This, from Masthead magazine (September 30):
Churn continues at The Walrus
TORONTO—Walrus deputy editor Sarmishta Subramanian and senior editor Lisa Rundle will be leaving the general-interest monthly at week’s end. Only creative director Antonio De Luca and associate editor/head of research Joshua Knelman remain of the original editorial team assembled by founding editor David Berlin and publisher Ken Alexander.
This, from a August 3, 1999, Salon interview with the front man of GBV:
Q: There was reportedly an article in The Onion a long time ago making light of your penchant for firing band members -- something along the lines of "Bob Pollard Fires Himself."
A: I've talked about that with the band before. Like, I'd fire myself and let them continue without me. That would be funny. You know how you see these bands like the Grass Roots come and play and there's only one guy left, like the drummer?
Now, back to the Masthead article about the Walrus churn:
"I was hardly blindsided by this," said Alexander of these most recent departures, indicating that he’s been asserting his vision for the magazine since taking over as de factor editor in June, making the magazine "edgier, more provocative, more about conversations that people are having, more topical." As for the ego clash between the pros and the rookie, Alexander said: "I think it also fair to say that there’s a view that the only person who can possibly direct or edit a magazine is a person who comes from the professional editorial core. I do not come from that core."
Finally, my response:
Kent: What do you say to the accusation that your group has been causing more crimes than it's been preventing?
Homer: [amused] Oh, Kent, I'd be lying if I said my men weren't committing crimes.
Kent: [pause] Well, touche.
Saturday, October 02, 2004
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Talkin’ CanLit
Here is David Gilmour, in the Saturday (September 18) Globe reviewing the new book Mysteries by Robert McGill:
There are only two people who really care about a book review, the critic who wants to sound smart and the writer who doesn't want to be wounded in a public forum. Understandable, on both sides. For the rest of the people, let's be candid, it's essentially fish wrap, albeit interesting fish wrap.
It is also true, I think, that for a young Canadian writer, there is no review more affecting, perhaps ever, than the review of his first novel in The Globe and Mail. Other papers can say what they like, The Globe is the review of record, and writers know it.
Essay Question: In his recent book review, David Gilmour contends that "there is no review more affecting, perhaps ever, than the review of his first novel in The Globe and Mail." Do you agree or disagree? Provide evidence for your opinion, and wherever possible, show your work. Use the back of this blog if more space is required.
On a somewhat related note, here is a sole sentence from Prairie Fire’s recent "please subscribe" letter:
The literary magazine is the nursery of contemporary Canadian writing.
Lest you think me a snit for selecting this sentence, it was both italicized and printed in red ink in the letter. It’s not entrapment when I select a sentence that was already highlighted. Clearly, the folks at Prairie Fire were proud of that turn of phrase. As such, I’m going to put that phrase on a T-shirt posthaste. I mean, here it is again:
The literary magazine is the nursery of contemporary Canadian writing.
The next time anyone asks about the role of literary journals in the CanLit ecosystem, I want you to answer:
The literary magazine is the nursery of contemporary Canadian writing.
I’ve heard lit-journals described as a "farm team," but never a nursery. Who, then, are the parents of Canadian contemporary writing? And why are they so abusive and neglectful?
There are only two people who really care about a book review, the critic who wants to sound smart and the writer who doesn't want to be wounded in a public forum. Understandable, on both sides. For the rest of the people, let's be candid, it's essentially fish wrap, albeit interesting fish wrap.
It is also true, I think, that for a young Canadian writer, there is no review more affecting, perhaps ever, than the review of his first novel in The Globe and Mail. Other papers can say what they like, The Globe is the review of record, and writers know it.
Essay Question: In his recent book review, David Gilmour contends that "there is no review more affecting, perhaps ever, than the review of his first novel in The Globe and Mail." Do you agree or disagree? Provide evidence for your opinion, and wherever possible, show your work. Use the back of this blog if more space is required.
On a somewhat related note, here is a sole sentence from Prairie Fire’s recent "please subscribe" letter:
The literary magazine is the nursery of contemporary Canadian writing.
Lest you think me a snit for selecting this sentence, it was both italicized and printed in red ink in the letter. It’s not entrapment when I select a sentence that was already highlighted. Clearly, the folks at Prairie Fire were proud of that turn of phrase. As such, I’m going to put that phrase on a T-shirt posthaste. I mean, here it is again:
The literary magazine is the nursery of contemporary Canadian writing.
The next time anyone asks about the role of literary journals in the CanLit ecosystem, I want you to answer:
The literary magazine is the nursery of contemporary Canadian writing.
I’ve heard lit-journals described as a "farm team," but never a nursery. Who, then, are the parents of Canadian contemporary writing? And why are they so abusive and neglectful?
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Quoting the Wisdom of Others
Clive Thompson, in the May/June 2004 issue of This magazine, talking about stump speeches versus lab coats:
I started my career as a political writer, but soon realized that politics wasn’t a game of progress. On the contrary, human history is pretty much just the same grim cycle over and over: A group of people gain power, then use it to screw over everyone else. Rinse and repeat. Open today’s paper and you’ll see stories of Paul Martin’s graft, or tax cuts for the rich, or First Nations bands wrestling over ancient land claim. Go back 3,000 years and you’ll find hieroglyphs describing essentially the same things.
This is not to disparage political activism; the sheer intractability of injustice is why we have a moral imperative to fight it. But when I started writing about science, I felt, for the first time in a long while, an unusual emotion: optimism.
Russell Smith, in today’s Globe (September 16/04), on Canadian magazines and the healthcare debate:
The September issue of Saturday Night magazine decided it would capitalize on this frenzy of excitement by putting out a cover almost as boring – I mean almost as relevant – as any grey-on-grey Walrus cover, showing a grey-haired, grey-faced doctor in a grey tie in a grey room. This makes me feel distinctly strange: If someone has consciously and soberly calculated that such an image is going to light up the jaded eyes of Canadian newsstand browsers, then I am even less of a Canadian than I thought. I must be weird.
[…]
Who are these magazines for? Recent poli-sci grads eager for jobs at the CBC? High-school Canadian Studies teachers, who use them to torture trapped youth on sunny days? Or just other Canadian magazine writers?
And I hear that The Walrus itself, not to be outdone in the race for the Dullest Worthy Endeavour prize at the next National Magazine Awards, is itself feverishly preparing a blockbuster of an article on the state of health care in this country. I can’t wait to see the shades of grey they use in their cover art. I guess they’re hoping to use a piece on health care to bring down the dangerously high levels of reader adrenaline brought on by the other entertaining articles on trade tariffs and parliamentary subcommittees.
By the way, The Globe will no longer allow you to access columnists on their website for free, so I might have to retire my interest in Smith commentary for the immediate future. On a related note, as this Wired article points out, paid access and registration-required tactics work to disappear a publication from the Internet. Without links to articles there is no resulting discussion in the blog ecosystem and thus little to no traffic around the marketplace of ideas. But that’s a whole other post.
Now, Carl Hiaasen on hurricane journalism (Miami Herald, September 6):
* What you should wear: Always choose the flimsiest rain jacket available, to visually dramatize the effect of strong winds. All foul-weather gear should be brightly colored in the event you're swept out to sea or sucked down a drainage culvert, and someone actually goes searching for you.
* What you should televise: The first rule of hurricane coverage is that every broadcast must begin with palm trees bending in the wind. Never mind that the puniest summer squall can send a coconut palm into convulsions, your producer will demand this meaningless shot.
And finally, as for Toronto Life being sued for $2.1 million by Conrad Black, I like the magazine (full disclosure: I write for it often) and I wish the publication the best of success in fighting this stupid lawsuit. However, I must say that the Robert Mason Lee article at the centre of the suit was an unreadable piece of drek. Horrible, horrible writing that should have been deleted at birth. A class-action lawsuit organized by Toronto Life subscribers, demanding some money back for wasting their time with such an unfunny piece of "satire" would be reasonable; Conrad Black suing for defamation is ridiculous.
I started my career as a political writer, but soon realized that politics wasn’t a game of progress. On the contrary, human history is pretty much just the same grim cycle over and over: A group of people gain power, then use it to screw over everyone else. Rinse and repeat. Open today’s paper and you’ll see stories of Paul Martin’s graft, or tax cuts for the rich, or First Nations bands wrestling over ancient land claim. Go back 3,000 years and you’ll find hieroglyphs describing essentially the same things.
This is not to disparage political activism; the sheer intractability of injustice is why we have a moral imperative to fight it. But when I started writing about science, I felt, for the first time in a long while, an unusual emotion: optimism.
Russell Smith, in today’s Globe (September 16/04), on Canadian magazines and the healthcare debate:
The September issue of Saturday Night magazine decided it would capitalize on this frenzy of excitement by putting out a cover almost as boring – I mean almost as relevant – as any grey-on-grey Walrus cover, showing a grey-haired, grey-faced doctor in a grey tie in a grey room. This makes me feel distinctly strange: If someone has consciously and soberly calculated that such an image is going to light up the jaded eyes of Canadian newsstand browsers, then I am even less of a Canadian than I thought. I must be weird.
[…]
Who are these magazines for? Recent poli-sci grads eager for jobs at the CBC? High-school Canadian Studies teachers, who use them to torture trapped youth on sunny days? Or just other Canadian magazine writers?
And I hear that The Walrus itself, not to be outdone in the race for the Dullest Worthy Endeavour prize at the next National Magazine Awards, is itself feverishly preparing a blockbuster of an article on the state of health care in this country. I can’t wait to see the shades of grey they use in their cover art. I guess they’re hoping to use a piece on health care to bring down the dangerously high levels of reader adrenaline brought on by the other entertaining articles on trade tariffs and parliamentary subcommittees.
By the way, The Globe will no longer allow you to access columnists on their website for free, so I might have to retire my interest in Smith commentary for the immediate future. On a related note, as this Wired article points out, paid access and registration-required tactics work to disappear a publication from the Internet. Without links to articles there is no resulting discussion in the blog ecosystem and thus little to no traffic around the marketplace of ideas. But that’s a whole other post.
Now, Carl Hiaasen on hurricane journalism (Miami Herald, September 6):
* What you should wear: Always choose the flimsiest rain jacket available, to visually dramatize the effect of strong winds. All foul-weather gear should be brightly colored in the event you're swept out to sea or sucked down a drainage culvert, and someone actually goes searching for you.
* What you should televise: The first rule of hurricane coverage is that every broadcast must begin with palm trees bending in the wind. Never mind that the puniest summer squall can send a coconut palm into convulsions, your producer will demand this meaningless shot.
And finally, as for Toronto Life being sued for $2.1 million by Conrad Black, I like the magazine (full disclosure: I write for it often) and I wish the publication the best of success in fighting this stupid lawsuit. However, I must say that the Robert Mason Lee article at the centre of the suit was an unreadable piece of drek. Horrible, horrible writing that should have been deleted at birth. A class-action lawsuit organized by Toronto Life subscribers, demanding some money back for wasting their time with such an unfunny piece of "satire" would be reasonable; Conrad Black suing for defamation is ridiculous.
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Everything and Anything
I started my Masters in Communication and Culture yesterday, which means my postings will soon be littered with terms such as "recursive" and "hegemony." I mention this because I’m also not sure how often I’ll be able to post. Either more often (I hope) or less often (more likely). Right now, I think that one long post each week is more feasible than shorter posts updated more frequently. It means the material will be less topical, but provide more analysis. Or something. Anyway, enough jaw-boning:
* Over at Slate, Eric Weisbard spoke talks about the new album Blueberry Boat by the Fiery Furnaces:
Sometimes a new album has critics so dazzled that we're forced to recommend it before we're positive we even like it. The Fiery Furnaces' Blueberry Boat is that kind of work.
This is how buzz often gets incorrectly assigned. I prefer the opposite instance: of being forced to dismiss something before even hearing it or reading it. Toward that end, check out this bit of clairvoyance regarding the Globe’s new alt-weekly 7. As for my first impressions: 7 resembles Queue, the Vancouver Sun Thursday supplement, except worse somehow, because the Globe is involved. (This just in: I’m wrong. Here is Edward Greenspon in the September 11/04 Globe discussing the matter: "Going tabloid also provided an opportunity for our in-house designers to let their creative juices flow in making 7 both user-friendly and visually appealling." That is some arid juice, man. And check out the rebel sell in his next sentence: "We wanted to change the look radically because we were changing the content radically." To the barricades, comrade!)
Suggested slogan: Why Waste Your Money Reading a Free Alt-Weekly When 7 Costs Only A Dollar?
* I received a four-page sermon disguised as a subscription plea from the Walrus this week. I realize there is some kind of (dismal) science involved in writing direct mail, but four pages? I find two whiny pages is generally enough. Four went past "methinks he doth protest too much" and lurched into "methinks he doth be pathetic." The funny thing is that the subscription letter focuses on all the success the Walrus has received and lists all the ways in which the magazine has exceeded expectations (gold awards at the NMA, record number of subscribers, etc, etc) and how much good press it has received. But it seems to me that you diminish your confidence if you have to spend page after page describing how great you are. We’re great. Really. No really. Really, really, really, please subscribe to the Walrus. Please.
That said, the Walrus offered to send me an issue absolutely free, so I took them up on the offer. In a related note, I must regretfully admit that the October issue looks decent, save for this. Perhaps things are finally turning around.
* Check out betterlivingcentre courtesy of Marc Weisblott and company. Very thorough and savvy and updated constantly. They even have professional illustrations – I figure they’ll put me out of business within the month.
* The new issue of Saturday Night hit the stands on September 8. If I find the Walrus a touch boring, then how best to describe SN? How about this way:
Bart: Nothing you say can upset us. We're the MTV generation.
Lisa: We feel neither highs or lows.
Homer: Really? What's it like?
Lisa: Ehh. [shrugs]
Anyway, the September issue of Saturday Night (Ehh) contains a kind of article I see every once in awhile in Canadian magazines. It’s by Jay Teitel, who is a very gifted writer. It’s about cellphones and how they’ve "restored the lost art of the social call." In the fifth paragraph, he writes "Formal studies may not exist, but anecdotal evidence abounds." First off (Ehh), here is my new tip – stop reading the next time you see a sentence of this variety. The second thing (and this may seem contradictory) is that the article isn’t bad. In fact, if you judged only the quality of craft, it’s near flawless. The quality of thought is the problem -- the article can make no claim to referring to life outside the borders of the page. Take the article out of the life-support of the magazine however, visit a bar or a café and try and spin the same ideas about how the cellphone has altered the way in which we communicate (for the better, no less!) and the delicate lattice-work contained in a sentence like "The cellphone in its most extreme social-call incarnation functions like a modern astrolabe, fixing us in latitude and longitude at any given moment" melts like the word sugar it is. It would have been nice of Teitel to acknowledge that the resurrection of the social call has corresponded with the eradication of civility in public spaces. Or referred to this truly vexing existential problem first raised in Hermenaut:
Forget the brain tumor—did you know that whenever you use a cellular telephone you're destroying your own existence? Convenience dissolves contingency, and as the facts of your current state fade to insignificance you are melting! melting! Who knew you were so soluble?
Some articles try to change our mind about a certain issue using things like "statistics" or "facts," while others prefer to avoid such messy and inconvenient elements of rhetoric and instead impress us with baroque curlicues. It’s something that Saturday Night prides itself on. Hopefully the new editor will reconsider.
* The September/October issue of This contains a smart article by Arthur Johnson about how magazines that actually turn a decent profit in this country use interns as a money-saving device. This is certainly true, but I would have liked to see a reference to the seminal article "Internment Camp: The Intern Economy and the Culture Trust," by Jim Frederick, that first appeared in Baffler #9 (and again in Boob Jubilee, a Baffler anthology that appeared last year.) Frederick offered a devastating bit of class analysis in his piece:
Thanks to those who can afford to win the labor auction with the lowest possible price -- I’ll work for free!– those without outside (read "parental") support are forced to take tremendous real-dollar losses to stay competitive, or they are simply priced out of competition entirely. This ensures that the glamour industries remain the land of the rich and privileged, for they are the only people who can absorb a short-term loss to get an imagined long-term gain.
The Johnson article makes analogies between sweatshops and media interns (a fine idea) but it could have been a feature, instead of a one-pager.
And as much as I agree, a couple of things about being a po’ little intern. You can allow yourself to be exploited, or you can make the most of the situation. Back in the day, Derek Finkle, now the editor of Toro, convinced Toronto Life to create an internship program. A day after he started interning, he asked to cover the trial of Robert Baltovich. Finkle went on to write a cover story for Toronto Life on the topic, and later a book. Plenty of other interns in Canada have used the foot in the door to get promoted past the mailroom (Stuart Berman, the music editor at eye, was once an intern, and there are many other examples).
Which gives me an idea: anyone wish to intern for The Bigge Idea?
* Over at Slate, Eric Weisbard spoke talks about the new album Blueberry Boat by the Fiery Furnaces:
Sometimes a new album has critics so dazzled that we're forced to recommend it before we're positive we even like it. The Fiery Furnaces' Blueberry Boat is that kind of work.
This is how buzz often gets incorrectly assigned. I prefer the opposite instance: of being forced to dismiss something before even hearing it or reading it. Toward that end, check out this bit of clairvoyance regarding the Globe’s new alt-weekly 7. As for my first impressions: 7 resembles Queue, the Vancouver Sun Thursday supplement, except worse somehow, because the Globe is involved. (This just in: I’m wrong. Here is Edward Greenspon in the September 11/04 Globe discussing the matter: "Going tabloid also provided an opportunity for our in-house designers to let their creative juices flow in making 7 both user-friendly and visually appealling." That is some arid juice, man. And check out the rebel sell in his next sentence: "We wanted to change the look radically because we were changing the content radically." To the barricades, comrade!)
Suggested slogan: Why Waste Your Money Reading a Free Alt-Weekly When 7 Costs Only A Dollar?
* I received a four-page sermon disguised as a subscription plea from the Walrus this week. I realize there is some kind of (dismal) science involved in writing direct mail, but four pages? I find two whiny pages is generally enough. Four went past "methinks he doth protest too much" and lurched into "methinks he doth be pathetic." The funny thing is that the subscription letter focuses on all the success the Walrus has received and lists all the ways in which the magazine has exceeded expectations (gold awards at the NMA, record number of subscribers, etc, etc) and how much good press it has received. But it seems to me that you diminish your confidence if you have to spend page after page describing how great you are. We’re great. Really. No really. Really, really, really, please subscribe to the Walrus. Please.
That said, the Walrus offered to send me an issue absolutely free, so I took them up on the offer. In a related note, I must regretfully admit that the October issue looks decent, save for this. Perhaps things are finally turning around.
* Check out betterlivingcentre courtesy of Marc Weisblott and company. Very thorough and savvy and updated constantly. They even have professional illustrations – I figure they’ll put me out of business within the month.
* The new issue of Saturday Night hit the stands on September 8. If I find the Walrus a touch boring, then how best to describe SN? How about this way:
Bart: Nothing you say can upset us. We're the MTV generation.
Lisa: We feel neither highs or lows.
Homer: Really? What's it like?
Lisa: Ehh. [shrugs]
Anyway, the September issue of Saturday Night (Ehh) contains a kind of article I see every once in awhile in Canadian magazines. It’s by Jay Teitel, who is a very gifted writer. It’s about cellphones and how they’ve "restored the lost art of the social call." In the fifth paragraph, he writes "Formal studies may not exist, but anecdotal evidence abounds." First off (Ehh), here is my new tip – stop reading the next time you see a sentence of this variety. The second thing (and this may seem contradictory) is that the article isn’t bad. In fact, if you judged only the quality of craft, it’s near flawless. The quality of thought is the problem -- the article can make no claim to referring to life outside the borders of the page. Take the article out of the life-support of the magazine however, visit a bar or a café and try and spin the same ideas about how the cellphone has altered the way in which we communicate (for the better, no less!) and the delicate lattice-work contained in a sentence like "The cellphone in its most extreme social-call incarnation functions like a modern astrolabe, fixing us in latitude and longitude at any given moment" melts like the word sugar it is. It would have been nice of Teitel to acknowledge that the resurrection of the social call has corresponded with the eradication of civility in public spaces. Or referred to this truly vexing existential problem first raised in Hermenaut:
Forget the brain tumor—did you know that whenever you use a cellular telephone you're destroying your own existence? Convenience dissolves contingency, and as the facts of your current state fade to insignificance you are melting! melting! Who knew you were so soluble?
Some articles try to change our mind about a certain issue using things like "statistics" or "facts," while others prefer to avoid such messy and inconvenient elements of rhetoric and instead impress us with baroque curlicues. It’s something that Saturday Night prides itself on. Hopefully the new editor will reconsider.
* The September/October issue of This contains a smart article by Arthur Johnson about how magazines that actually turn a decent profit in this country use interns as a money-saving device. This is certainly true, but I would have liked to see a reference to the seminal article "Internment Camp: The Intern Economy and the Culture Trust," by Jim Frederick, that first appeared in Baffler #9 (and again in Boob Jubilee, a Baffler anthology that appeared last year.) Frederick offered a devastating bit of class analysis in his piece:
Thanks to those who can afford to win the labor auction with the lowest possible price -- I’ll work for free!– those without outside (read "parental") support are forced to take tremendous real-dollar losses to stay competitive, or they are simply priced out of competition entirely. This ensures that the glamour industries remain the land of the rich and privileged, for they are the only people who can absorb a short-term loss to get an imagined long-term gain.
The Johnson article makes analogies between sweatshops and media interns (a fine idea) but it could have been a feature, instead of a one-pager.
And as much as I agree, a couple of things about being a po’ little intern. You can allow yourself to be exploited, or you can make the most of the situation. Back in the day, Derek Finkle, now the editor of Toro, convinced Toronto Life to create an internship program. A day after he started interning, he asked to cover the trial of Robert Baltovich. Finkle went on to write a cover story for Toronto Life on the topic, and later a book. Plenty of other interns in Canada have used the foot in the door to get promoted past the mailroom (Stuart Berman, the music editor at eye, was once an intern, and there are many other examples).
Which gives me an idea: anyone wish to intern for The Bigge Idea?
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
From East to West and Back Again
I’m back from Vancouver after a two-week holiday. There I had to curtail my media consumption, but I’ve spent the last 24 hours getting caught up with all the big hits. Topping the charts this week is my good close personal friend Russell Smith with his August 26, 2004 column about Dick-Lit. According to Mr. Smith:
The American publishing industry has, over the past five years, attempted to come up with a masculine rival to the phenomenal "chick-lit" successes of Helen Fielding and Candace Bushnell and Sophie Kinsella and all the other writers whose books have bright pink covers. "Dick-lit" fits a familiar matrix: It takes the form of first-person memoir or first-person fiction, is set among striving young people in a large city (usually New York) and tells the story of a youngish man -- a man who is starting to feel not so young -- who works in the world of media, just like Bridget Jones.
[…]
The current style was probably initiated by Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, followed by the handbook for the genre, About a Boy. Recent copies include Rick Marin's Cad: Confessions of a Toxic Bachelor, Kyle Smith's Love Monkey and Scott Mebus's Booty Nomad.
Now I point you to an article in the Toronto Star, dated April 29, 2003 by Mike Dojc:
A new brand of literature has arisen to feed the 20-something guys' need to read. An antithesis to Chick Lit, this hot new typology has been dubbed Dick Lit by pundits and the British press.
[…]
Books like [Keith] Blanchard's and [Rick] Marin owe more to writers such as Nick Hornby (High Fidelity) or Chuck Barris (Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind), than any authors who follow more in the tradition of Wilt "the Stilt" Chamberlain's View From Above, in which he boasted to having bed 20,000 women.
[…]
Both genders need their fill of frivolity. In recent years, the male market has been underserved. One only has to walk into a bookstore and see shelf upon shelf of Bridget Jones Diary and Shopaholic clones as well as book club picks to ascertain the lack of light guy reads available.
Smith’s column is stronger, but Dojc’s article appeared one year and four months ago. Which is better? To paraphrase the FNC slogan: I excerpt. You decide. (However, the next person who decides to write a Dick-Lit trend piece might want to mention the brand new Dave Itzkoff book Lads: A Memoir of Manhood in which the former Maxim editor deconstructs the myths of the lad-scivious lifestyle, in the process discovering it empty, false and stupid. But, as always, my free advice is worth every penny.)
Otherwise:
* A great geek protest sign. If you don’t get it, it’s not your fault. You probably kiss members of the opposite sex or go outdoors.
* I’m sure I’m late to this one, but a waitress at a strip club is blogging during the RNC. According to the waitress, both Democrats and Republicans are horn-dogs, but only Conservatives are brave enough to demand both re-election and an erection during a convention.
* No one gives a backhanded compliment quite like Now weekly. And if you think that review was rough, try this classic chunk of snark.
The American publishing industry has, over the past five years, attempted to come up with a masculine rival to the phenomenal "chick-lit" successes of Helen Fielding and Candace Bushnell and Sophie Kinsella and all the other writers whose books have bright pink covers. "Dick-lit" fits a familiar matrix: It takes the form of first-person memoir or first-person fiction, is set among striving young people in a large city (usually New York) and tells the story of a youngish man -- a man who is starting to feel not so young -- who works in the world of media, just like Bridget Jones.
[…]
The current style was probably initiated by Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, followed by the handbook for the genre, About a Boy. Recent copies include Rick Marin's Cad: Confessions of a Toxic Bachelor, Kyle Smith's Love Monkey and Scott Mebus's Booty Nomad.
Now I point you to an article in the Toronto Star, dated April 29, 2003 by Mike Dojc:
A new brand of literature has arisen to feed the 20-something guys' need to read. An antithesis to Chick Lit, this hot new typology has been dubbed Dick Lit by pundits and the British press.
[…]
Books like [Keith] Blanchard's and [Rick] Marin owe more to writers such as Nick Hornby (High Fidelity) or Chuck Barris (Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind), than any authors who follow more in the tradition of Wilt "the Stilt" Chamberlain's View From Above, in which he boasted to having bed 20,000 women.
[…]
Both genders need their fill of frivolity. In recent years, the male market has been underserved. One only has to walk into a bookstore and see shelf upon shelf of Bridget Jones Diary and Shopaholic clones as well as book club picks to ascertain the lack of light guy reads available.
Smith’s column is stronger, but Dojc’s article appeared one year and four months ago. Which is better? To paraphrase the FNC slogan: I excerpt. You decide. (However, the next person who decides to write a Dick-Lit trend piece might want to mention the brand new Dave Itzkoff book Lads: A Memoir of Manhood in which the former Maxim editor deconstructs the myths of the lad-scivious lifestyle, in the process discovering it empty, false and stupid. But, as always, my free advice is worth every penny.)
Otherwise:
* A great geek protest sign. If you don’t get it, it’s not your fault. You probably kiss members of the opposite sex or go outdoors.
* I’m sure I’m late to this one, but a waitress at a strip club is blogging during the RNC. According to the waitress, both Democrats and Republicans are horn-dogs, but only Conservatives are brave enough to demand both re-election and an erection during a convention.
* No one gives a backhanded compliment quite like Now weekly. And if you think that review was rough, try this classic chunk of snark.
Monday, August 16, 2004
The Same, But Different
"Excuse me," said the stranger, to the shapely young woman walking through the park, "But how big are your tits? Like 34C?"
"Actually, they’re 36D," said the young woman.
"Wow. 36D. That’s amazing. Are you a stripper? Or a porn star?"
"No," she replied with a weary smile. "Actually, I’m a graphic designer."
"Cool. That’s cool," said the stranger. Suddenly there seemed to be no more conversational electricity. The question was answered, and in its wake, awkward silence. "Well, bye."
"Yeah, bye," said the woman, who continued walking through the park.
By now I’m sure most of you think I’ve lost my mind. But wait, please, the denouement is arriving in the next sentence. Rewrite the above conversation by replacing the inquiry about tits with a question about height.
"How tall are you?"
"I’m 6 foot 5."
"Wow. Six-foot-Five. That’s amazing. Are you a basketball player?"
Obviously asking about height and asking about the size of someone’s tits is viewed differently in our society, but as someone who is tall, after awhile the question is equally annoying. Last week, two different people asked me how tall I was. I ignored both of them. The first time, I overheard a teenage girl whisper to her friend "Ask him how tall he is" as I was walking through a local park. Because of this advance warning, I ignored the girl when she said, "Excuse me." I kept right on walking, after repeated attempts of "Excuse me." Steps before I was out of earshot, in desperation, the girl yelled, "How tall are you?"
The second time was a day later, when some guy on the sidewalk asked me how tall I was. I continued walking as well. To his credit, he did not persist.
You see, I’m over 30, which means I have gone through this song and dance about my height for at least 10 years, which is roughly when I stopped growing. Unless you are a cute little old lady, or a kindly old man, I will not humour your requests for information about my height. The seniors I treat like gold, let me assure you.
(I think, back in May, I promised more love, less bitterness and I’m doing my best to deliver. Just don’t ask me how tall I am, if that’s OK…)
Some quick hits:
* A novel in 88 blog postings: www.roommatefromhell.com
* My suburbia article is finally on newsstands. (And, er, online.) Descant, the literary journal in which the article appears, had a launch on Wednesday at the Victory Café in Toronto. The turn-out was pretty decent, and, even better, as a reader, I received a cellophane-wrapped goody bag of organic vegetables. Drink tickets are more traditional, I suppose, but not very memorable. I will never forget receiving two ears of corn, a pair of apricots, a bunch of cherries, and one tomato for doing a reading.
* At a party on Thursday I was delighted to learn that the cab drivers waiting outside the Via Rail station are always stupid jerks. I thought it was only me – upon returning from an ultra-pleasant month in Montreal, I was jolted back to the arrhythmic rudeness (as opposed to the elegant rudeness of New York, for example) of Toronto within five minutes of stepping off the train platform. The details are dull, but the end result was my valve became immediately and severely irritated. Turns out the same thing happened to my friend Dave recently. I write this bile despite it being taxi appreciation week or day or hour or something today or yesterday or something. (On a related note, it’s clearly tourist season here in the center of the universe. I find it strange that people visit here of their own volition, yet I don’t wish to discourage anyone from innervating our economy. Although, when I recently overheard an American whigger on a cellphone telling a friend that "There was no ghetto downtown. Anywhere" I had to give pause.)
* Recent Onion A/V Club interview with Triumph, discussing how to beg before J.Lo: "I tried to play up how pathetic I was, which is not too hard if you're a 42-year-old guy crouched on your knees in the aisle of an awards show with a puppet on your hand. You do evoke sympathy."
* Smart article by Gord McLaughlin in this week’s eye about the dangers of being critical about the business of the dramatic arts in Canada. The shock ending is memorable and well executed.
"Actually, they’re 36D," said the young woman.
"Wow. 36D. That’s amazing. Are you a stripper? Or a porn star?"
"No," she replied with a weary smile. "Actually, I’m a graphic designer."
"Cool. That’s cool," said the stranger. Suddenly there seemed to be no more conversational electricity. The question was answered, and in its wake, awkward silence. "Well, bye."
"Yeah, bye," said the woman, who continued walking through the park.
By now I’m sure most of you think I’ve lost my mind. But wait, please, the denouement is arriving in the next sentence. Rewrite the above conversation by replacing the inquiry about tits with a question about height.
"How tall are you?"
"I’m 6 foot 5."
"Wow. Six-foot-Five. That’s amazing. Are you a basketball player?"
Obviously asking about height and asking about the size of someone’s tits is viewed differently in our society, but as someone who is tall, after awhile the question is equally annoying. Last week, two different people asked me how tall I was. I ignored both of them. The first time, I overheard a teenage girl whisper to her friend "Ask him how tall he is" as I was walking through a local park. Because of this advance warning, I ignored the girl when she said, "Excuse me." I kept right on walking, after repeated attempts of "Excuse me." Steps before I was out of earshot, in desperation, the girl yelled, "How tall are you?"
The second time was a day later, when some guy on the sidewalk asked me how tall I was. I continued walking as well. To his credit, he did not persist.
You see, I’m over 30, which means I have gone through this song and dance about my height for at least 10 years, which is roughly when I stopped growing. Unless you are a cute little old lady, or a kindly old man, I will not humour your requests for information about my height. The seniors I treat like gold, let me assure you.
(I think, back in May, I promised more love, less bitterness and I’m doing my best to deliver. Just don’t ask me how tall I am, if that’s OK…)
Some quick hits:
* A novel in 88 blog postings: www.roommatefromhell.com
* My suburbia article is finally on newsstands. (And, er, online.) Descant, the literary journal in which the article appears, had a launch on Wednesday at the Victory Café in Toronto. The turn-out was pretty decent, and, even better, as a reader, I received a cellophane-wrapped goody bag of organic vegetables. Drink tickets are more traditional, I suppose, but not very memorable. I will never forget receiving two ears of corn, a pair of apricots, a bunch of cherries, and one tomato for doing a reading.
* At a party on Thursday I was delighted to learn that the cab drivers waiting outside the Via Rail station are always stupid jerks. I thought it was only me – upon returning from an ultra-pleasant month in Montreal, I was jolted back to the arrhythmic rudeness (as opposed to the elegant rudeness of New York, for example) of Toronto within five minutes of stepping off the train platform. The details are dull, but the end result was my valve became immediately and severely irritated. Turns out the same thing happened to my friend Dave recently. I write this bile despite it being taxi appreciation week or day or hour or something today or yesterday or something. (On a related note, it’s clearly tourist season here in the center of the universe. I find it strange that people visit here of their own volition, yet I don’t wish to discourage anyone from innervating our economy. Although, when I recently overheard an American whigger on a cellphone telling a friend that "There was no ghetto downtown. Anywhere" I had to give pause.)
* Recent Onion A/V Club interview with Triumph, discussing how to beg before J.Lo: "I tried to play up how pathetic I was, which is not too hard if you're a 42-year-old guy crouched on your knees in the aisle of an awards show with a puppet on your hand. You do evoke sympathy."
* Smart article by Gord McLaughlin in this week’s eye about the dangers of being critical about the business of the dramatic arts in Canada. The shock ending is memorable and well executed.
Saturday, August 07, 2004
All Things Considered, I Probably Deserve That…
Last Saturday (July 31) I wrote about blogs for the Globe and Mail. I had originally pitched the Globe about attending a Toronto conference entitled Exploring the Fusion Power of Public and Participatory Journalism that was going to be held on Tuesday, August 3 and writing about the results. The Globe decided that a preview of the conference would be a much better idea. I mention this because doing a preview meant I had a little over a day to turn in 1,300 words. As a magazine writer, I’m used to a much slower pace.
If that sounds like the gentle eddies of an excuse forming, you’re sorta right, but a mistake is a mistake, regardless of the looming deadline. And so, I apologize for writing Matt Welsh, instead of Welch in my blog article. I have corrected the error in the version of the article that appears on my website. (See link in first sentence.)
Of course, the only thing worse than making an error is getting caught making an error. And inside today’s National Post (August 7, 2004), in a commentary column about covering the recent DNC, Matt Welch writes:
Not that I’m complaining, mind you. It’s always fun to have your work read, and any press is good press, as long as they spell your name right. (Psst! Globe and Mail guys! It’s W-e-l-c-h!)
Touché Welch. I mean, the guy has a website with the URL www.mattwelch.com. How could I mungle that one? (FYI: Mungle being a mixture of mangle and bungle, as opposed to a typo, which would be an even richer irony, given the whole mess.)
It is always a little scary hitting the send button for any newspaper article I file, because contrary to popular belief, there is nothing akin to fact-checking performed at any of the newspapers I write for. And since I know this, I tend to be as careful as I can. Still, as Jeff Jarvis (by way of Ken Layne) noted at the Fusion Power conference, "We [bloggers] fact-check your [Big Media’s] ass." And ultimately, that is a good thing. Except, of course, when the blogger pinches the ass of Bigge Media. I promise to be even more diligent from herein.
And I take some solace in the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, there are no errors in my article about the swing in the alley that appears in today’s Toronto section of the Post.
By the way, I feel it worthwhile to note that I received the swing article assignment on Tuesday, July 27. I mention this because a few days later, the Saturday Globe (bastards!) wrote about the swing. I do not wish people to think I get my National Post Toronto section ideas by reading the Toronto section of the Globe and Mail.
Rather than end this post with a mote of grace, I will instead conclude by mentioning Robert Fulford’s takedown of Edward Greenspon’s Saturday ramblings. As Fulford wrote today:
Greenspon’s "Letter from the Editor," which appears in a prominent position on Page Two, may be the most spectacular example in current Canadian journalism of a bad idea badly executed.
[…]
Editorial problems may excite him … but they’re no fun to read about. They’re dreary, even for people in the business.
In fact, Greenspon makes editing sound so deadly that it’s as if he were trying to discourage the young from entering journalism.
Or at the very least, encourage them start a blog instead.
If that sounds like the gentle eddies of an excuse forming, you’re sorta right, but a mistake is a mistake, regardless of the looming deadline. And so, I apologize for writing Matt Welsh, instead of Welch in my blog article. I have corrected the error in the version of the article that appears on my website. (See link in first sentence.)
Of course, the only thing worse than making an error is getting caught making an error. And inside today’s National Post (August 7, 2004), in a commentary column about covering the recent DNC, Matt Welch writes:
Not that I’m complaining, mind you. It’s always fun to have your work read, and any press is good press, as long as they spell your name right. (Psst! Globe and Mail guys! It’s W-e-l-c-h!)
Touché Welch. I mean, the guy has a website with the URL www.mattwelch.com. How could I mungle that one? (FYI: Mungle being a mixture of mangle and bungle, as opposed to a typo, which would be an even richer irony, given the whole mess.)
It is always a little scary hitting the send button for any newspaper article I file, because contrary to popular belief, there is nothing akin to fact-checking performed at any of the newspapers I write for. And since I know this, I tend to be as careful as I can. Still, as Jeff Jarvis (by way of Ken Layne) noted at the Fusion Power conference, "We [bloggers] fact-check your [Big Media’s] ass." And ultimately, that is a good thing. Except, of course, when the blogger pinches the ass of Bigge Media. I promise to be even more diligent from herein.
And I take some solace in the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, there are no errors in my article about the swing in the alley that appears in today’s Toronto section of the Post.
By the way, I feel it worthwhile to note that I received the swing article assignment on Tuesday, July 27. I mention this because a few days later, the Saturday Globe (bastards!) wrote about the swing. I do not wish people to think I get my National Post Toronto section ideas by reading the Toronto section of the Globe and Mail.
Rather than end this post with a mote of grace, I will instead conclude by mentioning Robert Fulford’s takedown of Edward Greenspon’s Saturday ramblings. As Fulford wrote today:
Greenspon’s "Letter from the Editor," which appears in a prominent position on Page Two, may be the most spectacular example in current Canadian journalism of a bad idea badly executed.
[…]
Editorial problems may excite him … but they’re no fun to read about. They’re dreary, even for people in the business.
In fact, Greenspon makes editing sound so deadly that it’s as if he were trying to discourage the young from entering journalism.
Or at the very least, encourage them start a blog instead.
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
Manchurian Classic?
I keep reading about the remake of The Manchurian Candidate, and most articles refer to the 1962 film as a classic. As Louis Menand noted last year (September 15, 2003) in the New Yorker:
Most people probably think of the movie as a classic of Cold War culture, like "On the Beach" and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" – a popular work articulating the anxieties of the era. In fact, "The Manchurian Candidate" was a flop. It was released in the fall of 1962, failed to recover its costs, and was pulled from distribution two years later, after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It turned up a few times on television, but it was not shown in a movie theatre again until 1987, which – nearly the end of the Cold War – is the year its popularity dates from. The true artifact of Cold War culture is the novel, by Richard Condon, that the movie was based on.
Most people probably think of the movie as a classic of Cold War culture, like "On the Beach" and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" – a popular work articulating the anxieties of the era. In fact, "The Manchurian Candidate" was a flop. It was released in the fall of 1962, failed to recover its costs, and was pulled from distribution two years later, after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It turned up a few times on television, but it was not shown in a movie theatre again until 1987, which – nearly the end of the Cold War – is the year its popularity dates from. The true artifact of Cold War culture is the novel, by Richard Condon, that the movie was based on.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Dear Noah Richler,
I am honoured that you consider me worthy of critique. A month or two ago, in the Toronto Star, you spent a substantial portion of your review of A Complicated Kindness talking about a literary essay I wrote for the Spring books section of the National Post
Toews' new novel, Bigge goes on, "serves to illustrate the conundrum many younger Canadian authors face — how to mash up our literary tradition of rural geography with the urban nation we have become."
This, frankly, is the sort of self-regarding metropolitan article that gives Toronto a bad name — with none of the "edge" Bigge thinks is missing in CanLit. (Bigge did not mention Colin MacAdam's novel of Ottawa bureaucrats and developers, Some Great Thing, certainly one of the best reads of the year so far — "urban" and full of vigour — but no reviewer can be abreast of everything).
I’m flattered, of course. But perhaps you should focus your energy on acquainting yourself with a crazy new medium called the Internet. Colin McAdam is the author of Some Great Thing. Also, in your article, you state that James Wood is the literary editor of The New Republic. Actually, it’s Leon Wieseltier, and it took me five seconds with Google to discover this. What happened? Did you write your review on an airplane? In longhand? On the back of an airsickness bag?
Oh well. You’ve never been a details man, Noah. You’re good at dropping names, but less proficient at spelling them correctly. I recommend you petition McClelland & Stewart to hire an extra fact-checker for your upcoming book A Literary Atlas Of Canada. Lest you think me nasty, consider this: if I was incubating any malice toward you, I wouldn’t make such a helpful suggestion. Indeed, I take your attempt to besmirch my good name with a milligram of sodium. This kind of literary catfight, is, after all, a sign of progress in the hermetic world of Canadian letters. Indeed, if I continue to work hard and write provocative essays, perhaps I can look forward to a Trudeau denigrating me someday. Then I’d know I’ve really made it.
But enough bickering. As you called me a "bright fella" in your article, it behooves me to reply in kind. Mistakes aside, I was impressed with your column – it was very focused, unlike the overlong, meandering, and often confusing lumps of prose you microwaved each week when you were books columnist at the National Post. I guess losing your Post column must have served as something of a wake-up call, as it appears you have discovered a little writing secret we pros like to call a second draft.
Still, I’m confused about something in your Toews review. You wrote:
Really, the urban landscape is just like any of the "rural" others Bigge implies are boring subjects for young authors. Deciding that we are an "urban nation" or that Prairie subjects are by definition stultifying is actually parochial.
That wasn’t the point I was trying to make in my essay, but that’s OK. I quote the above passage because in it, you suggest that setting is irrelevant. Which makes sense. A good book is a good book, regardless of setting. And yet, a few paragraphs later, you write that:
I am one of Smith's readers who would be relieved if some of that seriousness was finding its way into fiction about more than nightclubs.
Now I’m confused. A minute ago you said setting doesn’t matter. But now you’re dismissing fiction set in a nightclub (unless, I assume, said nightclub is filled with Mennonites). Please, I beg you, make up your mind.
In the meantime, it seems only fair to leave the last word with Russell Smith, who called you a "ninny" in his column back in early May. I realize I have failed to mentioned this often enough, so I’ll say it now: Russell Smith is a fantastic fiction writer. I have re-read Noise and How Insensitive because they are so damn good. The dialogue is pitch-perfect, his satire has teeth and there is nary a wheat field in sight. (Yes, his fairy tale book was stinky but these things happen.) Anyway, here is Russell Smith, from The Notebooks (Random House, 2002):
The most passionate stories can happen in suburbs and minivans. You don’t need to be in the Holocaust and it doesn’t have to be foreign or depressed. It doesn’t have to be a family saga, a history that goes back generations to a disaster in the nineteenth century, or whatever. I think that there’s a gothic tendency in Canadian fiction of the nationalist era. I think that that’s what this group you’ve assembled represents: it’s a leaving behind of cultural nationalism. That fiction no longer has to be about the land. The land actually influences us very little here, you know. We live in cities like everyone else in the world.
Yours,
Ryan Bigge
P.S. I think you’re a ninny too.
Toews' new novel, Bigge goes on, "serves to illustrate the conundrum many younger Canadian authors face — how to mash up our literary tradition of rural geography with the urban nation we have become."
This, frankly, is the sort of self-regarding metropolitan article that gives Toronto a bad name — with none of the "edge" Bigge thinks is missing in CanLit. (Bigge did not mention Colin MacAdam's novel of Ottawa bureaucrats and developers, Some Great Thing, certainly one of the best reads of the year so far — "urban" and full of vigour — but no reviewer can be abreast of everything).
I’m flattered, of course. But perhaps you should focus your energy on acquainting yourself with a crazy new medium called the Internet. Colin McAdam is the author of Some Great Thing. Also, in your article, you state that James Wood is the literary editor of The New Republic. Actually, it’s Leon Wieseltier, and it took me five seconds with Google to discover this. What happened? Did you write your review on an airplane? In longhand? On the back of an airsickness bag?
Oh well. You’ve never been a details man, Noah. You’re good at dropping names, but less proficient at spelling them correctly. I recommend you petition McClelland & Stewart to hire an extra fact-checker for your upcoming book A Literary Atlas Of Canada. Lest you think me nasty, consider this: if I was incubating any malice toward you, I wouldn’t make such a helpful suggestion. Indeed, I take your attempt to besmirch my good name with a milligram of sodium. This kind of literary catfight, is, after all, a sign of progress in the hermetic world of Canadian letters. Indeed, if I continue to work hard and write provocative essays, perhaps I can look forward to a Trudeau denigrating me someday. Then I’d know I’ve really made it.
But enough bickering. As you called me a "bright fella" in your article, it behooves me to reply in kind. Mistakes aside, I was impressed with your column – it was very focused, unlike the overlong, meandering, and often confusing lumps of prose you microwaved each week when you were books columnist at the National Post. I guess losing your Post column must have served as something of a wake-up call, as it appears you have discovered a little writing secret we pros like to call a second draft.
Still, I’m confused about something in your Toews review. You wrote:
Really, the urban landscape is just like any of the "rural" others Bigge implies are boring subjects for young authors. Deciding that we are an "urban nation" or that Prairie subjects are by definition stultifying is actually parochial.
That wasn’t the point I was trying to make in my essay, but that’s OK. I quote the above passage because in it, you suggest that setting is irrelevant. Which makes sense. A good book is a good book, regardless of setting. And yet, a few paragraphs later, you write that:
I am one of Smith's readers who would be relieved if some of that seriousness was finding its way into fiction about more than nightclubs.
Now I’m confused. A minute ago you said setting doesn’t matter. But now you’re dismissing fiction set in a nightclub (unless, I assume, said nightclub is filled with Mennonites). Please, I beg you, make up your mind.
In the meantime, it seems only fair to leave the last word with Russell Smith, who called you a "ninny" in his column back in early May. I realize I have failed to mentioned this often enough, so I’ll say it now: Russell Smith is a fantastic fiction writer. I have re-read Noise and How Insensitive because they are so damn good. The dialogue is pitch-perfect, his satire has teeth and there is nary a wheat field in sight. (Yes, his fairy tale book was stinky but these things happen.) Anyway, here is Russell Smith, from The Notebooks (Random House, 2002):
The most passionate stories can happen in suburbs and minivans. You don’t need to be in the Holocaust and it doesn’t have to be foreign or depressed. It doesn’t have to be a family saga, a history that goes back generations to a disaster in the nineteenth century, or whatever. I think that there’s a gothic tendency in Canadian fiction of the nationalist era. I think that that’s what this group you’ve assembled represents: it’s a leaving behind of cultural nationalism. That fiction no longer has to be about the land. The land actually influences us very little here, you know. We live in cities like everyone else in the world.
Yours,
Ryan Bigge
P.S. I think you’re a ninny too.
Thursday, July 08, 2004
Dead Walrus Bounce (With Hickeys)
I'm back from Montreal. I still haven't completed my Montreal blog, which is makes me feel lame beyond belief. Soon. As well, I think I'm going to cut back on blog postings here -- perhaps once a week or so during the summer, and wind the whole blog down in early September and try something different. Today, I offer some excerpts from items you might have missed...
Josey Vogels, writing in her My Messy Bedroom column (Hour, April 29th, 2004), quoted from an article I wrote for The Peak, the SFU student newspaper, many years ago. This, from the Vogels article:
While tons has been written on the history of kissing - one theory goes that kissing started among cave people who licked each other's faces for the salt - very little has been recorded on the history of hickeys.
I did find one article that quotes Oliver Kralhein, a guy from somewhere in New York who has been studying hickeys since 1965 and published a zine on the topic for over two decades.
In the article by Canadian journalist Ryan Bigge, Kralhein says his research suggests that hickeys have been around since the dawn of time.
[…]
According to Bigge's article, even Robert De Niro, John Tesh and Cher have permanently marked themselves with decorative hickeys. And back in the mid-90s, the rap group Funky See, Funky Do released a song with the following lyrics:
"A kiss is fine but it don't always last/That's why I got a hickey of your name on my ass/That may seem strange and a little bit fruity/But every time I say your name I think of booty."
For those wondering about the veracity of my hickey article, well, read the whole thing here and decide for yourself.
Moving right along. From the July 2004 Toronto Life, Robert Fulford writing about The Walrus in an article entitled Tusk Force:
Having started out with the promise of long-term security, the magazine instead proved astonishingly unstable. Moreover, the articles in the first five issues, whatever their other qualities, contain little that’s original or challenging; they suggest, on the contrary, that among Canadian writers new ideas are thin on the ground.
[…]
This is a magazine that performs better around the edges than at the core. Put another way, it succeeds most when it appears to try least. With some exceptions, the longish articles, the pieces that take up six or eight pages, have been badly managed lumps of prose, compilations of unremarkable facts and obvious ideas, put together without skill or wit.
And this, while very old news, is still worth checking out -- excerpts from an article on Frank magazine by Jowita Bydlowska in the Ryerson Review of Journalism:
"Dead cat bounce" is a term used in stock markets to describe the final, futile upsurge of a declining stock. In Frank's case it was the freakish spike in sales after Taylor published his first issue, number 414, in October 2003. Since that one brief, floating moment, the gossipy cat has been in free fall.
[…]
The dreary newsstand sales confirmed a lack of interest in Frank when Taylor developed his dead-cat chart in December.
[…]
Five issues into the new Frank, Taylor was obsessing over his "Trends in Circulation" chart where the long painful descent of the dead cat was marked.
[…]
The cat began falling around 1996 when Frank was successfully sued for $75,000 by a Quebec judge for suggesting he slept with a key witness at a trial over which he presided.
[…]
It was difficult not to quietly root for him. Besides, dead cats can bounce at least twice, and cats have nine lives.
Josey Vogels, writing in her My Messy Bedroom column (Hour, April 29th, 2004), quoted from an article I wrote for The Peak, the SFU student newspaper, many years ago. This, from the Vogels article:
While tons has been written on the history of kissing - one theory goes that kissing started among cave people who licked each other's faces for the salt - very little has been recorded on the history of hickeys.
I did find one article that quotes Oliver Kralhein, a guy from somewhere in New York who has been studying hickeys since 1965 and published a zine on the topic for over two decades.
In the article by Canadian journalist Ryan Bigge, Kralhein says his research suggests that hickeys have been around since the dawn of time.
[…]
According to Bigge's article, even Robert De Niro, John Tesh and Cher have permanently marked themselves with decorative hickeys. And back in the mid-90s, the rap group Funky See, Funky Do released a song with the following lyrics:
"A kiss is fine but it don't always last/That's why I got a hickey of your name on my ass/That may seem strange and a little bit fruity/But every time I say your name I think of booty."
For those wondering about the veracity of my hickey article, well, read the whole thing here and decide for yourself.
Moving right along. From the July 2004 Toronto Life, Robert Fulford writing about The Walrus in an article entitled Tusk Force:
Having started out with the promise of long-term security, the magazine instead proved astonishingly unstable. Moreover, the articles in the first five issues, whatever their other qualities, contain little that’s original or challenging; they suggest, on the contrary, that among Canadian writers new ideas are thin on the ground.
[…]
This is a magazine that performs better around the edges than at the core. Put another way, it succeeds most when it appears to try least. With some exceptions, the longish articles, the pieces that take up six or eight pages, have been badly managed lumps of prose, compilations of unremarkable facts and obvious ideas, put together without skill or wit.
And this, while very old news, is still worth checking out -- excerpts from an article on Frank magazine by Jowita Bydlowska in the Ryerson Review of Journalism:
"Dead cat bounce" is a term used in stock markets to describe the final, futile upsurge of a declining stock. In Frank's case it was the freakish spike in sales after Taylor published his first issue, number 414, in October 2003. Since that one brief, floating moment, the gossipy cat has been in free fall.
[…]
The dreary newsstand sales confirmed a lack of interest in Frank when Taylor developed his dead-cat chart in December.
[…]
Five issues into the new Frank, Taylor was obsessing over his "Trends in Circulation" chart where the long painful descent of the dead cat was marked.
[…]
The cat began falling around 1996 when Frank was successfully sued for $75,000 by a Quebec judge for suggesting he slept with a key witness at a trial over which he presided.
[…]
It was difficult not to quietly root for him. Besides, dead cats can bounce at least twice, and cats have nine lives.
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