Happy birthday to my dear Oma, who turns 83 years young today.

For a summary of nationwide celebrations, check this. I'm spending mine amongst hoodlums and $50 worth of a taxpayer-bought fireworks display downtown Trenton.

My friend/fellow student Brian posted his own take on the entry from a few days back regarding my love/hate relationship with Toronto, which included mention of Richard Florida, a social and economic theorist and author of Who's Your City?. He was the keynote speaker at a conference Brian recently attended, where he discussed how, "place is evidently quite important, despite how common it is for people to travel between cities and work from various remote locations." (They also noted how during his speech, he recommended that a good way to choose a great city is to look at "where the gays go," which is actually really worthy if you think about it: Amsterdam, San Francisco, Montreal, New York, Sydney, Berlin...)

Anyway, this all really interests me right now, for obvious reasons, and I checked out Florida's book's website, which has a great feature that involves a series of questions that help you decide what city may or may not be a good fit for you. Its obviously not the end-all of knowing where you should end up, but I did it with the 5 communities I have either lived in or know well enough to answer the questions: Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, Trenton (Ontario, where I grew up), and New York.

My results were a bit too close to call:

You should definitely consider staying in Montreal, Quebec
final score:80 (amongst the highest scores)

You should definitely consider moving to New York, New York
final score:81 (amongst the highest scores)

You should definitely consider moving to Toronto, Ontario
final score:74 (amongst the highest scores)

You should probably not move to Halifax, Nova Scotia
final score:58 (below the average [62.2] score)

You should definitely not move to Trenton, Ontario
final score:12 (way below the average [62.2] score)

I'm about to go hand in my first full draft of my ever-gestating thesis, after two post-Cannes weeks of pretty much nonstop hell (though obviously I've stopped enough to waste my time on this blog, so thats an exaggeration). The process isn't entirely over yet, there's one more edit in July and then my actual defense (think American Idol except with academia) on August 26th. But for the most part, it's over. And instead of giving it one final read through, I just spent an hour coming up with thesis-related "statistics":

Abandoned topics before actually choosing this one: 4

Days of research in preparation of writing it: approximately 75

Days since I started actually writing it: 96

Pages: 117

Words: 28,943

Cities it was written in: 6 (Montreal, Toronto, Trenton, Atlanta, New York, Cannes, though Cannes was literally one sentence the day I got there, and I also did some Advil-PM influenced editing - that was later revoked - somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean).

Estimated cigarettes smoked during the process: 1,176 (I'm as disgusted by that as you are)

Estimated eggs eaten during the process, as I was told that this an effective "writing food": 156

Yoga classes taken to keep me sane: 71

Episodes of The Wire watched: 60

Times drunk, despite my initial "no drunk during thesis rule": 10

Meetings of the "thesis club," an organized effort between 5 of my co-pupils to try and give the process structure: 9

Meetings of the "thesis club" in which there was considerably more discussion of The Wire than anything thesis related: 5

Meetings of the "thesis club" that resulted in getting drunk instead of talking about the thesis: 3

Library books taken out: 52

Fines resulting from not properly returning them: $176.25

Books bought off Amazon.com in which imperative sections were photocopied and then the books returned for refunds: 9

Times I yelled at my laptop as if it were a person: 500+

Times I threatened to drop out to either my parents or university faculty: 4

How I celebrated finishing the conclusion: taking a sleeping pill and watching a illegal download of Then She Found Me

I'm back in Montreal, lying near comatose on my couch trying to not fall sleep to avoid letting this jetlag get out of hand. My plan to not sleep last night so I would on the plane backfired. My seat was on the aisle in a 3 seat row. The people next to me were an elderly Quebecois couple, the husband of which was obviously suffering from a severely dehabilitating condition. It resulted in being woken up about 10 times so that his wife could help him out of his chair and to the bathroom, and many other times by noises he made that seemed to suggest some sort of physical pain. I asked if I could take the window to avoid disturbing their need to get up, and she told me that he likes the window, which is fair enough, but also put me in that horrible state of no sleep in 20 hours + 2 advil PMs and no possibility of sleeping.

Its obviously not their fault, and I certainly was not annoyed at them specifically, if anything was deeply empathetic. But I was feeling annoyed in general, and was specifically annoyed at the airline for continuing to shit all over their movie selection. They one upped their showing of P.S. I Love You on the way down with The Bucket List, which was the last thing I wanted to see. It probably seemed even worse considering I was sitting next to someone that was actually facing death, and I kept thinking about intense it must be for his wife, and himself, to deal with that. And then I watch Rob Reiner's horribly misrepresentative schmaltzfest that disrespects those actually going through cancer or any other life threatening disease. And thats only from the half hour I watched before deciding that sitting in silence was more entertaining.

Anyway.. unrelated (although it does technically relate to both Montreal - it was shot here last summer, and death - its about a man aging backwards), I found the Spanish trailer for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in an aimless three hour youtube fest to try and keep me awake. It looks like it has some serious potential. Though the trailer is pretty much dialogue-less, its visually stunning and Brad Pitt looks like he went through the quite the transformation.

This might also be my only entry for a few days while I try to readjust to Eastern Standard Time and a life in which the Mediterranean Sea isn't a 5 minute walk away.

After a four day stint in Toronto, my trip back to Montreal was welcomed with a sound you don't often hear in Toronto: Crazed hockey fans celebrating a playoff round won. For the past hour, horns, screams and now, sirens, have blared through my room window at a volume that makes me feel like I'm in a hockey arena. And I do not live in a pub-full area, nor anywhere near the arena where said win took place. And as annoying as the sounds are now getting, the first 20 minutes or so brought me sincere civic pride. True to one of our greatest stereotypes, Canadians and hockey are an intense hand-in-hand. And during playoff season - I time that I admit the Sports page becomes my first go-to of the newspaper - the mood of entire cities is quite extraordinary. Right now I do my part by having streaming games often minimized on my laptop for occasional check-ins. The bar scene is a bit too butch for me to fully embrace, but I do feel a bit jealous when I see herds of fans drunkenly screaming at bar televisions as I walk by pretending not to care. However, if the Montreal Canadiens make it to the finals - a possibility that secretly led me to ensure being in the city during that time - I might even have to full-on participate in the madness.

And yes, I have returned from Hot Docs (more on that later), which was a fantastic time filled with perhaps an exhausting dose of documentaries and Stella, and have exactly 36 hours to run two weeks worth of errands before heading to Tribeca, where its possible the New York Rangers could be playing Montreal in the second round... Maybe wearing a Montreal hockey jersey around New York is in order if that happens.

As I continue to increasingly turn this site into a weather blog, I'm ending my series of "yes, its still winter" posts with a "it's finally spring" one. Despite the above photo of Parc LaFontaine this afternoon (soon to be Lac LaFontaine), it was 15 degrees in Montreal today. And its remarkable the energy it put in the air. I swear every person I saw was smiling or laughing, many overdoing the mild temperatures by wearing tank tops or shorts. Terraces were packed, and a whole city seemed to unite to celebrate their survival of five whole months of white terror.

It was nice to see the city in such spirits again, as my days here are numbered and I'd like to enjoy them for all they're worth. Tomorrow begins this site's transformation into a "travel blog," with essentially consecutive film festival journeys to Atlanta, Hot Docs, Tribeca and Cannes. After that, I have a month or two to finish up all things thesis (which will remain, somehow, a substantial hell in my life even as I travel), and then my time as a lingual minority in the land de Quebecois will come to an end.

Last night, for the second time in two years, my apartment was burglarized while I was in the actual apartment. This time was thankfully a little less traumatizing. I got woken up to my roommate knocking at my door: "Peter? Uh, I think we were robbed." And he was right. Somehow, a crackhead or three made their way up four stories to our terrance and came in to take, among other things: laptops, cameras and cellphones. Luckily, I've always been one to sleep near my electronics, and nothing of mine went missing that I was too upset about. It just amazes me that 3 people slept through it, and disturbs in that my apartment now feels like tainted goods.

The first time, which was in what would generally be considered a much safer neighbourhood (The Annex in Toronto.. I live in "Cracktown, Montreal" now), was a lot worse. My roommates were both gone: one in Germany visiting his boyfriend, the other down the street visiting her girlfriend. I had stayed up really late for one reason or another, and was reading in bed when I heard the footsteps of what sounded like a very large person coming up the stairs. It was an above-a-store apartment, with a staircase leading up to it from right off the street. My room was this sort of make-shift bedroom at the very top of the stairs. It had a black curtain over the glass door, and I quickly turned off my bedside lamp when I heard whoever the hell it was coming up the stairs. It wasn't the boy roommate, as he was overseas. And the girl would not have sounded like that given her petiteness, and rarely left her lesbian love den six blocks east.

For a good 30 seconds (and what felt like an hour), the man stood outside my door, breathing heavily and not really doing much. I didn't want to make a sound, especially that of dialing 911, so I just waited. When he finally headed to the left, and into the kitchen about 30 feet away (and out of sight of the staircase to outside), I grabbed the only weapon I could find (a can of Pledge), and booted it down the stairs, wearing pajama pants and nothing else. Which would have been okay if it wasn't February, snowing, and 4:00am.

I called 911, and then sought cover. The Blockbuster downstairs (which had people in it for some reason), would not let me in, ignoring my banging as I assume they figured a disheveled topless man in February was bad news. Finally, two half-drunk college girls saw me and asked me what was wrong. They let me stand in the vestibule of their apartment building and gave me an extremely feminine coat to wear (all i can remember was light blue feathers against my neck, and feeling like a poor man's drag queen). Which was lovely, but unfortunately put my apartment door out of viewing. I assume the dude heard me run out and left, because by the time the cops got there, he was gone, as was my mp3 player and a bottle of vodka.

Obviously, that could have been a lot worse too. At least no one was hurt and the actual burglary limited. But it was a hell of lot more terrifying than today's experience (though I wouldnt be saying that today if I were my roommates, one of whom is now laptopless during end-of-school-year madness). I hadn't thought about that night in a long time until this morning, when that same unique sense of violation found its way into my mind and stayed there all day. So I figured I'd share.

Anyway.... Lock your doors. Even if they are four stories off the ground. And always keep dangerous cleaning products near your bed. Moral of story.

So as the first post today suggests, I broke my "no drinking during thesis writing rule"and woke up confused and nauseated, fully clothed on my bed covers with the DVD menu screen for Flight of the Conchords still flashing on my laptop. I've managed to recover to a degree, but still haven't been able to get anything close to a mindset required to do any real work, so I decided instead to find productivity elsewhere. I went through unopened mail, for one, and realized that my subscription to Entertainment Weekly was a week away from expiration: "Hasta La Vista, Baby," the letter told me. "Last chance. Renew now or risk termination."

I have subscribed to EW since 1991. As horribly sentimental as all of this is about to sound, I can clearly remember buying my first issue, seen above with Janine Turner and her breasts on the cover, and filling in that little card. 17 years later (dear god), its still going. In the time in between its been a big influence on my pop culture interests. Especially pre-internet. In the early years, I used to manually enter box office numbers into a Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet every week to compile a list of the highest grossing films of the year as it went on. This obsession led to a rather unhealthy knowledge of box office grosses, and to kids on the playground referring to me as "the movie freak" and asking me to relay financial information about any film they named, trying to stump me and threatening violence if I didn't get the right number (one kid had found an almanac with the prior year's top 100 films in it, and this was their go-to source, which occasionally proved an issue since sometimes the films had continued making money into the next year, and they didn't understand this).

Thanks to EW, I've probably made at least $1000 in Oscar pools over the years, and I also blame EW's (or Ken Tucker's, more specifically) lauding of four shows in particular: Roseanne, My So-Called Life, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Gilmore Girls for making me become avid and rather obsessed watchers of each of them. Its arrival in my mail has been one of the few routines I've carried with me since I moved out of my parents house 6 years ago (other than a daily visit to whatever Starbucks is closest by and ordering the exact same thing, maybe the only one). Through 10 different apartments in 3 different cities, its been a small weekly reminder that there is still that 7 year old movie freak in me somewhere.

But I'm wondering if its time to let go: I usually have read half the material online by the time the magazine arrives, and even if I haven't, the internet has given me most of the news by then anyway; Quebec's lazy postal service (or perhaps their hostility toward someone subscribing to an English magazine?) has pushed that "date" back to Tuesday or Wednesday, whereas its on newsstands the Friday before, and I sometimes end up reading it in a store before I get my own copy; I'm also rarely "home" for more than a few weeks at a time, and end up missing weeks of the magazine when I'm working somewhere else.

Magazines, in their printed form, are sadly becoming more and more obsolete in the internet age. I already read my newspapers online, order dvds online, buy music mp3s online, etc, etc, etc. But today I was reminded of how nice it can be to away from the glare of a computer screen (especially when my hungover eyes couldn't deal with it) and back amongst the nostalgia of the printed page. Nauseated to the point that almost anything was unpleasant, I spent the 2 worst hours of the day curled up with the latest EW, which I'd yet to read. The "Spring TV Preview" (EW 'Preview' issues are my favourite EW) on the cover, I took focus off impending vomit by getting lost in new details of "Lost" and a variety of other news and notes. There was a great piece by the lovely Lisa Schwarzbaum on HBO series "In Treatment," where she discussed the identity of HBO as a network, with the fact that "Treatment" is the third shrink-oriented HBO show as an entry point. She suggests that HBO's programming is built around the theme of people driven by forces they only partially understand. Lisa doesn't "count on the good shrinks of HBO to make sense of me and you and everyone we know, but I rely on them to confirm that I'm okay, you're okay." (On a side note, this led me to realize HBO itself has been another constant in my life, as a good chunk of my leisure time has been devoted to mass viewing of almost all their series (save "Arli$$" and "Lucky Louie"), making me wonder if Lisa's suggestion also played a role in my own psychological well-being).

So.. all of this is a long, sentimental rant leading to my final answer: I'm keeping EW. Today, it gave me a little piece of home during a day full of that horrible hung-over lethargy, and I'm grateful enough to throw another $50 EW's way to keep 'em coming.

With the quick explosion of Facebook into the majority of Western culture's communication rituals, the idea of "Facebook etiquette" is a make-up-your-own rules sorta deal. Personally, I usually don't add people I don't know. But yesterday morning I broke that rule when someone named "Kevin Benson" added me. It was early in the morning (I use internet browsing as a transitional tool in the mornings to go from half asleep to wide awake, kinda like I used to use the Today show when I had a TV), so I wasn't paying much attention. I saw we had a few friends in common, mostly from indieWIRE circles, so I figured my memory wasn't serving me correctly, and I clicked ok.

Anyway, so that evening I log in to the FB and see a message from ol' Kevin:

friendship
Between You and Kevin Benson

12:26pm Mar 27th
thanks for friendship.

K

Mostly annoyed but slightly confused, it boggled my mind that someone would send this to a stranger (or anyone other than their mother). After deciding that this warrants de-friendship, I checked out his profile, only to find his friends went from under 100 to over 700 in one day, and that we now had dozens of friends in common. I inquired around iW circles.. He had sent that same message to everyone he added, and one friend noted that him and Kev had 110 friends in common over a 24 hour period.

Conspiracy theories began: Was Kevin conducting a social experiment? Was he a journalist who was about to mock the independent film press and industry's admiration for a social networking site initially meant for college students and tweenage girls? Personally, I was holding on to my first thought: This guy is nuts.

His profile is filled with references to Second Life, which gave his takeover of my own "facebook network" a eerie feel personally (not to knock Second Life, I know its a treasured source of pleasure for many.. I just would rather stay far, far away). And most of his wall is messages to himself or society as a whole, or this one, to his dear mother:

Kevin Benson wrote
at 8:36am

NOT YOUR SON (never wiill be again) you're an aging ugly ghost! ROT. K

If youre going to use your facebook profile as a networking tool, adding a decent percentage of the US' indiefilm circle in a 24 hour period, perhaps calling your mom a cunt and threatening to do something to her face for everyone to see isn't the most effective idea? Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm going about this all wrong.

His frequent "status updating" also appears to tell some wacky narrative of being involved in a hit and run accident last night, and that he is en route to New York to take the world by storm.

So, whoever he is, watch out: Kevin Benson is a MAVERICK (with a 4.0 nonetheless!) and he's about to take over the world.

I spent Easter weekend, as I've spent every major holiday in my entire life, in Trenton, Ontario. The farther I get removed from the town, the more it amazes me. What sets Trenton apart is its stark contrast to neighbouring communities. I know the slew of mid-size towns between Toronto and Montreal along Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence river all very well. Once the suburbs of the bookending cities end, most of the places in between are picturesque, lake or riverfront towns that have benefited from retiring boomers, gaining both population and culture (see Cobourg, Port Hope, Picton, Napanee, and small city Kingston). Trenton, however, has gained neither. One reasoning behind this that I've heard from my grandmother was that during the 1970s, the government offered these communities money to up their waterfront properties. Trenton - whose downtown is basically owned by two families - worried the government's involvement would reduce this monopoly, and refused.

Stagnating around 15-20,000 people since the 1970s, Trenton has very little going for it beyond the giant airforce base located in its east end. The downtown has crumbled into an ugly, mostly out of business stretch, and most factories continue to close. Crime has been on the rise, with the town seeming to have a murder every summer, usually a teenage or twentysomething girl (when I was in high school, an acquaintance was found raped and murdered in the river, while last summer someone I went to high school with was found brutally strangled in a city park). A friend of mine works at the main pharmacy downtown, and says when corporate staff come in from Toronto they are amazed at the amount of narcotics being prescribed (the highest amount in any Shoppers Drug Mart - Canadas biggest pharmacy - in all of Ontario). Clean needles are given out on a regular basis.

All of this might seem pretty typical, and similar falls of communities have been documented time and time again. But growing up, I never really noticed. But now, its everywhere I look. A trip to a local bar brings fear I've never experienced in even the roughest parts of Montreal or Toronto, while a trip to Wal-Mart brings similar amounts of depression. Mind you, I still mostly enjoy coming here. It will always be home, as much as it continues to crumble. And when you spend 17 years of your life somewhere, its so embedded in you its hard not to root for it to turn itself around.. Though I do find I rarely leave my mother's house anymore when I am here...

The Canadian-made blog, Stuff White People Like, which began just 3 months ago, has managed to get a $350,000 book deal. Says The New York Observer:

According to the announcement that just went out from Random House, the book will use some material that has already appeared on the Web site (which has accumulated almost 15 million hits since its launch in late January), though two-thirds of it will be new. The press release promises a book that "will present a provocative, wickedly funny 'study' of upper-middle-class white people, satirically exposing a culture that prides itself on individuality and diversity, yet manages to express these beliefs in exactly the same way." Topics to be covered: "Whole Foods, Wes Anderson, Starbucks, graduate school, kitchen gadgets, Barack Obama, Apple products, the movie Juno, expensive sandwiches, and vintage t-shirts, to name a few."

Just 3 months! The blog - which I'll admit I've avidly read since its inception - isn't the only example either. Earlier this month, the person behind http://barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com signed a contract with Gotham Books, and before that, so did the person who runs LOLcat emporium I Can Haz Cheeseburger... So seriously if you have a clever novelty idea, type it up and find a way for word to get out as fast and as furious as possible, and $350,000 could be yours.

So I am in the midst of something like day 20 of writing my thesis. I had initially intended on somehow working developments in the work into this blog in a nice way of killing two birds or whatever, but am probably edging against it. Maybe that'll change, but for now writing on here is one small solace from a process that has becoming exceedingly hellish.

To brief, essentially my thesis is trying to take trends in production and distribution of W.Bush-era mainstream gay & lesbian cinema and connect it to trends within conservative gay political ideologies, specially capitalist ideologies within "the new homonormativity," a formation named by academic Lisa Duggan to umbrella the work of people like Andrew Sullivan and Bruce Bawer. I'm going to do all this under the framework of Antonio Gramsci's "hegemony."

Sounds like fun, right? 125 pages of it, even. And, in all honesty, there are moments where I feel like its actually going somewhere um, "exciting", and I get a bit into it. But when you spend 6, 7 hours every single fucking day trying to put this thing together, you start to go a little Jack Torrance. Its actually made posting buzzes on the main indieWIRE site feel like eating ice cream.

But I realize its necessary, and there are methods that make it doable, and instead of going into the content of the actual thesis (which honestly, would likely bore you anyway), I'll offer some tips to anyone in or thinking about being in the process of writing a post-grad thesis.

1. Write it on your bed. I'm not a giant fan of desks. And mine has essentially become a storage unit anyway. Spreading out papers and books at the foot of your bed, comfortably lining up pillows at the back and situating yourself somewhere in between with your laptop is perfect. Mind you, you do have to train yourself against distractions (gossip blogs, seeing if I have a new email and The Wire are my poisons right now) and simply falling asleep, but this set-up makes you feel as comfortable as possible physically during a process that is extremely uncomfortable mentally.

2. Hot Yoga. Or even just cold yoga if you can't find that. I was brought into this by some people and was extremely resistance to the new-age vibe and the yoga language but I have to say its one of the best things I've ever done for mind, body, etc, etc. I feel like a hypocrite even praising it, but when youre fucking up your back all day and cramming your mind with ideas you don't really care about, going into a room with 40 half-naked people and doing bizarre formations with your body you didn't think were even possible for 90 minutes... in 100 degree temperatures... is pretty amazing. Especially when its freezing outside and pounds of snow keep coming every other day. You find yourself able to concentrate in ways you never knew outside the class, and you actually becoming fit during the thesis process, which has a way of making people fat with that whole sitting and likely eating crap thing. Go every single day if you can afford it. You won't have this flexible time schedule much longer.

3. Don't Get Drunk. Even if you feel you need the release. It fucks up your next day, obviously; wastes money and sets you back mentally for at least 36 hours. Now, I mean don't get really drunk. Tipsyness is probably a good idea for that whole release thing I mentioned before. But being hungover is a perfect excuse to do nothing all day, and excuses will not get you on that graduation stage and as far away from academia as you need and want to be.

4. Don't Feel Guilty. If you do need that day off, take it and don't waste it thinking about chapter 3 and how its going to be formed or how youre a fuck up for not doing any work. Utilize the day properly. Clean your living space, it will make you feel more sane. Shower, it will make you feel less disgusting. Check those gossip blogs, watching downloaded television, or write on your own blog... do whatever you need to do to bring your brain back to the level you like it at.

5. Form a Thesis Club. There's gotta be other people out there going through what youre going through. I mean, youre in some sort of program right? So get the troops together weekly, go to a coffee shop or a bar or a strip club or anywhere... And bitch about your process. Set weekly goals (we have punishments for those who don't fulfill them), peer-review whatever garbage you cranked out that week, and feel some sense of comradery in your increasingly isolated existence.

One of my fellow club members gave her thesis-induced rant on her own blog yesterday (and much more poignantly than I), so check it out if for some reason this interests you.. She also links to a sadly spot-on take on grad school from Stuff White People Like:

It is important to understand that a graduate degree does not make someone smart, so do not feel intimidated. They may have read more, but in no way does that make them smarter, more competent, or more likable than you. The best thing you can do is to act impressed when a white person talks about critical theorists. This helps them reaffirm that what they learned in graduate school was important and that they are smarter than you. This makes white people easier to deal with when you get promoted ahead of them.

Even though its technically not celebrated in Quebec, today marks the first year of my home province Ontario's initiation of "Family Day," which is essentially a makeshift holiday to make up for the fact that Canadians don't get a President's Day. Alberta's been doing it since 1990, but this year three more provinces joined in on the fun: Ontario, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Oddly enough, the holiday originated in Alberta when Lieutenant Governor Helen Hunley proclaimed the day in response to then Alberta premier Don Getty's son, Dale, being arrested for cocaine possession. The arrest revealed Dale to have a serious cocaine addiction, leading the premier to admit publicly that he "neglected his family" and that it was "important for all Albertans" to take more care of their families.

So thank cocaine addiction for your statutory pay today!

A day or two has passed as I transition comfortably from the dry, snowy cold of Utah to the wet, not-quite-as-snowy cold of Ontario (and on Saturday, the wet, not-quite-as-snowy, but definitely more cold Quebec), and I figure its time to consider the past two weeks...

Its kinda perfect that my Sundance soundtrack consisted of a never-turned-to-another satellite radio station playing 80s new wave in the SUV rented my colleagues. Because the kind of false nostalgia I always got when I listened to The Smiths or The Cure or watched Heathers... I knew where it came from, I knew what it all meant, but I was never there to experience it and thus was sort of at a loss in comparison to those who did... was the same false nostalgia I felt when listening to - or worse, attempting to engage in - the constant reflective thought expressed by pretty much everyone I was around. As a Sundance virgin, my only real nostalgia was for what had happened in the days prior to that one.

This reflection was usually surrounding two topics: The first, and less personally interesting, involved Sundance as a new-found clusterfuck. My colleague Eugene sent me a random post-Sundance article from a blogger I'd never heard of that kinda summed up all the talk exactly:


There are two Sundance Film Festivals. One hosts several thousand film enthusiasts, movie industry professionals and others with passion for and/or professional interest in independent films. The other Sundance plays hosts to thousands of guests who have marginal interest in films or even relevance to the independent film community. While hundreds of stars turn out for Sundance, only a handful actually attend the screenings, and then it's usually only for the films they have direct involvement in. Several dozen corporations host clients for skiing the Deer Valley slopes, drinking at hospitality suites, expensive dinners and overly-hyped parties featuring "B" list talent.

To me and my experiences, this has always been any major festival. Toronto, Cannes.. in their own way, present that same dichotomy in their own unique and varying formations. Smaller fests, of which I would have never considered Sundance anyway (I who was 8 when Reservoir Dogs played there), have always fulfilled that first notion (almost) solely, and I've enjoyed them for what they were. Personally, for someone sorta new to all of this, the second "Sundance" presents a really interesting study in the state of celebrity culture; the state of humanity; and the state of those with a bit of money. I found it fun to attend Paris Hilton's publicity dinner or watch as hundreds of Utahians desperately roamed Main Street in search of celebrity. Maybe in five years, I'll sing a more bitter tune... But it seems to me that the first Sundance needs the second Sundance to thrive financially, and that they both exist just fine as long as people from either side mind the other's motiviations?

Either way... the second nostalgia was a bit more specific. I'm currently doing my thesis on queer film marketing campaigns post-2000... so I obviously made a point to take in all the GLBT festivities, whether panels, films or etc. I won't go into the specifics of the queer festivities (because I wrote about it here), but in general: There were a lot of queer films at Sundance this year, many of them by directors who were present during Sundance's "new queer cinema" moment in the early 1990s, and thus a "reunion" was sort of make-shiftingly created and there was a lot of talk of the past.

Tom Kalin spoke at one of the panels and pinpointed my position:

I can only see the early 90s and that first wave really coming out of a very specific historical moment.. the movies coming out of a specific moment. Its difficult to conjure for people that weren't alive or around during the time what it was like without AIDS medication and that kind of atmosphere of despair and frustration that people had politically and socially in their lives.

Christine Vachon, a the same panel, seconded it:

I mean I do think that term did come out of a sense of urgency that's very hard to reconstruct for people that weren't there and Im not trying to be like one of those people who was at Woodstock...

Its amazing to me that I can even say it with a smile now cause honestly at the time it really felt like it was such an atmosphere of death and despair.

Honestly, be around all this talk gave me a twofold emotional high: One of extreme amazement in watching these people - Kalin, Vachon, Gregg Araki, Bruce LaBruce, Isaac Julien, etc - in action.. These people whose early 90s films were my adolescent homosexual education and occasionally even brought on seminal autoerotic experiences (LaBruce...). These people - these artists - played a considerable role in assisting in my own identity, as well as the identity politics of the world I eventually came to exist in as an young, queer adult.

This was most notable during a screening of my "favourite" Sundance film (though, I must admit, there only were seven - and before you hiss, please note my actual job did not require me to see films and thus this is understandable)... Isaac Julien's Derek. At its core a poignant documentary about an artist whose life was cut too short.. the film intertwines archival interviews Derek Jarman with thought provoking prose written and performed by the goddess Tilda Swinton. Swinton was just as reflective in her words as anyone at Sundance: She spoke of today as a time of too much talk and not enough action. She spoke of too much focus on numbers and not enough films. She spoke of how Jarman wanted to evaporate with his work and how paradoxically this didn't happen - and given today's societal state - also did.

Though during the screening I was pretty much engulfed in Julien's artful representation of an endlessly charming, interesting and unpretentious man.. After I wiped away my supergay tears and left the Q & A, I was left feeling a bit like Kalin and Vachon suggested in that panel - clueless and ignornat. Just like 80s new wave or the Sundances where Paris Hilton wasnt running amuck, I never got to experience any of this firsthand. I never saw what Derek saw. I was never there to see the beginnings of AIDS or Reagan or riots or emotional despair I personally can't even fathom. What was I really the survivor of? What story did I really have to tell? I can get gay married. I could come out in high school to minimal fanfare. My parents wouldn't even flinch at the sight of me kissing another man. AIDS, though present, is something I'm educated on to the point that I can resite the components of an HIV replication cell. And while I realize I'm uniquely privileged, even in Western society... And thank god for that.. but lets accept: "We" don't have that urgency, and as Kalin & Vachon suggested, we will (hopefully) never know its horrors. But many of us seem to be ready to sit down an accept that this is as good as it may get. And thats maybe why the nominees for the GLAAD Media Award for best feature film this year were Stardust, Across The Universe and The Jane Austen Book Club.

I just wonder if this relative spoil is to blame for my potentially lesser generation of queer artists. Maybe its time that "we" just step out from under some queer niche and realize "we" have less sexual-identity specific stories to offer? Or maybe its not? Maybe "we" need to find our own voices, our own less urgent, but still necessary, voices.

Now I know I'm generalizing a generation, and especially generalizing a generation that hasn't even been given a chance yet.. and really all I'm saying despite my longwinded rantiness is that all this nostalgia just left me wondering..

I'm not going to go any farther in that regard (I have four months of thesis writing for that), but essentially, thats where my Sundance mind wandered.

I am an hour away from heading to the Toronto airport to catch a flight to Utah for Sundance. Unfortunately, I woke up feeling like death and gallons of oregano oil, "Germ, M.D.", smoothies, etc doesn't seem to be helping. Which will nicely combine my two worst fears: illness and flying (which includes both the actual act of flying and the security that comes before it - I have this way of looking like a criminal whenever I go through airport security). The latter fear hasn't been helped by yesterday's Toronto Star frontpage headline: "Airport security a 'con game'," which has an accompanying article that suggests that there are `gaping security holes' behind the scenes (read the full article here). So that article plus the anxiety induced by my illness led me to desperate wikipedia-ing to calm my nerves. And thus the following are Random Wikipedia Facts 5, 6 and 7.

See you in Sundance.

Salt Lake City International Airport
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

According to the United States Department of Transportation Bureau of Statistics, Salt Lake City International ranked number one among U.S. airports in on-time departures and arrivals in 2006 and through July 2007. Salt Lake City International also had the fewest flight cancellations among U.S. airports. JD Power and Associates has ranked the Salt Lake International Airport among one of the top mid-sized U.S. airports for customer satisfaction.

Delta Airlines

Last reported fatal crash:

August 31, 1988 Boeing 727 Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport Crashed after takeoff bound for Salt Lake City, Utah. Officials believe the crash was contributed by improper configuration of the flaps and leading edge slats. 14 deaths 26 serious injuries

Toronto Pearson International Airport

Accidents and incidents involving aircraft arriving and departing the airport:

2008: Air Canada Flight 190, flying from Victoria to Toronto experienced severe turbulance over the Rocky Mountains and was forced to make an emergency landing in Calgary, injuring up to 10 passengers.

Some friends of mine were checking out a screening of No Country For Old Men in Toronto a week or two ago when two senior+ men behind them starting making odd noises. They realized one was on the phone, whispering something and initially thought they were just being rude. But then they noticed one man appeared to be in severe pain, and that the other man was calling 911. He had had a heart attack. With Javier Bardem after Josh Brolin at that motel in the background, the audience slowly realized what was going on and the man was helped, with the movie still playing in the background. Eventually the theatre staff were informed and the movie was shut down... The man was taken to the hospital (and appeared to be conscious and ok).

After getting snowed in yesterday (and subsequently missing my own birthday party), I've finally arrived back in urbanland after 12 days slothing in small town Ontario. Though the sight of freezing homeless people and a Starbucks on every corner does sadly make me feel at home, there's always that really nostaglic homesick feeling I get for a few days post-Christmas holidays after spending two weeks enjoying a full fridge, a full house of people that have the same nose as me, and the general enjoyment of guilt-free sleepin' till noon. I also just hate the pressure a freshly new year brings, and my mind is all over the place with mental to-do-lists, fear of forgetting favourite shirts at my moms house, etc... So I'll try to channel that anxiety into regularly scheduled blogging, including my most anticipated films of 2008, some updated Oscar predictions, and in just 13 days, notes from Sundance...

My holiday buzz is wearing off and I'll be blog-efficient later today, including my film top 10 (which is already available at indieWIRE.com)

In attempt to create a true and honest 2007 Top Ten list in about a week's time, I'm in the midst of a press screening, paid screening and DVD marathon that's goal is to see the last 17 "notable" (read: not Norbit) 2007 releases before December 22nd.

They are: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Kite Runner, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Sweeney Todd, There Will Be Blood, Black Book, 12:08 East of Bucharest, Ratatouille, Waitress, The Bourne Ultimatum, Charlie Wilson's War, I Am Legend, This is England, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, The Savages and No End in Sight.

I have six down, eleven to go.

Thoughts to be noted in my "year-end blogging," as its just too much of a madhouse in my mind until then.

After staying inside for over 24 hours, I'm venturing out into the wild..

Apparently, Toronto - which was hit minimally in comparison to most areas - had more snow yesterday than it usually gets all of December. Partially due to this (and partially due to a very late and sloppy Saturday night), I've been wearing the same pajama pants for an embarassing period of time.

Headed back to Toronto today so didnt post re: the Globes noms (which you can see in full on the main indieWIRE page.. was overall unimpressed, even for them.) or anything else. Will tomorrow with new Oscar predictions.

Just a small personal note: Today I finished the last of my coursework, meaning that for the first time in twenty years, I won't be sitting in a classroom on a weekly (or daily) basis. Though its really strange to lose this crutch that was always there, particularly when extended family members asked you what you were doing with your life... Its definately liberating (though mind you I still have that thesis thing to write).

“Point de fuite.” Photo by MTL Guy on Flickr.

So this morning was a bit strange. I'm deaf in one ear - and this creates a problematic tendency for me to sleep through alarms. So its about 7:55 when I finally realize I've slept through over an hour of loud, French radio. I needed to leave by 7:30 to make it to work on time. Astoundingly, I was out the door by 8:10 (but you should see what I look like), and raced to the Metro to catch a train to the West End of the city. When I got on, I realized I had finally encountered the art-project subway car that I had been hearing about for months. Totally out of it and in a very packed car, the experience was sorta surreal, even if I was aware that it was an art project and not some hallucination.

The ads were entirely removed from the car, and the walls were made this deep blue panelling that resembled some bizarre version of '70s indoor "psuedo-wood". There were city scape designs on all the windows. And the speaker, which was playing only in that car, varied between jungle beats to church bells to something that sounded like the soundtrack from Heathers. In between, they would play internal monologues that resembled what I'd imagine is going on in many subway riders mind: "Do I know that person? She looks familar. No, her hair isn't quite right." Some of the people on the car had obviously seen it before, but others looked very confused. It created this really interesting vibe in the car, as people kept looking at each other for some recognition that they weren't going crazy and that this was actually happening.

More fun statistics from the Center For Disease Control to make you want to make celibacy your new year's resolution:

From Queerty:

Sexually transmitted diseases are having a ball at humanity's expense. Not only have nasty bugs like syphilis and chlamydia seen a recent resurgence, but it appears HIV's making more headway than some would like to admit: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention is mulling over when to release alarming new statistics showing that as many as 50 percent more people are being infected with HIV each year in the United States than originally reported by the government.

50%. If that trend continues, in about ten years, its gonna be hard for anyone to keep convincing Americans that AIDS is only an African disease. Instead of 60,000 annual infections, it would be more like 1.6 million.. which would be 1986 all over again and this time - sorry Republicans - it won't just be the gays and the drug addicts, in fact, its young women who are the rising sector, likely many of whom who are taught by Daddy Christian and their health teacher that condoms are bad and pre-marital sex ain't an option.

Seriously scary shit.

Check out my interview with the Margot at the Wedding helmer on indiewire's main site.

On Thursdays I work at a computer lab/dubbing centre for undergrads at my university. Today, of course, is Thursday, and I had to make my usual hour long transit trek across the city (at 7am no less). Waking up to a sub-zero bedroom, the two hours or so I have been up so far today have been frightful. It is -2 C (28 or so F) and snowing. Its horribly depressing. As most know, Montreal - a generally wonderful city in most regards - is not the greatest place to be in Winter. And today, sadly, is nothing compared to whats to come. I've never hated an article of clothing as much as I did the parka I was forced to put on this morning.

I'm back in cold and rainy Montreal after essentially a two week absence (save for 17 hours last Tuesday). Though New York was a great time, I'm now frantically coming to terms with piles of work in every direction (and a pile of dirty clothes and dishes), and I'm completely exhausted from a day of sitting.

"The Adironack", which is the Amtrak train that runs from New York to Montreal, is definately a beautiful ride in the Fall. All the leaves, all the mountains (I even saw some deer). But considering its near 13 hour+ duration (it takes 6 to drive), which included 2 hours at the border today (which resulted in two 65ish year old American ladies getting booted), I don't know how many more trips on it I have in me.

I had ambitious plans for thesis research and seminar prep but due to the fact I slept maybe 3 hours before taking a cab to Penn Station at 7am this morning, I was too exhausted to do anything but watch 11 episodes of the Freaks and Geeks DVD set I bought for only $40 US ($38 Canadian!) yesterday (they have outlets on Amtrak which is a HUGE plus.. almost enough to cancel out the absolutely disgusting cuisine offered in their meal car). Add that to 7 episodes of late-era Larry Sanders Show I watched on the way down, and I have Judd Apatow to largely thank for assisting me in getting through crowded trans-national transportation.

Anyway, this blog will hopefully return to normalcy within a day or so... Happy Monday.

So yesterday I swallowed my snobbery and took a Greyhound bus from Montreal to New York City. I am not a fan of buses. They are uncomfortable, crowded and often smelly. Suffice to say, this wasn't so bad (though I knocked myself out via the lovely Gravol for most of it). But there were two notable happenings:

First, at the border, an American border patroler came on the bus and instructed us to get off and bring our stuff inside the building for inspection: "Take all your Celine Dion CDs or beaver hats and get off the bus". It was just mildly offensive. Then inside they grind you so hard you start getting nervous.

"Where were you born?"; "Do you have a job?"; "Concordia? What do you study?"; "Whats your address?" "Why are you going to New York?"; "How do you know your friends there?"; "What do they do?"

Half-out-of-it due to the Gravol, I couldnt handle her hard boiled and fast paced tactic. My answers were slow and they didn't seem impressed. But after showing her enough IDs and batting the best "I'm just a kid" eyes I had in me, they let me into America. But not after making me claim the seven carrots I had in a ziplock bag.

Then, on the bus.. a woman I thought was cleverly dressed up for Halloween was wearing a hat that said "Jesus is my boss" and a sweatshirt with a giant cross on it. But no. An hour into the busride, she starts walking up and down the aisles handing out pamphlets for whatever religious cult she belonged to. I stupidly told her off, which made her even more interested in saving me on "Satan's day". Finally, someone else complained and the bus driver announced on the intercom for her to sit down. But that didnt stop her from soliciting any new person that got in in Glen Falls or Saratoga Springs. And the weirdest thing was.. Some people seemed into it.

I felt safe in the secularity of New York City once I got here, but small town America scares me, save for watching "Friday Night Lights". There is a distinctive difference between small town Canada and small town America and I can't quite pinpoint it. It just feels different.

So it has been a few weeks since the folks at indieWIRE gave me the logins and passwords that grant me a place in the iW blogosphere... I have resisted actually beginning to contribute anything because I wasn't quite sure how to go about the starting-up and I wanted to make sure I was capable of not half-assing the blog's progression past this entry. And I guess I feel ready now, so consider the next few weeks marked with full-assed intentions.

Just to brief the tens of people I hope to call my readership an idea as to whose words their reading:

I'm Peter. I've worked for indieWIRE for a little over a year, first as an intern at TIFF, then as part of their Cannes team, now as a permanent Assistant Editor. I'm unique to the iW team for a variety of reasons. First off, I'm Canadian (born and raised in small town Ontario, have since called Toronto home, now call Montreal home), which I've been told will offer a "unique perspective" to the iW blog world. I'm not completely sure what this will entail. For you Americans who haven't really dabbled in Canadiana beyond listening to one of our many indierock imports or coming to Toronto for 10 days in September, our cinematic place in the world is a tough one to pinpoint. Our own industry is not particularly booming. We usually make one or two good films seen beyond a festival each year, and that number is greatly reduced if David Cronenberg or Atom Egoyan are on vacation. Our own box-office is ruled by the U.S. (and counts toward your domestic weekend grosses, FYI), with the idea of a non-Quebecois (they actually make their own movies AND watch them, but that a lot to do with language) film entering our top 10 a huge rarity. Most of our homegrown directors find your dollars (as measly as they may be these days) too much to resist and head to Hollywood to make "Titanic" or "Ghostbusters". And I'm not blaming. I'm just trying to paint a little picture of the my cinematic environment. I was basically raised on, and still am very much drawn to, American cinema. This is particularly true due to my rural-youth, away from the film festivals and art houses of all 5 of our big cities. But I guess I see U.S. film culture through a different lens and I guess that is what makes my perspective unique.

Oh, and I said a variety of reasons unique to iW but I went off on the Canadian thing.. I guess I'm also fairly young (23), which will make this blog uniquely naive. And I'm also currently a student finishing his masters thesis, which I'll be writing over the next year and might offer research findings via this blog (the topic is a que(e)rying of "For Your Consideration" ads, looking at the marketing of Oscar bound queer films), which will make this blog, uh, uniquely academic? I don't know, its really hard to introduce something you haven't started doing yet.

So I named it The Lost Boy not because I wanted it to sound really gay-late-80s-teen-angst but because I've had blogs before (This being the most recent one, and one probably somewhat similar to what this will be), and have been calling them this since their beginnings in the late 90s (yes, I was that kid). And maybe it kind of makes sense if you look like I'm a fish out of the iW blogospher water? Due to the Canadian thing? And the young thing? That's still really lame (and even lamer of me to voice it like that). Nonetheless, that's what they've registered it as and I can't really ask for another one.

Alright.. So.. In conclusion: I'm not good at introductions, and I look forward to full-assedly contributing to the a iW-housed blog. Read me. (And excuse the blog's aesthetics, its a work in progress.)