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Canwest News Service
WE'RE NOT BUYING …
Bottled water. But we'll admit: We're torn. Our tap water is perfectly drinkable– unlike so many other countries in the world– and shipping water around is ludicrous. Yet Sir Paul Smith's new holiday striped riff for Evian ($5) sure makes it tempting.
WE'RE RELIEVED TO HEAR …
That there's no such thing as cool and uncool anymore. So says Brian Eno in Britain's Prospect magazine. Writes the man behind No Wave: "There's a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don't have the same localized stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It's all alive, all 'now,' in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it's old or foreign has left the collective consciousness."
WE'RE WILLING TO RECONSIDER …
Our instinctive snickering at dog shows, after reading Jesse Smith's cogent defence of the form on The Smart Set. "You could note how many of these people pursuing perfection in dogs are themselves fairly overweight, and eat too many funnel cakes, and dress in a way that would kill any chance of a social life were they actually in high school," Smith opines. "Spending time at the dog show, however, the group came less to resemble some kind of wacky subculture, and more just the culture. A common trait of Americans– blue and red, gay and straight, X and Y, whatever– is that they largely want to be good at something, to be recognized for doing at least one thing well, and maybe that's at the expense of everything else. Poetry writing, bass fishing, cooking, competitive eating, you name it."
WE'RE GLAD WE NOW KNOW …
Which U.S. states enjoy sweet potato casserole the most. Just in time for their Thanksgiving, Allrecipes.comreleased a series of maps showing which regions search for which recipes. The Deep South loves its sweet potato casserole; apple pie is a New England thing, but also big in Idaho (which reminds us that the French call potatoes "apples of the ground"); Texans do love their devilled eggs; Californians need instructions to make mashed potatoes; and the Deep South is the prime consumer of both macaroni and cheese and sweet potato casserole. WE'RE SLIGHTLY DISAPPOINTED …
To find out how Motley Crue decided to put umlauts in their name. We'd always assumed it was a carefully considered plan to maximize their credibility in the Germanic world, but in fact serendipity played a larger part in the decision. As Vince Neil tells Vanity Fair's Eric Spitznagel: "When we came up with the name, we didn't even know what umlauts were. I can remember it like it was yesterday. We were drinking Lowenbrau, and when we decided to call ourselves Motley Crue, we put some umlauts in there because we thought it made us look European. We had no idea that it was a pronunciation thing. When we finally went to Germany, the crowds were chanting, 'Mutley Cruh! Mutley Cruh!' We couldn't figure out why the f—they were doing that."
OUR OBLIGATORY DECADE LIST
As a newspaper, we are obliged to print an exhaustive and completely subjective list of the highest highs and lowest lows of the last 10 years from now until the end of 2009. Don't like it? Neither do we, but we can't get out of it. Without a point-form of what just happened, we may well be doomed to continue repeating the years 2000 through 2009 — and the only conceivable upside of that is that on the second go-round, we might be able to come up with a decent name for the decade. So without further ado, our brain-dead list:
Quality film trope of the decade
The braided narrative
Political accessory of the decade
Lapel flag pin
Font of the decade
Helvetica
Overused magazine front-of-book feature of the decade
What's on your iPod?
Misheard lyric of the decade
New York Synagogues (for New York City Cops), The Strokes
Emoticon of the decade
Tie between ;) and :-\
Excuse of the decade
Spending more time with family
Unfortunate pant of the decade
The skinny jean
Worst Best Picture of the decade
A Beautiful Mind
Crossbreed of the decade
Labradoodle
Canadian filmmaker of the decade
Guy Maddin
