Best of Summer Movies, L'Enfant

We watch a lot of movies in our office; typically once a day someone shows something, either after the coffee buzz has worn down and everyone has entered that mental no man's land of three o'clock, or else late into the evening when folks are too wired to go home. Our tally for the summer stands at seventy-three films.

The two most noteworthy are perhaps David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises (2007), and a Belgian film entitled, L'Enfant (2005). Eastern Promises, is filled with all the tension and edgieness that one expects from a director like Cronenberg who is capable of arguing that filmed car crashes can be high art. Further, as his second time working with actor Viggo Mortensen, he is able to coax out perhaps one of Mortensen's most nuanced performances. Concerned with the migration of Eastern Europeans into the West (specifically London), the film looks at the descent of some of these travellers into the world of organized crime and human traffically. A visually stunning, and not just for the extensive tatoos of the Russian mob characters (including Viggo), it left us awed.

If Eastern Promises captivated with it's stunning intensity, L'Enfant was something else entirely. Filmed in a cinema veritie style, it had none of the production value of Cronenberg's studio/art house movie. One never forgot that Eastern Promises was entertainment. L'Enfant, on the otherhand was different. The film explores the struggle of a young couple who have just had a baby. We never really find out their ages, but a rough estimate is that he is perhaps twenty, and she sixteen or seventeen. He, Bruno, is a neighbourhood hoodlum, having roped two local grade school boys into his "crew", and the threesome commit all manners of petty crimes. The film begins when she, Sonia, returns home from the hospital with the baby and finds that Bruno has sublet her flat, and is currently living down by the riverbank. She is upset at the fact that Bruno appears unconcerned, and Bruno slowly begins to realize that his lifestyle must change. 

The baby presents several challenges that neither Bruno or Sonia are capable of dealing with, likely owing to their youth and absence of family network. Despite the added financial burden of a baby, Bruno demonstrates little understanding of money, using his ill-gotten proceeds to by clothes, rent cars, even a baby seat for said car, only to sell or barter the goods away hours later for a fraction of their cost. When Sonia, in a bout of post-partum despair that she wished the baby had never come, Bruno takes that as a sign to contect his fence and arranges to have the baby sold. From there, the film is on, through many twists and turns. At no point is it "entertaining" but just as much, never let's the viewer go. At times, one feels like Alex the Droog being forced to watch the images of violence accompanied by Beethoven's Fifth.

The Watchmen Addendum, Part II

While The Watchmen's opening negation always stuck with us, clearly linked to it's cause, the other memory we had of The Watchmen lay dormant for a long time. Well over a decade later, after reading the The Watchmen, we came across an interview with Jimi Hendrix in which he claimed "I don't want to be a clown anymore", referring to the fact that he felt people expected pyrotechnics and not musicianship from his performances. Something about the remark struck us with half-filled rememberances of existential angst. Re-reading The Watchmen, we came across it:

"Man goes to see a doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says 'Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up.'

Man bursts into tears. Says, 'But doctor . . .

. . . I am Pagliacci.'"

Watchmen Addendum, Part I

One of the key moments in The Watchmen that resonated with us for years, was in fact the opening lines:

"The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!" . . .

". . . and I'll look down, and whisper "No.""

Obviously the film makers charged with editting the trailer for the movie were struck with it as well.

Years later, when reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (soon to be it's own movie, with Angelina Jolie), and found ourselves disagreeing with the celebrated Rand over how her protanganists' own "No" played out, it was perhaps because we were still hung up on The Watchmen and looking for something a little more dramatic, with a touch more nihilism.

We Watch The Watchmen

A few weeks ago we found ourselves hanging out, across the street from a bookstore, aimlessly watching people stroll along the boulevard. Over coffee we watched people coming and going, and eventually noticed a steady stream of customers entering and exiting the bookstore. We noticed that single men paid the store little attention, but it was the men walking with significant others that caught our eye, as it appeared that something in the window caught theirs. From where we were sitting we couldn't make out what it was in the window that was causing the causal commotion, but after investigating further, we found that the store and setup a display of of The Watchmen trade paperback. A twelve part comic book miniseries when we were younger, the book was stunning - unlike anything else we had read. It seemed to turn the entire notion of superherodom on its' head. Good guys were bad guys, and bad guys were . . . well, everyone was bad. It had swearing and nudity, and the guys behind the counters wouldn't sell it to you if you weren't old enough. Borrowed copies circulated through our grade six class like wildfire.

All of the men walking past the display, seemed like us, to have been right around thirty, too young to have past the "cool test" when the Watchmen came out the first time and were now picking up the trade paperback to make up for lost time. Without thinking, a few of us picked up copies, and we all felt like we were apart of some kind of generational moment, simultaneously, we also felt kind of lame, as if we were trying to make up for our lack of cool some twenty years ago.

Obvisouly, we are eagerly awaiting the Warner Brothers' film adaptation slated to appear this fall (though apparently a lawsuit from 20th Century Fox is threatening to delay it).

Lost Grooves

It's hard to believe that things have changed so much, and yet at the same time, not enough. Below is a story about Paul Mawhinney, a former record store owner who is trying to part with his record collection, spanning decades of collecting. The collection, valued at $50 million US, is being offered for $3 million, and has no takers. Surely some univeristy, like Bowling Green, home to prestigious popular studies programme would be interested.

Suburbs are bad, m'okay.

We've long held that suburbs are bad, poorly designed, wasteful, and divisive, but now it seems that the suburbs will make you fat to boot.

More two cents worth

Other albums from the 1990s that might deserve a space somewhere would be Becks "Mellow Gold" or perhaps "Odelay". To a lesser extent, Stereolab's "Emperor Tomato Ketchup Soup".

And of course, hard to beleive, but it was so of the 1990s, Pavement's "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain".

A Few More Candidates

Here's some more candidates for our list of Top Ten albums:

R.E.M.: Automatic For the People
Beck: Take your pick, Mellow Gold or Odelay (though everyone wants to say One Foot In The Grave)
My Bloody Valentine: Loveless - this one perhaps shows the difficulty of picking such a list, phenomenally popular in the early 1990s, it signaled the end of My Bloody Valentine, and one has to wonder whether "shoegazing" had any lasting impact. Putting this one on such a list could be like putting Frampton Comes Alive on a similar list of bygone era - sure it sold a lot of records, but did it go anywhere (other than crashing into a tree, high on coke)?

An interesting point was raised regarding the debate on which Red Hot Chilli Peppers album would be more deserving: Blood Sugar Sex Magic for sheer shock and funk, a kind of harbinger of what the 1990s might have been, or Californication as an album that mourned the reality of what the 1990s actually were and convinced a whole new generation of fans to lament something (that hazy period circa 1982 - 1992) that they never knew they had lost.

Flotsam and Jetsam on the Web

Here's a little something that we found on YouTube last night, a duet with Beck and Jane Birkin, perhaps for French TV. Beck is charming and appears happy to be there, even though it is clear he doesn't know all the French lyrics.



Watching Jane Birkin made us realize how much we missed her partner in crime, Serge Gainsbourg, so if you're wondering what all the fuss was about, here you go:

Top Ten Albums of the 1990s

The Olympics are being projected on a wall in the other room and several of us are taking a break and having a break. Allan Parker, the latest addition to our fold, has just finished reading Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, the film version of which is something of an annual kino classic. Parker, in honour of Hornby, has challenged us to come up with a Top Ten list of the best albums of the 1990s. We're not even sure such a thing can be done, but Parker argues that it's almost been twenty years, surely allowing enough time to have past.

So, at any rate, in no particular order, we assembled a list of albums that would challenge for a position on such a list:

1. Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
2. Ok Computer - Radiohead
3. Twice Removed - Sloan
4. Trouble in the Henhouse - Tragically Hip
5. The Lonesome Crowded West - Modest Mouse
6. Fear of a Black Planet - Public Enemy
7. Blue Lines - Massive Attack
8. Repeater - Fugazi
9. Post - Bjork
10. Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic/Californication - Red Hot Chilli Peppers (vicious argument over which gets the nod)
11. (Something) - Blur
12. O.G. Original Gangster - Ice T (though really, we want to suggest 1989's Iceberg)
13. Blow Your Headphones - The Herbaliser

This conversation sort of grounded out in the realization that no one in the room could credibly talk about the development of post-NWA hiphop or pre-Chemical Brothers dance music.

Sad.

Suggestions?

Reality Still Bites

The problem with taking a holiday is that there is often lots of things to catch up on when you come back. For example, we are trying to find the time go see The Wackness, a coming of age story set in 1994's New York, with Ben Kingsley in a supporting role (who we recently enjoyed as an alcoholic hitman attempting to dry out in You Kill Me). As something of a hold over, we did re-visist 1993's Ben Stiller flick, Reality Bites. At the time, we felt the movie was a little too-cliched (or perhaps that the cliches struck a little too close to home). However, fifteen years has given us enough perspective to look past some of those cliches, such as the GAP working alterna-girl, the angst-ridden indie rock slacker, etc.

So this time around, what strikes us is the prevalence of divorce, and it was something that other movies, such as the phenomenal The Squid and The Whale have also done, as well as, surprisingly, Bobby. Details' columnist Jeff Gordiner has recently suggested that the Baby Boomers have done Gen X'ers much wrong in his book X Saves The World. If Tom Brokaw and company can affectionately refer to a "Greatest Generation" one is tempted to subtitle the Baby Boomers as "The Most Self-Absorbed Generation". Tempting. What other generation has proen to be so afraid of growing old that they invented Viagra?

We digress.

In many ways, the United States is still dealing with the repercussions of the 1960s and the sky-high divorce rates of the 1980s are perhaps indicative of this. The scene from Bobby that gives us pause, is the one in which the audience discovers that Lindsay Lohan and Elijah Wood are getting married, not because they are in love, but rather because she likes him enough to not want him to get killed in Vietnam. What happens to these marriages down the road, as these people realizes that fear of Vietnam is not enough to build a marriage around?

More Mountain Goats

One of the things our sojourn in the Rockies allowed us to do was catch up on some music. Despite being released months ago (February), and highly recommended by many of our friends, we finally got around to giving the new Mountain Goats album a spin. Heretic Pride is full of lush instrumentation, cellos and violins, coupled with guitairs and such - it's a wonderful sound, and the songs are filled with complex, literate lyrics (really, how else could you describe a song about H.P. Lovecraft's experience living in Brooklyn?), it's unfortunate that John Darnielle's vocal's aren't up to the challenge. Instead he's distinctly at odds with the music, whose depth makes his voice sound quite nasal and flat.

All of Our Problems Should Be So Sweet

From mountain retreat to shore leave, all of our problems should be so sweet.

An aunt of one of our office mates recently dropped off a package of Kimbo coffee for us to consume. It's an intriguing package, as it is all silver, without the usual Kimbo branding. There's an Italian note the coffee is not for individual sale, which as some wondering if it is industrial (commercial) coffee, but the package is just average size so others consider it a part of some corporate offer.

Regardless, we are all eager to have some (Kimbo being a summer favourite around these parts). However, we've yet to finish our delightful Kicking Horse Coffee, and everyone knows it's bad form to open to packs of coffee at a time (since they'll both start to lose their freshness). What to do? Drink more coffee.

Thus, it is late in the evening at we are at the office goofing around and drinking coffee. Some are watching The Mummy in the main room, while offers our surfing YouTube with the overhead LCD hooked up. Fan favourite so far: clips from Zidane: 21st Century Portrait, with Mogwai providing the soundtrack, something we've meant to order online for some time now.

Espresso Fuel

As if to squeeze every last ounce of pun, simile, allegory, and metaphor out of our sojourn in the Rockies, the last few weeks we have been especially enjoying local (well, Invermere, BC anyways) Fair-Trade roasters Kicking Horse Coffee's Cliffhanger Espresso beans. Curiously mellow for espresso, without any of the chocolately hints that we sometimes find.

Mountain Battles For Mountain Goats

We've been listening to a lot of music over the last month, and one of our favourites (perhaps befitting our mountainous retreat) has been The Breeders' Mountain Battles. At first we were a little apprehensive, afraid that Kim Deal was just participating in a little lifestyle maintenance. We admit that this was based on our understanding of her reluctance to re-join the Pixies, as reported in Josh Frank's Pixies biography, Fool The World, and Frank's insinuation that she had no financial need for such a tour. The Twitter comments proved otherwise though, and we found ourselves in agreement as sound as the album hit the stereo.


Happily, Mountain Battles is no attempt to relive the fanciful magic of Last Splash, and certainly doesn't have the same eclectic pop whimsy but it does stand head and shoulders above Pod. The childish innocence of "Istanbul" or the seductive ease of "Regalame Esta Noche" perhaps hearkening back to the early days of the Deal sisters' genre-spanning home-recording (again as noted in Fool The World). Yes, songs like "Walk It Off" or "We're Gonna Rise" re-capture the tension of Last Splash, but without the screaming guitars. In fact, despite it's title, Mountain Battles is an album full of mature restraint, as if Kim Deal wasn't trying to one up Frank Black or The Pixies.

Wimbledon And A Whole New Ballgame?

A warm welcome to all of our friends who have checked in with us since Wimbledon and have been disappointed to see the lack of updates. We have been out in our secluded mountain retreat, communing with nature and crunchy little insects, armed only with our cellphones - one of which includes a shiny new iPhone, but none of which is capable of posting to blogger. Anyways, we hope to make up for our seemingly lacklustre July, with a more fulfilling and robust (some might say august) month ahead.

As for Wimbledon itself, as much as we enjoyed watching Safin and Federer go head to head, hope that this bodes well for Safin in his return to New York next month, the Federer v. Nadal final was everything that one could hope for - Sports Illustrated and many tennis commentators seem inclined to agree that it was perhaps the greatest match of all time, certainly of the last ten years. What is even more fascinating to us, is the potential of what is to come, and frankly, we are surprised that more commentators have not picked up on this yet. With Federer losing in the opening round of Toronto last week, and Nadal winning the tournement, it is increasing looking like Nadal will win the overall No.1 spot by the end of the year, regardless of who wins the U.S. Open.

In some instances though, who wins the Open is immaterial provided both Nadal and Federer make it to the same approximate stages, the excitement comes in what happens next. If Nadal proves that he can at least equal Federer on hard court, then the Australian Open will witness perhaps the greatest race in all of sport: the quest for the tennis' Grand Slam. It is hard to imagine an athletic feat as rare to accomplish, simultaneously being pursued by two players, both with equal chances to pull it off.

Something the Web Brought Up

Surfing the web has its uses: here's a little something we discovered via twitter user cafexperiment. You can visit their website at www.cafexperiment.com where they post daily collections of photos taken in cafes. Quite stunning for us espressoheads. Subscribe to their twitterfeeds for regular updates.

Safin to the Semis!

Marat "I Don't Like Wimbledon" Safin, is about to enter the semi-finals of the famed grass court tennis competition on Friday, facing down the sublime Roger Federer. For all the anticipation over yet another showdown between Federer and Rafael Nadal, this particular meeting of Safin and Federer is looking to be one of the most long-awaited match-ups in recent tennis history. As we write, Nadal is up two sets on Andy Murray, and really ought to be able to close out his match, setting himself up for a next round match against Clement or Schuettler, two opponents ranked around 140th on tour and not likely to offer a healthy Nadal much of a challenge.

Which brings us back to Safin. For all of the greatness of Federer, it was once fairly commonplace to hear Federer referred to as "the most talented male tennis player outside of Marat Safin", or "the only person with a forehand better than Roger Federer is Marat Safin". Of course, Safin's inconsistency has allowed Federer to take an 8-2 career lead over the Russian, including a third round dismissal at Wimbledon last year. What's different this year, is the composure that Safin is showing, much more reminiscent of when he beat Federer in the Australian Open semi-finals en route to his second Grand Slam.

Should Safin beat Federer, then a final featuring Safin and Nadal will be extremely exciting, as it truly will be anyone's game.

Sometimes Safin Is Like A Box Of Chocolates

Today was the opening day at Wimbledon and Safin's opening round match against Fognini did not disappoint. After going up an easy two sets, Safin suddenly found himself face-to-face against his own inner demons, allowing Fognini to extend the third set all the way to a tie-break. Once again, we are fascinated with Safin, the troubled perfectionist. Safin, who plays some of his best tennis against the toughest opponents, and some of his worst when he only has to play against himself, exhibits all of the hallmarks of the classically gifted student who is not challenged often enough to develop his or her full potential. What Safin really needs at this point, is not a better coach, really, but more likely a sports psychologist who can help him "let go".



Darren Cahill made an intereting comment about an episode in which Safin came to have dinner with Andre Agassi. Safin, fresh from defeat, was hoping to hear some words of wisdom from the older tennis champion. Unfortunately, as Cahill recalls Agassi stating afterwards, the two grand slam winners spent the evening talking past each other. This is sounds fairly reasonable, as Agassi was brought up with a rather mechanistic approach to tennis (right down to the memorization of how many steps it was from one point on the court to another), that allowed him to develop a strategy based on returning balls, making high percentage plays, and outlasting the competition. Safin on the otherhand, was encouraged to make something out of every shot, and early on in his career, had the talent to pull it off. Agassi was taught to defend, Safin attack. No wonder the two couldn't understand each other.

In two days, Safin meets Novak Djokovic, and both are at the opposite ends of their career spectrums and promises to be highly entertaining. It only remains to be seen which Safin shows up . . .

Half-Nelson

Half-Nelson was featured in our afternoon Kino session about a week ago, and it prompted some of the following discussion, but first a brief synopsis for anyone not familiar with the premise: The film stars Ryan Gosling as an inner city teacher who befriends Drey, one of his students (played by Shareeka Epps). Gosling is also the school's girl's basketball coach, an aspiring author, and drug addict. In fact, the moment of "befriending" occurs when Gosling's student catches him smoking crack in the locker room. It turns out that the girl, who's father is gone and mother works all the time, actually knows Gosling's connection, who was responsible for Drey's brother being jailed and is now taking an active interest in the welfare of the family.

Having known many teachers through our friendship with Sean Marchetto, over at www.explodingbeakers.blogspot.com , we found Gosling's portrayl of a young, idealistic, teacher quite true-to-life, despite his seemingly fantastical crack-habit (which we are afraid to wonder just how pervasive such things might be), in a way that is very akin to Richard Burton in Look Back In Anger, as suggested by Lucy, from the knitting site www.goodgrieflucy.blogspot.com.

1. Gosling, with his focus on Hegelian dialectics and their Marxist connotations, reveals himself in as a believer in the possibility for social change. This seems reinforced by his parents, aging hippies, who constantly remind him of their efforts to change the system. As we said, we know many contemporaries who found themselves questioning the system in the early 1990s and rather than going for more overt politcal agitation, ended up in the teaching profession as a way to affect change.

2. However, the school system demonstrates that it is not as open to immediate change as one might think. To begin with, there is the official curriculum, which is a legally binding document and a teacher who does not follow and fulfill the curriculum can face official sanctions. Second, the school is an institution with a life of its own, one that seeks to subsume it's constituent parts. Many of Gosling's co-workers have long since abandoned their outward activist stance, and have settled into something of a humdrum ease.

3. The days are long. When Gosling is done teaching, we see him coaching girl's basketball. A coffee-break conversation with a co-worker leads to the revelation that Gosling is a long way from his dreams of teaching by day, and working on his novel by night. As a way of consoling him, his colleague offers, "There's always summer".

4. One of the initial comments on Gosling's characters' drug use associated it with perhaps his frustration at his lack of writing prowess. The image of the author or artist who needs a little "help" with "inspiration" is fairly typical and so the thought was that day-to-day teaching was so draining that Gosling turned to drugs to perhaps fire himself up for writing. However, we soon learn that Gosling's character has a history with drugs, leading to the comparisons with Burton's self-destructive angry young man from the 1950s. Again, we can infer from Gosling's classroom talk that he does not believe that political change is possible without a social change occurring first, a process that can take decades. Later in the movie he makes the statement to the effect that "A man acting alone is nothing", which leaves him in a rather frustrating position, that of a man acting alone in front of classroom trying to deal with social forces much larger than himself, and knowing full well the futility of his actions. No wonder he's on drugs.

Of course, there's a huge effort to redeem himself and demonstrate what one man can do acting alone in his relationship with Drey that provides the bulk of movie's plot. We chose not to comment on that aspect, as it is covered in most reviews of the movie, but rather to focus on an aspect of teaching that we don't usually see.

Cognitive Surplus

This just floated our way via the web, and gives us a different spin on or theories of the consumption of university education. Below, Clay Shirky is speaking of television watching as a way of dealing with a "cognitive surplus", or as he admits, the surplus of time that post-WWII workers experienced when they were finished working for the day. You can almost hear Adorno whispering in the background . . .

On the Study of Popular Culture

As a further clarification, where we find value in the study of popular culture, is in the act and intent in it's creation. Our preference is to treat an article of popular culture in terms of the ideas or values that it was intended to convey or reflect. As a secondary area of research, we are interested in how various audiences have expressed their reaction to these items, however, we find that these expressions are all too often limited to mere consumption, and these consumption patterns are of considerable less interest than the acts of creation themselves.

Before advancing further, for us, the study of popular culture is decidedly different than the study of mass culture or commercial culture. Our roots are in the so-called counterculture, based on political dissent and acts of artistic creations. We recognize that any material study of the counterculture in terms of the intellectual development and value-expression is difficult because of how quickly the counter-culture became subsumed in a mass, commercial culture (think especially of "grunge"). However, it must be noted than in going back to the fundamental roots of bohemian, beat, hippie, and punk cultures, the emphasis was on being first, identity and material culture second. A study of punk makes this most dramatic and highlights the problems and confusion. The early drama of punk was about performing, not recording, and this became evident in some of the notable problems that several groups had in translating their performance into the recording studio.

The advent of industrial production methods of objects of art and folk culture, leading to the development of mass objects of consumption (mass culture), devoid of individual craft identity, has led to individual workers looking for emotional and artistic expression outside of their normal work routines. We want to juxtapose these countercultural goods made for private expression, with those goods made for public consumption. In fact, part of the problem with studying a counterculture that has become commodified (as happens to almost all of them) is the blurring that occurs between these public and private roles.

The Consumption of Post-Secondary Education

The last few evenings Sean Marchetto has been hanging around our office, clearly agitated (one might say consumed) by an idea that has generated some interesting ideas. They're not completely thought out, or fully developed by any stretch of the imagination, but we simply want to capture them here. This is also cross-posted to Marchetto's own Exploding Beakers blog.


Let us begin by acknowledging that the following rests somewhat on the ideas of Thorstein Veblen, Theodor Adorno, and Max Weber. You would also be correct to guess that the conversation revolves around "class", ie. "working-class", "middle-class", and "upper-class", though such labels bring to mind specific occupations and our talk deals more with social outlooks, values, or beliefs, independent of specific occupation.


To begin with, we believe in the value of studying popular culture. We believe that popular culture is an important vehicle for the exchange of ideas. We subscribe to the Journal of Popular Culture, although we are increasingly disappointed with the approach that the journal is taking to the study of popular culture. For years though, we have been unable to describe just what it is that makes us unsatisfied with it. Perhaps now we are a little closer.


Thorstein Veblen is noted for his ideas about the consumption pattern of social classes, specifically that people tend to follow their social betters. For example, in the nineteenth century, the houses of the rich had large rooms for receiving guest, while middle-class homes developed the parlour. Working class structures attempted to mimic this to the best of their abilities, given their often cramped floor space. Or, take kitchenware. The upper classes, it is assumed, eat meals off of expensive plates, and many families (of middle and working-class status) have special dinnerware (china) that they save for "fancy" occassions, where family members are dressed up, and elaborate, and sometimes expensive, food is served.


There is a crucial difference in the consumption trends between the social classes though, and that is the degree to which each class is able to make their wealth "work", that is, function as capital. For working-class families, much of the wealth is tied up in the family home, and generally not available as ready capital. Middle-class families tend to be to convert some of their wealth into capital in the form of stocks, bonds, etc., while the upper-class is assumed to have ready supplies of capital on hand not just for stocks, bonds, but also for business start-ups and such.


According to Theodor Adorno, there is also a difference in the relationship of these groups to popular culture. If we allow the division of popular culture into so-called "high-brow", tending to carry with it moral messages, or intellectual overtones, and "low-brow", popular culture that tends to satisfy emotional needs, it is generally assumed that the upper-classes favour popular culture that is "high-brow" and working classes favour "low brow", with the middle-classes enjoying a spectrum of both. Adorno was also one of the first to articulate the belief that popular culture (or what we might term "mass commercial culture" as opposed to "folk culture" both of which tend to be wrapped up in "popular culture"), could also function as a method of pacifying the working classes. Later writers on consumption, such as Conquest of Cool author Thomas Frank, and even in his own way, John Leland, author of Hip: The History, have suggested that richess of popular culture's emotional experience and the desire of novelty on the part of the working-classes, are effective ways of bleeding off wealth from that same class.


At it's heart, this kind of argument rests on the same sort of self-denial premise that Max Weber put forth. The so-called middle-class thrives under capitalism because capitalism reward self-denial in favour of disciplined investment. The working-class on the otherhand, fails to "get ahead" because it is too interested in self-pleasure. This is also typically the premise behind many of our rags-to-riches stories.


So, our question becomes, do these two social groups have different viewpoints on the purpose of post-secondary education? We would argue that there are (at least) two different social groups present in post-secondary institutions, those who view it in terms of self-denial and self-investment, and those who do not. To reference Veblen, for this second group, post-secondary education is not seen as a utility, but as a social goal attained by higher social classes. The proliferation of courses dealing with topics of popular culture, that treat it as an area of relativistic meanings and interpretations (a sort of atomizing of the audience) and not as the basis of praxis, enable post-secondary education to be consumed as novelty items and effectively bleeding off the wealth of students and student families.

Thus, the attainment of post-secondary education has generally been seen as one of the most effectives of social mobility, but we are increasinly wondering whether or not this remains the case, and whether more and more courses about popular culture are in fact undermining this effectiveness?

Salt Spring Island Coffee Company

When is a coffee company more than just about the coffee? Typically when it's a megabrand like Starbucks or Tim Horton's where it's as much about the image as the coffee. However, for the past week or so we've been enjoying British Columbia's Salt Spring Island Coffee - Sumatra Dark Roast. Like many micro-roasters, Salt Spring is trading as much on their coffee as they are information about their coffee - 100% Organic, 100% Fair Trade, and they claim, Carbon Neutral. However, what has really intrigued us (almost as much as their coffee), is the company's website and the range of interactive spaces it provides, from an official blog to a carbon neutral quiz.

The coffee itself has proven to be surprising mellow. We've talked about the distinctive flavour of certain other brands that we've enjoyed, such as Moak, Kimbo, and particularly Illy. The Salt Spring though was by far one of the most subtle beans we've experienced. As an espresso shot, it had none of the aggressiveness that we typically look for, much more suited to lattes and cappuccinos (which tend to be much more muted by the presence of milk). A refreshing and welcome change of pace.

What to tell them at your next intervention

Courtesy of Life Hack - but why would anyone want to give up the world's favourite, legal psychotropic drug is beyond us.

Put that gun back in that holster, bub

So we have disagreement on yeaterday's encounter with the Michael Jackson fan. Some of us feel that it is a mistake to equate the two listening experiences. The first counter-argument runs as follows:

1. We do not know for sure that the listener of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" was experiencing it as nostalgia, nor specifically as nostalgia for life in the 1980s.
2. Feelings of nostalgia for the feelings of a particular time and placed evoked by a piece of music, is not the same as an appreciation of a particular piece of music's ability to evoke those images and feelings. Granted, there is an undertone here that engaging in criticism is more valid than engaging in nostalgia.

This might seem a bit like a hair-splitting endeavour to save face, as if listening to the Descendents and Michael Jackson are of different aesthetic value, but (enter the second argument):

1. The casual listener's appreciation of music rests on either an enjoyment of well-crafted pop elements, such as melody (Michael Jackson's not called the King of Pop for nothing you know), or else because the initial listening of a song is linked in memory to specific episodes of personal or shared cultural experiences. A "hit" occurs when many, many people find resonance in the same song at the same time. Some theorists explain the rise and fall of hits as being related to the songs larger cultural resonance, while a few see it more in terms of the capitalist underpinnings of radio and other media.

2. Songs that never become hits are trickier, because a listener's first encounter with them may be well after their initial release. While they undergo the same sort of experiences as noted above, the emphasis is often on the personal as opposed to group experiences (unless the song is re-released, think "Unchained Melody" from the Ghost soundtrack). Furthermore, these experiences may be linked to more contemporary events, and not those surrounding it's initial release (thus, "Unchained Melody" evokes Jr. High, the age most of us were when Ghost came out, and not so much 1955 when it was first performed, nor 1965 when the Rightous Brothers recorded its' most famous version, and certainly not 1977 when Elvis sang it weeks before his death).

If one is to suggest an aesthetic superiority to a piece of music, then the "superior" listening experience is to be had by the song with the ability to engage in novel pop constructions, evoke personal as well as group nostalgia, and reveal insights into the larger cultural moment in which it was constructed.

Given how much of this is dependent on the listener's ability to develop a context for listening to a piece of music, one cannot truly state a universal merit to a particular musical piece, only a personal one.

Sometimes the glittered glove is one the other hand

The carefree weather in Calgary today, we found ourslves spending a fair amount of time outside. As mentioned in our twitter post this morning, some of us gathered at the office to watch the light-hearted Cole Porter adaptation of Taming of The Shrew, Kiss Me Kate, as an antidote to a late night viewing of the autobiographical and somewhat gritty A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. Dito Montiel's recounting of growing up in a dead-end New York neighbourhood in the 1980s, raised some eerie similarities for some of us, who grew up in NE Calgary during the same time frame and virtually all of the cultural reference points came from New York.

Later, while leaving our office, a passing car was overheard playing Michael Jackson's "Thriller". A smile crossed our lips as we initially began to think about the anachronism of the 1983 hit song, how out-of-touch the driver of the car was - but before we could say anything to each other, we stopped. Not only had we just been furiously rehashing our own lives during the 1980s, but had followed this up with an extended discussion on the merits of the Descendents 1985 album I Don't Want to Grow Up, as being indicative of West Coast adolescent suburban life (and also, however good the band and the album were, perhaps guilty of creating much of what is wrong in contemporary "pop punk" - but more on that in other post).

So really, crank the Thriller, 'cuz we're no better.

I Drank Your Milkshake. I Drank It Up!

Know what we're saying? 

Techcrunch has perhaps the first (to us at least) manifestation of the cultural impact of There Will Be Blood and it's made us chuckle. Especially the image at the end.

Brand City?

This weekend we had the delightful opportunity to have a cup of coffee with local musician Aaron Booth and his family. Booth has a new CD, available here, but ours was a social visit, and in the course of our conversation, Booth mentioned that he felt Calgary, as a city, was more brand conscious than others. This comment resonated with us.



Surely, everyone feels that their city is somehow unique, and we are no exception in our belief that there is an aspect to Calgary missing from other cities. At least, an aspect that we feel is worth investigating. In terms of demographics, Calgary exists in an intriguing location as a magnet for migration. One of the factors "pulling" newcomers to the city for the past thirty years has been the allure of riches. Literally. The promise of Calgary has been the promise of employment, supposedly higher wages, and the opportunity to create a better life (largely in terms of material prosperity). If you can hear a voice whispering "What happens in Calgary, stays in Calgary", you might not be too far off the mark. Very little has been done in terms of reflecting on who such a promise attracts.



Booth's comments led us to wonder how much the promise of personal re-invention plays in the decision to move to Calgary. We feel it is easy to believe that someone to whom personal re-invention rests at least partially on the promise of increased wealth, would be very eager to demonstrate this new identity through the display of wealth. As corporations move increasinly to branding consumer goods as part of a lifestyle, the consumption of brands can be seen as an integral part to communicating this new social identity. Just think about the battle of coffee consumption, Starbucks and Tim Horton's conjure up very different customer images.

The risk here is that it would be easy to divide the city's population into native-born (or naturalized) citizens and newcomers. Supposedly, one could suspect that the native-born citizens would not feel the allure of personal re-invention based on increased wealth as much as the newcomers, otherwise the native-borns would leave for parts unknown but of greater promise. This would help to explain the partial successes on local, non-chain brands, such as Higher Ground, one of Calgary's longest-running independent coffee houses, standing two doors down as it does, from a typically packed Starbucks.

Earth Hour in Calgary

Lucy, from Good Grief Lucy, was the first to share the results from Canada's participation in Earth Hour with us, and frankly we are a little surprised and disappointed by the whole thing. Canada.com has published an article here, with firmer numbers. With one critical exception, power consumption during Earth Hour last week dipped in a range of 2 - 7 %, depending on the community. Not necessarily significant results, but definately something to build on and indicative of grassroots support for conservation movements.

In Calgary however, energy consumption rose - as if people wandered around their houses actually turning lights and appliances on.

What is extremely disturbing about this is not so much that energy use increased, suggesting that perhaps few people participated in the event. Calgary does have a sizable environmentally aware community, one that actually translates into fairly strong Green Party results. So the question becomes, if we assume that this small minority actively worked to lower energy consumption during Earth Hour, then how much energy does the average Calgarian use? Remember, Calgarians have the highest carbon footprint in Canada, and one of the highest in North America.

Good grief indeed.

Coffee Update: Micro-roasting

It is by coincidence perhaps, that the closing of one of our favourite coffee shops on Edmonton Trail, Blends, brings with it our our introduction to two smaller coffee concerns, Cochrane Coffee Traders, and Molise Coffee, of Vancouver's Falesca Importing. That Blends roasted and sold its own coffee beans was not unusual, though it was one of our favourites, and its demise has led us to go looking elsewhere for fresh beans.

In an economic age that is increasingly putting a premium on product information and individuality, the rise of what we might call "micro-roasters" might be seen as inevitable. Like micro-brewing, the creation of small scale coffee companies, set to sell and distribute their own coffee within a limited geographic area is an evolution of a consumer market dominated by large scale chains. As coffee drinkers look to carve out their own personal, local, and regional identities, companies like the Cochrane Coffee Traders will emerge to serve the high-end, socially consciencious crowd (our East Timor dark roast promised not only to be Fair Trade, but also bird-friendly).

If the CCT represents an emerging coffee company, then the Molise brand of Falesca can be seen to be a more mature offering. Having started roasting their own beans in 1983, Falesca's products can now be found throughout Western Canada, whereas one can only find the CCT in a limited number of coffee shops. For our part, we enjoyed the CCT dark roast to the Molise Medium Roast Super Bar Espresso.

We've provided a link to an article on fair trade coffee and the Cochrane Coffee Traders from Fast Forward Weekly, as we were especially pleased to see the closing comments about attempts to develop consumer awareness of the geographic taste and characteristics of different beans.

The Ghosts That Haunt Us (Richard Nixon Lives)

One of our favourite historical eras is the French Revolution. We're always up for a good book, essay, or even movie (really, we're afraid to admit that we'll even find time for Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette) on that tumultous period. In fact, one could almost say that we find it inspiring, as it has proved to be a fertile ground for historical analysis.

This time around, the cause for review came from Charles Savage's book Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency, examining political efforts by post-Richard Nixon administrations to expand presidential power in the United States. Savage's treatment of this phenomena reminded us of a similar experience in Revolutionary historiography.

One of the enduring problems of studying the French Revolution has been attempting to fix an end date to the Revolution. Napoleon himself once declared the Revolution over, while some historians speak of French Revolutions in the plural. For our purposes here, the problem is the revolutionary/counter-revolutionary ebb and flow that French society experienced as conservative and liberal elements traded power over three decades, each attempting to undo some of the work of the other. Some sort of concilliation and consensus did not occur until the reign of Louis Philippe, the so-called Citizen-King, which attempted to merge the interests of the surviving Bonapartists, Jacobins, Girondins, Bourbon Monarchists, and Phillipe's own Orleanist groups. Louis Phillipe marked the final consolidation of the revolution, and the end of his reign, could effectively be said to mark the conclusion of the Revolution. Unfortunately, this unity came at the expense of his own popularity, as his government was overthrown in favour of Louis Bonaparte in 1848, some sixty years after the original Revolution.

Similarly, Hunter S. Thompson once described Richard Nixon as a unifier, on the same grounds that Americans were all united in their anger towards him. Perhaps it would be wrong to blame Nixon entirely for the sheer depth of illegality surrounding White House corruption, in the same sense that Louis XVI cannot be blamed entirely for the long-running structural weaknesses that plagued France on the eve of the Revolution. As Savage explains, virtually every Cold War president since Truman had sought to expand the ability of the president to act without having to refer to Congress, chief of amongst these, revolved around conducting war and declaring war, in response to perceived communist threats. The Constitution of the United States clearly separated these powers between the President and Congress, and events like the Korean War, Bay of Pigs, and especially Vietnam, would see different administrations employ all kinds of tactics to evade congressional oversight, ultimately leading to the so-called "secret wars" conducted by Nixon in Laos and Cambodia. In the aftermath of Watergate however, it was revealed that Nixon had been deceiving Congress in domestic matters as well, involving domestic intelligence gathering and the undermining of liberal-minded government insitutions, giving full scope to the term, "imperial presidency".

So what does this have to do with the French Revolution? As much as the Revolution was a specific response to conditions in France, it was also an ideological manifestation, and much of the turmoil experienced during the later decades stems from the tug-of-war between different ideological factions, a contest that would dominate French politics in one way or another for almost half a century. In the same way then, the Nixon presidency also had its fair share of ideologues who supported a president free from Congressional intervention. The Unitary Executive Theory, as it was called, held that the separation of powers articulated in the U.S. Constitution made it unlawful for Congress to create agencies capable of interfering with the President's ability to execute law. Following Nixon, the Supreme Court found that this theory was an improper interpretation of the Constitution, giving Congress an open hand at reigning in Presidential perogatives.

As with the French Revolution however, rival idealogical factions did not disappear the moment they were out of power. Supporters of Unitary Executive Theory from the Nixon administration continued careers in and out of politics, many finding homes in the Reagan-Bush administrations, where they often worked to scale back the restrictions to presidential powers. Chief among these was Dick Cheney, who served under Nixon, Ford, Reagen and Bush, before becoming vice-president under the current Bush. Unlike the Revolution, where we can clearly see the ebb and flow of these sides before they come to some sort of consesus, Charles Savage's book documents the extent that the Bush-Cheney administration have been able to return to Nixon-like levels of presidential control. In fact, Bush's signing statements, closed-door meetings, undisclosed foreign prisons, have all gone beyond Nixon.

Electioneering

It's been awhile since we posted, but that's not to say we haven' t been busy. In fact, the office of The Daily Wenzel has been awash in new music, and our afternoon kino series has been as productive as ever, with a viewing of Nick Cave's screenwriting debut, The Proposition. However, what has kept us from posting has actually been the results of the recent Alberta Provincial election. We had hoped to offer some sort of insghtful commentary on the meaning of the election, but have recently come to grips with the fact that such a thing will take months, if not years to analyze properly.

One of the things that we would like to examine is the electoral boundaries. Calgary and Edmonton each have roughly 1/3 of the electoral ridings. With approximately a million people in each city, this means that the remaining 1/3 of predominantly rural ridings (Red Deer, Lethbridge, and Medicine Hat, the next largest urban populations, each have two ridings) have a combined total of one million people? Have we really grown so much outside of the cities?

What is clear is that at the moment, the province is caught up in all sorts of demographic trends. Our earlier prediction that recent immigration to Calgary and changes in housing prices, has caused Liberal support to increase, and more importantly disperse throughout the city. We have yet to see exactly how this is playing out provincially though.

However, one needs to be very careful when talking about Liberal or Conservative support, since voter turnout was at its lowest point ever, something that is especially troublesome when the media was perhaps the most inclined as it has ever been to change. Earlier we made the comment that the Calgary civic election, with its faux David Bronconnier (returning mayor) vs. Ed Stelmach (unresponsive premier) battle for responsibility over the mismanagement of Calgary's growth. At the time, we said that Bronconnier's re-election could either be viewed as Calgarians blaming Stelmach for the city's problems, or else, the voting population of Calgary (again an election featuring a record-low voter turnout) being quite content with whatever regime is in power so long as the money keeps coming in, leading us to wonder what $110 oil will bring.

What worries us most though about the low voter turnout is that there is not much discussion over who is not voting. Generally speaking, it is assumed that the poor and the young do not vote. However, in Calgary (and we suppose Edmonton, or any other Albertan area experiencing an influx of people), the question really needs to be asked, to what extent do the new arrivals participate in the political process? How many Albertans failed to vote because they could not provide proof of the residency requirements - remember, Calgary shamefully has thousands of working homeless. Also, remembering the stories of the increasing outflow of workers from Calgary and Alberta this summer, workers and families selling their now doubled or tripled in value homes and moving back to Saskatchewan or further east where the housing prices have yet skyrocket, or else never really could establish themselves with Calgary's new cost of living.

To extrapolate, to what extent is the low voter indicative of a growing population that does not consider Calgary (or Alberta) home? a population that does not, or cannot, engage with the social fabric of the community around it? a community within a community? Such a thing would be disasterous for a city and a province that already has a lacklustre record in dealing with disadvantaged communities.

A Piece On Criticism

We saw this piece on the role of criticism in the form of gaming journalism and were surprised by the nature of both the article and the discussion that followed it. Note how one of the respondents even brings in the work of anthropologist Clifford Geertz in terms of the work and function of the critic.

In general, we feel there is a difference between the focus of a critic and a reviewer, and agree with the author Costik in terms of the difference between these two activities (even though some of the respondents disagree on terminology). Too often our media, and because of it, our more media dependent citizens, operate ahistorically. Costik's article, we feel, is a good introduction for all would be critics.

Espressin' It?

We once heard a particular cup of Kimbo referred to as "robust and sexy, like something down near dockyards," a questionable description at best, however we did wonder what sort of comment the drinker would have had for the following:

Education Leaves It's Mark

Some recent postings by our friends over at Exploding Beakers has left us wondering. The current posts centre around notions of play and "unsupervised spaces" in schools. One of the sources of inspiration for the posts was an earlier one of our own, referencing a childhood game called "Murderball", as part of our own interest in what children do when adults are not around, and just how omnipresent parents are starting to become.

However, what is interesting is the choice of "unsupervised spaces" and the knowledge that Exploding Beakers main contributor, Sean Marchetto (a frequent contributor here too), has like us, read Hakim Bey's lengthy poem The Temporary Autonomous Zone, an influential underground piece based around pirate utopias (to read an online version, or something else by Bey click here). In The T.A.Z. Bey searches for areas of the world where the run of the mill rules governing day-to-day living are suspended in favour of more spontaneous, exuberant forms - one would be forgiven for thinking of the Burning Man festival in a way, a place where traditional leaders and rule-enforcers are noticably absent or weakened.

While Marchetto was still a CJSW DJ hosting The Twelth Ave Paylot in the mid-1990s, he would often reference Bey, but we are very surprised to see some of theses ideas creeping back around in Marchetto's work with educational structures. To us, it illustrates just how deep and easily assimilated certain ideas are, that they can sink to the bottom of our consciousness and lie dormant for over a decade, only to resurface in completely different contexts and attached to different companion structures.

Fascinating.

Fly to London for a Party?

In response to our earlier gushing about the series of DJ podcasts being released by London nightclub Fabric, there was a suggestion that perhaps the strong Canadian dollar, coupled with upcoming cheap spring charter flights, might make a weekend trip to the UK feasible.

While we were intrigued by the idea, in the same way that we were interested in the logistics of summer shopping trips to nearby American cities like Seattle or Las Vegas that purported to take advantage of the exchange differentials between US and Canadian currencies and prices. We were reminded of a recent interview with Thom Yorke of Radiohead, where he discusses the ecological impact of air travel. It's a theme that we heard last fall from George Monbiot as well.

However, the good folks at Dopplr have shown that there doesn't seem to be any real fear at present. The social network is geared towards travellers and their blog has several different interesting (and colourful) charts showing membership travel patterns.

If Charity Begins At Home, Can Sanctions Too?

Federal Liberal hopeful and former astronaut Marc Garneau, floated the idea today that Canada should impose trade sanctions on countries that refuse to reduce their greenhouse emissions. This made us wonder, can the sanctions begin with Alberta?

Alberta Election

As the Alberta provincial election unfolds, it will be very interesting to see what happens in Calgary. Traditionally, Calgary is a very conservative city - the two members of the Liberal Party elected in the last provincial election were the first Liberals elected here in decades. The booming job market, coupled with sky-high real estate prices have wreaked havoc with the city's demographics. While areas of Liberal support used to congregate in predictable pockets, it remains to be seen just how diffuse that support has become owning to housing prices. There were quite a few ridings in the last election that went Conservative by their narrowest margins in years. Has the housing market shifted more Liberal support into these areas?

Added to this has been the failure of the Stelmach government to deal with the needs of Edmonton and Calgary. As we mentioned last week, Calgary mayor David Bronconnier portrayed Stelmach as the villain in the city's inability to manage the infrastructure problems associated with a booming population. Now, Liberal leader Kevin Taft is offering more power to the major cities to do just that. Clearly, the Liberals feel that there are seats to be won in this once Conservative stronghold.

Fabric

The famous London night club, Fabric, first crossed our radar a few years back when the Herbaliser recorded a set under the club's FabricLive imprint. Lately, we've been enamoured of their podcasts, with the two part Jonny Trunk set exploring forgotten and offbeat music being the best of the bunch.

Off to the Polls

As predicted by many, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach made his election call yesterday, announcing the beginning of perhaps the most anticipated provincial campaign since former Premier Ralph Klein made his inaugural run against Liberal leader Laurence Ducore. Unlike Klein, Stelmach has been unable to form a balanced relationship between the rural communities and the four major urban centres, who have found themselves (relatively) shut out of high profile positions. However, Stelmach has managed to safeguard the precious oil industry from any serious attempts at environmental reform, so the question for this election is essentially just how dissatisfied are Albertans

There have already been several negative ad campaigns, echoed in the newspapers, about Stelmach's failure to provide a clear vision for what to do with a post-debt Alberta. His recent 2020 Vision plan did not to much to generate excite, especially with communities like Calgary already starting to reel from lack of infrastructure and unfilled jobs (perhaps one of the worst Calgary statistics is that 1 in 4 Calgarians to do not have a family doctor). The re-election of Calgary Mayor, Dave Bronconnier offers conflicting interpretations though: either the vast majority of Calgarians do not blame Bronconnier (whose campaign blamed Stelmach) or else they are content to put up with the current problems so long as the oil money keeps rolling in. If the provincial Liberals hope to win their first election in recent memory, they need to somehow mobilize the discontent of Calgary and other similarly stressed communities.

2000 hits!

It was a busy day today, with several lengthy discussions on institutional change and ideas of "cultural sensitivity" that did not equate "culture" with ethnicity, sandwiched between exciting tennis from the Australian Open.

Amidst all this then, we almost didn't notice that The Daily Wenzel crossed the 2000 hit threshold earlier today. For some, with much broader appeal, and a large blogger network of cross-advertisers, two thousand hits may come a lot faster, but we are absolutely thrilled.

Feel free to tell your friends about us!

In the Thicke of It!

We were a little hesitant after the CBC aired the first episode of Douglas Coupland's TV adaptation of Jpod, but the return of Alan Thicke to primetime television has completely won us over. Perhaps things are made easier by the fact that he is playing an aging actor aspiring to be . . . Alan Thicke. Brilliant.

What the World Needs Now, Is Songs, Sweet Songs

Someone brought in violinist Sarah Chang's recording of Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, and a comment about her dress sparked an interesting exchange.



The comment was related to an observation about the marketing of young classical musicians in the mid-1990s, with women often dressed in "sexy" evening wear, or in a few cases, nothing at all. Part of this was the attempt to make these artists appear as "edgy" as their rock n' roll counterparts.



The exchange then centred around the different expectations audiences have for classical vs. rock musicians. In the classical musical idiom, the emphasis is on technique and conveying emotion, not songwriting. There is little expectation that a musician as talented as say, Chang, would be equally talented as a songwriter, and Chang can comfortably expect to make a living essentially by playing covers. In rock however, a musician who played primarily covers would be scoffed at, especially early in their career (please note this expectation is different in pop music), or at least would rarely be considered "elite". The expectation for rock n'roll artists is clearly that they write their own material, with the subtext being that the music somehow reflect the "spirit of the age". This was articulated by famous rock critic Lester Bangs in his reaction to early 1970s "prog rock" (perhaps not so ironically the moment when rock stars started to consider themselves the equal of classical musicians, such as with Deep Purple's Concerto for Group and Orchestra) in large part perhaps because rock emerged during periods of social change and has often served as the soundtrack to that era in our collective consciousness.



Few us quiver in our aristocratic boots at the playing of Figaro these days.

Top Ten Lists

We recently jibed fellow Daily Wenzel stalwart Sean Marchetto for his Top Ten Albums of 2007 list in Fast Forward Weekly as being perhaps the most mainstream of the bunch, with his inclusion of Feist, Modest Mouse, Arcade Fire, etc. While Marchetto shrugged off our good-natured ribbing, what followed was a good discussion of such "lists", as one of our favourite past times (or time-wasters, really) is comparing "All Time Best" lists from different years and trying to tease out social and political reasons as to why particular cultural artefacts appear at specific points. In defense of his own 2007 Top Ten list however, Marchetto pointed out that he listened to over 70 new albums this year - number we find logistically staggering. Essentially one and a half albums per week. Now, it's no secret that Marchetto's journalistic activities are a side-line to his education day job (We don't call him Il Professore for nothing), but it's easy to imagine that he can't sit around all day listening to music, making his actual music-listening time rather valuable. The decision to re-listen to a particular album then means sacrificing time that could be spent listening to an incoming album and requires making a committment to make up for that time at the expense of some other activity.



"After listening to two dozen middle of the road albums," Marchetto explains, "You really want to listen to something that stands out. It makes it really easy to appreciate something like Peter, Bjorn, and John, even if everybody else is listening to it."



On another note, here is our own 2007 Top Ten list, but of our most frequently read postings. Chances are you dedicated readers have already seen them, but maybe something flew under your radar the first time around:



1. Paul Virillo vs. Facebook
2. New Days for the Old Republik
3. Adios! Heidi and Howdy
4. A Good Cup of Kimbo
5. Vancouver, City on the Edge of Tomorrow
6. Federer Wins Again
7. Woodpigeon CD Release Party
8. Nights of the New Republik
9. Brain Heart Guitar; Dudes Bringing It All Back Home
10. We Are In Spooky Country

The Speed of the Age

There are books one reads that contain messages so profound, they force into the brain new visions of how the world might be, others present messages that must be decipher and considered, but ultimately yield dramatic insights. Then, there are books whose message is mainly banal, but contain perhaps a chance phrase or random association of words that spark entirely unintended lines of thought.

For us, Vince Poscente's The Age of Speed, was this sort of book. Aimed primarily at the business set, it functions as a basic time-management primer for the 21st century. Readers are encouraged to adopt new technologies and strategies to minimize time spent "at work" and to maximize time spent "at leisure". Poscente makes the most of the fact that mobile technologies have caused the work/home, labour/leisure divide to become porous. If I answer emails at home, am I working? If a client contacts me for consultation while I'm on a weekend getaway, am I working? Does it have to be one or the other?

Aside from urging readers to reflect on the nature of their work, hoping that individuals find themselves doing work they love to do, Poscente also strongly recommends businesses move to a task-based, instead of a time-based system. This was something we used to argue back when we worked in the parking lots. Our employer paid us to park cars and direct traffic, if no cars or traffic appeared, then we were free to spend our time as we liked, provided we were available should a car or traffic appear. Thus parking truly did blur the leisure/labour divide, as most of our "work" hours were spent in various forms of leisure (working as we did in rarely frequented parking lots). Within a more professional context, a task-based system would appear to encourage decentralized decision making, as individuals made choices about their time. Clearly spending eight hours at a desk with very little to do is not anyone's best use of time.

Our main benefit from The Age of Speed however, was a confirmation about the the importance of time. It might be cliche to refer to time as the new wealth, but the fact remains that this is where the culture appears to be headed. In the pre-modern era, wealth was based on land, during the transition to capitalism, the accumulation of cash was often spent on acquiring the trappings of aristocratic wealth (ie. land, Thorstein Veblen has written much here), but at some point things changed, "the edges of the map were filled in" (to quote our favourite volume of The Pirates of the Caribbean), and there was no more unclaimed land to possess. Perhaps this explains the mid-century fascination with space travel with its promise of new sources of land. At any rate, the emphasis shifted from land to time, and cash was used to shortcut the consumption of time, where possible, via faster travel, personal chefs and personal telecommunications, etc.

This is an idea that Poscente attempts to evoke, and fails, but a chance encounter for us that saw Paul Virillo follow Poscente helped organize these ideas somewhat better.

Oddly, this is not a 21st century idea, but rather a more 19th one, prior to the onset of mechanization where the assembly-line required precise timing of labour. ,

Imagine a better city

It is hard to picture the amount of change necessary in the attitudes of Calgarians for the following to become an eventuality, but it is easy to see how the benefits might play out. As traffic becomes more and more of an issue in major urban centres, the talk of "congestion charges" surfaces more and more frequently. A congestion charge, like that recently adopted by the city of Milan, is essentially a tax on driving downtown during business hours. In some cities, it is enforced at parking meters based on license plate numbers or special stickers. Here in Calgary, despite some progress being made towards carpooling, and increases in transit ridership, the average car occupancy rate is still considerably less than two people per vehicle.

In Milan, the congestion charge is $14 a day, the monetary equivalent of adding over three round-trip passengers to the transit services, as well as encouraging an increase in actual passengers. While the city actually does as fairly efficient job of moving people from the periphery to downtown, especially in peak hours, travel across the city, from east to west without stopping downtown, is rather poor and could benefit from expanded services, helping to alleviate congestion on major arteries like Glenmore Trail or McKnight Boulevard.

Of course, many Calgarians will argue that perhaps we already pay too many taxes, or that we should simply increase parking rates, allowing the market to decide. But the fact remains that Calgary has the largest carbon footprint of any Canadian city and we tend to be spoilt by the luxury of our lifestyle.

Christmas Wish Fulfilled!

It looks like Lucy, over at Good Grief Lucy was listening to our appeal for fiction and has forwarded a copy of David Liss' The Coffee Trader to us. Set in seventeenth century Amsterdam, Liss tells the tale of the birth of the coffee industry, mixing in elements of the burgeoning stock futures market as well as the city's Portguese Jewish diaspora. A fascinating introduction for us to Liss, who's debut novel, A Conspiracy of Paper, won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and makes us thirsty for his next book, due in September 2008, entitled, The Whiskey Rebels.

Christmas Kino

There's nothing like gathering around the ol'yule log the day before Christmas with a group of friends, all the hectic Christmas shopping and baking done, to enjoy a lazy afternoon of classic Christmas cinema, like Tony Jaa's heartwarming tale of a boy and his elephant, Tom Yum Goong.

Alright, yes, we're being a wee facetious here, but The Protector (as it was known here) offers stunning martial arts sequences, brought to you by the same people who helped choreograph Ong-Bak, as well as elements of District B13 and Casino Royale. Granted the following is a bit like admitting one buys Playboy for the articles, but one of the things that we rather enjoyed about The Protector, was the way it built a theme established in Ong-Bak, namely the modernization of Thailand. While we don't mean to suggest that director Prachya Pinkaew has his finger on the pulse of a Thai generation, but he nevertheless appears to be building up slowly a body of work documenting some of the transition problems Thailand is going through.

In Ong-Bak, who's plot we found rather confusing, these elements are limited to rural vs. urban, with Tony Jaa's character trying to adjust to life in the city after leaving his rural home to find his village's religious relic. Here, "modern" urban life is presented with all of its vices, gambling, drugs, prostitution, and the abandonment of religious values. In The Protector, this theme of decadence is taken one step further, as Jaa's character travels from "pre-modern" Thai village, to "modern" Thai city, and then to the global ("post-modern?) city of Sydeny, Australia featuring a transexual crime lord.

Nights of the New Republik

We're living in the past while the kids step into a brand new era.

The Republik hosted one of its first events last night, a Junior Boys DJ set.

Our friend Mike Bell has a story about the nightclub sitting at a generational crossroads as he talks to club owner Victor Choy.

Booked Up For The Holidays

As most of us came through the Calgary Exhibition & Stampede Parking Deptartment, a strange institution around which to form an intellectual coterie for sure, we were naturally attracted to Simon Henley' The Architecture of Parking. Henley shares our love of parking structures, but while ours exists in a more philosophical, abstract manner, for Henley, the parkade in its numerous forms offers examples of alternative architectural frameworks, composed on an altogether different scale from most of the buildings that surround us. Comprised largely of short essays and photo-investigations, Henly explores the development of the car park over the last century, looking at changes in design, use, materials, and forms, dipping into the rival conceptualizations of car park as urban hub, blight, or reluctant necessity.

Two other books that are working their way through our office are Benjamin Barber's book on consumption patterns in developed capitalist economy. The title and subtitle pretty say it all: Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole. We're still too early into it to offer any critical insights, but it is riveting, and one of our fellow readers, Sean Marchetto claims it has already helped him firm up ideas of the post-WWII visual culture that he talks about at www.explodingbeakers.blogspot.com.

The other book, Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought, has us a little bogged down in the meaty subject of grammer construction. Pinker promises to reveal how language shapes our thoughts and conceptualizations of reality, but without relying on the arguments of Wittgenstein, or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. We suspect he might be a closet Chomskyite, but will have to see, for The Stuff of Thought has offered many fascinating insights into the construction of language, it has yet to wrap things up into a big picture framework of reality.

As the holidays rapidly approach, and we look at the other books lining our reading shelves, we can only hope that Santa, or somone, leaves us some fiction beneath our Christmas tree, or perhaps a little poetry in our stockings.

New Days For The Old Republik?

We first started to wonder when we saw someone downtown wearing what looked like a brand new t-shirt with the logo for the old Republik night club. A staple of the 1990s music scene, many of us cut our teeth in the converted maison-cum-rock-mecca, with it's gutted concrete basement and built-over garage, turned into a stage. Outside, around back, the rear of the house sometimes functione as an after-hours/informal nightclub, the Delux a precursor to the Embassy.

The t-shirt was soon followed by rumours that the Republik was re-opening, and a full-page ad in this week's edition of Fast Forward confirmed everything. No date was given for the opening, but something should surface soon.

The Good German

Perhaps we've been hanging out with too many math folks lately, but we felt naturally inclined to express our views of the George Clooney/Cate Blanchett "The Good German":

f'(The Good German): S(Chinatown + The Third Man)

Fusion Infusion?

Despite our well-earned reputation as espresso lovers, we have been known to poke our heads around the local tea shops to investigate what's brewing. Quite often, as we stare at the loose tea leaves, we imagine packing them into our espresso machines to see what would happen. Obviously, certain teas, such as green and white tea, require a temperature range below that which our espresso machines operate, but perhaps some sort of herbal concoction might work? We've never been brave to work, but part of the allure is the supposed properties of many herbal teas.

Recently, a B.C. based coffee company has apparently been wondering the same thing, though in a slightly different way. Fusion Coffee infuses their beans with some of the same herbs that show up in teas. This week, The Daily Wenzel has been test driving their "Extreme Blend", that contains extracts of ginseng, yerba matte, and guarana, for added boosts of clarity, energy, and concentration (all this plus caffeine). Sadly, we report no insanely creative bursts of anything, though we suspect the recent sub-zero weather, dark skies, and occassional flurries may have more to do with our unusuallyt high degree of lethargy. Tastewise, the coffee is a somewhat lighter roast than our usual espresso flare, definitely sweeter, and took a little work to find the right degree of grind, but even without any supposed benefits, it is a satisfying taste alternative.

A Strong Wind A-Comin'?

The UN Convention on Climate Change starts today in Bali, a two week process searching for a successor to the Kyoto Accord. As with the opening of other such conventions, there seems to be an expectant hush as the world hopes that this time something will happen. Meetings this year, such as those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have brought public opinion one step closer to accepting the need for some kind of dramatic change.

Things began optimistically today, with Australia announcing that they would sign on to the Kyoto Accord, a tacit announcement that they are rejoining the world community. Canada meanwhile is showing it's increasing reluctance to remain a part of this group.

Music, Music, Everywhere

It's been a long time since we talked music here, and a lot of musical water has passed under the bridge. A few of the notable discs that have stayed resolutely in our players include Feist's The Reminder, alternating as it does between dirgy tunes like "Brandy Alexander" and poppier masterpieces like "1234" (available on seemingly every Apple commercial). A rough and tumble live album, recorded by Tokyo Police Club at the Chicago Lollapalooza stopover, has sparked our enthusiasm for their Saddle Creek full-length, duo out early next year. Similarly, Bassano del Grappa gets voluably excited everytime Stars' In Our Bedroom After the War comes on, speaking passionately about some kind of Dr. Zhivago-esque grand romance movie script locked up inside his head. Apparently only Stars hold the key.

Other noteworthy releases include Radiohead's In Rainbows (see earlier post). We finally got around to listening to Bright Eyes' Casadegga to only lukewarm response, but the Broken Social Scene's Introducing Keven Drew has grown somewhat on us.

A charming little surprise came to us in the form of New York anti-folketeer Jeffrey Lewis' acoustic covers of Crass songs entitled, surprising, 12 Crass Songs. Stripped of the screaming vocals, and buzzing guitars, couched in softer tones for more suburban surrounds, Lewis helps us think of a time when we were better (and poorer and more radical) people. Generally we solve this problem by listening to Nico's Chelsea Girls, and just descending into a deeply morose spiral best counter-balanced by more uplifting fare, like Tokyo Police Club.

Tokyo Driftin'

A few days ago we managed to secure a trio of Seijun Suzuki films, Youth of the Beast, Tokyo Drifter, and Branded to Kill, that made us swoon with cinematic delight. Filmed in Japan during the 1960s, these yakuza-centred movies ooze a sense of style that make them veritable pop art in an of themselves. Coupled with soundtracks that combine acid jazz and vibrant colours schemes amidst elaborate stage backdrops, Seijun was routinely at odds with his production studio over his films' "incomprehensibility". His response was always vowing to "play it straight" on the next, until ultimately Branded to Kill, released in 1968 was hailed by critics as a cinematic masterpiece, and a maddening failure by the studio, leading directly to his firing.

While the storylines often play second fiddle to the films' visual appeal, they nevertheless tackle themes of modern alienation and existential angst in a way that other contemporary gangster films, such as The Godfather, never did.

Joy Divsion - Control

Most of us here at The Daily Wenzel did not encounter Joy Division until we were well into our teenage years, often in the context of our more morose friends and fans of bands like The Smiths and The Cult. Even though "Digital" became one of our favourite songs, it certainly seemed at odds with the dour sonic atmosphere provided by other Joy Division classics like "She's Lost Control". Until viewing the new Ian Curtis biopic, Control, we never would have imagined that Joy Division could have passed themselves off as a dance band, though obviously the groundwork for New Order's dance-friendly sensibilities had to come from somewhere.

Control follows Curtis from his high school days in Manchester, where we are introduced to his prolific creativity, through to the rise of Joy Division, and Curtis' subsequent bouts of epilepsy, depression, and severe medication. There is much in Control that dovetails nicely with 24 Hour Party People, the biography of recently deceased Factory records head, Tony Wilson. Including scenes where Curtis accosts Wilson for not putting Joy Division on his show, or later, when Wilson signs the band's Factory Records contract in his own blood before passing out at the pub.

Given Wilson's own famous encounter with the British National Health Service during his bout with renal cancer (though his passing this summer was due to heart failure) it is sad to be reminded of the role that drugs potentially played in Curtis' suicide.

In the end, all we have is the music, and the Control images of Ian Curtis dancing and singing to "Digital" and others, helps to demonstrate that Joy Division was aptly named, despite all that came after.

Positively Unemployed

Like many Canadian youths aged 18-30, most of us here at The Daily Wenzel spent much of the 1990s underemployed at barely above minimum wage. Those days seem almost a lifetime removed from the current wage experience where high school and college students are being tempted to drop-out or delay graduation with the promise of high wages and plentiful overtime. One of the side-effects of this underemployment was a severe disconnect between working and identity; a common pop cultural theme in movies such as Clerks, or songs such as Gas Huffer's "You Are Not Your Job". It was also one of the touchstone's to Wilco's breakthrough Being There. Many of us would sit through the six and half minutes of ambient guitar feedback layed over a roots structure, just to hear Jeff Tweedy whisper the line "positively unemployed" because that's how we viewed ourselves. Overeducated, underskilled, and underemployed, developing hobbies and interests that filled up the vast amount of time we weren't in school or working. Many of these hobbies had creative manifestations that offered their own credible answer to that most boring of cocktail parties, "What do you do?". Did we park cars for a living or were we unpublished writers, artists, and musicans, bolstered by our formal membership in a conceptual arts organization?

We were paid to park cars, but we lived for other things.

Thus, Ivan Illitch's The Right to Useful Unemployment attracted us even before we knew his history as a radical educational thinker, questioning the roles of schools in society (see his most famous work, De-Schooling Society). Illitch's sense of "useful unemployment" mirrors our own, in that he calls for a more convivial way of life, in which wealth, income, and technological advancements, do not prejudice the enjoyment of basic living. His example here is the car. The prevalence of automobiles means that it is increasingly difficult to walk to all the destinations one needs to accomplish daily tasks. Anyone living as a victim of urban sprawl in Calgary will understand this.

However, this has more to do with notions of relative poverty, and Illitch links this somewhat weakly to the idea of "unemployment". In the second half, where he develops his idea of useful unemployment more fully, we find that it is more the professional classes that he takes argument with. Echoing the work of Michel Foucault and, to a lesser extent, Guy Debord, Illitch rails against the way the establishment of professions, doctors, teachers, even certified mechanics, allows for the creation of a priveleged body of experts free to set the agenda within their relative domains. They alone (or in conjunction with government and industry) decide on proper proceedures, adequate structures and precautions, necessary curricula, etc. In Illitch's mind forming a College of university-trained and government licensed teachers or doctors, renders the informally trained, or folk-trained, versions not only illegal, but unemployed.

Originally published in 1973, we are left wondering the extent to which the current information revolution, with info-on-demand, as well as the growing post-modern accomdation with Foucault's power/knowledge argument, has changed some of the basic structure's of Illitch's argument.

Sunday Matinee

The best music is evocative - it conjures within our minds some kind of mental image, whether it is a deeply personal moment of our lives, or else a specific impression of the particular time and place where the music was created. That's why people often don't agree on what constitutes "good music", because the same song does not evoke the same memory or feelings for everyone. Thus, when the Ipod shuffled Urban Waste's "Public Opinion" onto the stereo this morning, some of us in the Daily Wenzel offices, chugged along as if we were twenty years younger, chanting "I'm not into punk rock/ I'm not into hardcore", while others just stared dumbfoundedly.

Taken from Sunday Matinee, a 1994 compilation celebrating over ten years of all ages punk shows at CBGB's, it took us back to the all ages shows around town where we spent many of wasted weekend afternoon. Ahhh. . .

Like a wolf at the door with a big bowl of milk.

We are listening to Radiohead. In Rainbows. 'Nuff said?

There seems to be dozens of blogs with song by song accounts and reviews of the album, so start with the fine folk at Pitchfork and google away. For whatever reason, we've never been able to decipher the metaphors of Radiohead albums or songs as quickly or easily as others. When Ok Computer was named one of the most important albums of the twentieth century according to one magazine poll, we were rather caught off guard (we would have been fine with "best" or "popular", but "important" forced some re-evaluation). So, for that reason, we won't talk about what the songs mean, since we never seemed to be really good at that anyways. It's like a giant blind spot in our cultural analysis apparatus. Perhaps we're too close to the fire on this one, since Radiohead has always had the uncanny ability to stand two paces away from where we wanted to be at any given moment.

In Rainbows catches your attention right off the mark by being far more listener-friendly and pop-oriented than anything Radiohead has put out in a long time. It probably falls squarely between Ok Computer and Kid A, but coming after the "difficult" and "challenging" Hail to the Thief, it sounds like a breath of fresh air. It also sounds like the band is having fun again for the first time in years. In fact, our first thoughts were to wonder to what extent Radiohead had already envisioned the delivery method of In Rainbows back when they were recording Hail to the Thief. It would be easy to imagine that they could have decided to make their last contractually obligated album excessively experimental, in order to facillitate a parting of the ways with their record company. Other artists have travelled that root. Of course, if this were true it probably wouldn't have taken four years for In Rainbows to be released.

Instead, it seems like the album finds Radiohead comfortable with its position in the world, and intent on glancing back at where they've been. Others have pointed out that there are a lot of older songs here, some which were considered for inclusion on Ok Computer. It seems that perhaps everyone is finally on the same page again, if one reflects on the stories of tension and miscommunication that emerged during the Kid A/Amnesiac sessions. Jonny Greenwood, for instance, thought that they were going to enter the studios to record a return to the three-minute guitar-driven pop song following the "experimentalism" of Ok Computer. Thom Yorke meanwhile was looking at the upcoming sessions as an outlet for his emerging interest in electronic music. The pressure to follow-up on their newfound status as musical innovators likely played a determining role in the shape of Hail to the Thief.

Four years removed now, and Radiohead is free to re-establish their musical identity and In Rainbows can be seen as a celebration of where they've been. Let's just hope that the songs aren't intended to be a pot of gold at the end of the Radiohead road, but rather prepping for a new stage in the band's development.

Get Joost.

Several months back we signed up to beta test Joost an online provider of television programming. At the time, we were intrigued by their rather extensive list of channels, but saddened to discover that, apart from MuchMusic, MTV Canada, and a couple of extreme sports channels, there did not seem to be much that could be licensed for broadcast in Canada. Now, as Joost has announced this weekend that they are officially open to the public, the list of channels seems far greater, including numerous animation and film options. We are sufficiently interested to be willing to return and explore more of what Joost has to offer.

Music Update

Awhile ago we intimated that despite all of the music that has come our way lately, not a lot of it is any good. Or rather, since most music is suited for a particular time and place, with intended to be listened to with a specific mind set, we just haven't been there. Such lukewarmly received albums include Wax Mannequin, Oxbow, Hex Static, Klute, Cobblestone Jazz, Kings of Electro, and even, the latest from Winnipeg, The Details (let's be honest, we're all waiting for the Weakerthans to arrive). Truth be told, even the new Broken Social Scene left us a little non-plussed at first.

Instead, our attention has been captivated by the new Stars album, the digital reissue of Suicide's first album, a tribute to David Bowie released by French record label, Naive Records. The album is stellar, but then, we've been Bowie fans all along, which makes it easy, anyways. Devendra Banhart has also enjoyed relatively frequent plays, but also encouraged us to find a digitial version of the lone A Bullet For Fidel album - a record that we only had, once, on vinyl and since lost. Oddly, another blast from the past that has been spending much time in our player has been The Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed. Finally, we've have been pleased and surprised by how much we've enjoyed the 1970s inspired retro pop of Saddle Creeek's Georgie James.

For those keeping score at home . . .

Hot on the heels of our economic prediction turning out to be reasonably true, the Calgary Foundation released its report on Calgary living conditions today, barely passing the city. Chief among their criticisms was the increasing gap between the rich and the poor, made all the more complicated by the ongoing housing crisis. You can check out our original post on the subject: "Is The Boom Over?" .

All of this neither new, nor original, and stems from deliberate decisions to cut spending on social services and infrastructure starting back in the early 1990s. The corollation to this though, is that if Calgarians are serious about the complaints that they have, if Calgary is truly unlivable, as the Calgary Herald and the Calgary Foundation seem to be saying, then the political leaders who were part of the past decision making teams, clearly must go, regardless of whether their name is Ed Stelmach or Dave Bronconnier.

Local Cafe Spotlight

So, in-between our month long retrospective of French New Wave cinemas, we've been spending a considerable amout of time at Blends Cafe. Located on Edmoton Trail between 12th and 13th Avenue NE in a converted house, very reminescent of one of the houses we used to rent in Bridgeland during our college days. With rather sparse decor, though an abudance of art deco prints celebrating espresso, the true attraction to Blends is the outdoor backyard patio, and the fact that Blends roasts their own beans (plus they have wifi). Their espresso beans are some of the darkest we've seen with a captivating flavour, low acidity, and hints of nuts and chocolate.