Vice President Cheney's daughter Mary, the one who courted and then denied controversy a few months back by announcing that she and her "life partner" (she's a lesbian) were going to have a child by using a sperm donor. Mary carried the child, and just gave birth to an apparently healthy baby boy. Not really news, and I wouldn't really care, save for one, tiny problem: his name. Mary's son, the grandson to quite possibly the most malevolent politician the US has ever seen, is named Samuel...David...Cheney. So, since once isn't enough, FUCK YOU, MARY! My parents thought that one up in 1986, get your own damn name. It's not enough to take one of them, one of them is a coincidence. But both, fuck. And to add insult to injury, even the last initial is the same.
On a side note, though, every news website based in the US has a photo of Dick and Lynne Cheney, holding the baby and beaming, as is, I suppose, their right as grandparents. Only, don't pictures of beaming relatives involve, I don't know, the kid's parents? Oh...right. The whole two mommies thing. A fun bet: how many hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of therapy will this kid eventually need? Winner gets a signed copy of Lynne Cheney's frontier lesbians erotic thriller.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
File Under: Useless Minutiae; Nudity
So yesterday, after class, I high-tailed it to a bar on College to watch the UEFA Championship Match. AC Milan beat Liverpool 2-1 in Athens. Exciting game; both goals scored by the same overexcited, Roberto Benigni-esque player. I left the bar, in the immediate post-game crush, and headed south along McCaul. Ears rendered dead to the world by Joe Strummer and Steve Jobs, I was walking obliviously down McCaul, past the dusty pit that the AGO has become, now fronting the even dustier pit that the TTC has made of Dundas West. I crossed Dundas, and was walking past the OCAD dalmation, when I looked up, and to my surprise, saw Canada’s sweetheart Sandra Oh walking by me, with some guy dressed—as I was—in a green t-shirt and khakis.
So I momentarily succumbed to that unique brand of celebrity fever that Toronto brings on so seemingly randomly, owing to the Film Festival, Hollywood North, and that persistent feeling that despite the fact that Toronto’s the biggest city in the country, it’s not “up there” with New York and L.A. I texted a few friends, who almost immediately texted back a snide comment about some nonsense involving me and a celebrity crush.
A few hours later, after grocery shopping in K-Town, Siqi and I were sitting on the curb at the corner of Markham and Bloor as I called a friend about an apartment, when he suddenly looked over my shoulder, down the sidewalk, and says, “I think that’s Sook-Yin Lee.” I looked also, and sure enough, the Shortbus star and former VJ was walking up the street towards us.
We sat on the curb for just a few minutes more, talking about my prospective apartment, worrying about our toes getting run over by an overzealous Annex driver, and trying to avoid looking over at the patio, where the aforementioned actress was now sitting.
Walking home with by groceries, though, it began to dawn on me just how peculiar these two specific encounters were, considering that they occurred literally less than three hours apart. Encountering two Asian Canadian celebrities in Toronto isn’t the peculiar part. Rather, the peculiar part was encountering two people whose names and basic biographies I know, and, ever odder, who I’ve seen naked on more than one occasion (I’m not a perv, go rent Dancing at the Blue Iguana, Shortbus and Sideways). All I would have needed was to be standing behind Bai Ling at Starbucks to complete the trifecta.
Speaking of Siqi and Bai Ling, the latter is starring in the film adaptation of the former’s favorite example of borderline pornography masquerading as art, Shanghai Baby. The trailer’s posted on YouTube, but I wouldn’t watch it in public, considering the gratuitous nudity it involves (yes, the trailer). Shanghai Baby is but one of what seems to be almost a sub-genre of Chinese literature these days, the confessional novel about ennui-laden, gratuitously sex and drugs-fueled life in modern Beijing or Shanghai. If you’re looking to read about Chinese girls who do nothing but fuck their way through the New China, while experimenting with a pharmacy of narcotics, and want to seem like you’re on the cutting edge of a literary trend, read Shanghai Baby. And if Shanghai Baby isn’t enough for you, try Candy, Beijing Doll, or (my personal favorite title) The People’s Republic of Desire.
Shanghai Baby is by Zhou Wei Hui, Candy is by Mian Mian, Beijing Doll is by Chun Sue, and People’s Republic of Desire is by Annie Wang, and from the Amazon description, sounds like Sex and the City: Beijing.
So I momentarily succumbed to that unique brand of celebrity fever that Toronto brings on so seemingly randomly, owing to the Film Festival, Hollywood North, and that persistent feeling that despite the fact that Toronto’s the biggest city in the country, it’s not “up there” with New York and L.A. I texted a few friends, who almost immediately texted back a snide comment about some nonsense involving me and a celebrity crush.
A few hours later, after grocery shopping in K-Town, Siqi and I were sitting on the curb at the corner of Markham and Bloor as I called a friend about an apartment, when he suddenly looked over my shoulder, down the sidewalk, and says, “I think that’s Sook-Yin Lee.” I looked also, and sure enough, the Shortbus star and former VJ was walking up the street towards us.
We sat on the curb for just a few minutes more, talking about my prospective apartment, worrying about our toes getting run over by an overzealous Annex driver, and trying to avoid looking over at the patio, where the aforementioned actress was now sitting.
Walking home with by groceries, though, it began to dawn on me just how peculiar these two specific encounters were, considering that they occurred literally less than three hours apart. Encountering two Asian Canadian celebrities in Toronto isn’t the peculiar part. Rather, the peculiar part was encountering two people whose names and basic biographies I know, and, ever odder, who I’ve seen naked on more than one occasion (I’m not a perv, go rent Dancing at the Blue Iguana, Shortbus and Sideways). All I would have needed was to be standing behind Bai Ling at Starbucks to complete the trifecta.
Speaking of Siqi and Bai Ling, the latter is starring in the film adaptation of the former’s favorite example of borderline pornography masquerading as art, Shanghai Baby. The trailer’s posted on YouTube, but I wouldn’t watch it in public, considering the gratuitous nudity it involves (yes, the trailer). Shanghai Baby is but one of what seems to be almost a sub-genre of Chinese literature these days, the confessional novel about ennui-laden, gratuitously sex and drugs-fueled life in modern Beijing or Shanghai. If you’re looking to read about Chinese girls who do nothing but fuck their way through the New China, while experimenting with a pharmacy of narcotics, and want to seem like you’re on the cutting edge of a literary trend, read Shanghai Baby. And if Shanghai Baby isn’t enough for you, try Candy, Beijing Doll, or (my personal favorite title) The People’s Republic of Desire.
Shanghai Baby is by Zhou Wei Hui, Candy is by Mian Mian, Beijing Doll is by Chun Sue, and People’s Republic of Desire is by Annie Wang, and from the Amazon description, sounds like Sex and the City: Beijing.
Lost in Canada
There’s this bit in the movie No Maps For These Territories, the documentary about William Gibson, where he talks about the “eerie, post-geographical feeling” that life at the dawn of the 21st century so often involves. The last few months, the self-same sense of post-geography seems to have settled itself firmly over Toronto. Or maybe just over me.
My laptop, which was a screaming IBM in 2004, finally kicked the bucket about three months ago. So, after a few (read: 8) weeks in the shop, it was returned to me, no better for wear, with the advice that I strip it for parts and try to recoup my losses. At the time that I bought it, I remember, IBM was an American company, in many ways THE American computer company. As far back as the fifties, if you wanted a computer installed in place of your basement, you called the high-and-tight, black-clad men at IBM. Before Bill Gates, they were the original private sector Big Brother. So imagine my (short-lived) surprise when I crack open the case to salvage the saleable parts, to find that virtually every component—the hard drive, the RAM chips, the optical drive—are all manufactured by a Korean or Japanese firm in a Thai factory. You’d by hard-pressed to find an inch of circuitry in there that originated in the United States. This all came full circle, the cycle of globalization complete, when IBM spun off their consumer computer division a few years ago to Lenovo, the up-and-coming Chinese computer giant. And voided my warranty along with it.
And so here I am, sitting in a café in downtown Toronto, writing on my brand-new (and screaming fast) Apple notebook, drinking poorly made espresso imported from some God-forsaken backwater of the global economy, made by someone whose parents, I would almost guarantee, were born on the other side of the planet.
It’s that fact of immigration and non-assimilation—it seems like immigrants to Canada don’t feel any pressure to assimilate to the degree that they do a few dozen klicks to the south—that brings about that sense of being nowhere and everywhere. Everything in this city can seem like a facsimile of something else, whether it’s Little Korea, Little China, or Little Italy. Everything comes here from somewhere else—clothes and computers from Asian free-trade zones, records and books from the United States, food and immigrants from everywhere else in between. Styles don’t seem to grow up from the streets of Toronto so much as they seem to arrive at Pearson, slightly overripe from the sidewalks of New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong. Not that I’m complaining. I’d much rather eat sushi with Soviet immigrants in Chinatown, or play soccer with the Razmanaics than eat hamburgers with all-Americans in a suburb of Anytown, WI. It just seems, sometimes, for just a moment, like we’re a few inventions short of diving into a bad cyberpunk novel. Or maybe this “post-geography” is just a conceit of the upper classes, of those who can afford to have problems that necessitate knowledge of a sprinkling of international airports and immigration regulations, of not feeling “rooted” because they’re always on the move, spending on a year of plane tickets what most of the world spends on a decade of food. The Jet Set, reborn in an age of fashionable guilt and post-modern introspection.
Nevertheless, I DO have (at least) some knowledge of various immigration regulations, and while I don’t fly between metropolises, I do find myself in the air—and on layover in some of America’s creepiest regional airports—more than, I think, the average person. And in talking to my friends, I find that I’m not alone. None of us, with maybe one or two exceptions, were born in Canada, a sparse few more were raised here. All of us maintain some form of complex national identity—some are “Canadians of ***** descent,” others succumb to the inevitable hyphen, while others (myself included) see the Maple Leaf as little more than a hockey player.
My laptop, which was a screaming IBM in 2004, finally kicked the bucket about three months ago. So, after a few (read: 8) weeks in the shop, it was returned to me, no better for wear, with the advice that I strip it for parts and try to recoup my losses. At the time that I bought it, I remember, IBM was an American company, in many ways THE American computer company. As far back as the fifties, if you wanted a computer installed in place of your basement, you called the high-and-tight, black-clad men at IBM. Before Bill Gates, they were the original private sector Big Brother. So imagine my (short-lived) surprise when I crack open the case to salvage the saleable parts, to find that virtually every component—the hard drive, the RAM chips, the optical drive—are all manufactured by a Korean or Japanese firm in a Thai factory. You’d by hard-pressed to find an inch of circuitry in there that originated in the United States. This all came full circle, the cycle of globalization complete, when IBM spun off their consumer computer division a few years ago to Lenovo, the up-and-coming Chinese computer giant. And voided my warranty along with it.
And so here I am, sitting in a café in downtown Toronto, writing on my brand-new (and screaming fast) Apple notebook, drinking poorly made espresso imported from some God-forsaken backwater of the global economy, made by someone whose parents, I would almost guarantee, were born on the other side of the planet.
It’s that fact of immigration and non-assimilation—it seems like immigrants to Canada don’t feel any pressure to assimilate to the degree that they do a few dozen klicks to the south—that brings about that sense of being nowhere and everywhere. Everything in this city can seem like a facsimile of something else, whether it’s Little Korea, Little China, or Little Italy. Everything comes here from somewhere else—clothes and computers from Asian free-trade zones, records and books from the United States, food and immigrants from everywhere else in between. Styles don’t seem to grow up from the streets of Toronto so much as they seem to arrive at Pearson, slightly overripe from the sidewalks of New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong. Not that I’m complaining. I’d much rather eat sushi with Soviet immigrants in Chinatown, or play soccer with the Razmanaics than eat hamburgers with all-Americans in a suburb of Anytown, WI. It just seems, sometimes, for just a moment, like we’re a few inventions short of diving into a bad cyberpunk novel. Or maybe this “post-geography” is just a conceit of the upper classes, of those who can afford to have problems that necessitate knowledge of a sprinkling of international airports and immigration regulations, of not feeling “rooted” because they’re always on the move, spending on a year of plane tickets what most of the world spends on a decade of food. The Jet Set, reborn in an age of fashionable guilt and post-modern introspection.
Nevertheless, I DO have (at least) some knowledge of various immigration regulations, and while I don’t fly between metropolises, I do find myself in the air—and on layover in some of America’s creepiest regional airports—more than, I think, the average person. And in talking to my friends, I find that I’m not alone. None of us, with maybe one or two exceptions, were born in Canada, a sparse few more were raised here. All of us maintain some form of complex national identity—some are “Canadians of ***** descent,” others succumb to the inevitable hyphen, while others (myself included) see the Maple Leaf as little more than a hockey player.
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