January 1, 2003
I am thinking of friends near and far as we start the new year. Hope all is well with you and your loved ones, that you are keeping sickness and poverty at bay, and that you take some pleasure from the attached annual self-indulgent list of memorable cultural products encountered in 2002. Let me know what I missed.
Aaron Caplan
Not perfect by any means (the Ents are too short and Grima isn't suave enough), but the good parts are awfully good.
Not perfect by any means (I know the disappointing ending is part of the joke--but it's still disappointing), but the good parts are awfully good.
Legend from Hudson Bay filmed by an Inuit cast and crew.
Volunteers for a psychological test about life in prison do what they think they are told--even the Elvis Impersonator. (Hey! That's just what Elvis did in the end, too....)
As seen in the Fantoma DVD, "Educational Archives, Volume Two: Social Engineering." In this short film from your friends at the National Dairy Council (circa 1972), a well-meaning voice-over asks eighth-grader Cathy why she doesn't eat breakfast. Is there not enough milk in the house? Would she prefer pizza instead of cold cereal? Is she worried about her deadbeat dad, who drinks his breakfast with a twist of lime? Just when Cathy is about to spill the beans, the screen goes blank except for the glowing white letters: "Stop Projector--Discuss Film." Truly a mystery for the ages.
The product slogan is "Reward Your Curiosity." In the US version, friendly Mafiosi intimidate skate punks into drinking it. In Canada, a cartoon black woman has a dreamy smile on her face as a cartoon white woman saunters up and gives her a big slow kiss--until there's only five seconds left in the ad and it is all revealed as the reverie that comes to those whose lips taste new Vanilla Coke. Stop Projector--Discuss Films.
Hurdy-gurdy men and women. Chabenat makes good his description of the hurdy-gurdy as "medieval synthesizer" on his new compositions, while Telynor use it (along with the occasional mandolin, recorder, and didgeridoo) on Renaissance folk songs and the odd spiritual.
Not a single pair of lederhosen in sight, but no shortage of yodelers from country, western swing, blues, and minstrel show traditions. Yes, I did say blues yodeling.
The collection shows how American soul and funk sounded when reproduced in Sao Paulo. Zuco 103 make slinky techno-trance-bossa nova from Brazil by way of Amsterdam.
The story of Vera Zasulich, the heroine of Oscar Wilde's first play, cross-cut with Wilde's life story--except his is told in reverse chronological order, so he can be his own picture of Dorian Gray. Did I mention it was a musical? Here's a review (from The Stranger).
My new black and silver Vespa !!!! To be delivered in January. (a/k/a "Smells Like Mid-Life Crisis")
Like the best criticism, these use objects you've known for years as gateways into alternate universes.
Loewen examines artifacts purposely designed to be boring so you don't ask questions (historical markers, plaques, monuments, and high school textbooks), and then questions them. You'll never eat a Thanksgiving dinner without thinking of smallpox again.
Cooper & Smay examine the noble art of the Ohio Express and the Partridge Family and almost have you believe that anyone telling the truth would admit that they prefer "Yummy Yummy Yummy" to all that roughage by the likes of Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones that's supposed to be good for you. A favorite excerpt, on the transition from "Be My Baby" (1963) to "Sugar Sugar" (1969): "The Ronettes sang with voracious yearning, and the Archies sing from exultant satiation. That being the difference, of course, between Top 40 before The Pill and after The Pill." I suppose any year where I got to hear Richard Thompson singing Britney Spears as part of a revue of the finest music of the last thousand years would have to end with the 1910 Fruitgum Company's "Goody Goody Gumdrops" lodged in my cerebellum. Your cerebellum will thank you for it, too, even if the stuff does cause cavities.