It’s Obligatory Bitch About Work (OBAW) Day!!
OBAW 1: I work on the 12th floor of a building that is actually one of four. Together, the four probably qualify to be called a “complex”. (Lord knows when you ask a ground-floor commissionaire for directions anywhere, he gives you just enough guidance to get yourself to the next commissionaire, who in turn will pass you off like you are a baton and they are some sort of retired veterans’ relay team. The building I’m in is home to a pretty major department in the Government of Canada, possessed of the biggest single budget in government, in fact – for one thing, it distributes the monthly Employment Insurance cheques, but I digress.)
But what falls within the eyesight of each and every person who steps from the elevator on my floor is a small black sign with white letters that announces, “For elevator service and assistance…” That, at least is what it’s supposed to announce. Long ago, some wag who no doubt believed the only thing separating him from the wit of PG Wodehouse and Stephen Leacock combined was exposure, took it on himself to stand and methodically obliterate a few of the letters, leaving, “For elevator vice and ass stance…” (I say “himself” because there isn’t an adult woman in the world who would possibly be that juvenile and be employed by the Government of Canada.)
It has to be the same guy who scratches out portions of the instructions on hot air hand driers in men’s rooms. They all seem to come with a variation on their operating instructions that direct the user to push the knob and turn the exhaust upwards to dry your face. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve encountered scratch-outs that leave a variation on these directions telling the user to "turn… your… knob upwards and… blow…"
And people wonder why the Canadian “public service” occasionally gets tarred with a pretty broadly-swept brush.
OBAW 2: We have just completed a massive re-configuration of our cubeville space. The process required our packing everything into boxes, labelling same, going home for the weekend and returning to find the entire floor had been re-carpeted and each cubicle fitted with new dividers and work surfaces, (you can’t really call them desks when they’re fused to the wall, with nothing touching the floor) and new storage space.
The end result has been a net enlargement of the aisle space separating the lines of cubicles, and a corresponding reduction in the amount of individual in-cubicle space, with a corresponding increase in the overall pissed-offedness of the employees who now have to conform their box contents to the reduced space to hold it all.
But for me, the worst of it is that this new configuration has me sitting with my back to the “door” (read that as “gap in the cube wall”). When I went home on Friday, I was actually seated side-on to the “door”, so I could at least see who was coming in and who was merely passing by. Now I can’t, so every extra-cubicular rustle of fabric causes me to turn around to see whether it’s a visitor or merely a passing Ringwraith in search of the One Ring to Rule Them All (Pat Pend, tm reg’d, void where prohibited by law – that last, by the way, is not so much a statement of admonition as it is an anarchical directive.)
I have since spoken with the manager of the installation team and with the person who co-ordinated the reconfiguration design. And I have received the astonishing intelligence that “no one likes it”, ergo, there’s no point re-re-configuring my workstation or they’d have to do it for everyone!
Assembling these damned spaces is not rocket science, and their components are flexible. How hard would it have been, I wonder, to have had a brief pre-move chat with each space-holder and ask us what wall we want our “desk” to be on; what direction we want our monitor to face and whether or not we want / need (I don’t) one of those under-desk slide out keyboard trays that probably cost the government about $200 a pop and are, inevitably, the first items collecting by the freight elevator labelled “surplus” after each section’s move is completed?
Having reached the ripe old half-century point in my life, I wear bifocals and I need my computer monitor set slightly below eye level. The good folks in “IT” repositioned my computer so that, when I came in on Monday, I was actually facing a monitor set slightly above eye level. So I had to tilt my head back to be able to view the screen through that portion of my lenses intended for near work. I looked like Joe Flaherty doing Alistair Cooke on SCTV’s send-up of Masterpiece Theatre!
It took me about a hour and a half to disconnect all the cabling and power source links to my workstation, re-feed the wires through a different part of my “desk”top and reconnect everything, with my monitor now sitting where it works best for me. But at least that could be done as a DIY exercise. Reconfiguring the work surface locations rather inconveniently marries the twin difficulties of a requirement for tools designed specifically to fasten and unfasten the wall-hung furniture, plus the fact that they rather inconveniently weigh hundreds of pounds and moving them will require the constitution of and the strength of twelve good men and true.
Could be worse… my boss – a unit director for God’s sake! – had his corner “office” reconfigured so that not only is it significantly smaller than it was, its entrance is now actually part-way along the cubicle wall of one of his subordinates. In other words, he has to enter her office en route to his own. And as luck would have it, she requires more than average privacy in order to concentrate on her own work.
Perfect. And so considerate of the career progress that marks one’s arrival into a senior supervisory position.
On another note…
I have just finished reading Stephen King’s book of advice to budding writers. It’s called, appropriately enough, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft”. Besides documenting his own pathway to bestsellerdom, he has a lot of straightforward, no-nonsense suggestions. He believes that an awareness of what makes some writing good and other writing bad comes not from any “magic bullet”, but rather from the experience of reading and the practice of writing. And by “reading”, he means a lot of reading. His own booklist for the past year is paced at better than a book a week, and that’s just listing the titles he recommends.
Its epilogue is an especially grim chapter about his accident – he was almost killed when a van smacked into him while he was walking on the shoulder of the road. And it’s a necessary epilogue to this book, because this is the project that King was working on at the time of the accident.
Not surprisingly, he’s no fan of writers’ workshops because he suspects its participants, in fact its facilitators, harbour either a fear or an unwillingness to be honest in their criticism of the work of other paying participants.
As King puts it, (in this case, he’s describing a writers’ camp where feedback take place around a late-night bonfire): “What about those critiques, by the way? How valuable are they? Not very, in my experience, sorry. A lot of them are maddeningly vague. ‘I love the feeling of Peter’s story,’ someone may say. ‘It had something… a sense of I don’t know… there’s a loving kind of you know… I can’t exactly describe it…’ Other writing-seminar gemmies include ‘I felt like the tone thing was just kind of you know; the character of Polly seemed pretty much stereotypical; I loved the imagery because I could see what he was talking about more or less perfectly.’ And, instead of pelting these babbling idiots with their own freshly toasted marshmallows, everyone else sitting around the fire is often nodding and smiling and looking solemnly thoughtful. In too many cases the teachers and writers in residence are nodding, smiling, and looking solemnly thoughtful right along with them. It seems to occur to few of the attendees that, if you have a feeling you just can’t describe, you might just be, I don’t know, kind of like, my sense of it is, maybe in the wrong fucking class.”
And finally, here’s the Gold Medal award winner in my ad hoc Best End-of-Election-Campaign-Before-the-Vote-Result-is-Known comment from among the many, many I read on voting day. It’s from the June 28th Globe and Mail’s Roy MacGregor: “At a park between Squamish and Whistler, I hiked a trail until it came to a tumbling, roaring creek where, if you took off your shoes and waded in, the mountain water would turn your ankles so numb within a few minutes that you could barely wade back out. Tomorrow morning, depending on the returns, I may have to come back here to dip my head.”
I’ll do an election-result rant in a day or few.
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Saturday, June 19, 2004
Now here’s a sentence to give you pause; from a book I’m reading: “This sergeant ‘always attended to his various duties with promptitude and care – and nothing out of the way was discovered of him until… he gave birth to a large boy.’”
The book’s title and sub-title should clear things up: “They fought like demons: Women soldiers in the Civil War”. The “sergeant” in question was a woman who successfully managed to conceal her identity from her unit colleagues right up until that most uniquely female of events occurred, yielding the peculiar performance appraisal noted above.
Looking through the lenses of a 21st century viewfinder, it seems staggeringly impossible to conceive (sorry) of a woman’s being able to conceal her sex until the very moment of birth, but the book does offer a pretty good explanation of a variety of factors by which such a subterfuge might be brought off. And first and foremost among them is this: in the US and Canada of the mid 1800s, there was a universal and ridiculously simple means to visually divide the genders: men wore pants; women wore dresses. So universal was this simple notion that, in the minds of everyone at the time – regardless of education, regardless of social status, regardless of urban vs rural rearing, if it wore pants, it was a man.
Jane “Cat Ballou” Fonda’s torque-converting Levis are therefore fiction.
Since then, of course, gender-bending, androgynous, unisexual, asexual, bi-sexual, even non-sexual dressing has come and gone in a couple dozen fashion waves. (I have a book of Eisenstadt photographs at home, for example, with one that shows a 1930s Marlene Dietrich leaving not a shred of doubt about her sex, despite being garbed in full male formal wear – tux, top hat and tails.)
It’s a fascinating story that even the authors admit raises as many, if not more, questions as answers. But if ever an aspect of the US Civil War were qualified to wear the label, “lesser-known”, it is this one.
Election update: Recently I said that _my_ TV debate would also include the fringe parties. I’m not so firm in that assertion now. I just checked my riding for a complete list of candidates and I expected to find four – Liberal, Conservative, NDP and Green – because they are the _only_ parties I’ve heard of running candidates in our riding, until just now. But I find there are, in fact, eight, because we will also have the opportunity in Ottawa South of voting for an Independent candidate, the Marijuana Party, the Marxist-Leninist Party, and something called the Progressive Canadian Party.
That last one seems to me to be a shameless effort to grab the slow thinkers who roll into the polling station muttering, “No way am I voting for the $@#@#$!!! Liberals; I’m voting for the PCs this time!”
I checked their website and, despite their claim to be “continuing the progressive-conservative tradition of Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir George-Étienne Cartier (and) following the precept of Edmund Burke that the most statesmanlike path to follow is ‘the propensity to preserve’ coupled with ‘the ability to improve’,” they are running precisely 16 candidates in a nation with 308 ridings.
What makes us so lucky in Ottawa South, I wonder? Hell, the Marxist-Leninists have fielded 75 candidates in five provinces, and even the Marijuana Party is running 57 candidates through seven provinces and the Yukon!
So maybe my qualification should be, if the party in question has fielded candidates in, oh, say 75% of the nation’s ridings (that’d be 231 of the present list), and maybe even at least one in each province or territory (although that kisses the delightfully rumpish Bloc goodbye, so I have to say that I’d be open to consider arguments to waive that requirement for national representation – Gad, this nation-building is a tricky thing, isn’t it?), then welcome to my “King of the Forest” debate. Otherwise, you’re on your own.
And now the news… two items from the same day (18 June):
1. al Qaeda has announced to the world that it has beheaded a US contractor they kidnapped because the Saudi government failed to release any of the political prisoners it holds, as demanded by al Qaeda in exchange for the hostage’s life. The hostage in question worked on US weapons systems, including the targeting mechanisms for Apache helicopters, used extensively against Iraqi civilians in the US invasion;
2. a CIA contractor has been charged for beating an Afghani “detainee” to death, while in US custody, with a large flashlight. Coverage also informs us that the CIA contractor “was once fired from a Connecticut police department and had history of run-ins with wives and neighbours”. The Afghani had voluntarily responded to a US request to come in and talk to them about recent terrorist bombings in Afghanistan.
Hmmm… I wonder which of these two stories from this day’s news will provoke the loudest outcries of indignation, outrage, disgust... (Change the last sentence to "should provoke" and the correct conclusion is “both”, among any people who call themselves civilized. Easiest prediction of the day, however, is that the reality, sadly, will skew the moral outrage meter wildly towards the victim of al Qaeda, as though his death or its manner is somehow more appalling than that of the Afghani.)
The book’s title and sub-title should clear things up: “They fought like demons: Women soldiers in the Civil War”. The “sergeant” in question was a woman who successfully managed to conceal her identity from her unit colleagues right up until that most uniquely female of events occurred, yielding the peculiar performance appraisal noted above.
Looking through the lenses of a 21st century viewfinder, it seems staggeringly impossible to conceive (sorry) of a woman’s being able to conceal her sex until the very moment of birth, but the book does offer a pretty good explanation of a variety of factors by which such a subterfuge might be brought off. And first and foremost among them is this: in the US and Canada of the mid 1800s, there was a universal and ridiculously simple means to visually divide the genders: men wore pants; women wore dresses. So universal was this simple notion that, in the minds of everyone at the time – regardless of education, regardless of social status, regardless of urban vs rural rearing, if it wore pants, it was a man.
Jane “Cat Ballou” Fonda’s torque-converting Levis are therefore fiction.
Since then, of course, gender-bending, androgynous, unisexual, asexual, bi-sexual, even non-sexual dressing has come and gone in a couple dozen fashion waves. (I have a book of Eisenstadt photographs at home, for example, with one that shows a 1930s Marlene Dietrich leaving not a shred of doubt about her sex, despite being garbed in full male formal wear – tux, top hat and tails.)
It’s a fascinating story that even the authors admit raises as many, if not more, questions as answers. But if ever an aspect of the US Civil War were qualified to wear the label, “lesser-known”, it is this one.
Election update: Recently I said that _my_ TV debate would also include the fringe parties. I’m not so firm in that assertion now. I just checked my riding for a complete list of candidates and I expected to find four – Liberal, Conservative, NDP and Green – because they are the _only_ parties I’ve heard of running candidates in our riding, until just now. But I find there are, in fact, eight, because we will also have the opportunity in Ottawa South of voting for an Independent candidate, the Marijuana Party, the Marxist-Leninist Party, and something called the Progressive Canadian Party.
That last one seems to me to be a shameless effort to grab the slow thinkers who roll into the polling station muttering, “No way am I voting for the $@#@#$!!! Liberals; I’m voting for the PCs this time!”
I checked their website and, despite their claim to be “continuing the progressive-conservative tradition of Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir George-Étienne Cartier (and) following the precept of Edmund Burke that the most statesmanlike path to follow is ‘the propensity to preserve’ coupled with ‘the ability to improve’,” they are running precisely 16 candidates in a nation with 308 ridings.
What makes us so lucky in Ottawa South, I wonder? Hell, the Marxist-Leninists have fielded 75 candidates in five provinces, and even the Marijuana Party is running 57 candidates through seven provinces and the Yukon!
So maybe my qualification should be, if the party in question has fielded candidates in, oh, say 75% of the nation’s ridings (that’d be 231 of the present list), and maybe even at least one in each province or territory (although that kisses the delightfully rumpish Bloc goodbye, so I have to say that I’d be open to consider arguments to waive that requirement for national representation – Gad, this nation-building is a tricky thing, isn’t it?), then welcome to my “King of the Forest” debate. Otherwise, you’re on your own.
And now the news… two items from the same day (18 June):
1. al Qaeda has announced to the world that it has beheaded a US contractor they kidnapped because the Saudi government failed to release any of the political prisoners it holds, as demanded by al Qaeda in exchange for the hostage’s life. The hostage in question worked on US weapons systems, including the targeting mechanisms for Apache helicopters, used extensively against Iraqi civilians in the US invasion;
2. a CIA contractor has been charged for beating an Afghani “detainee” to death, while in US custody, with a large flashlight. Coverage also informs us that the CIA contractor “was once fired from a Connecticut police department and had history of run-ins with wives and neighbours”. The Afghani had voluntarily responded to a US request to come in and talk to them about recent terrorist bombings in Afghanistan.
Hmmm… I wonder which of these two stories from this day’s news will provoke the loudest outcries of indignation, outrage, disgust... (Change the last sentence to "should provoke" and the correct conclusion is “both”, among any people who call themselves civilized. Easiest prediction of the day, however, is that the reality, sadly, will skew the moral outrage meter wildly towards the victim of al Qaeda, as though his death or its manner is somehow more appalling than that of the Afghani.)
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
And here’s today’s carrier-pigeon borne message from the shellhole-pocked front that is the Canadian election campaign battlefield. CTV News offered this “instant debate reaction” following the English language leaders’ debate. Maybe someone else can figure out what it means, because I can’t:
(Based on a “wide cross-section of 2,107 Canadian voters”): “And here is what they said. On the overall question, who won this debate, 37 percent said Stephen Harper, 24 percent chose Paul Martin, 18 percent went with Jack Layton. Gilles Duceppe seven. On the question who offered the best performance in the debate? Once again Stephen Harper came out on top with 39 percent, next was Jack Layton with 22 percent, 20 percent said Gilles Duceppe, and last was Paul Martin with 16 percent. But when asked which leader would make the best Prime Minister, 38 percent chose Paul Martin, 36 percent Stephen Harper, 14 Jack Layton, Gilles Duceppe had six.”
So Harper “won” the debate; Harper “offered the best performance” and yet the people who provided that assessment have also concluded that Martin would make the best Prime Minister. These “Canadian voters” remind me of the people who vote the Academy Award to one movie, and then vote “Best Director” to another, producing a phenomenon that Hollywood cynics call the “self-directed picture.”
Now I confess I didn’t watch the debate in either language, because part of my job involves assessing media and stakeholder reaction to the debates, so I pay more attention to what the analytical “talking heads” say after it’s over. But I am more and more convinced that the whole debate event offers absolutely nothing of benefit to the participants. The clips I did see were largely of one leader trying to make a point while the other three were trying to shout him down. The whole schtick can be summed up by this report of a brief exchange between a “frustrated” Paul Martin and a pit-bull like Jack Layton, who doggedly (oh ya, pun intended) hammered away at the Liberals for endorsing Canada’s participation in a North American missile defence shield: “At one point, Martin became frustrated at the persistent questioning on missile defence. ‘Did your handlers tell you to talk all the time?’ Martin snapped at Layton. ‘Oh that's very funny, Mr. Martin,’ Layton replied. ‘We're talking here about missiles that can threaten the safety of our world. I don't find it a laughing matter.’"
The fact – its funniness or lack thereof aside – is that each of these guys without exception has been so thoroughly indoctrinated by his respective handlers that they all come to the event with precisely zero spontaneity. And based on the clips I saw, the format encourages rather than discourages the shouting down of one’s opponents in the “debate”.
All of which leads me to conclude the Great Canadian Leaders’ Debate is important only to the media. Think about it. It usually comes at about the mid-point of a campaign. The media hype it endlessly; they speculate ad nauseam about how a “good debate” will help a leader; or a “bad debate” will toast his campaign. Afterwards, they analyse to death who “won”, who “lost” and produce reams of paper and hours of tape about the subject at exactly the time the public is getting loudly ill at the tsunami of election coverage that daily inundates us.
If I were king of the forest, I’d have the “debate” on the same day the Governor General dissolves Parliament and calls the election. Because if a party hasn’t determined what platform it is going to run on by the day the election is called, it has no business even being in the race. I’d have my debate refereed, not “moderated”, and I would use a system like the carding that happens in soccer. Anyone who interrupts an opponent making a point (and point-making would be rigidly metered to a pre-determined amount of time) would receive a warning card. Three such cards and you’re out of the studio. No ifs, buts or appeals. Oh, and the public would hear from the so-called “fringe” parties, like the Greens, the Family Coalition Party, even the Marxist-Leninists. If their candidates have passed Elections Canada muster, they’re eligible for an airing of their platforms.
Voters have the right to hear Party leaders make their cases for election. The leaders in turn have the right to make their cases to the voters. But this shouting down has to end. Because it’s not a debate when that happens; it’s the very antithesis of a democracy to drown out your opponents’ voices. If a leader is incapable of arguing his case, or just refuses to do so, in an “I talk, you listen; then you talk, I listen” dialogue format, then he or she shouldn’t be seeking elected office in Canada. Try a country where the number of candidates is 1, and the voter choice is “Yes” or don’t vote.
When I watch the non-political public panels who analyze the debates after the fact, I notice they are universally polite, especially the journalists. Even when they disagree. Why can’t our wannabe leaders exercise the same restraint and basic courtesy? Watch the tapes, for goodness’ sake guys! You all come across like screaming children in a sandbox, not someone who would govern one of the planet’s largest countries.
Is “Act your age” too subtle?
(Based on a “wide cross-section of 2,107 Canadian voters”): “And here is what they said. On the overall question, who won this debate, 37 percent said Stephen Harper, 24 percent chose Paul Martin, 18 percent went with Jack Layton. Gilles Duceppe seven. On the question who offered the best performance in the debate? Once again Stephen Harper came out on top with 39 percent, next was Jack Layton with 22 percent, 20 percent said Gilles Duceppe, and last was Paul Martin with 16 percent. But when asked which leader would make the best Prime Minister, 38 percent chose Paul Martin, 36 percent Stephen Harper, 14 Jack Layton, Gilles Duceppe had six.”
So Harper “won” the debate; Harper “offered the best performance” and yet the people who provided that assessment have also concluded that Martin would make the best Prime Minister. These “Canadian voters” remind me of the people who vote the Academy Award to one movie, and then vote “Best Director” to another, producing a phenomenon that Hollywood cynics call the “self-directed picture.”
Now I confess I didn’t watch the debate in either language, because part of my job involves assessing media and stakeholder reaction to the debates, so I pay more attention to what the analytical “talking heads” say after it’s over. But I am more and more convinced that the whole debate event offers absolutely nothing of benefit to the participants. The clips I did see were largely of one leader trying to make a point while the other three were trying to shout him down. The whole schtick can be summed up by this report of a brief exchange between a “frustrated” Paul Martin and a pit-bull like Jack Layton, who doggedly (oh ya, pun intended) hammered away at the Liberals for endorsing Canada’s participation in a North American missile defence shield: “At one point, Martin became frustrated at the persistent questioning on missile defence. ‘Did your handlers tell you to talk all the time?’ Martin snapped at Layton. ‘Oh that's very funny, Mr. Martin,’ Layton replied. ‘We're talking here about missiles that can threaten the safety of our world. I don't find it a laughing matter.’"
The fact – its funniness or lack thereof aside – is that each of these guys without exception has been so thoroughly indoctrinated by his respective handlers that they all come to the event with precisely zero spontaneity. And based on the clips I saw, the format encourages rather than discourages the shouting down of one’s opponents in the “debate”.
All of which leads me to conclude the Great Canadian Leaders’ Debate is important only to the media. Think about it. It usually comes at about the mid-point of a campaign. The media hype it endlessly; they speculate ad nauseam about how a “good debate” will help a leader; or a “bad debate” will toast his campaign. Afterwards, they analyse to death who “won”, who “lost” and produce reams of paper and hours of tape about the subject at exactly the time the public is getting loudly ill at the tsunami of election coverage that daily inundates us.
If I were king of the forest, I’d have the “debate” on the same day the Governor General dissolves Parliament and calls the election. Because if a party hasn’t determined what platform it is going to run on by the day the election is called, it has no business even being in the race. I’d have my debate refereed, not “moderated”, and I would use a system like the carding that happens in soccer. Anyone who interrupts an opponent making a point (and point-making would be rigidly metered to a pre-determined amount of time) would receive a warning card. Three such cards and you’re out of the studio. No ifs, buts or appeals. Oh, and the public would hear from the so-called “fringe” parties, like the Greens, the Family Coalition Party, even the Marxist-Leninists. If their candidates have passed Elections Canada muster, they’re eligible for an airing of their platforms.
Voters have the right to hear Party leaders make their cases for election. The leaders in turn have the right to make their cases to the voters. But this shouting down has to end. Because it’s not a debate when that happens; it’s the very antithesis of a democracy to drown out your opponents’ voices. If a leader is incapable of arguing his case, or just refuses to do so, in an “I talk, you listen; then you talk, I listen” dialogue format, then he or she shouldn’t be seeking elected office in Canada. Try a country where the number of candidates is 1, and the voter choice is “Yes” or don’t vote.
When I watch the non-political public panels who analyze the debates after the fact, I notice they are universally polite, especially the journalists. Even when they disagree. Why can’t our wannabe leaders exercise the same restraint and basic courtesy? Watch the tapes, for goodness’ sake guys! You all come across like screaming children in a sandbox, not someone who would govern one of the planet’s largest countries.
Is “Act your age” too subtle?
Monday, June 14, 2004
1. Recently I was driving to our local animal hospital to pick up another sack of vet-prescribed cat food for our feline trio, that apparently is “THE ONLY FOOD YOU SHOULD GIVE THEM OR THEY’LL SWELL UP AND DIE!!! THAT’LL BE $40 PLEASE.” But I digress.
I got to a red light and found myself sitting right behind a biker. And the back of his helmet was painted in a highly realistic way to look like the view you’d get if you were looking at the front of his helmet – a full face, wearing goggles, framed by the edge of a motorcycle helmet. The effect was Dali-esque in its surrealism. Imagine: first of all, you’re looking at a human face turned 180 degrees relative to the body on which it sits. Secondly, of course, as the rider turns his head from side to side, the face you see also turns and the surreal effect is magnified even more – because you just know a human head cannot possibly turn from that position, much less actually get there in the first place.
I was so mesmerized that, at the next light, I only remembered at the last second to brake, so intently was I staring at this helmet image.
I have this sick feeling that this biker one day will be involved in a crash (perhaps caused by a following driver staring intently at the back of his helmet) that will render him unconscious. A well-intentioned good Samaritan will happen by, see the unfortunate result of the accident and promptly wrench the rider’s head around 180 degrees to the way he thinks it should be.
OK, So I’m not entirely normal and I did grow up during the heyday of the Mad Magazine cartoons of Don Martin (“Egad! It’s Joe Fonebone! He’s apparently been run over by a steamroller! We’d better get him to hospital” * Flip * Fold * Flip * Fladdap… and as they’re rushing the neatly folded Mr Fonebone to the hospital, along comes a heavily bespectacled gentleman sporting a sweatshirt emblazoned with “Nearsighted Strongmen’s Club” who, of course, thinks the recently-pleated Mr. Fonebone is, in fact, a phone book. “Riiiiiiip!”) I guess you had to see it for yourself.
2. Mixed media: You can really tell that the media are already starting to get sick of their own election coverage. CBC radio did a short piece one recent morning about a local resident who woke up to find a Liberal party candidate’s sign had “appeared” overnight on the publicly-owned corner of his property. He is emphatic about wanting his neighbours to know he is not a Liberal party supporter. CBC injected a bunch of Twilight Zone background music in a successful effort to make the story sound even stupider than it already was.
And for those who craved something more than a simple on-air description of the sign’s embellishments (the homeowner in question had bracketed his corner's unwanted Liberal sign with two handwritten additions, one in English, the other in French, proclaiming, “This sign does NOT represent our voting intentions!!!”), there was the direction to “visit our Ottawa website for a photograph.” So the CBC’s paid staff use so far on this idiotic story? A reporter dispatched to interview the disgruntled homeowner, an accompanying photographer; two on-air personalities to banter about it and quite probably a webmaster to upload the photo. Talk (but please, just amongst yourselves) about a slow news day!
3. A lawyer joke comes to life. Remember the old riddle that goes, “What do you call 100 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? – A good start.” Well, it seems the American Medical Association is entertaining a motion that treats this as a directive instead of a joke.
At their Annual Meeting this year, AMA delegates might be asked to consider a little something called Resolution 202, tabled by one Dr. J. Chris Hawk III from South Carolina to something called the AMA's Committee B.
Ralph Nader points out in an article he has written for the website, “Common Dreams” that, if passed by the Committee, this resolution will proceed to the AMA’s House of Delegates:
"RESOLVED, That our American Medical Association notify physicians that, except in emergencies and except as otherwise required by law or other professional regulation, it is not unethical to refuse care to plaintiffs' attorneys and their spouses."
Bottom line? If passed, it will no longer be a violation of a US MD’s Hippocratic Oath to refuse medical care to the lawyer – and his / her spouse – who might be representing someone suing you or one of your colleagues for malpractice, because the good Doctor Hawk has concluded that the tens of thousands (!!) of plaintiffs who have an action pending on any given day are directly responsible for the incredibly high cost of malpractice insurance.
Ralph calls it “chilling”. Yours truly is still too stunned to call it anything but unbelievable. (Of course, this is happening in a country whose President has just been revealed to be in possession of a carefully worded legal opinion that essentially places him above worldwide laws like the Geneva Convention when it comes to condoning torture by soldiers serving under him when he sports his “Commander-in-Chief” hat. So considering their role model, the AMA might just as easily be said to be right in tune with the times. O tempora, O mores)
4. From the Department of Urgently Needed Clarifications: Here are the first and last sentences of a report from AnaNova about the content of one brand of Belgian hotdogs. In between were a half dozen other short paragraphs, but it’s only when you hit the very last sentence that you realize the “OmiGAWD!” reaction you experienced at the start need not have been nearly so grossed out as it was: (FIRST SENTENCE: “Two directors of a Belgian meat wholesaler have been arrested after dog meat was found in hot dogs around Europe.” … LAST SENTENCE: “The Federal Food Agency in Belgium has confirmed the meat used in the hot dogs was intended for use in the dog food industry.”) So it’s meat FOR dogs. Not meat OF dogs. * Phew *
(Just don’t ask them why they spell the main ingredient of their canned soup line “collie-flower”.)
5. And last on today’s list – more than one tear has probably been shed for the following loss in St John’s, Newfoundland:
Mon, 14 Jun 2004 12:00:28
“Fire destroys St. John's fish and chips landmark”
ST. JOHN'S, NFLD. - The owner of Newfoundland's landmark fish and chips restaurant has vowed to rebuild after a fire destroyed the building on the weekend. The blaze broke out at Ches's Fish and Chips in St. John's Sunday afternoon. Both of the business's buildings were destroyed in the blaze. A third building was heavily damaged. A block of adjacent houses was evacuated but no one was injured. "It won't keep Ches's down," said Kathy Barbour, daughter of the late founder, Ches Barbour. "We'll come above this. It's not an easy thing, by no means, but we will survive this." Ches's opened in 1951 and has become a landmark in the city. It operates three other restaurants in the capital region. There is no official explanation for the cause of the fire yet, but police say it started in one of the kitchens. It's suspected a frying machine caught fire."
I’ve been there. Decor-wise, Ches’s was the quintessential greasy spoon. In fact, I'm not surprised to hear that a pot of cooking grease is being fingered as the most likely cause. I suspect some of their fryers still had residue of their 1951 inaugural fish-fry in them -- like those Ukrainian yogurt culture starter batches that are culled from the previous batch, and some of which are believed to go back centuries.
But it's what made Ches's so good. Unbelievably good, in fact, assuming your only expectation was for the best deep-fried fish and chips you’ll ever taste. The minuscule side cup of cole slaw almost always went uneaten (at least by me), and I suspect it was probably only added to the menu to assuage a grumpy out-of-town nutritionist who foolishly ventured into the fry-smoke aroma-rich eatery and threatened to blackball them in front of his whole convention if they didn’t provide something that was not deep-fried.
Ches’s cheesy arborite tables were each adorned with large shakers of salt and malt vinegar. They did give you a plastic fork, but hey! Firm fish and fries are finger foods. (Typographer! More “f”’s! And be phast about it!) Plates? Fuggedaboudit. They used re-cycled yellow cardboard pulp trays, made of the same material as the things you get at a Tim Horton's drive-by window to hold multiple cups of hot fluid. And those "plates" just soaked up the vinegar! I wouldn't be surprised to hear you could chow down on them after you'd finished your fish and chips! That’d sure please the Dietary Fibre Convention.
Hopefully, they'll go for recapturing as much of that as possible when they rebuild. Being business-wise common-sense Newfies, they no doubt will. Don't want to kill the goose that fries the golden fillet, after all. The last thing they want to do is to inject some uppity city-slicker accommodation like styrofoam plates or some such nonsense into their service.
No, Ches’s – like the phoenix – will arise from its own ashes, and probably will even have an opening day special on – ahem – smoked cod. Heavily smoked cod. Waste not; want not.
I got to a red light and found myself sitting right behind a biker. And the back of his helmet was painted in a highly realistic way to look like the view you’d get if you were looking at the front of his helmet – a full face, wearing goggles, framed by the edge of a motorcycle helmet. The effect was Dali-esque in its surrealism. Imagine: first of all, you’re looking at a human face turned 180 degrees relative to the body on which it sits. Secondly, of course, as the rider turns his head from side to side, the face you see also turns and the surreal effect is magnified even more – because you just know a human head cannot possibly turn from that position, much less actually get there in the first place.
I was so mesmerized that, at the next light, I only remembered at the last second to brake, so intently was I staring at this helmet image.
I have this sick feeling that this biker one day will be involved in a crash (perhaps caused by a following driver staring intently at the back of his helmet) that will render him unconscious. A well-intentioned good Samaritan will happen by, see the unfortunate result of the accident and promptly wrench the rider’s head around 180 degrees to the way he thinks it should be.
OK, So I’m not entirely normal and I did grow up during the heyday of the Mad Magazine cartoons of Don Martin (“Egad! It’s Joe Fonebone! He’s apparently been run over by a steamroller! We’d better get him to hospital” * Flip * Fold * Flip * Fladdap… and as they’re rushing the neatly folded Mr Fonebone to the hospital, along comes a heavily bespectacled gentleman sporting a sweatshirt emblazoned with “Nearsighted Strongmen’s Club” who, of course, thinks the recently-pleated Mr. Fonebone is, in fact, a phone book. “Riiiiiiip!”) I guess you had to see it for yourself.
2. Mixed media: You can really tell that the media are already starting to get sick of their own election coverage. CBC radio did a short piece one recent morning about a local resident who woke up to find a Liberal party candidate’s sign had “appeared” overnight on the publicly-owned corner of his property. He is emphatic about wanting his neighbours to know he is not a Liberal party supporter. CBC injected a bunch of Twilight Zone background music in a successful effort to make the story sound even stupider than it already was.
And for those who craved something more than a simple on-air description of the sign’s embellishments (the homeowner in question had bracketed his corner's unwanted Liberal sign with two handwritten additions, one in English, the other in French, proclaiming, “This sign does NOT represent our voting intentions!!!”), there was the direction to “visit our Ottawa website for a photograph.” So the CBC’s paid staff use so far on this idiotic story? A reporter dispatched to interview the disgruntled homeowner, an accompanying photographer; two on-air personalities to banter about it and quite probably a webmaster to upload the photo. Talk (but please, just amongst yourselves) about a slow news day!
3. A lawyer joke comes to life. Remember the old riddle that goes, “What do you call 100 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? – A good start.” Well, it seems the American Medical Association is entertaining a motion that treats this as a directive instead of a joke.
At their Annual Meeting this year, AMA delegates might be asked to consider a little something called Resolution 202, tabled by one Dr. J. Chris Hawk III from South Carolina to something called the AMA's Committee B.
Ralph Nader points out in an article he has written for the website, “Common Dreams” that, if passed by the Committee, this resolution will proceed to the AMA’s House of Delegates:
"RESOLVED, That our American Medical Association notify physicians that, except in emergencies and except as otherwise required by law or other professional regulation, it is not unethical to refuse care to plaintiffs' attorneys and their spouses."
Bottom line? If passed, it will no longer be a violation of a US MD’s Hippocratic Oath to refuse medical care to the lawyer – and his / her spouse – who might be representing someone suing you or one of your colleagues for malpractice, because the good Doctor Hawk has concluded that the tens of thousands (!!) of plaintiffs who have an action pending on any given day are directly responsible for the incredibly high cost of malpractice insurance.
Ralph calls it “chilling”. Yours truly is still too stunned to call it anything but unbelievable. (Of course, this is happening in a country whose President has just been revealed to be in possession of a carefully worded legal opinion that essentially places him above worldwide laws like the Geneva Convention when it comes to condoning torture by soldiers serving under him when he sports his “Commander-in-Chief” hat. So considering their role model, the AMA might just as easily be said to be right in tune with the times. O tempora, O mores)
4. From the Department of Urgently Needed Clarifications: Here are the first and last sentences of a report from AnaNova about the content of one brand of Belgian hotdogs. In between were a half dozen other short paragraphs, but it’s only when you hit the very last sentence that you realize the “OmiGAWD!” reaction you experienced at the start need not have been nearly so grossed out as it was: (FIRST SENTENCE: “Two directors of a Belgian meat wholesaler have been arrested after dog meat was found in hot dogs around Europe.” … LAST SENTENCE: “The Federal Food Agency in Belgium has confirmed the meat used in the hot dogs was intended for use in the dog food industry.”) So it’s meat FOR dogs. Not meat OF dogs. * Phew *
(Just don’t ask them why they spell the main ingredient of their canned soup line “collie-flower”.)
5. And last on today’s list – more than one tear has probably been shed for the following loss in St John’s, Newfoundland:
Mon, 14 Jun 2004 12:00:28
“Fire destroys St. John's fish and chips landmark”
ST. JOHN'S, NFLD. - The owner of Newfoundland's landmark fish and chips restaurant has vowed to rebuild after a fire destroyed the building on the weekend. The blaze broke out at Ches's Fish and Chips in St. John's Sunday afternoon. Both of the business's buildings were destroyed in the blaze. A third building was heavily damaged. A block of adjacent houses was evacuated but no one was injured. "It won't keep Ches's down," said Kathy Barbour, daughter of the late founder, Ches Barbour. "We'll come above this. It's not an easy thing, by no means, but we will survive this." Ches's opened in 1951 and has become a landmark in the city. It operates three other restaurants in the capital region. There is no official explanation for the cause of the fire yet, but police say it started in one of the kitchens. It's suspected a frying machine caught fire."
I’ve been there. Decor-wise, Ches’s was the quintessential greasy spoon. In fact, I'm not surprised to hear that a pot of cooking grease is being fingered as the most likely cause. I suspect some of their fryers still had residue of their 1951 inaugural fish-fry in them -- like those Ukrainian yogurt culture starter batches that are culled from the previous batch, and some of which are believed to go back centuries.
But it's what made Ches's so good. Unbelievably good, in fact, assuming your only expectation was for the best deep-fried fish and chips you’ll ever taste. The minuscule side cup of cole slaw almost always went uneaten (at least by me), and I suspect it was probably only added to the menu to assuage a grumpy out-of-town nutritionist who foolishly ventured into the fry-smoke aroma-rich eatery and threatened to blackball them in front of his whole convention if they didn’t provide something that was not deep-fried.
Ches’s cheesy arborite tables were each adorned with large shakers of salt and malt vinegar. They did give you a plastic fork, but hey! Firm fish and fries are finger foods. (Typographer! More “f”’s! And be phast about it!) Plates? Fuggedaboudit. They used re-cycled yellow cardboard pulp trays, made of the same material as the things you get at a Tim Horton's drive-by window to hold multiple cups of hot fluid. And those "plates" just soaked up the vinegar! I wouldn't be surprised to hear you could chow down on them after you'd finished your fish and chips! That’d sure please the Dietary Fibre Convention.
Hopefully, they'll go for recapturing as much of that as possible when they rebuild. Being business-wise common-sense Newfies, they no doubt will. Don't want to kill the goose that fries the golden fillet, after all. The last thing they want to do is to inject some uppity city-slicker accommodation like styrofoam plates or some such nonsense into their service.
No, Ches’s – like the phoenix – will arise from its own ashes, and probably will even have an opening day special on – ahem – smoked cod. Heavily smoked cod. Waste not; want not.
Monday, June 07, 2004
How’s that again?
(Overheard on CBC television recently) “Coming up after the news: the growing gender gap between boys and girls.”
I’m still thinking about what this means. I’ve always felt that you were either one or the other. But more importantly, I always felt that whichever one you are, your distance from the other remains the same.
- - - - - - - - - - -
OK, I hereby declare this to be National Curmudgeon Day. (Which will recur however often I damned well feel like it!)
Memo to self: Even if it’s not “Harry Potter 3” you want to see on the very night it opens in Ottawa, stay away from the entire cineplex movie experience on such a night. In this case, it was “Shrek 2” we wanted to see but it was, as just noted, on the same night that the HP3 blockbuster opened.
Most people by now surely are familiar with the cineplex concept. A movie is no longer just a trip to a theatre where you, well… watch a movie. Nope, it’s an EXPERIENCE!!! (Having a molar ripped from your skull is also “an experience”, by the way. My point is that not all experience is good experience.)
Our nearest cineplex is called Silver City and it is home to 14 or 16 (or maybe it’s 1,042. I lose track) separate screens of various sizes. When you enter a building that would comfortably park a Boeing 747, the first thing you notice, unless you are hearing impaired, is the sheer volume of noise.
I’m sure if cineplexes (cineplices?) had been around when Phil Spector began experimenting with bringing his “wall of sound” to rock and roll music, he would have recoiled in horror when he first stepped through a cineplex door. He may even have started producing music with a “wall of silence”, and “rock” music might have come to mean “that which rocks you to sleep”. On such fortuitousness of timing do the wheels of history turn. But I digress.
The central core of Silver City is divided into Hose-You Zones (although that’s probably not their official designation). First is the front desk where you actually pay to attend a movie. There are three cash stations now at Silver City, usually only two of which are actually staffed. Bracketing it like the walls of a funnel are lines of “fast-pass” machines which will yank your credit card in and spit you back however many tickets you want faster than you can say “debt counselling”. I still refuse to use the machines, but given that hiring for the Silver City front desk apparently has now been redefined on the basis that “congenital idiot” is the number one job requirement, I’m thinking that maybe a stone-cold impersonal bit of steel with a CRT face might not be such a bad choice of ticket vendor after all.
Once past the front desk, there is an enormous donut-shaped ring of service stations dispensing the mandatory movie snack choices – popcorn and soft drinks. And for a quick lesson on just how much abuse a Canadian is willing to suffer, there is no better classroom. Start with the obscene prices, the utterly indifferent service, and a laughable standard of cleanliness that makes Max Yazgur’s field at Woodstock – after Hendrix said good-bye – look pristine. These people were literally ankle-deep in popcorn as they fought to placate the hungry fans decked out in their Slytherin capes and Hogwarts scarves! Combine all of these with the fact that we are still willing to line up and part with an average of $10.00 per person in exchange for about 14 cents worth of ingredients (15 cents if you make the suicidal choice to accept the inevitable cheery offer to “Supersize it” for “only 75 cents more!”) and you get what is surely a benchmark image of Canadian-as-masochist.
But wait; there’s more! Hose-You Zone 2 almost completely surrounds the centre foyer and the core snack bar. In it are multiple food services that now offer movie goers the opportunity to haul in trays of nachos and melted cheese, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Timothy’s mocha latte coffee, hot dogs and what is arguably Canada’s single most embarrassing contribution to the world of fast food – poutine. In a movie theatre, for God’s sake! Who knew that people lined up for the next viewing would ever have to be put in the position of waiting while staff cleaned the theatre of chicken bones and gravy stains?
Finally, and most egregiously in my card-carrying curmudgeon’s opinion, Hose-You Zone 3 is a large arcade games room area with the very latest in loonie / twonie wallet vacuuming services. (Which is not to overlook bills. This space is also home to a change machine that will take up to a $20 bill and return you the appropriate amount in coins.) For those movie goers for whom a pre-movie wait cannot reasonably be filled with time passing activities like, oh maybe conversation, you can now smash your formula one racing car into concrete walls at the cyber equivalent of 240 miles per hour.
You can blow an entire four-engined Hercules aircraft full of paratroopers out of the sky even before the chutes deploy, resulting in an onscreen explosion and crash that eliminates the need to gun them down one by one as they hang overhead in their harnesses drifting slowly down to the patch of ground you are defending at the rate of about two dollars a minute. Or you can be an ethically challenged drug enforcer who chooses to clean up the neighbourhood by the simple and direct route of using your hand-held simulated pistol to kill anyone who moves into your field of fire. Blamblamblam! Let God sort ‘em out! Or you can exercise your ankles on a large “Dance Dance Revolution” footpad that requires you to fling your feet about to match onscreen choreographic directions at a pace that makes a Brigade of Gurkas march speed of 120 paces to the minute look like slow motion, all the while accompanied by a loud soundtrack devised by someone who is obviously the owner of a closet full of paisley shirts and is bitterly resentful and completely unwilling to accept that disco actually died and was buried a couple decades ago. Yep, George McRae is back and more sub-bass woofer thudding than ever. Do the hustle!
And it is all this stuff – stuff for which the word cacaphony was surely invented – that builds into a cumulative aural assault of eardrum hammering that begins the moment you step in the door from the comparative outside calm of hundreds of angry drivers all struggling to park their cars no more than eight spaces from the front door. You honest to God have to shout to be heard above the din. And guess what? All those people shouting don’t help reduce the electronic noise volume one little bit.
I hate cineplexes. Even the centrepiece – the actual showing of the movie – now begins only after you’ve been forced to endure an excessively cheery escapee from the Department of Cineplex Gnomes, who wheels in a cartload of snacks and drinks (in case you missed those few discreetly placed food vending stations in the foyer). Picking up a microphone, this frustrated loser of last week’s “You too can be Jerry Seinfeld” night in St Peristaltis’s Church basement congratulates you on making the “awesome choice” of your movie tonight, triggering throaty grumbling from all those fans who fell into these seats only because the Harry Potter 3 movie they wanted to see tonight was sold out long ago at roughly the same time Canadians were securing their Juno Beach supply lines to enable them to push on to Berlin. (Every movie is “awesome” to these people, incidentally. “The Passion of Christ” – “Awesome!” “Sponge Bob Squarepants?” – “Awesome!!” Even if Siskel and Roper have just the night before on national TV suggested that your movie choice will be available for home video rental by 10 tomorrow morning – it’s “Awesome!”)
The movie’s actual start, meanwhile, is still temporally located somewhere in what the weather channel would call a “long-range forecast”, because you still have to sit through a half dozen movie screen-sized replays of television commercials that were crap when they were shot for their intended viewing at home on TV, and are now no less crappy for the oversized pore-counting imagery that they become on the theatre screen. But you’re not done yet! You still have to face a half dozen “Coming attractions” that distill all of the plot surprises of movies “coming in the Fall of 2017” into a two-minute sonic blast for each. (“Sonic blast” is deliberate and accurate. Coming attractions are usually blown through the speakers so loudly that my teeth vibrate.)
So take all that rant, and multiply its irritation factor by at least 10 on this night, because the cineplex was awash in Harry Potter fans – kids with lightning bolts inked on their foreheads, people in full dress Hogwarts House regalia (Huffle-Puff! Gryffindor!), and just plain mobs of people waiting to be passed, as though through a colon, along the various steps required to get them into a theatre – buying a ticket, buying a snack. Not even just having your ticket torn in half is exempt from a stultifying wait on this evening. Usually an easygoing process with no wait, tonight there is a line-up of at least 50 people with whom we had to wait to get beyond all those Harry Potter lathered-up zombies into “Shrek 2”.
Snarl.
Footnote: A Canadian gentleman named Nat Taylor passed away on March 3, 2004. He is credited with coining the name “cineplex” and the concept “multiplex”. And its inauguration was, in fact, in Ottawa in 1948 when he subdivided the huge Elgin Street theatre into the Elgin and Little Elgin. It had a common lobby and snack bar to serve both theatres. But it was still a movie house first, last and always. I doubt even the “sucker born every minute” exhibitor roots in Mr Taylor ever foresaw the travesty that his little bit of convenience would become in the bastardizing hands of marketing juggernauts like AMC, Cineplex Odeon and Famous Players.
(Overheard on CBC television recently) “Coming up after the news: the growing gender gap between boys and girls.”
I’m still thinking about what this means. I’ve always felt that you were either one or the other. But more importantly, I always felt that whichever one you are, your distance from the other remains the same.
- - - - - - - - - - -
OK, I hereby declare this to be National Curmudgeon Day. (Which will recur however often I damned well feel like it!)
Memo to self: Even if it’s not “Harry Potter 3” you want to see on the very night it opens in Ottawa, stay away from the entire cineplex movie experience on such a night. In this case, it was “Shrek 2” we wanted to see but it was, as just noted, on the same night that the HP3 blockbuster opened.
Most people by now surely are familiar with the cineplex concept. A movie is no longer just a trip to a theatre where you, well… watch a movie. Nope, it’s an EXPERIENCE!!! (Having a molar ripped from your skull is also “an experience”, by the way. My point is that not all experience is good experience.)
Our nearest cineplex is called Silver City and it is home to 14 or 16 (or maybe it’s 1,042. I lose track) separate screens of various sizes. When you enter a building that would comfortably park a Boeing 747, the first thing you notice, unless you are hearing impaired, is the sheer volume of noise.
I’m sure if cineplexes (cineplices?) had been around when Phil Spector began experimenting with bringing his “wall of sound” to rock and roll music, he would have recoiled in horror when he first stepped through a cineplex door. He may even have started producing music with a “wall of silence”, and “rock” music might have come to mean “that which rocks you to sleep”. On such fortuitousness of timing do the wheels of history turn. But I digress.
The central core of Silver City is divided into Hose-You Zones (although that’s probably not their official designation). First is the front desk where you actually pay to attend a movie. There are three cash stations now at Silver City, usually only two of which are actually staffed. Bracketing it like the walls of a funnel are lines of “fast-pass” machines which will yank your credit card in and spit you back however many tickets you want faster than you can say “debt counselling”. I still refuse to use the machines, but given that hiring for the Silver City front desk apparently has now been redefined on the basis that “congenital idiot” is the number one job requirement, I’m thinking that maybe a stone-cold impersonal bit of steel with a CRT face might not be such a bad choice of ticket vendor after all.
Once past the front desk, there is an enormous donut-shaped ring of service stations dispensing the mandatory movie snack choices – popcorn and soft drinks. And for a quick lesson on just how much abuse a Canadian is willing to suffer, there is no better classroom. Start with the obscene prices, the utterly indifferent service, and a laughable standard of cleanliness that makes Max Yazgur’s field at Woodstock – after Hendrix said good-bye – look pristine. These people were literally ankle-deep in popcorn as they fought to placate the hungry fans decked out in their Slytherin capes and Hogwarts scarves! Combine all of these with the fact that we are still willing to line up and part with an average of $10.00 per person in exchange for about 14 cents worth of ingredients (15 cents if you make the suicidal choice to accept the inevitable cheery offer to “Supersize it” for “only 75 cents more!”) and you get what is surely a benchmark image of Canadian-as-masochist.
But wait; there’s more! Hose-You Zone 2 almost completely surrounds the centre foyer and the core snack bar. In it are multiple food services that now offer movie goers the opportunity to haul in trays of nachos and melted cheese, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Timothy’s mocha latte coffee, hot dogs and what is arguably Canada’s single most embarrassing contribution to the world of fast food – poutine. In a movie theatre, for God’s sake! Who knew that people lined up for the next viewing would ever have to be put in the position of waiting while staff cleaned the theatre of chicken bones and gravy stains?
Finally, and most egregiously in my card-carrying curmudgeon’s opinion, Hose-You Zone 3 is a large arcade games room area with the very latest in loonie / twonie wallet vacuuming services. (Which is not to overlook bills. This space is also home to a change machine that will take up to a $20 bill and return you the appropriate amount in coins.) For those movie goers for whom a pre-movie wait cannot reasonably be filled with time passing activities like, oh maybe conversation, you can now smash your formula one racing car into concrete walls at the cyber equivalent of 240 miles per hour.
You can blow an entire four-engined Hercules aircraft full of paratroopers out of the sky even before the chutes deploy, resulting in an onscreen explosion and crash that eliminates the need to gun them down one by one as they hang overhead in their harnesses drifting slowly down to the patch of ground you are defending at the rate of about two dollars a minute. Or you can be an ethically challenged drug enforcer who chooses to clean up the neighbourhood by the simple and direct route of using your hand-held simulated pistol to kill anyone who moves into your field of fire. Blamblamblam! Let God sort ‘em out! Or you can exercise your ankles on a large “Dance Dance Revolution” footpad that requires you to fling your feet about to match onscreen choreographic directions at a pace that makes a Brigade of Gurkas march speed of 120 paces to the minute look like slow motion, all the while accompanied by a loud soundtrack devised by someone who is obviously the owner of a closet full of paisley shirts and is bitterly resentful and completely unwilling to accept that disco actually died and was buried a couple decades ago. Yep, George McRae is back and more sub-bass woofer thudding than ever. Do the hustle!
And it is all this stuff – stuff for which the word cacaphony was surely invented – that builds into a cumulative aural assault of eardrum hammering that begins the moment you step in the door from the comparative outside calm of hundreds of angry drivers all struggling to park their cars no more than eight spaces from the front door. You honest to God have to shout to be heard above the din. And guess what? All those people shouting don’t help reduce the electronic noise volume one little bit.
I hate cineplexes. Even the centrepiece – the actual showing of the movie – now begins only after you’ve been forced to endure an excessively cheery escapee from the Department of Cineplex Gnomes, who wheels in a cartload of snacks and drinks (in case you missed those few discreetly placed food vending stations in the foyer). Picking up a microphone, this frustrated loser of last week’s “You too can be Jerry Seinfeld” night in St Peristaltis’s Church basement congratulates you on making the “awesome choice” of your movie tonight, triggering throaty grumbling from all those fans who fell into these seats only because the Harry Potter 3 movie they wanted to see tonight was sold out long ago at roughly the same time Canadians were securing their Juno Beach supply lines to enable them to push on to Berlin. (Every movie is “awesome” to these people, incidentally. “The Passion of Christ” – “Awesome!” “Sponge Bob Squarepants?” – “Awesome!!” Even if Siskel and Roper have just the night before on national TV suggested that your movie choice will be available for home video rental by 10 tomorrow morning – it’s “Awesome!”)
The movie’s actual start, meanwhile, is still temporally located somewhere in what the weather channel would call a “long-range forecast”, because you still have to sit through a half dozen movie screen-sized replays of television commercials that were crap when they were shot for their intended viewing at home on TV, and are now no less crappy for the oversized pore-counting imagery that they become on the theatre screen. But you’re not done yet! You still have to face a half dozen “Coming attractions” that distill all of the plot surprises of movies “coming in the Fall of 2017” into a two-minute sonic blast for each. (“Sonic blast” is deliberate and accurate. Coming attractions are usually blown through the speakers so loudly that my teeth vibrate.)
So take all that rant, and multiply its irritation factor by at least 10 on this night, because the cineplex was awash in Harry Potter fans – kids with lightning bolts inked on their foreheads, people in full dress Hogwarts House regalia (Huffle-Puff! Gryffindor!), and just plain mobs of people waiting to be passed, as though through a colon, along the various steps required to get them into a theatre – buying a ticket, buying a snack. Not even just having your ticket torn in half is exempt from a stultifying wait on this evening. Usually an easygoing process with no wait, tonight there is a line-up of at least 50 people with whom we had to wait to get beyond all those Harry Potter lathered-up zombies into “Shrek 2”.
Snarl.
Footnote: A Canadian gentleman named Nat Taylor passed away on March 3, 2004. He is credited with coining the name “cineplex” and the concept “multiplex”. And its inauguration was, in fact, in Ottawa in 1948 when he subdivided the huge Elgin Street theatre into the Elgin and Little Elgin. It had a common lobby and snack bar to serve both theatres. But it was still a movie house first, last and always. I doubt even the “sucker born every minute” exhibitor roots in Mr Taylor ever foresaw the travesty that his little bit of convenience would become in the bastardizing hands of marketing juggernauts like AMC, Cineplex Odeon and Famous Players.
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