Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Dressing for the ladies

I've been a reader of men's magazines (make that men's style magazines) for a long time. I was especially obsessed with the early 1990s incarnation of Esquire and then Details and more lately Men's Health, which shows you where my interest have gone as I have gotten older. Despite their differences, which show themselves mostly in their feature articles (art auctions or war? Mr. Mom or CIA conspiracies? toxic meat or George Clooney?), they all have the same kind of simultaneously snobby-chummy tone throughout their service sections.

The men's magazine snobby voice is the kind of know-it-all who would be insufferable if he wasn't so helpful. (I realize he's in a newspaper, not a magazine, but The Globe's Russell Smith is an current best-practices standard of this genre.) And then there's voice of the ordinary Joe who, like you, starts out knowing nothing about fragrances or high-end watches but through a process of discovery is, by the end of his 250-word blurb, able to make very specific recommendations for every reader. These two modes of conversation are quintessentially guy-magazine-y, and they're anchored in the two ways guys talk to other guys.

So when Men's Fashion (published by the equally generically titled women's fashion magazine Fashion, which is published by the slightly more specific Toronto Life) fell out of my Globe last week, I was intrigued. (Notice the ordinary-Joe lead-in to the topic at hand; perhaps I should have thrown in a "Gee whiz.") Here was a men's style magazine edited and written mostly by women, perhaps in their spare time while they were waiting for Fashion's proofs to come back from the printer. Of the four men shown on the contributor's page, two had worked on the magazine's sole photospread--shutterbug and stylist--one had written on grooming ("Men may prefer washing up just once a day..." starts the article but not on the page cited by the contributor's blurb) and one wrote a feature article on defective sperm.

The rest was pretty much written by women. As someone who believes that anybody can write about anything, the strange thing was--I could tell without looking at the bylines.

From the sexual connotations of the cover headline, "Playing Around With Justin Timberlake"--it would be hard to believe a straight man would have produced the same text--to the first-person lecture on sharing a bathroom--"Do men even want this space?"--there was something of a nagging wife/girlfriend throughout the magazine's pages. Even the cover line for the sperm article pointed an accusatory finger at the reader, "Actually It Is You." Hard to image a buddy, or even a know-it-all, speaking that way to a friend.

There were moments when long pent-up stereotypes about men seemed to have finally found a place to be joylessly unleashed: "For many men, shopping is a necessity rather than a hobby--something that needs to be done when old clothes no longer fit or look right." And moments when men were merely afterthoughts: "In the world of perfume, a great name is worth its weight in gold. So if women enjoy Pleasure and Joy, guys now have an outlet with Play and Play Intense."

It dawned on me that this wasn't a magazine for men but a magazine for women about men. They're the ones the editors are assuming are doing the clothes shopping, so the editors have merely cut out the middleman and gone straight to the decision maker. It makes sense. That's why the "That girl" pin-up is so modestly dressed; she's been styled threatless to the core readership.

But then there was advice about avoiding zits by showering regularly. And the spotlight on cars emphasized little other than power. Power, muscle, power. Wouldn't these female readers who are so eager to get their husbands to spend money on Ben Sherman coats and John Varvatos sweaters want to rip out these gasoline-fueled pages before their significant others saw them and were tempted to siphon of some of the disposable income slated for Harry Rosen?

That's when the light went on. There are no readers in mind for Men's Fashion. Only advertisers. Once the thing is sold by the sales team, it hardly makes a difference what fills the gap between the Audi ads and the Paco Rabanne, neither of which would be interested in buying into a catalogue that's just that, a catalogue.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

The new season looks a lot like the old season

I know that in some circles, Soulpepper can do no wrong. But, really? Four remounts, including two shows, Glengarry Glenn Ross and Billy Bishop Goes to War that were highlights in the season we're just three-quarters of the way through.

Then we have works by David French and Joe Orton again, admittedly different ones. Sure, they're great plays by great playwrights but there must be others kicking around. Is the modern theatrical canon that Soulpepper loves so much really that tiny? Obviously, they made money off these plays--last season was exceptionally strong--but what does it say to subscribers, who would have seen Billy Bishop less than six months earlier? In some ways, it's less a theatre season, closer to a Broadway run, with shows running until all the available audience has seen them.

There are a few interesting and surprising choices. Sharon Pollock's Doc gets a little female can-con in there, and A Raisin in the Sun much needed colour. The academy pieces, especially Daniel Brooks' non-traditional mounting of The Cherry Orchard also look promising.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Flame wars on Craigslist

Suddenly fire-eating is an in-demand skill. Here's the first ad:

Photog looking for fire breather (GTA)
from craigslist | tv/film/video/radio jobs in toronto
Hello,

I'm looking to do a portrait of a fire breather for my portfolio (and for fun:) Please check www.fordphoto.ca for examples of my work. As compensation I will provide a sweet 8x10 or 11x14 fully re-touched print as well as a DVD of some of the "out takes". Lets do this!

Thanks for reading

Mike


And here's the second:
looking for fire breather paid gig 150 (toronto)

just like the guy below I will supply a print and a dvd with the images plus the pictures will be way better. Also I will pay you for your time. I know that fire breathing is very dangerous ( burns or to your heath). This is a incredible talent and you should be paid something for your time, giving it away for free when the other guy will use it to further his career is stupid. 150 is not a lot of money but I will do it on your time. If you have any other fire skills please list them with a simple photo of your self. It might even be cool to have more than one person at a time.

cheers

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Changing the world with music


Picking favourite bands when you're young is a little like betting on a horse race without even knowing it. Pick someone like the Eurogliders, and the horse doesn't even make it out of the gates. I loved the Thompson Twins and figured they would be around for a long time--I remember some music magazine calling them the future--but they barely stumbled into the 1990s. If you backed U2, you never stopped counting your winnings. Whitney? It's still up in the air.

Then there was Prefab Sprout, a band with an obscure name that never charted very high, never broke into America despite the exuberance efforts of 1988's From Langley Park to Memphis to take the world by storm. That single-filled album, with a candy-store of production tricks by Thomas Dolby, was their best bet and, still, they remained a cult act. Under pressure from the record company, they had even shelved Protest Songs, the more forlorn album they had recorded before it, in order to break into the charts. Their last release was a 2001 concept album about cowboys, though not country music, except a reworked version of the "Streets of Laredo." Which is all to say that Prefab Sprout are an unlikely endurance runner. To cite them as one of my favourite bands has been to invite a scrunched face and a "Who?" It is to end a conversation about music. I wouldn't have guessed that would change in the late noughts.

If great philosophy is untimely, so is great music. It's been funny over the last few years to hear younger bands like Stars cite Prefab Sprout as an influence, to have them name checked in the New Yorker and The Guardian. It's the world that's changed, moved itself a few degrees closer to the sensibility of the Paddy McAloon, the man at the heart of the Sprouts. The release this month of Let's Change the World With Music, an album slated for release in 1992 and then shelved, is the ultimate vindication. Its contents were placed in a time capsule, let sit for 17 years and, voila, it's something fans of Beirut might enjoy.

It's easy, from the commercial point of view, to see why this album was not released. Each of the songs touch on the idea of music, which seems indulgent, and God, even more so. With its Irving Berlin and Ira Gershwin flourishes, its grandiosity and genre-less-ness would have seemed out of place in the era of grunge. But while the definition of hit music has narrowed--aren't a handful of producers responsible for most of the songs that chart nowadays?--the definition of pop music has relaxed. Even the 1990s production values of this reworked demo don't come off poorly compared to, say, Cut Copy or Lily Allan.

At the core of Let's Change the World With Music is McAloon's song-writing skills, which produce melodies which worm their way into your head after only a few spins. "I Love Music" sounds at first like a half-hearted Frank Sinatra parody, but gets you with its genuineness, its coy phrasing, those little pauses in lines like, "Who's my hero? The unnerving, unswerving Irving Berlin." In another homage to tunefulness he yearns for sweet gospel music to "carry this boy away from danger." If movies about movies aim to show us how our visual landscape is created, then music about music shows us how our emotional landscape is renewed and regenerated.

McAloon has gotten flack for the pomposity of some of his themes; one UK critic said the album title was worthy of U2. And though he he's not being sarcastic with songs like "Earth: The Story so Far" there is a humility that's inherent in the Prefab Sprout enterprise, which started at as definitively anti-romantic with a faux-blues song like "Cruel," which always struck me as a celebration and critique of feminism ("Cruel is the gospel that sets us all free, then takes you away from me"). McAloon has matured since then, realized that celebrating love without deconstructing it is part of what music does. But no matter how much he wants to change the world with music, he's well aware of his own limitations and that of art. It's not a choice between self-aggrandizement and irony, it's a choice between giving up and pressing on. And if digging through their vaults for these gems is pressing on, I figure I've backed the right horse.

Sunday, September 06, 2009

Mutual exclusivity

An ad in The Globe and Mail for the Bloor-Yorkville shopping area has one bubble with the text, "We're cultivating a greener bloor with wider walkways & greener spaces" and the next one with "Over 7000 parking spaces." I suppose, they may be parking the cars on the walkways and green spaces, but aren't these contradictory promises? It's that whole promise of "you can be environmentally sensitive and not change anything about your life, you can reduce your carbon footprint and consume material and energy at the same rate you've always consumed them."


Ah, no.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Craigslist posting of the day

I would have posted the link but it's since been flagged and removed.

Get Paid To Destroy Objects, and Take Photos, Shoot Video (N/A)

from craigslist | art/media/design jobs in toronto

Okay, here's basically it; I enjoy watching people (Women, specifically) destroy a wide variety of objects - electronics, glassware, what-have-you; Rates vary and are negotiable, paid upon delivery of the Photo / Video set, or webcam session. This position will be on a strictly virtual basis, and payment is delivered via Paypal.com.

Work is intermittent, so don't expect a regular income.