Post Pic

I've just been sent a scan of the National Post piece from today. When shooting this pic the photographer said "pretend you're a disinterested back-alley amputee" and I did my best to oblige.

Post

The incredible PR company here got me 5 days in the National Post, beginning today.

I was asked to keep a travel diary of my time here, and these are excerpts. If they seem familiar it’s because all of the content has been pillaged from this blog, or from emails I sent home about my trip, coz I had nothing else to say, let alone remember.

To make it more interesting for myself I took their 250 word limit very literally, and each of the 5 entries comes in at exactly 250 words.

(They write the headlines).

Kidnapping, cloning, etc.

WFMU are pitching the life of Joyce McKinney as a story idea for a film by the Coen Brothers. If you haven't seen it in the news, McKinney was an Appalachian Mormon soft-core porn model and former Miss Wyoming, who, after failing in her bid to woo one of the Osmonds, got together with Kirk Anderson, a 19 year old Mormon classmate. Wracked with guilt over their (apparently plentiful) pre-marital sex, he left her and became a missionary. She hired a private detective, tracked him down to London, and kidnapped him. He was held in a cottage for three days and chained to a bed, where he was repeatedly sexually assaulted. During the sensational trial she had this to offer: "I loved Kirk so much that I would have skied down Mount Everest in the nude with a carnation up my nose."

At the time a woman couldn't be charged with raping a man (her counsel apparently quipped "me thinks the mormon doth protest too much"- yeesh), but McKinney faced kidnapping and other charges. She jumped bail and fled to Canada in 1978 and was sentenced in absentia to one year in prison, but was never heard from again. Until this week.

A "Bernann" McKinney made headlines a few days ago for becoming the first commercial dog cloning customer. A laboratory in South Korea charged her fifty thousand dollars to create five puppies cloned from the ear of her recently deceased pit-bull Booger. The company, RNL Bio, reportedly offered a reduced rate if she assisted them with publicity. Little did they know.

Isaac Hayes, RIP

Songs About Artists

Since seeing Jonathan Richman perform in Calgary in June, I haven't been able to get Pablo Picasso out of my head, even though he did a fairly mediocre version of it. I first heard the song by the LA band Burning Sensations, on the soundtrack to Alex Cox' debut film Repo Man, which I haven't re-watched in ages because the DVD comes in a license plate box and sits atop a shelf, away from my other disks. I was wondering how the film held up and checked its Rotten Tomatoes rating. It gets a near-perfect 97%. Cox followed this film with the higher-profile Sid and Nancy, and then pretty much disappeared. Last I heard of him was the time he got fired from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, to be replaced by Terry Gilliam. You know your career is in trouble when studios think that Gilliam will be more bankable.

Anyway, here's a live version of Pablo Picasso by Jonathan Richman, followed by covers from David Bowie, the Television Personalities and John Cale. Coincidentally all three have written their own songs about artists. Here are the Youtube clips:

Hello It's Me by Cale and Lou Reed from their Warhol tribute Songs For Drella

David Bowie performing Andy Warhol (not to be confused with Bowie performing as Warhol, which can be seen here)

and Lichtenstein Painting by the Television Personalities.

Lastly, the original Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers version, without any video footage, is here.

Other Residencies, 5

I realized that all of the residency info that I've posted has been for programs that have come and gone, mostly as one-offs (even if they weren't intended that way). Here's one that's forthcoming, though I note that the deadline passed a month ago.

Titled Reverse Pedagogy, the program runs from November 10th to December 5th of this year at the incredible Banff Centre. It's hosted by Winnipeg artist Paul Butler who says he wanted to be “…at an exclusive resort away from the art world where all the participants would be locked in — like “Big Brother,” but not televised. That way we could have 24-hour access, and eating and finding our way home wouldn’t be a challenge. No distractions. There would be a chef, a full gym, and a juice bar. A little karaoke, an endless supply of fireworks, a screening room, bikes, croquet, ball hockey, foosball. We would have all the resources necessary to sculpt, draw, paint, take and print photos, make videos, and ceramics. There would be a full library, and a team of technicians to assist us — like an art school set in paradise, but without any instructors.”

Like at his famed Collage Parties, collaboration will be encouraged, but not expected. Butler will plan leisure activities including a film series, readings, as well as such outdoor activities as skiing, snowboarding, hiking, and taking to the waters at Banff Upper Hot Springs. Participating artists include Dean Baldwin and Kristan Horton, two of my favorite Toronto artists, both of whom I worked with at Mercer Union.

The Thick of It

One of my favorite television discoveries last year was the BBC 4 political satire The Thick of It. I was watching the 2005 series at the time, but today found a site that streams the December 2007 hour long special. I can't think of a better way to spend a cranky afternoon than watching this, which is the funniest thing I've seen in ages, besting even the very strong series. One of the main characters does not return (apparently the actor is up on kiddie porn charges) so the special spends more time with the opposition party. But Malcolm Tucker is back, the 10 Downing Street 'enforcer', who is rumoured to be based on Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's spokesperson. He is easily the most unsympathetically vile character on television. The show hires a 'swearing consultant' to ensure his foul language is as accurate and colourful as possible.

Created by Armando Iannucci, who also produced the mock-news shows The Day Today and Time Trumpet, as well as Knowing Me and Knowing You and I'm Alan Partridge, the show is described as Yes, Minister meets Larry Sanders. Imagine The West Wing, if it were:

a) funny
b) good
c) not a vehicle to trumpet the writers' Hollywood version of Liberalism (Republicans initially dubbed it the 'Left Wing', but after 9/11 the producers reportedly tried to be more balanced, which I suspect made it even worse).

An attempted American version of The Thick of It, by Christopher Guest and Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz, failed to materialize. A pilot was shot for ABC but was not picked up and has not aired. Earlier this summer the BBC announced a feature length spin off was going into production, with cast members from the show augmented with James Gandolfini and long time Iannucci collaborator Steve Coogan.