I Was Searching for the Band

The Tire Calendar

So, do you know about the Pirelli calendar?

Briefly, it's a high-art nudie calendar put out by the Pirelli tire company as a corporate gift. They've been doing it since the mid-60's and it's considered a high-brow version of all the babe calendars out there. Rich sophisticates spew their jism at the creativity and eroticism of this calendar. I've seen some examples from previous years, and it basically looks like that Chris Isaak video with that model where they roll around the beach in black and white.

This year, Terry Richardson is the photographer.

Is there anything hip left of the year 2000 that stockbrokers and people who send their kids to private school don't know about? LCD Soundsystem, American Apparel, riding bikes, Holgas, PBR - is nothing sacred? Or at least exclusive? What, so now, when I'm telling this girl at a party that I would really like to photograph her using a Terry Richardson aesthetic juxtaposed with Cartier-Bresson's eye, she's gonna already know that I want to get naked with her in the street while carrying cameras and taking pictures of each other?



Fuck.

Hecho en Mexico!

I was in Mexico recently, and as per my custom when visiting foreign countries, I checked out their porn.

I was somewhat surprised that there wasn't a bigger porn industry in Mexico, what with America's love of "Latinas", but taking some cultural considerations and some debatable statistics into account, it makes sense that American content still rules the porn roost.

Mexicans read a lot more paper materials than the US and Canada. There are a lot of newsstands on the streets of Mexico city. They sell a variety of magazines, covering insightful topics like celebrities, wrestling, sports and politics. Not all newsstands carry porn, but if they do, they've got Hustler, Playboy etc., usually the Spanish language version, and often several months or even years out of date. A few have the much smaller Historias Calientes and a few other Mexican mags. I'm attributing this high literacy to the fact that most people probably don't have internet access the way we do up here.



These magazines are smaller (5.5x8.5) and feature a real Mexicana on the cover. With very little exceptions, these women are dark skinned, short and, by Northern North American standards, a little dumpy. But this is what Mexican men like (if the TV show Family Guy is telling it straight). And they have a lot of this to choose from on the streets of Mexico. The Mexican woman prefers to accentuate the fat around her hips by displaying the "muffin-top" that so many of us North of Mexico are afraid of. While on the streets it seems that this is the ideal, the Mexican media mostly ignores women who are a) dark skinned b) short and c) not thin. Advertisements and TV shows are filled with leggy brunettes and blondes from Argentina and other latin American countries who wear short skirts, dance around and contribute to the inanity of Mexican TV. Instead of showing off the Juliana's of Mexico, we get an idealised version of beauty based on what Hollywood and New York runways have established as "babe". Big deal, we do it up North as well.

Unfortunately, besides the spread of Juliana, the magazine featured re-prints from other silicone and blonde porn magazines, a few 'you're never going to believe this' sex letters, interviews with people who claim to have sex in movie theatres, some porn movie reviews and then some swinger ads. The Mexican content is slim. This may have something to do with a certain modesty of Mexican women that is not shared across Latin America. They don't wear skirts generally. No joke. Seriously, I've been to Havana as well, so I can say these things about the Southern hemisphere. Like, tight and skimpy is synonymous with Latin America, but in Mexico, it's just tight. Skimpy is so not in this season.

Luckily porno comes though to feed Mexican men their true desires. Meet Juliana, in all her rounded belly, 5 foot one, droopy-titted glory.

Boner Warning!

Achtung! Cuidado! Warning! Attention!

If you are prone to popping huge boners when presented with twenty-something, thin, brunette babes who host pirate radio shows, take high-art photographs of other babes, and have a serious passion for obscure European minimalist nu/no/post/new-wave electronic music, you had better give your pants some room to POP. VERONICA VASICKA is your new favourite search term. Here's a video to get you started.

Veronica Vasicka | Minimal Wave

If you don't get chubs from that, here's a link to some of your style babes

Sellouts!!

If you're going to sell out, it may as well be something as dope as this.



Props to the down ass homies at Oxnard Toyota. Hear that beat? Nod Factor: High.

Most rap used in marketing back then was of the variety that we used to do presentations with in grade 7. Like this style, wack:

Drink Local (Assholes)

First off, I've got nothing against PBR. It tastes decent, in that way where if you haven't had a good beer in a while, you're like, "hmmm, not bad for the price!" I also appreciate it's identity as a "working class" beer that has been established over the years. Because as someone who is not working class (I've been unemployed for the last 6 months but my "net worth" (yeah, I calculate that) has actually increased due to the upswing in the markets where I have retirement savings and other investments), but modest and somewhat envious (not so envious as to desire the workforce of manual labour - yuck!) of that class, it's nice to be able to appropriate a symbol of my connection to that group. Half of my family is white trash after all.

Anywhoo, what ticks me off about PBR is that there are so many more sensible, local, independent and cooler alternatives to it. Here I will present two excellent ones that we should be seeing a lot more of in Vancouver.

If you go to a hip bar in Vancouver, you can get a can of PBR for $3.50 (more?). That's right, you can pay for one, what you could get about three for in the liquor store. I understand bar mark ups and get that considering the alternatives at the bar, $3.50 isn't that bad of a deal, but if we're drinking PBR to appropriate its value as the working class beer, paying that much kind of ruins the effect, don't it? A pint of a local, similarly tasting swill on tap would make more sense. Also, out of a can?! At a bar?! That is not on, son. Cans are for drinking around the fire, or at home when you're too lazy to wash the glass afterward. Cans are disgusting and impede the flavour, unlike bottles or glass, which enhance it. It's poor barmanship to serve in a can. This has got to stop.

So why is PBR available in bars, despite its can-only availability? I'll tell you why. Some local slimy hipster representative for whoever owns PBR (I wasn't able to find out who markets it in Canada) who is knowledgeable of the current, plaid/bearded/"I'm so poor I have to drink at DTES bars, yet my cellphone bill runs me upwards of $100 a month"/dirty denim fad knows that PBR is in demand by a certain demographic (that's right Eddie Underground - you're marketable) and knows how to exploit that fad. At the same time, the Pacific Brewery (union made in Prince George) and Shaftebury (I thought it was brewed in Delta - that's what it says on the can, but the internet is telling me they are a Sleeman subsidiary and now brewed in the Okanagan) seem to have missed the marketing boat. To be fair, Pacific beers have been claimed by the hipster crowd, although for the most part, I haven't seen them at many hip bars. But to be fairer, coming from a local source, and tasting quite excellent (Shaftesbury 420 Lager - I'm looking at you), it seems that the obvious choice should be to not support PBR. Where's the indie spirit? Where's the acting locally? The locavorism? The hometown (home province) pride? The anti-establishment attitude?

But what really gets me, is the sad plea that has been put on the side of the new Pacific Traditional BC Lager can: "Spirit of Hope. Keep jobs in BC and support Pacific Western Brewery, BC's longest running independent brewery"

How sad is that? Dear Sirs, here we are in Prince George, toiling away making brews for buddies and good ol' boys throughout the province, but things are not so rosy. There is a spectre haunting our prosperity: the US version of us. Sure, they may be union made (can't confirm this), and they may proudly display their tradition on their cans like us. They may, like us, be a favourite amongst farmers and foam and mesh ball cap wearers, but fuck that, we're local. And you're killing us every time you crack a can of their low quality brew. We're low quality too! We do it up workin' man style! We make a high alcohol beer called Cariboos, which has a play on the word booze in it! We even make a beer called Dude Beer (sorry, but that one sucks, guys)! Please support us! Please!

So in conclusion, we are comparing apples to apples here: both brews are union made, have working class cred, taste pretty good considering the price and are equally cheap (maybe a ten cent difference). Yet one is a Von Dutch cap that you may see some twenty-something celeb drinking on TMZ, the other two are my grandpa's CPR hat that I drink in my home. Which would you rather be? Spencer and Heidi or me?

What's Out, What's In for 2010

OUT: lol
IN: actually laughing out loud

OUT: WTF
IN: What the Hey!

OUT: the word, amazing
IN: applicable adjectives that actually describe rather than inflate that object being described hyperbolically. Recent examples where amazing was incorrectly used, (and in so doing, its power and meaning is reduced) include: Susan Boyle's new video, Juicy Couture perfume and this. Seriously, dude - amazing? Neat, nifty, cool, stupid, yeah, but amazing?

OUT: moss
IN: lichen

OUT: Ballin'
IN: Huggin'

OUT: Celebrity "news"
IN: Actual and real engagement with our communities, the people within them and the issues that affect them (jk!)

OUT: Lil' Wayne
IN: Some other ugly multi-hundred-thousandaire telling lies to teenage boys. Or Coolio.

OUT: Top 10 lists
IN: Oddly numbered lists (7 will be especially popular)

OUT: Tweets
IN: Little messages written on paper and left under rocks in the park.

Hype!

One of the reasons I love hip hop is because it is one of the few musical forms that gets me excited. Like real excited. Like hype. Like a smile inadvertently appears on my face after a few bars of a beat and I'm sitting there by myself with this dumb smile on my face. You just know what's dope and what's not - you've just found the latest Banger of the Month. I dig other music, but with hip hop, within seconds that track can grab you and give you all the excitement of some kids rocking out on adrenaline and bravado at a cypher.

It's unbridled enthusiasm for a guy whose enthusiasm is always bridled.