Rebel Matters 240 – Série Pandémique – Leaf Encounters of the Steeped Kind

Tea Being Poured (AI generated image i made just for this podcast)

At the end of January, Special K and I went to the Toronto Tea Festival.    The last time we were there was February 2020.   It’s the first time it has been held since the pandemic started.    Speaking of the pandemic, we are still in it as I post this episode in February 2023.    It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost three years since the pandemic was declared, but here we are.   I know, you possibly think it’s over.  Maybe you’re not wearing a mask anymore.  Anywhere.  Well, I still am.   Everywhere I go.   Five vaccine shots and one Covid infection later, I am still wearing my mask.   It was no different going to the tea festival.   The venue was very small.  And quite crowded.  Everyone there wanted to taste the best teas the world has to offer.  So, with the few exceptions where I tasted tea and talked to vendors, Special K and I kept our masks on.    The festival has been held annually except for 2021 and 2022 since, well, sources differ on when it first started, but it might have been 2014.    It is set up in what I think is too small a space for the number of people who attend, in the Toronto Reference Library steps
from one of the most famous intersections in Toronto – Yonge and Bloor.  

There were a total of 41 vendors at the festival and I started my journey at table 41 Daniel’s Chai Bar.  Daniel has even served tea to HRH King Charles III.    I asked him to share a few words for ninjaradio and then moved on to talk with Isabelle and Nickola who have what I can only describe as the smoothest teas I have ever tasted.   A more frothy mellow matcha latte I have never had.   

We then headed over to the David’s Tea booth where we chatted for a long time with Nadia, the Director of Sustainability for the company.  We were rather intrigued that a Tea company would have such a position defined.  But they are committed to fair trade and eco-responsibility.   They have a partnership with Teahorse.ca, a women led indigenous owned company out of Thunder Bay. The featured tea from this partnership is Manoomin Maple.  Manoomin is Ojibway for Wild Rice. 10% of the proceeds of their maple tea will go towards the David Suzuki Institute to support Indigenous communities.   

Finally, we tested the award winning Cream of Earl Grey at Blink Tea, where I had a chat with the President, Michael Prini.   It is astounding how many different types of tea there are and the history and rituals that surround them.  I’ve put some links in the show notes if you want to explore further.  Have a listen here to my conversations with experts in the field.    Enjoy the show. 

Listen here: HotFRM 240 35m59s 65.96mbs

AI Generated Tea Bag I Made (well not me, the AI)

Links:

Annual Toronto Tea Festival

Daniel’s Chai Bar

Seta Organics

Moringa

Cordyceps Mushroom

https://www.davidstea.com/ca_en/

https://www.davidstea.com/ca_en/steeping-together-podcast/

Indigenous owned from Thunder Bay:  Teahorse

David’s tea ethics, sourcing, and sustainability efforts:    https://www.davidstea.com/us_en/sustainability/

Michael Prini’s Blink Tea

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Rebel Matters 239 – Série Pandémique – In the Belly of a Beast

Black Obsidian – Volcanic Glass

When Special K and I stepped into the AGO in Sep 2022,  the dulcet tones of Jónsi, the Icelandic artist and singer/guitarist for the band Sigur Rós, reverberated in the hall. Drawn onward by the music I listened and poked my head into the dark room. The exhibit is called Obsidian in English and Hrafntinna (Hrawftinna) in Icelandic. The piece I was about to see is inspired by a volcanic eruption in 2021.  The text panel says that Jónsi ’s, “…work in the visual arts draws on the genre-blurring atmospheric effects of his music.”   In this installation, Jónsi  “…imagines the sensation of being inside a volcano…”  Also on the panel is a description of the installation:  “A single circular light stands in for the summit of the volcano.  A sixteen-channel audio composition resonates through 195 speakers; a sweet and smoky scent fills the air…”  In bold, the panel warns the participant that it features low lighting [which did take a few minutes to adjust to], scents, sound reverberations and occasional flashing lights. Visitors should exercise caution.”  It’s described on another panel as a “…sound installation…” with “…chandelier, speakers, subwoofers, carpet, and fossilized amber scent.”  

I take issue with the term “visitor”.   It is too immersive an experience to not be a participant.  I’m hoping my audio keeps to the spirit of what my experience was.   Let me explain further.   There is a video on the Art Gallery of Ontario website about the exhibit.   The audio in that video is very different from what I actually recorded.  The promotional video no doubt used many mics and professional mixing to convey the aural message the artist wanted.  I love the sound on that video – of course-  it’s Jónsi , but I like the sound my Zoom audio recorder captured too.  I lay back on a carpeted circular platform that others were laying back on, listening, watching the light show, and smelling the smoky scent.  The only mics were on my two ears in a particular position in the room.    As a participant, I felt the reverberations directly.  I hope the audio I captured achieves something close to that same experience, if you listen to it in a relaxed quiet location with headphones. You might just feel the rumble and explosions of the volcano.    You will hear what I heard, from my vantage point, using binaural earbuds, albeit, rendered digital. 

If you live in Toronto, or even if you don’t, I recommend this installation.    I can only provide an audio interpretation of what I experienced, and sound is only one aspect of it.   Missing is the darkness that surrounds the participants, the amber scent that evokes ash and fire, the sensations of a moving earth, and the light above, sometimes dark, sometimes bright, sometimes flashing.  We were after all, supposed to be inside the belly of the volcano.   It’s not clear when the exhibition leaves the Art Gallery of Ontario.   You’ll have to check the AGO website for that. 

Here’s the audio (Hotfrm239 – 24m05 44MBs):

Effusive eruption of Fagradalsfjall in Glendingadalir, Iceland 2021, photo credit:Arnar Kristjansson

Full Album: Jonsi’s Obsidian on Youtube

Rebel Matters 234 – Série Pandémique – Who Is Gentleman Jack and Why is There Such a Fuss About Her?

Dragon speaking virtually from Anne Lister’s Shibden Hall

My guest today is Dragon, a dear friend and Uber Fan of the British television Series Gentleman Jack.  The series is based on the actual diaries of the landowner Anne Lister, who lived in early 19^th century in Halifax, England.   She lived, as much as 19^th century England would allow, as an openly queer woman. There may be some debate about what queer means, but I would define it here as someone living against the expected gender roles and sexual norms of the time.  She documented, in her own secret code, her private  thoughts, opinions, and romantic escapades with a score of women.   At more than 26 volumes it is a fascinating chronicle of the life of a female landowner in a time when options open to women were extremely limited.    Dragon enlightens me on why Anne Lister’s story is so important to British history and what makes a Gentleman Jack fan. 

Listen to the show HotFRM234 (138Mb 59h08s)

Other things discussed:  Rhubarb Liqueur, Downton Abbey, Diversity in the entertainment arts, The sacrament – of marriage, English laws of landownership, epigenetics. 

Links to interesting resources: Halifax, England. Shibden Hall. Shibden After Dark Podcast. Out on the Street, a Toronto Gay Village Business. Gentleman Jack–The Real Anne Lister. Take a Virtual Tour of Shibden Hall.

TV Shows referenced: Last Tango in Halifax. Happy Valley. Scott and Bailey. Normal People. I May Destroy You.

Movies Referenced: Bound. Carol. Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

Authors Referenced: Jill Liddington. Helena Whitbread.

Rebel Matters 231 – Série Pandémique – No It’s Not Censorship

Shelter In Place, Physical Distance, and Wash your Hands Unless Otherwise Instructed

 

Last week a friend sent me a link to a removed YouTube video and the question, “Censorship?”  That sent me on a search for the video by Drs. Erickson and Massihi, two Californian physicians who want sheltering-in-place ended in their state.   The doctors provide unsubstantiated claims about the virus SARS-COV-2 and one even goes as far as suggesting that there will be gun violence about this issue.   This video is full of misinformation, pseudoscience, false hopes and fear-mongering.  You are free to watch it, do your own research and make up your own mind, but I give you this rant in any case on a sunny cool spring day during my lockdown. Let me know what you think.   (Have I ever said how much I love spring in Canada?)

Have a listen: (22m04s 52mb)

 

Show Notes and Links:

This Week in Virology  (Thanks to Okaexa, who alerted me to this site last month)

John Hopkins Medicine Site

What Canada’s Theresa Tam Has To Say About Herd Immunity

What Dr. Kurtsinger Has to Say About the Video

Another Opinion on the Video

The Video Taken Down by YouTube:  Bakersfield Doctors Dispute Need For Stay at Home Order

The Doctors’ medical practice:   Accelerated Urgent Care

If the video has been taken down again on NewTube, Let me know at hotfrm@gmail.com and I’ll give you another source.

Rebel Matters 230 – Do You Eat the Stickers Off Your Fruit?!

I don’t always drop my phone in the toilet, but when I do I put it in a bowl of rice

Listen to this episode (25mb 10m38s)

 

I read Life Hacks by Keith Brandon so that you don’t have to. There are 1000 so-called life hacks in this book. I share my review that is more of a rant against misinformation that Brandon is guilty of shamelessly spreading.

Extra Info you may want to know:

Link for hack number 317: “Daytime naps help to improve your memory and cut the risk of heart disease” can be found at ynquiz.com.

Link to my new favourite podcast:  Were you raised by wolves?

Link to the YouTube playlist builder:  https://www.youtube.com/disco

Despite the disclaimer that the author and publisher accept no responsibility for misadventure caused by following any of these hacks, this reader thinks that it is extremely irresponsible and unethical to publish this book without rigorous fact checking. There is no excuse for propagating false, incomplete, or misleading information. And the author shouldn’t be profiting from it. If he wanted to maximize his credibility, citing sources and proof would have helped. Save your money and time and skip this one altogether.

I cross-posted this review to https://www.goodreads.com/ so you can also see it there.  If you are interested in connecting with me on goodreads, my site on it at https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1169678-ninja

 

 

Rebel Matters 225 – Don’t Trust Steve Lazarides

Don’t Fall For It

Rebel Matters 225 (47mb 25:42)

I am an avid and passionate art appreciator.  If there is a genre or artist I like that’s being shown in my city (or anywhere I’m visiting), I’m in.   But I should have known better in this case.   I should have realized and read the fine print. I should have paid attention when posters read “unauthorized”.  As soon as I stepped into the Banksy Exhibit in Toronto, I saw it right away.   The so called 80 original pieces, were mostly photographs of Banksy attributed works taken in various cities.  At worst they were photographs of other people’s photographs.   There were very few original pieces.   I dutifully went through the spaces in the warehouse wondering whether anyone else was feeling the way I was.  Special K was feeling the same way.  So was Drag-On.   I asked Drag-On.  She didn’t want to talk about it in public.  I wanted to spread the word that we were all being ripped off.    Forty-four hard-earned dollars to see how an opportunist exploits someone else’s art for profit.   Well maybe it was partly my experience at the Yayoi Kusama exhibit. That was massively well attended and disappointing for many who wanted more time in her infinity rooms.  Now there’s someone who got the last laugh.  But that’s for an entirely different podcast.   Then there is the question of the theft of a piece of the art just three days before the opening.  Some are reporting that it was a hoax.  A publicity stunt to entice people into the show.  Well I don’t know. All I know is that I wasn’t expecting mounted photographs out of context.

I wonder if he is just using Toronto to see if it’s viable to take it elsewhere.  I guess we’ll find out at the end of the summer. This is just a money grab by Steve Lazarides,  So, please don’t waste your money if this hits your town.  Stay away.   Here is my sound scene audio of our visit to the event and how we reacted to it.   Enjoy or rather buyer beware.

People’s Names I forgot:  Samuel L. Jackson

Details I left out:   Everything I saw at the Banksy exhibit you can easily find, for just the price of your data provider, on the internet.

Titles of this show that ended up in the Bit Bucket: 

• Human Beings are Radically Flawed.
• The Gorillas are Already in Charge.
• I’ve been pwned

Here’s the link again:

Hot Fossils and Rebel Matters 222 – Photos of HAL. Not Permitted.

Star Child (Taken at the Kubrick Retrospective at TIFF Lightbox November 2014)

I am not an expert on these matters.   I merely know what I like and what I don’t like.   And though there were movies of his that I absolutely did not like, I cannot ignore the profound impact his movies have had on me.   I don’t know anyone who will deny, if they have seen the movie, that when they hear Also Sprach Zarathrustra or The Blue Danube they can think only of 2001 – A Space Odyssey.   There are those of us who saw A Clockwork Orange who will never be able to see it again because of its assault on our morality, senses, and emotions.   I have a friend who can’t listen to Beethoven’s 9^th, Ode to Joy, or the William Tell Overture anymore after seeing the movie without seeing the most vicious and disturbing scenes in her mind’s eye. We don’t understand what some of these movies were about but we simply cannot forget them. He arguably redefined the relationship of music to American film, camera work with American film, and even redefined how to tell a tale.   He turned the ghost story on its head with The Shining and confused us about war and violence with Full Metal Jacket. I am speaking of course about Stanley Kubrick, one of the greatest American filmmakers of all time. He made only sixteen movies in forty-eight years, three of which were documentary shorts made very early in his career. Fans waited eagerly for years between movies. Disappointed or not by what I saw, I know that there was great depth and thought put into every inch of film he shot. There is so much to say about him as a filmmaker, that I could probably study him for years and still not understand his films or his process.   But I cannot stop being compelled and drawn to his work.   In November 2014, the Toronto International Film Festival, mounted a retrospective of his work at the TIFF Lightbox location in Toronto. I eagerly attended and was surprised by the mashup curation of the main exhibit.   I got a new perspective on the man and his movies and learned about some I had yet to see.   My show today is separated into two parts. The first takes place in the main exhibit. I sometimes compete with the cacophony of music that surrounds me, and try to provide a sense of how the exhibit takes you through his body of work.   The second takes place in a quieter section of the exhibit where various people share their opinion on select works by this master.

The Twins Costume from The Shining (Taken at TIFF Lightbox – Kubrick Retrospective)

Listen here (53m24s) :

Download HotFRM222

The subtlely distrubing statements on war and violence in Full Metal Jacket (taken at TIFF Kubrick Retrospective Nov 2014)

Our Precarious Lives – A Review of Frames of War by Judith Butler

I’m In War by Uda Dennie

It took me more than two years to get through this book. I put it down after page 42 in 2012 because of its dense content and academic language. I am a fan of Judith Butler because she has some unique and thoughtful ways of looking at difficult questions. In this book of essays, (some of which she gave as lectures), she is looking at how we frame war and violence to justify it and give it meaning. She touches on how the media manipulates our emotions to reinforce or create our sentiments. This is not a new idea. Of course we all know the power of propaganda. But she has more to say about how we frame the idea of war so that we can bear its negative affects.

According to Judith Butler, each of our lives is “…always is some sense in the hands of others”.  She points out that we are nothing but social creatures that depend completely on each other for everything in our lives. And she means everything. From the survival of each infant born to the food on our plates to the infrastructure that provides the food on our plates including the plates. Each of our lives is necessarily dependent on others.  She makes a case that our global social entanglement shapes how we view each other as human beings. Or not. Consider that she makes this observation:

“…war [divides] populations into those who are grievable and those who are not. An ungrievable life is one that cannot be mourned because it has never lived…it has never counted as a life at all.”

In a war where the one side (say Hamas) stores armaments in schools, community centres, and houses of worship, the destruction of those armaments means that the people in those places, be they children, women, holy men or teachers do not have grievable lives. Their lives have and had no meaning because they were already dead before they were born. They are not alive and never were. We may believe that the people in those places are being used by the enemy as human shields. Therefore if the enemy does not give their own people the status of living beings worthy of being mourned, missed or valued, why should anyone else? So the bombing of these places becomes justifiable. Butler makes the entire idea of killing ludicrous when seen from this point of view. She is coming from the position that all human life, all interconnected on this planet, is grievable. Yet,we divide the world into those who are worthy of being grieved and those who are not. Otherwise we cannot justify war and violence. In one of her many brilliant statements she writes,

“…war seeks to deny the ongoing and irrefutable ways in which we are all subject to one another, vulnerable to destruction by the other, and in need of protection…[via]agreements based on the recognition of shared precariousness.”

She goes on to assert that “[w]ar is precisely an effort to minimize precariousness for some and maximize it for others.”

Apart from these ideas and some interesting discussion of the impact of media and photography, the essays for the most part left me cold and wanting. I was distressed by her use of language. For example, she uses the word alterity at one point when otherness would have made her point much more accessible. There are also statements and ideas that I found completely incomprehensible. For example, I could not make sense of this:

“The point is not to celebrate a full deregulation of affect, but to query the conditions of responsiveness by offering interpretive matrices for the understanding of war that question and oppose the dominant interpretations — interpretations that not only act upon affect, but take form and become effective as affect itself.”

If you can decipher this, I’d love to know what it means.

I was also shocked that she actually used the (non)-word irregardless (page 178 for anyone that cares). I will give her the benefit of the doubt and consider that an incompetent editor or grad student made the slip-up.

In matters of our global attitudes to war, violence, hatred, and non-tolerance, accessibility of her ideas is important for real change in my opinion. I am not sure she is interested in changing the world so much as she just wants to explore it philosophically and for the fun of it.

 

(note: this review, slightly edited, was cross-posted to Goodreads on Aug 31 2014)

Hot Fossils and Rebel Matters 218 – The Warship that Wasn’t

I’ve been away now for quite a few months, and I am sorry for that.  Life has been busy.  But today I am back with some more soundscene audio, this time from our travels in Scandinavia last spring.

As Molly Oldfield says in her new book The Secret Museum, “As a work of art, it is a masterpiece, but as a warship it was a disaster.  You can see the entire distance it ever sailed from the roof of the museum.”

She is talking about the 17^th century Swedish warship, the Vasa.  In 1628 it sank  just 1300 meters into it’s maiden voyage.    The king at the time, Gustavus Adolphus, effectively overrode his designers, engineers and expert shipbuilders to have them construct a battleship that was dangerously unseaworthy.   The cannons put in the gun ports may have been too heavy than was usual for that type of ship.  The ship was ultimately weighted with insufficient ballast.  Ballast is used to ensure that a ship can stay steady, counteract the wind and momentum of the ship and otherwise keep it upright.  Sometimes ballast can be the weight of the crew and passengers. Sometimes it is objects. Sometimes it is a characteristic of the way a ship is constructed.   In the case of the Vasa, it was built top heavy with no counteracting design.  Or perhaps the boat was simply too big to support the king’s intent against the Polish that his men were sailing to fight.   With all this, it is a magnificent construction.  Here’s  Vasa by the numbers:  It is estimated to be about 69 metres long.   That’s 226 feet or 75 yards.  The width of the ship is 11.7 metres or 38 feet.   The height is roughly 52.5 metres or 57 yards.  It originally had ten sails of which six, in various states of disrepair, survive.   It held 64 bronze cannon.   Well over 26,000 artifacts of all kinds were also found.   It is adorned with over 500 sculptures, designs and enormously detailed reliefs that must have been spectacular in their original colors.   Those colors have been washed away by centuries in the clay bottom and currents of the harbour waters.

The technology that made it possible for the Vasa to be raised did not exist until the 20^th century.   It was confirmed to be 32 meters down in August 1956.    In the words published on the Vasa Museum website, we know that:

“The [Swedish] navy’s heavy divers were able to cut six tunnels through the clay under the ship with special water jets. Steel cables were drawn through the tunnels and taken to two lifting pontoons on the surface, which would pull the ship free of the harbour bottom’s grip. In August 1959, it was time for the first lift. There was great uncertainty – would the old wooden ship hold together?  Yes! Vasa held. She was lifted in 18 stages to shallower water, where she could be patched and reinforced in preparation for the final lift, to the surface…At 9:03 AM on the 24th of April, 1961, Vasa returned to the surface.”

In order to preserve the wood, the Vasa was sprayed with polyethylene glycol, a chemical compound that replaces the water in the wood.  This was to prevent shrinkage and cracking.   This process took an astounding 17 years.  The ship had to be kept purposely wet in order that it not dry out and crack.   More than 90% of the ship was recovered intact.

Archaeologists think that 150 people were on board, mostly mariners, and no soldiers, (300 were to board the ship eventually).   When the ship sank, about 30 died.   The skeletons of about 16 persons were found in and around the ship.   The skeleton exhibit seemed to be the busiest with dozens of children gathered around the glass cases containing them.  The museum curators have given names to the skeletons, tried to reconstruct what they may have looked like, and created stories about what their lives may have been like aboard the boat and off.

Now that you have the background, sit back and enjoy this soundscene of our visit to this amazing one of a kind museum:

Download instead HotFRM 218 (36mb 18m47s)

Hot Fossils and Rebel Matters 217 – Tales from the 1960’s and Back

“Why can’t we just do everything we can while we’re here for one another?” – Pearl Goodman, 2013

On today’s show I interview Pearl Goodman who has written Peril: From Jack Boots to Jack Benny.  In 300 pages, Pearl gives us portraits and vignettes of what it was like growing up in the nineteen-sixties and seventies.   This was a time when many holocaust survivors had ended up in cities like Toronto putting geographical if not psychic distance between them and the horrors of World War II.  Everything about her childhood is coated, clouded and influenced by her parents’ experience during the war and after.

Her parents were survivors of the Nazi’s attempt to exterminate the European Jews.  The remainder of their lives was infused with this terrible knowledge, the death, the suffering of entire family members, friends, neighbors and many others left behind.    As we roll ever closer to the 70^th anniversary of the end of World War II, the numbers of survivors who can still remember and tell us anything of those times are dwindling to a precious few.   All the stories we can find, first-hand, must be sought out, recorded and shared.  And those who can relay much of those untold stories and insights, as the survivors of World War II pass on,  do so as translators, interpreters and paraphrasers of the original tellings.   Ms. Goodman and other children of survivors must speak for them because they no longer can.

It is said often that we are doomed to repeat history if we do not learn from it.    Indeed, genocide has been attempted and succeeded many times to greater and lesser degrees before that war and after.    And Jews throughout history have been no stranger to attempts to being eradicated and removed from everywhere we have ever called home.   We see the story of the holocaust repeated over and over again in small and big ways in the modern era in such places as:  Cambodia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, The Congo, and Pakistan.

In that sense, Ms. Goodman is not just telling her parents story and her own, but the story of all survivors and immigrants trying to overcome the persecution and oppression of their birth country.  Join me in my conversation with the author, on a pleasant spring evening in a local restaurant on the very street that Pearl grew up on.

Listen up:

Or download media:  Hotfrm 217 (33mb 36mins)

Links:

http://www.bridgeross.com/peril.html

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/peril-from-jackboots-to-jack/9780987824462-item.html

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/peril-pearl-goodman/1113066890?ean=9780987824462

“life don’t clickety clack down a straight line track It come together and it come apart” – Ferron (Ain’t Life a Brook)

Just because I give it three stars out of five does not mean I didn’t love it. It was the concepts I loved, not the writing. Because it’s an academic book, it was slow going and plodding. Like all works written by some academics, the sentences can be dense and full of meaning that require multiple reads of the same sentence or paragraph. I hate having to look up words like liminal, preliminal, hegemony, deconstructionism, and postmodernism. It makes my head hurt. But look them up I did, if only to try to get inside the mind of Judith Halberstam, the author.

Here is what I think she is saying and it’s wonderfully trailblazing and original. In no particular order: First, she suggests that the queer way of life establishes an entirely unique, reasonable and freeing alternative to the tyranny of the heteronormative (look that one up) timeline of the mandatory passages that the heterosexual lifestyle requires: birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, marriage, career, children, grandchildren, old age, and finally death with all the attendant obligations, constraints, and rituals. An alter-normative life imposes no such constraints. Adolescence can last as long as you want. The ushering in of the age of child rearing doesn’t have to happen until you are good and ready or never. That’s the queer time part.

Next, (well not quite next but I am going to talk about it next), she shows how the queer subculture, the ways we define ourselves in terms of music, dress, film, all forms of art and style, including the way we express ourselves in general, define the particular way that we construct the space and place, psychically and physically, around us. They are as real as the heteronormative popular culture that no one of us can escape. But the success of our art is not defined by conventional fame, celebrity, and money. She uses the world of transgenderism, genderqueerism, drag king shows, dyke slam poetry, and dyke rock to prove that point. These types of expression and lives could serve to represent an undefined and full of possibility midpoint between a threshold and the establishment of new rituals in our culture. A state where definition and space is undefined and being redefined.

Lastly she pays homage to the queers of the mid 20th century and lesbian folk artists of the 70s who paved the way for the freedoms of expressions and rights (at least in some states and Canada) that queers enjoy today. Using the musicians Cris Williamson and Ferron as examples, she engendered in me a new appreciation for their music that I already love so much.

The clod that I am,  I’m sure I have missed the finer subtleties of her arguments. But what I did get out of the book completely captivated and fascinated me.

Here are some choice quotes from the book that I particularly enjoyed:

“…we create longevity as the most desirable future, applaud the pursuit of long life (under any circumstances), and pathologize modes of living that show little or no concern for longevity.”

“…formulaic responses to time and temporal logics produce emotional and even physical responses to different kinds of time…people feel guilty about leisure, frustrated by waiting, satisfied by punctuality, and so on.”

“…time has become a perpetual present, and space has flattened out in the face of creeping globalization.”

“…the transgender body has emerged as futurity itself, a kind of heroic fulfillment of postmodern promises of gender flexibility.”

“…Brandon [Teena]’s death…[is]…evidence of a continuing campaign of violence against queers despite the increasing respectability of some portions of the gay and lesbian community.”

“…the brutality that visited Brandon [Teena]…[was]…also a violence linked to a bourgeois investment in the economy of authenticity.”

“Entertainment…is the name we give to the fantasies of difference that erupt on the screen only to give way to the reproduction of sameness.”

“…gender functions as a ‘copy with no original’.”

“…queer subcultures offer us an opportunity to redefine the binary of adolescence and adulthood…”

“Queer youth sets up younger gays and lesbians not as the inheritors and benefactors of several decades of queer activism but rather as victims of homophobia who need ‘outreach’ programs and support groups…[There is] an emphasis that arises out of an overreliance on the youth/adulthood binary…[that]…encourages young queers to think about the present and future while ignoring the past.”

“The radical styles crafted in queer punk bands, slam poetry events, and drag king boy bands…model other modes of being and becoming that scramble our understandings of place, time, development, action and transformation.”

“Ferron…understands herself to be engaged in a collective project that is rewarded not by capital or visibility…but by an affective connection with those people who will eventually be the vessels of memory for all she now forgets.”

Hot Fossils and Rebel Matters 197 – Water is the Only Thing That Matters or Watermageddon

That’s How Much Water We Have to Use for 7 Billion People

Listen to the show:

• Hotfrm 197 (35mb)
  

On Canada Day this year, July 1st, Special K and I went to Royal Ontario Museum, the ROM to view three separate exhibits. The first is on water, what it is, what it means to us, what it means to everything on the planet and how little of it there actually is. The second was an exhibit of Edward Burtynsky’s photography. A well known local and international photographer, the exhibit showcased some of his more stunning and beautiful pieces. I try to describe his photography as I move through the display. See what you think. The last exhibit is a display of Bollywood showcards and I try to get you interested in the delights and promise of the most popular cinema art form in the world.  Important Links:

The Big Picture Science Podcast

http://www.ec.gc.ca/eau-water/default.asp?lang=en&n=300688DC-1

How Much Usable Water? Really?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_distribution_on_Earth

http://www.allaboutwater.org/water-facts.html

Listen to the show:

Hotfrm 197 (35mb)

Hot Fossils and Rebel Matters 195 – Savage Beauty and a Bit of Gershwin

A Typical McQueen Creation

Listen to the show:

•  (27Mb)
• HotFRM 195

Special K follows the fashion world, so it made sense that she didn’t want to miss the late designer Alexander McQueen’s retrospective Savage Beauty. It was showing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art during our New York trip. I’m normally not so keen on fashion, so I didn’t expect to be blown away by the exhibit. On Feb 11 2010, McQueen tragically killed himself in his London flat at the age of 40, just days after his mother’s death. He was known for his runway spectacles, outrageous edgy performance art meant to compliment his fashion creations and make a statement. I didn’t even know any of this about him when I followed Special K and Dragon into the first gallery. Despite the crushing crowd, straining to get a glimpse of his works adorning mannequins and on display platforms, I lingered over what I realized were oddly compelling works of art. I couldn’t believe that anyone would collect razor clam shells, strip them, varnish them and then drape them over a woman’s body or make a leather suit with bleached denim attached and taxidermy crocodile heads. I think the pieces that intrigued me the most were his monstrous lobster claw shoes and the endless variety of masks, some playful, some nightmarish, adorning the mannequins’ heads. To me, it is brilliant, ironic, and a little mischievous that these pieces are even called fashion. Instead, each garment tells a story and makes a point, sometimes terrible as illustrated by his collection called Highland Rape. 

Besides seeing this exhibit, we also took Dragon and Fly through Central Park and through an photographic exhibit by the Korean artist Ahae. Walking through the Vanderbilt Hall in the Grand Central Terminal, we saw but a small sample of the many photographs he took over the course of two years from one window where he lives and works in Korea.

And what trip to New York would be complete without a pianist in Washington Square Park playing Gershwin’s iconic Gotham tune Rhapsody in Blue?

Playing Gershwin in Washington Square Park (Photo by Ninja)

Listen to the show:

•  (27Mb)
• HotFRM 195

Hot Fossils and Rebel Matters 188 – Coffee with Tyffanie

On a lazy rainy Sunday afternoon in November, Ninja calls Tyffanie Morgan (of Breakfast With Tyffanie). She hails from Kingston, Canada, has been a host of the Kingston’s Gender Bender community radio show, and speaks from time to time on social media.

While Ninja sips her delicious coffee, they discuss the subtleties of cooking beer can chicken on the grill, gardening, yard vermin, gender bending, musicals, queer politics, have the requisite meta-talk about podcasting, social media and Podcasters across Borders. There may or may not spoilers in this show about Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. She didn’t specify which kind of beer she used for her chicken. Broadway Shows mentioned: Hair, Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Classic Canadian Plays mentioned: Hosanna. Canadian small towns mentioned: Picton. Iconic Gay Music mentioned: Madonna, ABBA, Disco Podcamps mentioned: Podcasters Across Borders, Podcamp Toronto

Other Links

http://www.wordreference.com/fren/cuirette

http://www.rabble.ca/

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

Hosanna by Michel Tremblay

Listen to the show at:

• HotFRM 188 (50 Mb)

Thoroughly Modern Mikael

Critics and literary pundits wonder if the story has the makings of a classic.  I am merely suspicious of phenomena that take popular attention by storm.  Such was my skepticism about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.   What is it about the story that is capturing people’s imagination?  Is it the mystery and controversy surrounding the author’s life, legacy and death?  Is it the very modern twenty-first century sensibility that makes us so eager to stick with the book and keeps it alive for us long after we get to the last page?

I have just spent two weeks and one evening of my life immersed in Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander’s world.  It took me took two weeks to get through the book because I did it in audio form.  The version I indulged in was somewhere around sixteen hours of listening time.     I was only able to listen to it for about an hour and half  a day and some of that involved much backing up to get straight the geneology of the Vanger family and details about economics and business that normally go over my head at the best of times.  When I was half-way through the book, I was certain I had solved the mystery of the Vangers or more accurately certain that this was as common a crime novel as any that I had ever read.  Maybe, I was thinking, it’s on a par with In Cold Blood, and certainly not worth any bigger fuss than that. (Though admittedly,  the fuss In Cold Blood caused was considerable.)  I groaned with disappointment when the author, for example, assures us that although Salander will sleep with anyone that the fates choose to present to her, she has a decided preference for the male of the species.   Ok – she’s bisexual – but not too bisexual.  I also thought the author belied a patronizing pseudo-feminist sensibility by giving us a character stunning in her intellectual curiosity and brilliance, who is also only twenty-four, so he could have the inevitable affair with the pixie waif.  Why not make her forty-four?   Well then her four foot eleven aloof taciturn non-conformance would have been about as alluring as a gorilla on her period.  (I found myself asking what becomes of a forty-four or fifty-four year old female hackivist anyway?)

The second half of the book definitely held my interest.   There is indeed a complexity and depth to Larsson’s story telling and characters that I wasn’t expecting.  It is not an ordinary murder mystery.  It is a treatise on morality, ethics and justice masquerading as a thriller.   These are are almost real people dealing with real life difficult questions.  I was pleasantly surprised that though the mysteries and subplots are neatly wrapped up at the end of the book, all the questions and problems of life and love and justice are left as confoundedly open ended as they were before the prologue began.

Now I had to satisfy my curiosity about the film, so I prepared Special K to join me for the almost three hour movie.   This was a much more disappointing experience, as  bits of the story were changed, timeframes condensed, and some characters completely eliminated.    I did enjoy knowing the outcome and  being able to answer Special K’s questions without revealing anything that might ruin her surprise.  Blomkvist and Salander are true to Larsson’s creations, as are many of the Vanger clan. So much, however, is left out in the film that Special K wondered how we kept getting  from here to there.   She was left with a bad taste in her mouth about Salander and her guardian.  To someone who has not read the book, that particular subplot is completely gratuitous, unnecessary and inexplicably disturbing.  (As though it is not disturbing enough as Larsson intended it).  The story was hacked, chopped, and revised to keep the more gruesome bits in the forefront.   I’ll never forgive the filmmakers even though they tried to preserve the spirit of the complexities.   I wish that the story had instead been made into a multi-part miniseries that kept all the intricacies of and faithfulness to the original plot.   That would have made for showing all the character and plot development that would have had the viewer travelling down numerous paths of red herrings as the reader does.

Links : http://nplusonemag.com/man-who-blew-up-welfare-state,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_with_the_Dragon_Tattoo, http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/12/hitchens-200912?currentPage=all,