Over at the Fug Nation HQ, the girls have been dilligently monitoring George Clooney's progress from smirking, terrible Batman to fox. How apropos that the Cloons, who is known by the people who know these things, as a foxy kind of guy, is now playing a real fox. Even better, he's doing it in a Wes Anderson-directed adaptation of Roald Dahl's book The Fantastic Mr. Fox, thus bringing together three of my favourite pop-culture creating men. Clooney, Anderson, Dahl: The CAD! Wait, that sounds weird. We'll figure out their sassy acronym later.
Let's take them one at a time, shall we? Clooney, being the biggest star for the older-than-twelve set (Dahl being the biggest star in the under-twelve set, of course), used to annoy the living daylights out of me. Remember when ER was huge and George Clooney was starring in those dippy romantic comedies that aren't really all that funny? Yeah, that was annoying, wasn't it? Right around the time of Three Kings, though, something switched. El Clooneria has made an interesting late-career choice to go funny and political, and that movie was the first flick of his that won me over. Since then, he's gone on to star in several Coen productions - generally a win, in my books - and usually plays disgruntled soldiers, bank robbers, or other unsavories. In fact, looking over Clooney's resume since the mid-'90s, there have been few straight shooters; he loves a loopy morality. Maybe playing Batman did something to him after all.
Wes Anderson can also be sort of a hit-or-miss enterprise. His films are generally precious, sometimes working and sometimes not so much. I loved The Royal Tenenbaums, because it's required by law for people under thirty to love it and identify fiercely with one or more of it's characters. (I'm a Margot, thanks for asking, although I aspire to one day be an Etheline.) Same with Rushmore, which perfectly captured the insecurities and arrogance of high school love. Some of Anderson's later works have been...uneven, especially the oddly paced and highly affected Life Aquatic, which wasn't all that good. But I do admire his aesthetic sense, because everything onscreen seems to have a story. His liveliest movies are practically three-dimensional; his flimsiest can barely muster one.
And then we have Roald Dahl. I'll be honest - those illustrations used to scare the crap out of me. Especially those for The Witches, which I read on vacation (in a cottage with strange closets) and which terrified me. His books balance whimsy with sheer pant-shitting scariness, often with bright children fighting off awful adults. I read a piece in the Globe recently about how Dahl wooed children's imaginations by writing about their suspicions that adults are nothing more than overgrown, beastly children, more like than not imbued with power and strength they use only for evil. As a current adult, it's not a flattering portrait, but hey - he called 'em like he see'd 'em. The best adults in Dahl's worlds are crafty, caring and educational: they teach their young charges that the world is going to try to mess with them, and the best ways to mess with the world right back.
So. To combine these three incandescent people into one project, the recently-released Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is plus animation and a lovely warm colour scheme, and which is a children's movie, which I also enjoy (yeah, I know), and those whole thing just seems ripe with the fruits of potential amazingness. I'm not going to oversell it to myself - I learned my lesson with the heartbreakingly mediocre Life Aquatic, thanks - but I do want to see it. Movies that inspire, books that move mountains, children who grow up to be George Clooney...it's a serious case of the warm 'n' fuzzies over here.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Bus Stopped
Disclaimer: in no way am I saying that the people who live, work, make sexy times and raise families in the following places are bad people. I am credulous of their eyesight, but the residents of these places are, I'm sure, fine people with some sort of mass ocular disorder that prevents them from seeing the truth.
Which is: Kitchener is a total dump.
Oh, there are lovely pockets of the town. Whatever this is happens to be kind of pretty, in a what's-your-point sort of way. But vast stretches of the landscape are both really unattractive and vaguely offensive, as though the municipal government has thrown its hands in the air and said, "The hell with it, we're moving to Cambridge."
Take, for example, the bus station. It's totally groady, with the filthiest escalator I've ever seen. Think it's weird that I noticed a dirty escalator? This thing is disgusting. The whole building gives me the heeby-jeebies. Bus stations, as a rule, aren't known for their glorious architecture, but Kitchener's seems disreputable; if the building was a person, it would be seedily hanging around on a corner, trying to sell you watches from the lining of its coat. It's ingrained right down to its commuter bar ("Transfers," natch) and the fact that you have to buy Greyhound tickets on the platforms, as in not with the standard issue ticket-counter set up that is, you know, official looking. They keep the tickets in one of those Thermos lunch bags, as though the tickets need some sort of heat engineering. The whole thing seems unorthodox, and possibly illegal.
Taking the bus through Kitchener is one of those OMG-what-is-this-place deals. All the restaurants located in strip malls; the entire city seems to be housed in car dealerships. If aliens landed in beautiful downtown Kitchener, they would assume that humanity is powered, not by the sun, but by painful fluoresent tubes and pad thai. Across the street from the bus station, there is a tattoo parlour - nay, a former tattoo parlour, since it appaears to have gone out of business some time ago - named "Stray Katz." That's terrible.
This type of endemic ugliness isn't native to Kitchener's soil. It infects all kinds of small cities - Kitchener, along with Saskatoon and Burnaby, is home to about 200,000 people - especially places with an impverished downtown core and seeping sprawl along the outer rim. The downtown kind of looks like one of those "flea markets" that sell Confederate-flag bandanas and bootleg DVDs, and the sprawl is filled with big-box stores and Galactus-sized movie theatres.
I'm not demanding that Kitchener suddenly thrust a fat wad of cash into its downtown. It could start small - like the bus station, which is the pits, and unfortunately one of the transit hubs (and therefor public faces) of the city. Maybe small cities need to be more aware of their zoning outlook. Sure, Costco et al brings jobs into the area...but what kind of jobs? Low-paying, vest-wearing jobs that people need to drive to. It's kind of a losing situation all around.
Anyway, I'm just venting. I'll continue to travel through Kitchener, since it's a spoke on my wheel o' travel. I just wish the time spent there was just a little prettier to see.
Which is: Kitchener is a total dump.
Oh, there are lovely pockets of the town. Whatever this is happens to be kind of pretty, in a what's-your-point sort of way. But vast stretches of the landscape are both really unattractive and vaguely offensive, as though the municipal government has thrown its hands in the air and said, "The hell with it, we're moving to Cambridge."
Take, for example, the bus station. It's totally groady, with the filthiest escalator I've ever seen. Think it's weird that I noticed a dirty escalator? This thing is disgusting. The whole building gives me the heeby-jeebies. Bus stations, as a rule, aren't known for their glorious architecture, but Kitchener's seems disreputable; if the building was a person, it would be seedily hanging around on a corner, trying to sell you watches from the lining of its coat. It's ingrained right down to its commuter bar ("Transfers," natch) and the fact that you have to buy Greyhound tickets on the platforms, as in not with the standard issue ticket-counter set up that is, you know, official looking. They keep the tickets in one of those Thermos lunch bags, as though the tickets need some sort of heat engineering. The whole thing seems unorthodox, and possibly illegal.
Taking the bus through Kitchener is one of those OMG-what-is-this-place deals. All the restaurants located in strip malls; the entire city seems to be housed in car dealerships. If aliens landed in beautiful downtown Kitchener, they would assume that humanity is powered, not by the sun, but by painful fluoresent tubes and pad thai. Across the street from the bus station, there is a tattoo parlour - nay, a former tattoo parlour, since it appaears to have gone out of business some time ago - named "Stray Katz." That's terrible.
This type of endemic ugliness isn't native to Kitchener's soil. It infects all kinds of small cities - Kitchener, along with Saskatoon and Burnaby, is home to about 200,000 people - especially places with an impverished downtown core and seeping sprawl along the outer rim. The downtown kind of looks like one of those "flea markets" that sell Confederate-flag bandanas and bootleg DVDs, and the sprawl is filled with big-box stores and Galactus-sized movie theatres.
I'm not demanding that Kitchener suddenly thrust a fat wad of cash into its downtown. It could start small - like the bus station, which is the pits, and unfortunately one of the transit hubs (and therefor public faces) of the city. Maybe small cities need to be more aware of their zoning outlook. Sure, Costco et al brings jobs into the area...but what kind of jobs? Low-paying, vest-wearing jobs that people need to drive to. It's kind of a losing situation all around.
Anyway, I'm just venting. I'll continue to travel through Kitchener, since it's a spoke on my wheel o' travel. I just wish the time spent there was just a little prettier to see.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Procrastination Is A...Wait For It....
End-of-term anxiety is a tough monster to beat. I, of course, am a total procrastinator, and as such, consistently ruin my own life every four months. I think this is one of the curses of the smart kids - I was going to be modest, but at this late hour, why bother? - because we're told for a number of years that we're awesome. And then we get farted out into a university system that doesn't care about our awesome sparkly specialness. It's demoralizing. I'm demoralized. I'm bummed.
In high school, at least your teachers talk to each other. This can be a drag for that one kid who started a garbage can fire in the first week of grade nine, and is now branded (probably not unreasonably) "a troublemaker." For the rest of us non-pyromaniacal peeps, however, the interteacher convos can be kind of nice: teachers know what's up. In university, I've had to go, sick as a dog, to a bunch of classes to explain why my feverish flush is not the result of some hot-for-teacher crush but a medically terrible day. Or explain that, since I've just returned from a funeral, my mind had wandered off the upcoming assignment. Things like that - things that make me feel like a jerk who's somehow let them down.
Even more frustrating is the sense that, since I'm paying gobsmacking amounts of cash to be there, the more prickly teachers are such pricks. I've had debates about whether or not post-secondary should be free. As a current student, and one who is interested in not graduating with an assload of debt, I'm firmly on the "yup" side of that debate. Making it free would also sort of justify the jerkiness of the system as a whole: at least when I'm peeved about a lousy mark that I worked for, at least I'm not also annoyed that said lousy mark cost me a couple hundred bucks to earn.
To be fair, most of my lousy marks don't come from some stray teacher holding a bullet with my name on it; they're a result of my deeply ingrained tendency to procrastinate. I'm not lazy (well, I'm not really lazy), but I am a perfectionist. I tend to rationalize my procrastination by saying, "Well, if I had really put in the effort, I'd have done a bang-up job...but this is good enough, since I did all my work for the term in seven hours. Now, let's all drink a beer." It's not so good for the soul. Or, actually, the liver. But I would say mostly the soul.
Even if I know why I procrastinate, it doesn't make it any easier to stop doing it. I resent when people tell me to man up and get to work, because that's about as effective as commanding my hair to stop growing. It's just a part of who am I. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out a system that allows me to thrive with the procrastination/perfectionism dyad that wrecks me so hard...especially since all my I'm-smart confidence goes right out the window once I'm deeply into a late, sure-to-be-horrible project.
Fortunately, as the song suggests, big wheels keep on turning (turnin'!), and this Proud Mary keeps on burning (burnin'!), and the second hand keeps making its sweeps. What I'm trying to say is that time heals all procrastination wounds, since the work either gets done by the due date or it...doesn't. It usually does, and while I'm not averse to handing things in late, I like to at least offset the chance of bad lazy-work grades by getting the suckers in on time.
Still. It's hard on the soul. Not to mention the distressing trend in some of my classes to base marks on things like attendance and vocabulary terms instead of things like essays and comprehension. Because comprehension doesn't need me to actually go and spend three hours in an uncomfortable chair, listening to the deranging clickettes of a hundred laptops being typed on. I rarely write essays that are truly terrible, and I resent being told that I have to sit still and listen in order to avoid doing so in the future. Procrastination, I see you. What I need is some anticrastination. Do they make that?
In high school, at least your teachers talk to each other. This can be a drag for that one kid who started a garbage can fire in the first week of grade nine, and is now branded (probably not unreasonably) "a troublemaker." For the rest of us non-pyromaniacal peeps, however, the interteacher convos can be kind of nice: teachers know what's up. In university, I've had to go, sick as a dog, to a bunch of classes to explain why my feverish flush is not the result of some hot-for-teacher crush but a medically terrible day. Or explain that, since I've just returned from a funeral, my mind had wandered off the upcoming assignment. Things like that - things that make me feel like a jerk who's somehow let them down.
Even more frustrating is the sense that, since I'm paying gobsmacking amounts of cash to be there, the more prickly teachers are such pricks. I've had debates about whether or not post-secondary should be free. As a current student, and one who is interested in not graduating with an assload of debt, I'm firmly on the "yup" side of that debate. Making it free would also sort of justify the jerkiness of the system as a whole: at least when I'm peeved about a lousy mark that I worked for, at least I'm not also annoyed that said lousy mark cost me a couple hundred bucks to earn.
To be fair, most of my lousy marks don't come from some stray teacher holding a bullet with my name on it; they're a result of my deeply ingrained tendency to procrastinate. I'm not lazy (well, I'm not really lazy), but I am a perfectionist. I tend to rationalize my procrastination by saying, "Well, if I had really put in the effort, I'd have done a bang-up job...but this is good enough, since I did all my work for the term in seven hours. Now, let's all drink a beer." It's not so good for the soul. Or, actually, the liver. But I would say mostly the soul.
Even if I know why I procrastinate, it doesn't make it any easier to stop doing it. I resent when people tell me to man up and get to work, because that's about as effective as commanding my hair to stop growing. It's just a part of who am I. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out a system that allows me to thrive with the procrastination/perfectionism dyad that wrecks me so hard...especially since all my I'm-smart confidence goes right out the window once I'm deeply into a late, sure-to-be-horrible project.
Fortunately, as the song suggests, big wheels keep on turning (turnin'!), and this Proud Mary keeps on burning (burnin'!), and the second hand keeps making its sweeps. What I'm trying to say is that time heals all procrastination wounds, since the work either gets done by the due date or it...doesn't. It usually does, and while I'm not averse to handing things in late, I like to at least offset the chance of bad lazy-work grades by getting the suckers in on time.
Still. It's hard on the soul. Not to mention the distressing trend in some of my classes to base marks on things like attendance and vocabulary terms instead of things like essays and comprehension. Because comprehension doesn't need me to actually go and spend three hours in an uncomfortable chair, listening to the deranging clickettes of a hundred laptops being typed on. I rarely write essays that are truly terrible, and I resent being told that I have to sit still and listen in order to avoid doing so in the future. Procrastination, I see you. What I need is some anticrastination. Do they make that?
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Secret Pleasures
Living alone has its benefits, not least of which is the chance to be as naked as possible as frequently as possible. (Another is peeing with the bathroom door open, but this really isn't going to be about bodily functions, I swear. But it is nice.) But the best thing about living alone is the chance to indulge in all the secret pleasures that otherwise would need to be smothered in the interest of, you know, living in polite society.
For example: I enjoy stand-up comedy. A lot. I mean, I have seen my fair share of Just For Laughs, the seminal and usually hilarious Canadian comedy showcase out of Montreal and rerun 84 hours a week on the Comedy Network. I'll rent stand-up comedy specials by comics that other people are bored by: Jim Gaffigan, he of the Hot Pockets jokes and blinding whiteness, or Russel Peters, the it's-okay-I'm-racist-'cause-I'm-brown comic. I know these people are celebrities, but in a very particular, nerdy way. I am clearly a member of the Nerd Tribe, however, and indulge myself as such.
Anther secret pleasure I can only really enjoy alone is my huge number of baths. I am a bather. Showers? Meh, and I'm sure my friends can attest to my high score on the stinkiness battles. (Those battles are disgusting, FYI.) But baths? - baths are ridiculous. I take, like, nine a week. I think it combines some of my favourite things: hot tub-like spaces, reading, and being naked. Win-win-win.
Secret pleasures don't have to be a strictly house-bound game. One of my personal joys is dining out - or in, since the person who developed the take-out container is, in my opinion, worthy of at least a Nobel prize. Magazines are another delight, as is playing solitaire on my iPod, and playing Bad Outfit with friends while in line for the bathroom at bars. I love sequined shirts, short-shorts, graffiti, duvets, the smell of new books, really cold Coke Zeroes, petty thievery when drunk, and scoping out bikes on the street.
The thing about keeping a personal blog is, some of those secret pleasures aren't so secret any more. I write a lot about myself and my interests - hey, as your high school English teacher probably taught, write what you know (they probably also taught you about Freytag's Pyramid, which you heard about 95 times in fours years of high school, never knowing the name, until it was reintroduced amongst great internal groaning in your totally horrible Fantasy and Horror class in university and you were docked marks for forgetting the name of the Pyramid, which, frankly, never seemed all that important until said marks were docked, provoking a great gnashing of teeth and rumpusing of spirit, because seriously, that class was frustrating and gave you the first C- you had recieved in, like, three years, which is totally stupid because you're practially a professional English major at this point. Maybe this didn't happen to you specifically. Maybe another secret pleasure I have is hyperbole. There are a lot of hypotheticals going on here), and what I know is myself. If I knew a lot about ancient Egypt, say, or animal husbandry, I'd write about those. As it stands, I'm not totally clear on what animal husbandry is. I'm pretty sure it's not dressing up livestock in formalwear, but that's what I think of. Every time.
While the people who fought in World War Two are known, not without their own sense of the hyperbolic, as "The Greatest Generation," I would posit that people who are currently living and breathing and, for the most part, not fighting off the Red Commies or what-have-you, might be known as "The Indulgent Generation." Oh, I'm not indicting anyone but myself. The Craig Kielburgers of the world aside, my peers and I are a pretty self-obsessed. I might make the argument that our technologies have allowed us to monitor ourselves with ever-increasing levels of mania, but that's more of a symptom than a disease. We love to talk about ourselves.
Okay, maybe not as much as the alleged Me Generation, whose pop-culture legacy, despite having great sports apparel and hilarious moustaches, consists pretty much of Classic Rock and the invention of cocaine - sometimes both at once. Or Generation X, which incorporated the medicalization of every known personality failure into their self-obsession. People who are jerks do not have "Oppositional Defiant Disorder." They're just jerks. My generation loves to blab: we twitter, update our statuses, and overshare to the max. We're so good at telling each other way too much that "TMI" has become a standard phrase, like NASA, or DTMFA.
Our secret pleasures? Not so secret. I propose a thought exercise: search your brainpan for one thing you've never told anyone you enjoy. Masturbating outdoors? Dipping your fingers into barrels of dried beans? Vintage slides starring your parents in their awkward honeymoon phase? Paper-mache? The feeling of fresh, fluffy towels? Dusting your television set? Static electricity? Whatever it is, think on. Turn it over in your head. The word "mull" is appropriate for the activity I'm describing. Now, take that secret pleasure and never tell anyone. Save it; make it just for you. Don't update anything or take a picture. Preserve a little something that makes you happy in a weird, fleeting way. Your secret pleasures may change through the years, but the ability to keep something secret should last a lifetime.
For example: I enjoy stand-up comedy. A lot. I mean, I have seen my fair share of Just For Laughs, the seminal and usually hilarious Canadian comedy showcase out of Montreal and rerun 84 hours a week on the Comedy Network. I'll rent stand-up comedy specials by comics that other people are bored by: Jim Gaffigan, he of the Hot Pockets jokes and blinding whiteness, or Russel Peters, the it's-okay-I'm-racist-'cause-I'm-brown comic. I know these people are celebrities, but in a very particular, nerdy way. I am clearly a member of the Nerd Tribe, however, and indulge myself as such.
Anther secret pleasure I can only really enjoy alone is my huge number of baths. I am a bather. Showers? Meh, and I'm sure my friends can attest to my high score on the stinkiness battles. (Those battles are disgusting, FYI.) But baths? - baths are ridiculous. I take, like, nine a week. I think it combines some of my favourite things: hot tub-like spaces, reading, and being naked. Win-win-win.
Secret pleasures don't have to be a strictly house-bound game. One of my personal joys is dining out - or in, since the person who developed the take-out container is, in my opinion, worthy of at least a Nobel prize. Magazines are another delight, as is playing solitaire on my iPod, and playing Bad Outfit with friends while in line for the bathroom at bars. I love sequined shirts, short-shorts, graffiti, duvets, the smell of new books, really cold Coke Zeroes, petty thievery when drunk, and scoping out bikes on the street.
The thing about keeping a personal blog is, some of those secret pleasures aren't so secret any more. I write a lot about myself and my interests - hey, as your high school English teacher probably taught, write what you know (they probably also taught you about Freytag's Pyramid, which you heard about 95 times in fours years of high school, never knowing the name, until it was reintroduced amongst great internal groaning in your totally horrible Fantasy and Horror class in university and you were docked marks for forgetting the name of the Pyramid, which, frankly, never seemed all that important until said marks were docked, provoking a great gnashing of teeth and rumpusing of spirit, because seriously, that class was frustrating and gave you the first C- you had recieved in, like, three years, which is totally stupid because you're practially a professional English major at this point. Maybe this didn't happen to you specifically. Maybe another secret pleasure I have is hyperbole. There are a lot of hypotheticals going on here), and what I know is myself. If I knew a lot about ancient Egypt, say, or animal husbandry, I'd write about those. As it stands, I'm not totally clear on what animal husbandry is. I'm pretty sure it's not dressing up livestock in formalwear, but that's what I think of. Every time.
While the people who fought in World War Two are known, not without their own sense of the hyperbolic, as "The Greatest Generation," I would posit that people who are currently living and breathing and, for the most part, not fighting off the Red Commies or what-have-you, might be known as "The Indulgent Generation." Oh, I'm not indicting anyone but myself. The Craig Kielburgers of the world aside, my peers and I are a pretty self-obsessed. I might make the argument that our technologies have allowed us to monitor ourselves with ever-increasing levels of mania, but that's more of a symptom than a disease. We love to talk about ourselves.
Okay, maybe not as much as the alleged Me Generation, whose pop-culture legacy, despite having great sports apparel and hilarious moustaches, consists pretty much of Classic Rock and the invention of cocaine - sometimes both at once. Or Generation X, which incorporated the medicalization of every known personality failure into their self-obsession. People who are jerks do not have "Oppositional Defiant Disorder." They're just jerks. My generation loves to blab: we twitter, update our statuses, and overshare to the max. We're so good at telling each other way too much that "TMI" has become a standard phrase, like NASA, or DTMFA.
Our secret pleasures? Not so secret. I propose a thought exercise: search your brainpan for one thing you've never told anyone you enjoy. Masturbating outdoors? Dipping your fingers into barrels of dried beans? Vintage slides starring your parents in their awkward honeymoon phase? Paper-mache? The feeling of fresh, fluffy towels? Dusting your television set? Static electricity? Whatever it is, think on. Turn it over in your head. The word "mull" is appropriate for the activity I'm describing. Now, take that secret pleasure and never tell anyone. Save it; make it just for you. Don't update anything or take a picture. Preserve a little something that makes you happy in a weird, fleeting way. Your secret pleasures may change through the years, but the ability to keep something secret should last a lifetime.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Plan for the Future
Man, I am just nerding out a little vis-a-vis all this New Urbanism that Toronto is grooving on. I went to class today and this Charles Campbell fellow was talking about all the ways his citizens group is trying to mess with the new development along West Queen West. Having tried, for last three years, to squeeze blood from a stone re: housing, money, power, respect for our little housing co-op that could, it was super gratifying to hear of even modest successes in the fight against the glass tower'd landscape that's infecting Toronto the Good's downtown core. Plus, with the Richard Florida interview in the last issue of Spacing talks about how, while LA has film and New York has - what? everything, I guess - Toronto has this rep as a burgeoning proponent of the New Urbanism school of thought that makes me gleeful.
New Urbanism, for the unconcerned or ignorant, is a school of thought that basically prioritizes residents (those of who work, live, move and shop within the city walls) over the concerns of things like cars - which led to the ultimately defeated Spadina Expressway proposal - or the fake-landed-gentry, big lawn, big garage, total bullcorn that leads to projects like, oh, all of suburbia. It likes its architecture modestly futuristic, its foodstuffs local, and its streets walkable. New Urbanism is not without its detractors - there are problems with how much it costs to integrate all the expensive facets of NU into a workable site (you know how transit systems cost money? Yeah) - but it's really captured the imaginations of a generation of regional planners, city councillors, and urban dwellers.
The nice thing about this moment in urban design is that Toronto's been leading the guard for a while. Ever since Jane Jacobs blew a raspberry at New York City and started working in Toronto, we've had a smug little cachet of people who have claimed her as a personal saviour. While Jane Jacobs did not, in fact, save lives, she was huge in the 1970s in putting the stop-work order on a variety of ill-advised projects (the aforementioned Spadina Expressway), as well as ones that, in hindsight, might have been a case of good idea/bad timing. In any case, much like a reverse Michael J. Fox, Canadians got to gloat over an American made good on our turf.
Despite the recent uglification of some of Toronto's downtown (ROM? OCAD? AGO? BARF.), during which Borgian structures have had their way with unassuming older buildings, there's also been a real effort to promote Toronto as a city people can actually, you know, live in. Section 37 projects, which trade a developer's desire for more height/units/penile surrogates for community benefits like low-income housing, parks, libraries, and so on. While it's sort of lame that the city isn't funding those projects themselves, I'll takes what I can gets. Section 37 brings subsidized housing to the downtown core, parks to the financial district, and, maybe someday, waterslides to the elderly.
Even if I wander off the road labelled "urban planner" in favour of the path labelled "co-op developer" or the trail of breadcrumbs through the underbrush called "writer," it's exciting to live in a city where community design is something the community actually talks about. With the advent of Spacing (full disclosure: I'm doing an internship there), a network of active and chirruping neighbourhood associations, and an explosion of development in the past ten or fifteen years, Toronto has a chance to create a space for itself on the world stage as a leader in best-practice consideration while it develops its communities and businesses. Man, it's going to be exciting to watch Toronto either shine or fail. I vote shine.
New Urbanism, for the unconcerned or ignorant, is a school of thought that basically prioritizes residents (those of who work, live, move and shop within the city walls) over the concerns of things like cars - which led to the ultimately defeated Spadina Expressway proposal - or the fake-landed-gentry, big lawn, big garage, total bullcorn that leads to projects like, oh, all of suburbia. It likes its architecture modestly futuristic, its foodstuffs local, and its streets walkable. New Urbanism is not without its detractors - there are problems with how much it costs to integrate all the expensive facets of NU into a workable site (you know how transit systems cost money? Yeah) - but it's really captured the imaginations of a generation of regional planners, city councillors, and urban dwellers.
The nice thing about this moment in urban design is that Toronto's been leading the guard for a while. Ever since Jane Jacobs blew a raspberry at New York City and started working in Toronto, we've had a smug little cachet of people who have claimed her as a personal saviour. While Jane Jacobs did not, in fact, save lives, she was huge in the 1970s in putting the stop-work order on a variety of ill-advised projects (the aforementioned Spadina Expressway), as well as ones that, in hindsight, might have been a case of good idea/bad timing. In any case, much like a reverse Michael J. Fox, Canadians got to gloat over an American made good on our turf.
Despite the recent uglification of some of Toronto's downtown (ROM? OCAD? AGO? BARF.), during which Borgian structures have had their way with unassuming older buildings, there's also been a real effort to promote Toronto as a city people can actually, you know, live in. Section 37 projects, which trade a developer's desire for more height/units/penile surrogates for community benefits like low-income housing, parks, libraries, and so on. While it's sort of lame that the city isn't funding those projects themselves, I'll takes what I can gets. Section 37 brings subsidized housing to the downtown core, parks to the financial district, and, maybe someday, waterslides to the elderly.
Even if I wander off the road labelled "urban planner" in favour of the path labelled "co-op developer" or the trail of breadcrumbs through the underbrush called "writer," it's exciting to live in a city where community design is something the community actually talks about. With the advent of Spacing (full disclosure: I'm doing an internship there), a network of active and chirruping neighbourhood associations, and an explosion of development in the past ten or fifteen years, Toronto has a chance to create a space for itself on the world stage as a leader in best-practice consideration while it develops its communities and businesses. Man, it's going to be exciting to watch Toronto either shine or fail. I vote shine.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Friends Are Friends
It's a goofy thing to admit, but I sort of miss the Friends.
Cast your mind back, if you can, to the late 1990s. Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt were still married. Angelina Jolie was starring in such classics as Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which was one of those films that was a total WTF moment in most people's lives, if they even noticed it in the first place, which most people, to be honest, did not. There was no such thing as the critical flop and destroyer of career worlds known only as Joey. It was, as they say, a simper time.
While Friends is no ground-breaker, the series itself was charming and shockingly well-executed. The characters - dimbulb Joey, kooky Phoebe, nerdy Ross and all the others - were well developed and genuinely funny. Most women I know (the ones between 20 and 35, at least) can solidly point to one of the male Friends as their "type." Most of the dudes I know can point to all three of the female leads as being "babes." I think while most people started off as Chandler girls - he brought the funny! everyone loves the funny! - by a few seasons in, Matthew Perry had started mugging so hard you could fill him with coffee. Chandler was so easier typed that it sort of became lame. Well, lame for him: it allowed David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc to shine that much brighter. By the end, even though he was a dork, Ross was America's Favourite Dork.
Friends is one of those shows that sort of defined a generation of TV watchers. Oh, sure, Seinfeld was hilarious and off-beat and cutting edge; they played fast and loose with TV rules and rooted the show in some slightly off-kilter alternate universe. For that, they won a bajillion awards and became one of those intensely quotable shows that still shows up in daily conversation (see: master of my domain). However, I feel like, because Seinfeld was just slightly out of our world, Jerry, Elaine, and the rest of the gang were a little alien. Friends, on the other hand, peopled its universe with characters who were slightly larger than real life, and therefore imminently relatable.
If you go back in time, Friends followed a time-honoured tradition that was probably started by Gilligan's Island, honed to a fine (if mostly asinine) point by Three's Company and indelibly stamped by Cheers: they were all about friends who argue, hang out, date and make the funny. While shows like I Love Lucy, The Brady Bunch and The Simpson used the family as the driving trope, Friends made space for the self-created family, the friend group, to really shine.
While neither the show nor the genre is perfect - sitcoms, as a rule, can grate, and by the end of its 10-season run, Friends was getting a little Byzantine in its hooking-up flowchart (and, quick sidebar: what is it about flowcharts that makes them rule so hard?) - the show worked really well. The writers and the actors all knew their characters inside and out, making episodes like "The One With Ross's Teeth" sucessful as both stand-alone episode that your average person can watch on TBS with only a hazy recollection of the show, and as part of a larger narrative wherein the thrice-married Ross Gellar is unlucky in love and not a slammin' stud with the lady-types, which produces much comedy over the years.
I might be overselling the point a little, but I think that Friends is in the top five or six shows produced in the last 20-odd years. Rivalled seriously by only and Seinfeld, The Simpsons and The Office in terms of character-driven comedy, Friends was consistent, semi-sweet humour with a huge side order of relatability and humour. As such, I miss it. If that's lame, I'm fine with it: there's a lot of TV out there in the world, and I like the stuff that makes me feel good.
Cast your mind back, if you can, to the late 1990s. Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt were still married. Angelina Jolie was starring in such classics as Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which was one of those films that was a total WTF moment in most people's lives, if they even noticed it in the first place, which most people, to be honest, did not. There was no such thing as the critical flop and destroyer of career worlds known only as Joey. It was, as they say, a simper time.
While Friends is no ground-breaker, the series itself was charming and shockingly well-executed. The characters - dimbulb Joey, kooky Phoebe, nerdy Ross and all the others - were well developed and genuinely funny. Most women I know (the ones between 20 and 35, at least) can solidly point to one of the male Friends as their "type." Most of the dudes I know can point to all three of the female leads as being "babes." I think while most people started off as Chandler girls - he brought the funny! everyone loves the funny! - by a few seasons in, Matthew Perry had started mugging so hard you could fill him with coffee. Chandler was so easier typed that it sort of became lame. Well, lame for him: it allowed David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc to shine that much brighter. By the end, even though he was a dork, Ross was America's Favourite Dork.
Friends is one of those shows that sort of defined a generation of TV watchers. Oh, sure, Seinfeld was hilarious and off-beat and cutting edge; they played fast and loose with TV rules and rooted the show in some slightly off-kilter alternate universe. For that, they won a bajillion awards and became one of those intensely quotable shows that still shows up in daily conversation (see: master of my domain). However, I feel like, because Seinfeld was just slightly out of our world, Jerry, Elaine, and the rest of the gang were a little alien. Friends, on the other hand, peopled its universe with characters who were slightly larger than real life, and therefore imminently relatable.
If you go back in time, Friends followed a time-honoured tradition that was probably started by Gilligan's Island, honed to a fine (if mostly asinine) point by Three's Company and indelibly stamped by Cheers: they were all about friends who argue, hang out, date and make the funny. While shows like I Love Lucy, The Brady Bunch and The Simpson used the family as the driving trope, Friends made space for the self-created family, the friend group, to really shine.
While neither the show nor the genre is perfect - sitcoms, as a rule, can grate, and by the end of its 10-season run, Friends was getting a little Byzantine in its hooking-up flowchart (and, quick sidebar: what is it about flowcharts that makes them rule so hard?) - the show worked really well. The writers and the actors all knew their characters inside and out, making episodes like "The One With Ross's Teeth" sucessful as both stand-alone episode that your average person can watch on TBS with only a hazy recollection of the show, and as part of a larger narrative wherein the thrice-married Ross Gellar is unlucky in love and not a slammin' stud with the lady-types, which produces much comedy over the years.
I might be overselling the point a little, but I think that Friends is in the top five or six shows produced in the last 20-odd years. Rivalled seriously by only and Seinfeld, The Simpsons and The Office in terms of character-driven comedy, Friends was consistent, semi-sweet humour with a huge side order of relatability and humour. As such, I miss it. If that's lame, I'm fine with it: there's a lot of TV out there in the world, and I like the stuff that makes me feel good.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
It's A Series Of Tubes!
I am in a serious rut. Oh, sure, I've kvetched before about my apparent lack of motivation re: obsessions (although my mom rightly pointed out that I may have, ahem, fixed that), but in terms of time spent surfing the various screens, I'm losing my touch.
Oh, sure, I still love me some CSI: Someplace, especially when Eddie Cahill gets all drunk on the subway, and I'll still sit down for the old Jon Stewart and his Daily Show - a stalwart favourite since 2002 - but TV, when you only get two channels, means watching a lot of local news. The local news is always some lead story about: the dearth of/apparent unsafeness of the flu vaccine; a massive local fire; some boneheaded thing Americans are doing; a shooting. Then it's weather, sports, and a feel-good story about a local kid made good. Then I have my nap.
It's the same on the internet. I regularly read, like, three websites: Go Fug Yourself, to which I am fully and completely addicted; XKCD, which I remember to check maybe once a week; and Cracked, which, given the chance, I'll read everything they post. Dudes: this isn't enough. Wither the funny Youtube videos? Where is my addiction to online TV? How come I can't find anything new, anything fresh, anything that hold my interest for longer than a few months? My cultural currency is like, a peso.
I guess it's okay that I'm not totally addicted to the Next Big Thing on the internet, since I don't have an at-home connection and am loathe to spend hours in Robarts, which gives me a headache and makes me hungry. But I still feel a little out of cultural touch - it makes me wonder how I'm going to cope with I'm older. I mean, the things that grew up when I was growing up include: home computers, cell phones, digital cameras, Discmans (Discmen?), iPods that shuffle songs when you shake them, talking to your car, phones that fit inside your damned ear, hologram newscasters, and making long-distance phone calls on your computer.
Do I own any of those things? Nope. I am so technologically ill-adapted at this point, when someone hands me an iPhone, I return it and demand a phone with numbers. I can't work this shit. I have been alive for 26 years. What the hell am I going to do when I'm in my fifties? I can't drive a regular car; how I am supposed to drive my flying car?
In a way, it's a relief not to keep up with the trends; if something's really important, people will tell me about it. Like the Beyonce video that everyone spazzed about this summer. It sort of clears the path of all the look-at-me crap that's out there competing on 456 different channels and a zillion websites. With a DVD player, a stereo system and a land line, we can figure it all out, and still have time for a nap.
Oh, sure, I still love me some CSI: Someplace, especially when Eddie Cahill gets all drunk on the subway, and I'll still sit down for the old Jon Stewart and his Daily Show - a stalwart favourite since 2002 - but TV, when you only get two channels, means watching a lot of local news. The local news is always some lead story about: the dearth of/apparent unsafeness of the flu vaccine; a massive local fire; some boneheaded thing Americans are doing; a shooting. Then it's weather, sports, and a feel-good story about a local kid made good. Then I have my nap.
It's the same on the internet. I regularly read, like, three websites: Go Fug Yourself, to which I am fully and completely addicted; XKCD, which I remember to check maybe once a week; and Cracked, which, given the chance, I'll read everything they post. Dudes: this isn't enough. Wither the funny Youtube videos? Where is my addiction to online TV? How come I can't find anything new, anything fresh, anything that hold my interest for longer than a few months? My cultural currency is like, a peso.
I guess it's okay that I'm not totally addicted to the Next Big Thing on the internet, since I don't have an at-home connection and am loathe to spend hours in Robarts, which gives me a headache and makes me hungry. But I still feel a little out of cultural touch - it makes me wonder how I'm going to cope with I'm older. I mean, the things that grew up when I was growing up include: home computers, cell phones, digital cameras, Discmans (Discmen?), iPods that shuffle songs when you shake them, talking to your car, phones that fit inside your damned ear, hologram newscasters, and making long-distance phone calls on your computer.
Do I own any of those things? Nope. I am so technologically ill-adapted at this point, when someone hands me an iPhone, I return it and demand a phone with numbers. I can't work this shit. I have been alive for 26 years. What the hell am I going to do when I'm in my fifties? I can't drive a regular car; how I am supposed to drive my flying car?
In a way, it's a relief not to keep up with the trends; if something's really important, people will tell me about it. Like the Beyonce video that everyone spazzed about this summer. It sort of clears the path of all the look-at-me crap that's out there competing on 456 different channels and a zillion websites. With a DVD player, a stereo system and a land line, we can figure it all out, and still have time for a nap.
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