Author: Dan Dickinson

"Kids had never been attacked in this kind of way"

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Yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of Columbine, the familiar title given the killings at the Columbine high school in Littleton, Colorado. CNN yesterday ran a piece about the release of a new book — Columbine, by Dave Cullen — which I’ve been meaning to pick up. The big draw of the book for me is that is tells the real story of what happened and debunks many of the myths which sprung up in the immediate aftermath. Among them:

  • There was a group of kids at Columbine called the Trench Coat Mafia, but Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold weren’t part of it.
  • The killers did not target jocks (those wearing baseball hats, as it’s sometimes reported) or black kids. There was no discernible pattern to their killing.
  • Harris and Klebold, though clearly unstable and dangerous, were not outcasts or loners, nor was their rampage apparently caused by bullying.
  • Cassie Bernall, reported to have been killed when she replied to the killers that she believed in god and subsequently made a martyr by evangelical christians, in fact said no such thing. Another student was asked whether she believed in god; she answered yes, was shot and lived.

The first three myths are explained by psychologists in the CNN article as being persistent because they were (irresponsibly) reported immediately after the killing, and are convenient for people to believe because they point to Harris and Klebold being misanthropes, different from everyone else, conveniently monstrous. People don’t like to think that normal people can do terrible things, so they cast them as evil. While not logical, this is understandable as a coping mechanism.

The last myth, though…that’s the one that gets me. By the fall of 1999 it was well established that the rumour about Bernall was false, but her parents still earned royalties from a book about her death called She Said Yes released in Aug 1999 (and reprinted several times) and earned $3,500 per speaking appearance in the years since. Misinformation is one thing; exploitation another.

Even I adore ya, my Victoria-aaa-a-a-a

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According to Richard Florida’s latest in the Globe, I’m living in the wrong city.

MID-CAREER PROFESSIONALS (Age 29-44)
1. Ottawa-Gatineau
2. Calgary
3. Whitehorse
4. Yellowknife
5. Iqaluit
6. Edmonton
7. Guelph
8. Victoria
9. Toronto
10. Montreal

Hmmm…#9, and behind some cities that I really have no desire in which to live. Also, the older you get, the better an option Toronto is for you, according to Florida: It’s #2 for families with children, #1 for empty-nesters and #2 for retirees. It doesn’t even show up in the top ten for single people. Not that I am, but that ranking says something about the city, or at least Florida’s perception of it.

I suppose I’d have to buy Who’s Your City to know exactly what criteria Florida uses. I suspect growth potential of the economy plays a large part (otherwise I can’t imagine Whitehorse-Yellowknife-Iqaluit going 3-4-5), but there are likely specific industries centered around Toronto and Montreal that would skew the scores for some people.

Anyway, having just gotten a taste of Ottawa winter (and having lived there for an entire humid-ass summer), I don’t think that #1 rating’s gonna sway me.

Komisarek vs. Lucic, part II

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Beginning Thursday night, for the 32nd time in their history, the Montreal Canadiens and Boston Bruins will face each other in the Stanley Cup playoffs. This is as storied a rivalry as exists in sports — TSN recently listed some of the more memorable meetings over the past forty years — and I’m more than a little bit excited about it.

That said, I give Montreal almost no chance to win. Boston finished first in the east, miles ahead of the Canadiens. The Habs sucked after the all-star break, and seemed to turn it around before struggling down the stretch when the Leafs cheap-shotted their leading scorer and best defenseman Andrei Markov, knocking him out of the lineup. The Bruins owned the Canadiens this year.

But…when these two teams meet, it can always get crazy. Last year the roles were reversed — Montreal #1, Boston #8 — and it took Montreal all seven games to finish them off. Their final regular season game, last Thursday, was a classic and went to overtime before Boston won. In the past few years Montreal beat Boston as both an 8 seed (2002) and a 7 seed (2004). So I think the odds are against them, but if Alex Kovalev and Carey Price can turn it on, Montreal could pull off the shocker.

Final note, courtesy of Joe: the Bruins have some awesome tv ads:

"Death is the road to awe."

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Over the last few days, in between spring cleaning and sucking back Cadbury easter eggs, I’ve watched a few movies in an attempt to rescue our PVR from the crushing weight of so many hours recorded:

The Last Winter (imdb | rotten tomatoes) started off reasonably well by building tension in a remote Alaskan oil field, but to borrow a phrase from Western Canadian hockey fans: holy man did it ever die. It took a nose dive of truly epic proportion right around the time that [spoiler alert, but it’s so ridiculous that you wouldn’t believe me anyway] the giant ghost moose showed up. Yeah, you read that right. I guess it might’ve been an elk or caribou, but it was definitely some kind of giant green ghostly quadriped with antlers. I think they tried to pass it off as Windigo, but…yeesh. Not even Connie Britton in her underwear could salvage this. I am stunned that it scored 79% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Similar pattern for Hancock (imdb | rotten tomatoes) which started off funny and kind of interesting, then got dumb, then got cheesy. Will Smith had lots of good lines at the beginning but then…droop mope yawn boring.

Fortunately The Fountain (imdb | rotten tomatoes) didn’t follow the same pattern as the other two films. Actually, it didn’t follow any pattern. I’m still processing it, to be honest, and I think it’ll take me a few days to figure out whether or not I liked it. It certainly felt like an accomplishment, to weave those three stories together so tightly…I just struggle with whether the stories were good. Whether they should have been woven together. I also struggle with how Hugh Jackman seems to constantly act as if he’s on a broadway stage, in that over-enunciating, shouting for the back of the house, bare your teeth kind of way. Anyway, that’s a different topic. I guess the fact that it’s stuck with me for several hours says something. Those other two films faded like like a fart in the mist.

Good timing, Black Angels

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Because I’ve had so little time to peruse new music (pro tip: say the phrase “peruse new music” out loud…it has a certain quality) my IN tray is filling up. Here’s what I should be getting to but amn’t:

  • asobi seksu . hush
  • bishop allen . grrr
  • black angels . passover
  • bob mould . life and times
  • elliot brood . ambassador
  • fanfarlo . fanfarlo
  • gaslight anthem . the ’59 sound
  • great lake swimmers . lost channels
  • mirah . (a)spera
  • thermals . now we can see
  • tindersticks . waiting for the moon
  • william elliott whitmore . animals in the dark

Anything there I should skip? Anything that should jump to the top of the list?

Help me I am in hell

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Dear Rogers & Bell: collectively, I wonder if you would be so kind as to please eat a dick.

Here is what I’ve had to deal with today, in ascending order of shittiness:

  • your websites: impenetrable, convoluted, error-ridden and (in Rogers’ case) excruciatingly slow
  • your customer service: uninformed, ill-equipped and speaking into what I can only assume were tin cans tied to strings, based on the sound quality of the call
  • your hold music: Michael Bolton? Really?

In closing, fuck all y’all. Happy Easter.

Garbage in, garbage ou…uh, actually, I guess in this case garbage stays.

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Not long ago, on the way home from work my Zen randomly played “Eat Junk Become Junk” by Six By Seven. While I listened I studied the subway ad in front of me. It was an ad for an MTV reality show. I couldn’t help but make the connection.

“Eat junk become junk” is just another way of saying “you are what you eat”, something we’ve all heard since we were kids. No one really doubts that the badness of what we eat affects our overall health. It’s not the sole determining factor, obviously, but it does matter. Doctors, medical studies, common sense…they all tell us so.

So why doesn’t the adage apply to music? Why not books? Why not movies or television? Aren’t the worst of these just empty calories, the Twinkies and triple-bacon cheeseburgers of culture? Aren’t people just jamming the same crap into a different orifice? I would think we would consider these toxic materials as harmful to the mind as we consider toxic food harmful to the body.

And yet, we hear people describe the benefit of vanilla TV (Two and a Half Men, anyone?) being that they don’t have to think, they can just have a laugh. They describe “beach books” the same way…something you just read but don’t have to think about. Worse yet, “reality tv” deliberately misleads viewers, making them think these shows are actually happening unscripted, trying to warp the viewer’s idea of reality rather than try to find entertaining reality to film. Music so banal and oversampled there’s no shred of musical innovation or feeling left at the heart of it. Movies slapped together to lampoon scene after 30-second scene of fleeting pop-cultural references funny mainly, and especially, to those whose news-gathering begins and ends with TMZ. At best these are vapid space-fillers; at worst, mind-numbing distortions. Alone they do not make you stupid. But they certainly lean that way.

Let me preempt the usual cry: that I’m arguing against fun. That’s a weak case, unless you would suggest “fun” can only equal “stupid”. Millions of things are fun, and funny without being weakly, patronizingly so.

Let’s maybe try showing this graphically. FlowingData recently posted a chart titled “Music that makes you dumb” courtesy of a CalTech grad student. It doesn’t show that listening to crap music makes you dumber. It just shows that people who listen to music like Lil’ Wayne, Carrie Underwood and Taking Back Sunday do worse on their SATs than those who listen to stuff like Radiohead, Bob Dylan and Beethoven.

Look, I’m not saying people should stop watching American Idol or listening to Nickelback any more than I’m saying they should avoid eating at Carl’s Jr. three times a day. I’m just saying that everyone knows they shouldn’t eat at Carl’s Jr. three times a day. For some reason they just haven’t figured out that it’s harmful to put other kinds of junk in their bodies too.

"Then Serenity Ends."

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According to the Onion AV Club, NBC has moved Kings to the dreaded Saturday night time slot. While timeslots matter less than they used to in the Tivo era, I would have to think this signals the end of the series. At least the rest of the season will air, or so says TOAVC.

I didn’t think Kings was a great show, but I think it had great ingredients (Ian McShane foremost among them, but also the politics, Brian Cox in a secret trapdoor room, the sheer awesomeness of Dylan Baker and Eamonn Walker, and the Shakesperean comic relief duo) and it was certainly better than most network TV shows.

Too bad, though, I enjoyed having Swearengen-lite on TV. Somebody needs to get McShane in a room with David Mamet. I don’t care if it’s about copper mining or oral hygiene, just make it happen.