It’s hard to believe I haven’t been there for a whole year! That’s the longest I’ve ever been away from the city. I’m excited, if a little bit stressed, because what started out as a nice relaxing vacation has become a fully booked plans-and-packing-palooza. Poor Stark, I don’t think I’ve allowed us any time to ourselves. Between back to back games of Scrabble, bouts of beer drinking with assorted friends, Mets games, Liza concerts, trips to Coney Island, five mile runs, and voyages out to the outer reaches of Westchester, every evening is now occupied. And now that my parents have sold their house and need to be packed by the end of August, every morning will be spent working and every afternoon spent packing and going through the last of my stuff in New York. Fun fun fun!!

In my positive news: Porter Air for the win! This will by my first time flying Porter, and barring some horrible disaster, I am well pleased. I booked a flight from Toronto Island Airport to Newark a few months ago for $99 bucks. Already that’s cheaper than Air Canada, and leaving from and heading to way better airports. Air Canada requires an hour long trip out to the noisy, hectic Pearson, where they inevitably leave three hours late with no reason or explanation, and then eventually arrive in La Guardia, an even noisier and more overcrowded nightmare of an airport, out in the nether regions of Queens. Toronto Island Airport, on the other hand, is a short cab ride and/or free shuttle ride away, conveniently located to downtown Toronto. The island is a thirty second ferry ride away from land. You could swim it, if you felt inclined to touch Lake Ontario with bare skin.

But, I’ve gotten ahead of myself. So, a few months ago I booked my flight. A few weeks ago, I realized I would have to change it to a week earlier. I called them, and not only did I not have to sit through five years of “Press 2 for French, press 3 for assisted suicide, press 4 to hold FOREVER AND EVER,” but a human actually picked up the phone after two rings. They were friendly and helpful and being that the flight I wanted to switch to was actually cheaper (only 59 bucks from Toronto to New York!!), THEY GAVE ME MONEY BACK. Who has ever heard of such a thing?

So, this morning I got up hella early to leave for the airport, expecting the usual hassle. No, I took my cab down to the cheery ferry dock, checked in, hopped on the ferry, admired the view of downtown on the short jaunt over the water, was through security in two minutes, dropped off my bag, and am now sitting in the clean, quiet, and peaceful lounge in a comfy chair with my FREE cup of coffee and my FREE cookie, typing away happily on my FREE Wi-Fi. What is this nonsense? This isn’t how air travel is supposed to be! Air travel is supposed to be overpriced and full of surly staff, extra charges, noisy terminals, and rude security guards. This is just wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Get me back to Air Canada. I can’t take this courtesy and competence.

Massive List of Things to Do
1. Finish processing backlog of photos
2. Add new photos to portfolio
3. Update website
   • Redo this ugly blog page
   • Rewrite photography page intro
   • Change “Video” button to “Audio/Video”
4. Rework running plan
5. Organize audio files
6. Backup documents, photos, music
7. Watch Final Cut Pro and Garageband tutorials, download Audacity and Painter
8. Get creative rear in gear
   • Coney Island
   • St. Jamestown
   • Lesbian short
   • Don Q
   • 101 Unfinished Movies
9. Start packing for NYC!!!!

Woo hoo, have I been getting a lot of reading done lately. I’ve made a point to skip off to bed at a reasonable time, thus having time to actually read more than two pages before going to sleep. Why didn’t I think of this before? Everyone else has books sitting on their bed stands and in movies, the wives are always reading in bed while the husband is out having an affair/killing someone/running the country, and yet the thought of reading prior to sleep never occurred to me until I moved to Toronto. Huh.

So, some assorted reviews for my future reference and for possible use on Stark and my queer book/movie review site, if we ever get that going: (more…)

Life has been hectic lately. Work is out of control and, in addition to my regular job, I’ve also been doing some emergency copy writing, which is really fun, but also a crunch in terms of deadlines. I’ve been powering away at my running. I ran over 10K last week, which was exciting and also encouraging, as I registered for a 10K race at the end of July before I had actually hit that distance successfully and was starting to worry that I had hit a plateau and wouldn’t be able to increase my distance in time. I am starting to develop some tightness in my right calf that I’m worried about, though, and I’m hoping that stretching will keep it from becoming a problem before the race.

The article about the Canadian Club project was finally published in Time Out Chicago last week. It made the front page of the site, which was awesome. I’ve sort of reached a bit of a block while thinking about doing an adbusting blog. I just have a million projects going right now, and the thought of working on all of them at once has left me with no choice but to retreat to the couch to read magazines.

But, in exciting news! My parents came to visit and brought me two old cameras they had found while getting ready to move. One is a Cine-Kodak 8mm camera, which is really cool looking, but unfortunately 8mm film is no longer manufactured. And who can afford to process film anyway?

The other is a Voigtlander Brillant which, miracle of miracles, is a medium format camera that uses 120mm film! Stark and I are going to get the lens cleaned and buy some film for it, and hopefully many photographic adventures will be had.

This weekend is Pride, and I’m hoping I’ll get some good shots of the crowds.

Now, on to some general notes on things I’ve seen and read lately. Not really full reviews, but just for my own future reference:

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So I got what I hope was the final response from that woman at Beam Global. I refused to communicate by any method by email, and she was set on me calling her, so… there shall be no communication. In her last email to me she sent me their marketing code of practice. This pdf discussed their high standards and their commitment to responsible advertising.

Oh yes, they have very high standards. Here is an example of their high standards, which was linked to me by Audra Williams:

On Friday, Canadian Club Whisky will host a spoof protest outside Toronto showings of Sex and the City to “protest the rise of the pink, girlie cocktail and the demise of the masculine cocktail.”

The planned protests will be staffed by young men hired by a promotional company, who will stand outside movie theatres throughout the day holding signs saying “No Pink Drinks” and chanting such witticisms as “Hey hey, ho ho, girly drinks have got to go.”

“It’s kind of reminding people that there are other options,” said Ginny Homewood, brand manager for Canadian Club Whisky. “You can have a sophisticated cocktail that doesn’t look like a martini.”

But isn’t promoting whisky in front of a crowd of avowed cosmopolitan drinkers a bad idea? Would you go to a Big Lebowski festival and make fun of people who drink white Russians?

The campaigns will probably be ignored by those who attend the movie this week, an audience that is expected to be almost exclusively women.

Sigh. Apparently, it’s responsible marketing to pay men to jeer at women going to see a movie so that they won’t buy your product.

Also, I’ve received several new ads for the campaign, including three very bleak ones that I’ve added to the original entry. It’s amazing how this project has evolved. I had this idea that it would mostly focus on female musicians, but it’s really evolved into something else entirely.

Based on a suggestion I received from one of the commenters and from discussions (insane rants) I’ve been having with Stark, we are thinking of starting a feminist ad busting blog. Basically, it would be a collaborative project where people could rework any ads they found offensive and send them in to be posted. It would keep the protest focused on current campaigns, and it would be a great way for lots of people to participate and stay informed. Are there any ad campaigns you’ve found to be particularly offensive lately? Any that you would like to satirize and share with the world? Ideas, people. Don’t force me to go out and buy a copy of Maxim to find these things myself. I shudder at the thought. Also, what should this blog be called? The name is crucial, of course.

I just finished reading Ladies and Gentlemen: The Bronx is Burning by Johnathan Mahler. I was definitely disappointed by this book. I had been looking forward to reading it after seeing pieces of the miniseries on ESPN while roadtripping across the country with my friend Gen. I am not a big baseball fan, but even I found the portions of the series that we caught in our hotel rooms to be gripping entertainment. The splicing together of the Yankees 1977 pennant run with the Son of Sam killings, the blackout, and the bankruptcy of the city was a great concept. ESPN’s use of fantastic stock footage helped bolster the story even more. I find it really sad to say “This book wasn’t as good as a made-for-TV-movie on ESPN,” but that’s exactly what I find myself compelled to utter.
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It always amazes me how far and wide things can spread across the Internet in a small amount of time. I’ve been trying to track the progress of my project through pingbacks and comments, although sometimes it’s not entirely clear how people have found me. Certainly nothing I’ve ever written has garnered as much interest before.

This is how it’s gone so far:

1. After I posted the initial entry there were some responses from the Livejournal community, where the project was also posted, and by fandom related people who probably saw the ad campaign on Trancer’s journal. This got the attention of Rebecca Tushnet , which got the attention of Laura Quilter at Derivative Work.

2. After the post was up, I decided to go looking for other critiques of the Canadian Club ad campaign. I found one on Shameless Magazine’s blog, which I commented on with a link back to my project. Shameless, in turn, posted an entry on the faux ad campaign. This drew the attention of Carmen Van Kerckhove at Racialicious, who asked if she could reprint my post.

3. My post then appeared at Racialicious, prompting two new ads. “Your Asian Wasn’t Quiet” was first posted at Resist Racism and then again at Racialicious.

4. This got the attention of a lot of people, including the f-word all the way in the UK. Awesome! Between Racialicious and The F-Word, the project has spread even further, getting mentions at Faux Real, Mental Hygiene, and Noli Irritare Leones, as well as suggestions for new ad campaigns from a number of people who find Photoshop confusing (who doesn’t?).

5. Finally, and most importantly, today I got an email from a woman at Beam Global, the company that owns Canadian Club. She wants to talk to me about the fake ads. This could be either really good or really, really bad. That’s to be determined I guess. Until I hear back from her I shall nervously eat leftover Thai food and squeak a lot.

Do you know what works better than renting movies that were critically acclaimed and nominated for Oscars? Picking movies with funny covers and/or Phillip Seymour Hoffman. This last batch of movies was far more satisfactory than that last bunch of allegedly “great” films. Hooray!

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Such exciting things have happened today:

Firstly, NICOLA GRIFFITH HERSELF wrote a post that quoted my review of her book. She says I’m funny. Nicola Griffith says I’m funny. Okay, I have to take a moment to regain composure.

And! There have now been a bunch of new ads made for the Canadian Club Fake Campaign. Three awesome ones by Trancer21, one awesome one by Robbie of the fantastic music blog Womenfolk, one from my partner Stark, and two others in addition to that! I have added these to the bottom of the updated original post. I’m waiting to see if I get any more, and then I’ll make a new post featuring the submitted ads.

Also, some fellow bloggers have written about the project:

A legal commentary by Rebecca Tushnet, whom I very much admire, and subtle arguments for subversive billboard alterations and culture jamming from Laura Quilter. Also, the project got a shout out from Shameless Magazine. Hooray!

It’s not too late - make your own Canadian Club ad now!

In honor of Mother’s Day, Stark and I have been working on a multimedia project. I’m hoping that it can really grow and expand, and that lots of people will participate. Here are the basics:

While I was out for a run recently, I saw a new ad for Canadian Club Whisky. The campaign is called “Damn Right Your Dad Drank It,” and features photos of white men doing manly things circa the Seventies. There are several of these ads. One reads “Your Dad Wasn’t A Metrosexual,” another reads “Your Mom Wasn’t Your Dad’s First.” The one that really annoyed me was “Your Dad Had Groupies.”

Here are the ads, click on the thumbnails to enlarge:

You can see some of their ads on the street here, including “Your Dad Had a Van for a Reason.” Ew, that one is just gross.

I find this campaign offensive on so many levels. First of all, if Canadian Club is attempting to change their image to increase sales, I find it odd that they are being so exclusionary with their re-branding. Apparently, the only people invited to the Canadian Club Club are White Males, Ages 18-30, women and people of color need not apply. It’s not that surprising to me that a company is aiming at that small demographic, but the way they’re doing it is truly offensive. Basically, they are appealing to men who miss the days (whether or not they were born yet) of grabbing the asses of their secretaries, playing a few rounds at the all-white private golf club, and then going home to their wives, the happy homemakers who would mix them drinks, cook them dinner, and wait on them hand and foot. None of this women’s lib, civil rights, limp-wristed liberal bullshit that men are expected to follow these days. No, let’s go back to the days of rampant sexual harassment, before women could expect to be seen as equals and before the gays turned all those masculine men into pansies with waxed eyebrows. Let’s return to the days when men were men. Please.

Adding insult to injury, visitors to the site are invited to “Put your own dad (or yourself or your friends) into one of our Damn Right ads. It’s downright easy to do, and when you’re done you can download your ad and send it to your friends.” This Ad Maker is where I got the idea for the following project: I was going to remake the ads, but with women. Women who were old enough to be my mom or my grandmother, and with tag lines like “Your Mom Didn’t Shave Her Legs” or “Your Grandma Built Fighter Jets.” The first one I made was “Your Mom Had Groupies.” I included a selection of female musicians that I love, some that were well known, others that were not. Here is my version of the Canadian Club Damn Right ad (click the image to see a larger version):

The musicians are, starting at the top and going counterclockwise:

The Raincoats, an all female post-punk band, who started making music in the late Seventies. Here’s their page on YouTube. Buy: emusic or Amazon

Jesse Mae Hemphill, blues artist and electric guitar innovator. Watch her sing “You Can Talk About Me” on YouTube. Buy: emusic or Amazon

The Go-Go’s, all-girl rock band. Reunited after so many years, check out their homepage. Buy: Amazon

Precious Bryant, Southern blues singer songwriter. Visit her website. Buy: emusic or Amazon

Joan Armatrading, English singer songwriter. Visit her website. Watch on YouTube. Buy: Amazon

Okay, so that’s the end of my contribution. Here’s where the fun participatory multimedia project comes in. As I was working on my version of the Canadian Club ad, I thought, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if lots of people made new versions of the ad, just like Canadian Club intended, but replacing all the men with women that they find inspiring or influential or whom they love?” So I’m throwing this out to all of you - make a new Canadian Club poster. Put together a “Your Mom Had Groupies” poster with your own set of female musicians. Who would you pick and why? You can make your own poster, or you can just leave a comment, telling me who you would choose, or posting a song that you love. To make it easier, I’ve made a template that you can download. Click to download the larger file:

Here’s the whisky glass to add as a new layer when you’re done putting in new photos.

If you want to play with the other ads, that would be fantastic as well. Put in photos of your own mom, make up new catch phrases, anything at all. Maybe at the end we can send what we have created to Canadian Club and show them how much potential business they’ve lost by not making even one ad catering to women, or we can post our own ads around cities, showing our disgust with the campaign. If I get enough musical selections together I might make up a playlist that will be available for download. So, go forth and be creative! Whatever you make, you can post it wherever you like, but leave a link or an image as a comment here, so that I can pull everything together.

And we now have some of the first reader contributions to the fake Canadian Club campaign (click for larger versions):

“Your Mom Built Fighter Jets” and “Drunk Driving Is Illegal For A Reason” were made by my partner Stark

“Your Mom Had Groupies” was made by Robbie, from the fantastic music blog Womenfolk (featuring appearances by Cyndi Lauper, Nina Simone, Chrissie Hynde, Stevie Nicks and Kim Carnes)

“Your Mom Wasn’t A Stepford,” “Your Mom Played Sports,” “Your Mom Was A Pilot,” “Your Dad Wasn’t Your Mom’s First,” and “Your Mom Wasn’t Your Dad’s First” were made by Photoshop addict Trancer21

“Your Dad Was A Real Man” was made by Wonko.

“Your Dad Wasn’t Your Mom’s First” and “Your Dad Had a Van For a Reason” was made by Coolbyrne.

“Your Asian Wasn’t Quiet” and “Your Dad Doesn’t Buy It” were made by Resist Racism.

“Yours Was the Best” was made by RedHeadInRed.

“Your Mom Knew About Poisons” was made by Elena Landriscina.

“Your Dad Always Apologized” was made by Mental Hygiene.

“Your Mom Was Your Dad” was made by Roman_Machine.

My comments on the spread of the project across the Internet can be seen here