500 words about Avril Lavigne

Pre-bed channel surfing led to me momentarily happening upon a rerun of this afternoon's Much on Demand (MuchonDemand?) , which, these weeks being these weeks and said weeks being the weeks following the release of Avril Lavigne's latest single and CanCon restrictions being CanCon restrictions, meant I unsurprisingly enough got to see Ms. Lavigne in video form.

I thus note my pleasure that she remains looking rather fecund, and continues to very carefully balance the trashy and drunk-doable with the inaccessible starlet thing. Full marks to her stylists. They wanted to plant the idea in my head that I could hypothetically bump into her and Spouse41 outside some shitty club, talk some smack, give said kid a titular Fat Lip/Pain for Pleasure and lead her giggling approvingly away to the corner for her Happy Ending. And they did. Crafty buggers.

With Ms. Lavigne's continued movement deeper into the heart of her third decade, I can also happily report that the trend line involving the progressive removal of her clothing continues where we left off after album number 2. It would appear fishnet legwear has now fully supplanted ersatz neckties as Ms. Lavigne's identifier of choice. This development I greet with considerable glee. And, I daresay, redirected circulation.

Mind you, enough talk about that. How about some sensible cultural commentary?

See, I believe this video marks the first time we have seen an interface between the concept of Lavigne and the concept of choreography, more specifically the school that traces its ancestry back to Michael Jackson and his assorted zombie groupies.

Yup, li'l Avril has taken it upon herself to do the dance routine thing. Now, we're talking entry level here: Avril, looking calculatedly accessible in her aforementioned hosiery, sort of shimmies in the middle of a pack of reasonably attractive contemporaries; not quite a full-on "Baby One More Time" dance-pop setup, more shades of Gwen Stefani crossover girlrock/dance-pop. Hesitant and restrained as it might be, the line has nonetheless been crossed.

Interestingly, other shots in the video make a point of showing Avril, true rocker that she is, playing along on guitar. Its smells suspiciously like the music video director got cold feet that this might be cited as the video where Avril went Britney and needed a visual counterweight. And, to be fair, Avril looks more natural hammering away on an electric guitar than Lance Bass ever would.

Still, I can't help but feel that with Ms. Spears's fade into self-parody, the brains behind Avril Inc. have realized the coast is clear to drop the act. When bubblegum starlets lipsynching over canned beats dreamed up by fabulously wealthy black men was the hegemonic force in youth music, it was absolutely essential Avril keep both feet planted on the stage, guitar slung over her shoulder, clothing loosely covering her skin. Anything less would call into question her place as pop's Joan of Arc, standing at the head of the army of instrument-wielding non-dancing eyeliner-wearing rebels.

But those days are gone. France is free. My Chemical Romance has sacked the capital. And I'm jonesing for a piece of Joan's ass.

Edit: The artistry in question:

Found wisdom

Found printed on a package of border sauce ("hot," no less) obtained this afternoon at that garden of gastric delights, Taco Bell:

Save a bun.
Eat a Taco.

Goodnight, everybody.

Time well spent at Band Camp

So, this blog is increasingly becoming all about me finding something neat on the intertubes, linking to it, saying something vaguely interesting about it and then letting my legions of fans benefit accordingly. I guess that's a step up from not posting on it at all. And c'mon, would you really want to hear about my day today?

Today's oeuvre comes once again from that merry aggregator of all things mildly smile-inducing, youtube.

This fine gentleman plays the flute. Which is exciting enough, I suppose. But this gentleman also beatboxes. The tricky part is that he's figured how to do both.

At. the. same. time.

And he isn't even black.

The geeky cherry surmounting this delightful confection though, is what tune he chooses to reproduce using said skills. Indeed, after referencing the musical stylings of one great 1980s detective, he medleys into those of another. A hit of A-Team mightn't have hurt, either, but let's not get greedy here.

Edge of seventeen

Somewhere back in the mists of elementary school, it seemed prudent to acquire a lucky number. So I did. I decided 17 was my lucky number. I haven't the slightest foggiest whateverest idea why.

Okay, not quite true. Some ponderance has gone into this. One theory I occasionally toy with ties into the traditional birthdate of my childhood stuffed animal-in-chief Rolf being ascribed to January 17. (The preceding was possibly the greatest sentence I have ever written.) However, I have a distinct recollection dating back to some point closer to this era that the Rolf connection was identified and rejected as some sort of coincidence.

This evening, though, comes some food for thought from science's finest minds. Turns out that I might not be the only person with a 17 fixation. Which is odd, come to think of it, because I never recall running into to trouble fighting with other kids for the "rights" to the number when the matter of sports teams and so on came up.

In other news, Pandora has been pleasing lately in its capacity to play multiple non-shit songs in a row, I have rediscovered my heartfelt affection for Pizza Pops, and I am ready to take the big step and start using blog labels.

International statistical porn

The last post was rather long, so this one will be rather short.

This is the coolest toy I've come across in some time. It's like someone finally did something useful with Flash that didn't involve punching the monkey as it scrolled across the screen.

A good day

Today was a good day. A politician I'm rather fond of is in the news for being on the up and up. And perhaps the politician I despise most throughly is in the news for being on the down and down.

I haven't mentioned a certain Mr. Gerard Kennedy much on the blog, despite my surfeit of manly affection for him. The two random people who stumbled across this blog and don't already know me will need to be brought up to speed on the fact I quite happily worked for him for six months during the Liberal leadership race. He's sharp as a tack and works like a dog. He likes mustard on his hot dogs. His children are adorable, except when they are punching you in the testicles. Go Gerard.

However, I maintained—and still maintain—a strong allergy to fanwank of the Cherniakian school. So, yes, Gerard is a great dude. But he sells himself. (And what he doesn't do, Dan does, far more effectively and intelligently than I might.) The last thing Gerard needed was a little shit like me writing daily dispatches echo-chambering His wise ideas, decrying those who did not pay heed to His pronouncements, and generally kissing His divine ass.

Besides, it was far more fun to kiss ass in person.

So Gerard made public today the fact that he wants to run for federal office in Parkdale—High Park, the riding he represented provincially up until last year. While it hardly comes as a huge surprise, I'm pleased Gerard is now in a place where he is (a) very likely to win the Liberal nomination and (b) very likely to subsequently layeth the holy red-machine smackdown on Peggy Nash. (Who, incidentally, as a friend of mind has pointed out, is the only fully sane NDP MP from Toronto. I'll freely concede there's some misfortune there that she gets caught in the crossfire. Oh, and sorry, Claire.)

Even more spendid news, this time from the Schadenfreude department, involves the general spearing of the head closest to the centre of my personal political dartboard, a certain Mr. Bill Bennett.

Mr. Bennett is one of those interesting creatures known as a "BC Liberal," which is an entirely different thing than a "Liberal from British Columbia." I'm sorta the latter. The latter is cuddly and wonderful. The former is most definately not, and while unfortunately (for them) it includes a few from the latter category, it also contains all manner of sketchy former Socreds, Reformers, Twenty-first Day Adventists, Spotted-owlivores, Milton Friedman fellatists, and toothy Andrew Carnegie sorts (the evil unstoppable clink of industry part, not the nice books-are-wonderful part).

Mr. Bennett is the two-term MLA for the provincial electoral district of East Kootenay, home of yours truly's mammy, daddy, and childhood stuffed animals. Mr. Bennett is also a man of, shall we say, contrasts? paradoxes?

Although he himself moved to the East Kootenay area from Ontario relatively late in life to pursue his true calling as a hunting lodge operator, the firstest and furiousest words out of Bill's mouth whenever anything right-wing was derided in the area was that this was clearly the work of the dastardly "lifestyle tourists"—smelly hippies from that smelliest of hippy holes, Calgary, that bought property in Fernie and wanted to preserve it as some kind of kitschy greeny-socialist playground with kitchsy greeny-socialist trappings like properly-funded hospitals and a whit of environmental stewardship. Real, born-and-raised Kootenay-dwellers like Bill apparently don't have time for any of this guff, and instead live ruggedly-individualist lives devoted to skidooing as close as possible to calving mountain goats, strip mining any tectonically stable surface, and changing the sheets at hotels frequented by weekend tourists.

Although a loyal footsoldier in a neoconservative government that routinely deployed its tongue into anything that so much as smelled faintly American, Bill's favourite whipping child in all things local is the uppity Montanans quite literally downstream of our provincial riding. When the Montanan government had the chutzpah to request, as provided for under the International Boundary Waters treaty, the Canadian federal government to look into the ecological impacts of Bill's pet proposal to open up the Flathead Valley to petroleum and mineral extraction, he upped his general torrent of anti-American abuse into something entirely more embarassing. On catching wind that United States Senator Max Baucus was planning on visiting Fernie and potentially meeting some of the Flathead Valley's defenders north of the border, he put out word to the local rednecks to ambush the guy, and noisely joined them in making a scene and telling him to get his Yankee ass out of our country. Now, Baucus is hardly a saint—I understand he's something of a cranky protectionist right-wing Democrat with alleged presidential ambitions—Bill basically pulled a stunt straight out of the playbook of some Eastern European ultranationalist party, and Fernie was delightfully portrayed in both the Vancouver and American media as some sort of mouth-breathing shithole. (Which it isn't.) (Most of the time.)

Although Bill (his own suspect localist cred aside) billed himself as defender of all things local, he increasingly found himself batting in favour of largely-Albertan guide outfitters and Calgary-based Elk Valley Coal in terms of land use in the area. This seems to be what ultimately proved his undoing. When the local Rod and Gun club—unsurprisingly traditional backers of Bennett given his priorities—lost patience with his record on this file. Bill, for his part, lost patience with their breaking ranks from his flannel coalition and playing into the hands of the GoreTex-wearing enemy.

Except Bill lost his patience is a delightfully explosive manner.

Bennett's been known as a spaz for a while. My family's been on the recieving end in light of my parent's chosen profession, as has pretty much any decent-minded municipal politician in Fernie at some time or another. (This article, for instance, has some decidedly diplomatic comments from Fernie mayor and all around good guy Randal Macnair who's been the target of Bennett's histrionics on more than a few occasions.) With the possible exception of the Baucus incident, Bennett's previous high-water mark had been when he told off a local kid using some fairly colourful turns of phrase at a public meeting: Bennett did not particularly agree with this guy's conclusions as to the ecological merit of national park expansion, and upbraided the guy for going away to university to learn about ecology from the idiots in ivory towers rather than asking what local guide-outfitters thought. That one prompted the rarity of angry letters in the local paper, and reportedly resulted in Bennett's Victoria-based overseers pulling him aside for a little chat about the importance of not openly insulting the concept of higher education.

As best I can tell, we have the great Sean Holman partially to thank for breaking this story on Public Eye in this post. There's also been amusing coverage in the American press (this from Seattle, and this from Kalispell); for his part Baucus even gets a few cheeky shots in.

With Bill humiliated, he might be due a turn a bit removed from the aforementioned bullseye on the aforementioned dartboard. Any suggestions for a new target of generalized disdain?