The Scene and Herd

J.D. Salinger is like a good, mopey, eighties pop tune. I like to claim that all of it bores me by now, but just watch me get all emotional when Depeche Mode comes on the radio, and just watch me
get all overwhelmed
by J.D.’s death.

I try to avoid retro music because it seems to keep me from changing. I can’t get older to the soundtrack of 1980s Manchester, that’s for sure. I’d just stay 20 forever. Morrissey Night is an indulgence, but I always leave there feeling guilty and melodramatic and telling myself that if I want to get shit done, I’m going to have to forget about The Smiths for a while.

The Catcher in The Rye was the first book I ever read that was different. It was the first book I read that made me realize that books could be different. Before Salinger, I didn’t understand that writers could do whatever they wanted to do. I was fascinated by the way his characters thought and spoke. It was new and colourful. Good Lord, I thought J.D. was the most quotable writer in history and I read every one of his books, even as they became terrible.
It was an awful romance.

Of course, the newness faded. I realized that there were all kinds of authors out there that did things differently and I forgot that Salinger was the first one to teach me that. I forgot about Salinger completely so that I could change and get older and not get stuck being fifteen forever.

Now he is dead and I’m feeling all guilty and melodramatic. I’m sure we can tell ourselves to forget about our youths for a little while, but I’m not convinced that we can shake them for good, can’t shake the books and the songs that saved our lives.
Yes, we’re older now.
And we’re clever swine.
But they were the only ones who ever stood by us.

It moves quickly, stretching across the countryside and engulfing trees, fences and homes. It reaches up hydro poles and across transmission wires, eventually collapsing them under its weight.

-Globe and Mail, September 26th

I imagine the kudzu as a giant green snake, stretched across our nation with houses digesting in its belly. I imagine us slowly migrating up north, towards Nunavut and the ocean where it’s too cold for the kudzu to survive, or learning to live with the kudzu, on top of it perhaps, destitute except for plenty of tea.

At times, the invasive plant’s arrival in Canada sounds more like an environmental science fiction film than an agricultural reality. Experts use words like “endemic” and “catastrophic” to describe the finding of a small patch of it by Lake Erie and in the US, the kudzu costs the agricultural industry hundreds of millions of dollars a year to control. It sounds like if we left it alone, the whole country would get covered up with kudzu and part of me wishes to see that, a truly historic occurrence.

The Baron in The Trees by Italo Calvino is about an Italian boy named Cosimo who climbs up into the trees to protest his parents’ treatment of him (they were making him eat his dinner) and never comes down again his whole life. He grows old up there and finishes his education up there and takes part in revolutions up there in the trees, because he manages to travel long distances without touching a toe to the ground. He even falls in love up there and remains in love with the same girl for the rest of his life, because he can’t follow her when she gallops away on a horse.

The kudzu catastrophe reminds me of The Baron in The Trees, not only because it’s growing a bizarre and far reaching infastructure of plants, but because it’s somehow lovely and somehow devastating. At times, the kudzu vine’s arrival in Canada sounds more like a romantic work of literature than an agricultural reality.

I’m just thrilled that President Obama called Kanye West a jackass.

Not because it’s true (although it is, it is) and not because I think it’ll knock some sense into that jackass (not possible at this point – out of control) but because it’s really funny. That Obama, he’s a blessing. Remember when he brushed that dirt off his shoulder? Ha!
However historic his leadership is, we sure are lucky to have a political figure that pulls stunts like that and I fear we often forget it, take him for granted. Luckily, he gets chances every day to remind us of how awesome he is.

In honour of Obama calling Kanye West a jackass, I’d like to remind everybody about an incident that happened just over a month ago involving a tourist couple and an extraordinary squirrel that, unlike Obama, only had one chance to tell us how awesome he is.

We take the photo for granted and I don’t want this little guy to be forgotten just because we live in a culture that forgets everything great that has ever happened within fifteen seconds of it happening. The crasher squirrel practically reaffirmed my faith because he didn’t have to show up but he did. And just like Obama’s remark, I smile every time I think about him.

Take a good look. Remember. Laugh. This little squirrel is more miraculous than a brand new baby. And if you can’t see that?
Well, then you’re just a jackass.

I didn’t actually see Stephen Colbert douse himself with sugar the other night (nor is it available for online viewing in Canada yet), but I can imagine what it would look like: glorious – a fountain of sweet little crystals (one of the pillars of civilization) drenching the face of one of my favourite comedians. Oh my, what’s not to like about that? Aside from whatever political statement and/or easy comedy Colbert was trying to pull, “bathing in sugar” has connotations of luxury that I surely stand by.

Last year I was speaking with a lady from Zimbabwe who was trying to communicate to me the perils of life under Mugabe. What she chose to stress was the lack of affordable sugar in her country. She tried to explain the more sinister aspects, of course, but I suppose those things are difficult to communicate to a foreigner from a free country. “You can’t get sugar, coffee…” Indeed, expensive sugar struck me as outrageous. It struck me as unbearably unfair.

I’m reminded of wartime food rations and how my grandfather’s generation tends to have a soft (sweet) spot for sugar cubes. Sugar is a right, not a privilege. Colbert knows the truth. Aside from whatever political statements and/or easy comedy we’re trying to pull, we should all be bathing in sugar.

What about Bob is a really great movie.

The Blockbuster across the street doesn’t carry it (which is probably why Blockbuster is going out of business) so I haven’t seen it all that recently, but I’ve always remembered when Richard Dreyfuss tells Bill Murray to take a vacation from his problems. Every vacation should be, in essence, a vacation from your problems, right? And yet, to have it put that way is somehow appealing because it makes a vacation seem so accessible, a personal decision that no one can interfere with. All you have to do is declare that you are taking a vacation from your problems and then you’re on vacation.

I love vacations. I know everyone loves vacations but I love them more. I think about vacations fifty percent of the time and I don’t even have a job. When I was a kid I would get hella depressed to the point of tears on the last night of Christmas vacation. After two weeks of family togetherness I didn’t want to splinter back into the real world and go back to school. I wanted to stay home with my brothers. During summer vacation, before I was even in kindergarten, I would ask my parents every single day if my brother, Adam, had to go back to school tomorrow or the day after or the day after. Whenever it was that his summer vacation was going to end, I was going to need a lot of notice to prepare accordingly.

Now, a strike is a tricky business. A strike allows participants to avoid going to work, and it is certainly a change from the everyday, so it is kind of like a vacation. But it leads to disorder. A strike is a vacation of problems, which is why this summer’s municipal workers’ strike has got me all messed up in the head.

Last Wednesday night, Dupont Street dutifully lugged six weeks worth of trash, recycling and compost to the curbside. It sat there, expectantly, for two days before the garbage truck chugged along overnight and collected everything but the recycling, which is still sitting out there three days later. It appears the whole street has collectively decided to not risk pulling the recycling back in off the curb, just in case the truck makes an unscheduled return. Furthermore, everything smells bad because the compost leaked onto the sidewalks and the streets.

In the past six weeks, I haven’t been taking the recycling out that often because there’s no space outside. Since the bottles are piling up in the kitchen, I stopped doing the dishes unless I really have to. We have a fruit fly problem. The compost is full so my fridge is a disaster because I’d rather old food pile up in a cold refrigerator than sit in the sun beside the porch. I also stopped cleaning my room, going for a morning run and writing any blog entries. These last three have nothing to do with trash collection, but when the city is a mess and the kitchen is a mess, I really can’t feel responsible for anything. In short, I’ve neglected all my regular duties because I’m on a vacation of problems. The whole city is on a vacation of problems and it feels very familial. I’ve a real solidarity with my neighbours in these chaotic last days of this grimy situation. It’s almost enough to make me wish the strike would go on just a little while longer. I don’t want us to go back to school tomorrow, you know?

Lady Gaga is interesting, evidently.

Sometimes she walks around with no pants on. She wears funny make-up and dies her hair and says raunchy things. And Marilyn Manson has a crush on her, which proves that she’s interesting. So why am I so bored by her all the time? When she was obsessed with that purple teacup and carrying it around all the time, I thought to myself, “fascinating,” but my mind forgot that it was interesting two seconds later.

I got bored in spite of myself.

I purchased The Velvet Underground and Nico one short year ago and really listened to it for the first time. I was overwhelmed by a feeling of peace and gratitude, like going back in time to the motherland to thank your ancestors for some solid culture building. But there was nothing interesting about the album. The Velvet Underground is too pervasive to be interesting, practically in our blood. I was born in 1982 and this glorious artistic movement is inherently known. Praise God. That’s cool, right?

The best part about being born after the 1960s is getting to be born after the 1960s.

Lady Gaga doesn’t get that, which is why she bores me. “Warhol said art should be meaningful in the most shallow way,” she told Maxim. “He was able to make commercial art that was taken seriously as fine art… [and] that’s what I’m doing too.” She let the cat out of the bag.

Lady Gaga’s antics are boring because they were interesting. She is contemporary but her art is not. Don’t worry if she does not immediately compute. She’s confusing, right? And don’t worry if you get bored in spite of yourself.

From the first paragraph of The Globe’s obituary this morning:

Robert S. McNamara, the cerebral former U.S. secretary of defence who was vilified for carrying out the Vietnam War, then devoted himself to helping the world’s poorest nations, died today.

Mercy, that’s heavy. I wonder when McNamara made peace with the idea that his obituary would hold more references to Vietnam than his penitent work with poor countries. Speaking as someone who has zero connection to Vietnam, I admire McNamara for trying to pull it together at the end there. He knew his reputation (soul?) was permanently tarnished, but still tried to make good. Most powerful people with guilt on their heads maintain a fake innocence with gusto, and a bad attitude ‘till the bloody end. 

Which brings me to the Chris Brown fiasco. It’s been on my mind. 

Chris Brown could not understand why he was not allowed to perform during the Michael Jackson tribute at the BET awards, and I think that’s weird. His confusion is confusing. He beat up his girlfriend. Why hasn’t somebody (Chris Brown’s lawyer/agent/mom, I’m looking at you) told him that people don’t like that sort of thing? Assuming his participation was nixed by Jay-Z, Brown twittered, “Jay-Z is mad childish. Never keep a person from paying there respects.”

Aside from the fact that he wrote “there,” (always troubling when an angry person does that) is it not totally bizarre that the Rihanna incident seems to have slipped his mind? It only happened a couple of months ago. McNamara had Vietnam on his mind for forty years. I expect Chris Brown to mull things over at least until his community service is finished. I think that’s fair, if not exactly proportionate.

I expect this from Brown for the simple reason that I think everyone should at least have as much class as Robert McNamara, and hopefully a bit more. 

While watching Tropic Thunder the other night, I started thinking about how the Vietnam War was funny. More specifically, I thought about how Vietnam War vets were funny. Mostly, of course, I was thinking about Walter from the The Big Lebowski and how much I treasure the invention of that character. Like any good thing that results from a painful situation (especially if it’s not your painful situation), the thought crosses my mind that Walter makes the Vietnam War worthwhile. I’m immediately struck by the inappropriateness of the thought, but it occurs so swiftly, I haven’t the time or nature to curb it. For my generation, this kind of thinking is the most natural thing in the world.

On the same night that I watched Tropic Thunder, I had people over to my house for a potluck. Before the food had even been served, we were cracking jokes about the epidemic, deciding that one of my friends was missing from the festivities because he’d been afflicted. That was before I knew that swine flu was affecting healthy, young adults. I read in the paper the next day that my demographic was certainly at risk and had a brief moment of panic (which involved a lot of sudden flu-like symptoms, I’m sure you can imagine) but I quickly lost interest in my own vulnerabilities the second I read that the EU wanted to call it the novel flu. Is it not enough that Israel and some Muslims want to name it after the Mexicans? This is funny – this and the Vietnam War.

The thing is, we’re not laughing as a defense mechanism. My own panic was brief and I’m convinced that everything is going to be okay. We’re laughing at the novel flu because we don’t believe what we hear. There’s not really going to be an epidemic.

I blame my disbelief on the economy (which is bad but not that bad), SARS and terrorism. I blame Y2K! I especially blame the swine flu outbreaks of 1976 and 1988 respectively, in this case. I blame everything that’s happened in the past 20 that was supposed to be really awful, but turned out to be inconvenient. I blame the media for framing everything as an epidemic (literally and metaphorically). As a people, we’re desensitized, sure. But we’re not desensitized because we hear about bad things like AIDS, poverty and war every day. We’re desensitized because everything we hear about every day is told with a panic that should be reserved for discussing the war in Vietnam etc. People don’t read about Darfur and think, “I’m tired of this and I don’t care.” They read about Darfur and think, “Yeah right. This from the people that told me to keep out of Chinatown in the summer of 2003.”

I blame the media and SARS and the economy. But I also credit these…groups for enabling the creation of Walter and other comical war vet characters. Without all these false alarms, we might still be sensitive about bad things.

I’ve been getting old recently. I know I have because I watched Toronto Stories last night and I really enjoyed it, even though it wasn’t good. During the opening credits I actually breathed a sigh of relief. “Canadian Cinema is so refreshing,” I said out loud.

 Now, I don’t remember ever saying or thinking anything of this sort before. Let it be known that there is a safe and permanent place in my heart for Canadian Cinema, but “refreshing” is a not the way I would generally describe it.

When I was in San Diego last week, I heard a song in a frozen yogurt place and really liked it. Johnnie’s little sister told me it was MGMT, a group I vaguely recalled hearing about before. I went home and watched all their videos on youtube, wondering how they’d flown under my radar for so long.

I don’t “get” Miley Cyrus or The Jonas Brothers, and sometimes I don’t understand facebook lingo. But that’s fine because these are boring cultural phenomenon. I’m comfortable being disconnected from pop culture so long as it’s stupid. What struck me about Johnnie’s fifteen-year-old sister having to tell me about MGMT, was that the song was pretty good.

For a while now, there has existed a culturally forceful demographic that is at least ten years behind me. Up until now, that demographic has been made up of children: half-people with no taste. Now that I’m 26, the group I don’t “get” is made up of sixteen year-olds, kids that are starting to form half-decent opinions. They’re making good music popular without my permission. It’s terrifying.

I think I’m suddenly finding Canadian Cinema so refreshing because I feel in on it. I’m almost offended by how much I enjoyed Toronto Stories, but I recognized the place and I recognized a lot of the people. I rarely feel this way about popular music anymore, even if it’s good. I like electric feel, but the video is just a bunch of kids messing around doing who knows what.

It’s not as fun to pay attention to music anymore, because the realm of pop culture is shifting further and further away from me. Today, sixteen years-olds are ten years younger than me. But there will come a day when I am separated from mainstream culture by thirty years. I don’t wish to completely detach myself from pop culture, so hopefully by then someone will be making movies about Toronto that are actually good.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtUI5MC9tVM]