Tea and figs

Deguerrotype from the most recent outing of the Upper Canada Chap Society:


Gin was drunk, vulgoisie was suppressed (if only within our immediate vicinity), and the bar wenches at the Royal York Library Bar seemed impressed with our presence, and willing, after some persuasion, to concoct some reasonable glasses of Pimm's. The event, to welcome home one Oscar Wildeflower III (student of man) from his adventures among the cads and criminals of the far continent, was rich with both tweeds and rebellion.

Labels: chaps

I've always been fascinated by the practice of advance obituaries, when newspapers pre-write obits for prominent figures and TV networks prepare mini-docs ready to drop on air the minute someone drops dead. The Queen Mum's obit was, reportedly, first written 63 years before she actually died. Bob Hope's obit was accidentally released on to the wire years before his death, which amused Hope. When I interviewed a producer at CBC's the National several years ago, there was a tape marked "Pope obit" sitting atop a stack on on his desk.

It's kind of the best and the worst about the media in general. Sure, news outlets are on the ball, ready to go with instant information, but you don't have to be superstitious to find the practice more than a little cold, even macabre.

The New York Times have decided to be a little more open, talking with old people about how they want to be remembered. They've posted a video obit of the recently departed humour writer Art Buchwald. And Buchwald opens with the line "Hi. I'm Art Buchwald, and I just died."

[Link]

Labels: death, journalism, media

I made split-pea soup this afternoon, and damnit if it's not the most comforting thing you can put in your belly, and incredibly cheap to make. So, since I know that many of you are having as swamped and stressful a January as I am, here's a recipe to make you all feel a bit better.

Ingredients:

2 cups dried green split peas
4 cups water
2 cups broth or stock (I use chicken broth from a can, undiluted)
1/2 cup white wine, if you have it handy
1/2 cup onion, chopped fine
3/4 cup carrots, chopped how you like 'em
1 medium-sized chunk smoked Portuguese bacon or salt pork (if you're vegetarian, or this item scares you, skip it, but I'd use more stock and less water to bump up the flavour a bit)
2 bay leaves
a few sprigs thyme or savory

Directions:

Cook onion in a big pot in a bit of olive oil, and throw in a bit of salt and a serious dash of pepper. Add carrot, bay leaves, and herbs. Swirl it around until fragrant and soft.

Throw in the rest of the ingredients, and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer, lid on, at a low heat for a bit more than an hour, until mushy.

This part is a bit subjective: take a look at the soup, and see how runny it is. If you like it plaster-thick, then take the lid off and boil away some of the liquid.

Remove the chunks of pork or bacon and the bay leaves.

Ladle some of the soup (about 1/3 of it) into a food processor and puree. This will thicken the soup, but don't puree all of it or you'll end up with monotonous baby food.

When the bacon is cool, separate the fat from the meat, chop up the meat and throw back in the soup.

Enjoy.

Labels: recipes

This has been a head-down-keep-working week punctuated by a breaths to keep my social skills from sinking evermore into the mud. Wednesday, Laura & I saw Volver, the new Pedro Almodovar movie. I loved All About My Mother and the sublime Talk to her a little more than Bad Education, but I think Volver tops them. What is so remarkable about Almodovar's films are his amazing characters -- particularly the women. Strong, proud, even ridiculous, and most amazing -- in Volver especially -- are the women who have suffered through some incredible shit, and are still funny, vibrant characters. They don't walk around in a fog of pain; they aren't martyrs or saints because of it.

Volver is essentially about ghosts, both literal and figurative. Don't read any plot summaries, see it fresh; the only thing I'll say is that Penelope Cruz is so much better in subtitles than in English. And even the closing subtitles are breathtaking.

Labels: movies

Something has been bothering me about the Emily Haines concert the other night. About midway though the show, Haines was introducing the song "The Maid Needs a Maid" and she said (to paraphrase):

"You don't believe the media reports that say that this is a feminist retelling of 'The Man Needs a Maid,' do you?"

To which one enlightened soul in the audience yelled:

"The media lies."

First of all, it sits poorly with me that Haines should be so distressed to be labeled a feminist that she feels the need to deny this to her audience.

But I am also tired of hearing that bland, ill-informed, sweeping misstatement "the media lies." I'm both a member of the "media" (in as much as there is membership) and the holder of very progressive political values, and I make apology for neither. And there is nothing I hate more than hearing progressives make arguments that lack nuance and intelligence. There are fundamental, systemic imbalances in media coverage, but surely there is a more refined position on media literacy than "the media lies."

Part of the issue, I think, is that many of the people who've cornered me at parties and demanded that media bias is a solid fact, do not seem to understand the difference between opinion (columnists and editorials) and news writing.

Also, one thing I don't quite get about this argument is who exactly is doing the lying. I've worked for a bunch of different magazines and have friends throughout the media, and let me break the stunning news here: they're not that organized. There really is no secret meeting place where freelance writers or high-ranking editors drink scotch and muse over the policies they will set for administrations, instead, they usually work in sweatpants and fret over the minutae of industry gossip.

And, I'm quite certain that "the conspiracy" wouldn't include music journalists, anyway.

I spent a year working for two professors on a research project on media bias, and the arguments that do exists (on both sides) tend to be faulty and incomplete. For example, you can demonstrate the political beliefs of journalists at various levels, but you need to also make the leap to see how, qualitatively, those attitudes influence their coverage. Many of the studies (as far as I remember) that correlate news coverage and media ownership or journalists' attitudes are inconclusive, and when they're not, they're yelling loudly from both sides of the debate.

The research that I find most illuminating is that of Herbert Gans, who argued in 1979 that media bias exists in the myths we retell and how we recognize a good story. Here's a section on his ideas from a piece on the subject in the Columbia Journalism Review:

In his 1979 book Deciding What's News, the Columbia sociologist Herbert Gans defined what he called the journalist's "paraideology," which, he says, unconsciously forms and strengthens much of what we think of as news judgment. This consists largely of a number of "enduring values" - such as "altruistic democracy" and "responsible capitalism" - that are reformist, not partisan. "In reality," Gans writes, "the news is not so much conservative or liberal as it is reformist; indeed, the enduring values are very much like the values of the Progressive movement of the early twentieth century."

...

John Laurence distills Gans's paraideology into simpler terms: "We are for honesty, fairness, courage, humility. We are against corruption, exploitation, cruelty, criminal behavior, violence, discrimination, torture, abuse of power, and many other things."

...

Gans, though, notes a key flaw in the journalist's paraideology. "Journalists cannot exercise news judgment," he writes, "without a composite of nation, society, and national and social institutions in their collective heads, and this picture is an aggregate of reality judgments . . . In doing so, they cannot leave room for the reality judgments that, for example, poor people have about America; nor do they ask, or even think of asking, the kinds of questions about the country that radicals, ultraconservatives, the religiously orthodox, or social scientists ask as a result of their reality judgments."

Of course, doesn't participatory media negate the effect all of this? So, enlightened-girl-at-concert, shut up and blog.

Labels: journalism, music, politics, rants

Here we go again ... issue 10 is now up, with stories on Of Montreal, All Of Your Friends, The Broken West and a wee photoessay on Wakefield, Quebec's rural indie hotspot The Black Sheep Inn. And the main pictures on the site are wonderful, weird pictures of ducks. Check it out. [Link]

Labels: music, new pollution, writing

Jason & I went to see Emily Haines last night at the Danforth Music Hall. We arrived to find a line snaking around the block, but managed to snag some pretty good seats. The concert was terrific, much better than Metric's show. I saw Metric maybe two years ago at the Mod Club, but found the show very contrived, plastic, choreographed. But last night, Haines was funny, disarming, intimate, and her solo work is more vulnerable and less detached than Metric. I've found a lot of solo breakaway work disappointing -- I thought Amy Millan's show was enormously dull, and I'll take The New Pornographers and Rilo Kiley over Neko Case and Jenny Lewis on their own any day -- but I could listen to Haines' voice forever.

Labels: music

Friday night, we piled into a sports bar at St. Clair & Dufferin for karaoke and to celebrate Sarah L.'s birthday. Despite my insistance that private-room karaoke reigns supreme, this was a damn good time, and for most of the night, it was only us (and one random karaoke idol) at the mics. Above, Douglas, Josh & Jer as the Soggy Bottom Boys. Douglas's take on the Darkness takes my personal prize for Most Brilliant Moment, though Roopa gets the title of Karaoke Queen for her George Michael impersonation.

After, Josh, Steph, Jer & I cabbed to the Dance Cave. Talked to pyjama man, who gave us stickers and took his picture with us (it was his birthday). Haven't been there in a year, but, fans will be happy to know that the music has not changed. At all. It's sort of comforting.

For those who have never been dance cavers, pyjama man is a mystery. It's almost as though Dance Cave is a vocation for him -- I don't think I have ever been there, in the past five years, and not seen him, either on Friday or Saturday. In pyjamas. (I think he must change there, since I've never seen him on the streets in his flannels.) I don't know who he is, and probably wouldn't recognize him if I met him, sans-pjs. Why does he do it? How did it start? Isn't he hot, dancing to Franz Ferdinand in flannel?

Labels: friends, music

Found an amazing site of paper dolls you can dress up in fantastic outfits. You can dress up Alexander the Great, Frida Kahlo, several eras of Jackie O, as well as your favourite literary heros and heroines. Seen here: Hedy LaMarr, movie star and inventor -- whose scientific innovations in the 40s led to cell phone technology, among other things... [Link]

A guilty pleasure, fine, but I love New Year's horoscopes. Yes, the zodiac is inane, unless you are a genuine fire dragon (which just kicks some ass). So, inspired by Mir, here's what my year as a fire dragon promises:

Fire Dragon - Your vivaciousness of mind and the rapidity of your reflexes will be surprising. However, your close ones will have a hard time following you, and you can't bear their slowness and their indecision. Be more tolerant.

Beware, close ones, of my vivaciousness of mind! Damn, I hope this isn't telling me to cut down on coffee.