When popular culture gets you down, get your rant on and proclaim your lovehate for everything that you can't pull yourself away from, no matter how guilty the pleasure is.
When culture gets overinflated, yet refuses to pop, I want to be there with the needle.
Enlightened cynics of the world unite! Express your love or hatred of things from the sacred to the mundane.
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lovehate: The Immaculate Waffle
We often turn to each other and snicker upon hearing of the entreprenurial opportunist who sees Jesus in a Ruffle and sells it on eBay. We often split our sides at claims of Christ on a cracker, the Virgin Mary Rice Krispie square, or the incidental rendering DaVinci's Last Supper on a mold formation in month old cottage cheese. The sad truth is, it's quite obvious the person selling the product is not a "true believer". If so, how could these latter-day Merchants at the Temple bring themselves to sell what could very well be akin to the Ark of the Convenant?
Even those that consider themselves religious refuse to get caught up in the divine delectables, the holy hors d'oeuvres, the beatific breakfast sausages that draw so much closing story fodder on nightly newscasts while every "Dan Anchorman" wannabe echoes a couple of light chuckles as they go to the wide shot of the Action 5 News Team enjoying the joke. But someone's not laughing, because, on eBay, people are actually bidding on this stuff.
You may think yourselves above such digestible miracles, but even in your Doubting Thomas ways you may be an active participant in a cult-like subset of the Church of Food.
Are you padding down from every hotel/motel room you've ever stayed in, before you've checked out, showered, or sometimes even dressed, to share in the bounty that is the complimentary hotel breakfast? At what cost in time and effort are you willing to buy-in to the word "FREE" while skittishly glancing around the sunroom to observe those shoving individually-wrapped muffins, sickly bananas, orange juice concentrate, and dishwater coffee down their sullied maws.
People will sacrifice hours of needed sleep and waste up to an hour meandering amidst the soma-like trance fields that are the hotel breakfast nooks. They'll bitterly complain later in the day that their road trip driving sessions are going too late into the night, forgetting the cultural Mecca they participated in that same morning at tiny round bistro tables made cozy by the warm glow and hum of microwave ovens.
But nowhere is this devotion to ritual so evident than people who will line up for hours waiting their turn for the malted Belgian waffle iron to be free. These are people who would never go out and just buy a freakin' Eggo once in a while, but instead shamble wearily in the queue, like breadline comrades in Iron Curtain Warsaw. They mutter obscenities under their breaths at the mother who spends double the necessary time explaining the process to her four year-old while trying to soothe the crying jags at not being able to fill a bowl with a generic Froot Loop substitute and throw them around the room. They secretly wish death upon the doddering senior who has to peer intently to decipher the instructions before calling over a companion to ask them what to do next. They seethe with rage at the person who isn't immediately present at the waffle iron upon the completion of their batter press session - to tired to yell, too polite to open it and steal it, to exasperated at the 38 minutes they've been standing in line while their partner has the kids packed up and is honking the horn outside the window, they grimace and direct elaborate sneers of disdain worthy of someone who molested a child.
This is what we've become. We want our ten cent portion of waffle mix SO BAD that we are willing to waste far more valuable time to attain it. We'll gladly spend $20 extra for a hotel room that doles out $5 worth of high fructose gluten in the morning. We're willing to shave hours off of well-needed sleep to rush down to mingle with the Morlocks so that one day we will be able to tell all our friends how worthwhile an experience our travel breakfasts were. Not that far from the devotion of the eBay divine potato chip purchaser, where they've traded money for a chance at getting closer to their creator, you've traded time to stuff your craw.
In the end, they'll have a chip that looks like Jesus... or more likely the Shmoo, while you'll have a twelve hour window to get to the next motel so that you can befoul the bathroom with what passes as pungent remnants of a "healthy" breakfast, grab a five hour sleep, and be ready to be down in the foyer for 9am the next morning, or at least before the last stale croissant is put away.
In the name of the Fritter, the Bun, and the Whole Wheat Toast, as it was in the beginning, finishes by 9:30am, checkout at noon. Alpen.
P.S. Across Canada on Canada Day, all Mandarin Chinese Buffets served free meals. Nice gesture. Kudos to the owners. And the cult descended:
"The restaurant's first customers for its Canada Day (Wednesday) buffet lined up at 10:30 p.m. Tuesday night, say staff who saw them then and let them in the next morning. Yesterday afternoon, a line of several hundred people wound around the plaza. Many of the 1,600 people who ate there yesterday waited for several hours."
Some people waited overnight, over 12 hours, in a concrete parking lot for a buffet that costs $16.99 - largely middle-class people, forgoing the better part of a day for a free meal.
Filed under //
breakfast
buffet
cheap
complimentary
consumerism
cult
ebay
free
hotel
jesus
motel
religion
travel
virgin mary
waffle
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lovehate: Rediscovering Ezra Pound
To some, Ezra Pound was a crazy mofo. To others, he was a crazy mofo genius.
His ability to paint images with words is often hit and miss for me, but generally the hits are illuminating and the misses are because he's written 100 cantos in cunieform.
How many writers can claim such a biological paragraph as framework for their writings:
"After the war, Pound was brought back to the United States to face charges of treason. The charges covered only his activities during the time when the Kingdom of Italy was officially at war with the United States, i.e., the time before the Allies captured Rome and Mussolini fled to the North. Pound was not prosecuted for his activities on behalf of Mussolini's Saló Republic, evidently because the Republic's existence was never formally recognized by the United States. He was found incompetent to face trial by a special federal jury and sent to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he remained for 12 years from 1946 to 1958. His insanity plea is still a matter of controversy, since in retrospect his activities and his writings during the war years do appear to be those of a sane person." - via wikipedia.org
With this brief context in mind, (and I encourage you explore his writings and life more) I provide some of my favorite thoughts of Pound.
"And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will."
"Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one."
"I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn't irascible." "I have always thought the suicide should bump off at least one swine before taking off for parts unknown." "The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting." "The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people." "Religion, oh, just another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art." "Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance... poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music." "The image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy." The Encounter All the while they were talking the new morality Salutation O generation of the thoroughly smug
Her eyes explored me.
And when I rose to go
Her fingers were like the tissue
Of a Japanese paper napkin.
and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake
and do not even own clothing. "The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity."
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Podcast 95 - Canada Day AnthM
Canada Day Anth M by Anthony Marco
My Canada Day podcast of lists, concerning my love for my country and my summer bucket list... things to do before summer dies!
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lovehate: Top 12 Reasons I Love Canada
- The flag kicks serious ass. You know how the most effective logos and branding can be done with two simple contrasting colours, well the Canadian flag is it. For those of you who don't know the left and right red fields on the flag represent the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans while the eleven point Maple Leaf has one point for each of the ten provinces and the remaining for the northern territories. As cool as it is, it still comes a close second to the awesomeness that was the logo of the NHL's Hartford Whalers.
- Hockey. Okay all you haters, I know you may find the game boring or hard to follow, but in as much as 80% of the world mythologizes soccer and 19 of the remaining 20% worships football, baseball and basketball... or even Nascar, in Canada we bleed hockey. I love to watch it, but if I can't watch it, I'm just happy to know it's being played. It's part of the national identity and if you don't get, we don't care.
- We don't care. Yeah sure, we care about some things, but for the most part we're a laid back people. Foreigners often call us polite, but really we're just making fun of you behind your backs so we don't hurt your feelings... I suppose that's more tactful than polite. Let's call it diplomatic because it's not smart to piss people off when we don't have disproportionally huge armed forces.
- We don't have disproportionately huge armed forces. I've never been a "fan" of any army... especially not a fan in a way that would entail putting on a replica jersey and getting in the game, but I respect that the prime role of the Canadian soldiers have generally been peacekeepers in recent years and that those in the service generally get thrown into a shitstorm without proper backup, funding, and respect. While we have a proud military tradition in this country, our government really needs to reconsider risking young lives just to satisfy global expectations.
- Global expectations aren't too high. Sure you may think that's a bad thing, but it allows us to self-pace and largely concern ourselves with internal matters, like the national hockey and curling programs, exporting stand-up comedians, making Hinterland nature shorts, and advancing the latest R&D techniques to develop the most cost effective coffee and donut combo in world.
- The best coffee/donut combo in the world. Tim Horton's and it's competitors serve the most cost-effective, value for money, coffee and donut combos in the world. Most of this is due to the fact that the small coffee is small and the large coffee is large and even though Southern Ontario has the largest Italian population outside of Italy we still haven't allowed the elitist Starbucks to overrun our homegrown donut houses with crazy sizes like Grande and Venti. What's up Starbucks, do you think you're in a Puccini opera or something?
- Multiculturalism. You can have your melting pot for your chicken soup/nacho cheese/fondue gruel. I'll take them on separate plates and bowls forming a great mosaic across the dinner table that spans from Newfoundland to British Columbia, with lobster from the Maritimes, poutine from Quebec, maple syrup from Ontario, bread from the prarie wheat fields, beef from Alberta and smoked salmon from BC. Sure, it sounds like a crazy mix, but at least I can pick and choose instead of melting it up.
- Crazy mixes. This one deserves its very own reason. I quote from the source of all things - Wikipedia: "A Bloody Caesar, after the similar Bloody Mary, is a cocktail popular mainly in Canada. It typically contains vodka, clamato (a blend of tomato juice and clam broth), Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, and is served on the rocks in a large,celery salt-rimmed glass, and typically garnished with a stalk of celery and wedge of lime." I did warn you.
- We warn people when we're coming. Why do you think we wear the Canadian flag on everything we wear while travelling? We want you to know our laid-backedness is on its way to charming your country's existence. Sure we may wear tuques and flop on your chesterfield for a bit and drop in "eh" a whole bunch of times for your amusement, but that's just so you'll feel at ease with us and give us your beer while watching Meatballs and Strange Brew.
- Strange Brews. We'll drink you under the table. Set up a mickey, a twenty-sixer, a forty pounder, and a palette of two-fours and we're ready to go to town... well, take a cab to town anyway. After all, no use hitting a poor defenseless moose while drinking and driving.
- Driving. Although getting around Southern Ontario can be agonizing at times, driving across Canada is awesome and I would do every year if I could. From Pacific to rivers to Rockies to foothills to prairies to forests to Great Lakes to plateaus to bays to Atlantic and up to the Great White North, you will never see greater diversity or meet nicer people.
- People. In 2004, the people of Canda voted Tommy Douglas as the Greatest Canadian ever. You may ask who Tommy Douglas was. He "was a Scottish-born Baptist minister who became a prominent Canadian social democratic politician. As leader of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) from 1942 and the seventh Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961, he led the first socialist government in North America and..." still waiting for the greatest part? He introduced universal public healthcare to Canada.
Happy Canada Day to all Canadians, wherever you are!
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thinglets: Thorax Cake and other Food Art
How about this at your next birthday? Know someone in the family who's a trauma surgeon? I don't know that I could eat this, but I imagine that the image would be exacerbated with burning candles in it. This is like something Tom Savini would get for the cast at a wrap party.
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lovehate: My Summer Bucket List
Below is my summer "bucket list" - i.e. things to do before summer kicks the bucket.
- Think of a better name for this list than "bucket list"
- Get back to Las Vegas and find a way to break the bank and come home with enough money to fund a winter trip to Vegas.
- Spend ample time deciding whether I should get an iPhone.
- Reassure myself that my decision to not buy a BluRay DVD player is completely justified because the cost is still too high for its own good, and even though I own a couple hundred DVDs, I never watch them.
- Try to regain the same blogging output that I had last summer when lovehatethings first started. (Two weeks until the first anniversary!)
- Try to encourage more of friends that Twitter is about way too much more than lifestreaming for them to use that as an excuse to stay away.
- Catch up on the latest seasons of Weeds, Burn Notice, Ashes to Ashes, Star Wars: Clone Wars, and True Blood.
- Go to see some late night movies... I wish they started at midnight - 10:30 is too early for this night owl.
- Get on the ball and reserve a night for my 3rd annual Backyard Film Festival.
- Book a gig so that my gracious friends who keep asking me to play are kept happy for another six months.
- Find a cheap source of watermelons. Those things are like crack in the summer; gotta have my fix.
- Play some poker with friends and at the closest casino.
- Try at least five local restaurants I've never checked out.
- Do at least one day of buying rush tickets for Stratford and checking out a couple of plays.
- Find things that really piss me off... it helps the podcast rants so much.
- Start to write the Great American novel and then give up in a violent fit having drowned myself in a sea of bourbon.
- Start to read Finnegan's Wake... and then give up in a violent fit having drowned myself in a sea of bourbon.
- Do annual summer viewings of Dazed and Confused, Almost Famous, Big Fish, a Kevin Smith marathon, and, if the moment moves me, a John Hughes marathon.
- And last, but not least, read the books that have been gathering dust on the shelves for far too long.
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thinglets: God's Away On Business
via youtube.com
As I prepare to kick back for a couple of months and take time away from sitting behind a "real" desk, I can't help but think emu's, abandoned offices, and Tom Waits - not necessarily in that order.
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Podcast 94 - An Open Letter to Fans of Jacko
Ep. 94 - An Open Letter To Fans by Anthony Marco
Filed under //
artist
death
fan
jacko
king of pop
michael jackson
mj
mourning
music
musician
open letter
thriller
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thinglets: Ain't No Sunshine - Michael Jackson
via youtube.com
In as much as I like Bill Withers far more than I like MJ, this is a great version of Withers' classic track as recorded by a young MJ. The anti-pop sensibilities of my teen years made me ignore most Michael Jackson (as though one could), but there was no denying the talent and dedication to craft for several decades.
Peace out MJ.
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