Post Rogue

I will be recounting my lack of money in a post-grad blog:

NegativeNinetyThousand.blogspot.com

Peace Out R World...

It seems fitting that on the night before my final exam at Rotman I took some to contemplate, ie procrastinate, and think over the past 20 months of my life, most of which were spent in, talking to people from, or bitch about the goings on at, 105 St. George Street, which is colloquially known as the Rotman School of Management. As I thought long and hard about it I realized that there had been some good times; some bad times; some teary times; some downright weird times; some new friend times; some times that made a national newspaper; and this one time at orientation camp...

As with most of my decisions in life I realized retrospectively that I didn't think hard enough about actually going to Rotman until I found myself knee deep in first year finance thinking: "where I come from cum day means something totally different then what this guy is talking about." I mean sure, I did the administrative tasks necessary: I applied, interviewed, quit my job, and basically sold my soul to the Bank of Nova Scotia. But truthfully, did I think long and hard about what it would mean to become a permanent and flummoxed fixture at Rotman? No. Not really. Rotman was sort of like this one time I woke up and decided I needed a new pair of pants. 2 hours later my whim found me standing outside of Club Monaco on Bloor Street with a pair of pants and also a bag full somewhat expensive clothes that I wasn't exactly sure I needed. Similarly, one very expensive whim later, I found myself on Bloor Street with a Rotman branded knapsack full of textbooks that I wasn't quite sure when I would use again and with my head crammed full of learnings. But hey, I had those 3 letters I wanted so... Such is life; I really should think about things before jumping headfirst into a data pool.

Those 3 letters of course provide no answers to life's greatest mystery's; in cheesy terms it provides a tool-box. In consulting terms it provides a framework. In banking terms it lowers your WACC in order to achieve positive project NPV; or something. An MBA provides nothing beyond a foundation. A foundation for what you may ask? Well that's the ironic beauty of a degree as broad as a business degree; it provides a foundation for anything really. The veritable world is your oyster. Spotted: a double edged sword of frightening. Much like Ontario, the MBA is yours to discover.

In some ways I wish I could look back at my Rotman application essay and see how I responded to the seminal question of: what do you want to do with a [Rotman] MBA? Sadly my computer crashed halfway through school (please, as if I back shit up) so I can't actually look at what I wrote. I remember vaguely how I answered, but what I also know is that if I was asked the same question today my answer would be completely dissimilar to what it was two years ago. Truthfully I'm not even sure I could even answer that question anymore; in many ways, I've become entirely less certain of myself in the twenty months since I started Rotman. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. The precocious kid whom entered Rotman and who believed he know all of the answers to life's greatest mysteries found out he knew almost nothing beyond his comfort zone.

In reality my answer to that indomitable question of what I want to do with my life is about as truthy as asking my 4 year-old nephew, Ethan, what he wants to do when he grows up. With certainty I can picture him saying: "Uncle Jono I want to be Buzz Lightyear." Sure kid... and I want to be the King of Spain. Rotman is like the adult version of finding out that Santa Clause doesn't really exist. As a reality check it sucks at the time, but its seminal. And leaving your comfort zone is well... what life's all about. Uncertainty breads reinvention and it instills a sense of drive and purpose. This probably is the art of the MBA; beyond of course the rote learnings of Porter's five forces, an MBA is a kick in the pants.

And so, after twenty months at Rotman, which included one too many self reflection papers, a lot of group work and countless trips to that weirdly stocked general store where I would look in disappointment at my food options (really?), it is time to quote the legendary Edward R. Morrow: Good Night and Good Luck.

It has been a slice R-World.

And remember everyone - there are just as many's B's in MBA as there are A's.

The Many Meanings of Flip Flopping...

The term Flip Flopping is something that probably won’t be included in the Ontario sex-ed curriculum once it is updated to teach 3rd grader’s about the big nasty world of the gay; regardless it is perhaps a term that every Ontarian should now know its definition of.

In the gay world flip-flopping is when two men (lets assume they are partners, and maybe, depending on where they live in North America lucky enough to be considered husband and husband) take turns penetrating each other. This is what we gays like to call a flip flop f*ck and this versatility is one of the many reasons, of which sharing bow-ties and face-cream are others, that being gay is awesome. Just think of the penetrative combinations the average gay couple’s sex life includes; who's on first is NOT a common question being asked in gay bedrooms across the nation, rather the question asked is: who's doing who first? Straights, most of the time, I feel bad for you as it must really suck to be constrained by single-partner penetrative sex [SPP] (unless of course you’re with a straight man who enjoys anal play, in which case all the more power to you) and I’m sorry to the lesbians reading this who may or may not have penetrate intercourse. Munch on.

In politics, however, a flip-flop means something completely different, obviously; and furthermore, get that visual image of Dalton McGuinty and George Smitherman flip flopping on the health tax credit out of your head. Ew. In politics flip flopping refers to political leaders who approve a policy before clawing back on said policy; this claw back is often due to demands from special interest groups. "Dalton really flip-flopped on Transit City," would be one example of a political flip flop. Occasional flip flopping on Sean Cody would define the gay meaning.

Now it appears as if Dalton McGuinty, current Premier of Ontario has flip flopped, politically, over something much less graphic then flip flop f*cking. Updating our sex-ed curriculum to teach Grade 1's proper body names for their private parts is suddenly too much for our government which found itself on the wrong side of special interest, mostly religious minority groups. I mean won't someone please think of the children?

Anyway I haven’t read all of the proposed and "scary" changes that Dalton McGuinty approved to provincially mandated sex-ed curriculum, before he rescinded them, but apparently they were going to teach 3rd graders that gay people exist. GASP. And then in grade six the province was going to talk about vaginal lubrication, anal sex and masturbation. Scary stuff that. When I was in grade nine my gym teacher introduced anal sex as a risky sex activity. When someone asked why two men would have sex with each other in the bum, he responded by saying: “well there’s no other hole you have to make do with what you have.” Touche.

People in Ontario should meet a Colorado third grader by the name of Ethan McNamee. In 2009 Ethan arranged a same-sex marriage rally as an independent class project. Ethan was concerned about the issue after hearing about anti-gay remarks on the playground. Then he learned about a same sex couple in his neighborhood that couldn't get married because uhm... they're gay and the American's don't allow such things as gay marriage. "Everybody is different in a good way," he said.

If a kid in Colorado can stump for same-sex marriage, certainly, the good people of Ontario can handle their kids learning about gay people. Jesus, its not like I'm asking the province to teach children about flip-flopping; after all McGuinty's already done a good job on that one.

Sometimes I think a lot about Heather Reisman, CEO of Chapters/Indigo. Girl – what are you up to exactly? Are you making organic paper products for your Pistachio stationary chain? Are you and Jerry deep in a game of Risk? Do you use the Streit’s Matzoh Ball Mix at Passover or do you cook matzoh balls from scratch? If so, what’s your secret?

But beyond the mundane realities of Heather’s life, I also have more serious business minded questions for her. Like how does she pick her Heather’s Picks for Indigo? According to Indigo’s website Heather’s Picks are: “Guaranteed Picks, Chosen Personally by our CEO and chief booklover – we guarantee these great reads or you’ll receive a full refund or exchange.” I thought initially that Heather’s picks would be somewhat topical; even Gwyneth Paltrow has amended her GOOP lifestyle e-newsletter to include season offerings such as Steven Spielbergs favourite Matzoh Brei recipe. Oddly enough, however, Heather’s picks exist in a festive time warp, Brian Mulroney’s Memoirs is currently one of her “picks” even though it was published in 2007 and well… Brian Mulroney is about as relevant as Britney Spears these days.

That being said, there is still money to be made in seasonal literature, and now is the time when every Indigo is decked out with copies of that clichéd graduation gift: Dr Seuss’s Oh, The places you’ll go. It may not be chosen by Freulein Reisman, but its still a money maker.


People often give copies of Oh, The places you’ll go to recent graduates as a sort of pick me up as they embark on the next chapter of their lives. I suppose rhymes like: “You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.” are helpful in times of CRISIS, JOB SEARCH, and OH MY GOD WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH MY LIFE moments. Heck Theodor Geisel even has rhymes for moments when you feel like crying: “Out there things can happen and frequently do to people as brainy and footsy as you. And when things start to happen, don’t worry. Don’t stew. Just go right along. You’ll start happening too.”

I understand why the book has a following, however, if I see one copy of Oh, The places you’ll go at my Donna Martin Graduate themed graduation party… I’m going to lose my shit. Its not that I don’t value its message, which is about as saccharinely sweet as a “Favourite Things” episode on Oprah, feeeeeeaaaaaaatttttttuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrinnnnngg JEEEEEENNNIFFEERRRR ANNNNIISSTTTTON (you know the voice that Oprah uses to introduce big name guests, read that line like that) because I do, but because… it just isn’t really the right message to graduating students.

Lines from Oh, The places you’ll go are like when you call your mother crying because your boyfriend broke up with you or because you don’t have a job and the only thing she can tell you is that everything is going to be ok. In those types of situations, hearing that “everything is going to be ok”, just isn’t very helpful. What you need your mother to do is introduce you to that cute boy down the street and or get you a job. We need action and well action… not words.

So what will I be getting my Rotman friends, besides a papier mache picture frame made out of my statistics notes? In keeping with the Children’s literature them, I’m partial to something from the Hardy Boy, Nancy Drew oeuvre. Why? Well the Hardy Boys mystery novels, which chronicle the lives of amateur teenage sleuths Frank and Joe Hardy, teach a couple of valuable lessons that Oh, The places you’ll go does not.

For Example:

First of all each of the original Hardy Boy books are self sustaining stories; when the Hardy Boys solve their mystery du jour, the story is over and there is no lingering bullshit. This is helpful for moments of your life that you wish would just end. The Hardy Boys teach us know that once you’ve solved the mystery of the Tower Treasure, you’re on to the next case, the mystery at the House on the Cliff. Lets say you hated doing your Masters of Lameness Administration (MLA) at the School of Lameness; well that shit ends in two years. Move on!

Secondly the Hardy Boys teach us that life is mysterious. Frank and Joe have solved over 100 different mysteries. They’re only 18. So don’t cry and don’t be lazy; go solve some mysteries.

Thirdly, don’t discount the value of friends. The Hardy Boys are surrounded by good friends, from Chet Morton and his Jalopy to harmonica playing star athlete Biff Morton, described as buff, blond and muscular (call me!). This also leads us to point 3b): although the Hardy Boys also have “girlfriends” these seems to be a platonic designation; if you notice neither Frank nor Joe are taking time away from their busy schedule of solving crimes to fuck-around with lady parts. Point noted Frank and Joe.

The reality is that the last thing MBA students, and other graduating students need is a pat on the back telling us that everything is going to be ok. We know that; we survived. What we need now is a little context – and for that context, I will be looking to the Hardy Boys whose tale of white, upper middle class, WASP suburbia is about as comforting as anything else out there.

And to make a long-story short - Heather, I’m looking for a job – if you want someone to vet your picks – call me!

Release Your LOADD!

Hi,
My name is Jonathan Naymark and I suffer from a condition; a condition that only recently has been properly identified by the Ontario College of Physicians and Health Canada. Known as Late-Onset Attention Deficit Disorder (LOADD), LOADD is hard to diagnose yet effects thousands of Canadians.

Almost two years ago I began to notice that I could no longer finish a Harvard Business Case in one sitting. It would take me days, even months to simply read the A Case. When I was younger, I remember sitting at the park and reading case after case, my appetite for business cases was practically insatiable. My growing inability to focus coincided almost directly with my return to school. Once again a student I suddenly found it difficult to concentrate during my mandatory statistics class; was that regression random, or was someone bbm’ing me? Financial accounting? Account me out; there was status liking to do be done on Facebook instead.

Sound familiar? Clearly, I am not alone. In fact Late-Onset Attention Deficit Disorder (LOADD) impacts thousands of Canadians, and hundreds of new cases are self-diagnosed daily.

What exactly is LOADD? Well I’m glad you asked. While ADD is a condition that afflicts younger children, LOADD is a condition known to only inflict twenty-somethings who are in professional school programs. The greatest number of LOADD sufferers are in their final year of a post-bachelor degree.

There is no cure for LOADD. Doctors believe, however, that LOADD may be situational and that it IS possible to lose your LOADD at some point in the future.

If you are wondering if you too may suffer from LOADD, doctors have developed the following Top Ten List:

1. You cannot concentrate long enough to read a top ten list.
2. I cannot concentrate long enough to make a top ten list.
3. Monkeys!?
4. I love chocolate milk!
5. Am I hungry?
6. No I’m thirsty.
7. Exercise.
8. Your mind.
9. Homework.
10. Gossip Girl.

With the surge of LOADD Sufferers, there is now a national support group that all those inflicted with LOADD are welcome to join. The group is known as Late Onset Attention Deficit Disorder Sufferers (LOADDS) and they can be reached online via their website: www.releaseyourloadd.org.

“We like it when people bust into a LOADDS meeting,” declared LOADDS President Cyndi Macelrone; in fact sufferers are joining the group by the hundreds. “LOADDS are popping out of the woodwork," Cyndi declared. Cyndi, a 2009 graduate of the Schulich School of Management, was diagnosed with LOADD in early February of 2009. She founded LOADDS in March but became distracted by NCAA March Madness. It was only when she finished school that she was able to restart the group, “Our goal is for everyone who suffers from LOADD to dump their LOADD on us. I believe that through group therapy, LOADD can be erad... Hey! Do you hear that music playing? I think its the new Lady Gaga song."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In no way does this "note" aim to hurt anyone who has, or knows someone who has, been diagnosed with ADD, or ADHD. Those are two very real conditions and should not be made fun of.

Prestoooooooooooooooooooooobody!

The TTC Doesn’t Have a Customer Service Problem, It has an Operations Problem

At about 9:30 am on March 2 I stood in St Patrick subway station in a line with about six of my fellow Torontonians. I wanted to buy 5 tokens, which, as most frequent TTC users know you can’t do from a token vending machine assuming you’re lucky enough to find a working one, which is probably out of tokens and regardless it only accepts cash, but for some odd reason it won’t accept a five-dollar bill. I’d actually love to see how a tourist guidebook précis the TTC payment system, which has more nuances then a typical episode of Lost.

The morning was a standard TTC shuffle; the person in front of me wanted to buy a Metropass (which were sold out), while the person behind me just wanted drop her coins into the fare slot, but couldn’t quite maneuver herself around the metal barrier, and instead stood impatiently behind me tapping her foot. It was another typical Toronto morning of near civil unrest in the city’s underground.

The next day the TTC would announce members of their Customer Service Advisory Panel. The Panel, chaired by hotel manager Steve O’Brien, is the TTC’s attempt to respond to what has been an annus horibilis for the Commission in terms of customer service. Torontonians have developed a rather rapid disdain for its not so better way; our collective dislike for the TTC began in earnest last December with a fair hike, which was followed by immediate token hoarding, none of which mattered as the TTC suffered from a spate of noted and widespread service disruptions. All of this was punctuated by a well-publicized photograph of a napping TTC worker, which appears to have been the final straw in our collective will. Something had to be done to calm the masses, so the TTC decided to assemble a panel that will help figure out the Commission’s customer service strategy. Taking things to the max the TTC even ran a Twitter contest to fill a spot on the Panel. How web 2.0 of them; impressive considering the TTC still can’t tell you exactly when the next bus is coming.

I don’t have high hopes for the TTC’s customer service initiatives. Why? Well this may sound like crazy talk, but the TTC doesn’t actually have a customer service problem. The TTC has an operations problem.

The TTC isn’t the Gap; you don’t need a TTC driver to rifle through a pile of t-shirts to find you an extra-small t-shirt… Rather the TTC is a service provider, which bills itself “as the quick, convenient and safe way to get around Toronto.” Yet the TTC fails big time in its ability to actually fulfill this mission and customer service improvements won’t help. When it comes to moving Torontonians around, the TTC is stuck in the dark ages and this has little to do with whether employees smile as you board a streetcar or how many subway lines it does or doesn’t operate; as Rocco Rossi, Toronto Mayoral Candidate, said recently we have the best 1970’s transit system there is. Problem of course: it is 2010.

In a way, however, the TTC’s problems are connected to its fare collectors. They’re tied to the fact that the TTC actually employs fare collectors (who may or may not be smiling at you). Go to Hong Kong, London or Shanghai… and count how many times you interact with a transit employee. You can’t. Because you won’t. All of these transit systems use a smartcard as a form of payment. Even Boston, which runs North America’s oldest subway system, introduced the Charlie Card to its entire bus and subway fleet in 2006. Four years ago. Here in Toronto the TTC is still relying on gravity as its proof of payment system, which as TTC Chair Adam Giambrone is happy to tell you, is still the most reliable form of payment system there is. Can’t argue with Isaac Newton, right?

For Torontonians who haven’t used a smartcard system before, smartcards look like debit cards, and transit users simply go to a machine, and with their debit or credit cards (or even cash) purchase a smartcard which they can then load with currency, which is then swiped, or tapped as you get on or off a bus, subway or streetcar. Customer service problem solved.

The lack of a smartcard in Toronto is operationally archaic. What’s even more awkward about the TTC’s reluctance to go the smartcard route is that Canadians love debit cards, and are world leaders in the cashless movement. Canadians have the second highest number of debit transactions per inhabitant people worldwide. Of Canadians with ABM cards (which includes 90% of adult Canadians), 45% of transactions are done via debit , while cash accounts for only 22% of transactions. Yet the TTC has basically ignored any other form of payment beyond cash; of the TTC’s 69 subway and RT stations only the following have automatic Metropass Vending Machines: Bloor-Yonge, Eglinton, Queen, Scarborough Centre, Union, Islington and Finch. No Metropass Vending Machines accept credit cards either, even though credit cards account for 31% of transactions for those Canadians with ABM’s. How does this make any sense?

What makes the entire situation laughable is that unbeknownst to the majority of Torontonians the province has developed a provincial smartcard program called Presto. The Presto Card is waiting patiently like a pound puppy for mass adoption by the province’s transit operators. When the program launched in 1996 the province agreed to fund Presto's implementation, which is estimated to cost approximately $140 million, asking only that Ontario’s various regional transit systems pay for the cost of Presto machines themselves. The entire project was to be implemented across the Toronto region by 2010. Guess we’re still waiting on that one eh? Now full Presto implementation across GO Transit, and the nine Greater Toronto Area transportation agencies, excluding the TTC, is expected by 2011; however, only 12 TTC stations and no TTC bus lines will use Presto by the end of its scheduled 2011 roll-out.

So what’s the hold-up? Well… initially the TTC boycotted Presto arguing that the money that the province was going to use to pay for Presto would better be spent on new buses. A worthwhile endeavor indeed, although part of me thinks that the TTC shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Recently, there has been a minor mood shift at the TTC, which is now tentatively on board the Presto train to normalcy. However, there is still no firm date for when the TTC, which accounts for 85% of all transit trips taken across the GTA, will fully implement the card. TTC officials have been concerned at the cost of purchasing and installing Presto machines; understandably considering the size of the TTC compared to other regional transportation agencies. Regardless the fact that there is no firm schedule for the TTC’s full participation in the Presto program should be worrisome for consumers; without full implementation by the TTC the Presto card is doomed to failure.

Toronto’s civic unrest with our transit system has little to do specifically with customer service. The TTC has, however, failed a key customer service test; customer willingness to pay is strongly tied to ease of payment and the TTC just doesn’t make it easy for its users to pay.

The reality that Mr. Rossi pointed out is that it is now 2010 - who needs service when a smile when you’re simply swiping a smartcard?

To quote one famous Torontonian: NOOOOOOOOOObody.

What the Junk? Censorship in Corporate America

This may come as a bit of a surprise, but my favourite song in the entire world is California, by Phantom Planet. Why?

Well… the lead singer, Alex Greenwald, was featured heavily in the mid nineties Gap “Everybody” campaign. Remember: Everybody in Leather, Everybody in Vests, Everybody in Cords? If that campaign doesn’t turn a frown upside down, then clearly you have no more soul then Angel after he de-virginized Buffy the Vampire Slayer; and apparently I’m still living in 1998.

California was also the theme song to the OC, which was, at least in its first season, an excellent teenage drama.

While dithering around my apartment this afternoon looking for a distraction I ended up YouTubing my way over to Everybody in Vests, which reminded me of my love for California. A quick type into YouTube and soon enough I was quickly “cruising down the 101” reminiscing about Seth Cohen, his bromance with Chino’s favourite son Ryan Atwood and some of the best TV dialogue ever written; how can you forget: “Welcome to the OC bitch; this is how its done in Orange County.”

These days most music video’s on YouTube are hosted via Vevo. Vevo was launched by Sony Music Entertainment as a compiler of music video’s. Vevo is also an act of corporate cooperation; EMI, Universal as well as Google and YouTube have all signed on board the project. Vevo is an attempt by the record industry to counter pirated YouTube music video’s and allow record companies to profit from people viewing music videos online.

Vevo… however, is not your friend. My euphoric moment of OC memory lane-age was quickly destroyed, when Alex sang the second verse of the song: “Hustler grab your guns. Shadow weighs a tonne. Driving down the 101”. On Vevo the word guns is bleeped. Guns. Bleeped in a country that prides itself on the Second Amendment to its Constitution, which states, “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” Apparently in America you can bear arms but you just can’t talk about it in song. Not even bothering to get into America’s fucked up gun culture, how does this make any sense?

I had my moment with Vevo on the same day that Apple began removing “suggestive” iphone applications from its App Store. Apple is concerned that the App Store was becoming cluttered with “racy content”. According to the company it was also fending off complaints from customers concerned with sexual applications. According to the NY Times some of the applications that have been removed include: “SlideHer, a puzzle that challenged users to reassemble a photograph of a scantily clad actress and Sexy Scratch Off, an app which depicted a woman whose dress could be whisked away at the swipe of a finger, revealing her undergarments.”

Oh My Gawd. Scantily clad women? Undergarments? Is this seriously what people consider racy? Here’s a little tip: if you have time to call Apple to complain about racy applications you probably need to get laid.

I find it shocking that a scantily clad woman application caused a corporate uproar. I’d like to know if anyone who complained to Apple has ever typed the word “tit” into Google; cause I can tell you, you don’t need to be a computer hacker to see things on the internet that are a lot more sexualized then a woman in her undergarments. I just typed “tit” into google images and saw a lot more then I was expecting. In fact I saw a lot more then I’d ever seen before. And less you think that only app’s which sexualized women were removed; gay-centric app “Hunk du Jour” (which does exactly what you think it does, it sends you a daily picture of a shirtless hunk in undergarments) was also removed from the App Store.

Jesus Christ Corporate America, this is what you’re concerning yourself with? Never mind the Iraqi War, the Country’s massive fiscal deficit, broken revenue models, racial inequality, marriage inequality, health care… you’re busy fucking white washing mildly suggestive content from entertainment properties. (But of course… if you slap a Rated M for Mature on games like Grand Theft Auto, which can be used on the Sony Playstation, then all is ok). Dummbasses.

And this is the greatest problem with America today, the lingering sense of Puritanism that its populace demands and that its corporate leaders are obliged to acquiesce to. Remember how the American public was so scandalized when Janet Jackson accidentally showed her nipple the Super Bowl? Its like corporate America has become afraid of its buying public. Even the Tiger Woods narrative is indicative of this fear; Tiger’s mistake wasn’t that he fucked a bunch of stripper’s, rather his mistake was convincing American’s that he was a perfect family man while he continued to fuck a bunch of stripper’s. But ask yourself this: did Tiger have to sell himself as a perfect family man to solidify his endorsements? What we the public told corporate American is that being a great golfer apparently isn’t good enough. We needed a husband and a father as well as a great golfer. Tiger just tried to give us what we wanted and we wanted wasn’t racy.

Because god-forbid Vevo lets a child somewhere in Illinois here the word gun in a music video and woah nelly – imagine if Apple let a 14 year-old boy download an application that featured a scantily clad women? Or even worse, what if a 14 year-old boy downloaded a Hunk du Jour application and liked it?

One of the reasons that America as we know it has been so successful is because of its corporate culture. Corporate America, and its iconic brands, have defined much of twentieth century mass culture. Corporations have also driven innovation. America is built on the ideology of the private corporation. But this corporate ethos should be about openness, not censorship.

The world already has one superpower that censors the web (hi China!); the world doesn’t need another super power where corporations practice censorship as well.

So grow up corporate America; show us your balls.

The Google

I was out with some friends recently when we got onto gossiping about a mutual friend of ours, whom we were all apparently stalking on Facbeook (as if you’re judging us…). One of us, me, was concerned that her new boyfriend was but a year out of high school, while another was convinced that the boyfriend was still in university. Confused, worried and lost, we went straight to Google.

“The Google doesn’t lie.” I declared; and sure enough but five minutes later, the Google let us know, with some relief, that our friends new boyfriend was indeed a community college graduate. Praise be allah.

I’m convinced that people don’t pray to god anymore; people now pray to Google. In fact the search engine and its various appendages (GTalk, GoogleDocs, GChat, Gmail, G-adNauseum) have seemingly more to do with my day-to-day life then my mother, at least with the exception of financial support. For that I still need Sima, although as a blogger – I once made almost $8 from Google ad words. Google only mails checks in installments of hundred dollars so… I guess I’m still waiting for Google Ship to come in.

Anyway, so pervasive is Google that its latest advertisement actually aired during the Superbowl; perhaps the massest mass market marketing festival of our culture. The ad, entitled Parisian Love, is part of the Google Search Story campaign. In a nutshell: the commercial tells the story of someone, presumably male and American, who uses Google’s search engine to look for French exchange programs, Parisian coffee shops, how to impress a French woman, how to deal with long-distance relationships… blah blah blah… until the ad ends with a baby crying as our unknown hero searches for: “how to assemble a crib.” Orangina vomit mouth.

The conceit of Google’s current ad campaign is that Google is essential to your life. Google is now your best friend. But is it?

Thinking that the Google worked out well for our unknown American friend, who moved to Paris, found himself a spouse, taught himself the difference between truffles and Truffaut, I thought I’d try out my own luck with the Google, seeing as I don’t live in Paris (but would like to), I have considered finding myself a spouse (but haven’t been able to), and would also like to know the difference between truffles and Truffaut (so I can impress douchebags at bars). And as June 8th grows closer and closer, ie my convication from RotFunMan, I should probably find out what I’m going to do with myself post MBA.

Looking for love and answers I typed into Google: “Where should I work after my MBA?”

The first thing that Google came up provided no career advice, and in fact served to only make me feel worser about myself.

Someone in cyberspace asked: “Should I add MBA after my name?”

The response: “Unfortunately, there are only a handful of professions in which adding credentials after your name make sense. Having an MBA is certainly not one of them, and there are a host of other abbreviations that are downright pathetic.”

Thanks Google; for $70k I don’t even get to ad something fun to my signature? FML.

Then I tried: “What do I do with an MBA?”

The Google coughed up this: “What you can do with an MBA degree is really up to you and how far you want to go in your career. Graduates of an MBA program can choose to use their skills to help others in a nonprofit or to climb the corporate ladder and reach the upper echelons of management. Regardless of the career path you choose, your return on a MBA is based on how much you want to push yourself to reach your personal and professional goals.”

Realizing that my immediate personal goals should involve doing the dinner dishes I left in the sink, I sensed a feeling of inherent boredom. It was something only that could best be described as ennui, which, when typed into Goolge led me to its official definition: en·nui –noun; a feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest; boredom: The endless lecture produced an unbearable ennui.

Maybe it was just me, but the Google, which had seemed so reliable only hours earlied, now seemed so unhelpful. Why Google did you forsake me, why?

All of this just goes to show you though, that Google, which is attempting to ingratiate itself into all aspects of my life can’t actually do everything.

So ya know what I did? I called my mother. And ya know what she told me to do? She told me to get off my lazy ass and do the dishes.

Le Sigh.

When in Beijing

I often find myself visiting gay bars when I’m in foreign cities. I guess I do it for the same reason I like to visit synagogues when abroad; while I may not frequent either establishments at home in Toronto, when traveling its nice to know how my peeps like to keep it real (and or kosher) in foreign cities. So just as I found myself getting body checked when visiting the historic Ohel Leah Synagogue in Hong Kong, so too did I find myself getting manhandled at Beijing’s primary gay club, Destination.

As a destination, Destination, is fairly typical for its ilk; think strobe lights, a large dance floor and dark cozy corners. I was dragged to Destination late one Friday night with a fellow Canadian, Chris, a PEI banker who had made Beijing his home. The club was full of what Chinese call tongzhi; in Mandarin tongzhi means comrade, but as of late, the word has been co-opted by China’s slowly emergent LGBT community as self-referential slang. It is both a pun, if you divide the Mandarin characters for tongzhi you get “same-will”, and a subversive joke on comrades obvious communist connotations.

Chris and I had met up at Destination after our plan to attend the first ever Mr. Gay China was foiled by a police raid. The event, affiliated with the international gay pageant movement, had been raided by the Beijing police and shut down due to an “alleged” permit infraction. After two years of living in Beijing Chris was hardly surprised at the evening’s turn of events, “That’s what they do here,” he shrugged his shoulders and downed another drink, “If they don’t like something, they’ll just shut you down.” Chris was weary about his time in Beijing and having made the decision to leave, he was hardly nostalgic, “the things that are unbearable about China and Beijing – like tonight – well you try and overlook when you’re living here; but once you’ve decided to go they really start to really grate on you.”

I expected that there would be outrage about Mr. Gay’s cancellation, but standing in Destination, hours after the police disbanded the event, there was nary of ripple of angst; Lady Gaga was on the loud speaker, there was end of week dancing to do. Plus ca change.

The crowd at Destination may not have cared about the failure to launch of Mr. Gay China, but I could only imagine the scene if anything similar were to happen back home. In Canada, after our Harper government decided to demote a minister for supporting Toronto’s pride parade, the angst amongst both the queer community was palpable. Even my father, a Conservative stalwart, admitted “what Harper did just wasn’t right”.

It is easy to travel through China and see what pundits call “Tier 1 China”, the country of glittering skyscrapers, massive construction sites and marvel at the fact that the Shanghai subway system has built seven new lines in the last ten years, while the TTC dithers over the cost of one. It is not as easy to read between the lines and remember that the country is still a communist relic. It is still the People’s Republic of China after all. But f you listen closely to corporate CEO’s as they talk about the country’s economic miracle you eerily begin to realize that such rampant economic success is not as benevolent as its pro-China hype.

One CEO I met in China admitted cheerfully, that China’s public health care system was partially subsidized by provincial citizenship; payments are only covered if you stay within your home province. From an economic standpoint this is a major no-no as it limits the free movement of population. It also means that China’s healthcare is not like Canada’s, which we pride on being “accessible, portable and comprehensive”. In China such limitations are admitted to rather readily;1.3 billion people seem to acquiesce to things that 33 million Canadians would, for all of our politeness, join a Facebook group and protest over. Oh wait, Facebook is banned in China.

My suspicion of China, or judgyness, isn’t of course a new sentiment. While the world generally has a collective miasma over China and her civil rights violations we do every-so-often collectively remember that all is not well at the end of the Silk Road. Most recently and infamously internet titan Google threatened to leave the world’s emergent super power fearing for government privacy laws.

And yet its hard to stay mad at plucky China, which seems caught between the country we all want it to be and the country it wants to be for itself. Chinese themselves are seemingly happy with the country’s progress and the recurring theme amongst Chinese is that this “Chinese way” is a different but also a successful way to develop economically.

When I asked a Chinese intellectual about the Christmas Day arrest of Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobou, my question was patently dismissed.

“The west,” he said, “has a contract, a constitution with its population and that contract is hard to change. How many times gas the American constitution changed since it was written?” he asked me rhetorically. “We have no similar culture here in China. Our constitution with our people is constantly changing, it is under constant refinement and evolution.”

This “evolving contract” allows the government to shut down gay events, arrest dissidents, and execute British drug dealers, all of which occurred in China during my three-week visit. This evolving contract probably ensured that last year’s inaugural Shanghai Pride didn’t feature a public parade for fear of police intervention. But beyond this evolving nature of the politic I wonder if the reticence of China’s gay community to embrace such hallmarks of queer culture, pride and pageantry, is not only about a fear of police retaliation but perhaps a rejection of westernized values as well?

When the state of India decriminalized homosexuality last year, Canadian-Indian author Anand Mahadevan wrote in the Globe and Mail, that Indian gays must “look to their own past,” instead of following a western model, which he feared would “promote a McDonald’s-ization of queer culture.” “The Stonewall riots are not their past, pride marches are not their celebrations,” Mahadevan noted.

The same sentiment can be made about China. Obviously those who were at Destination were not ready to make the police’s reaction to Mr. Gay China their Stonewall. But what will be China’s Stonewall if anything at all? When it comes to queer rights, if China looks neither inward, as Mr. Mahadevan suggests is necessary to develop an indigenous queer culture, nor outward, at Western iconography of queer culture (which China seems to rebuff), then the fight for queer rights in China will stagnate.

This chicken-versus-egg problem of China is that the country is adept at both rejecting the external, in order to promote “the Chinese way”, but the lack of a Chinese political class prevents the country from championing an internal alternative. If this dichotomy continues then the praises that the so-called “Chinese way” receives for ensuring economic expansion will turn to criticisms when it comes to promoting political freedom.

What Toronto Needs is a Mayor Who Can Sext...

Today the municipally inclined world of Torontonian (ie the Centre of Canada) politics was abuzz with Adam Giambrone’s admission of an “inappropriate relationship” with a 19 year-old female. For Canadian (and municipal at that) politics, this Clinton-esque scandal is about as saucy at it gets. The Star’s scoop, written by Linda Diebel, read more like something you’d find on Dlisted and less like your typical Star exclusive report on “Poverty in the GTA!” or “Toronto’s Best Elementary Schools!” Quite frankly it was a fairly tawdry piece of reporting, considering that the 32 year-old mayoral candidate is not married and has no children with his live in girlfriend. Did he lie? Sure. Lapse in judgement? Check. But if we’re gonna fry Giambrone for anything, lets do it for his colossal fuck up as TTC chair and not for sticking his Broner in some 20 year-olds fare slot… BAM!

But anyway… I’m ranting. As with any admission of a politician’s infidelity, the usual debate about whether the press should report on personal lives ensues. For those of the Trudea era, the oft repeated mantra of “The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation,” is a rallying cry while those of a different political bent argue that someone with such apparently loose morals and ethics may not be the best choice to lead Canada’s largest city.

Me? I’m not particular concerned about the fact that Giambrone was cheating on his partner; what DOES concern me is that someone who is running to be my mayor can’t write a proper sext. I mean I’m fairly indifferent to someone schtupping another adult on the couch in his crusty office in City Hall, but all I really want is a mayor who can sext. Sexting implies passion and shitty sexting does not exactly exude confidence.

For example, I once wrote a sext to a guy I was seeing. At the time he was doing a fair bit of travel and via sext I suggested some activities I was thinking we could do upon his return. His reply: “yes. That would be nice if we could do that.” I realized then that our relationship was headed to nowheresville fast; if you can’t write a mildly dirty sext, then how passionate can you be in life?

People often say that the eyes are a window to a person’s soul, but what if sexting is a also a window. Think of it this way, do you think George Smitherman would EVER sext his partner something as awful as: "I still think of you when I need ... um ... stimulation." Uhm… what exactly does that mean Adam? I’m willing to be that Smidge hasn’t written a sext that lame in his life. I’d even put money down on the fact that Rocco Rossi could muster up something a bit more sexual then: "I like you because you're smart and interesting. You're also good-looking naked." How exactly does one reply to a sext along those lines? “Thanks. Does that mean we’re still gonna fuck tonight on your couch?” I mean really that’s the notion of the sext. It should be direct, frank, a bit hot and maybe just a bit dirty. If you can’t communicate properly via sext, can you communicate effectively to your bureaucracy? Can you communicate efficiently and effectively to your citizenry?

Before we elect our next mayor, we the people of Toronto deserve to know what we’re getting into; in 2010 I believe the proof is in the sext.

Why Canadian Queer History is Important

I should probably start off with a caveat: I’m gay and I did my Bachelor of Arts in History. In fact while at McGill, I was actually president of the History Students Association, which in fact made me the King of History (Reign of Terror: 2004-2005). So obviously my views on the subject at hand are about as partisan as a Sarah Palin book signing. You betcha!

Of late my favourite thing to do on the interweb is to peruse the comment section of news websites. Comment pages are my own personal narcotic, about as toxic as crack cocaine and just as addictive. And for the comment junkie anything controversial is like scoring a major drug hit.

One of the most controversial topics in the blogosphere this week was ESPN.com's profile of Brendan Burke. Brendan is the son of Brian Burke, current General Manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, he is also gay and a former high-school hockey athlete. In his ESPN profile Burke recounted his decision to come out of the closet and tell his father, "Mr. Testosterone", that he was gay. Brendan also discussed his decision to stop playing competitive hockey, tied to his fear of his teammates discovering his secret. Brendan’s story has, at this point, elicited over 250 comments on ESPN.com alone, hundreds more on the Globe and Mail, National Post and Toronto Star websites. The response, as these things go, has been fairly typical. In one corner you have supporters, “I'm a straight Christian and I applaud Brendan for what he did. The kids got guts,” and on the other side you have your standard, if not juvenile, and borderline homophobic comments, “I have a couple gay friends [some of my best friends are black] and I am not a homophobe. That being said, what the hell is the point of this article? This article belongs in a lifestyle magazine, but not ESPN".

However, the most common question was some variant on the following: “So, why is this even a story? The kid is gay. So what?”

Here’s what: the majority of the population, will never have to tell someone that they’re gay. The majority of the population will grow up, become sexually active and enjoy messing around with the opposite gender never. (And in the United States – the majority of the population can also get married without interference from the state legislature). The reality, is that unless you’ve laid in bed wondering why you don’t like girls the way that you “should” and whether your parents, friends and or teammates will still love you if you tell them your big secret, it is hard to fully appreciate or understand why “coming out” is a) important b) notable and c) a game-changer. No matter how far we’ve come in our search for LGBTQ equality, there is still a stigma associated with homosexuality. We, as a society, still see things in a hetero-normative capacity. Subsequent to Brendan’s coming out the Globe and Mail actually posed the question: “Is the NHL ready for a homosexual player?” The fact that we can still have an intellectual debate on this topic, and the hoopla surrounding the ESPN article on Brendan, signifies the fact that this stigma still exists.

Brendan’s story is noteworthy because of his association with professional sports, an industry that is rarely associated with homosexuality. While we may be ready to accept certain types of gays, i.e. we’re ok with sanitized gay men á la Will and Grace, or we’re somewhat ok with sexualized gays like the randy men on Queer as Folk (we’ll just slap an NC-17 rating on them). But real-life gays who do real-life things… society is seemingly just not really ready for that. While we expect and enjoy our gay hairdressers, when it comes to sports, the puck stops at the jock strap.

Brendan’s story is also a milestone in the continuing evolution of Canada’s queer history. As with any modern historical movement, the evolution of queer rights has yet to fully find its place within the overarching themes of modern Canadian history. Regardless, the queer rights movement in Canada is remarkable because of its rapid march towards acceptance. In 1961 gay men were classified as "sexual psychopaths” and it was only in 1969 when Canada’s buggery and sodomy laws were repealed. By 1994 gay men and women were allowed to be active and out members of Canada’s military. And in 2005 LGBT couples across the country were legally allowed to marry. Amongst this rapid pace of change however, the true breadth and scope of the queer rights movement can easily be lost, especially amongst people in who are in their twenties. While modern queer history is still in its infancy; in the interim, however, stories like Brendan Burke’s have the capacity to remind all Canadians, and especially the gay community, where we’ve come from and where we still have to go.

In response to his son’s profile Brian Burke was quoted as saying: "I hope the day comes, and soon, when this is not a story." Well I hope that coming out will always be a story; however, I also hope that one-day soon it will be people’s reactions, which will be the non-story.

What Happens to our Facebook Page When We Die?

The knowledge of what happens after we die is truly one of life’s greatest mysteries. The afterlife is almost as confounding to society as to how exactly they get the caramel inside a caramilk bar. No one quite knows what happens after we buy the farm… Some stereotypical allusions of death envision humanity walking towards the proverbial yellow light. Various religions have various conceptions of both a heaven or a hell depending on what type of person you’ve been. Catholic priests guilt their flock with images of purgatory, which rhymes with masturbatory so who’s to really know what those cwazy Catholics are getting up to in their afterlife. The Hindu faith talks about reincarnation. Jews are waiting for the messiah to come – so when he gets his lazy ass here we all get to rise up and flock to Jerusalem. It'll be like a mass Birthright trip, only not paid for by the Bronfman family. And yes Jews did inspire the original Dawn of the Dead and we also do control the media. Anyway the Messiah has yet to come, probably because as we speak he or she is being guilted by his mother, “Lawrence, why don’t you go to law school first. This Messiah business can wait. Can’t you be like your older brother Chaim? He’s a partner at Goodman’s…”

Jono doesn’t really know, nor does he particularly care about the afterlife; I’m pretty bad-ass like that – I live for the moment, BITCHES. Anyway what I’m more concerned about is, what happens to my Facebook page when I die?

I mean this seriously. Are people going to write on my wall, “I miss you”? Is someone going to log into my account and change my status: “Jonathan is now dead”? I don’t really care either way – probably because I’ll be dead, but for the 800 or so acquaintances whom habitually visit my profile… my death is going to be a bit awkward isn’t it? I guess you could always make a friend list: deceased, but still… does anyone use friend lists anyways – it’s a bit complicated.

Now in some ways and I don’t mean any disrespect to anyone – death and Facebook have already awkwardly met. (Death dated Facebook’s best friend. It ended badly.) I can, however, think of several tragic accidents, where people around my age have died, which have instigated sudden Facebook memorial groups and other such public outpourings of grief. After all Facebook is the only way my generation seems to be able to communicate effectively with each other. In these instances these ad-hoc responses are representative of the tragic and spontaneous nature of said tragedies. It’s fairly unexpected and extremely sad for anyone in there twenties to die so it makes perfect sense that we’re societally unprepared to de-activate someone’s Facebook account. In the business sense – demand hasn’t really hit the mass market, as macabre as that may or may not be.

Realistically the vast majority of Facebook users are in there twenties, thirties and forties. The vast majority of us are seemingly healthy, productive members of society (although probably 10% less productive then when we didn’t have Facebook). But what happens when this demographic bump of users starts dying off? But how will Facebook learn to deal with death once the mass-market actually starts necessitating it?

Perhaps Facebook will just become a natural part of the grieving process. For example a “Facebook Friend” of mine, let’s call her Anastasia, recently lost their parent. I only know of this because she changed their status to reflect the funeral details: "Anastasia’s mother died. Please come visit me at the Bedford Park Memorial Chapel for a Viewing. Mon-Fri 12:00pm – 9:00pm."

Now as most my friends will know - I tend to live a fairly public life, chances are if you’ve seen me shuffling along Bloor Street in the past week you generally know what’s going on in my life, but even I found Anastasia’s status a bit, well… much. There is no part of me that would want anything related to my death to be on Facebook. In fact my friend Karen and I have a pact that should anything happen to either of us we’re to immediately de-active the other one’s Facebook account. But then again was Anastasia’s response any different then buying an advertisement in the Globe and Mail announcing a birth or death? As our print industry faces its own morbidity, is Facebook the new town hall bulletin board? Perhaps stagnant profile pages are just going to become twenty first century memorial; wall writing is akin to signing a guest book. If so… well this still strikes me as… a bit weird. Although maybe by the time I’m rolling about Baycrest, or as they’ll call it when I’m there: Gaycrest, I’ll decide to update my page and become a fan of Metamucil, new interests: sponge baths, as I prepare my profile for the great beyond.

I realize I’m being a bit of a drama queen in my analysis, but such hyperboles do raise an important issue, as we create ever growing online footprints, we blog, we flickr, etc… how do we bury our cyber cadavers?

When you think of it our generation has grown up almost in tandem with email. Hotmail, launched in 1996 as one of the first free webmail services, coincided with the social awakening of me and my peers… and we’ve become addicted to email ever since. As Generation Y we are the Blackberry, Facebook & Twitter kids. If its not online it doesn’t exist. I have something like 12000 emails in my gmail account; accumulated only since October 2004. What the fuck happens to all of those emails when I die? At the rate I’m going… approximately 2500/3000 emails a year, lets say I live to 80 – that’s almost 200,000 emails sitting errantly in cyber space. If I were famous Peter Newman would probably go through them after my death so he could write my biography: Portrait of a Canadian Gay-triot. Even if I do become famous, Peter Newman will be long dead and no one is going to be that interested in the thousands of angry emails I’ve written to Jordan about various injustices. I’ll be leaving a huge, boring, bursting email account squatting on cyberspace. Now – in some ways boring minutiae of life isn’t a newfound phenomenon. When I was cleaning out my grandparent’s house this past winter– I found a bunch of old love letters. It was beautiful – but also a very private moment. My grandmother had kept stalks of cards, letters, and notes from my grandfather stashed away in a cookie tin. I kept a couple of them – and shredded the rest. Who really wants to voyeur through a 65 year-old love story? However, unlike our email accounts, my Pop’s letters were destroyable. While I was able to delete my grandfather’s cutesy poems (this from a 6 foot something rugby player) when we die – all of those embarrassing: I miss you emails that you’ve drunkenly written to your ex boyfriend, will be sitting there, forever squatting in cyberspace.

So what happens to our Facebook page when we die? Well… depending on your religion – you can expect your gmail account to be reincarnated into a twitter page, or perhaps your Facebook profile will become frozen in time, or if you’re lucky your Flickr page will rise up when the messiah comes and will march itself towards Jerusalem. Or not. However, just as the internet has found a way to commodify most other things – business may in fact be the answer. After all, death is the world’s second oldest business. Most likely I’ll see you at cemetery.com.

Getting Shticky With It!

A friend of mine is a non-Jewish lawyer in New York City. Recognizing the career limitations of being a cucumber in a world of kosher pickles I've spent a good couple of months trying to teach him conversational Yiddish. "Suppose you're in a meeting," I told him over the phone, "and the room is really really hot, just shout: "is anyone else schtvitzing in here? It's so hot I could just about shluf." [Translation: Its so hot in here I could just about fall asleep."] My thinking was that even if he was about as unkosher as unkosher can be - dropping the Y Bomb now and again wouldn't hurt his cause and may in fact get him noticed by a senior partner. It's the same reason I am trying to convince my JD/MBA friend Julie that she say the following at her law interviews: "my grandfather actually tried to kill Hitler. Ya know that guy Stauffenberg? They were really tight." Know your audience people…

Yiddish, although an almost dead language, is still a tongue that everyone should know a shitckle of. And by shtickle I mean a little of. Why? Well Yiddish actually adds emotions to words without using adjectives (this is why Jewish people are so efficient. We don’t even need adjectives). In Yiddish a penis is a shmuck, how angry is that word though. "Have you met Shelley’s new boyfriend? – He’s total shmuck..." This sounds a lot more emphatic then: "Have you met Shelley’s new boyfriend? Total penis." Anyway my new favourite Yiddish word of the week is shtick. Shtick? Shtick is Yiddish for gimmick, or a piece of a showbiz routine; defined in one dictionary as a "person's idiosyncratic performance". In a sentence: "Did you see his skit on Saturday Night Live? People just love his shtick."

But shtick – shtick is more then just an idiosyncratic performance. Shtick is actually a business term.

A couple of months ago, while organizing a conference and searching for a keynote speaker, someone suggested a man by the name of Keith Ferazzi. Several years back Ferazzi published a piece of non-fiction: Never Eat Lunch Alone, and Other Secrets to Success One Relationship at a Time. The book was a fairly big hit and Ferazzi became known as the guy who never eats lunch alone. Subsequently Ferazzi parlayed his MIND BLOWING REVELATION [sic] into a profitable career as a networking and relationship guru. For example, Keith was very happy to speak my conference, for the low low price of $25,000 (plus flight, hotel and other incidentals). Because I was affiliated with a non-profit Keith's people were willing to negotiate, however. Thanks Keith. You may never eat lunch alone, but you're certainly never going to eat lunch with this hombre; I’ve never paid to play and am certainly not starting to pay at 26...

Never eating lunch alone is what I would call Keith's shtick. He has a blog: http://nevereatalone.typepad.com/. And from this one book about how to secure lunch dates Keith is still peddling the same line about how to build relationships over lunch years after the fact. Shtick in fact refers to popularization of business-lite books that provide "business-speak" to the masses. The shticky author turns a simple, usually just one sentence, statement on how to improve your life, business or career, into a witty catchphrase and suddenly finds himself on the New York Times bestseller list proselytizing business readers to "think outside the box", or to "value outliers". Before you know it - you and your shtick have been turned into a syndicated column and you're charging $25,000 for a speaking fee. Shtick is good.

Shtick is overgrown pop culture self-help lite. Prolific thinkers come up with a relatively simple idea and suddenly, with proper marketing, its been turned into the second coming. This isn't to say that shtick is always stupid, but - is there anything groundbreaking in a shticky novels or are they simply packaged and decently written? I’d argue for the latter, and that well that is the power of shtick. It packages things you probably already know into succinct and catchy easy to read morsels of goodness; it’s brilliant by association. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking – shtick for increasing your brainpower without actually increasing your brainpower! French Women Don't Get Fat - shtick for people trying to lose weight! How to Win Friends and Influence People - shtick for people who can't seem to manage personal relationships!

So what makes good shtick? (IE how can you, dear reader, get on the speaking engagement circuit?):

1) Keep It Simply Shtick (KISS):
Never Eat Lunch Alone. - Yes that's right - Keith Ferazzi - is teaching you how to never eat lunch alone and that in order to be successful you need to build relationships. That's it - Ferazzi is not discussing the atom bomb or dissecting the rise of Hitler. Scratch below the surface of most shticky books and you're not going to find much, because there often isn't much there. He's Just Not That Into you for example teaches readers that the really cute guy they've been chasing (and who doesn't return their call), actually doesn't like you! How is this groundbreaking? Please, I realized he wasn't that into me when he broke up with me on a subway platform - but MILLIONS of people have read that book; I even own the hardcopy and have highlighted mundane passages for future reading. I bought it into it.

2) When your shtick isn't so simple, just dumb it down:
There is higher quality shtick, which is actually relatively interesting and thought provoking. Take Richard Florida's ideology behind the Creative Class. I'll admit I find it fascinating, it’s a fairly interesting concept and there are so many graphs and charts in his books – I’m not arguing with his research. And yet, the Creative Class is still shtick. Heck it landed Florida in Esquire Magazine. The problem of course with shtick is that shtick can outgrow the academic. By becoming shtick - the Creative Class - knows no bounds. It becomes known for its shtick, i.e. drinking latte’s in gentrified factories and not for much else. Even academic shtick is in danger of becoming a buzzwords. Practically everything in Toronto is now either a part of or aspiring to be the Creative Class.

3) When in Doubt Get Shticky With It
If you don't think of yourself of an academic and are worried you can't develop your own shtick, think again! Good shtick can come from an analogy, or a personal experience. One great albeit shticky presenter I saw compared the business world to climbing a mountain. She was great, she made jokes along the lines of: “I’m used to harsh environments. I’m a forty something single woman in San Francisco.” Don’t think she didn’t use that joke at every speaking engagement across the country (a key factor of shtick – its adaptable to every major city in North America) and don’t think the audience didn’t yuk it up. Shtick isn't about the research remember - it’s about what you've done and accomplished, but more importantly about how you've packaged it with wit and sass.

So go dear friends – develop your shtick, get on that public speaking bandwagon. Charge Jono $25,000 for a keynote speaking gig.

Think Unsexy Thoughts... Think Unsexy Thoughts...

Things I hate at the moment:
1) People who change their Facebook status to describe how close they are to completing a assignment (Your life called, it wants you back)
2) The current recession

I know its not a very long list and I'm sure if I sat down for more then a moment, stopped taking extra strength Advil (I have the flu) I'm sure I could come up with a whole whack of other things I hate (like men in flares, there! there's a third!)... But for now I'm keeping my hate list at a manageable two; I even refuse to hate the Jonas brothers (I have a minor crush on the youngest Jonas, who is, yes - 16; desperate times my friends, desperate times indeed) and if you can't find it in your heart to hate the Jonas brothers I mean, what else is there left to hate?

My commitment to be less of a hater is in part due a march break resolution of trying to think more positively about life. I had a boyfriend once (yes I know... its true) who was deep into positive thinking and tried to convince me about its attributes. This gentleman caller argued that by thinking positively about a situation I could actually effect the outcome. Sort of like a self fulfilling prophecy, where the prophecy is like a room full of bunnies and chocolates. Its a nice thought, isn't it? But... I mean - its not like I walked into my finance exam last week thinking, "Glad I didn't study, if I just think positively I'll pass." Now of course I did think positive net present value, but that's a whole other WACCy story (finance joke!). Anyway I feel like there are limitations to positive thinking's efficacy but still I'm willing to be a believer at least for the next little bit.

Within this positive thinking headspace I've decided to ignore the current recession. If you're response is: "What recession? There's a recession?" You may be an idiot or you may be an heiress, but regardless you're also the type of person I'd like to befriend. We can be clueless together. Because what's positive about a recession? Nothing I tells ya, nothing. The recession is so fucking depressing and on top of being a big debbie downer I think the recession is actually a self-fulfilling prophecy, but not one of positive thinking but of negative thinking.

Hear me out: is it possible that this godforesaken Great Recession, as some chaps are calling it, is simply expedited by the crisis of the consumer? As credit markets have tightened the American consumer has stopped the majority of its spending. No more mocha frapuchino's while buying the latest Coach bag... Keynsian economists, quoting his oft used General Theory, would argue that pumping up consumer spending is integral to the restarting the circular flow of the economy. However, as consumer confidence continues to fall (February 2009 marked the lowest level of American consumer confidence in decades) the economy contracts further. The harsh reality is that consumer spending accounts for something like 60% of the Canadian economy. Its a vicious cycle. So WHY aren't we spending? Negative thinking!

Think of it this way - you're a partner at a large management consulting company in downtown toronto - let's call you Mavid Lecaut and you're a partner at the Toronto Consulting Group [TCG] (everything at this point is purely hypothetical). Anyway - at TCG your clients are major fortune 500 companies, every day when you wake up and read the Globe and Mail and Financial Post you're inundated with hyperbolically bad news about the economy. By the time you get into work and start thinking about monthly billings at TCG (how many hours clients are using your high priced conslutants) you forecast that future billings are going down the crapper. You sit and think to yourself, why the fuck am I paying people silly salaries and why am I hiring new staff and interviewing for summer positions - when there is NO work. NONE. COMPANIES ARE GOING BANKRUPT. So Mavid Lecaut, smart man that he is, tightens his belt (from last seasons Harry Rosen FYI) and lays off some staff, stops hiring summer students... the whole deal. Anyway long story short, suddenly you have an angry ex TCG staff member not buying cashmere blend sweaters at Banana Republic, then it looks like Banana Republic is going to have to lay off some of their part time staffers too. Suddenly that part time Banana Republic employee who spends something like $150 a week at Fly on Friday night on shooters is no longer going to Fly, and they're contemplating laying off a bartender as well... Before you know it half the city is on the dole, the other half is employed by the provincial government, but don't worry because they're working on a creative economic strategy. Do we see how this vicious cycle effects everyone from your corporate CEO to your shirts off bartender at Fly? Its like the ebola virus. No one is spared.

On another level - you think I bought that cashmere sweater I was fondling earlier today at Club Monaco. HELL to the N-O. Have you read a newspaper lately? There's a credit crisis. I'm lucky I have a roof over my head, CIBC could revoke my credit at any moment. That weird Caisse de Depot thing they have in Quebec lost almost $40 billion dollars over asset-backed commercial paper. I don't even know what asset backed paper is. Why would I buy a cashmere sweater? Can you eat cashmere? I'm looking at cold hard assets: land, diamonds, gold. Fiat money? That's so yesterday.

Anyway - my point is that this recession business can quickly spiral way out of control the more the media portrays it as the Great Recession. You're all frantic now aren't you? I'm freaking my shit out while writing this wondering if the end to world economic order is upon us, contemplating purchasing a couple of acres of farm-land so at least I could feed myself. You're probably cashing out stocks and RRSP's wondering if you should start storing money under your mattress like your grandmother did during the Great Depression. Lot of good those Laboutins are going to do us now, unless of course people start forming gangs when world economic order collapses and one of the gangs is called Lord of the Rings and their territory is Holt Renfrew and they've made weaponry out of last seasons Laboutin heels... IT COULD HAPPEN.

So what should we do about it? How can lowly old you and lowly little Jono make a better world? Well... let's all think positively! Come, join me. Join me in the world of conspicuous consumption. Everyone - grab your credit card, hit the mall and spend, spend, spend. Worst comes to worst, you'll be bailed out by the federal government, right? And at least you'll lack fabulous at the hearings!

To quote Marie Antoinette [herself well known for thinking with her head in a time of political and economic instability]: Let them wear Club Monaco.

Keeping Up With the Dean's List...

Friday nights at the Two-Fer (the Naymark family compound – and by compound I’m actually talking about a house, not a Kennedy esque playground) invariably feature my two and a half year-old nephew, Ethan, who is, at this point, the family’s star attraction. As the evening draws to a close we good few Naymarks gather in the den to sing Puff the Magic Dragon, en famille (yes, that’s right, how much more Norman Rockwall can you get?). In more recent months, as Ethan has matured into a toddler, Bold Sharon will turn to him and ask: “Ethan do you want to make a pee pee on the potty?” At two and a half years we’re hitting potty training mode and familial encouragement, “Why don’t you show Uncle Jono how you make a pee pee on the potty?” is the name of current game. I’m not sure why showing me how he can make a pee pee on the potty would be enticing for Baby E, but I’m sure Bold knows best, she is a doctah.

Milestones such as potty training are great equalizers of our youth; give or take a couple of months and Ethan will become potty trained at around the same time that the majority of his peer group will also learn how to make a pee pee on the potty. And Bold, being bold and Toronto’s star pediatrician is happy to tell you, “Ethan is right on target for potty training.” As with anything else these days it seems there are matrixes with which we can examine in order to compare results.

Potty training is a right of passage, like losing your first tooth, your first day of grade school, or the day you finally get your driver’s license. Such societal and natural milestones are expected and accomplished at a certain stage of life and in a way such barometers of our youth are extremely comforting. To some degree they’re normalizes. They allow us all to realize that our development is proceeding apace. Remember when you were 18 and your entire year in high school was carted down to the auditorium and shown how to fill out the OUAC application form? It was like you were being handheld and encouraged throughout the process, “Do you want to see Jono apply to university?” If memory serves me right that was about the last time anyone held my hand. The decision to attend university is perhaps the last of life’s unchoices; for most it is the potty training of your teenage years.

By the time you graduate from an undergraduate program, communal milestones don’t really exist. Some people take longer to finish their degrees, others go directly into grad school (never to be seen form again), those with an entrepreneurial flair will start up companies, others will hurdle themselves into the corporate ladder. Suddenly everyone isn’t sitting in the same auditorium filling out the same application form; rather everyone is in different auditoriums filling out different application forms. But if that’s the case how can you compare yourself to everyone in order to make sure you’re doing ok?

In short you can’t; and the much longer answer is you probably shouldn’t. Unfortunately as human beings, shallow creatures that we are, comparisons to our peer group are what we thrive on. After all our economic system, albeit tarnished, is bred on such competition. At RotFunMan, for example, every professor provides a grade distribution and analysis for every test, homework assignment and exam handed in. As future business leaders we are bred to think competitively. Even in high school competition exists; remember those seemingly benign English essays: “at our ten year high school reunion I will be…” [And not to freak anyone out, but I’m about two years away from that ten years].

So who is my peer group now? Ethan’s peer group is the 18 other kids in the Dinosaur Playroom 1 at his daycare. At North Toronto Collegiate Institute my peer group consisted of approximately 150 other kids in the NTCI Class of 2001. In real life of course, almost, everyone becomes a competitor. An old McGill friend called me about a month after my picture appeared in the Toronto Star (insert shameless self-promotion here), “Looks like I’ve bested you,” he said. Colour me confused. “A press release I wrote was quoted in the Wall Street Journal.” “Oh,” I paused, “congrats!” In fact I hadn’t quite realized that we were in competition, but of course, we had gone to McGill together, had taken similar history majors, and just as we had sparred over grade point averages in the Redpath Oasis, it made sense that we’d be comparing bylines in our twenties.

Similar rumbles occasionally make waves through my circle of friends. Whenever someone gets married, or someone buys a house, there’s the collective gasp of shock. While everyone is super psyched, there’s always that conversation you wind up having with the person who isn’t getting married or who hasn’t bought the house: “Why don’t I have a house? Why aren’t I married? We did go to high school together. How did I go so wrong, but so and so did everything so right?”

In my own existential crisis just the other day, I called KB.
“I think I’m falling behind.”
“Falling behind what?”
“People.”
“Which people?”
“Everyone. I’m not successful. People have jobs, they’re climbing the corporate latter. This girl I fooled around with (yes, screw you all for judging) has a book deal.”
“You’re doing your MBA.” She said calmingly.
“But that’s all I’m doing…”

Worse – I came across a New York Times article about a gay couple that had bought and restored a house in the Hudson Valley. Between commuting from powerful jobs in Manhattan, they were making organic goats milk on the weekend. I was despondent; after looking through the slide show of their life on the New York Times website, I realized they were living my dream (if you replaced organic goats milk with organic beer: Faux Hill Bitter). In comparison I have no job, no farm, no partner; fuck I don’t even have a goat. If this were a shtetl in the pale of Russia, I’d be first to be offed when the Russian army came riding through town.

KB tried to talk me back to earth, “Nay. They’re a decade older then we are. You can’t compare yourself to them.”

Suddenly I understood why my mother cries against how she’s kept up with the neighbours her entire life. It’s exhausting. How do you keep up with the Jones’s when you’re not even sure whom exactly you’re keeping up with?

The cheesy euphemism of course is that “Success is yours to define”. A friend and I came up with this line for a speech she was giving at high school a couple of years ago. But still its cold comfort isn’t it? I mean, success is yours to define, but isn’t there a matrix I can apply my successes to just to make sure I’m still on track?

At least I’m one up on Ethan; I can make a pee pee on the potty.

This is Your Future?

While novelist H.G. Wells helped to popularize the concept of time travel with his Victorian tome: the Time Machine, we humanoids have never quite been able to conquer the space time continuum. Even in twenty first century of Pax America time travel has never quite made it to reality, and instead is relegated for use as a trope in sub-par popcorn flicks and sweeps week TV episodes. And now as we currently grapple with such crises as the sub-prime loan and the Madeoff scandals, I fear we are most likely never going to invent anything remotely close to time travel. It’s as we suffer from a collective: “Look things came up, we got busy.”

And while true time travel may have been forever lost to science fiction, creative pursuits and Michael J. Fox, every once in a while we’re given the opportunity to, if not travel into the future, peer into what is potentially to come.

I recently found myself at one of those holiday party’s where people were wearing blazers, shirts and jeans and I also wore a blazer and a shirt and a pair of jeans. It wasn’t very rogue of me – but I can only go rogue in so many areas of my life… at social events I’m about as conformist as they come.

The party was hosted by my good friend Kat who had recently renovated and moved into a rather sharp Victorian row house. To all of my MLS obsessed friends who gaze into the potentials of a starter home I have a friend who actually owns property in the 416 area code. She is our hero. Subsequently the demographic spread of the shin-dig, lawyers and business people in their mid to late thirties, was a bit beyond my current cabal of acquaintances most of whom are all in various professional schools and who pay too much rent for creaky apartments with leaky roofs in drafty old houses in the Annex.

Not only was this party also geographically out of my safety zone (ie it wasn’t sandwiched between Spadina and Bathurst) but it was also out of my financial league. Kat actually provided all of the booze, for free. It wasn’t one of those parties where your buddy charges you ten bucks for a plastic cup and a keg; Kat served martini’s and wine. I’m also pretty sure she rented wine glasses. The Chairman Mills truck is the number one sign you’re at a party which has not been paid for by the lovely Scotiabank Student Line of Credit.

I should have known something was going to be different when I responded positively to Kat’s Evite. Yes my friends, an Evite… remember, thirtysomethings are NOT of the Facebook generation. In fact my former boss once called me into her office for a very important meeting so I could show her how to set up her profile; we filed that in other duties as assigned. Thirtysomethings also RSVP to events along the lines of, “Joe and I will try and come - if we can find a babysitter…” eek.

As I didn’t know anyone besides my lovely date Julia I realized that this was going to be one of those party’s where I had better exercise a witty answer to everyone's favourite parlor game, “So what do you do?” The simplistic “I’m doing my MBA” makes me sound about as boring as is the reality of doing my MBA (shout out to my Rotman hommies).

Thankfully it turned out I was in fairly compassionate company, it was a house full of MBA’s and JD’s, where the topic of conversation oscillated between the piss-poor economic climate (“at least when we graduated law school, all of the firms were expanding; we thought we were the shit...”) and fine wine.

“A 2004?” Exclaimed Katherine as I presented her with my housewarming gift, a Vintages bottle of red wine. “You shouldn’t have.”

“Don’t thank me. Thank Richard Waugh. CEO of Scotiabank.” I deadpanned.

My newfound friend Mo overheard me laughing about student loans and then admitted that at 36 he was still paying his back, “but don’t worry,” he laughed, “You’ll be fine. We’re totally happy and stuff.” I was a bit surprised that he was still indebted to the bank for his JD/MBA. “Aren’t we supposed to make enough with a signing bonus to pay it all back?” I asked with a modicum of hope. “Things come up,” he admitted. “And It’s a fairly low interest rate.”

“So what you’re saying - is that these aren’t our Carlsberg years – they’re our student loan years?” Mo nodded his head affirmatively as I downed as much free martini as I could. With the ongoing financial crisis would I even find a job? Without a job how was I going to pay back my student loan? Without paying back my student loan how would I ever afford another martini at the Four Seasons? Kat’s house was, at this point, the next best thing to the Avenue Bar.

Meanwhile Jule had found herself a new bestfriend in Mo’s wife, Elle. Elle was fairly concerned that her 14 year-old had recently received his first blowjob; she had discovered this because someone had written so on his Facebook wall. The generational cleavage once again reared its head (no pun intended) and part of me thought - comparatively who hasn’t found out if an ex was on the receiving end of a blow job from a new person via Facebook?

Mo’s wife used to be a publishing executive in New York before they moved back to Canada to raise their 4 kids. For a mother of 4, she looked amazing, “I do yoga four times a week.” Which explained how she fit so well into a pair of Rock and Republics (And on top of that she advised me where I could get them for cheapsies in NYC, take that Rainbow).

“We’ve become so conservative,” the wife later lamented. “We used to smoke joints and Mo had the longest, nappiest hair. Now we’re suburbanites…” Elle yawned and as the clock struck 11, the party goers vanished into the night letting Jule and I down the last of our free martini’s.

Just a few days after Kat’s party, on New Years, Jule and I went to a party with our professional peers: ie people in professional school, people who have just graduated from professional school, and people who are applying to professional school.

“It was like going into the future.” I told everyone as I regaled them with tales of what people were wearing (Designer denim! Diamonds!) and their jobs (they were venture capitalists and partners in big important law firms) and their lives (they own property!)

“But were they happy?” Everyone asked.

“Well… they didn’t seem unhappy.” I answered truthfully.

And maybe that’s why we never got around to figuring out time travel; it would ruin the surprise.

Rogue at Rotman

It was the wise words of my mother who declared way back in August that, "Rotman wasn't ready for me."

"What do you mean?" I asked. "I made a cheer: R-O-T-M-A-N - that's the way you spell Rotman."

"My point exactly." She said as she raised her eyebrows in worry.

B School? Surely the integrative thinkers at 150 St. George could handle an expressive aesthete in a J. Crew sweater. Besides, I was in “Section 1 – We Have More fun!” How bad could R World be?

By the time late September rolled around, as I was knee deep in debits, credits and something our professor kept referring to as sigma, I began to wonder what in Gods name I had got myself into. Not only were my initial marks fairly sub par, even by the standards of the Rotman [where a 9 is perfect….] grading scale, but also mildly disconcerting was the accompanying class-wide grade distribution and standard deviation analysis. The whole thing felt fairly mean; and by mean I ain’t talking about the expected deviation of a random variable.

Rotman, which introduces students to McKinsey’s “think outside the box” motif, can be a fairly isolating place for those of us who may not fit the mould of a traditional business school student. From the often times confusing subject matter to the hyper competitiveness, first year sometimes feels like a marathon. Running into your Rotman nemesis, the section keener, at Second Cup doesn’t help either.

“So what did you do this weekend?” They ask.
“Chilled, I think I’m still recovering from Saturday night.” I admit and order a large coffee, which will hopefully get me through two hours of finance, where I wonder if I’m the only one juvenile enough to laugh when Professor Goldreich introduces the cum day of a stock dividend to the class.
“Oh you didn’t start the MCV case analysis?”
“No.”
“You know it’s due this Tuesday.”
“I know.”
“It’s just that we also have the group assignment due then as well – so if you didn’t start that…” I smile and nod amicably as my mind wanders: how Lady Gaga gets her hair like that?

As if such conversations weren’t alienating enough, in a cruel twist of fate the Gods have given us Facebook, the great social capital of the modern age and the schools unofficial gossip girl. Facebook is nice enough to let me know how my classmates have outdone me on the latest finance case. After all they’ve probably updated their status four times since they started, with the final, most offensive slap in the face: “Section Keener is finally done Southport Minerals Case and finally leaving Rotman.” Newsfeed time: 3:34 am.

A friend of mine almost de-friended a classmate over their Rotman related status updates.

“What if, they set their alarm at 4:00 am, wakes up, change their Facebook status and then go back to sleep.” I hypothesized. “Just to make the rest of us feel bad?”

A second year once told me that the first year Rotman experience was about taking 265 students, putting them through the same rigorous process, and bringing everyone up to the same base level of knowledge. “Its like a pasta machine” he said, “Someone’s wheat, someone’s water and we mix you together and force you out into similar strings of pasta.”

So what exactly do you do if you don’t want to become a piece of spaghettini at BCG for the rest of your life?

Think al dente; and go Rogue.

The great downfall of R-World (and perhaps of most business schools) is the emergence of the so-called B-School state of nature, which at times can be nasty, brutish and short, and where a seemingly diverse class of students is simply delineated into a West-Side Story-esque montage of Consultants versus Bankers.

Paradoxically this state of nature is in fact the opposite of how business schools are meant to be. Why when we entered the doors of Rotman did we shed our individualism to become a merry band of identical soldiers in Roman branded knapsacks? Especially when business schools are meant to breed “creativity”, “entrepreneurship” and inspire “leadership”.

My solution is to go rogue.

Going rogue is a state of being, a mindset if you will, that suggests success by flying under the radar and going your own way. It assumes that by acting as your own boss you may actually produce better quality, more noticeable work. And in today’s economy, as traditional b-school firms are cutting jobs and internships like Wal-Mart is cutting prices, there is an even greater need to go rogue.

Most importantly, rogue, in fact, further builds on the Rotman school of thought and the integrative thinking ideology. If integrative thinking is “the ability to face the tensions of opposing models, and instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generating a creative resolution of the tension in the form of a new model that is superior to each.” Then the rogue individual is in fact best able to discard obsolete models because they are concentrating less on what’s expected of them and can actually concentrate on creating creative resolutions.

So if Rotman’s getting you down: Go Rogue!


P.S. I can see Robarts from my class!