Won’t you please talk to me
If you’d just talk to me
Unblock this misery
If you’d only talk to me
– Peter Gabriel, “Come Talk to Me”

Last night, I went to a party. Each year around this time, Lee Dale and Jay Goldman organize a get-together just before South by Southwest, ostensibly for Torontonians heading down. Cheekily-titled Canadian Livers in Training (CanLIT), it’s a boozy, loud, and utterly wonderful time. And that’s coming from someone who’s a bit of a party wallflower. I didn’t have any deep conversations last night. I might have spoken to ten people in a room of about 150. But what it reinforced for me is that life is about connection with other people. I would argue that work should be, too.

This might sound strange coming from someone who has worked and lived online for the past decade or longer, but I think that as wonderful as computers and mobile devices and the web can be, they have contributed to much more isolation in the workplace. I’ve spent the past few years miserable in high-paying and some might consider cushy jobs writing and building “communities” on the web. Miserable because in the workplace, my day and the days of everyone I worked with consisted of long stretches alone staring at a screen and not actually talking to each other.

This might work for some among us. It’s not surprising that tech jobs are often filled by people with some form of social dysfunction, but I think I’m arguing that our workplaces reinforce and in some cases may even help create that dysfunction. I’ve certainly learned that personally, I need a job where I can spend a significant amount of my day interacting in real space with human beings, preferably smart people. It seems a gross injustice that most of the people who are comfortable around others, those with so-called “people skills” are often channeled into sales and marketing positions, forcing them to use their gifts in the service of selling more crap, while so many other people in the organization look at these folks with a mixture of envy and resentment.

I’m not saying that we should spend our work day holding hands and singing folk songs. Nor am I arguing for more useless meetings. But to me, all of the talk about “corporate culture” is meaningless if we all work alone.

To bring it back to South by Southwest, each year for the past ten years, I’ve been spending a pretty large amount of money and often taking vacation time to make the trek to Austin. Though there are literally hundreds of panels and presentations, I learn more in the hallways between sessions, or over lunch or dinner or drinks with all the smart people I meet there. Humans are social creatures, even the introverts. Somehow, our workplaces have crushed that out of us in a misguided quest for efficiency. I would argue that we’re much more efficient when we’re interacting with each other. Now, how can we make that happen? See that comment box below? Come talk to me…

Thanks to Flickr user cliff1066™ for making his images available under a Creative Commons license. The sculpture is called Last Conversation Piece, and it’s by Spanish sculptor Juan Munoz (1953-2001). It’s in the Hirshorn Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC.

from Consolation Champs

Come Talk to Me

It’s hard to believe that this year will mark a decade for me of attending the annual South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. I started in 2001 by attending just the Interactive festival, and that’s still the core of what interests me, but over the years, I’ve extended my stay and now take in film screenings and panels and as much free music (along with beer and food) as I can squeeze in. One of my traditions has been to make a mix CD each year of songs that have meant something to me in the previous 12 months. I used to make about 20-30 copies on CD and then give them out in person each year. It was a nice way of reinforcing the connections I’d made and giving a small token of friendship to some of my new pals. But each year, it got more onerous to create something that most people would end up ripping to their hard drives anyway. The only place most people play CDs these days is in their cars, and I expect that’s changing, too.

So, this year, behold the mighty .m4a compilation! It has album artwork and everything. All that’s missing are the liner notes, which I’m going to provide for you right here. You don’t need to be attending SXSW to download and enjoy this 10th annual SXSW edition of Compilation Champs. But if you are, make sure you say hello if you see me. In any case, please let me know what you think about the songs. I love putting this together each year and writing a little bit about music, which I don’t do often enough.

You can stream the whole thing by hitting the play button, but it works best as a download, so go ahead and click that link (or the image).

Duration: 48:00
Download .m4a file (67.8 MB)

1. Intro – The XX (2009, from the album XX): I named this my Album of the Year for 2009 and this song does indeed make for a perfect “intro” to the rest. The XX sound to me a bit like what would have happened if Young Marble Giants had listened to more James Brown growing up. Minimalistic dance music that’s both cool and hot at the same time.
2. Shadow – Delta 5 (c. 1979-1981, from the album Delta 5: Singles and Sessions 1979-1981): I only recently discovered the amazing Delta 5 after watching a documentary about the history of Rough Trade Records in the UK. This unique band had two bass players and were at the forefront of the feminist and anti-racist movements. Plus they’re from Leeds, home of one of my all-time favourite bands, The Wedding Present.
3. Blessed Brambles – Múm (2007, from the album Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy): My fascination with Icelandic music continues, and with Múm’s in particular. There’s a mechanical sound to their music that reminds me of sewing machines: industrial and yet homey at the same time.
4. My Love Life – Morrissey (1991, from the EP Morrissey at KROQ): An old favourite from the tail end of my college days. A plaintive plea for sympathy, and who couldn’t use “a little something” for our love lives?
5. Overground – Siouxsie and the Banshees (1978, from the album The Scream): Stark and cool, this song is from the band’s very first record. Despite being criticized at the time for their lack of musicianship, I find the stripped down sound enervating and kind of epic, actually.
6. I’m Confused – Handsome Furs (2009, from the album Face Control): In a lucky accident, I stumbled into a show by this husband-and-wife duo at last year’s SXSW. I couldn’t believe how energetic they could be with just a guitar and a keyboard. It pleased me that they’re Canadian, from Montreal, but it’s strange that I haven’t really listened all that much to Dan Boeckner’s other band, Wolf Parade.
7. Time for Heroes – The Libertines (2002, from the album Up the Bracket): Another discovery from the Rough Trade Records documentary. I’d only ever heard of Pete Doherty as the drug-addled boyfriend of Kate Moss. His most recent band, Babyshambles, never crossed my radar at all, but listening to The Libertines makes his subsequent troubles all the more sad.
8. Hell Yeah (Pimp the System) – Dead Prez (2004, from the album RBG: Revolutionary But Gangsta): Dead Prez impressed the hell out of me in the film Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, and so I went looking for more from them. This song is powerful enough to both frighten me and make me see things from the other side. Muggings and fraud are survival tactics, but there’s also a thrill, that of “pimping the system” that tries to keep you down.
9. The Major Lift – Years (2009, from the album Years): Years is a side project from the impossibly-named Ohad Benchetrit, multi-instrumentalist for Do Make Say Think. It was the horn section in this particular song that grabbed me, especially the tuba, which is a bird seldom-heard in most of my music.
10. A Prophecy – Close Lobsters (1987, from the album Foxheads Stalk This Land): Scottish band Close Lobsters were part of the C-86 “movement” spawned by a compilation put out by the NME. Though they weren’t prolific, this entire album is a treasure chest of jangly goodness. I have no idea why the song speeds up at the end, but I sort of like that it does.
11. Footsteps – Bricolage (2009, from the album Bricolage): This Glasgow band seem to be mining the same territory as Postcard Records acts like Orange Juice and Josef K, which is just fine by me. If I had actually heard this album last year, it might have been my album of the year. Also, what is it about Scottish bands that compels them to make electric guitars sound like something else? First it was Big Country making guitars sound like bagpipes, and now on this song, Bricolage give the guitars a steel drum feeling. Or am I crazy?
12. Broken Rifle – Evening Hymns (2009, from the album Spirit Guides): Closer to home this time. Evening Hymns is essentially Jonas Bonetta, from tiny Orono, Ontario. Over the years I’ve introduced a few people to some great Canadian music, and I hope this year it might be this lovely song that reaches you.
13. Peach, Plum, Pear – Joanna Newsom (2004, from the album The Milk-Eyed Mender): I had heard OF Joanna Newsom for quite a while but had never heard her music until the closing credits of a short film called City Paradise, which featured “Peach, Plum, Pear.” It worked so well there that I’m stealing the idea here for my own “closing credits.”

I have no way of determining how many people download the compilation this year, so if you’ve read this far, would you mind just dropping a comment to say Hi after clicking the download link? Of course, it would be great if you came back to tell me what you thought of the music, too.

from Consolation Champs

SXSW 2010: Compilation Champs

You’ve got to hand it to him. My good friend Kevin Smokler is like a one-man cheering section for the publishing industry. Throughout all their travails over the past few years, Kevin has been in the midst of things, shouting encouragement and (often) exhortations. His day job (CEO of Booktour.com) involves helping authors and publishers find ways to connect with readers in real space, and now he’s doing the same thing for magazines. Sort of.

Kevin’s organizing the first annual “National Magazine Day,” to be held Saturday February 27, 2010. There will be an “official” event in San Francisco, held at an independent bookstore. Readers will congregate and read to their hearts’ content all day, followed by a lively panel discussion. But you don’t have to be in San Francisco, or even in the USA, to participate. Kevin’s encouraging all of us to “attack the stack” of unread magazines we have lying around, and I intend to take him up on the offer. I’ve always loved magazines, and subscribe to quite a few:

• Harper’s
• The Walrus
• Iceland Review
• The Big Takeover
• Little White Lies

I also have loads of issues of Film Comment, Cineaste and the latest Oxford American to get through. There’s no way I’ll get through all my unread stuff, but by encouraging us to set aside some time just for magazines, Kevin’s helping us reconnect to what made us fill our houses up with this stuff in the first place. With the advent of the iPad, who knows how many magazines will survive in printed form. Let’s show our magazines some love this weekend.

By the way, all this has me curious what magazines other people read. Jump into the comments and let me know what mags you’re reading these days on paper. And here’s an idea. If you’re coming to South by Southwest in a few weeks, as I am (for the 10th year!), bring along an issue of something unusual that you’re finished with and let’s have a swap. I’ve already promised Kevin a copy of Canadian magazine The Walrus, and am hoping he’ll bring me something unique as well. Let me know in the comments if you want to participate and I’ll try to find a few things you might not have seen before.

from Consolation Champs

(Inter)National Magazine Day

This photo was taken at the end of my very first South by Southwest Interactive in March 2001. A few of us had decided to walk to Katz’s deli late one night and during our walk it began to pour.

By the time we’d made it to the restaurant, we were drenched but laughing like idiots. I’d made some genuine friends.

Today I found out that Brad Graham (at the far left in the photo) has passed away. He was 41. Brad was one of the funniest, smartest and warmest people I have ever met. It seems unbelievable that he is not in the world anymore, and that I won’t hear his laugh again.

I used to joke with him that he reminded me so much of comedian Paul Lynde, the old center square on the game show Hollywood Squares. I hope that when I die, he will be sitting in the center of the Bloggywood Squares and that he’ll be saving a seat for me.

Godspeed, my friend…

from Consolation Champs

Rain Can Make Brothers Out of Strangers

My album of 2009

This was a tough year for me to compile a list. Although, as always, there was great music released this year, I found myself mostly buying older stuff. In fact, my discovery of the year was probably Delta 5, who made music from 1979-1981. That being said, I’ll rank every complete album and EP I bought this year (a few physically, most through eMusic. Entries marked with asterisks were downloaded either free or at a significant discount (ie. the Fanfarlo album was given away for $1)

1. The xx – xx
2. Handsome Furs – Face Control
3. múm – Sing Along to Songs You Don’t Know
4. Years – Years
5. The Raveonettes – In and Out of Control
6. Fanfarlo – Reservoir*
7. Jarvis Cocker – Further Complications
8. Wilco – Wilco (the album)
9. Metric – Fantasies

Not ranked because I haven’t listened to them enough:

• Timber Timbre – Timber Timbre*
• Do Make Say Think – Other Truths
• The Joy Formidable – A Balloon Called Moaning*

I thought I’d rank EPs separately:

1. Ume – Sunshower
2. Suburban Kids with Biblical Names – #4

Here are some of the “pro’s” lists:

• Chromewaves’ Favourite Albums of 2009
• Pitchfork Top 50 Albums of 2009
• Pitchfork Top 100 Tracks of 2009
• Allmusic’s Favorite Albums of 2009
• Last.fm’s Albums of the Year

• My Best of 2008
• My Best of 2007

How about you? What were some of your favourites?

from Consolation Champs

Best Music of 2009

(cross-posted from Toronto Screen Shots)

After a few brief weeks of unemployment, I began working again at the beginning of October. It’s just a few days a week for now, but it’s likely to grow into a full-time position before long. I’m working for a small but mighty distributor called Kinosmith. I’d been aware of them for a while, but didn’t realize that the company was only founded in early 2007. Or that up until now, it’s been essentially a one-man operation. Robin Smith has worked in the Canadian film industry for more than 20 years, for companies such as Capri Releasing, Seville Pictures, Lions Gate, Alliance Atlantis, and the Toronto International Film Festival, and he seems to know everyone. But he made it clear upon meeting me this summer that he needed some help. Although my main areas of responsibility will eventually be the web site and social media initiatives, for the past few weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of administrative work. It’s been a great way to begin to understand the business, and I look forward to absorbing some of Robin’s expertise as we continue to work together. I consider myself extremely lucky to have been in the right place at the right time.

I had been emailing back and forth for the past few months with another industry veteran, Oliver Groom, proprietor of Project X Distribution, a specialized DVD label that puts out the work of British filmmaker Peter Watkins as well as a few others. We finally decided to meet in person for a drink and since Oliver and Robin had recently partnered up for their DVD releases, Robin came along too. All three of us got along well from that first meeting and after another get-together and a few emails, Robin asked me to come and help him out. He recently moved his home office to Oliver’s house and so even though I work for Robin, I see Oliver a lot as well.

If I haven’t been writing here as often as usual, it’s not because I’ve been watching fewer films. On the contrary, I’m also helping out by watching screeners submitted to Kinosmith as well as catching up on the films we’re releasing now. Robin has built up a very impressive catalogue of films in just over two years, and lots of filmmakers want to work with him, so things are very busy. It does bring up a bit of an ethical dilemma for me. I don’t intend to refrain from reviewing films that happen to be distributed by Kinosmith, but I want to be completely transparent about my relationship to the distributor. Do you think it will be enough to put a standard disclosure notice at the beginning of any blog entry that deals with a Kinosmith title? I promise not to give any film preferential treatment, but I don’t want to ignore them, either, especially if I’m ever somehow involved in the decision to acquire the film for Kinosmith.

In any case, I’m very excited to be indulging my passion for film and learning more about the business side of things. It’s a great opportunity and I’m very thankful to Robin and Oliver for taking me under their wing.

from Consolation Champs

Working for Kinosmith

When I was younger, September was the month I loved the most. The leaves were turning different colours and it was time to head back to school. One thing that you could count on as a student was that each fall would being new challenges and new faces. There’s obviously some part of me that still craves that sort of change each year.

It began in August of 2007, when I posted about a career change. After four happy years doing web stuff at a small wine importing agency, I left for what I thought would be greener pastures at a huge professional services company. I craved a bigger fishbowl, I guess, and a bit more coin. As well, I thought that having a job title with “writer” in it meant that I’d be able to write more. But it turned out to be more re-writing than writing, and the office environment left me feeling isolated and bored.

Last August, I moved on to take a “social media” position at Tucows. The field was burgeoning and I felt excited to be stretching myself even further into a marketing role. But when my boss resigned earlier this year, things began to change, for me and for the company. She had created a brand new position for me, and when she left, I wasn’t quite sure where I stood. Worse, I began to realize that not only did I not have a passion for what the company did, I was beginning to lose my passion for the whole “social media” field. I felt a bit dirty, actually. The web culture I’d loved felt like it had been taken over by smooth-talking salespeople, selling their own expertise to a corporate world eager not to be left behind. Even worse, I’d become one of them. My work began to suffer.

I’d never intended to become a marketer, actually. It was different at the wine agency because I actually enjoyed most of the products we sold. But for the past two years, I’ve had a hard time even understanding what my employers did. To me, that meant that even if I was successfully doing my job, that I’d become soulless. Passion is essential to real job success, both for me and for my employers. It was obvious that I was a square peg in a round hole.

Earlier this summer, my new manager called me into a meeting where someone from HR was present. My performance wasn’t up to standard, I was told. I had to agree. Unfortunately, motivation was never discussed. That sort of honesty isn’t really encouraged in most workplaces. Instead, I was advised to pull up my socks or face dismissal. Unfortunately, passion can’t be manufactured out of thin air, and so on Wednesday morning this week, I was called into another meeting. Eerily, I’d been expecting it. On Tuesday night, I began bringing home photos from my desk. It must have seemed strange to my manager and HR how sanguine I was about the whole thing. But in fact, I’d been planning my exit for months.

I’d contemplated trying to “negotiate” my resignation but was afraid that showing my hand would only convince them to fire me. And I didn’t really want to leave with nothing else to go to. So I’ve been having meetings with people over the past few weeks, talking about possible jobs. Some of the work may be contract, but there are a few full-time possibilities on the horizon. Best of all, I’m not afraid.

I also feel confident that my old colleagues at Tucows will carry on just fine without me. I had my doubts that what I was doing warranted a full-time position at all, and they will have no problem picking up the slack. I wish them and the company nothing but success.

Several months ago now, I took some time for myself and went on “career retreat” to Kingston, about three hours east of Toronto. The last time I did that, in 2003, I discovered that my skills and my passions could be combined, even if it meant having to create a job out of thin air and then sell the need for that job to an employer. It led to my most satisfying period of employment yet, and even though I’m not heading back into the world of wine, my retreat reinforced my belief in my core skills and interests.

What all that means is that, somehow, I’m going to be working in the film business. I’m not exactly sure what that will look like, but it’s pretty obvious that film has been one of my dearest passions over the past 20 years, and if anything helps me achieve “flow,” it’s writing about a film I’ve just seen. I’ve got lots to learn, but I’ve gotten to know a lot of smart and generous people over the past few years, and I’m trusting that some of them will come through. A little help and a lot of hustle should get me back on my feet soon.

Onward and upward!

from Consolation Champs

August is Time for New Beginnings

Brooke and I have run this race every year since 2003, with the exception of last year, when we were in New York City. The Pride and Remembrance Run is one of my favourite races on the calendar. It’s part of the annual Gay Pride celebrations here in Toronto and there’s always a really fun atmosphere, with lots of costumed runners and a real community feeling. Not to mention, they actually cater the food, with great stuff like pasta salad and Dufflet pastries at the finish line! This year, it was going to be kind of a warmup, so to speak, for the much hotter weather we’ll be experiencing on July 4 when we run the Peachtree 10K in Atlanta.

At race time, the temperature was already into the 20s (Celsius) so I knew I’d have to stop at all the water stations since I’d decided not to carry my own water bottle. I started off very conservatively and ran the first kilometre in about 5:15. I actually slowed down for kilometres 2 and 3, and then picked it up toward the end. I’m pretty happy with my time, considering my total lack of training. But it did make me a bit more nervous that the heat next week will be even more debilitating. I’m going to make sure I bring some Gatorade along and I’ll still stop at all the water stations.

P.S. There is one team of guys that always dresses up each year. They’ve come as a team of Richard Simmons one year, and dressed as Dorothys (from the Wizard of Oz) another year. This year they all wore red bathing suits and blonde wigs and came as Gaywatch. Somehow, watching a team of male Pamela Anderson wannabes wasn’t as much fun as watching the real Baywatch girls would have been, but what do I know?

Gun Time: 28:06.0
Chip Time: 27:28.9
Overall Place: 388/812
Gender Place: 280/424

2008 Chip Time: (didn’t run)
2007 Chip Time: 24:28.5
2006 Gun Time: 25:08
2005 Gun Time: 26:06
2004 Gun Time: 24:10
2003 Gun Time: 28:45 (this is still the only race where Brooke has ever beat me, although she was on my heels this year!)

Full results from 2009

from Consolation Champs

Pride and Remembrance 5K 2009

Well, it was a perfect day to run the Sporting Life 10K along with 10,000 others. About 14° Celsius at the finish and clear skies. And I began well. More than well, in fact. Hoping to break 55:00 (a 5:30/km pace), I set off quite quickly and was running close to 5:05 pace for the first 4 kilometres. But I knew I didn’t really have 10K in my legs this morning. I hadn’t run at all since my last race four weeks ago, and although my breathing was good, my legs felt a bit heavy. I figured I could slow down my pace and still make my goal time. Then something weird started to happen.

I have a very fancy GPS watch (Garmin 405) and around the time I began to feel tired, it kept notifying me of my split times several metres BEFORE the course markers. As the race went on, this happened earlier and earlier, until by the end, my watch was reporting that the course was almost 400 metres longer than 10K. As a result, according to my highly calibrated (well, accurate to within 5m, according to it) watch, my 10K time was actually 53:32. When I stopped it at the official finish line, it read 55:12. Odd.

Anyway, even though I didn’t quite reach my goal of breaking 55:00 officially, I felt pretty good for the first half of the race. If only this had been a 5K!

I did struggle in the last half, and felt really dehydrated. Stopping to walk and drink water almost every kilometre near the end wasn’t pretty, but I’ve learned a lesson for our upcoming 10K race in Atlanta on July 4. The Peachtree Road Race will have more than 50,000 participants and the weather will likely be MUCH hotter, so I’m going to make sure I drink plenty of water, Gatorade, whatever it takes.

Gun Time: 56:58.8
Chip Time: 55:23.5
Overall Place: 4901/10762
Gender Place: 3159/4857
Age Group (M40-44) Place: 390/597

2008 Chip Time: 54:32.1
2007 Chip Time: 51:22.7
2006 Chip Time: (didn’t run)
2005 Chip Time: (didn’t run)
2004 Chip Time: 52:30.9

Full results from 2009

from Consolation Champs

Sporting Life 10K 2009

I have had a file on my computer since 2001 entitled “I am beginning to write a novel.” It starts like this:

I am beginning to write a novel. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Just to begin something with no end in sight. To follow some path until it comes to an end, and then look back on where I’ve been. It won’t be a screenplay, or a play, although I’ve wanted to try my hand at those, too. The forms would be too constricting, I think, for me right now. I just want to get out there and run.

Of course, I’ve had to transfer this file from computer to computer in the almost-decade since I started writing it. It began as a sort of scratch pad for my thoughts during a period of unemployment (when I actually thought of trying to write a novel) and I’ve added to it on and off ever since. Well, truthfully, the last time I wrote in it was 2005, but I opened it up again today and added a whole bunch of new stuff.

When I first started this blog in 2000, I expected that I’d be able to use it as a sort of semi-public diary. I wanted to explore my thoughts about important issues like faith, politics, work, relationships. But it hasn’t really worked out that way. Sadly, along with many others, I’ve begun to contract my onine self just a bit over the past few years. I’ve talked a little bit about it here, this fragmentation of the blogging self into the personal and the professional, for instance. And now there are microblogging services like Twitter and self-contained social networks like Facebook. Between all of them, some have said, they’ve killed the personal blog.

I wish I could use this space to air out my thoughts a bit more, but I realize that it’s probably not going to happen again. In the meantime, I have a text file on my computer called “I am beginning to write a novel.” It’s becoming a novel, alright (currently at almost 60,000 words!). Except it’s where I tell the truth.

from Consolation Champs

My Diary

As always, the Harry’s Spring Run-Off 8K is the first race of the season for me, and I’ve done next to no running over the winter months. I did go out and run 8k last weekend in preparation, but I was still woefully underprepared for this challenging race, which ends with a steep 300m hill. Yesterday, it poured rain all day and all night, and there was rain forecast for this morning, but luckily it held off. But it was COLD, about 3° Celsius, and with very high gusting winds that made it feel more like -4°. Unfortunately for me, that meant I had to run in long pants with a rain jacket. I absolutely HATE running with all that gear on; I always feel completely weighed down and sluggish, and that was the case today. I ran at roughly a 5:40 pace for the first 5 or 6 kilometres, which wasn’t horrible (except I wanted to be running at least a 5:30 pace), but around 6k, I developed a nasty stitch in my right side that didn’t go away and caused me to stop and try to walk it off several times.

So, I was pretty disappointed overall with my run. Brooke also had a sub-par year, finishing about a minute after me. Imagine my surprise when I realized that I actually improved on last year’s time. Not that 2008 was such a great race for me, either, but I suppose I can take some small comfort from the slight improvement.

Next month, we’ll be running the Sporting Life 10K again, and I hope to do much better. My goal is to run sub-54:00. That’s not very fast, but it will be a (hopefully) reasonable challenge for me.

Gun Time: 48:20.3
Chip Time: 47:29.3
Overall Place: 1060/2016
Gender Place: 703/1043
Age Group (M40-44) Place: 100/140

2008 Chip Time: 47:43.6
2007 Chip Time: 45:23.7
2006 Chip Time: 44:16.8
2005 Chip Time: 42:38.3
2004 Chip Time: 43:26.5

Full results from 2009

from Consolation Champs

Harry’s Spring Run-Off 8K 2009

I’m crossposting this from the Facebook, where Bob Turnbull tagged me.

Based on the title, I’m going to interpret this to mean that these albums have had an influence on my overall musical education. These are the albums that I bought with my hard-earned allowance and wore out on the turntable, in the tape deck or in the CD player. I had to keep it pre-2000 just to keep the numbers down, and these are mostly off the top of my head, so I could very well be omitting something huge and obvious. It’s clear that I could easily make a list of 100, but the rules said 50. So here are 50 plus a few more…

I’ve linked to a few full-featured, ahem, biographical reviews in the Great Albums category. Ideally, I’ll write one of those for each album on this list, even if that seems daunting and scary. For you as well as me.

And please not that I wrote this originally between midnight and 2:00am so my “notes” are a little slapdash. I reserve the right to add, delete, and edit at will

The Beatles – The Beatles (The White Album) (1968)

* Incredible in its range and showcasing the full range of the Beatles’ creative genius.

Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin (1969)

* The first album I ever bought, in 1975. I remember thinking the band was really good, but that the singer couldn’t sing.

David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)

* The first concept album I knew, and the beginning of an amazing decade for Bowie.

Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon (1973)

* THE soundtrack to my stoner years.

Alice Cooper – Alice Cooper’s Greatest Hits (1974)

* What a run Alice Cooper had to have a greatest hits album out already in 1974. A really versatile and underrated songwriter.

Queen – A Night at the Opera (1975)

* “Bohemian Rhapsody” was huge, but my friends and I played this right through at most of our high school house parties.

Max Webster – High Class in Borrowed Shoes (1977)

* I loved the combination of “hoser rock” and art rock that Max Webster always embodied. Plus, they’re in drag on the cover!

Sex Pistols – Never Mind the Bollocks (1977)

* Much has been made about the “manufactured” nature of the Pistols, but for me, the songs were and still are very good. And no one had ever sneered the way Johnny Rotten did.

The Clash – The Clash (1977)

* I loved the fact that a punk band could have two different singers.

Ramones – Rocket to Russia (1977)

* Every song is a winner even as every song sounds like the same song.

Kraftwerk – Trans Europe Express (1977)

* Perhaps no other album invokes a time and place so perfectly.

The Cars – The Cars (1978)

* I’ve written about this one elsewhere. “Just What I Needed” – more memories of unrequited love. Not saying that memories of unrequited love were just what I needed.

Talking Heads – More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978)

* Angular and yet soulful. Arty and yet kind of primitive.

Devo – Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (1978)

* Twitchy and danceable, if nerds danced.

The Clash – London Calling (1979)

* Amazed then and now at this band’s range.

The B-52s – The B-52s (1979)

* Loved loved loved this whole album, except “Rock Lobster,” strangely enough.

Gary Numan and Tubeway Army – Replicas (1979)

* Wore the grooves off this one, during my “I’m really a robot trapped in a gawky teenage body” phase. Lost interest when “Cars” came along and he seemed to forget about the guitar.

Gang of Four – Entertainment! (1979)

* Only fully discovered this album recently, but loved the way they took punk in a new direction.

Buzzcocks – Singles Going Steady (1979)

* Didn’t own this at the time, but I remember the songs and the attitude.

Bob Dylan – Slow Train Coming (1979)

* Just like Dylan, I was going through a spiritual transformation around this time, and this remains a powerful document of that time in my life.

The Boomtown Rats – The Fine Art of Surfacing (1979)

* I’ve written about this one elsewhere, but this album’s finest tracks have been overshadowed by “I Don’t Like Mondays,” my least favourite track.

The Specials – The Specials (1980)

* Of all the ska revival bands, I found The Specials the most versatile and politically engaged.

Teenage Head – Frantic City (1980)

* These semi-local heroes seemed to embody working-class teenage rebellion for me and my friends. Sort of punkabilly.

The Pretenders – The Pretenders (1980)

* I’ve written about this one elsewhere, but for my 15-year-old self, Chrissie Hynde was what sex looked and sounded like.

Magazine – The Correct Use of Soap (1980)

* I didn’t discover Magazine until maybe 20 years after this came out, but singer Howard Devoto (the original Buzzcocks frontman) and bassist Barry Adamson define postpunk for me. Cool and yet warm, with angular guitars underscored by funky basslines and overlaid with whipsmart lyrics.

Simple Minds – New Gold Dream (1982)

* “Someone Somewhere in Summertime” still brings back memories of unrequited love, though for whom I can’t remember(!).

U2 – War (1983)

* Spirituality engaged with the real world in the nuclear-frightened 80s. I was finishing high school.

The The – Soul Mining (1983)

* I’d never heard music like this before and still can’t classify it. Confessional and haunting lyrics, catchy tunes.

Lloyd Cole and the Commotions – Rattlesnakes (1984)

* I’ve written about this one elsewhere, but to sum up: world weary and impossibly cool, I wanted to be Lloyd Cole

Billy Bragg – Brewing Up With Billy Bragg (1984)

* Picked out of a delete bin in the mid-80s, unbelievably. Soft-hearted socialism like Billy’s defined me as a young man, and likely still does.

REM – Reckoning (1984)

* Michael Stipe’s mumbled lyrics over Byrds-like jangly guitars was pretty revolutionary in the synth-drenched 80s. It felt authentic.

Kate Bush – Hounds of Love (1985)

* Spooky, smart and sexy.

The Waterboys – This Is The Sea (1985)

* I loved the Waterboys’ (and later World Party’s) “Big Music” which was bombastic and yet felt incredibly personal at the same time. I loved the oblique spirituality and the sense of the divine lurking just around the corner.

The Smiths – The Queen Is Dead (1986)

* Not since Lennon and McCartney had there been such an amazing songwriting partnership as that between Stephen Patrick Morrissey and Johnny Marr. Morrissey’s ambiguous sexuality helped those of us who weren’t quite frat boys.

Violent Femmes – The Blind Leading the Naked (1986)

* Gordon Gano was another geek talisman, singing about Reagan and faith and not getting the girl.

The Wedding Present – George Best (1986)

* David Gedge’s strangled voice and the band’s unbelievably fizzy guitars made miserable relationships seem like fun.

Jane’s Addiction – Nothing’s Shocking (1988)

* I first heard this very very loud at a party and it still speaks to that part of me that likes music very loud. Also has the best song ever about our capacity for evil (“Ted, Just Admit It…”)

Pixies – Surfer Rosa/Come On Pilgrim (1988)

* Completely innovative song structures and tightly-controlled aggression helped me through a very tough year.

The Waterboys – Fisherman’s Blues (1988)

* Mike Scott’s rediscovery of Irish traditional music was warm and open-hearted and got me through a very rough year.

Sugarcubes – Life’s Too Good (1988)

* My first exposure to Björk’s heavenly voice, and Einar Orn’s not so heavenly voice.

Pixies – Doolittle (1989)

* Just a towering album which seemed unlike anything before it. And like lots after it.

My Bloody Valentine – Loveless (1991)

* Sonic ear massage. Sometimes painful and then forms into something incredibly beautiful. Kevin Shields is sculpting with sound.

Matthew Sweet – Girlfriend (1991)

* Matthew Sweet emerged almost fully formed with this amazing album of rock, power pop, and even country songs. An amazingly gifted songwriter.

Pavement – Slanted and Enchanted (1992)

* Pavement’s brand of slacker rock seemed slapdash and spontaneous, but they were really just trying to hide their smarts.

Rheostatics – Whale Music (1992)

* I’ve written about this one elsewhere, but a bit like Max Webster in the 1970s, the Rheos played a winning mix of hoser rock and art rock. Martin Tielli’s voice and guitar took this into sublime orchestral territory for much of its length.

Catherine Wheel – Ferment (1992)

* Catherine Wheel were like the slightly tougher rock cousins of the shoegaze scene.

PJ Harvey – Dry (1992)

* Polly Jean Harvey kicked ass and made you want her and fear her all at once. When she later started wearing dresses and stopped playing guitar, I was sorely disappointed.

Pulp – His ‘n Hers (1994)

* Cynical Jarvis Cocker sang with a world-weary nostalgia about the seamy side and had me singing along with catchy hooks.

Sloan – Twice Removed (1994)

* Perfect pop songs from Halifax.

Spoon – Telephono (1996)

* Pixies comparisons abounded but Britt Daniel’s Texas roots gave Spoon more soul than simple imitators.

Radiohead – OK Computer (1997)

* Radiohead began to take over the world with this ambitious and sprawling masterpiece.

Modest Mouse – The Lonesome Crowded West (1997)

* Filled with startling lyrical imagery, this album matched the words to jagged music that stopped and started and changed directions. Startlingly original and exciting.

Spoon – A Series of Sneaks (1998)

* Spoon showed real development on their second album, pushing into more angular and yet funky territory.

Built to Spill – Keep It Like A Secret (1999)

* Original and every track is a winner. Not an ounce of filler here.

I had to stop this before the year 2000 to keep it near to 50, but maybe I’ll do another version of my top albums from the past decade.

from Consolation Champs

50 Albums That Rocked My World

Thanks to Frank for alerting me to this. Holly Miranda is the gorgeous singer of the Jealous Girlfriends, a band he turned me onto last year and whom I had the distinct pleasure of seeing in Austin at last year’s South by Southwest. Frank reports that she’s working on a solo album and linked to this solo show she performed last spring. I think you’ll agree that not only is she nice to look at, but that she has a uniquely soulful voice.

By the way, FabChannel looks to be a great find too!

from Consolation Champs

Holly Miranda Live in Amsterdam

The Geography of Bliss, by Eric Weiner

A few days ago, I got a call from the public library informing me that a book I’d put on hold had become available. I’d completely forgotten what book it was, but the timing couldn’t have been better. Eric Weiner’s book The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World reached me at the beginning of a new year, at a time when I’ve been thinking about my own life and happiness quite a bit.

I’d discovered the book after reading about it on my Icelandic friend Alda’s blog. Weiner, a correspondent for National Public Radio, had visited Iceland and met with her in his research. As it turns out, Icelanders regularly score highly on surveys of the happiest people in the world, despite their isolation, unforgiving climate, and the fact that they spend most of the winter in perpetual darkness. Hopefully, the economic meltdown won’t dampen their spirits too much. But it fascinated me, Weiner’s quest to find the world’s happiest people. He traverses the globe, writing chapters about specific countries/cultures, both happy and unhappy, to see how happiness is defined elsewhere and how it is pursued. Though he’s a self-professed “grump,” he’s also a very entertaining writer and someone I wouldn’t mind sharing a beer with. But that’s hardly surprising, since over the years, I’ve always seemed to attract friends who seemed less happy than I did. Which is to say that I’ve always considered myself generally a very happy person (perhaps an 8 out of 10). The thing that has me thinking about happiness so much lately is that over the past year or so, I think I’ve dropped to about a 7 (or even a 6 some weeks). Now this could be the dreaded “mid-life crisis” but I want to understand it a little more.

It turns out Weiner is around my age, so I find his questions similar to my own. I burned through 90% of the book yesterday and hope to finish it today. In addition to being a highly entertaining travelogue (he visits Iceland, Bhutan, and Moldova, among other places), the book is a very honest and personal quest to understand happiness, if not to seek it out directly. Weiner provides a good overview of the relatively new field of “happiness studies” (or positive psychology as it’s more formally known). Instead of simply trying to understand damaged psyches, why not try to find out what makes a healthy one so healthy? A quick peek at Amazon tells me that books about happiness are all the rage right now, but what I liked about this one is the author’s wanderlust and desire to find out what makes particular cultures happier than others. I think he hits it on the head when he says that it’s our relationships with other people that ultimately determine our happiness, and that sometimes you have to remove yourself from your own culture (by comparing it with others) to understand it better. I’ll surely have more thoughts after I’ve finished the book, but I can give The Geography of Bliss my heartiest (happiest?) endorsement.

from Consolation Champs

The Geography of Bliss

My album of 2008

Exactly one year ago, I posted my list of the best of 2007. Strange then that I woke up at 6:00am this morning thinking of putting together my 2008 list. I’m a subscriber to eMusic, so most of my music this year has come through downloads from this excellent service. As well, my experience attending some of the music portion of SXSW has helped me find new music this year. Looking over this list, some are quite recent listens, while others have become old favourites, so it’s a little hard to rank them precisely. That being said, here are my choices (idiosyncratic and personal, definitely) for the best music released in 2008:

1. Frightened Rabbit – The Midnight Organ Fight
2. British Sea Power – Do You Like Rock Music?
3. Okkervil River – The Stand Ins
4. Sigur Rós – Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust
5. Cut Copy – In Ghost Colours
6. Deerhunter – Microcastles
7. Love is All – A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night
8. Islands – Arm’s Way
9. The Jealous Girlfriends – The Jealous Girlfriends
10. Emiliana Torrini – Me and Armini

Just outside the top ten (either due to quality or just not enough listens yet):

• Of Montreal – Skeletal Lamping
• The Dears – Missiles
• Portishead – Third
• The Vivian Girls – The Vivian Girls
• Los Campesinos! – Hold On Now, Youngster
• Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend

Here are some of the “pro’s” lists:

Chromewaves Best of 2008
Pitchfork Top 50 Albums of 2008
Last.fm’s Albums of the Year
Britt Daniel (Spoon) picks his best of 2008 on the Merge Records blog

How about you? What were some of your favourites?

from Consolation Champs

Best Music of 2008

I love this:

I never wanna write short stories again. They suck. They’re incredibly demanding. A story can be perfect. No novel can be perfect. Novels are awesome. Novels are like us.

From an interview with CBC News reporter Sarah Liss

I’m reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao right now and really enjoying it. Perhaps I’ll write a review when I’m finished. Perhaps not. Either way, it’s worth reading.

from Consolation Champs

Junot Diaz on Short Stories

My Twitterpal April Dunford talks about Nortel’s teleworking policy in this Youtube video (sorry, can’t seem to embed it on the page). Not only is teleworking good for productivity and the environment, but it also helps them save millions in real estate costs. I’ve long been an advocate of this kind of flexibility in working arrangements, and it’s nice to see one of Canada’s biggest telecommunications companies taking such a progressive stance.

from Consolation Champs

Nortel and Teleworking

cross-posted from Toronto Screen Shots

On Wednesday, my wife Brooke and I will be flying to Iceland for the fifth edition of the Reykjavik International Film Festival. We’re staying for the entire duration of the festival, which runs from September 25th through October 5th, and in addition to seeing films, we’ll be doing some sightseeing. We’ve rented a car for the entire time, and are hoping to see as much as we can, including the Golden Circle (the geyser at Geysir, the waterfall at Gullfoss and the site of the world’s oldest parliament at Þhingvellir National Park), the Blue Lagoon geothermal spa, and possibly an overnight stay on Vestmannaeyjar, the Westman Islands. Other planned activities include whale-watching and horseback riding, depending on the weather.

All that to say that I haven’t quite decided how I’m going to cover the film festival yet. Ideally, I’ll be able to blog as usual, posting reviews shortly after seeing the films, but because it’s a vacation, I might just be having too much fun to post right away.

Though the entire schedule hasn’t yet been posted, the main program (Open Seas) features the following 18 films:

• 33 sceny z zycia (33 Scenes From Life) – Malgorzata Szumowska
• Pandoranin kutusu (Pandora’s Box) – Yesim Ustuoglu
• Adoration – Atom Egoyan
• Avant que j’oublie (Before I Forget) – Jacques Nolot
• Piao lang qing chun (Drifting Flowers) – Zero Chou
• Il y a longtemps que je t’aime (I’ve Loved You So Long) – Philipe Claudel
• Good Cats – Ying Liang
• Revanche – Götz Spielmann*
• Frygtelig lykkelig (Terribly Happy) – Henrik Ruben Genz*
• Barcelona (A Map) – Ventura Pons
• Venkovský ucitel (The Country Teacher) – Bogdan Slama*
• Zui yao yuan de ju li (The Most Distant Course) – Jing-Jie Lin*
• A Feast of Villains – Pan Jian-Lin
• My Winnipeg – Guy Maddin*
• O’Horten – Bent Hamer*
• A Nyomozó (The Investigator) – Attila Galambos
• Dos Miradas (Two Looks) – Sergio Candel
• Til døden os skiller (With Your Permission) – Paprika Steen*

Some of these played at TIFF this year and some others were released earlier, but I haven’t seen any of them. So far, I’m planning on seeing the ones marked with asterisks based on either recommendations from friends or just my own interest. If you have any recommendations I haven’t marked, please comment and let me know why I should see them.

from Consolation Champs

Off to Reykjavik

With our trip to Iceland just a few weeks away, I was delighted to discover Iceland Socks, a promotional site for the Iceland Express airline. They’re already a pretty hip company, with a great blog featuring lots of information on music and other stuff, but Iceland Socks is pretty amazing. The site lets you quickly create your own travelogue movie, starring a pair of sock puppets you can name. You can add subtitled dialogue in up to three scenes. Lots of fun and a great way to get people to think about Iceland’s “other airline”.

You can see my masterpiece here.

from Consolation Champs

Iceland Socks Rocks

It was almost exactly a year ago that I wrote about changing jobs, and now I’m at it again. Luckily, this year doesn’t involve a change of address as well. The past year at PricewaterhouseCoopers has been an education for me. I’d never really worked in such a large corporate office environment before, and despite being surrounded by great people, I felt isolated. As well, my job function was quite specialized and I never really felt I was flexing all my muscles, especially when it came to social media. In addition, the combination of some legacy technology limitations as well as a generally risk-averse culture left me feeling frustrated a lot of the time. Despite my manager’s and team’s enthusiasm for social media, it was just too difficult to put much into action in such a large corporate environment. My job devolved into writing (or rewriting) corporate marketing copy and then waiting for various levels of approval. For someone coming from an entrepreneurial environment where I was basically a one-man-web-band, the adjustment was difficult.

A few months back, I was introduced to Leona Hobbs, the marketing honcho (honcha?) at Tucows who was looking for someone for her team. It turned out that it wasn’t the right position (my euphemistic way of saying I wasn’t qualified) and I didn’t think I’d hear from Leona or Tucows again. And then about six weeks ago, she contacted me about a brand new position with her team and after several weeks of interviews and paperwork, I’m happy to announce that on Monday August 25th, I’ll join Tucows as a Community Specialist. The job description ticks off all my favourite boxes and basically allows me to be an internet rockstar for money. Of course, there’s more to it than that, but I’m looking forward to stretching out in the social media space again.

I know this opportunity wouldn’t have come along without all the meeting and greeting and learning I’ve been doing in the past year, starting with the Talk is Cheap unconference, continuing throughout the year at the excellent Third Tuesday PR events, CaseCamp and Mesh, in addition to my eighth South by Southwest Interactive conference. To everyone I’ve met and chatted with over the past few months (and especially to my colleagues at PwC), thank you for giving me the benefit of your knowledge, your experience, your connections and your encouragement. I hope that I’ll be able to repay it in some way.

from Consolation Champs

On the Move Again

I had the amazing experience of eating at Momofuku Ssam Bar a few weeks ago while I was in New York. My friends Dan and Kathryn took me and I let them order whatever they thought was good. I have to say that it was one of the most sublime eating experiences I’ve had in my entire life. Best of all, because they were early advocates of the restaurant, they know chef David Chang pretty well, and throughout the evening, a number of courses arrived at our table “on the house.” David even stopped by our table before he left for the evening to say hello. All in all, an amazing experience and one I can’t wait to repeat.

Now, my local (jealous) friend Neil has pointed me to this Charlie Rose interview with David. I suppose it might just be that much harder to get a table now, which is too bad. But I wish Momofuku every success.

from Consolation Champs

Charlie Rose Interviews Chef David Chang

Amazing blog: For Those Who Tried to Rock, chronicling “every band to have been formed by teens with that perfect mixture of big dreams and questionable talent in suburban garages, high school music rooms, and college dorms across America. And to preserve them cryogenically with the very dry ice they once merited, for future generations.”

You’d better believe that the Gitch Band will soon be included in the canon of “those who tried to rock”!!! But I’ll post the story here first. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to lift some of our music off that ancient cassette somehow.

(via Canuckflack)

from Consolation Champs

We Salute You

The Toronto Star reports today that Air Canada is laying off another 632 flight attendants, trying to cut costs associated with the soaring cost of fuel. Most interesting was a compilation of measures other airlines are taking in a desperate effort to keep flying:

• American Airlines has removed pillows from most domestic flights to save $375,000 a year.
• American and others are charging $15 for the first checked bag.
• Southwest Airlines is among those slowing down to reduce fuel.
• Delta has swapped heavier seats for models weighing about 5 pounds less.
• American’s new drink carts are 17 pounds lighter, a move that saves 1.9 million gallons of fuel a year.
• Lufthansa is among those washing its planes more often to reduce wind resistance.
• Japan Airlines is redesigning cutlery to save 2 grams per piece. It is also saving 50 pounds per flight by cutting the number of newspapers and magazines it carries.
• Cathay Pacific has removed paint from its 747 freighters, removing as much as 440 pounds per plane.
• Delta is studying whether it is feasible to divide pilot manuals required on each flight between the captain and first officer, so they are not toting duplicate sets of five or six books that each weigh about a pound and a half.
• Northwest is carrying 25 percent less water for bathroom taps and toilets on international flights. Each 25 pounds removed, saves $440,000 a year.

It is definitely only a matter of time before passengers will be paying fares based on their own weight. With rising obesity rates in the developed world, some passengers may find themselves, er, grounded unless they can pay their way. It only seems fair, since there are already extra charges for overweight baggage. But I wonder what kind of a “human rights” kerfuffle will result?

With some peak oil commentators like James Howard Kunstler arguing that the whole airline industry will be dead and gone within 24 months, the point may be moot.

from Consolation Champs

Air Travel in Crisis

Brooke and I got home last night from four days in New York City. While Brooke attended the Origami USA annual convention, I was free to wander the city and get into mischief. The weather was incredibly hot and humid and there were unpredictable and wild storms on both Saturday and Sunday. Since I had my Edirol R-09 digital recorder with me, I decided to record my thoughts instead of trying to keep a written blog. Forgive the rambling nature of these, but I thought it might be an interesting way to document my time there.

Saturday June 28, 2008

Episode 1: McCarren Park, Brooklyn

Duration: 7:58

Episode 2: McCarren Park, Brooklyn (after my tour of the Brooklyn Brewery)

Duration: 2:52

Episode 3: Hotel Kitano, Manhattan

Duration: 1:57

Sunday June 29, 2008

Episode 4: Hotel Kitano, Manhattan (morning, before almost drowning at the Pride Parade)

Duration: 2:55

I meant to record a few more episodes, especially since my experience on Sunday was so crazy. I walked out to Fifth Avenue to catch the Pride Parade and ended up following it all the way down to Christopher Street, about 40 blocks. Just as I got there, the heavens opened and without an umbrella, I was drenched. The rain didn’t let up for more than an hour so it kind of put a damper on some of the specators, though to their credit, the parade marchers kept up appearances. Well, except when the storm first broke and the parade stopped. I’ll never forget the sight of four drag queens huddled under a tiny umbrella trying to keep their wigs dry. Later, as I made my way back uptown, I tried to huddle under various awnings with hundreds of others. It was interesting sharing a bit of shelter with a group of soggy drag queens! By the time I got back to my hotel, my shoes, pants and shirt were waterlogged and I even had to spread all my paper money out to dry. Luckily the Euro 2008 final between Germany and Spain was on TV so I wrapped myself up in a robe and watched that.

Later, instead of going out to see a comedian (Eddie Izzard’s show was sold out, and Brooke doesn’t know Patton Oswalt at all), we just decided to see Pixar’s new film, Wall-E. First we ate at Empanada Mama, somewhere we discovered on our last visit in January. Delicious, reasonable and a short walk from the cinema which was on 42nd St.

On Monday, I met up with filmmaker Aaron Katz for breakfast (I’d met him the previous weekend in Toronto when he was here for Generation DIY) at Junior’s in Brooklyn and then went to the IFC Center to see Daisuke Tengan’s film The Most Beautiful Night in the World, screening as part of the New York Asian Film Festival. After that, a quick stop at Italian Wine Merchants to pick up few bottles from my favourite Slovenian wine producer (Movia) and then back to the hotel to meet Brooke and catch our shuttle bus to the airport.

Another great trip, and I’m still only just discovering what this amazing city has to offer.

Oh yeah, pictures are up on Flickr. Fair warning: lots of origami models.

from Consolation Champs

New York Audioblogs

Last night, on my friend Jay’s recommendation, I downloaded Radiohead’s “video album” In Rainbows – From the Basement from the iTunes store. It’s fantastic, with the band playing most of the album live in a basement studio. And it made me realize that with CD sales dropping, the future of music is for musicians to really connect with fans again, to show how music is made and what kind of passion goes into its creation and performance.

Simply listening to music doesn’t bring us face to face with the people who make it. Going to live shows is somewhat better, although it can often be hard to make a connection in a crowded sweaty club full of drunk people, or, in the case of a more successful band like Radiohead, in a huge stadium sitting quietly in an overpriced plastic seat.

Stripping the music down in some way, and allowing us to get closer, really helps to make the musicians human again, and the music feels much more immediate when it’s being played live in an intimate setting.

I noticed this trend taking hold recently when I began to download the wonderful HD video files from Soft City Lights, sometimes from bands I either didn’t know or previously didn’t like. The Black Cab Sessions is another favourite, with musicians performing live and acoustic in the back of a London taxicab.

The Radiohead album is the first time I’ve actually paid for music video online, but I suspect that it won’t be the last.

from Consolation Champs

The Future of Music (for Me)

Another week, another race. Today it was the Bread and Honey 5K and 15K Race in Streetsville, which is a neighbourhood in Mississauga, just west of Toronto. Again, we were up early (5:30am!) but with the added annoyance of very muggy weather that made it hard to sleep. To make it worse, some partying girls in the apartment next to us were chattering drunkenly on their balcony (right next to our bedroom window) until at least 4am. So, I didn’t sleep much at all.

By the time the race started at 8:00am, the temperature was 25°C and the humidity was stifling. Brooke was running the 15K race, which started at the same time, but by the time she finished the temperature was over 30°C. Needless to say, her time wasn’t as good as the last time she ran this race, in 2004. On the other hand, even running without a watch, I managed to pace myself well even though I had no idea what my finishing time would be. I thought it would be between 27:00 and 28:00, so was very pleasantly surprised.

The race itself was really well supported, with lots of families and several groups of schoolchildren running in teams. I even got to see long-serving Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion, still going strong into her 80s. Though she wasn’t running, she did have her running shoes on!

That’s all the racing for me for a while. It figures that my Garmin Forerunner 405 shipped last Thursday and will arrive this Tuesday. Though it would have been nice to have it today, at least it will motivate me to go outside as we enter the hottest part of the year. At least, I hope it does.

Gun Time: 26:16.3
Chip Time: 25:43.2
Overall Place: 161/665
Gender Place: 122/286
Age Group (M40-44) Place: 15/41

Full results from 2008 (5K race)

from Consolation Champs

Bread and Honey 5K 2008

Alfie Shrubb was a world champion runner in the early years of the 20th century. For the past six years, there has been a race in his honour in the town of Bowmanville, east of Toronto. Brooke signed us up for this one for the first time this year, and though I was annoyed I had to get up at 5:30am to get out to Bowmanville in time, it was a nice race. After driving almost an hour east of home, we arrived in plenty of time to pick up our race kits and prepare for the race. The weather was a cool 13° and it looked ready to rain at any minute, but thankfully it held off. The course was a turnaround, on a relatively straight stretch of country road with a few gentle hills thrown in.

Since I’m still without a watch, I ran with Brooke for the first 3.5km or so. I wanted us to stick to a 5:30/km pace, and we actually were slightly ahead of that pace when I took off. While I was satisfied with my time, I’m still pretty far from my best performances. Brooke, however, set a personal best at the distance (44:45) so we went home happy.

Gun Time: 43:38
Chip Time: 43:25
Overall Place: 122/272
Gender Place: 92/137
Age Group (M40-49) Place: 33/50

Full results from 2008

from Consolation Champs

Alfie Shrubb 8K 2008

At a local “Geek Lunch” a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Ben Lucier, a genuinely nice guy who works in the telecom field. But a big part of Ben’s non-work time is devoted to the Little Geeks Foundation, an organization established to help provide computers to underprivileged kids. I’m delighted to share the news that on June 12th, Ben and the Foundation will be giving away 100 refurbished PCs to children and their families.

Ben says it’s just the first of many planned giveaway events, since the Foundation’s goal is to give away 1,000 computers by the end of 2008. Bravo, Ben, and Go Little Geeks! It’s only a little sad that the computers are running Microsoft Windows.

from Consolation Champs

Go Little Geeks!

Forgive the possibly offensive title of this post. I’ll explain. I attended the first day of the Mesh 2008 conference today here in Toronto. This is a brand new conference for me, although it’s now in its third year. Although I have online and offline relationships of varying degrees with perhaps a dozen people who were attending, I still found the “networking” to be incredibly stressful. In fact, at lunch, I bailed completely and went off to eat on my own, despite the fact that there was a free catered lunch available at the MaRS Centre, the conference venue. It felt too much like the first day of high school in the school cafeteria for me. So you’ll know where I’m coming from when I talk about one of the sessions I attended.

CBC Radio’s Nora Young hosts a radio program called Spark! and her session was being taped for later broadcast as a show. She spoke with Microsoft researcher Bill Buxton on the subject “Does Location Matter?” which I thought would be about the benefits of telecommuting. It turned out to be mostly about the advances in video conferencing software and how to use it to work and socialize virtually with our colleagues and friends. It was fascinating stuff, but I was hoping the conversation would be broader.

We interact in a variety of ways with others online, but it’s mostly in the course of doing several other things at the same time. I can post a Twitter message, comment on a blog, and carry on an IM conversation all at the same time, possibly interacting with three different people, while at the same time writing in Microsoft Word or working with an image in Photoshop. I call these “micro-interactions” because they usually involve very little time, and are usually quite focussed on a particular subject or question. I’m reacting to a specific thing the other person has posted, for instance. These interactions have a defined purpose and they require little etiquette because online, interruptions can be dealt with later.

I’m finding more and more, though, that when I meet some of these same people offline, I’m finding the interactions more difficult. The idea of giving or getting “full attention” seems a bit overwhelming. I often fear that in offline situations, we won’t have enough conversation to keep things running smoothly. I also dread the awkwardness of introductions and departures, and knowing how long to just “hang around.” These are all non-issues with people I’ve met and known offline, because there is established etiquette. But I find that the more we interact online, the more awkward we get when we can’t interact the same way in the physical world. Among even good friends whom I’ve met online, our face-to-face interactions can sometimes feel awkward. “Just hanging out” can be difficult without some issue or topic to focus our energies toward.

Paul Collins tells a funny but illuminating story in his book Not Even Wrong: Adventures in Autism. He describes a speaking engagement at Microsoft in which the heads of more than half the audience are down over their laptops, a scene familiar to many conference speakers nowadays. When he asks what’s going on, his host tells him the audience members are watching the streaming video broadcast of the very talk they’re attending. It’s joked that many web geeks are probably mildly autistic, and that their legendary social awkwardness may actually be symptomatic of Asperger’s Syndrome, but it’s not really a joke.

The incidence of autism in general is rising rapidly; some statistics say it now affects one in 100 births. It’s interesting to me that the number is rising just as more and more of our social interactions are moving online. If I’m finding my own feelings and confidence around social interactions changing, I wonder how it will be for the generation of children who are growing up with the sort of “micro-interactions” I’ve described earlier?

Now all of this could just be unique to me. Maybe I’m just having a bad day socially. But I’m glad that it forced me to think about some of these issues. I’m very curious to see what others think about this. Feel free to comment below, or should you see me wandering around at Mesh tomorrow, by all means stop me. At least we’ll have a defined topic to discuss.

from Consolation Champs

Is Asperger’s Contagious?

Business Week: Ten Reasons Gen Xers are Unhappy at Work

Thanks to David Crow for linking to this thought-provoking article. I can identify deeply with the first three reasons, especially the feeling that I got a “late start” to my career. In fact, sometimes I don’t feel like I’ve started at all. My father, a Boomer, was laid off from a comfortable corporate job at the age of 49, which is just six years away for me. Also very true that I fear the “narrowing” of options that many career paths dictate. I prefer to be a creative generalist, though that can make the search for meaningful work (not to mention job interviews) pretty difficult.

from Consolation Champs

Amen from this Gen X Lad

Wii Wii Time!
Originally uploaded by jmcnally

I bought two Wiis on Friday. One is for me and one for a friend. There were only five in the whole store!

My Wii number is 7657 1175 3719 5076.

from Consolation Champs

Wii Wii Time!

Continuing with the theme of work and how we get it, here are some things that have certainly popped into my head before, during and after job interviews in the past. I wish I could verbalize some of these things with the people I’m considering working with:

• I think I’m smarter than 90% of the people you have working here. I may not be as focused or even as motivated, but I’m capable of being focused and motivated.
• I’m a little scared that I don’t know what I’m talking about.
• Whatever you think I haven’t done enough of, I can easily learn.
• But what if I can’t? And even if I can, what if I hate it?
• I don’t think that you’re telling me the truth about what it’s really like to work here.
• I’m not sure yet if want this job, but you’re not going to give me enough time or information to make a good decision.
• I’m a little scared that I really want this job, and that I’ll come across as too eager.
• I’m worried that I’ll become restless in six months and want a different job.
• I really have no idea what I want to “do” with my life.

What are some things you’d like to say in a job interview?

from Consolation Champs

Things I Wish I Could Say in a Job Interview

This past Sunday, Brooke and I ran our second race of the year and I felt considerably better than I did about the Spring Run-Off 8K I ran last month, even though I only fit in one training run of 8K in between that race and this one. The Sporting Life 10K is a fun race because most of the route is south on Yonge Street, and Brooke and I live within ten minutes walk of the starting line. As well, it’s mostly flat or downhill. But the best part is that this race might very well be the largest in the city, attracting nearly 10,000 runners each year. The weather is usually better by this time than it is in early April, too.

That being said, it was pretty cold when we headed out at 7:00am for an 8:00am start. The temperature was around 6° Celsius, though it did get up to about 10° later. Since I’m still without a functioning watch, I had decided to stick with Brooke for as long as possible, but she started to slow down around the 7K mark, so I took off. I wasn’t feeling particularly speedy, but my regular pace is faster than hers. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I struggled a bit for the last few kilometres. I’m definitely not in as good shape as I’ve been in past years. I need to get out and run more between races. But I was still quite happy with my time. I’d hoped to run sub-55:00 and I accomplished that. The discrepancy between gun and chip times is because we were quite far back from the starting line. Unfortunately, gun time is still how races rank you for placing.

Brooke has already signed us up for two more races in June, with a strong possibility that we’ll do a third. The Alfie Shrubb 8K is a small race held in Bowmanville, Ontario on June 1st. And the following weekend, I’m doing the Bread and Honey 5K in Streetsville, while Brooke runs the 15K. The third is the Pride and Remembrance Run, a personal favourite that we’ve run every year since 2003. There is a possibility that we might be in New York City that weekend, so we’ll have to wait and see. Hopefully I can secure my Garmin Forerunner 405 before my next race! And run faster! (P.S. Brooke ran 55:10.4)

Gun Time: 56:17.7
Chip Time: 54:32.1
Overall Place: 3072/8590
Gender Place: 2106/3895
Age Group (M40-44) Place: 318/543

2007 Chip Time: 51:22.7 (wow, forgotten how well I did last year!)
2006 Chip Time: (didn’t run)
2005 Chip Time: (didn’t run)
2004 Chip Time: 52:30.9

Full results from 2008

from Consolation Champs

Sporting Life 10K 2008

Here’s a wonderful story. Terry Fallis is one of the founders of Thornley-Fallis Public Relations, one of the most social media-savvy PR firms around. Terry wrote and self-published a political satire last year called The Best Laid Plans. Not only did he publish it himself, but he used the book’s web site to market and promote it. As befits an innovative PR practitioner, he used all the social media tools at his disposal, making the whole endeavour a truly DIY affair.

About a month ago, Terry was nominated for the 2008 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, in the company of such literary luminaries as Douglas Coupland and Will Ferguson. The happy ending came this morning, when he found out that he had won. Bravo, Terry!

from Consolation Champs

Terry Fallis Wins Leacock Medal

I’ve been a very bad runner of late. Brooke and I started running to keep fit back in 2003, and for the first few years, I was motivated. One of the tools that helped me was a great heart-rate monitor watch I bought from Sports Instruments. That watch is now on its last legs, and it’s time for some new gadgetry to help get me back on track, so to speak.

I’d always loved the Garmin Forerunner series of GPS-enabled watches, but they were enormous and ugly, and often didn’t work in the city, where tall buildings interfered with their ability to pick up a signal. I kept telling myself that when they got smaller and more capable, I’d pick one up. I believe that day is now at hand. Behold the Forerunner 405:

This thing will do everything: track distance, time, map routes, even heart-rate (on one model). Best of all, it can upload its data to the web, where you can analyze it or compare yourself with others on Garmin’s new Connect community.

This is exactly the sort of tech geekery that gets me excited and motivated to exercise more. There are only two notes of caution here. One is that there won’t be any Mac support for the 405 until November 2008. The other is that Apple has long been rumoured to be working on a much fuller implementation of the Nike + iPod kit. While it’s doubtful that Apple could build something as sophisticated as the Forerunner (though it would play music!), I might still try to wait a while. Although I’m sure I could use Windows under Parallels for a few months to sync my data with my iMac, there could be some potential hiccups.

Don’t be surprised if I go out and buy one this weekend, though!

from Consolation Champs

Technolust: Garmin Forerunner 405

Tonight, I attended CaseCamp for the first time. Inspired by the original BarCamp “unconference,” CaseCamp is a marketing event where people present case studies and lessons learned, and the crowd can comment and ask questions. Pioneered right here in Toronto in 2006 by Eli Singer, the event is now in its seventh iteration, and has been wildly successful. Perhaps it’s become a victim of its own success.

Before I continue, I want to recognize all the hard work done by Eli and his group of volunteers and sponsors. But now that I’ve made that disclaimer, I’d have to say that I came away slightly disappointed this evening. Part of it is my own fault. Today was a very long day for me. I was up at 6:00am to travel to a financial services conference being held in the far northeast of the city. My journey by transit was an hour each way. I was only able to attend half the day because I had to get back to my office for a 90-minute conference call with a “social media platform” (ie. blog software) vendor, whose sales representative seemed incredibly unprepared, not to mention tacitly unconvinced by the product he was selling. So as I headed over to Circa night club, I was already feeling pretty exhausted. Nevertheless, navigating a crowd of close to 500 people in a night club setting where the music was turned way up was not conducive to any kind of networking for me. Call me old and crotchety, I don’t care.

The actual case studies were enjoyable, and I took some notes that I think will be useful. But the large setting (with haphazardly arranged plastic patio chairs) made it difficult to find a seat. And the size of the crowd made it difficult to hear all the questions. Overall, I’d divide my complaint into two:

1. The venue was unsuitable: A night club might seem like a “cool” place to hold a business function, but not if the music drowns out attempts at conversation. As well, their inexperience putting on “conference” type events showed, with poorly-arranged seating.
2. There were simply too many people: Close to 500 people is unmanageable for this type of event. Even had I been a bit less tired, I still don’t think I could have managed to introduce myself to many people in a crowd of that size. I recognized about a dozen names on the wiki signup page, and thought I’d have no trouble finding some people I knew. I was wrong.

I was hoping that CaseCamp would be similar to another “unconference” event that I attend as often as I can, Third Tuesday. Though more narrowly focused on public relations practitioners, the events (at least in Toronto) are held at a pub with a function room. The volume of music is much lower, the vibe is more laid back, and you actually sit around tables to listen to speakers. In this way, you can introduce yourself to the people around you first, and continue the conversations there afterward. Most importantly, the number of people hasn’t (so far) exceeded 100. I believe that this is a key issue. While online social networks can scale significantly, in the real world this isn’t possible. Groups larger than 100-150 become difficult to navigate. I certainly felt that way tonight.

What I’d like to see for the next CaseCamp is a “soft” cap of 150 attendees. After that, another group should be created and another venue found for the next 150. In this way, there is value for everyone. If that means featuring different cases at each, then so be it. Presenters could be rotated for the next event if necessary. As well, this makes finding venues a bit easier and certainly less expensive.

Part of tonight’s CaseCamp schedule was the afterparty, in which 5 DJs would spin tunes for the campers to dance to after all the case studies had been presented. People were invited to join from a few other events taking place tonight, such as StartupCamp and CopyCamp. I’m glad that the organizers extended the invitation to these others, and I’m sure they’re leveraging the very expensive rental of Circa night club, but honestly, the last thing I want to do at 9:00pm on a Tuesday night is dance, especially after a 15-hour day.

In conclusion, I think the exploding popularity of the event has even caught the organizers by surprise, and I’m sure that some of these thoughts might be crossing their minds as well. I very much enjoy the concept of CaseCamp and will look forward to seeing what the next one looks like. For any of you who were there tonight, first of all, sorry we didn’t get to talk! Secondly, what are some of your impressions of the evening?

from Consolation Champs

CaseCamp 7 Report

UPDATE: All fixed now. Pay no mind.

My friend Neil just let me know that my RSS feed is, in his parlance, “borked.” The problem is that it seems to have happened just over a month ago, at the confluence of a few different events. First, I added the Disqus plugin, changing my entire commenting system. Second, I upgraded to WordPress 2.5. And last, but not least, I was the target of a Distributed Denial of Service attack, seemingly as part of a strange hacker SEO contest.

So, as brilliant as I am (!), I’m having a hard time figuring out what’s happening. The feeds all validate fine, it’s just that they’re completely empty.

My feeling is that the culprit might be the upgrade, since a few other people have experienced this over on the WordPress forums (or is that fora?). But no one seems to have a definitive answer as to how to fix it.

Any suggestions? Of course, anyone subscribed to my feed won’t actually see this, but I’m hoping there are at least a few of you still coming to look at the pretty pictures.

from Consolation Champs

RSS Woes

I’ve been thinking about the wonderful world of work again, and the more I think about the way we “get” our jobs, the more bizarre it seems. We go to a meeting where someone asks us about our skills and about what other jobs we’ve had, and then, based on that, and more than likely also on how we look, dress, smell and shake hands, they hire us. Or they don’t. It’s akin to getting married after the first date.

I’m worried that making that sort of commitment after such a one-sided and inadequate evaluation is hurting both parties. Although the good interviewers encourage you to ask questions about the company during your interview, most of us aren’t as well-prepared as we might be. How do you ask questions about a place you’ve just seen for the first time? Also, most people aren’t that comfortable asking about things like what operating system do they have to use, or whether they can ever work from home, or take a “sick” day when they’re not sick. Many people are even too afraid to ask about salary and benefits, desperately hoping that the interviewer will volunteer that information. The good ones do, but that doesn’t mean they can anticipate the other questions you might have. Like the ones that won’t pop into your head until you’ve been working there for six months.

Why can’t working be more like dating? Why can’t there be a process of gradually getting to know each other to decide whether you like each other, and only then to commit?

I’ve been a big fan of something called “informational interviewing” for many years now. Basically, it’s just a fancy name for contacting someone at a company you’re interested in and taking them out for lunch, coffee or a beer. One of my big discoveries is that there are all kinds of jobs in all kinds of interesting companies out there, but you’d never read about them in the want ads. Some of these jobs have strange titles, or none at all. Some of the jobs don’t even exist yet.

Something great happens when two people meet on an equal footing in a non-threatening space. Even better if some intoxicants are involved (but not too many!). These are NOT job interviews; they’re more like job dates. You’re not even required to meet with the person actually capable of hiring. Just someone who can be honest about where they work, about what they and their company do, and about what it feels like to be there for eight (or more) hours a day.

from Consolation Champs

Why Can’t Working Be More Like Dating?

It figures that I received a package from Amazon UK today with a whole bunch of Region 2 DVDs that I bought on sale. You see, I’m in the thick of HotDocs, reviewing a bunch of films over at my film blog Toronto Screen Shots. Nevertheless, I can’t wait to check these out over the next few weeks:

• A box set with Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water, Repulsion, and Cul-de-sac, along with 8 shorts (Anchor Bay)
• Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (Artificial Eye)
• Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf (Artificial Eye)
• Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s Innocence (Artificial Eye)
• Ken Loach’s Land and Freedom (Artificial Eye)
• Mike Leigh’s Life is Sweet (FilmFour)
• Keisuke Kinoshita’s Twenty-Four Eyes (Masters of Cinema)
• Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone (Optimum)

If that weren’t enough, a screener for Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly arrived this week, too, which I’ve been eager to see. Brooke is reading the book right now and raving about it.

I think the sale might be on for a while yet, especially on the Artificial Eye releases. If you have a region-free DVD player, these are some great deals.

from Consolation Champs

Region 2 Bargains Arrive

Kevin Kelly is at it again. And all I can do is link.

Borrowing some ideas from Chris Anderson’s Long Tail concept, Kevin postulates that to make a decent living, an independent creator (musician, artist, writer, whatever) need only amass a thousand “true fans,” defined as people who will buy whatever the maker creates. The challenge, says Kelly, is that the artist has to maintain direct contact with all of these people or they will stop feeling “connected” to you. The good news is that the web has many tools (blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts) that allow creators to maintain direct connections with their fans.

It’s a compelling argument, and the discussion unfolding in the comments is enlightening, with people jumping in with examples of successes and failures. Go over and have a look. Then come back, if you’re a True Fan of mine!

from Consolation Champs

Kevin Kelly: 1,000 True Fans

I’ve always been a big supporter of the BarCamp concept (a free self-organizing “unconference” where everyone is expected to contribute or participate), although the original BarCamps are way too technical for me to understand, never mind contribute. So I was happy to find out that CaseCamp Toronto is happening again on April 29th. CaseCamp is a marketing version of BarCamp, with people presenting case studies, and because there’s a big crossover with my favoured tribe of web nerds, there’s usually a heavy dose of social media wonkery. For some reason, these only appear to happen in Canada. My only disappointment is that it’s happening at the exact same time as two other potentially interesting events: StartupCamp 2 and Raindance’s free “99 Minute Screenwriting School.” If anyone makes it to either of those two, would you mind reporting back? And if you’re interested in CaseCamp, sign up soon. There are almost 100 people coming already!

from Consolation Champs

CaseCamp Toronto 7

Brooke and I have run the Harry’s Spring Run-Off 8K each year since 2004, but this year, I’d done next to no training. To make things worse, my watch battery died a few weeks ago and I hadn’t replaced it. And then Brooke and I were placed in different “corrals” at the beginning since she’d registered us and estimated my time being much faster than hers. So even though I’d planned to run with her to keep track of my pace and use her watch, we were separated throughout the entire race. Without a watch, it was hard for me to know what pace I was running, and to make matters even worse, there weren’t enough kilometre markers on the course. I only saw them for 1K, 4K and 6K. The end result was my worst time ever. I felt lost out on the course and my own body felt like a bit of a stranger to me. Brooke has registered us for the Sporting Life 10K in four weeks and I know I need to train now. Funny enough, even though she finished after me, Brooke’s chip time (47:29.9) was better than mine, and so she can deservedly say that she beat me. This is even more significant since she ran the 30K Around the Bay race just last weekend. She’s amazing. Next month, I’m hoping to go faster!

Gun Time: 48:30.3
Chip Time: 47:43.6
Overall Place: 1064/1950
Gender Place: 737/1045
Age Group (M40-44) Place: 117/166

2007 Chip Time: 45:23.7
2006 Chip Time: 44:16.8
2005 Chip Time: 42:38.3
2004 Chip Time: 43:26.5

Full results from 2008

from Consolation Champs

Harry’s Spring Run-Off 8K 2008

I’m barely 40 pages into Chuck Klosterman’s Killing Yourself to Live and I’m already feeling jealous. Not of his talent for comic writing, though he has plenty of that. I’m feeling strangely jealous that I’ve never been able to go on a solo road trip with 600 CDs like he’s doing. You see, I’ve never had a driver’s licence. 99% of the time, it’s no big deal at all. Well, more like 80% of the time. When my wife and I do occasionally need to drive, we either rent a car or borrow my Dad’s or her Mum’s, and Brooke does the driving. I know she resents it a bit (okay, maybe a lot), but at this stage I really think it might be too late for me to learn.

I did know how, once. Just like every other kid, I signed up for the driver education classes at my high school and did perfectly well. Except for one thing. It was probably at my very last lesson when my driving instructor advised me not to book my test appointment until I practiced my parallel parking. A lot. At this point in the story, my memory gets a bit foggy (this is, after all, now more than 25 years ago). I did NOT practice my parallel parking. In fact, I got a bit annoyed with his advice. And when it came down to it, I guess I just didn’t care enough. All of my friends were getting licences, and some of them were even buying cars. I was happy, like Iggy, to be the Passenger. Until now.

It’s not that Klosterman has made me crave the experience of actually driving thousands of miles. The physical and mental effort of keeping the car safely between the lines and away from the cars in front and behind strikes me as exhausting. But there’s just something about the particular kind of solitude with musical accompaniment a “road trip” offers that a bus journey with an iPod just can’t match.

Even if I were to practice my parallel parking, after all this time, and successfully obtain my driving licence, I doubt very much whether I’d be able to take off on my own with a trunk full of music. I suspect that there would be some marital payback which would involve me doing every single bit of driving for the next ten years, and beyond. And as a much older new driver, I could never build up the self-confidence that would let me roll down the window and rest one arm on the doorframe. Instead of the freedom that I have in mind, more likely I’d be squinting at highway exit signs, nervously changing lanes and trying not to fall asleep behind the wheel.

If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll get back to my vicarious road trip now. At least when I start to get sleepy, I can just put the book down and go to bed.

from Consolation Champs

Vicarious Road Trip

As if updating my blogging software wasn’t enough of a hassle, it turns out that for most of today, my site was unreachable. It was the bad hangover of what looks to have been a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack. Wow, that makes me feel kind of important. Over the weekend, some malicious freaks hit my site over 100,000 times. These were page views, but the number of unique visitors was suspiciously low. The weird thing is that I had no trouble viewing the site until this morning, when the attack seemed to be over.

If you had trouble getting the site to load today, I apologize. And I’m glad you’re reading this now. No, not you, malicious freaks. You guys can go away and not come back. kthxbye.

from Consolation Champs

DDOS!

Well, a few hours of updating, uploading and customizing later, I have a freshly upgraded copy of WordPress 2.5 running Consolation Champs. I had to also update my current theme, Cutline, and then re-add all my customized header images, which also needed to be resized. So, these things never go as smoothly as advertised. A few familiar things are looking unfamiliar, but overall, it was fairly painless. Let me know if anything looks strange to you (other than the strange header images, which are strange all the time).

from Consolation Champs

Freshened Up

I’m trying out a new commenting system for a little while. Disqus is an external commenting system, but before you start screaming, it’s not another Haloscan. Disqus actually integrates pretty well with blog entries but what it promises is to free comments from the pages they’re on and weave them into a fuller conversation. I’ve been frustrated trying to follow all the places I’ve made comments to try to keep contributing to those conversations, and perhaps a solution like Disqus can help. On their site, each commenter has a dedicated Dashboard where I can see all comments made on my blog(s) and all comments I’ve made. I’ve only had this thing installed for an hour so obviously I can’t say how I like it in practice, but I hope you’ll jump in here and comment so I can see how it works. Do you have any experience with Disqus? What do you think of the current state of blog comment systems? Do they meet your needs?

from Consolation Champs

Disqus: Discuss

Ok, I’ve been back from SXSW since yesterday afternoon, but I’m not quite ready to do the full writeup just yet. In fact, I’m extremely distracted right now. At Jane McGonigal’s amazing keynote last Tuesday, she pointed to a new ARG (alternate reality game) that she’d been working on for the upcoming Beijing Olympics. I’m a HUGE Olympics junkie and the trailer she showed just knocked my socks off. So now, I’m immersed in the mystery of The Lost Ring. This isn’t the sort of thing one person can figure out on their own, so if you decide to try to figure it out, jump into the comments here and let’s join forces.

P.S. One of my favourite things about the game so far is the extensive use of Esperanto, the “world language” that hardly anyone speaks. It’s tied into the hopeless optimism of the Olympic movement, and that gets me all choked up, but it’s also supremely geeky.

from Consolation Champs

Find the Lost Ring

I’m here in Austin for my eighth consecutive South by Southwest Interactive conference. I’ve come to look at this week as an essential creative reboot each year. The weather in Toronto combined with the months of near darkness always leave me drained in inspiration. And then I come to Texas and spend a week with a few thousand of my closest friends.

I didn’t plan well this year. And work got crazy. And I foolishly solicited SXSW filmmakers to send me screeners. So the leadup to this year’s conference was a flurry of late nights and trying to compile a super-calendar of Interactive, Film and Music events. Now that I’m here, it’s clear that I just can’t do it all.

In fact, my normal “shy extravert” personality has taken a hit and I am finding myself cocooning in my hotel room, which is unusual for me. I think part of it might be that I’m a bit nervous about trying to meet new people (ie. Film people). On the one hand, I’m a lazy man and don’t mind hanging around with my old Interactive tribe. But I feel like I might be missing an opportunity to learn something new and talk about another of my favourite things with like-minded people. But I’m also afraid of being embraced by the Film people and then missing out on all the stuff I’ve come to love about the Interactive conference. This conflict over different social choices as well as scheduling options has left me even more paralyzed than usual. And I don’t like feeling like this.

I’m hoping that staying a few days extra to see free Music day shows and hang around with my Austin pals will sort me out. I’ll post an update in a few days.

from Consolation Champs

SXSW 2008: Social Networking Indeed

Tara Hunt is someone thinking creatively about marketing and other business topics, and what I appreciate about her is that she isn’t afraid to relate the world of business to the world of the personal. I loved her recent blog entry Happiness as Core to Your Business Model because it again effortlessly aligns the goals of individuals with the goals of business. She relates the four elements of happiness as defined by the American Psychological Association (autonomy, competence, relatedness, and self-esteem) to the three core concepts of Web 2.0. (openness, collaboration and community). I think it makes sense. I think everyone would like to work at a place where the business goal was to bring happiness to others.

In fact, I may have taken my last job for that reason. I felt good about selling wine because of the experiences I was offering. Family gatherings, social events, parties; all are places where people feel connected to each other and where the pleasure of enjoying our product would enhance (in most cases) people’s good feelings. Of course, I don’t think my employers thought about this directly, but it was a positive that 95% of the people who worked for us were wine lovers (in one or two cases, perhaps a little too enthusiastic in their appreciation) and one of the perks of the job was meeting people at events and enjoying our products at our own company parties.

The barriers, of course, were competence and self-esteem. The world of wine can still seem stuffy and class-conscious and there are enough wine snobs around to make even the most eager student feel stupid. I think this is why so many wine web communities sprouted around the same time. WineLog and Cork’d are great ways to share your drinking experiences with others, and Gary Vaynerchuk’s Wine Library TV video blog makes learning about wine fun.

Now, how do I begin to apply some of these concepts to the new world of accounting I find myself in?

from Consolation Champs

The Pursuit of Happiness

Kevin Kelly brilliantly sums up the entire internet economy in an article entitled Better Than Free. His thesis is that the internet is basically a giant copy machine, but that as copies of content become more abundant, they lose their value. For a business to become successful in the age of the internet, they have to offer things that cannot be copied. He lists eight:

• Immediacy
• Personalization
• Interpretation
• Authenticity
• Accessibility
• Embodiment
• Patronage
• Findability

In a real sense, these are eight things that are better than free. Eight uncopyable values. I call them “generatives.” A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time. In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold.

Another overriding factor he mentions is trust. I suggest that if you or your business have any connection with the internet (and that’s all of us, especially if you’re reading this!), then you read Kevin’s article immediately. I think there are the seeds of a million business plans in there.

from Consolation Champs

Kevin Kelly: Better Than Free

David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, has an interesting blog entry about what a job description for a marketing or public relations practitioner should sound like in this new age of social media. I think the main quality required is curiosity:

You’re curious about new things and always try stuff like Skype, Second Life, Twitter, Ryze, XING, digg, and reddit early.

People who are willing to try new things and are not afraid of a little dabbling should be getting work. Perhaps this is what Joe Thornley was getting at in his assertion that he won’t hire people who don’t blog. I reacted strongly to that statement, but I can definitely see where he and others like him are coming from. They want people who are using the tools already, who don’t have to be taught to use them. But that’s where the educators can seem just a little off base. You can’t teach curiosity, or passion. Joe feels he can figure out who someone is from reading their blog and following their online trail, and he’s right. But should educators be counseling people to create these things in the first place? I mean, if a 50 year old professor has to tell a 20 year old student about new technologies on the web, then something feels amiss.

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Job Description 2.0

I’m a little disappointed that I missed what sounds like the most exciting Super Bowl game in ages. I was delighted to hear about the Giants upset of the Patriots, but I’m sorry to say I missed every single minute of the game. We’d arranged to pick up Brooke’s mum at the airport around 4:30 yesterday. She was coming back from a two-week cruise in Hawaii, and we’d heard she’d been a bit sick with a cold for the past week. But when she got off the plane, it was clear this was more serious than a cold. She told us she hadn’t slept or eaten much in two days and that she’d been coughing up stuff earlier in the week. So we took her directly to Emergency and by the time we got home at 10:30, the game was over.

The doctor told us she’s got pneumonia, but she’s doing better already. A good night’s sleep was the first thing she needed. But instead of her staying with us for just one night and then driving home to Collingwood, it looks like we’re hosting a sick houseguest for the next few days.

There’ll be another Super Bowl next year, I hear, but it still would have been great to see such a competitive game. How was the halftime show? Did I miss any wardrobe malfunctions?

from Consolation Champs

Super Bah!

It started with a well-meaning post from Joe Thornley, of Thornley-Fallis Public Relations, one of the savviest PR companies around. Their embrace of social media cheers me up immensely, and Joe writes interestingly and often about how blogging and other social media tools can be used as part of an overall public relations strategy. But when he called blogging an essential for new PR practitioners, a red flag went up for me. He advises students:

I do not hire entry level people without looking at their blog, following their twitter stream and checking their Facebook presence. I want a sense of who they are over time, not just when they are in my office. I want to know what they think on the issues they care about and how they express themselves. I want to see whether and how they connect with others. And I can find out all those things from their social media presence.

It’s not really Joe’s post specifically that bothered me. It’s how it will be interpreted by students eager to line up that first job. I’ve already seen what I call “the rise of the pundit” drain all the personality out of a huge part of the blogosphere. Eager to show how much we know, many of us now use our blogs as soapboxes, hoping to be noticed and hired. Maybe I’m just a crotchety old blogger, but I miss the days when blogs were an extension of a person’s whole life, not just of their job.

In fact, the advice Thornley gives to these students makes me afraid that their “blogs” will be nothing more than collections of sycophantic links to the people they want to notice them, or empty boosterism of a career they’ve yet to fully try on. When the doubts come, and the disappointment, and they finally have something interesting to say, will they be afraid to say it on their blogs?

I’m rehashing a lot of what I said in my comment over on Joe’s site, but one thing I want to repeat is that it would be a real shame if the blog became just an extension of the resumé.

I’ve had a few wobbles lately about crossing the boundary here and talking about work, but ultimately, I want this space to be a true representation of what I am thinking about and struggling with over time. If I was beginning my blog in 2008 instead of way back in 2000, I don’t know if I’d be able to hold that conviction with any confidence. And I find that sad.

Rebecca Blood, pioneer weblog historian, wrote way back in 2000 in Weblogs: A History and Perspective:

As corporate interests exert tighter and tighter control over information and even art, critical evaluation is more essential than ever. As advertisements creep onto banana peels, attach themselves to paper cup sleeves, and interrupt our ATM transactions, we urgently need to cultivate forms of self-expression in order to counteract our self-defensive numbness and remember what it is to be human. We are being pummeled by a deluge of data and unless we create time and spaces in which to reflect, we will be left with only our reactions. I strongly believe in the power of weblogs to transform both writers and readers from “audience” to “public” and from “consumer” to “creator.” Weblogs are no panacea for the crippling effects of a media-saturated culture, but I believe they are one antidote.

It’s getting harder to fly that idealistic flag, but I’m not ready to give up yet. The question is, how do we teach students to be fearless when they are being taught to blog in college to make them better employees?

from Consolation Champs

Is Blogging Now A Career Move?

Just browsing around this morning, I came across a great example of word of mouth marketing. Michael McDerment is a successful Toronto entrepreneur behind the innovative FreshBooks.com online invoicing service. In a 2005 entry on his own blog, he recommends a company called Landmark Merchant Solutions as a “great business partner” for small companies looking for payment gateway services. In the comments to that entry, there is a link to a bulletin board where an amazing conversation has unfolded. Apparently, Landmark isn’t such a great business partner after all.

Shady business practices, drug abuse, sexual harassment, lawsuits. And I’m only about a quarter way down the page. The thread starter has been participating in this conversation for more than three years now. Word of mouth is real.

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Word of Mouth is Real

Flipping through the Canadian Oxford Dictionary this morning, I discovered that a liger (favourite animal of Napoleon Dynamite) is not only a real animal, but that it is specifically the offspring of a male lion and a female tiger. The corresponding offspring of a lioness and a male tiger is called a tigon.

Good to know.

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Ligers and Tigons and Bears, Oh My

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Protected: Transparency, Not Spin

For someone who considers himself a seasoned traveler and informed citizen of the world, I’ve always been a bit embarrassed that New York City wasn’t really on my list of places visited. My parents had taken me a few times when I was a young sprog, but I have no memories of the city, only the stuff I’ve seen in movies or read in books. It seemed crazy to me that I hadn’t visited, until you figure out how expensive it is to fly anywhere in the U.S. from Canada. Though New York is only about an hour’s flight from Toronto, it’s at least a $500 ticket. Since New York is also incredibly expensive in general, I’ve usually saved my dollars for visits to some of my other favourite American cities (Austin, Chicago, San Francisco) instead. But a few months ago, my lovely wife Brooke surprised me with tickets, and we just spent a fantastic three-day weekend in mythical Gotham.

After hearing about New York my entire life, I was happy and relieved to say that within an hour of arriving, I felt like I “got” the city. I felt at home and comfortable, which was unusual. American cities usually feel different to me, and it normally takes me about a day to settle in. I was also surprised that New York actually felt small to me. Not literally, because we only really got to see a small patch of midtown on our trip, but I guess I mean it felt manageable. We found that we could walk almost anywhere we wanted to go in just a few minutes, and if we needed to jump on the subway, we normally only had a ride of a few stops. I’m also a bit proud that I grasped the subway almost right away. Our subway in Toronto is much more basic, but I’m a transit user, so it was fun to figure out a more ambitious system.

Most delightful of all was the feeling that I actually knew people in this vast and hitherto-unexplored metropolis. When Brooke mentioned she’d like to tour the New York Times, I emailed Khoi Vinh, the design director of their web site, to see if any were offered. He graciously offered to show us around, himself, on Friday afternoon. On Saturday, we arranged to meet newly-engaged Dan Budiac and Kathryn Yu for brunch. And then while browsing in the 14th Street Apple Store, we serendipitously bumped into Anil Dash and his wife Alaina Browne. On this weekend, the big, intimidating city felt more like a village to us.

It helped a lot that we stayed at the wonderful Chelsea Lodge, a quiet, comfy and affordable haven on a quiet residential street. We ate two delicious breakfasts at the nearby Empire Diner on Tenth Avenue, where we overheard a number of great conversations, including the subject of a Men’s Vogue cover story reading the story to his group of friends. Our other breakfast was at the wonderful Pastis, in the revitalized Meatpacking District. It’s said to be a celebrity hangout, and we did spot Sam Shepard and Jessica Lange and their daughter having breakfast just before we left. While we’re on the theme of food, we also enjoyed great and unfussy food at Empanada Mama and the “Burger Joint” hidden in the luxe Parker-Meridien Hotel.

Other highlights of our whirlwind trip include:

• Visiting all three of NYC’s Apple Stores
• New York City Ballet’s production of Balanchine’s Prodigal Son
• the huge Japanese bookstore Kinokuniya
• MoMa
• Nintendo World
• Strand Books
• Touring the United Nations Headquarters
• New York Public Library’s exhibit of Kerouac’s On the Road

By Sunday we were pretty wiped, and the only vaguely stressful things that we encountered were:

• looking for a Starbucks near Times Square that had somewhere to sit down, just after all the theatre matinees let out.
• trying to bring a special bottle of wine back through security in my carry-on bag and being forced to leave it there—no liquids allowed, even in sealed bottles.

For anyone interested, I’ll post a link to our photos when I get them posted to Flickr.

New York, I will be back soon!

from Consolation Champs

I Love New York, Seriously

Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, by Steve Martin

Brooke picked this book up for me a few weeks ago, knowing I’d been a huge fan of Steve Martin during his standup years. You could even say that as a teenager, I idolized Martin. To this day, I’m in awe of people (including myself!) who can make others laugh. But I’ve always been slightly bemused by some of Martin’s latter-day forays into melancholy (Shopgirl, for example) and wondered what had happened to the sense of the absurd that fuelled his edgy comedy routines of the 1970s. I think I was 13 when I saw him perform at Toronto’s cavernous Maple Leaf Gardens, and it still boggles my mind today that a comedian could fill a 20,000 seat arena. It almost seems unreal now. But Saturday Night Live, his appearances on The Tonight Show, and for me, his comedy albums made Martin a bonafide superstar. But as Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life reveals, he was not quite an overnight success.

In fact, in this book he writes with a sometimes dewy-eyed sentimentality about all the hard work it took for him to look “wild and crazy.” A driven perfectionist with a Protestant work ethic, Martin grew up studying magic tricks and practiced for hours upon hours until his act looked effortless. Martin’s seemingly absurd routines were fuelled not by the ubiquitous drugs of that period, but by a ruthless intelligence and curiosity. He was a student of philosophy, and of comedy.

I smiled with recognition as he recalled some of his more inspired bits, but Martin himself seems still somewhat detached from this period of his life. He admits that after he left standup for the movies in the early 1980s, he rarely thought about that time. Only now with this book does he realize that it was the most fruitful, exciting, and just plain funny period of his long and (now) distinguished career. He’s honest enough to admit that he was never really after fame, and became very uncomfortable with it pretty quickly. But he loved performing. Although he seems at peace with his life, he still seems to look at his standup self as if he were looking at a completely different man. I find that a bit sad.

Steve Martin is less funny these days, and I think he knows that. But he’s had tremendous success as a writer of essays, fiction, plays and screenplays, and as an actor. For me, though, Steve Martin will always be the man who let me know it was OK to make a smart joke that nobody else got. Along with Monty Python and, later, the Coen Brothers, Steve Martin’s “bits” were the currency that was shared among me and my friends. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been thirty years. Now, before I start becoming the dewy-eyed sentimentalist, I’ll wrap up. If you’re of my generation, and actually saw Steve live on Saturday Night Live, you’ll want to read this slim but rewarding volume. Although the real Steve is considerably more complicated than the “funny” Steve, this was still a great read. In fact, I read the whole thing today.

from Consolation Champs

Born Standing Up

Lloyd Cole and the Commotions – Rattlesnakes (1984)

I’d met Goldie through my friend Colin around 1983, I think. With his thinning hair and permanent scowl, he looked like a perennially pissed off old man. We shared a love for punk, even though he was somehow affiliated with the strange evangelical subculture I’d recently become part of. I remember him bringing us Dead Boys records when Colin and I were in residence at Bible College. We’d play those and Colin’s Zapp funk records as loud as we could, enjoying the vicarious thrill of swearing and talking sexy. I remember Goldie and I commandeering the lounge television one night when Rock ‘n’ Roll High School was on. So we shared a taste in music and a slightly skeptical attitude toward the world around us.

Around 1984, our tastes were broadening. Goldie was the first one to tip me off to The Style Council, a new direction from The Jam’s Paul Weller. So it was no surprise when he showed up one afternoon with a home-recorded tape that he wanted me to hear. Side A was Eden by Everything But The Girl, well before their dance music days. Though I enjoyed Tracey Thorn’s soulful vocals, I was much more interested in Side B, which Goldie hadn’t even mentioned.

Lloyd Cole’s anguished voice and whipsmart lyrics drew me in. Here was a guy who seemed impossibly sophisticated and world-weary at the same time. Every song was tinged with regret but filled with literary barbs and wry humour. One of my favourite lines is from Four Flights Up: “Must you tell me all your secrets when it’s hard enough to love you knowing nothing?” The songs had a sophistication that screamed Europe but the album title sounded American. And Lloyd seemed worldly enough to know New York, London and Paris equally well. This guy was flat out cool, like an upper class and definitely more hetero Morrissey.

In the same vicarious way that I listened to Zapp and the Dead Boys, I absorbed the heartbreak and romantic adventures of Lloyd Cole. I didn’t have anywhere near that sort of experience (and still don’t), but when on the final track Lloyd sang “Are You Ready to be Heartbroken?” I wanted to jump up and scream out “Yes!”

Track Listing

1. Perfect Skin
2. Speedboat
3. Rattlesnakes
4. Down on Mission Street
5. Forest Fire
6. Charlotte Street
7. 2cv
8. Four Flights Up
9. Patience
10. Are You Ready to be Heartbroken?

Lloyd Cole’s weblog
“Perfect Skin” video on YouTube
“Forest Fire” video on YouTube

Great Albums is an occasional feature on Consolation Champs where I relate some personal stories about life-changing music in lieu of any proper music criticism. You’ll probably learn more about me than about music, so consider that fair warning. For more, click the Great Albums category tag.

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Great Albums: Rattlesnakes

In the custom of the season, I wanted to take a look back before taking a look forward. 2007 was a year of many changes for me, and it’s probably a good idea to take stock at this time of year.

• March: We lost Brooke’s dad to cancer, which has been tough on both of us. Jim had survived lots of things and it was sad to see him go at the relatively young age of 73. His booming Scottish brogue (both spoken and sung) is sorely missed. Although I lost my mum a full twenty years ago, the death of a parent at this stage of life always reminds us of our own aging and mortality.
• March: For the first (and hopefully not last) time, I chaired a panel at South by Southwest. After six years of attending, I decided to contribute a little, suggesting and then moderating a panel called “Ghost in the Machine: Spirituality on the Web.” Although I’m not repeating in 2008, I hope to be able to do something like it again soon. It was immensely rewarding for me and I got to meet some of my online heroes for the first (and hopefully not last!) time.
• March: I started a new weblog, gathering all my film reviewing into its own space. Efforts to make it a group blog have met with limited success, but I’m really enjoying all the new people I’ve met through Toronto Screen Shots.
• August: We moved to a bigger apartment, on a higher floor. We have more room and a great view of Lake Ontario. Unfortunately, now that it’s winter, our 27th floor pad feels more like an eyrie, with the cold Metric winds howling all night long.
• August: I changed jobs, from being the jack-of-all-trades web guy at a small but market-leading wine importing agency to being a web producer-writer at a huge “Big Four” accounting/professional services firm. The jury is still out on whether this is a good long-term fit for me, but I like having a bit more change in my pockets.
• October: Celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary and our tenth year as a couple. I hope we’re beginning to get the hang of this.
• October-November: Brooke and I took our annual holiday, this time to Havana. It was perhaps the strangest holiday we’ve ever taken together and I’m still not sure I’m ready or able to write about it. From almost-missed flights to a broken camera to illness, it almost felt like we shouldn’t have gone. Now that we’re back, I almost can’t remember being there. Our pictures are terrible, but at least they’re evidence.
• November: Celebrated the marriage of our friends Philip and Ian, finally tying the knot after fifteen years together. Congratulations, guys!

Plans for 2008, though subject to change and the will of the Universe, include:

• January: Visiting New York City for the first time since I was a small boy. We’re planning to see the United Nations, the NYC Ballet, maybe some theatre, the Nintendo World store and some good food.
• March: Attending my 8th South by Southwest, staying a few extra days (like last year) to enjoy more films and music.
• September: Holidaying in Iceland and covering the Reykjavik International Film Festival.
• Yearlong: connecting and reconnecting with new and old friends, being the best husband I can be, overcoming my shyness to love people more, rewiring my spiritual self to remove some scar tissue, continuing to figure out how to use more of myself at work.

Here’s to 2008, cyberfriends!

from Consolation Champs

2007: The Year That Was

I’m not a music blogger, but in the spirit of all the year-end lists that are popping up on proper music blogs, I thought I’d make my own. My criteria were simple. The disc had to come out sometime in 2007, and I had to actually care enough to buy it. I don’t buy that much music anymore, so my list of potential picks was mercifully small. Ranking was difficult, but I decided that if something was pleasantly surprising, it ranked higher than something that was just dependably good. So, here, without any real commentary, are my top 10 from 2007.

1. Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
2. Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
3. Okkervil River – The Stage Names
4. The Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
5. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova – Music from the film “Once”
6. Apples In Stereo – New Magnetic Wonder
7. Modest Mouse – We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
8. LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver
9. St. Vincent – Marry Me
10. Interpol – Our Love to Admire

Outside the top ten:

• The New Pornographers – Challengers
• The Shins – Wincing the Night Away
• Radiohead – In Rainbows
• Stars – In Our Bedroom After the War
• Peter Bjorn and John – Writer’s Block

Other great albums that I just haven’t got around to buying yet:

• The National – Boxer
• Beirut – The Flying Club Cup

How about you? What were some of your favourites?

from Consolation Champs

Best Music of 2007

Croatian design agency Bruketa & Zinic have created an annual report for the food company Podravka that features a book of recipes that has blank pages until the book is actually baked in an oven. Very very cool, but I wonder if they were sending a subversive message about the company’s finances? (via the always-fascinating Paul Collins)

from Consolation Champs

Cooking the Books

I have got to spend a few days here, in lovely Grantsburg, Wisconsin. Who’s up for a JamesMcNallyFest?

I found this, by the way, through the very cool, though slightly creepy Spock.com, which had already built a profile page for me before I ever visited the site. I joked on Twitter that that’s probably exactly why it’s called Spock.com.

from Consolation Champs

Who Wants To Go Camping This Summer?

I just read an interesting article on Wired News. Former evangelical minister Michael Dowd is now touring the United States in a van with an image of the Jesus and Darwin fishes kissing on its side.

Dowd is a proponent of evolutionary theology, which embraces the science of evolution while maintaining faith in God as the “ultimate reality” behind the process. The article refers to the work of Thomas Berry, whom I am eager to check out. The wikipedia article refers to him as following in the footsteps of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a fascinating thinker who was proposing this sort of understanding back when evolutionary theory was only a few decades old.

I’m sure I’ll be driven back to these thinkers after I finish reading the free PDF download of Dowd’s latest book, entitled Thank God for Evolution. I get the impression this guy likes to shake people up.

from Consolation Champs

Thank God For Evolution

So President Bush remains adamant that Iran is a threat? Even after his own intelligence services have told him otherwise? Why am I not surprised? I’m reading Frank Rich’s book The Greatest Story Ever Sold right now, and it’s all sounding very familiar. I just hope that the presidential election campaign can steamroll any “ambitions” that Dubya has for adding to his collection of wars.

from Consolation Champs

Iran: Deja Vu All Over Again

Facebook pals, please read this.

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What He Said

I spent a very educational evening tonight at the Talk Is Cheap “unconference” on Social Media, held at Centennial College’s slightly inaccessible Carlaw campus, the Centre for Creative Communications. It was a free event that brought together around 200 people, mostly public relations and corporate communications practitioners. As such, it wasn’t directly related to my job, but for someone who’s desperately trying to advocate “social media” and “Web 2.0″ stuff at PricewaterhouseCoopers, it was food for my soul. Not so much in terms of content, though, as I’d have to say I probably know more about these issues than most of the people in attendance. My problem is that I’ve never held a career position that allowed me to actually apply all this knowledge. And so my passion for blogs and the like has largely gone unrequited throughout the course of my professional career(s).

This became apparent as I listened to several very good speakers, like Joe Thornley and Michael O’Connor Clarke, both of Thornley Fallis (whose employees actually communicate with me regularly in their capacity as PR agents for ThinkFilm, whose films I review for Toronto Screen Shots. Small world sometimes.) Thornley Fallis is a small Canadian public relations firm who have made great use of social media and established a reputation as leaders in helping their clients apply that knowledge. I found myself envious of working in an environment like that, and thought, perhaps foolishly, that maybe I should be working in public relations instead. But I can clearly see that my apparent zigs and zags, career-wise, are attempts to find that ideal environment where I can apply my skills and passions to the fullest while still making a decent amount of money. While I’m not going to be hasty, maybe I should examine whether my skills and experience as a web-savvy writer might be better applied in a field that is embracing social media.

While I can foresee that PwC might call upon my experience in a limited way, it’s a large firm. So large that even after several months, I still feel like I’m learning what they do. It also feels very decentralized and finding the right person to talk to takes a fair amount of work. I haven’t been there long enough to have a truly informed opinion, but my initial impression is that they’re using cumbersome and limiting technology to publish their web site. As well, they’ve separated my job function from the actual coding of web pages, so that I’m working only in Microsoft Word, writing content that someone else will mark up. So it may be too soon to tell if PwC will be a long-term home for me, or if I just have a perennially roving eye. I’m trying to get some insight into myself, anyway, and tonight was useful.

from Consolation Champs

Social Media, Unrequited

Wow. For the past two days, I’ve been keenly aware of a feeling of disconnection between my mind and my body. It’s been quite a long time since I felt it this strongly, but I know that there are a number of factors that are causing me to feel this way. I began a new job just over two months ago. From working in a small and casual office environment, I’ve moved to a large and rather impersonal corporate office. New clothes, new space, new people (and lots of them). Sometimes I feel like I’m just carried along on the tide of people during the morning and evening rushes, or at lunch in the cavernous “food court”. As well, I just returned from a week’s holiday in Cuba, a place where it would be very difficult indeed to separate your mind and body, for a variety of reasons. Coming home with a flu bug has only increased this feeling of my mind floating above my body like a balloon in a hazy sky. And I think the cold weather and early darkness also make it easier to forget about having a physical presence in the world.

I’m going to check out the local YMCA in the next few weeks and will probably join. It has a running track and is closer to my new job than the University of Toronto Athletic Centre where I usually run in winter. I’m realizing that I need this physical activity for more than just physical health. I think that running will help me to reverse this feeling of unraveling. I hope so, because it’s really beginning to creep me out.

from Consolation Champs

Out of Body Autoreply

Theodore Dalrymple, writing in City Journal, nails my discomfort with the “new” atheism (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, etc):

What The New Atheists Don’t See

from Consolation Champs

Theodore Dalrymple on the Neo-Atheists

Cuban flag
Originally uploaded by Patrick Dinnen

Brooke and I are off early tomorrow morning for eight days in Havana. We’ve never been to Cuba before and thought we should go now before it all changes. We’re not beach people, so we didn’t care about staying at a resort where we wouldn’t be able to meet Cuban people or see what their lives are like. Instead, we’re staying at a casa particular, a kind of Cuban version of a bed and breakfast. After reading raves about them on TripAdvisor.com, we’ve decided to stay with Ana and Pepe in the Vedado neighbourhood of the city. Though they do have internet access, don’t expect me to tie it up posting to Flickr. But when we get back, I’ll likely be posting like a fiend. Wish us safe travels, everyone, and we’ll raise a mojito for you!

By the way, Viva Cuba is actually a very charming recent film from filmmaker Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti. I reviewed it over on Toronto Screen Shots.

from Consolation Champs

Viva Cuba

GodTube.com is growing fast and now offers social networking and live streaming, in addition to Christian-themed videos

This is interesting in light of some of the issues we discussed at our panel at SXSW Interactive this past spring. You can listen to the podcast here. I wonder if there’s a way to measure if more people are actually “attending” church online than offline. They certainly seem to be indulging their curiosity at this new site.

Of course, my fear is always that online “community’ is often just an invitation to flame others with views different than your own. The internet makes it much easier to express views you wouldn’t feel comfortable expressing to a stranger IRL, but it also makes it easier to trash someone else’s views without getting to know them first.

Must keep an eye on this GodTube thing…

from Consolation Champs

GodTube.com Growing Fast

From the November 2007 Harper’s magazine:

From a summary of recommendations in Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation, a 211-page report released in July by the RAND Corporation’s National Defense Research Institute, under a $400,000 contract with the United States Joint Forces Command.

HARNESS THE POWER OF INFLUENCERS: Businesses strive to harness the power of influencers and word of mouth in their marketing efforts. The U.S. military should harness the influencing power of indigenous government employees and security forces by having them blog about their views regarding coalition forces. The military might further consider enhancing the Internet access of indigenous populations via distribution of cheap and durable Wi-Fi-capable laptops and by sponsoring Wi-Fi clouds around U.S. operating bases.

from Consolation Champs

Just Give Them Blogs and WiFi

Something very odd happened in July. My site traffic slowed to a trickle. Admittedly, most of my “visitors” are people who arrive at some ancient entry through the magic of Google search. But my unique visitor count went from 4,430 in June to a measly 642 in July. August continues the trend. Does anyone out there know what happened? Has Google tightened up its algorithms? They have been criticized for ranking blogs too highly, but wow, that hurts! Of course, I’m asking a question that nobody out there will even read, based on recent traffic. Oh, the indignity…

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There Goes The Neighbourhood

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind. Brooke and I moved on July 31st into a two-bedroom apartment just three blocks west of our old place. We have a great south-west view from the 27th floor and can see Lake Ontario! But the move was really stressful, as all moves are, and we’re still unpacking and getting used to the new space. I think this weekend might be the first time in a month where I wasn’t either painting, packing, shopping, or assembling crappy IKEA furniture (though there are still a few pieces waiting in their boxes for me).

On top of all that, I was in the midst of several job interviews. I had second interviews with two places right around the time we were moving. In fact, I had my final two and a half hour long interview on the morning we were moving. The movers were scheduled to arrive at our place at 1:30, and I got home at 1:20. It was a crazy day. The good thing is that later that day, after we’d finally moved all of our stuff into the new place, there was a message on our phone. I got the job.

So, I’m happy to report that on Monday August 27th, I’ll start my new position as Web Producer/Writer with PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of the biggest accounting and business consulting firms in the world. It will be a big culture change from the small office setting I’m used to (and, ulp, I’ll have to use a Windows PC again), but it will also be really nice to spend my working day doing what I love, and as part of a team of other people.

I will really miss the people I worked with for the past four years at Lifford Wine Agency, and I’ll especially miss all the great wine events I was able to attend, but I’ve promised to keep volunteering at their big annual portfolio tasting, an event that I wouldn’t miss for the world.

from Consolation Champs

On The Move

During the excavations that took place this past week while Brooke and I moved, I found this ancient relic from the past. My “cyberspace companion” featured some helpful articles. My favourite was “Six Myths: Unmasking Cyber Lore”:

• Myth 1: The Internet is a single network controlled by one organization.
  • Fact: The Internet is actually a patchwork of commercial, educational, government and public and private networks, all cooperating to achieve an open, interconnected communications system.
• Myth 2: The Internet is free
  • Fact: Don’t believe it for a moment. All of the Internet’s conduits, computers, and information resources are paid for by someone. Often an organization provides free Internet access to its members as part of an affiliation. But, for people lacking Internet access through an organization, getting on the Internet carries a price tag.
• Myth 3: The Internet will usher in a new age of democracy, a socio-political nirvana.
  • Fact: People created the Internet, people run the Internet, people drive what happens on the Internet — and people are human. No inherent technological properties of the Internet will bring democracy or a new age of global community.
• Myth 4: Internet users are cyberpunks and content they create is cyberporn.
  • Fact: While some consider portions of the material on the Internet to be immoral, obscene, or useless, much of it is no more controversial than what’s found at a public library or in a bookstore.
• Myth 5: The Internet is chaotic. There’s simply no way to find anything.
  • Fact: While no Internet information-collection or resource-searching tool is flawless, there are landmark collections and tools on the Internet that you can use to find what you want.
• Myth 6: The Internet is hostile to newcomers — the hapless newbies.
  • Fact: While a newbie can get mercilessly flamed for ignoring or flouting the Internet’s social customs, there are plenty of ways a new user can get up to speed in a hurry.

In this pre-Google world, Myth 5 was especially amusing to read. Yahoo still resided at its Stanford URL (http://akebono.stanford.edu/yahoo). And I love how many times they use the prefix “cyber”! Can you remember your first experiences with the “Internet”?

from Consolation Champs

Unearthed

Brooke was running the Nissan Toronto Ten-Miler this morning in the Distillery District, so I entered the 5K because I don’t enjoy anything longer than 10K. It was a perfect day, cool and sunny, and the race started very early at 8:00am. Getting up at 5:45am was not fun, but it was a decent race for me. Not my best time this year, but I didn’t go in with any expectations.

Kilometre 1: 5:06.9
Kilometre 2: 5:11.6
Kilometre 3: 5:11.7
Kilometre 4: 5:08.0
Kilometre 5: 5:03.4

Chip Time: 25:35.8
Gun Time: 26:06.8
Overall Place: 111/425
Gender Place: 75/174
Age Group (M40-44) Place: 7/16

P.S. Brooke took three minutes off her previous time at this distance, so I’m very proud of her!

Official Results from the 2007 Nissan Toronto 5k

from Consolation Champs

Nissan Toronto 5K 2007

Documentary film blogger Pamela Cohn has tagged me with the latest blog meme. This one requires me to tell you eight things you may not know about me. I’m also required to post the following rules:Rules:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged write their own blog post about their eight things and include these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and that they should read your blog.

Ok, here we go:

1. I have a thing for visiting obscure countries. In the past two years, my wife and I have vacationed in Uruguay and Slovenia. Iceland and the Baltic republics are high on the list for future trips.
2. I’ve formally studied French, Italian, Spanish and Russian, but can speak none of them even passably well.
3. I still don’t have a driver’s licence, at the age of 42.
4. I have a Bachelor’s degree in theology that so far hasn’t come in that handy.
5. As a teenager I had a pet hamster named Fergus.
6. The first rock concert I attended was Queen in 1978. Freddy Mercury in a leotard. Yikes.
7. I once played drums in a bad “Christian” rock band. Our gimmick involved wearing underwear over our pants. That was my idea.
8. When I was visiting Finland in 1989, I took a 36 hour round-trip train journey so I could say I’ve been north of the Artic Circle.

One more thing that Pamela might not have known about me was that I actually have two other blogs. She knows me from Toronto Screen Shots (my film blog). But this one was first (established AD 2000!) and there’s also Runner-Up (mostly sports-related stories about “non-winners”).Next victims:

• David Thomas
• Kevin Smokler
• Neil Lee
• Gord Fynes
• Josh Benton
• Jay Kerr
• Jason Chu
• Jane Hoskyn

from Consolation Champs

8 Things Meme

I’ve been listening to Spoon’s new album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga for the past few weeks, “unofficially.” Today in the mail I was delighted to receive my pre-order of the new CD from the nifty guys at Merge Records. Because I was among the first 200 geeks to order, I got a signed 7″ (you know, a 45rpm record!) with two non-album tracks. Problem is, I no longer have a turntable. I also have a rare 7″ of “Anticipation” that I can’t play, either, but who’s counting. Anyway, I want to beseech you to go out and buy this CD. It sort of crept up on me, but the Aha! moment came last weekend when I played it LOUD on the stereo in my bedroom and crawled back under the covers. At that moment, it was the perfect record for me. And I think it’s stronger than their last two albums, which makes it well-nigh perfect.

There are at least three perfect singles that should launch Spoon to superstardom (although I think I say that about every album they release, and it hasn’t happened yet.) Find and listen to “Don’t Make Me A Target,” “The Underdog,” and especially “Finer Feelings” and then buy this CD. Really.

And the boys are playing in Toronto on October 15th, after a gap of just about two years. You’ll want to be there, too. Here are some other shows.

from Consolation Champs

Ga Ga For Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

I always seem to have trouble with this race. It might be because it’s just two weeks after the Toronto Challenge, or because the weather is generally warmer, or because it’s generally a very fast field. But I think it’s because the course involves running two loops of Queen’s Park, and I find that particularly demoralizing, for whatever reason. But despite all that, I had a good run this year, though not my fastest on this course.

Official Time (Gun): 24:50.4
Official Time (Chip): 24:28.5
Overall Place: 189/658
Gender Place: 161/368
Age Group (M26-49) Place: 134/298

My 2006 Time: 25:08
My 2005 Time: 26:06
My 2004 Time: 24:10
My 2003 Time: 28:45

So far, 2007 seems to be shaping up to be a good year, which is odd because I’m generally running less. Just one longer run a week on Sundays with Brooke. It seems to be working so far.

Official Results from the 2007 Pride and Remembrance 5K

from Consolation Champs

Pride and Remembrance 5K 2007

In August, Brooke and I will be moving. We’re not going far, just three streets west, but it brought up for me the impermanence of living arrangements. We’ve lived in our current apartment for six years, but that doesn’t seem that long to me anymore. When I was a child, we lived in the same apartment for more than two decades. From 1971 until 1992, I lived in apartment 310 at 270 Cassandra Boulevard, near the intersection of Victoria Park Avenue and York Mills Road in Toronto. That apartment building was the scene of all my life’s most important moments: my first kiss (1975, I think), my first beer (summer of 1978). My mother died at home there in 1987. So that place will always hold strong memories for me. I was six when we moved in (Dad, Mum and me), 13 or so when Dad moved away, 22 when Mum died, and 27 when I finally moved away. It was only a four-storey building, but it was unusual in that there were lots and lots of families with kids there, and I made more friends there than at school. Thanks to the recent success of Facebook, I’ve actually reconnected with a few of these long-lost friends. I’m going to list more of them in case they find their way here through Google. Maybe we can arrange a road-hockey game reunion!

• Caroline Ryan
• Michelle Vautour (now Rowe)
• Gilles Lafond, and his sister Lise
• Ken McCourt, and his brother Craig
• Mike McArthur
• Bill Haddock, his brother Chris and sister June
• Andy McNeil, his brother Steve and sister Belinda
• Lisa Hornet
• Joanna Connor
• Jimmy Baird, and his brother Johnny
• Aubrey Singer
• James Mason, and his sister Claire
• Mark Gillespie, and his sister Katrina
• Steve Parent, and his brother Terry
• Dave Batterton
• Joanne Mackie

from Consolation Champs

270 Cassandra Boulevard

Brooke and I ran this 5km race for the fifth year in a row this morning. This was the first race we ever did, and even though it’s crowded, it’s one that we’ll continue to enter. It doesn’t hurt that in my opinion it’s a little short of 5km, so I always post a good time. In fact, this year, I set a new PB (personal best).

Watch Time: 23:34.0

Kilometre 1: 4:18.3
Kilometre 2: 4:56.3
Kilometre 3: 4:18.1
Kilometre 4: 5:08.8
Kilometre 5: 4:52.5

Official Time: 23:34
Overall Place: 88/388
Gender Place: 73/194
Age Group (M40-49) Place: 14/37

My 2006 Time: 24:45
My 2005 Time: 25:12
My 2004 Time: 24:16
My 2003 Time: 29:03

As you can see, I went out really fast, and knew that I wouldn’t be able to maintain that pace. The temperature climbed above 20° Celsius pretty quickly, even though the race started at 9:30am. The fourth kilometre was slower because of a slight hill over a bridge, although I’m sure the markers weren’t quite evenly spaced, either.

In any case, I’m happy with my time, and looking forward to our next race in two weeks, the Pride and Remembrance Run, which takes place during Gay Pride Week.

Official Results from the 2007 Toronto Challenge

from Consolation Champs

Toronto Challenge 2007

The lack of posts around here has been on my mind lately. I’ve just come through an incredibly busy time and can finally relax. A bit. My company’s annual huge wine tasting event was yesterday and I’m hungover in every conceivable way. It’s been a lot of work, and it’s finally finished. But in case you think I’ve been completely absent from the web lately, well, you’d be wrong. Evidence:

• Podcast of the panel I moderated (Ghost In The Machine: Spirituality Online) at this year’s SXSW is now available.
• I was featured along with my friends Philip and Ian on an episode of Livebait.tv about Hot Docs.
• Related to the Livebait.tv story, my new film blog Toronto Screen Shots has been going like gangbusters, and I’ve got a huge stack of great DVDs to review.

So, although there hasn’t been a lot of text here lately, you can see and hear me in a few different places.

from Consolation Champs

Still Here! And There! And There!

I’m up to my ears in Hot Docs right now, but it was great to meet up with Alison “Deadly” Headley on the Canadian leg of her round the continent road trip. We gathered at the Victory Cafe with Rannie, Jay (and his daughter Jayden), Matthew, Dave and Natalie and had a fine old time.

I’m just a little bummed that I didn’t get to meet the dog.

from Consolation Champs

Deadly Headley Rolls into Town

The statement “In New York City, someone stole the penis of a chocolate Jesus” is not true; the source was a satire website that was mistakenly thought to be a genuine news source. Harper’s Weekly apologizes for the error.

Harper’s Weekly is an email with a bunch of odd news mixed in with more serious stuff. The fact that it’s usually pretty funny all on its own made this “retraction” even better.

By the way, Harper’s recently revealed an amazing new site with access to PDF scans of their entire 150 years of back issues, free for subscribers. After my complaints about the lack of a DVD archive, this is amazing news. No new, potentially obsolete hardware to buy, just a low rate of US$16.97 per year, and that gets me the printed magazine as well. Genius! Big ups to the brilliant Paul Ford, who’s behind the curtain.

from Consolation Champs

Best. Correction. Ever.

Rheostatics, circa 2006

I feel incredibly fortunate to have been a witness last night to my beloved Rheostatics‘ last concert. After more than twenty years together, they’ve decided to call it quits as a band, although all of the members will continue to make music.

The event was held at the fittingly historic Massey Hall, a large and yet intimate space that has been the venue for some of my most memorable evenings of music. Last night was no different. Unfortunately, my favourite Rheo Martin Tielli had voice problems that prevented him from unleashing his trademark falsetto as well as some technical issues with his guitar, but it didn’t get in the way of my enjoyment. One of the band’s trademarks has been their shambolic and sometimes uneven live shows, and last night seemed to be a summary of their career. They played over three hours, and seemed reluctant to call it a night, coming back for a second encore where they sat huddled on the edge of the stage around Dave Bidini’s acoustic guitar and singing without mikes.

The set covered the range of their long career, but was understandably weighted toward their two greatest albums, Melville (1991) and Whale Music (1992). After hearing these songs for maybe the hundredth time (and maybe 20 times live), I’m still convinced that two finer albums have not emerged from this country.

Their music was impossible to categorize, with three and sometimes four songwriters in the band, but somehow these guys from Etobicoke, Ontario seemed to resonate with Canadians all across the country, especially in smaller places where “cooler” bands didn’t play live. The crowd at their shows always seemed incredibly diverse, with young and old fans side by side, and there was something incredibly sincere about them, whether they were performing stinging political songs, spacey art-rock, or irony-free covers of Canadian standards by Gordon Lightfoot or Stompin’ Tom Connors. No band that I’m aware of has had such an ambitious reach, from making a children’s record, scoring a film, and accepting a commission from the National Gallery of Canada to create a piece of music celebrating Canadian painters The Group of Seven. The Rheostatics did all of this and more, and despite a lack of commercial success, cultivated a small but devoted following right across the country.

I found myself choking up a few times during the show, especially between songs when, amid shouted song requests, people could be heard yelling “Thank you” and “We’re going to miss you.” I’ve never been part of anything like that before, and it made me feel happy, sad, and old all at the same time. I was at the show with my wife Brooke, and in the row in front of us were my friend Brent and his girlfriend Kim. Brent introduced me to the band way back in 1992 while we were sharing an apartment, and it’s sobering to think of how long we’ve been friends, and fans. But even though it was a bittersweet feeling, there was nowhere else on God’s green earth that I wanted to be last night.

• CBC has an interesting photo essay
• My friend John Martz has great photos from last night’s show as well as their farewell to the Horseshoe Tavern the previous night.
• Metric tonnes more photos here
• Rheostatics Live (live show audio and video)

from Consolation Champs

The Rheostatics’ Last Waltz

I know this post is long overdue, but it’s actually taken me this long to recover physically and mentally and catch up a bit at work. This year’s SXSW was even bigger than last year, and despite the fears of my friends and I, it was actually somehow a bit more manageable. This was probably due to a few factors. First, I had a panel to prepare for and that allowed me to focus on that to the exclusion of almost everything else on the Saturday. Another sadder reality was that Brooke’s father passed away just a week before I was to fly to Austin. We spent almost the entire next week with her mum in Collingwood, about an hour and a half north of Toronto. That made it pretty impossible to think about or plan my week too carefully. For a few days, it wasn’t even clear I’d be able to make the trip at all. But in a strange way, it made me less anxious about the panel and about figuring out what I wanted to do every hour of every day. I was just happy to be there. And just so you know, Brooke was able to spend some quality time alone with her mum that week and sent me on my way with her blessing. She’s amazing like that.

I didn’t attend a lot of panels, or take a lot of photos or notes, so I thought I’d just give you a list of highlights and lowlights:

Highlights

• My panel was great. It was a pleasure and a privilege to meet some very sharp people who also happen to be warm and genuine about their faith. I’m really hopeful that I can be involved in something like it again next year.
• Sticking around a few days was a great idea. Although I didn’t buy a Music badge, there were heaps of free day shows. I got to see The Buzzocks(!), The Polyphonic Spree, Apples in Stereo, Peter Bjorn and John, Robyn Hitchcock with Peter Buck and Okkervil River. There was even free food and beer.
• During one of the parties during Interactive, I was chatting with my friends Kevin and Baratunde when we were joined by a personable young guy talking about films. He introduced himself as Joe and said he was acting in a film that was at the Film festival. During our 40 minute conversation, it dawned on me that we were hanging out with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, star of The Lookout. He turned out to be a great guy, smart and interesting but completely unpretentious.
• As a panelist, I got a complimentary Gold badge which allowed me to attend both Interactive and Film events. I took the opportunity to see a few films (Reign Over Me, Exiled, and Eagle Versus Shark) and this was a great break from the intensity of hanging around with smart geeks or rocking out at concerts.
• The panels and keynotes I did attend were almost all interesting and valuable.
• I focussed more on my writing about film and made a number of useful contacts. My decision to launch Toronto Screen Shots was based on attending a great panel called “Blogging About Film.”

Lowlights

• The weather in Austin this year was kind of crappy. It rained for several days, which made getting around fairly miserable.
• Hotels were expensive and filled up really early. Despite sharing with my friends Neil and Kevin, which involved spending five of my eight nights on either an air mattress or a rollaway bed, it still cost me more than US$1,000. I’m going to book my room by July or August next time.
• Almost everyone I know had some travel snafus on the way home. I wasn’t immune. I flew back Saturday from Austin to Detroit without incident, but my flight from Detroit to Toronto was cancelled for “unscheduled maintenance.” Despite the fact that it’s a one hour flight, there were no flights available until Monday or Tuesday, and the airline would only pay for one night’s accomodation. I banded together with a few other Torontonians and we took a taxi across the border to Windsor and jumped on the train. I got home about seven hours late, and it cost me more money, but there was no way I was staying two days in Detroit, especially at my own expense. Boo airlines!
• As always, the week went by far too quickly and I didn’t get to spend nearly enough time with people. There were a few people whom I’d wanted to meet for the first time, and didn’t get the chance. Ah well, I’ll be back next year!

from Consolation Champs

SXSW 2007 Wrapup

I’ve been back from SXSW since last weekend but of course have been exhausted and swamped with work. I have, however, taken some time to collect all of my film-related writing on a brand-new weblog called Toronto Screen Shots. I’m hoping to collaborate with a few other film writers there and feature some exciting new content in the coming months. Please visit and let me know what you think!

P.S. Yes, I’ll post something about SXSW soon, probably this weekend.

from Consolation Champs

Toronto Screen Shots

Ok, this entry is really just for those folks who are sitting in the Austin Convention Center Room 9C between 5:00 and 6:00pm Central Standard Time today. Welcome! I hope you’ll enjoy our panel “Ghost In The Machine: Spirituality On The Web.” I hope you’ll leave me a comment with some feedback on the panel. I hope we can do this again next year, and I know we’ll learn a lot. I want to thank Hussein, Rachel, Kevin and Gordon for agreeing to be the “smart guys” on the panel and am so glad to have finally met them in person.

And oh yeah, if you’re wondering about why I’m moderating a panel on spirituality, you might want to look here and maybe here.

from Consolation Champs

Welcome To Our Panel

Thanks to my mad mouse clicking skillz, I was able to secure four tickets to the May 15 Arcade Fire show at Toronto’s storied Massey Hall. I love seeing shows in this venue. Plush seats and early start times also let my darling wife participate. Tickets for both May 15 and 16 sold out in about ten minutes. Who are the lucky stiffs in the sidecar? Neil and Craig, two of my web designer pals from the legendary Mondays at Volo.

p.s. Pinball Arsonists is my wife’s smart-aleck name for the band. She’s funny.

from Consolation Champs

Pinball Arsonists Tickets Secured

Every year I’ve attended SXSW, I’ve put together a compilation CD to give away to people I know, and this year is no different. The playlist is finalized, the liner notes are almost complete, and I’ve started burning the discs, but I’d like to know how many to burn. I usually give away about 30 each year, but if you’re coming to Austin, and haven’t received one before, and would like one, please comment.

I won’t be leaking the playlist, but if you like Chinese reggae, Uruguayan punk, or Bollywood novelty songs, you should be happy with this year’s disc.

March 8, 2007: I’ve now posted the playlist for all those who are curious.

from Consolation Champs

Compilation Champs 2007

I posted the following entry last June on my company’s blog:

I have to admit that since then, the underdog WineLog seems to have closed the gap considerably, and maybe even pushed ahead. While Cork’d attracted a lot of the web design/blog crowd who enjoyed the work of designers/programmers Dan Cederholm and Dan Benjamin, there seem to be fewer, well, wine people there, and I find the site harder to actually use, especially when searching for wines. I still think the biggest challenge involved in making sites like these useful is formatting the information consistently and weeding out redundancies. Which is why I still generally use Cellar Tracker over the upstarts. But it’s fun to keep track of how these projects are developing.

from Consolation Champs

Wine-ing on the Web

(with thanks to Jay)

from Consolation Champs

Level 42

Jesus Land: A Memoir, by Julia Scheeres

It seems that I’ve been immersing myself in stories about toxic Christianity lately. Julia Scheeres’ memoir of growing up with her adopted black brother David in a hellish “Christian” home hasn’t made me feel any better about the evangelical subculture. In fact, I am beginning to wonder if Christianity itself might be broken beyond repair. Though a harrowing read, the book is a beautiful testament to the power of hope and love (and the corrosive power of twisted faith). Scheeres and I are around the same age (and even attended the same college), and I found myself nodding in recognition of some of the trappings of Christian life in the 1980s: Keith Green, Sandi Patti, Petra, the mistrust of anything “secular”, the obsession of our youth leaders with sexual immorality and especially abortion. The difference is that I spent my teens in a safe, happy place, and Julia spent hers in a tyrannical Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic. Julia and David cling to each other during this time and her descriptions of both the horrors of the school’s “Program” and her rare moments of freedom with her beloved brother are written in the immediacy of the present-tense, like a teenager’s diary. This is powerful stuff, and by the end, I was amazed at her and her brother’s resilience. With the traditional safe places of family and church twisted into abusive prisons, her relationship with David is a lifeline for both of them.

At times I was shaking my head in disbelief, but on her website, she includes supporting documents from Escuela Caribe, the reform school she was sent to by her parents after a little too much teenaged rebellion. And she links to a site for “survivors” of the school’s regime, which may bring some much-needed catharis and hopefully shut Escuela Caribe down and other places like it. Yes, incredibly, the school is still operating. I’m happy and amazed that Julia has been able to make a life for herself as a writer, and a good one. She is happily married and has just had a baby girl, and though her faith has been completely shattered, I know that her daughter will receive a far more “Christian” upbringing than she ever did. In these days when the rise of the Christian Right seems to have caught us all by surprise, it’s good to see that these dark undercurrents have been there all along.

In more happy fun religion news, next month’s Doc Soup screening will be Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. Another story of religious madness in the Caribbean jungle. Can’t wait.

from Consolation Champs

Jesus Land

In a bizarre case of art imitating life imitating art, or something, there is now actually a BAND called Consolation Champ! I wonder if they left off the “s” since they couldn’t get this domain name? Most of you know that the name of this site was one of a number of hypothetical band names I tossed around for most of the 80s and 90s, and so I’m actually sort of proud that there is now a bunch of guys out there (in Minneapolis, actually) who are making music under the (slightly-different) name. Rock on, guys and good luck! Go and check out their CD.

I realize that some of you poor typists might have already found this out, actually.

UPDATE: I just checked their MySpace page and it appears that they might be playing SXSW this year. WEIRD! If they are, I think I might just NEED to see them. So strange.

from Consolation Champs

Consolation Champ!

The Shutka Book of Records (Director: Aleksandar Manic, Czech Republic, 78 minutes): This month’s Doc Soup screening was one that I’d heard absolutely nothing about beforehand. Shutka is a small town in Macedonia that boasts that it is the unofficial capital of the Roma (Gypsy) people. Though not rich in material goods, its inhabitants are rich in imagination, and almost everyone proclaims himself a “champion” of something. Obscure pursuits such as hunting vampires, training geese to fight, and collecting obscure cassettes of Turkish music are all fair game in the townspeople’s constant quest for one-upmanship.

I had some issues with the film’s tone. Even though the film was made in 2005, it was uncannily close to some of the scenes of the “Kazakh” village in Borat. This film, ostensibly a documentary, also used a slightly comical “narrator” (actually actor Bajram Severdzan, from Emir Kusturica’s Black Cat, White Cat) and the abundant humour brought it so close to parody at times that I felt that perhaps the whole thing was a put-on. According to the reviewer for the Chicago Tribune, (aptly-named) director Manic has called it an “acted documentary,” which only muddies the water.

As well, and as another reviewer noted, there is an unspoken undertone of grinding poverty. These people, although indomitable and at times charming, are the sort of uneducated, superstitious bumpkins who would rather spend their welfare money on a lavish party for their son’s circumcision ceremony than on his school fees. Though there is a discernible Roma culture evident, one wonders whether it thrives only because of a lack of any alternative. Without meaningful work or future prospects, people are bound to end up spending all of their waking hours boasting, stealing, arguing and worrying about evil genies. It’s entertaining, but it somehow felt wrong to be entertained. The few attempts made by the director to get us to empathize with many of the residents’ desire to “fly away” to the riches in the West felt buried under the weight of the jaunty anthropological style (including faux-archival black and white footage). At the end of the film, I felt somewhat like I’d emerged from a carnival sideshow. (7/10)

from Consolation Champs

The Shutka Book of Records

Yes, it’s hard to believe, but I’ll be attending my seventh South by Southwest in a few weeks. Things will be a little different this year for a number of reasons.

1. This year, for the first time ever, I’m speaking on a panel. Not seeing anything on the schedule about the subject, I proposed a panel on faith, and it was accepted. It’s entitled Ghost in the Machine: Spirituality Online and it’s scheduled for Saturday March 10 from 5:00-6:00. I’ve assembled a panel of rock stars who will say most of the intelligent things, but I’m still nervous and excited.
2. As a panelist, I received a free Gold pass this year, which means for the first time I can attend both Interactive and Film events. I’m still unclear how ticketing to film screenings works, but I’m hoping to actually see a few films this time. A few of the scheduled films recently screened at Sundance, so it might be a good chance to see some stuff that won’t make it to Toronto until at least the fall, if at all.
3. The Interactive section of the conference ends on Tuesday, but I’m not leaving Austin until Saturday morning, so I’m hoping to catch a few bands during the Music portion, and just generally hang out in one of my favourite American cities with some of my favourite Americans.

If you’re going to be there, make sure you say hello! And it’s also acceptable to buy me a Shiner. After all, I’m a crusty conference veteran now!

P.S. Make sure to check out SXSWBaby for the latest news and updates.

from Consolation Champs

7th Annual Pre-SXSW Post

[The Oscars have] got nothing to do with standards of good moviemaking. And I mean nothing, as in what’s left when you take zero from zero, multiply it to infinity and divide it the number of times Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Ingmar Bergman or Akira Kurosawa won for Best Director. (Which was zip, by the way.)

Geoff Pevere is spot-on in his hilarious lambasting of the Oscars. But I’ll still probably watch them.

from Consolation Champs

Oscar Loathing

Suddenly, of course, I need one. I recently enrolled in a magazine writing class, and I need something to record interviews. But I’m also attending SXSW again, and staying a few days in the hope of seeing some bands, and of course it would be great to record some music, too. As well as the panels.

So, in my usual way, I do an obsessive amount of research. The one I really really want is probably too much for me. The Edirol R-09, which is around US$400, seems to do it all and in a small package, too. It’s really well-reviewed, and works flawlessly with both PCs and Macs. If you’re mostly recording music, this is probably the one you want.

Closer to my budget is the Olympus WS-320M (around US$130), which is primarily a voice recorder. Olympus also offers the DS-30 (around US$150), which appears to offer higher-quality sound. But I doubt the Olympus units can really do music well at all.

My philosophy has always been that if you’re going to spend $150 to get something that doesn’t do everything you want, you may as well spend $400 to get something that does. As well, since my wife is a full-time journalist who also does freelance work, maybe I could convince her that she needs this thing? It would certainly qualify as a deductible expense, right? Right?

from Consolation Champs

Digital Recorders

I’ve never been to the Sundance Film Festival, and have no burning desire to hang out with the stars in a ski resort in Utah, but I have been trying to follow a bit of what’s going on. Here are a few films that I’m hearing good things about and which, with any luck, will make it to Toronto either at HotDocs or TIFF:

• Son of Rambow
• For the Bible Tells Me So
• Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten
• King of California
• Snow Angels

The film summaries are from the much more attractive and usefully-designed Unofficially Sundance site.

from Consolation Champs

Watching Sundance from Afar

The nominations were announced for the Oscars yesterday. I’ve been seeing fewer feature films lately, but I do manage to catch more documentaries. Of the five nominees, I’ve only seen two so far, but I plan to try to see all of them if I can before the Academy Awards are handed out on February 25.

The nominees for Best Documentary are:

It’s nice to see that documentary film is serving some of its most important purposes in these films: to bear witness, and to kick us in the conscience. It’s interesting to note that two films deal with Christianity (both deal with forms of toxic Christianity, in my opinion), two deal with the Iraq war, and one with a global crisis. No uplifting films, this year, sadly. Times are tough.

If you’ve seen any of these, what did you think? Who’s your bet to win? My money is on Al Gore’s sobering PowerPoint presentation on climate change. Not the most creatively filmed, but certainly the most urgent, and it managed to present information in an entertaining and mostly guilt-free way that made me want to make some changes to the way I live.

UPDATE: In a bit of cross-blog linkery, I’ve listed the losers in this category for the past few years over at Runner-Up! Check ‘em out!

from Consolation Champs

Oscar Nominations: Documentaries