press round-up

Since I don't want to bore you all with constant press updates, I've added a sidebar link over there on the left if you feel like reading various mentions about ye olde Tadpole in the press. New additions today include round-up reviews from the Newark Star-Ledger and the Boston Globe.

The book also got a (slightly misleading but welcome all the same) mention in a delightful column by Ontario writer Ian Gillespie - which, my Canadian representative (read: my dad) informs me, ran in all of Rupert Murdoch's Canadian papers. Media conglomeration: working for me!

Anyway, the best part of the column is this:

The BBC reported that things recently went wobbly at Wembley Stadium when British opera singer Tony Henry belted out a somewhat distorted version of the Croatian national anthem.

Henry was performing the anthem Lijepa Nasa Domovino (Our Beautiful Homeland) before the start of a European Championship qualifying soccer game between England and Croatia.

Unfortunately, Henry erred on the last line of the second verse. He should have sung, "Mila kuda si planina," which roughly means, "You know, my dear, how we love your mountains."

Instead he sang, "Mila kura si planina," which translates into, "My dear, my penis is a mountain."

Oops.

"If I have offended any Croatians, then they have my deepest apologies," Henry said later. "The last thing I would do is brag about my (private) parts like that."

Read the full column here.

This reminds me of a time my senior year when our Headmaster was observing my AP French class. We were spending the class working on our conversational skills, and my friend Kelly was telling some story that - for what reason I cannot possibly remember - involved talking about how much she yawns. "I yawn," in French, is je bâille. Unfortunately, Kelly confused bâiller with another word, baiser. Which she repeated again and again and again: "Je baise, je baise, je baise."

I fuck, I fuck, I fuck.

My teacher nearly hyperventilated she was laughing so hard. When the headmaster asked what was so funny, she just waved her hands and said "Oh, it doesn't really translate."

Sometimes, lost in translation isn't always a bad thing. (More)

northern exposure

In fourth grade I was given what should have been a simple assignment: to draw a picture of my life's ambition. It was supposed to be simple because it's supposed to be easy to know what you want to be when you grow up - provided you're a kid and don't have the slightest clue what growing up really means.

But I was pathologically indecisive at an early age, so I had a bit more trouble than my classmates. (My shortlist of potential careers, circa 1990: a geologist, a kung fu master, a cat burglar, a chemist, a paleontologist, a spy, a submarine captain, a witch, a Ghostbuster.) Eventually, though, I settled on two pictures. For the first, I drew skeletons and a volcano. For the second, I drew a net, a puck, and the number 50.

I've long since lost the pictures, but here are some reproductions:

Now, if you know me at all, it probably won't surprise you that no one was much troubled by the first picture. I was, after all, a freakish only child who had turned to National Geographic for companionship and really wanted to excavate dead bodies in Pompeii. My classmates knew this and avoided me accordingly.

The second picture, however, caused some consternation - because no one knew what it meant.

I mean, I thought it was pretty obvious: I wanted to be the first woman to score 50 goals in 50 games, naturally. I wanted to be just like Rocket Richard. Just, you know, a girl. It didn't matter that I could barely skate, much less play hockey - I could do it. After all, I was half-Canadian, dammit. And according to my dad that was a good 30% more Canadian than anyone from Quebec was anyway.

You can imagine how well this went over with my classmates.

Suffice it to say, I got made fun of pretty mercilessly for months. I think that people were actually still bringing it up in high school, despite the fact that by then I'd landed myself in far more humiliating circumstances.

But this is what happens when you let fiercely loyal Canadians raise their kids in the States: endless childhood trauma.

Because Canadians, at least in my experience, tend to be exceedingly (and rightfully) proud of their heritage. In fact, I suspect that many Canadians even have a pro-Canada pitch ready to go, one refined over a lifetime of answering to skeptical Americans who can't help but ask: what's so great about Canada anyway? (Short answer: high standards of living, really nice people, reasonably intelligent social policy, poutine.) And I guarantee that any Canadian - and particularly those Canadians living in the U.S. - can name at least a dozen Canadian-born celebrities with hardly a moment's thought.

My dad's favorite go-to Canadian celeb is Pamela Anderson. Mine is Rae Dawn Chong. It's hard to argue against Canada in the face of evidence like that.

Canadians love their country, and they're not afraid to let you know it. And they're even less afraid to let their kids know it. All the time. Day in. Day out. Until the kids sing O Canada more clearly than the Star-Spangled Banner, announce in class that Saskatchewan is ten times better than Minnesota's Land of 10,000 Lakes, and start to wonder what they did that was so wrong, that their fathers would keep them hidden away in St. Louis, so very far away from what is obviously their rightful home.

Really, though, I think it's all pretty sweet.

(Curiously, although New Yorkers display this same compulsion to shamelessly self-promote, I have never found it at all charming. In fact, I found it profoundly irritating. So irritating that I was forced to move here so that I would never again have to hear "What, you haven't been to the Frick?" or "It's not exactly Bergdorf's, is it?" or "In the city we have 24-hour public transportation.")

(N.B. to those of you not living in New York: this non-stop public transportation thing is bullshit in any case. When you stumble out of a bar and onto the subway at 4am, you're more likely than not going to pass out and wake up 40 minutes later in Coney Island, which is not - trust me on this - worth the 20 bucks you saved on cab fare.)

But even Canadians need to be reminded of their history on occasion, and this is why we have a little something called Historica.

Officially, Historica encourages "the best possible Canadian history education ... by providing or supporting programs and resources that inspire Canadians to explore their history." But what Historica really does best is produce one-minute historical reenactments, many of which are shown in Canadian movie theaters as part of the pre-show entertainment. I was in Vancouver this past weekend and I got to enjoy a number of these shorts while waiting to see The Notorious Bettie Page. And I can safely say that the Historica shorts were the highlight of my afternoon: for the most part, the Historica Minutes are tiny slices of comic genius. (And, okay, I thought Bettie Page was pretty middling, but that's beside the point.)

And so I've decided that instead of bleating incessantly about how much I just so heart Canada, I will just encourage everyone to take a low-budget look at our great neighbor to the north.

The Historica site is chock-full of delectable historical morsels on subjects that range far and wide: the Montreal Expo, the Underground Railroad, syrup. And you can learn all sorts of new and exciting things, too. Did you know, for instance, that we have Canada to thank for Winnie-the-Pooh? And time zones? And orphans?

My personal favorites include "Jacques Plante", about the brave and awe-inspiring invention of the goalie mask, and "Flags", about the intense political debate that surrounded the adoption of the Canadian flag. ("Do we want one Maple Leaf - or three?")

The most curious film by far is "Grey Owl", an ode to the James Frey of the early twentieth century. Grey Owl was a Brit named Archibald Belaney who conned the world into believing that he was half Apache and became a best-selling author as a result. From what I can tell, though, Grey Owl had slightly nobler aspirations than Big Jim: he was a dedicated naturalist and conservationist and, quoth Historica, "helped create a legacy of awareness and protection for Canada's forests and wildlife."

Which is all well and good, but not particularly revelatory from a one-minute-reenactment point of view.

Until you see the actor portraying Grey Owl:

The way I see it, there are two ways this could have happened. First of all, it's possible that this short is just a collection of scenes from the 1999 Richard Attenborough film of the same name. Or it's also possible that the Historica people put this together in conjunction with the film's release in Canada. It's awfully hard to tell, though, given that the Grey Owl short is not substantially different from the rest of the Historica series. That is, it has the production values of a PBS pledge drive. Were it not for the inclusion of Thomas Crown here (looking mighty uncomfortable in those pigtails, if you ask me), I would never have guessed that it was a film tie-in.

On the other hand, the movie was so bad that it went straight to video in the States, so maybe it was just naturally in keeping with the Historicaesthetic.

(Either way, I'm sure you'll all be glad to know that Sir Richard is sure to be back in top Best Director form with his next film, which stars Mischa Barton.)

But of course, no survey of Canadian history would be complete without a nod to the man who is, depending on whom you ask, either the Babe Ruth or George Washington of Canadian history: Maurice "Rocket" Richard. And Historica does not disappoint, featuring a segment on Richard's legendary 1944 performance against the Detroit Red Wings, in which he scored 5 goals and had 3 assists. And which they celebrate by immortalizing Richard's remarkable skill in the Historicarchives.


His remarkable skill, that is, in being his family's bitch. Yes, Richard spends 50 of his 60 seconds moving furniture for his folks.

Which just goes to show that my ten-year-old self was actually much wiser than I realized. Because in one way, at least, I have grown up to be just like Rocket Richard.

Just, you know, a girl. (More)

jingle hell

Well, I guess there's no escaping it now. I've been doing my best to ignore seasonal cheer and its attendant stress and bullshit sentimentality, but Christmas finally weaseled its noxious little way into my life this weekend, and I'm guessing it's here to stay.


On Saturday, I received my first Christmas present, from my reliably absurd Auntie Marilyn. Marilyn is my father's only sister, and growing up with four sarcastic, sharp-tongued brothers has not served her particularly well. She is still married to her high-school sweetheart, who won her over in part because he managed not to be scared off by my uncles or by my grandfather, who once yelled at him "Go paddle your own canoe!" (Which, along with "if you can stay up late at night, you can get up early in the morning", was one of Grandpa's favorite sayings.)

Marilyn has children and grandchildren and even, if I'm not mistaken, great-grandchildren. Which is really lucky for me, actually, because had her line not proven to be so fertile, I would probably have to take a lot more shit for being the family's generational bottleneck.

Anyway, Marilyn's had a perfectly lovely life and she's a reasonably nice person: she is, after all, the type of woman who still sends Christmas presents to her 24-year-old niece. Unfortunately, nice just doesn't cut it in our family. And, to make matters worse, Marilyn has an unfortunate tendency to make herself the butt of a joke, without any effort whatsoever on our part.

Like, for instance, her Christmas presents. My dad and I used to have a yearly tradition of saving her gifts for last so that we could fully appreciate the grotesque beauty of her taste. She usually sent my father some sort of locally made tchotchke, like a Tlingit-inspired shot glass or a fish-shaped paperweight. I always assumed that she was trying to rebuke my father for defecting to the U.S., but, I mean, come on: they grew up in a white, working-class smelting town. Trail, B.C. isn't exactly a treasure-trove of traditional Canadian culture.


I usually got jewelry of the most hideous kind - pendant hearts and smiley-face earrings and such - but one extremely memorable year, the year my dad received an exquisite clay Loch Ness Monster, I unwrapped a three-foot musical nutcracker doll.

I was seventeen at the time.

This year I got another age-appropriate gift: a flat, diamond-shaped rock, about the size of a silver dollar, affixed with an epoxy treble clef and attached to a leather cord. From the customs form, I gather that it's a necklace. But then again, if the customs form is to be believed, it's also worth 50 Canadian dollars. Which, exchange rate jokes nonwithstanding, is patently untrue.

Although it provided me with a few minutes of cheap laughter - and God knows I'm never one to undervalue an easy joke - I can't call Marilyn's gift anything less than what it was: a fucking millstone around my goddamn neck. Up until that point, I think that I had really managed to convince myself that it was still October. And now, all of a sudden, it's mid-December and I haven't bought a single present or sent out a single card, my tree is still sitting neglected in my basement storage unit, and, let's be honest, I'm not even close to discovering the true meaning of Christmas.

(According to Grey's Anatomy, even the most shrewish among us can find something to believe in this holiday season, but I'm skeptical. This is, after all, the show that taught us that medical training is predicated primarily on banging everything in sight.)

All the same, I did try to get into the swing of things, whatever that means, by doing a bit of half-hearted online shopping this morning. And as I was trolling Bookslut for recommendations, I found this. It seems to me the perfect gift for many of my friends and relatives, and I wrote them to that effect. My father was the only one to acknowledge my very thoughtful efforts with an equally thoughtful response.


Dad: I wish I'd read this when you were younger. It is now too late, for you are clearly already in Satan's power. ("To save us all from Satan's power when we had gone astray" is, as you remember, a line from God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. But, clearly, this carol refers just to men.) So don't bother sending it because it will do no good. Plus, it's too cheap. If you really have done a deal with the devil, you should be able to score me Rolling Stones tickets. One look at Keith and you know that they have made a Faustian bargain.

Me: Yeah, but I think Satan's cashing in on that IOU. And with interest: this week the Stones are playing three episodes of Days of Our Lives.

Dad: And they're also doing the halftime show at the Super Bowl. Can you imagine the trauma of the Christian younguns if Keith's wardrobe malfunctions?

Me: I don't think it's just the Christians who'd be traumatized. Nobody likes to see an exposed corpse, no matter how rocking.

Dad: Satan would.

And people wonder how I turned out this way.

But maybe it's not my fault for not looking forward to jingle bells and misteltoe and awkward non-denominational qualifiers. Maybe Dr. Davis is right and I gave myself over to Satan at an early age. It would certainly explain how I dressed throughout high school.

Either way, though, I'm no closer to finishing my Christmas shopping. Happy fucking holidays, everybody. (More)

rawhide

I'm sitting here in my usual Friday-afternoon haze, trying to figure out if I want to go to a movie after work or if I should just go drink.

It's a movie sort of day, after all - cold and tiring and annoying. And I'm in a movie sort of mood - cold and tired and annoyed. I also really want to see Brokeback Mountain. I read the short story online a few days ago, and I was pleasantly surprised by it. Because I didn't think I liked Annie Proulx.

A few years ago, my father called me up and said, rather urgently, "EB, I just read the most horrible book. It was awful. I couldn't even finish it."

I had experienced something similar that very day, and said so. "What was your instrument of torture?" I asked.

"The Shipping News," he spat.

If I had been drinking Diet Coke at that moment, I would have choked on it. Because I had been reading the exact same thing.

I think my father was more disappointed than I was, though. I like my novels like I like my men: mean. Annie Proulx just didn't seem like a mean bird. So I didn't really expect to like it. My dad, on the other hand, likes his novels like he likes his everything: Canadian.

And the Shipping News is set in Newfoundland.

I told him he should have known better - after all, Canadians make fun of Newfies the way Americans make fun of the French.

But Brokeback Mountain is a gorgeous story, and unlike The Shipping News, the details of which now almost completely escape me, I haven't quite been able to get Brokeback Mountain out of my head. As excited as I am about the movie, though - I have been quietly in love with Ang Lee ever since The Wedding Banquet - I don't think I can go see it by myself. I'm usually fine with seeing movies by myself, but there's something about this movie that makes me think that it's not quite right for solitary viewing, what is it ... hmm ... oh yes: it's a chick flick.

I mean it. It its core, it's a film about true love impeded by tradition and social pressure. That pretty much describes every period romance, ever - this one just happens to be about two dudes. What's more: two overwhelmingly attractive dudes. So, yes, the movie will appeal to anybody with an aesthetic appreciation of the human form. But the movie will also to the Will-and-Grace single gal who's ever on the lookout for another exciting and small-minded way to fetishize homosexuality. Remember when white poseur liberals tried to establish their PC cred by having some token minority friend to display at parties? Similarly, gay men are the de rigeur fashion accessory for the vapid fashionista set, all of whom absolutely must have a fabulous gay best friend. (Because, didn't you know, homosexuality is all about style and girlish heart-to-hearts.)

So, basically, the theaters are going to be overflowing with my least favorite segment of the population: chicks. Who are distinguished from the rest of the female population by their slavish devotion to fashion-magazine gospel and bad-sitcom cliche. I'm thrilled that so many women honor the freedom of choice and opportunity so very recently afforded us by allowing their dreams to be entirely dictated by witless representations of romance. I'm also thrilled that I'm insecure enough that these same women are able to incite in me the fear of being identified as one of them.

Which is why I just don't think I can go by myself to this movie.

Although, now that I think about it, why would that type of girl go to a movie by herself? I'm sure they're going to go in herds. All the better to drink overpriced Cosmos and talk about blow jobs with, my dear. Going alone might actually set me apart.

Oh. Well. Never mind. Apparently it's sold out. Everywhere. Thanks for playing the film in, like, four fucking theatres, Focus. At least it's playing on three screens in Chelsea. Somebody somewhere has some sense. (More)