Right in the Chops, Atwood.

From the National Post:

Overall, just 53% of respondents were able to name a Canadian author. Just one-third of respondents said they feel very familiar or somewhat familiar with Canadian authors.

Deep breath...

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Canadians, on average, reported reading about 17 books in the past 12 months, of which 22% were written by Canadian authors. Twelve per cent indicated they spend no time reading books.

Adrian Stein of Books in Canada, said the high percentage of Canadians unable to name a Canadian author is "dreadful but not surprising."

"It is difficult for any country to maintain a literary culture when the vehicles that support this expression are disappearing, one by one."

"There is little interest or understanding of the nature of book reviewing or its importance to an independent publishing industry at the level of Canadian Heritage," Mr. Stein said.

Yeah, that's the problem, people don't want to read Margaret Atwood and Farley Mowat because they're not well-known enough. Stein never asks why that could be. Instead he offers up a fraudulent feedback loop designed to get the government to shill out more money to promote the same hackneyed, tired-ass shitty writers. 

Okay, I admit I haven't read Margaret Laurence or Guy Vanderhaege or Alistair MacLeod. And I do deeply respect the work of Alice Munro and Richard Wagamese and a handful of others. 

But but BUT: 

"Canadian Literature" is out to lunch, unrealistic, xenophobic and full of shit.

Just as people with high intelligence quotients aren't smart, they're just good at taking IQ tests, Can-Lit authors aren't great writers, they just reinforce the bogus pageantry and machinery of the Canadian government--they're good at working the system, getting awards and grants. They write the kind of books that look good to support: "Oh yes, I was just reading about incest survivors on the Prairies/ the experience of Haitian immigrants in Toronto/ Native struggles for self-identity in Nunavut/ Addict hookers on the Lower East Side of Vancouver." Now those subjects are important and can be interesting in the hands of a top-notch writer, but they are not substitutes for A) characterization, B) storytelling or C) wisdom and insight.

Can-Lit exists to make white liberals feel less insulated and foster the illusion of a unique community among an increasingly alienated, fragmented, and Americanized society. 

In the past I've bitched and moaned about how shitty Can-Lit is, and I will continue to do so until it is readable. But tonight I'm offering up solutions. So, even though I posted a list a few days ago, I'm offering up another. Things which would improve Canadian Literature:

1. Take the Canadian out of it. By that I mean, stop fearing that Canada is losing its identity to the States. Canadians watch American tv, eat shitty American fast food, and buy overpriced American crap. Accept that there's a whole lot of overlap, and don't trumpet the differences just to trumpet the differences. Just because people cross an invisible magic line on the 49th parallel doesn't mean that they stop eating McDick's and craving poutine. Quality transcends geography.

2. Take the Literature out of it. I love literature--great writing that has stood the test of time--as much as or more than anyone I know. I can't get enough of it. But to my mind a book can't be "Literature" until it's been around a few years. Tony Kushner's Angels in America, David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, the work of Don DeLillo and Cormac McCarthy--they've always been great, but they're only now, in the last ten or so years, becoming literature. Canada doesn't need "great literature," it needs "good books." Lose the pretention and get in touch with society.

3. We get it, Margaret Atwood, you can write really good descriptions. How about a memorable character or a sequence of dialogue that seems genuine? Canadian authors are good at description and metaphor, and weak on story and characterization. They excel at symbolism but have trouble coming up with something worth symbolizing. It's like being a chef who's mastered salt. 

4. The only thing worse than "Proud Canadians" are "Proud Provincialists," people who believe that being born in Nova Scotia or Quebec or Manitoba is the equivalent of London in 1600 or  The French Riviera after the Great War. Rudy Wiebe may be the best writer in Moosefuck Manitoba, but that means four fifths of fuck all to anyone outside there. Writers write about the human condition, not the petty trivia of why Saskatchitoba is worse than Manitobachewan. Dirt and cold don't change, and your region is not fsacinating just because you're there. Joyce left Dublin for France in order to write about Dublin. 

5. Most Canadians live in cities along the border, so enough with the image of Canada as a pristine pastoral full of moose and bison and elk and penguins. 

6. Yes, patronage is important for underfunded artists, and yes, Shakespeare was state supported. But enough with kiss-ass works that skip over our broken political system and the selfimportant blowhards who run it. Canada has plenty to atone for--residential schools, Japanese internment camps, the Chinese Head Tax, John A. MacDonald's sell-out to the States, all the way up to Mulroney and Chretien (I so wish that was the French form of cretin) and Harper. Bite the hand that feeds. Show some righteous outrage...

7. ...but at the same time, Canada is a pretty good place to live, and don't forget to show the country's humanity as well as its injustices. Many of Canada's most shameful episodes arose out of a sincere desire to help--which speaks to incompetence and racism but not tyranny, fascism, or genocide. And yes, I'm sure a few Quebcois lost their farms during the Mirabel airport scandal, but a 200-page book of airport poetry is the kind of book that deserves to be burnt. "My spirit flies over this desolate depopulated dreamscape...I sing an encomium for the grounded souls." BPPPTHH. Fuck you. Enjoy your government-subsidized condo and shut the hell up. 

The moral of the fifth season of the Wire was that journalists should stop seeking awards and do their job, namely, report the news. Canadian Authors have to worry about government grants and literary prizes, but this process has destroyed any chance of holding the mirror up to nature. We've strangled what we wanted to nurture. The job of a writer is to tell stories. Canadian authors don't tell good stories. This is something that needs to change.

-What's the difference between living with your parents and being in prison?

-You can get laid in prison. 

R.I.P. Freddie Hubbard

One of the true greats of hard bop. If you've never heard him, check him out. 

Film Predictions for Ought Nine

Has 2008 been a shitty year for movies? Yes.

It seemed to be a good year for foreign films (Christmas Story, The Class, Edge of Heaven, etc), and it was a very good year for Hollywood Action Spectaculars (Batman and Iron Man were both terrific, and Hulk and Indy 4 were pretty decent, and Wall-E was supposed to be amazing so long as you love Al Gore and have never seen Short Circuit 2). But where are the smart Hollywood movies this year? Eastwood's film Changeling seemed pretty weak, and his other film Gran Torino won't be widely released until the new year. Ed Harris did a western called Appaloosa which disappeared overnight, as did a Russel Crowe / Leonardo DiCaprio film called Body of Lies. The Road was pushed back a year. The Wrestler was just released, so was Valkyrie, but I haven't seen either yet. The DeNiro / Pacino collaboration Righteous Kill looked like a pile of shit. Milk looked well done, but Gus Van Sant is a pretentious ass and I avoid his movies like the plague. Kevin Smith's porno thing looked awful too. 

So basically, if there was good non-superhero-related stuff this year I missed it, either from not hearing about it or not caring enough to fork over the cash. Maybe I'm just getting tired of risking twenty bucks and two hours on a film, or maybe the increase in watchable television curbed my need for filmed narrative. But doesn't this seem like an exceptionally shitty year for film? 

So what's gonna be nominated for the Oscars? Milk will win for movie and Heath Ledger is a lock for actor, and neither of them would deserve it if they were up against real competition, but since Prop 8 passed and gay rights needs a boost, and Heath Ledger is dead and was honestly very good as the Joker, there won't be too much dust kicked up over the steaming turds of Ought Eight. But nothing this year could compete against There Will Be Blood or No Country For Old Men. Last year we got the quality. This year we got lots of Will Smith and Seth Rogen.

Here are some trends to watch for in the following years. These are not predictions, these are stone cold fucking guarantees. Look for:

1. A lot more movies with the kid from Arrested Development standing around looking flustered and confused, and wackily/inappropriately dressed.

2. The continued waste of all cast members from Deadwood and the Wire with the exception of Amy Ryan.

3. More three-hour superhero movies which serve large portions of pop philosophy and Bush/Cheney allegories.

4. A continuation of Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino's contest to see who can phone in the most performances as burned-out cops facing suspension for breaking the rules which they don't play by.

5. Remember when  Will Farrell/Steve Carell/the Superbad guy only put out one movie a year (and it was worth seeing)?

6. Fewer intelligent films overall, but more intelligent zombie films. 

7. Shia LeBouf will eventually take over all franchises and revive, ruin and plunder every sacred 80s property. Look for him to star in all four roles in a new Ghostbusters film.

8. Something with the words "Star Wars" in the title will be a hunk of steaming shit.

9. My bet for the property Steven Spielberg revives next: Jaws. It's totally time for a Shia LeBouef "Jaws 2010" with hundreds of CGI sharks and a cameo from Richard Dreyfuss as a salty old beachcomber with sage advice.

10. Kiera Knightly will make another movie based on a timeless work of English literature that involves long tracking shots of her staring out at the sunrise from the veranda of a country manor, ostensibly to show how conflicted her thoughts are, but really just to show off her swell boobs. Not all these trends are negative.

11. Will Smith will continue to make the kind of films that make you wistful for the time when his horrible, inexplicable career was limited to saying "Uncle Phil--you fat" and "Carlton--you short" on Fresh Prince.

12. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt will continue to be the most popular movie stars without ever putting out a film worth seeing. Jennifer Aniston will appear on magazine covers with taglines like "Jen Learns to Trust Her Heart" and "Jen Moves On." She will not appear in any films whatsoever. Again, not all these trends are negative.

13. I predict that those awful Godfather novels that aren't written by Mario Puzo will be adapted into a Godfather film that doesn't involve input from Francis Ford Coppola, and will be embarassingly bad. Conversely, one of those 'Rainbow Op-Center Counter Strike Tackle Force Team' Tom Clancy books that aren't written by Tom Clancy will be adapted into a not-half-bad action flick. Ka-pow. 

14. We've seen Sylvester Stallone's comeback. Now it's time for Frank Stallone's comeback. "Risin' Up, back on the street..."

15. Tom Cruise will completely redeem himself.

16. Someone like Ridley Scott or Mike Nicholls will direct a Shakespeare film and will actually have the gall to put "A Film by Ridley Scott" or "Hamlet: A Mike Nicholls Film" on the billboard. This will be followed by "Merry Wives of Windsor: A Spike Lee Joint."

17. The French will make an American genre film (western, crime/mystery, musical) and completely misinterpret what made those films good in the first place. Look for Gerard Depardieu as an existential cowboy who plays ragtime piano and addresses the camera in the first person.

18. Musicals will continue their unjust discrimination against heterosexual males and listenable music.

What is "Milch-speak"?

Over the years, NYPD Blue co-creator David Milch developed an idiosyncratic dialogue style for the show, which eventually came to be known as "Milch-speak." Originally employed only by Sipowicz and Medavoy, Milch-speak eventually came into use by every character on the show: cops, crooks, lawyers, victims, and pretty much everyone short of little Theo Sipowicz.

Milch, like his good friend playwright David Mamet, firmly believes in the power of sentence construction. He feels a line like "Did the Russians mention anything about a girl getting whacked at their club last night?" isn't half as evocative as "They mention anything about a girl getting whacked at their club last night, the Russians?" He loves cop lingo, and would rather have a character say that someone "came in lawyered up" instead of "came in with his lawyer."

For the first seven seasons of the show, Milch either wrote or rewrote nearly every line of dialogue in every episode. While the names on the scripts changed from week to week, the only writer whose names really mattered were Milch and Bill Clark, who helped him cook up story ideas each week. After one of the staffers put together a few early drafts, Milch would rewrite -- often extensively, sometimes completely -- the script until it satisfied him. Sometimes, that satisfaction took a while to come. He's been known to often give actors their lines moments before a scene was being filmed and, on at least one occasion, "wrote" an entire episode without actually putting any of the script down on paper. (The seventh season finale.)

For seven years, many observers were convinced that Milch was the show. Sipowicz, originally based on certain aspects of Milch's father, eventually become an alter ego for Milch himself, and some writers from the show, past and present, said Milch was the only one who knew how to write for Andy.

But Milch's desire to succeed away from the shadow of Steven Bochco led him to leave the show after season seven and create the CBS drama Big Apple. In the meantime, Bochco and the writing staff have had to find their own voice on the show, and that voice usually doesn't use Milch-speak. To the relief of many, the characters began talking in plain, easily-understood English once Milch left.

Memento Mori

Last minute shopping idea...

I've always wanted a human skull. I don't know why. I don't find it morbid. I find it fascinating. And I wouldn't mind if one day my own skull was on someone else's bookshelf or mantle. It's pretty badass.

Santa, know what I'd really like? HBO to pick up Last of the Ninth, the David Milch cop show starring Ray Winstone that takes place in the seventies. Is that maybe too much to ask?

Final grades...four A's and an A-. 3.95 GPA for the term. Would've been 4.0 if Harry Pussy Potter wasn't on the syllabus. And I'm still worried about grad school.

My goal this term was to give myself no excuses to fail. My GPA is usually around 3.7 to 3.8 but I've been juggling two jobs and a bitch of a commute. Also, no one realated to me died this semester. It's nice to know that in a perfect world I can hang with the best of 'em. 

One more final grade:

465 Nietzsche...A.

Also, I got an A+ on my Canadian Lit research paper. That's right, the course I badmouthed the entire year is the one I got my A+ in. Sheeeeee-it. I worked hard on that paper but didn't really care about it. Meanwhile the paper I do care about, Nietzsche and Blood Meridian, wallows in its sixth draft. 

You know what this means? This means I write better when I don't care. I don't know whether this is progressive, like the less I care the better I write. But it's a fascinating revelation. 

This isn't funny. No, it's not. Not a bit.

English 311...A

Engl 399...A-. 

So I'm already ahead of the game. Awesome. Almost makes up for being snowed in up here.

Done. And time for stately plump Sam Wiebe's triannual projection of his grades:

311 Late Shakespeare: A if there is a god, A+ if ever anyone deserved one. (an A+, not a god)

345 British Lit (Dystopias): A. Solid A.

357 Literature of incest and resentment--I mean Canadian Lit: A-

399 (hero lit): B or B+ depending on how the Harry Potter quiz is weighted

465 (Nietzsche): A so long as"Nietzsche Contra Holden" goes over well. 

English teachers don't give out A+'s. I don't think I've ever got one--maybe a few assigments, but never on a major paper. And I've written some great fucking papers. Gr-e-a-t fucking papers. What does a guy hafta do to get an A+? Score like 96% or something? Nobody appreciates me but you, Jack Daniels. 

(Half an hour ago)

Finished my essays, finished my bibliography, let the party start!

(now)

Ramen noodles, Hawkins Cheezies, Jack Daniel's, and the Xmas episode of NYPD Blue. You know you're in for righteous trash when the DVD menu screen is Dennis Franz in a Santa suit pointing a gun and looking completely serious. Fuck yeah I live alone, why?

Dennis Franz has got that Walter Matthau look to him. He looks like a guy who eats a lot of processed meats. There's something trustworthy about that. "Fire up the barbecue, Dennis is coming over!" As opposed to, "Break out the wheatgrass, we're having David Duchovny over!" 

It takes me about an hour to write a page of double-spaced, A-quality academic prose. Today I had one eight-page paper left to write, another to edit, and an annotated bibliography to cobble together. I started around ten this morning, and now I am within one page of completing my term paper on Nineteen Eighty-Four. In those pages I have written 'Winston Smith' probably a couple hundred times, and each time I have misspelled it Winstone. Yes, he really is that good in The Departed.

You Stupid Mother-Hugging Crap-Head; Or, Just Edgy Enough

If this is the Era of Really Good Television--and one look at the music or film charts will confirm that we're not picking up any awards in those categories--then the 90s could best be described as the Era of Two Point Five Dimensional Characters. All the people who are big-time tv writers now--Milch, Simon, etc--were working in tv back in 1994, but were dealing with the constraints of mainstream network television, which is geared towards hillbillies in Wisconsin who think Jesus loses a lock of hair every time a policeman on tv says a swear. HBO wasn't a real option back then, but the comparison still holds.

I've watched three episodes of the first season of NYPD BLUE. I'd seen an episode or two back in the day, but I never really paid attention to it. But watching it now, you can see a battle being waged between what tv would become and the network restraints that had kept it the same for forty years. And the result is wacky.

You've got Dennis Franz's character, Sipowicz, who's as complex as anyone on The Wire or Deadwood, but is limited to expressing that complexity underneath a musical score of early-90s finger-snaps and synthesizer riffs a la Seinfeld. Sipowicz is a drunk and a racist who's frustrated with the system which allowed a mobster named Giardello to shoot him and walk. Giardello is in Witness Protection in a luxury suite while Sipowicz is out drinking in dives.

There's a lot of tension that can be squeezed from that situation, and the creators of the show are obviously doing their best. But after McNulty and Bullock and even Vic Mackey, it's hard to watch Sipowicz shove Giardello's hairpiece into his mouth and say "I'm gonna clean yer clock, pal!"

Sipowicz allows the chef at the hotel Giardello is staying at to skate on a prostitute roust in exchange for seasoning Giardello's lasagna with dog shit. You half-expect Giardello to chase Sipowicz around the room yelling "You scwewwy cop!" while ducking in and out of different hotel room doors. 

Even worse than the music and the gags is Sipowicz's partner, David Caruso, who plays a cop...with an ex-wife...who hates how much time he spends on the job...but can't quite let him go. So he has steamy 90s tv sex with his wife, then steamy 90s sex with the desk seargent, then his wife catches him, and back and forth. For those unfamiliar with steamy 90s tv sex, it includes a naked woman and a fully-clothed man hugging and rolling across a bed away from the camera, flashing a brief glimpse of the woman's ass, while a lonely saxophone twitters away. Day-am...

So you've got a fully fleshed out character who expresses himself in Looney Tunes gags and a walking mannequin who exists solely to writhe under a naked chick's airbrushed ass. At its best, NYPD Blue is the worthy progenitor of The Wire and all the other good shows we have today. At its worst, it's full of exchanges like this:

FEMAL DISTRICT ATTORNEY: If I thought you knew what it meant, I'd say 'Res Ipsa Loquitor.'

SIPOWICZ (Grabbing his crotch): "Ipsa" this you stupid bitch!

All the censorship rules were beginning to lax, so you have a weird list of things you still CAN'T do (say fuck or shit or cocksucker or cunt or any racist epithets, show gore, show a woman's tits) and a list of things you HAVE to show so the show can still be "edgy" (airbrushed ass, someone saying bitch or bastard, violent shootouts). Sipowicz and Kelly are dealing with complex issues and emotions with a handicapped vocabulary--"You're so full of crap, Giardello!"--while pushing those stories into the requisite "edgy" ass-flash or shootout. 

The same critique probably holds for X-Files  and the other big 90s shows. I like NYPD Blue, and I really liked Homicide, and I'm all for ass-flash. But after Deadwood it's like comparing Carlsberg to O'Doul's. Near-beer ain't gonna cut it. 

I remember people getting really upset over those 90s shows--"What am I supposed to do when my eight year old kid starts telling me I'm full of crap because he heard someone on the tv box say that?" I don't know, how about not letting him watch twelve hours of primetime cop shows a night? Put on something healthy, like WWF. Worked fine for my brothers and me.

12.5.08

Nothing gets my dander up like having to beg for shit in writing. My grad 'letter of intent' is killing me. How specific to make it? Do I write four separate letters or stick with one? Formal or informal style?

I'm gonna end up sending in the cock letter just to be done with it.

In non-dander-related news, the Julius Caesar performance went quite well. I think our performance was by far the best, owing to two really good lead actors, one of whom had a British accent. The togas were pretty cool. Caesar was a bit of a ham, and instead of blood and gore they used a red feather boa...I was away a lot of the time.

The other performances were all right. The first group did the deposition scene from Richard II, meaning you have two people talking and a dozen flag-bearers and trumpeters standing behind them on stage. At least we gave our extras fucking knives and let them stab someone.

The second group put on the rape scene from Titus. There's class. 

The third group did...what the fuck did they do? Something out of Richard III, but with somebody's Info-Tech 12 slideshow presentation in the background, a combination of  photos of Cold War-era world leaders and schematics clicking by. Shakespeare by way of Ionesco. There were also a bunch of demons hovering around Queen Margaret--because, y'know, she's the real devil, not the guy who's systematically wiped out her entire family. Tied with Richard Dreyfuss for worst RIII conceptualization I've seen.

The Henry IV was pretty good--they set it in a 1930s speakeasy and someone lip-synched to Ella Fitzgerald before they tried some lighting trick that didn't quite go off. Their Falstaff was skinnier than their Prince Hal, and you could tell he didn't quite understand what he was saying. But at least they were enthusiastic, and their background didn't include Trudeau and Castro eating hot dogs.

Christ, I just critiqued my student presentations. It must be three in the morning.

In twelve hours I have to hand in my Nietzsche paper. Next Monday I have two papers due. Tuesday I have a final exam. After that...whiskey and Fallout, Fallout and whiskey. Yee haw.

Advances, none miraculous

Fifty bucks worth of spending will get you the following David Milch-related swag:

1 (one) copy of Deadwood: Stories of the Black Hills, remaindered at Chapters for a paltry $7.99

1 (one) copy each of NYPD Blues Seasons One and Two

That's fifty bucks I really didn't have, but I prefer to look to the future and not worry about the past. What's done is done, and who really cares what I may have spent. Christ, next thing you know I'll be dropping two hundred bucks a week on whatever Eurotrash trust fund baby's box set the Criterion collection pulls out its ass.

In less important news, I submitted my grad school apps today. UBC, SFU, UVIC, McMaster. No, I am not relieved. Now comes the bitchwork of rounding up applications, writing personal statements, paying for mutiple copies of transcripts, and harassing references. All so I can go to school and read books with protagonists named Pip and Mikhail. At least Classics students get to stare at tits and schlongs all day.

A lengthy tale of woe

Internet service in residence has been the shits for the entire semester, but this weekend was the ultimate in "fuck you but thanks for the money" experiences. On friday Reznet sent out a magnanimous  email saying to the effect that, since all clients had stayed within their imposed-after-the-fact bandwidth limits, the cap would be lifted for the exam period. This was followed by no internet for five days. Whether this is due to aggressive downloading on students' part, or incompetence and malfeasance on the part of Reznet, is immaterial. They fucked us and got away with it. 

In the next two weeks I have three essays and two exams, plus applications for grad school to compile. I still waffle on what to study--Shakespeare or American Lit? Shakespeare is the guaranteed look-really-erudite choice, plus it's probably the easiest to get accepted with. On the other hand, American lit is current and more interesting to me. I want to do it all. I think in broad strokes. I could never spend a career on one text.

From what one of my profs told me, the write-by-numbers M.A. is "looking at ____ (book or author) through the lens of ____ (critical theory)." So "Looking at King Lear through the lens of postcolonialism," "looking at Auden through the lens of women's studies." That kind of horseshit. Like making a burger, you just slap things together. 

My problem is, I don't find any one theory compelling by itself. I don't really care about whether or not a text displays a class or gender or race bias, unless the text happens to be running for public office. Who gives a fuck if Caliban is representative of indigenous peoples? Shakespeare didn't know anything about natives, so why turn to him for that when he knows so much about human behaviour and psychology? But I guaran-god-damn-tee that somewhere out there some choad is writing, "The Tempest presents a portrait of a writer insensitive to the plight of the aborigine..."

Most theories are born through literature--not the other way around. Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment influenced Nietzsche's concept of the ubermensch. Hamlet was existential before there was a name for it. Oedipus was around long before the complex that bears his name. So why slot a text into a theory? Why not give the author the chance to break out of the box before slamming the lid?

But how to cloak my disaffection on my grad school application so that I don't end up sounding as ignorant as I am?