What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
(and remember, you can always e-mail me if you love or loathe anything you're about to read)...


   Tuesday, November 20, 2007

   THEY WANT YOUR EYEBALLS

The words "sexy" and "Canadian Broadcasting Corporation" aren't often used together but that's what I'm hearing at the media launch for the CBC's "winter season" beginning in January, with a batch of new shows hoping to follow The Tudors' lead in sexing up our public broadcaster.

I'm led in by women from the CBC's PR firm Media Profile. There's over a dozen attractive women in headsets, like some power-lesbian secret service, leading journalists into a large, white-draped room. I sit in the second row, behind Due South star Paul Gross. He looks better now than he did as the hot Mountie, the bastard. We watch a slick montage of trailers for 12 new shows, including MVP, a hockey soap opera clearly modeled on the saucy UK hit Footballers' Wives.

Writing for fab, I'm viewing all this with a Queer Eye, like some pink filter. I'm forced to ignore the creators of gritty drama The Border and even the very cute David Kopp, star of the new comedy jPod. No gay office mate, David? I must move on, though I do have to stop and chat with Nicholas Campbell, Canadian TV veteran (if not icon). "You mean I have to play a gay character to be in your magazine?" he asks. Pretty much, I tell him, unless you want to come out, right here. He laughs.

I go looking for the very gay Chris Hyndman and Steven Sabados, stars of their own new daytime talk show. The former Designer Guys are thrilled. "This really is a step up for us," Hyndman says, "We feel like The Jeffersons!" Any pressure from their new masters to tone down the gay? None, says Sabados: "They keep saying, 'Just be yourself.'" Hyndman laughs, "As if they’re going to hire me and ask me to play it straight! They’re going down the wrong street!" The Steven and Chris Show will have the occasional celebrity guest -— who’s topping their wish list? "Pamela Anderson!" they announce in unison.

"We just want them to be themselves," CBC programming head Kirstine Layfield later tells me. (Did they rehearse?) But I point out that the CBC's gayest show, the British sci-fi drama Torchwood, has been airing with no promotion, buried in the Friday-at-9 time slot that MVP will occupy in January. Layfield insists they’re happy with Torchwood's half-million viewers and that limited funds for ads should be spent on Canadian shows. "We try to reflect Canadians back to themselves and diversity is obviously part of that," she says, "but we want to be natural about it."

The bubbly Natalie Brown has dubbed her single-girl show Sophie a "conflamady" (conflict-drama-comedy) and agrees that including a gay character felt natural: "Really, who doesn't have a gay best friend? Why would Sophie not? I do. It's not a cliché, it's true." My Gay Agenda satisfied, I'm ultimately forced to agree with Brown when she says, "After watching all those trailers, I have to say -- CBC is looking kind of sexy."

Labels: Canada, fab, homo-a-go-go, Trawna, TV

Blade Runner needs no explanation. It just is. All of the best. There is nothing like it. To be part of a real masterpiece which changed the world's thinking. It's awesome.

Far be it from me to argue with Rutger Hauer but just a little explanation is in order: I went with a few friends to see Blade Runner: The Final Cut tonight. It's the third time the film's been released in theatres but the first release that director Ridley Scott has had complete control over. And Hauer's still right.


Blade Runner: The Final Cut trailer

What amazed me about watching this movie again (since 1994 and 1982) is seeing how Ridley Scott removed everything that didn't work before (bad narration, awkward edits, a clumsy ending) and polished what remained into a dark diamond. This is a slow, despairing, elegant piece of future noir that's even more relevant now. Most movies set in the future end up looking silly when the time comes (welcome to the year 2000!) but this film's Los Angeles in 2019 is both increasingly implausible and increasingly unsettling. The details are wrong (no offworld colonies yet) but the overall dystopia feels disturbingly probable.

And the lead actors are so gorgeously understated: Harrison Ford is cynical to the point of brutality, Sean Young is cool and aloof but desperately sad, and Rutger Hauer is one of film's all-time great villains -- terrifying yet sympathetic. Watching the film again, you really see how he is the real hero here: trying to answer the question of existence in a mere four-year life span while the deadened and soulless human characters fail to match his vitality, curiosity or faith. I was going to post a YouTube clip of his big speech here but how can I? It's too good not to be seen in the context of the film (see for yourself when a splashy DVD set comes out Dec. 18).

What was especially nice about going to this screening was that I went with my friends Danielle and Josh and, in a surprise move, an old friend of mine from university named Glynis. I hadn't seen her in nearly 15 years but she'd seen me making plans on Facebook to see Blade Runner, her favourite movie ever, and asked if she could tag along. I loved that, especially in regards to a movie about a high-technology culture of emotional cripples. Here instead is technology bringing people together. I was impressed by Glynis taking the risk in asking to join us and it was great to see her again.

Meanwhile, other friends Victor and Trevor were literally just down the street, going to see Breakfast With Scot. I was able to make it to the theatre in time to join them and this Canadian indie comedy was a total delight:


Breakfast With Scot trailer

Though the film's plot is predictable as can be, the witty script, engaging actors and surprising lack of sentimental button-pushing thrilled the group of us. Plus it's just so great to see a film set in Toronto, about Toronto and filled with people you could mistake for your neighbours. And I love a film that recognizes that trying to avoid gay stereotypes doesn't mean making the gay characters bland, inoffensive and indistinguishable from other guys. We are different, just not as much as everyone seems to think. Breakfast With Scot got that and I was really pleased.

After seeing one film that questions our very ability to hold onto what makes us human, it's great to see another that champions all the little things that let us.

Labels: back in the day, Canada, friends, homo-a-go-go, movies

It'd be so much easier on everyone if Brian Mulroney would just keep his trap shut. A good deal of the Canadian public thinks he's as dirty as, well, Jean Cretien but many others are agnostic on the subject. Whatever crimes Mulroney may or may not have committed, they're long in the past and might as well stay buried.

But no -- he's so consumed with his legacy, he keeps coming out of hiding to tell us what we should be writing in the history books. It reminds me of his little tirade two years ago, after Peter C. Newman released his tell-all book. Mulroney fumed:

"By the time history is done looking at this, and you look at my achievements as opposed to others, certainly no one will be in Sir John A.'s league -- but my nose will be a little ahead of most in terms of achievements."

Sure, Brian, but most of us believe it's because your nose keeps growing. Tonight, as the RCMP has announced its reopening another your-tax-dollars-at-work investigation, Mulroney appeared at a speaking engagement in Toronto tonight, met by throngs of reporters eager for scandal.

Watching the video, I'm amused at how son Ben -- who so easily overflows with gush upon meeting any D-list celebrity -- becomes a deer in the headlights when the reporters ask about his dad, then he makes a nervous giggle. Was it too difficult to toss the reporters a "My father is a great man" cliché?

But the speech by Mulroney Sr. is the most telling. I was inclined, mostly out of disinterest, to give him the benefit of the doubt. In a world where Bush and Cheney's lies, larceny and torture are met with shrugs, I can't get too worked up over Mulroney's petty grifting. But then I watched this footage of him announcing:

"I want to tell you here tonight that I, Martin Brian Mulroney, 18th prime minister of Canada, will be there before the royal commission with bells on, because I have done nothing wrong and have absolutely nothing to hide."

And there it was. My doubts vanishing in the rush of déja vu:


Nixon: "I am not a crook"

Uh-oh.

Labels: Canada, media, politics, Trawna

I`ve been strolling the streets of Montreal, new and Old, this morning and it`s felt like slipping on an old favourite pair of shoes. Last time I was here was twice in 2000 -- a free weekend jaunt in November, courtesy of my friend Gord`s frequent flier miles (Tintin isn`t his favourite character for nothing) and just before that in the summer, when Bryce and I came here for Pride right before we broke up.

It was strange to walk through Old Montreal with hazy memories of that happier yet sadder time. I felt very wistful, especially since I was by myself. It was around noon and the rest of my gang had either eaten already or were still sleeping. Wild weekends like these play havoc with everyone`s schedules and I`ve already been told off for my lack of a mobile phone. This trip has been the first time in my life when I wished I`d had one.

Yesterday was a day of crazy culture shock, one extreme to another.
We woke up in a forest.
We biked down twisty forest paths and along the mighty St. Lawrence River.
We ate lunch in the bleachers of a park baseball diamond.
We arrived with great fanfare as we biked down the streets of downtown Montreal.
We danced and drunk beer at a drag bar as Montreal Pride revved into gear.
We met up with friends and stayed out as late as our exhausted bodies would let us.
It was a long, wild day.

The only downside was arriving at the UQAM residence that's hosting us. Imagine rooms like the driest of musty libraries, made hot enough to do bikram yoga in. The ceiling fans spin uselessly and there's no breeze through the window. The girl in the room next to me slept with her door propped wide open with a chair all night, the florescent light burning into her room. I wasn't prepared to try that but a rocky night of lying on top of the blankets in a puddle of my own sweat might make me a convert tonight! I'm not sure I'll survive another night of that.

But who knows? Maybe I won't have to go back. I've got friends from Toronto in town (I'm running off to meet Robert, for one, right now) and there's a club crawl planned as a stag party for Rob and Greg, getting married in three weeks. Can I muster the energy for all this? How could I not?

Labels: Canada, friends, health, holidays, introspective, sports, travel

I finally put my profile on John Amaechi to bed yesterday, by the way. I'm disappointed to see that the Advocate beat me to him by a week but Amaechi's PR person told me that they'd set up a deal with ESPN in advance. I'll have to settle for landing the first Canadian gay Toronto bi-weekly newsprint magazine interview.

I spent half an hour on the phone with him last Thursday and he was every bit as kind, intelligent and elegant as he'd come across in his book. And it's been really delightful to see the sports world support him, especially after Tim "I hate gay people" Hardaway sprayed venom everywhere.

Now we'll just have to see if a pro sports player can come out during his career. It's like that morbid joke that floated around the premiere of Philadelphia and Tom Hanks' Oscar win: everyone cries for the dying AIDS patient, but it's the ones who live they can't stand.

Which makes for an unplanned-yet-effortless segue into mentioning the piece I did in the current issue on a new plastic surgery treatment for people with HIV-related facial wasting. The foundation director I interviewed read it and said she was thrilled with how "kind and complimentary" the piece was. I was pleased but surprised, since I thought the tone was just matter-of-fact. I guess I'm just a big softy!

Labels: Canada, fab, health, homo-a-go-go, sports, Trawna, writing

Despite once knowing a guy who insisted that government-sponsored flu shots were part of a grand science experiment on the public, I've faithfully taken one for the last few years. That guy was too paranoid -- even for me -- and I knew that the government's motives were more mercenary: the cost of flu shots is far less than the cost of nursing a public epidemic. Even with doubts as to their efficacy, I always got the shot.

This year, however, a packed work schedule combined with an apathetic 'oh, what's the worst that could happen' mentality and I skipped the shot. One week into the new year and I have been destroyed -- brought low by the worst thing I've had in years.

So yeah, I think the flu shot works.

This past week has been a nightmare of phlegm, no sleep, body pain, cough syrup, diarrea and...oh why go on? We've all been there.

If there's any bright spot, it's that my cover story on New York photographer Joe Oppedisano was already put to bed before I was, and I've certainly been able to catch up with what's on TV. I've been watching Dexter and The L Word and Nip/Tuck -- all them fascinating, clever and taboo-busting in various ways -- but I confess it's the sitcoms that have really helped me through this flu.

First up, I was able to track down 30 Rock, the new show from former Saturday Night Live headwriter Tina Fey, who also wrote the witty movie Mean Girls. As a parody of her former workplace, I expected her new show to be more snide but instead, it's like soda pop, sweet and fizzy like its adorable 50s-pop credits. The best thing about the show is that it's providing a solid showcase for the man-who-can-do-anything, Alec Baldwin. If Fey's aiming to be a 21st-century Mary Tyler Moore, Baldwin is playing Ed Asner and Ted Knight at once.

Of course, it also reminds me of the days when Fey and Baldwin first met -- he's always been great hosting SNL and this National Public Radio parody still makes me laugh out loud:



Meanwhile, there's the aforementioned How I Met Your Mother, a show that seems like a standard Friends clone until you realize that, with each week, it's getting smarter, funnier and stranger -- like this bit with the gang worried for Robin's little sister, followed by the now-nearly...wait for it...legendary "Slap Bet" episode where she reveals her dark Canadian secret:





Of course, if that's all just too silly for the rest of you, there's always the intense 24, a show I've long avoided, out of a belief that its politics and mine wouldn't get along. From what I'd heard, the show's hero was way too fond of using torture as a quick-and-simple way to foil terrorist plots (by that logic, the horrors of Abu Gharib should've ended the War on Terror by now) and the show is absolutely beloved by right-wingers. Last summer, the Heritage Foundation hired Rush Limbaugh to host a panel discussion called "24 and America's Image in Fighting Terrorism: Fact, Fiction, or Does it Matter?" "Does it matter?" What the hell kind of question is that? Oh wait...next week's seminar is "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11." Never mind.

At any rate, all this had me avoiding a TV show that people have talked about for years, one that then won the big Emmy awards this year -- Best Drama, Best Actor. Meanwhile, in his Entertainment Weekly column, Stephen King echoed my misgivings about the show's "gleeful" use of torture while still calling it "the best thing on TV" so when the first four episodes started floating around the Internet this week -- in advance of this weekend's two-night, Sunday-Monday premiere -- the curiosity finally got to me:



Hours later, I can see exactly both why I resisted the show and why so many people love it. The opening episode hinges in part on whether or not the nice Muslim family down the suburban California street are terrorists. That's the kind of paranoic race-baiting that makes my teeth clench. Meanwhile, an innocent Muslim leader is unfairly detained (okay, some balance, I guess) but wait -- he uncovers part of the terrorist plot while in custody. You see? Locking him up was a good thing!

Yes, the underlying biases in 24 are unsettlingly fascist if you stop to ponder them but the reality is that the show never stops moving long enough to let you. I've never seen anything so relentless -- not on TV, not on film. Kiefer Sutherland is indeed terrific and the plot grabbed me in, held me there and then, at the end of episode four, threw out a truly-jaw-dropping climax to an hour that was already the most harrowing thing I'd seen on TV since the infamous car-jacking on Six Feet Under. Yep, I'm forced to admit it -- I'm hooked, dammit. I was already watching too much TV as it is!

Labels: Canada, fab, health, Orwell says hi, silliness, TV, writing

To demonstrate his command of the US economy, George Bush hopped on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle this week, adding 'biker' to his long list of photo-op personas:
















It must be exciting for him. At this rate, he's just one feather headdress away from completing the set:



But I'm not picking on America -- far from it. After all, our Boy King loves to play Mr. Dress-Up, too:




These guys love to look like Action Men but, like the plastic army toys, they're just as hollow. Maybe this is why Harper couldn't be bothered to show up at the AIDS Conference ths week -- no one offered him a white lab coat to dress up in.

Labels: Canada, George W Bush, Stephen Harper

Oddly, the Globe and Mail expects people to pay to read Margaret Wente (winner of the prestigious Golden Clam award), but it takes all kinds, I guess. There are people who pay to be whipped and walked on with stiletto heels, too.

Here's the opener of today's column in which Margaret weighs in -- again -- on the International AIDS Conference here in Toronto:

The trouble with Africa

The big AIDS circus is winding up tomorrow, and not a moment too soon. If I have to hear Saint Stephen Lewis hectoring us with his apocalyptic rhetoric one more time, I think I'll choke. Please, sir, can't you take an Ativan? Nor will I miss the ritual denunciations of Stephen Harper. Is it really his duty to show up so that 20,000 people can boo and hiss him? Funnily enough, Jean Chrétien didn't show up at the AIDS-fest in Vancouver a decade ago, either.

And here's me clenching my teeth and writing the editor:

Margaret Wente’s second ill-informed dismissal of the International AIDS
conference (The Trouble With Africa - Aug. 17) attacks “Saint” Stephen
Lewis for “hectoring us with his apocalyptic rhetoric…” Mr. Lewis has
worked on a continent with nearly 25 million people infected with AIDS –
is that number not apocalyptic enough? Ms. Wente’s only contribution to
the discussion involves sealing Canada’s borders and offering women
“education and a reliable microbicide” (what “the big AIDS circus” already
suggested earlier this week).

From her comfortable chair, Wente mocks the “madcap protesters”
criticizing the “evil” Catholic Church who, she counters, “runs something
like a quarter of the AIDS clinics in Africa” where “there is widespread
ignorance about the disease and very little public education about it.”
Given the Church’s refusal to discuss condom usage, Ms. Wente’s clear
inability to put two and two together means that, with relief, I can go
back to ignoring her. She’s tired of Stephen Lewis’ saintliness; I’m
tired of her hatefulness.

Tomorrow: Margaret writes another love letter to her SUV!

Labels: Canada, Stephen Harper, Trawna

Since I'm always all "Bad America! No donut!" it's only proper that I rant about Canada occasionally (and thankfully, 'occasionally' is all I need to). The ever-glamourous Miss Retro Virus alerted me to this post from 'RightGirl' at the Shotgun blog of Alberta's Weekly Standard:

Islam must be stopped
I cannot abide by apologists calling Islam a religion of peace. Not when every new day brings fresh tales of violence. Not when the devil that they call Allah rewards murder with polygamous sex. Not when their undeserved supremacy is fought for in countries big and small around the globe...If everything from smoking to lead paint to pitbulls can be banned because they are dangerous and deadly, why can't Islam?

"Jane, you ignorant slut."
There's a little acorn of frustration here that I totally understand but RightGirl grows it into a big tree of crazy. She's obviously unable to separate a religion from its zealots and, while I've been accused of that once or twice, I've never advocated for the banning of Christianity -- no matter how toxic many of its enthusiasts can become. As Miss RV rightly points out, her rhetoric is one step away from Communist Russia's enforced atheism and look how well that turned out! It kills me how these people with the simple solutions of simple minds never see where their illogic is leading them. Fortunately, one of RightGirl's commenters offers a practical five-point plan:

We need to stop Muslims from manipulating our Government, policies and ways of life.

1) Immediately restrict Muslim immigration.
2) Citizens must be loyal to Canada before their native nations.
3) Stop the political correctness and false accusation that our concerns are bigotry or racism
4) Muslims who are already here must assimilate or we can unleash a backlash.
5) Eveyone must show patriotism and loyalty

Jawohl, Mein Fuhrer! At least Alberta's reputation as 'Canada's Texas' is secure. Don't I sound like a smug yuppie liberal, though? Am I not just tossing around snark in lieu of factual rebuttals? Well...yes. That's what I do. But let's assume RightGirl is, erm, right when she insists that I can't just write her off as a racist, that I must engage her argument on its own merits.

I can't speak for Islam, of course. I'm still holding a grudge from university, where I knew a gay Muslim named Naseer. He was funny, somewhat excitable and Madonna-obsessed. He took great pride in his Islamic faith, struggled with his shifting sexuality and swallowed a bottle of pills at the end of the school term, killing himself. Do I hate the entire religion for that? I'm not sure, since I've seen Christianity have the same general effect.

All I know is that I like the Emami's, the Iranian family who run Millie's Place, an old diner around the corner on Sherbourne Street. Their two kids are in university but the entire family works in the restaurant. They smile constantly, serve the crazy homeless people with care and patience, and gasp in shocked delight at the zany stories of the gays who pop in for the all-day breakfast. I suppose RightGirl and her gang would call them 'the good Muslims,' the ones they'll allow to remain here after the Glorious Revolution, but I still suspect that the Emamis aren't as rare as they think.

And at any rate, if I had to choose between having a greasy lunch at old, worn-down Millie's versus a fine meal at one of Alberta's gorgeous steakhouses with RightGirl, well I'll have the banquet burger with fries, please, with some political correctness on the side.

Labels: Canada

It's the end of the work week! I'm off to collect the Little Terrorist from doggie daycare so there's no time to comment on CBC Radio's collection of 24 Bitchin' Canadian Music Videos, other than that it's awesome! Here's one of them -- and I think you know which...

Labels: Canada

And while I'm feeling nostalgic, here comes the National Film Board of Canada, who've decided to post streaming video of 50 of their greatest short animation pieces. In the early eighties, my mom sprang for Pay TV for a couple years (First Choice and Superchannel!) and they would run NFB shorts in between movies. I was introduced to some fantastic and delightful material and I'm glad to see that the NFB is finally using the Internet to keep that flame burning.

There are a lot of gems: The Sweater is as sweetly Canadian as maple syrup, Hunger is creepy satire done with early CGI, The Cat Came Back is deservedly loved by millions, Neighbours is as weird and sadly relevant as ever (the same goes for Every Child), and, of course, The Big Snit is the Greatest Thing Ever.

Thanks, NFB -- you do our country proud!

Labels: back in the day, Canada, the 80s

The Bell/Globe and Mail/CTV takeover of CHUM Limited -- home of CityTV, MuchMusic, Bravo!, Space and many, many more -- shocked everyone this morning, mostly the nearly-200 employees who showed up to work in cities like Calgary, Winnipeg and Barrie and found themselves locked out. Even the big fish at both networks will see massive changes over the next few months:

- the CBC's George Stroumboulopoulos hosts a support group at the Y --
'Thirtysomething Hipsters Suddenly Working For The Man'

- Gord Martineau rents a DVD of All About Eve; begins hanging around Lloyd Robertson's office

- Ben Mulroney stomps off the set of Canadian Idol after new judge Ed the Sock calls him a "blow-dried pansy"

- Brett Butt thrilled to become the new program director of SexTV, though his request to have the channel renamed after himself is denied

- CTV execs are confused: "We have SIX MuchMusic stations???"

- only Global's smattering of lame US comedies prevents BellGlobeMedia from carrying every current American network show

- Mark Dailey's voice booms from Vancouver to St. John's; wheat farmer in prairies looks up and says, "God?"

- Marilyn Denis becomes the replacement for all four hosts of Canada AM, along with three of the six contributors

- Sandie Rinaldo forced to lug around heavy videocamera; insists that Barbara Frum was never a 'videographer'

- Mike Duffy argues politics with anyone who enters Speaker's Corner

- CTV begins running Baby Blue movies on Fridays, Canada becomes a filthy playground of decadent immorality, with faster broadband from Bell Sympatico

- the new principal of Degrassi High: Terry David Mulligan

- Jeanne Beker now completely unstoppable, her throaty cackle of victory can be heard over Mark Dailey's voice

Labels: Canada

Brendan and Dale here are two of the people I met last weekend at the gay science fiction convention. I went in on Saturday afternoon to attend some panels and find people to interview for my fab article. I was already behind the deadline but you can't write about fans without actually going to their gathering, I insisted. Still, the pressure was on -- I had to talk about sci-fi all day long with all sorts of different people!

Fortunately, this trauma was eased by the late-night charity event in which Brendan and a beautiful straight boy named Nick were among the volunteers feeding people cheesecake for donations to Casey House. Handsome Dale was a writer in Ottawa and we instantly bonded over friendly shop talk before a gentle debate over which one of us Brendan was flirting with more. "Oh please," I said, "He's a 21-year-old from San Francisco -- he's flirting with everybody!" And I was right, though I soon changed my tune by the time Brendan was sitting in my lap and challenging Dale to a Goldschlager shot contest -- Canada vs. the USA!

Do you understand the punishment I had to endure here? I mean, I had planned to leave hours before but, next thing I knew, I had to referee a drinking match with our country's honour at stake! One of the perks of age is that a tendency for indirectness is eventually burned away. I put my arm around Brendan and said, "Dale has a room down the hall -- let's go." The terms of an international alcoholic sports event preclude any further breach of confidentiality, I'm afraid, but I can tell you that Canada won.

I spent the next day with the two of them -- torturous, I know -- and the big geek convention turned out to be as magical and fantastic as it pretended to be. Brendan, meanwhile, revealed the perfect 'newbie' viewpoint for my article so we had an in-depth interview that evening after Dale had caught his train home. He was adorable, articulate and thoughtful. As my friend James likes to say, I fell right in love!

So, in the end, I'm left with a weekend that fired on all cylinders, two lovely new e-mail correspondents, and an article that I couldn't be happier with. It was a difficult road to walk but I've got my feet up on the desk in perfect gloating!

Labels: Canada, fab, friends, oh l'amour

Yep, here I was, another liberal fag asking the usual questions like
"War, what is it good for?"
"Muslims, are they really so terrible?" and
"Nixon lied, Clinton got blown, but we can't impeach George Bush for torturing people?"
All the usual War-on-Terror-bad, freedom-and-not-killing-good except -- whoops -- police have foiled a massive terrorist plot right here in Toronto.

Well that'll learn me.

As usual, the Star's Rosie DiManno summed it with calm, even-handed diplomacy:

These accused wanted, if intelligence experts are correct (and they've been wrong before), to kill you.

Your children, your parents, your lovers, your neighbours.

Wouldn't matter, the colour of your skin, your mother tongue, the God that you pray to or if you pray at all. Wouldn't matter even if you happen to equate George W. Bush with Osama bin Laden.

The Jihad Generation — nothing alleged about it — makes no distinctions.

Come such a day, Toronto will look like London ... Madrid ... Bali ... New York City.

Blood streaming, mangled metal, severed limbs, inchoate rage and immeasurable grief.

Yeah okay, Rosie ... Rosie? ... Rosie!! We get it already!
Now cut it out -- you're getting drool on the table. Let's all turn the Hysteriameter down to about four, shall we? Don't you and Thomas Walkom run into each other in the Star cafeteria?

Now then, first things first -- huge thanks to the excellent men and women of the RCMP and CSIS who didn't spend their time and our tax money creating the biggest database of personal phonecalls ever or investigating producers of pornography. No, they actually focused on possible terror networks and patiently accumulated evidence against them, rather than simply invade some tangentally-related country.

It's called police work. Because it's done by police and it works.

US Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice was so impressed she made special mention of it. Given the company she keeps, she probably thought these were revolutionary techniques. Even so, I give her points for being classy and rational.

Not so to the people who, following the arrests, vandalized a mosque. It's Muslim, you see. And the terrorists who were arrested? Muslim. And the cab driver who screamed at me and drove away after I'd specifically called for a taxi to take my dog to the vet? Muslim! Why, it's all coming together -- they're evil and must be destroyed!

I kid, of course, though the dog part happened -- another cab driver explained that Muslims have a rule that they must immediately go and wash themselves seven times if a dog should happen to touch them. That's not a religion, I say, that's Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Nevertheless, I've learned to keep my beloved pet away from these people I share my sidewalks with -- it's just what you do in the big city.

That's part of a little thing we call liberal values but, when terrorists don't share them, the obvious thing to do is throw them all away and Canada's conservatives know exactly how to solve the problem:

I know there will be an outcry from the anti-war crowd, the NDP, CAIR, and all the other usual suspects, but the fact of the matter is we need to gut the center of this. We need to destroy the camps and mosques and imams where this poison is coming from before we have a hope of cleaing up our own back yards. And that means Afghanistan. Iraq. Iran. Maybe Indonesia and Pakistan. Line 'em up, we'll knock 'em down. We need to.

Oy. What kills me is the perfect-circle Dr. Strangelove logic on display here: "They've declared a Jihad! That's evil! We'll declare War!" I used to think Brazil was a comedy; now we're living in it.

Once again, there is a middle ground between these two approaches:



It's called police work. Because it's done by police and it works.

Labels: Canada, Middle East, Trawna

I love, love, love electric cars. Or even the gas hybrid ones. They're like those incredibly-rare well-behaved children. While the others are making grinding noises and spitting up oil, they just cutely putter along, quietly and neatly, taking up little space. Everyone should have one.

But they DO take some getting used to. You glide along in near-silence -- the absense of the motor noise is somehow deafening -- and the jury's still out on how safe or effective they are for cross-country travel. Darcy and I wanted to take one down to Georgia last December but we felt it probably made more sense to go with a small-but-solid sedan. In the city, though, the cars are pretty damn cool.

Even cooler are the new breed of geek machanics who hack their hybrids. It seems that Toyota Prius owners who aren't 100% happy with some of the design features in their otherwise-sensible little cars are cracking the codes and making some tweaks:

"It's the new breed of hot-rodders," said Phillip Torrone, an associate editor at do-it-yourself tech journal Make Magazine. "In the 1950s, it was all about getting more speed. Now, instead of getting more horsepower, it's about getting more miles per gallon. So your hot-rodders are going to be your hot-greeners."

Now there's a competition I can rally behind:

JAMES DEAN [leaning back against a brick wall]:
How many miles you drive on that one tank?

COREY ALLEN [glaring at him with hatred/homoerotic tension]:
Eighty. Got all the way to San Luis Ray.

JAMES DEAN [with a short, snorting laugh]:
Pussy. I went ninety-five.

That would be infinitely preferable to the automotive competition North America is losing:

A Ford Motor Co. plant in Atlanta and a General Motors Corp. facility in Oshawa, Ont., led the [productivity] rankings in the annual Harbour Report, released yesterday by Harbour Consulting, an automotive consulting firm whose yearly study is watched closely in the industry.

The closings of two plants that topped the Harbour list -- as measured by hours needed to assemble a vehicle -- are a sign of the times for the two auto makers, said Canadian Auto Workers union president Buzz Hargrove.

"When you don't have the market share, you don't have the new products, [so] the best plant doesn't mean anything at that point," said Mr. Hargrove, whose members are trying to persuade GM to build a leading-edge, flexible manufacturing operation in Oshawa.

But owners of Toyota electric cars are both irritated enough and enthusiastic enough about their foreign-import cars to do their own home-mechanic hackwork? If that doesn't seem like an opportunity to the Big Three in Detroit, they've got to get their eyes off the rearview mirror.

Labels: Canada

This is a post for people who love bad writing. Really bad writing. Even if you don't know the story of US Senator Bill Frist -- stocks grifter, cat killer, doctor-by-videotape -- I hope you'll love this wildly-fawning profile of him by Laura Blumenfeld in yesterday's Washington Post as much as I did. I couldn't help but highlight my favourite bits of this astonishing literary blow job:

The houses were dark on Bill Frist's street. A morning bird chirped; the others were waiting for dawn. But Frist was awake, and his bedroom light was on. "I'm going to take a shower," the Senate majority leader said brightly. Ten minutes later, the blow dryer roared.

Absolutely gripping opener, no? But fasten your seatbelts -- it's about to get sexy!

Frist, at heart, is a doctor. At 5:45 a.m., before a recent Senate workday, he prepared for a quirky slice of surgery. During congressional breaks, Frist, 54, has been known to fly to Africa to operate. But in Washington, he has quietly cultivated another practice: gorillas at the National Zoo.
...
He climbed into the back of his black SUV; his driver steered toward the zoo. "I gravitate towards insurmountable problems," Frist said, his long legs spilling between the front seats. "I try to use creative solutions." One day, he hopes to cure AIDS or cancer. He sucked on the stem of his glasses: "The typical person around here may not understand."

At the zoo hospital, a team of four veterinarians, three technicians, an animal keeper and a veterinary dentist were wheeling a 350-pound gorilla into surgery as Frist arrived. They would perform an ultrasound of the heart, a root canal and a physical. Frist joined the team, as he had on other mornings, tying on a mask. He unbuttoned his business shirt, revealing jungle-pattern surgical scrubs and a pair of hairy, toned biceps.

"A little bit like Superman," said the dentist, Chuck Williams.
...
He pressed his stethoscope to the gorilla's chest and narrowed his eyes. Kuja, a silverback patriarch, was breathing isofluorine. He was the Senate majority leader of the gorillas, who negotiated disputes, back-slapped the ape boys and owned exclusive mating rights with the females. When Kuja started to stir, a veterinarian injected more anesthesia. One backhanded swipe could break Frist's neck.

Frist listened to the heart; the gorilla's lub-dub sounded human. "When you're this close, you feel this kind of oneness with them," Frist said. The stink of ape sweat and gorilla testosterone soaked his hair and clothes. "Gorillas, people, men. You look at the people here, a symphonic flow of people pitching in. It's the oneness of humanity."
...
Afterward, Frist buttoned himself back up, into his blue shirt and into his senatorial reserve. "I need to be talking to the Israeli prime minister in 18 minutes," he told his driver as the SUV rumbled toward the Capitol.
...
At 9:30 a.m., Frist opened the Senate, gripping the corners of the lectern, as he had the operating table...Frist smiled and spoke unremarkably from the lectern, reeking of silverback testosterone.

Laura, please, you're embarrassing yourself -- Senator Frist is married! I can't really blame her though...by the end of the article, I wanted to sleep with him.

Meanwhile, here in testosterone-drenched Canada, Stephen Harper has been whining this week that the national media is biased against him, that "the press gallery at the leadership level has taken an anti-Conservative view." Maybe, or maybe it just seems that way because he's not getting his profiles from the Washington Post.

Labels: Canada, Stephen Harper

Less than a year after his excellent "Devils and Dust" album, Bruce Springsteen has slapped together his latest CD, "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions." If "slapped together" sounds disparaging, it shouldn't -- I'm only referring to the speed it was made with because the album is a lovely, lively tribute to Pete Seeger's timeless folk music.

A piece on Seeger in the Globe today mentions how

...Springsteen has cast himself as a populist, politicized troubadour in the mould of Guthrie and Seeger, especially so in 2004 when he performed several concerts in support of John Kerry's candidacy against George W. Bush. The failure of that effort reportedly put the Boss in a depressive funk for several months.

Oh I hear ya, Boss. But, as the piece quotes Seeger in 1972: "It's a very great mistake to let pessimism get you down," and it seems like Bruce listened. His new album is the sound of a man gathering a bunch of friends together and having a whole lotta fun.

Perhaps not MY kind of fun -- I'm still getting used to the banjo-and-washboard twanginess of it all -- but it's got the delightfully-peculiar sound of people partying like it's 1899. Oh, and the new version of "We Shall Overcome" does just what it says on the tin. Compare this album to the lost and lonely Bruce in "Tunnel of Love" and it glows all the more.

As for Seeger, he'll be at Toronto's IdeaCity conference in June and says, "A wonderful country, Canada. And to have survived so near Uncle Sam." Seegar's speech promises to be as inspiring as his songs:

"Without giving too much away, I'm gonna be a devil's advocate in a kind of way. I'll not be presenting ideas for toys that rich people can spend their money on, but talking about how we can save the world from collapse in the next 50 or 100 years."

If that sounds heavy, well, Seeger insists it won't be. "You see, if there's still a world here in 100 years, it's not going to have been saved by One Big Thing. One Big Things can be co-opted and corrupted and turned to mush...All my life I've been aware that there's a whole class of very rich people who control the country and this has been going on a long, long while...But what are they going to do about tens of millions of little things, good things? Like maybe some mothers or teachers and children who start growing a healthy garden in a vacant, ugly inner-city lot..." Or his brother John, a former high-school principal and pacifist, still alive at 92, who likes to ponder the question: "How can I cure a kid of being a bully?"

The entire interview with Seeger is terrific --you can see why Springsteen staged a hootenanny to honour him!

Labels: Bruce Springsteen, Canada, George W Bush

Catching up with last Wednesday's Globe and Mail:

The votes of 40,000 Canadian citizens who qualify as "Italians abroad," some of whom have never set foot in Italy and many of whom don't speak Italian, played a pivotal role in the defeat of billionaire Silvio Berlusconi in Italy's election yesterday, according to poll results released late last night.

For the first time in history, a country's political fate appears to have been determined by citizens of other countries, after Mr. Berlusconi introduced a scheme in 2002 that defines eligible Italian voters by blood lines rather than residency.

As it became apparent yesterday that he had been defeated by this system, which provides 12 deputies and six senators to represent Italians on foreign soil, the Prime Minister and media magnate reacted with outrage...Mr. Berlusconi's anger and scrutiny is now focused tightly on these votes, especially in the riding that represents North and Central America, in which Canadian votes proved decisive.

Buona notte, Mr. Berlusconi!

Labels: Canada, Italy

Ever since the summer of 2004 -- That Certain Re-Election Campaign -- my friends in-person and here on-line have quietly endured my transition from Rambler to Ranter. I had been driven nearly insane by the lack of any mass political response to the horrors of the Iraq war, the tortures at Abu Ghraib, the illegal wiretapping of US citizens and the outrageously-inept handling of Hurricane Katrina. I've clung to the tiniest shreds of hope that America -- the elephant in the bed -- would regain its sanity. And then, this week, I read this article from Sy Hersh, the New Yorker writer who broke the news of the Abu Ghraib scandal:

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government." He added, "I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’"

The bombing campaign against Iran would involve "tactical" nuclear strikes. And everyone shrugs. That's how inured we've become to post-9/11 doom-mongering. Blogger Steve Billmon neatly summed it all up:

The U.S. government is planning aggressive nuclear war (the neocons can give it whatever doublespeak name they like, but it is what it is); those plans have been described in some detail in a major magazine and on the front page of the Washington Post; the most the President of the United States is willing to say about it is that the reports are "speculative" (which is not a synonym for "untrue") and yet as I write these words the lead story on the CNN web site is:

ABC pushes online TV envelope
ABC is going to offer online streams of some of its most popular television shows, including "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost," for free the day after they first air on broadcast TV.

It appears our long national journey towards complete idiocy is over. We've arrived...We’ve already seen a lengthy list of war crimes and dictatorial power grabs sink into that electronic compost heap: the WMD disinformation campaign, Abu Ghraib, the torture memos, the de facto repeal of the 4th amendment. Again, why should a nuclear strike be any different?

Maybe it's just too big an issue. Maybe people can deal with all this foreign policy incompetence as long as their children are safe at home. Oh no, wait -- the Republican clan has screwed up there too, in the most horrifying manner: there's a massive list wandering around the Internet that's a "family values" nightmare:

President of the advocacy group Faith and Family Alliance Robin Vanderwall of Virginia was convicted in Virginia on five counts of soliciting sex from boys and girls over the Internet.

Rev. Stephen White a Pentecostal minister in West Chester, Pennsylvania, who demanded a return to traditional values, was sentenced to jail after offering $20 to a 14-year-old boy for permission to perform oral sex on him.

Anti-gay activist Earl “Butch” Kimmerling of Anderson, Indiana was sentenced to 40 years in prison for molesting an 8-year old girl after he attempted to stop a gay man from adopting her.

Republican County Commissioner Merrill Robert Barter of Boothbay, Maine pled guilty to unlawful sexual contact and assault on a teenage boy during the Republican State Convention.

Yeah, I think that's quite enough for now but it's only four examples. This site has over FIFTY more examples of child sexual abuse by conservative Christians (three of them Mayors!) who blame gays and lesbians for all the ills of society. I'm not saying that all conservatives are evil or that all Christians are bigots but I wish, fervently wish, that they would look to clean up their own backyard before attacking others. I don't want to keep hearing about how gay marriage is a massive threat to society while child molesters are left to roam free because they say they're Christians and shriek about 'protecting the family'.

And it's not as though this story is new, either (check out this newspaper) -- Republican congressman and anti-gay activist Robert Bauman of Maryland was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old he picked up at a gay bar in 1980, for pity's sake.

No, if there's one thing that ties all this together -- Bush, Iraq, Republican paedophiles, nuclear weapons -- it's the depressing notion that people don't learn. They do what they want to do, believe what they want to believe and the wheels of the bus go round and round. I grew up in the ever-present shadow of a nuclear war between the US and Russia; now the next generation will do the same with the US and Iran.

Ten years ago, I quit a job I loved because the bookstore wanted to carry art books with photos of naked boys in them. I never said a word to the men who bought these books (that would cross a line I agreed to as a sales clerk) but I knew I had to decide what I would willingly be a part of or not. I argued with the buyer, I wasn't listened to, I walked away.

And so it is with this. There's not a whole hell of a lot a thirtysomething Canadian gay man can do to influence a country as insane as America has become. I leave it to more capable people while I go off and tend to my friends, my family, my community -- the people and places I can help. This is me learning.

Labels: Canada, George W Bush, Middle East

If I wasn't born a geek, growing up in the 1970's certainly sealed the deal. It was a crap decade -- Vietnam, Watergate, the oil crisis, Jonestown, Barry Manilow -- so people tended to become either desperate for nostalgia or fascinated by the future. Seventies pop culture wallowed in sci-fi: there were happy futures, terrifying futures and futures I'm not sure which. "Star Wars" managed to be futuristic AND nostalgic at once!

Somewhere in all that -- way up in the Canadian fringes past even "The Starlost" -- was a cheap little Global TV show called "Science International." Host Joseph Campanella (an actor who's appeared in every TV show ever) wore a groovy black turtleneck against a black background so that his floating head could explain the scientific innovations that would change our lives. Each segment ended with his breathless exclamation, "What will they think of next?" He said it so often that the producers eventually threw their hands up and made it the new name of the show.

That sort of gee-whiz glee is largely passé these days though my old boyfriend Bryce worked for Telus Mobility and excitedly told me in 1999 how hard they were working on video games for cellphone colour video screens. "But what's the point of that?" I asked. "Who cares?" he shrugged, "It's just cool."

Today, though, I got a genuine dose of that old-school 'wow, futuristic!' vibe when I read this piece on what Proctor & Gamble has been working on:

Chemists have developed a powerful household water purification system that puts the cleansing power of an industrial water treatment plant into a container the size of a ketchup packet. The researchers have shown that the tiny packet, which acts as a chemical filter, can be added to highly contaminated water to dramatically reduce pathogen-induced diarrhea — the top killer of children in much of the developing world.
...
Worldwide, approximately 1.5 million children under age five die each year from simple diarrhea acquired from pathogens found in drinking water, according to public health experts. That translates to about 4,000 children dying each day as a result of contaminated water.
...
A single packet can decontaminate 2 ½ gallons of drinking water, or enough drinking water to sustain a typical household for about 2-3 days, Allgood says. The packet is added to a large container of impure water, stirred, filtered through a cloth to remove impurities and then allowed to sit for 20 minutes. The net result is clear, safe drinking water, the researcher says.

What will they think of next?

Labels: Canada, technology, the 70s

Hello and Happy New Year!

Yeah, I know, nearly three months late, and a very long time since my last confession...er...posting. Where the hell have I been?

Well, to say I've been busy is, of course, the standard cop-out but truthfully, I haven't had this much on my plate in a very, very long time. Here's what been distracting me, one alibi at a time...

Excuse number one:
NEW ADVENTURES IN POOP

This is the big one.

On December 3rd, my boss called me at work and told me to get in a cab and meet her down at the Humane Society. "You have GOT to get down here NOW!" she said. While walking her dog near the pound, Janet had been approached by a man bringing in a four-month-old Jack Russell/Italian greyhound mix. His girlfriend had demanded this because the puppy had chewed up an antique doll ("Who leaves antique dolls lying around where a puppy can get them?" Janet and I later asked in disbelief). He was near tears and couldn't bring himself to go in, asking instead if Janet would take the dog, but she convinced him that the pound would give the puppy the best care and find the best home, then called me straight away. Janet had long been pushing for me to get a dog because anyone who knows me sees how much happier I am around them.

True to form, I rode down to the pound with a determination to refuse. I don't make a lot of money. I'm not home many nights. How can I care for a dog when everything's so chaotic in my life right now? I had over a dozen concrete reasons why I should not take this puppy and every one of them evaporated like mist when I looked into her tiny brown eyes. She scrambled into my arms, licked my face with mad zeal, then leaned back against my chest and calmly looked around the room at everyone else. She was home and I knew then I'd never let go of her.

So began an absolutely insane month of sleepness nights, ridiculous spending and a complete change in lifestyle. For one thing, I have been brutally, unwillingly transformed into a Morning Person -- standing on the front lawn at seven in the morning, waiting for the puppy to pee.

I let her sleep in my bed at first, though she yelped and squealed in her sleep as if suffering from puppy nightmares. I did everything I could to ease her separation anxiety while busily acclimatizing her to other people, dogs, children, cars -- anything to build her confidence (though now I worry that I've done my job too well!). The previous owner had named the dog 'Asia' which suggested either an eastern land mass or a pole-dancing porn star. I decided on 'Tegan', an old Celtic name I liked and (yes I admit it) the name of a 'Doctor Who' character -- a bossy Australian woman who famously described herself as "a mouth on legs!" Seemed appropriate.

There's a new book called "Marley and Me" that's on the NYT bestsellers list. The author spent 13 years with "the worst dog ever" and his story is apparently hilarious. I believe I may one day write the sequel. As a terrier, Tegan is a willful little creature, constantly testing the limits of my authority. She tugs on the leash, jumps up on the off-limits furniture and only obeys commands the second or third time I say them. It's a constant struggle for me to stay firm with her, since she knows she's almost cute enough to get away with it!

The worst moment occurred right after her first obediance class. She was stubborn but smart enough to grasp the introductory commands and she behaved beautifully on the walk home. She trotted along beside me and stopped and sat at each crosswalk. I beamed with pride as we got home and I removed her leash. I hung my coat on the stand and turned around to see Tegan standing on the armrest of the sofa (where she's not allowed to go), her head up proud and happy as she hosed my sofa with pee.

I think I've only felt that kind of angry despair twice before in my life: when my house was robbed in 1990 and when George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004. It's a kind of blinding white light, a cold heat that tears through you. It was all I could do to keep from snapping her neck like a twig. Instead, I screamed, mashed her face into the puddle, snapped the leash on her and whisked her out onto the front lawn, where she calmly resumed the last of her emptying. She then got lavish praise and a cookie, even though I wanted her dead.

Even the standard housebreaking has been a painfully slow and irritating process. Nothing is more aggravating than someone breaking my 'don't crap in my living room' rule (guests, be told!) and she's done it often and enthusiastically. I'm SO glad I don't have carpeting. Adjusting to the 'poop and scoop' routine was difficult -- nothing in life can quite prepare one for the ghastly sight of poop steaming in the winter air (steaming!). Even that nightmare was quickly eclipsed by a treat experiment with peanut butter that led to two days of diarrea, a horror I shall not describe now or ever. Yes, I've been in the trenches...and they're filled with poop.

Fortunately, it hasn't all been urine and death wishes. Despite it all, I love the dog completely and totally. She's a fantastic little thing -- happy, friendly with strangers, relatively quiet, whip-smart and always ready to play. Just watching her curled up on her chair, gnawing on a chew toy, makes me smile. It's a paradox but once I understood that I have to be totally firm with her at all times (alpha-dog!), we've had a more relaxed and harmonious relationship.

Now if only I could still bring the dog to work (more on that coming up). I hate leaving her in a crate all day but she's adjusted well by becoming nocturnal(!) -- once we spent lazy evenings on the sofa with a book or movie, now I get home after a long day and she's there with tug rope in mouth, jumping up and down, silently squealing, "Let's PLAAAAAY!!! For nine hours!!" My every last nerve is worked but I still wouldn't want it any other way.

Excuse number two:
MAD ABOUT THE BOY

They say third time's the charm, right? That's why Darcy and I are back together.

Again.

I love him. He loves me. We're utterly wrong for one another. Sigh.

James once suggested that some part of me must love "the drama" of it all. Oh no. Build-ups of unnecessary drama are what's kept us apart on a semi-regular basis. Ultimately, though, he makes me happy more often than not and most of our time apart after breaking up has been spent pining for one another. Life's too short for that so I'm willing to hang on and see what happens. At the end of the day, he makes me laugh and I like that a lot.

One thing I have learned is that the longer I spend with him, the more I see that his issues that have often upset me to the point of walking out are usually just
a) unfortunate echoes from his past that I can understand once we talk about it
b) misunderstandings due to our very different operating styles
c) random bits of idiocy that I can freely ignore
And if Darcy had a blog, I'm sure he'd be writing the same thing (only with less 'Doctor Who' and more NASCAR).

He's moped in the past that I never write about him on this blog (apparently not realizing that I've been protecting him from myself!) and seems dismayed that he's not the most important thing in my life. I don't know what to say about that. How do you juggle your many interests and obligations to career, friends, family while simultaneously letting your loved ones know how very much smaller and emptier your life would be without them? Maybe that's why Valentine's Day was created -- one day to stop and say all that out loud. I like to think I've never been shy with my affections to Darcy but sometimes it's as though he just doesn't believe me. And I can't tell if that's a), b) or c).

Excuse number three:
POUNDING THE PAVEMENT

Working at CORE Feature Animation was the best job I ever had. Not answering the phones and whatnot -- that was crap -- but the environment, the people, the puppies roaming free, the whole 'let's put on a show' making-a-movie vibe, it was all fantastic. A Disney-lawyer-approved confidentiality agreement kept me from discussing most of it but now I can freely plug away: Walt Disney's The Wild is the first feature-length animated movie made entirely in Canada and, though the plot was handily ripped off for Dreamworks' "Madagascar" last year, CORE's work looks a thousand times better. Though the movie is aimed squarely at kids and lacks the emotional resonance of the superior Pixar films, there are shots in this movie that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and an occasional line that made me laugh out loud. It opens April 14th and everyone should take their favourite kids to see it.

There. Now I can bitch. Disney worked with CORE because Michael Eisner -- who was to Disney what George W. Bush is to America -- totally alienated the creative talent at Pixar. Disney needed new engines for its machine -- hence CORE -- but their board of directors finally got wise and voted Eisner out, leaving the new CEO free to renegotiate with Pixar and woo them back.

What does all that have to do with me? I means that CORE Feature Animation then had no new features to animate and, with virtually everyone's contract up, we were all sadly shown the door. It was especially difficult after the New Year, as groups of people left on a weekly basis and I slowly became part of a skeleton crew. The part that really chafed was that I had only just started to work on press releases, a company overview and actual PR writing but, as I've endured from previous jobs (I'm looking at you, Britnell family!), the rug was pulled out from under me right when I thought I was getting somewhere.

As always though, I bounced back fairly quickly. The only perk of being near the bottom in the Grand Scheme of Things is that you don't have far to fall (some people I worked with had to give up their condos and whatnot -- ouch). After more fruitless searching than I'd have liked, my friend Trevor recommended me for a receptionist gig at an architecture firm and, after four(!!) interviews, I was hired -- same kind of job, same Spadina neighbourhood, slightly better pay.

It's been a stressful transition. Coming off of the rough-and-tumble pace of a film studio, the calm, polite, professional environment of a small architecture film has been...well...eerie. Stan, my old boss at the record store, chimed in with one of his usually-brilliant analogies: "You're like one of those kids who's been raised by wolves and now you've been cleaned up, set at the dinner table and you don't know which fork to use. You'll be fine!" Thanks, Stan! (I think)

Excuse number four:
MISCELLANEOUS THINGS -- LITERALLY

So aside from the dog, the boyfriend, the new job, what could be keeping me away from my blog writing? Writing where I get paid. After a few years away, I'm back in the warm busom of fab magazine after the new editor called me out of the blue and asked if I could be persuaded to take on the dreaded "Misc. Things" column.

Every two weeks, fab reaches into its box of odd products sent to us by corporations hungry for press and we find a gay community personality to try it out. The nice thing about it (aside from the adorable little paycheck) is that I don't have to plug anything that's crap -- if the product sucks, we say so -- and that I get to interview interesting, offbeat people. In the last three months, the column has featured
-- a martini lounge bartender testing a 'smoothie' blender
-- an Ontario tourism lobbyist testing an online spa booking service
-- a 'sexological bodyworker' testing an oil-based lubricant
-- "Enza Supermodel" testing a fabric refresher
-- a pair of drag kings testing Nivea Aftershave Balm for Men
-- a sleep-deprived writer/actor testing an ergonomic pillow

It's been mostly fun and has happily allowed me to build up the kind of writer-editor relationship I've longed for. Steven trusts my ideas, throws new ones back at me, tells me when my work is junk and praises me when it's clicking. It's a terrific back-and-forth thing we've got going and it's leading to bigger, non-product-shilling pieces (like the Catholic priest one -- more on that later). fab is often dismissed as a pointless little gay rag but it's MY pointless little gay rag, dammit! Let's see what this baby can do...

Excuse number zero:
KEEPING UP WITH THE JAMESES

And there you have it -- over 2000 words that I could've typed in four: I'm a lazy ass. But really, I've only written about 700 words for each month which is nothing, right? Now that I'm in back in a groove, I've got to get back at this -- not only have I lost my two fans but Darrell has nearly given up on me, Josh is concerned that I let the death of Don Knotts pass without comment (Janet had dinner with him a few years ago and says he was one of the sweetest people she'd met) and James simply went off and started his own blog! Dainty Bastard looks great and thrillingly captures my friend's wild, brilliant and slightly terrifying personality. He's raised the bar (Dainty Bastard, indeed!) so it looks like I'm back on the job!

Labels: Canada, Doctor Who, fab, friends, George W Bush, oh l'amour, Tegan the Jack Russell Terrorist

Dear Jack Layton,

Canada is now operating without a federal government. We can tell. I was opening a jar of pasta sauce when I felt the tremor run through my soul. Or maybe it was the garlic.

After grappling with the (sort of) ruling Liberals for months now, you and the NDP have jumped into bed with Stephen Harper's Tories to topple the government. Let me ask you Jack (may I call you Jack?), is this wise?

Stephen Harper behaves as though Canadians have just now realized that the Liberals have been in power too long and become shifty and arrogant, to which the public can only say, "Duh!" We know they're weasels -- that's why we handed them a minority government not even a year and a half ago. It was the voters' way of saying, "We completely dislike and distrust you but you're still a better choice than the other losers." I paraphrase, of course.

The thought of a Tory government back in power gives me hives, especially after Mike Harris gutted this province (who knew Common Sense cost $5.6 billion?) and as Stephen Harper continues his Ahab-worthy obsession with gay marriage. When you see him in Ottawa, Jack, does he talk about anything else? I know you mean well but how can you allow this guy anywhere near Sussex Drive? The way he carries on, I think he's desperate to redecorate.

But enough about Harper, let's talk about you. Both you and your lovely wife, Olivia, have been hard-working, popular fixtures in Toronto politics but you're not running for Mayor, you're running for Prime Minister. Despite your charming media-whore tendencies, the rest of the country still hasn't a clue who you are.

Worse yet, the few who do still hold a grudge from the last time your party ran the show in Ontario, fifteen years ago. A recent Rabble forum asked the still-pertinent question, "How did the NDP tick Ontarians off?" My guess is that it was Bob Rae's unique ability to piss off both big business AND unions. Personally, I think he was on to something, playing to the middle (am I right, Bill Clinton?) but Rae didn't end up with the 'Voted Most Popular' yearbook page. The NDP may have created Canada's healthcare system but it seems that, for the general public, they blew their chance fifteen years ago.

I know -- I don't get it either but then again, you're bringing down a government for the kind of financial grifting that most people assume goes on regardless of who's in power. Meanwhile, our friends to the south have a government that lies, steals, blunders, slanders, tortures and kills yet the American people seem confident indeed that it'll all work out. Politics is an unfair business.

Yes, Jack, you've got your work cut out for you and the shadow of Tommy Douglas is a long one indeed. But you've got me in your corner and, I suspect, millions of other Canadians who want smart, honest people in their government. Be that person, Jack, and let us know what we can do to help.

Labels: Canada, Stephen Harper, Trawna

We've had wild weather in Toronto this week -- severe winds on Sunday, a massive thunderstorm yesterday at lunch -- but who knew that Hamilton would get the tornado? We're still not sure is was a tornado proper but, hey, if it rips the roof of a school, I'm willing to call it one.

I called my friend Tara as soon as I heard and she told me that only Hamilton's 'mountain' was truly affected (so mother, sister, niece -- all fine). I got on the phone to the family living up there but kept getting a machine. Worrisome. I finally called my aunt who lives somewhat close to them and she too said things were okay and that I shouldn't worry. I'll try again tonight.

The stretch between Barrie and Sarnia has been referred to as "Ontario's tornado belt." The only one I recall in my hometown touched down in the late seventies. I remember being in school when, almost instantly, the sky outside turned a grey dark enough to be called black. We crowded around the windows, watching day turn to night, as the school PA began calling everyone to assemble in the gym. Some kids were afraid but most of us were just too interested in it all for terror to set it. I've tried to keep that mindset since.

The only question that remains is why -- what did Hamilton do to deserve a tornado? After the year of terrifying weather we've endured, we need some perspective on it all. We need a journalist like CNN's Wolf Blitzer:

Biblical proportions again. The tsunami, the hurricanes and now the South Asia earthquake, why some see signs the end of days may be near.

Sodom. Gommorah. New Orleans. Hamilton.
It all makes sense now!

Labels: Canada, friends