SAINTS PRESERVE US

 

Way Off Target

 

Target Corporation did indeed change the Canadian retail landscape. Shopping malls across the country are now lacking a major anchor tenant. The department store’s Dunkirk, the epic fiasco of its first foreign foray is the paradoxical result of hitherto exceptional branding.

 

Logos and wordmarks are visual representations of a brand. Any steer would say so. Target’s graphic identity is sublime in its simplicity, its ease of application for any medium and its instant identification; it doesn’t get any more basic than a dot within a circle. Symbols, while often easily rendered, carry a lot of abstract weight.

 

A brand is a tacit contract between its purveyors and its adherents, sellers to buyers: In exchange for your money and your loyalty we will provide you with status or self-esteem or something as mundane as a decent product at a reasonable price; you have expectations of us which we will meet and strive to exceed. It’s all about the consumer’s carefully manipulated perception. The curse of evolving a commodity or service into a beloved brand is a razor-thin tightrope, the margin for error becomes miniscule and it’s a long way down from the giddy heights of an engineered acme.

 

Target’s brand equity in Canada before its expansion into this country was pure gold. The vast majority of Canada’s citizens live within a reasonable proximity to the American border. Target was a destination worth enduring Customs for. Cheap chic fashion and other goods of seemingly better quality than those rummaged in Wal-Mart and anyway, no one up here had ever scrolled through an e-mail photo montage entitled ‘Shoppers of Target.’ Low cost class, eh? The Canadian financial press was as excited as Canadian consumers, goodwill and thrill.

 

There are two billion hard excuses for Target’s colossal crash in Canada and they range from market hubris to incorrect bar codes. The reality of Target’s failure is actually a tad more ethereal. The brand broke on the crucible of perception. Target’s American promises fell short of Canadian expectations. It was held hostage by its own image. Now we all know that Target is a brand that can’t shoot straight.

SAINTS PRESERVE US

 

If They Can’t Take a Joke…

 

Paris is one of the world’s great cities simply because of her history. From the Reign of Terror, through Nazi occupation to the student riots of 1968, she’s been around the block a few times; seen it all and then some. In the wake of the slaughter at the editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo, she will be a little quieter than usual this week but she will recover, as she has in the past and as she must now.

 

There is not a rich tradition of ink and paper satire in Canada even though there’s plenty of material. Then again, unlike the Old World immigrants who built this nation, we’ve not had to endure the tyrannies of emperors and kings, of communism and fascism - merely the Harper government. As with every place in the world, there is always room in our provinces and cities for a welcome prick, the nub of a pencil or the nib of a pen. Satire is an elegant tool. Wielded with scathing expertise, cartoons, poetry and prose slice and dice those buffoons who most fear lampoons. Nothing beats a gag to cut a cretin or a gang of them down to size.

 

Radical Islam deserves our scorn and derision. There’s something Pythonesque about Islamic State who has changed its name more frequently than the Judean People’s Front. Are we ISIS or ISIL this week? There is the head-scratching contradiction of utilizing modern social media to return the planet to the good old days of the 7^th century. Apparently the West isn’t all bad: wasn’t a stash of porn found in bin Laden’s compound? And we’ve been aware for some time now that the collective of holier-than-thou barbarians is without humour.

 

There was heartening news in this morning’s press. Charlie Hebdo will not miss publishing an issue. In fact the next press run will be increased to one million copies, a substantial upping from the standard 60,000. Such is the power of print, an irreverent weekly going smack-down against ideologically insane misinterpretations of the revelation of Allah. One suspects that Muhammad, secure in paradise or wherever he may be, isn’t overly bothered by earthly caricatures. The Prophet’s concern would be the alarming and violent schism infecting his faith and affecting the globe; these past couple of decades must’ve seemed like an eternity while watched from above.

 

So, Charlie Hebdo akbar! And if they can’t take a joke or a million more like them…

EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

 

I Do the Rock

 

This year’s YouTube song of choice for the dead of winter is Tim Curry’s 1979 single I Do the Rock. ‘Well, it’s stimulating!’

 

Curry most recently trod the boards of Broadway in ‘Spamalot!’ Anyone with midnight cinema credentials and a hash-fogged mind may vaguely recall him in ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show.’ He had a bigger role than Meatloaf.

 

‘Rodney’s feeling sexy/Mick is really frightfully bold.’ The official video is a gleeful send-up and arch parody of the skinny, preening front man archetype. Curry as Jagger through the looking glass of Joel Grey’s charismatic ‘Cabaret’ emcee, old chum. It’s a bouncy and infectious ditty punctuated by bursts of sax that absolutely compels awkward white men to dance around the house as if they still inhabited bodies lithe enough to encase in sausage casing jumpsuits.

 

‘John and Yoko farming beef/Raising protein quota/Sometimes they make love and art/Inside the Dakota.’ Curry affects an absurdly ersatz island patois. The choppy and delightful delivery is essential, especially when the lyric demands rhyming ‘Castro’ with ‘disastro.’ No one has ever rocked and rolled a better R than Tim Curry.

 

I Do the Rock was a cynical and cheery wink-wink survey of the political and cultural landscape as it existed in 1979. Some of the references are long past their best before dates. Those world players are either demented or dead. But nothing truly fades away anymore because of the Internet and sites such as YouTube. So, classic literary allusions aside, naming TV’s three original Charlie’s Angels isn’t such a vexing obscurity to a new listener. (The Farrah hair flip in the video is MasterCard squared – hilariously priceless.) Meanwhile, O.J. didn’t just disappear after leaping that heap of luggage in the Hertz commercial, Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones are still performing, Queen Elizabeth II remains perched upon her throne and Jerry Brown is the governor of California again. Our lowest common denominator obsession with fame and the famous has only grown. The more things change…

 

Our world today is a shrill and discordant place populated by petty activists, entrenched ideologues, cause marketers, activist investors, and populist, zealot demagogues who refuse to absorb the lessons of our centuries of tragic history. What can a poor boy do?

 

‘Me, I do only thing that still makes sense to me.’

 

‘Me, I do the only thing that stops me growing old.’

 

‘But I’m afraid philosophy is just too much responsibility for me.’

 

‘I could never get the hang of ideology.’

 

‘I do the rock! It’s stimulating! I’m a keen student!’

 

Join me for a four-minute escape from it all. Don’t hesitate to hit REPEAT and strut around your house. I do. Constantly.

HUMAN WRECKAGE

 

Everything’s Swell, Just Swell

 

Our New Year’s Eve plans were simple, do nothing. Yesterday we had to rent a Rug Doctor machine.

 

The Flying Monkeys Smashbomb Atomic IPA tastes good. The brew has a refreshing hint of grapefruit. A fine way to start the year in a cat piss disaster zone and punt those silly resolutions for 2015. Actually, it’s my third. Let me light another cigarette, place another log on the fire and button my cardigan, I’ve a story to tell you.

 

On the last night of the year we joined two other couples for dinner. Our friends had made reservations for the six of us on a whim. We, on a similar whim, invited everybody back to our place afterward. We threw a satisfying shindig; the Doobies and the Stones made appearances as did tequila shots. But the party did get off to an awkward start when Ann asked our guests if the house smelled of cat pee. ‘Overpowering,’ and ‘I wasn’t going to say anything,’ were two of the replies. Ann and I looked at each other: Fuck. The guilty party lay curled up asleep on his favourite chair in the living room within the bounds of his new territorial initiative, the Christmas fir.

 

The first of January was supposed to be about admonishing myself because I know better than to drink tequila at one o’clock in the morning and then chase the horrid ounce with more beer. It was supposed to be about dozing off while watching hockey or American college football. New Year’s Day instead became about the re-imposition of order. Order in today’s chaotic world is more important than ever before. The coffee table book must be angled just so. A magazine may be recycled only after two newer issues have been delivered. The toilet roll must unspool from the top. Novels cannot rub up against non-fiction. Music must be filed alphabetically by artist and then chronologically by release date. Say what you will about a fascist buffoon like Il Duce, but, hey, the trains ran on time.

 

The festive decorations came down. The Nutcracker soldier went back into his box. Down on my hands and knees, my nose inches from the tree trunk and the carpet, my gag reflex worked overtime as I unsecured the tree from its stand. I now have abs of steel. We then raced up to the grocery store to rent a carpet cleaning machine. If you ever have to tidy up a murder site, I recommend a thorough perusal of the Rug Doctor Quick Stain Removal Chart beforehand. It covers everything: bile (yellow/green vomit), blood, feces (non-urine), perspiration (!), urine and regular vomit.

 

This morning Mungo the tabby, already a professional puker, wandered into the living room and promptly took a piss where the Christmas tree used to be and where the Rug Doctor had been many times over. Cats are like people who manage to earn a wage even though they’re not competent at what they do; there’s no talking to them. The little bastard is incapable of explaining this new aberrant behaviour after 14 relatively benign years. And we cannot make him understand that his ninth life now dangles from a rapidly fraying thread.