Saturday, May 29, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
The commercialization of Garfield
I have to admit, I enjoyed Garfield as a kid. You know, before I discovered the delightful genius of Calvin and Hobbes. This is a pretty creepy article in Slate about how Garfield was always a commercial and ad-orientated creation.
It's funny, because when I was a kid I just liked Calvin and Hobbes because they were fun and funny. Then in my late teens I went back and re-read all the books and fell in love all over again for so many other reasons. And I was surprised – but shouldn't have been, I'm sure – to read all the text in the 10th anniversary collection. You know, the parts that I'd skipped through when I was a kid. In it, Bill Watterson talked about the same issues that a lot of the bands I was into at the time would rant about: struggling with a syndicate (i.e. record labels) over issues of artistic freedom and creativity, the ways in which the form has become more and more standardized and commercialized. Etc.
Things are a lot more connected than I knew at the time.
These days I know that it's a lot more than just "art." It's everything... the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the things we do for fun. Our own choices about employment and how we (fail to?) make a living. Is our primary motivation going to be money? Efficiency? Looking good?
Of course, I say this as someone who nearly went on a tour where one of the main factors pushing me to do so – much as I struggled to admit it – was that I really needed money, and knew I could make a fair bit by being part of it. No self-righteous judement here.
It's funny, because when I was a kid I just liked Calvin and Hobbes because they were fun and funny. Then in my late teens I went back and re-read all the books and fell in love all over again for so many other reasons. And I was surprised – but shouldn't have been, I'm sure – to read all the text in the 10th anniversary collection. You know, the parts that I'd skipped through when I was a kid. In it, Bill Watterson talked about the same issues that a lot of the bands I was into at the time would rant about: struggling with a syndicate (i.e. record labels) over issues of artistic freedom and creativity, the ways in which the form has become more and more standardized and commercialized. Etc.
Things are a lot more connected than I knew at the time.
These days I know that it's a lot more than just "art." It's everything... the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the things we do for fun. Our own choices about employment and how we (fail to?) make a living. Is our primary motivation going to be money? Efficiency? Looking good?
Of course, I say this as someone who nearly went on a tour where one of the main factors pushing me to do so – much as I struggled to admit it – was that I really needed money, and knew I could make a fair bit by being part of it. No self-righteous judement here.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Have you see the ads for the new Robin Hood?
I think this one is going to be dark and gritty.
I mean, as opposed to that other one. You know, the other one with an aging actor trying to revive a flagging career.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Excuses, excuses
So it's been a long time since I posted anything. I feel like I had pretty good reasons: a series of adventures involving little or no access to computers. Or just little time. Witness:
I ran off to JPUSA in Chicago for three weeks, to see old friends and get re-acquainted with the place.
Once there, I found out Seth Martin, a kindred spirit I met in Portland on the Blessing Tour was playing JPUSA's Easter celebration. He invited me to join the crew for the rest of the tour, so I did. We played messy folk music – sometimes pretty, sometimes screamy-and-stompalongish – in Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
A few highlights of the tour:
-Playing the front porch of the Possibility Alliance, a permaculture farm where the people live electricity-and-gasoline-free lives. They also send out teams of people dressed as superheroes on bikes to do free acts of service in neighbouring communities and states.
-Seeing The Great Confinement live at one of the house shows in Minneapolis. They have yet to even finish up an album, but they should become huge if there's any justice in the world.
-At our two 'standard' shows, refusing to use the proferred stage and amplification, but setting up in the middle of the 'audience,' playing acoustically and having them sing and stomp along, blurring the line between 'performer' and 'audience' just a bit.
-Giving out free seed packets for people to shake along with the music. (And then take home and plant, hopefully).
-Playing our last show in Philadelphia with the Psalters.
And immediately upon returning to Toronto, I biked out with my love to spend a week at an organic farm near Hamilton. The people there only ate locally – mostly stuff they grew themselves. The farmers there strove to (in their words) to 'put themselves out of business' by trying to convince all their urban CSA clients to grow their own food, showing them how to do it, providing seeds, etc. One of the longtime volunteers there lived year round (Canadian -20 degree Celsius winter included) in a teepee, and mostly wore beautiful clothing he had made out of the hides of deers he had hunted.
In the future, posts will not have such a diary/faceborg/'what I did this summer' kind of feel.
I ran off to JPUSA in Chicago for three weeks, to see old friends and get re-acquainted with the place.
Once there, I found out Seth Martin, a kindred spirit I met in Portland on the Blessing Tour was playing JPUSA's Easter celebration. He invited me to join the crew for the rest of the tour, so I did. We played messy folk music – sometimes pretty, sometimes screamy-and-stompalongish – in Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
A few highlights of the tour:
-Playing the front porch of the Possibility Alliance, a permaculture farm where the people live electricity-and-gasoline-free lives. They also send out teams of people dressed as superheroes on bikes to do free acts of service in neighbouring communities and states.
-Seeing The Great Confinement live at one of the house shows in Minneapolis. They have yet to even finish up an album, but they should become huge if there's any justice in the world.
-At our two 'standard' shows, refusing to use the proferred stage and amplification, but setting up in the middle of the 'audience,' playing acoustically and having them sing and stomp along, blurring the line between 'performer' and 'audience' just a bit.
-Giving out free seed packets for people to shake along with the music. (And then take home and plant, hopefully).
-Playing our last show in Philadelphia with the Psalters.
And immediately upon returning to Toronto, I biked out with my love to spend a week at an organic farm near Hamilton. The people there only ate locally – mostly stuff they grew themselves. The farmers there strove to (in their words) to 'put themselves out of business' by trying to convince all their urban CSA clients to grow their own food, showing them how to do it, providing seeds, etc. One of the longtime volunteers there lived year round (Canadian -20 degree Celsius winter included) in a teepee, and mostly wore beautiful clothing he had made out of the hides of deers he had hunted.
In the future, posts will not have such a diary/faceborg/'what I did this summer' kind of feel.
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