"God's Country: A Short History" by Ralph Barton

The New Yorker panned this book, but it sounded so interesting that I couldn't resist finding a copy: "God's Country: A Short History" by Ralph Barton, published in 1929. As you can see by the tag list for this post, it contains elements of pretty much everything I talk about in this blog.

Barton was a popular '20s cartoonist and caricaturist, and he seemed to be trying to establish himself as a writer before his manic-depression prompted his suicide in 1931. I'm not surprised that he killed himself two years after writing this book. "God's Country" is a bitter thing indeed.

It's a satirical, absurd history of the United States, beginning with Christopher Columbus and ending with a bizarre dystopia in which women have taken over the government, radio advertisers have inadvertently caused widespread looting and domestic terror, and poison gas has destroyed everybody except for eight criminals who -- following the intentions of the pilgrims from the beginning of the book -- set out to wreck everything all over again.

Oooo, it's nasty. Barton has equal loathing for Democrats and Republicans (known in the book as "Uniboodlists" and "Multiboodlists" for reasons I didn't understand), Presidents ("Misters"), businessmen ("Interests"), newspapers (who dictate "Public Opinion"), and the everyday citizens who allow the aforementioned to get away with everything they do, over and over again, throughout the entire history of democracy.

Is there anybody Barton doesn't hate? He appears to have sympathy for Native Americans, he finds few unpleasant things to say about Abraham Lincoln, and he goes out of his way to avoid lampooning African Americans, but for the most part "God's Country" is a relentless, snarky skewering of EVERYBODY. And that means you too, reader. And me.

You can imagine how tedious such a book can be. It's especially tedious to somebody (like me) who doesn't know the finer points of every President -- errr, Mister -- in American history. Barton goes through them all, giving them the names of monarchs ("St. Abraham," "Franklin the Debonaire") to highlight one going theme throughout the book: the American obsession with electing "jus' plain folk" who are -- in actual fact -- part of the social elite who have been carefully groomed to appear otherwise.

This obsession is one element of the book that still holds true today (see Palin, Sarah). Another element is the reliance on FEAR to manipulate public opinion, as formented by business requirements and amplified by the newspapers. We sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that the disgusting collusion of politics, business, and media is a relatively new phenomenon. "God's Country" will tell you different.

After 250 pages of spot-on satire, Barton comes to women's suffrage and temperance activism. I can only assume that he really, really didn't like women, as the book tips from "cutting satire" to "cruel stereotype" in the space of a few pages, detailing a world where women with "blacksnake whips" run around emasculating everybody and turning them into "ex-males." They conceive arbitrary rules and devise irrational schemes to enforce them, finally bringing about the downfall of the already-tottering country. It's ludicrous and leaves a bad impression, and is probably one of the reasons The New Yorker reviewer panned it.

But there are great moments, especially near the end when everything goes completely off the rails. The businessmen are discovered to have retreated into a secret society with its own language ("Six huh pcent a fi million dollas is thutty million dollas. Fiscal.") and in a mysterious desert pilgrimage they invent golf. This presentation of Big Business as a totally self-interested, self-contained, and illogical cabal is ominous in light of the subsequent financial collapse.

When the new breed of radio announcers start to amuse themselves by shouting demands like "Desire to see a prize fight!" and "Long to see a movie about Arabs!", the book provides an amazing insight into '20s popular culture. It's like reading a Readers Digest Condensed Version of The New Yorker between 1925 and 1929:

[They were] soon being ordered to deodorize, to smear mud on their faces, to hate New York, to play Mah Jong, to do cross-word puzzles, to ask each other questions, to bathe in violet rays, to develop personalities, to practice numerology, to adore the Russians, the negroes and aviators, to eat Eskimo Pie, to throw bits of paper out the window, to have themselves psychoanalyzed, to engage in Marathon contests, to eat liver and to perform a thousand other like obediences.

When "God's Country" is good, it's very, very good, but most of it is the 1920s brand of screwball, sledgehammer burlesque that leaves me exhausted, alternating with some surprisingly dry historical dissection.

More importantly, however, it is a clear expression of the immense disgust that an intelligent, educated, creative, and mentally-tortured man had for all the things he saw in the world around him. If he'd had a more balanced view of human nature then "God's Country" would be an easier book to read, but it never would have been written in the first place.

Did You Know That Michael Jackson Died?

I know what you're thinking: now that Michael Jackson is buried we can finally stop hearing about him.

But think of the anniversaries! We'll need to celebrate his birthday, of course, and relive his death-day, and also remember the funeral itself. And what about the date when "Thriller" was released, shouldn't that be commemorated? When his family members die we will SURELY need retrospectives, and Quincy Jones' death with DEFINITELY require a remastering of the back catalog.

No, there simply aren't enough ways to chew on the dead flesh of Michael Jackson. He's like the remains of some sacred Mennonite cow, stripped of everything that can possibly be turned into a pudding, then stuffed and deoderized and put back on display. Hey, get that dead cow off of my lawn! Stuff it back into your bottomless pit of vicarious misery!

Whew, I just had to say that.

Portentious Statements About Air Disasters

While expressing his annoyance about the constant radio coverage of the Graf Zeppelin's inaugural flight, an anonymous New Yorker reporter had this to say on September 21, 1929:

The covering of the event was a good technical achievement. Microphones were hidden everywhere except in Lady Drummond Hay's hat, and the announcers spoke from planes, dangled off roofs, and even pursued the Zeppelin down the field, talking into the microphone as they ran. It was a weary business. If the Zeppelin ever mysteriously blows up, I advise the police to hold all radio announcers on suspicion.

Hmmmm.

Calling Out the Canned Midnight Special Performers

I'm finally watching the 1980 "Midnight Special" DVD and I'm having a rich experience that I'd never anticipated; in seeing the performances range sequentially from 1973 to 1980, I've gotten a sense of the changes in both music style and performance over that period.

My conclusions are by no means scientific -- each season of "Midnight Special" has been compressed to an hour's worth of performances by a small number of artists -- but I have watched the folk renaissance wane and disappear (Gordon Lightfoot, Janis Ian); the growth of disco out of R&B and funk into an increasingly glittery spectacle (from James Brown to Earth, Wind & Fire to Donna Summer to Amii Stewart); the mainstreaming of hard rock (AC/DC) and punk (Blondie); the slow death of glam into a more watered down style (Nick Gilder); and the sudden appearance of white guys with red suspenders and metallic hats, inflicting their humourless, spastic, disturbingly misogynistic dance routines on big-haired ladies with silver stiletto heels.

So, like, the '80s have arrived.

Most interesting, however, has been the evolution of canned performances, which have become increasingly more common and stylized, apparently paving the way for MTV.

Since I love spotting canned performances -- and since some people seem to never notice this sort of thing -- I present this handy guide for figuring out when your favourite '70s band is faking you out.

THE CANNED PERFORMANCE SPECTRUM

Straight Up: Everybody in the band is playing their instruments, the singer is really singing, and nothing significant has been added to the mix. This is obvious because the song doesn't sound exactly like the album, and nothing sounds totally perfect.

As an example, here's Heart playing "Crazy On You." It's all so improvisational, they're all looking at each other to keep the playing tight, the vocals are unprocessed and "real," it doesn't sound like the single, and...well, there's an ENERGY.

If you spot the things listed in the following categories, however, then your favourite band is putting you on.

Embellished: Most of the band is really playing and the singer is really singing, but they're playing along with a backing tape which includes horns, a string section, and/or vocal harmonies.

You can spot this if you hear horns or strings, but there is no horn or string section on stage. Keyboards in the '70s were far from reproducing those sorts of sounds, so a mysterious keyboard player cannot be responsible. You can also spot this if the harmony sounds TOO GOOD, and the people supposedly SINGING the harmony are just the band members.

If the harmony is being sung by dedicated backup singers, however, then there's more chance they're legitimate (but beware when two backup singers suddenly sound like four, and they don't do any apparent improvisation, and they overlap in a way that would be impossible for only two people).

You can also spot this if the drummer is wearing headphones, which means he's listening to the backing tape (or a click track) in order to stay in sync. Otherwise the drums are prerecorded and the drummer is just faking it, in which case he's NOT wearing headphones and he's hitting cymbals that you can't actually hear. When this happens, though, pains have been taken to make the drums at least SOUND live (as opposed to the next example).

Here's a good example: Golden Earring's "Radar Love." The vocals and guitar are certainly real, and the bass might be as well, but the drums, keyboards, horns, and most of the backup vocals are fake. The drummer ALMOST pulls it off but you can see moments where he gets it wrong. It's all most obvious near the end.

Singer Only: The band is not playing their instruments, but the singer is really singing along to a backing tape. You can tell this if the vocals sound a bit rough but the rest of the music sounds exactly like the studio version. Also if the instruments -- especially the drums -- sound double-tracked or otherwise produced in a way that wouldn't work live: particularly thumpy or whizzy, for example.

If the musicians don't seem to be paying any attention to each other when the song changes tempo, chances are they aren't really playing...in a live performance they tend to glance around to make sure they're all switching to the right beat at the right time. This is especially obvious at the end of songs which have those big synchronized "WHAM!" (wait for it...) "WHAM!" (one more time...wait) "WHAM! ... WHAM! WHAM! WHAM-WHAM-WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAAAAM" (waaaaait...) (waaaaait...) (waaaaaaaaait...) "WHAM!" endings.

This brings us to the BIGGEST (and most ridiculous) sign of a canned performance: if a song DOESN'T end with a synchronized "WHAM!" and instead actually FADES OUT, then nobody is playing, and I bet the singer isn't singing either (see below). There's a reason why live songs don't fade out: it's impossible, and even if somebody went through all the trouble to make it happen it would just look stupid.

In some cases they'll dispense with the artifice altogether and just put the singer alone on the stage. This is a dead giveaway. You don't go through the trouble of laboriously soundchecking a band just to hide them behind a curtain (though there appeared to be a trend for disco and R&B singers to sometimes put their bandmates in a dark, obscure area, maybe to make the singing and theatrical dancing more prominent).

Here's ABBA's "Mamma Mia" as an example. The "ABBA sound" was so treated and produced that it could NEVER sound that way live, but you can hear the way their live vocals stand out from the rest of the song. Amusingly, the men AREN'T actually singing.

Milli Vanilli: It's all pre-recorded and the singer is lip-syncing. This sounds EXACTLY like the single version, and the vocals sound far too smooth and "treated" to be live. The singer drastically changes the position and distance of her microphone with absolutely no change in the quality or volume of her vocals. She dances in a way that would otherwise leave her out-of-breath, or at least cause her to "hitch" occasionally. She doesn't improv or say "thanks" at the end.

Here's Olivia Netwon-John's "Magic." That is NOT a live voice, it is far too smooth and echoey, it's been sent through a half-dozen sweetening filters. It also sounds exactly like the single. A slightly more subtle example is Hall & Oates' "Kiss On My List," which again is far too slick and -- ha ha -- fades out at the end.

...

On "Midnight Special," this spectrum gradually shifted from the "Straight Up" to the "Milli Vanilli" area as the years went by. I wonder if the "studio sound" was getting harder to reproduce on stage, or if expectations were simply changing?

At the same time, the audience went from a huge auditorium full of real people sitting down, to a smaller selection of dancing club "characters" -- including, yes, a shiek -- in a way that seems to represent a shift of attitude...instead of the viewer joining an audience to watch a band perform live, it's become the viewer watching a stable of dancers, with a band in the background as an afterthought...like the viewer is just a dancer listening to the radio. A case of nightclubs and their frenetic, hyped-up subcultures killing the live band, maybe?

I assume the logical next step was "Solid Gold," which (to my memory) was just dancers performing to prerecorded hits without anybody from the band even being there.

And after that? I don't know. Any thoughts?

Disappointed Consumerism: The Transparent Hard Sell of VV Brown, Plus Regina Spektor

Last November, friend Annissa sent me a link to a video by up-and-coming artist VV Brown. The song -- "Crying Blood" -- was not a sad ballad about my cat's eye infection, but was actually a fun little tune that was making a bit of stir on music blogs:



I thought it would be a good drag number to learn so I went online to purchase it, but -- huh? -- the single wasn't scheduled for release until 2009.

It seems to me that, at the time, I read that the single was being delayed "in order to create interest." I didn't think about it much -- I didn't have a wad of cash to spend anyway, and I figured that if the song stuck in my head I'd get around to buying it when it came out.

Today I found myself wondering, "What about that VV Brown song?" So I looked on iTunes and discovered...nothing. Not a peep. I finally found my way to the Island Music store and the baffling information that the single -- in all of its myriad forms -- will not be available until March 11.

So I thought, what? The song is finished. The video's been online for months. The remixes are available for download, so the delay isn't apparently due to the Dust Brothers being too busy dusting. No, the only reason I can think of is..."in order to create interest."

I understand that most products -- movies, video games, gadgets -- are released at strategic times in order to maximize their consumer impact. That makes sense when you've invested lots of research and development time -- and therefore need maximum return -- or you're in a highly competative environment where you need to clobber your competitors with a single rollout or your board of directors kicks you out.

But this is a SINGLE. It's a relatively small part of VV Brown's supposed future output. The video has already appeared online. Singles are NEVER delayed for months...

...unless this is Island Record's way of generating HYPE. Us consumers are supposed to be tantalized by the opportunity to finally buy this song, waiting patiently until the big day arrives. They've dangled the video in front of us and then said "You like it? Wait for it. Chuckle."

For this reason I decided not to buy the single. I felt bad, thinking that perhaps VV Brown was a brilliant indie artist being unwittingly manipulated by her label...and then I noticed the way that her press releases are written, all establishing how mavericky her writing and composing style is. It all sounded so "Vanilla Ice," a carefully coordinated campaign to establish her "cred."

This, to me, is a total backfire. It appears to be a blatant attempt at "going viral." It's like your grandfather telling you that if you clean your room he'll give you an apple, and then asking you "What do you hip cats rap about these days, bro?"

I hate being given such a clumsy hard sell. I hate when people try to hype by using some form of anti-hype. And after viewing VV Brown's annoying and frankly subnormal "blog" -- a pop-up window without any facility for making comments -- I decided I can live without her music.

Maybe I'm selling her short. Maybe she's a talented artist simply bursting with a genuine creative impulse.

Or maybe she's somebody that a talent scout at Island Records picked up because he thought she could "rap with the hip cats, bro, using that internet thing," as long as they could prepare her and the world for each other.

Bonus: Regina Spektor

I've just discovered this wonderful song ("Fidelity") which I imagine everybody's already heard to death. It's new to me at least.



Excited by someone who seemed truly original and interesting, I bought the "Begin to Hope" album. Some of it's quite good, but I find the majority to be awfully...well, Tori. And I'm referring to all those songs I skip on "Little Earthquakes" and "Under The Pink," the solo piano numbers with pretentious stream-of-consciousness lyrics.

They're totally different from the finely-crafted brilliance of "Fidelity." I wonder if, once again, I've been duped by a carefully-manufactured single.

Neil Shubin Celebrates the Fish

During the past few years American scientists have been bemoaning the lack of accessible science literature, particularly in the field of biology. And they have a right to worry about this.

While biologists and paleontologists are going off and doing important things like researching, teaching, and studying, a group of other people are engaging skilled PR to convince the American public that evolution is somehow a "theory in crisis." Creationists (often camouflaged as "Intelligent Design Theorists") ARE churning out accessible literature about their theories, basically because their theories are so empty that they don't even BOTHER spending time to research them.

I suspect that this was the real motivation behind Neil Shubin's "Your Inner Fish" -- an attempt to quickly get an entertaining layperson's guide to evolution into the marketplace. By quietly revealing the mountain of evidence behind common descent, and by exposing the positively UNDESIGNED aspects of our bodies -- nobody would EVER deliberately build us this way, but it all makes sense if you go back and look at our fish ancestors -- Shubin fires a friendly salvo in a way that anybody can come along and appreciate.

And the book IS lots of fun. He draws on particularly bizarre aspects of our bodies to show why things sometimes go wrong -- hiccups, bed-spins, hemorrhoids -- interspersed with the "human element" of his personal thoughts while dissecting cadavers or searching for transitional fossils. His examples are clear-cut and the illustrations excellent. I've no doubt that this book will fulfill its intent as ammunition for countering the more prevalent creationist propaganda.

But Shubin isn't a fantastic writer, and the book has a hurried quality to it: occasional grammatical and word-usage errors ("jerry-rigged" keeps being used, and others have criticized the books usage of the loaded term "primitive" to describe anything pre-mammal) and often Shubin's prose sounds a bit TOO informal to my ears. Plus, no doubt due to the intended audience of total science newbies, he tends to over-explain the things the rest of us already know, and then gloss over the more technical details that we'd really enjoy reading about. The section on the Bozo family was particularly gaggy.

So basically, "Your Inner Fish" is not intended to be read by anybody who is already -- say -- avidly reading Panda's Thumb and its offshoot blogs, though it does have some interesting new twists and turns, and it CERTAINLY gives a clear (though sort of flippant) description of its subjects. If you'd like a primer on common descent and evidence for evolution, however, this book is certainly for you.

Paying the Angles

The August 11, 1928 issue of The New Yorker had an interesting article about Tin Pan Alley songwriters.

Apparently, songwriters bore the responsibility of paying influential people to "plug" their songs. These people -- called "angles" -- tended to be radio singers who were allowed to choose the songs they wanted to perform; if a songwriter offered them thirty to fifty percent of the song's royalties, the radio singers would sing it.

Likewise, a songwriter could end up paying money to additional "angles" such as "jazz-band leaders, makers of phonograph records, movie-house program directors, and the like."

It's interesting that -- according to the article -- the music publishers used to be responsible for paying the angles, at that time usually vaudeville singers. But after theatre managers complained that the vaudeville shows were suffering from substandard material and constant repetition, the music publishers formed the Music Publishers Protective Association and vowed to stop the practice...which is why, by the 1920s, it was up to the writer to do the dirty work.

Compare this to the more modern practice of payola, in which music publishers get back into the game and pay DJs to play their songs.

Incidentally the article concludes by saying there were few successful female songwriters, and that the often-seen name "Mary Earl" was actually "a copyrighted pseudonym belonging to a firm of music publishers and is used on songs written by men."

Hateful Advertisements are Effective

Most of us know that an annoying advertisement can be just as effective as a nice one. You know those commercials that are loud and brash and deliberately ugly? Their point is not to make you ENJOY them, it's to make you notice them and remember the message.

I live life blissfully free of adverts and it's rare that one actually enters into my consciousness. But I've developed such an irrational hatred of this Canadian Tire "Mortgage" character that I have to admit it: the advertisers, by being sneaky, have managed to get me. They've won again.

Every time I see this guy pop up somewhere -- most commonly at BlogPatrol, where I track my blog stats -- I get a hot feeling in my face and I try to minimize my exposure by frantically "clicking through." If I'm lucky I can get to my stats without ever seeing him, but more often than not I miss the links and wind up on other pages, where I see him again...and again...and again.

Why do I hate him? Partly because he looks "stupid," but mainly because he makes no sense. What is he supposed to be? Why's he dressed like that? Why's he always grabbing things and then falling down? YARGH!

The thing is, if I didn't hate him so much I would never have absorbed his message: Canadian Tire offers payment plans of some sort. Despite my best efforts this sidebar advertisement has effectively reached me. I now know exactly what Canadian Tire wanted me to know. Hey, I'm even indirectly advertising for them by telling you all how much I HATE the commercial.

The fact that I would NEVER get a loan from Canadian Tire is beside the point; other people DO want to get loans, and if they hate that egg-shaped guy as much as I do, they'll notice the advertisement and the message will get across.

Brilliant. Awful.

Sicko

I just finished watching "Sicko." Here are a few thoughts before I go to bed.

I enjoyed Michael Moore before he started taking himself so seriously. At one time he was a pest that used irony and confrontation to make relevant points about greedy, selfish people. He seemed sort of cavalier and fun, making a difference almost by accident. Sometime around "The Awful Truth," however, he decided he was a combination "celebrity" and "guardian angel," and he became more concerned with his image, and more manipulative in his techniques, than he ever was before. He also stopped being funny. He also developed a sort of embarrassing love of Canada.

Maybe Moore is fighting back against the equally-manipulative conservatives, trying to use their own slick messaging against them. The thing is, most lefties -- like myself -- pride ourselves on LOOKING for truth, as opposed to cynically manipulating people, no matter how grand the cause.

So whenever Moore gets that sad sound in his voice, I squirm nervously. When a woman grieves over her child's death IN A PLAYGROUND, I turn slightly away. And when Moore wraps it all up by bringing in 9/11...well, gag.

But he probably does it because it works. All those Canadian, French, and English people who interject that they "love America" might touch the hearts of swing voters in the USA, but I can't help thinking that Moore's noble goal (universal health care) is being advanced by transparent methods (the French have universal health care AND THEY AREN'T EVIL!)

Anyway, there's no doubt in my mind that the American health care system is a wicked muddle of greedy jackassery, kept in place only by hysterical fear-messaging on the part of politicians and pundits (who are bought off by those who grow fat on the system). We're on the same page there.

And yes, thank goodness for the Canadian medical system, which guarantees that I will never go without treatment, will never pay money for necessary treatment, and will always be able to go for free checkups.

But the day I walk into a hospital emergency ward and only wait a few minutes for treatment is the day I'm...well, being interviewed by Michael Moore, perhaps. Emergency room treatment here will rarely take less than four hours and hospitals are quite full. Family doctors are scarce. Even so, however, I have never waited more than 90 minutes in an "urgent care clinic" (though they aren't open all night).

Anecdotes:

• Many years ago I dropped a glass at Club Abstract and cut my hand open. I was driven -- in drag -- to the emergency ward at 2am, and I got out of there at around 6am. Most of that time was spent pressing a towel to my hand and waiting for the doctor to see me. Granted, my injury was not that serious, four hours is not long (considering that 2am is the busiest time at a hospital), and I didn't need to get any sort of approval or pay any money for my treatment. And the nurse liked my outfit.
  
• It takes at least two weeks for me to get an appointment with my "hand doctor" (regarding my tendonitis), but he's always ready for the appointment when I arrive and -- as usual -- no approval or payment is involved.
• I did need to pay for my "hand cast."
• My diabetes supplies -- insulin, pentips, blood-testing strips -- are not covered (at least they weren't last time I checked, seven years ago). I don't know WHY they aren't covered, and they're VERY expensive. Fortunately my company's benefits pay 80% (though they get bitchy about the "usual and reasonable" thing).

My point is -- as others have noted -- the Canadian system is not perfect, even though Moore portrays it as being so. But as far as I can say it is LEAGUES beyond the American system and I'm very glad to have it (and help pay for it).

The BusWalk Tour Gets a Boost!

This weekend's Kitchener-Waterloo Record has a nice article about the BusWalk Tour. It makes me sound a little goofy, but I suppose that I really do sound that way, and kudos to Colin Hunter for working in the "drag" variable without being too sensationalistic OR serious.

I was a bit nervous because I know how easy it is to be misquoted (through the power of editing, selective listening, selective memory, and "sexing up"), and I was afraid I'd see something out-of-context that would make me cringe. Nope! I feel no need to write an annotated version of the article.

For visitors who are curious about the tour itself (and not my vain worries about appearance and representation), click here to read all references to the tour in this blog, and rest assured that more are coming. My walkin' shoes have actually disintegrated and I hope to get some more today; maybe there'll be another trip tomorrow?

You can stay tuned and read other things, though...I think this blog is an interesting enough place to hold your attention, and it's also "work friendly." Please feel free to comment, critique, and suggest.

Beating Reality to Death with Your Fantasy

I love to visit secluded creeks and look at their beauty. Forget the shopping carts and beer bottles down there, I mean the slow, uneven erosion of moss-covered banks, discrete spots of sun and shade from the trees, and green-tinted water so clear that you can see the algae waving back and forth underneath.

In those places I hear birds flapping in stereo sound, left to right, and I hear the rustling of squirrels coming down from their nests to drink, and under that I hear the irregular bubbling of a stream that never stops, and suddenly – looking at the still and green-tinted world, listening to these subdued and overlayed noises – I think “wow, this is just like Myst.” And then I feel a little sad for all the hours I spent PLAYING Myst, when I could have been standing by a brook and LIVING the experience instead.

The same thing happens when a thunderstorm is coming, especially now that I can stand on my balcony and see the clouds getting old and black. I look out at the evil skyline and hear the wind hitting my eardrums…and suddenly I’m reminded of “Poltergeist.” It’s view so bizarre that it MUST be a special effect, and the shrill sound of air rushing through tight corners is a sound engineer’s dream. I find myself "removed" from reality briefly, confusing my experience with some movie I haven’t even seen in years.

I think we all do this more than we realize, in an age when our entertainment can so closely mirror our experiences. This is even worse when savvy marketers and producers create out-and-out fantasy and then TELL us that it’s reality, and we end up mimicking the behaviour of somebody in a commercial or a soap opera or a reality TV show. It’s one thing to associate a real-life experience with a simulated recreation; it’s another to embrace a total fabrication and make it "us."

Far be it from me to deride escapism: I play video games, I read books, I watch movies, I listen to music. But I CAN tell the difference between these things and the world around me, the parts of the world that weren't carefully engineered to "make an imprssion." I do my best to understand the differences between the real world – finances, work, friends, social interaction – and their re-created counterparts in entertainment or escapism. I DO know the difference between a babbling brook and a scene from “Myst,” so much so that when I DO feel that I'm becoming disconnected, I worry a bit.

I got particularly worried when I became obsessed with “The Sims” many years ago. I could create my own worlds and my own little humans and live vicariously through them. Then I realized that I was having fun watching SIMULATED human beings doing their dishes, while letting my OWN dishes pile up in the sink. That’s wrong. It’s denial and seductive and a whole bunch of badness that appeals to my most anti-social, desperate, and voyeuristic instincts.

And yet our world seems to be going further in that direction…the much-anticipated “virtual reality” worlds ala “Second Life” are here already, and while I’m sure they are quite social in their own way, they also contain so much fabrication and wish-fulfillment – fake abilities, fake fame, fake appearances – that I can’t help thinking that it’s another step in the direction of a “fake reality,” one that is more convincing than ever.

We humans LOVE to be fakers. Most of us are faking it, most of the time. But we can only go so far in our fakery before somebody calls us on it and we’re forced to come face-to-face with the world and ourselves, and therefore grow and change and adapt and – hopefully – improve, maybe so we can SHED some of our fakery, or at least understand it better. If nobody can call you on your fakery – in fact, if fakery becomes so normalized that your “zwinky” or your “avatar” is more real to others than your actual personality – then I predict that YOU will end up a maladjusted lump, sitting on a virtual reality branch with all the OTHER maladjusted lumps, some of which are probably bots.

I use an assumed name and spend lots of time and money to swap my gender, for goodness sake, so maybe I have no right to criticize. Hey, who am I to say?

Feature Films For Families: Savvy Telemarketing

Last week I got a phone call from somebody doing a "survey" about family entertainment. She was a real, live human being and she actually responded to my questions, but it was obvious she was fronting for "Feature Films for Families," as she asked if they could call me for my opinions about family entertainment. Sure, I said. Either they were genuinely producing good, value-driven films for kids, in which case I'm supportive, or they're a sugar-coated evangelical organization, in which case I'd be up for an argument.

Today I got a call back from a pleasant person who spoke in measured, reassuring, obviously-scripted tones. The strangeness started almost immediately. Here's a slightly shortened transcript.

Him: "Which children under 16 are you involved with?"
Me: "My nephew, who's about 16."
(Beep, then long pause...)
Me: "Hello?"
Him: "Could you please say that again?"
Me: "My 16-year-old nephew."
(Beep)
Him: "I'm glad to hear that. Are you aware that Disney is refusing to make family films that do NOT contain a certain amount of profanity?"
Me: "Wow, I hadn't heard that."
Him: "Well--"
Me: "Can you give me a source or a reference for that? I'd like to check it out."
(Beep, long pause...)
Me: "Hello? You keep--"
Him: "I'm sorry. Do you agree that more films need to reinforce traditional values?"
Me: "I think--"
(Beep, long pause...)
Me: "You keep cutting out."
Him: "Could you please repeat that?"
Me: "Listen, are you a computer or a real person?"
Him: "Ha-ha-ha. I'm not that bad, am I?"
Me: "It's just--"
Him: "I assure you that this is not a computerized call, though it is being monitored for quality assurance purposes."
Me: "It's just that you keep cutting out. Okay, I got distracted, what was the question again?"
Him: "Do you agree that more films need to reinforce traditional values?"
Me: "That depends on the traditional values. My idea of 'traditional values' isn't necessarily the same as yours."
(Beep, short pause)
Him: "I agree. Based on our discussion, I'd like to recommend two movies to you: 'The Penny Promise' and 'Who Stole My Voice?' Each DVD is $19.95. Can we arrange payment and send these films to you?"
Me: "I'm going to check out your website first, and then if I choose to order a movie, I'm sure I can do it through the site."
Him: "We understand that you don't know much about us. Unlike Disney, we do not have millions of dollars to spend on advertisements."
Me: "Your phone call is an effective advertisement. Thanks for calling, and I'll look at the website."
Him: "The telephone is not the best way to communicate, and we may not have called you at a good time. We can send you the DVDs and defer payment for thirty days."
Me: "No, I will check out your website first, and do any ordering from there."
Him: "Security is always a concern. We assure you that no sensitive payment information will be sent over the telephone."
Me: "The hard sell doesn't work for me, it just annoys me. You're getting really obnoxious."
(Beep, long pause...)
Me: "Hello?"
Him: "Would you like use to send you a single DVD, with deferred payment and a full money back guarantee?"
Me: "No."
(Pause)
Him: "May we call you back at another time?"
Me: "No."
Him: "Thank you for taking this call, goodbye."

This exchange was essentially a Turing test for me, and I'm still not 100% sure whether I was talking to Eliza or a human. I don't think he was an incredibly sophisticated computer, unless voice recognition software has progressed since I last checked. Maybe some sort of software was being used during the beeps and pauses -- that would explain why a simple "yes" or "no" caused a swift response -- but I assume he was mainly reading a branching script which he was absolutely FORBIDDEN to deviate from.

These scripts produce the strange feeling that you ARE talking to a computer, since the responses can never QUITE match your answers. It all felt very weird, and I was fascinated until he started aggressively selling to me. In my world, "no" really DOES mean "no."

The "Feature Films for Families" religious ties are also ambivalent...I've done a lot of Googling around, but their "traditional values" seem to MAINLY be -- gasp! -- honesty, effective problem solving, and respect. Some of their DVDs have religious connotations, but if the others do they've made darn sure not to set off any alarm bells. In any case, even if I DID have a child, I would NOT buy ANYTHING from a company that so forcefully (and deceptively) tried to sell me their product.

For more about this telemarketing technique, get it right from the horse's mouth. Several people have blogged about these weird calls from "Feature Films for Families," and it sounds like their script hasn't changed in years.

The Masturbatory, Self-Interested Fiber Disease

I try to stay on top of all the most grotesque and mysterious fringes of our bio-diverse world, especially when they're related to parasitism. I'm pleased to finally find out that they've named a film genre after my obsessions: "Body Horror."

My fear and fascination of parasitic invasion probably began (as I've said before) with "The Seeds of Doom" and solidified with "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" which puts me in a particularly exclusive body horror sub-genre: fear of being turned into a plant.

That sounds funny I'm sure, but through most of my life this has been an honest-to-goodness little phobia...but though it still fascinates me I no longer sort of suspect that it will happen to me. I'm not alone, though, judging by the amount of horror fiction written on the subject: "Fungus" by Harry Adam Knight springs immediately to mind, and also "The Voice in the Night" by William Hope Hodgson (which inspired the Japanese film "Attack of the Mushroom People.")

All this explains why I find "Morgellons Disease" so intriguing. Rampant parasites under the skin? Weird egg-sacks? Multi-colored cellulose fibers growing out of sores that never seem to heal?

That would be interesting enough, but add to this the fact that the "disease" -- which apparently affects thousands in the United States -- is most likely a case of internet support groups gone mad, and you have a REAL fascinating story.

I won't recite the whole schpiel -- you can research it yourself if you're interested -- but I will point out the prevalence of Morgellons-themed You-Tube videos by people who are supposedly filming their "intelligent fibers." I'll also point out the intellectual dishonesty of so many of the "sufferers," who proudly trumpet that the CDC is investigating the disease but neglect to mention that they're only doing it because they're barraged with letters about it.

The claims of the sceptics seem reasonable to me: it's delusional parasitosis (otherwise there'd be SOME physical evidence other than what's posted anonymously on YouTube), but the sufferers of delusional parasitosis now have Morgellons to fall back on. Now that they have a support group they can all cluster together and reinforce their beliefs, avoiding the antipsychotic medication that would supposedly stop the delusions. This is complicated by people who want to be part of a grotesque mystery, and -- perhaps -- by a real but much-less-spectacular condition that a very small group of people actually have.

But maybe I'm wrong! Lord knows that being worried about something unknown and dangerous makes most people feel more alive. No wonder many of us sort of half-wish it would turn out to be real!

The Masturbatory, Self-Interested Death Orgy

Minutes after the second spate of Virginia tech shootings became news people had turned tragedy into a tool to support their causes. The postings I personally saw -- on Americablog -- connected the incident to both gun control and the war in Iraq. Meanwhile, on the right (Townhall), the incident was being used to illustrate the heartlessness of the left (turning tragedy into support for gun control) and to then say "I wish some of those students were carrying guns."

The frenzy has already started in the media, I'm sure. Have they chosen music to go with the Blacksburg graphic yet? What's the catchy phrase, is it "Virginia Tech Tragedy" or "Columbine II" or "Blacksburg Slaughter?" It may be too early for the shots of cute weeping children, but I'm sure the satellite trucks are ready for the upcoming mourning ceremonies and the inevitable pilgrimmages which allow people to say they were there (and maybe get on TV and be part of an event).

The real frenzy will begin once we know the ethnicity and social affiliation of the attacker. In the few clips I watched yesterday the poor news anchors were virtually PANTING for this information. Does "Asian" mean, like, a muslim from India or Pakistan? Or was he a Christian fundamentalist? A recent immigrant? An over-achiever? Did he watch violent movies, was this an example of jilted male rage, and what sort of music did he listen to? Where are his parents, HOLY COW, WHAT AN INTERVIEW, find his parents! Are there any copycat killers? Exacly how many morbid records did he break? Let's interview pundits with contrary opinions about how the incident was handled, speckled with families of the slain, heroes of the day (quick, find a hero!) Let's even raise our ratings by condemning the way the news media latches on to tragedy in order to raise ratings.

On Sunday we might find out which element of American foreign or domestic policy prompted God into doing this. There will be an "outpouring of sympathy" across the country, in which people hope silently for more camera time and get a thrill out of the "bonding." If they ever read this blog entry, they will accuse me of not "feeling" anything and insist that they have every right to be -- not just sad or regretful -- but totally and verbally broken up and outraged about what happened. There will be an unspoken desire to keep the story alive so we can all feel excited and in permenent danger. The school officials will be rightly or wrongly crucified. The Bush administration will accuse democrats of crassly pursuing corruption investigations while the rest of the country is "in mourning."

Very little of it will be honest, most of it will be destructive, and it makes me damn sick.

Synchronicity: The Manual

Henning (HE FIXED MY BLOG TEMPLATE!!!) has occasionally loaned me some rare and wonderful CDs by KLF. While their overblown and strangely beautiful "stadium house" sound is fun to listen to, and their collaboration with Tammy Wynette ("Stand By the Jams") is outrageously funny and odd, I reserve most of my affection for one-off KLF side-project The Timelords. They produced one mega-hit single, and then -- in typical quirky style -- produced "The Manual."

Subtitled "How to Have a Number One the Easy Way," it's their tongue-in-cheek guide to constructing the ideal hit single. Amazingly, many people have read The Manual and then produced number one hits, usually before fading away into obscurity. Close to my heart were Edelweiss, who in 1988 combined ABBA and yodelling to create one of my all-time favourite "fun" songs. They credit The Manual. So does (shiver) Chumbawamba for (shiver) "Tubthumping."

Now I find out that "The Pipettes" ALSO give The Manual credit for their success.

So what the heck is IN this manual? I'd love to read it, but until I can find a copy I can only guess, based on the examples provided above. All of these songs have simple repetative beats. Excluding The Pipettes, the songs also juxtapose different song segments that are surprising and seem slightly bizarre. Most importantly, they all have a sarcastic/base/simple/ironic tone reflecting elements of popular culture: The Timelords rip off (among other things) Gary Glitter and Doctor Who, Edelweiss rips off ABBA and German ski resorts, Chumbawamba combines a drinking anthem with "Danny Boy."

From what I hear, the original Manual focused more on electronically sampling other sources, but later groups show that simply referencing those sources is enough to score a hit.

Pierre Berton on Vogue

Blood sugar finally doing a swan-dive after hours of battling the sick-stress sugar secretions from my liver (which doesn't yet have a name...maybe "Parker?"). 53 pages and I'm in love with Mr. Berton. On women in Vogue magazine:

At the end of the neck one finds a face that has overtones of Buchenwald about it--chalk-white and haggard. Vogue women do not have noses, only nostrils. Their eyes are enormous and decadent, their lips thin and solemn. Their hair is always quite odd. They are shown thrust forward in inscrutable positions that suggest some curious doe-like animal at feeding time.

They always look terribly thin and hungry, and slightly haunted. They stand about in the queerest attitudes, modelling this and that. They do strange things with their stomachs. They perform the most amazing contortions with their feet, forcing them into positions that would bring the green blush of envy to a Chaplin's cheeks. The Vogue stance has got to be seen to be believed, but I have never encountered it outside the pages of the magazine.

Vogue women suffer terribly from curvature of the spine. Their smiles are enigmatic; their eyes are soulless; and their faces are drained of all expression. But they are always perfectly groomed; indeed, it seems to me, they have had the personality groomed right out of them.

Pierre Berton, David Foster Wallace, Advertising

When I was very young I remember watching TV with my parents and seeing a commercial where a popular movie star endorsed a headache tablet, possibly Aspirin. My dad, in his efforts to educate the family, said the movie star probably didn't even USE that brand. He told me that celebrities didn't endorse products because they BELIEVED in them, but because they got a lot of MONEY for doing it.

I told my parents that if *I* were a celebrity, and if I were asked to endorse a product that I didn't believe in, I'd go on live television and tell EVERYBODY that I didn't believe in the product. I felt awfully brave and honest when I said this but I noticed that my parents weren't impressed, and I think my mom told me I'd end up getting myself sued.

While this memory is a bit tangled up with my subsequent worries that Morris the Cat didn't really enjoy 9 Lives cat food, I think it instilled in me a healthy cynicism about advertising. Rather than get crotchety about advertisements I try to see the "fun" in the industry, and I also try to ignore that their only purpose is to line the pockets of company executives -- often by instilling fear in consumers -- and that -- yes -- Morris probably DIDN'T really like 9 Lives.

To take a break from heavy reading (but still stick with a "Canadiana" theme) I've decided to start a book of short, funny essays by Pierre Berton called "Just Add Water and Stir." The book came out in 1959 and is a "best of" collection of some of the satirical and social columns he wrote for the Toronto Star.

I've read the first three stories in quick succession and I'm sort of shocked and disturbed. He's poking fun at the advertising business by exposing some small common practice, magnifying it, and taking it to its logical (and hopefully impossible) conclusion. In "The Great Detergent Premium Race," for instance, rival detergent companies start offering mail-in prize contests. Each company is forced to one-up the rival by providing more prizes, until the boxes of detergent contain ONLY prizes...and no actual detergent.

That alone would be a cute little newspaper column, but Berton takes it one step further: the practice quickly spreads to non-detergent companies, some of whom offer DETERGENT as their prizes. So, if you want to actually BUY detergent, you have to buy a box of Whiffle towels, which comes with detergent as a "prize" but does not actually contain a towel. If you want a Whiffle towel you need to buy a box of detergent, which contains a Whiffle towel as its prize...but no detergent. This "extra step" started to remind me of the work of another author...

The next two stories are similar: they're essentially about the extraordinary lengths of fakery that ad agencies use in order to make their products sincere, relevant, and appealing. Pierre Berton does this in a deadpan style, stooping to a cheap joke now and then but mostly writing in a style more reminiscent of newspaper reporting than short-story writing. And what's more, he always takes it a step beyond into a level of silliness that you didn't see coming.

By the third story I was so surprised that I shouted the most shocking word I could think of: "Krasny!" It no longer felt like I was reading Pierre Berton...I could have sworn I was reading David Foster Wallace instead, without all the footnotes and gimmickry. At its center, the TONE and CONTENT of Wallace's work sounds EXACTLY like Pierre Berton's. Krasny!

Meanwhile many of us Canadians have spent all these years making fun of Berton as one of those non-celebrity celebrities who filled the void of Canadian media before it had ACTUAL celebrities, that stable of stuffy "stars" who were on all the news programs and talk shows but you never actually recognized (or even knew what they did for a living). In short: an ideal panelist for "Front Page Challenge."

And yet here he was spoofing advertising in exactly the same way David Foster Wallace does...40 years earlier. David Foster Wallace is hailed as a brilliant satirist, but very few people even care who Pierre Berton was.

Or maybe I've just been living in a cultural bubble? Either way it's weird.

Rising Up and Rising Down: Columbine

A magazine sent Vollmann to Littleton after the school shooting. The article he wrote is mostly about the "vultures": the media who shamelessly exploited the tragedy for ratings, and also the relgious and ideological vultures who opportunistically swooped in to convert the grief-stricken to their causes.

I do think that news media is probably the most lethal thing in the world today. It homogenizes, exploits, simplifies, and cynically manipulates. Worst of all, it usually doesn't even have an ideology...it's just acting this way so it can make more money, get bigger, and acquire more subsidiaries...and as I've said before, I think the idea that everything MUST get bigger and better is the basic root of human evil.

This case study ("Murder For Sale") is a vicious and much-deserved swipe. While watching a journalist take pictures of a weeping grandmother:

I watched that journalist for a while. The grandmother proved to be an aberration. Mainly he was taking pictures of little girls. I suppose that they were his natural prey. Just in case you wish to understand the feeding habits of this subspecies of vulture, I now refer you to my friend Noah Richler, an acute and articulate student of the world who's worked with me at BBC Radio and now runs the book review section of Canada's National Post. He put it to me like this: "In a way, the climactic moment is always being pushed forward. Twenty years ago, the shootings themselves would have been the point. But now the shootings are not good enough. You neeed the weepy hugs. And it becomes something other than news. You know, here we are at the newspaper, and we had loads of shots from Littleton of the kids hugging each other. Then the next day there was that copycat shooting here in Canada, and so we had shots of teeth biting the lips and parents hugging their kids and all that, and I found myself thinking, these kids aren't as cute as the Littleton kids-you know, prairie kids, farmer's daughters and all that. I suppose the American journalists had searched out more photogenic kids..."

Ciao, Anna Nicole

I was originally going to write a great big entry about body image, but it's all been said before. I was also going to spit venom about the spoiled, stupid, doped-up brat that was Anna Nicole Smith, but somehow this doesn't seem to be the right time (though the chances of her reading my blog are pretty slim as of today).

So instead I'll just say that as a model she certainly had her moments, but as a ROLE-model she was thoroughly undesireable. She did make a dent in beauty stereotypes, but mostly because she just sort of tripped over her feet and bumped into it and not because she wanted to. The fashion industry just knocked the dent out again anyway.

I do think she was pretty, at times. If anything she served as an example of what highly-trained cosmeticians and stylists can do with a person's body, given enough money and enough time.

The above picture shows Anna Nicole in Bryan Ferry's video for "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow." Since we're on the topic of beauty standards and Bryan Ferry, I present a picture of Rossy de Palma in the video for "I Put a Spell On You." The video is horrible but there's little doubt that Rossy is a far more unconventional beauty than Anna Nicole was, and she never stooped to a nose job either.

Broadcast Signal Intrustion

I try not to stick too many YouTube videos on here -- it gets repetative, slows down the page loading time, and seems sort of a cheap thing to do -- but this is a particularly strange one with an interesting history.

On November 22, 1987, the only two successful cases of "broadcast signal intrusion" ocurred. During the 9:00pm WGN news broadcast, somebody managed to hijack the signal and insert their own video signal into the program. The signal was without audio and only lasted for twenty seconds; engineers quickly corrected the problem.

But the same hijack was attempted at 11:15pm on WTTW, this time with audio. Since the engineers weren't on duty, the inserted signal seemed to run its course...this time with audio. Nobody knows who the hijackers were, but whoever they were, they were very very strange.

Here's a recording of the incident, which occurs during a broadcast of Doctor Who's "Horror of Fang Rock."



Yes, he's wearing a Max Headroom mask and his voice is being pitch-shifted. Here's what some folks think he is actually saying, and for more information visit this site.

"He's a freaky nerd!"

"This guy's better than Chuck Swirsky." [another WGN sportscaster at the time]

"Oh Jesus!"

"Catch the wave..." [reference to a Coke commercial at the time of which Max Headroom was a spokesperson]

"Your love is fading..."

"I stole CBS."

"Oh, I just made a giant masterpiece printed all over the greatest world newspaper nerds." [??]

"My brother [mother?] is wearing the other one."

"It's dirty..."

"They're coming to get me..."

Incidentally, I loved Max Headroom. Hey, I was young, but after he teamed up with Art of Noise for "Paranoimia" -- a video which really messed up THIS 14-year-old's head -- I was hooked:



I even switched to Coca-Cola. It was at a time when people still thought he was computer generated, which made everything all the more mysterious. And the TV show was darn good too.

Also incidentally, "Horror of Fang Rock" is one of the best Doctor Who serials out there. Made during the Hinchcliffe-Holmes era -- when their mandate was "let's scare the little buggers" -- "Fang Rock" was one of a series of particularly nasty, out-of-control programs that eventually lead to Philip Hinchcliffe's ouster. And yes, it terrified me, and it's disturbing to watch even now. It's been given the full DVD restoration treatment. Sadly the Max Headroom video isn't part of it.