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Bits from my Tumblr and the rest of the web.

1. SEAN’S ANTIQUE WEATHER CLOCK

My pal Sean is known for his interest in clock mods. In the past, he’s modded a thrift store alarm clock to be controlled by a joystick. This time, he’s taking an antique weather clock and hooking it up to the freakin’ internet. Oh yes. Check it out!

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2. ONE GRAND HOME TAKES ON THE BEHEMOTH

Thanks to Racialicious, I was recently introduced to One Grand Home (Subtitle: Reflections on sophisticated, affordable home design and the ethics and politics of decor) and have been appreciating Alexis’s analyses of the classism and racism that tend to rear their ugly heads in the art/craft/design blogosphere. On Monday, the target was design megablog Apartment Therapy, with an illustrated breakdown of its many incidents of race- and class-fail and the way that the blogs editors refuse to acknowledge or address these issues.

3. THE EXCELLENCE OF TUNE-YARDS, IN VIDEO FORM

Lizzyville posted a link to dublab’s video of Tune-Yards performing the song “Fiya.” The video itself is understated — just Merrill Garbus playing and singing in front of a backdrop of soft blue lights — but that’s probably what makes it so wonderful.

tUnE-YaRdS “Fiya” from dublab on Vimeo.

Tune-Yards, if you don’t know, was one of the best things in music in 2009 and undoubtedly will continue to be in 2010 and beyond (it was the soundtrack and partially the inspiration for my first Video Scrapbook back in April). Experience it on MySpace.

(One more parenthetical: I refuse, simply refuse, to render the name in tOgGLe CaPs as Merrill Garbus wants us to. I will honour many different ways of styling proper names — all caps (HEALTH) or lowercase (crys cole), but I simply will not acknowledge that anyone over the age of 14 would choose to render their name in toGgLe cAps. SoRRy.)

4. THIS WEEK IN FAT FASHION (A.K.A. FATSHION)

New blog discovery this week: Christina’s Musings of a Fatshionista (Tagline: Fashuns for the Fat & Fancy). This week, she posted some scans of a high fashion shoot by Velvet d’Amour. The model in the shoot is, of course, plus-sized (no — she’s actually fat. In model terms, “plus-size” can mean anything from a size 4-8, so let’s give this gorgeous woman credit for her actual adipose tissue!).

5. GABBY SIDIBE CONTINUES BEING AWESOME, LOOKS AMAZING WHILE DOING IT

The star of Precious is profiled and photographed in Harper’s Bazaar, and that article is profiled in People (funny how that works). She looks gorgeous, and she drops a couple of great quotes, one wise, one hilarious:

[W]hile Gabourey can pose for the camera like any seasoned pro, her confidence didn’t come as easily as it may seem. “It came late, too late in my life,” she recalls of changing her attitude. “One day I decided that I was beautiful, and so I carried out my life as if I was a beautiful girl.”

“I hate yoga so much. Like if yoga was a person, I’d stab them”

So, the backlash against Michael Cera has begun. It might be in full-force, actually.

Backlashes are rather inevitable when it comes to young actors who rise to fame on a string of filmic and televisual critical successes. For Michael Cera, these successes were the best sitcom of the last decade (and in the top ten of all time, if you ask me), Arrested Development, as well as the Oscar-winning hit teen pregnancy dramedy Juno and Seth Rogen’s teen-boy-comedy opus Superbad.

But these days, everywhere I look, it’s disdain for this GTA-raised former child star. He’s getting it from Jezebel, he’s getting it from ONTD (but that’s not surprising, since LiveJournal’s largest community is notoriously fickle).

I’ve been trying to figure out the roots for this hate (if it can be called hate, since I’m not sure Michael Cera is really the sort of personality that inspires that level of emotion), and I’m coming up at a bit of a loss. We can probably chalk it up to his relative ubiquity. He’s 21, Canadian, and has an IMDb acting filmography that is 43 items long.

I’m not usually over-occupied with Michael Cera. It’s just that tonight was one of those nights that my buddy Ian got me free passes to an advance screening, as he periodically does. The screening was of Michael Cera’s latest star turn, in the screen adaptation of Youth in Revolt, a novel which I have not read, nor had I even heard of it before this week.

One of the most frequent criticisms of Michael Cera is that he really only plays one character, and that character is very similar to himself. To that, I say, maybe and so what? There are plenty of actors who build successful, long-running careers doing this — from Anthony Michael Hall to Harrison Ford.

In the film version of Youth in Revolt, I’d argue that M. Cera manages to play two separate characters (within the same movie!), though the one who accompanied me to the movie argued that the characters he plays aren’t really that different. Those characters are the awkward teen boy named Nick Twisp (our hero) and his ultra-suave alter-ego/persona by the name of Francois, a persona he adopts in order to win the affections of Sheeni, a confident, intelligent and Francophile blonde teenage girl who lives with her ultra-conservative religious family in a very fancy trailer home.

Sure, throughout the movie realized that Sheeni is absolutely too good and too smart for Nick Twisp, and in the movie’s resolution hoped that she would tell him that. She doesn’t. My disappointment is not so great that I can’t enjoy the absurdist humour that forms the basis of the rest of the movie, though.

Back to Michael Cera. I suppose I do feel twinges of my own backlash against this guy; like Seth Rogen before him, Michael Cera’s maleness means he can be awkward, unconventional in appearance, and still be a movie star. It doesn’t work that way for girls, and I resent that.

I’m pretty sure I’d never want to hang out with Michael Cera. He’s probably a dick in real life. But it doesn’t really matter to me, because he’ll have to mess up pretty badly to override the immense goodwill I have toward him because of one thing. Well, one character:

George Michael Bluth. Awkward teenage comic perfection. I always loved George Michael because he was the only one of the Bluth family who consistently acted selflessly (even the erstwhile moral centre of the show, his father Michael, was as manipulative as the rest of his maligned and maladjusted family).

The point of all of this is that I can never jump on the Cera hate train. I just can’t. Every pratfall, every ill-timed hand gesture and stutter endeared him to me so that it’ll take more than oversaturation to get me off Cera. (What will be the limits of this goodwill? Hard to say. Actually, it’s not that hard. It happened with Seth Rogen and the horrible date rape joke in Observe and Report. I’m kind of off Seth Rogen now, and not even watching his 18-year-old adorability the series DVD of Undeclared over the holidays has been able to wash the taste of bitter, unfunny misogyny out of my mouth.)

CERA, RECOMMENDED:

Arrested Development - One of many, MANY brilliant shows Fox cancelled over the last decade. If you haven’t already, rent it in order on DVD. Die laughing. Revive. Repeat.

Paper Heart – Cera appears in this fictionalized documentary with comedienne/musician Charlyne Yi, and if you like sweet, nerdy romance, I think you’ll like this flick.

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist – Not as highly recommended, but if you like movies about teenage misfits wandering the big city, go for it.

I got this little snap-close plastic container with food-shaped erasers at the dollar store yesterday. Specifically, Dollarama. This is the kind of thing Dollarama is importing! I love it.

I had a conversation with the guy at Vintage in the Village (if you’ve ever been there, you know that once you start a conversation with the proprietors, well-meaning as they are, you’d better settle in for at least 15 minutes of discussion! And the only way to end the discussion is to physically walk away) about things that were inexpensive back in the day but are now sought-after by collectors because of their scarcity today. Things that are inexpensive are not preserved and cared for the same way objects that are pre-determined to be collectibles or heirlooms are, thus ensuring their place in the future vintage Hall of Desirability. He pointed in particular to these metallic drinking glasses from the mid-century — I don’t know if they’re made of tin or what, but they’re painted on the outside, and apparently they were the kind of thing you’d pick up at Woolworth’s and have on the patio in the summer. They were especially handy because you could freeze liquids in them (before plastics were ubiquitous). Now, they’re rare, because no one thought to hold on to them. They got dented, they got chipped, they got tossed out. Not like grandmother’s china.

I suggested that in our future, the sheer glut of material objects in our society will mean that fewer objects will hold vintage fascination. He disagreed. He thought that the stuff we get at the dollar store today could be prized by collectors decades from now (and not just because they’ll be scrounging for any and all implements that will allow them to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland).

I’ve found myself more and more surprised by the aesthetic appeal of things you can find at Dollarama, lately. For instance, the notebooks don’t just have garish holographic cartoon animals on the covers, but elegant bird motifs (a motif which is old meme to the design-savvy, of course, but it’s mainstream now, and still pleasing to look at, especially when compared with the alternative).

None of this has anything to do with the food-shaped erasers, which I got because they are just too adorable to pass up. Or use, for that matter. Likely not an heirloom — but one never knows.

I don’t always set New Year’s resolutions, but this year I’ve got a couple. The first is one I started before Christmas, already — to get seriously gluten-free with my diet. (I’ve been mostly gluten-free for the last number of years, but now it’s time to get serious and weed out the hidden sources of gluten and also, oh, stop cheating when presented with a delicious baked good at a party or some such)
The second is to go to bed on time. That is, before midnight. Ideally, before 11 p.m. So far I’ve accomplished this both days this week! The reason this is so hard for me is that my schedule is flexible, and I work from home a lot and I rarely have to be out of the house before noon. That makes it easy to set the alarm for 9 or 9:30 a.m. when I meander to bed at 1 a.m. or later.

The last is one I came up with this morning. I’m going to keep track of the books I read this year. I tend to think of myself as “not much of a reader,” but lately I realize that’s only because I tend to hang out with ridiculously voracious readers (my mother, for example, can easily polish off three or four a week). I’m keeping a list — we’ll see how I do. I’m on GoodReads; you can friend me there if you like. Here’s my little badge thing.

Currently Reading

Jenny’s favorite books »

Do you have any resolutions?

Every year, my friend Sarah throws a New Year’s Eve party. I daresay it’s the best ticket in town (not that you need a ticket, though it is friends and friends-of-friends only) on the big night — great people, great tunes, tasty food and drink, complete with champagne at midnight.

The centrepiece of the party is the gingerbread “house.” Sarah and friends conceptualize and execute a gingerbread masterpiece which often isn’t completed until the day of the party (as was the case this year). Past years’ dioramas have included the Empire State Building, the Manitoba Legislature, an Ancient Egyptian scene, and a pirate ship. This year it was the sinking city, Venice. I think that the imperfections of gingerbread lent themselves well to replicating the ancient stonework of Venezia, and the jello-as-water was an inspired maneuver.

Notice the fine detail work on the gingerpeople! These Venezians get stripes and scarves. Also, you can’t see her in any of my pictures, but there was also a ginger rendering of Katharine Hepburn, who reportedly lost some of her vision after falling into the highly polluted and toxic canal during a movie shoot.

Check out Sarah’s food blog, Food Adventure Club, for similarly adventurous and appealing edibles.

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