From Maisonneuve:
What if Avatar Took Over Harper’s ‘Findings’?
by Drew Nelles
James Cameron’s mother dreamed of a twelve-foot-tall blue woman. Cameron wanted Avatar’s alien sex scene to be more explicit, Na’vi females had breasts even though the race was not placental, and Hustler will make a pornographic Avatar parody. Google China treated its staff to Avatar after threatening to leave the country.
I have not been posting, but a writerly acquaintance recently told me he googled my name and came upon this thing. (Spell check recognizes neither “writerly” nor “googled.”) So an update is in order. I have been posting sporadic entries at Maisonneuve, though editing work has kept me busy. Please head over there for infrequent writings. This blog will stick around as an informal archive. Here’s what I’ve been writing:
Olivia: A Folk Opera (on a wonderful project that I now miss very much)
Pop Montreal: An Abbreviated Roundup (on the highs and lows of Pop Montreal)
Pop Montreal: Hear Tune-Yards Roar (an interview with the mighty Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards)
Pop Montreal: Edge of the Island (an interview with Patrick Gregoire of the now-defunct Sister Suvi and James Irwin of My People Sleeping)
Pop Montreal: Maisy’s Picks (on what I predicted, rightly or wrongly, would be worthwhile at the festival)
The Sound of the Police in Montreal North (on the death of a young man and a community’s anger)
In other news, I finally made time to write my first piece of pulp-and-ink journalism in a long while. It is about vinyl, books, and aesthetics, and will appear in the Spring issue of Maisonneuve. In other other news, Kelly has been updating her blog with refreshing frequency, while PJ has made a triumphant comeback. Sarah started a blog, too. Joe has long promised a post detailing a delicious beer-and-cheese he hosted some months back. My breath is bated.
From Maisonneuve:
Hetero Republican Affairs are a Gay Conspiracy
by Drew Nelles
The biggest non-Glenn Beck joke in American political circles goes thusly: When a male Democrat has an affair it’s with a woman, and when a Republican has an affair it’s with a man. (It’s homophobic in its own way—why do Republicans deserve ridicule for screwing other men?—but you get the point.) Recently, though, that’s just not true. First there was John Ensign’s deafening silence, and then there was Mark Sanford’s inability to stop those torrents of sappy diarrhoea from dumping out his mouth-hole.
From Maisonneuve:
Who Cares if the Birthers are Right About Obama?
by Drew Nelles
I am a Canadian-born American citizen. I can live and work in the United States, vote in American elections, and even, if I wished to debase myself, run for public office. But can I run for president? That’s less clear.
From Maisonneuve:
Stick to the Union, Even Amid Recession
by Drew Nelles
Of the many clichés to arise during this economic crisis—“golden parachutes,” “too big to fail,” and, worst of all, “recessionista”—one stands out. We are told that unions must automatically stand down during any given dispute, because their members should be grateful to be employed at all. This attitude became part of the North American zeitgeist during the height of the car industry’s woes last year; as a municipal strike in Toronto drags on, it has now gripped Canada’s largest city.
From Maisonneuve:
Iranian Protests Are Not Just an Excuse to Talk About Twitter
Twitter is great for a lot of things. For example, I enjoy mocking people who have Twitter accounts. But you know what else Twitter is great for? Providing journalists covering an uprising with an angle that also happens to include an ultra-popular, search-engine-friendly keyword.
On the redesigned Maisonneuve site:
by Drew Nelles
I didn’t get to the National Magazine Awards afterparty at the Comrade until around 1 a.m., and I briefly stood in line for the men’s room, eavesdropping on Ian Brown, before deciding to leave. It was a long trek back to my friend’s house in the Annex. As I walked along a certain stretch of Queen, alone and wearing a suit, a young woman with a crutch approached me.
by Drew Nelles
If you’ve grown tired of reading self-referential fiction from lazy, apolitical authors, D.Y. Béchard understands. His 2005 debut novel Vandal Love walked the line between On the Road’s roaming spirit and One Hundred Years of Solitude’s generational mysticism, and in so doing established Béchard as one of the few young writers today willing to look beyond his own life for inspiration. Now, in our latest issue, Maisonneuve presents “Learning to Rage,” Béchard’s thoughtful anti-manifesto on making fiction relevant once more. Currently at work on a short story collection called The Opera of War and a novel called The Tower, Béchard spoke with Maisonneuve about cynicism, hatred, and other fun stuff.
by Drew Nelles
Sameer Singh probably knows more about belly dancing than any other journalist-filmmaker out there. In the latest issue of Maisonneuve, he attends an Egyptian belly dancing conference to learn why the country’s religious conservatives want to stamp the art form out. Plus, on Omni television this fall, you can catch his documentary about a longtime friend who happens to be one of Canada’s few male belly dancers. But, as we found out, once you’ve seen nine hundred or so writhing, half-naked bodies, you’ve seen ‘em all.
I guess I’m dabbling in advertising now, albeit for a nonprofit civil-society forum. The special issue of Place Publique I helped coordinate for the 5th Citizen Summit is in the Hour today, though only in the Milton-Parc area, as an advertorial supplement. Montrealers, check it out.
Maisonneuve landed ten National Magazine Award nominations yesterday. (Technically, we got eleven, although for some reason the final tally doesn’t include the nods for Best Student Writer.) All the nominations are for work that happened before I started at the magazine, and there are about a billion noms in all, but it’s still pretty good. Especially when you look at the other mags in the top ten: the rest are either heavy hitters (the Walrus, L’actualité, Toronto Life, Maclean’s, Report on Business) or lifestyle publications (explore, Chatelaine, Cottage Life, enRoute). Plus, Maisonneuve is the only quarterly in the top ten. Everyone pretends not to care about these things, but, you know, recognition is encouraging.
Maisy’s nominations:
Best Single Issue
Derek Webster and Anna Minzhulina
Issue 29
Best Cover
Anna Minzhulina
Issue 29
Best Student Writer
Chris Watt
“Iraq’s Walking Dead”
Humour
Craig Silverman
“My Life in Dépanneurs”
Investigative Reporting
Bruce Livesey
“Scientology’s Defier”
Investigative Reporting
Chris Watt
“Iraq’s Walking Dead”
Science, Technology & the Environment
Fraser Los
“The Green Gospel”
Sports & Recreation
Michael Carbert
“The Old One-Two”
Photojournalism & Photo Essay
Roger Lemoyne
“Serbia, the Sad South”
Portrait Photography
Roger Lemoyne
“Serbia, the Sad South”
Spot Illustration
Jack Dylan
“The Dep Guy”
From This Magazine:
Jillian Tamaki found that literary juries are still learning how to read graphic novels
DREW NELLES
Last year, on October 21, Jillian Tamaki got a phone call from her cousin, the Toronto-based writer-performer Mariko Tamaki. Their muchloved co-creation Skim had made history by becoming the first graphic novel nominated for a Governor General’s Award, in the Children’s Literature (Text) category. Skim, loosely about sexuality, teenage alienation, and Wicca, had already received a torrent of praise and would later make the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books list. Now it was in the running for Canada’s pre-eminent literary prize.
