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.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, November 27, 2009
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 รก 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.
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 รก 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.
Monday, May 18, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
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.
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.
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