Blast from the Past

Some of you may remember the short-lived and ill-fated Poetry-Sticker on the Street project I got involved in last winter. I never thought they would re-surface again in any form or shape, except that one of them got immemorialized in a photo that is now on the Spacing website. I vaguely remember pasting this one myself, although I don't take any responsibilities for the inanity of the quote itself.

It made me think of Andrea: professional closet organizer; Queen & Bathurst; blow-torched roses; flower studded bicycles and all that jazz.

Me and Ayn Rand Were Tight Once

It's 12:24, 14 hours before my exam. Studying is going nowhere, and I thought, what the heck, might as well.

A post on Adeel's blog ended up unearthing my earlier flirtation with Ayn Rand and Objectivism. If you click on my profile you can still see Atlas Shrugged listed as one of my favourite books. Truthfully though, it's not; back when I had a lot of zits it was.

I don't know exactly why it's still there, I mean, except for it being a badly written novel that incidentally sheds light on Ayn Rand's intellectual narcissim and her ironically authoritarian approach to political ideologies, I'm also pretty offended, on behalf of Melville, Forster, and even Jane Jacobs et al, that it's consistently ranked number 2 in Library of Congress's survey of America's favourite book. Yet somehow I felt, for some inarticulat-able reason, that it should be there: it was what I lived by, if only for a brief year-and-a-half during which I didn't know better.

I actually met my current roommate during Frosh week, when I was lying face-down on a sofa in a boozy stupor while we talked about Objectivism. Later that week we somehow found and signed up for the Objectivist club of UofT, and two weeks after that we went to a lecture given by the club on Objectivism in art.

The lecturer was a self-proclaimed trailer-park boy who found his higher calling. The ensuing two hours was nothing short of a disaster, as he tried, through theatrical imitations of ancient Egyptian gestures, to demonstrate the evolution of the Objectivist idea in ancient Egyptian and Greek art.

I took it rather well under the circumstances. We walked out before the lecture ended, shrugged to each other a little embarrassedly; I felt a little empty, but in a rather cathartic way. We went for pizza instead.

I've never lived by any philosophy since.
p.s. that being said, I do like the cover design of these Rand books and very much appreciate the Deco motifs. My copy, the whole fucking 1000 pages of it, was (I believe) left in Niagara Falls bus terminal by accident. I hypothesize that it ended in one of the following ways: 1) it went to the garbage dump, 2) it spontaneously self-combusted, or 3) it got picked up by an angsty pimply teenager from Hamilton who skipped class for the day and converted him/her. 1) is by far most likely, but I hope it ended up with a teenager. Ah those bittersweet years. Tears.

Transit and Myth-Making: One Button at a Time

Posted on urbanphoto.net

The true mark of a city that has shed its pimply adolescent past and gained preeminence is the development of a larger-than-life personality, a personality that is based on layers of collective memories, recollections, human dramas real and ficticious, observed and enacted by oneself. A story of one’s adventures in Camden Town will almost certainly be echoed by someone else’s tale of a London romp; likewise, a hispter’s salacious anecdotes of Saturday night debauchery in the Lower East Side will solicit from others more than just a few recollections of the Lower East Side, and not just from fellow hipsters alone.

It is precisely here that Toronto’s city-building efforts flounder a bit, and the problem is certain even more acute for the multitudes of smaller cities that find themselves on the losing side of the battle for population and talents. Sure, the air might be cleaner, the people friendlier, the street safer, but what does all this matter if your place is constantly mistaken for Anyplace? The occasional appearance in Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje novels aside (and same goes for Montreal and Modeccai Richler/Leonard Cohen), does the Toronto myth mean anything to anyone?

What is particularly vexing about the city government’s shaky sales pitch for Toronto is their obliviousness towards a tremendous resource known as the transit system, which incidentally carries 2.3 million passengers every single day. A cross road in every sense of the word, it is precisely the kind of place where stories take place and memories build upon memories. For a good portions of the 2.3 million passengers, the TTC is an elaborate system of signifiers for their own lives.

For me, the culminative experience of riding the TTC has turned streetcar rides into–excuse the trite metaphor–trips down memory lane: early mornings on the College Streetcar recall brunches on College Street’s brunch row; “501 Queen”–the grandmother of streetcar lines–conjures memories of strolling on beaches near the far east end of that street, and hopping between galleries near the far west end; Dundas Station near Eaton Centre is a sometimes-almost-painful reminder of high school mall rat days.

Pooling such individual recollections can be an almost emotionally overwhelming experience, as a Toronto Star contest proved four years ago. In a competition for the best TTC stories, the entries ranged from the bizzarre (man on subway groping own balls under his newspaper) to the touching (couple met on Chaplin Estate bus, happily married for 25 years). The end result is a curious study of people’s hopes and fears, and the irrefutable proof that Toronto is capable of sustaining its own stories– stories that make outsiders and Toronto’s own inhabitants interested in the city.

Another part of that system of signifiers is physical design, an area in which the TTC has some inherent handicaps to overcome. The functional-utilitarian interiors of subway stations built in the 70s is a farcry from the grandeur of the Moscow system and has few details that make the NYC subway as intriguing as it is; the TTC logo is also not the London Underground Roundel. But as the TTC stations progress in age, the late modernism of their architectural design is gradually beginning to be appreciated. The special TTC font and its retro-modernism offers further opportunities for exploitation.

A shame then that when a TTC merchandise shop finally opened last year at Union Station, people could find nothing other than crappy t-shirts. What happened to the mugs, pens, specialty maps, books, napkins etc. that any tourist can find at Trafalger Square that bear the London Underground roundel?–Yet another case of squandered opportunity and lack of imagination.

Not all is lost though. Thanks to Matt Blackett of Spacing Magazine, these buttons bearing subways station names and the station’s special tile patterns became a runaway success and was dubbed the “civic pride fashion statement of the year”. Add to that the good work that has been done over at Transit Toronto, suddenly the effort doesn’t seem too bad.

A positive feature of the TTC may help also: the transit system in Toronto is not forsaken ground as far as the middle class is concerned, and is instead heavily used by all economic classes. The transit system thus functions more like the kind of civic hub it’s supposed to be, where one meets who he rarely expects to meet–and isn’t this spontaneity the essence of the urban experience?

I'm a Communist Kindergarten Survivor

Choosing not to work, as evidenced by two blog posts within the hour, at the busiest junction of the year, becomes a much less morally challenging proposition once you square it to yourself that you just.don't.want.to.work. Bullshitty excuses are a moral hazard on par with smoking, abstinence, and driving.

So Aliza and I went to a movie this past Saturday at the ReelAsian Film Festival. It was a properly Asian affair: we are both Asian, which was a start. We started the evening at Traditional Chinese Buns, patronized by an entirely Asian population save two white ass cracker Kensington Market transplants. We then made a quick hop to Chinatown Starbucks where I chatted up with the Asian barista. After that we walked back to the streetcar stop on Spadina Ave., which is basically the heart of emigre China this side of Lake Ontario.

I have a small confession to make: I used to dream about, and still occasionally does, of being a festival circus groupie--whoring myself out all day for free festival film tickets and sneaking peeks of Tilda Swinton's non-existent breasts at after parties so I can share salacious tales of her androgyny with my otherwise apathetic friends. Dreams aside, as it stands now I can only afford maybe four tickets at the International Film Festival each year. I briefly contemplated writing for Innis Herald again, in the slim hope that some magazine critic will pick up this quality paper one day (circulation 500) and contact me on the merit of my sharp and incisive writing.

Thankfully, these ReelAsian tickets for Little Red Flowers are only 7 bucks apiece.

It's, well, ironic, that the Chinese title for this film means "It Looks Beautiful", considering the first shot that greeted me when we walked into the theatre was a 5-year-old's penis. Points of subtle psychosexual interest recurred with unfailing frequency in this 90 minute film: a boy named Qiang Qiang (meaning "guns" or "pushka") was enrolled in a residential kindergarten in post-revolution Beijing; the highly regarded school was a place of toys and seemingly benevolent teachers, but also of regimented exercise routines, group bowel movement rituals, and a ruthless system whereby a child was awarded a little red flower for good behaviour. Soon, the spirited Qiang Qiang began to find himself at odds with people around him.

Kids lined up to take a dump every morning, and were awarded for shitting like clockwork

The film's director Zhang Yuan is supposed to be the first truly underground filmmaker in China, his work routinely censored for political reasons. That Little Red Flowers is a political satire on communism and its group psychology is beyond obvious. Like, the group shitting is totally a stab at the kind of cross-surveillance citizens of communism used to carry out on each other. When you've seen someone's privates up close like that you've seen everything, no?

Child actor Kan exposes his privates for art, and takes on the Chinese equivalent of the name Rammington Steel

It wasn't awfully original to situate a political satire in a communist boarding school; the individual in an authoritarian regime is a theme all too often explored, often with great mastery. Heck, even the spirited-boy-in-a-boarding-school franchise is a bit overdone. But lead actor Kan was a miracle, and for anyone who actually went to a communist kindergarten (me & Aliza), the film surely brought back memories.

It was pretty sad that as late as the 80s, things didn't change that much. The group shitting was abolished, thank god, but the nap rooms were still co-ed, with guys wearing pants that had a slit along the asscrack to facilitate easy transportation of goods. All this indecent exposure probably lead to psychosexual retardation at later ages, which explains why all these asian people have issues with their bodies. We still learned songs that ran something like the following:

Li and I are sharing apples;

there are only two left;

I give the bigger one to Li;

and keep the smaller one for myself.

Ayn Rand would have been livid.

But these are beautiful, sepia-toned memories through the filter lens of temporal distance, and both Aliza and I found ourselves oddly moved--half an hour after the movie we still found ourselves excitedly chatting about food in a communist kindergarten (corn gruel, white flour buns). It was then that I realized Little Red Flowers was bound for the Pantheon of Chinese cinema, not as a superb satire, but as a finely crafted keepsake, a little slice of history.

I tried to search through my memory to decide if I ever wore those pants with ass-slits and found nothing. The memory must have been subconsciously suppressed.

Miscellaneous Bits from the Santa Parade...

...which passed by my apartment this past (bleak) sunday afternoon, brought with it an army of screaming kids on curb side benches, and left in its wake an eerie, terrible void.

Sadly, the last time I saw the parade was last year, when I stood at University and Dundas, balancing myself on tip-toe, stuffing an 8-inch piece of street meat into my face.

This year, I decided to spend my time with more grown-up poise: I ran around in the apartment, panic-stricken in the face of impending doom in the form of a paper, sickishly awake due to previous night's insomnia and two cups of cheap brew from the west-end breakfast room Boom, hoping against hope that it would all become just a little easier to deal with.

Santa granted my wish in strange ways: Life brand earplugs, $2.99.

My Belated Two Cents on the Election

A very long-winded and badly improvised post on urbanphoto.net

"Those seeking thrill from Toronto’s municipal politics are advised to look elsewhere. In a city that at times seems to be in love with the status quo, the re-election of incumbent mayor David Miller is all but certain. But election 2006, which took place this past Monday, is worthwhile if only for what it says about the state of affairs in Toronto.

There was something almost messianic about Miller’s 2003 mayoral bid in a city still reeling from SARS, post-amalgamation fiscal hell, and bad governance. What he brought was a palpable sense of beginning anew and making big plans. Within a year both the Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario unveiled their starchitectural expansion plans, and urban issues became something they couldn’t have possibly been: hip—with the launching and subsequent success of Spacing magazine being perhaps the most telling sign of changing times.

To be sure, some of the campaign promises were promptly carried through: his first act as a mayor was cancelling the highly contentious bridge link to the Island Airport. Relationship with the city’s creative community also remained cordial, with Miller being a major proponent for a “creative city” and a regular attendee of “cool” parties.
But those enamored with Miller the visionary had good reasons to feel a little disenchanted. On the more strategic issues, little headway seemed to have been made. The TTC still consistent underperforms and, despite a Ridership Growth Strategy, raised fares twice. The much touted “Clean and Beautiful City” initiative also seem to have produced little effect as far as the number of unsightly newspaper boxes were concerned. Most importantly, the city’s neglected waterfront saw little action in the past three years besides incremental and piecemeal improvements; a verdict has yet to be reached for the much-maligned Gardiner Expressway, even though experts warn that, as highrise condos more and more overshadow the area, precious time is running out.

Nobody however doubts Miller’s will power and commitment to the city, and most opinions agree that unless the federal and provincial governments take up their share of Toronto’s money problems and shed their collective antipathy, not much can be done. Thus when Miller’s main competitor Jane Pitfield boldly promised 50km of new subway construction, 250 new police officers and a garbage incinerator, all with local money, she was hardly taken seriously.
The tragedy of the situation is that, in the face of provincial antipathy and fiscal holes, Toronto seems to have comfortably settled into a culture of resignation, taking what it can get and renouncing the rest without complaint, to the point where when the Expo 2015 bid was killed because nobody was willing to pay for it, few even noticed.

Yet all is not lost. That surge of civic optimism with Miller’s election in 2006 may have ebbed but is far from dead. The arts and music scene are thriving, and are increasingly cross-pollinating with the city’s youth urban activism. Once fringe organizations like Spacing and the Toronto Public Space Committee are just beginning to enter the spotlight. Architecture and design is all the buzz on university campuses and in local papers, and the city’s wondrous new cultural edifices (the just-opened opera house for example) all point to that heightened awareness.

Miller may be a “cautious mayor for a cautious city”, but frustrated ambitions aside, much is to be said for his part in ushering in a period in the city where one tangibly feels history been made and changes on the verge of happening. With the city’s first ever charter becoming effective next year, Miller will get more executive power and more room to act; much can still be done about the waterfront and the TTC. Torontonians maybe a resigned and at-times parochial bunch, but they are hardly pessimists. "

What I did want to say but couldn't find a way to incorporate into the article is that I personally find Miller a man of integrity, although sometimes more of a talker than a doer, not entirely through his own fault. He has also done something important that Mel Lastman couldn't have done: he trendified municipal politics and made it a cause celebre for the young 20-something set. Ok I know the public space "scene" is a little in-bred, but at least people are talking about the Gardiner and the waterfront and Regent Park and the TTC, and that's important.

More on K-Fed Becoming Fed-Ex

Ok, I didn't come up witht the clever title. Some wit at the Star did.

But seriously, what are all the nasty lives of celebrities good for other than as a source of witticisms? So, quoting another one from my friend (paraphrased), the only positive contribution Kevin Federline was able to make is to prove that anyone besides women could be gold-diggers.

YouTube Is the Shit!!!

As is the case with every technological fad in the past five year, I was a later comer to YouTube (I still don't have gmail). But an afternoon of aimless browsing has done nothing short of completely converting me. Ok, there are the requisite depressed-suicidal teenage girl videoblogs and Celine Dion sing-alongs. But there is also a lot of cool shit, like William Sledd "Ask a gay man", and hours upon hours of mind-numbingly funny physical comedy (fat kid on the roller-coaster, anyone?)

Even more surprisingly I came upon something other than mid brow schlock yesterday. Peter Watkins's War Game, the infamous 60s mockumentary that hypothesized an all-out nuclear attack on Britain, has been posted in its entirity in 5 parts. To think that only three years ago, people paid $20+ to go to Peter Watkins retrospectives to be able to see this movie!

Thank you YouTube for helping me discover my paranoid inner self.

Rick Santorum Out. Britney and K-Fed Split.

In other news, the sun rises in the east.

Urban Foibles (1)

While waiting for the lights to turn at College and Spadina today I all of a sudden became aware of the heady smell of burning weed wafting up my nostrils. Normally this wouldn't even warrant a turn of the head, but the smell was so strong that it smelt like someone was smoking up right under my nose--no--it smelt like I was the one smoking up.

Upwind was a curious-looking trio: 60-something 6' giantess with tied-back essex-girl hairdo in a dirty-biege puff jacket, and shrunken-faced 5'5'' hubby with walking cane, happily puffing away, glassy-eyed and dreaming of hippiedom past. Under their noses was a 8-year-old kid, semi-neatly dressed, busy as all 8-year-olds are with Biff or Tommy or whoever their imaginary friend happens to be.

I felt bad for the kid; really I did. I kinda wished for his sake that the old couple had been hippies who sold out as opposed to hippies who never did and ended up having to smoke up at College and Spadina in those dreadful clothes of theirs.

At least the kid will turn out to be interesting, I hope.

Here is Food for You, My Starving Child

Isn't it sad when the only consolation in life is that you weren't born in Africa?

So I was with a friend last night at the Green Room, downing a pitcher and eating a rather suspect chicken sandwich, and the general sluttiness and festiveness of Halloween sort of got to me--in a bad way. You know those few times when you are walking on a street full of happy people with the piercing realization that you are still as alone as ever? I went back home, took one look at my planner (which was incidentally full until the end of next week), and went on to bawl on my bed.

Yeah, I just admitted to crying to the entire cyberspace. It was that bad.

The end result of that rather cathartic experience was that I finally had to square it to myself that the past two years of living hell in engineering science might have been just one colossal waste of time. I need meaning; I need vindication; and I'm seriously going to consider getting out of this. I peg my chances of being in the Faculty of Arts and Science by January at better than 50-50.

I feel an ever greater kinship to Woody Allen and his whole persona of the cereberal frustrated manhood trapped in an existential crisis, which is why I went back to seeing Stardust Memories and decided it was one of his best movies. Of course his dilemma was way more delicious: he had to choose between Marie-Christine Barrault and Charlotte Rampling, but I hope the analogy is not completely lost.

On the same subject, I hope you all come out for Woody Allen's Manhattan on Thursday night. You may dismiss it as an example of flimsy psedo-intellectualism, but the cinematography is amazing, and the opening sequence of Manhattan scenery--I don't know how to put it better--is almost religious.

I once tried to picture how a Toronto-born auteur might shoot the same sequence, but quickly came to the conclusion why it wouldn't work. The whole sequence would be over in just 15 seconds--financial district, Queen St., Kengsinton Market (incidentally similar to Queen St.), Chinatown (messy), City Hall (ugly), the Annex (incidentally similar to Main Street, USA). What, are you gonna put a mall in there too?

Plus Toronto people are just uglier, no offence.

Review: Manufactured Landscapes

Edward Burtynsky’s China photos explore what has always been a veritable fount of intriguing images. Recalling Antonioni’s 1972 Chung Guo China, which in a coolly detached manner examined the ordinary, everyday facet of a society that was nevertheless rife with political tension, his work, with equal detachment, goes underneath the surface of prosperity, and discovers tension of an entirely different kind: us vs. nature.

Burtynsky’s photos come alive on the big screen in Jennifer Baichwal’s Manufactured Landscapes, as the camera follows his footsteps to China and lingers on some of the very same frames. Opening anonymously enough at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, this documentary nevertheless found some success on its own terms, at least judging by the crowds on a Friday night in its second week of general release.

Not that surprising, because Burtynsky’s photos are gorgeous to look at. His keen eye for unconventional beauty took him to some unusual places: bustling and grimy coal mines; container seaports; remote villages where half of the world’s discarded computers and cell-phones end up; entire cities demolished in the wake of the Three Gorges Dam; mega-factories that employ thousands; and the seamy underbelly of Shanghai, where the living room of one jostles for space with the kitchen of the other, all in the open air on the street.

Interesting framing and lighting manage to bring out things we wouldn’t even think to look for. Through his lens, piles of plastic transistors turn into a vibrant mosaic of colours, piles of coal into a study of sensuous contours; and scenes of people working to demolish their own cities in anticipation of the Dam get imbued with a marmoreal and post-apocalyptic beauty.

The whole notion of “ugly” beauty may seem a little ironic, but Burtynsky’s photos, and Manufactured Landscapes by association, work not because they pander to our sense of irony. These photos are quietly meditative, a quality that the film successfully recreates by moving at a glacial pace and saying little, but the sense of unease underlying the landscapes is unmistakably transmitted. As the film puts those stunning photos of transistors into context, it tells the story of how entire local economies in rural China have come to depend on imported junk electronics from which toxic components are scavenged and sold for money. Even the photos of Three Gorges Dam construction, while upbeat by social realism standards, are given a curious spin; put side by side with images of cities whose destruction it necessitates, and the glistening new ones it will support, the culminative effect is one that questions the fundamental sanity of the whole contraption.

Manufactured Landscapes hastily denies being China-bashing, and it isn’t. Just who are the perpetrators is a question with no easy answer and one that both Burtynsky and the film are wise enough to avoid. After all, most of the polluting junk electronics came from us in the West; and the decidedly un-quaint squalor of the Shanghai slums seems like a good moral case for China’s construction bonanza and energy hogging: who are we to be indignant, when we have had a free ride on cheap energy and, with our endless suburban subdivisions and super-highways, are probably just as guilty of tempering with the landscape?

The succinct “message” of Manufactured Landscapes, if there even is one, is that we are all implicated.

The refusal to be accusatory is the main strength of Manufactured Landscapes—emotionally un-satisfying perhaps, but necessary in light of the moral complexities of the issue. Yet it’s quite clear from Burtynsky’s photos who the victims are. In all his sweeping images of transformed landscapes, people are reduced to mere dots, toiling away complacently or perhaps haplessly, about to be swallowed, both in a literal and metaphorical sense, by the enormity of what they themselves have done. Thus is how civilization savagely but beautifully turns on itself.

I Just Don't Love You Enough

I'm fine; a little rough around the edges, but fine, really.

School hasn't been treating me very well; a deep cut on the sole of my foot hurts like a mofo, and is daily beginning to resemble a gaping mouth that smiles at me tragically whenever I look down to inspect it; and just last Saturday, a vile mix of urine-feces-I-don't-want-to-know-what overflowed from my somehow backed-up toilet, damaged the dry wall on the apartment below us, and put Mt. Everest out of business for a couple of hours.

My very intimidating rough-neck superintendent came huffing and puffing: "You gotta pay for it", and looked as if he was gonna kill us. I guess that murderous look came from years of working as a slum lord.

But the day goes on, and what a day! You wake up under a perfectly blue sky with violent splashes of fall-foilage red and yellow, but soon have to cower under this roof or that, away from the fiendish wind a la Wuthering Heights. Hardly a better time to wear that sneering misanthropic look on your face.

That I'm good at at least. And the day goes on.

---

Fall is a new beginning of sorts, and I've recently begun to contribute to urbanphoto.net, a Montreal-centric urbanism photoblog. Go there and take a look if you like. This also means I'll be writing on a semi-regular basis with content syndicated on both blogs. So stay tuned.

In New York

Not dead. At the hostel. Don't wanna pay through my nose for internet so wait for updates later.

Apocalypse Now?

According to a number of leading experts, including Princeton's Benard Lewis, a catalysmic attack on Israel followed by worldwide nuclear holocaust is imminent on August 22, one of Islam's holiest days, courtesy of the Irianian loonie.

Although unlikely (considering I read it in the National Review), it does have that ominous ring of truth to it.

Yep, Some Day I'll Make a Good Father

I'm so psyched. I mean I have dinner parties all the time and I watch ultra-violent cult Japanese films all the time, but I've never ever tried to squeeze these two favourite pastimes of mine into one (I hope) mindblowingly fun night.

The sight of the chicken in the fridge sends jitters down my spine--in less than 24 hours it'll turn into a crispy golden brown hunk of pure glory. There will be baby potatoes, creamy fettucine; there will be viscious dinner table gossips, snobbery, alcohol, more gossips & snobbery, songs and dances, blood splattered, and guts spilled.

Seriously, I think I'll make a great father some day. I'll be the kind of cool dad that cooks kids amazing meals, gives them their first sip of beer at age 5, reads them Nabokov for bedtime stories, and introduces them to the Iranian New Wave cinema. Sure they won't grow up to like football, but at least they'll be gym rats, like me.

Plus with me being as neurotic as me, they'll eventually possess a huge repertoire of funny little anecdotes to impress their friends with: "you know, my dad used to..."

I need to go brine that chicken now.

I'm Angry

If I ever see another family of 905ers taking up the entire sidewalk with their mammoth obese bodies while gleefully trying on coolie hats and posing for picture, I swear I'll cut them.

Fuck.Off.

...And This Is How Snobs Find Each Other

This article, I bet you look good in a bookstore, featured in the Guardian's excellent culture vulture blog, made a rather tongue-in-cheek proclaimation that "Not only can you judge a book by its cover, it seems you can judge the person reading it, too."

"According to a survey of over 2,000 adults carried out by internet pollsters YouGov for Borders bookstore, books play a crucial role in influencing our opinions of strangers. Half of those asked admitted that they would look again or smile at someone on the basis of what they were reading." The Guardian being the voice of the intellectual elites the world over, things invariably get a bit more complicated. It went on saying:

"Erotic fiction, horror, self-help books and the dreaded chick-lit were all, in fact, deemed turn-offs when it came to love between the covers. The genre most likely to help you pull - the itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny yellow polka dot bikini of the books world - is the classics, followed by biography and modern literary fiction (think Zadie Smith and Sebastian Faulks, rather than Dan Brown and Martina Cole)."

As much as these statements need to be put into context, they are more or less true. I doubt if I can ever smile at anyone parading themselves on the street with a copy of Confessions of a Shopaholic.

But reality is rarely as black-and-white as that. The classics are good, and by extension most of the Penguine books. But as one commenter aptly put it, anyone who hasn't read the Great Gatsby by the time they are legal is bound to be a turn-off. Other classics that are in the tricky territory include Dickens and Catcher in the Rye; you can never tell if someone is reading them for fun or is simply agonizing over his/her grade 10 English assignment.

Modern classics are safer; I'm almost bound to take an instant liking (unless they are eating a $15 chickpea curry on brown rice at a pretentious vegan restaurant) to anyone reading Philip Roth or Ian McEwan. Henry James (would he be considered modern?) and Nabokov are also bonus points for people reading them.

My fascination with the Bloomsbury group and their time in general disposes me favourably towards Forster, although Virginia Woolf is much trickier business--Virginia Woolf faithfuls tend to be a mixed bag, not to mention the fact that the object of your un-called-for affection might very well be a lesbian.

Books by Poe and Lovecraft also lend some ambiguity to people. They are generally fine unless goth kids are reading them.

The area that bibliophilia less often extends to is special-interest books, which is a shame because they are often a good gauge of intellectual curiosity and depth. I once caught sight of a girl reading The Life and Death of Great American Cities in a coffee shop; it was truly brain and beauty.

I feel obliged to express my opinion on people who read in bars and nightclubs. I find them irksome and ostentatious in the same way I find non-vegetarians who refuse to eat meat at Korean Grill. I attribute it to a remarkable lack of common sense: nightclubs are where you get gregarious, act loud and obnoxious, and dance with your arms thrown up in the air, not where you put up intellectual pretensions. Which is why I find the following paragraph a little funny:

"...A colleague told a story of a wedding she attended which had its origins in a chance meeting in a nightclub, during which the gentleman in question asked his future wife what she was reading. Obviously her reply - The Great Gatsby - struck the right note. "

Well, I wish the gentleman best of luck in his marriage.

Finally, there are books I love to hate: Dan Brown, Screen-to-novel adaptations, and Amy Tan brand of Asian American literature starting with Joy Luck Club.

Of course exceptions have to be made. One commenter said, and I heartfully concur, that love at first sight would be someone attractive reading the Da Vinci Code and suddenly tossing it out of the window. That she has to be attractive is, I guess, an after-thought?

p.s. Some of the really funny responses I forgot to mention:

I like to sit next to holidaying families on the tube with a copy of the 120 Days of Sodom and shout "oooh!" and "Uuuugh!" extra loudly.

I also enjoy concocting a pungent mix of spit, jizz and piss and flinging it at any furrow-browed twat that happens to be conspicuously reading Paradise Lost or their trendily tattered Nabokov or whatever. Fuck. Off.

Posted by simiain on August 1, 2006 09:04 PM.

A colleague of mine remarked rather pithily that, if the stranger opposite is very good looking, then what does the book's title matter? They can read, can't they?
Anyway...
Total turn offs for the ladies include:
- Mein Kampf - you might find you have long-term ideological issues with this person
- The little red book by Mao Tse Tung - ditto
- Anything by Enid Blyton (if the person is over 10) ditto
- Anything by Oscar Wilde - the guy's probably gay so don't bother, girls
- Anything by the Bront�s - ditto
- A DIY manual - this guy's already hitched and a home-maker. No chance
- Da Vinci Code - simply because anyone who hasn't read it yet AND is reading it has been on another planet for the last year. Mind you, it could indicate he's a NASA rocket scientist...
----
And total turn-ons are:
- Saki's short stories. Marry this person before the bus or train reaches its next stop. Wonderful wit, black sense of humour and epicurean lifestyle. Go for it.
- Anything by Irvine Walsh. Offbeat, bedraggled and very sexy. In a lowlife sort of way.
- Shakespeare's complete works. You'd never be short of conversation.
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Erudite without being boring.
- Anything by Ishiguro. Very sexy indeed.
- Viz magazine. Read by a very well-dressed gent smelling of Givenchy. Unexpected.
Not sure where I stand on Louis de Berni�res and Mishima...Depends on what the bloke looks like, I suppose.

Posted by frogprincess on August 1, 2006 06:35 PM.

To Riverdale: A Photo Tour

Today's weather was a ruthless reminder of the trappings of urban living. Downtown was engulfed in a sceptic mix of hot exhaust fumes, white noise, and the body odour of the living multitudes. I picked my way through Chinatown in the mid-day sun, dodging the chive ladies and street hawkers, trying in vain not to get irritated by the seemingly more-gruesome-by-the-day Falun Gong displays. Garbage cooked in the garbage bins along the street, giving off that familiar sickly sweetness; I was convinced my own legs were slowly cooking too in my jeans.

I ended up in Riverdale Park East, the piece of land east of the Don Valley that was once Toronto's own mini-penal colony. Now as the whole wide universe knows (or Torontonians tend to think), it is a piece of prime park land bordering one of Toronto's most prettified upper-middle class bastions, whose ethos is but a faint echo of its working class past. Didn't Paul Martin buy into neighbourhood in the early 2000's? Or so I thought I had read from Toronto Life a couple of years ago. In any case, the popularity of North Riverdale (north of Gerrard) was such that poor cousin South Riverdale (Toronto's other Chinatown) was able to cash in on the good press. I'm sure more than a few eyebrows were raised this side of Gerrard.

---

Riverdale (and the whole East End in general) to me has always had this sort of tangibility to it . I remember way back one year in September when my mother and I went to the Taste of Danforth. A few minor mishaps and a couple of wrong turns later we found ourselves there at the very end of the festivities (and food), stared at the few remaining bereft-looking corn cobs, and decided to just walk around. The walk took us to Broadview Ave. just when the lights were coming on--white, cold, furtive lights beckoning from the million windows of downtown skyscrapers acorss the valley, and on our side, fuzzy yellow beams streaming out of solid, squat-looking Victorians and Edwardians, more grimey-looking than I (a suburbanite then) was used to.

When Toronto takes a momentary respite from its mad dash towards being the ideal place of post-industrial cool, and re-appraises its working-class roots and mythology, this is the place it will turn to. In West Queen West and Little Italy there are hipsters galore and the latest drama in the rise and fall of indie bands, but in Riverdale there are weathered but solid two-storey houses, streetcars clunking by, and tall maple trees instead; nothing but decent lives, quiet industry and Anglo-Saxon rectitude, which, willy-nilly, pervades our history.

Stop, breathe, take stock--we can't and shouldn't walk away from history--and that's why I'm here.

---
Not suprisingly, few were out in this hot and muggy day. Riverdale Park East to many downtownites is a forgotten place, and happily so. On my admittedly few trips there I'd never seen more than 10 people on the gigantic grassy slope, though many families did walk by on their way to the pool, a sudden flurry of sandals on concrete, garish swimwear, bronze flesh, white teeth, and childish giggles lingering in the distance.

Tanning on a muggy day like this definitely sounded better on paper. I fidgeted uncomfortably as the farawy cityscape simmered in the toxic brew.


---
At five o'clock I packed up my stuff and headed down Broadview, intent on crossing the DVP on Gerrard. Chinatown East at Broadview and Gerrard had the same autumnal air that every dying neighbourhood seems to be infected with; not particularly interested in witnessing squalor and decay, I quickly turned on Gerrard towards the west, across that sad parody of a highway, the Don Valley Parking lot.

At Gerrard and Broadview was the Riverdale Public Library, whose front steps many able-bodied yet unproductive men had for some inexplicable reason taken a liking to. A few Chinese men in their 40s squatted on the garden terrace and gawked at me as I walked by.

Also at that intersection was the Don Jail. While taking this picture an elderly east end-type (read: forlorn-looking) named Floyd approached me. We were very happy to share with each other our views on Walkerton, world religions, and the relative merit of Toronto-area senior homes.

And I did walk past the infamous Regent Park. Beer bottles littered across the lawn was a in-your-face reminder of poverty and the abject failure of 1950s social engineering. The vast expanses of trees did look enticing enough, and vaguely recalled sylvan Stuyvesant Town. But alas, the mis-matched curtains in the windows pulled me back into reality, and reminded me that being poor was not quaint afterall.

---

Half an hour of trekking landed me in the heart of hip Cabbagetown. I checked into Jet Fuel, reputedly the best coffee shop in the city. The barista smiled at me until I asked for a drinks menu--"Do we look uncool enough to carry menus?" she seemed to ask. A curt look, and an espresso landed angrily on the counter; we are back in the familiar playground of the young and the hip.

All this Riverdale expedition has managed to do was to deepen my appreciation for my expensive, albeit heavenly, espresso fixes.

THE END

When Culture Jamming Goes Wrong

Oh-so-crude, and oh-so-funny:

fuckthiswebsite.com

Oh the Trappings of Online Identity

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The Trashy Side of Me Couldn't Resist

But I felt like I had to post this entry from urbandictionary.com

azn

-Asians (mainly from California) who shame their race by bleaching their hair blonde and trying to develop the personality of a 'ghetto' negro. Ironically, these azn's do nerdy things such as hang out in arcades playing Tekken and DDR, but they still uphold their 'ghetto' personna online in chat rooms and blogs/xanga accounts.

azn: look, my hair is blonde
white guy: you're not white

azn: yO nIgUh?
black guy: you ain't black

azn: got rice?
asian guy: you're not asian

The Chronicle of a Shitty Day

I woke up at ten in the morning, noticing the conspicuous absence of the hot fuzzy sunlight that usually pours into my east-facing bedroom window by this time in the morning. There were funny cloud formations in the sky: yet another leaden day. I grunted, flipped listlessly through a few pages of the slightly trashy Foreign Babes in Beijing, and went back to sleep, only to wake up at one in the afternoon, head throbbing, nauseaus and hung-over with sleep.

The flip side of sweet languor is obtuseness.

I stared unseeingly out of the window while lying on my back, clouds inching across the sky and rain drops rattling the window. There was (a lot of) work to be done and no motivation to do it; I felt really lonely; by my pillow was Foreign Babes in Beijing and its ludicrous cover--I couldn't even get up, let alone face the day.

I finally dragged myself out of bed at three in the afternoon and arranged a coffee date with a friend, at no place other than the Chinatown Starbucks. Sad how this unspectacular event was the highlight of my day. We people-watched, chatted about how Jude Law and Sienna Miller made an appearance at the humble store my friend worked at; I was informed that I tend to unconsciously make inappropriate jokes in the presence of girls.

The rain had let up by the time I was walking back. A weird diffused light descended upon the streets of downtown Toronto, investing the scene with a ugly luridity--the wet, gritty alleys, the overgrown, weedy gardens, and the chain-link fences--stuff I've walked by a million times but only somehow choose to see on occassions like this. I chuckled at myself.

Well, everyone gets to be ridiculous once in a while. Might as well get it over with on a Sunday.

I suddenly want a facebook account.

Noteworthy, or Just Worthy of My Note: A Review of 6 Movies

I caved into Match Point just about when everybody around me had seen it. That I would be so willing to bypass a Woody Allen movie was due in part to the disappointment I had with his later films, and also in no small part to the good folks at NOW magazine, who panned the film.

Points off for NOW, because actually watching the film was a small delight. Moving from his familiar milieu of Upper Westside Jewish intelligensia to the refinement of London's high society gave fresh impetus to the film's theme of luck and questioning of the notion of justice. The story is familiar enough: poor Irish boy from the province (Chris Wilton, played by Jonathan Rhys Myer) accidentally broke into Waspy high society and stole the heart of rich heiress Chloe Hewett(a rather insipid performance by Emily Mortimer); everybody fell in love with the young, hardworking, upwardly mobile Chris, but he himself couldn't stay settled but accidentally knocked up a drifting American actress Nola Rice(Scarlett, who else?), who, alas, was once due to marry into the Hewett family herself.

As the film itself was not shy to point out, the story had a lot to say about luck contrary to society's prevalent teachings about hard work. Luck saw to it that Chris Wilton would achieve the kind of lifestyle that, had he relied on hard work alone, he would have never attained; luck also set colliding trajectories for Nola and Chris.

The extent to which the plot stretched luck required a small suspension of belief (some are understandably unhappy about it); another charge levelled against this film--and I agree with it--is that most of the supporting characters were mere caricatures. The rich Hewett family seemed like an assembly of rich people stereotypes: the insipid, good-natured daughter Chloe, the slightly irreverrent and langourous son Tom, the measured and reserved father, and the anal-retentive bitchy snob of a mother. Well, it hardly needs to be said, but not all rich Waspy matrons have to a bitch and have names like Eleanor.

Where the film truly gets points though is Chris Wilton's character and the palpable chemistry between him and Scarlett's Nola Rice. Chris Wilton is a poser: in an early scene he was filmed reading Crime and Punishment (for self-enrichment), but gave up midway and started reading the Oxford Companion to Crime and Punishment instead. His purported love of culture was his passport into high society, which he met with a latent inferiority complex and a faint sulkiness. All this was readily understood by Nola, herself an outsider, whose attitude towards Chris's attempt was in equal measure sympathetic, amused, and slightly disdainful.

This nuanced chemistry was most evident when Chris and Nola sat in a bar after a chance meeting, bonding over their mutual outsider status. Then all of a sudden Nola lost her nuanced touch and became this psychotic and possessive bitch. Why this was the case I can't say, but I suspect it was bad acting on Scarlett Johanssan's part (gasp!!) But Chris's rags-to-riches story was sufficient to drive the story along, his evolving relationship with money, power, and his own desires closely paralleled by our identification with him, lending plausibility to his climactic actions.

It may be an old story, but it surely worked. I found myself much more satisfied in the end than at the end of Crime and Misdemeanor, a similar story but more contrived in comparison to Match Point.

I can't say much about the much-hyped London setting; that "touch" Woody Allen has with New York is conspicuously missing in this movie. Also gone are the quips and witty one-liners. I miss these two things: that spectacular opening sequence to Manhattan and his famous witticism and dissection of neurosis in Annie Hall. Match Point can't match the height of those two movies, and I find the philosophy of it a bit trite. But if only for telling a good story, Match Point still marks a sort of return to form for Woody Allen.

And finally, Scarlett Johanssan was a disappointment. Loud and annoying, she was hardly the femme fatale she was supposed to be. Seduction works when it is (or at least appears) effortless, not when she struts around wearing too much make up and uttering lines like "you are playing a very aggressive game".

And while on that subject, Woody Allen needs to go back to film school to study directing more convincing sex scenes.

---

I went into A Scanner Darkly with a free ticket, which probably explains why I liked it more than I otherwise would--instead of caving to my urge to yell "Shut the fuck up" when the characters talked too much, I just sat back and reminded myself that I wasn't paying for this.

And plenty of that I did. This Linklater film was, in the same vein as Waking Life and Before Sunset, talky, and a lot of the conversations were no more than exchanges between stoners, one of them played by Keanu Reeves, an undercover agent investigating a brain-damaging superdrug called substance D as the drug flooded the country in a functioning but dystopic near-future. As he was forced to take the drug and the damage began to take effect, he found himself gradually assuming the identity of the very person he was investigating.

This was the founding premise of the main theme of identity. It was further complicated by the availability of "scramble suits"--protective clothing that completely disguises one's identity. Agents were required to wear them for security, and of course, secrets lurked beneath these sinister looking contraptions.

The scramble suits nicely reflected the air of paranoia in the Orange County of near-future: the film's greatest success was creating muted fear within the decaying world at large and the quiet horror of one man's private hell as he was eaten away by brain damage and drug-induced hallucinations.

But the film's attempt at being thought-provoking never really took off from there but was instead undercut by its persistent attempt at not-so-subtle current commentary. The government appeared so sinister with all of its survallence activities, that you almost expected a conspiracy from the outset; and when the conspiracy was revealed, all it got from me was an indifferent shrug.

The use of rotoscope animation was useful for a) creating the kind of hallucination-ridden world seen through the eyes of drug addicts ("are those sofas moving or is it just me?") and b) disguising Keanu Reeves's bad acting skills.

Too self-conscious and bent on becoming an instant cult-classic, a Scanner Darkly is bound to become an instant cult-classic among high school art majors.

---

I've been getting my fill of CGI-ladden films lately: Superman Returns, X-men, and Pirates of the Caribean. All three were surprisingly entertaining, although regrettably none of them had enough things being blown up. I mean, that's what they are for, right? And what's with Brandon Routh's face?

Also saw Devil Wears Prada; trivial frivolous fun.

A Healthy Dose of Sentimentality

Visiting these forlorn and stagnant pages of my blog has been a difficult exercise lately. My sincerest apologies to my loyal readership, for whom logging into these pages is probably just as difficult.

I hate to come across as a poser--although this will most definitely make me one--but the impetus for committing anything on this blog really only presents itself in one of my contemplative moments, when vague notions and half-formed jokes begin to take a more concrete forms; these "moments", among others, include:

a) me taking a long contemplative walk late at night, staring vacantly at the streetscape while looking pretty;

b) me taking my breakfast at an empty diner early in the morning, staring vacantly out of the window while looking pretty;

c) me taking the streetcar, staring vacantly out of the streetcar window while looking pretty.

And the sad thing about my summer so far is that there haven't been enough of these moments that lend themselves to poetry; hence the sparse update.

Well, at least you can't accuse me of not living introspectively.

---

So the long and short of my life's story at this moment is that I'm working an un-inspring job (although the title elicits a few "wows" before they find out my exact job description), taking an art class, and just getting generally comfortable with my routines. Terribly unexciting, and a far cry from my grandiose plans at the beginning of the summer.

I did get to indulge in my cinephilia, and actually meet some pretty splendid people. Soloman deserves a special mention if only for the truly bizzarre story of how we met and the hilarity that ensued.

And I threw a dinner party last night on a whim: curry, creamy leek and potato stew, and various grilled goodies, washed down with cheap wine; a small but happy and lively gathering.

I suspect this is what life would be like in ten years' time: routines after routines, and the occasional (literal and figurative) dinner parties; truth be told, I don't exactly mind it. (ha, yesterday I just gave a speech on how I hate people who lead white-bread, unintrospective lives, but under the influence of alcohol of course) There is a satisfying sense of down-to-earth everyday-ness to it, and frankly, what beats having good friends to take care of and be generous to?

Wow, that was totally a Life Network moment.

Love the job...Lovin' it

Before I settled down to work this morning I chatted with everyone on my MSN that's actually up at this ungodly hour, read everything in the Epoch Times, and browsed two backissues of the Varsity.

New Music Genre: Tart Pop

Introducing my own Academy of the Overrated

"-Levitt's overrated. In fact, he may be a candidate for the academy."

"-Right!"

"-Mary and I have invented the Academy of the Overrated for such notables as"

"-Gustave Mahler"

"-Isak Dinesen and Carl Jung"

"-Scott Fitzgerald"

"-Lenny Bruce. Can't forget him, can we?"

It's scary when you watch movies like Last Days, Elephant, and My Own Private Idaho and listen to Gus Van Sant talking about his exploration of the human condition, because what are we supposed to make of a world that heaps all of its adoration onto this supposedly serious artist when we all know that the world is not nearly as vacant, senseless and devoid of motives as he "observes" it?

Comfortingly, most of the films for which he wrote the script were panned by critics.

To someone as boring, irritating, self-indulgent, and nihilistic as Gus Van Sant, my only response is "Up Yours!"

...And you think herpes is scary?

Jane Jacobs Dead; Siqi Lives

The glorious(??) but ubershort run of my blog (one month all in all) is a testament to my amazing stamina and the seriousness of my literary aspirations. But it's not really all my fault: some may attribute it to writer's block, which is untrue and entirely too flattering; and I say it's just an unfortunate mix of inertia and working an academic job.

Working as a summer researcher (read: paper shuffler) in one of the drabbest buildings on campus is analogous to eating too much potatoes: you get little out of it and end up farting a lot. I pray to my stars that my supervisor will never see this--to his credit, he's the nicest and most congenial professor ever, and climate change is a good research topic in so far as it appeals to my do-gooder, public-sector, anti-car side--but should the frigging babushka at Butler's Pantry ever call me back for a second interview, I'd switch jobs and don a waitor's outift in a heartbeat.

Collision of the Worlds

But life does have some surprises in store even in the drabbest corner of the universe. I walked into the registrar's office today to borrow a sharpie and there he was: a fellow blogger whose identity and blog I somehow (creepily) stumbled upon on facebook and creepily followed.

As is the case with most stories this one began with a bit of tainted intentions. Bored on facebook one day I decided to search the most fob-ulicious names: Walter, Walt, Edison, Lawrence, and eventually Soloman. Lo and hehold there is actually a Soloman here at UofT, a diva no less, with his own blog.

I guess the blog, which was really interesting, erudite, and updated, redeemed it all. I figured the whole Soloman thing was just a sad mistake his parents made after watching the History Channel in a boozy state; and as far as parental misconduct goes, it's really not all that bad. My parents once told me for whatever reason that I looked ugly when I smiled and the gap between my teech showed; someone should have called social services in on them.

Summer in the Annex

I have an air conditioner and am thankful for it. Every day when I come home hot and sweaty, I throw away the fact that I'd spent the entire day researching climate change and jack the air conditioner all the way up. The sheer pleasure of suppressing guilt is unparalleled.

In good weather I'm prone to long walks. I frequent Harbord Fish and Chips; the smell of frying fat makes it the most congenial place on earth.

Other pleasures are more unexpected. I found the book "Metropolitan Life" by Dorothy Parker-lite, Fran Lebowitz, in mint condition in a garbage pile on Major St. A good read, but I just hope I won't pick up some random bacteria from it, like, Garbagitis (haha).

Movies

I tried to review movies when I get the time to. But then the last movie review dates from March so apparently that was successful. I finally saw Stardust Memories but could see nothing except for Woody Allen's genius cracking under his own fame. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was quite good (finally dragged my lazy ass to see it), and Art School Confidential was a bummer. What is it with people like Max Mingella who think that just because they can act drippy they are good actors?

I saw X-Men and liked it. Not to say it's not shitty but I went in with really low expectations. So don't ask.

Today I was called in by the Public Space Committee people to help screen and critique films for their upcoming film festival. I was unlucky enough to see first-hand this rancid travesty of a home video called Winking Circle.

Nothing good comes out of small town Ontario, Avril Lavigne being the case in point. So when you are about to watch a bunch of grade 11s from Uxbridge, ON exploring individual expression through basement pot parties, painting their parents' pick-up trucks, punk rock concerts in the garage & skateboarding, you know it's not gonna be easy. But it felt more like someone holding my eyelids open and giving my eyeballs paper cuts, because 1) this "Wink Circle" organization actually exists, and 2) people beside me were nodding appreciatively.

(See the horrors for yourself)

I hope people from my organization never see this, but I hereby resolve that, should this movie pass screening, 1)I would quit this thing once and for all and 2) I shall pray day and night that the God of Good Taste will strike all these people down.

There, I've taken all you dear readers into my confidence. But confidence comes cheap these days, so don't get excited 'cause you are still not my friend.

Urban Legend

Jane Jacobs, 1916 - 2006

“I love New York so much still,” she (Jacobs) said. “But the traffic is the worst I’ve ever known it to be.” (In a chapter in her new book, she explains briskly why one-way streets, designed to streamline traffic, only complicate it.) “New York still has so much pizzazz, because people make it new every day. Like all cities, it’s self-organizing. People looking for a date on Third Avenue make it into a place full of hope and expectation, and this has nothing to do with architecture. Those are the emotions that draw us to cities, and they depend on things being a bit messy. The most perfectly designed place can’t compete. Everything is provided, which is the worst thing we can provide. There’s a joke that the father of an old friend used to tell, about a preacher who warns children, ‘In Hell there will be wailing and weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ ‘What if you don’t have teeth?’ one of the children asks. ‘Then teeth will be provided,’ he says sternly. That’s it—the spirit of the designed city: Teeth Will Be Provided for You.”

From the New Yorker, "Cities and Songs," May 17, 2004

p.s. A new post coming up soon.

A Call to Stratford

Had the most brilliant idea the other day: we should all go to Stratford after exams (or during the summer), bring some good books, get some good food, some wine, and catch a show or two--the Glass Menagerie looks really good. What do you say, friends? (tickets are only $20, drop me a line if you are interested)

I never professed to be a big theatre person, and the only experience (musicals don't count) I've had with real theatre is limited to this understandably embarassing one time at Angels in America with my potentially homophobic mother. But I always liked Tennessee Williams--the gentle and tormented genius, last relic of the fading genteel south; all romantizations aside, I'm also addicted to a Streetcar Named Desire.

On that subject, while dining with (haha I love dining at New Ho) with Aliza after life drawing we bumped into two really burly obnoxious men from Louisiana who listened in to our conversation and joined in at their liberty, and burped liberally. God, what's more pathetic than being a hick and having your home washed away by Katrina?

Three Times, and Other Tidbits

Apologies to my dear readers for the lack of updates, but since seeing Three Times on Friday I've felt like I owe it to this blog to write a movie review, which, as I remember from my Innis Herald days, can become really excruciating.

It wouldn't be impudent to draw parallels between Hsiao-hsien Hou's Three Times and the noltalgic pieces of that other demigod of Chinese cinema, Wong Kar-Wai. Both are awash in lush colours and oriental melancholy, and evocative of the semi-mythical places of yesteryear (Hong Kong, Taiwan). Yet almost over-indulgently Three Times prized style over characters and story, and suffered for it.


Chen Chang and Shu Qi appeared as lovers in three separate stories that spanned almost a hundred years. A Time for Love was a convincingly awkward love story between a soldier (Chen) and a poolhall mistress (Shu Qi) in the pre-modernization Taiwan of 1966. It was the most accessible story out of the three, granted, but also the most charming. The landscape of dilapidated houses and noisy roadside snack joints, symbols of a more innocent and restrained existence, provided the perfect backdrop as the young lovers gingerly fell in love. Shu Qi and Chen were clearly comfortable in their respective roles, and made up for Hou's economy with characters with nuanced and believable acting.

The other two segments, set in 1911 and 2005, respectively, were much more forgettable. There is something to be said about Hou's ambitions--to chronicle of the changing nature of love and relationships throughout the century; but his tendency to linger over scenery and overlook characters proved to be a serious handicap. In a Time for youth, Shu Qi had the very thankless job of portraying an epileptic lesbian singer whose infactuation with a man threatened to destroy her established relationship with another girl. There was supposed to be inner turmoil and confusion, yet with Hou's quick and broad strokes, little of that came across; Shu Qi's character appeared genuinely callous, even loathsome.

Three Times should have been three seperate movies, instead of only one that managed to be both contrived and boring (3 hours!!!)

Having said that, it was gorgeous to look at. The lush interiors of the 1900s brothel dripped with saturated colours and a pervasive sense of claustrophobia; 21st century Taipei was instead shown in a harsh, bluish, searching light that perfectly communicated the quiet anguish of the young and the lost. Unfortunately that was all Three Times was--a beautifully shot dud.



In other news, the Squid and the Whale recently came out on DVD. I beseech you: do yourself a favour and watch it. It honestly is one of the best of 2005, and embodies the best qualities of American independent cinema. It's at once witty, contemplative, incisive, and emotionally honest; if for nothing else, watch it just to see Jeff Daniels (at his best here) as the failed intellectual: his snobbisms are quite something.

A Hilarious Look at Sushi Etiquette

http://www.atomfilms.com/af/content/japanese_sushi

Biatch

I've decided to celebrate the 10th post of this blog with a picture of everyone's favourite , Bai Ling. Move over Paris Hilton: Bai Ling was in this business before you could even pronounce "c-o-c-k".

Quite a picture I must say. She looks like a cobra in some sort of a bizzarro ballerina's outift. Hmm, delectable.

Good Laughs

I forgot to mention this. Go to this blog, Bent Yellow Boy, scroll down to the entry titled "Celine Dion as fag hag" on March 20, and watch the music video. Note the trademark wind-blown hair.

I was like "holy crap" when I saw it. Goes to show how the 90s really was the golden age of civilization.

Really funny stuff. His whole blog is.

It's All Uphill From Here

Poster for my design project: it's worse than it looks

Design demonstration was on Wednesday and no parts of my machine worked. The humiliation was however brief (thankfully). The elaborate ritualistic burning of the machine that I had for so long planned never happened either--I thought I could for once do without all the negativity and strive for a small measure of fineness. So I went to New Ho King and doted on a plate of beef & brocolli instead.

Thursday was eventless; I skipped classes and made a creamy leek and potato stew and had people over. Good times.

More good times on Friday: went to Kensington Market with Aliza and met up with newly-hitched Sam. It was gray and windy, altogether a terrific day for coffeeshop-lounging and conversations galore--movie snobbery, new apartments, enticing prospect of drinking forties on a Annex patio--all of this over expensive coffee, which I drank not entirely without guilt. Kensington Market is gentrifying, and we've got blood on our hands.

Today was one of those days when you thought you'd been working hard but got little done. A supposed study session at Future's degenerated into people watching; saw the Failed Artist, Sandra Oh's mom (no not really), and an awkward blind date where a golddigger worked a professor; discussed the role of dogs and babies as the facilitators of social interactions between otherwise lonely but staunchly aloof urbanites.

There is this web service called China Bridal that hooks up rural Japanese men with women from China's northeastern rustbelt; and there is this advertisement I saw in the Spectator (the voice of elitist conservative Britain) that markets "elegant Japanese ladies" to successful British men. Here is the real problem: that the world is full of lonely people all over, including all of us, to a certain extent.

And that includes my rowdy neighbours and their group of obnoxious parties animals. You sad bastards, I sit quietly cursing.

p.s. I need a blog name that's actually not lame. I'm open to suggestions.

Having the March Blues

That battered garbage bin at the back of my apartment reminds me of me.

Rule, Nerdlandia!

Those of you who know me well probably know that my design project is due for a public demonstration on Wednesday afternoon. For those of you who don't know me that well, the aforementioned design project is to build an automated grain-packaging machine, part of the core curriculum of my engineering education and a major source of misery in my life.

I'm posting this information because 1) the demonstration is open to members of the public and 2) you should come. If you are the type of guy/gal with tucked-in shirts and pocket-protectors who wetdreams about groupies with Jay Ingram and Natasha Stillwell, you are probably foaming at the corner of your mouth already; all the cool robotics will inspire hours upon hours of good dinnertable conversations afterwards. If you belong to the rest of humanity, however, a deep foray into the heart of Nerdland should also prove entertaining--the human dynamics in engineering (my division in particular) is most defintely different, and the whole human carnival will also, for better or for worse, provide hours upon hours of dinnertable entertainment. Do dress down though: khaki pants, white socks and trainers are the prerequisites; engineers hate Mr. Fancypants.

Natasha and Jay, light of my life, fire of the groin (barring the Eww factor)

So if you live in the fair city of Toronto, do come to the UofT campus on the coming Wednesday at 2 pm (location TBA). Interested parties should drop a line in the comments section. Now I must go back and battle with stepper motors and solenoids.

I can't believe I gave up St. Patrick's Day for this.

Toronto & South Dakota: Recycled News

Take note, everyone. Richard Florida's Creative Class theory is not all bullshitty polemics afterall. In the, well, not-quite-latest news, Toronto Hydro has announced plans to turn the entire city of Toronto into a wi-fi hotspot, with downtown coverage operational possibly as early as this fall. The city will thus become one of the few North American cities (after Philadelphia, New Orleans, and San Francisco) to have city-wide wireless Internet coverage.

San Francisco, people! The semi-mythical land of coffee-swigging sandal-wearing so-hip-it-hurts lesbian artists of colour! Tasteless cultural stereotyping (which I seem to have a knack for) aside, is Toronto really there yet?

Richard Florida would say: "getting there", and I with my shameless Toronto boosterism would gladly concur. The attraction of Wi-Fi on the "creative class"--hi-tech professionals, artists, web-designers--hardly needs to be emphasized more. Who hasn't dreamed of a languid afternoon spent in High Park? Who hasn't dreamed of a languid afternoon spent browsing useless websites? Why not spending a languid afternoon in High Park WHILE browsing useless websites? Finally wikipedia-nerds will get out and get some sun.

The whole creative class thing sort of leads into this piece of news from South Dakota, whose government has recently banned abortion in all but life-threatening situations. Get this: if you dad came in your room one day, raped and impregnated you, you wouldn't be able to get rid of that child. Kudos to their common sense: South Dakota has been suffering the worst of rural flight, with most of their college grad voting with their feet and leaving for places where, you guessed it, rape/incest victims actually have rights.

Some people just don't get it. South Dakota has been trying to fight brain drain with tax breaks and free land. But really what does a piece of South Dakotan land mean for a well-educated and progressive-minded college-grad? Nil. Nada.

South Dakotan legislators need to be lectured by Richard Florida before they once again sabotage themselves. Meanwhile the exodus of their young talents is only going to continue.

If you see a guy with horn-rimmed glasses working on a iBook who sports a midwestern accent at Future's, try guess where he's from.

And soon enough I'll be doing my blogging at Future's, too.

P.S. The following states are considering a similar abortion ban: Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Notice a pattern here?

Most these states are already pretty odious places to be in the first place. Someone should tell them that smearing yourself with shit doesn't make you any more attractive.

What a Little Bugger!

Ok. I fixed up the commenting system so even non-members can comment now. Happy commenting; good things will happen to you in the form of better grades and a more explosive sex life.

Starchitect Power!!!

Towards the end of today I was feeling more than a bit feverish, the culminative effect of sleeping for two hours a day for a week. More cowbells won't help now, sleep would. Nonetheless to celebrate the end of a tough week I went for sushi and succeeded in not letting my face fall in the food. Afterwards I stumbled south to catch the Frank Gehry retrospective at the AGO. Bad idea perhaps, but this is what I call mental opium: I can never get tired of standing in front of magnificent buildings and letting my napoleonic alter ego pretend that I designed it.



I can't say that I'm a big Frank Gehry fan; I've always been queasy with the whole nihilistic undertone of deconstructivist buildings. But man, anything is preferrable to the sad pathetic excuse of an art museum that is the current AGO. The fact that I was one of the only two people there speaks volumes.

The AGO kindly designated what felt like its storage room to this meagre exhibit of 5 buildings. Adding salt to injury, visitors had to pass through that dreadful concrete walkway with the dreadful picture of that dreadful Henry Moore sculpture, past that dreadful sculpture court, where, even more dreadfully, two women sat gazing at the Henry Moore's, full of admiration ("Is that a phallic object?")

On display was the Stata Center (pictured above) at the MIT. I thought I rather liked it compared to the other Gehry projects: playful, packs a punch, but not too destructive. The building meets the sidewalk more or less like a normal mid-rise does, and the overall form is just conventional enough to blend in with the street wall. There's even an amphitheatre-like entrance that is apparently intended for students to loiter and people-watch--a small concession to the common man that many demigods of architecture nowadays refuse to make. All in all, a "comfortable" building for where it is.

Interestingly Gehry had based the whole building's concept on an Orangutan's village, because many professors expressed the desire to have a building with a "hierachy" built into it. The laws of the jungle still rule. Chuckle.

I never really liked his signature stuff though. You know what with all the titanium and wood. Irrational, bewildering for no good reason; plus the sensitivity to context is pretty much none-existent here. Looking closely and you'll see that his Walt Disney concert hall in downtown LA is built entirely upon a foundation of a concrete platform. How is that a friendly gesture to pedestrians who can only see a blank wall as they walk down the street? Downtown L.A. is not the most lively place to start with; that building just about puts the last nail in the coffin as far as the immediate surroundings are concerned.

Fuck, he's Frank Gehry. Starchitects like him get to make expensive personal states like that.

In the last room was Transformation AGO. I honestly thought he wasn't really trying with that building (did anyone else feel that way?). An improvement no less; plus the art gallery can always do with a bigger over-priced gallery shop.

As I stepped out of the exhibit they were showing a video clip with Adrienne Clarkson interviewing Gehry for the CBC, where he kept bitching about the poor-Jewish-little-me. Yeah, his name was originally Ephraim Goldberg.

The entire exhibit took me half an hour. Don't spend 10 bucks on this thing unless you have a membership. Wikipedia puts together a better Gehry retrospective than the AGO does.

I walked up Spadina towards my apartment in the early March dampness, face burning, feeling slightly unsteady because of the fever while trying to balance the hang-over-in-a-bottle cheap wine I had just bought. As I rounded Spadina Circle I secretly wished that Toronto had been a more beautiful place.

Manifesto

So this is it. The blogging fad has claimed its latest victim. Be happy though that Siqi, unlike more than 90% of humanity out there, doesn't complete suck at writing and has something semi-interesting to say from time to time. Like what I stepped on while walking on St. George today (I'm sure you wanna know). But I digress.

Unfortunately this will also mean the end of my MSN space, much loved (by MSN space standards) but perpectually malnourished as it is. Fret not: this is better for wasting your time. Notice that "Next Blog" button on the top right corner?

Why a blog? And why now? Lately there has been a lot of unhappiness and a lot of soul searching about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. Engineering is a drain; and not to come across snobbish or anything, it puts people at the risk of a lifestyle that solely revolves around cheap Spadina eateries, classes, and the engineering cafe (aptly named "the pit"). Terrible thing really, but worse still is the de-sensitizing effect: you stop noticing what interesting movies are on and what's going on around the city; soon enough you stop noticing that you just forgot to take a shower last night.

I guess writing is therapuetic this way. There is just something soothing about putting all the transient good moments of a day on paper--a good meal, a midnight walk through the Annex, a good movie, or (the hilarity of) stepping on dog shit; and they in turn force you to look for them in the first place. So here I am.

Forgive the Caban aesthetics of this minimalism. I wish as I never before that I had actually learned something in Grade 11 computer graphics.

So stay tuned ladies and gents. Now I have to stuff myself with pork pot roast and study.

Just a test

Don't worry, I will have better things to say.