Culture – Page 14 – Nicolas Demers

Pride Movie Night

This event, part of Vancouver Pride Week, and taking place on July 29^th, featured two excellent—and locally-made!—documentaries.

she’s a boy i knew

This film by Gwen Haworth chronicles her transition from male to female over the course of several years. It uses her own narration, as well as interviews with her parents, sisters and ex-wife along with old photos and home movies of her family, to weave a brutally honest and moving story. She takes us through every step of her (complex, often frustrating) transition process and, without judging, lets her loved ones express their feelings and concerns, in their own words.

The movie’s message (at least, what I got from it) is that finding and accepting yourself is hard work, but definitely worth it in the end. It looks like Gwen is now closer to her parents and siblings than she had ever been as Steven. And her mother was there with her at the screening. How awesome is that?

Beyond Gay: The Politics of Pride

I love this flag, no matter how many tchotchkes it’s been made into

These are the words of Ken Coolen, current President of the Vancouver Pride Society, in this documentary on Pride movements around the world: Vancouver (yay!), Toronto, New York, Sao Paulo, Warsaw and Moscow. It brings home the fact that while we’ve got it easy in Vancouver (and Toronto, and New York, and…) there are many parts of the world where waving a rainbow flag runs a real risk of getting you beat up, or worse. There are 70 countries where homosexuality is illegal, including a few carrying the death penalty.

Even when it doesn’t, things aren’t exactly rosy. Warsaw’s parade attracts a couple of thousand people (as of 2007), and at least that many police officers, to protect them from some really scary (nationalist/hard-right Catholic) protesters. Moscow has similar anti-gay forces, except that their parades are illegal. Mayor Lushkov has consistently denied Moscow Pride a parade permit, which forces them to sneak about and perform quick public actions (though with lots of media present). Things are changing, though. The police still does arrest marchers, but they’re not as rough and don’t detain arrestees as long. So that’s progress, and it’s thanks to a few score incredibly brave, incredibly stubborn individuals.

A couple of segments looked back on our history: Ken interviewed one participant of the Stonewall Riots, as well as Gilbert Baker (creator of the rainbow flag, and one of three Grand Marshalls in our 2008 parade). It’s easy to think that the old queer revolutionary spirit is gone, what with the relentless partying around Pride Week, the massive sponsorship and commercialisation. But no, it’s not gone: witness the hilarious (and unofficial) New York Drag March, witness InterPride, where Ken initially connected with many of the people we saw in this film; witness efforts in Vancouver events to put our rights and privileges in perspective, with (e.g.) posters on Vancouver/Canadian queer history at the Pride Picnic, as well as a map showing how queers are treated worldwide.

And it’s easy to think that these parades are pretty pointless, except as huge parties and billboards for corporations eager to court the queer dollar. But hey, there’s more to Pride than this. It’s about visibility, and empowerment, and connection. Ken argues that Pride marches/parades are not the end, but a step on the road to true equality and human rights. And that the rainbow flag—overexposed though it is, maybe—has meaning, beyond just a pretty pattern to put on your bath towel.

I’m not as cynical as I used to be, back when I stayed away from the parade altogether. But even when I went back to watch, and later participate, I think I was missing something, and now I know what it is: a sense of perspective. About where Vancouver Pride fits in the grand scheme of things, and how yours truly, with VGVA, fits in Vancouver Pride. Food for thought, definitely. And, a renewed belief in the value of the parade.

Nikolai Alekseev, founder of Moscow Pride, was one of the special guests at the screening, and will be one of this year’s parade Grand Marshalls. After the screening I plunked down $5 for a lovely Moscow Pride ’06 keychain (which they were selling to raise funds). It’s the least I can do; gawd knows it’s not like they’ve got corporate sponsors!

Movie Review: The Last Airbender

Against my better judgment I went to see The Last Airbender. Ohmygod, that was bad. I blame the heat wave and needing to spend an afternoon in an air-conditioned theatre. Plus, let’s be honest, a sick train-wreck curiosity. I just had to see if the movie was as bad as everybody said.

I loved the original TV show. It had a great story, well-developed characters, cool mythology, amazing visuals and exciting action. This movie… has none of that. The acting is sub-par, the martial arts and special effects are just about decent, the writing is awkward and painfully expository, the characters are boring and one-dimensional, with none of the zip and fun of the TV show. Shyamalan claims to be a fan, so I hear, but nothing about this movie tells me he really respects the source material. None of what made the show really come alive was translated to the big screen.

Part of the problem, I’ll admit, is that Shyamalan decided to condense all of season one into 1 hour and 45 minutes of movie. Fair enough, I guess, though it does mean dropping a lot of excellent characters and world-building, not to mention development of the characters that remain. The Kyoshi warriors? King Bumi? the “sexyfine” Haru? Jet? Jeong Jeong? Bato? The mechanist community? Master Pakku? Avatar Roku? Fucking Koh the Face Stealer? All gone, sorry. Gone also is the chemistry between Aang and Katara, gone is Katara’s growth into Team Mom and badass waterbending fighter, gone is Iroh’s sweetness and coolness, gone is most of the world’s mythology, the Avatar’s history and their relationship with the spirit world.

What’s left? The bare bones of the first season story arc: the premiere (Aang is found and captured, escapes, and head north with Sokka and Katara, pursued by Zuko and Zhao); a bit of The Southern Air Temple, where Aang deals with the loss of all his friends and his culture; a bit of Imprisoned, which begins a fairly irrelevant subplot of the Gaang fomenting rebellion in Earth Kingdom villages; most of The Blue Spirit, where Aang is captured by Zhao and broken out by Zuko; and the finale, where the Fire Nation attacks the Northern Water Tribe city (more about that later). In between all that we get told some of Aang and Zuko’s backstories, in flashbacks and amazingly awkward exposition.

What’s also left, of course, is the magical kung fu, but that mostly falls flat. The FX are competently done, and so are the martial arts (I guess; I’m not an expert), but together they just don’t work. The connection between physical movements and elemental effects are broken because for some reason, Benders need to do various moves for a few seconds (to “warm up” their ch’i, I guess) before anything happens. These moves are usually too quick and small to really look good on screen. The end result isn’t cool, it’s not pretty, it’s just really distracting. Maybe it was a mistake to translate an animated show to live action, or maybe a better director could have made it work, I don’t know.

Shyamalan’s failure as a writer is most obvious in the climactic battle between the Fire Nation and the Northern Water Tribe: almost all of the amazingly epic scenes in the series were either left out of the movie, or simply ruined. Not just done badly: done wrong. Zhao killing the Moon Spirit, Iroh unloading a can of whoop-ass, Yue’s sacrifice, Aang saving the day, Zhao’s death, every single one of them was a middle finger aimed at the fans. I honestly can’t understand how Shyamalan could think his changes are an improvement on the series. I’ll just highlight a couple:

In the TV series, Yue’s farewell scene was touching and wonderfully done. She becomes the new Moon Spirit, ascending to a higher plane of existence, and even has time for a final ethereal kiss with Sokka. In the movie she just… dies. Her life energy flows into the Koi fish, and her body stays floating in the pool. Lame.

In the TV series, Aang merges with the Ocean Spirit to lay some righteous smackdown on the Fire Nation fleet, in an awesome spectacle that combined stunning visuals, lovely music, and epic action. In the movie, Aang was never near the spirit pool. But that’s okay, I thought, he doesn’t need the Ocean Spirit. Yeah, he’s in the Avatar State now, that’s awesome! And summoning a tidal wave, like he almost did a couple of times before. He wasn’t ready then, but “water is the element of acceptance,” so let your emotions flow, and unleash all your rage and grief at the Fire Nation fleet!

…

… any minute now…

…

No? You’re just going to… hold it there? Oh, you’re waiting for the fleet to turn and run? Huh. Okay. I was hoping for some epic kickassery, but whatever floats your boat, I guess.

The movie ends with Aang accepting his destiny and the Firelord expositing about Sozin’s comet, thus setting up the rest of the trilogy. But with the horrible reviews this movie’s getting I’d be very surprised to see the sequel. Good thing, too. The last thing I want to see is Shyamalan fucking up Toph, Azula, Zuko’s change(s) of heart, and all the shadowy, creepy plots in Ba Sing Se.

Mind you, if he does make that movie, I have a feeling I might go see it. Because I am weak that way. Though if it’s any comfort, I promise I’ll feel really bad about it.

You Can’t Take The Sky From Me

Hey, who’d have thought I’d be back at the planetarium so soon?

This Saturday I went to Can’t Stop The Serenity, a fundraiser by the BC Browncoats to benefit Equality Now and the BC Women’s Hospital & Health Centre.

Hey, who’d have thought I’d be back at the planetarium so soon?

This Saturday I went to Can’t Stop The Serenity, a fundraiser by the BC Browncoats to benefit Equality Now and the BC Women’s Hospital & Health Centre. There was a silent auction, an evil laughs contest, and a whole lot of Whedon- and Firefly-related things to watch. Including a few costumes, though not as many as I expected. There was a fair number of Jayne hats, a group of three people (including at least one girl) dressed as cowboys (i.e.: Bad Horse’s chorus), and one woman dressed like a Vulcan in a blue TOS uniform. Huh. Didn’t see that coming. But I’ll say this for the Firefly/Serenity crowd, they’re pretty ecumenical. The auction items ranged all over the sci-fi spectrum, from an awesome foot-high plush Dalek to signed Stargate: Atlantis posters.

First up was Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. I actually hadn’t watched it in its entirety in a long time, which is a shame because it’s a damn good story with damn good songs. (Usually I just watch “Brand New Day” because it’s catchy and evil Neil Patrick Harris is fucking sexy. Well, sexier.)

Browncoats: Redemption is a fan-made film set shortly after the events of Serenity, and starring the crew of yet another freelance transport. It’s got a neat plot, so-so acting, and crappy special effects, but hey, I’m not going to make a big deal about that.

We also watched Whedon’s acceptance speech, from when he received an award from Equality Now (“Honoring Men on the Front Line”) back in 2006. And… okay, I’m going to be contrary here, but this is what I think:

Whedon isn’t all that. There, I said it.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, he’s done some good TV. I love Buffy (well, mostly the first 3 seasons, though it only started sucking in seasons 6 and 7) and quite liked Angel though I kind of lost interest about halfway through. Firefly is hella fun, though there’s a lot more style than substance. And I fucking adore Dr. Horrible. (Never watched Dollhouse.)

But his Equality Now acceptance speech really got my dander up. The way he went on and on about creating strong female characters seemed incredibly smug and self-congratulatory. Buffy is strong, yes, in that she can beat up any living creature and most nonliving ones. But when you get right down to it I don’t see how that makes her really special, or even especially feminist. It certainly doesn’t make her revolutionary, because William Moulton Marston has Whedon beat by 50 years.

Not to mention that whatever character development Buffy had was absolutely demolished in the later seasons, what with her creepily abusive relationship with Spike, turning into a one-dimensional cold bitch to the Potential Slayers, Brother Caleb’s over-the-top (and not in a good way) misogyny, and here’s the kicker: discovering that Slayer power really came from primordial male wizards, who created the original Slayer in a weird act of magical borderline rape. Wow, way to crap on seven years’ worth of female-centered mythos there, Joss.

The only comparable characters (that I know of) in his other shows are the badass warrior Zoe, and—here’s a better match—River, who rather like Buffy is a small, harmless-looking girl that had her powers thrust upon her against her will (in this case, nasty medical experiments). Huh. Never saw that pattern before.

No, I don’t think Whedon was trying to make any kind of statement with Buffy, or any of his later characters. I think he just lucked into a character that (with great writing and a fine supporting cast) got picked up as a feminist icon. That said, I’ll give him props for:

Being a feminist man, and using his fame to campaign for women’s equality. It is a big deal, in real life as well as fiction.
Being brutally honest. In his speech, one of his many answers to “Why do you always write these strong women characters?” was “because it’s hot”. (Incidentally, Marston’s bondage fetish formed a big part of the early Wonder Woman mythos).
Writing at least one series with something close to gender parity. Of Firefly’s 9 main characters, 4 are women. Actually, since the two who died in Serenity were men, that brings us to a female majority. A nice variety of characters, too, from the hardened warrior to the sweet wrench-wielding nerd to the crazy psychic dancing timebomb, to the—oh, let’s be honest, Inara is 100% fetish fuel.

Well, enough contrariness. Sorry, had to get that off my chest. I really did have a great time Saturday, and I’ll be sure to go next year.

Northern Voice 2010

So, Northern Voice: the annual blogging and social media conference, held this year at UBC’s beautiful Life Sciences Centre. It was my first time; in fact I only heard about this event a few weeks ago. It sounded like a great time, and it truly was: two days of learning, nerdery and camaradery! I met some amazing people, attended talks and workshops for all tastes, from the technical to the social to the political to the academic, and overall basked in the presence of my fellow bloggers.

And that was the biggest thrill of all. No blogger is an island, but the fact is I have been pretty isolated, since day one. Sure, I’ve followed a lot of blogs, read a few books and so on, and they’ve taught me all I know. But the flow has always been one-way. I wasn’t interacting with the authors online, let alone in person. But here I was, not just learning but dialoguing and connecting.

And it took me out of my comfort zone, in other ways: I knew very few people there, which was uncomfortable since I’m not the most outgoing guy around (more on that later). However, I did meet up with a couple of people I knew on Twitter, so that was all right. And even by myself, I could dip into the Twitter stream, drink in everybody else’s posts, and once in a while see one of mine retweeted.

Here are some of my thoughts on the talks I attended.

Day One Keynote Speaker: Bryan Alexander

And we’re off! I found this speech kind of rambly, as it meandered back and forth between storytelling, mystery, and how social media are misrepresented in mainstream media. That’s okay, though, because Bryan Alexander is a fantastic speaker, engaging and funny, working the crowd without any PowerPoint slides. A great way to start the conference!

Gov 2.0: Social Media in Canadian Government

How involved is government in social media? The answer, at least at the federal and provincial level, seems to be: not much. Politicians are generally terrified of any risk of “gotcha” journalism, and civil servants are usually set in their ways and don’t want to use newfangled tools. And citizens are left out in the cold, unable to more efficiently engage with the people representing them. Vancouver, however, is a lot more open with its data. The speakers also made the excellent point that it’s not about the tools, but the process. Really using social media means more than just slapping a wiki here or a twitter account there, it means a fundamental rethinking of the entire process of governing and decision-making.

Good Science: It Takes An (Online) Village

Kids today know more about Pokémon than biodiversity. What’s the solution? If you said, “how about a science-based trading card game, to both educate and entertain?” then David Ng is way ahead of you. Behold, Phylo! What an awesome idea!

Finding Your Voice

What do you write about? And how do you write it? That’s something I’m still struggling with, even after years of blogging. Could Monica Hamburg show me the way? Well, sort of. Her main point was, simply “be yourself.” The hard part about that is I to know the self that I’m being. Also that it’s okay to suck at first, and to be unknown. It gives you freedom to experiment. Good stuff, and encouraging to someone who still feels like a beginner at this whole writing thing.

The nuts and bolts of SEO

Kind of interesting, but mostly focused on commercial blogs. Alexandre Brabant gave some numbers on ideal post length and keyword seeding which I’ve forgotten now, and don’t really apply to this here personal blog. On the other hand, they may be useful for other projects I’ve got going on…

Overcoming Social Anxiety

Kimli rocks! Oh, I could totally tell how nervous she was during her talk, but then I would be too. She was powerfully frank about her social anxiety, how it used to cripple her life, and gave some tips on how to deal with it. Basically: events like Northern Voice are pretty good for introverts, since the attention will be on the speakers and not yourself; don’t be intimidated by Big Name Bloggers, since none of us are cooler than others, no matter how many hits we get on our blogs or how many times we’ve been interviewed by the CBC.

She had a few more pieces of advice (you can see her slides here), but that’s mostly what I took out of her talk. I’m still working on the whole no-intimidation thing. And on most of the other stuff, to be honest.

Incidentally: those Justin Bieber masks in her slides are CREEPY with a capital CREEP.

Social Media Buffet

As the name implies, this is a half-dozen little parallel workshops on various technical issues. None of the day’s remaining talks really appealed to me, so I hung out in the atrium and got a bit of free web design and WordPress advice.

Day 2 Keynote Speaker: Chris Messina

Chris is a long-time open web and open source advocate; also, the inventor of the Twitter hash tag. That makes him okay in my book. His speech (also done without PowerPoint!) was focused on the future of the Web, or at least a possible, dark future: with more and more consumer products like the iPad or WebTV discouraging use of the address bar, and with corporations always trying to clamp down on content, people will simply surf in the channels chosen for them. This will lead to a fractured, bland Web. It’s a sobering but not depressing speech; that future doesn’t have to happen, if people like Chris (and you and me) can work to avoid it.

How To Do Good on the Web

Mahatma Gandhi said: “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” But what does that mean? What is good? And how do you do “good” online? Darren Barefoot, in this funny and inspiring talk, gives a few answers. Doing good on the Web, he says, can be as simple as clicking “Like” on something your really like on Facebook, or as complex as setting up something like Kiva.

He gave us a few practical ideas for doing good, such as Nabuur.com, which I’ve signed up for, and Procrasdonate, which I’ve installed on my browser. Should be interesting.

(Also, I think it’s during this talk that I installed Evernote, which totally rocks.)

Coping With Social Media

It’s addictive, isn’t it? There’s so much good stuff out there, a constant stream of tweets and posts and lovely information, that twenty-four hours aren’t enough to sample it all! How does one cope? Well, Alexandra Samuel argues, social media doesn’t have to be the problem. There are ways to make it work as a coping mechanism. For example, cleaning out your inbox can seem overwhelming, but it actually forces you to sort through your contacts, establish filters and rules, and make some hard decisions about what you let in. Tough, but it’s transformative!

Location sharing sites

What’s interesting is that the producers of location-sharing services like Gowalla, Foursquare, etc… don’t have any idea what they’re really for. And apparently, neither do users. Are they games? Are they a way to mark your travels? Connect with other people? They can be all that and more.

Sometimes a lot more. Last month a 54-year old North Vancouver man was accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year old boy who he apparently tracked down through Grindr. This just goes to show the risks inherent in letting other people know your past or present whereabouts. Issues of privacy and personal risk will probably multiply now that Facebook is about to roll out geolocation.

Art and Social Media

I’m not an artist, but I loved the four speakers’ stories of using social media to find, and connect with, their audience. Mainly, it involves taking people behind the scenes, see part of the creative process, etc… That sort of thing is apparently very popular, and I see why. You get to connect with artists as people, not just producers of art. And who doesn’t love a good behind-the-scenes documentary?

I wonder if I could do something similar, for my occasional graphics design work. Who know, it might put me in a different mental space, and help the creative process. Gawd knows I could use some help with that, when it comes to graphics.

If Machiavelli and Montaigne Grew Mushrooms

And what better way to end the conference than with some high-falutin’ abstract talks on the principles of social media?

Dave Cormier started us out by connecting Socrates, Machiavelli and Montaigne, how they related to books, and how this can teach us about books and social media today. Now, Socrates hated books (which I guess were still kinda new in the 5th century BCE), because to him, the only real way to develop and communicate philosophical ideas was through personal discourse. Books not only froze ideas, but broke the entire discussion process. Machiavelli, however, loved his books. He wrote something to the effect that in his library, he could commune with the Ancients. Maybe Socrates was amongst those Ancients; if so, I don’t think he would have appreciated the irony. Montaigne also loved his books and went one step further by scribbling notes in them, actively dialoguing with the authors. Was it vandalism, or 16th century blogging? Montaigne saw that books were instruments of communication that were meant to be used, not venerated on a pedestal.

Tyranny of the moment… and the past. Future technology imagined in terms of the present. A lovely steampunk moment.

Thing is, Socrates was right. As necessary as books are, they do have their own tyranny. What can social media do about that? What sets them apart from traditional media is not the content, but the connection between bits of content, and between reader and author. This is the metaphor of the rhizome, connected shoots that have no centre, like knowledge spreading out in all directions.

Though, not to be pedantic, I don’t think mushrooms fit the metaphor. Unless they all grow rhizomes. But whatever, the alliteration’s nice.

Jon Beasley-Murray’s talk, “Knowledge 3.0”, was depressing and frustrating. He saw a drop in the level of critical thinking and quality of education offered by universities and newspapers, and essentially blamed social media for it. Okay, I’m putting words in his mouth, I know. He never actually said anything more than social media being “complicit” in this process, but he never discussed any other factors. The democratisation and physical scattering of knowledge and education is a complex thing, and may cause problems of its own, but I’m convinced that social media is not to blame for sloppy education and news. Correllation is not causation.

So that was a bit of a sour note. But everything else was gold. I can’t wait for next year!

Old poetry brought to life

Excellent post to cap off National Poetry Month, right? This is a clip of Natalie Merchant singing a selection of songs from her latest album; all the songs in this album are adapted from old poems.

Ghosts, right? They have nothing to say to us… obsolete, gone… Not so! What I really enjoyed about this project was reviving these people’s words, taking them off the dead, flat pages, bringing them to life.

Excellent post to cap off National Poetry Month, right? This is a clip of Natalie Merchant singing a selection of songs from her latest album, Leave Your Sleep; all the songs in this album are adapted from old poems.

My favourites in this video are Charles Edward Carryl’s The Sleepy Giant (00:15) and E.E. Cummings’ maggie and milly and molly and may (8:00). I’ve purchased the whole album from iTunes, and I’m sure I’ll have more favourites before long.

Movie Review: Clash of the Titans (2010)

Well, now I totally want to play God of War and Dante’s Inferno…

A nice little movie, following in the original’s mix-and-match approach to Greek mythology, though adding the whole “rage against the heavens” plotline. Pretty entertaining, with some nice special effects, though a couple of fight scenes did those annoying rapid-fire cuts that actually hide the action, which action-movie editors seem so fond of these days.

I’m not going to compare this movie with the 1981 original; all I’m going to say is that they’re equally cheesy, both having shallow storylines and an overreliance on fancy effects. Still, they’re both fun, so I’m not complaining.

Now that the party’s over…

And, just like that, the 2010 ~~Spring~~ Winter Olympics are done.

Frankly, I’m not missing them. The choppers flying around day and night, the road closures, the crowds, the noise… It could have been worse, though. I could be living right next to one of the venues.

And, just like that, the 2010 ~~Spring~~ Winter Olympics are done.

And I realise I probably would have felt differently if I’d gotten more in the Olympic spirit. And don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed some of the events, but overall I wasn’t as flag-wavingly fanatical as some of my friends who put up a Canadian flag on their Facebook profile, or spent every hour of every day watching the events, and who are now all going on about Olympic withdrawal.

Here’s what I enjoyed: first, watching a friend of mine run with the Olympic torch.

Second, the opening ceremony, which I’ve already blogged about. It managed to stir some patriotic pride in me, which I hadn’t felt in a long time.

After that, I followed the events somewhat, though never live (I’ll say this for CTV, their dedicated Olympic site kicks a lot of ass. I did cheer for Alexandre Bilodeau, our first gold medalist of the season; I cheered and wept with Joannie Rochette; I high-fived strangers on the street whenever we won a medal, and sometimes when we didn’t. And on Sunday, though we were supposed to play volleyball, the director agreed to let us listen to the hockey game live on the radio. I totally didn’t mind. Go Canada!

What else? Well, I did the tourist thing in my own city, and checked out the mint and cauldron, and Vectorial Elevation, and the cauldron again. Swung by to visit a few of the houses (such as Maison du Québec and Place de la francophonie) but those places aren’t really touristy places to visit, they’re to hang out in and drink and watch the games.

Oh, and I went to see Laurie Anderson’s show Deluded. That was… pretty fucking surreal. Which I expected, of course, so it’s all good.

And… that’s about it, really. I caught part of the closing ceremony online; that wasn’t nearly as impressive as the opening ceremony. Besides the nice pomp and circumstance, and an Olympic anthem I could actually understand (and a Russian anthem that kicked so much fracking ass), there wasn’t much that really grabbed me. Michael J. Fox is made of awesome, as are William Shatner and Neil Young, but the rest? All those cutesy self-deprecating jokes? Meh. Also, John Furlong should never, ever try to speak French again. Ever. The live feed died about halfway through, and after a couple minutes’ trying I gave up.

Though I will tell you, my heartstrings were tugged at the end of Young’s Long May You Run, when the torch just… went out. And I though, Oh, wow, it’s really over.

Okay, I admit it. Part of me will miss the games. But you gotta move on, right? I just hope all our guests left with a good impression of Vancouver. And, congratulations to our Canadian athletes. First in gold and third in overall medal count? Awesome.

The Olympic Opening Ceremony

It was not a nice day. The weather was cool and overcast, predicted to rain in the evening. Which it did, but that didn’t stop me from going down to David Lam Park in Yaletown to watch the opening ceremony. My jacket had a hood and was waterproof, but I could have used a layer or two more. At the end I was starving, shivering, and my legs and neck were killing me.

It was totally worth it. The ceremony was beautiful and stirring, a wonderful showcase of our country’s culture and diversity that, dammit, made you proud to be Canadian!

But it was totally worth it. The ceremony was beautiful and stirring, a wonderful showcase of our country’s culture and diversity that, dammit, made you proud to be Canadian!

The bad: the embarrassing mechanical hiccup at the end, cheating Catriona Le May Doan out of her part in lighting the cauldron. Boy, someone’s head is gonna roll over that.

And Nikki Yanofsky’s rendition of O Canada was incredibly annoying. She’s a great singer, but the anthem doesn’t need all those frills, which messed up everybody who tried to sing along. Though I appreciated that she switched between French and English.

(Come to think of it, the whole ceremony was very bilingual, with all announcements and introductions done in French first, but the countries were introduced in alphabetical order according to their English names. Usually that doesn’t matter, but then you’ve got Netherlands vs. Pays-Bas, or Uzbekistan vs. Ouzbékistan.)

The meh: Nelly Furtado and Bryan Adams’ duet. The song was alright, I guess, but I’m not a fan of those two. Also leaving me cold was Measha Brueggergosman’s rendition of the Olympic Hymn. Sorry, she’s got some incredible pipes, but I couldn’t understand a word she was singing. I could tell some parts were in English and others in French, but that’s about it. I’m not even sure she wasn’t sneaking other languages in there.

The awesome: pretty much everything else, really. The First Nations greeting and dance was stunning, Ashley MacIsaac kicked so much ass, and k.d. lang blew me away. Not to mention the outstanding visual effects, with the whales, and the breaking ice, and the trees, and the audience participation, and the… everything.

So hey, I finally caught the Olympic spirit!

What I Used To Write

Talk about a blast from the past. A few months ago my folks found a few binders full of notes and writings from long ago, and asked me to take a look at it before throwing it out. What a find!

Talk about a blast from the past. A few months ago my folks found a few binders full of notes and writings from long ago, and asked me to take a look at it before throwing it out. What a find! The treasure trove includes:

Some printouts of my finished short stories, written around 1994, plus 2/3 of the final version of my first novel (finished 1992). Plus the maps that went with the novel. Can’t have a cool fantasy novel without maps, dontchaknow.
Notes and drafts for two more short stories, which I finished but don’t have the final versions of anymore; reams of notes on poems and various half-finished projects; all written 1994–1995
A dream journal I kept up for a few months in ’94. A self-hypnosis journal around the same time
Drafts of my Web site (first online in September 1995). Including notes of me learning HTML, and printouts of some of the pages.
Notes about my evolving spirituality—not beliefs, because at that time I was sliding into agnosticism, but playing around with symbols, rituals and made-up mythology.
Various odds and ends: a couple pages of quotes I really liked; episode guides to Star Trek: TNG and Space: 1999 for some reason; notes on an unsent letter to Phil Farrand, with feedback on nits he missed and criticism of his occasional heterosexist attitude; a map for an AD&D campaign I briefly DM’d sometime in the mid-80’s. The overall plotline, IIRC, was “inspired” (by which I mean, “ripped off”) from Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné and Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant; maps and world-building notes for another AD&D campaign, a couple of years later, that I never got to play in.

I’m throwing most of it away. The story notes, the poetry? Gone. The dream and self-hypnosis journals? Outta here. The novel? Recycled (no, I don’t have a soft copy). The Web site drafts? Like you really need to ask.

Let’s be honest here, aside from the very temporary nostalgia value, I’ve got no reason to reread any of this stuff. It’s coming at me from long ago and far away, and is pretty well irrelevant. There’s nothing useful this motley assortment of words can give me. I haven’t written fiction or poetry in over ten years, and have no particular desire to pick it up again. I haven’t played D&D since the early ’90’s, and likewise don’t miss it. And if the journal isn’t helping me remember any of these dreams from 15 years ago, what good is it?

And, with all due respect to my younger self: my prose and poetry was mostly crap. I mean, there’s a reason why I never tried to publish any of it, with one exception. The novel was mediocre clichéd sword-and-sorcery fantasy, the shorts were a little better but mostly written for myself as creativity exercises, and the poems… okay, some of them weren’t bad. I put a few up on my site for a while, back in the day. But still, nothing to write home about, and I took them down when I began blogging more regularly.

The self-hypnosis stuff… yeah. I was trying so hard to deal with my many issues, and figure out where my life was going, but I didn’t really know how to go about it. I was so used to living inside my own head anyway, so this seemed like a good idea. In hindsight, it proved mostly just a lot of mental masturbation. I say “mostly” because I did get a couple of useful insights and actions out of it. I guess it was a bit like cognitive therapy, except without a trained professional.

The spirituality stuff was more interesting, but even then (late ’95–early ’96) pretty much on the decline. I’d gone through my my kinda-Pagan phase and was sliding into agnosticism, then atheism. None of these made-up rituals and things were ever that useful—see “mental masturbation” above—and I eventually dropped them by late ’97 (after I started identifying as atheist, but that’s a whole ‘nother story).

Still…

Still, in a more or less direct way, it’s all got me to where I am now. That first site evolved over many iterations, leading to this here blog, plus giving me the skills and confidence to branch out in the last year. Those fantasy stories got me used to putting words on paper or computer screen, which led to articles in student papers, and eventually this blog.

Doesn’t mean I need to spend much time navel-gazing, fun though it could be. It’s a brand new day, a brand new year, and I need to look forward, not backward. I’ll just take a few select pieces that have real sentimental value, and move on.

Game Review: Batman: Arkham Asylum

I’d heard the hype about this game, and eventually got to play the first few chapters at a friend’s place. I was so hooked that I decided to rent a disc and console so I could play it for myself. Everything about it is excellent, from the graphics to the gameplay to the story. Everything.

That was absolutely awesome.

For one, the voice acting is first-rate: Batman, Joker and Harley Quinn are played by the same excellent actors as in the 90’s Batman animated series (oh, how I missed Mark Hamill’s demented giggles, and Arleen Sorkin cooing “Pudd’n”!). The other voices—Bane, Scarecrow, Riddler, Poison Ivy, Killer Croc, Commissioner Gordon, Oracle—are also all great. Hell, even the generic batarang-fodder henchmen sell their lines pretty well.

The visuals are beautifully done, from the brooding asylum grounds, to the oppressive Victorian architecture, to the crumbling sewers, and every environment is full of little details that add to the gloomy Gothic atmosphere. Batman’s hi-tech armor and toys looked very nice too.

The game controls are quite complex, and there’s no tutorial as such. That’s okay, though: the game introduces elements gradually enough—moving, looking around, fighting, etc…—that before you know it you’ll be tossing out Twin Batarangs with the best of them. All you have to do is remember which button does what. As for the upgrade system, it’s pretty cool, but I didn’t find that it gave you a lot of room to customise: in the end you’ll have pretty much all available skills, it’s just a question of which to get first. (hint: “Inverted Takedown” is the shiznit.)

Replay value? I’ve only gone through the game one and a half times so I can’t say for sure, but I could probably play it a couple more times, if only to see what the “Hard” difficulty level is all about. Also, I could try out some of the more advanced fighting techniques, and see how much of the bonus material I could get my hands on. On my one complete playthrough I only discovered about half the trophies and unlockable extras, including just under half of Arkham’s Chronicles.

Which brings me to the story. On the surface, it’s pretty simple: Joker and Harley Quinn have taken control of the asylum, and Batman must save staff and other innocents, all the while figuring out the Clown Prince of Crime’s true intentions. It’s an engaging story, bringing together many characters from the Batman universe. The writers’ love for the mythos is evident in the little details, like the iconic clatter of pearls when Batman, hallucinating on Scarecrow’s fear gas, is forced to relive his parents’ murder. And Harley Quinn telling a captive Jim Gordon, “Mama spank!”. Plus, nods to sillier villains like Scarface and Calendar Man.

But there’s more. A lot of the extra world building was clearly inspired by the graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Dave McKean in 1989. It’s the kind of deliciously trippy mind-fuck only Morrison can deliver, delving deep into Lewis Carroll, Jung, Crowleyian magic and other esoteric themes, yet (at least to me) never crossing the line into random pseudo-profound mystical babble. In this story, Batman is presented as hardly more sane than the Joker and other inmates, and Arkham as a cursed house, fed and made strong by the constant flow of violently insane souls.

The “chronicles” hidden throughout the game are each short chapters in the journal of Amadeus Arkham, founder of the Asylum. From what I’ve seen (ie: the first half) it’s not too different from the original Morrison story—toned down, because this is an action-adventure game, and players don’t want to spend too much time hearing about Crowley and the Tarot and whatnot—but still pretty darn creepy and disturbing. And though they only show up in Scarecrow-induced hallucinations, the game does drop a few nice hints that Batman has, shall we say, issues.

I wish I’d found all of Arkham’s chronicles, though, because I want to see how this version of the story ends. Forget defeating the Joker, I want to know about the Asylum’s history!

So, to recap: fantastic game. It’s fun, challenging, full of atmosphere and details that show deep love for the Batman mythos. Definitely a keeper. And hey, they’re making a sequel!