Attention Both Followers!

In the interest of full disclosure, I have copied over my first few posts to this individual blog from their original home on our "Art (and Business) of Blogging" course blog (which you should totally check out for all my classmates' rockin' posts). I attempted to alter reality and travel back in time in order to add my earlier posts here on the dates they were originally posted, but it seems despite other similarities, I lack Clark Kent's ability to reverse the spin of the Earth, with the result that they appear on Ms. Behaviour as new December posts. If anyone else is anal-retentive enough to care, the chronological order was: "Say Something," "The Age of Hybrids," and "Technology + Politics + Celebrity +....blah blah blah," followed by the Ms. Behaviour ones.

Many thanks for your comments and support, and I hope you'll stay tuned!

Technology + Politics + Celebrity + Film + Music + Pop Culture = ?

From: www.static.flickr.com/3558/3339723663_def8c07c2d_t.jpg

Figuring I had the whole blog popularity thing sewn up, I planned to title this post "Make Millions On-line—From Home!" Then it struck me: Why fart around with anything less than a sure thing? After all, I had it from a reputable source exactly what the six favourite Internet topics were, and that was good enough for me.

But how to stitch them together? I closed my eyes and concentrated on each topic in turn, waiting to see what images might come. In a flash straight out of A Beautiful Mind, I quickly saw it could only B. Obama.

Technology
As the first e-commander in chief, Obama freely admits to an intractable addiction to his Blackberry, facing down the security Gestapo who threatened to confiscate it shortly after he was elected. Happily, after some high-tech tweaking and de-Friending a bunch of people on Facebook, his favourite sidearm was safely restored to its holster.

Additional proof of the Prez's tech-savviness is the November, 2008 debut of his weekly Web address, a kind of YouTube fireside chat that manages to straddle the formal–informal line while avoiding his predecessors' annoying habit of interrupting my primetime TV shows.

Politics
Check.

Celebrity
Can anyone really argue against Obama as a celebrity? Not since the saxophone player have we had someone so telegenic. Hasn't he been on Oprah? And Letterman? (Yes, yes, he's also been on Leno and Kimmel, but we all know they don't count.) And do I even need to remind you of Obamania and Obama Girl?

Film
Rumour has it Denzel has been signed to play him in the movie. 'Nuff said.

Music
Obama's impact on the U.S. music industry is undeniable (not counting the aforementioned Obama Girl's "Crush on Obama"). Dozens of musicians leapt aboard the Yes We Can campaign wagon, then jostled for a spot in the winner's limelight. The musical message from the newly funky White House was also received loud and clear: at the Feb. 18 "We Are One" concert, performers including Beyoncé, Bono, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Usher, Shakira, Sheryl Crow, Josh Groban, Pete Seeger, James Taylor, Stevie Wonder, Renee Fleming, Garth Brooks, Mary J. Blige, and Herbie Hancock did their best to aurally represent the theme. (However, as Jon Stewart pointed out at the time (see 3:10–3:30), a democratic line-up doesn't necessarily translate into pleasing all of the people all of the time.)

And who among us who isn't an active member of a militia didn't get misty when Beyoncé serenaded Barack and Michelle with "At Last" at the Inaugural Ball?

Pop Culture
Lastly, we come to my favourite category. For just a taste of Pop! Goes the Obama, let's troll the e-waters for the history of black presidents in TV and movies, and discussions of whether or not the fictional versions helped the real guy win. In Slate, Troy Patterson looks back at black Hollywood commanders-in-chief, and over at NPR, Scott Simon interviews Weekend Edition's entertainment critic, Elvis Mitchell, who points out that in most movies, "you could only have a black president...when the Earth was about to be destroyed. He would never get to complete his term."

In his thoughtful entry in the Hollywood-casts-the-presidency discussion, Sean Higgins takes a more detailed look at the Pre-Obamas. Higgins applies Shelby Steele's theory of black leaders as "challengers" vs. "bargainers" and finds that like his fictional predecessors David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert in 24) and Tom Beck (Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact), Obama seems to falls squarely in the fatherly "bargainer" category.

Ha! Looks like I've found him—the El Dorado of blogging.

Now...where do I send my invoice?

The Age of Hybrids

On Thursday night’s edition of The Colbert Report, Stephen’s guest was Jerry Mitchell, a renowned investigative reporter whose diligent digging has led to the convictions to date of four KKK members for the murders of civil rights activists. The host greeted his guest with, “From my research, I see that you are a newspaper reporter. What is that?”

The question seemed especially well timed as a follow-up to Michael Massing’s New York Review of Books article about news on the Internet.

I freely admit to a profound ignorance concerning anything to do with politics, but the subject of politics is not alone in moving to the Web, and the latest stage in the evolution of human communication applies equally to any topic. Newspapers in their traditional form are clearly not long for this world, but hasn’t the digitization of information been the sword held over the heads of many forms of media, especially books, for years?

Still, the shift is undeniable. As a hanger-on of the publishing industry, working mainly on textbooks, I can attest to its effects. On the first page of a memo accompanying a recent proofreading project, where the publication details would normally be it said instead, “No print copies; content to be posted online only.”

Like the antediluvian auto industry, it seems newspapers and printers, along with the rest of us clinging to the coat-tails of published forms of communication, will have to suss out a new paradigm or get cozy in history’s seconds bin along with beta tapes and laserdiscs.

Where are we going from here? In his article, Massing writes of “reporter-blogger” Paul Kiel, “Kiel is an example of an emerging new breed of ‘hybrids,’ schooled in both the practices of print journalism and the uses of cyberspace.” It seems hybridization is everywhere; technologies are converging and becoming interactive at a dizzying rate: cars, phones, Internet, TVs, music, maps—so isn’t this just news becoming interactive as well? Does the delivery method matter as long as it’s still news?

We all get that the hybrid car is a stop-gap; something must eventually replace the internal combustion engine to wean us off our fixes of fossil fuel. So if our traditional-news drugs of choice must be replaced, is there value in the hybrids that now give us our fix, and what “active ingredients” in those drugs should be carried forward?

Massing’s article suggests that one of the key differences between traditional news-gathering and news blogging is that in many news blogs, the discussion is no longer balanced. He points out that this may be a good thing, as newspaper coverage can carry its own biases. But isn't the down side a deafness to other voices?

How do we avoid a blogosphere that “supplies the reader with ‘prefiltered information’ supporting his or her own views,” as Massing, quoting Bill Wasik, puts it? Anyone who has watched the terrifying documentary The Corporation is aware of the dangers of corporately funded and sanctioned media product. The democratization that the Internet has permitted seems twinned with a dilution of quality, as our class has discussed. As Massing says, “a premium is put on the sexy and sensational.”

The big questions for me, therefore, are not which delivery method will eventually win out in the transitional sweepstakes, but how the “product” will be paid for, and how its quality will be controlled. If there is no neutrality, how do we make sure people hear all sides of a discussion? Who will sort the wheat from all that chaff?

As Deadwood’s Al Swearengen knows, no matter how heady, a no-holds-barred environment eventually degrades into chaos without controls of some kind, whether benevolent or not. The hybrids of this age will be replaced by new, probably interactive technologies, but the old debate surrounding what constitutes news, and who gets to call it that, will rage on.

Say Something

The Stage by Simon Scott

In what is probably a good example of biting off more than I can chew, I’m going to try to blog about beginning to blog.

Thinking about this course, it occurred to me recently that I really don’t know anything about anything. That’s not strictly true, of course; I know enough about enough to navigate through most days. But I started to think: what do I know enough about to tell someone else? Would anyone hire me as an instructor of anything? Highly unlikely.

I feel I have only a few true skills, some acquired, some inborn: I am an absolute expert at avoiding (particularly at “laying down and avoiding” as the Pythons might say). Some might call this laziness, but there’s too much anxiety involved for that. I am pretty good at cat care, but for our instructor’s sake, I’ll forswear that discussion for now. In the inborn category, I have a spookily accurate, almost photographic, short-term memory, useful for proofreading. However, when I say “short-term” I mean exactly that. I can’t remember my last birthday, whom I saw that movie with or how it ended, where I spent last Christmas or New Year’s, my childhood, or other such details.

This skill shortage does not prevent me from concocting theories on a near-constant basis and trying to link world and cultural events that "prove" them. I cherish my favourite theories like beloved pets; they’ve evolved and matured along with me. But they are shared with only a few confidants—mostly those who I am fairly sure will agree with me. The choir, in other words.

So now we get to the crux of it: if I am unqualified to pass along most forms of knowledge, what qualifies me to comment on anyone else’s knowledge or experience? I realize this is mainly an issue of insecurity—who grants any of us the authority to make our opinions known? But even if I can convince myself I have something to say, actually saying it is an entirely different matter.

Luckily, there’s only one thing worse than the paralyzing anxiety of sticking my two cents out there for all to see, and that’s keeping them to myself. The urge to create is elemental; if it’s suppressed, I believe it worms its way out in the form of unhealthy behaviours. So expressing ourselves is essential to our mental (some would say spiritual) health.

But there’s another reason to share, and that is, it contributes to personal growth. Experiencing art teaches us who we are. We are constantly searching for ourselves in various artistic products. We ask ourselves, “Do I like this?” “Is this something I can relate to?” “Do I understand the behaviour of this character?” “Am I like him (or her)?”

By adding my voice to the discussion, I can discover the views of others and adapt my own. I also get out of the echo chamber of my own head and step into the real world of others’ perspectives. Relationships are potential sites of growth; avoidance results only in stasis. As an entropy-denier, this is a difficult hurdle for me. But I try to remember E.M. Forster’s exhortation, “Only connect.” If our connections are all that matter, all that live on, shouldn’t expanding the boundaries of our conversations be our primary goal?

Like most of my theories, this all sounds great in my head, but of course is terrifying to put into practice. Can my need to express myself, to grow or die, to indulge my curiosity, to persuade others, overcome the performance anxiety? But maybe these are the wrong questions. Maybe it’s about having the courage to do it anyway, to admit my limitations, to see that they are universally shared, to abandon perfection, and to step off the next cliff and speak up. Leap and the net will appear, as they say.

Here’s another good quote I saw recently, from Theodore Roethke: “Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.”

With a mix of trepidation, faith, and anticipation, I’m stepping off.

We Are Their Meat: The Real Us vs. Them

A ballet class in Hong Kong in the spring of 2003.
Photo by Vincent Yu/Associated Press

On Tuesday night, TV Ontario premiered a new series called The Virus Empire. The first episode, called "Silent Killers," examined the modus operandi of the SARS virus, painfully familiar to anyone living in Toronto in 2003. Fascinating though the behaviour of these creatures is—or are they even creatures? Scientists are still arguing over whether they are even alive, and Wikipedia calls them "infectious agents"—the key message of the episode seemed not to be "better stock up on masks and Purell," but rather that humans had better smarten up and realize that if we are able to overcome this common enemy when the promised pandemic strikes, it will only be through co-operation and transparency, neither of which are plentiful in these paranoid and protectionist times.


In "Silent Killers," Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg is quoted as saying, "The single biggest threat to man's continued dominance on the planet is the virus. They are looking for food; we are their meat." The program traces the path of the 2003 killer as SARS is rapidly dispersed throughout Europe and North America while the World Health Organization (WHO) and Atlanta's Centres for Disease Control (CDC) scramble to identify the predator and protect the prey. It re-enacts the early days of the outbreak at the Metropole hotel in Hong Kong, where Dr. Liu, Patient Zero, first arrived from China's Guangdong province in February, 2003. A handful of travellers ride in the elevator with the good doctor, then over the next few days, they carry the pathogen worldwide.

The show also relates the actions of the authorities in Frankfurt, Germany, on March 15, as they are alerted to the presence of an ill passenger on an incoming Singapore Airlines plane. Immediate quarantine of all 250 passengers on touchdown entirely prevents the entry of the virus into Germany. The traveller, also a doctor, had been treating one of the original flight attendants infected by Patient Zero in Hong Kong. By the time the outbreak is contained that summer, it will be discovered that fully 50% of reported cases internationally can be traced back to Dr. Liu.






The SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV).


In April, the WHO manages to convince 13 high-security labs worldwide, normally fierce scientific competitors, to sacrifice individual credit in order to tackle deconstructing the SARS genome with the goal of developing an effective test for the infection. This is accomplished in short order—less than a month—via co-operation and marathon teleconferencing sessions. The WHO's success at overcoming the labs' usual proprietary interests and competitiveness essentially provides the means to halt the outbreak within another three months.
As it has done before, the People's Republic of China delayed informing the international community or requesting assistance in the early days of the outbreak in November 2002, inactions that directly resulted in widespread transmission. And as has happened before, such self-interest ultimately backfires when the situation that has prompted such defensiveness cannot be effectively contained, resulting in many needless deaths before international help is requested and received. Whether it's floods, earthquakes, or epidemics, China's leaders just never seem to grasp this cause and effect relationship.

But humans are inclined that way. We can all be protectionist, closing ranks and building walls to keep "them" out. "They" are a fearsome threat, indeed, and range from the immigrant neighbours cooking their "smelly" delicacies to actual aliens—and all those foreign evildoers in between. But there is no real "them"; we are all in this together, as the virologists keep trying to explain. As Mike Ryan, one of the WHO SARS team members puts it, "Nature is the main bioterrorist."

And even the viruses aren't "them"! According to the virologists in The Virus Empire, one-tenth of our genes are the residue of ancient retroviruses. Viruses are literally a part of us—and every other living organism—and as such are just another environmental challenge that can only be effectively faced together. On the scale of such things, SARS was a weakling, quickly captured and neutralized. According to the experts at the CDC, the next major threat is likely to come from a mutated influenza virus, possibly a variant of the bird flu.

SARS, H1N1, and the next pandemic have many lessons to teach us: about co-operation, about asking for help, about the ultimate equality and vulnerability of all of us. We don't have to live our lives behind masks if we can come to terms with the myth of the bogeymen, the other, "them." Ryan asks, "Is our security at some nominal border, or is our security the health of our population?"



Masked citizens in Hong Kong during the 2003 SARS outbreak.
Photo by jlatvels


We were lucky with SARS. It seems we will be lucky with H1N1, this year's threat. But can we learn our lessons before we find ourselves riding in that hotel elevator with the Big One?

Lost Toronto: The Top Ten Things I Miss the Most, Part 2

The Eglinton's sign, marquee, and shops, circa 1938.

Those of you kind enough to have read Part 1 of my "best of lost T.O." article may have noted that three of the five entries were movie theatre–related. Well, brace yourselves if that ain't your cuppa, because I freely admit it: I adore old movie houses, palaces, and nabes (neighbourhood cinemas) and have even been involved with saving one or two from the threat of demolition or, worse, condosization. So here's part deux, again in no particular order, in which, sadly, cinematic locales continue to feature prominently.

The Eglinton's original Three Fates mirror, recently reproduced.

6) The Eglinton Theatre. The Eglinton, an Art Deco gem on Eglinton Ave. West near Avenue Road., (now known as the Eglinton Grand, an "event theatre," whatever that is), wrapped up its single-screen life in 2002 with screenings of the Sing-along Sound of Music. Not only did I attend this last hurrah, I'll have you know I won an honourable mention in the costume contest—I wore tan cords and a big beige sweater along with a fluffy tail and antlers; I was, of course, "Do, a Deer." (And yes, I realize does don't have antlers. Sue me.) The Eglinton no longer functions as a single-screen cinema, but the raked floor and all the rest has been preserved should the day ever come when watching movies becomes more lucrative than renting event space. Favourite Eglinton memory: Deer tales notwithstanding, I was grateful to be a member of the neighbourhood group Save the Eglinton, which tried to do its small part to impress upon the building owner that preserving the theatre was an act of cultural heroism for which he would be amply rewarded in his next life. Well, actually, we just donated the money we'd raised for the restoration of one of the original etched mirrors....

The shopping concourse in the College Street Eaton's, circa 1930.

7) Eaton's College Street. Another Deco beauty, Eaton's fabulous uptown location, which opened in 1930, succumbed to a new retail reality in 1977, when the Eaton Centre opened just a few blocks south. Through a combination of luck and the support of heritage groups, the superlative seventh floor, home of the the Round Room restaurant and Eaton's Auditorium, where my mother's school choir once performed, and boarded up and left to rot for decades, reopened in 2003 as the Carlu event space, and is once again host to the creme de la creme of city society. Favourite Eaton's College St. memory: Making a special trip up to T.O. to visit the store one last time before it closed, when I bought an Eaton's facecloth (big spender, I know) and rode the noisy but cool old escalators with the wooden treads.

The Gardens interior in February, 2009. Photo by Яick Harris

8) Maple Leaf Gardens. The Gardens is still standing, thank god, but is currently empty, left to molder like so many cultural treasures before it, its future uncertain except as a movie and TV set. When I first moved to Toronto, I lived in a high rise right behind it, and enjoyed the thrill of proximity to a legend. Though no one would ever accuse me of being a hockey fan in any form, I will admit to a purely exhilarating experience when my parents took me to a live Leafs game as a kid; the scrape and spray of the skates carving the ice, the sting of the cold, the explosive crack! of the slapshots, and the brilliant colours of the jerseys left me breathless. Favourite Gardens memory: A sweaty midsummer Elton John concert in the early 80s (one of his four or five “farewell tours”), when our seats were in the gods and the packed crowd was so amped that every man jack of us left that arena screamed hoarse.

Update: The day after this article was posted, it was announced that Loblaws and Ryerson University plan to share the Gardens in an innovative commercial-athletic configuration that will, at least, preserve the exterior and the existing ice surface.

The pavilion princesses and mayors at the 2002 opening of the 34th Caravan.

9) Metro International Caravan. Where did this summer stalwart go? After 35 years, it seems to have slipped away quietly in the night. When Leon and Zena Kossar first proposed this annual festival of “multiculturalism,” as we used to call diversity (maybe someday we’ll just call it….nothing at all!), Toronto's many ethnic groups rarely rubbed shoulders. But with Caravan passports clutched in our sweaty fists, each year my friends and I tried to see more spectacles, eat more "weird" foods, and get more henna tattoos than the year before. My Caravanning rules were quite strict (read: anal-retentive): to count, a visit to a Caravan pavilion had to include witnessing a full show, viewing the exhibits, and partaking in some unfamiliar cuisine. I am proud to say that in my last year, I managed to collect passport stamps from 27 of the 30-odd pavilions. Ironically, as former mayor David Crombie stated at the time, by the time the Athens pavilion served that final plate of spanakopita in 2004, Toronto had simply become its own giant version of Caravan, no passport required. Favourite Caravan memory: The lovely and amazing candle dancers of the Manila pavilion on Millwood Road.

The Carlton's last gasp. Where will the "little movies" go? Photo by P. Griffin.

10) The Carlton Cinemas. For this final entry, I beg your indulgence, as it's not yet actually lost. However, the haven for alternative, arty, foreign, documentary and other out-there forms of cinematic expression is scheduled to shutter its doors on December 6th. Though these tiny boxes are now equivalent to the home theatres in many 'burban rec rooms, for the last three decades they’ve provided a venue for the movies no one frequenting the Colossus will ever hear of, and that was a good thing. Favourite Carlton memory: There isn't just one; however, I will miss pretending I have my own screening room when I'm sharing the place with only one or two others—or no one at all—as well as feeling I'm at one of those hipster New York City art-house cinemas. In the coming week, I will be observing my customary habit of making a final pilgrimage to the Carlton, my former neighbour and friend, and the most recent Toronto theatre to face the executioner, to say my latest goodbye.