Thin veils on thinner ice

Bitter blog ideas don’t come more venerable – meaning it’s been maintained consistently for a few months and probably days away from being abandoned for a book deal – than Veiled Conceit, a contemplation of the snobbish Weddings & Celebrations pages of The New York Times. Forget what the courts say – it’s been two-and-a-half years since those Sunday capsule items commemorating connubial mergers, along with one consistently offbeat Vows feature, modified their policy to accommodate same-sex couples. This got Timothy Noah of Slate to demand the abolition of this “anachronistic holdover from the days when newspapers carried ’society’ pages unabashedly celebrating even the most trivial events in the lives of the local (usually WASP) elite” while continuing to “reward the crudest measures of meritocratic worth” particularly when the weddings involve aristocratic kiddies still too young to have accomplished anything of their own. Fine, but thanks to the NYT online archive spanning nearly a decade of nuptials, notice of the current Mrs. Jerry Seinfeld’s honeymoon-length first marriage in 1998, to a fella who inherited his money the old-fashioned way, is available for perusal along with the full-length November column commemorating Seinfeld rival Eric Nederlander’s second time around to a clinical psychologist who even boasted, “Emotional baggage is my business”.

Meanwhile, the Toronto media provides no such insight into the machinations of the upper crust. Reading between the lines of a business feature usually reveals more than a photo spread of cosmetically overhauled veneers mugging for the camera whilst being plied with hors d’oeuvres – yet the mating rituals of the local elite remain generally uncovered. Given how all three broadsheets are now running their version of a vapid Vows column, you’d think there’d be some competition for the most ostentatious tale; instead, middle-class ambiguity prevails in these fail-safe features, guaranteed to provide aging readers with a rare glimpse into the younger generation acting liberated from angst, if just for one day – plus, the photographer is already paid for. So, if any institution is desperate for a re-think, it’s these write-ups where a wedding is too often depicted as the selfless culmination of triumph over adversity, rather than a two-person plunge into shared arrogance and material gain. Maybe the gays will deliver more ridiculousness on that front, since the bourgeois weddings covered in the papers over the past three days could benefit from a more honest reading.

The Globe and Mail: Australian grad on walkabout lands in Toronto and gets a job selling mutual funds where “water-cooler musings” with a female co-worker leads to both dumping a significant other. With plans to propose during a weekend in Gravenhurst, he detours for a business trip, giving a package to the pal who owns the cottage – who leaves it behind. “Fortunately my ex-wife lives next door [to me],” chuckles the Aussie’s buddy, so ex-wife hires a locksmith to help retrieve the “package”. (If there’s homoerotic subtext in this story, columnist Judith Tenenbaum has none of it.) Sure, it was the friend’s fault – but given how they’re already crashing at the guy’s retreat, why the hell should he drive all the way back home? The package in question contained “champagne flutes and a toy koala and a polar bear teddy holding Australian and Canadian flags, respectively”. Now they’re off for a two-year stint on his turf, where she’ll do volunteer work as he runs a bank. The wedding march consisted of “Waltzing Matilda” and “O Canada”. The bridal party entered the reception to Australia’s football song. The newlyweds debuted to the Hockey Night In Canada theme.

The Sunday Star: The latest story (not online) concerns a couple getting hitched on a hockey rink. He’s 25 and she’s 23, together eight years ever since meeting in a high school principal’s office – where both awaited disciplinary measures for jumping a fence. This provides a bit of levity three weeks into the revamped Sunday edition, after one story of a narrowly dodged deportation order and another involving a breast cancer survivor. But details of how this latest couple got minor hockey leagues to shuffle their practice times in a Keswick arena overshadows the fact that it was a shotgun affair prompted by her self-conscious desire to not be “showing” in her bridal gown, which leaves one wondering just how long before the “Kimber vs. Jansen” showdown engraved on the ticket-style invitations will be appearing on a legal document instead. “It allows them to be a part of what’s happening rather than having something imposed on them,” says the pastor of the unconventional ceremony. Yet, a few paragraphs earlier, he’s praising the bride for bending to her new husband’s desire to exchange their vows on ice. Which one is it, then? Guess that’ll be one for family court to decide.

National Post: More high school sweethearts, these ones from P.E.I., where Adelee first learned of her future spouse’s intentions during a biology class via a notepad which contained “a complete unadulterated transcript of Phil’s feelings for her”. Quite an achievement for a heterosexual boy just starting high school. But she was deemed too young to date until “the gentlemanly qualities of her new boyfriend” led to her parents bending the rules, and he came forth with a promise ring for her 16th birthday. Then she went to Mississippi for a school trip, where “their e-mail correspondence began to uncover many issues between them”. The details are left unspecified. Her friends were suggesting a break-up, but they were both determined to reach the altar – he even read her a verse from the Bible on a pier in downtown Charlottetown that spoke of a husband’s dedication to his wife and what more do you need? “A month into their marriage,” writes Catherine Hernandez, “these newlyweds admit it has been a rough start but, as usual, they are willing to stick it through to the end.” What? Sounds like the only thing that’ll keep this particular couple’s clause intact is notwithstanding.

Cupidwatch 2005

Once upon a time, there might’ve been a reasonable breather between the Christmas season sales pitch and the promotional foreshadowing of the even less inclusive, more dysfunctional and similarly over-commodified occasion of St. Valentine’s Day. Yet, the annual Harlequin Romance Report, issued last week by the slumping Toronto-based publisher of happily-ever-after bodice-ripping paperbacks, earned its share of focus in the hometown media for attaching meaningless statistics to antiquated notions. Like how 19 per cent of women in “North America” – typical code for a Canadian survey where it’s unlikely Mexico was considered – want more help with chores around the house, even as 32 per cent of men wish their significant other would do something sweet for them on special occasions, while three per cent of fellas confess their concept of a guilty pleasure is curling up with a “sexy magazine”. Most of all, it’s revealed that people, regardless of genitalia, would rather not schlep off to work in the morning, Harlequin’s way of telegraphing a desperate quest to regain market share by churning out even more formulaic knock-offs of jadedly promiscuous chick lit.

More compelling are the results of a survey conducted by Brazilian professor and researcher Marcelo Peruzzo, dedicated to the subject of Who hurts others the most in Canada? Not a big surprise that “Lover” comes in at 13.6 per cent, compared to 8.4 per cent for “Husband” and 5.2 per cent for “Wife” – as Prof. Peruzzo explains, a weaker bond leads to less forgiveness, whereas erosion in a marriage breeds greater immunity. But blogging misanthropes aren’t left out of these findings either, as respondents also cited “Self” (2.6 per cent), “The world” (2.3, tied with “Fiancé[e]“) and “Life” (1.6). Mothers hurt their daughters more than sons, but fathers cause more hurt overall, and grandparents hardly seem to be upsetting anyone. (Mentioned by just 0.5 per cent of 433 surveyed.) Yet, any illusion that Brazil is a more hedonistic society gets dispelled by Peruzzo’s conclusions regarding how the amount of hurt generated by romance gone sour on his home turf parallels the Canadian statistics. Ladies, don’t go falling for that Brazilian wax thing – each hair seared from your most intimate of areas with expectations of arousing your man is another nail heading straight for your heart.

Those companies already announcing their desire to take your money “just in time” for Valentine’s Day include the eventually former book merchant Indigo, now selling diamonds worth up to $1.3-million; Pizza Pizza insisting that toppings can be a potent aphrodisiac, particularly that ever-phallic asparagus (“I guess that’s why a lot of romances have started or been rekindled over a slice of pizza,” offers Pizza Pizza’s VP of marketing); and Canada Post promoting the postmark from Saint-Valentin, Quebec, where a stamped greeting card can be sent inside a second stamped envelope allowing for the timely cancellation to be dutifully unnoticed by your stalkee. Does the same sweet deal apply even if the letter is being sent postage-free to Parliament Hill? Given how Canada Post indicate it takes up to fourteen business days to boomerang from one destination to the next, it’d probably help to know in advance how your local MP will tilt on the same-sex marriage vote. But if you want to express fondness for their sanctioning of polygamy, given how it’s tougher for a man to pack so many marital duties into a single day, maybe a Feb. 14 deadline needn’t be as firm.

Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming

York University, forever suffering from an inferiority complex due to the remote location of its Keele campus, can now claim to be the current hotbed of the meta-protest. Rallying moonbats from the school’s Grassroots Anti-Imperialist Network (GRAIN) couldn’t resist the occasion of the U.S. presidential inauguration last Thursday to holler about York’s alleged financial ties to the likes of Lockheed Martin – and because it was so damn frigid outside, they weren’t going to gather on the lawn, which meant assembling inside Vari Hall. The prohibition of protest in that echo-prone rotunda has been enforced since a bout of nasty business last year, where undergrad Daniel Freeman-Maloy’s megaphone-wielding ways toward fellow Jewish students who don’t share his contempt for Israel. Freeman-Maloy was expelled from York for three years, but his mounting an elaborate legal defense and PR campaign against school president Lorna Marsden resulted in the decision being overturned. It’s no surprise he was among the members of GRAIN braying against York’s “ties to war, occupation and oppression throughout the world”, even if Freeeman-Maloy wasn’t one of the five activists arrested for throwing punches at paid-duty officers, pouring coffee on one of them and attempting to grab a constable’s Glock. But those arrests begat another rally the next day, allowing for Freeman-Maloy to dust off his bullhorn in solidarity with those who’d been dragged into the paddywagon. And, on Monday, there was a third event, where the media were invited to hear the denouncing of force against peaceful activists. Based on the estimates floating around, the turnout for the protests built from 20 to 300 to 500 – at these exponential rates, all 45,000 students at York will be protesting en masse by the end of the academic year, if only they can find a common cause.

The account from Isabel Macdonald posted at Rabble provides only the most breathless play-by-play account of the fuzz’s barbarism: “Then they began to move toward us, making a bee-line for the student with the megaphone. He was knocked down. I saw him lying on the ground with his hands raised protectively around his head, to defend himself from the cops’ fists and batons. I had trouble keeping my video camera focused, my arms were shaking so much,” she writes. “We followed as Greg was pulled down the hallway by a few cops, one of whom waved his bayonet in the air. I could hear him calling out, his small frame dwarfed by the burly officers on either side of him, ‘They called me “fag”!’ … Outside the classroom-cum-torture chamber, the crowd was growing. As at the scene of a morbid car accident, passers-by slowed down, curious and horrified, to find out what was unfurling in the hallway. ‘Why did the police attack the students if they were only speaking?’ I heard one woman exclaim. ‘Why?’ But nobody could answer.” The concurrent discussion thread casts aspersion on exactly what’s depicted in the choppy video “evidence” – shrieks of “Shame!” segueing into chants of “Cops off campus!” and the event’s ringleader being physically removed from Vari Hall while offering the time-honored rhetorical comment: “What the fuck is this?” The fact that several of the six officers have uncovered heads suggests the hats were flipped off amidst the fracas. Canadian Federation of Students unionists are now demanding legal fees from the university to compensate for police aggression, even if York’s internal security video depicted palm-outward police requests for the GRAINiacs to disperse.

A blogging York student, Dan Levy, a card-carrying GOP member from Florida with a site called The NeoCon Nexus, raises the obvious absurdity of peace activists trying to grab away a gun, while noting the aforementioned Freeman-Maloy might not have been speaking at the initial protest, but he was the junior Zapruder filming the confrontation. Yet another Daniel flails in pursuit of a more rational perspective on his own Das Blog, noting the cops didn’t intervene until being subject to at least a half-hour of law-breaking behavior: “I’d like to imagine if these cops had any sense, they wouldn’t throw the first punch. You know who would? A naive, idealistic 20-year-old student activist who’s watched too many cop shows and played too many video games, who thinks resisting arrest will make his situation better.” He also wishes for a Hegelian synthesis between police and protesters, lest you think OSAP money is just paying for more weed.

Martyr at the movies

Last week, Globe and Mail columnist Russell Smith delivered a prosaic screed, The films stink more than the greasy audience, a tirade against folks herding into Hollywood blockbusters that read like a campus newspaper parody of geriatric expectorate. Confusing things further was that Russell wasn’t making a point any civilized person could disagree with – just the aging College St. dandy’s version of Seinfeld-style populist stand-up without the burden of generating laughter. But he ended the column with a call for feedback, deigning to suggest you too could get interactive with this mightily pontificating boulevardier unaccustomed to quoting the proletariat. Then, a link to the subscription-only piece strangely surfaced on Metafilter, producing 85 reactions. Predictably, that response thread gave this week’s follow-up column some fangs – with the columnist noting his being called a “wanker” a couple times in a generally agreeable chorus of people unfamiliar with Mr. Smith’s reputation – yet the headline It’s confirmed: I have the tastes of a 72-year-old is kinda misleading. Rather, it’d seem the only Globe readers who’ll submit their thoughts to a Globe columnist – especially with the paper putting their columnists behind a firewall (even though you can usually find them gratis through Google News) – are Golden Agers. Does being able to prompt a ripple of reaction entitle one to many hundred dollars per week just because their words can line a birdcage? That’s the real question here. “I am still waiting for the arguments I prepared for,” asserts Russell, concluding with an allusion to the one 15-year-old female respondent who defended cinemas as the ideal hangout for 10th graders. “I quite agree. This is largely my point.” Hopefully he’s saved that e-mail address – the gap of 57 years between her and Russell’s disposition shouldn’t be a problem.

Don’t say that you love me

The Walrus, a periodical that prompted Utne Reader to inexplicably gush of Toronto being “the city with the hottest magazine scene in the hemisphere” also boasts of nearly all the masthead names beneath its foundation beneficiary Ken Alexander changing over its first year of publication. And with so much turmoil in the ranks – cue insufferable “tusk”-related puns – what’s positioned as a CanCon equivalent of Atlantic Monthly-meets-Harper’s-meets-The New Yorker (while pretending its fate is resting entirely on market forces) may have been distracted from living up to its launch hype. The new February 2005 issue contains Only Connect by Ellen Vanstone, a 3,126-word first-person account of trying to procure a new internet connection after a marital breakup – which is devoid of any detail of the “failure of true love” cited in the subtitle (moreover, the ex in question is Ken Finkleman of CBC’s The Newsroom fame) just a heap of lusterless typing about calling technical support reps and how her editors would rather she found a hobby. (Yes, it’s a metaphorical overload, in that sense not necessarily un-clever, but still …)

Could it be The Walrus were attempting their own version of last year’s Webstalker by Katha Pollitt, wherein the process of foraging for an ex-flame’s whereabouts was luridly detailed? Contrasting passages between the two provides all the evidence one needs about the difference between how neuroses are expressed among the rubes of Darkest Annex – by writers undeserving of a LiveJournal account – and the kind of wacky chick who gets to use The New Yorker as a therapist’s couch, while at least worthy of that buck or two per word.

The opening lines
Pollitt: “After my lover left me, I went a little crazy for a while. By day, I could pass for normal, as that concept is broadly understood on the Upper West Side, where I live – I sat at my desk, I took long furious walks in Riverside Park rehearsing all the terrible things I would say to him as he lay stricken with something rare and painful, I wandered through Zabar’s looking for kitchen things to replace the ones he took when he moved out. What kind of person walks out the door after seven years with a wooden spoon, a spatula, a whisk?”
Vanstone: “My phone service and high-speed Internet service started to break down a few months before I broke up with the man I was living with. As stressful as this development in my personal life was, it did mean that I could get a brand-new e-mail account in my new home.”

The sacredly profane
Pollitt: “He had left only one art work behind – a colorful picture of two ambiguously sexed people embracing, by a jolly, tough-talking artist we had socialized with when her child and mine were small. I called her up and told her I had belatedly come to conclude that my lover had had affairs during our years together and I didn’t want to keep her picture if she had slept with him. ‘I never saw his genitals,’ she said cheerfully – just mooned around with him in coffee shops.”
Vanstone: “We’d been on the phone for about half an hour, and getting along pretty well. I’d gotten into the habit of asking the technicians about themselves while waiting for my computer to reboot, or my modem to light up. Anyway, this guy, John in New Brunswick, at one point asked me something like ‘When you attempt to log in to your account via the Internet, what appears on your screen?’ I answered, ‘The same little box keeps appearing. You know – the little box that tells you to quit trying and fuck off.’ I could feel the ice through the line.”

A cultural touchstone
Pollitt: “I’ve always believed in the Nero Wolfe theory of knowledge. You can just sit quietly in your room – according to Pascal, the activity that if practiced more assiduously would free humanity from most of its troubles, but that was before e-mail – and through sheer mental effort force the tiniest snippets of information to yield the entire story of which they are a fragment, because the whole truth is contained in every particle of it, the way every human cell contains our DNA.”
Vanstone: “That reminds me of a line I heard on the old HBO sitcom Dream On: the odious Australian boss, Gibby Fiske, taunts the beleaguered protagonist, Martin Tupper: ‘What’s wrong with you? You look rougher than a sheep’s arse on “Farmers Drink Free” night.’”

The existential crisis
Pollitt: “Sometimes I think I would like to be a word – not a big important word, like ‘love’ or ‘truth,’ just a small ordinary word, like ‘orange’ or ‘inkstain’ or ’so,’ a word that people use so often and so unthinkingly that its specialness has all been worn away like the roughness on a pebble in a creekbed, but that has a solid heft when you pick it up, and if you hold it to the light at just the right angle you can glimpse the spark at its core. But of course what my friend meant was that I ignored inconvenient subtexts, the meaning behind the meaning: that someone might say he loved you, but what really mattered was the way he let your hand go after he said it.”
Vanstone: “I really want to make another list here, because I don’t know how else to do justice to the fiasco that my relationship with Bell Sympatico degenerated into during the dying days of our association. But the editors here refuse to discuss the list thing anymore. And I do realize it’s pointless. But when one has been through a terrible experience, it’s so soothing to make a complete record of all the transgressions – the treachery, the injustice, the heartbreak of disconnection. Perhaps it’s a bid for control, or a need to convey to you, whoever you are – to prove beyond any doubt – that none of this was my fault.”

Her parting thoughts
Pollitt: “In the months to come, I would look back on this time in my life almost as a kind of out-of-body travel, from which I had returned with nothing but a sense memory of having been somewhere inexpressibly exciting and far away. It wasn’t like a dream, exactly, although it had a dream’s strange internal logic. It was like looking through the window of an airplane at night, the way the city below appears so near, yet untouchable beyond the glass – a network of lights, flames, stars.”
Vanstone: “Sometimes I almost suspect that maybe it doesn’t matter what you buy, or whose system you go with, because underneath they’re all the same – the hardware, the software, the ISPs, the printers that cost next to nothing – till you run out of ink. … But at least my e-mail works, pretty much, or will, someday, if I can just figure out a couple more things, and, of course, get the right help …”

Sticker shock

It’s no surprise that the “Sticker Lady” – revealed in The Toronto Sun as Catherine “Katie” Hebert of Hamilton, who commutes to her Yonge St. panhandling outpost from her $333K Hamilton home in a 2001 Jetta, and has even taken her act to other cities – is married to the former head of our town’s Hare Krishna movement. Sure, the tabloid pics made her look a bit bedraggled – an ashen face probably helps when hitting up strangers for five bucks for your own cause – but 51-year-old Katie doesn’t look like she’d have been the last one picked off a plate of clams either, y’know?

Her long-running nefarious act across the street from the Eaton Centre involved offering a sticker to the “handsome gentleman” or “pretty lady” passers-by, with the sort of politely seductive flattery that could’ve only been honed in the age of patchouli-scented parties where the beds weren’t used as a place to keep the coats, which engendered the sort of self-esteem that leads one to grasp how flattery can get you everywhere long after the orgy was over. Forget the old-world desperation projected by the Sun’s previous beggar exposé subject, The Shaky Lady. No, the puffy-jacketed Stickette has just tried to retain those good Yonge St. vibes that formerly radiated from Le Strip, the Colonial Tavern or Cinema 2000, a free-wheeling remnant of the pre-Clear Channel generation. Now who is willing to take over as Toronto’s answer to Angelyne-meets-Robin Byrd? Surely not nearby 20-year-old Starbucks employee, and source for the Sun articles, Oghomwen “who didn’t want her last name used”, lest she be mistaken for another. Fare thee well, then, Sticker Lady – if the mayor ever gets around to approving that Statue of Responsibility on Albion Rd. in Rexdale, she oughta be the model, if not saving erection costs by having Katie stand there herself.

Building a better bombshell

Quite a damp year this is turning into when it comes to all things lascivious. With so much to brood about, what this city needs are more pseudo-starlets who can light up a room with the sort of insouciance that transcends trauma and taxes. For this we have The Bombshell Bible by Jacqueline Bradley, the former model and stand-up comedienne – credits include emceeing Mike Harris’ charity events – currently peddling “the only makeover book for style and soul”. Just how do these broads emanate self-esteem? And can such secrets really be revealed in fewer pages than The DaVinci Code? This apostle of allurement claims to know the tricks, and even offers personal consultation packages – including making herself available to three clients per year on a 24-hour basis – that involve an in-depth journey to find one’s “signature move”, making Bradley the closest thing our city has to an existential detective. Presumably, this process results in the most haggard divorcée prompting stiff men of power and influence to scamper about for the closest Viagra vending machine. When the transformation – including “lawn maintenance” – is complete, you too can be a coquettish pomegranate shuttling between Toronto and Palm Beach, despair be damned.

Meanwhile, blessing us with her presence is our century’s chastiest manifestation of the bombshell blueprint, Hilary Duff. Remember when middle-aged journalists – even entertainment ones – needn’t concern themselves with the pre-teen world, back in the day of unrepentant adverts for Kool-Aid and Oreo cookies? The Toronto Star’s Peter Howell, however, resorts to lurking in an MSN chat with his 12-year-old daughter and her friends on the topic of this renaissance woman: “Well, she has a good sense of fashion because she does not expose skin and she likes to cover up her body,” says Dana. Her friend Chandler disagrees: “She does show much skin but not as much as other celebs, example: Paris Hilton.” Jane Stevenson of The Toronto Sun works the inauguration angle – St. Hilary of Houston will take a detour from this Canadian tour to warble psalms for G.W. Bush – and learns that two guys “in their late 20s-early 30s” knocked on Duff’s hotel door in Winnipeg offering coital room service.

Now, if Miss Duff weren’t so fond of her hajib, turtleneck and apron ensemble, would there have been any incentive for those gents to invite themselves into the boudoir? Just one night earlier, a CBC Marketplace report Buying into Sexy: The sexing up of tweens, found Wendy Mesley furrowing her brow at single parents wondering how their 7-year-old daughter ended up begging Santa for a studded thong, then providing evidence that color-coded jelly “sex bracelets” have gone from urban myth to playground reality. This wouldn’t have been a successful investigative report if the outlook were anything but glum. C’mon, those hormonal chaps who’ve interfaced with every sort of gynecological image via their spam inboxes aren’t lusting after the target consumers for La Senza’s 30AA padded bras – they prefer the pneumatic pixilated chicks in Tony Hawk skater videogames. Wouldn’t it disturb boomer parents even more to learn they’ve spawned a generation of sullen young males whose bombardment with come-hither imagery is making them neutered? At this rate, the only tween girls who’ll grow up harboring any desire to light up a room near you are pyromaniacs.

Googling Malcolm Gladwell

There’ll be an awful lot of ink spilled in the weeks ahead over University of Toronto graduate Malcolm Gladwell, whose book party for Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking happens next Tuesday at the fabled NYC restaurant Elaine’s, followed by two months of book signings. Blink is the follow-up to The Tipping Point, published five years ago, the kind of success that led to Gladwell procuring $40,000 per half-hour speaking engagement, according to his Fast Company cover profile, The Accidental Guru. Good thing Gladwell fled this backwater burg, following a failed attempt to break into advertising, in favor of an internship at the arch-Republican journal The American Spectator; had Gladwell stuck around, he could’ve written those couple of books and peddled the eight or so annual feature pieces he does as a staffer with The New Yorker and still not cleared that $40K in a year. The Tipping Point, with its lingo about “connectors” and “mavens” and “salesmen”, however, is the business book everyone can love – it makes the CEO and mailroom clerk feel at one, accomplices in some kind of great furthering of the cause. Who amongst them will admit to preferring the old static cling? Of course, taking innovative action is a different matter – the lack of which isn’t mitigated by a dog-eared copy of The Tipping Point on the shelf, sorry – and by shifting his focus to the psychology behind rapid cognition, Gladwell has cemented his stature as everyone’s fantasy sage. His elliptical anecdotes about Aeron chairs and The Pepsi Challenge reflect a world where you’re better off not thinking, not explaining, not deconstructing – at least until after the fact, when the inevitable triumph of this non-process will permit many hours of gloat-filled feasting off the spoils of letting a few lucrative accidents just kinda … happen.

Then why not eliminate the hassle associated with bringing something to market and just figure out how to get a career just like Gladwell’s? There is a million smackers in speaking fees available for projecting the right kind of smug modesty that comes with being able to cite wacky academic experiments in the process of staring down the entitlement that accompanies the short-sightedness of tall men. Gladwell was born in England and raised amongst the Mennonites in Elmira, Ontario when his father became a professor at the University of Waterloo, he transitioned from pubescent track runner to the teenage pamphleteer for something called Ad Hominem: A Journal of Slander and Critical Opinion. Nothing about Gladwell’s background doesn’t smack of amorphousness – racially, politically, hair stylistically, he’s been all over the place. Yet, while this might be the stuff of every guidance counselor’s nightmare, he has hooked into something whereas you have not. His writing communicates neat and tidy satisfaction rather than the high-pitched rhetorical tantrum that’s eternally reverberating beyond coherence. Dig this decade-ago piece from Saturday Night where Gladwell meets his peer David Frum, and shrugs off the silver-spooned neo-con braying about the havoc allegedly wreaked by a paternal welfare state.

Not that Malcolm G. is rooting for unadulterated socialism either. His perspective on health care – the fiber of our country’s journalism business – can be found in a 2000 dialogue with fellow Canada-bred New Yorker scribe Adam Gopnik here. It’s really not much different than Gladwell’s reaction to having his report on a serial killer-studying psychiatrist adapted into a play without his permission which, based on the resulting feature from last November. For him, remaining nonchalant generates more interesting dialogue than overbearing opinion. Oh, you probably live your doom-riddled life feeling drowned out, left behind, teetering on invisibility – but someone has already beat you to transforming those qualities into a career of telling people what they’re doing wrong without exuding actual criticism. At the conclusion of a 1996 article for The New Yorker called Black Like Them, Gladwell talks of meeting a classmate from Toronto happy to flee from a city being overrun by criminal Jamaicans, obviously oblivious to the fact that the law-abiding writer’s mother hails from there. There’s a fine line between being colorless and being a chameleon. Gladwell swaddled himself in all of the hues that were laying there unclaimed and now he shan’t be giving them away.

BLC’s Year in Review

You’ve heard about these weblogs, right? Well, how could you not? All those folks using their computers to torment Dan Rather, post feline pics or initiate melodramatic entanglements. Yet, the renewed promise of online media remains oddly unfulfilled here on pavement once pounded by Marshall McLuhan – as exotic as the concept of premium cable channels felt a quarter-century back, or cash-burning hedonistic parties in Silicon Valley or Silicon Alley five years ago.

Weird, considering no physical presence is required to partake of recent developments; no federal regulator is restricting access to any website. Still, a certain stubbornness prevailed in Toronto during 2004. Nobody wants to concede to being out of the loop with this blog business – but if there’s been no self-sufficient homegrown model, and arts councils or other benevolent Canadian benefactors aren’t interested in exploring the medium, does it really exist?

The biggest affirmation of online media in Toronto this year was a one-day August conference dedicated to The Fusion Power of Public and Participatory Journalism, organized by the Atlanta-area Kennesaw State University, piggybacking on a symposium of mostly American media educators. The panels focused on feel-good affirmations about how to bring interactivity to the newspaper business in a fashion not unlike talk radio. Create the illusion of a two-way exchange with the reader and they’ll be glad to send you their digital pics of their cat stuck in a tree. Plus, that’s one less ambulance-chasing hack to pay. However, the concept of citizens’ media doesn’t sizzle without allowing personalities to flourish on the front lines, which often defies strategic planning.

And the more outlandish voices the better, because even if facts get obscured in the process, the medium allows for a counter-perspective to leap into the fray, no matter how frivolous or prurient the topic might be. Now, a qualified communicator isn’t necessarily the one drawing a salary, it’s the person who gets you to leave the year with a dollop of greater passion for a subject than you entered with – even if it’s only contempt for their strident narcissism. There was some of that to be found in 2004’s local online media, still lagging behind developments in a city like Greensboro, N.C., but falling short with panache.

Below, a nifty 15 examples of such activity impacting Toronto life during 2004.

• Belinda Stronach bids to lead the Conservative Party of Canada in January, launching Belinda.ca, prompting punters to wonder what lurked at Belinda.com, a personal page with vaguely lascivious overtones. Belinda.com claims she got an offer from the Stronach camp to buy her domain, which points to bad poetry and even worse erotic photos. Belinda.ca starts with a blog, even allowing for reader comments, but the effort is short-lived, maybe the result of too many wondering why a billionaire heiress would be asking for campaign donations.

• Gord Martineau stars in a tape of CityPulse News outtakes posted online in January, where he’s lisping heavily and waving his arms from side to side while calling Roch Voisine a “homo”, wonders if a story about a pancreas transplant recipient isn’t something out of National Lampoon, then gesticulates toward his groin. Citytv lawyers hound the material offline. Gord offers a sober apology.

• Andrew Coyne coins the term Adscam for the federal sponsorship scandal on his weblog in February. Disenchantment with the ruling Liberals dominates Canadian blogs, and with no real demonstrative affection to be found for Paul Martin, commentary on the June election race is mostly confined to echo chambers. Rather than weblogs, Liberals try and pre-empt ideological attacks by launching StephenHarperSaid.ca, the Conservatives retaliate with TeamMartinSaid.ca, and everyone gets the ho-hum result they deserve.

• The Department of Canadian Heritage launches Culture.ca, with a $6-million budget allocated to the online search engine equivalent of a drab government pavilion. The wretched effort is highlighted via CBC News item based on complaints from a Calgary arts group director griping about the site’s “complexity”, a story featured on the home page news feed on Culture.ca.

• Frank magazine spends the year in a bizarre tailspin after being taken over by Fabrice Taylor, who aspires toward a broader readership. The uninspired effort burns a reported $600K. The print edition’s December demise means the trademark reverts to previous owner Michael Bate, who may soon revive Frank’s agenda in an online format more kinetic than the horse ‘n’ buggy distribution.

• “Plain Layne”, a 26-year-old female diarist from Minnesota is revealed in June as a hoax perpetrated by male writer Odin Soli, but not before being featured in a Maclean’s magazine story. Lauding how “she opens up her soul to readers”, correspondent Michael Snider maintained Layne was for real when the truth first emerged. (But there’s a newer trend of ladies getting mistaken for Raymi.)

• Michael Moore drops in the weekend before the federal election for a screening of Fahrenheit 9/11, imploring Canadians to vote anything but Conservative. The appeal prompts an online petition insisting the filmmaker be charged under Canada’s Election Act for meddling, which prompts a counter-petition demanding the Chief Electoral Officer focus on less irrelevant matters.

• Secret Swing, the unofficial name of an installation by artist Corwyn Lund found in a trash-strewn alley on Queen St. (west of Spadina) becomes subject of some photoblogger fascination, a meme that spreads from Accordion Guy through BoingBoing and beyond until the swing ain’t much of a secret anymore.

• The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission revokes the license of Quebec City shock ‘n’ roll station CHOI-FM in July, then conditionally green lights Al-Jazeera’s broadcast into this country, while not approving the Fox News Channel’s bungled application until November. The events shed light on how antiquated the CRTC’s mandate of protectionist regulation has become, and those Canadian media execs handsomely compensated to protect their mediocre turf won’t have it any other way.

• Marketing becomes the first Canadian publication to feature blogs as a cover story in September, despite no indication that its readers will grasp the premise. At this rate, chances are Canadian agencies will first need to suffer through a few psuedo-blog debacles along the lines of Raging Cow and Kid Halloween.

• [daily dose of imagery], the widely-lauded photoblog of Sam Javanrouh, inspires a parody in October, [daily dose of generic photos], which only lasts a couple weeks. Like last year’s Dissecting Leah McLaren, any attempt at sardonic humor quickly dissolves into misplaced pathological resentment.

• Warren Kinsella, LL.B. threatens legal action at bloggers who claim he’s being mawkish about the October submarine fire death of Lt. Chris Saunders, given how Kinsella’s old boss, Jean Chretien, cut the military budget. The resulting blogwar ends up focusing on whether calling one’s parent “retarded” is an appropriate insult. Kinsella, in between writing his book about punk rock, claims to feel unencouraged by this so-called blogcult’s “solipsism and incoherence”.

• Marry An American is launched by THIS Magazine after the American election, a spoof personals site connecting disgruntled John Kerry voters to Canucks aspiring to love them. Such immigrant fantasies circulate for the month following George W. Bush’s revival, ending with a thud when medical sociologist Nora Jacobson claims in The Washington Post that anti-Americanism in Toronto is rampant enough to turn any liberal ex-pat into a GOP booster.

• Tart Cider blogger Chris Selley, who noticed a plagiarism offense by columnist Elizabeth Nickson in July 2003, is mentioned by The Globe and Mail as factoring in her dismissal from the National Post almost 16 months later. (Take that, Power Line.) The rival Globe, however, can’t quite piece the events together and ends up having to run a clarification that confuses everyone further. The Post gives up on its editorial board blog around the same time.

• The Val Kilmer Tagging Caper is revealed as the name of a rock band, at least according to “Shufler”, who even posts their alleged album cover on his LiveJournal, thus explaining the mysterious origin of all the graffiti bearing the name and mug of Mr. Kilmer proliferating in downtown Toronto this year. The final ominous comment on the response thread reads: “You are all wrong.”