I No Longer Read Travel Books

This is a memo to myself and actually, anyone who reads blogs:

I no longer read travel books.
To live vicariously through something or someone else, whether that be a friend, a travel book, a news report, a postcard or a film, is to not live at all. You may say that it is the second best thing to the actual thing, but what is the actual thing anyway? When I was living the most, I watched the least films. I love films but they are just images of fantasies of other people. Throw away your armchair and travel in the place you live. Walk. Talk to people on the streets. Eat up life, consume life. Fictions free you and you may escape life for a while, but life always catches up. Instead of trying to outrun life by consuming fictions, wouldn't it be better to catch up with your dreams?

"I want firsthand knowledge of everything, not fiction, intimate experience only. Whatever takes place, even a crime I read about, I can't take an interest in, because I already knew the criminal. I may have talked with him all night at a bar. He had confessed what he intended to do. When Henry wants me to go and see an actress in a play, she was a friend of mine at school. I lived at the home of the painter who suddenly becomes a celebrity. I am always inside where it first happens. I loved a revolutionist. I nursed his discarded mistress who later committed suicide. I don't care for films, newspapers, 'reportages,' the radio. I only want to be involved while it is being lived." --June Miller

I Miss Ottawa Only This Much

View Favourite Spots of Ottawa in a larger map

Herzog on Waldo

If you've ever seen Grizzly Man, Encounters at the End of the World, or any other of Werner Herzog's documentaries, his irritating voice-over narration may either make you ponder about life's depths or make you want to cover your ears. Here's a spoof:

Guster!

Describing Guster is a difficult task. The group with 3 core members who met in university can be called a college band, an alternative rock band, but that categorizes them with much much less worthy bands.

With most indie-type bands I can tell you the story of how I "discovered" them but with Guster I totally forget. I know it was during the last few years of high school though.

A few nights ago I went to the Phoenix concert theatre in Toronto (a venue I dislike very much) expecting to hear some good ol' songs. Well, it turned out to be one of the top 5 concerts I've ever been to. The best concerts plaster a smile to my face and at the end of this one I had a huge grin and was skipping down the street to the subway station.

In another post I mentioned that concerts aren't just for hearing music - if I wanted that I could just listen to it at home or on an ipod (and, in the case of bad artists, I wouldn't have to put up with off-key singing either) - they have to be entertaining. Let me list the things that Guster performed to entertain:

1. They had a guy come out in a hot dog costume in the middle of the thing.
2. They didn't bother with an encore the first time. Adam Gardner said something along the lines of "Goodnight!" signifying that the concert was over. He then turned his back to the crowd, then turned around again and said into the mic, "Okay, we're back."
3. The harmonic singing. Wow, it's so refreshing to not hear only one voice.
4. Luke Reynolds recently joined the band, so a whole crowd shouting 'Luke!' sounded like 'Boo!' (Adam Gardner pointed this out)
5. Brian (the drummer's) perfectly horrible rendition of Under the Bridge as a final encore.
6. The switching of many guitars. Banjos. Trumpets.
7. Brian plays crazy drums with his hands.
8. The crowd. There were some really excited fans. The last two concerts I went to there, the crowd was really snobby (it was probably because of the artists who were playing there). Since Guster have been around for quite a while, there was a good mixture of old and young fans.

I didn't take any photos or videos but I'm sure you can search for them :)

The Lord of the Rings revisited

When the first LOTR movie came out I was, oh, in grade 8. People who didn't usually read started reading the whole series of books in a few days. I tried The Hobbit and gave up. But I loved the first movie, and I loved the second movie for the trailer. Then, after finishing the last movie I forgot about it. To this date I've only read The Hobbit and the first book.

Now my cousin is a huge fan of the movies and the story and can explain everything. So when I was at her house we re-watched the first and second movies and as she was getting more and more passionate about the universe I wondered why I felt that the movies are great, awesome, but still I do not LOVE the movies.

The ways in which I like the LOTR movies very much:
-the music. at the time I wanted to be a composer and this score convinced me more than ever. kudos to James Horner
-the trailer for the Two Towers. I lost count of the number of times I watched it
-the scenery - beautiful. i love the different worlds.
-the ensemble cast

The ways in which I cannot say I love the LOTR movies:
-to the uninitiated, there's too much happening at once, too many worlds to explore, too many things that are 'given' or 'taken for granted'. For example, in The Two Towers we see Kings and Princes and Princesses appear and we have to take for granted that these people are powerful.
-other than the love story between Arwen and Aragorn, nothing is personal. the plot is just too epic, too wide of scope in that we are dealing with whole kingdoms being massacred. do I care that Rohan is doomed? no. why not? i don't know any of the citizens 'personally'. they show a couple of clips where the villagers are fleeing, are fighting, but they become one big blur.
-the characters border on stereotypical. none of the characters are fleshed out, not even the main ones. it's true that throughout the trilogy, we experience the good times and the bad with the characters. through showing and not simply telling, we get to see that Aragorn is brave and noble, that Frodo is innocent, that Ringwraiths are evil and so on. But once we determine an adjective to stick onto a character they remain that way to the end.

This revolution may be postmodernized

Yesterday I went to an Amnesty International meeting in which one of the workshops I attended was "Middle East and North Africa Uprising: Conversation with AIUSA Experts". Many times they mentioned that technology such as Twitter and Facebook was to Mubarak as poison may have been to Nasser, but that the revolution did not start with technology; it started with hope. Hope, and an idea, and that youth were tired of waiting and didn't yet know how to be afraid. So where did this idea come from?

The experts also mentioned that this revolution was not like other ones before - there was no Mandela, no Ghandi, no one leader, because "they were all leaders". How did this happen?
A hypothesis started forming in my mind, that even though Adbusters published a few issues back that postmodernism's time has passed, this revolution is very much postmodern.

Postmodernism started, in the West anyway, with Nietzsche's declaration that God is dead, that there is no longer only one religious truth. Then there's Barthes' Death of the Author, another postmodern proclamation in which he pronounces that there is no one driving force behind any text. Similarly, the revolutions in North Africa can be interpreted in this light: death of the leader. There leader has not disappeared; rather, the leader has pluralized into multitudes.

Why do I always get into these situations?

I've been trying to decide whether Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves is an utter load of drivel or is a bold statement on the nature of art and will enhance my life.

This book was my first online purchase experience. I bought it with Chapters gift cards, when I wasn't even old enough for a credit card. I bought it because I was in an Ellis-Ballard-Palahniuk phase and I'd seen favourable reviews of the book on Amazon.com. Sure, I was up for a challenge. It arrived in my mailbox, fresh, I ripped open the box, looked the cover over, then stored the book on my bookshelf until 2009. I was living by myself in 2009 and had nothing better else to do than to read after work (I had no Internet, either). So I started and grudgingly got to page 130 after having read some interesting things. Then I put the book down until now, in 2011. I picked it up again today and with more than 400 pages to go I don't know when or if I will be able to finish it...which now that I'm reading other reviews seems to be the point of the book. Great, Danielewski! You've done your job! You've made your point known! Spare me!

Further Study?

So here I am at my parent's place right now, practically jobless and lounging around the house. Not the best position in the world. A lot of people are asking me when I'll look for a job, or what I'm going to study for my master's degree. I don't want a job until I know I can make a difference doing the stuff and enjoy it, and for my master's I still want to study too many things is the problem. My dream would be to complete a triple Masters degree in audiology-cinema-international development/affairs. The first would be for employability of an in-demand job, the second because I have a burning desire to complete a degree in it and I feel like I could analyze films for so long, and the third because I have a growing interest in the field. I really just can't choose one field! Even my undergrad degree had me studying many different domains. I feel paralyzed.

Interesting idea

eat lots of chocolate and then brush your teeth. instant mint chocolate chip!

The ending of Blowup

I've just finished watching a movie by Antonioni called Blowup and it has one of the most random endings ever. However, here's my interpretation:

The whole movie is a character study of this self-absorbed, talented photographer who is childlike only because he's an Artiste and commanding. He's always in his own world. He's the type who plays around with women for power and who would do anything to get what everybody else wants (like the guitar neck) even if it means nothing to him. When he discovers a murder, he's the type that would never even consider going to the police. Instead he goes to his publisher-person and says, "Look what I've got!" almost bragging but doesn't photograph it. Only after bragging does he go to photograph the body and then it's too late. He would photograph the body because it'd be a nice 'addition' to all the brutality that's already in his anthology.

So he goes to the park prepared to photograph the body but finds that it isn't there. For the first time, he senses a loss, as if the murder had never happened and he had been imagining it. The mimes then show up and fills in that sense of loss with another type of imagination, replacing the negative image of a lost body with a positive image of an imaginary ball and tennis match.

The protagonist is worlds away from the university students and activist types. Although he is an artist, he seems not to care for amateurs (he doesn't give the fans a chance and he only permits the girl to put the NO BOMBS sign in his car because he finds it highly amusing).

He is a photographer, and they are theatre-mimes. Photography highly depends on the visual and the concept of presence - what is there. However, mimery is a performance art that is ethereal and depends on the mind to fill in the blanks of what is not there.

So when they start 'playing' tennis he is amused, but when he is asked to pick up and throw back the imaginary ball for them he crosses a boundary - he becomes part of their world and breaks the bubble of self-absorption. He is forced to participate in the world that is greater than himself, a world dependent on negative visual presence while he is so used to positive visual presence.

This is a good ending because all the events that have happened up until the end - the photography, the murder, the party, the coming back for photographing the body - lead him up to crossing that boundary that is a complete character. By the end of that scene and therefore by the end of that movie he has changed himself, if only for a second.

SKT, H, YT, NA, G

Today I walked 10 kilometers to eat dinner and to sample some fare from the Steve Koven Trio. I'd first heard of the trio on CBC Fresh Air and after having heard some samples on their website I was hooked. But as some jazz pianists are better composers than live performers, I needed to see if SKT was the real deal and when better to do this than a free concert at a café/diner/bar on a cloudy Sunday afternoon? It turned out to be one of the best concert's I've been to in a long time and one of the better jazz concerts. In my opinion, any sort of jazz can be listened to on the radio while you're working or cooking. However, live jazz must include energy or else I'll get bored, distracted and/or sleepy. This concert mustered energy, improv, skill and entertainment. Congrats, trio, you have converted me into a fan!

3 hours prior to that I was on the west side of the Humber River buying more concert tickets. In keeping with my jazz interests I am booked to go see Hiromi at the Markham Theatre this coming Saturday evening. Then, Yann Tiersen one of my long-awaited artists is coming to town on February 22. His last concert in Toronto got mixed reviews, so we'll see how it goes. Next, the singer-songwriter Nicole Atkins will be onstage at The Horseshoe, a venue I have never been to. And finally, a week after I get back from California I will be going to see another long-awaited favourite artist of mine, Guster.

By the way, none of these artists are playing in Ottawa. That is why it's good to be back, if only for a while.

Around the World in Films

I belong to some online reading communities such as GoodReads and Librarything and people post their World Travels through Literature lists there. I was thinking that I do a lot more film watching than book reading, so I should make my own world travel list. In films. Below is a list of the current 195 countries of the world. If the country name has a link to it, the link will direct you to a title of a movie that's produced in that country that I've seen, liked and may be representative of a significant style or period of that country's film industry. Some international co-productions will be inevitable, but I strive to include films that are wholly produced in that country and that are in that country's main language(s). For the remaining countries, please send recommendations!

Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Andorra
Angola
Antigua & Deps
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bosnia Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Brunei
Bulgaria
Burkina
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Cape Verde
Central African Rep
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Comoros
Congo
Congo {Democratic Rep}
Costa Rica
Croatia
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
East Timor
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Fiji
Finland
France
Gabon
Gambia
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Grenada
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland {Republic}
Israel
Italy
Ivory Coast
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kiribati
Korea North
Korea South
Kosovo
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macedonia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali
Malta
Marshall Islands
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mexico
Micronesia
Moldova
Monaco
Mongolia
Montenegro
Morocco
Mozambique
Myanmar, {Burma}
Namibia
Nauru
Nepal
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Palau
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Romania
Russian Federation
Rwanda
St Kitts & Nevis
St Lucia
Saint Vincent & the Grenadines
Samoa
San Marino
Sao Tome & Principe
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
Solomon Islands
Somalia
South Africa
Spain
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Suriname
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Syria
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Togo
Tonga
Trinidad & Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Tuvalu
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Vatican City
Venezuela
Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe

Parallel Lives

I am living another life in movies, one which I never encounter in my normal (read: boring) day-to-day "real" life. That is the life of all types of criminals, lawyers, police, courtrooms, jails and prostitutes. I feel that there are a disproportionate amount of these types of people and places represented in films compared to my day-to-day life. With each additional film I view on these subjects, I feel more and more weird.

Concerts, Crowds and Serendipity (some band comes to town and i leave town and vice versa)

I was expecting to go to a lot of concerts in February. Back in December I was already writing down lists of which Toronto concerts I would attend. The list grew from one to two then five and then seven artists: The Decemberists, the Radio Dept., Cold War Kids (March), Yann Tiersen, Hey Rosetta!...and now I am going to none of them because I waited too long and the tickets are all but sold out. Other than the cost of the tickets, which are already an impedance since my income is not that great at this time, I'm asking why I hesitated to buy the tickets and that led into a question of what I expect from concerts.

My first concert was Apocalyptica and it was awesomeness! The crowd was easy-going, I had a great view, there were smoke machines, the band came out sitting on thrones, the opening act got booed off the stage, and the venue in general was good. My first concert set a high standard for what I expect from concerts.

Now that there's Youtube, I feel the value of concertgoing has gone downhill. I find that if I go to a concert that has not met my expectations from the get go, I zone out during the show and waste all my money. So what AM I expecting nowadays when I pay for and go to a concert? I think I'm longing for the serendipity that came with walking into venues without the expectations or anticipation. Maybe I'm expecting too much - the most memorable shows are theatrical and include confetti, props and backdrops. Most of the bands I see again and again interact with the crowd instead of just playing their set and going offstage as if the audience were not even there. The problem with Toronto shows, and I regret to say this because if there's one city that artists go to in Canada then it's here, is that the crowd can be a bit pretentious. And that absolutely ruins the spirit of comaraderie that I've come to expect from great concerts.

At best, music festivals offer a diverse array of good bands in a short amount of time and within a small geographic area. At worst they are a distraction and like film festivals, make you want to throw up.

Arab world

As an aside, what's happening in the Arab world is exciting - the protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere. It's a really interesting time to be interested in the Arab world right now. Though the Jasmine Revolution is just starting, the only thing in my knowledge that I can relate it to is 1989. Just a couple of years back I learned that the protests that started in Leipzig led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, which led to chain reactions and the end of the Iron Curtain. I remembered listening to these historical events with some doubt, as just stories, as events which I had never lived through. I asked myself how, living in Canada where things move at a snail's pace and going through the motions of elections seem to be like picking different types of $hit off the same plate, revolutions can start and regimes can be toppled. Now there's proof! Living proof!

Tim Burton

Yesterday I went to the TIFF Lightbox theatre in downtown Toronto. As a movie aficionado, when this building opened and I was still in Ottawa I was really curious about it. Yesterday, I was underwhelmed. It's more a theatre than anything museum-like. And the building itself is quite ugly - glass, four floors, no real good spaces.

I also went to the theatre because of the Tim Burton exhibition the set up. The exhibition was initially in New York's MoMA. I've seen a lot of Tim Burton's films but I've never really been a fan of them. At all. Still, I'm interested in his characters and his wacky way of depicting characters. The exhibition had a few props from the films but most were drawings. Most of the sketches were character sketches - they didn't have a story to them and they were grouped together just because they were part of the same movie or project. The best drawings weren't even by him - it was his collaborators who fleshed out the scenarios in which Tim Burton's characters lived. He is hugely influenced by German Expressionism which I find good. If his style were complex but repetitive and vice versa it'd be okay, but his style if both repetitive and not complex. Stick-out hair, bent bodies, sharp angles or round faces over and over again. Okay, I get the point! Now put them into context! Same with the stories that were displayed - his stories are too simple and the words are too simple. Basically, there's no depth in his work. I don't know whether it is because of him or it's the curator's fault.

It was okay, I guess, but I'm saying that because I'm reluctant to part with my money right now and I paid money for this. In fact, I'd say I was a bit disappointed in the exhibition and I would not go again.

Speaking of being a film aficionado, I am doing a sort of pilgrimage to Hollywood in March.

life and debt

The title for this post is a mistake - I was typing it into the imdb search engine when my internet browser switched to this tab. But I think I'll keep it.

I've finished reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Spoilers lie ahead: well, well well. A lot of Scandinavian *shock value* entertainment that I've come across has something to do with incest and this is no exception. Ahem.

The thing I want to point out here is coffee. According to this, coffee is mentioned 92 times. The first thing the protagonist does in each scene is to make a pot of coffee, boil water for coffee, get asked for coffee, walk to get a coffee, wake up and smell the coffee, stay up for a coffee. Holy smackerals. Reminds me of the time I drank coffee every other day.

Here Come the Comedy Troupes

As a child I would go over to my grandmother/aunt's house on Saturdays and after eating dinner, we would watch TVB TV. I would get really bored as the shows on at that time were silly variety shows where slapstick humour was centrestage and where I didn't understand a lot of the humour. But then when we got home, I would stay up until 12 to watch MAD TV. After a while I came to dismiss most Saturday night Chinese tv up to today. Except last Saturday, I watched this show called "Fun With Liz and Gods". It was satirical. It was hilarious. There are three guys and they do sketches parodying many different types of pop culture things. It was probably because of the many references to Western culture that made it so accessible for me.

Then yesterday, Sunday, I watched Monty Python's Meaning of Life and that was also hilarious. I was laughing out loud and then my parents came downstairs towards the end of it and they probably thought nothing of it, or maybe even thought it was distasteful. Which makes me think that humour if culturally bound.