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Yesterday, via Vero, I discovered a couple of charming videos featuring British chrildren’s choirs singing pop hits. First, there’s Lily Allen’s “Chinese”:

I thought it was all girls, but you can spot a few boys in the latter half of the video. And then something a little more old-school:

Of course, that immediately reminded me of the Langley Schools Music Project, which has achieved an odd sort of fame. Here’s the first part of a documentary about the project:

Over the past two years, I’ve cycled more than I have in the rest of my adult life combined. We had bikes on Malta, and I regularly used my old clunker to get exercise or to ride into town for supplies or a movie. Here in Victoria, my Dad kindly loaned me his old bike, and I use it pretty much along the same lines.

Becoming a regular cyclists has made me more observant of some cycling-related behaviour. So, in no particular order, some random thoughts on cycling:

• My new favourite pet peeve is asshats who cycle on the sidewalk. As somebody said on Twitter when I complained about this: “it’s called side-walk, not side-ride”. If you can’t cycle on the road, then leave your bike at home. When someone’s riding on the sidewalk toward me (and they’re frequently grinning like an idiot), I refuse to change direction. If they run into me, I’m pretty sure they’re going to end up worse off.
• There’s an odd camaraderie among cyclists with which I’m uncomfortable. They always want to chat with me when we’re stopped next to each other at an intersection, or when we happen to be locking up our bikes at the same moment.
• As you probably know, there are a lot of retirees in Victoria. I’m often struck by how many more elderly men I see out riding than elderly women. Why is this?
• I still think Critical Mass is a lousy approach to cycling activism. When I think of Critical Mass, I think of this insightful comment that Christine left on my blog three years ago:

I watch these guys go by, yelling “we’re not holding up traffic - WE ARE THE TRAFFIC!” and I wonder about the definition of traffic, and whether they fit into it. Before they got there, traffic on my way home consisted of people obeying traffic laws, and doing their best to get home in time for dinner while allowing others to do the same. Critical Mass riders seem to take glee in subverting all that. They are the traffic? Huh. How is it, then, that they storm through lights and disregard numerous traffic laws, getting away with it just because there are so many of them?

Apparently Edmonton has a municipal airport a stone’s throw away from the centre of town. It’s called Edmonton City Centre Airport (also known as Blatchford Field), and has been around in some form or another since 1929. Google Maps says it’s 4.4 km from the airport to Edmonton’s City Hall, or seven minutes of driving time.

I gather that the airport is used for regional flights and private air travel. It also gets annually converted into a race track for the Edmonton Indy. Larger aircraft and international flights come through the Edmonton International Airport, which is 26 km southwest of the city centre.

According to the CBC, there’s been a long debate about the airport’s future:

Some of the people who have made submissions to the public hearing want the downtown airport closed and the land developed into a transit-oriented community with housing for thousands of people, along with commercial and retail space.

Other presenters have told city councillors the airport must stay open because it is vital for the business community. They describe it as a hub to the north and argue that it is critical for medevac flights. About 4,000 medevac flights a year go through the facility.

I learned about this whole business from Mack’s site. He’s started NotMyAirport.ca (here’s the associated Facebook group), which argues for replacing the airport with “a new transit-oriented, green community”, as well as an expansion of Edmoton’s NAIT campus. Removal of the airport would also apparently change building height limitations in the city, which is a good thing. A dense city, after all, is a healthy city.

Mack launched his site in response to SaveOurAirport.ca, which argues that the airport “plays a vital role in making Edmonton one of Canada’s leading health centres, as a hub for air ambulance and other essential health services for all of Alberta, the Northwest Territories, British Columbia and Saskatchewan.” This claim is disputed by the CEO of Edmonton Airports in the aforementioned CBC article, who says “”what the City Centre Airport offers is a tremendous amount of convenience for corporate travellers and those people who live in the downtown area and have private aircraft.”

SaveOurAirport.ca is run by the Alberta Enterprise Group. Looking at their board members, they seem to be mostly local business owners.

Are you an Edmontonian? What do you think of this debate?

Early on in “Away We Go”, Maya Rudolph’s character asks her boyfriend, “are we fuck-ups?” Because Dave Eggers co-wrote the script, the answer is surely a resounding “yes”. In an earlier post mentioning Eggers’ first novel, I said “Eggers is a great stylist, but must all of his books feature such aimless losers?” In truth, I’ve only read two of his books, but that’s kind of how I felt about “Away We Go”.

The movie’s plot is frustratingly thin. Verona (Maya Rudoplh) and Bert (John Krasinski) are expecting a baby, and so travel the country looking for a new home to raise a family. The film’s inciting incident–Bert’s parents announce they’re moving to Belgium–reveals the protagonists as selfish slackers. It’s as though we’re watching Juno and Paulie, fifteen years later. This isn’t really a legitimate critique of the film, but I found the lead characters’ charmless entitlement really frustrating. So much so that it distracted from my enjoyment of the film.

Which is too bad, because the movie is comprised of a bunch of great scenes. The script, though overly concerned with meta-discussions of language, feels truthful, and the supporting cast–Jeff Daniels, Catherine O’Hara, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Paul Schneider, among others–are all excellent in their one-off scenes. But the movie never seems to coalesce into a fully-realized work of art. Like Eggers’s books, it meanders.

Sam Mendes directs, so the film is a visual treat. In “American Beauty” and “Revolutionary Road”, the British director seemed a little obsessed with the American suburb. In this movie, Mendes heads out on the highway, looking for adventure. The result is splendid road trip fare, from Phoenix to Montreal.

Roger Ebert liked the movie. A. O. Scott did not (I see he started his review with the same as I did), and I like what he has to say about the protagonists:

And even though they express themselves with a measure of diffidence, it’s clear that they are acutely, at times painfully, aware of their special status as uniquely sensitive, caring, smart and cool beings on a planet full of cretins and failures.

Metacritic gives the film a 57, which feels about right.

I assume that, given all of the lost cat posters in my neighbourhood, one of my neighbours is a werewolf. You may recall this carefully-worded poster featuring Mr. Softie. He was “heavier set”.

Yesterday I spotted a yet another new missing cat poster. Mylo (troubling spelling there) apparently a “has a ‘belly’”:

It’s charming the way the owners choose to describe their pets’ girth. Why is ‘belly’ in quotation marks, anyway?

As regular readers know, Julie and I have been working away on a business book. It’s been a long process of writing on weekends, evenings and ferry rides, but we’re getting down to the brass tacks.

I’ve got a chapter and a half left to write, but all of the other eleven chapters are complete and well on their way through the editing process. The book is scheduled to be released in the latter half of October, 2009.

Here’s what the cover is going to look like. Click for a super-size version:

Our publisher, No Starch Press, has posted a sample chapter (PDF) on their site. I’ve embedded it below:

Sample Chapter from Our Social Media Marketing Book, “Friends With Benefits” - Get more Business Documents

Glancing through that chapter, I spotted a couple of errors. The final proofreading hasn’t been completed, so no need to worry for the time being.

It’s exciting to see a bit of the book laid out, and to see it on Amazon and such. I just need to finish another 5000 words or so, and I can move on to resurrecting and re-theming our ebook site.

It’s not often I feature cat fights from Spanish (or maybe Latin American?) soap operas on this site, but Richard sent this along and I couldn’t resist. You have to watch until about the 1:10 mark, when there’s a rather unexpected turn of events.

I think all that hair helps to cover up the lousy fight choreography. Hey, Spanish speakers, what are they fighting about? A man, no doubt.

On several occasions in the past, I’ve railed against established artists permitting their music (or images of themselves) to be used in ads. According to Bill Wyman (thanks to AdHack for the pointer), that ship has sailed.

There is no longer even a debate, let alone a stigma. “If you did an advert, you were a sellout,” notes Billboard Executive Editor Tamara Conniff. “The Rolling Stones broke that when they allowed the use of ‘Start Me Up’ for the Windows campaign. Though there was an initial backlash, it suddenly made it okay for bands of integrity to do commercials. Now, it’s almost as if as an artist you don’t have a corporate partner [or] commercial, you’ve not really arrived.”

Mr. Wyman still doesn’t think it’s a very good idea. However, he wants to quantify sellouts, and devise “an objective formula for determining just how offensive a particular rock-based advertisement is”.

Tongue firmly in cheek, he enlists the help of a mathematician. They invent a formula for calculating what he calls the Moby Quotient. Here’s an illustrated version, with a number of examples. The Clash’s “London Calling” selling Jaguars? Bad. Bachman-Turner-Overdrive’s “Taking Care of Business” selling Office Depot? Not so bad.

Julie and I recently finished watching season four of “How I Met Your Mother”. It’s obviously just “Friends” 2.0, but I’ve grown to enjoy it. I like how the show gets very post-modern with plots and time lines. Plus, of course, Neil Patrick Harris is kind of a revelation.

This season both of the female leads, Alyson Hannigan and Cobie Smulders, were pregnant. In the second half of the season, I enjoyed watching the meta-show of “Conceal the Pregnancies”. The show’s producers devised all sorts of creative strategies to hide the actresses’ growing bumps.

You’ve got the clothing options, which the show deployed early on. There’s the big flowy scarf, the loose-fitting shirt and the big dressing gown:

Several variations of the big bag:

The rather unconvincing newspaper:

The cereal box:

Finally, if you’re looking for something really formidable, just have the actor stand behind something solid, like a cooler:

Or, she can carry something and stand behind something:

I posted a photo set of 18 bump-hiding tactics on Flickr.

In what I’d imagine to be a nod to this issue, both actress’s characters make a joke about being pregnant in the final episodes of this season. I’m not sure what the thesis would be, but there’s surely a Women’s Studies essay in the metaphor of hiding these women’s pregnancies. What’s the opposite of ‘emasculated’?

Earlier this week I attended a church service at the Abbey of Gethsemani (great URL, there). This was Compline, the last of the seven ‘hours’ or prayer services which the monks recite daily. Because part of the monastery’s mandate is to “turn no stranger from their gate”, the public may attend any service.

There was a vaguely voyeuristic feeling to the proceedings, however. The public sits in a cordoned section at the back of the church, just past the narthex. We’re separated from the rest of the church by a railing (though those wanting blessings or take communion pass through a gate at the appropriate time). The monks, most of them clad in a kind of cowl (you can see a bunch of them here), amble in and take their places in pews. The ceremony begins–there’s no obvious officiant–and you watch.

Extraordinary Lives

Rituals aside, I was actually fascinated by the life the monks lead. It’s exactly what you’d expect. It’s also nothing like what you’d expect.

Every day (with no exceptions–monasteries apparently know no weekends), the monks rise at about 3:00am. They take their first prayer service at 3:15am–Vigils. Then, I gather, they go to work.

In terms of work, I kind of imagine the Abbey like a big, permanent summer camp. You need cooks, caretakers, gardeners, cleaners and so forth. Monks fill many of these roles, though they’re getting a bit long in the tooth and do hire laypeople for certain work.

The monks also make chesse, fudge (with bourbon–very tasty) and fruitcake on site, and apparently do brisk business through their online store. They also run a retreat centre with 45 beds. It’s very popular, and is booked ahead of time for months.

There are also scholars (many have advanced degrees) writers and artists among the monks. I spoke with a monk–a published photographer–who recently went into Louisville for a Photoshop course. Another was consulting on a movie script with a number of Hollywood names attached to it.

These monks are a cloistered, silent order. So while you might expect them to live in a kind of jovial brotherhood, I guess they actually choose to live solitary lives. I heard of one monk who, in twenty years of shared living, had only had one conversation with a fellow brother.

The Last Generation of Monks

There were 400 of them in the early fifties, but through attrition and departures it’s down to 50 mostly old men. Judging from what I saw in at Compline, I’d say the average age is north of 65. One brother, in his nineties, rolled into church in a motorized wheelchair. The abbey was founded on December 21, 1848. The next morning, forty-four monks said the seven prayer services. They’ve been said every day since. They probably won’t be said in 2048. This is almost certainly the last generation of monks at this abbey.

It’s an extraordinary lifestyle, and I’m glad to have glimpsed it. I feel about the abbey the same way I do about Cuba under Castro. I’m glad I could experience these places when I did. Before they change.