On Wrath

There are seven things which the LORD hates,
Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him:
Haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
And hands that shed innocent blood,
A heart that devises wicked plans,
Feet that run rapidly to evil,
A false witness who utters lies,
And one who spreads strife among brothers.”

~Proverb 6:19 – 6:19, King James Bible

Mr. Vick, you have sparked worldwide controversy, and another addition to the Seven Deadly Sins collection.

The line “hands that shed innocent blood” was the precursor to Wrath being considered a mortal or deadly sin, but was expanded because, I suppose, a person could be an asshole without actually killing someone. But originally, according to Wikipedia, Wrath was described as “inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger…the desire to seek revenge outside of the workings of the justice system and generally wishing to do evil or harm to others. The transgressions borne of vengeance are among the most serious, including murder, assault, and in extreme cases, genocide.”

Let’s be clear here. Vick admitted to setting up, financing, and managing a dogfighting operation. Dogfighting is when two or more dogs are trained, usually through means involving beatings and starvation, to fight to the death. During the fights they literally bite and rip the flesh off each other and die slow and painful deaths, either from organ damage, blood loss, or from having their jugular severed or windpipe crushed. The under-performing dogs are often executed by drowning, hanging, electrocution or gun shot. Vick not only knew what he was financing, but enjoyed watching it, and from all accounts, participated in the execution of the dogs with his own hands.

Hasn’t he ever seen a thriller? Doesn’t he know that people don’t mind watching teenagers get picked off by the dozens, that innocent bystanders can get blown away without a single tear being shed, that even children are fair game…but let threat come to the family pet, and moviegoers will start to whimper in horror?

He released a statement today, which admitted responsibility and refuted earlier claims that he was not guilty of the charges laid.

"First I want to apologize for all the things that I've done and that I've allowed to happen…I was ashamed and totally disappointed in myself, to say the least. And I want to apologize to all the young kids out there for my immature acts. What I did was very immature, so that means I need to grow up. I totally ask for forgiveness and understand as I move forward to a better Michael Vick the person, not the football player. I take full responsibility for my actions. Not for one second will I sit here and blame anyone else for my actions. It was totally irresponsible. I feel like we all make mistakes. I made a mistake in using bad judgment and making bad decisions. And those things just can't happen. Dogfighting is a terrible thing and I did reject it."

Call me crazy, but I don’t see how financing something, watching it, putting money into making it happen more often, and using your own two hands to participate in it is quite the same thing as thinking it’s terrible and rejecting it, and I think it’s kind of rich coming from someone who repeatedly posed in photographs, smiling, with the fighting dogs. But the real problem for me is that he puts what he did down to “immaturity.”

Immaturity makes you date people you know are going to treat you poorly because they look good with no shirt on. Immaturity is mixing anything with Jaegermeister and calling it a shooter. Immaturity is wearing your pants with one pantleg rolled up. Immaturity is not slaughtering dogs. Michael doesn’t need to “grow up,” he needs to do some reading on the psychological profile of violent psychopaths (the three main precursors of which are bedwetting, fire starting, and cruelty to animals.) A man who can sit through a dogfight, enjoy it and want to see more of it, who can hang a dog he bred and raised with his own hands, is a little more than immature. It’s incredibly troubling to me that he would trivialize a crime of repulsive violence to the level of breaking curfew, especially in the same breath as his acknowledgment that he's a role model to children.

I also enjoyed the very subversive tactic of sending a plea to separate “Michael Vick the person” from “Michael Vick the football player.” A nifty trick designed to allow us to hate the person but to try and separate his means of income from his crime. As though a football player who earned millions of dollars by having thousands of fans, many of whom are children, and by being the endorsement face of many products doesn’t have anything to do with refraining from criminal activity. He’s trying to insinuate that while he understands that you’ll hate him for his ‘immaturity,’ his career shouldn’t be impacted. Let’s look at it this way; if Michael Vick was a politician, would we be saying, “Sure, he participated in something like that, but he makes good public policy. He shouldn’t be removed from office.” No, because he’s a football hero. Apparently, our disdain for domestic abuse, rape, animal cruelty and even murder can be lessened by a really impressive record with rushing yards. It’s sad, but it’s life, and I think anyone who expects this man to spend more than a year behind bars is a nice person, but a misinformed one.

Besides, Michael claims to have Found Jesus. His “we all make mistakes” and “I give myself up to God” and redemption talk, as ridiculous as it sounds to most of us, is usually a pretty good strategy, because it confuses the mostly atheist left wing and placates the right wing, who never get to hear about God in the media anymore. (If I were the part of the Christian right, I think I’d actually be pretty pissed off that the only people who kept finding Jesus were those who were trying to evade rehab or escape dog fighting charges, but whatever.) He’s not finished, as much as I’d like to think he was.

And I don’t mean to open a very messy can of worms, but he killed dogs. Would we be going apeshit if they were some other animal? Scary Spice’s boyfriend killed a duck with a brick, but he’s still out there enjoying his life. What if it were a fur farm? A slaughterhouse for cows? Pigs? We like dogs, and I think that’s the problem here. He picked on the Miss Congeniality of the animal world. Every meat-eater out there, myself included, is implicit in the often painful existence and death of animals, it’s a matter of fact that we can pretend isn’t the same, because it’s not dogs, and other people do it all the time. But it is the same. It’s a difference of degree, not of principle. So while I believe he's an asshole and probably a mentally sick man, let's have a rational look at the matter, not a witch hunt.

But if Wrath is having 'hands that shed innocent blood,' he’s guilty of Wrath, no matter which way you cut it, and I don’t think Jesus would be all that keen on him. If Vick did a little more homework, he’d find out that committing a deadly sin, in the eyes of the God that he’s currently trying to give himself up to, “destroys the life of grace” and is unforgivable except through confession and perfect contrition, neither of which he’s showing. That Old Testament stuff does not allow for lesser sentencing and plea bargaining; he’s probably better off giving himself over to the Judicial Branch of Georgia than to God. If he’s not careful, he’s going to face an even less pleasant reception once he checks in for eternal damnation; personally, I kind of like to think that he’ll be issued a suit made out of meat and introduced to an unforgiving pack of his former pets.

But Disney taught us that all dogs go to heaven, where, unlike the NFL, Vick probably will not be welcome. And I sure hope the poor puppies are up there right now, being loved and cared for by Helen Keller, and the kid from Lassie.

Rest in peace, you poor things. You were the only ones Vick forgot to apologize to in his speech.


For my friend R, who is a friend to all puppies and kittens, and who would probably be happy to see this guy get his ass kicked. By Johnny Cash.

On Dangerous Penises and Harmless Torture

To continue my previous rant...er, post, and to indulge my love of throwing a controversial theory around, are images of sex, violence, and drugs in popular media all that harmful? Or is the contextual basis what we should really be looking at?

Here's my (soon to be belaboured) point. I don't think that violence, harsh language, or sex is all that harmful to older children or teenagers, provided they are capable of understanding the context and the purpose for showing it. When it doesn't have a purpose, it's what we call gratuitous. There just to titillate, a little "gratuity" or tip for the hardworking average Joe for coughing up $25 or whatever it is now for a ticket. I love gratuitous nudity and violence in its place. If you ask me, a courtroom drama where the DA takes down her hair, whips out her breasts, blows up a car outside, and then resumes her closing argument is a better courtroom drama because of it. But I'm 28 years old and a working professional. I would never blow up a car I paid 18% interest on for four years. And I also know that showing your breasts in a professional situations is more likely to get you hauled into HR's office than into a plushy executive position.

There, the purpose is to entertain. It's not a part of the story, no statement is being made, and the contextual basis is nil. We as adults can make that distinction. But children can't. We'd hardly want an 8 year old to think that blowing up a car doesn't have consequences. Or to not realize that when a ninja clears a room of bad guys, that the reason the bad guys are conveniently lying quietly afterward is because they are dead or dying of massive internal injuries. So do I believe we should limit gratuitous nudity, drug use, violence, and language in film to adults? Abso-fucking-lutely. Without the ability for children to understand not only what they're seeing, but why they're seeing it, they should never see disturbing material separated from its proper contextual basis. They just don't have the capacity to make the call...but moreover to even understand that a call is being made.

But when controversial elements are used to make a point, I believe it can be more beneficial than damaging. Sure, you don't show a three year old a beheading under any circumstances. But look at Glory, Boys in the Hood, Requiem for a Dream, Mean Creek, or Bowling for Columbine. These movies all use controversial elements, and all of them earn their right to depict what they depict with a thoughtful treatment of the matter at hand. Hotel Rwanda showed little children dead on the lawn of a suburban neighborhood, and that image has never left me. But it earned the right to do that. Pay it Forward used the death of a child to force people to cry right at the end. It was completely unnecessary, exploitative, and served as a plot twist. It was melodrama, and melodrama is entertainment. Is the death of a child entertaining to you? Not to me.

Glory showed graphic violence, yes. Would I recommend that 11 year olds see it? No, but it's a well-made film with considerable historical value that puts across so many valuable messages without being preachy: that people united in something of value can put aside racial and class differences and support one another, that standing up for what is fair and right is more important than monetary gain or social acceptance, that bad attitudes can be changed by empathy and willingness to understand a fellow man's experiences, and that war is a horrific experience and that the casualties involved are significant and personal and tragic - unlike most video games would have us believe. Yet no one under 18 is able to see this movie, despite the fact that they are the very same age group targeted by military recruitment efforts. Apparently we believe that 17 year olds with parental consent are fit to serve in the military, but not old enough to witness the human consequences of war.

Boys in the Hood was a movie that looked at systemic racism as a whole, and more specifically, how gang violence, drugs and alcohol, and absent parents contribute to the shocking mortality rate of (mostly) African-American (mostly) men living in ghettos. This is a very relevant film that takes a hard look at the senseless violence that results from joining a gang, and the trap that drug and alcohol use can create when it strips away the desire to change one's current environment. Unless I'm mistaken, and the newspapers would lead me to believe I'm not, the 15-17 year olds that can't see it would be the ones that need this message, in time, the most. Not to mention that the characters in the movie were 17 year olds; are we arguing that we can bear that they deal with in reality what we couldn't bear for them to see in a movie?

Requiem for a Dream is disturbing, all right. The MPAA felt it was so much so that it was hit with the NC-17 rating, meaning that no theatres in their right mind would have shown it, and it would have faced financial ruin. The producers finally elected to release it unrated to avoid this, but theatres would then still have to restrict children. Now, this is not for the kiddies; double-headed dildos, forced amputation, electroshock treatment and prison beatings are pretty extreme consequences of drug use. But as a deterrent from drug use, for older teenagers who are experimenting with harder and harder drugs at younger and younger ages, this sure would beat the pants off the vague "just say no" superficiality of most anti-drug policies. The presence of the drugs isn't the point, and their inclusion shouldn't necessarily be the problem, since only the certifiably insane would claim that this film glamorizes drug use in any way.

Mean Creek, rated R, takes a calm, quiet, deeply unsettling look at school-age bullying and what can happen when a bad, if somewhat understandable idea gets into the hands of the wrong kid. The bully in this movie is pretty bad, but the movie is brave enough and cares enough to show that his aggression is due to the deep loneliness he feels at being unable to connect. The teenager that encourages the others to act out a vengeance ploy is no white knight avenger but a bully in his own right, satisfying his own emotional agenda. The teens realize once the plan is underway that it might be a bad idea, but don't act, and their inability to resist the mob mentality results in tragedy. As if that wasn't enough antidote to the "kick the bad guy's ass" simplicity of most teen dramas, they must struggle with whether to tell the truth and deal with the consequences, and why they must in order to hope for redemption. The reason, incidentally, for banning this film from being seen by teenagers is because of the use of the "F" word. If you know of even a 10 year old who has never heard this word, you live in a much nicer world than I.

Here we have a movie depicting preteens and teenagers struggling as they start to develop an independent moral system. It's just that lack of moral system that we point to time and time again when we see horror in the news; but since we never give young people the encouragement or opportunity to think about these issues, how can we expect them to develop it in a vacuum? Bowling for Columbine is another great example of this specious logic, a thought-provoking film that teenagers cannot see. If anyone should be outraged by this, it should be those very teenagers, their schoolteachers, and parents. Gun control is becoming an issue that is screaming to be addressed. Children do not feel secure at schools, and they know damn well why they shouldn't; the same 17 years olds that acquired the guns and killed their classmates would have been deemed too young to see a film discussing their actions or the political system of a country that allowed it to happen. If teenagers are not asked to think about such things, we are putting an already vulnerable segment in an even more precarious position: ignorance.

I am certainly not advocating movies as a scare tactic for today's youth, but I believe that raising consciousness and having discussion about issues like drug use, bullying, gun control, gang violence, war, racism are more important than using censorship to pretend they don't exist. If a movie earns the right to depict something with sensitivity and depth, let us think twice before we reject it out of hand.

Or at the least, demand that the MPAA start to justify their decision making process. The sight of a penis or pubic hair almost guarantees an NC-17 regardless of context. Too traumatizing, I suppose, for teens to see something that exists in their own pants. But somehow it's not considered traumatizing for trashy Hollywood fare to show misogynist attitudes and violence if it's supposed to be funny.

How else do you explain the MPAA feeling that a movie like Employee of the Month, where the clerks sit around spewing homophobic remarks and a dimwitted female lead rewards with sexual favours anyone who attains "Employee of the Month" status as suitable entertainment for 14 year olds?

And then there's Big Daddy, where an unfit adult caregiver repeatedly has fits of violent rage in front of a 5 year old and even encourages said 5 year old to participate. Adults know that a child in real life who was abandoned, found by a stranger and forced to witness violence and urinate on newspapers would be seriously traumatized. And probably, so do most teenagers. But a little more insidious is how the main character continuously degrades and humiliates a woman because she worked as a waitress for Hooters to put herself through medical school. Somehow this feels...icky. What is the movie trying to say, here? We know that a woman intelligent and driven enough to support herself and get through medical school while working is a far better role model than a 32 year old who works one day a week at a tollbooth because he's living off a settlement, who uses an abandoned child as a ploy to get dates, and who is a violent jerk, but the movie's not quite sure about that. His incessant and misogynistic comments about her being "nothing but a Hooters girl" and "what are you going to tell your kids about their mother" despite her being a doctor is a little worrisome, considering that his character uses a "live nudes" sign as a night light. But the fun is being poked at his stupidity, right? I'm not so sure. The former Hooters girl with the medical degree is portrayed very clearly as the 'bad guy' for being concerned about the child's welfare and condemning the clearly antisocial behaviour of the Sandler character, while the Sandler character comes off as sympathetic. So what's going on? And can a 13 year old really make that distinction, if I can't quite figure it out?

Or 2 Fast 2 Furious, another PG-13 where we have men repeatedly punching and kicking each other, a race where a car (and presumably, the driver) ends up turned sideways beneath a semi and is crushed, a man repeatedly bashing another man's head onto a dashboard and then using a button to eject said man into a body of water and (are you ready for this?) a scene where a men forcibly ties another man down, places a live rat in an upside down can on the man's bare chest and heats the can with a torch, thus making the tortured rat have nowhere to escape but through the man's body. Soon thereafter the man removes the can and rat, we see the bloody scratch marks on the man's chest.

Now that's something that I just wouldn't want a 14 year old to be exposed to. MPAA, you have some 'splaining to do.

On Fascism in Hollywood

The MPAA gets to do whatever they want and that really pisses me off.

The MPAA (that's the Motion Picture Association of America, natch) is the association that determines movie ratings. Movie ratings, in turn, tell us what subject matter is harmful to people, and at what age.

So what, you ask? Well, film has and continues to play a large part in shaping dominant cultures, and is a medium through which we express what is relevant to our society and how we interpret it. Not only the boob, to be flip, but how we feel about boobs. It gives us both the subject and the contextual frame. The medium, as MacLuhan has long said, is the message.

Said MPAA has had a long standing (and long criticized) policy of tolerating extreme movie violence while adopting a very punitive attitude towards acts of sexuality, particularly that related to the human body. This would lead me to believe that the minds behind the MPAA's rating system feel that extreme gory violence is less harmful to people than sex. As someone who has dated in Vancouver for five years now, I'm almost tempted to agree.

The identity of the MPAA members is a secret more carefully protected than how they get the Caramilk into the Caramilk bar (which by the way, I looked up, and it's clever machinery and judicious layering.) Despite all this cloak and dagger crap, it's probably a safe guess that an association that would give a movie featuring loads of casual and gory violence and pretty extreme homophobia a PG-13, one free of violence but featuring a naked woman an R, and one featuring a plain old penis the "kiss of death" NC17 rating might possibly have a disproportionate prevalence of heterosexual conservative white males. But that's only my guess; the MPAA has never, to my knowledge, been required to reveal the demographics of their members, how they are chosen, or even the system they use to rate the movies themselves. Doesn't that seem a little strange to you? My beloved second family throws an annual rib competition that has a more formal and accountable process than that, and last I checked, BBQ ribs have only a very minor impact on the formation of cultural values, at least outside of Texas. So why all the secrecy?

The MPAA claims that their group is demographically balanced, but given that they've taken pains to never be accountable to prove that, it's a questionable claim at best. Secondly, the fact that the members selected are exclusively parents inherently refutes their claim that the association is demographically balanced, at least in terms of sexual preference, given that there are still states in the US that ban gay adoption. If fewer gay people are permitted to adopt in the US, and thus be parents, then that automatically ensures a heterosexual bias, admittedly slight, on the association.

And doesn't it seem odd that the fact that the members have to be parents? This would lead us to conclude they don't think that people without children would have a balanced perspective on what is and isn't damaging. This is a distinction that eliminates the rather valuable opinions of counsellors, sociologists, schoolteachers, doctors and politicians, should they not have children themselves. There are some pretty bad parents out there and some pretty conscientious single people who would like to have some say in the world they bring children into, should they choose to. I think it would be a tough argument to state that bearing children makes one more open-minded, educated, or morally apt. It didn't do much for poor Britney, did it?

Even more ridiculous is that the parents in question aren't even required to be parents of young children - the very ones that would impacted by the ratings - so a 60 year old with grown children would still be prefered over a childless child psychologist. I'm not trying to generalize, but someone whose last experience raising little children was when Eisenhower was president might be slightly out of touch with the challenges faced by today's parents and the progressions of modern social norms. Kids today have internet access, cell phones, and increasingly live in urban cities. Trust me, a boob is probably the last thing you need to worry about them being harmed by.

So we have an association made up of the most wealthy studios dictating who can see what and when and why, using a rating system and a member selection roster that is deliberately kept from the public. And the studios stand to profit by their decisions, of course, which makes the whole thing even more suspect since they aren't exactly impartial. There is no accountability save a repeal board - made up of the same members, through a process also not required to be visible. Excuse me if this sounds a little libertarian, but isn't that just de facto censorship supporting the moral beliefs (and prejudices) of a specific social and demographic class who stand to benefit financially from maintaining the status quo? And don't we all kind of agree that that's a bad thing?

Adolf, put your hand down, please.



For Roger Ebert, a tremendously gifted writer who once postulated that the MPAA board members have "cut loose from sanity and are thrashing about at random."

On Why I Love the English Language

“Owl, wise though he was in many ways, was able to read and write and spell his own name, WOL, yet somehow went all to pieces over delicate words like MEASLES and BUTTEREDTOAST.”

~From Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day

The English language is a marvel of malleability. While there are some who will rage over the inclusion of slang terms into the dusty old upright corridors of Webster’s Dictionary, I am not one of them. I take a perverse delight in the confusions that result from the fluidity of modern language, and in no confusion do I take more delight than the made-up word.

Probably the primary reason that I do not censure the made-up word is that I have discovered I use a few of them myself. For example, today the auto-dictionary scolded me with its censorious little squiggly red line for using the word “agreeance.”

Surely agreeance is a word. I use it all the time: “if so-and-so is in agreeance, we’ll move on this.” “Are we all in agreeance?” Et cetera, et cetera. Except agreeance isn’t a word. The actual correct word is agreement. And so I was forced to acknowledge my own ignorance and be corrected by that bloody Microsoft paperclip. Guilty as charged.

Another set of words which cause a lot of confusion, and which result in descriptions of physically impossible feats, are figuratively and literally. Literally is shorter and therefore easier to remember, so is often used both for its actual meaning, and when people really mean figuratively. Literally means it actually happened as the words say it did – if someone literally jumped out of their shoes then you have a human being who has just levitated out of their Sketchers, and it’s probably time to call Ripley. If they didn’t actually physically jump out of their shoes, but were very scared (and perhaps demonstrated other amusing bodily feats, like wetting themselves) then they figuratively jumped out of their shoes. But literally sounds much more dramatic, and is thus much favored in cocktail party conversations.

My other particular favorite is irregardless. That is definitely not a word, although Websters caved and decided to add it with the definition of “the frequently misused synonym of regardless.” I suspect this made-up word was birthed from regardless and irrelevant, like some freaky centaur of ancient Greece, and I love it. But for the record, it's just plain regardless.

This word is extra fun because it’s often used by pretentious people who are including it in their sentence to sound smarter...

...but who are really just showing themselves, in fact, to be Wols.


For my friend T, who knows irregardless isn’t a word, and gleefully uses it anyways.

On Why Kids Nowadays are Great Big Wussies

"The environmental movement of our times was sparked by the re-release of Bambi in the 1950s." ~Tom Platt, from Walt Whitman's The Last Days of Disco

Do you remember the huge brou-ha-ha that erupted when The Lion King came out?

First there was all the fuss over the word “sex” being subliminally inserted into a scene. A conservative activist even went so far as to ask for a ban on the film because he felt the intent of Disney was to make children sexually promiscuous (guess it worked, huh, Paris?)

Seems kind of argumentative to me, considering that kids have memorized every song from Disney movies and own the DVD before the thing is in pre-production. If you want a Disney movie to influence kids, don’t use a hazy word that you have to freeze frame the movie to find. Just have one of the lions tell kids outright to have promiscuous sex, for heaven’s sake. That would get it done much more efficiently. Only very, very nerdy children run through animated films in freeze frame trying to find hidden stuff, and it doesn’t matter whether or not they see messages telling them to have sex, because they are never going to get laid anyways. Freeze frame nudity is the only kind they’re ever going to see. Don’t take that away from them.

The Lion King was also criticized for being too “dark” for children. I guess the Nazi hyenas were pretty scary, but I don’t know that children are really grasping the fascist or genocidal undertones while they’re watching a hyena voiced by Whoopi Goldberg do a song and dance number. The dad lion did get trampled by a herd of buffalos, but that was far less traumatic than Bambi’s mother getting both barrels from that hunter. And Scar was a threatening character, to be sure, but if you’re looking for true terror in the form of Jeremy Irons, may I please direct you to Kubrick’s Lolita. That presents both Jeremy Irons and Melanie Griffiths as sex symbols. Not for the kiddies. (Or grownups, for that matter, Mr. Irons, please put your pants back on.)

So what’s all the fuss these days? Kids are too sheltered if they think the African savanna is a place where zebras and lions hang out together and happily fulfill the socially dictated requirements of the caste system. Wait until they get into the corporate world. This is not a world we want children to go into unprepared for reality. Protected, yes; ignorant, no.

Let’s look at what was put forward to my generation as good kiddie fare:

Watership Down. Made the year I was born, this featured a bunch of bunnies dealing with displacement and dictatorships, all in psychedelic animation and scored to John Denver. (No, seriously.) It depicted, in full colour no less, a rabbit getting its ears torn to shreds by the owsla, the rabbit secret police (cough cough) and a rabbit burrow being plowed over while the rabbits and their babies crush each other to death as they try and scramble to the surface. The climax features a rabbit being freed from choking to death in a wire snare, blood oozing down his throat, and one rabbit tearing another’s jugular out while it screams, backlit by lightening, and blood pours down its jaws. And these bunnies are the cutest things you’ve ever seen, all expressive ears and huge eyes. I remember walking home from school very, very slowly the day we all watched that.

Plague Dogs. This is another animated movie that ostensibly indicted animal testing, something I think all of us would admit is pretty horrible as subject matters go, but that really only served to scare the pants off the children that expected the “can’t we all just get along?” camaraderie of the Fox and the Hound. No, while this movie does admittedly have a fox-dog friendship, the two titular dogs start off trapped in an experimental laboratory in Britain. (Boy, the Brits are mean to their animated animals…and let’s not even get into the concept of Dalmatian coats.) The lab is a nightmare – it even has a gas chamber for kittens. They endeavor to shield children from this horrible concept by calling it..."the kitten gas chamber.” Well done. So one of the dogs has undergone brain experiments and wears a bandage over his exposed brain (not kidding) and the other dog, noble Rowf, has had rocks sewn into his stomach cavity and is forced to undergo tests where he swims in a tank until he drowns, and then is electro-shocked back to life to do the test again. Then the dogs escape, and you breathe a sigh of relief until half an hour later when the dogs are accidentally shooting a farmer point-blank in the face with his own rifle and eating the dead human corpse. The movie ends with the dogs being driven out to sea, and it fades away as they swim towards a hallucinatory island off in the distance but presumably drown, alone and terrified. Get the popcorn, kids!

The Secret of Nimh. Yet another animated feature showing cute animals having terrible things done to them and doing rather gruesome things to each other to the sound of synthesizer music. It centers around a brave little widow mouse whose child is bedridden and in the path of a plow that will crush their home (in case the children couldn't figure out what that would look like, the movie helpfully shows it in a flashforward.) Brave mother mouse, being romantically pursued both by a seagull and a libidinous secret police mouse, consults with a group of rats. These rats are shown in flashback to have been experimented on and injected, thrashing and squeaking, with all sorts of components, and as a result have developed superhuman intelligence. Nicodemus, a superintelligent rat who has visions and really creepy glowing eyes, is plotted against by a power-mad capitalist rat faction, which is eventually successful in crushing poor Nicodemus underneath a cinderblock. All of this takes place underground, in gloomy wet caverns, and drugs are featured all over the place: medicine for the baby, sedatives for the cat, psychotropics for the rats. Pretty far from the mousy frontier fun of An American Tale.

The Last Unicorn. This wasn’t so much scary as just plain weird. It was as if the producers at Rankin/Bass got together, smoked a few joints, consulted King Lear and a game of Dungeons and Dragons, and then decided to make a children’s movie. There are sexual undertones all over the place: the huge rampaging Red Bull forcing all those delicate white girl unicorns into submission and then drowning them in the sea, the tree that tries to date rape a magician, and finally, a man that falls in love with a horse. Might be a little touchy to replicate these characters for McDonalds toys, don’t you think? Not to mention some pretty serious violence: a woman is torn apart, screaming, by a naked-breasted harpy, a young prince is trampled by a flaming bull, said bull is dragged under the waves and drowns, a decapitated skull gets loaded on wine, and the unicorns rush the castle en masse, tumbling the old king to his death on the rocks. It also features a song with the following lyrics:

“...when the last eagle flies over the last crumbling mountain
and the last lion roars at the last dusty fountain
and it seems like all is dying and leave the world to mourn...”

Not as catchy as Hakuna Matata, I suppose.

Old Yeller. "Ma? Ma...there's sumthin' wrong wit Yeller. Hey boy, who's my Yeller? What's wrong, Yeller?" Nuff said.

So after my generation survived all the fascism, rabbit capital punishment, kitten gas chambers, doggie vivisection, rat torture, and the forbidden love between a man and a tree, you’d think that Poor Mufasa’s off-screen trampling wouldn’t be considered nearly so terrifying.

Hiding anything scary from our children might be a bit of a worry. This is a generation, after all, that will have to live with environmental devastation, the continued ghettoization of the developed world, the poverty, insurmountable national debt, vicious civil wars and widespread epidemics of the undeveloped world, and Britney Spears’ continued moral decline.

They can handle a few Nazi hyenas.

For my sister A, who I remember being very scared by The Dark Crystal.

On Why I Miss the Cocktail Hour

“The idea of drinking before dinner has its roots in the Prohibition era. When the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act were passed banning alcohol consumption, citizens would host “cocktail hours” or “happy hours” at a speakeasy (underground drinking establishments) before eating at restaurants where alcohol could not be served. Cocktail lounges continued the trend of drinking before dinner.

The push against drunk driving and alcohol abuse has curtailed the use of the cocktail hour to some extent. In the 1980s, bars started providing free hors d'oeuvres to lower the blood alcohol content of patrons. Glasgow has banned happy hours to reduce binge drinking, as has the Republic of Ireland. Even the U.S. military got in the act, when in 1984 they abolished happy hours at military base clubs.

Despite the controversy, cocktail hour still exists around the globe. Today in the United States, "Cocktail Hour" culture consists largely of junior and mid-level
professionals getting together for a drink to unwind after work.” ~from Wikipedia, bastardized

Not anymore. Bring back the cocktail hour, please. I wasn't able to drink in the eighties, so I don't remember it and thus technically I can't miss it, but I miss the idea of it. We won’t drink and drive, we promise. (Vancouverites never drive downtown anyways, we like to pretend we’re in Manhattan.) So give us back our after-work drinks.

I don’t know when this tradition died, but Vancouver, you are a city desperately in need of a cocktail hour. There are thousands upon thousands of randy young professionals with lots of money here. After all, someone is buying up $400,000 studio condos. In fact, 100,000 people live in the downtown core; that’s a higher population density than LA, San Francisco, and Manhattan. The only cities that come close to comparison are Hong Kong and Rio.

So how are all these people unwinding at the end of a long workday? They’re rushing home, getting on their computers, pouring a glass of wine, and surfing through other singles online. Deliver me. We’ve allowed technology to transform our city into the ultimate high school dance where the sexes are lined up awkwardly against opposite walls. No, scratch that, it’s worse: we’re not even in the same room anymore.

Toronto has a cocktail hour. Manhattan has one. Why don’t we? I blame stratification. Left to pick between substandard sports bars and higher-end lounges that won’t get hopping until the weekend, most of the city’s best looking potential cocktailites are sighing in defeat and shuffling off to a sweaty 40 degree Bikram’s studio, mat in tow. There's no middle ground. What are the alternatives? Jostling arm-in-arm for bar seating with the mougars* on the roof at Joe Fortes? Getting peanut shells in your Steve Madden pumps at Madison’s? Suddenly sliding around in the sweat of 40 other people is looking more appetizing.

*man cougars

Bar owners take note: there are not enough good after-work places downtown. Women will not go to a place where there is carpet on the tables. Men will not go to places where their only drink options have names like “The Flirtini” and come in complicated glasses. And no one, male or female, over twenty-six years of age will step foot into a place where the bartenders pour shooters into people’s mouths.

A bar is a concept. It is not a club, and it is not a lounge. It has food, but it does not have edamame, or anything requiring a sugar cage or a reduction or even truffle oil. You can order beer, but they have wine that doesn't come in a tetra pak. There is a bar to belly up to. There are charming bartenders and cute waitresses to act as social lubricant for the patrons. And there are cocktails, not just sugary martinis. I'm very feminine, thank you. But if I want a Jack and Coke, I don’t want to be stared at as though I just crawled out from under a Chevy at a work-release program in the local women’s penitentiary.

Publicans: if you build them, they will come. If they come, they will mingle. I implore you, Vancouver, bring back the cocktail hour. We can handle it. I promise.

For my friend C, who remembers fondly with me a time when there was a cocktail hour, and even cigar girls.

On Why Marketing Executives are Overpaid

When one watches television and one sees a commercial for tampons, and the commercial tells you that the particular tampon in question comes with "three specialized features standard," one must shake their head and admit that things are getting a little out of hand in the G7. Let us never be so civilized that we lose the capacity for recognizing the ridiculous.

Features?

No. A Mercedes-Benz comes with features. Leather detailing is a feature. Heated and cooled cup holders are a feature. Tiptronic transmission is a feature (and a pretty fucking cool one.)

Tampons do not need to be differentiated with features that come standard. A Mercedes-Benz is a piece of fine German engineering. Tampons, essentially, are a cottonball on a string.

Life is getting too complicated.

On Environmental Consequences

Have you seen An Inconvenient Truth? It’s a fantastic documentary. I previously had always scoffed at the environmental movement, mainly because of its association with bearded people living in trees and lingering visions of that hilarious Greenpeace boat souped up with megaphones and orange paint going around ramming oil tankers.

However, this film is not only sound scientifically, but about as entertaining as a film about the potential end of the world could probably be. It is devoid of anyone chaining themselves to anything, doesn't mire us in scolding or threats of unavoidable impending doom, but rather gently suggests that unless we want to live in the global equivalent of a dirty tanning bed, we need to start changing how we approach our lifestyles.

I'm down with that. But I think the primary problem with engaging people in the environmental movement is the lack of immediacy in the consequences of environmentally irresponsible actions. It’s the same reason we engage in all sorts of other excessively consumptive behaviours, such as racking up credit cards or cheating on our partners or buying a couch you don’t need, but also don’t have to pay for until 2035. Yes, we all accept that at the rate we’re going, we’re going to cause massive global warming and boil all the whales alive and make our air into nuclear waste and grow tails or whatnot. It’s just that we’re not going to actually manage to do that for at least another thirty or forty years. And while we do feel mildly guilty about handing over a world that looks like the Chernobyl plant over to our children, we can sort of justify away our personal responsibility. Indignance is often a good defense.

“Hey,” you think, “my generation had to deal with the Depression / Cold War / Celene Dion / etc. I didn’t like making soap out of old candles and fireplace ashes / spending my evenings playing Yatzee with the kids in the wine cellar / listening to that god damn Titanic song for seven months straight either, but I managed.”

It’s a little different, of course, but it’s still easy to worry about that tomorrah, as Scarlett would say. Now, if each of us were immediately hit with the negative consequences of our actions, we would see greenhouse gas emissions disappear faster than Rachael Ray’s career potential. Say you threw out a can in the garbage. If, seconds later, a little cloud came and rained some burning acid rain on your head, I bet you’d stop doing that right away. If every time we drove our car to go four blocks down the road, we were attacked by a vengeful spotted owl, we might get out and walk. The other night I left the sink running while I brushed my teeth. Now if I returned to the bathroom to find a Sudanese family displaced by drought in there, I’d smarten right up.

So, Mother Earth, Hurricane Katrina was pretty bad, but you can’t try and appeal to our higher consciousness unless you employ distributive justice. Quit punishing the Third World areas; they're not the ones burning a kajillion gallons of fossil fuels a day. Throw a few natural disasters at Washington DC and you'll see things change in a hurry. Or better yet - go after individuals. If apocalyptic plagues could occur on an individual pro-rata basis, it would probably do quite a bit to deter people from their bad behaviour.

After all, if a mere $0.25 library fine will make you drive ten blocks (in your SUV, no less) to return a book on time, just think what a very small cloud of locusts waiting for you in your walk-in closet would do.

For T, who may have, in her time, hugged a tree or two.

On First Dates

Admit it. We all hate first dates.

We all enjoy second dates, usually because if there is a second date, it's because we already like the person...or at least can't yet figure out if we hate them. And the third date, well, who doesn't love the third date? And every date thereafter - usually fabulous. But just not that first one.

First there's the whole "where should we go and what should we do" aspect. Hurdle number one is avoiding the dreaded dry date. This is usually disguised as "going for coffee." No, no, no. Have you ever seen a SWAT guy in the puffy jacket defusing a bomb while sucking back a 16 oz Timmy Ho double double? No. Why? Because caffeine is not a good idea in a highly tense situations. Alcohol, however, is a great idea in highly tense situations, which is why people get pissed at office parties and whenever they have to visit their families during the holidays. So pick a date location where your date can have a glass of wine, for God's sake. (If you're too broke to do anything but coffee, don't date. Spend your time working overtime to get a promotion. No one wants to date someone poor anyways so you're not missing anything.)

The next Herculean task is selecting the venue. Sports bar? No. They have carpet on the tables. If we wanted to eat off carpet, we'd join our pets on the floor. The idea should not be to bring the floor closer to your food. Chain restaurant? Not unless the chain happens to be Nobu. Sorry, but chances are you won't find a romantic atmosphere somewhere where they have a burger named for a sports hero or where anything comes in a plastic basket. Believe me, your date will go better when you don't have to worry about your sexual chemistry being interrupted by the waitstaff singing Happy Birthday to someone. Be safe and pick a nice upscale place where everyone's complexion will be flatteringly candle-lit. You'll know it's probably good if teeny-tiny food comes on teeny-tiny plates, or if the menu features outrageous over-description, or if the word "truffled" is used anywhere.

And then - the date itself. What an exercise in frustration as you make small talk avoiding exactly the questions you really want to be asking. Wouldn't it be so much more effective - and fun - if you could just slide over the following little survey?

1. Age
2. Astrological sign
3. Occupation
4. Income
5. Quality of last relationship (please rate on scale of 1 - 5)
6. Time since last relationship ended (in months)
7. Who ended things and whose fault was it?
8. Level of comfort with commitment (please rate on a scale of 1 - 5)
9. Do you want children, and if so, when?
10. Please briefly describe your relationship with your parents.
11. Do you currently hold any extreme views on the following? (please provide additional detail below if yes): gender roles, religion, dressing up your pets, sexual orientation, abortion rights, racism, politics, reality TV, eating meat
12. Please provide two (2) references below of previous partners with name and current phone number or email address.

Simple, and it gives you time to have that all too important first drink while you're both completing it. Then, voila, you have all the information right there that you can't really talk about on the first date, a really good idea as to whether you want a second one, and a nice buzz on.

It also saves you from unpleasant topical surprises during the first date, such as:

"You know, acting brings a lot more fulfillment than say, your same old, 9-5, "steady salary" type job. Besides I really like to read on the bus. Gives me time to think."

"Oh, yeah, I totally want kids. I want a huge family. I mean, not right now, of course. Maybe in like, I don't know, eight months or something."

"Well, I wouldn't say I'm religious. I guess I do go to church, but our church is really a different kind of church. It's not like other churches, really. Hey...what are you doing Sunday?"

And so on. It's strange that people tend to feel bad about judging other people on the first date, when essentially that's exactly what you're supposed to be doing. That's the point of the date - figuring out whether there is sufficient compatibility. You have to judge in order to choose, and you do have to choose, otherwise you'd just meet each other when you moved in together.

But without the first date, we would never feasibly have a second, or third. So it will enjoy a time-honoured place in social history for many, many years to come. But feel free to print the survey for your next one.