Late Bloomer

Some things I've only gotten into in the last few weeks:

• Arrested Development - best show on TV, brilliant writing, why isn't it more blah blah blah. Eh, I just never bothered with this show. By the time the hype got so insistent and unavoidable that I felt obligated to watch it, there was too much backstory and I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on. Now that I've seen the first season on DVD, I finally get it. Unfortunately, I'm two years too late to discuss the intrinsic brilliance of Gob's magic show. And the dead dove in a bag in the fridge. C'mon, remember the dove?
• The Office - the UK version. I guess if I was into the American version I wouldn't be too (too) far behind, but no, I'm just getting around to watching the original. It's going to take me a long time to see the whole thing, too, because I can hardly stand to watch an entire episode. I have a low tolerance for humiliation comedy, so it verges on physically painful for me to watch scenes limp towards their excrucriatingly embarrassing conclusions. I also have a crush on Tim and alternate between wanting to smack him and wishing he was real so I could rescue him from his life of drudgery and sarcasm. Watching him limp off after quiz night, searching for his other shoe? tragic.
  
• Sufjan Stevens - All that crap about him making an album for each of the 50 states was really annoying. And really unavoidable for pretty much all of 2005 - just when it was dying down, it all got regurgitated for the year-end lists. The only thing I had ever heard from him was a song off an O.C. soundtrack. It's a good song, but who wants to admit they've been listening to O.C. mixes? I guess I just did. Anyway. Hearing him quaver oh my god as he sings about John Wayne Gacy made me forget about a year of annoying hype. He had a kind of honesty that makes me listen to every nuance, trying to catch his meaning. Ordinarily I'd just assume that a song about a serial killer must be bullshit. I mean, the world has already had all the ANSWER Me! it ever needed. But, somehow, by the end of the song, it's like he's erased the entire serial killer fetish that permeated 90s culture.
  

Pride

According to Shawn's father Clyde, the Carnival Pride is considerably tackier than the average cruise ship. I've never been another ship, so I can only hope he's right. If you're looking for taste and subtlety, then the Pride is a true floating monstrosity. But if you're open to nine-story reproductions of Renaissance paintings and glittering plastic mosaics, then the Pride is actually quite fun. I liked how the decor cheerfully strode over the line from gaudy into bizarre without a second thought. Poorly-rendered reproduction of the David overlooking the dining room? check. A repeating pattern of mermaid sculptures swimming overhead in the cafeteria? of course. A series of unfortunately suggestive images of a boy riding a dolphin with, uh, no hands? sure, why not? Plastic Rococco Renaissance Vegas doesn't quite cover it, but it's a good start.

One of the highlights is the aforemetioned nine-story reproduction of Galatea which you can gaze upon as you take the glass elevators. Apparently this blatant display of boobs garners endless complaints from the easily offended, who swear to never set foot on a Carnival ship again. If only the endless parade of Renaissance flesh could convince them to never leave home again.

Luckily the excess doesn't extend to the cabins, which were simple and almost scientifically streamlined. I thought it was cool the way everything in the bathroom was oddly angled, yet perfectly ergonomic - fooling you into thinking it was much bigger than it really was. I need that designer to work on my apartment.

After a few days, it got so I hardly noticed it all. Checking out the massive murals was just something to while I waited for the elevator. But there were always more details waiting to jump out - wait, is that mermaid pattern woven into the carpet? What the hell were they thinking with that massive plastic molding over the stairs? In comparison, the rest of the world looks rather boring and excessively restrained. I think my office would be much improved if we could just install a 10-foot-tall David next to the printer. And now that I think about it, my living room would be much improved with the addition of a sparkly red velvet curtain...

Viva Mexico

I used to have a tenuous claim to travel snobbery. While I've never spent years travelling the world on $5 a day, or devoted months to rebuilding war-torn villages, I felt like I had amassed a small amount of credibility. Backpacked Europe alone, ridden rickety buses around Central America, hitchhiked through the Gulf Islands. Enough that I could claim a modicum of knowledge and respectability. Well that's gone now.

And even if I had done all that trekking-solo-through-the-Himalayas stuff, I'm pretty sure that it would still be cancelled out. Posing for a photo in Puerto Vallarta whilst holding a donkey and wearing a Viva Mexico sombrero can do that. And that's not even mentioning the blanket draped over my shoulder, nor the fact that the donkey was wearing some sort of denim overall.

Really, we only wanted to take a photo of the donkey. Shawn saw him running around the port area, handler in pursuit, and had to take a picture. But, no sooner had we walked up than I had a sombrero slapped on my head and the donkey dropped in my arms. Shawn was fiddling with the focus and by the time he looked up, there I was - ready for my authentic Mexican photo opportunity.

I have to say, that was one damn cute donkey. I pet his head and he was as soft as a cat.

The tourist photo people have got a great set-up. I watched them hanging out around the port. Real live Indians in flamboyant costumes, chatting and smoking as they waited for the cruise ships to disgorge. Cute girls with handfuls of flyers for local bars, ready to pose in their bikinis with an endless stream of men. Some guy with an iguana. They positioned themselves at the end of the gangways so the tourists walk straight into the trap. As we left the ship, we bobbed and weaved our way around at least three separate photo ops before falling victim to the awwww factor of the donkey.

For the rest of the day in Puerto Vallarto, we kept thinking about the photo op donkey. Shawn thought that this donkey probably only had another month to go before being replaced by a new baby donkey. What becomes of a tourist donkey when it's no longer small and cute and malleable enough to serve as prop? It can't be good. I decided that we would save this donkey from his fate and bring him back to Canada with us. He would stay in our cabin for the rest of the cruise, and on the flight home I would stow him safely under the seat in front of me. Neither of us speak Spanish, so we struggled to string together an offer to purchase the animal. Had babelfish been available, I might have tried Hola, quisiera comprar su burro. But the best we could come up with was "Hey man, cuánto donkey?"

Unfortunately the little donkey, along with all the entire photo op brigade, was gone by the time we got back to the ship. So here's an insider tip for any hardcore travel snobs going to Puerto Vallarta: grab the donkey when you have the chance. She who hesitates will be left with nothing but a silly picture.

The West is in

...is the headline on the Calgary Herald today. They might as well have followed it with "So suck it up, bitches!" - that's so clearly the message. The Sun has "VicTORY!" splashed across their front page in 300-point. Nothing like tossing away that facade of journalistic neutrality the second the wind starts blowing your way. It almost makes me wish I could be more of an oil-obsessed, Ontario-hating redneck. Because I bet that today is a very happy one for most people in the oil industry and all the endless related industries. I have a mental image of businessmen pouring out of their downtown skyscrapers, running around, hollering and throwing snowballs, celebrating their tremendous luck with the fervour of children let loose for recess.

Then again, maybe they're all disappointed. Just last week a Conservative majority looked inevitable. So while I'm breathing a sigh of relief over a Conservative minority ('it could be worse' is my new mantra) the rest of Calgary could be pouting about being denied the opportunity to play with the big-kid toys.

Also:


One is a creepy-eyed horror movie villian. One is my new leader.

I'm just saying.

Vernacular

I had a problem come up at work recently, caused by everybody's favourite bit of English slang - "chav"

The exact definition is hard to pin down, although Wikipedia makes an earnest attempt. Apparently something about being poor, loud and partial to Burberry knock-offs. Any way you define it, the stereotype has taken hold in Britain to the point that it has started to show up in British stock photos. We got a small batch of these images and had to figure out how to keyword them for the North American market.

It didn't make sense to add the word to our keyword list, since it's unlikely that anyone in the US or Canada would ever actually use it as a search word. The next step was to find a word that meant basically the same thing as 'chav' but was more familiar to North Americans. Problem is, there are none. Chav is an entirely British creation - all its signifiers and details mean nothing outside of England. Supposedly
these are chavs. To me, they just look like your average hiphop-obsessed teenagers hanging out after school.

Another idea was to map the word chav to a term describing a North American stereotype, like white trash or trailer trash or something like that. That's when things got icky. Because nobody really wants those words on the keyword list anyway. I mean, it might be okay for campy, Diesel-style images, but what about documentary-style, slice-of-life photos? Will everyone who looks at all poor or uneducated end up labelled white trash?

So I fell back on my standard decision-making technique: checking out what everyone else is doing. None of the major stock sites use White Trash as a search term, which can only be seen as a good thing. As for Trailer Trash, only Getty uses it, and they have it mapped as a synonym for 'hillbillies.' Unfortunately, their results just prove my point about it being dangerous to even allow the possibility of labelling photos with a perjorative search term. One of the trailer trash photos is actually a historical image of a rural family playing music in their house. Even better, one of the people is Augusta I. C. Metcalfe, a fairly well-known American painter. I'm sure everyone at the Metcalfe Museum would be thrilled to see her labelled trailer trash.

So, I've managed to work my way from chavs all the way to pioneer artists in just one post. I guess my point is... keywording is hard. Nobody really gets it, everyone complains about it, and even the simplest problems can lead you down some very strange paths.

New Obsession

So it looks like a fifteen-year-old podcaster is way cooler than I'll ever be. I love Zoe's radio show/podcast. I guess I'm way behind on this one, since I found her today via a mention on adpulp, which referred to her as a "podcasting phenom." She manages to play tons of different music without ever seeming to try too hard. (for me, self-conscious eclecticism is the bane of college radio: "that was the Rachels, followed by Isis, and coming up I'm going lay down some Brahms and maybe a little Public Enemy" yeah. rock on, dude. ironically, of course) And I love her teen girl, skip-to-the-hits approach - everything she plays is damn catchy, which is usually NOT the case with the Pitchfork set. I grabbed a bunch of shows off of yahoo, so I'll be spending the next couple days catching up.

Simple Pleasures

Maybe I'm a bit evil, but I can't even describe the PURE FREAKING JOY this little incident brought me:

Everyday my walk to work takes me across Centre Street, just before the bridge into downtown. (Close to here) There's no traffic lights nearby, so everyday, twice a day, I have to rely on the attentiveness and better nature of commuters to stop and let me cross unscathed. Well, it's also THE LAW, but you wouldn't know it from how hard it is get four lanes of SUVs to stop.

As some extra background, I should mention that Calgary pedestrians tend to be a meek and downtrodden lot. I was once one of these invisible, endangered wretches, but a few years of living in Vancouver turned me into Calgary's own Pedestrian Avenger. The attitude of pedestrians in Vancouver in one of constant moral outrage. In the more genteel sections, getting cut off at a crosswalk will elicit a disgusted sigh, dirty look and maybe a few gestures of annoyance. In my East Van neighborhood, failure to yield to even the most egregious of jaywalkers would earn your car a swift kick, and cause all sorts of shouting, swearing and even spitting. I've adopted the middle approach - lots of hands thrown in the air and murderous looks. It's nothing out of the ordinary in Vancouver, but it seems to shock the hell out of drivers here in Cowtown.

Anyway, last night I was standing in my usual spot, venturing out inch by inch, trying to get at least one lane to slow down and notice me. I hadn't noticed it, but on the cross street next to me was a police car waiting to turn left onto Centre.

One lane clear, I walk out and try to stop the second. A few cars blow past me. I lock the next oncoming driver into a stare and he grudgingly stops. Step in front and wait for the third lane, filled with drivers that apparently assume that the guy in the second lane has stopped just for fun. The cars keep coming, I'm starting to use my oh, come on gestures. but then there's a small gap - the next guy has to stop. He slows down, I start to take a step, but then he CHANGES HIS MIND, speeds up and nearly runs me down. I explode in a flurry of arm-waving and eye-cursing. But it's all in vain, because this happens every. single. day.

But then the miracle happens. The unnoticed police car next to me springs to life, turning on it's sirens and lights. It pulls out onto Centre and waves down the offending car. This never happens. People get busted for speeding on this street all the time, but mowing down pedestrians hardly raises an eyebrow. Failure to yield to a pedestrian in crosswalk? Stupid. Failure to yield to a bitchy, gesticulating pedestrian when a police car is right there? $575 worth of stupid, sucka.

Cruisin'

I just received the document package for the trip I'm going on at the end of the month. I'm not sure which is statement I found most disturbing:

From the ticket and boarding pass section:

"Our records indicate that you have not provided us with all the information that is required by the Department of Homeland Security"

or this one, from the glossy cruise brochure"

"You won't encounter any language problems. Almost everyone speaks English, even if it is with a slightly different accent."

I guess the first one is just standard legalese, but, being Canadian, I don't really like having 'the Department of Homeland Security' and 'you' together in any sentence that refers to me. The second one is just annoying because it leads people to expect perfect English everywhere, and lets them feel justified in expecting it. And it's kinda sad, because it's probably a true statement for all the places I'll be seeing.

Achievement. Integrity. Teamwork.

Despite being the most brilliant thing I've come across in ages, I really wish I had never seen NWYH Business Stock. It's a note-perfect parody of standard business imagery and the stock companies that peddle it. The problem is, stock photography is my freaking life. I spend most of my working hours describing, cataloguing, sorting or just staring at commercial imagery.

And I know that I wouldn't have thought twice about a fair chunk of these 'parody' images. Hopefully I would have noticed they were crap, or at least rolled my eyes at the hackneyed scenarios and stiff modelling. Or at least wondered what the hell was up with the neck brace. Unfortunately, I've just started work on a series of photographs that are only slightly better than those at Now Wash Your Hands. It pains me to contemplate whether that expression is meant to convey "I am stressed by deadlines" or "I really have to pee." Actually, it pains me to look at them at all. If I burn out by the end of next week, it will be entirely due to Now Wash Your Hands.

Discovery

I went to Corbis' site today to check out their new Hotline Calendar which is actually pretty damn nifty. It's a great idea - fill up a calendar with all sorts of trivial anniversaries and commemorations, and then provide links to pictures to illustrate the lame articles that will inevitably accompany the events. Step 3: profit.

But one entry caught my eye as being particularly ham-fisted. Did you know that on March 1st 1606, Willem Jansz discovered Australia? I'm sure all the people already living there we were also surprised. I don't know, but didn't the whole 'man discovers new land' version of history fall out of fashion about 30 years ago? But what elevates this entry from the realm of merely stupid to that of the absurd, is that they illustrated it with a photo of aborginal artwork. Wait - so there were people there when it was discovered? And they painted pretty pictures?

It's pretty sad that nobody thought twice before posting it. I actually send them a note about it. I got a auto response telling me my concern is being forwarded to the appropriate person, which I imagine is the big trash bin in the sky. I am kinda looking forward to an explanation though. Someone's going to have to tie themselves into semantic knots over this one.