11:11

Sports are magical! Sports are more magical than David Blaine (street magician) and more popular than David Blaine (street magician). Football, the most popular sport in the world, has participation of some 3.5 billion people. Half of the planet is either playing or watching soccer. Sports are capable of uniting cities, countries, and people across all divides in a way that nothing else can.

Of course, there are hooligans, but still, something magical happens when you get together with a group of fellow supporters and throw bottles of urine at your arch rivals and then get tear gassed by the state police. Or, in my case when this actually happened to me in Ecuador on Easter Sunday, I was the one getting hit with the bottles instead of throwing them. But it wasn’t because I was the only gringo there; it was because my jersey was emblazoned with a beer logo instead of a car logo. Still, my eyes were burning with the fire of freedom, my nose smelling not only the beer and urine soaked jerseys, but also victory. As the tear gas and smoke bombs cleared and the teams ran off to their respective dressing rooms, all that was left were the memories of the show that we had all shared. Not bad for a 0-0 game. We promptly marched into the streets to fistfight, or in my case to take off my jersey and run, but you get the point.

Sports are the second-most dominant institution of our time, next to the corporation, and at least on Easter Sunday in Quito, the Catholic Church seemed a distant third. Corporations have seen how compelling this magic show is, and they want in. But, they aren’t just happy with front-row tickets, they demand backstage passes, and they want to participate in all of the tricks… I mean “illusions”.

The corporate world is so intrinsically tied to sport that it seems almost impossible to remember a time when it wasn’t this way. The first professional football team in England sold the front of their jerseys to corporations in the late-1970’s, and it seems absurd now, but until 1983 British television stations refused to show teams wearing uniforms with corporate logos. Today, every single team sells the front of their jersey as a billboard, and ties their corporate image to the pride of a team. Manchester United of the Barclays English Premiere League sells the rights to adorn corporate logos on the front of their jersey for £20,000,000 a season, and Nike can sell 7,000,000 of these shirts every year.

Some leagues have resisted, but even resistance nowadays means that a corporate logo is smaller than the team’s logo. During the Winter Olympics, when Sidney Crosby scored the golden goal, an entire nation was captivated and energized and triumphant with “our boys”, while images beamed around the planet showed Crosby screaming a victory scream, fists clenched, eyes wild — in our moment of victory — wearing a made-in- Vietnam Team Canada hockey jersey adorned withthe all too familiar Nike swoosh.

26.5 million Canadians watched that game. A staggering 80% of the country put everything on hold to watch a game of hockey. But this was more than just a game of ice hockey. This was a contest between Canadians and Americans. This was about pride and honour and winning… or something. Corporations insidiously use these legitimate feelings as gateways and use them to market and sell. Wearing a jersey and representing your community, city — or for the lucky few — country, should be an immense source of pride. What then does it say about us that we sell advertising space on the front of this jersey to the highest bidder?

The corporatization of sport has been taken to an absurd end in America with Nascar. Extremely popular in the most obese region of the United States, the cola companies pay drivers to drink their soda after they get out of their car in the winner’s circle, while wearing a flame retardant suit with hundreds of logos. Or perhaps we can look to college football to find the most absurd examples of this behemoth run amok, where amateur student-athletes compete in “championships” like the “Little Caesars Pizza Bowl” at Ford Field.

In Canada, as in most countries, the shrewdest corporations have taken the most popular sport and adopted it, making it their own. “Tim Horton’s”, a national coffee chain in Canada with 3000 stores, has sponsored youth hockey, our best hockey player and Olympic hero Sidney Crosby, and created a campaign of commercials so flowery and Canadian that they belong on the back of our currency. But, by tying into something that Canadians love so dearly, they become part of that thing. Tim Horton’s is hockey in Canada. That’s what the commercials tell us, and we love hockey and will continue to love hockey, so that’s that. This model has been adopted all over the world. The same technique is in play when Coca-Cola trots out giant inflatable bottles at half-time at a football game in Ecuador where the average wage is $3500 USD/year. If the corporations can adopt something we love, it’s easier to get us to love their corporation, or at least choose their corporation over their competitors and increase their market share.

Perhaps the most disturbing of all the corporate adventures into sports is the corporate takeover of anti-sports. The last bastion of kids who didn’t want to play team sports, and weren’t interested in competing has always been the board sports - surfing, snowboarding and skateboarding. In the mid-90s the X-Games brought corporations and skateboarders together. Countless million dollar deals later and today top skateboarders are just cooler versions of Nascar drivers that speak directly to the valuable and sought-after young male demographics.

In 2003, Nike bought Converse and sent the production of Chuck Taylors from the USA to Asia, raised prices and continued to market the shoes under the illusion that wearing them was still a sign of “rebellion” or “freedom”. In 2011, the majority of business in the board sports industry is done by billion dollar, publicly traded corporations and their subsidiaries dressed up to look like something they’re not.

In the face of all of the money and sponsorship deals, all over the world people are picking up a ball, paddling out past the breakers, or driving to the rink, not because of the promises of future riches, but because sports are a way of life. Sports are fun! Sports can make the world make sense for a short amount of time, or at least put the absurdity of the world on hold. Our absurd world that makes it necessary to be vigilant as we separate our love for sport, and our sports heroes, from the corporations that try to make us love a financial institution, beverage, or brand as much as we love our favourite pastime. Sports are magical because they are transformative; either David Blaine levitates or he doesn’t. Would we still believe him if he had a corporate logo on his cape?

Here’s a list of my favourite albums of 2009. Albums by Swell Season, Girls, Grizzly Bear, Neko Case, Matt Good, Matt & Kim, Lightning Dust and Sunset Rubdown all spent a lot of time in my life this year but aren’t on this list. Also, I’m trying to go back to the Canadian spelling of words… like favourite:

11. Tegan and Sara - Sainthood

Canadian twin sister lesbians!

Sentimental Tune

10. Jamie T - Kings & Queens

I have a great love for really British people. I also have a great love for young people who do cool things. This dude is 23, doesn’t seem like as much of a twat as “The Streets” and made an album that takes you on a pretty cool ride.

Spider’s Web

9. Metric - Fantasies

I touched Emily Haines this year after she sang an acoustic version of Combat Baby. The next day I talked to Metric and Stars, hanging out on the beach in Vancouver watching the sun set.

Twilight Galaxy

8. Pink Mountaintops - Outside Love

From the Georgia Straight: “Seriously, whatever mind-expanding strain of cheeba Stephen McBean has stumbled onto, he really should be sharing it with the rest of Vancouver.”

Vampire

7. The Temper Trap - Conditions

Sweet Disposition is one of the best songs to pump while driving a mini-bus full of Australians. Just in case anyone else ever finds themselves in that situation.

Sweet Disposition

6. The xx - xx

This band is really stellar, so of course they’re already breaking up. Hopefully the 4th (now departed) member wasn’t the source of magic for this album.

Heart Skipped a Beat

5. Handsome Furs - Face Control

“If you want to reserve a table at a bar in Moscow, it’s $5000—and that’s at a normal bar. You do it through PayPal or you can do it by cash. Then when you go to the bar, there’s no guarantee you’ll get in because there’s this thing called Face Control. You line up and if they don’t like the way you look. We became obsessed with this idea.” -Dan Boeckner, Handsome Furs (interview)

Radio Kaliningrad

4. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

This band gets its name from an unpublished children’s story. I really want to read that story.

Stay Alive

3. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

“Do you remember when 21 years was old?”

Countdown (Sick For The Big Sun)

2. Japandroids - Post-Nothing

Two young guys from Vancouver make a perfect album about being young.

Sovereignty

1. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

No surprises here. It really is the best album of the year. This band sounds like the future.

In The Flowers

dropoutfilms.tumblr.com

As I present my favorite albums of the year, I should note that this list could be much longer. At the beginning of the year, if you told me that Iron and Wine, Rilo Kiley, The Shins, Stars and The Weakerthans would release albums and none would be on my ‘best of’ list, I would’ve called you a damn liar. But, it happened. I’ve included some of the standout tracks for your enjoyment. Here’s hoping that every year is as musically rich as 2007.

Forgotten Album That Deserves to Be Included Somewhere Towards the Top of the List:
Sunset Rubdown - Random Spirit Lover

Worst name for a band.
Best name for an album.

The Mending of the Gown

12. Feist - The Reminder

Everyone and their mom has this album. My mom has this album and may have even referred to the single that rocketed Feist into superstardom as, “that counting song”. Regardless, this album is great, her performance this summer in Vancouver was spectacular and all the cool kids should still take pride in the fact that it took the public six months to figure out that this album was worth buying.

Intuition

11. Radiohead - In Rainbows

This album reminds me of drinking a frozen drink called the zombie the night I turned 24, playing Jesse Patch at Connect 4. (Don’t do it until you get him loaded on zombies - he’s a champion.) The waitress was pretty and bought me a drink. Jesse quipped, “Good waitresses and good strippers know how to make guys like us feel special.” It may be a slight misquote, as I was bombed on zombies when I wrote it down in my moleskin.

Jigsaw Falling Into Place

10. Kanye West - Graduation

I was on the campus of North Carolina A&T State Universtiy (a historically black school) waiting for my historically black friend and heard SEVEN passing cars playing this album in the span of 30 minutes. Then I went to Williamsburg, the whitest neighborhood in Brooklyn, and the same thing happened. The Avenue of Puerto Rico was also rocking out to Kanye in September. Asians were probably loving it too, but I didn’t go to Chinatown.

Everything I Am

9. Band of Horses - Cease to Begin

I loved “Carissa’s Wierd“. I loved the first album. These guys put on a killer show, sold me my favorite t-shirt of 2007, and took a huge step forward. They are destined to be rock stars. This band will always be from Seattle — really.

Islands on the Coast

8. The New Pornographers - Challengers

I’m in the minority, but I think this is The New Pornographers’ best album. People who don’t like this band/album should move to Vancouver for a while.

Adventures in Solitude

7. Sigur Ros - Hvarf/Heim

I walked a frozen lake in B.C. and listened to this album and remembered in New York when I saw these guys play acoustically. I like that they don’t interview well. I like that they make music that lets me think about… things.

Hljómalind

6. Elliott Smith - New Moon

I love Portland, Oregon, Kill Rock Stars and this fantastic poet.

Half Right (the final track)

5. Eddie Vedder - Into the Wild Soundtrack

Read this book. See this film. Listen to this album. It just speaks to me.

Hard Sun

4. Panda Bear - Person Pitch

Everything you need to know.
Note: Animal Collective deserves a spot in this list, but I liked this album slightly more so it is here and Animal Collective is not.

Comfy in Nautica

3. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

The most underrated album of the year. I have the distinct feeling that in a hundred years, people will still be in love with this band. If you need convincing - check out this SNL performance of “Intervention” (sans Owen Pallett)

Win Butler has “sak vide pa kanpe” on his guitar - a Haitian proverb meaning, “An empty sack cannot stand up”. This band gives a dollar from every concert ticket they sell to a charity helping to end poverty in Haiti.

2. The National - Boxer

For a long time, I thought this would easily be the album of the year. I was fortunate enough to receive an advance of the album and turned a lot of my friends on to this band. Their live show leaves something to be desired but the album is flawless.

Fake Empire

1. Broken Social Scene Presents: Kevin Drew - Spirit If…

My first instinct upon pressing play was to skip the first track of this album. I have friends who still skip halfway through track one (available below). Something changed however, one day when I was at Costco shopping for my MTV overlords. I needed to hear the madness. I needed it to appreciate everything else.

Farewell to the Pressure Kids

San Francisco is a city meant for rainy days and Sundays. In the summer of 2003 I stayed in a hostel on Geary St. and fell in love with my first Irish girl, walked around the city from sun up until down, and wrote postcards I never sent. I discovered City Lights Bookstore. I felt alive and out in the world.

 In 2005, I stayed in a hostel on Sacramento St. and fell in love with my first Northern California girl, walked around the city from sun up until down, and bought postcards I never wrote. I was shown the true magic of City Lights Bookstore. I felt alive and without direction in the world.

In 2007, I stayed at a friends house south of the city and fell in love with no one, took a train to the city, walked around until my feet hurt,  and sent postcards to people I love. I went back to City Lights Bookstore and discovered my name in print - in response to my “Summer of Love” essay. I ripped a sticker from a streetlight that said, “Win the War - Whatever it Takes”. I took a train back to the suburbs, and listened to this song on repeat and wanted to cry but didn’t.

Jack Kerouac wrote it. Jesse Patch gave it to me, after riding around in his back pocket in bars and subway cars for a few weeks. 

“I’ve been reading Whitman, know what he says, Cheer up slaves, and horrify foreign despots, he means that’s the attitude for the Bard, the Zen Lunacy bard of old desert paths, see the whole thing is a world full of rucksack wanderers, Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn’t really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of ‘em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures…” 

In the future, I will no longer be in Los Angeles, but still on the west coast, which has always felt like home. Maybe one day I’ll even have my own bed here.

We are not righteous because we are fortunate.

We are not fortunate because we are righteous.

This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the famed “Summer of Love”. A group of people came together in protest, because they could no longer acquiesce in their society. They came together in the hope of finding something better.

A group of people stood together in absolute protest of an unjust war. They shared ideas, inspiration, art, sex, dreams, and things I can only begin to imagine. They focused on a love-centered life. But, perhaps more than that, they lived that life – even if it was only for a brief moment in time.

As the summer faded, so too did their revolution. Or, at least I imagine that’s how they felt. Sucked back in by the material world. Back to school, jobs, and lives, with the war ever escalating.

But something had changed. Ways of thinking, ways of living, ways of being. Those flower children spread back out across the world, and eventually sparked the changes they dreamed of in the summer of 1967.

Everything moves in circles (ellipses to be exact) and forty years later, we find ourselves in strikingly similar circumstances. I find it hard not to look out into the world, country, city and neighborhood without seeing very serious, seemingly insurmountable problems and heartbreaking injustices.

The key to revolution is to get angry. The key to evolution is to get happy.

The hippie movement failed as a revolution, but it was a major evolutionary success. Their success paved the way to the end of the Vietnam War. It, and every other success for justice, human rights and love, from the beginning of time, has led us one step closer to this opportunity. When I feel myself slipping into despair, I try to focus on the things I can touch. Or let my mind soar.

What did famous abolitionist Theodore Parker have to endure, fighting to end slavery in the American south during its heyday? Though he died before the success of ending slavery in America, he knew what was to come, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

In my deepest moments of despair, I believe that we really might need a revolution. Let’s start over. Or at least chop the head off this beast. But then I come back to Earth and remember the work of every great person who has been part of the solution, desperately struggling to push us, even an inch, in the right direction.

When we were kids, we were taught to see the world in black and white – right and wrong. Then, as we grew up, the world got grey. Starting now, and for the rest of the summer, let us remember that the world is black and white. You are either part of the solution, or part of the problem.

This summer, we will all choose to be part of the solution. We will be happy! We will make small, but important changes in our own hearts, and lives. We will put ourselves into the world, in service, and spark positive motion. This is literally the time of our life. We will seize this opportunity.

The only way we can fail is if we don’t act. And to those who firmly believe that they can’t make a difference (we are, after all, seen as an apathetic generation of brainwashed consumers) – let me tell you that you already are making a difference: but, for which side? When I first acted with pure selflessness, I experienced a satisfaction that connected with something deep inside, but long forgotten. Then, a funny thing happened. Selflessness and selfishness became one in the same, because it felt so damn great. The world is perfect! “War is over! (If you want it.)”

Armed with love, stand and fight!

(I dare not suggest what problems may be taken on, or how you all may choose to confront them, because I’ve witnessed so many of my friends doing so many incredible things in our battle to better our future. And to those enlightened, eternal souls, I say with every part of my being, “THANK YOU.”)

My father has been working in the restaurant industry his whole life. He started a Canadian franchise in the 80s, brought fast food and convenience stores to the North in the 90s, and currently owns and manages a small, family restaurant in the BC mountains. He is lucky, in that he enjoys his work and feels the satisfaction of serving people good, reasonably priced food. Like most restaurateurs, my pops is extremely pragmatic, a perfectionist to say the least. A genuine self-made man who has voted conservative most of his life.

A few years ago, something changed. My father had an epiphany. Perhaps it was the scenery of “Beautiful British Columbia”, connecting with nature again, or some other undisclosed event, but we started a dialogue about the environment. “We need to do something before it’s too late,” he would tell me, in that confident and immediate tone of his. Seemingly overnight, he made the preservation of our planet his business.

He stepped up to the plate at home and in his restaurant, taking his existing recycling program to new heights. Energy conservation. An integrated food-waste recycling program. And he stopped paying a truck to come to the restaurant to haul away the used vegetable oil from the fryers. He would turn it into fuel.

Using vegetable oil to power automobiles is nothing new, but it has only recently become more widely known. The process is surprisingly simple: my father built his “refinery” in a 4-foot by 4-foot corner of our garage, in a day, with under $200. Get a 30-gallon garbage can, fill it with 6 parts vegetable oil, 1 part diesel fuel, .2 parts diesel fuel additive, pump it through some filters and into your car – drive away!

It’s good for the environment, and after two months you will have recuperated your initial $200 investment, and be driving around for $0.25/litre. (Less than $1/gallon) The satisfaction of making your own fuel in your garage is unbelievable. It’s our own little way of sticking it to Exxon’s (et al.) bottom-line. You can find everything you need to get started by typing “diesel secret energy” into Google.

In Decatur, Illinois recently, 79-year-old David Wetzel has been fighting with the Illinois Department of Revenue, who sent agents to his house to try to collect retroactive gas tax from Mr. Wetzel, who has been making his own fuel from vegetable oil for the past five years. They threatened him with felony charges and a $2500 bond. Mr. Wetzel fights on, in his crusade to de-criminalize recycling waste into fuel. A government law that would allow big oil to rape, pillage and profit while forcing citizens to pay tax for their innovation is not a law worth obeying.

My father recycles enough vegetable oil in his restaurant to continue to supply us with fuel, in addition to some staff members and customers who are now on the vegetable oil bandwagon. When I asked him about the political element of the environmental debate, as always, he put it bluntly, “the future of our environment transcends politics.”

Next up… solar panels?

“Can we opt out of this theater of the absurd? Restore our clarity of mind? Learn to feel again? Sure we can, but it will take a movement to do it – a radical new way of looking at culture. Who generates it? Who controls the information flows? Who creates the meaning and to what ends?”

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