The Savages, written and directed by Tamara Jenkins, is a touching, if at times heavy piece of filmic realism. Although there are laughs to be had, anyone expecting a straight-up comedy – as The Savages seems to have been promoted – will be taken aback by the naturalism that is its primary recommendation. Having said that, the verisimilitude that the film creates, thanks to Jenkins’ simple story and astute direction along with brilliant ensemble acting by Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney, is both striking and harrowingly recognizeable.

Seemingly estranged siblings Jon and Wendy Savage, performed with dour grace by Hoffman and Linney, are brought together in order to decide what to do with their father Leonard who is sliding into the abyss of dementia. Because of his past abuse of his children, neither Jon nor Wendy are particularly thrilled with the prospect of caring for their ageing and increasingly irrational father. After the death of a long time live-in girlfriend, along with his growing antisocial behavior brought on by dementia, Leonard is given the boot from his Arizona retirement community. First presenting retirement in a series of surreal, drugged-out visual clichés – happy old folks playing golf and dancing under desert blue skies – the movie switches to the winter industrial landscape of Buffalo, New York where Jon lives. It is here, at the Valley View retirement home, essentially a hospital for the soon-to-be-dead – and the only place Jon could find that accepts Medicaid – where Leonard will live out his final days.

For reasons left unknown, Wendy is loath to the idea of allowing Leonard to languish in less than ideal surroundings. Jon, on the other hand, is far more pragmatic and content with their father’s living situation. As if giving us insight into Leonard’s past as an abusive parent, Jon says to Wendy while framed in the bleak surround of Valley View’s parking lot, “We’re taking care of him better than he ever took care of us.”

The rest of the movie plays out against the backdrop imposed by a bleak northern winter. We catch glimpses of the passing industrial landscape of New York, poetically captured by cinematographer Mott Hupfel through the windows of cars and trains. Certainly the recurring motif of a passing and wasted landscape touches on the film’s themes of entropy and death’s inevitability; however, that a definite visual aesthetic anchors the repeated imagery – barren, sillouetted trees, the shadows cast by abandoned buildings – seems to point to the redemption that Jon and Wendy are seeking for each other and themselves.

In its honest portrayal of a family struggling with life’s hard realities, The Savages, albeit at times hard to watch, is both sweet and sad. The subject matter that it takes on will no-doubt be unpalatable to many – this ain’t no Hollywood romance. However, the striking realism with which it is presented is reason enough to see it. Don’t expect a comedy, but do expect to be impressed.

“Your Ex-lover is Dead” by Stars is a peculiar “pop” song. Found on 2004’s Set Yourself on Fire, “Your Ex” is both wistful and mesmerizing in its combination of
musical arrangement and narrative.

Essentially orchestral, the initial pace of the song, provided by an intermittently struck bass drum, is slow and elegiac – something more akin to a funeral march. With its liberal use of strings and horns “Your Ex” is given an intimacy reserved for a small concert hall or private room. The almost whispered vocals of Torquil Campbell and Amy Milan along with a loosely strummed electric guitar and forceful snare drum give “Your Ex” its pop hook, but the song seems to bare a greater resemblance to a chamber music recital. Considering the title of the song and the lyrics, the choice of musical style is fitting. Mournful and ponderous, the music seems to capture perfectly the sentiment carried by the words.

On the subject of the lyrics, “Your Ex” is more of a narrative relating to a specific time and place. With clearly articulated concrete imagery, its story-telling style seems to draw the listener in closer: “captured a taxi despite all the rain/we drove in silence across pont champlain/and all of that time you thought I was sad/I was trying to remember your name.”

Although “Your Ex” sounds as if it’s the direct personal experience of the songwriters, its very specificity gives the song a compelling force. Like an eavesdropper, the listener is, through compulsion or recognition, forced to listen.

Using InDesign, I created this mock-up magazine titled Catalogue. Pretty good for a non-designer.

catalouge-magagzine.pdf

These two instruction manuals were written specifically for new volunteers at the Wildlife Rescue Association’s Burnaby facility. It was intended as a quick-access document, written using plain language principles. My excellent colleagues with whom I woked on this project are Kai Jansson, Christine Romani and Melanie Scott.

wra-tech-man-cleaning-65.pdf

wra-tech-man-nestlings-fledglings-65.pdf

Theatre Terrific Society is a non-profit group that promotes the participation by disabled people in the performing arts. Along with my colleague Jeff Schering, we prepared this report that looked into declining enrollment levels for some of Theatre Terrific’s acting classes.

final-report-april-5.pdf

The Bone Cage
By Angie Abdou
Newest Press, 2007; 235 pp.; $22.95

The Bone Cage, Angie Abdou’s first novel, follows the lives of fictitious Olympic hopefuls Sadie Jorgenson and Tom “Digger” Stapleton. The novel focuses primarily on the rigors of their training as the two athletes (Sadie is a speed swimmer and Digger is a wrestler) prepare for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Abdou, a competative swimmer herself, certainly has first-hand knowledge of the privations of training. She captures the physical and mental strain that Sadie and Digger must endure with a fair degree of writerly acumen. But as a former competative athlete, I know that besides being physically and mentally difficult, training for any athletic discipline can be intensely boring. As I worked my way through The Bone Cage, I found Abdou’s descriptions of training and competition, while vivid and accurate, to be lacking in any real drama. But I do not think this is the fault of Abdou’s abilities as a writer; rather, I think it is a general flaw found in most sports writing. The problem being, that sports writing, whether journalism or fiction, in the absence of real drama, artificially tries to create importance out of what is, in the end, unimportant.

Perhaps anticipating readers’ disdain at having to plow through another account of yet another grueling training session, Abdou fills out her story with detours from the main athletic narrative. For example, Sadie’s life in the pool is juxtaposed against that of her family, specifically that of her grandmother who is languishing in a hospital – a victim of adult onset diabetes and the ravages of old age. The comparison between the youth and strength of Sadie and the failing health and body of her grandmother will be obvious and superficial to some. But to be fair, it is in the tension between youth and age and the limited time we all live under where Abdou is able to pull her story out of the plodding chronicles of Sadie and Digger and their strict training schedules and give her novel some life.

It is not as if Abdou has written carelessly about her two main characters; there is a certain affection for both that seems to be coming from Abdou’s own intimate understanding of sport. However, Digger and Sadie’s lives are so circumscribed by their dedication to their respective athletic pursuits that they are necessarily rendered as dull and uninteresting in spite of the fact that they are both headed to the Olympics – the pinnacle of all athletic dreams.

Perhaps in an attempt to make her characters more human and less the single-minded machines that Olympians must be in order to have the remotest chance at a medal, Abdou vaguely delves into her characters’ sex lives. But this only comes across as tacked-on and shallow – an editorial afterthought designed to prevent readers’ attention from fading. Also, seemingly to maintain reader care, the narration is written exclusively in the present tense. In this case, such a compositional choice only draws attention to itself as “technique” – automatically suggesting, for me at least, that there is something lacking in the story.

Sport occupies odd territory in our equally odd cultural epoch. Existing somewhat as a paradox, sport is primarily viewed as entertainment – frivolous or otherwise – but at the same time it has been given an elevated status. In the absence of real drama, however, the attempt to create a story out of what is fundamentally a trivial subject will lead to a boring tale – in real life or in fiction.

Pain and Passion: The History of Stampede Wrestling
By Heath McCoy
ECW Press, 2007; 333 pp.; $22.95

Back in the early 80s when I was about 11 or 12 I remember gathering with my pre-adolescent friends on Saturday afternoons in Brad Johnston’s parent’s basement. There in the formica wood-paneled room hung with cheap oil paintings depicting scenes that looked like they were taken from a Louis Lamour novel, we would watch Stampede Wrestling. Despite the cheap production values, the action was always over-the-top and predictably violent. But even at our tender age we suspected that the painful submission holds and body-slams administered by the likes of Bad News Allen and the Cuban Assassin were a fiction. In our vocabulary back then we’d shout at the screen, “Oh that’s sooo fake,” and roll our eyes. In Pain and Passion: The History of Stampede Wrestling, journalist Heath McCoy seems to acknowledge our former youthful suspicions by writing about “professional” wrestling primarily as staged entertainment. At the same time, however, he writes with a sentimental attachment that praises the sheer athleticism and, indeed, pain and suffering that went into creating the gloriously absurd spectacle that was Stampede Wrestling.

Written mostly in a sensational journalistic style, Pain and Passion comes across more as a series of outrageous anecdotes and less of a historical account. Indeed, the book has a slapdash feel to it, but this seems to be more a reflection of the subject matter than anything else. As anyone who has watched mainstream wrestling will know (well maybe not everyone but at least a few) there is a contrived recklessness to the “sport” that is part and parcel of its charm – such as it is. Regardless of its lowbrow status, McCoy has gone to great lengths to put together an intensely detailed history of a genuine Canadian “cultural” institution. But rather than be attracted to Pain and Passion as a historical account by itself, readers may be more drawn to the lurid, and seemingly endless, tales of life on the road and in the ring as a Stampede wrestler.

Certainly McCoy writes with serious praise about the athletic requirements of wrestling: “wrestling, for all of its theatrics, should be an athletic exhibition first and foremost, not some circus of depravity.” But it is always the depravity of wrestling to which audiences are drawn; likewise, it is the depraved spectacle of wrestling to which McCoy’s book constantly returns. Whether it is the vague homoeroticism inherent in two men wearing briefs and leather knee-high lace-up boots grappling with one another or watching a “heel” (bad guy) like Abdullah the Butcher purposely cut himself or his opponent with a hidden razor and bleed all over the ring, wrestling is nothing if not a depraved spectacle.

For all of its exaggerated violence and melodrama, professional wrestling can perhaps best be thought of as story telling, as basic and visceral as it is. As 70s Stampede Wrestling mainstay “Cowboy” Dan Krofatt says, “Why do soap operas on TV last for years and years?… They’re propelled not through violence but through story telling.” As we suspected when we were kids, there seems to be more fiction than fact in the ridiculous extravaganza of wrestling. But like anyone who likes a good story we stuck around for the blood. And there is plenty of blood and good story telling in Pain and Passion.

Upon the turning of the year, besides looking back– sometimes with nostalgia, sometimes with regret – at the year that has passed, people are usually inclined to look towards the new year with a renewed sense of optimism. But as the world blindly staggers into 2008 burdened by seemingly intractable conflicts and the ever-lingering awareness that humanity as it stands is pretty much fucking up the planet ecologically, it is hard to be optimistic. And yet life without hope or optimism would be unbearable.

Although it is a predictable choice for this time of year, “New Year’s Day” by U2, and found on 1983s War, seems to be performing a high wire act. Caught between hope and despair, “New Year’s Day,” in the words of Saint Bono, is about “the struggle for love.” The song was originally penned as a love song for his wife, but world events of the early 80s, particularly that of Poland’s Solidarity movement, infiltrate “New Year’s Day” and turn it into a protest or antiwar song as well.

Driven by Adam Clayton’s now distinctive bass line and Edge’s piano, the sound of “New Year’s Day” is both urgent and stirring. As if amplifying the already compelling nature of the song, Larry Mullen’s drums add a distinctive martial beat while Bono’s vocals soar over the music, which is laid down like an army on parade.

Perhaps reflecting the destruction wrought by war, love in “New Year’s Day,” as is usually the case with Bono’s writing, is attended by darkness and loss: “Under a blood red sky/A crowd has gathered in black and white/Arms entwined, the chosen few/The newspapers says/Say it’s true it’s true/And we can break through/Though torn in two/We can be one.” Certainly the music and lyrics of the song convey a sense of darkness, and it seems that most people would be hard-pressed to call “New Year’s Day” optimistic. Indeed, the song teeters around the abyss of violence with the central image of, presumably, two people being torn from one another. However, the alternating arrangement of the words “I will be with you again,” for “I will begin again” in the chorus, although caught in the mournful quality of the music, can really be only understood as the attempt to see the world in a more hopeful light.

In spite of the horrors implied by “New Year’s Day,” the song seems to be more of an acknowledgement of suffering than be voicing an outright disappointment with humanity. Rather than be mired in darkness “New Year’s Day” looks toward the light, however dim it may be.

Happy New Year everybody.

No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart
By Tom Slee
Between the Lines, 2006; 240 pp.; $24.95

In 1776, moral philosopher and political economist Adam Smith in his tome, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, came up with the famous concept of the invisible hand of the market. For anyone who was sleeping through Economics 100, what he meant was that through the pursuit of self-interest within a market framework, individuals inadvertently promote the general welfare of the society they occupy. This of course is a simplistic account of Adam Smith’s 18th century metaphor. Smith presented a far more complicated theory of markets that many of his present-day supporters are willing to admit, and yet mainstream economists and neoconservatives everywhere continue to preach a shallow faith in the market. It is this simplistic faith that Tom Slee’s book No One Makes You Shop At Wal-Mart, primarily criticizes.

For Slee, the proponents of mainstream economic thought argue that the choices individual consumers make in a market context automatically lead to the best outcomes. Referring to the neoconservative faith in markets and individual choice as “MarketThink, ” Slee writes, “In the world according to MarketThink, the combination of choice and the market is a mechanism for solving problems and improving outcomes…” Certainly, most people would be hard-pressed to argue in favour of limited choice and the inherently anti-democratic values that that implies. And at no point does Slee say that choice and markets are necessarily bad things; neither does his book read like an anti-capitalist rant. But what No One Makes You Shop At Wal-Mart effectively shows, is that in spite of the rationalizing of the neocons and their toady economists, individual choice operating within a market framework very often results in poor outcomes.

How could this be true? How could the market fail us?

Using game theory, Slee presents theoretical situations where “players” are given a set of choices designed to result in the best possible outcome for each player. Naturally, the players are expected to make the choices that will improve their situations. But as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the most commonly used game in Slee’s book shows, “each player’s outcome depends on the choices of all participants.” That is, the choices of each player necessarily affect, negatively or positively, the outcomes for the other players. But the rationale of each player to play for what he or she thinks is the best outcome necessarily leads to all players being worse off had they not entered the game in the first place. The choices offered by the game, and by extension choice in the marketplace, are, in essence, false.

Even though the scenarios presented in the games are massively simplified versions of reality, Slee makes the inescapable point that in the games, as in reality, peoples’ choices affect other people. When choices affect other people, externalities emerge. For the purposes of Slee’s book, externalities are measurable costs created through the actions of others that aren’t immediately paid for. For Slee, this is a situation that MarketThink irresponsibly ignores. Indeed, the MarketThink worldview wants to believe that people are isolated economic actors whose choices only lead to outcomes that affect them exclusively. Remember when arch neocon Margaret Thatcher brazenly declared that there was no such thing as society, rather only individuals and families? If it were only that simple.

The problem of externalities shows that choices are rarely, if at all, made in a vacuum. Take the example of an individual consumer “choosing” to buy an SUV. Let’s say that for this theoretical consumer, buying an SUV is the best possible choice he can make: it’s cool; it appears safe; it’s got a powerful engine. For this consumer, these are all measurable benefits. At the same time however, the choice to buy this SUV has measurable costs on other people: it takes up more space on the road; it consumes more gasoline; it contributes to a greater degree to air pollution. All of these costs are external to the initial purchase, and yet are very real and, moreover, not immediately borne by our theoretical consumer.

Perhaps SUV’s are an easy target, but it is clear that the coincidence of markets and choice are not providing a positive outcome here. MarketThink would have us believe that we are automatically better off given an array of choices within a market framework. But as Slee writes, such an assumption is both unrealistic and totally misleading:

MarketThink is a simplified picture of the world in which choices are independent of each other, and in which the link between choice and outcome is simple. But once we acknowledge that tangled choices are ubiquitous, then it follows that we must use a picture that includes externalities if we are to avoid being misled.

Slee’s reliance on game theory may come across as sterile and superfluous to some readers – he writes at length in dry technical prose on the artificial scenarios he has created. Readers may be left puzzled why he does this when there are dozens of examples from the real world that demonstrate the fallibility of the market. However, in his use of game theory, Slee seems to be adopting the discourse of the proponents of MarketThink. By wielding the same set of rational principles, that is, by referring to the cold logic of numbers, Slee undermines the basic assumptions supporting market forces and shows them to be at best simplistic and not a true accounting of the world at all.

Adam Smith would be impressed.

Joy Division has always been one of those bands that have hovered around in the background for me. At parties, at friends’ smoke-filled and stale beer-smelling basement suites, their signature synth-pop sound was always easy to identify. However, it wasn’t until a recent Sunday morning that I, in a very real way, heard them for the first time.

The CD that was in the player when this realization occurred was Substance. It is a compilation of Joy Division’s work in the short time they existed before front-man Ian Curtis’s tragic suicide and before the band and its surviving members were rechristened the more recognizable and more successful New Order – songs of which you can often hear and dance to in the most mainstream of nightclubs today. An easy sonic connection can be made between the two bands, but a dark energy, perhaps coming from Curtis’s tortured life, endows Joy Division’s music with a devastating raw power.

So, it was with surprise (or was it shock) when, expecting to hear atmospheric, pop-inflected music along the lines of Joy Division’s most recognizable track “Love Will Tear Us Apart” – to coincide with my melancholic mood – that I was inundated with a barrage of what I can only call punk rock.

Needless to say, I was completely knocked off my chair. Not so much because I was being exposed to something completely unexpected, but because what I was listening to completely blew me away – pretty good for a band that hasn’t existed for almost 30 years.

One of 17 tracks that cover Joy Division’s short career, “No Love Lost” is one of a handful of songs that capture a high energy UK punk influenced sound. The song begins with a throbbing bass and is soon joined by a buzzing guitar that sounds similar to early Pete Townshend. In fact, the first two minuets of “No Love Lost” is an instrumental that bears a remarkable resemblance to The Who of the mid-60s. But whereas contemporaries such as the Sex Pistols were loath to admit any affinity to so-called rock stars, in “No Love Lost” Joy Division seem to be content, or at least unaware, of the influences they are channeling.

As for the lyrics, they are a bizarre mixture of first person experience and third person narrative. Perhaps typical punk rock angst is being expressed when Curtis sings in mid-range, “Just to see you torn apart/ witness to your empty heart/ I need it/ I need it/ I need it.” But after the first verse, the song turns into a story of a woman who is the victim of some experiment or surgical procedure that is on display for the public.

It may be that the woman being experimented upon is the same one with the “empty heart” referred to in the first verse. Whether or not this is the case is unknowable, but the mixture of the two narrative points of view suggest a complexity, sophistication and darkness that will be developed to greater depth in Joy Division’s later, more recognizable music.

Check it out for the first time if you haven’t already.