November 27 – December 3, 2008 - Vol. XXXI, No: 12
Your community is inside! Sex!
Drugs!
Balls!
Breasts!
page 5
page 1
page 4
page 5
mechanical separation. With Tim Horton’s aplenty on campus, one has to wonder to what degree the U of T community is contributing to the ‘contamination’ problem. Do students know to separate lid from cup when tossing the latter into the blue bin? Are they even aiming for the blue bin at all? I spoke with Vig Krishnamurthy, a representative of the U of T Sustainability Office. He expressed his support for the city’s latest measure by asserting that the action “should be applauded, it’s well overdue …[The city] is finally taking a stance.” When asked whether Toronto should attempt to dictate the actions of a national company, Krishnamurthy conceded that it is understandable that Tim Horton’s would be “digging its heels.” However, he believes that the problem is best solved by creating a more responsible cup design, especially since a wide variety of cup types are available, including ones that are biodegradable or compostable. “If you change the cup,”
he says, “you solve the problem in every community... Toronto might eventually be able to afford the sorting machine, but an [immediate] change in [overall] packaging is a change for the better across the board in all contexts and all communities.” With regard to the latest ‘in-house’ recycling system at Tim Horton’s, Krishnamurthy affirmed, “It’s a smokescreen.” He pointed out that the majority of people toting takeaway cups will be doing just that: taking it away. A recycling program at Tim Horton’s won’t change what people do off the premises. And although the U of T campus accommodates recycling, there seems to be a lack of awareness of both the problem that these lids present, and sometimes of general recycling practices altogether. Krishnamurthy explained that because recycling regulations are frequently in flux, it is difficult for the average person to keep track of the changes. Continued on page 4...
Coffee crackdown Toronto needs to put a lid on it JODIE SHUPAC Community Concerns Bureau Over the past several weeks, Toronto has played host to a face-off between City Council and the renowned goliath of Canadian coffee, Tim Horton’s. On November 12th, the city’s Public Works and Infrastructure Committee released a set of proposals aimed at reducing wasteful consumer packaging. Among these proposals is a plan to ban the sale of to-go paper coffee cups with plastic lids by June 2009, as the lids contaminate Toronto’s paper-recycling process. Also, customers sporting their own reusable mugs are to be rewarded with a 20 cent discount. Separation in the recycling process is a more contentious issue than one might think. Nick Javor, senior vice-
president of corporate affairs at Tim Horton’s, maintains that in municipalities outside Toronto, plastic lids are mechanically separated from the pulp during processing. In what looks to be an effort to appease, Tim Horton’s has announced a plan to institute its own recycling system in stores across Ontario. However, Toronto officials argue that it is naïve to assume that Torontonians will manually separate cup from lid at their own accord. Javor insists that manual separation should not be the focus of debate, and points to what he upholds as the greater issue: Toronto’s refusal to financially invest in the necessary machinery for
the newspaper delivers far-out Awesome
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The newspaper is proud to announce our latest and greatest contest: tripping the light! We’re offering you the opportunity to get buzzed, drug-free, thanks to Brion Gysin’s “Dream Machine”. From November 27-28th,12pm-6pm, the newspaper will be hosting the official Dream Machine in our offices! The award-winning documentary, FLicKeR, is coming to Toronto, and the newspaper is offering the university community exclusive access to this mysterious device. But wait, there’s more! The first
tion, the “Dream Machine,” which he believed would revolutionize human consciousness. Great artists like William S. Burroughs, Iggy Pop, Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, DJ Spooky and Kurt Cobain all had a “Dream Machine” of their own; now its OUR turn! The concept is simple – a bright light is placed inside a rotating cylinder with patterned holes until a pulse of between 8-13 Hz is achieved. This is the exact frequency of alpha waves in the brain – the brain waves associated with creativity and dreaming. Subjects report
Come trip the light fantastic 10 people to experience the “Dream Machine” and then be able to name the director of “FLicKeR” will win a pair of tickets to the newspaper’s screening of FLicKeR at the Bloor Cinema on December 1st. Tickets are also available from the Bloor Cinema Box office. FLicKeR - which won a Special Jury Prize for Canadian Documentary at the 2008 Hot Docs Festival, and which has wowed audiences at festivals around the world - is the story of the influential Canadian artist and mystic Brion Gysin (1916-1986) and his amazing inven-
seeing shapes and images, sometimes full-blown hallucinations. Check www.thenewspaper.ca regularly for updates on these awesome events. EVERYONE who comes to experience the “Dream Machine” can have their picture on our website. And the best pictures will be published in the December 4th issue of the newspaper. It doesn’t get much more fantastic than this!
WIN!
2 the newspaper
November 27 – December 3, 2008
the inside
the table of CONTENTS
it’s a free-for-all! Calling all writers, copy editors and artists! Have you ever wanted to work in journalism? Would you like a chance to have you work published?
the newspaper is U of T’s ONLY independent newspaper, distributing across all 3 campuses as well as the surrounding community. This is an open call to all potential contributors. We want writers for politics, current events, sports, finance, arts and more! We are looking for creators to submit flash fiction, prose, poetry, photography, art, comics and anything else that falls out of your head. If you’d prefer to work behind the scene and help to edit and refine a weekly publication with 15,000 copies in circulation, then come see us. One more important thing: we offer free food! Yes! Come to our weekly open staff meeting, EVERY Thursday @ 5pm in our offices. We will feed your face! Awesomeness! We are on the South-West corner of St. George campus. Just North of College on Spadina. We want YOU to write between the lines.
the front page . . . . . . . . . . . 1 the inside . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 the editorial . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
NOW WITH 28.1% MORE AWESOME!
the arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 7
29.5% of all people surveyed said that the new, improved website for U of T’s only independent newspaper did not cause them to vomit in their soul. Exciting! It’s a website that is always growing, built to specifications and suggestions that you can send to us! Soon you can rant, discuss and get your hate on for all your leastfavourite writers! teh interwebs is Good again.
the end . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Come see for yourself.
the news . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 5
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the newspaper Publisher Matthew Pope
News Editor
Arts Editor
Ashley Minuk
Helene Goderis
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Contributors Stephan Bundi, Natalie Rae Dubois, Carl Gouldson, Mathiaus Poe, Andrew Prosser, Jodie Shupac
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the newspaper is proud to be University of Toronto’s ONLY independent news source. We look to our readers and contributors to ensure we provide a consistently superior product. Our purpose is to provide a voice for university students, staff, faculty and U of T’s extended community. This voice may at times be irreverent but it will never be irrelevant.
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the newspaper 3
November 27 – December 3, 2008
BEER • WINGS • POOL • JAVA SPORTS • JUKEBOX • SPIRITS EVENTS • OPEN STAGE • GAMES
the editorial I hate People Network fail MATHIAUS POE
The views and opinions expressed here are barely those of the author and not representative of the newspaper, its parent company Planet Publications or its helpless minions.
Opinion Column Bureau
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Networking, in all its sundried forms, has become the bane of my existence. I work in an office that houses both Macs and PCs. Not only do they fail with almost comforting regularity, but they have no idea how to talk to each other. Because they don’t know how to talk to each other, the only communication that tends to go on is me yelling at them. I happen to know that ‘the newspaper’ is in need of a wise techno-sage who will unite our fragmented, failing computers and lead us into a golden age of communication, cooperation and wonder. If you are (or know) this person, please contact my friends at ‘the newspaper.’ Sadly, that is not even the tip of the networking iceberg. As we follow this term into cyberspace, we find a whole galaxy of little network-worlds, none of which are able to communicate with each other. As you may also have guessed, I’m not skilled (or at least not fond of ) communicating at all, so all of this quickly becomes an issue. It seems that every few months there is a new social-networking site that I apparently have to join. Naturally, my initial response is to refuse. I don’t respond well to things as cliché as peerpressure and I don’t want to make it any easier for people to contact me. Weeks pass into months… and that is when I begin to realize that I have not heard from a certain chunk of my greater circle of friends. A small amount of investigation quickly reveals that they have abandoned standard forms of
communication like phone, texting, or email for the very social-networking site that I poo-pahed not that long ago. I am perpetually wedged in between these rocks and hard places. On the one hand, I hate People, I hate ‘networking’ and I actively avoid fads. On the other hand, I realize that there are certain persons that I want to or need to communicate with, and the only way to continue doing so is to join socialnetworking site X. So, I am eventually forced to succumb and join the latest network. However, because this is a cycle that has been repeating itself for years, I am adding social-networking site X to sites A through W. Suddenly we’ve come back to the same problem I have in my office: things not communicating with each other. Each social-networking site is exclusive and self-contained, so they are unable to communicate with other competing sites. In fact, I suspect they are intentionally designed to block any interconnectedness of that kind. Email crossed this barrier long ago. Google (which is god-like) allows me to use all seven of my emails from one location, send and receive from whichever addy I choose, and POP or IMAP anything I want, anywhere. Unfortunately there is no equivalent way for me to link all of these social-networking menaces together, so I quickly lose track of what accounts I have and where they are. I don’t even check the majority of them with any kind of regularity, so whether I have an account and
Paid in Awesome That’s how the newspaper rolls I recently attended the release party for the new albums of Snow Patrol, Keane, and Kaiser Chiefs, courtesy of the newspaper’s lovely representative over at Universal Music. I faced blazing beats, intense visuals, and awesome giveaways (a Vespa!) at a free party. Sigh, being a journalist can be such a burden. I may not get paid in dollars, but I do get paid in Awesome. Not only do I get to face deadlines and difficult assignments, but I get to go out to fabulous events (free of charge) and basically get paid to party. Schmoozing with industry types and dancing until the wee hours can really take its toll. It’s a tough life, but somebody’s got to do it; which leads me to my next point: all this Awesome and its rewards are just too much for one person to handle, so the newspaper needs your help. We need people to help us distribute our awesome assignments and their subsequent rewards. It is regular contributors that get to enjoy the
don’t use it, or never get an account at all, I am still offending someone for not being in touch. What I’m about to say might date me in a horrible way but… did you know that internet users can be separated by era? pre-social-networking sites, pre-streaming media, pre-Google, even pre-“www.” (believe it or not, there was a time that URLs did not have www. appended to them). I barely remember IRC, and I would bet that today’s generation of internet users don’t even remember Friendster anymore. People jump on and off these networking bandwagons faster than Robert Downey Jr. does his. Message boards are largely forgotten, Friendster is adrift and countless others (like Tagged, Ringo, and WAYN) were but flashes-in-the-internet pan. And the bloody bots that infest these sites are still sending me reminders to “join all my friends on ‘social-networking-site X.’” The interwebs is for Wikis, pr0n, and 4chan. The rest are just pesky bits of junk clogging up my access to those wonderful things. If you want to reach me, send me an EMAIL! Anyone remember those? Or does everyone just use Facebook messages or stupidlypublic wall posts to communicate? If you haven’t seen me, it’s because I’ve been in the meats or cyber-space, or even out in Meatspace. I encourage you to join me there, or on /b/.
WIN! fringe benefits here; we like to give back what we’re given. So we want to give you Awesome. We also hope to involve the local community. To that end, we announce our latest contest:
Local Music Mayhem! Choose a local band, ideally with ties to U of T. Create an artist profile piece (with an interview and album or show review) and submit it to the newspaper. The first two articles selected for publication will receive a CD prize pack courtesy of Universal Music Canada! Submissions should be sent to arts@ thenewspaper.ca The deadline is November 30th. 2008
4 the newspaper
November 27 – December 3, 2008
the news A word of advice
- Op Ed Blue balls
From someone older and more bitter than you
Law students take to the court
JODIE SHUPAC
ASHLEY MINUK
Opinion Piece Bureau You know that scene in Billy Madison where Billy grabs the face of the chubby third grader and whispers intensely, “Stay here. Stay here as long as you can. For the love of God, cherish it. You have to cherish it�? These words have never rung truer to me than right now. Freshly graduated from undergrad and flung into the postcollege phenomenon so familiar to the un-hireable arts grad, the Unpaid Internship, I have entered the Rat Race and all it has to offer, minus the paycheque. Rather than bitch and moan to you about bygone glory days, I will first pull a Billy Madison and make you promise that you will never ever leave. I will then proceed to outline some shitty things I have discovered about alumni life, which you may or may not experience, depending on the particular path you choose (unless it is world travel and if that is the case you should never, ever come back). 1.
2. 3.
Waking up before 9 a.m.: Let’s be honest, even when you have an early class, the only real consequence of being late for school is the thirty seconds of shame you experience slipping in, cursing the six dollar Starbucks you waited in line for. Non-academic life spells scary bosses and bad coffee. Moving back in with my parents after four years of independent bliss: Enough said. Discovering that my B.A. is worthless: I worked hard for that thing, like, really hard. Sometimes
University Community Events Bureau I would forget what outside looked like or what laughter sounded like because I was cloistered in the library for hours on end. And now I, and everyone I know with arts degrees (who are everyone I know), am excited to land that ‘competitive coffee shop gig,’ because god knows we have no chance of earning anything above minimum wage (or of course my ‘paid with a heart-felt thank you’ at the 9-5 internship). 4. Getting old: Even though I’m only six months out of school, I have taken on the part of a premenopausal woman, nostalgic for a lost youth. My friends and I will flee bars, mortified, upon determining that everyone there is, “In University!!â€? I scrutinize my face for wrinkles, cruelly demanding that people I just meet guess my age. An LCBO employee apologetically carded me and I hugged her. 5. Continuing to write for a student newspaper: As I approached ‘the newspaper’ office last night, breathing in the musty aroma of hallowed academic halls, in that old building on‌ uh‌ campus, I was filled with a renewed sense of vigour and purpose. This quickly turned into my feeling lame for trying to get back on the ship when the ship has so clearly sailed. That said, and in the interests of full disclosure, I didn’t even go to U of T, so take it or leave it.
Coffee crackdown
There’s nothing more entertaining than watching wannabe-lawyers duke it out... on the basketball court. Last Friday (Nov. 21st) I witnessed the second annual Black and Blue Charity Tip-Off game at the Air Canada Centre; a match pitting Osgoode Hall Law School students against Toronto law students in an effort to raise money for the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Lawyers Feed the Hungry Program. The final verdict: $10,000 for the hungry and a 30-19 win for the Toronto Blues. Arriving at the ACC on Friday afternoon to support the Blues, I filtered in with the crowd and immediately realized I had underestimated the magnitude of the event. Students and fans, some sporting pom-poms and noisemakers, poured into Gate 1, where they were handed complimentary t-shirts to represent their team of choice. The York crowd seemed noticeably more spirited (i.e.drunk) than the U of T crowd, perhaps as a mechanism to compensate for lack of athletic ability. Apparently, Osgoode law students did not use their time off from school to schedule extra basketball practice. “It felt
very good to beat them,â€? admits Robbie Faibish, lead scorer for the Toronto Blues, “We had a key second half‌ but ultimately we were there to come together for a good cause.â€? Organizers from both schools raised more than $10,000 through sponsorship, ticket sales, and a joint pub night fundraiser. All proceeds went to Lawyers Feed the Hungry, an organization staffed by volunteer lawyers, judges, law students and legal staff, who together serve about 1,350 meals each week. The game itself was sloppy but entertaining, as fans watched their friends futilely attempt shots from the NBA 3-point arc, several feet further from the net than what they’re used to. The half-time show included a 3-on-3 half-court faculty game, in which U of T’s law professors took their opponents in a whopping 6-2 victory. The venue raised the bar by offering its intense and exciting atmosphere, with the Toronto Raptors set to tramp the same court just hours after. For Faibish, and no doubt many others, playing ball at the ACC “was a dream come true.â€?
...continued from page 1
Toronto needs to put a lid on it Furthermore, as U of T comprises many international students, there is a disparity in terms of what people are accustomed to. With regard to the proposed discount for reusable mugs, Krishnamurthy observes that if students are generally willing to spend five bucks on coffee at a place like Starbucks, then a twenty cent incentive at any coffee shop may not have a galvanizing effect. Making recycling as straightforward as possible should therefore be a priority. Since U of T has its own Waste Management Service, this group could potentially work with the Sustainability Office and with student groups to promote education, perhaps through better signage. Krishnamurthy encourages students to champion this cause. For instance, individual residences could rally to distribute clearer recycling information in their buildings. On a more optimistic note, U of T still has the highest waste diversion rate of any university in Ontario, with close to 70% diversion away from landfills. Says Krishnamurthy, “We should generally be
proud of the job we’re doing at U of T. We [ultimately] want to see a continually comprehensive program moving toward 100 percent waste diversion.� Some might consider it a typically Torontonian assumption that a national company should cater to our city’s particular needs. Regardless, the city’s proposal to address the problem at its root will likely yield greater environmental benefits. Toronto’s waste will be reduced by eliminating both excess packaging and the potential for misplaced waste. As for other municipalities, well, a little less plastic never hurt anyone. Resources: http://www.sustainability.utoronto. ca http://www.toronto.ca/committees/ public-works-infrastructure. www.torontoenvironment.org For information on Waste Management Services at U of T contact: Reno Strano, Facilities & Services Dept. 416-946-5711 or 416-971-2994 reno.strano@utoronto.ca
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www.athabascau.ca/standout
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the newspaper 5
November 27 – December 3, 2008
the news
cont’d
Breast friends . . .come together for a good cause
the campus comment HELENE GODERIS
The newspaper took to the streets to ask YOU: Where, in your expert opinion, is the best place to have sex on campus?
CARL GOULDSON Community Events Bureau Lori Benson, a filmmaker out of New York City, took her daughter’s hand and walked out of a screening of her own film “Dear Talula” during the November 21-22 Breast Fest Film Festival at the Royal Ontario Museum. “She’s seen bits and pieces of it by accident,” she explained to the audience during a Q&A after the screening, “but I didn’t intend for her to have to see it for the first time today.” Benson was one of six filmmakers chosen from hundreds to feature their work at the world’s first-ever film festival dedicated solely to breast cancer awareness and discussion. Breast Fest is the latest in a long line of innovative awareness and support campaigns from Rethink Breast Cancer, a non-profit organization that specifically targets young people. “We’re trying to think differently about beating breast cancer,” said Alison Gordon, Vice President of Rethink. “There are already many cause-related festivals, and we felt it was a great way to engage a younger audience, which is what Rethink is about.” Rethink’s edgy take on awareness is already having an effect – in the days following the festival (and perhaps the only week in recent history), Googling “breast” actually brings up fewer porn sites than sites containing national media coverage of the event. The press gravitated toward Benson’s story in particular. The film’s first scenes were products of her husband’s afterthought to bring a video camera to her first appointment with her oncologist after the diagnosis – intended as a keepsake for her one-year-old daughter, Talula, in the event of a worst-case scenario. It was only several visits later that she stopped narrating to her daughter and started shooting B-roll. “Once I saw the footage, I said to myself, ‘I have to do this,’” she told the crowd. “It was cathartic, I got all the crying out in the editing room,” she continued, refering to the magnitude of emotional turmoil the film portrays
despite the lack of any actual crying. Gordon and the festival organizers made a conscious effort to include a wide range of emotions in the festival to balance the sheer weight of the subject matter. “One of the most important parts of any campaign is talking to lots of different people,” she said. U of T grad and Palm Springs Film Festival’s Most Promising Filmmaker, Susan Cohen, submitted the film “Open Your Eyes,” about a woman who gains an off-beat, almost sardonic perspective of her life as a woman living with breast cancer while locked in a bathroom at a bridal shower. “I put more humour in it because that way it’s easier to open a channel of conversation,” said Cohen. “If you hit them over the head with [the subject matter, the message, the support], you’ll loose your audience.” The decidedly hard-hitting selection of the festival delved into the long-term contributing effects that some environmental and chemical exposures have on breast cancer. “Toxic Bust,” from L.A. director/producer/professor Megan Siler, is what she calls a “hybrid documentary,” which atypically follows a single narrative wrapped around the “every woman,” as opposed to a single subject. “Breast cancer awareness has got a lot of coverage so my original conception was more experimental,” she said. “The stories I told were already about something that lurks in every woman’s mind, and I was angry that all the focus was on treatment and not the underlying causes.”
“I’m an atheist and I’ve always wanted to be converted (ahem) in the campus chapel.” Taylor Ramsay, 2nd year, (taking care of) Business
“Being the raging megalomaniac and narcissist that I am, I see no better venue than under the big bright lights of Varsity stadium. No audience will be in attendance; we need to preserve some romance! And watching my bare body on that big screen, nothing could satisfy me more.” Jake Steinmetz, 3rd year, English and Political Science
“Atop the roof of the architecture building as the sun comes up while College Variety is just opening for the day’s vending” Matt Zito, 4th year, Religion
“The mythical record room in Hart House!” Aidan Nulman, 3rd year, Cinema and Psychology
You can now view the festival’s films online at www.breastfestfilmfest.com. “10th floor study room in Robarts, overlooking the CN tower. It’s really romantic.” Andreas Finlay, 3rd year, Sexual Diversity
“Definitely Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library - the head of the peacock - attached to Robarts. It’s quiet, dark and usually pretty empty.” Elizabeth Syrotuik, 4th year, Religion
6 the newspaper
November 27 – December 3, 2008
the arts Barns’ door swings open Diversity, thy name is Wychwood; Ambition, thy name is Artscape NATALIE RAE DUBOIS Community Events Bureau “Find the Sleeping Beauties and wake them up” Elizabeth Cinello, Friends of a New Park Steering Committee On November 20th, Artscape’s Wychwood Barns officially opened. Inside the Covered Street Barn, one of the four newly restored TTC streetcar repair barns, a large and diverse crowd gathered to hear the opening speeches. The atmosphere was electric, just like the cars that used to be serviced there. Ward 21 Councillor Joe Mihevc, who has been crucial to the success of the project, referenced the recent Obama campaign mantra, “Yes, we can!” as the audience cheered. The president of a local heritage group, Peter MacKendrick from Taddlewood Heritage Association, went so far as to cite Ruskin, the influential nineteenth-century art, architecture and social critic: “When we build, let us think that we build forever…Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for… and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, ‘See! This our father did for us’.” These are powerful words to place on the shoulders of Wychwood Barns, a small and modest project compared with Toronto’s most recent architectural unveilings such as the AGO and the ROM. What makes the Barns so special? Here’s a brief profile of the project. Located just south of St. Clair Avenue, between Christie Street and Wychwood Avenue, are four former TTC streetcar repair barns. Built between 1913 and 1921, these long and narrow industrial brick sheds were decommissioned in the 1980s, and have since sat vacant - until now. These buildings, which form an important part of Toronto’s transportation heritage, have been saved from the wrecking ball and a landfill grave. They are now home to a mixed-use program that aims to combine arts and cultural connectivity, heritage preservation, The public flows into the Barns.
environmental leadership, educational programming and community partnership. There are 26 affordable artist live-work residences incorporated into the Studio Barn, forming the housing component of the project and creating a small artist community. An additional 15 affordable artist studios are provided, along with office and rehearsal spaces for 13 notfor-profit organizations, many of which will run educational programs and workshops for the community. These spaces are located in the Community Barn. The Covered Street Barn provides a year-round space for community festivals and events, to be organized by the artists and other organizations. A Community Board of Directors will also help with programming this space (the Board happens to boast our own John Smith, the Chief Scout for U of T’s Varsity Blues team). The Stop Community Food Center will run a sustainable food systems education center in the Green Barn, which houses a year-round greenhouse. This organization will supply food to low-income families around the city, as well as supply the Farmer’s market that will take place in the Covered Street Barn on Saturdays. And if that weren’t enough, the project is targeting LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, the first heritage redevelopment project in North America to do so. The project employs a geothermal pump system (which uses the differences between the earth’s temperature close to its core and at its surface to either heat or cool air for a building) and a rooftop cistern to capture rain water to flush toilets. Oh, and there’s also a newly landscaped 127,000 square foot park that surrounds the complex, complete with a children’s playground, sports field and natural skating rink during winter. The project seems too good to be true – a utopian vision in which the creativity of artists and organizations live sustain[Photo: Sam Catalfamo]
Barns architect Joe Lobko addresses crowd; “the Barns still have life in them.”
ably in a preserved heritage building, while providing such noble services as a greenhouse where local children can learn to grow healthy food. Skepticism begins to fade, though, considering the unique characteristics of the project. “This is a different situation than social housing,” Alyssa Ryvers points out. A composer, Ryvers is one of Wychwood Barns new tenants. “Artists generally are highly educated, and highly underpaid… you’re dealing with people who have been financially marginalized,” she says. She also adds that it is a place where she feels that artists can live with dignity. Another reason why this project should be able to survive over time is the amount of flexibility built into design. Spaces are left for the community and the artists to use as they see fit; this ensures that the buildings can adapt to the users’ needs as they change. Tim Jones, President and CEO of Artscape, explains: “We’ve just created an open canvas here and invited creative people in this building and in the neighbourhood to fill in the colour. So, we don’t really know what’s going to happen, and we’re really excited to see what kind of collaborations, what kind of resources can be shared, and what kind of programming can come and begin to animate this site.” Artscape, the developer of the project, also has a pretty good track record (previous projects include buildings in the Distillery District and Liberty Village). The not-for-profit organization firmly believes in harnessing the creativity of artistic individuals to build sustainable and liveable cities and communities. While their mandate may seem based on dreams more than reality, their projects are working in the real world. According to a Globe and Mail article from February 2004, two of Artscape’s buildings on Queen Street West helped rejuvenate the area. Rents increased for 87 percent of businesses in the area;
[Photo: Sam Catalfamo]
retail sales increased from 102,300 dollars to 115,500 dollars over a three year period, and nine new retail stores were created. Artscape has become a leader and innovator in the field of designing places with creativity in mind, and consults on projects around the world. If the success of Artscape as an organization is any indication of the success of its individual projects, Wychwood Barns will embody the potential that is envisioned for the community now. Joe Lobko, the lead architect for the project and a principle at du Toit Allsopp Hillier Architects and former U of T School of Architecture professor, sees the diversity of the project as the key to its success. “It’s the diversity of it that I think is the most interesting and engaging part of it; it’s the range of places. That’s what really, I think, is the magic of it,” he says. With the completion of this project, U of T becomes the geographical center of Toronto’s cultural renaissance, pinpointed by the reincarnated ROM, AGO and Wychwood Barns. For art students at U of T, it will be encouraging to see these types of spaces being built by organizations like Artscape. It provides artists with a “good, safe place… [and] a certain amount of security, like a safety net,” says Ryvers. The Barns gives hope to future artists who are worried about entering the art world, commented a third year Visual Arts student, Michelle Lun. U of T Visual Arts exchange student Abhishek Talapatra was equally enthusiastic: “[the Barns] provides a sense of direction for recent graduates.” The magic touch of the many people who helped re-awaken this Sleeping Beauty will hopefully enliven the dormant potential of Toronto’s artistic and cultural community.
the newspaper 7
November 27 – December 3, 2008
the arts
cont’d
Brave new mind Look out, here comes the Spidey-man ANDREW PROSSER Community Events Bureau Highly recommended to anyone with a mind. “...bringing a new dimension to the minds of Toronto... entertainment in its most incredible form... the true power of YOUR OWN MIND.” These are big words for an apish Egyptian franglophone, spoken while standing in front of me backstage, dressed to the nines in magico-suave. Think Friday night on Richmond Street, complete with a spider motif – right down to the cobweb-patterned contact lenses. The lenses, however, he admits are only for the show: “man, if I wore those at a bar that would just freak people out”. This is SPIDEY, ladies and gentlemen. Bedros Akkelian by birth, he is Montreal’s mentalist, magician and hypnotist. I talked to Spidey before his show at the Bader Theatre this past Friday night, wanting to know his deal before all the entrancing began. With advertisements in the vein of Chris Angel’s, I was expecting a wild-eyed barrage of hocuspocus and wondering how I’d stomach it. In person, however, Spidey did up his arachnid cufflinks and leveled with me on having no pretensions to any supernatural mindfreaking: “I don’t like those guys who claim to have magical powers or psychic gifts - hypnosis is a skill anyone can have with enough practice, like being a quarterback.” Aside from his first show at the University of Toronto, Spidey has performed 5-6 nights a week for years in Montreal, at Yale and Harvard University, and at Club Meds in the Caribbean, where they let him push his shows into R-rated territories (not so with us tame
Torontonians). He also does one-on-one relationship hypnosis therapy (getting over your ex, etc.) and has recently started a workshop on the “Art of Attraction,” wherein he combines elements of psychology, social magic and basic hypnotism techniques to help guys improve their cruise at the bar. So much for the tarot-enshrouded voodoo sage I was expecting. In fact, it put me in mind of an entirely different type of sage, and yes, my instincts were right: it turns out that Spidey is connected with the pick-up artist community popularized by Neil Strauss’ The Game. However, Spidey likes to distance himself from that group by emphasizing attraction rather than one-night stands. Take that how you will. So, the man has a degree in psychology and admits to nothing more magical than showmanship. But that still doesn’t negate the burning question: is it real, dude? Thus in the spirit of true investigative journalism, I volunteered to subject myself to Spidey’s onstage spells... and got nothing. All but five of the volunteers, including myself, were ‘tapped out’ of the tricks just as the first one began. I imagine he was aware that we didn’t really believe in the instruments we were supposedly playing. To be fair, he had warned me this might happen. He says he’s never had anyone resist hypnosis in a private session, but onstage he has to deal with people who are overly skeptical or easily embarrassed by a crowd. Whatever the reason, I’m glad that I didn’t zone out, because those who did provided me with streaming tears of laughter (I’m not exaggerating – it was
intense) at the expense of their shameless somnambulistic monkeying. Spidey had them eating onions like passion fruit, punching their own crotches, rapping in Chinese and sputtering drunk off a bottle of water. I can’t convince any cynics here on paper – you have to see these things for yourself to know that the 17 year-old Puerto Rican and the bald 40-something could not possibly fake it that far in. The kid’s mom was sitting right in front of me in hysterics, his little brother hiding his face behind his shirt through half the show. Even if it was fake, I’d still recommend the show to anyone – it was too completely ridiculous to even think about nitpicking. But to soften my ebullience here with a note of criticism, I will say this: my enjoyment stemmed from the tomfoolery of the victims; Spidey himself could have used some work on his game. He was charismatic enough, but the jokes
fell flat or verged on the plain tasteless (“I don’t think I’ll be de-hypnotizing her tonight, I’ll just take her home like that!” – a comment after which there ensued a small heckle-tiff with the girl’s boyfriend). At times I got the impression he didn’t quite know what he was doing and things might just fly off the handle. It was painful to watch his awkward attempts to de-hypnotize a violently spasming elderly woman who had obviously dove in too deep; likewise when one of the volunteers, after he had coaxed them into getting outraged at an imagined insult, threatened to throw a chair into the audience. Overall, of course, things worked themselves out and ran smoothly enough. But if hypnosis is, as Spidey says, 50 percent showmanship, then he might do well to shape up that particular ship.
Great album! True story U of T alum’s ‘Orchestra’ makes magic STEPHAN BUNDI University Community Music Bureau In the context of contemporary music, it is unconventional wisdom that the greatest gems are the ones best hidden. U of T alumnus Ainsley McNeaney is living evidence of this fact. Certainly it can be easy to dismiss artists when they cite musical inspirations for their music (there’s just something about Puddle of Mudd that lacks the Led Zeppelin sound), but Ainsley McNeaney’s latest album oozes with elements of Rufus Wainwright, Tori Amos and Joanna Newsom. In June of this year, to little hype, McNeaney released her debut album, True Story Orchestra. Stylistically, her music is difficult to define. Tracks are as mellow (“The Night”) as they are enthusiastic (“This Girl”); lyrically, they are as brutally pragmatic (“Old & Grey”) as they are idealistically joyous (“Closer”); and one bipolar track (“Paper Doll”) is as as restrained as it is passionate. More impressively, True Story Orchestra is completely self-produced and funded. “I discovered very quickly that the North American recording industry is experiencing absolute chaos right now,” Ainsley told the newspaper. “The major labels blame the internet and the choices that it bestows upon today’s listener… the gist of it is that it’s an independent artist’s world out there”.
Ainsley recorded the album with help from audio engineer Steven Major at the XM Satellite Radio Studios in Toronto; Major was looking for new projects at the time. After the two were introduced by a mutual friend, they recorded two demo songs and then worked together for the remainder of the album. “My initial plan was to get the whole album done in a few months, but in hindsight that was an extremely ambitious goal that got squashed pretty quickly,” she explains. As the title of the album suggests, the recording process involved a legitimate orchestra: “many of the wonderfully talented orchestra musicians who played [on my album] were people I went to U of T with or know through the small world of classical music – some I even went to public school with!” Ainsley writes all of her own music, wanting the product to be her’s, as she puts it, “through and through.” When asked about the track that carries the greatest significance to her, she cited “Closer” – a song that represents the capriciousness of life, the apprehension we all share of not knowing what is yet to come. Appropriately, the melody of that song is tremendously upbeat. Ainsley has got a busy schedule ahead of her. She’s playing December 11th at the Pepper Jack Café in Hamilton, January 18th at the Tranzac in Toronto and January 23rd at the Freeway Café in Hamilton. Afterward, she says that “the plan is to hop in my car come springtime with a slightly smaller band and do a this-end-of-Canada tour!” True Story Orchestra is available for sale on her web site (www.ainsleymcneaney.com) or for download on iTunes. This exemplary music album is definitely worth an ear.
8 the newspaper
November 27 – December 3, 2008
the end
the jumbler BY: ASHLEY MINUK
Unscramble the letters to form common words. Use the letters in the highlighted boxes to answer the riddle! Answer for last week’s jumbler: “All shook up� [with apologies for misprinted extra-space] Solution to THIS jumbler in next week’s the newspaper
BY STEPHEN NOTLEY
! ! " #