In Defence of the Pet Shop Boys

It has recently come to my attention that some people are not as respectful of The Pet Shop Boy as they ought to be.



To which I say: SHAME. I love the boys for two reasons. The first is that the only friendly employee at the Montreal VIA station once sang part of "Opportunities" to me, completely poker-faced, as various and generally irate people milled about.



The second is that they're a legitimately good act. Don't be fooled by the high production values and superficial lyrics. The Pet Shop Boys know they're singing to the dark, empty - but most of all lonely - heart of the city.

The Plastic and the Glory of Seth

Seth is an interesting case. Sometimes I feel like I love his book covers more so than his actual books. His art is so pristine, so gracefully curvaceous, that I sometimes want to crumple it up, just so it can be a little bit messier and a lot more real.

Take, for example, this Dorothy Parker cover for Penguin. It's the perfect match, really. Surface sophistication with a bitter little centre (did Seth make her a little bit drunk? I think so.) Like all good covers, it economically sums up both the content of a book and the worldview of its author.

Now, compare with Wimbledon Green. Wimbledown is a beautifully-designed book in all ways. The foil on the cloth cover, the comfortable weight in your hands, you really couldn't ask for a more beautiful object to look at and to hold. But to read? As much as I like Seth, I sometimes feel as if his art is too perfect. Something a little more raggedy gives you space to fill in what's happening in between panels, whereas Seth's art is so pristine that each panel ends up frozen.

Then again, there are worse things than ending up in a stasis that's so damn pretty. And I think Seth does well when he works from a topic that is closer to his heart, like illustrating his father's stories in Bannock and Black Beans, or, uh, writing in shades of acute depression, as he does in Clyde Fans. It's when he follows the path of his cartooning idols, with elaborate plots and Chris Ware-style formatting, a little too closely that things begin to feel overly mannered.

Normally, I wouldn't be writing semi-critically about Seth. He lives in my hometown and I feel a certain amount of Guelph solidarity with him. However, my mild concerns with his work are becoming more acute ones I hold for art comics as a whole. Just as comics are breaking into popular and academic respectability, the stories many of their creators tell are becoming more artificial. Without a strong interest in the work of Doug Wright or a strong stomach for autobiographical blather (the black and white books I think of as the "Straight White Guys Buying Milk" genre), I'm not sure how much interest the Drawn and Quarterly catalogue will hold. And with the choice of vision seemingly split between looking at the past (Seth), or at one's own navel (Jeffrey Brown), I wonder who in comics is looking towards the future.

I started this post after reading a post at the excellent Comics Comics. I may not agree with all of their evaluations, but they're always convincingly phrased and educational. Jeet Heer, who wrote about Seth for that blog, also has an excellent piece in this month's Walrus about Stuart McLean. So good that it almost made me re-evaluate my intense, flaming hatred for The Vinyl Café. Almost.

Back In Pulp

One of the nice things about having gainful employment - besides not being able to watch back to back episodes of Sue Thomas F.B.Eye and Oprah, which means not having to justify doing so - is having ready money. No more lentils every day for a week. No more hoping your hair looks charmingly tousled instead of desperately in need of a cut.

And one of the nicest things is being able to buy comic books. When you're unemployed, spending four to six dollars on twenty-page bundles of paper does not seem the wisest investment one could make. At least, it didn't to me, which meant I stopped buying comics. And like missing one day's worth of soap operas, missing a month or more of comics is a bad idea.

Why? 'Cause, all of a sudden, you'll find yourself in the middle of the comic book store, wondering since when was Wolfsbane knocked up. And you'll be more judgmental of yourself for not knowing the answer to that question, than you are for knowing who the hell Wolfsbane is in the first place.

I've been trying to get caught up on some of the series I was following before the Great Poorening, and so far I'm almost up to speed on Berlin (since when did that start publishing again? I feel like it was on hiatus forever), The Unwritten and Sweet Tooth.

And honestly, if you're not reading Sweet Tooth yet, you should be. I know I've become kind of an annoying proselytizer for this book, but I don't feel guilty. It has an unrelentingly grim post-apocalyptic world, but still finds room for isolated notes of human (and mutant) warmth. And thus it deserves all the flogging it can handle. READ IT!

The Green Hornet Trailer Will Make You Cranky And Confused

Question: Does the Green Hornet movie even know what it wants to be? I think it's aiming for the cocky comic action that brought Iron Man many sacks heavily laden with money. Instead, it only feels like the demented, oozing offspring of Daredevil and a Judd Apatow movie.

Also, I am concerned about Jay Chou's aka Kato's hair. What are the bangs hiding? WHAT?

Sometimes, I just want movies to have the conviction to stay in one genre. You don't have to be a self-aware comedy, a big budget action movie and a make-work project for Edward James Olmos at the same time. Pick one thing and be good at it, instead of hoping Cameron Diaz will somehow save your movie. It's not 1997 anymore. She won't.

The strangest thing about this monstrosity is that it's directed by Michel Gondry. Now, perhaps the trailer monkeys got a little too weirded out by his original footage and spliced in more explosions and hunger dunger dang music, so the trailer looks like what a superhero movie trailer should look like. But unless the actual movie has the Green Hornet riding in a crocheted supercar that unspools yarn as cotton batting clouds pass by, I'll be concerned that Gondry has given up on being twee. And he did it so well.

Still, at least it's better than the trailer for Skyline, but that's a whole 'nother rant.

Food For Forest Critters

I hope the defining aspect of my generation is not its dedication to theme parties, but it's beginning to look that way. And so here is my theoretical contribution to the age's great body of work:

A Dinner Party Featuring Food A Hedgehog Would Make If A Hedgehog Could Make Food.

Drinks would be Forever Nuts tea from Davids Tea, and dessert would be this, a Scandinavian Dried Fruit Soup. God, doesn't the name alone make you think you're living in a burrow? And that's not whipped cream on top. Oh no, there are no whipped cream cartons in the forest. Only yogurt for this one (although I'm not sure why I've decided there are plastic yogurt tubs in the wood either, but I'm the hostess of this theme party, and so my word is law.)

It's from the Moosewood Daily Special Cookbook, and although I was expecting something that tasted like dates floating in spruce beer (don't ask,) it's rather sweet thanks to the four cups of peach juice you pour into this. Those hedgehogs might be on to something yet.

Book Covers I Have Loved: What To Cook And How To Cook It

Thanks to my new job, I've learned that designing a cookbook is hard. Each page has a dozen bits of information, from ingredients to cooking times, that must be communicated clearly to a reader who is similarly doing a dozen things at once trying to make that page into a meal.

However, I don't much care whether the inside of What To Cook and How To Cook It is easy to use, because the outside is certainly nice to look at. There's no creepy, branded photo of a celebrity chef with their signature scrawled across their own face, like you would get with your David Ramsays. Or a bunch of boring text that marks kitchen classics like The Joy of Cooking and How To Cook Everything.

There's just a few illustrations, including a fish who is so cute, I could eat him up. Literally. Like, with tartar sauce.

Book Covers I Have Not Loved: Room

If I could justify the purchase of a new hardcover book, I would have bought Emma Donoghue's Room a long time ago. It's received stellar reviews everywhere, including from a much-respected professor, and its subject matter is right up my true-crime inspired alley.

I would have even ignored its unfortunate cover.
You know what this looks like?
The poster for Jack, that's what. And if I'm going to be reading one of the best books of 2010, I don't want to also be reminded of a Robin Williams schmaltzfest.

The Social Network And Storytelling

Caesar And His Imperial Pyjama Pants

If you can stop creeping your friends long enough to go to a movie theatre, you should probably go see The Social Network. Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue is hyperactively clever, David Fincher’s visuals are clinically perfect, and Jesse Eisenberg’s ability to project fussiness is finally used for evil instead of good. And once you’ve finished – if you don’t run home to delete your profile – you should read this long New Yorker profile on the man himself, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

I don’t think you should read it to give you some fresh perspective on who Zuckerbeg is, or what really happened when Facebook was founded. I'm sure the guy we saw in The Social Network bears only a minimal resemblance to the real thing, but I'm not all that interested in what that would be anyway. What's neat is to see what was left out, what was changed, and what that says about our narrative expectations of the rich and the assholish.

For one thing, Zuckerberg's long-time girlfriend Priscilla Chan, who we meet in the article in an awkwardly stagey way, is completely out of the movie. Well, unless she's one of the Asian girls who give Zuckerberg and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin blowjobs in the bathroom. Instead, we meet his white, well-spoken ex who provides the spark for starting and growing Facebook by rejecting him. The movie even ends with a superficially current tableau, where Zuckerberg friends her and waits, refreshing the page, to see if she accepts his request.

Well then, where did Priscilla Chan go? She was ditched so we could have a traditional, psychological narrative, where the engine driving the success is a personal failure. Starting a site for sexual vengeance makes more sense in this framework than the straightforward empire-building that comes out of the New Yorker piece.

It also allows the movie to play one of the most satisfying of narrative tropes, where vast wealth is gained but at a loss of all connection. Zuckerberg hitting refresh is just Charles Foster Kane alone in his mansion, except with worse tailoring. It would be hard for anyone in the audience to have more money than Zuckerberg, but at least they can congratulate themselves for having a warm body to go home with after the credits roll. Knowing "Zuck" gets to curl up with Priscilla and his DVDs just isn't as tasty.

I'm not saying that I mind Fincher and Co. making these changes. I probably enjoyed the movie more. I just find it interesting that traditional narrative expectations prevail even when we're dealing with a true story, about a new technology, developed recently enough that facts can be checked. It appears there are some things even more powerful than the urge to stalk the Facebook walls of people you hate.

(Oh look, Max rambled about the movie here. Why not check it out?)

Eco/Illogical

As part of the social contract of living in my current apartment, I have to abide by my landlord’s desire to use only environmentally-friendly products. Which is why I spent last weekend sunning myself under fluorescent lighting, debating the relative merits of dish soap.

The problem is that, once you veer from the path of Old Dutch, you’re suddenly chasing the vanishing point of virtue. No deed is ever good enough. Say you need hand soap, and start out with the store brand. Well, you might as well go down to the local pond and choke all the fish yourself, with what that will do to the algae population. So, you pick up the slightly more expensive store brand, the one that has a tasteful green and brown label and the words organic on it. Well, that’s better, but not good enough – after all, it’s still full of chemical additives and fragrances, in spite of the microscopic amounts of “organic” olive oils. The next is not made locally, the next has cetyl alchohol in it, the next has no alcohol, but has sulfates… and suddenly you’re considering spending over twelve dollars on hand soap.

And this is the point where virtue eludes you entirely. At least, it did for me. Paralyzed between Island Essentials and Nature Clean, I realized my own privilege was debating itself, and wondered if it wasn’t somehow better to spend three bucks on SoftSoap and send the difference to Amnesty International. But then – what about the fish? Surely, the best thing would be to spend over twelve dollars on soap, still send off nine dollars, and do something about the plastic bottle, because it’s hardly biodegradable, NOW IS IT?

By the time I had worked through this exhausting mental calculus, I still hadn’t found the all-crucial integer for keeping food in my belly. So, I spent five dollars on the mid-range natural soap - tragically unscented so no one could smell the eucalyptus and French lavender fumes of my goodness - and left. After all, you can’t save the world when you’re faint from hunger.

Greetings From The Island

Well, as promised, I made the move to Victoria just over a week ago. And, as my brother promised me, finding a room in Victoria is a bit of a nightmare. I finally ended up with a place that reminds me of what being a young career girl in the '50s must have been like, except with more Ikea furnishings. I live above an older couple and have a wee kitchenette all to myself, and kind of do and kind of don't have Internet.

So, posting will likely be erratic until I figure out what's going on with the connection. Hopefully it won't all end with me darning my nylon stockings by the radio, waiting for the phone to ring, or whatever it was ladies with an education and without a husband did back then (bridge?).