Check out these videos made by the beautiful, brilliant and talented students of the Interdisciplinary School of Health Sciences.  I think it’s for a contest or something.  I don’t know.  No one tells me anything.

Video #1:

Video #2:

Part 5 is over here.

I can’t be the first to have noticed this one…

…

and

…

PS, got a new article over at Skiffy.ca.

This is the special “Bowie edition” of Separated At Birth. For the true part 5, click here.

Matt Smith, the current Dr Who

David Bowie, 1974

Comparing the gangly Matt Smith to timeless sex symbol David Bowie is perhaps the best gift Smith has received in a while.  But Smith is the first person I thought of when viewing Bowie’s 1974 interview with Dick Cavett.  It’s actually an interesting interview, among the first Bowie ever did on an American talk show.  Check out the first segment; you can plainly see how thoroughly coked up Bowie was.  In the final segment, the otherworldly charm of Bowie really shines through.

I just finished watching Rare and Unseen, a documentary made up of vintage interviews with Bowie.  Most instructive is an extended session with British interviewer Russell Harty, who comes across as a deeply condescending prick.  Yet Bowie continues to radiate nothing but timeless elegance and intellect.  I particularly enjoy his reference to his young son Zowie, whom he is thankful is not (yet) a prodigy.  If you don’t know, Zowie grew up to be Duncan Jones, a successful Hollywood director.

It sort of saddens me that the youth of today don’t have a mainstream entertainment icon the likes of a David Bowie, someone who was iconoclastic, quietly brilliant, yet humble and mysterious: a genuine artist, with all that that word implies.

Clearly, I’m a fan.  A lot of my fandom has to do with the role Bowie played in inspiring us weird and unusual children of the 70s.  It was an era of long-haired, blue-jeaned stoners.  If you were not one that group, if you were interested in things avante garde or extraterrestrial, you had few inroads into mainstream society. Bowie was one such inroad.

Earlier this year, David Bowie announced that he had retired from making and performing music.  An end of an era indeed.

Gary Numan

I remember the first time I saw Gary Numan.  It was 1979 and he was performing on Saturday Night Live.  I was all of 12 years old, but I knew that this was something special.

Remember, this was before music videos, before the internet, before the 100 channels of cable TV.  One learned of music from the radio.  If one were older and cooler, perhaps one learned from friends or from imported British music magazines.

Disco had recently died.  Light metal was the local craze.  If you weren’t a thug with overly greased hair and pants so tight that your testicles popped out, then you had no place in the youth culture of my neighbourhood.

The schoolyard was abuzz the day after the SNL performance.  For some of us, this was eye opening indeed.  It was a glimpse into a foreign world of science fiction and creativity that was well beyond the buffoonish caricatures of guitar youth culture of the time.  In Gary Numan, I saw a youth culture that spoke to me.

Looking back, it seems silly.  Today, British New Wave is remembered mostly for being a pretentious product of skinny geeks in plastic clothing and with a penchant for being weird for weird’s sake.

Regardless, 1979 was one of the most interesting years ever, for a lot of reasons. One of those was the rise of Gary Numan, who introduced the world to “rock’n'roll without guitars”, otherworldly synthopop, and a new kind of electric geek cool.  Interestingly, part of Numan’s appeal was his detached cool… which it seems might have been due to Asperger’s Syndrome!

Here’s a link to an early performance by Gary’s band, Tubeway army, of  ”Are Friends Electric”, a truly groundbreaking song.  It has no hook or chorus; but if you listen deeply, you’ll hear its Blues origins.

There are literally scores of covers of the song.  Numan himself produced countless versions.  Here’s a recent version by Numan and another band called Little Boots.

My favourite version, though, is an acoustic performance on ukeleles by Scottish duo Gus and Fin.  (They do versions of a lot of modern pop and rock song.  Visit their YouTube channel.

And lastly…

“Pooh-man” is given a more prominent role ’cause…. well… given his name, one must wonder whether this image shows a gynecological or scatological predilection.

That is all.  As you were.

Hey, dig the latest produce from my rooftop garden.  I’m a farmer!

Here’s a photo of a little known street behind the Central Reference Library in downtown Toronto:

I get it. Sherlock Holmes was a major literary character, and the street is behind a big building full of books. But what an odd choice for a street name in Toronto! Are there any Canadian literary characters worth celebrating? Actually, I can’t think of any.

More concerning is that City Council chose to celebrate Holmes and not his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Makes me wonder how many Torontonians actually realize that Holmes was fictional, and that Conan Doyle was real.  Hmm.

The last photo I will share with you is essentially a follow-up of my 2007 post called “Abuse of Numbers“.  In that post, I railed against a well-meaning ad by a women’s shelter that presented statistics in such a way that, in my opinion, ended up being propagandistic.  Go have a quick look at that post before continuing to read.  Go.  I’ll wait.

Okay, back?  Cool.  Now check out this ad I saw in a Toronto subway station:

It’s put out by the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research (CANFAR) and says, “Did you know that 86% of HIV Positive Canadians are male, And 2/3 of boys, aged 15 to 19 are sexually active? You think your kids aren’t at risk? Think again.”

All right, epidemiology fans, who sees the problem with this quote? (Other than the questionable grammar, that is.)

Well, the concept of risk is a touchy thing.  It’s not a lie: everyone is at risk for pretty much everything.  And HIV/AIDS is a serious disease worldwide that needs our attention and resources….

…BUT, the data as presented in this ad are propagandistic because they have been selected for their largeness and their emotional appeal moreso than for their accuracy in representing the true scenario.  It is true that about 86% of Canadian HIV Positive people are male.  CANFAR itself states that about 58000 people are living with HIV in Canada.  Using their 86% statistic, that means that 49880 males are living with HIV.

Note that the ad says “male”, not “men”.  According to the same CANFAR page, “youth between the ages of 15 and 19 account for 1.5% of all reports”.  So atuomatically we see some duplicity in the ad, trying to conflate “male” with “men”, when in fact the thrust of the ad is to warn of youth behaviour.  Yes, I know the implication is that male youths grow up to become men, but I think the propagandistic elements here are obvious.

So, of our 49880 males with HIV, about 98.5% are adults, giving us 49132 cases, to be generous.  Each case is a tragedy that should have been avoided, to be sure.   But 49132 cases, divided by a denominator of  16,332,277 total adult males gives us a prevalence estimate of adult men living with HIV of 0.3%.    Obviously, 0.3% is not as impressive a number as 86%.

But let’s consider the thrust of the ad again: it warns of sexual activity among male youths and the risk of HIV.  Okay, but not all of the prevalent HIV cases were the result of unprotected sex.  Some were the result of drug abuse, or transfusions, for example.  So let’s break down the transmission stats.  It is believed that sex of any kind is responsible for the bulk of HIV cases in Canada, with the bulk of those cases due to gay sex (or as we in the business call it, “MSM” or “Men Who have Sex With Men”).  According to Avert.org, sexual contact constitutes about 44% of cumulative HIV cases over the past 15 or so years.

Using the most recent complete data of 2007, it seems that sex was responsible for 37% of male HIV diagnoses in that year alone, and that includes cases of mixing sex with IV drug use.  Among those, heterosexual contact accounted for 18% of all sex-based cases, or 7% of all adult male HIV cases overall.  And heterosexual contact still remains the most prominent form of sex among Canadian males.  (Looking at cumulative stats from 1985 to 2007, heterosexual contact accounted for 6.2% of all Canadian male HIV cases.)

Overall, then, the prevalence of Canadian males currently living with HIV who likely got it from sex (including sex mixed with IV drug use) is about 44% of 0.3%, or 0.13%.  In my opinion, then, 0.13% more accurately represents the risk of of being sexually active, where HIV is concerned in Canada.

To get even more sticky (no pun intended), the risk of being a Canadian man living with HIV, having contracted it through heterosexual contact, is about 6.2% of 0.3%, or 0.02%.  (Another way to look at it is to divide the 3000 cases of known male HIV cases due to heterosexual contact by the 16 million at-risk male population, which also gives 0.02%).

Obviously, neither 0.13% nor 0.02% are as impressive numbers as 86%.

Lastly, the ad makes a sly connection between a problematic allusion to HIV rates (i.e., 86% of HIV positive cases are male) and sexual activity among young people (i.e., 2/3 of males aged 15 to 19 are sexually active).  The slyness is in not spelling out the connection, which is fraught with issues, many of which are outlined above.  I hope it’s obvious that one particular pitfall really throws a wrench into the ad’s wording: sure, maybe 2/3 of youthful males are indeed sexually active; but are they having risky sex?

Risky sex is unprotected sex.  If the ad-makers knew the proportion who are having unprotected sex, or knew that proportion to be substantial, I assume they would have included that bit of information.  Without it, we are left with the following message: “sex is bad, mmkay?”

Sex is not bad.  Unprotected sex is problematic and probably unwise.  That is all.

So, are sexually active male youths not at risk for acquiring HIV?  Of course they are!  But not nearly to the extent that the misleading ad suggests.

Draw your own conclusions, but I call shenanigans on a very sloppy and anti-intellectual ad campaign by CANFAR.

Greetings from the noon train to Toronto.  Already this morning I’ve had a complete workout, backed up my computers, cleaned my condo from top to bottom, splinted all my drooping tomato plants, organized my taxes (though didn’t get around to actually doing them) and, um, plucked those stray nostril hairs.  Okay, so maybe the last bit wasn’t necessarily extraordinary, but it was sort of fun.

Now the question remains, how much work will I get done in the next five hours of uninterrupted first class travel?  I guess it all depends on the coffee-to-booze ratio, no?  First order of business is, of course, updating this blog, because it’s clearly the most important item on my lengthy to-do list.  It’s well above my overdue corporate taxes, the two presentations I’m giving next week that I haven’t written yet, a late student recommendation letter, and an outline for a new book that’s already a week behind schedule.  So let’s get to it.

Check out this letter from Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes, announcing his discontinuation of the beloved comic strip.  That got me thinking about the roles of various comic strips to various generations of North Americans.  It’s interesting how a handful of strips rise to capture the public imagination, usually reflecting the ethic and geist of the times.

Blondie, which today is a forgettable distraction about bumbling Dagwood Bumstead and his stereotypical family, actually started back in the early 1930s.  It was so popular at one point that it spawned a series of films and radio shows.  Reading it today, it’s easy to forget how it provided relief and distraction for suffers of the Great Depression and World War II, and evolved to reflect the new wealth and power of the American post-War period.

I was a kid in the 1970s, and really started to become aware of the nuances of society and history in the late 70s and early 80s.  I had heard of this legendary strip called Doonesbury, but really didn’t get its importance.  Doonesbury was born in the American Viet Nam War era, the product of the fabled Counter Culture.  It went on hiatus in the early 80s, and I remember the hype surrounding its return.  Newscasters of the time –much like the overblown windbags of today– were hot and bothered about the kind of impact the return of Doonesbury would have on the new selfish, yuppie-centric, Reagan Era America.  The unsurprising answer: no impact at all, really.

Doonesbury’s real impact, I think, was that its creator actually managed to force the newspapers that carried it to publish it in a significantly larger format than other comic strips.  Since then, other strips have successfully negotiated the same honour.

Personally, I grew up with Charles Schultz’s Peanuts.  I think everyone reading this understands the importance and cultural impact of Peanuts.  But, more than that, those characters are universally beloved and lovable by children of any time and culture.  It was also my first exposure to the ways that a corporation can take ownership of an artistic phenomenon and continue its production well after its creator’s death.

Today, I rank Peanuts as the second best comic strip of all time.

My adolescence was made better by Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County, which at the time seemed to be the funniest thing ever created by human civilization.    Bloom County was there for the birth of the video generation, and its style reflected the opulent garishness of those times; but its cool did not survive the onslaught of MTV excess.  It’s hard to believe it was as big as it was, since so few speak of it or its sequels Outland and Opus.

Calvin & Hobbes was, like Peanuts, transcendent.  It was hilarious, touching, sometimes sublime, and always worth reading.  I rank it as the third best comic strip of all time.

So what do I rank as #1?  Well, The Far Side, of course.  This was the perfect blend of medium with content.  I can’t imagine a better way for Gary Larson’s twisted genius to be conveyed than through the drawn panes of a newspaper strip.  Though Larson retired to commune with the apes, his timeless work lives on in medical waiting rooms the world over.

Note, of course, that I have not included more classic comics (like Popeye), or ones from non-Anglophone nations (such as Tintin).  But them’s the breaks.

On Friday I was interviewed by the University of Ottawa’s student paper, The Fulcrum. The interviewer was a first year student, and I couldn’t help but recall my own student journalism days, many many many years ago.

I was a writer for the University of Toronto student papers, The Varsity, The Gargoyle and The Newspaper. This was back in the late 1980s and early 90s, so there were no websites back then, and even email was a rarity. Many would type out their articles on typewriters! Gasp! I know!

I wrote mostly arts reviews, and rarely something more serious. I wrote about 40 articles for those journals back in the day, and at least one was included (without my permission, I will add) in some Japanese coffee table book about an art installation I’d reviewed (“Ball Crowd Illuminates Riotous Architecture”, The Varsity, Oct 2, 1992). The rest were of variable quality, but each had the fullness of my attention. The experience, without a doubt, helped me to develop the skills and discipline to become a professional writer.

My very first editor was Isabel Vincent, who went on to Canadian journalistic fame. The article I wrote for her was a review of a new TV show called Star Trek: The Next Generation. I’d concluded that the show would probably not have a long run. I was quickly pigeonholed as the “Star Trek guy”, and was subsequently sent out to review a couple of Star Trek conventions. Yeah, chicks dig guys who write about Star Trek. Right?

My old high school friend Simon Houpt was my subsequent editor. Simon, of course, is now a superstar arts writer for the Globe & Mail, and author of Museum Of The Missing: A History of Art Theft. I remember that one of Simon’s thrills was occupying the Gargoyle office once owned by David Cronenberg when he, too, was a student journalist. The lineage of such things is deep and important.

(A decade later, Simon and I would meet Ted Turner in the men’s room of a movie theatre. Simon would go on to interview Billionaire Ted in an article that briefly caused a little stir in American print media. I mentioned the meeting briefly in one of my wrestling columns at the time.)

I recall fondly my first “big name” interview, which was arranged by Simon. It was with film director Patricia Rozema at the so-called “Festival of Festivals”, which is what the Toronto International Film Festival was called back then. It’s quite the giddy thing for a naive 20-something to be cast into the world of glamorous film festivals, with a catering room, press pass, press kit and everything! I would go on to review the TIFF for a variety of magazines years later, as my career matured.

Ms Rozema was very helpful, as she could probably tell how nervous I was. She told me to stop recording and check to see if the tape recorder was actually working. Now that I myself am sometimes interviewed, often by inexperienced journalists, it’s something that I find myself doing: asking the interviewer to check on his recording device. I was such a pathetic sod, that at one point the interview turned into a therapy session as Ms Rozema attempted to console my broken heart, recently made so by an ended relationship.

I’ll never forget something she told me during the formal interview. She was talking about how people search for meaning through family and by doing good deeds, leaving their mark, etc. I asked her then what her purpose in life was, and she replied, “To make beautiful things through my art.” At the time, I thought it was the stupidest, flakiest and most self-obsessive thing I’d ever heard. I’m not so sure anymore.

I’ll also never forget the reception that my interview received, so typical of idiotic, self-important youth. The first line of the article was, “Patricia Rozema is a beautiful woman in every respect.” Predictably, the newspaper received letters of complaint that I was “objectifying” her. Insert rolling eyes here.

One of the curious things about student journalism, especially at a big and important school like the University of Toronto, is that you never know who your coworkers will become. Another old friend of mine, Matthew Vadum, was big on the student journalism scene and now makes it big on American TV and print. Another gadabout in those days was Hal Niedzviecki, who has certainly carved out a niche for himself in Canadian culture.

Back in the Varsity days, I worked alongside many future big names. Two necessarily come to mind: Naomi Klein, who is now one of the most famous women in the world; and Tim Long, who is now a writer and producer for The Simpsons. (And I will personally attest that long before the Powers That Be noticed him, Tim Long was a reflexively hilarious writer and a naturally hilarious fellow.)

As a result, despite whatever small success my writing has afforded me, I hope you will forgive me for never quite feeling up to the task. Look to whom I must constantly compare myself!

So what’s the lesson here? There is none, except to say that so much of student experience separate from the formal academics plays a role in shaping one’s skills and path in life. I wonder who the young woman who interviewed me on Friday will become in 15 years.

I just learned from Rondi that Edward Woodward is dead. Most of you will remember him from that great American TV drama, The Equalizer. That show represented something sorely missing from current entertainment media: recognition of the skills of the middle aged. Rather than a team of models-cum-martial artists, all with genius IQs and deep histories going back decades beyond their actual ages, The Equalizer was about a retired British secret service agent who righted wrongs on the tough streets of the USA.

I loved Woodward in one of the creepiest of understated British horror films, The Wicker Man (the original, not the ridiculous Nicholas Cage remake). His son, Peter Woodward, is also a successful, though lesser known, actor, most noted in my world for his excellent and creepy portrayal of Galen, the “technomage” in the Babylon 5 spin-off, Crusade.

You also may not know that Edward Woodward had a key role in the recent (2007) Simon Pegg comedy, Hot Fuzz. Edgar Wright, the director of that film, has a tribute to Woodward on his website. Wright links to this Youtube clip of the opening of one of Woodward’s early UK dramas, Callan. As Wright put it, “Edward Woodward was badass”.

I find it pretty cool when serious British actors pop up in bit roles in their twilight years. Another example of that was the late great Patrick McGoohan’s role as British King “Longshanks” (Edward I) in the Mel Gibson epic, Braveheart.

I will always lump the two with Richard Harris, who in his twilight years played Dumbledore, far more convincingly, in my opinion, than his replacement, Michael Gambon. I always thought Heath Ledger was on track to become the next Richard Harris.

Many people don’t remember that Richard Harris was the voice behind the 1970s epic song, McArthur Park. For some reason, I can never disassociate this fact from the 1981 parody of his performance on SCTV. Here’s Dave Thomas playing Richard Harris doing McArthur Park:

In terms of classical British actors in their twilight years, who does that leave? Peter O’Toole, of course, most recently seen in a gloriously creepy role as amoral Pope Paul III in The Tudors.

In Other News

Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin claims that Canadian forces engaged to some degree in the illegal detainment and torture of Afghans. Conservative Ministers McKay and Baird deny such allegations and turn to questioning Colvin’s very character. Thus, despite opposition demands, the government has refused to initiate any inquiry into possible abuses.

Hmm, you know what would really help to clear up any of these misunderstandings and allegations? I dunno, evidence of some sort, a smoking gun…. maybe some photos. Because, as we all know, when photos of crimes are taken, any truly responsible and democratic government would enter such photographic evidence into the public record, so that wrongdoers can’t hide behind slandering their accusers or by erecting the wall of denial.

And we all know that no responsible, ethical and democratic government would ever seek to, I dunno, conceal such photos because that would be illegal, unethical, tantamount to criminal conspiracy, and plain old wrong.

Just sayin.

Wow, it’s been a while since my last blog update! Been so very very busy. Sigh. Lot of stuff to cover.

First, it’s gotta suck if you’re Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon or Karl Malden. Not only are you dead, but you died pretty much the same time as Michael Jackson, so no one is going to take note. Not even this blog.

I was looking through my blog archives for any mention of Michael Jackson. On Dec 31, 2007, I rode a camel in Egypt named Michael Jackson. On Jan 6, 2006, one of those computerized photo matching services told me I look similar to MJ. On Sep 7, 2006, I mentioned how Adam Ant once gave MJ fashion advice. On Feb 1, 2007, I showed you the Indian version of the video for “Thriller”. And on July 25 of 2008 I mentioned that I had watched the Michael Jackson biopic.

What I didn’t mention, and what I’d expressed to friends at the time, was that I had been utterly convinced of Michael Jackson’s innocence with respect to all the various paedophilia charges against him. He simply struck me as an odd, naive fellow with more money than sense, and with a weird fascination with his own lost childhood. I doubt if he’s had more than two sexual thoughts per year in his adult life, and probably never acted on any of them.

A funny thing happened after his death was announced. First, much like the unrest in Iran, MJ’s death finally brought some relevance to Twitter. Second was the mindblowing outpouring of grief, both live and online. MJ reflections dominated the Twitterverse, Facebook and pretty much every blog I frequent. I know people who were moved to depression and tears.

It’s weird. Michael Jackson was only a few years older than me; I consider him to be of my generation. I grew up with his music since the 1970s. But his death, while tragic, really didn’t move me much. However, the people I know who have been the most affected are those under 30 years of age, who reached social awareness well past Jackson’s glory days. I’m not sure what this means, but it must surely mean something.

One Facebook comment really pissed me off, though. I don’t have the exact quote in front of me, but it was something to the effect that, “Why is the world obsessing over a dead paedophile? Have all the wars, rapes and injustices in the world been solved? Why is this news?”

This comment was objectionable on so many levels. First, Michael Jackson was never found guilty of any of the charges against him, so it’s unfair, incorrect and possibly slanderous to refer to him as a paedophile. Second, since when is “news” only “wars, rapes and injustices”? News is anything that is new and that people seem to care about.

What the commenter really, and obtusely, doesn’t get is that Jackson’s death (and life) were transformative events for a great many people in the world. Spontaneous expressions of genuine, public emotion, unspurred by media, are rare in our modern times. We should embrace them and indeed revel in them.

The Other Ray sends us the following video of the history of Moonwalk:

While we’re at it, here’s the best Moonwalk I’ve ever seen:

And Brother Bhash sends us some well-timed Michael Jackson death jokes, ’cause it ain’t the Internet age unless someone crosses the line:

Jockeys at tomorrows horse meetings will wear “black” armbands out of respect for Jacko, who rode more 3 year old than anyone in living history.

When Farrah Fawcett arrived at heaven, God granted her one wish. She wished for all the children to be safe. So God killed Michael Jackson.

Out of respect, McDonalds has released the McJackson burger, 50 year old meat between 10 year old buns.

Q: Why did Michael Jackson die on the same day as Farrah Fawcett?
A: He didn’t want her to be the only white woman grabbing all the headlines.

Toxicology report is out. It seems Michael Jackson died from an allergic reaction after eating some 12 year old nuts.

Michael Jackson died of a heart attack? What did he do, walk into a room full of pre-schoolers?

That’s all for today.