GOD HATES MY PONY TAIL

Or something.

I'm not really sure what it is that god hates about me, but apparently, in some way, I've pissed him off. I mean, didn't his son have long hair and a beard? But I've never seen the messiah portrayed with his hair tied back (though you'd think this would be a practical accessory for a guy who was so busy healing lepers, tossing vendors out of churches and walking across water and all) so maybe my dubious fashion sense is seen as being profane ... Or perhaps this dislike is based on about 40 years of me denying his existence, questioning the need for such existence and just generally being a pain in his omnipotent ass

So I'm not really sure why god hates me, I just have proof that he does.

This past weekend I was scheduled to be held hostage by family and friends here at my house. It's a strange and devious act of terrorism that happens every year. It's like a dark ritual, somehow connected to the movement of the stars, the turning of the calendar and how much more grey my hair has become in the interim ...

The previous week or so had been perfect weather; sunny, warm, dry. This boded well, if the weather was warm I may be able to keep the invading horde out of my sanctum santorum Let them erect their yurts in the yard and keep them out of the house; this is always a sage strategy, let them in the house and they're prone to breaking the furniture and covering the wall with graffiti and replacing all my coffee with tea ... the horror!

So we cleared space in the yard and I erected a barbarous stone and wood altar to appease them (ok, it's a picnic table but Costco was all out of altars) and I set my two trained attack dogs on guard duty (they will actually bark when someone enters the house, then they will show you where the dog cookies are) and glanced up at the sky. All was well, the sky was clear ...

But the big ponytail hating bastard in the sky had other plans. And it rained. Roll back to last year's birthday blog ... more rain. If I live another 40 years and this pattern persists, then I predict a flood ... a really really really slow coming flood. Clearly, instead of buying a new picnic table, I should have invested in a few lifeboats.

But the one thing about invading pagan terrorist hordes, they have their own powers. While the rain poured down on me as I sacrificed meat on the fire to appease the rain gods, we built a fire and it scared god's rain back ... OK, technically, the rain had stopped by then, but if you thought this blog had anything to do with technical truth, brother, you're in the wrong place

The next day, the day the horde was leaving was, of course, sunny and hot. At least god was on my side at that point ... no excuse for them to stay ... not that I could have prevented them from hanging around. Nor would I want to

So another tussle with the cranky old bastard up there. Licked my wounds, pressed on, and showed him that year after year, the cranky old bastard down here will never tap

THE BLACK AND WHITE OF COLOUR

This is not a review of the recent movie The Last Airbender. I have not seen the movie, nor did I ever watch the anime series upon which it's based
However, this movie is kicking up a bit of controversy. The young actor who plays the titular character is white, yet the Airbender apparently is Asian, so everyone is kicking up a fuss
Again, I am not that familiar with the story but it's a fantasy, based in a fantasy land. I don't believe that any of the chracters are identifed as Asian. If you look at the images from the anime I wouldn't call the drawings necessarily evocative of an Asian person; most anime, although it originates in Japan, never look Japanese to me.

If you look at the picture above, the character does certainly seemed dressed in a style that reminds me of ancient China. But the kid is not Chinese. But is he supposed to be Chinese? Again, this is a fantasy world

I know in the past there has been a big issue with ethnic characters being portrayed by actors completely outside of that racial type. I think all of the original Charlie Chan's were white guys in atrocious make up and accents so horrible you wondered how this guy was supposed to be smart ...

For a long time in Hollywood movies, if a native American had a role that was something beyond drunken comedy relief or cannon fodder, it was almost always assigned to a Caucasian actor, usually with make up that made his skin look irradiated.

Then you just have some flat out absurdities like my man John Wayne as Genghis Khan ...
But these absurdities aside, this raises an interesting point. Where does acting end and reality begin. With the state of CGI as it is, with the aliens of Avatar seeming so real, it's possible we could make any race look like any other race in a movie ... should we? Isn't acting the process of being something that you are not? If a Caucasian actor should not play a Chinese actor, should a Gentile play a Jew, even if there are no immediate physical differences? Sometimes the difference between a character and an actor is the accent. Ralph Fiennes affects a German accent in Schindler's List and he's a Nazi. Mind you, Kevin Costner fumbles around with some kind of accent/speech pattern in Prince of Thieves and he was still no Robin Hood
I understand that a lot of these issues stem from the racism that permeated Hollywood for a long time where a white actor in ridiculous make up and ludicrous accent was seen as a better option than actually hiring an actor of the character's race. And I don't think for a minute that that mind set has totally disappeared. Obviously we are seeing more actors of "colour" on screen, or is it just that Denzel and Morgan get all the "black" roles. Is three or four black actors who are true stars much of an improvement over having none at all? In well over a hundred years of movie making?
But even if you have more black actors in the mainstream .. and there are still a lot of other races with almost no representation .... it seems to me that they are there because they are black. That they only play black characters. In other words, the script calls for a specifically black character but if the script says that Bob is just some guy, would a black actor get it? Or do we assume in our culture that "just some guy" is always going to be white.

Is it racist to hire a white actor to play a Chinese character? Is it racist to hire a black man to play only "black" characters? Is it racist to care about race at all? Should Denzel be able to play Mao? Should Jackie Chan be able to play Malcom X? Well no to both. But still, it is acting, it is all make believe.

Then you get into the area that still exists today: that a character of a specified Asian race can be played by any Asian. I grew up in a time where you say Asian actors on TV, but the same guy would play Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese. In the recent movie Blood, the Last Vampire, also based on an anime, the lead character is clearly identified as Japanese, but she is portrayed by a Korean Actress. Is that right? Isn't this one race being portrayed by another race? Or is that "close enough"

There are some real issues at play here, no doubt about it. But I think Last Airbender is a poor platform from which to express them. Just as Avatar was a poor platform to address the portrayal of native Americans in movies .. these are fantasy films. But they are popular and people try to shoehorn in their perspectives on the back of that popularity. Unfortunately, it makes their opinions seem a tad specious and insincere.

Now the Duke as Genghis Khan, there's a serious issue for you ... "Let's circle the yurts, pilgrim"

TALL SHIPS TORONTO 2010

Argh, me hearties, reef that sail, mount the mizzen mast and keep ye hands off my poop deck ... Um, no I'm not doing a Pirates of the Caribbean imitation. This past weekend the Tall Ships returned to Toronto Harbour
It's been two years since we've been to this festival and a few things have changed. One, they moved the date up later and it resulted in some of the best weather of the summer thus far. The other thing that changed was that the festival now has commercial sponsorship, which meant there were a few more boats but it cost you to board them. Yay commercialism
But let's not dwell on that. Let's dwell instead on a hot sunny day, a nice breeze blowing through the Gap into the Inner Harbour, and all manner of sailing craft spread along the quays.
There was a pretty good collection of ships on display. A combination of Great Lakes ships and ocean going replicas. One of them was a ship we've seen before, the Pride of Baltimore which, strangely, is out of Baltimore Maryland and the Niagara

There were some sea going ships as well... sort of. They brought in the Bounty. Well not THE Bounty, the one that was the scene of naval history's most famous uprising (not mutiny) but a replica. But the replica that was used in the Marlon Brando version of the movie.

The real story of the Bounty is pretty interesting with very little relationship to that told in at least two of the movies. There is no real evidence that Captain Bligh was quite the tyrant he was made out to be; some in the British Admiralty thought him too lenient. It seems more likely that the crew of the Bounty, once they got a load of Tahiti's natural resources .. those being breadfruit and half naked women .. had no desire to return to dreary old England, and wives, debts etc. So they set Bligh adrift in a dinghy in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and didn't he manage to get himself right back to England with just the most meager of supplies and navigational gear; to this day it's considered one of the most amazing feats of ocean navigation. Not that this replica had anything to do with that, but it is still a very pretty ship

Pretty as well is a tall ship when she is under sail, tacking over towards the Island
We took a little harbour cruise to see the ships from the water and to gain a view of the city that we are normally denied. The boat we were on didn't really allow for good video, but Collette managed to get a few pics but then, she always does

There were a couple of unique ships, like the Empire Sandy billed as the largest sailing ship currently on the Great Lakes ..
... and the Unicorn, with its all female crew
And for me, there was a blast from the past, the brigantine St. Lawrence II a youth training ship that sails out of my hometown in Kingston Ontario
All in all it was a great day down by the harbour. Living in the center of the GTA as we pretty much do, surrounded by our large parks and hiking trails I sometimes forget that Toronto is, indeed, a harbour town. The harbour was a huge part of this city's past and had a great deal to do with its growth. On our tour we saw that much of this city's industry was built along the harbour where they could be serviced by Great Lakes traffic; bringing in supplies and taking away merchandise. While we there the Redpath Sugar Company, the last factory in the harbour, had several boats at its docks, bringing raw sugar cane from South America. I'm glad that most of that industry has left the harbour now and what remains are the quays, the gulls and this weekend at least, the sussurus of the waves against wooden hulls.
So here's the video, the music is by Rivertribe out of Australia

Tall Ships Toronto 2010 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

DAMSELS AND KNIGHTS AND VIKINGS, OH MY!

The beginning of July means it's time to dust off the jerkin, polish up the mail, sharpen the bodkin and head off the Renaissance Fair at Casa Loma ...
OK so Collette and I didn't dress up, it was too hot and we really don't have the gear, but lots of other people did, as they do every year for this annual event held at Toronto's very own castle.
This year's fair had some of our returning favorites and a few new attractions. One of these were the Brothers Grimm, billed as "twins separated at birth". And like all brothers, they seemed to never agree about anything

What they offered was an energetic and fairly funny stunt show with hand to hand, sword play and even whips, as you'll see in the video at the bottom of this post ... yes, of course there's a video.
A returning favorite was Zoltan, a magician and stunt man. Now, Zoltan is no ordinary magician. He is not Zolan the Magnificent or Zoltan the Incredible .. no, he is Zoltan the Just Adequate
What he had were some card tricks, a little self humiliation, fire eating and a fairly twisted sense of humour ... so yeh, we like Zoltan.
There was a bit of conflict at the Renaissance Fair. The Lords and Ladies of the Castle were in a generous mood, inviting all us commoners to their lovely manse but they took it a bit too far. I mean, really, who's idea was it to invite the Vikings?

At any rate, there were Vikings camped on the lawn. I think they were out of beer. Why else would they have stolen the fair maiden?

Well, the knights of the castle took some exception to this .. in typical medieval fashion as you'll see from Collette's photo's and in the video

Even after the Lady was rescued, the carnage continued as the Vikings began to squabble amongst themselves. I heard something about "lost honour" but frankly, I think they just ran out of beer.

Besides the new shows there was also the familiar, such as gypsy dancers ...
... and the guys from the Barrie Swordplay Association
In the video I just gave a few highlights of their performance but they really do put on a great show. To see more of it, check out the video I did last year, the Assc. is about half way through it
So a day in the sunshine, in and out of this unique urban castle, surrounded by damsels and knights and vikings .. oh my! Seriously, what's not to love

Casa Loma Renaissance Fair from Collette Scale on Vimeo.