The Invasion

The Doctor that *I* grew up with was mostly Tom Baker, with just a hint of Pertwee. But I have to say that, by far, my favourite Doctor/companion combination is Patrick Troughton, Zoe, and Jamie.

I can't really explain why I like Troughton so much; I think it's because he so convincingly switches between glee, silliness, fear, and viciousness. As others have said, he's like a wonderful, slightly scary, crazy uncle. Throw in Jamie and Zoe, who are the most lovable non-sibling siblings ever, then add the fact that the three of them got along so INCREDIBLY well off-screen, and you have almost as much fun watching them as they supposedly had during rehearsals. Not to mention Zoe with That Catsuit.

Along comes the release of 1968's "The Invasion" on DVD. The cyberman story that doesn't really have cybermen in it. Instead it's got the debut of UNIT (who I've always enjoyed), Tobias Vaughn (best villain ever), Sally Faulkner as the rude mod gal (empowered just long enough to get a soldier killed, then settles down to tea-making duties)...somehow it's eight episodes that DESERVES to be eight episodes, never dull, always something new, even if you DO have to see the same stock footage of missile silos over and over and over again.

What's more, the BBC has gone out on a limb and animated the two missing episodes, synced up with the surviving audio soundtrack. It's cheap but absolutely watchable. Particularly fun is seeing animated characters try to sell the trademark Hines & Troughton mumbling ad-libs.

But best of all -- yes, it gets better! -- is the 15-minute documentary about the sad people who recorded the soundtracks off their TVs. Yes, the kids who audio-taped every episode of Doctor Who, some of them from the time of Marco Polo. The kids that everybody probably made fun of. The kids who, after the infamous wiping of 109-odd episodes by the BBC, are now the only source of those long-lost soundtracks.

They're slightly-embarassed middle-aged men now, but they chatter about the lovingly obsessive care they took recording the shows, and Mark Ayres (audio guru) explains the process of lovingly and obsessively cleaning them up for DVD. My brain just about exploded when he explained his technique for restoring a complete 10-second audio drop-out during "The Abominable Snowmen": sampling Patrick Troughton's phonemes from other episodes, then pitching, equalizing, and splicing them together to make a mostly understandable replacement.

Personal sentimental anecdote: I never recorded Doctor Who off the TV, mainly because I didn't have enough audio tapes. But I DID consider "Phantom of the Paradise" to be tape-worthy, though it ended up being grumbly City-TV jingles and me yelling at my sister to keep quiet.

A Diabetic's Sad Cry For Understanding: Lessons in Liver

You might not realize that whenever you're agitated or sick your liver secretes sugar. I'm not sure where the sugar comes from -- it's probably stored inside the liver for just such an occasion, like the bottles of booze you keep for unexpected visitors -- but it ends up in your bloodstream with all the sugars derived from your food...and since you probably have the bonus of automatic insulin production you never even know about it.

This is something I was never told about when I was a kid, but I'd long realized that stress and sickness caused my blood sugar to plateau at an unusually high level. An endocrinologist finally identified the culprit: my liver (AKA "Parker").

A lot of the trouble I have with my blood sugar comes down to Parker's sugar-happy ways. If I get upset about something, or if I feel a bit more stressed than usual at work, I have to assume that more insulin is necessary to bring my blood sugar down again. The problem is that Parker doesn't ALWAYS secrete sugar in response to stress...sometimes he's asleep on the job, so I take the extra insulin, I have an insulin reaction, I eat sugar, Parker might wake up and decide to give me an extra jolt of sugar in the meantime because I'm stressed about my failure to properly anticipate my blood sugar level, and next thing I know I'm a mushy, totally unproductive citizen.

When I'm sick, though, Parker ALWAYS comes through. And what's more this "sick sugar" is apparently difficult to break down, because I can spend hours topping up my insulin...with absolutely NO effect whatsoever, at which point I become frustrated, inject massive amounts of insulin, and end up being unable to sleep and writing blog entries about Pierre Berton when I should be resting up and getting healthy.

So next time you get sick, or somebody cuts you off in traffic: give a thought to YOUR liver. You don't have any nerves in there so you can't tell what it's doing, but take it from me: it's injecting sugar into your bloodstream, just to annoy you.

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.

Films for a Do-Nothing Week

There's nothing like watching a bunch of movies to fix the brain when you're feeling ill and overworked.

Double Dare

A documentary about two stuntwomen from two very different backgrounds: Jeanie, who used to double for Wonder Woman, and Zoe, who doubled for Xena. Jeanie is over sixty, well-respected in her field, classy, established, but thinking more and more about liposuction and becoming a "stunt coordinator." Zoe, on the other hand, is a young newcomer who doesn't quite know what she wants to do when Xena is cancelled. Who's going to set her on fire now?

The documentary follows the women as they pursue their own careers, face mounting rejection, and no doubt frequently annoy each other. A running theme is the marginalization of women in Hollywood, and ESPECIALLY in the stunt field...but the close-knit community of stuntpeople helps to smooth the problems a bit. It had never ocurred to me that the job of a stuntwoman is often more dangerous than it is for a stuntman; while the men usually double for actors who are a bit bulky or are well-clothed -- allowing the stuntman to wear padding -- women double for slim actresses with low-cut necklines and sleeveless outfits. No padding for them.

Even though I didn't find myself liking Zoe -- she's a bit crass and over-the-top -- it's amazing to see her land an audition for "Kill Bill" (thanks to help and support from Jeanie)...and to see her actually get the part of Uma Thurman's double. She's obviously good at what she does as she's apparently continued to do stunts in Hollywood and had a substantial acting role in one of Tarantino's recent films.

You go, stuntwomen!

Mid-'40s Experimental Films

When you rent a DVD of early experimental films you never know what you're going to get. Will you be forced to sit through an hour of meditations on trees, shadows, reflections, and the reflections of tree shadows on other trees? Usually.

The DVD of Maya Deren's films is wonderful. Mostly silent, starring herself, and made throughout the '40s, her movies are well-organized, thematic, and -- most important -- they seem to involve actual human beings. Her experiments with framing and film speed always come across as having a useful purpose.

I didn't know anything about her when I watched the films, but my first thought was: David Lynch saw these. They have that David Lynch "feeling" to them. It turns out there's a real connection, and she's viewed as one of the pioneers of "New American Cinema." Considering that she made these beautiful, slow, creepy films while Hollywood was spending millions on musical extravaganzas...well, her individuality is especially striking.

As a bonus, her husband's film "Private Life of a Cat" is almost impossibly cute. Except when you get to watch kittens squirming around in their half-eaten placentas.

I was less enchanted with the DVD of Kenneth Anger's films, however. His movies were distant and narcissistic, showing '40s Hollywood bohemia at its most self-indulgent. His love of opulence and chintz would make a cherub queasy. "Eaux d'Artifice" is an exception, mostly because of his camera trickery, and also because it isn't wrapped up with Anger's love of classic mythology and Alistair Crowley.

Guelph's "The Main Drag" is Rescheduled!

Come out to "The Main Drag" on March 16th. The long-awaited yearly drag show -- featuring both veterans and first-timers -- will be held in the Grad Lounge at the University of Guelph. I'll be doing two numbers and otherwise just schmoozing around. These shows are ALWAYS fun, and not just for the performers!

Jack Frost Overstays His Welcome

Every year the day comes when I can no longer stand winter. This morning I looked out my bathroom window at the same old icicles, and they weren't pretty anymore. I was sick of winter. It always happens.

March is when enough old snow has accumulated to make walking difficult, especially in front of houses owned by people who never shovel. Instead of being fluffy and white, the snow has became hard-packed and speckled with junk: leaves, branches, garbage. When the streets are wet they're covered with black oily slush; when they're dry they're disfigured with huge psoriatic rings of salt. Birds tweet and squirrels come out of their trees even though they know better.

Every time I go out of doors, or come indoors, I need to go through the elaborate routine of bundling up or stripping off. Winter has already given us a few good snowstorms, which are at least worth looking forward to. My Safe-T-Salt bag is almost empty and it's hard carrying a full one home. More than anything else I want to see grass.

Do you hear me, Jack Frost? Finish your wine and your boring story and go home.

Krasny: The New Russian Note in the Rouge of the Modish Parisienne

THE IMPERIAL EXILES OF THE COURT OF THE FALLEN CZAR CAPTIVATE CHIC PARIS WITH THEIR GOREGOUS MAKE-UP--KRASNY

A new vogue--a new fashion in Rouge! Product of the gorgeous color-sense of Russia's banished beauty and the infallible taste in Paris!

It came about in this way. When the aristocracy of Russia, the court of the Czar, the most brilliant society in Europe, fled before the sans culottes of the Revolution, Paris became their hope!

And there the most of them are today, the Russian Coterie, the most glowing color-note in the fashionable life of Paris.

Nothing was more captivating than their gorgeous make-up, their thrilling use of rouge! Glorious shades, mircaulously harmonious with the coloring of these barbaric beauties. Paris, who lives to be conquered by beauty, by chic, of coure made this make-up her own! Krasny!

But nowhere in the world does Krasny belong as in America, with its splendid, fearless, gorgeously healthy women! So we brought Krasny to America for you, and here it is today.

The New Yorker, July 9, 1927

Toronto the Good

I guess that my long walk through 45kph winds on Monday night has done me in: sore throat, muddled head, developing cough, and excessive saliva. The second possibility hardly bears thinking about: maybe the bat spit I touched in the summer has finally worked its way into my nervous system. Cujo was a St. Bernard, after all.

To comfort myself I'm reading "Toronto the Good," written in 1898 by Evening Telegram journalist C. S. Clark. He wrote the book to counter claims by city planners that Toronto was "the city on the hill," a booming utopia. By exposing crooked police, useless morality laws, fawning presses, corrupt financial enterprises, gambling, prostitution, and the general awfulness of women, Clark's book is well-remembered...though he himself appears to be forgotten.

This is just as well. My initial impression (partway through the book) is that Clark is a crotchety, nasty old bastard. He obviously has a narrow range of tolerences and interests, and anything that falls outside that range -- certain types of literature, for instance -- is unspeakably awful. But not REALLY "unspeakably," because he chooses to speak about it...endlessly. Bitterly. Impotently.

The thing is, I haven't figured out yet if the book is serious, satirical, or sarcastic. And herein lies my problem with the common writing style up to 1930 or so: I can never tell if they're joking or not. Part of this is because I don't understand some of the references -- some of them are only implied instead of being stated outright -- and also because satirical writing was much more subtle and dry at the time. Not to mention some words had a slightly different meaning; off the top of my head: "rise," "reach," and "brilliant."

But the big issue has to do with sentence structure. Run on sentences were not just acceptable, but par for the course. I've spent some time trying to figure out why Victorian writing gives me such a headache, and I think it's because it tends to be written like this:

"Short sentence proposing something. Another short sentence of exactly the same length that ramps up the emotional level somewhat. A third short sentence to let you know that the author really means it. An incredibly long sentence, with, awkward punctuation, that provides a useful logical link, which works towards proving the point, with a digression, and this is related to another earlier point, and you'd better believe it reader, the final logical link in the chain, and now I've proven the point with a long-winded final sentence fragment including a chuckle at the whims of humanity.

"A new paragraph about something completely different."

Anyway, I'd love to be able to present some pieces of wisdom I've gleaned so far -- some interesting insights into early Toronto life, for instance -- but all I've learned so far is that C. S. Clark probably had very few friends and that women shouldn't write about anything other than fashion (and those who do write about anything else have "acidulated" faces), that "bucket shops" were places were you could gamble on the stock market without actually BUYING stocks, that (literally) all police officers were scoundrels, and that the Evening Telegram has the BESTEST writers in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD, which is no coincidence because Clark writes for it.

Okay, here's something interesting: C. S. Clark REALLY HATES people with cute names, and he wonders repeatedly "how people, presumed to have good common sense, could expect children possessed of such names to live." As an example of the sorts of cute names that people had at the turn of the century, here are the awful ones he culls from obituaries (to prove -- I think seriously -- that people with such names die sooner):

• Prince.
  
• "A laboring grinder in a concern where I once worked called his son Earl. The child died in four days."
• Queen Victoria Lockwood Warner (AKA "Queenie," a very popular "cute nickname" of the period).
• "Li Hung Chang Jones is the fearsome name with which a heartless father has burdened his helpless and unoffending offspring."
• "Birdie" Bates (another common nickname).
• Dorathea Beatrice (Queenie) Chambers.
• Emeline (Emmy) Gladys Davis.
• Irminie Savage.
• Zenith Gertrude Longley.
• Abraham Lyncoln Ulysses William McKinley Graydon. Not to be outdone, a neighbour called his child Thomas Jefferson Andrew Jackson James Monroe William Jennings Bryan Vaughn. "At last accounts both infants were doing as well as could be expected under the circumstances."

As a sidenote, these "Coles Canadiana" reprints are priceless.

Catherine Tate

I'm watching the DVD for the first season of "The Catherine Tate Show." I've watched quite a few show clips on YouTube and I found very little of it funny, but now I realize that her comedy is based on the repetition of simple themes, characters who do the same thing every time you see them. I think of this as the "Addams Family" approach to comedy...and I really like The Addams Family.

So I now present the character of Helen Marsh. Whenever a professional is unavailable, Helen reveals that she specializes in whichever field is required, but she turns out to be totally incompetent. You know it's going to happen which, somehow, makes it funnier.

In this case she's an interpreter. You could make an argument that this is in some ways racist, but I disagree for reasons that aren't very edifying or interesting.