Meet my new adopted Asian child.

The Reason I love Chuck Klosterman

I have no idea what I emailed to my Prof on Saturday night. Its not my fault that no one cares about Canadian television. Seriously, it should be an indication something is wrong when you’re allowed to use course materials as all of your sources on a final research paper, because there is practically nothing printed that hasn’t been included.

And you know what, I like Canadian television. I remember moving to Massachusetts when I was ten, and flipping between MuchMusic and MTV on satellite, and thinking, despite the fact these two channels have exactly the same purpose, they’re nothing alike. Yes, MuchMusic and pretty much all Canadian is budget as shit, but it was more than a superficial difference, the whole vibe Much gave off was completely different. This was back when they had Bradford Howe and Strombo and Rick Campanelli, basically people who were more than pretty faces and actually knew what they were talking about. I mean lets face it, despite the fact Bradford Howe has quite a space carved out for him in the collective conscious of every Canadian born in the late 80s, he would have never made it on MTV. One look at those plaid pants and he would have been escorted out of the building.

And Strombo! I was watching Jay Leno the other night (granted Jay Leno will never be known as a good interviewer, nor does he host the same kind of program) and it really made me realize just how good George Stroumboulopoulos is at his job. Jay Leno couldn’t even keep up with Megan Fox. She says something about how she started modeling when she was fourteen or fifteen, and Leno’s next question is “so when did you start modeling?” Sweet Jesus Leno, what are they paying you for? Can you at least stay present? After that incident, all I notice is how detached every other interviewer is. I used to hate the set of The Hour and how Strombo would always lean towards his guest to the point where when they cut to the guest’s response, the corner of his head would be in the frame. I found it gimmicky, like they were saying “look at what an effort Strombo is making to connect with his guest! he’s almost falling off his chair!” but now it doesn’t seem so irritating, because weird posture or not, at least he’s ENGAGED. He is PAYING ATTENTION and asking RELEVANT QUESTIONS. Granted the testament to his skill is how easy he makes it look, but shouldn’t those two things be the bare minimum for someone who gets paid to talk to someone?

The problem is no one’s allowed to have opinions anymore. The media is just one big circle jerk, the shows need celebrities, and the celebrities need the shows, but they aren’t going to go on the shows if they aren’t going to come out looking good. So no one is allowed to ask anything but the most benign questions, because God forbid someone who is being payed millions of dollars to do something, have to justify why they’re there and someone else is not.

Obviously celebrities/politicians/whatever and the press have conflicting objectives, but that’s just the nature of things. I remember watching an episode of Disband where they school Dean Lickyer (I think) on the media, telling them the success of the interview is based on how many times they can drop their album release date in the span of five minutes. The same thing happens at the White House, the press corps literally has a meeting every morning and defines the key issue of the day, then tries to push that issue as hard as physically possible while avoiding the others. The difference is the news media will pry as hard as they can, while Sarah Taylor just stands there in leggings.

Its a damn shame, because the whole reason I used to watch Much (and watch shows in general) is because I wanted to know other peoples opinions. I like certain hosts and liked hearing what they had to say, even if I didn’t always agree with them. I mean even if George Stroumboulopoulos wasn’t explicitly bashing Good Charlotte, you knew he had an opinion. Today with music journalism you might as well just subscribe to an RSS feed and be done with it, because everyone is saying the same thing.

Guy LaFleur

I just got back from watching The Rocket in Quebec Cinema. Well we have fourteen minutes left, but I can’t imagine it will redeem itself in that little time, so let’s just continue.

I was cringing throughout the past two hours.

Yes. Quebec loves the Habs and Toronto loves the Leafs and if my experience watching the season opener, where the (alcohol fueled) shit-talking escalated to physical violence, was an indicator of anything, these opinions are held very strongly.

The film was made in Quebec. Obviously its going to be imbued with some nationalist sentiment. I can even see why they’d want to use the Canadiens struggle in an English speaking league as an allegory for Quebec’s oppression by Anglo Canada (honestly I think its more Anglo business owners, not Anglo Canada, but whatever.) But for the love of God the duality was taken to a ridiculous level. I’m sure you can make the case that Richard’s Quebecois identity made him a better hockey player (how coming from a poor Quebec town made him hard working, whatever) but he was not a good hockey player because he’s from Quebec. I mean dear God, look at half the NHL.

What’s more is the filmmakers depicted him as just so damn melancholy throughout the film. I mean sweet Jesus, Charles Binamé, are you really saying you believe Maurice Richard was just so depressed about being kept down by whitey that he couldn’t even crack a smile when he broke Malone’s record? Because that’s what happened in the film. I mean they broke the relationship between Anglophones and Francophones into causality. There were so many scenes that went like this:

Random English-speaking hockey player: You damn dirty Frenchman!
Announcer: HOLY SHIT MAURICE RICHARD JUST SCORED 21 GOALS.

A player would refer to him as “pea soup” and Richard would suddenly gain the power of 10,000 men. No doubt Maurice Richard’s crusade to change the league was positive, but to make it seem like everything bad that was happening to him was solely because he was from Quebec, and that none of the discrimination was happening to anyone else, is ridiculous. Honestly, the way I see it, is just like public figures give away any ability to sue for libel, you’ve got to figure getting chirped, and that someone might go after race as part of that overall chirping strategy, is part of the game. I guess what bothered me is not so much that he fought against racism (I mean honestly, who the fuck is pro-racism?) but that he expressed such shock every time someone made a racist comment. Like who the fuck are you? Have you never played sports before?

Then there’s this whole thing where Richard gives an interview in English and his English is bad, and the paper calls him stupid. As if this doesn’t happen to every non-English speaker in a public position. Alex Ovechkin looks positively retarded in every interview he gives. Maybe this is because of his lack of English fluency, maybe its not (I mean Sidney Crosby doesn’t seem any more intelligent,) I don’t know. You want to give an interview in French, fine. One of the characters says it himself! “If they talk to us in English, we respond in English.” Then why not stop. I’m Anglo-Canadian, you want to have them dub that shit, fine by me. Give me some subtitles, I don’t care. Just stop acting like its somehow an act to keep the French down, and start blaming the networks, or yourselves, or the whole lazy non-reading North American culture.

Or at least don’t reveal your own hypocrisy. In one scene Richard writes an article disparaging the league’s commissioner in French. Cut to the commissioner holding up the paper yelling “Damnit! Get me someone who reads French!” like an idiot. How can you mock Anglophones for not being able to speak French, then turn around and say our inability to speak English should have absolutely no effect on your perception of us whatsoever?

Ugh. I mean obviously its hard for me, coming from a position where I’ve never seen Quebeckers being treated as second-class citizens and where everyone I knows feelings towards Quebec have at worst, been neutral, its hard to grasp what the gravity of the situation must have been at the time, but my GOD, reducing Quebec’s entire struggle to the binary between French and English, and Anglo-North America and Quebec, and the extent to which Binamé sought to make that relationship clear, was fucking ridiculous.

Fake Plastic Trees

Just came back from the Rainforest Café, the site of Alyssa’s/everyone’s birthday extravaganza. Apparently everyone in my family is born in November. Holy fuck I hate the Rainforest Café. I’m shameless in my love of theme restaurants, theme parks, theme parties, anything where you or your waitress has to dress up in the presence of animatronic monkeys, but the Rainforest Café fucking sucks. Why should I (really my uncle) have to pay $13 for some limp dick chicken sandwich that doesn’t come with fries, and for my thirty-something safari gear clad server to fuck up 9 out of 10 orders (Alex is five and had a children’s pizza on a little plastic plate, the only reason she was capable of matching the two, I’m quite sure.) Seriously its no wonder they are (were?) nearly bankrupt. And don’t give me any shit, Rainforest Café, about how price gauging is necessary to upkeep your plastic jungle. That robotic crocodile and all those Michael’s Craft Super Store vines are a one time purchase, and those matching polyester Steve Irwin bermuda shorts and button ups cannot be that expensive.

 

I promise

I will cease to be so boring soon.

Run to the hills.

I fucking hate Perez Hilton. If I’m going to kill time reading about people I don’t care about, then I at least want to read something with a little creative flair, you know, a little personality a la Michael K/Todd/Jesus Martinez/anyone who passed grade 9 english. Chronicling the lives of celebrities is not serious business, so it just pisses me off when people like Perez approach it with major ego and zero sense of humor. I want my bloggers to use celebrities as pre-made characters for a semi-fictional novel (I guess I’m an advocate of the Augusten Burroughs school of Journalism?), since its not like anyone can approach detailing their lives with any accuracy to begin with.

However, I check Perez like 90 times a day because for whatever reason, he always reports on shitty Canadian celebrity gossip that NO ONE else on the internet (besides that metrosexual fucktard Zack Taylor) ever covers.

Which is where I just got MY FAVOURITE TIDBIT EVER.

Deryck Whibley + Hanna Beth = ♥

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Please say there’s someone else out there who spent way too much time on the internet at sixteen that knows Hanna Beth. You know, the slightly more coherent, slightly less dedicated Audrey Kitching.I’m not exactly sure why this is so funny to me besides the fact its like two bizarre worlds colliding. Neither of them should have existed past 2006. They breached the space time continuum. Her illegitimate x. diet coke x. myspace x. sidekick x. gloomy bear fame, and his 2002 number band (+ time bonus from a celebrity marriage) fame have potentially merged.

Bonsoir

Man, fuck Nuit Blanche. It failed me twice, so last night I gleefully abstained. Kicked off the night by drinking flat diet coke in my living room and watching the Leafs get fucked up the ass by the Caps. I guess I didn’t fully meet my goal of avoiding shitty video installations etc. because we watched the CN Tower fail to fully sync up with CIUT from our deck. Kind of a sick idea, using those much bemoaned LED lights as a visualizer, and I support any (much needed) advertising that non-engineering shit at U of T gets, but that exhibit did not last all night by any stretch.

After getting bored with the lights and the Leafs loosing we all went to Futures because it would ensure a smooth transition between eating our faces off and getting drunk, since we would only have to move 15 feet to get to Lab for $3 tequila night. Ended up making a detour to this Leafs swag van they had set up outside the Brunny where Geoff stole me a flag. While carrying it into Lab I got shit from the bouncer for having a Leafs flag but an American ID? Because that’s somehow my fault? No idea. Drank a bunch of sangria, listened to them play the Ghostbusters theme song and covers of “My Boyfriend’s Back,” then went home and made peanut butter toast and watched the Leafs loose a second time during the replay.

I stand by my choices. I’d rather listen to shitty music and watch the Leafs loose multiple times than go to Nuit Blanche, as long as there is free shit and decent food involved.

Cry Baby

Obama calling Kanye West a jackass is like the real life equivalent of Radiohead calling Scott Tenorman “the most uncool kid they’ve ever met.”

The 5 Rules of Being Adrian

So Edgefest was Saturday. I didn’t take any pictures of the bands because by the time Alexisonfire came on the crowd was so packed I couldn’t move let alone pull my camera out of the bottom of my back pack. You can look at a picture of my muddy shoes though.

We rolled in just as The Stills were finishing their set on the second stage. I like The Stills but frankly they haven’t put out an album I’ve been interested in since Logic Will Break Your Heart. Without Feathers just really wasn’t my thing, and Oceans Will Rise is no different. They just strike me as a kind of bland, prototypical, indie-rock band. Like a cuter Canadian Coldplay with more cred since they wear plaid and are on Arts & Crafts. If they come on the radio I’m certainly not going to turn it off, I might even bob my head around a bit, but there’s no way I’m going to go “Yeah! The fucking Stills!” or even know what the song is. I mean COME ON, can you tell the difference between “Being Here” and “I’m With You,” because I sure as hell can’t.

In Defense of Pop Punk

I just watched Punks Not Dead to try to cheer me up on this gloomy motherfucker of a day, as rock documentaries are usually the type of thing to leave me feeling empowered, but now I’m just pissed off.

It was basically an hour and a half of elitist punks, young and old, railing against pop-punk and corporate America. They threw in a couple interviews from people like Kevin Lyman in an attempt to make it seem a little more balanced, but in the end it was really just 90 minutes of vitriol.

Nothing pisses me off more than seeing the guys from the Subhumanz and U.K. Subs shit on a bunch of kids for what they’re wearing. Complaining that they hate these kids who dye their hair green because they aren’t really punk. Its just pathetic, these forty or fifty year old men attacking a bunch of high schoolers. If you ask me its pure bitterness over the fact that punk is bigger than anyone or any band right now, and they’re no longer the poster kids.

I don’t understand why people won’t just accept the fact that time passes and things change. Rancid and Green Day grew up listening to The Adicts and Flipper, and now a whole new group of kids is growing up listening to Rancid and Green Day. The idea this “pure” strain of punk must either be maintained, or the genre must be abandoned altogether is fucking ridiculous. Its like people trying to maintain a pure race.

What’s worse is they’re bashing the very people that support them. They interviewed Deryck Whibley of Sum 41 about the pop punk label, and he said “people shy away from it just to avoid their heroes making fun of them.” He just sounded so fucking sad about it. And why shouldn’t he be? I remember them getting shit on by The Buzzcocks a few years back, and asking myself, why the fuck do the Buzzcocks need to go after Sum 41? Do they really need to engage them in a “who’s more punk rock” fight? In hindsight it was clearly an attempt to prove they’re still relevant.

But they’re not. I can assure you when that article came out I was 14 or 15 and that was the first time I had ever heard of the Buzzcocks. That’s not saying the Buzzcocks are not a great band (they are) or that some kid isn’t going to pick up “The Buzzcocks Are Coming” ten years from now and have their outlook on music changed forever, but they’re not actively changing anything.