Friday, October 30, 2009

Fubar 2

Give'r. Again.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Music Update

By September standards, October slowed down a little bit, though some of you might have noticed my "Bowie or Bust" updates on Twitter (@wenzel), where I tried to work my through Bowie's entire solo artist catalogue. I'll post my thoughts later in November.

As for new stuff, the new Do Make Say Think album, Other Truths, was captivating. Particular the lead song "Do".


The British record label Ninja Tune continued to surprise with a new release Patriot by a group called Cougar. Ninja Tune helped pioneer the whole DJ/turntable revival in the mid-1990s, and until recently mainly put out electronica releases. Cougar, however, has a far more deliberate rock and roll sound, and coupled with the folky Fink album they put out a few months back, marks a real attempt to diversify.


The British Isles also furnished another album I gave steady play too, Two Sunsets, by Glasgow's Pastels, and Tokyo's Tenniscoats, collaborating for a ethereal synthy pop album at times reminiscent of the Lost in Translation soundtrack.


Closer to home Magneta Lane's Gambling with God got things rocking with their bluesy four-four time and Vancouver's Said The Whale, a homage to their cross-Canada travels stacked with a few hometown songs like "False Creek Change" that helped inspire some fresh fiction writing.


Generation Bubble

Wow, yesterday's post about hipsters via Generation Bubble led to some costing around their website and brought back a flood of memories from the early days of The Daily Wenzel. I think it fair to say though that Generation Bubble does everything we set out to do far better than we ever managed to accomplish it. I tip my imaginary hat to them and encourage you all to read what they have to say.

(To be fair to my colleagues in The Daily Wenzel though, I couldn't help but notice that the members of Generation Bubble are geographically spread out. Clearly this is advantageous to overcoming the drinking and socializing that tended to undermine our literary efforts.)

Thursday, October 22, 2009

More on Hipsters: His Bowtie Is Really A Camera

Generation Bubble posted a translation of a recent article by heavyweight philosopher Slavoj Zizek. In his article, Zizek bent his considerable intellect to the task of considering "hipsters", a topic that I am finding more and more interesting thanks to Kaya Oakes' discussion in Slanted and Enchanted.

I can't say that I understand everything Zizek is saying (since some might argue the extent to which he says anything at all), but it seems to me that really all he is saying is that we throw around "hipster" as a derogatory term because we feel insecure about our own identities. To a certain extent, I think this would only be true if all our relationships with other people were premised on exchanges of power and status. It's a pretty cynical point of view, but certainly we can all think of some people in "the scene" that we would accuse of harbouring these views. Further, given government policies of infiltrating suspected subversive groups, it's not wholly unwarranted to be suspicious.

On the other hand, as I argued earlier, any person who's participation in the counterculture is limited to passive activities such as consumption, can be defined as a hipster. If we accept that the counterculture is one where all members are encouraged to become more active participants (though we often debate how to define "more active"). However the point to be made here is that the transition from mainstream culture to counterculture is not clear cut, the boundaries are fuzzy, and "hipster" represents a transition state that more senior members of the counterculture ought to help these sympathizers negotiate.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Movies I wished I had time to watch

I find myself in possession of two seasons of Flight of the Conchords on loan, which initially excited me, until I released it meant that I had to find the time to watch eleven hours of television that I don't really have. It's a challenge, but I'm up for up.

Other challenges will include finding the time to watch some movies. The first is Where The Wild Things Are because I'm not sure who will enjoy more - me or my daughter. She loves the book, as do I. But, she has not grown up on Spike Jonze videos for Weezer or the Beastie Boys, or Might Magazine and David Eggers, and she has certainly not been exposed to James Gandolfini.

The second is this upcoming soccer movie, The Damned United, since I rather do enjoy the sport.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Why We Love Pirates


My daughter and I watched Pirates of the Caribbean on the weekend, and she drew this picture during the film. I think it's inspired by the scene where Jack Sparrow and Will Turner steal the Interceptor (the small ship) and are chased the the Royal Navy (in the big ship). The navy has launched a cannonball at them.

Part of my motivation for watching Pirates of the Caribbean was because I watched The Ultimate Gift, a religiously inspired motivational movie. I won't spoil the ending (completely anyways), but at no point did the movie make me fear that the hero would not survive or would fail in his task. It never happened, and so the movie carried no emotional weight. It wasn't poorly acted, and I guess the poor directorial choices could ultimately be blamed on scriptwriting.

As I noted last week, I have not been exactly productive in my own creative writing, but I have been thinking a lot about what works from a plot development perspective. Back in the 1990s I freely admitted that plot was overated and wrote a few parking lot inspired anti-dramas. While I still struggle with coming up with plot devices that I feel are original enough, I do have a new found appreciation for how some of those parts add up to a good story.

Enter Pirates of the Caribbean. What I really like about these three movies is the interplay between the three lead characters of Jack Sparrow, Will Turner, and Elizabeth Swann, especially in the second and third movies where they appear to have set each one up with mutually exclusive goals. The initial goal of any good story is to introduce characters that the audience likes, something accomplished in the first movie. The opening sequence in Port Royal where Elizabeth and Will defend Jack's "honour" also established them as fiercely loyal to their friend. It is this loyalty, combined with our own love affair with these three, that the second and third movies play off. We like these characters and want them to succeed, but the plot has been developed in such a way that we sit awash in tension from knowing that should anyone of them achieve their individual goals, it will come at the expense of the other two.

As an audience, we want to cheer for the main character and the job of the author is to engineer situations that puts our feelings for the character at risk. Either we need to be afraid that the character will fail, won't catch the bad guy or won't win back his or her's lover, but better movies manage to add an extra layer wherein we are afraid that the character will succeed, but only by resorting to some action of which we disapprove. This is why we like films about pirates and anti-heroes; all of the visual cues of the character establishes them as bad guys, and a few will-placed acts of good faith early on wins our trust. The rest of the movie is spent testing the audience with the notion that our trust was misplaced and given too easily.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Psychic Hearts

Maybe it's the dreary weather, but I found some quiet time this morning to finish editting a short story I wrote back in the middle of my undergraduate days. It's called "Psychic Hearts" after the Thurston Moore solo album that came out around that time and pulled heavy duty on my stereo.

Ostensibly, it's a story about what happens on a snow day, one of the worst ever experienced by Calgary, and was inspired by the infamous St. Patrick's Day snowstorm of 1998 that ground everything to a halt (although the temperature did not plunge as much).

Looking back on the story now, it also appears to be as much about being young and hanging out in a city struggling to come out of a recession. I think they were starting to pick up economically even as I wrote this one.

Enjoy.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

September Progress Reports

Not much to report this month. Things have been extremely busy in my nine-to-five life, and so not much creative writing got done. I did write half a dozen reviews for Fast Forward and Spectrum, making that one of my busiest months as well. Back in the summer it seemed easy to find the time to write what appeared to be a paltry daily quota of 500 words. Now that my daily routine is back into grinder mode, even making that would seem to be a chore. I am developing the sense that I need to make some serious choices about how I spend my non-work, non-family time as it doesn't look like I have enough time to do some writing, some reading, and exercising each day. I might have to alternate with dedicated days for each activity. The summer demonstrated that I can write in excess of 500 words, so maybe writing 1500 words every three days could be an option?

Needless to say then, I failed to make my 45,000 word tally, and even the revised 25,000 words that I thought would be more realistic didn't happen. In fact, I only managed to type up 1000 words of the hand-written material I generated on my road trip. I also can't say that, as of October 10, this month is going to make up for it as I've written zero so far. Theoretically, my absolute totals for the end of October ought to be 60,000 words, but given my current output, even hitting 22,000 would represent an outstanding achievement.

Hopefully I'll have a better strategy in place for November.


Short Stories:
"Of Light and Darkness" - in revision*
* this is part of my Twilight of the Idle short story series along with"Labellypock", "A Night on the Fronde" and "Out of Time (Ped Xing)"
"Psychic Hearts" - in revision
"How My Uncle Faught The Spanish Civil War" - 1000 words
"Il Brute" - 700 words, a short story about living in Bridgeland

Novel Ideas (and working titles):
A Saturday Afternoon By The Slurpee Machine - 2100 words, growing up in NE Calgary, circa 1990
Games of Chance - 12000 words, quasi-related to the current economic downturn
The Last Days of the Daily Wenzel - 8150 words
Father Borsato di Sangi - notes only, about a priest in small town Alberta, circa 1910,
Mt. Pilatus Calls My Name - notes only, a corporate satire

Good Ideas At The Time (Whole draft novels):
joculatores domini - in revision, a novel about parking attendants and the Calgary Stampede
The Liminal Trip - in revision, backpacking through Europe,

September's Total Word Count: 12000

Thursday, October 8, 2009

September Bookends

Wow, we're already into the second week of October and I'm just getting around to reporting on September's reading. I guess that gives you a hint at how busy I've been in my nine to five work and suggests just how much reading of non-reports, non-proposals, and non-emails I've managed to do.

Precious little.

The one book I am in the middle of reading is Jack Whyte's finale to his Templar Knights Trilogy, Order In Chaos. I was a big fan of his sprawling and detailed Arthurian books, and was finding the Templar books a little bit of a disappointment, in that Whyte appeared to be streamlining his style somewhat. Order In Chaos is something of a return to form then, and I am enjoying it very much.

My enjoyment might also stem from the fact it is the only non-fiction book I'm reading at the moment.

Books Read
Gary Small - iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind (2009)

Currently reading:
Jack Whyte - Order In Chaos (2009)
David Townsend, Pamela Adams - The Essential Question: A Handbook For School Improvement (2009)
Richard DuFour, et al., Learning By Doing (2006)
J. Lloyd Trump - A School For Everyone (1977)*
Robert T. Kiyosaki, Sharon L. Lechter - Rich Dad, Poor Dad (1997)*
*I'm in no hurry to finish these, but for different reasons

Books Acquired
None

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Maybe I was mistaken


It occurs to me now, having been out of the parking lot attendant business for ten years, that maybe the designers of this t-shirt were being ironic.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Music Update

Man, September has been a busy, busy time. I think I picked up a dozen albums in the last month, which is a lot, even for me. It's a new album every two to three days, which requires a lot of listening. Luckily, I guess, I also spent a lot of time driving across Calgary doing site visits, giving me ample opportunity to listen to a lot of this music.

I stumbled across this Belle & Sebastian side project, God Help The Girl, courtesy of my friends over at Spectrum Culture. It's a kind of concept album, with a story set to music by Stuart Murdoch, who then recruited three amateur vocalists. It's interesting, but I wouldn't go much farther than that.



Speaking of Belle & Sebastian, Spectrum also ran down their recommended playlist for the Scottish group, and I spent a considerable amount of time trying to pick my favourite tracks. The end result? I'm not particularly crazy about Fold Your Hands Child... and I appear to like the "happy" Belle & Sebastian songs.



Speaking of favourites, The Big Pink's A Brief History of Love has been one of my favourites on the year.


I also picked up the Bon Iver Blood Bank Ep.


My friend Dan Vacon, lead singer of the Dudes, released an album under his quieter side-project Dojo Workhorse.



I also picked up the new Grizzly Bear album, which to be honest, really couldn't hold my attention for long.


I also found myself spending some time with Lou Barlow's latest album, Goodnight Unknown:


The new Magnolia Electric Co. album Josephine was something I listened to a fair bit back in August and so picked up the Songs: Ohia album Didn't It Rain on a bit of a whim.

I've also picked up the new Bonnie Prince Billy and Bill Callahan, two highly recommended albums that I hope to listen to more in October. Similarly, Saddle Creek's Orenda Fink has a sophomore album, Ask the Night, that just recently joined my collection.