Nathan is back to help us talk about the 2012 Academy Awards Nominations. We go through the noms in the Best Picture category and make our predictions about who will take home the Oscar on February 26th.

The Nominees: The Artist; The Descendants; Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close; The Help; Hugo; Midnight in Paris; Moneyball; The Tree of Life; War Horse.

Nerd Hurdles returns to the Underworld. It triggers an argument about body image.

Jakob and Mandi talk food, foodies, cooking classes and cheeses of the world. Anyone up for some balut?

We went on vacation again and this is what we thought about the things we watched (pretty much spoiler free!).

Like all good things that come in threes, Nerd Hurdles celebrates its 3rd birthday on December the 18th, 2011. Fittingly, or a reasonable facsimile of fittingly, they talk about the great trilogies of our time (somehow omitting the Beethoven movies).

To celebrate the brilliant new The Muppets movie, we return to this subject to give it a more in depth analysis than in our puppetry episode (yeah right).

This week Jakob and Mandi return to the world of reality TV—specifically the talent contest shows— and use it as a frame for tangents. They also talk about drunk Paula and confuse  X-Factor with various countries that Got Talent.

After a brief, unplanned hiatus, we’re back with an episode of proportions. Not epic proportions, but human proportions where we wax poetic about the weird anatomy of people far more beautiful than us. We also manage to talk about the oft-maligned, under-rated, misunderstood, yet somewhat problematic, Joss Whedon TV series Dollhouse.

Jakob and Mandi are joined by their soft-spoken librarian friend Stephen about the most hallowed of all nerd haunts, the public library. Together they comb the stacks in search of the fiction, non-fiction and history behind the stigmas and stereotypes of the institution, its employees and its patrons.

Links: We would have written about famous librarians in pop culture but a blog called The Despectacled Librarian has already done more research on the subject than we care to.
Librarians in song
Librarians on TV
Librarians in movies

Libreas Podcast (as in Library Ideas… see what they done there?). Interestingly the name is a pun in English but the podcast is actually in German.

One of the few horribly over-crowded places you can say, “It’s a zoo in here!” and mean it literally. Never mind the penned-up animals, the real exhibits are the people.

When we sat down to chat about nerdy girls with Ro Karen of Starbase 66, her infamous Beloved claimed she wasn’t going to say a single word. So we didn’t give her a microphone. That didn’t stop her. At all. Welcome to The Beloved Show.

Police dramas and legal dramas have been a staple of television programming since television was called radio. This week Jakob and Mandi investigate and prosecute infamous television cops and lawyers. Murder One and Law & Order are named in the indictment but, as with any police dragnet, many key suspects elude capture.

Let us know who we missed on the forums.

We all need to eat. Which means some of us need to cook. So, how do you cook?

It can be an unexpectedly difficult set of skills to master considering how basic they are to our survival.  Luckily, since the dawn of time—well, since people discovered fire and consequently bar-be-que—there have been those willing to pass on these skills to others. With the advent of television, the sum total of our culture’s culinary knowledge was places at out fingertips.

So why aren’t we all master chefs?

Besides the fact that we all learn at some point that following along with a cooking show results in gastronomic disaster, human beings don’t like to learn so much as pretend they’re learning.  We prefer to better ourselves through osmosis as opposed to practical, hands on experience. Very few people who watched the Joy of Painting with Bob Ross have ever painted a single happy tree. The same can be said for anyone who ever attended classes in university.

Observing this, the producers of cooking shows have steered away from straight instructional demonstration to focus on personality, between steps banter and chef competitions. Some shows aren’t about cooking but food appreciation where the preparation of the meal is, at best, a footnote (such as BBC’s The Supersizers).

Now, with the democratizing effect of the internet, people who don’t even know how to cook have cooking shows. Such as the delightfully messy My Drunk Kitchen with Hannah Hart.

Proof that it’s harder than it might seem to make a simple little (enjoyable to watch) YouTube cooking show: Our Pagan Kitchen.

Real cooking shows: The Supersizers; My Drunk Kitchen; Cookus Inrreuptus; Vegan Black Metal Chef, Hail Seitan; Martha Stewart Bloopers; Wok With Yan; Urban Peasant.

Yes, there are spoilers in this episode. For both Angel and Buffy. But if you haven’t watched them yet, you probably have no interest in watching them. So you may as well listen to some spoilers.

If, after listening to the spoilers, you think it all sounds pretty good. You should follow this guide for watching Buffy and Angel in conjunction.

And don’t forget about the Toronto Meet-up!

What’s more awesome than going to the movies?

Free ride on a space shuttle? A room full of gold bars? A root canal?

It’s always a crap-shoot. Who will ruin your movie-going experience?

The Loud Eater: We can all rest well at night knowing that whoever had the brilliant idea of selling popcorn at the movies is now enjoying their own special ring of hell. Well, you can’t really blame them. The profit margin on popcorn—especially cinema popcorn—has to be astronomical. Unless “golden topping” is actually made of gold, it should actually be given away free. At every video store I worked at, that’s exactly what we did, at minmal cost to us. The main difference being, no one cares if the stranger beside you at the video store is munching loudly on palm oil infused crunch-balls. At least popcorn comes in the most crinkly bag possible. Otherwise The Loud Eater would have to buy Twizzlers or Doritos—or slurp their 1.5+ litres of soda—in order to make enough noise to drown-out dialogue or ruin the tension in a suspenseful scene.

The Chuckler: Humour is an important part of a movie, even a serious drama. Films are full of all kinds of jokes ranging from extreme slap-stick gags to subtly wry observations. The Chuckler laughs, and laughs loudly, at anything resembling an attempt at humour. The volume of their laughter will often be inversely proportional to the appropriate response to the joke in question. A quip intended to inspire an inward smirk will unleash a full volume guffaw. The Chuckler will always be seated directly behind you.

The Superfan: Most common at genre and series films, The Superfan will inform their noob companions of the back story of every peripheral character, no matter if this information isn’t even integral to understanding the plot. They will also comment on costume design and every single aspect of the story the filmmakers changed or “got completely wrong”. A variation of The Superfan is the HIMDb—Human Internet Movie Database. Expect complete run-downs of the filmography of every actor in the film and projects the director has in development. Oh joy.

The Cavedweller: The exact opposite of The Superfan, they will leave their cave of pop-culture isolation once every five years to go to something like the 8th Harry Potter film—cleatly not having seen or read anything in the series—and demand their companion explain everything that happens. If you’re lucky their companion will be the HIMDb and you won’t have to listen to the actual film at all.

The Snark: This charming piece of work will loudly and derisively snort at every cheesy piece of dialogue or ridiculous plot device. Like The Chuckler, their volume will be inversely proportional to the appropriateness of the scene. Sometimes their name is Jakob.

The Conversationalist: Catching up with their college roommate would be a lot easier if the movie wasn’t so loud. Why do movies have to be so loud these days?

The e-L33T-ist: Apparently a darkened theatre provides the best atmosphere for viewing the screen of your smart phone for all-night texting sessions. Also, excellent for testing out new ringtones to see if they can cut through the hubbub of a mega-watt THX sound system that’s been cranked up to drown out The Conversationalist.

The Rover: The grass is always greener on the other side of the theatre. Or the seats more comfortable, maybe. The Rover likes to try out a few different locations during the course of a movie—all of which places them directly in your line of sight as they sidle down a new row. Frequent trips to the bathroom and concession (to obtain more soda to enable more bathroom trips) are also part of their wanderlust.

The Character Builder: Nothing puts hair on your chest like being taken to an age-inapproriate movie. The monster under the bed doesn’t seem so bad after Dad takes you to a whimsical little romp like Pan’s Labyrinth on his custody weekend. Of course, the cries and whimpers of a life-defining childhood trauma does add an authenticity to certain films.

The Kicker: Clearly the back of your seat did something to offend them.

Luckily, you might not experience any of these cinematic archetypes. Going to the movies can be a truly enjoyable experience. Being immersed in the multi-million dollar sights and sounds of a Hollywood production can sweep you off to a magical land for 90-or-so minutes in one of the few ways available to us legally .

To give yourself the best chance of enjoying a film at the cinema, we suggest following this tidbit of advice: Go to a matinee showing no sooner than two weeks after the movie opens. You’ll have the theatre practically to yourself, sharing it only with other people looking for a rewarding movie-going experience.

For a comic strip so overwhelmingly popular (over the course of 50 years it became a $1 billion empire), it’s relatively rare to find someone who will admit to enjoying Peanuts, much less love it devotedly.

My name is Jakob and I am that person.

Though Peanuts is my only true fandom, the only franchise I actively (though modestly) collect merchandise from, I am not willfully blind to many of the strip’s faults. I understand how the prevailing themes of failure in the face of adversity, crippling self-doubt, bullying, isolation, nihilism about the state of the world, unrequited love, betrayal, mental health issues and vague theological overtones, are off-putting for many readers.

The first Peanuts comic, October 2, 1950:

The first complaint I ever heard (from my mother when I bought a stack of Peanuts books at a yardsale), and still most often hear, is how painful it is to witness the constant abuse Charlie Brown meekly accepts at the hands of his so-called friends.

It’s really a testament to Charles Shultz‘s writing that the reader feels so personally implicated in the perennial tearing-down of Chuck’s ego. It’s not just that there’s something so identifiable about Charlie Brown that it’s almost impossible not to sympathize with him, we are also so familiar with the petty indignities he suffers. Shultz was a master of exposing the subtle cruelties, banal hypocrisies and creeping isolation of the typical 20th century North American suburb.

Peanuts is, if nothing else, a bleak existential treatise exploring the harsh truth that we are all alone with the cards stacked against us. You always strike out. Your true love is indifferent to you. Your dog hates you. Your friends take advantage of your weaknesses. The house always wins.

At the same time as these dark, socio-pychological dramas are playing out, there’s something sickening wholesome about the strip. The Peanuts neighborhood is made up of white picket fences, sandlot baseball diamonds, icecream cones, puppies, whistling birds, lemonade stands and kids flying kites. It’s the kind of place you’d expect the fire department only exists to rescue kittens from trees.

At first blush the comic is as cloyingly quaint as Family Circus or Leave It To Beaver. It’s easy to understand why so many dimiss Peanuts as a white-washed relic of the 1950s. People are often surprised (and more often doubtful) when you explain to them there’s deeper, more cynical social commentary underpining the strip.

And it’s both these distasteful aspects combined which allowed the comic to transcend the confines of the funny pages and become one of the first examples of graphic literature.

As popular as Snoopy’s frivolously absurd cosplay adventures (blech!) might have been, without the foundation of Chuck’s misguided perseverance, Lucy’s mean-spirited attempts to bolster her low self-esteem, Linus’ fragile psyche held together by his whimsical intellect and unwaivering faith, Sally’s borderline narcisism, Shroeder’s self-absorbed sarcasm, Peppermint Patty’s perpetual struggle with societal gender norms, and Marcie’s long-suffering adoration, the strip’s popularity would have faded over time like so many yellowed newspapers.

Most comic strip punchlines are based on situations the characters are placed in. With Peanuts the punchline was almost secondary to the outcome of the day’s strip. The characters weren’t plopped into a situation for the sake of a quick gag, situations were built around characters. Yet, even with the longer story arc that developed, the strip never devolved into a cartoon soap opera.

For 50 years Shultz managed to balance light and dark, silly and serious, childish and adult, cute and cringing, without (entirely) losing sight of what resonated with his audience. Very few strips—Calvin and Hobbes being the obvious example—have managed to create characters as rich and rounded as the Peanuts gang. They are partners in storytelling instead of mere punchline delivery systems.

Well, except for Snoopy. Snoopy is terrible.

• Official site (with comics archive!)
• Creepy realistic Charlie Brown.
• Lucy and Chuck, growed up.
• Manga Peanuts gang. Same but with Sally, etc.
• Dysfunctional Family Circus.

Summer is a terrible time of year. According to Jakob.

Links: Ogopogo.

We’ve given you a full week to see the film and something like four years to read the book, so we’re not even going to bother warning you this episode/blog post contains spoilers. Your puny Petronus is no match for our Avada Spoilavra anyway.

A decade of Harry Potter comes to a close with HP7DHPt2. Which is the second half of the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and not a new virulent strain of the flu.

Yet, like a malaise, this cinematic end is causing acute sadness in some people. It’s the end of a magical era. There will no longer be another installment to look forward to; No annual booster shot of enchantment to revive the spell cast by the books that were such a profound experience for so many.

In others there’s merely this vague sense of relief or, if that’s putting it too strongly, a sense of finality somewhat similar to putting a cherished pet to sleep after a long and fulfilled life. But a pet you were never really that fond of. What’s playing next?

Richard Smith, of the Movies You Should See Podcast, wrote this blog post on opening weekend. In it he’s summed up most of what’s wrong with both Deathly Hallows films. Mainly that the pacing is messed up entirely. Things that should have had time spent on them are rushed and unimportant events are given long, atmospheric sequences. At one point I came back from the washroom and Mandi told me, “You missed Voldemort walking across the bridge.”

David Yates is certainly adept at conjuring up the proper atmosphere for Harry Potter. But but he’s a squib at telling the story.

Too many small, but very important, details were cut seemingly for the sake of freeing up the time needed for atmospheric bridge walking. It wasn’t until the polyjuice potion wore off that I realized the bearded guy in the bank heist was Ron. Perhaps process of elimination should have clued me in but I was too busy trying to actually be immersed in the movie to do some critical thinking.

Those who know the book by heart (many in the audience probably) wouldn’t have this problem. But I’ve only read the book once and that was over a year ago. There should have been a five second shot of Ron transforming. Besides it’s always cool to watch wizards doing some magic. In a movie about wizards doing magic.

Though there were far too many small cuts of this nature, one thing I do disagree with Rich about is that the whole book couldn’t have been done in one film because the cuts would’ve been even worse. It’s not the cuts that are the problem, it’s the slapdash way they were handled.

If the proper amount of time had been given to each scene, the book could have been wrapped-up in three hours without jettisoning anything important. At least, it couldn’t really be any worse than it is and we wouldn’t have had to sit through so much camping and an interminably drawn-out, unengaging, teenage soap opera.

Part 2 doesn’t suffer from the same poorly handled interpersonal drama by almost entirely removing personal interaction between any of the characters. Everyone is all business, all the time. There’s hardly time for Harry and Ron to share two words and none that aren’t pragmatic discussions about the task at hand.

The same goes for Ron and Hermione’s romantic reconciliation. When estranged true love’s reunite in the heat of battle, it should be an emotional experience. But like many of the scenes in the film, Yates relies to heavily on the audience’s knowledge of the book and not actually spending the time on telling the story in the film. Film kit contains everything you need to recreate the scene from the book! Some assembly required (emotions not included).

With this in mind, I find it amazing Yates handled “Snape’s Memory” so well. Or well enough for it to provoke an emotional response in me. He must have known this scene would be make-or-break for the movie.

Actually, I give all the credit to Alan Rickman. He’s one of those deceptive actors who fools you into dismissing him as a campy showboat then blindsides you with some subtly nuanced quivering-eyeball-and-lip acting. Perhaps that still falls into the campy camp. But he saves the entire film in one five-minute scene.

Speaking of campy acting, Ralph Fiennes does a pretty amazing Voldemort happy dance when he believes he’s killed Harry Potter. It’s as if, after ten years, he finally got a handle on Voldemort’s character at the end of the franchise. It reminded me of when the titular Bill shows up in Kill Bill part 2 and is disarmingly wacky, defying expectations (well, defying the expectations of someone who’s never seen a Tarantino film).

Voldemort finally transcends being a two-dimensional matinee villain and transforms into an actual flesh-and-blood character. You see just how crazy he really is; how his fascist, anti-Muggle beliefs are really just a smokescreen for a damaged, infantile psyche. He’s not just hateful, power-hungry and psychotically violent, his “evil” is much more tragically human. He can’t even begin to understand the world he inhabits because he sees the world through the eyes of an emotionally stunted child. He’s lost in the wilderness and doesn’t even realize it. It’s a glorious bit of acting and it lasts under 3 seconds.

Then it’s back to being the cartoon baddie until his inevitable and somewhat anti-climactic demise.

Really the film is an endless series of anti-climactic deaths. Bellatrix Lestrange, George Weasley, Snape, Remus and Tonks plus others all die without quite enough ceremony. The deaths didn’t have to be long and drawn out affairs full of wheezing speeches and final breaths, but each should have felt more more significant than it did.

But anti-climax seems to be what Yates was going for with film. Which brings us to one of the most bizarre final shots in film history. Just before the “19 years later” epilogue (which itself is unintentionally hilarious for various reasons involving make-up), Harry, Ron and Hermione are standing on a bridge, the one Voldemort walked across atmospherically, staring ahead.

Staring at what, we don’t know.

The ruins of Hogwarts? Maybe. We aren’t shown. Towards the future or back at the past seven years? One would assume. Though that shot is traditionally framed from behind the actors so we can partake in the vista they’re contemplating. Whatever it is they’re standing there silently looking at was making them visibly awkward and uncomfortable. Fade to black.

They probably appear so awkward—as if they don’t know what they were supposed to be looking at or why—because they were actually looking at nothing, standing in a green screen studio with David Yates directing them, “More intense! And faster!”

Though not entirely unsatisfying (for those who’ve read the books and only need the films to be the cliff-notes version), it’s still a disappointing, slightly inglorious end to a monumental film franchise.

Not as disappointing as Warner Bros. stopping Brad Neely from making the entire Wizard People, Dear Reader series.

The most legitimate or most dubious of all cosplay fandoms? ‘Tis a conundrum which is devilishly difficult to deduce an answer to. For a sub-genre that’s never had a bona-fide “even your mother knows it” hit, steampunk sports a deucedly large legion of dedicated followers.

Perhaps this is due to this same underground status. Fans can be as creative as they want without dressing like any particular character. And what razzes a fan’s berries more than their favourite games, books and movies being virtually unrecognized by the general public? Or the general public being unaware a film such as Wild Wild West is part of a larger subculture (though perhaps steampunkers would like to forget about that one too).

Reading list: Leviathan (Westerfeld); Airborn (Oppel); The Shadow In The North (Pullman); His Dark Materials (Pullman); Firefly (Serenity comics)

Ignore the podcasters behind the curtain.

Not so much a collection of gaffs, blunders and bloopers, our fourth “gag reel” is more like deleted scenes, alternate endings and candid moments from between takes.

Mostly it’s tangents that were edited out for being too tangential to even be easter eggs. A look behind the curtain, so to speak, or a chance to hang out in Jakob and Mandi’s basement with their cats. If that’s your kind of thing you might even enjoy this tangy collection of pointless tangents.

If this is your first time here, please consider listening to one of our other episodes first.

Link: Simply Syndicated Toronto Meet-up 2011 thread.

Looking over the shownotes of our first board games episode, it seems to me we cover absolutely no new ground in this episode. Except of course this episode contains 100% more Kennedy of the Starbase 66 and Books You Should Read podcasts. And really, any topic would have just been an excuse to hang out and gab.

This was recorded just before the Charlie Sheen #winning explosion and before every single person knew what Angry Birds is all about. Amazing how fast pop culture moves.

Links:

Settlers of Catan

List of Monopoly editions

Possible board game movies

Best movie board games

Kensington

Forget chess clubs, forget spelling bees, forget matheletes and band camp, if you want to discuss nerdy school activities, citing the debate team itself is a strong argument.

Not only is it an intellectual pursuit but there’s a huge element of dorky role-playing involved. It’s sort of like the law court or government version of LARPing. Even spelling bee kids admit it’s just a spelling bee. The sophists on the debate team always seemed to really believe they were preparing for future careers as UN diplomats or that their dialectic tournaments really mattered in some way.

Or this negative attitude of mine towards these deliberating debutantes could have simply been a slacker’s knee-jerk aversion to people who seem to care about things. Fashion sense, physical attributes and social graces aside, one of the things that separates the nerd from the chaff is earnest sincerity and enthusiasm. You’ll never find a cooly-wooly getting hot and bothered about contentious issues such as euthanasia, abortion and capital punishment. Feigned indifference about such things, if not outright obtuseness, is what makes them cool. Conversely, it also makes them douchebags.

Well, that and not caring if the Enterprise or a Star Destroyer would win in a fire fight.

That makes them cool. Anyone who care about that is a douchebag of a nerdier colour.

This week we return to the cage and battle it out to decide what is the nerdier fandom: Science Fiction or Fantasy.

Star Wars is famously not considered hard Science Fiction by nerds. Instead it’s given dubious terms like space opera or the ponderous fantasy-that-happens-to-be-set-in-space. Conversely, nerds will often cite Star Trek as being proper Science Fiction since it is supposedly based on scientific concepts. Even if warp drive is based on actual scientific theories, really it’s just as much space-fantasy as Star Wars‘ generally unexplained hyperdrive. And is the Vulcan mind meld really any less magical than the Jedi mind trick? If you ‘re going to be completely honest about it, no, it’s not.

But more importantly, for the average person, it’s just all the same pile of space shit, as one of my roommates used to say with her face scrunched up like a cat’s ass.

But if you’re a nerd and want to quibble, as nerds often do, Original Series Star Trek actually was real Science Fiction. Frequent instances of space-wizardry aside, each episode was based on a classic sci-fi concept. Whether it was speculating on alien biology or quantum mechanics, the crew’s weekly adventures were merely the backdrop to the bright idea hatched by that episode’s writer.

The Next Generation was less interested in scientific speculation and more interested in exploring socio-political concepts. Science was relegated to merely being the excuse for the Enterprise to visit the planet/star system of the week. By the time Deep Space Nine came along, science had been almost entirely discarded in favour of pure space opera.

Which is ultimately what almost all contemporary Sci-Fi has become. Battlestar Galactica was really just Odysseus in space trying to make his way home; the Stargates are closer to magical wardrobes than CERN reactors; the the aliens in District 9 could be exchanged for human refugees; Avatar could easily have been told in a traditional fantasy setting with magic and elves instead of science and aliens—the sci-fi elements were really not essential to any of these stories. They really are Fantasy-Adventure stores with a few technological trappings.

On the other hand, films such as Inception and Moon entirely rely on their Sci-Fi premises. But films like these are rare compared to the fantasy-that-happens-to-be-set-in-space.

You can still find plenty of hardcore Science Fiction of course. Speculative, often cautionary, stories about emerging technologies, time travel and interstellar exploration are alive and well in print. Yet they remain the domain of a niche market. Your average reader might pick up a Michael Creighton, but will shudder at the sight of something by Ben Bova. Now take into consideration the popularity of Harry Potter, Twilight, the Lord of the Rings films, every damn vampire franchise currently going,  perennially popular horror tropes such as demonic possessions and hauntings, and it appears that these days Fantasy is far more popular than Science Fiction. Especially if you add “space opera” to Fantasy’s score.

As I said before, by default your average Normie is going pigeonhole anything set in space as Sci-Fi. And who’s to say they’d be wrong in doing so? If you find Star Wars filed under Fantasy in a video store, you know you’ve walked into a joint run by some nerd-ass geeks. Just having a separate Fantasy section would be pretty telling, actually. It probably has a killer selection though. If you find this store in Toronto, let me know.

Cage match result: Sci-Fi is the bigger, nerdier hurdle. As long as you ignore the existence of LARPing.

Canada, really? The true north strong and free is a hurdle? Well, Sgt. Kanada on the forums suggested we do an episode where we explain Canada to non-Canadians. Well, we recorded this episode instead where we explain nothing.

But Canada really can be a hurdle sometimes. Or at least the Canada made up of polite Mounties playing hockey with sticks made of old Tim Horton’s cups glued together with maple syrup and pucks made of beaver pelts sure is.

It’s a hurdle because it’s all lies.

By and large, Canadians are not particularly friendly or respectful or polite. We’re not all that progressive in our thinking and our environmental record isn’t too shiny either. As for our cuddly Mounties, just ask the protesters who attended the G20 protests last summer what they think (hint: they traded in their red coats for black riot gear). Any time we manage to be respectful towards other human beings or uphold our humanitarian/socialist ideals, it’s done out of a knee-jerk reaction to not being American.

For instance we’re not a melting pot of cultures, we’re a cultural mosaic. The idea being that we value diversity over assimilation. I’m not convinced this approach actually works on a pragmatic level and might be the root of the lack of social cohesion in our cities or a true national identity. But it is a big part of what makes Canada a Canadian country. Specifically that, when talking about socio-political issues, we take the moral high-ground over our neighbours to the south who prefer a homogenous and, theoretically, more easily controlled society.

And that’s the crux of it. We’re a country defined by not being another country. That’s our whole national identity. Yet somehow we delude ourselves that this is a legitimate source of self-worth. We’re those nerdy kids relegated to the corner of the high school cafeteria who take pride in at least not being jocks.

And it’s a shitty corner of the cafeteria, let me tell you. The reason the jocks don’t sit up here is because the windows leak, there’s a freezing draft eight months of the year, and in the summer the heater gets cranked up to 11 so everything becomes a sweltering sauna.

Oh, by the way, I’m only talking about Central Canada. You see, there’s actually four Canadas and only one that really matters.

There’s the Maritime provinces on the East Coast, there’s Western Canada and then there’s Central Canada which is the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. And that’s the only true Canada. This is where most Canadians live. Or, at least, the only Canadians the Federal government considers the needs of when making policy.

Notice I didn’t mention the fourth Canada? Most Canadians wouldn’t either. That’s Northern Canada which only exists to be forgotten and sometimes get screwed over by the rest of us.

The weirdest thing about Central Canada is half of it wants to leave. Quebec has had a separatist movement since the 1800′s. This has something to do with speaking French. Most of Canada wants them to stay. Though if pressed for a reason why, they’d probably just tell you something about as eloquent and considered as “Because” or “Well, they’re part of Canada. They can’t leave.”

Mostly, no one wants the poutine pipeline to dry up. That’s not a euphemism for anal porn, we just like having a douchie name for cheese and gravy on fries.

Really, Canada is too big and under-populated to work as a nation. Only a country with this small a gene-pool would offer up Chad Kroeger as one of our best and brightest. I’m a patriot and all, but I can certainly sympathize with another province wanting to distance itself from Alberta.

Growing up in British Columbia—which has about as much to do with Canada as Britain or Columbia—I was a big proponent of the Cascadian Independence Movement. Like any Utopian dream, to believe it would actually work is pretty naive. But, hey, I was young and still believed people weren’t all bastards and could set aside self-interest long enough to work together to make a better world. Foolish, I know.

Cascadia could really only be viable economically if California, the Yukon and Alaska were, however unlikely, also a part of it. But the general idea of breaking the continent up into smaller, European-style parcels makes a lot of sense. Decisions made in Ottawa, no matter how well-intentioned, generally only end up giving the shaft to people in Victoria or Halifax.

By this point in the article I suspect you’re probably wondering how I can seriously claim to be a patriot. I have just suggested the country fracture into a series of smaller states, in some cases uniting with The Great Satan. Well, that’s just how patriotism roles up here.

Canadians are known for our humility and self-deprecating humour. In reality, we’re closer to self-loathing. We look at Texas and say “At least we’re not like that” but we know Alberta really is and it hurts. We make fun of Tennessee and Alabama rednecks, but we’ve all seen Trailer Park Boys and know there’s a little bit of that American stereotype in everyone’s backyard. We all know Montreal is just a crappy, cut-rate version of Paris and Toronto is a bargain-basement New York knock off.

But Canada is still the best country in the world to live.

We’re a country where the downtrodden aren’t left out to dry, where the sick aren’t doomed to financial ruin, and people have control over their bodies and the right to marry who they wish. Even if Prime Minister Stephen Harper cuts most of the social programs that define Canada, or erodes the personal liberties that separate us from less free states, the next government will probably reinstate them. Though, individually, Canadians are kind of assholes, there’s just a sense in this country of collectively doing the right thing. You can screw your neighbour on your own time, but as a country we’ve got each others’ backs.

Where the real hurdle about so-called Canadian Culture comes in is when it’s implied that finding hockey remotely interesting is somehow tied into these greater ideals. Or that desperate isolation in barren landscapes is the Canadian experience for the average citizen. Reading Can-Lit and watching National Film Board movies might make you think so, but only a small percentage of Canadians actually live this bleak, desperate lifestyle. Most of us live in suburban developments and shop at box-stores. Which is another kind of bleak, desperate lifestyle.

I’m truly proud of Canada and to call myself Canadian. I’m proud to live in a country with the kind of Medicare program we’ve developed, but please don’t paint any more murals of beavers and farmers in the style of the Group of Seven.

The Group of Seven brings me to my next point.

Due to out proximity to the United States of Media Domination, the Canadian arts & entertainment scene is a bit of an odd bird. To combat the proliferation of American movies, TV shows and music, our government is dedicated to promoting that dubious entity called Canadian Culture. This means certain artists who are deemed worthy (meaning they know how to write a grant proposal) get funding from the government. In effect, all Canadian publishers and record companies survive on grants.

On one hand, Canada Council funding means the arts actually exist in Canada. On the other, it means only a certain “Canadian” aesthetic is given bias. This isn’t intentional, the “Canadian bias” didn’t exist until the Canada Council created it. What I mean is, artists and producers know what’s going to get a green light from the Canada Council and what isn’t. This is how Canadian Culture has been insidiously steered in a certain direction for a little over 50 years. Ultimately, is this really a bad thing? No, of course not. I just, personally, don’t care much for the flavour the Council curates.

We also have something up here called Can-Con which is a CRTC requirement that a certain percentage of Canadian music gets played on the airwaves. This is important because otherwise new Canadian bands wouldn’t get any exposure (on radio stations no one listens to anymore anyway?) in favour of Lady Gaga or The Vaccines.

Also Rush wouldn’t get played 20 times a day on the classic rock stations. Sacre bleu! Without this regulation, bands like Barenaked Ladies, Beduin Soundclash, Metric, Glass Tiger, or pretty much anyone else on this list would never have gotten any attention from the general public. The same goes for international superstars like Bryan Adams, Nickleback and Celine Dion (make of that what you will).

When Can-Con and the Canada Council work, they give a leg-up to deserving Canadian talent. The rest of the time they’re perpetuating a culture of mediocrity. How else do you explain Kim Mitchell‘s career?

In a lot of ways, our Canadian Culture is as entirely a fabricated charade as the Molson I Am Canadian ad campaign.

Further reading:
If you want to know more about Canada. I suggest perusing Filibuster Cartoons. Their article on Canadian Stereotypes expands on a lot of what I’ve said here. There’s also a Guide to Canada.

The man, the myth, the Mandi’s teenage crush. We talk about Wheaton through the ages from Gordie to @wilw.

Shownotes: The Hurdled Nerd