine. The University of Toronto Press imprint would have been fair warning.

But persevering was rewarding, if you count the gift of guilt. The guilt of my weak support for Canadian movies, in particular. I'll see about one every month or two, compared to dozens of American or European films. There's no reason for it, I've seen Canadian movies I've liked. Great ones like Léolo and Mon Oncle Antoine. And ones that aren't great, but you can't help liking more anyway. Like South of Wawa, which has some lovably inept hockey scenes and tonnes (yes that's metric, we're in Canada) of smalltown Ontario. How can anyone resist a movie whose tagline was "Endless Love - Passionate Dreams - Cream-Filled Donuts"? Apparently some of the raters at IMDB could. But don't listen to the haters, watch it yourself. If you do, I personally vow to see every Canadian movie that comes my way. Whether that includes American movies starring Ryan Reynolds, I leave you to decide.

Domestic Thursday: Whoopie Pies and Stout

2011-12-01T17:34:00.000-05:00

American Thanksgiving has passed. The piped-in carols have arrived. The Christmas season is upon us. Truth is, I have always loved Christmas, in spite of my atheist cred. But even those who don't get as excited as I do by the sight of holiday specials on the TV schedule likely appreciate the baked goods and booze. Recently, I made a recipe that combined them both.

Meet Gingerbread Whoopie Pies with Rum Filling, the star of this week's domestic Thursday. The cookie base comes from this McCormick's recipe, which uses lemon crème for the filling. I ignored that part. Not nearly boozy enough. Instead I found a recipe online for rum buttercream icing, which seemed like an awesome idea, especially since I had some Kraken Spiced Rum in the cabinet. With a slightly I've made these twice this season. Paired with a Dark and Stormy made from the same bottle of rum, they've been making my spirits bright and it's only the first of December. Just imagine how jolly/bloated I'll be when the 24th comes around.

Instructions:
Cookies: This recipe, with some minor alterations:
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
pinch of cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup blackstrap molasses
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Filling: Slightly adapted from this recipe:
1/2 cup softened butter
1 package powdered sugar
4 tablespoons rum
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Mix dry ingredients (flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, nutmeg, cloves and salt) in a medium bowl. Set aside. Beat butter and brown sugar in a large bowl with your mixer until nice and fluffy. Add molasses, egg and vanilla; beat well. Gradually beat in flour mixture on low speed until well mixed. Press dough into a thick flat disk. Wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate 4 hours or overnight.
2. Preheat oven to 350°F. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. (I've found I've had better results getting cookie spread, and thus more manageable cookie sandwiches, if I press the balls flat-ish before baking.)
3. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until edges of cookies just begin to brown. Remove and cool completely. COMPLETELY. Otherwise your icing will melt all over the place.
4. Beat butter for the icing with a mixer until nice and creamy. Slowly add about a cup of the powdered sugar, beating slowly until blended. Add the liquid ingredients (rum, milk, extract), beating until blended. Add powdered sugar until you get the consistency you like.
5. Assemble whoopie pies by taking one cookie, topping the flat side with a decent amount of icing, then adding another cookie on top. Then eat.

And here is this week's domestic beer, the Smoked Oatmeal Stout from Trafalgar Ales and Meads. Since my last experience with a smoked beer was like drinking a liquified charcoal briquette, I was wary. But this was only subtly smoky, and as hearty as any good stout. While we're on the topic of stouts, I was shocked to find out that most "chocolate" or "coffee" stouts are rarely brewed with either of those foods, with the flavour coming from the darker roast of the malt instead. There are exceptions, and I hope to talk about one of them next week. But oatmeal stouts are brewed with real oats, which makes them smooth instead of particularly oat-y. So, drink this or McAuslan's, and you won't be drinking A PINT OF LIES.

Guilty Graphic Pleasure: Frankenstein Agent of S.H.A.D.E.

2011-11-28T20:51:00.000-05:00

Is it possible to describe something as a "guilty pleasure" without condescending to the object you find so pleasurable? I ask because I have been searching for a better term to describe Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E., one that makes it clear that I both acknowledge its silliness while deeply respecting Jeff Lemire's writing. Yeppers, R-E-S-P-E-C-T even though it contains such gems as:

"Khalis took out the spider-like forms on this continent, but we still need to take care of the ogres and the sea monsters before this thing makes it to Earth!"

In fact, especially because it contains sentences like that. Frankenstein: AoS is smart in the way Raiders of the Lost Ark is smart- it distills something essential about old-fashioned entertainment, tempered with enough modern humour so the result is something fresher than a simple pastiche. Think Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, with the cast of the Munsters instead of human soldiers. Max fun.

Save Our T-Shirts First: The Made in America Store

2011-11-27T21:51:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving is a day of tradition and ritual for Americans. And Black Friday is a day of tradition and ritual for some Canadians, that is, my family. On Thursday Americans carve a turkey, and on Friday the Hunters order fried chicken. On Thursday Americans give thanks, and on Friday the Hunters curse LSU's irritatingly deep football team. On Thursday many Americans ignore the troubling colonial baggage of the holiday, and on Friday the Hunters ignore the moral bankruptcy of the NCAA, the BCS, and the culture of collegiate athletics in the US as a whole. But on both days all parties watch football, because that is the American way. And if you don't love it... you can leave it!

That's a product from the Made in America store. Store motto: "Because China is a Long Drive to Work!" Store location: Elma, NY. There were ads for this place during commercial breaks on Buffalo, NY television, so it's not an elaborate Internet hoax. There's really a faux-Colonial outlet where you can buy confusing (but 100% American-manufactured) shirts that have a picture¹ of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima and the slogan: "The United States of America... Love it or leave it!" But leave what? Iwo Jima, which is a Japanese island? Shouldn't that ellipsis be a colon? Perhaps not? Ah, questions.

But while I would love to sit here and play smug Canadian about this store and its products... I can't. Well, at least I can't until I mention this artwork depicting Jesus comforting a crying Santa in front of a memorial to the victims of 9/11. That's just whack. But the store is a reaction to a real problem, as the manufacturing sector has crumbled in the US, taking the middle class down with it. Writing up a protectionist shopping list may not be the solution to the problem. And a quick glance at the online store shows just how untenable it would currently be- ladies wanting closed-toe shoes are shit out of luck, for starters. The only footwear they sell "for her" are the Okabashi Maui Hot Pink Sandals. But this store's existence is still a sign of engagement with the problem, even though direct political action might be more efficient than purchasing a pair of Maui Hot Pink Sandals before a long, cold winter.

There's also an emotional fulfillment that the Made in America store is selling, along with its t-shirts. In oh so many ways, the MIA store aesthetic of stars, stripes, and servicemen is the complete opposite of Etsy's "put a bird on it"² look. But deep down, the motivations of shoppers may not be so different. Not only is it easy to go through life without making anything yourself, it's almost required. And without those manufacturing jobs, you may not be making anything at work either. Divorced from the labour needed to produce stuff, even though not from the labour required to buy it, we value our stuff less. We don't feel connected to the stuff. But through these two means, shoppers can experience that connection with our stuff again just by "knowing" the maker. At the MIA store: an imaginary community decided by the country of manufacture. In Etsy world: the redheaded chick with the severe bangs who makes felt hedgehogs.

1. Actually, it may be a photo of a stature of the iconic photo of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, which is just confusing to write.
2. Portlandia, IFC.

Arkham City and Bonus Bats

2011-11-25T22:38:00.000-05:00

Buy one, get one free

An interesting thing I've noticed in TV commercials: In spots for the video game Batman: Arkham City, the 1994 movie Batman Forever is being offered as, essentially, a bonus feature. Buy the game and the Schumacher flick is yours to download and keep in the cloud... if you haven't torrented it already. I'll admit that video games aren't really my bag, but that has more to do with my upbringing, where they were banned, than with any assumptions I hold regarding their artistic merit. I'm no Roger Ebert. Theoretically, I think video games could be art, but I still think it's unfortunate to package a feature-length film as an extra on something that's not even a movie.

First, because I'm not sure how much use the players of Arkham City and the pleasures (interactivity, control) I'll assume it brings will have for the very different pleasures of a film (surrender to spectacle, rubber nipples on batsuits.) Second, because it seems vaguely insulting to sell a separate creative enterprise as the superfluous add-on of another. My favourite DVD extras are those, like documentaries or commentaries, that comment on the work itself. Even when manufacturers throw in another film as filler- God bless public domain- it's usually at least an earlier, silent version of the same story. I don't know. I just have this vague dread that it's setting a bad precedent. And that I've spent too much time worrying about a movie that features Jim Carrey in Spandex.

Domestic Thursday: Squid, Cables and Ginger Beer

2011-11-24T20:44:00.000-05:00

Whoah, did another week really go by? It seems that today is Thursday, which means it's once again time to get domestic in here. My week hasn't been too eventful, the highlight (or lowlight) being a botched interview Wednesday morning. Everything I learned in the past year fell out of my head and slithered away halfway through. Only a slimy trail of shame was left. I would dwell upon it all- what am I saying? I do! I do!- but as the saying goes*... "Onward and upward with the arts."

First up: this year's Christmas card theme is "A Squid Fails at Christmas." Also, pink. More specifically: "Shades of Holiday-themed Papers My Mom Wouldn't Use, and So Donated to Me." So far the series has four cards with four different doodles. They confuse my Mom, which means I'll be giving her the oddest one (I'm seeing 3D flocked tentacles) for Christmas.

Also, the back of my Beatnik sweater is finished and in the process of being aggressively blocked. If it's still too small when it dries, I might just concede defeat on this New Year's Resolution and start my Owls sweater.

Finally, more domestic beer fun: Mill Street Brewery's Traditional Ginger Beer. Not to be confused with the Jamaican kind of ginger beer that you use to make a Dark and Stormy (the drink of champions.) Instead, it's beer first, with a kick of ginger second. It's not nearly as distinctive in its ginger notes as the version you can buy from Phillips, seasonal whims permitting. But it's still a well-balanced spicy beer, and I'm sad I tracked it down just at the end of its annual run.

*Yes, I already said this on Twitter. It's like "Keep Calm and Carry On", but it doesn't appear on so many throw pillows.

More Domesticity: Muskoka Brewery Mad Tom IPA

2011-11-18T09:51:00.000-05:00

Another domestic thing I forgot to mention yesterday- beer! One of the best things about returning to my home province has been discovering its wide world of local brew. I do miss biking to the Phillips brewery to get my two growlers (nicknamed Rock'em and Sock'em) filled up, and in the process living up to a certain BC stereotype. This week's selection, Muskoka Brewery's Mad Tom IPA, is a nice reminder of all that. West Coast brewers love their hops, and this IPA has enough of them to make your face scrunch. Well, at least mine. I enjoyed my glass, especially once the initial bitter taste faded and a strong citrus taste came through, but I couldn't pound it all night. I could, however, go for a pint of this with drunken noodles from a Thai restaurant.

Domestic Thursday: Juliana Wrap and Some Sweaters

2011-11-17T16:18:00.000-05:00

I am now booking Thursdays on this blog to talk about matters domestic. Not politics domestic- check out Rabble.ca for that, I guess. But if you've long felt that the one area Rabble was truly lacking in, between its columns from union leaders and coverage of Occupy Toronto, was knitwear photos, check here once a week. Knitting, baking, sewing, I have a lot of free time and so you can expect a lot of completed projects. Hopefully.
First up, an accidentally "artistic" composition (got a little excited with the image filters there) of my first completed crocheted object, the Juliana Wrap made using two hanks of Montoya Beach Space Dyed linen yarn in Blood Red. The yarn has a really lovely drape post-blocking, though it spewed half of its dye into the water during the process. Below you can see me wearing the scarf. I kind of love the tassels. They're almost tacky. But not quite.
Flouncing around in the scarf keeps me from focusing on other, less-pleasant fibre-related business in my life.
This pile of knitting in need of steeking and finishing for example. Over a year has gone by and I still don't have the courage to cut the yarn.
And this cabled tragedy, a version of Knitty's Beatnik boatneck sweater, doomed as it is to be too small. I can only knit on, hoping some really aggressive blocking can solve the problem.

Book Pile for November 16

2011-11-16T23:44:00.000-05:00

1. Creepy CanCon Reading: Ravenna Gets, Tony Burgess
2. Normal CanCon Reading: Canada's Hollywood, Ted Madger
3. Current 19th Century Novel: Middlemarch, George Eliot
4. "Yes, I Joined a Book Club, Shut Up" Novel: Annabel, Kathleen Winter
5. Current Graphic ~~Fiction~~ History: The Horror! The Horror!: Comic Books the Government Didn't Want You to Read!, Jim Trombetta

Behold the Cloonling: Three Ryan/George Films

2011-11-15T22:07:00.000-05:00

Of the past three recent releases I've watched, one starred Ryan Gosling, another George Clooney, and the third co-starred them both. I'm sensing a theme, let's call it The Societally Prescribed "Thinking Women's Sex Symbol" Film Festival, James Franco flicks optional. Anyway, this season's TWSS programming was Drive, The American and The Ides of March. The first two share some gross plot similarities (professionals redeemed and compromised by the love of a good women) and some fine differences, and will likely also make a fine compare and contrast essay for a film studies course in a few years. American versus European settings, youth versus age, ideals versus cynicism, techno beats versus golden realism etc. etc.

The Ides of March is also a decent movie, which goes as much for its morals as its quality. It can feel a little creaky though, and will be best for those raised on rentals of The Sweet Smell of Success and All the King's Men. Drive was my personal favourite, looking and sounding like urban myth, although the music that sets the mood also nearly ruins it. As the movie ends, the synths kick in and for the second time a vocoder tells us that the Driver is a "real hero" (as well as a "real human being"). Got it. Thanks. But they forgot the missing fourth verse: "And you, have proved, to be/A real human being, and a real hero/AND A TOTAL DREAMBOAT..."

Crimes and Crinolines II: Inferno!

2011-11-13T23:35:00.000-05:00

Sorry, I've either been busy or in Toronto for the past few days. But I will share with you all the hilarious conclusion of the British Period Drama I was describing in my last post. Our poor Scot never did get the girl, but it wasn't because of his long concealed capitalistic tendencies. Robert Carne didn't marry Sarah either, although it wasn't his mysterious heart ailment that got him. Instead he rode his horse too close to the edge of a cliff during a dramatic thunderstorm, and coastal erosion did the rest. I appreciated the unromantic realism of this ending. Too often have people gone too close to the edge because of turmoil in their innermost selves, or so the director could get a nice shot. Good aesthetics are no protection from severe head trauma. Perhaps the next Period Drama I borrow from the library will deal with my other perpetual annoyance: dozens of lit candles in single rooms. Seductive? No. FIRE HAZARD.

Crime and Crinolines: British Crime Shows and Period Dramas

2011-11-07T22:45:00.000-05:00

My Mom lives on a diet of two kinds of DVDs: British Crime Series and British Period Dramas. The plot of the average British Crime Series is as utterly routine and comforting as a strong cup of tea. There is a crime, various suspects are presented, a piece of utterly circumstantial evidence is discovered, at which point the culprit makes a full and detailed confession. Here's some dialogue that could be parachuted in to the next British Crime Series the Guelph Public Library feels like buying:

Detective: But why, my lord, DID YOU LEAVE THE WINDOW OPEN?
Lord Evil Baddy-Diditmay: Yes, I did it, I'm glad I did it, I would do it again and here's how I did it. I purchased arsenic at the druggist's at tuppence* a pound, reduced from sixpence and four as Lloyd's had ordered a surplus...

The British Period Drama is no less formulaic, but instead of confessing to having been Colonel Mustard in the drawing room with the candlestick, the spunky heroine simply hones in on the biggest asshole within county limits and falls in love with him. Or: the rough idea of Pride and Prejudice gets some new togs. My mother and I are currently working our way through a fine example of this sort of British import. It's called South Riding, and it features Sarah, an idealistic young headmistress with two potential suitors, a Scottish socialist and a local aristocrat. Robert Carne, the local aristocrat, has unpaid bills, a mysterious illness, an incident of marital rape, a high-strung daughter and a wife in an institution. Most of us bring some baggage into our relationships, but he's one hatbox short being a full-on baggage car. Naturally, Sarah falls madly in love with him.

We're only two thirds of the way through, and I'm shocked the socialist hasn't become evil in some way. He can be excessively dogmatic or secretly in league with the capitalists, but either way, the path towards being Mrs. Carne must be cleared somehow. But then the first Mrs. Carne also needs to be conveniently offed much like the first Mrs. Rochester, so maybe they'll just have Carne succumb to whatever he's taking amyl nitrate for to keep things simple. Personally, I'm hoping that Lord Evil makes a crossover appearance and bashes him over the head with a chamberpot. In the oh-so period conservatory.

*I have no idea of the true meaning of "tuppence" or "sixpence", as with "bob" or "quid", but if the Brits couldn't be assed to figure out if I was Canadian or American, then I can't be assed to understand their funny money names. So there.

Cage Fight of Awful: Rob Ford v. Ezra Levant

2011-11-03T22:47:00.000-04:00

The worst person in Canada right now, ignoring the usual criminal element, might be either Rob Ford or Ezra Levant. I know that sounds ideological, but hold up. It's a battle between a quivering mass of privileged resentment and an oily mound of an attention hound, so I think this crosses party lines. Rob Ford has an international profile, earning "Worst Person in the World" laurels from Keith Olbermann last week. But a Ford scandal only breaks every fortnight or so, while Ezra Levant appears on SunTV every single weekday.

Although Levant has the (dis)advantage when it comes to exposure, Ford has all the real political clout. Levant might have more if SunTV's production values ever surpass those of a local cable access channel, and he finds a legion of followers. But right now, with that lighting, viewers could be forgiven for turning on The Source and thinking they've caught My View with Peter Etril Snyder on channel 20 instead. Ford carries the chain of mayor and he's using it to batter Toronto. He's set its urban planning back thirty years, abandoned useful transit plans and removed bike lanes instead of adding more. He almost succeeded in saddling Toronto with a monorail/megamall development, and believes his football coaching is more important than his actual mayoral obligations. He doesn't just make people nostalgic for David Miller. He makes them mourn for the days of Mel Lastman.

And yet, even while so genuinely awful, Rob Ford is also more genuine than Ezra Levant. As much as I disagree with his politics and personal conduct, at least it seems like he believes in them. Levant is just what the SunTV's website describes him as, in its little blurb on The Source: a "provocateur." Publishing those Danish Muhammad cartoons in the Western Standard, the dubious achievement that's been front and center on his CV for a while, wasn't a great gesture for free speech. It wasn't even the expected act of an Islamophobe. Levant probably doesn't hate Muslims, as long as they don't raise his taxes, don't ask for arts grants, and keep off his damn lawn, please. But it wasn't free speech. It was just the keening sound of one huckster squawking for attention. And that makes Ezra Levant the worst- or at least the most annoying- person in Canada.

In Praise of Unfaithful Movie Adaptations

2011-10-31T23:28:00.000-04:00

For whatever reason, I decided to watch The Eagle today. It's a 300-lite adaptation of The Eagle of the Ninth, which used to be the kind of dusty thing elementary kids were assigned to read, like Johnny Tremaine but without all the silver-deformed hands. Anyway, I read it sometime when I was 10 or 11, so my recollection might be foggy. But I'm fairly sure the book ended with the protagonist disillusioned with the glory of Rome. Instead, the movie has our hero (Channing "Mr. Poutylips 2012" Tatum) and his sidekick (Jamie "Billy Elliot Got Buff" Bell) striding out the door and into a buddy comedy.

But oh well. A sick side of me actually enjoys it when movie adaptations stomp all over their source text. Like that version of The Scarlet Letter with Demi Moore, where a bunch of Natives ride in at the end to save the day. I figure by that point screenwriting was happening on a day-to-day basis, and having run out of excuses for Demi to get her frock off, the writers decided to wrap it up quickly. Credit also goes to Timur Bekmambetov's Wanted. Mark Millar's comic books might not have the same cultural capital as Hawthorne's AmLit 101 staple, but they get hacked just the same in the 2008 adaptation. The title's the same, and so are the characters' names, but... that's about it. And I loved it. Here's to faithless movies made from better books. They allow me to quietly disrespect my English degree and eat hot buttered popcorn, all at the same time.

Reflections on Canzine

2011-10-25T22:32:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday, I went to Canzine with some cash in my wallet and the stated goal of finding a zine about backyard chicken raising. I never did succeed in the latter, but did return to Guelph with a bag of zines and the following observations, shared below for your edification/amusement/ire.

1. Cupcakes Are Our New Overlords
The most popular product at tables at Canzine? Zines, of course. It's in the name. Second? Screenprinted posters, probably. And third? Cupcakes. You could buy homemade versions along with your handmade journals at many a stall, or go for the slightly more ambitious cakes being sold as part of the Underground Food Fair. Remember when folks said the cupcake trend had crested, and it was for whoopie pies and macarons to fight to the death for our love? Well, cupcakes were there all along, waiting for the other baked goods to destroy each other so they could hog all the sweet, sweet glory for themselves. Victory tastes of buttercream frosting. And costs between $2.50 and $3.25 a pop.

Conclusion: Cupcakes are here to stay. Unless if fatigue finally sets in next year, in which case I'm fully planning to bring a doughnut frying machine to Canzine.

2. Digital Technology Has Not Killed Print (Yet)
The vendors at Canzine ranged in age, but generally skewed- based on a lazy visual appraisal- heavily to the 20 to 30 year old range. Admittedly, zine culture is a niche thing, but there was still a roomful of people who had taken the time to write, draw, stitch, photocopy, staple and in whichever way create printed artifacts. And it wasn't the work of a colony of strange youth who had rejected Twitter and Facebook, grabbing their butter churns to go back and crank a letterpress, either. I checked out some of the scheduled readers and presenters the day before. Most of them at least had a blog.

Conclusion: Calm down, New York Times, Globe and Mail, or whomever. I know that as the new moon rises, another, often hysterical, obituary for the printed word (the book in the particular) appears under your masthead. But at least for the time being, young folks are finding ways to integrate both print and digital media as creative outlets and entertainment.

3. People Can be Sickeningly Talented, and Often Nice Too
A few highlights: Raymond Biesinger, who produced this clever graphic poster of World War I. It already contains more information about The Great War than I was ever taught in a high school history class. He's also really friendly, so buy from him and you support the cause of niceness. Jonah Campbell, who writes about food in Food and Trembling in a wry, critically sharp way. The man understands the power and the glory of the Montreal zaatar, so clearly he's to be trusted. Aaron Costain, who has some pretty but sinister prints of cityscapes, along with cat zines and comics about transportation disasters. A true Renaissance man, that one. There were also tons of social justice zines, and although I neglected to do my duty and pick some up (apologies, I had cupcakes on the brain) they still made me feel a bit better about the world.

Conclusion: We must harness their power for our ends. Or at least make them fetch zaatars for us.

Goddess of the Longbox: Brian Azzarello's Wonder Woman

2011-10-22T23:18:00.000-04:00

Up until two months ago, I thought of Wonder Woman more as a brand than as a book. She could be bought on journals, t-shirts, wallets and more. But not so much in comic books I wanted to read. I knew about her first, bondage-heavy incarnation thanks to a collection of golden age Wonder Woman stories which randomly appeared in my grade 8 classroom. Everything I could find at the library told me we then passed through a Lynda Carter/George Perez heyday, only to get bogged down in the 1990s with convoluted stories and low sales numbers. After that, good things could have happened. But so did The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Wonder Woman having sky-shaking sex with Superman was bad enough, but the digital colouring job gave it a particularly mind-searing quality. I decided I no longer had the fortitude for her. Who could guarantee I wouldn't see her boffing Darkseid, printed on glitter paper? But the big DC 52 reboot brings renewed faith, in the form of Brian Azzarello's Wonder Woman.

Issue #2 has just been released, which means it's still simple and fiscally responsible to catch up on the series. So far it's shaping up to be less about typical superheroics than Maury among the gods. Zeus has been fooling around on Hera again, and Diana and Hermes try to protect his latest mortal conquest and the unborn demigod she carries. The family tree gets further complicated at the end of issue #2. Strife lets slip that Diana is also Zeus' daughter, instead of clay brought to life.

Perhaps my Maury comparison is unfair. Wonder Woman aims higher than that- Apollo, Hermes, Hera and other superstars of Greek mythology all make unannotated appearances, for example. For a truer ancestor, something about the dense, allusive writing reminds me of the Sandman series, Azzarello sounding as much like Neil Gaiman as his earlier, 100 Bullets self. Cliff Chiang's pencils are worth noting too. Although all of the female characters are drawn within society's set parameters of female beauty, Diana gets to look more athletic than pneumatic. It may be too early in Azzarello's run to get excited about his Wonder Woman. But there's something exciting about a book that aims for Mount Olympus while so many others settle for the gutter and a pretty thin conception of grit.

I feel as if a link to this Dresden Codak comic about Wonder Woman's costume is only appropriate: Why Cleavage Is Bad For Crimefighting

Love Hurts, And Sometimes Steals Your Tea

2011-10-21T22:57:00.000-04:00

Even my dreams have begun to sadden me. Last night I was dreaming about meeting a guy in some sort of meet-cute situation in an apartment. For most of you, normal, happy people, the next part of the dream would have involved some sexy adventures of at least Cinemax standards. However, I dreamed I went to his apartment the next day, only to find the loose tea he had stolen from my apartment. It was all there- the Earl Grey, the genmaicha, the rooibos, the bougie green tea with the little fruity bits in it. There was a confrontation, dramatic tears were shed, doors were slammed, he admitted that he had a compulsion and I gave him the ultimatum that "I'll only see you if you get heeeeelllllp!"

It was kind of like an episode of Intervention, crossbred with a Lifetime movie of the week and sponsored by Tetley.

I woke up remembering the "green tea with the little fruity bits" detail distinctly, and the rest of the dream with some concern. Really, if my dream guy is a tea-hording klepto, and not a bare-chested English 19th century lord with suspiciously good dental work and a disdain for the social conventions of his time, my real-life prospects have got to be depressing. Which reminded me of a recent conversation I had with a friend, where I confidently promised to "work harder at, you know, that whole aspect... of life" once I found a job in Toronto and moved there.

Really, that was just a way of buying time, and even that looms oppressively in my future. My anxiety was not helped by a post on a Toronto city blog that offered a glimpse into that very future. It was about a singles event with an ugly sweater theme, held at a bar with an awkwardly long name. That kind of name is usually a good indication that it will house equally (and endearingly) awkward men, so at first I was all like "Whoah, I could get a head start on my vow!!", then was more "That bar name is actually mildly annoying" and finally: "I would likely want to burn down that bar and the be-sweatered men it contains, mostly out of misdirected self-loathing, but also because of drunkenness."

So, now that I've saved myself the trouble of finding an embroidered cat sweater at Value Village, I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't also save myself from this doomed vow. Some people are good at dating- I'm not one of them. Some people are good at learning how to be good at dating- I'm not one of those either. I don't even know how to blow dry my hair. My temporary conclusion is that, yep, I'm still planning to move to Toronto, and if nothing works out in the suitor department, that's fine. But if something does work out, that's fine too. I'll just have to remember to keep an eye on my Elf Help (organic) tea, and put out the Lipton as decoys.

Book Covers I Have Loved, Liked and Loathed: Wuthering Heights

2011-10-18T23:05:00.000-04:00

Realities may be plural and meaning may be fluid... but anybody who goes about thinking Wuthering Heights is a template for true love is a stone-cold idiot. Postmodernism can only take you so far. Of course, the actual content of the book hasn't stopped legions of hormone-addled folks (and some older people who should know better) from taking Heathcliff to be the dreamiest of dreamboats to ever sail, or at least stalk, the moors. Thus, a certain kind of terrible cover could be expected for Wuthering Heights. Bare, yearning, extremely buff chests. Terrible Twilight tie-ins, even. But I sure wasn't expecting this:

I couldn't bring myself to open the book, although I'm sure Heathcliff exhuming Cathy's corpse was rendered with the same kind of apple-cheeked wholesomeness. I understand that this is part of a series of classic stories and novels digested for the children. And because of that, some darker elements would have to be left in the original text. But this is more than missing the mark. This is aiming for Wuthering Heights and landing somewhere deep in Magic Treehouse land. Perhaps writers, librarians, parents and anyone else who cares about kids should stop presenting pulverized classics and give children good, original works instead. It seems more likely to create dedicated readers who'll find the real Wuthering Heights (and Jane Eyre, and heck, Agnes Grey) on their own.

This next cover (for the complete text) would definitely appeal to those kids, particularly those tormented souls who are simultaneously going through a Tim Burton phase. The cover is by Ruben Toledo, and it's part of a set of three Deluxe Classics he illustrated for Penguin. I can't decide whether I like it or not. Sometimes I think it has the right mix of superficial prettiness and barely hidden rot. Other times, I find it irritatingly gothy-cute, with Catherine looking like a consumptive Hello Kitty.

(Photo from Etsy seller CalloohCallay)

But I would love to track down a copy of this Wuthering Heights, which features woodcuts by Fritz Eichenberg. Published as a box set with Jane Eyre in 1943, I think it's just about perfect, with the emphasis being as much on the environment and atmosphere of its setting than Heathcliff himself, looking here- unlike that awful Real Reads cover- like a real adult.

A Very Merry X-Oween

2011-10-17T23:51:00.000-04:00

It's not an original sentiment, but... the X-Men the Animated Series intro is just balls out awesome, isn't it? Seriously, I want to loop that song and play it for 20 minutes whenever I run. Things would quickly go south however when I confuse myself with Rogue and attempt to fly off the curb while punching the air, but with the healing powers of Wolverine (or my delusions of such) I would quickly recover and finish my run. Or at least limp home to the X-Mansion, aka my house.

On a related note, I am strongly considering making Rogue my 2011 Halloween costume of choice. Unfortunately, one thing is kind of stopping me. Three syllables, starts with a vowel, heavily featured in American Apparel catalogues... no, not areola. That's four syllables. I'm talking "unitard." I mean, for 19.95 I can buy a green unitard from Value Village that promises, somewhat sinisterly, "one size fits most." Judging from the model photo though, a more accurate description would be "gives cameltoe to all." Oh well, slap some yellow spandex patches on it, add some superfluous belts, bleach a streak in my hair, and I'll be cooking like early '90s classic Rogue.

Book Pile for October 13

2011-10-13T23:46:00.000-04:00

This month's book pile, from top to bottom.
1. The Itty Bitty Book: Music From Big Pink, John Niven
2. Book Most Likely to Take Another 8 Months to Finish: The Magus, John Fowles
3. The Tome of Misguided Self-Improvement: How to Get Any Job: Life Launch and Re-Launch for Everyone Under 30 (or How to Avoid Living in Your Parents' Basement), Donald Asher -> Too late!!!!!!
4. Let's Get Critical, Critical Reading: American Movie Critics, Ed. Phillip Lopate
5. Current Non-Fiction Reading: The Best of The Best American Science Writing, Ed. Jesse Cohen
6. Future Novel Reading: A Meaningful Life, L. J. Davis

Lucille by Ludovic Debeurme- Review

2011-10-12T20:48:00.000-04:00

The teenager, whether as subject, intended audience or both, has been well-served by graphic novels. Well, well-served in quantity, at least, but not so much in quality. Nearly every adult superhero team has a youth league (Teen Titans, Generation X, Young Avengers, etc.) but when Batman angsts more than a sixteen year old, the actual teens can seem like toddlers. Which is why Ludovic Debeurme's Lucille is so surprising and necessary.

Originally published in French by Futuropolis in 2006, Lucille appeared in English earlier this year through Top Shelf Comics. If you were expecting, based on its continental heritage, lush backgrounds and smoothly symbolic figures, you'll be disappointed. This isn't that kind of bande dessiné. But if you've read King Cat Comics and liked John Porcellino's minimalist, sketchy illustrations, you'll probably enjoy the kind of style Debeurme is working with. And it's a good fit for the story, allowing readers the space to mix their own experiences with those of the characters.

That kind of projection will be more effective if you're either still in, or still reeling from, your that time. Hopefully, few of you are as put-upon as Vladimir (né Arthur) and Lucille though. Vladimir is the scion of a long line of suicidal Poles and Lucille is an anorexic French girl. But this isn't an issue-driven YA novel, with no hotline phone number on the back page. Lucille and Vladimir are written like plausible, intelligent and troubled teenagers. That is: As people who are more articulate on the interior than they can express to the exterior. It's not surprising then that Debeurme leans heavily on interior monologues instead of dialogue, but pages completely free of text are common too. Coupled with Debeurme's aversion to the square, thickly bordered look of the traditional comic panel, Lucille feels like a graphic novel that's fighting against traditional expectations of the form while still having to work within some of them. And that's not unlike your average teen's life experience, helping this book to become one of the truer, sadder looks at those in-between years.

On a related note for Toronto folks, two events of note are coming up:
Canzine Toronto, which should have some great indie comics for sale, among other artifacts of the zinely sciences (October 23, 2011)
Toronto Draws Tintin, in honour of everyone's favourite Belgian, which features history, local artists, and provides support for the Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund. (November 2-27, 2011)

The Avengers Trailer, or Iron Man and His Marketable Friends

2011-10-11T22:41:00.000-04:00

Was there any need to actually make a teaser trailer for The Avengers? Most likely anyone who needs to know about The Avengers- a demographic that consists of anyone who loves air conditioning, loves theatre popcorn, likes movies and tolerates paying up to $13 to enjoy any of the former- is already planning to do it. From Hulk to Captain America, they've had entire films that were essentially teaser trailers for this movie. But here it is.

Of course, Iron Man hogs the trailer, but his movies did the best, so why not? The explosions look competent, and I'm glad they brought Loki back from the Thor movie. But poor Hawkeye is barely in it, although maybe they're just saving Jeremy Renner for the Oscar campaign. And seeing Scarlett Johansson really makes me wish they had found a way to work the Scarlet Witch in as well. Sure, maybe they're going with the genetically enhanced version of the Black Widow, but the ability to look Vogue cover-ready for decades is pretty lame when you're standing next to a Norse god and a big green bag of testosterone. Even Hawkeye gets a crossbow.

Why I Quit on this Kai Nagata Article, Or: Honey, Press Delete Sometimes

2011-10-10T23:14:00.000-04:00

Hey, remember Kai Nagata? He wrote that article about why he quit his CTV gig, which got sent around to most of Canada, pissing off a few, being shared by many more, and likely read in its entirety by none. This is because Kai, who I am sure is an articulate, well-dressed young man in person, gets a bit windy when place in front of the keyboard.

His "Why I Quit My Job" post comes in at just over 3,000 words, about twice the length of the average New York Times news article. My brain has interpreted this as a sign to give Nagata's words as much weight as anything I've read lately about the Euro zone crisis or Occupy Wall Street. Although, full disclosure: both Nagata's quarterlife crisis and world events take up a fraction of my mental real estate when compared to pictures and/or videos of corgis. Arf.
Since that went viral, Kai got himself hired by The Tyee, an independent lefty-ish online magazine based out of B.C. And, as The Tyee likely mandates from all of its columnists, he grew out the contractual beard. But, long in facial hair as Kai may now be, he is even longer in print. And "Why Harper Wants You to Know that He Loves Hockey", his most recent article, is a few hundred words longer than his most famous post.

But maybe Kai Nagata is just stretching out his rhetorical muscles online, in preparation for lecturing us all through the medium of CPAC. In short: he wants to be the prime minister. The first third of the article is Kai comparing himself to Harper on the three things Harper is supposed to love most- hockey, the military, and Tim Horton's- and then detailing how he wins each contest. Harper says he loves hockey? Well, Kai Nagata played hockey with a ragtag band of scrappy Vancouver kids so ethnically diverse CBC is probably casting for a commercial right now. Harper loves the military? Well, Kai was actually in the army... reserves. Harper loves himself some Timmy's? Well, Kai HAS A TIM HORTON'S TRAVEL MUG. Suck it, creepy lips Steve!! Something's riding shotgun in the cup holder of Kai's car, and it's a little something called AUTHENTICITY.
It was a competition that Harper was bound to fail, because Stephen Harper... is a robot*. And robots cannot truly be said to understand the human emotion we call "love", even when we're talking about a sweet, sweet double-double. But still, I don't think winning these games makes Nagata a better Prime Minister, or even a better Canadian. Nagata is not writing about how a politician fails to live up to the standards of being a useful public servant, but instead on how they're failing to be the author, and by the end it starts reading like so much literature for a campaign that's only happening inside the writer's mind.

And it's also, sadly, a way of letting the other side win, by letting them set the terms of the debate. You might eat more Timbits than Harper (or care more for immigrants than Jason Kenney, or like Dan Mangan more genuinely than James Moore, etc. etc.), you might have won that battle, but it's a pretty hollow victory when you're still yelling their talking points than talking about what really matters.

But my irritation at the structure of Kai Nagata's piece has obscured, for me and for this post, the important observations he makes about the message Harper is selling, and the techniques he's using in the process. However, it's hard to find them under the heaps of Naga-trivia. So, some suggestions to The Tyee: hire an editor, put Kai on a 1,500 word limit and tell him to talk about himself less and listen more. And maybe shaving that beard would be a good idea too.

*Note: I do not think that Stephen Harper is a robot, just a truly regrettable prime minister.

The Mysteries of S.

2011-09-30T21:30:00.000-04:00

When I switched my cell number in Victoria for a local number, I never imagined I would be gaining a fraction of somebody else's life, along with the new area code. The other person is named S___. Here are a few things I know about him: at some point in the past few years, a woman caused him some kind of heartache that he's still bitter about. Random girls call him from clubs at 4 in the morning. And he enjoyed the services of a masseuse, but not necessarily of the Swedish variety. Don't worry, I'm not stalking him. It's just that a few days ago I received the following text:

"Note to all my faves.. I'm getting out of the business.. going from full service to straight massage..last day is Oct 3rd so pre book an appt now or you will miss out..thanks its been a wild ride :)"

At first, I wanted to text back "OH HAS IT NOW?", to make up for all the times I refrained from answering "Pardon me, but this is MRS. S____ SPEAKING" after yet another drunk girl searching to get laid woke me up past midnight. But I didn't. Every one of these cases of digital eavesdropping was unintentional- I never asked the girls to call, or the ex to text looking for a Thanksgiving reconciliation. But I still felt like I was intruding each time they happened.

Because here are a few things I don't know about S____: what he looks like. How old he is. What his last name might be. And since I do not know all these boring, but public, facts, I feel like I have no right to anything private. All I did was pick up the phone number he abandoned, and now poor Shane is missing out on his last chance for a wild ride.

Back to the Roost

2011-09-27T21:07:00.000-04:00

What personal business did I leave off the blog in the past month? Well, my internship in Victoria ended, and although I briefly entertained the notion of trying to stay out in the West Coast, I just as quickly decided to pack my (over airplane regulations) bags and head back East.

This decision lead to many things. A few nights spent sleeping in the living room. Dressing out of suitcases. The purchase of unemployment rum*. Ten days spent no more than a metre apart from my parents. And now, a return to Guelph.

Yep, I'm back at the homestead - a strange mid-sized city, an hour and change away from Toronto, and somewhere over the crest of my sanity. I did a whole series on Guelph artifacts last year. If you want the official version, the city of Guelph's website is this way. Library memberships have been renewed and subscriptions set up at the comic book store, but I keep on hoping a magical job offer will arrive before Animal Man #2, so I can move to Toronto. But don't tell the Guelpherati that, or I'll be barred from The Bookshelf's cinema.

*Depending on my mood, said rum was also named either "employment insurance rum, hooray" or "poverty rum of despair". You can decide which mood went with which name.

Me vs. Game of Thrones

2011-08-31T00:28:00.000-04:00

I resisted watching Game of Thrones for a few months, mostly on the strength of my HBO-related bitterness.

Also: my home Internet connection is really slow.

But one day I was bored, and my roommates were out, so the Internet connection was limping towards "reasonable" status. I made myself a BLT sandwich, opened a beer, and started the show. I watched one episode, and snickered. Barely halfway through the first episode, and there was just boobs a-jiggling all over my screen: yep, it's HBO. But then I watched another. And then I tried to watch a third one... but something happened while streaming and I missed the last fifteen minutes of the episode.

This led to many attempts to finish watching those last fifteen minutes. Who knows what could have happened during that time? The men could have started getting naked as well!! But by then the roommates were home and the connection had returned to its normal, 1994-like state. Which would have been awesome if I was interested in ASCII porn, but since I wanted the finest in boobies that HBO had to offer, it simply would not do. After the third attempt, it wasn't even about watching Game of Thrones: it was about beating the Internet and therefore winning the game of life.

Which is what I did the next morning. Sadly, there was no trophy for winning the game of life. Just the realization that, as enjoyable as Game of Thrones is, what with Sean Bean, Peter Dinklage, and wolf puppies, it's not worth battling the forces of connectivity/chaos. And also, instead of angrily pounding at my keyboard because I am waiting seconds (perhaps just milliseconds) longer than I want to for free TV, I could try something else. Like opening a book.

This is What I Want You to Think: An Anti-Conspiracy Theory Rant

2011-08-22T01:22:00.000-04:00

Before moving to B.C., I found conspiracy theories to be quaint and wacky little things. Oh the joy I felt at seeing a conspiracy theorist in the wild once, eyes a-darting and hands a-fluttering, explaining to a friend how the American government had been the ones responsible for the Oklahoma City bombings. But that was in Montréal, where most of the people were too cynical to trust the government, but also too cynical to trust a poorly-edited website instead. So he was a novelty.

Out here he would have been about as common as a seagull. Conspiracy theories are party conversation in Victoria. I would rather have malicious gossip and petty cattiness. I may even prefer talking about the weather. Instead, I have heard that:

The U.S. didn't really kill bin Laden
The U.S. (or at least the FBI, CIA, etc) did kill JFK
Chemtrails are a real thing
The government and university scientists are also bouncing radio waves off of those chemtrails to control our weather
We should be growing all our vegetables using hydroponics as the Fukishima disaster has irradiated all of our land
Bobby Fischer was the victim of a Cold War-era plot that lead to his exile
D.S.K. was framed

All of this conspiracy talk has lead me to develop a ratings system for the theories. "Probably Wrong, But Understandable" is a level 1. Level 2 is "getting wacky." Level 3 is "WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS." Here's how I've rated the former theories:

The U.S. didn't really kill bin Laden (1)
The U.S. (or at least the FBI, CIA, etc) did kill JFK (2)
Chemtrails are a real thing (2)
The government and university scientists are also bouncing radio waves off of those chemtrails to control our weather (3)
We should be growing all our vegetables using hydroponics as the Fukishima disaster has irradiated all of our land (2)
Bobby Fischer was the victim of a Cold War-era plot that lead to his exile (1)
DSK was framed (1)

This ratings system can also be applied to various 9/11 conspiracy theories:

The U.S. knew 9/11 was going to happen, but did nothing to stop it (1)
The U.S. blew up the planes themselves (2)
The U.S. strapped propulsion engines to the top of the buildings, there were no planes at all and the JEWS WERE INVOLVED SOMEHOW (3+)

I know I shouldn't care, but I do. Not enough to argue with them-mostly because Beer #6 is when I'm accused of thinking what THEY want me to think, and Beer #5 is when I actually stopped thinking, whether for myself or others. But two reasons and a hangover usually lead to some irritation the next morning.

First reason: conspiracy theories are a waste of effort. Skepticism is a sign of a healthy democracy, but these beliefs are just more blind faith with a different end in mind. Governments and corporations do enough heinous things in the broad daylight that you don't have to waste your time chasing after shadows. Complain about corporate tax loopholes instead of chemtrails. All you need is a tax code and some filings, instead of a shaky grasp of physics and meteorology. These issues are a sideshow to genuine social problems.

Second reason: these theories come down to emotion winning out over logic. Talk to a few of these true believers for a while, and there's a pattern. Step 1: Something doesn't "feel" right about event X. Step 2: They go on the Internet. Step 3: They search out theories that validate their own "feelings" about event X. Step 4: They corner you so that you, too, may begin to see the light. Feelings aren't facts. Don't turn one into the other and call it a plot. It's just bad research. With the increasingly fearful and combative state of politics both here in Canada and down south, less emotion is exactly what we need.

Grudgingly, I'll admit that there's a chance, if slim, that some of these theories might be true. Or maybe the story's so good that it might as well be so. Thanks to my comic book reading habit, I spent most of my adult life believing that FDR knew that Pearl Harbor was going to happen- it was that handy of a narrative. But you know what they say about broken clocks and blind squirrels. They're right, they find nuts, but not often enough to start watching the skies and writing off exploding jets.

The Father, Son and the Holy Guilt Trip

2011-08-17T22:21:00.000-04:00

I'm not a religious person. In fact, I'm an atheist. But, on the atheist colour scale where, say, Christopher Hitchens would be a garish shade of scarlet, I'm an inoffensive beige. In simple terms: I will not refuse to say grace around the family Thanksgiving table, but I will quietly think about gravy while mumbling the words.

Still, the beliefs of some believers do confuse me. For example, a recent Facebook post from a vague acquaintance that popped up in my news feed:

♥ I personally believe in Jesus Christ. I asked Jesus, "How much do you love me?" Jesus replies, "This much." And stretched his arms on the cross and died.

Jesus!! (for lack of a secular higher power to appeal to. ) My thought was less "What a powerful sacrifice our Lord made" and more "I should call a crisis line for this person Jesus is talking to." This just makes Him sound like the kind of abusive jerk who uses threats of suicide as emotional blackmail to keep his girlfriends from leaving him. Which does add another layer to Degrassi Season 5, circa 1991: "Claude Tanner as Christian Allegory."

I died for your sins, Caitlin Ryan!

I Love Legends Comics

2011-08-10T23:13:00.000-04:00

Pictured: Nerd Alley

There's a particular section of Victoria's Johnson Street, from Douglas to, say, Government that I've taken to calling Nerd Alley. It features two comic book stores, a collectible store (in other words, a toy store for items that are not to be toyed with), two stores for WarHammer figure painters, and one used bookstore. Even the bookstore focuses on the occult, SciFi, and Ayn Rand. If they only added a bubble tea place to the block, it would be possible for any nerd to live, quite happily, in a block-square area of town.

Or at least it would be possible for me to live in a one-block radius, if I didn't hate Ayn Rand and her brand of cuckoo con-objectivism so much. But, from 5:15pm to 5:40pm on Wednesdays, I do anyways. That's because it's New Comic Book Day, and I have an unofficial appointment to be at my preferred of the two comic book stores at that time, begging for the latest issue of Sweet Tooth. Legends Comics is the best, because there are no action figures or licensed T-shirts, just comic books and graphic novels crammed into every conceivable corner and surface. The one area which doesn't have some kind of literature on it is only there, so you can park your coffee and not spill anything on the paper that's everywhere else.

Along with their stock, Legends also has Gareth and Lloyd, the owners. Gareth knows my name and always tells me that I'm awesome. Lloyd, on the other hand, still asks me if I live in town. This is in spite of the fact he's heard Gareth say I'm awesome at least a half-dozen times, so he should know that A. I live in Victoria, and B. am awesome. You might think this means I like Lloyd less than Gareth, but that's not true. Okay, so Gareth does have an edge, but that's as much for his expert lettering on The Perogy Cat as for his weekly validation of my worth. Really, G and L are the yin and the yang of customer-proprietor relationships. On the one hand, the soothing mother's milk where somebody knows your name and the books you like. On the other, the bracing two buck chuck of mild indifference that you yearn to impress away.

I might even be making progress on the latter: Lloyd now knows my name, and even dug through boxes to find an issue of this month's The Unwritten for me. This is a book I've found uneven in the past, alternately gripping and perplexing, but this month's instalment had my complete attention. There's a plot featuring an intelligent, brittle pulp fiction writer, blessed with a schnozz, and the hard-boiled man who loves her. For self-evident reasons, I'm a sucker for those.

Adventures in Arduino

2011-08-09T00:21:00.000-04:00

In my youth, I decided that computers were not for me. This was a decision that likely coincided with my "Victoriana" phase, also known as the time in my life when I saved up my allowance to buy an antique inkwell. I had a quill (and a slate, dear God) to go with that inkwell. Fortunately my parents intervened before I ended up in pinafores and stockings, like a time refugee from Miss Tavistock's Home for Wayward Children, but the damage to my technical capabilities had already been done.

The past 10 months have been my attempt to overcome my technophobia, with mixed results. I mean, if it was still 1994, I think I could now make a pretty bitching webpage. On the other hand, and in the present day, I broke the 3D printer at the workshop when I tried using it. But at least now I have an Arduino.

Arduinos are really neat, open-source microcontrollers. And, as far as I can gather from my obsessive reading of the Make: Magazine blog, their main uses include somewhat creepy robots and the automation of fairly routine actions. Thus, my two-step Arduino Plan: 1. Use it to wind balls of yarn for me, and 2. Power my killbot, who will smite my enemies. But first, I started with a simpler, more manageable project: making it blink my nickname in morse code using an LED. Today, "MARTY MARTY MARTY," tomorrow the world/Vancouver Island.

Book Covers I Have Loved: A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

2011-08-08T00:49:00.000-04:00

The hardback Penguin Classics, designed by the eerily talented Coralie Bickford-Smith, have been celebrated ever since the first set was released. And yes, they're lovely, but they're also a pretty cover on a cheap binding. Stiff and prone to cracking, I would wager that a standard paperback Penguin Classic would hold up better than their clothbound cousins. But I will make an exception for their version of A Tale of Two Cities.

Blame the knitting. Yes, I've actually read A Tale of Two Cities, so I know that knitting doesn't have the most positive connotation in the novel. But you can blame the knitting and my Madame Defarge-like vengeful streak for not really caring. This book cover is amazing, touching upon the passage of time, guillotine blades, doubles, and my favourite fibre art, all at once.

The Apprehensive Hooker

2011-08-04T01:06:00.000-04:00

After a successful yoga mat bag-making enterprise, I thought it was safe to pick up the hook and crochet again. So I decided to make this scarf:Pattern from Berrocco.

Well, it's good to have dreams. Just trying to make the first medallion lead to a headache and a glimpse into Lovecraft-style madness. Crocheting is hard enough for a knitter, used as we are to linear progressions. But then the fine folks at Berrocco ask me to single crochet INTO yarn I've simply looped around my FINGERS, like it ain't no thing.

Reader, I did it, but I'm not sure I did the right thing. But here's what it looks so far, all 1.5 medallion's worth. Thank God I've got some socks to knit at the same time.

Vancouver Bound

2011-07-22T13:24:00.000-04:00

I'll be in Vancouver for the next three days with my lovely friend Ms. C. Have a good weekend, y'all!

Gardening: Science, Faith, Slugs

2011-07-15T01:50:00.001-04:00

A successful slug hunting mission. Die, mollusks, die.

Gardening. It's supposed to be rewarding. Your own hands raised that kale in the kale and tomato pasta you're about to eat. Same with the kale in the kale salad you just finished. And the kale chips you have as a side. And the kale cheesecake that's for dessert.

There's a lot of kale when you garden, is what I'm saying. It's unkillable and even the slugs don't like the stuff. Unlike your precious basil, which like your dreams of a Summer of Pesto, lies in tatters thanks to their slimy ways. Something like Murphy's Law is at work when you garden, except instead of anything that could possibly go wrong doing so at the worst possible time, everything you actually want to eat will wither right before it's ready and you will be left with fields of kale.

A second law of gardening: the outcome is inversely related to the level of input. Whatever you fertilize, prune and stake with the greatest of care will still only be tenuously clinging life- or at least the aforementioned stake is still keeping its withered carcass upright- while the rhubarb you've completely ignored is doing just fine. Which means, on the bright side, it's time for pie.

And, just when you think gardening can be reduced to a series of laws as well-defined as those for thermodynamics (looking at my lemongrass, the concept of entropy does spring to mind), the supernatural steps in. Your swiss chard resurrects (Christianity). And you smush a slug, creating something not unlike a John Carpenter movie (Satanism).

Straight White Girls Drinking Coffee #5: Marty Trail in Magnificent Marmots

2011-07-13T00:29:00.000-04:00

Yes, the place who scanned this cut off a few words. No, I can't bring it back. Why? Because I damaged the original. Just make up your own words, okay?

Anyway, if you don't know why Mark Trail is, now is the time to brush up on everyone's favourite smuggler-punching park ranger, and his hideously-skulled family. Check out the Comics Curmudgeon's archive here.

And find out more about the Vancouver Island Marmot here.

(Click to enlarge)

Please Check Out Criminal: The Last of the Innocent

2011-07-11T01:01:00.000-04:00

Those waiting for that gritty Archie reboot had two choices, up until this year. Either read so far into their Double Digests that even university professors would shake their heads, or try to track down a copy of Return to Riverdale, the live-action TV movie that featured a ten-years-older Archie, Betty and Veronica in dueling lingerie, and a sexy Big Ethel. Unfortunately, Return to Riverdale also showcased rapping single dad Jughead and his hellspawn*, so few ever chose the latter.

God, why?

However, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips heard their prayers, or at least read their fan fiction, and so the newest story arc of Criminal was born. Criminal: The Last of the Innocent has only released one issue so far, but I would recommend buying that first book and any others. Phillip's art transitions easily between his usual hard-boiled chiaroscuro and a more cartoonish, Dan DeCarlo-inspired look. Brubaker's writing, in contrast, keeps to a straight, bitter line. Richie Richards/Archie Andrew's youth is as full of sex and lies as his adulthood, even as the stakes have gotten higher, leading to the intriguing- if depressing- conclusion that the innocence of childhood is more a matter of perception than reality.

*I know this because I own Return to Riverdale on DVD. Thank you, Canadian Tire $2.99 movie bin.

Paying For It: The Hidden Costs of Chester Brown

2011-07-05T01:25:00.000-04:00

There's some R-rated content in this post. Please stop reading if you're underage, squeamish, or my Mom.

I bought Chester Brown's Paying for It when it came out a few months ago, read it in a night, felt dirty, showered, tried writing about it, showered again and then palmed it off a friend so he could read it as well.

So, I've had a pretty good excuse for not writing about it (no source text to refer back to), and it's not like I really need to anyway- reviews appeared everywhere, from the expected likes of The Comics Journal, to the more pedigreed pages of the New York Times Review of Books. Thirty years ago, the NYT would have never run a review of a graphic narrative, much less one about a john waxing autobiographical, and particularly not one that would move the reviewer to describe the author as looking like "a praying mantis with testicles." That reads like progress to me. Comics: Not just for kids! ... SERIOUSLY, the children will be traumatized.

Mostly, I found that the reviews spoke more to Paying for It's merits as a polemic, and any conclusions to the reviewer's own position on prostitution. Compare this negative review by Matt Seneca to the positive one in the Times, "But I would hope that righteous, human indignation at Brown's exploitation of a pre-existing problem will flare up and remain as long as it can..." versus "Mr. Brown’s illustrated memoir is exactly what it sounds like, a frank and guileless account of his predilection for paying women to have sex with him."

Likewise, my ambivalence about Paying for It could be a reflection of my own ambivalence about prostitution. As a good quasi-Third Waver, the kind who has picked up at least one copy of Bust, I know I'm supposed to be pro-sex work, but practically I remain suspicious of the actual power dynamics in many sex-for-cash transactions.

Sidenote: This is an ambiguity that was strengthened by my year spent toiling in one of the dustier reaches of the smut world. Not as a sex worker (or, as Brown so charmingly calls them, a whore), but as a porn reviewer. I would go from reading some porn star's bio, where she would claim how liberating her career was, to seeing videos of her getting brutally DPed. Now, those guys, like most male pornstars, would have been paid significantly less than our busty babe for that scene. But all that- the salaries, the personal manifestos, the hopes, the anti-itch creams, form a context that is likely uninteresting to the average viewer. Because, if you ponied up 40$ a month for a site called DoubleStuffedSluts.com (or whatever), you know what you want. And that's not a fully actualized woman- it's what's in the sitename.

Even if I could suppress my personal shudder factor though, I doubt I would like Paying for It any better. The 40$ cover price in effect buys you two books- the graphic memoir portion, and the hand-written essay on why prostitution should be decriminalized in the back, but neither justifies forty bones. Or even twenty.

Let's start with the Appendix. It's a frustrating read, showing that Brown has done his research, and documented it in full. However, that documentation is also a map of a certain kind of logical thinking, the kind that blazes a path straight through any uncomfortable conclusions to a self-serving destination. For example, Brown works through every experience he had with foreign-seeming prostitutes, just to see if he was somehow involved with trafficked women. And of course, he decides that he never was. The most irritating piece of evidence was that one of the brothels had an ugly prostitute, which in Brown's mind meant they were necessarily all voluntary employees, because why would sex traffickers pick up an uggo? That's not his exact wording- Brown often strikes a tone of stilted chivalry- but is his general point.

I would say it's perfectly likely that, while sex traffickers would prefer conventionally attractive women, they would still find a use for a "monster in a miniskirt." Some guys need a cheaper lady. Some genuinely like women who look like that (please see above for how I would know this.) Either way, they're going to be able to exploit someone. I have no evidence that was the case when Brown paid them a visit, but at least I will admit that I don't know, unlike Brown, who knows he is right all of the time, and would like you to know that too.

Few policies are wrong, or misguided in this appendix-they're all EVIL. It seems to be one of Brown's favourite words after "whore." And even when he's found some individual cases of evil outcomes- like the abuses in Nevada's system of legalized prostitution- he extrapolates from these incidents to write off more general ideas. Just because it's done one way in Nevada, does it follow it would have to be the same way in Ontario? Brown says yes- next point please.

Even if you skipped the last half of the book and focused on the part with pictures, Paying for It disappoints. In Louis Riel Chester Brown's simplified faces and frozen forms seemed epic, allowing the reader to impose and explore their own interpretations of the Métis hero in their blankness. Here, they just feel small and unfinished. The decision to obscure the prostitute's faces is more problematic, even if it is understandable. Few of the women could probably be found at this point to give their consent to be drawn, and it seems like those Brown actually asked, didn't. But it's hard not to see the parade of prostitutes as anything but tits and ass when that's all you see of them.

Oh, Chester Brown, I love The Playboy and Louis Riel so much, that maybe I'm seeing too many flaws with Paying for It in comparison. Or maybe I just resent making a contribution to the Chester Brown Gets Laid Fund. Either way, I'll be shelving this one in the back, covered by better books, but at least not by a brown paper bag.

Bill Simmons: In which B.S. is literal

2011-06-22T01:13:00.000-04:00

I liked Bill Simmons, but I shouldn't have. There were warning signs. The love for the forces of Evil embodied by all Boston sports teams. The quality he has, native to that same city, of sounding like he's SHOUTING even when he's not. What is it? An intonation? A cadence? Is every Bostonian dictating a telegram at all times? "YES. LARRY BIRD. THE. LEGEND." But, most telling of all, he was buddies with Adam Carolla, King of the Douchenozzles.

But I couldn't resist his eagerness, and so I would listen to his podcast regularly. Even when he was talking about some random point guard, or whatever, he made me care because he seemed to know every statistic, every play, from memory. He was an earnest beacon in the gloomy age of Deadspin. But then he started Grantland- a hot stew of 6 parts sports, 3 sports pop culture and 1 part Klosterman- and my love died.

I called the time of death at 9:13pm last night, after finishing "Hackery in the First Degree," Simmons's rant about The Killing's season finale. I'll admit that I haven't seen a minute of any of the Killing's first season, much less the finale, so I won't speak to his issues with the show. But I will talk about his issues with women. Or, more pointedly, his apparent belief that there is an implicit, but binding, contract that requires all female leads on TV to reach basic standards of hot-itude. "Our heroine" he writes "was a redheaded detective named Sarah Linden, a poorly written character who didn't wear makeup, kept her hair in a sexless ponytail, and wore the heaviest sweaters anyone has ever worn on television."

You could, at least, blame CSI for that statement, since that show and its many clones demonstrate- nightly- that a woman's greatest investigative strategy is to bend over and thrust her cleavage in the general direction of a cadaver. Also, that foot chases are best conducted in stiletto heels, whether they're over New York City pavement or Florida swamp. But CSI can't be blamed for this:

I think they were trying to humanize Linden, which was obviously hard because you can't humanize a "strong" female character when she's dressing like a lumberjack.

I'm still trying to parse that statement. Maybe Bill Simmons meant to say that The Killing did such a poor job of characterizing Sarah Linden that her wardrobe had to do all the work. And he just worded it so that what it sounds like he's saying is "Practically-dressed women can't be compelling characters." Or maybe that is what he meant to say, and Carolla's rampant asshattery is contagious. I would love to think the former. Come on, Simmons was there for the '90s, so he's seen Fargo, and there's no way Marge Gunderson in her sensible parka is anything but human and wonderful. But I can't. He just seems so aggrieved in the rest of the article, entitled to a resolution in the first season, or at least a spoiler when that didn't happen, that I feel he sees himself entitled to a hot actress too. Even if it defies all sense of reality to have a busy homicide detective put on a full face before going out. All The Killing owed him was a well-written season, something it evidently failed to do, but it never really needed to succeed at finding Bill Simmons a sexy actress.

R2D2 Hat

2011-06-21T01:32:00.000-04:00

P, a Preferred Coworker, had a birthday a few weeks ago. Since he solves all InDesign problems (they are legion) and washes orphaned dishes (they are many) I knit him a hat.

But not just any hat.

An R2D2 hat!

Ta da! Pattern comes from Carissa Knits, yarn is SandnesGarn Smart Superwash. I wasn't crazy about all the duplicate stitching, but I can't think of a better alternative, considering my aversion to intarsia and seaming hats. Crochet, maybe?

A Mason Bee Box

2011-06-20T01:30:00.000-04:00

The beginning of June was kind of wacky, and busy, and felt not unlike May. Which, incidentally, happens to be the last month I've posted in. I know where the blame lies though. With my calendar, which I have left on May up until today. Subliminally, I must have THOUGHT it was still May, and thus had no inclination to do any of the things I was supposed to do for June.

Sounds like science to me.

Anyway, one other thing that was accomplished today: I made a bunch of these mason bee boxes. Yes, I am finally a bee slumlord. The screens on these babies are never going to be fixed, I tell you what. Nor will the pipes ever be replaced.

They're super easy to make, especially if you have some spare 4x4 lying around. Then you just angle one end, drill a bunch of deep holes, add some overhang and hang it up near some flowers. If, like me, you do NOT have some spare 4x4 lying around, then you will have to buy a standard 8 foot piece at the lumber store, get it cut into two more manageable pieces, and then endure the clerk's snarky remarks (Eg "Oh, the bus driver is going to LOVE you. Good luck with that.") You will then leave half of it on home and carry the rest to the nearest public transit, where the bus driver will INDEED love you as you ferry it aboard and all the way to Saanich.

After that, you can repeat the previous steps, starting with the sawing.

In Which I Face My Two-Wheeled Phobia

2011-05-29T23:43:00.000-04:00

Only one thing scares me more than zombies.

Bicycles.

At least zombies can be killed with a shot to the head. Bikes can keep going forever, mocking you and your lack of balance. Well, if you're me. If you're a normal person, you're probably already cycling around town, accordion music playing in the background, a baguette and carrots with leafy tops in your basket, free as a bird and not in imminent danger of death by truck.

Those issues are why last Saturday marked the first time in about ten years I touched a bicycle. But I didn't just touch a bicycle. I paid for the bicycle, got on the bicycle, and then rode it to a scrapped knee in downtown Victoria.

My chariot came from Recyclistas, one of those places that sells old bikes, builds bikes from spare parts, rents out tools and smells suspiciously... earthy. The journey there was just as exciting as a store. It involved a stranger's bodily fluids, a missed bus, a broken computer and a detour along a sidewalk-free expanse of highway. Oh, and I spotted of a pair of California Quails. Tragically though, I had left my rifle at home, so I couldn't bag some trophies.

To be difficult, I didn't pick a cute European road bike or cruiser. Instead, I came home with some hideous Korean mountain-bike knock off, with with a horn that sounds like a clown's nose and a bunch of holographic stickers. The nice Recyclista man was briefly impressed that the person who could barely ride a bike could tell that it was Korean. Then I pointed out the three South Korean flags on the frame.

In honour of its proud nationality, I have named it Bikegolgi. I have now ridden Bikegolgi three times, and I'm still alive, but barely. Seriously, why don't seemingly normal people, including the entire population of Amsterdam, find the bicycle completely terrifying? It's your fleshy, squishy self on two paper clips and a set of wheels! It's wrong! WRONG!

But I will do it again tomorrow.

Book Covers I Have Loved: Cheers! by Nicholas Pashley

2011-05-24T23:25:00.000-04:00

Don't worry. Unless you're seeing four noble Mounties (those proud inheritors of tradition/purveyors of police brutality) on your monitor, you're still sober.

This cover is cheeky and perfect for a book on Canadian beer history, although perhaps a little expected. Still, considering that it avoids the maple leaf/hockey skate/beer bottle troika of clichés, I believe it deserves our appreciation. And maybe a round of drinks.

Cheers! A History of Beer in Canada, by Nicholas Pashley

Straight White Girls Drinking Coffee #4

2011-05-20T02:46:00.000-04:00

Click to make readable.

This one is dedicated, with love, to my brother and his girlfriend.
But seriously, you know your relationship is in trouble if you're thinking of watching Arli$$. Shudder.

Return of the Knit-i

2011-05-16T00:43:00.000-04:00

Although I haven't featured any photos of my knitting on this blog for months- months- I assure you that I am still knitting.

Just slowly.

Very slowly.

How slowly? Well, what you will see below is a scarf being blocked, out of yarn purchased in December of 2010. I cast on in January, and so it was taken me about five to six months to complete a fairly simple scarf with a four row pattern repeat. Not quite as long as it takes to make a human baby, but more than four times as long as it takes to make a litter of baby squirrels, and squirrels are idiots, so yes. I am officially slower than fuzzy rodents.

Unorthodox blocking items: chess board, book, external hard drive, CD case. Sigh. I need to get some pins out here. Glamour shots of the scarf coming some time in the next week.

Pattern: Pavement, by Jared Flood
Yarn: Berroco Ultra Alpaca #6281
Needles: 4mm straights
Notes: No matter how squishy the yarn, cables get really tedious after a few weeks. I would love to keep this scarf, but it's being sent away as a surprise gift for a friend. Unless I buy a scarf, cut off the labels and send that instead. Now there's a plan.

The Book Pile for May 11. 2011

2011-05-12T02:28:00.000-04:00

A lot of these have become stalled reads in the past month or so. I'm hoping that publicly displaying my shame will inspire me to get my ass in gear. Or at least inspire me enough to pretend that I've finished reading Moby-Dick.

1. The "Canadian History 101" Read: Northern Armageddon, D. Peter Macleod

2. The "Classic" Read: Moby Dick, Herman Melville

3. The "I suppose getting into SF late is better than never" Read: Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card

4. The "I Miss Required Reading Lists" Read: The American Political Tradition, Richard Hofstadter

Orcas! Orcas, Ahoy!

2011-05-09T23:56:00.000-04:00

With May comes many things: flowers, my tax rebate, moving, and the realization that I better step things up if I want to have my BC Bingo card completed on time.

What, you didn't know about BC Bingo? Actually, that's perfectly understandable, because I just made it up. The centre square is "Free," like all bingo cards, but the other squares include "Make Breakfast Quinoa" and "Complain about Albertans." And another square: "See orcas off the side of the ferry." Fortunately, I can dab that one off with the ole Bingo Bright, because this past Sunday a pod of orcas was spotted off the Spirit of British Columbia, the vessel that was transporting my slightly dopey self back to Victoria.

The Captain came over the P.A- we would be passing a pod of orcas off the starboard side soon. Hearing, perhaps, the lack of shuffling, he helpfully clarified, "the right-hand side of the boat." We landlubbers dutifully made our way to the right-board side.

Part of me felt foolish for going. I felt like a tourist. Not the savvy Victorian I was, a Victorian who has seen both Free Willy AND Free Willy 2, and is thus well-versed in the biology, symbology and mythology of orcas. But then I saw them ducking underneath the water, jumping up, and looking black, white and beautiful. They moved on, we moved on, and suddenly I had a new sympathy for the sea parks I had just read about in "The Killer in the Pool." I still think keeping killer whales in captivity is wrong, that it insults their intelligence and our humanity to do so. But I understand why the sea park owners do it, and why so many of us go to see them. Wanting to keep an animal that beautiful is no weak thing, even if that desire translates, on a practical level, into making them smile as grubby children pet their tongues.

Straight White Girls Drinking Coffee #3: I Was Almost a CBC Star!

2011-04-28T23:49:00.000-04:00

Ah, finally. The comic strip I promised two weeks ago. I know it's a little wordy, but there was a lot of exposition to get out in this strip. If you're not Canadian, or neglect to tune your radio to CBC, you might be confused. Here are some references, should you require them:

The Next Chapter, with Shelagh Rogers (book show)
Q, with Jian Ghomeshi (Canadian arts magazine show)
Peter Mansbridge (The Voice, The Pate, The Man)
On the Island (Vancouver Island morning show)

Click to make readable.

The stuff about Ghomeshi and I reproducing is (mostly) a joke. Please no restraining orders. And congrats to Lindsay Cochrane of Toronto, who'll be talking about Guy Delisle's Pyongyang on The Next Chapter. Kick ass and get the good word about graphic novels out there!

Meet Craigslist, The New Hemingway

2011-04-24T13:02:00.000-04:00

Hemingway famously wrote a six word story: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." And Craigslist has provided a current version. It's a bit wordier (and comes with photos!), but I feel it contains the same sense of tragedy.

Text: "This album has a lovely detailed plush heart on the front. I was going to use it for wedding scrapbookking[sic] but never did."

Or... maybe this woman had five other wedding scrapbooks she filled instead. We will never know!

Feminine Hygiene: Anna Faris, A New Yorker Article, and Some Feminist Ire

2011-04-23T15:53:00.000-04:00

This photo of Anna Faris is either from one of the Scary Movies or a romantic comedy, but the scariest thing is that it works equally well for both.

I like Anna Faris-somehow I survived an entire Scary Movie and concluded that she was the best part of it -but her recent New Yorker profile ("Funny Like a Guy: Anna Faris and Hollywood's Image Problem") has me confused about whether I want her to succeed or not. Sisterhood is powerful, but bitterness lasts forever. Especially the bitterness of wishing, for once, that having "guys want to nail her" would not matter if a woman wants to do comedy.

A "leading agent" tells that to the writer on page 54, and the entire article is full of sad, sad quotes like that one. It should be news to none of you that women- even attractive, white, straight, thin blonde women with breast implants like Faris- do not rule Hollywood. But in this article, that situation is presented so starkly that it left me wanting a drink, matches for my DVD collection, and a good book to read before the cops came to arrest me for arson.

Also notable: Keenan Ivory Wayans's belief that what holds women back from being funny is their innate vanity, because "If Will Ferrell is a girl, and she's got a belly and a hairy back, she's not running down the street naked." Actually, Keenan, if I may pipe up... I'm no Hollywood insider, but I don't think that's what's stopping hairy, fat women from running down the street to the box office bank. Rather it's the legion of American assholes who would surely rise uponce she did, to complain about how she had the audacity to kill their boners.

Which brings me to my least-favourite part of the article, a part I have termed "The Magical Slut Number." For most of the profile, Faris is shown wrapping up What's Your Number?, a romantic comedy and (the article hints) hopefully her big, international break-out role. In the film, a woman reads an article in Marie Claire that says anyone who's slept with more than some arbitrary number of guys will never get married. Unfortunately, she's at that limit. Thus, the plot: tracking down randoms in order to find Mr. Right, ignoring that he's actually right down the hall. God knows, like all women, I conduct every facet of my life in accordance with a magazine with lower circulation than Cosmo.

But what would that arbitrary number be? According to New Regency's Hutch Parker "We thought, would twenty guys be too many for the audience to relate to her?... But if you take that number down- and we though about fifteen, or even twelve- it makes the film less bold." The Magic Slut Number! Too low, and you're not wild enough! Too high, and you scare people. Now, some might say that 20 is not that high of a number for a woman in her thirties. After all, femininity embraced Sex and the City, where even uptight Charlotte probably got her ticket punched more than 20 times in five seasons, much less one lifetime. And New Regency would probably say back to you that you're the kind of dirty whore they don't want in the movie theatre anyway.

At least there was one benefit to reading this article. If some guy ever says to me that the whole "Stud/Slut" double standard does not exist, and is only something angry women bring up while drunk at parties (as I do believe Chuck Klosterman stated, in some form, in Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs), I have ammunition. "Twenty," I will yell, "TWENTY." And then I will mutely point to Anna Faris's face on a bus stop poster.

Summer Resolutions

2011-04-22T15:25:00.000-04:00

So, with the completion of my birdhouse a while ago, I am officially 25% finished my resolutions for the year. Already better than last year! This fact has given me a completely unearned sense of confidence, and so I am adding in Summer Resolutions. I'm typing this in a café on an absolutely gorgeous Spring day and so my thoughts have turned to summer. (Sidenote: this day also happens to be Good Friday. If I was more religious, I would approach it with the due solemnity, but as it is, I'm planning on seeing a minor league hockey game, c'est la vie d'athée.) And I have made Plans. Here they be:

Summer Resolutions, 2011

See an octopus underwater
Can some fruits and/or veggies (applesauce!)
Get over my deep, abiding phobia of bicycles
Read Moby-Dick
Take up my poor, abandoned clarinet again.

Hopefully, soon, the smells of cooking applesauce and the squawk of my clarinet will fill the air of my apartment.

Three Paragraph Movie Review: Jane Eyre

2011-04-19T23:46:00.000-04:00

As the bearer of a B.A. in English, I am contractually obligated to see any and all film adaptations of Great Works of Literature. If Dover ever made a thrift edition from it, and that edition was then palmed off on a desperate screenwriter to adapt, my ass is in a theatre seat. And so, seeing Jane Eyre was a given. But was it any good? Generally yes, although I'm not sure if that's my critical faculties speaking, or my intense appreciation for Michael Fassbender's body... of work.

He's Mr. Rochester, who employs Jane Eyre (Mia Wasikowska) as governess to his French ward. As so rarely happens in real life, but is so delightful in fiction, Jane's fine intelligence and noble resolve win Rochester's heart. But there's a secret prowling around in the attic that threatens the wedding. And it's not the kind of issue all those wedding shows on TLC would lead you to expect.

Sure, both Jane and Rochester should be homelier, but every lit student has given up on that kind of accuracy. And it's not the main problem with the film. It falls down on the pacing, spending too much time dwelling on the horror of Jane's childhood, so that by the time her romance with Rochester comes around, it feels rushed. I might consent to marrying Fassbender's Rochester within months (it feels like minutes on screen) of meeting him, but my brow is not as steely as Jane's. At least every scene is beautifully shot, so if Michael Fassbender doesn't appeal, the light-enfused landscapes surely will.

THIS IS NOT A LIFESTYLE BLOG

2011-04-17T14:59:00.000-04:00

Do you see that picture? Doesn't it look perfect? Apple ginger compote, complete with vanilla ice cream. Local vanilla ice cream. You can see pieces of bean in the ice cream, so you know it means business. Basically, I've shot the compote as if I was the camera man for All My Children and I was filming Susan Lucci. Can't you taste the wholesomeness?

Well, this photo is a LIE. I am no lifestyle blogger. And that compote is basically inedible.

As much as I would like to blame the eerily perfect Swedes at Green Kitchen Stories for my failure- the place from which I grabbed the recipe, with its oh-so-Scandinavian whole cardamom seeds- the fault lies not with them. Actually, no fault ever lies with them. I secretly suspect they were cyborgs manufactured by Ikea, so I would feel bad about my imperfect life and try to fill the emptiness with Bjørnsklärn candle holders.

In any case, my problems began when I couldn't find lemon balm leaves at the grocery store, and figured lemongrass would make an able and unique substitute. East Meets West! Perhaps I could blog about this recipe too! And an attractive blond named Sven would love me for it! I had never cooked with lemongrass before though, and didn't realize it was one of those cook with and then remove seasonings, like bay leaves. I chopped it up into a million little pieces, and now a bitter, woody surprise awaits anyone who bites into the compote.

It's only edible if I drown it in ice cream. I have two jars of that stuff -that's a lot of ice cream. Still, even in death we are in life, and even in cooking failure I look towards potential success. Cardamom and ginger-flavoured applesauce is such a good idea, that it has to work somehow. Just with no lemongrass, and ground cardamom instead of crunchy, soapy whole seeds, and an attractive Scandinavian family unit I am importing just for the occasion.

William and Kate and Me

2011-04-14T21:26:00.000-04:00

Are YOU watching the royal wedding? Victoria is! The following nuptial-spotting opportunities are on offer in my fair city:

I could "Rise and Shine" with the Royals at the Fairmount Empress, watching the wedding ceremony at 3AM in pyjamas and robes
I could Tea and Toast the royal couple at Point Ellice House, "Western Canada’s finest collection of Victoriana in its original setting", where wedding attire is encouraged but hardly required
Or, I could forget about the wedding until hours after it's past, when someone snarks on a particularly ridiculous hat.

Clearly, the third option is the only one with any likelihood of happening. As much as I enjoy the Royals- and I have looked trough entire issues of Royalty Magazine at my Mom's hairdressers, so I must- I also feel like they are not to be encouraged. Especially when the UK is dropping lord knows how many pounds on a Royal love-in while raising tuition.

But maybe my latent lefty learnings will be smothered in a shower of pomp, circumstance and commemorative plates! If that happens, you can probably find me at Point Ellice House (I'm not posh enough for the Fairmount,) spiking my tea and drunkenly slurring that "Wills was mine, DAMN IT, until that slut Middleton stole him!"

And I'll do it all in gloves.

Straight White Girls Drinking Coffee #2

2011-04-13T21:26:00.000-04:00

Errr, evidently I didn't erase my pencil marks completely before getting this scanned. And I'm not at work, so I can't borrow their Photoshop for the duration of my break for a quick fix. Just ignore the ghostly pencil marks, then. It's meta-commentary. About the physicality of the strip.

Next week: True Confession: I Was (Almost) A CBC Star!

Current Book Pile

2011-04-12T21:40:00.000-04:00

Whoah, I did NOT mean to leave that Charlie Sheen post up as long as I did. Oh well. This mont's book pile, for your consideration. It's a little out of date, but really, all I've added since then is Moby Dick. Just imagine some added heft to the pile.

From Top to Bottom:

Future Reading: The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen

RIP Elizabeth Taylor Reading: The Driver's Seat, Muriel Spark (she starred in the film adaptation)

Just Finished Reading: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

Just Finished Non-Fiction Reading: Gretzky's Tears, Stephen Brunt (mentally subtitled: "Stop it with all the padding, Brunt)

Current Graphic Novel: Shenzhen, Guy Delisle

An Open Letter to North America Regarding The Charlie Sheen Situation

2011-04-03T14:44:00.000-04:00

Dear North America,

I'll begin this letter by sharing a personal anecdote. When Charlie Sheen exploded/imploded into media consciousness a few weeks back, my reaction was as follows: hearty chuckle, followed by an "Oh, that Charlie Sheen, he's so wacky", followed by "Actually, no, he has a history of spousal abuse, some serious issues, and is also responsible for the well-being of several children, a task he's clearly ill-prepared for. This isn't wacky. This is fucking SAD."

Evidently, this was not the reaction shared by many of you. You followed him on Twitter, you made his quotes into catchphrases, and you probably continued to watch re-runs of Two And A Half Men, although maybe it was 7pm on a Tuesday, you were tired, and the remote had fallen behind the couch, so I suppose it's justifiable. But mostly, when he took his meltdown on tour, you bought tickets.

And, the result was not good. Sheen was booed during his first show, with most of the audience fleeing and many of them demanding refunds. Let's look at a few quotes from this Associated Press article about Sheen's debacle in Detroit. "'It's kind of like a NASCAR race. You're just tuning in because you're just waiting for the accident to happen,' said Prentice, 37." "Adam Hawke said he bought a ticket for the same reason. 'He might be doing something really crazy,' said Hawke, 47, who works in the construction business and lives in Michigan. 'He's a wreck. That's half the draw.'"

To which I say: NO REFUNDS FOR ANY OF YOU. If you wanted a wreck, an accident, there it is. Sheen didn't let you down, he delivered exactly what you loved weeks ago, except this time there was no protective screen. His physical presence made you confront his humanity- and you realized that what's funny on YouTube isn't necessarily so funny when it's being yelled at you in a bus stop or on stage.

And since you so badly want to see a human being flame out, I'm glad that pleasure has a high price tag: at least $45 dollars, plus two hours in a room with a bitter man in a bowling shirt.

Cordially yours,
Portagitron.

One Paragraph Movie Review: Hobo With a Shotgun

2011-04-02T17:02:00.000-04:00

You don't have to be a twelve year-old boy high on Mountain Dew and Hot Rods to like Hobo With a Shotgun, but it's a good place to start. You could also be a twelve-year-old boy in a twenty-three year old woman's body. That worked for me, and it could work for you too. It's a fine export from Nova Scotia, a province finally delivering something besides (shudder) Celtic revival music, and features a Hobo With a Shotgun, his sidekick the Hooker with a Heart of Gold (and Even Better Rack) and a bunch of evil dudes. Supporting credit must also go out to as much red paint/blood as Canadian Tire was probably stocking on film day. Rutger Hauer is the titular hobo, who goes head-to-head with the megalomaniacal Drake and his goony sons in order to clean up Hope City. Naturally, Hope City is less hopeful and more like a Canadian version of RoboCop's Detroit; slightly cleaner and housing George Stroumboulopoulos. But it's Strombo's cameo, as well as those by other Canadian celebrities, that are the only awkward notes in 90 minutes of good, nasty, Troma-inspired fun.

Introducing Cascadia: The Best Place That Doesn't Exist (Yet)

2011-03-29T22:50:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the total drought of posting- it can be blamed on a combination of things, from Marmotinis (like a regular Martini, but more endangered and expensive, and found only in the Bengal Lounge of the Empress Hotel, aka The One Place Where the Sun Has Never Set On The British Empire) to woodworking to house sitting.

But mostly, I blame Seattle. After nine months of being apart from my beloved ex-roommate Ivy McDougalhopper, we finally made plans to be in the same city. She lives in Minnesota, I live in BC, and so we ended up meeting, if not quite in the middle, then at least on her side of the border.

Seattle, of course, was lovely. Any city that offers honey-lavender and balsamic-strawberry ice cream (at Molly Moon's, in Capitol Hill) must be amazing. But it also felt strangely familiar. There were people in GoreTex, bicyclists, rainy weather, piers, fairly liberal politics... OH MY GOD, I had actually taken the wrong seaplane and ended up back in VANCOUVER.

Oh wait, no, the money is still uniformly and confusingly green. So many one dollar bills! I can't count them all! I must still be in Seattle. But it did feel a fair bit like BC. Then my coworker explained my confusion by introducing me to the fake country of Cascadia.

The Douglas Fir Flag, emblem of Cascadia. Likely to be pine-scented as well.

Cascadia is the union of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia into an independent nation. One assumes its main exports would be lumber, agricultural products, and flannel-wearing men. And, for a fake country, it has an awful lot of real support. It's shown up in a bunch of Sci-Fi books, but more endearingly the Cascadia Cup is contested between the city's respective soccer teams (the Whitecaps, Sounders and Timbers) and three breweries put the flag on their product.

Between the soccer and the local brew, it's clearly a movement with a particular audience. I imagine the ideal Cascadian citizen being Grant Lawrence, the scruffy Cowichan sweater fan and CBC broadcaster. His favourite beer is already Phillips Blue Buck, which comes emblazoned with the Doug flag, and I'm sure Cascadian Public Radio would find a place in its heart for this man.

And I'm just in love with this idea too. From now on, I'm a dual Canadian/Cascadian citizen. Rule, Cascadia! Cascadia, rule the coast!

Comic Strips!

2011-03-21T20:44:00.000-04:00

A few months ago on this blog, I was complaining about "Straight White Guys Buying Milk" comics, my term for indie comics that revolve around the purchasing habits and general sadness of some scruffy, beleaguered cartoonist. Then I made up a joke script, which I finally got around to illustrating in my own awkward drawing style (I call it: Canadian Primitive. Canada Council Grant, please!)

But then I started to wonder- I am white, straight-ish, and the occasional purchaser of beverages. Just because I am a girl, would that make my navel-gazing comic strips any more insightful? So, I drew one (of a true story that happened to me just a few weeks ago) to find out. And the answer? No. Which should be a surprise to no one, although I certainly put more effort into drawing it.

You can judge for yourself which side of the indie comics coin is the best, below. Click on the strips to make them bigger. Then, vote in the poll to the right. I'll only cry a little bit if you choose A.

Book Covers I Have Loved: Sleepless by Jo Anne Metsch

2011-03-20T19:06:00.000-04:00

This cover might not be particularly powerful on its own, but consider the fact that it's a mystery. Then consider what that fact would shelve it next to: a whole lot of dark, busy covers. You know, blood splatters, shattered fonts and "The Next Steig Larsson" taglines. I know when I saw this on a table of mysteries in a bookstore, bright, crisp and very white, I wanted to read it- even if I could barely make out the title.

The copyright page says the book designer is Jo Anne Metsch, so I'll assume she was responsible for the cover as well.

Sticking to Paper and Ink

2011-03-13T20:45:00.000-04:00

The results of the poll I ran a few weeks ago were definite- the majority of my readers have Print 4 Life tattooed over their hearts. And, I would assume, inked in that curlicue script so beloved of hip hop artists everywhere.

I'll be skipping the tattoo, but I agree with my friends. There will be no ereader for me in the near future. First of all, there's the matter of cost. I just can't justify spending over $100 on a piece of equipment when I'm still paying off student loans, trying to keep my credit card bill reasonable, and tipping a firm 20% on all my drinks.

But it's more than just finances. Since I polled my readers, I have poked at a Kobo while avoiding overeager Chapters employees, and tooled around on somebody's Kindle 2. And I've realized that one thing really bothers me. Most ereaders are about the size of a trade paperback, but the screen is only a part of that. The Kindle 2 felt particularly miserly, maybe equalling half of an average printed page. I can only imagine Kindle users with poor eyesight getting carpal tunnel syndrome of the thumb working their way through Freedom. Just. 6,000. More. Clicks. Of the Next Page. Button.

It's completely irrational, but I'm so used to the average presentation of a page that only seeing half that would feel as if I was getting half of the information. Clearly, there are many people out there who don't share my issues- Kindle downloads outsell paperbacks on Amazon.

And, should anyone find it in their hearts and wallets to gift me an iPad, I'm sure I would change my mind as well. They would have to pry that bit of shininess out of my cramped, desperately tapping, hands.

In No Particular Order, a Few Things I Miss About Quebec

2011-03-08T22:39:00.000-05:00

I think I've almost acclimatized myself to British Columbia. But in spite of its good halibut and suspiciously fresh air, I do find myself missing Montreal every now and then. And some of the things I miss about that fair city aren't the usual suspects either (poutine.)

-Really stupid "controversies" over language. Does that disco movie, Funkytown, have too much English in it? Surely, somebody thinks so and will write a column about it.

-Lebanese places that stay open late so you can shovel garlic sauce into your gullet while drunk.

-Francophone men, the kind of guys you strongly suspect have more scarf than personality, but you don't mind because they really know how to drape that scarf.

-The days when the brewery near my house would make the whole air smell sweet, probably because they were brewing some kind of Honey Brown Ale.

-A metro system

-Meu Meu, the ice cream place with hibiscus, honey, salted chocolate flavours and more

-Monastiraki, and Billy, the delightful man who runs it.

-The cheap pitchers at Verres Stérilisés

-The sense of unearned victory you feel when you speak French to someone and- glory be- they reply in French!

-Simons, the store where you can lust after some 1,000$ designer skirt, and then actually purchase the 19$ store brand knockoff they're also carrying downstairs.

-Ms. C and Mr. Will, two wonderful friends

-The murals in the train station

That's all I can think of, for now. I would try and come up with a list for Guelph, but fear it would be a rather short one.

Book Covers I Have Loved: The Information, Cover by Peter Mendelsund

2011-03-05T22:35:00.000-05:00

I thought this cover was a little dull at first. White space, serif type and two columns? Lucky they didn't put three on there, that would have really angered up the blood. But I kept on returning to this, even though it was on a shelf with more superficially interesting covers. And that's when its cleverness started to grow on me. Although the title, the author and one of his other credits are highlighted in red, the subtitle is not. The only thing that makes the words "A History, A Theory, A Flood" stand out is their singularity, so my brain was scanning and sorting information, even before I could start reading a book about the same.

Correction of the Correction: I thought I found the credit for the designer on the author's blog, then I thought I hadn't, but now it seems like it really is Peter Mendelsund's work. Oh God, the information!! It's too much for me!

Mystery Train: A Paragraph Review

2011-03-01T21:51:00.000-05:00

You should watch Mystery Train if you like the music of Elvis Presley. You should watch Mystery Train if you prefer the music of Carl Perkins. And you should watch Mystery Train if you know anything about Stax Records. In short, you should probably just watch Mystery Train. It's a Jim Jarmusch movie, with the expected interweaving stories and elliptical conversations. What makes it awesome though is the chemistry between Cinqué Lee (yep- Spike's brother) and, of all people, Screaming Jay Hawkins. Lee is the bellhop and Hawkins the desk clerk in a rundown Memphis motel, and it's hard to describe how amazing they are without repeating their scenes verbatim. But they're not nearly as amusing if you can't also hear Hawkins rumbling, Voice of God tones, so let's just say that they create the funniest scene involving a Japanese plum since The Simpsons. And if you're a right-thinking person, that's all you need to know about the validity of this film.

It's Election Time: Picking Graphic Novels for Canada Reads

2011-02-26T20:32:00.000-05:00

"If we pick the wrong book, and they read it, they don't like it, they will never read again."

-Georges Laraque on Canada Reads

In the National Post article I posted yesterday, editor Mark Medly asks an interesting question of the comic book cognescenti: “Can you think of another comic or graphic novel that might have been better received by the Canada Reads panelists?” All three conclude that it was the type of book, and not the title- and that any graphic novel would have had a steep climb winning the affection of Debbie Travis.

I say Cooke, Heer and Butcher are giving up too easily. They need to learn from the way Americans do politics: with dedication and a firm belief in magical thinking. I'll leave the attack ads down South, but will adopt the American way of bloviating about "electability." For the uninitiated, that means focusing not on the inherent qualities of a candidate, but whether they're a candidate the public will vote for.

Now, I can't poll the judges of Canada Reads, but I have gleaned the lists of past nominees and winners and listened to a couple of this year's debates. I even thought about reading a few of the past winners, but when I saw Rockbound (2005 winner) described as "The Classic Novel of Nova Scotia's South Shore", I figured I would rather light my hair on fire. I also followed the format of Canada Reads and picked five candidates: quasi-Canadian Joe Matt's Spent, Chester Brown's Louis Riel, Jillian and Mariko Tamaki's Skim, Seth's Clyde Fans and Julie Doucet's My New York Diary.

Joe Matt- Spent:
Ah, the first sacrifice. While picking books for Canada Reads, I have to keep in mind that these must be books my Mom (a CR devotee) would read, and my Mom does not want to read about masturbation. Joe Matt wallows in his sex life and porn habit. And while it would be a treat to see some Canadian icon (or, at the very least, CBC host) talk about these issues, it will never happen. Furthermore, Joe Matt was only an illegal Canadian.

Jillian and Mariko Tamaki-Skim:

I rather like Skim, and think it did a great job of making the teenaged protagonist sound wry and intelligent instead of precious. But it wouldn't win Canada Reads. For a start, it's too short- and as Cooke pointed out, Canada Reads panelists love getting reading value, which I think they calculate by dividing the number of words by the book's trade paperback price. And I think the judges would also ghettoize it as a Young Adult book. What's the difference between YA and "real lit" books that happen to have a young protagonist? They're YA if the protagonist interacts mostly with people their own age, and "real lit" if they only observe adults.

Julie Doucet- My New York Diary
The Canada Reads folks love books with a strong sense of place. It needs to telegraph that it's a Montreal book, or a salty Maritime tale, or set in a Mennonite farming community in Ontario, to make the cut. And Doucet's book is definitely strong on place- too bad it's an American place. Sure, there are parts in a very recognizable Montreal, but Canada Reads is a little xenophobic. Doucet would get a few points for being French-Canadian, but she briefly defected to our Great Southern Enemy, and is thus dead to the jury. Also, her drawings might make some of the judges feel icky.

Seth-Clyde Fans
If Clyde Fans was a novel, it would probably win. Small-town Ontario, vintage setting, depression seeping from the pages like sebum from pores? That's CBC gold, baby! And Seth already has mad CanCon cred with all those Vinyl Café covers. However, Clyde Fans doesn't offer enough on top of its manifest sadness to overcome its graphic novel status- and Book 2 still needs to be collected.

Chester Brown- Louis Riel

One thing that struck me while listening to the Canada Reads debates is how seriously the judges take their mission (see above quote.) In the first debate of this year's competition, they worry endlessly over whether this or that book is essential. "Essential," I gather from the judges, doesn't have to do with the prose style, but whether the books deal with Important Issues that are Key to Canada's Past, Present, Future or (ideally) D. All Of The Above. And so, The Birth House can be used to comment on modern technology, per Debbie Travis, and The Best-Laid Plans will rescue us from political stagnation, per That CNN Guy.

Well, Louis Riel is a book full of Important Issues. There's the Important Issue of the Métis, the Important Issue of Riel's fraught place in Canadian history, the Important Issue of the fine line that divides madness from inspiration. Also, it's definitely a Manitoba book, and it's fairly hefty for a graphic novel. Length and a sense of place? That feels good in your hands while you're catching up on The Current on CBC. So, if you want a graphic novel with electability, vote for Louis Riel in '12.

Rumble Between the Panels: Canada Reads and Essex County

2011-02-25T21:43:00.000-05:00

If you're Canadian and care about comic books, you might have heard: A graphic novel was one of the Canada Reads nominees this year, then was knocked off by the panel on the very first day. And although Essex County still won the People's Choice award, the way the book was treated on air has caused some consternation among comic books fans.

Then again, if there is one group of people known to consternate to the extreme, it's comic book nerds. A certain amount of distemper is to be expected. What is fascinating, though, is how mainstream the debate has come. In a panel printed in the (shudder) National Post, writer Darwyn Cooke gets testy when describing this year's judges:

"There was a British interior designer, an ex-pat CNN talking head, a Native Canadian fifth billed sitcom star, a pop singer/songwriter and so on*. It seems obvious the CBC was more interested in making the group seem like whatever Canadians call a hip celebrity jury than recruiting relevant or critical thinkers."

Cooke and the other panelists (store manager Christopher Butcher and journalist/critic Jeet Heer) shouldn't rend their garments just yet, though. Getting to read this kind of comic book talk in a national newspaper shows that graphic novels are, at least fitfully, seen as something more than raw material for Hollywood blockbusters.

Perhaps denying Essex County the big award is better for graphic novels than slapping that 'winner' sticker on the cover. A win can be seen as an anomaly, barely mentioned and forgotten after a year. Cooke mentions in passing that Fun Home was Time's Book of the Year in 2006, but I doubt that many Time subscribers have picked up a graphic novel since then. By inciting a debate that's picked up by popular media, Canada Reads might have just proven, in spite of itself, that graphic novels are as interesting and valuable as their prose-only relatives.

Tomorrow: I pick up on a Jeet Heer comment from that same article to discuss the "electability" of various other Canadian graphic novels. For the rest of tonight: I go to a concert.

*As my co-worker rightly noted, Cooke left out "energy drink-shilling, Haitian-Canadian hockey pugilist and Green Party member." Or maybe Cooke realized that George Laraque's credentials made him seem kind of righteous.