J’aime le Parti Québécois parce que…

….they always run a bunch of super cute girls that I fall for.

And I will always hate Jean Charest for knocking off Elsie Lefebvre in 2007. She was the most aborable person in Canadian politics ever.

In Defence of President Bush

I was an ardent supporter of the coalition invasion of Iraq at its outset. Today, I have mixed feelings about the intervention. On the one hand, the neocons that we liberal internationalists trusted to make a sound national security and public policy argument in favour of the Bush policy, to compliment the suit we brought against the Hussein regime for its violations against human rights and international law, lied. On the other, those same neocons– who promised effective oversight of the invasion from the Pentagon, State, and Military Intelligence– botched the management component of the invasion all together and drafted no clear exit strategy.

So yes, I have mixed feelings. I’m not particularly peeved about the falsifications– the lies. I wanted a way into Iraq because the Clinton policy of neo-isolationism simply was not working. UN estimates had half a million children under the age of five dead during the 1990s because of sanctions and an ineffective Oil-for-Food program. If starvation by displacement in the Sudan is a righteous cause for intervention, which it is, then this would have to be, too. I wanted a way in because we had proof of a genocide. We had proof of torture, sex discrimination, violence against women, political executions, child abuse, and the systematic suppression of the human conscience. Any argument suggesting that the right thing to do would have been to continue isolating these problems from the international community’s responsibility to protect citizens whose rights are undermined by rogue states doesn’t hold up. Going into Iraq was the right thing to do, whether your justification for doing so was the neoconservative assumption that the state posed a regional and international security threat or the liberal interventionist bent that saw a robust military policy as the only solution to decades of failures on human rights and democracy. The falsifications about WMD I could care less about. I had my own reasons for wanting the Hussein regime taken out– reasons that hold up to this day. What concerns me, and what will always register in my mind as Bush’s greatest failure, is the management of post-invasion Iraq.

The Bush administration has, thus far, failed to meet any benchmarks for progress in its handling of post-invasion Iraq. The “surge” has allowed for headway in a limited number of provinces and the Iraqi capital. It hasn’t improved the US diplomatic core’s standing in the region and has done nothing to resolve the perpetual stalemate that is the Iraqi parliament. It hasn’t done much of anything.

A year from now, historians will have their chance to begin assembling what will be the Bush legacy. And, for the first time, the former president will have an editorial say on his actions as commander-in-chief from outside the DC beltway and from outside the press-scrum spin. I think we all understand that the execution of the Iraq war has been a complete failure. The authorities President Bush delegated to coordinate the efforts to topple the Hussein regime ignored almost every recommendation from US military leadership and State about deployment levels, length of occupation, and diplomatic strategies to withstand the weight of a potential fallout. At this point, I don’t think there is a practical argument he or his supporters can make in support of the president’s Iraq policy. But I do think there is a theoretical one. And that theoretical argument might be just enough to save face in the pages of history.

Neoconservative foreign policy is always a Trotskyist exercise. It’s ideological, given the consideration that its only aim is to spread or establish a particular form of moral governance. I don’t consider Dick Cheney a neoconservative or, for that matter, any of the war profiteers at the White House who had ties to major financial backers of reconstruction projects in Iraq. But I do think Bush and Paul Wolfowitz can be excepted from this crowd.

Michael Ignatieff used to teach his students at Harvard of the ‘uptopian’ appeal of genocide. That is to say that there is an understanding among those who commit genocide that their actions, although heinous, are intended to create a more homogeneous and, thus, more manageable and, they would argue, ‘better’ society. Of course, this line of thinking is morally outrageous, but it is appealing to the desperate and it is often why genocide happens in the first place. Genocide is irreconcilable with accepted moral systems, but it exists because somewhere someone sees virtue in it.

Okay, what the hell does that have to do with anything?

Well, it’s my way of framing my argument. The neocon principle that liberty and constitutional democracy are the two most essential counterpoints to human oppression is right. And the neoconservative movement’s advocacy for military intervention in cases where humans are oppressed of their freedoms is admirable, if not morally adequate. To those who discount Bush’s morality or his humanity offhand I raise the extreme example above, which Ignatieff was known to use in order to introduce paradigm analysis in political theory. The morals of genocide are simply twisted, but understanding them is essential to preventing philosophies that deem human extermination acceptable from ever gaining mainstream acceptance in any part of the world again.

Understanding Bush’s theoretical argument is important, too. It’s important, not because of a moral failure, but because of a failure to execute.

Next time, we listen to our generals. Next time, we listen to our diplomats. Next time, we listen to our intelligence officers. The idea of preemptive war in the name of constitutional democracy or freedom is never something that should be taken off the table. It is, however, something that should be executed with practical consistency. President Bush failed to make morals translate into success on the ground and that is, in part, because he let those around him that had no morals convince him that an insufficient strategy for helping the people of Iraq grab a hold of their own destiny was the right one. His failure in judgment has led to the suffering of millions, but it isn’t too late to amend some of the damage done. Theoretically, that is.

MUSIC FOR THE DAY

It’s sad rolling into a New Year knowing there will be no more legendary Magnificent Sevens parties at the label’s old warehouse space on Lisgar. In the interest of remembering good times, here are two songs by Toronto’s Disraelis, one of the trendier bands that came off the label. Standard post-punk Joy Division lovefest, but I still like these guys a lot.

“Blackmail” by the Disraelis.

“Planet Earth” by the Disraelis.

Because Naomi Klein is a Whiny Bitch, I’m Sprinkling This Entry With Morrissey Videos

It’s been almost a year now and I’m not going to make it through The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. From now on, if I need to prove to someone that the book is five hundred plus pages of an unmitigated douchetruck on the loose, I’m just going to point out the fact that the cover sleeve has a quote from Tim Robbins on the back of it.

Nuff said.

PMSH Catches Fire NBA Jam Style

Stephen Harper walked into the National Press Theatre yesterday for the first time in the 20 months he’s spent as Canada’s prime minister. Accordingly, he whipped out his balls and dropped them on a conference table for Ottawa’s press core to marvel at. They are huge.

Harper is daring his opposition foils to support the government’s fall agenda in its entirety or face a federal election. Giving this dare teeth are his intentions to engineer a series of confidence motions tied to core Conservative policies that will be outlined in this month’s Speech from the Throne. Angry Liberal MP Omar Alghabra scoffs:

The Throne Speech is expected to outline the areas of priorities that the government intends to focus on. It doesn’t usually detail how those priorities are going to be met. It says things like “the government plans to fight climate change” but it may not say how it plans on doing it. However, Stephen Harper is saying that if someone agrees with his generic intention to fight climate change, for example, then that means he believes he has received unconditional approval in how he will do it. He doesn’t want any questions asked or any challenges put forth. Canadians have been watching how the Conservatives have been pretending to do something on the environment and how they have destroyed any attempts to enhance their weak plan.

Great hackery, which is about all Omar and Team Kennedy were ever good for, but Harper’s point is overlooked. At his press conference, the Prime Minister indicated that his strict demands are rooted in a desire to govern. “This is only a reasonable request,” he argued. “It’s not a matter of making threats, they [the opposition] have to fish or cut bait.” I don’t agree with the Harper agenda on crime and I still wish he and Finance minister Jim Flaherty would come to their senses and acknowledge that income tax reductions are a more effective way to encourage Canadians to save than consumption tax reductions, but if I’m the fish I’m biting here.

The Liberals and NDP were quick to pounce on Harper’s proclamation as a sign that he’s an ideological dinosaur unwilling to resituate himself on the political spectrum in order to pass legislation in a minority parliament. However, it was Harper who came out looking focused and decisive, while his federalist counterparts on the left ended up sounding as hollow and as vacant as Matthew Barney’s head (nominalism mothaf*ckas!). The Liberal dominated senate has been stifling legislation from its assent to law for over a year now. Their actions are an affront to the democratic process and have effectively rendered any criticisms their party has launched at Harper null and void. The Prime Minister looks like a man who wants to get things done. The opposition Liberals look like a caucus full of hypocrites— which, truth be told, they are. The Bloc under Gilles Duceppe, who have long since tabled their own ‘non-negotiable’ demands for the fall session, surrendered all credibility the second they began insisting the federal government not be allowed to spend any money in vaguely defined areas of ‘provincial jurisdiction.’

So what’s to bank on?

Well, Harper cannot count on support from Duceppe, whose party is already one foot deep in the grave due to the countless concessions it has made to the Conservatives in an attempt to stave off an election. Where they seek to lose at least a dozen seats to Tory breakthroughs in rural, ADQ territory, the political fortune of the Bloc now depends on its ability to distinguish itself from the province’s fastest growing political force. If Duceppe cannot dismiss concerns that his party is becoming increasingly irrelevant with the presence of a governing party that practices ‘open federalism,’ his once unshakeable credibility as BQ leader will simply have evaporated.

Jack Layton isn’t in the Prime Minister’s corner, either. Hot off the heels of the Outremont byelection and reeling in almost as much fundraising cash as the Liberals, Layton’s NDP is capable of expanding its parliamentary ranks beyond the 30 incumbents who form the House’s smallest caucus in a fall election. The party’s primary focus, from here on, should be the recruitment of talent to take on sitting MPs where they have a greatest chance of conquering ground. To Harper’s benefit, however, the Dippers war on the same political turf as the Liberals— they’re a heavy tide crashing against the left-leaning walls of the party.

Layton and Duceppe out of the way and all but forced to cast consistent and unending votes of nonconfidence, Harper has exactly what he wants: the future of the government in Stéphane Dion’s presumably incapable hands.

Harper, who has all but conquered the political centre, has left the stingy Dion with no room to grow his leftist, opportunistic platform. If Dion intends to take on the Prime Minister in an election, the Conservative leader has made it so that he will have to explain his policy position on one of a small number of issues Harper has already effectively staked out and stumped on. More than likely, this issue will be the potential extension of the Afghan mission beyond February 2009 or emissions reductions targets under the Kyoto Protocol. News today that the Vandoos are making serious progress in rooting out Taliban insurgents and a reasonably ordered table of emissions reductions would be more than enough for a Tory campaign to coast along into victory.

In recent years, Jack Layton has frequently been taken to task by Stephen Harper in private meetings for not making an agressive enough move to the centre to capitalize on sliding Liberal fortunes. With Dion on the run and caught between the prospect of a federal election he and his party are not (mentally, physically, strategically, or financially) ready for and a series of votes they cannot afford to go along with, the Prime Minister is looking like the only serious candidate for Canada’s highest office who is ready and willing to face the judgement of the Canadian people. Although Layton and Duceppe are ready and, perhaps, itching to go, they are not legitimate candidates for Prime Minister and they have far less to lose than the still minty fresh leader of the Opposition.

For better or worse, I admire Harper’s balls. They’re huge. The cynical talk initiated by Liberal and NDP critics in response to his press conference left little to no impression on the daily papers and will have an even smaller audience with everyday Canadians.

Stephen Harper has let it be known that he is willing to fight for what he believes in. He has let it be known that he is willing to push Canada forward in the direction he sees as the best fit.

If Stéphane Dion truly believes what he says about the backwards agenda of the PM and the Conservative Party he had better get off his high horse and prove it. Election readiness is not an excuse. If Dion believes the balance of the country is in danger, he will, too, fight for what he believes in.

However, something tells me that only Stephen Harper is brave enough to Stand Up For Canada. Even if it is only his vision of the country, it would be nice if Stéphane Dion and the Liberals shared one that they could claim they were willing to Stand Up for, too.

[Note: I would prefer PMSD, but the way he's acting right now that doesn't seem like even a remote possibility.]

Britney Rages Against the Cyborg

I’ve got a raging hard-on against the last week of mainstream media coverage attacking Britney Spears’ VMA performance.

First of all, I don’t believe that Spears’ performance should go unchecked by criticism, but I do believe that new media art star, Britney devotee, and YouTube mainstay Chris Crocker has a lot of valid things to say, too. “Gimmie More,” the track that opened the VMAs, is a mediocre disco flourish and, although Britney hasn’t had a great single since “Toxic”, it’s still better than most of what’s on the Billboard club charts. The beat by Floyd “Danja” Hills, Timbaland’s best know studio protégé, is the driving force behind the song and, although Britney sounds a little too digitized on the recording, she makes it out alive with an okay single. All this bullshit about Britney’s career being at its apocalypse is largely unfounded. I’m sick of the ‘Is it over?‘ headlines and the cruel personal attacks that are being lobbed into what are supposed to be reviews of performance art.

1) We know she lip-syncs. The fact that she did it worse than usual at the VMAs doesn’t change the nature of the practice. Perez Hilton made note of this, which I thought was cool, but then took a stupid dive and called Spears laughable. “Gimmie More” is still hovering on the Billboard 100 and other charts and Britney’s starpower will always be attached to her ability to fill dancefloors. As far as it seems, nothing has changed that, yet. I’m especially offended by the fact that pissing on a 14 year old was a brilliant career move for R. Kelly or that his getting shot in the midst of gang violence is an instrumental part of 50 Cent’s marketing campaigns, but that Britney’s personal struggles are used to target her.

2) Sure, the choreography and the showmanship weren’t there in full force. It’s been a while and the chains are a bit rusty. This is just inspiration for an even greater impetus to reinvent the wheel. If I’m Britney’s manager, I’d get Tina Landon on the phone to plot a stage show for the next tour. No more bubblegum shit or quasi-raunch. I’d ask Landon to do something like she did with the Velvet Rope Tour— make something that’s dark, poetic, and grand with no narrative gimmicks or silly asides. The closest thing to an aside during that show was Janet picking a boy out of the audience and tying him up while administering a viscerally powerful lapdance. But man was it classy. I mean, the guy in the DVD was so obviously gay and he clearly blew his load within seconds of being strapped down.

3) Britney looked fine. The thing that’s really rubbed me wrong this week have been the callous lobs at the girl for being ‘fat‘.

If this is how we define fat then I’m a sucker for porkers, because my last three partners have been 110, even 115, pound brabusters. To put it another way: Beyoncé is a fucking fatass. According to the assessments by media, industry, and much of the general public of Britney’s body last week, Beyoncé is seriously one fat fuck. The girl should be a spokesperson for Popeye’s.

Okay, now let’s be serious. Beyoncé is the hottest thing on planet earth and the girl is no stick. Hell, she got famous by singing about her ‘jelly.’ The weight criticisms being launched at Britney aren’t even sensible, as they create contradictory standards of beauty that would make any beautiful, naturally shaped woman come out looking like a fatass.

Haraway used the metaphor of the cyborg to argue that human bodies are not natural, but are instead constructions of our ideas about them. In this case, Britney has been relentlessly heckled by the media because she no longer meets the standards set by the very definition of herself. Britney Spears is a specific body type and a specific set of behavioural standards, Haraway would argue. Whenever she fails to meet those standards, it offends our expectations and causes the kind of sensationalist media backlash we’ve seen in the last week. However, Britney Spears is an ailing mother with drug and alcohol problems. She’s a person whose entire life has been prone to invasion by third parties looking to document Britney Spears. Like Chris says, she’s a human being— something you can’t turn into convention (and, worse, it’s impossible to force uniformity on human beings— how the fuck do you think girls who look at photos of Britney during her performance feel when they’re told that this is fat?).

Because Britney means something entirely different than Beyoncé, because it involves a completely different structural code for physique and a completely different roster of expected behaviours, Britney is ‘fat.’ Beyoncé, on the other hand, is bootylicious. Britney, for losing her shit in the midst of trials that no young woman deserves, is crazy. She’s crazy for pushing against our invention, for not being our cyborg, for not being our definition of natural.

Why that is, I’ll never understand.

MUSIC FOR THE DAY

Toronto’s Louise Bak threw one of her wonderful Box Salon parties Saturday night in the city’s East End. Fortunately, the party was at an incredible rooftop space with an absorbing view of the downtown skyline. Unfortunately, there was a stiff windchill which kept the attendance numbers at a pretty modest level. The programming was wonderful— there was some fantastic performance art and poetry and the two headlining bands were devilishly good. I hope they both blow up. Here’s the one I, especially, fell for. And I fell for their adorable singer in that other way, too.

Claire Jenkins Avec Band is a girl named Claire Jenkins playing with her band, anglos. Last night, Claire’s quirky, nautically-themed songs were supported by a violin, a double bass, and an accordian. At their shows, the performers in the act ritually don paper hats and use stage props ranging from umbrellas to boxing gloves to illustrate their song lyrics for their audiences. While this practice is adorable enough on its own, Claire’s songs open themselves up like a Mary Louia Molesworth book. Molesworth was this wonderful Victorian children’s author whose books were meant for readers “too old for fairies and princesses but too young for Austen and the Brontës.” When you watch Claire Jenkins Avec Band, that’s sort of how you feel— too compromised by the world to dream up imaginary royals, but still ambitious enough to voyage out to sea looking for a boy without daddy’s permission.

“Harold, Coco“and “Heart as Furnace” from 2007’s Crow’s Nest/ Nid de Pie

Stéphane Dion: Kindergarten Cop

California’s Arnold Schwarznnegger delivered a barnburner yesterday at his state’s fall Republican Party Convention. Stéphane Dion, of all people, could learn a thing or two from the governor’s remarks.

While Leno still uses Arnold’s percieved weakness on the syntax and enunciation files as cannon-fodder for nightly one-liners, the man has quietly become his party’s most arresting and influential public speaker. When the governor speaks, every media organization within a continent’s reach flocks to the spot, expecting an innovative new policy announcement or a maverick stand for social progressivism within a party whose base describes itself as traditionalist. These days, Arnold seems like the only Republican in the national spotlight who isn’t paralyzed by consternation or who isn’t afraid of putting his neck on the line for his constituents. He’s made sitting ahead of the political curve an asset instead of an albatross. Last night’s speech, a stern critique of Republican failures to maintain the support of centrist voters in the last three years, spoke about political moderation in such a convincing fashion that any leader of any party, in any country, with ambitions of forming a government should give the prepared notes a glance over.

Schwarzenegger is arguing from the right side of his country’s political spectrum, reaching into the centre, while the Liberal Party of Canada is currently perched uncomfortably left of its traditional, centrist ground. Stéphane Dion’s cop-out on Afghanistan and abdication of liberal internationalism, his refusal to engage in pragmatic compromise on the environment, his about-face on public safety measures, and his embarassing (and stupid) stance against calling Air India suspects and witnesses to a second testimonial have the big red machine stuck in the fixer’s garage. Unfortunately, Dion is the only mechanic on staff and he has a Ph.D. in political science— something which has never ever come in handy at a car shop.

Dion is dragging the Liberal party, kicking and screaming, into the same territory where the NDP sits. He is actually taking the party to the place where Bob Rae found it neccessary to flee and seek refuge from. The place where the vitriolic hegemony of today’s NDP leadership is closed off to the rest of the world and to any serious debate about global politics. This is the same territory that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair led his party out of when New Labour formed government on a centrist platform in 1997. Rae, a huge fan of Edmund Burke and an admirer of Blair’s, was keen to stress the philosopher’s belief that you can’t govern by ideology as the impetus behind his switch to Liberal stripes. Labour became the dominant political force in the United Kingdom by arguing much the same.

Short term memory intact, Liberals in party circles across the country are sour about Dion’s insistence on towing the party line. His reckless demands for unanimous caucus support on Afghanistan and Air India are unjustifiable and are best negated by a Reagan quote Schwarzenegger used in his speech:

We cannot become a narrow sectarian party in which all must swear allegiance to prescribed commandments. Such a party can be highly disciplined, but it does not win elections. This kind of party soon disappears in a blaze of glorious defeat.

Bill Graham, as interim leader, took the Liberals to neck-and-neck standing with the Tories in most national polls by running an open caucus, where his deputies and fellow MPs were free to vote their conscience on almost all matters in the house. This demonstrated to the public that, at the time, the Liberal Party of Canada was the country’s only political institution that allowed for a truly national debate to take place within its ranks, one that was reflective of the diverse beliefs of Canadian voters themselves. Stéphane Dion’s demand for so-called ‘discipline’ is as shallow as the ideological, cynically motivated strategies employed by Stephen Harper, Jack Layton, and Gilles Duceppe. They don’t make the Liberals a viable alternative for governance— they make them a hamper on the political system. Worse yet, Dion’s inability to compromise has rendered the Liberals powerless to move anywhere in the polls. Bill moved the Liberals by allowing caucus members to deviate from one another on national issues and by emphasizing that a Liberal government would bring about solutions to challenges in public administration by holding dialogues that everyone could relate to, not by standing on a soapbox and screaming hyperbole.

Say what you will about Ronald Reagan, but the man once carried 49 of 50 states in a national election. He knew how to appeal to the broadest possible number of voting citizens in his country. Alluding to the Gipper, Schwarzenegger emphasizes that the Republican party has only ever been an effective agent for national change when its leaders have championed the issues of the day and taken them head on in a progressive manner— he cites Lincoln on slavery and Eisenhower on infrastructure as two other key examples.

Schwarzenegger’s best line, and the one Dion should really take to heart, is this one:

The majority of Republicans prefer progress with messy compromise over defeat with pristine principles. Compromise is part of politics. And it is especially part of politics if you are the minority party.

Stéphane should know that there is a significant number of Liberal stalwarts who will not, in good conscience, vote with him on Air India. Bob Rae and Ujjal Dosanjh are the two most obvious and I would be surprised if deputy leader Michael Ignatieff wasn’t right there beside them. If he wants traction in the polls, Dion will allow the Liberal party to be what it is: a national tent, one where there is no party line but a steady stream of compromise and pragmatic negotiation. Wilfrid Laurier allowed for it, Pierre Trudeau did, Jean Chretien did, and most recently Bill Graham did with stunning results. And let’s not forget that Tony Blair’s final, comprehensive education reforms were passed by a coalition of Labour and Tory MPs; or that Liberal Democrats Junichro Koizumi and Heizo Takenaka tracked their banking reforms and the Japan Post privatization in 2003 through the diet by securing support from members of the rival Democratic Party of Japan’s caucus; or that almost all of the legislative progress the American Senate saw from 2001-6 was a result of decisions made by the so called ‘Gang of Fourteen,’ a pragmatic group of centrist lawymakers on both sides of the aisle.

The Liberal Party has never failed when it has wrapped itself around Canada and built policies out of the co-existence of opposing viewpoints. This practice is what has made it the most unique and enduring political institution in all of the last hundred years of Western democracy. If Stéphane Dion continues to use Karen Redman like she’s Catwoman’s whip Stephen Harper will use this to his advantage and work quickly to sew seeds of discontent in the Liberal caucus by calling up the Air India measures and the Afghan mission renewal to hasty votes. The funny thing is that the Liberal Party looks more disciplined and mature when its members vote freely, as it demonstrates the breadth of thought within the caucus. The more Dion uses his whip, the more ideological and impractical his party seems and the more unlikely his ever heading a government becomes. Harper knows this and he’ll gladly take advantage of it.

On Afghanistan for instance, Canadians don’t want Stephen Harper’s “get ‘er done” Blue Collar Kings of Comedy insouciance towards international development. Blowing shit up and calling it a policy for fighting terrorism and spreading democracy is laughable. However, they don’t want Jack Layton’s cut-and-run shallowness that would leave 15 million women abandoned in a country with extremist and terrorist forces who want to see nothing more than every single one of their human and civil rights stripped of them either. Canadians want our forces in Afghanistan patrolling for the safety of the war-torn country’s citizens and protecting the liberties and freedoms they were granted after the Taliban was overthrown in 2001. Alongside they want diplomacy in the Northeast— teams of our best foreign affairs experts holding open discussions with the Pashtun community that is Al Qaeda’s greatest safe-haven. They want Canadian economic think tanks and private sector companies working to establish safe, legal medicinal production methods for Afghanistan’s opium, the richest resource in the region. They want CIDA funding and humanitarian aid multiplied and distributed throughout Kandahar, Kabul, and all across the Afghan geography. They want a compromise, something that upholds the values of all Canadians— that utilizes a robust military force when neccessary and that is geared towards the cultural and political renewal of war-torn and underdeveloped states.

If Stéphane Dion can’t even bother to listen to dissent within his own caucus, how can we expect him to listen to the multitude of viewpoints that Canadians will present him with during the next general election? If he doesn’t smarten up, I’m voting Rhinocerous.

MUSIC FOR THE DAY

A couple of years back, I caught Michael Gira and his Angels of Light project at a church in Montréal. It was a strange place to see the former frontman of Swans, one of the most sonically challenging and abrasive acts in recent memory— but Angels is a whole different story and the atmosphere they created inside the venue felt more like Nashville than it did some arty-New York bullshit theatre. Swans was one of those bands that transgressed across fringe subcultures in high school— I was more into the punk-hardcore scene, but I could listen to their records with the goths or the alt-rockers or even some of the jangle pop and C-86 people.

Well, anyway, Angels of Light is, really, the most perfect and logical progression I’ve ever seen any musical artist make. Gira packed up Swans because he knew it had run its course and started making some of the best folksy Americana that’s ever been commited to record. He’s just come out with a new Angels record and here are a couple of my favourite songs so far:

“The Man We Left Behind“and “Joseph’s Song” from 2007’s We Are Him.

Talking to Dave Sim

Canadian comics raconteur Dave Sim spent two days in Toronto a couple of weeks back and, for a good chunk of a Saturday, we waxed on Tory politics, the legacy of Bill Clinton, Jaime Hernandez, and how comic book fans scare the living shit out of him.

If you’re not familiar with Dave’s epic graphic novel Cerebus, it’s a worthy read and the closest thing, in terms of personal dedication, to À la recherche du temps perdu that the last twenty years of publishing in the 20th century came up with. I love it because it’s a work produced by an artist who, over the course of its creation, became increasingly more competent with the tools made available to him by his medium. Comics are a great place to watch someone grow up, as anyone who has read stories like Starman or Sandman can attest.

Dave became a controversial figure in the mid-80s when he started writing op-eds in his independent publications that comics and literary critics deemed misogynist. Although virtually all of what Dave has to say in print on the subject of the sexes is stupid, I think people are a dictionary page off of categorizing Sim, who is more of a misanthrope than a misogynist.

In Jaime Hernandez’s art, for instance, Dave loves the eye-popping Jack Kirby dimensions that are lock-in-step with images of both idealized and moderately well-proportioned human figures. Pen waving in hand, he spent a lot of time complaining about the “big tit superhero shit” that dominates the Marvel House of Ideas and every scene in which DC Comics has a massively well-endowed woman assraped and killed by guys with names like Astro-Glide (in reality, every DC comics panel is of a massively endowed woman getting raped and/ or killed by villians who share brand names with lube). The more you talk to Dave about the state of the industry he works in, the more you realize he holds equally as much antipathy towards everyone that annoys him, which is okay with me. His editorials, however lame, are directionless hyperbole and, as Chester Brown once argued, can’t be taken at their face value. So, I’m a little skeptical of the insane woman-killer-waiting-to-happen charges that fly out so often at Dave. Revealing his perfectly sane fear of obsessive comic fandom, he remarked after a fan with a son dressed as Superman and named ‘Clark’ walked away “That’s screwed up, man.” I tend to agree. And, having spent a few hours with the guy, I feel confident enough to say that Dave’s a cool, funny dude.

On Canada’s politics, the Kitchener resident made it clear that Liberal House Whip Karen Redman hasn’t a hope in hell of garnering his vote in the next federal election and Sim berated her party for an incoherent strategy on Afghanistan. Stephane Dion is hugging too close to Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe, he says, on withdrawal and is neglecting the wide-open plateau that lies between his two fellow opposition-party leaders and the prime minister. Sim’s actually right here, and he went on to tell me that Canadians want a subtle Afghan strategy, one that reconciles the demands for building a peaceful country where tribal warfare is still commonplace with concerns for troop safety. That would, more or less, mean an increase in CIDA’s presence and funding, diplomatic flirtation with the Pashtuns, and the continued presence of peace-enforcement troops. Although he, personally, supports the mission as it stands today, Dave believes the Liberals are squandering their electability because of a fear of looking hawkish. He actually praised Michael Ignatieff for having huge balls— which is remarkable coming from a guy who considers himself right of Trent Lott. However, he’s also unsure (like most everyone) that the prime minister will be able to realign his government’s priorities this fall without looking like he’s the furthest thing from visionary.

Stopping in at the Toronto Comics Arts Festival, Dave likened luminaries Seth, Chester Brown, and Joe Matt to the Marx brothers— as a tandem that no director could ever get in one place for one shot (“Oh shit, now where’s Harpo? Oh, there he is! Hey, where’d Gummo run off to?”). He delighted a small crowd at the end of the day, in the midst of a side-chat we were having about the upcoming US presidential election, with a stirring rendition of Bill Clinton sells Wal-Mart to rednecks. Laying into a Southern drawl and pressing his right arm forward with a clenched fist, thumb erect, Sim did the perfect impersonation, afterwards noting that Bill Clinton will forever be remembered as the world’s greatest traveling salesman.

Dave seems like a good guy, just don’t tell that to Evan Dorkin. The funny pages guru let it be known that he would at least attempt to whoop Sim’s ass if they ever had an encounter (in fairness, Dorkin would probably get his ass beat). Anyway, here’s a reprint of a conversation from Dorkin’s blog which, unrelated to everything else here, proves that Joe Matt isn’t worth having alive:

Dork: Did I throw your credit card off the balcony at the after-party at Central Sunday night?

Moi: Yeah, you did. But only because I told you to jack off on Joe Matt’s sketchbook.

I should add that there was more money on the table than would be generated by six print runs of Dork— which, actually, means x > 0. Anyway, it stands to reason that you, Evan, were a fucking idiot then and there.

Context: Joe Matt was trying to do a comics jam at the post-TCAF party. Darwyn Cooke drew a brilliant panel of hands in a tornado reaching to try and grab “MY PRECIOUS JARS OF URINE” to fuck with Matt, who was not sitting at the cool table and had to bring the sketchbook over from across the deck. At this point, the cool table (smokers, drinkers, Jews) dared Evan to one-up Darwyn and piss or jack off on the last panel of the same page for lots of money.

Dork: I may be a fucking idiot but at least I’m a professional fucking idiot. So there.

The jackoff bit didn’t upset me, it was funny. The credit card waved in my face after I said I wasn’t a trained monkey didn’t work so well for me. You were trying too hard, and I made a bad joke decision based on a minor irritation. Apologies for that, even if it did get some laughs from the table, it wasn’t perhaps the coolest thing to do.

Nobody was getting your card, btw, except maybe Joe Matt when he was picking over the empty tables later that evening like a dumpster diver looking for god knows what (I am not making that up).

BTW, Dork might sell for shit in regards to the real world, but the ante wasn’t even close (Otherwise I may have gone for it). Now, if you said Hectic Planet, you might have made me cry a little.

Moi: As long as we’re rapping on Joe Matt, I was more concerned for the Powerpuff Girl sitting at table two that he tried to reel in as Humbert Humbert rapebait. You could actually judge by the expression on his face the approximate volume of blood that nascent, prepubescent touch sends flooding down to his bell-end.

Joe is like the R. Kelly of comics, whereas you’d be a sort of Al Jolson-Gary Busey hybrid.

Distractile Dysfunction

Lately, I’ve been screening some of my favourite movies for close friends, trying to get over some crushing discoveries in the wake of an arduous, contracted break-up from someone who, it turns out, did a lot of terrible things to me. There’s rarely anything as rich in this world as a bowl of butternut squash soup and a pretty friend under the covers with a whirring laptop on her belly. So, I guess I’ve been doing okay. Here are some films that have been keeping me warm, along with all the sympathy cuddling (it’s good to know lipstick lesbians):

Woman on the Beach (2006).
Directed by Hong Sang-soo.

I love Hong Sang-soo. He’s just someone whose artistic vision I’ve always felt totally comfortable with. If you caught any of his films before Woman on the Beach, you, too, have probably wondered why Sang-soo isn’t a staple ‘art-house’ name, among hipsters, like Michael Haneke, Abbas Kiarostami, or Wong Kar-wai are (Woman is the Future of Man is like The Maltese Falcon for me).

There isn’t really much to tell here, other than the fact that you need to see this movie. We meet Chang-wook, a screenwriter at an offshore resort who has taken time alone to try and overcome writer’s block. Not expecting anything, he falls into two ‘meet-cute’ situations that lead to simultaneous relationships with two women and all the subtle, Allen-esque hilarity that ensues forms a narrative for his script as quickly as it forms one for the film’s audience. Truthfully, the movie is about adolescence and, by that, I mean the idea that mature adults are no more or less governed by childish impulse than toddlers are. It is one of the most competent treatmens of human sexuality, lust, and romance I have ever seen commited to film. Also, the movie is so much fun and just as funny. And don’t think it’s male fantasy either. Despite the fact that, like Sang-soo’s other films, Woman on the Beach is a prodding investigation into the Korean male’s sexual psyche, it is the female characters who are given agency of the plot and who control Chang-wook. If you let them control you, I guarantee you will not be dissapointed.

Sans Soleil (1983).
Directed by Chris Marker.

Sans Soleil is a classic. It will always be in my Top 10, no matter how many post-apocalyptic, roller-blade themed movies come out in my lifetime.

Because Sans Soleil is a classic, I’ve never really felt comfortable talking about it. Since so many people with such a greater handle on philosophy and art and film than I can ever expect from myself have already come and gone and made their comments, I doubt there’s anything I can offer. What I can tell you is this: Sans Soleil is really, really, really French. It’s a quasi-documentary of scenes from a fictitious, travelling filmmaker, mostly centered in Guiné-Bissau and Japan, served by a female narrator who reads letters sent to her by the man whose movie you are, supposedly, watching. More or less, they are informal musings on his personal feelings and the way the places he travels to change the way he orients himself and his philosophy in relation to the world. That sounds really fucking corny, and 99% of the time it would be, but Sans Soleil is the real deal. It’s a genuine experience to watch. Rarely have I ever felt that there was such a strong connection between a work of cinema and the corporeal than there is in this movie. It’s just remarkable and be certain that you don’t watch it after Ladybugs (another classic, but for different reasons).

ATL (2006).
Directed by Chris Robinson.

ATL was probably my favourite film from last year. It got mixed reviews, but I think the critical elite missed the point when it came to Chris Robinson’s dazzling, star-studded production. Basically, ATL is everything I’ve ever wanted from a contemporary ‘black’ film. Rather than reducing the inner-city poverty debate to a point where it lies on a false axis of race, Tina Chism’s script (with a story by the Antwone Fisher) exposes the ways in which the class divide is reconfiguring relationships within minority communities as they are subject to the unequal distribution of capital. What you get is a group of graduating friends at a public high school in Atlanta (Mechanicsville, down by the I-20 for those of us from the Dirty South) who are all members of a competitive rollerblading team. Rashad (played impressively by Tip “T.I” Harris) is the film’s main character, an orphan who lives with his slothful uncle and takes care of his younger brother, Ant, while trying to figure out what to do with his life when school ends. He befriends and falls for a young girl, nicknamed New-New, who he meets at the roller rink while practicing with his friends for an annual choreography tournament. The rink is its own character in the film and Robinson allows it to come alive with some of the best cinematography I’ve ever seen, following all the local roller teams as they hammer out their routines under a multitude of lights and decoration.

As the plot progresses, one of Rashad’s teammates, the ambitious and brilliant Esquire, starts to uncover secrets about New-New suggesting she might not be as ‘ghetto’ or ‘poor’ as the rest of the rink patrons. Esquire is a young prodigy who sees himself on an Ivy League campus in the not-so-distant future, leading him to a friendship with a successful, black corporate executive (Keith David— such an amazing, underutilized actor) who takes up his cause. His bumps with Atlanta’s financial elite are what bring him to the conclusion that New-New isn’t who she says she is. Of course, this is where the politics come into play, and where we learn that ‘ghettoization’ has nothing to do with colour anymore and has everything to do with class ideology. This point is hit home further by Ant’s subplot, as Rashad has to deal with his little brother getting tied up, as a runner, with a rich, dodgy drug dealer (played to menacing perfection by André “Big Boi” Patton of OutKast).

Think of Spike Lee, when he was still talented, directing a film with David LaChapelle as his cinematographer and you’ll get an idea of what a wonderful film this is. The best thing about ATL is that even the rappers, especially Big Boi, are used in roles that accentuate and capitalize on their strengths as popular stars. A lot of hip-hop films tend to use their crossover artists as gimmicks or carryovers of their musical personalities for no good reason. Here, the rappers may still be carryovers, but everything fits and feels purposeful. As a result, ATL screens like a two hour music video and it’s one of the most gorgeous, lavish movies I have ever seen. Every movement, whether by the camera or the actors, is so fluid you almost think you’re watching a trill, hyphyed-up Swan Lake.

The Detective (1968).
Directed by Gordon Douglas.

Frank Sinatra was remarkable in his turn as the title character private investigator in 1967’s Tony Rome and so it’s no surprise that he chips in another criminally underrated performance as Joe Leland in The Detective. In terms of plot structure, the movie is standard detective fare, following a hard-drinking, tough talking veteran of the New York Police Department as he seeks to expose a suicide as a conspiracy murder. Leland is forced to confront with institutional forces that are corrupted by racism, bigotry, or that are in on the take, leaving him at odds with the civic authority he, as an officer of the law, represents. Like all good crime stories, The Detective is about moral relativism. It’s about how humans justify their actions in social relationships and how they reconcile their social behaviours with moral systems. Leland’s romantic subplot has him trapped in a wrenching divorce with a beautiful psychologist, while he tries to contain his lust for the woman whose husband was the victim of the conspiracy murder he’s trying to expose. On top of all of this, The Detective was a groundbreaking social statement about equality rights for homosexuals. Having come out a year before Stonewall, it features an investigation that leads to undeground gay clubs, where we see men abused by forces of authority for taking up relationships that conflict with the conservative, reactionary values of a corrupted police force. Sinatra’s character turns out to be a gay sympathizer, and he chastises other officers for their inhumane discrimination against citizens on the basis of their sexual orientation. It’s a remarkably progressive film, for the era it was made.

The Detective had been shelved away for a number of years, cast off as a carbon copy production of many greater genre films that came before it, but it’s actually a lost classic. Sinatra plays a great straight cop and the plot unravels itself into pulp-noir overdrive. If you’re interested in genre cinema or are looking for something unexpectedly ahead of its time, I recommend The Detective.

MUSIC FOR THE DAY

Glass Candy started out not amazing or mindblowing, but they’ve always been fun. When they first turned up on the happening Portland scene a few years back, they were basically an electro-pop throwback with some Throbbing Gristle and a little Screamers thrown in, for good measure. Their sound has, recently, started to weave into much richer depths and, judging by the newest stuff they have posted on their MySpace, I would say they’re headed for increasing success.

In their early years, Glass Candy issued a ton of CD-Rs at shows that sold in limited runs and have become collector items. I enjoyed the early stuff, simply because I love minimalist synth-pop. You got the new stuff on MySpace, and here are a couple of tracks from a recent tour release:

“Etheric Device” and “Last Nite, I Met a Costume” from 2006’s Yes Music CD-R.

The Good Vivienne Westwood

I fell in love with Rebecca Turbow’s Safe Clothes two years ago when I was roped up in Chelsea and known as the only guy on Hudson Street who ate at hot dog stands and Wendy’s. Inspired by Courregès and Mod fashions, Turbow hyped her own, New York-based line by hedging all her bets on guerilla marketing. And so, as soon as she graduated from MassArt, Rebecca hit the Williamsburg pavement as a self-sartorialized scenester.

Eventually, everyone from Manhattan’s hipster elite to the New York Post took notice. It’s not hard to imagine why…

Now a wee 24, Rebecca has her almost entirely turquoise and white haute projects going viral all over Pitchfork-y indie bands, which has made her into something of a contemporary, talented version of Vivienne Westwood. Check her MySpace (speaking of Pitchfork-y things) and you’ll see that Turbow has designed custom outfits for Japanther, Tilly and the Wall, Islands, Lizzy Yoder (formerly of Fischerspooner), and New Idea Society. Whether you’re into this scene or not (I’m not), you have to marvel at the bi-chromatic hegemony of Safe. It really is one of the most beautiful lines for practical wear that New York has seen since la fin du dernier siècle.

Turbow’s most recent work, commisioned for a musical artist, has gone to Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes. And, fortunately, you’ve got an opportunity to see it for yourself.

You can catch Safe Clothes in motion, tonight, on Late Night With Conan O’Brien (12:35am EST, NBC), where Barnes will be fronting Of Montreal in a custom outfit designed by Rebecca Turbow.

Also, check the Safe store from time to time in search of some money deals.

MUSIC FOR THE DAY

I love coupling my fashion posts with music that fashion people would hate. A couple weeks ago, I got back into Raging Slab, who were kind of a proto-stoner rock band whose adventurous playing ended up in out-of-print obscurity. Despite all its members coming from the Northeast, Raging Slab made kickass, blown out trucker music that, were it coming out today, would probably blow away fans of the Southern Lord sound. For mainstream context, know that the band’s music holds a kind of middle ground between Kyuss and Lynrd Skynrd, I guess. You get chunky riffs, stadium rock vocals, and bottleneck slide guitar from a chick in a cowboy hat. It’s pretty sweet.

“Don’t Dog Me” from 1991’s Raging Slab.

Crisis on Earth-Two Solved: Knut Lives!

In Earth-Two news, Darkseid has just declared Apokolips a free and democratic state, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has instructed his country’s scientists to cease their flirtations with nuclear technologies, the Injustice Gang has converted its clandestine headquarters into a public library, Osama Bin Laden has renounced violence as a parallel power to political authority, Damon Albarn and Noel Gallagher have patched over their differences, Roger Ebert has given thumbs up to a Vincent Gallo film, Gotham City has been declared crime free, an investigative report by Maury Povich has awarded the custody of Daniellyn Smith to her real father, people have stopped pretending to understand/like The Cremaster Cycle, Green Lantern Kyle Rayner has reassumed the mantle of Ion and used its powers to travel back in time and rescue Jade from certain death during the Rann-Thanagar War, the production of Vanilla Coke has resumed, Sophia Coppola is dead, and the IMF has reached an agreement in principle with the government of Eritrea to begin feeding the world’s last three malnourished human beings as a part of its new universal living standards program. Oh, and Thierry Henry just finished off a hat trick, in extra time, to give Arsenal the European Cup. Basically, it’s a utopia.

Why? Because, on Earth-Two, everyone has seen this:

OMG SO CUTE!!!