You'll Like What I Tell You to Like: Catfish

As you can see I’ve been having some trouble maintaining the old blog in recent months. You know how it goes – work, extra-curriculars, TV, drinking, etc. But fortunately, some months ago I wrote a review of the movie Catfish that I never got around to posting. So, in a blatant effort to capitalize on all the #catfish chat that’s happening in the social media sphere, here it is now! Thank you Manti Te’o for helping me to blog with minimal effort. 

No no no. Not that kind of catfish. 

There are many reasons why I’m thankful every day that I reached adulthood before Facebook came around. Why? Think back to all the stupid things you said and did before you fully developed a sense of what is “socially acceptable.” Now imagine that stupidity preserved for the rest of your life in a public online forum. Maybe even beyond your life – what happens to Facebook profiles after the user dies, anyway?

The Internet can lull people into a false sense of security. It puts enough of a buffer between them and reality to make them say and do things they wouldn’t in real life. And once something is said or done online, it can’t be unsaid. That’s why I’m glad that as a socially awkward kid I didn’t have the opportunity to create any fake online personas. Still, I can certainly imagine having the compulsion to do so.

A strong grip on reality helps most people keep their Facebook profiles more or less representative of who they actually are. But what if that reality is so far from the life you want that you feel compelled to create an online alter ego? Someone to live through vicariously; someone beautiful, smart and successful – everything you feel you’re not? You can be anyone, so why be you?

Catfish tells the story of a good-intentioned young fella who “meets” a young lady online. He gets to know her and her family, speaking to them regularly online and on the phone. But when he attempts to meet the family in person, things quickly get weird. It’s a fable for the digital age – a high-tech retelling of age-old mantras: tell the truth and just be yourself. Tell lies and you’ll get caught.

Wikipedia and other sources suggest that Catfish is a staged documentary—that very little of the film is truth; or at least, the filmmakers did not experience the events as they unfolded. But it’s so easy to suspend disbelief in a film like this, that it’s a little disappointing to think that it’s not all real—it’s probably similar to the feeling the movie’s Angela got when she signed out of her 15 Facebook profiles and turned off her computer each night to face with the soul-crushing blandness that was her life.

But for three young, technologically-savvy people to set off on a cross-country trek to meet total strangers without Googling them first was a major plot hole. You have to really want to suspend disbelief to go along with that – just like someone clings to a fantasy as it unravels around them, hmmmm?

The character of Angela—insofar as she appears in the film—is a sad case, but understandably. I hope she got some kind of therapy, because what she does in the movie sounds like it came straight off the pages of the DSM. Usually, when one thinks of online identity fraud, one thinks of stolen credit card numbers, or pedophiles trawling the Internet for victims. You don’t think of the fraud as being a victim herself.

That’s one of the reasons Catfish may be worth checking out. Just be sure you bring along a healthy skepticism… be sure to bring that to any online romances as well. Whether or not the film is true to life isn’t the point—the point is that it easily could be.

My Extra-Curriculars

So between working for the man, lounging in the sun and entertaining you fine people, I also find time to share my two cents on flurtsite.com. Flurt is an Edmonton-based non-profit with the goal of empowering young women. You can think of it as a result of that one beautiful night that Cosmo and Adbusters share under the boardwalk while Bob Seeger played in the background.

There are many talented writers sharing their thoughts on the site, and I highly recommend checking some out. But since this is my blog, I'm going to direct you to the two articles I've written.

Here I'll introduce you to a lovely young lady with something to say about legalized abortion. Check out the comments to see some random tell me I should be ashamed of myself. (I'm not.)

For less controversy, check this out. Disney tries to create a heroine that isn't sorta lame. Are they successful?

Hope you enjoy!

You'll Like What I Tell You to Like: Summer Reads

As you can see, I haven’t been expending a whole lot of energy on blogging endeavours. That’s because I’ve been enjoying all the summer has to offer! Beaches and beers on patios and what have you.

I’ve also been enjoying some reading that doesn’t strain my neurons too terribly. It’s no Twilight, but here are a few numbers that I think are pretty accessible. Read one, and do your part to combat Fifty Shades of Grey mania.

1. Spadework – Timothy Findley

I’ve read a fair bit of Timothy Findley and he never fails to please. His prose is what you might call Hemingway-esque: he says a lot with a little. Findley is one of those great writers that you enjoy as a beach read, or as a thesis paper—he creates enough plot to keep the pages turning, but if you want to go deeper you can see he’s saying a whole lot more than what it seems on the surface. Psychology and psychosis are prominent themes in most (or maybe all) of his work, and the dark recesses of the mind and universality of corruption and weakness play heavily the characters here.

All that said, this was not my Findley fave. It started out like a Nicholas Sparks novel, i.e. a lot of description about what the heroine is wearing and exactly how happy she is in her perfect suburban life. Golly gee! But then we discover there is actually nothing picturesque about it. Like a beautiful summer day that dissolves into thunder and lightning and winds that tear down street signs, the darker side of human nature quickly rears its ugly head.

Then all kinds of crap happens! Obviously I won’t go into detail, but to tempt you I will say that Findley has a nifty way of working sex into many facets of his characters. It runs throughout the novel, but there is one really weird sex-capade (for lack of a better word) that may almost cause you to stop reading. Listen to your heart. If it tells you to stop, do, because you probably can’t stomach the rest of what Findley has to say about YOU, the reader. And all of us. He’s very Jungian, you see.

2. Rules of Civility – Amor Towles

There's not a whole lot you can do to make a photo of a book interesting.

Twenty dollars says this novel is made into a movie inside five years. It’s got all the makings of a thinker’s blockbuster: Depression-era New York, a plucky heroine, a love triangle. And it works the rags-to-riches angle, which is as much a fantasy now as in pre-war USA.

It starts out strong—nothing catches and holds my interest like a glorious Model-T smashup resulting in an alarming disfigurement. Whenever we drive past a fender bender I cry to Mitch, “Rubberneck! Rubberneck!” This stems from my early days in the ’Skatch. We didn’t have computers, or cable, or sock puppets to amuse us, so we relied on other people’s misery. It remains the job of the passenger to paint me a poignant word picture, because I’m a responsible driver who keeps both eyes on the road at all times.

But anyway, things went downhill from the crash… or through the windshield, as it were. It didn’t exactly crash and burn (there’s a wealth of wordplay opportunity here) but there was definitely a steady decline. Most importantly, I felt like the authenticity waned as things went on. There wasn’t nearly enough 1930s slang for my taste, although the cigarette holders and martinis were plentiful. And frankly, the heroine kind of irritated me. Her name was Katey Kontent. Kontent? It’s reiterated several times in the book that “it’s pronounced kon-tent, like the state of being,” so I suppose Mr. Towles was trying to get at something with this. Is it that Katey will always take what she has and be thankful? Or is it that she’s just the opposite? I sure don’t know, so read it yourself and find out. Either way, I personally have never encountered a Russian immigrant whose surname began with anything other than “ov[a].”

My final beef is that the primary love interest’s name is Tinker. Tinker. That’s something my grandpa used to do with his train set, or something my dad does to the dishwasher when he’s too much of a he-man to call a professional. It’s definitely not glamorous. Certainly not the name of someone you’d trust to show you the town in style. But then again this was the era of the nickname, so maybe the ridiculousness of the moniker positively correlates to the attractiveness of the gentleman. At any rate, I’ll leave it to you potential readers to decide how attractive Tinker really turns out to be.

3. I’m Starved for You – Margaret Atwood

Ah Margaret. I’ll never have anything bad to say about you.

This is a short story released exclusively in electronic format, proving that Ms. Atwood, at 72, is still totally fresh and hep with the times. Like Findley, she probes into the soul of the everyman and shows us exactly what we all hate in ourselves. And I love her for it.

But at the same time, she scares the crap out of me. Here Atwood takes us into the not-so-distant future, somewhere between now and Oryx and Crake-era, and concisely illustrates what a mess we’ve made of things. In this particular dystopia the economy has disintegrated and the lack of jobs and stability has caused society to turn on itself. The solution: get people to volunteer as inmates. They spend every other month in custody, interspersed with months spent as civilians. Sort of a giant, sinister make-work project.

There’s not much more I can say about this because I have nothing to criticize, and it’s so short that to say anything is to say it all. But Margaret gets it, man. She sees what we’re all afraid to see and puts it down on paper, or its electronic equivalent. She too can say a lot with a little, but she’s more inclined to throw in a savoury word or brow-furrowing metaphor than Findley, which makes her writing a lot more fun to read out loud.

So that’s it. Despite my little barbs I actually recommend all three of these books, especially for a pleasure read this August on the beach, or if you’re in Edmonton, huddled by the fire. They may not be Shakespeare, but I didn’t feel my brain melting to mush as I read, either. So have at ’er!

In Which I Get Creepy at Various Summer Events

Saturday was a glorious day here in the city, so I decided to take my camera downtown and creep on people. And do other things.

I also bought asparagus.

I don’t have one of those fancy zoom lens things, so in order to properly creep I had to get pretty close to my subjects. I kept expecting someone to yell at me, or some law enforcement professional to get up in my grill about privacy, but I guess I’m stealthy enough to avoid such inconveniences.

But as an aside, does anyone know what the laws are regarding taking photos of people in public places? In San Jose I was taking photos of some pretty buildings and a cop stopped me, since apparently people live in those buildings and there’s a chance I could catch a shot of exposed hiney in a window or something. It’s a good thing he said something, since that was the shot I was looking for. Additionally, a pool I worked at prohibited photos because unconsenting bystanders could be caught in the background. So. Anyone?

There are a few things I actually love about living in Edmonton, and the 104^th Street market is one of them. Farmers’ markets in general are pretty great for their selection of locally produced goods and weird people to watch, but the 104^th Street market has the added appeal of being outside, downtown, on a street with several restored historic buildings. The mixture of urban and rural, modern and historic is downright nifty.

See? Urban - rural, today - yesterday.

A bit overblown... the sky was blue, FYI.

I think he wanted watermelon.

I like it when things hold still.

Meet.

Greet. 

Later I headed over to the Works festival, where I encountered another Edmonton thing I like: the fountain/wading pool in front of City Hall. There, I discovered my camera has the shutter speed capacity to catch water droplets in motion!

A bit dark, but you get the idea.

Probably my favourite of the day.

Feel free to leave comments—good or bad—especially if you know something about photography. I changed my settings so you can now comment anonymously without logging in, AND you don’t have to prove you’re human by repeating wonky non-words. I’m desperate for validation, people!

You'll Like What I Tell You to Like: Wasted Generation

Hey Heaviside. 1971 called. They want their record back.

If that sounds like an insult, it’s not. Think back to 1971. It was a glorious time: people strutted around in mismatched plaids, cars were as long as city blocks, and pop lyrics were more along the lines of  “There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold / And she’s buying a stairway to heaven” than “You a stupid ho.”

Yes, Heaviside’s debut Wasted Generation is loud, it’s riff-driven, and it’s retro. If you’re into solid block chords and in-depth lyrics about plugging that special lady, you’ll be disappointed here; this is a band that puts the music first, and all the other stuff a distant second. In a day and age when music is as much a product as a drain cleaner or an antidepressant, it’s nothing short of inspiring to find a band who puts their values before the prospect of cash and commercial glory.

Nowadays, perfect pitch is just a mouse click away, but Heaviside decided to take an alternate route: actually playing their own instruments. Rest assured that everything that hits your ears on this record, from every thunderous drumbeat to each full-bodied vocal howl, is the real deal. This is the auditory equivalent of good hearty whole-wheat bread from Grandma’s oven; no acetylated distarch adipate or butylated hydroxyanisole here.

The album starts off strong with the noisy, energetic “War Machine,” a tune that seems tailor-made for a Michael Bay movie. The explosions! The frantic excitement! The track practically begs to be cranked up and blasted out of the windows of a car that may or may not actually be a Transformer.

And the energy doesn’t taper from there. Track after track the adrenaline builds, peaking with the singalong debut single “Lady.” With its steady bass groove and easy-to-learn chorus, this is a track just made for the arena.

In fact, this whole band is made for the arena. The kind of energy they bring to the stage can’t be contained in small clubs. If you’re in the Edmonton area, check out a live show. You may think you’ve seen sweaty, but until you’ve seen Heaviside in action, you haven’t. The band is all over the stage, throwing in the odd high leap or behind-the-head solo, and their audience is always equally engaged.

The band’s influences are far-flung. There’s a distinct similarity to Wolfmother, and “Aurora” echoes Priestess. Singer Mitchell Reynaud’s vocals compare to shrieking majesty of Chris Cornell, guitarist Johno Hermary’s nimble picking (and onstage attire) are reminiscent of a certain man in a hat, and the overall Zeppelin-esque impression is undeniable.

This is a band that’s well-read when it comes to classic rock. They know what’s good. So it’s no accident that the band went with the title Wasted Generation. You can hear it in the closing track—“Oh wasted youth, lost in time, lost in the basement.” That’s where most of today’s youth are, at least in terms of music.

Let’s hope that Heaviside makes it big and today’s wasted youth, who have cut their teeth on Rihanna and Nickelback, will learn that music is not limited to inane drum beats, strobe lights and one-liners deriding female sexuality.

Pick up the album on iTunes or visit the band’s website at www.heavisidemusic.ca.

Kristen and Mitch Take On California: Part II

On day two of our vacation, we took the train from Davis to San Jose. What a fine way to travel! Smooth, inexpensive and energy efficient. Too bad Canada hasn’t caught the wave. While I’m on the topic, the public transit in California was cleaner and cheaper than Edmonton’s, and the light rail ran directly on the street. This suggests that the transit-riding population is sharper than that in Edmonton as well… maybe just because their brains aren’t addled with cold.

Anyway, we got to San Jose, walked to our hotel, had a look around, took Mitch out for some birthday pub food and beer, marveled at the comprehensive Happy Hour (ALL drinks on special, not just whatever the bar overstocked!), and took off for HP Pavilion and the Boss!

BROOOOOOOCE!

Everyone we talked to in San Jose, including a kindly vagrant, asked if we were there to see Bruce, and that’s one reason I was excited to see him in the States. He’s a much bigger deal there. And this is the same reason I was stoked to hear him play “Born in the USA,” which he didn’t (spoiler).

Bruce was fashionably late—nearly an hour—taking the stage, but he made up for it with a THREE HOUR SET. I must say, I was impressed. When I’m his age I hope to be breathing on my own, never mind crowd surfing and doing wicked back bends.

He really puts the "sex" in "sexegenarian." 

During my pre-Mitch party years, I knew very little about the Boss. I knew he had a song called “Glory Days”—it’s the only Springsteen song my hometown radio station seemed to have in their catalogue. And that’s about all I knew. Growing up in small-town Saskatchewan pre-MySpace could really limit your musical knowledge.

Oh man these guys are my fave! 

I’ve tried not to let Mitch have too much influence on my musical taste, and he hasn’t. Mitch loves music in a broad sense, a quality that leads him to listen to a lot of crap.

Including but certainly not limited to this. AGGGGHHHHH.

But Bruce is his all-time favourite, and fortunately this is something I can really get behind. Springsteen is like the personification of the Olympics or September 11: he has the power to speak to a zeitgeist (assuming I used the word “zeitgeist” correctly) and unite a culture through the good and the bad.

There are times when I really don’t like people—they can be such messes, with all their insecurities and conceits. But Bruce’s music can really make me happy to be one of them, stumbling along from point A to point B, with all the joy and misery that may fall in between. It's easy to forget our differences to a soundtrack of Boss tunes.

For example, in the merch line I really bonded with a gentleman with a heavy tan and a sleeveless t-shirt from Reno. We got along swimmingly, at least until he found out I was Canadian. Then he looked at me like he suspected I was trying to sneak gay married people and free healthcare into his country. The humanity!

But back to the show.

At the show. As you can tell by my face, the wine and the Red Bull are really fighting it out in my system.

The sustained energy! The sheer entertainment value! Bruce was accompanied by most of the E Street Band, with the notable omission of Clarence Clemons—the legendary Big Man behind the similarly legendary E Street sax, who died last year. Filling his size 98 (or so) shoes was the Little Big Man, his nephew Jake Clemons, who led a horn section with a sax sound almost as big as that of his predecessor.

Big sax sound. 

But there is a definite reason for Springsteen’s sustained popularity, and the live show he consistently puts on, even after 40 years in the biz, is only one reason. As world-weary as his tunes have always been, Bruce clearly loves performing.

The set consisted of plenty of material from Wrecking Ball and other works from the past decade, particularly the similarly dark The Rising. He skipped over the E-Street-less misstep that was the 1990s, opting instead for a hearty helping of classics including a few deep tracks, a soul medley and fully half of Born to Run.    

The Boss worked all kinds of crowd participation into the show. He seems to genuinely love his fans, and God knows the crowd loves him. At several points, he left the stage and walked through the crowd—not on a catwalk, but actually through the fans on the floor, at their level. And then he crowd surfed back to the stage. Way more humility, trust and respect than I would expect from a star of his caliber.

It was really a family show too—he worked ballads into his high-energy set, giving the boomers a chance to sit down and take a load off. You could almost hear a sigh of relief as the band struck up the melancholy “Jack Of All Trades.”

And things were fine at the other end of the age spectrum too—a little E-Streeter joined the Boss onstage for “Waiting on a Sunny Day.” He knew all the words too, which just warms my heart. And a girl of about 12 took Courtney Cox’s place onstage for “Dancing in the Dark”—although I think her dad was more thrilled about her moment in the limelight than she was.

The high point for me came with “Thunder Road,” my favourite Boss tune and the main set closer. Thanks to the magic of YouTube, you too can enjoy it:

We left the arena aching and stimulated from head to toe, just as Bruce said we would. And that was the night it was. But just like a photo can’t compare to an amazing view, a blog post sure won’t do the Boss justice. Some things are just meant to be experienced. 

Kristen and Mitch Take On California: Part I

We began our journey at the bracing hour of 4 a.m., when we set off for the scenic Edmonton International Airport. We started the day by knocking back a few buffalo wings, just like we do every morning. 

Breakfast of champions.

Two layovers, three flights and a bus ride later we were in sunny Davis, California, a Lethbridge-sized college town just outside of Sacramento. One of my favourite things about traveling is the first few breaths you take in a new place: the feel and smell of the air lets you know you’re far from home, better than scenery or language barriers can.

Compared to Edmonton’s dry continental air, Davis was humid. I had been checking the Weather Network obsessively in the days leading up to our departure, and I was not thrilled about what I saw: a high of 23 degrees on Monday was the highest the temperature would get while we were in California. But I was thinking an Edmonton 23, when you still need long pants, a jacket and closed-toed shoes since the gust of a north wind or a moment of cloud cover bring recurring shivers. But no—this was a California 23, sunny and humid.

Davis would be a great place to live. It was just my style, and just my pace. It was green, clean, well-treed and well-maintained, and according to Wikipedia, it holds the title of most bicycle-friendly city in the United States. Environmentalism? Garbage-free streets? Pretty flowers? I’m in.

Davis, California: pleasant.

Edmonton, Alberta: unpleasant.

The college students probably accounted for a large number of the bikes. And since they're so educated (if not as educated as the good folks in Arlington, Virginia... see joke set up below), they also know that eating and shopping local is the way to go; hence the abundance of independent businesses that lined the lush green streets. Unless they were just weird American chains that I, sans cable TV, had never heard of.

Unique, small-town character. 

Oddly enough, even though they have the weather to enjoy them for more than three weeks each year, the city was lacking in patios. This made me nervous. As many of you know, I love nothing more than a good patio, and a holiday without one is like Alberta without environmental exploitation: it's just not what you came for. But don’t worry—we found one! 

Doesn't look like rain, does it? Yeah, we didn't think so either. 

Davis is also supposed to be the second most educated city in the country (after Arlington, Virginia; see punchline above), which is surprising considering the number of people we saw biking around without helmets. For a country that's dragging its feet towards universal health care, they're surprisingly laissez-faire about head injuries.

At the centre of the city is the large UC Davis campus on which Mitch and I got lost trying to find our first reason for being in California: The Shins, in the flesh. Gather around, and let me tell you what it was like.

I’m not even going to tell you about the pretentious hipster opening band. Their music was sorta okay, but the lead singer stored his collection of wooden flutes in a buckskin quiver thing slung casually over his shoulder. Enough said.

The Shins opened with “The Rifle’s Spiral” (which I so accurately predicted), and I immediately knew that I was going to like them live. As you may recall from my review of Port of Morrow, the tune was too Broken Bells-y for my taste. Not so in real life. It was more rock and more real without the production. It could have been the Shins from ten years ago.

I probably know the Shins’ catalogue better than that of any other artist, and as such I was probably more excited than I’ve been at any other show, ever. What song would they play next?!? Would it be better or worse than the recorded version, or just different? As the band cruised through its set, it became clear that the answer would never be “worse.”

The band was high energy, James Mercer was far less depressive than I expected, and the crowd was nothing but enthusiastic. Some stood throughout the set, but when the band struck up “Caring is Creepy” mid-way through, nobody sat down again.

The crowd was great, too—just the right combination of enthusiasm and respect, showing the band ample love but not letting their own show overwhelm the one on stage. With the exception of one person: the young gent right in front of me.

He was a real special guy. Even his girlfriend couldn’t stand his hoots and whistles and requests for songs recorded by other bands. But enough about him. This show had so many pros, this single con isn’t even worth mentioning.

The venue wasn’t huge—about the size of Edmonton’s Jubilee Theatre—and it was well-selected, catering to the band’s college-aged fan base. Less convenient for me, being 2500 km from home and in the middle of a labyrinthine campus. Even Google Maps couldn't find this venue.

The highlight of the evening was “New Slang,” my fave Shins song. It was a quiet tune but the whole band was involved, and the vocals of Jessica Dobson (who wasn’t with the band when the song was recorded… just like everyone else in this lineup except Mercer) were just lovely indeed. Also its cool that the lead guitarist of an (otherwise) all-male band is a girl. Estrogen power!

Like this... but with class. And talent. Actually, nothing like this.

The set closed with a great rendition of “Sleeping Lessons,” which, like the rest of their set, was more energetic than its recorded counterpart. The only complaint I have about the show (besides the guy in front of me) is that, at just an hour and a half, it was too short! Granted, they don’t have a huge catalogue to work with, but I was left wanting much much more. Fortunately, the Boss made up for that the very next night. (Spoiler!)

I’ll leave you now the way the Shins left me: with “Sleeping Lessons.” This video pretty much sums up the performance. The energy! The dynamics! The appropriately-timed woos of the crowd!

I really wish the band would come to Canada. I could certainly handle seeing them again.