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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2011-01-27, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 27, 2011. PAGE 5. T he chief problem about death is the fear that there may be no afterlife – a depressing thought, particularly for those who have bothered to shave. – Woody Allen Let’s see now…there’s Land of the Living Dead, Dance of the Dead and Diary of the Dead, Night of the Dead, Day of the Dead and Return of the Living Dead…. You had enough Zombie movies already? Too bad, because to borrow a riff from Bachman-Turner Overdrive, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Used to be that Madison Avenue advertising gurus depended on old reliables like cleavage and biceps to sell us stuff we didn’t really need. Now it looks like they’re leaning towards corpses. I don’t mean those hollow-eyed, green-hued, recently exhumed stumblebum extras in flicks like Dead Meat, Zombieland and Let Sleeping Corpses Lie.No, this new line of cadavers looks amazingly healthy. Lifelike, even. They haven’t actually made it to the silver screen yet, but they’ve appeared in TV ads. The first one was an ad for Dirt Devil vacuum cleaners that hit the airwaves a little over 10 years ago. It showed Fred Astaire nimbly two-stepping across the screen with a Dirt Devil machine as a dance partner. A tiny detonation went off in the brain pans of a few couch potatoes, who murmured, “Fred Astaire…isn’t he…you know….dead?” Indeed he is. Has been for nearly a quarter of a century, ever since he succumbed to pneumonia in 1987. But that didn’t stop the makers of Dirt Devils from digging up old celluloid footage of the dance wizard and using it to sell their vacuum cleaners. The idea of images of a deceased artist being used to shill for a household appliance appalled enough Fred Astaire fans to create a backlash and the company hastily yanked the ads off the airwaves, but either we had better taste then or the Dirt Devil folks were just ahead of their time, because the grave robbers and tomb defilers are back with a vengeance. Exhibit A: Corbis Corporation. The Seattle- based firm, founded by Bill Gates, sells customers the rights to use photographs for advertising. The company boasts that it holds the rights to over 100 million images. One of Corbis’ best money-makers ($50 million US in 2009) is what it calls its “Classic Personalities” line. Interested in using images of Johnny Cash? Mae West? Andy Warhol? Albert Einstein? Give Corbis a call. Corbis owns all ‘personality rights’ – another Corbis term – to those and several hundred other celebrities, all of whom happen to be both internationally famous and utterly dead. But it’s not just Corbis. Dorchester Hotels, an upscale chain of five-star hostelries has an ad campaign that features shots of Ray Charles, Greta Garbo, Peter Sellers, Albert Einstein, Grace Kelly, Noel Coward and Orson Welles, all seemingly hanging out in the lobbies or penthouses of various Dorchester hotels. Guess what condition of mortality they all have in common. This is a profoundly creepy development, and it may get even creepier. Mel Smith, a former student of George Lucas, claims in a British newspaper interview that the Star Wars director is doing a little grave robbing in his spare time. “He’s been buying up the film rights to dead movie stars in the hope of using computer trickery to put them all together in a movie,” Smith told a Daily Telegraphs reporter. Swell. Maybe some day we’ll see Sir Laurence Olivier playing The Cisco Kid. With Sydney Greenstreet playing Pancho. Is it just me, or is this uber-yucky? Portraying images of dead people in situations and poses that never happened (like, say, mamboing cheek to cheek with a vacuum cleaner) is not only dishonest, it’s ghoulishly disrespectful. These people are dead, dammit! We should have the decency to let them rest in peace. But who am I kidding? Death has not only lost its sting, it’s piling up residuals like crazy. You know how much Elvis earned in 2009? Fifty-five million dollars. Not bad, for a guy who left the building 33 years ago. Not a patch on Michael Jackson though. He earned $275 million in the year after he stopped breathing. Hard to say how Elvis and Michael would feel about their post-mortem payouts, but there’s little doubt that Fred Astaire must be pirouetting in his grave. During his lifetime he steadfastly refused to allow anyone to portray him in a movie biography. “However much they offer me – and offers come all the time – I shall not sell”, he said. “I have no particular desire to have my life misinterpreted, which it would be.” What – dancing with a vacuum cleaner, Fred? Ya think? Arthur Black Other Views But he looks so lifelike! Covering Huron East Council was a tough night on Jan. 18. There was plenty of pushing and pulling, a power struggle or two and a clear reluctance to back down. And that was just at the press table. So you buy a new hat. You pop it on your head and leave the house, right? That’s not the way it works, at least not with me. While hats have come along for the ride of everything being pre-broken in these days, I’m still a fan of my Major League Baseball hats. They’re fitted to your head, they’re rigid, they’re fragile, but after you put the work in, they’re the best hat you’ll ever own. They’re like the perfect woman. They make you work and work to prove you’re worth a damn, but at the end of the tunnel when you so prove, you’re rewarded handsomely. So a few months ago I decided my beloved Boston Red Sox cap was getting a little tired and I bought a new one. This was, of course, just the first step in the process. An old advertisement for New Era, the company that produces these hats, showed a baseball jammed and rubber-banded into the bill, the bill curving around the baseball. This is not far from the truth. There’s a curving process and then the breaking-in process. That’s where I was on Jan. 18. The first time I put this hat on my head, it was like wearing some sort of obtuse headdress. It felt like I was wearing a tight cardboard box on my head. But for someone who has played sports his whole life, this should be nothing new. Baseball gloves were the same way and for all you hockey players out there, I have only heard about the nightmare that is breaking in a new pair of skates. When I used to umpire baseball games and the home team gave me baseballs for the game, the first thing I did was drop them in the dirt and start scuffing them up. Like anything, breaking in a hat comes with its own laundry list of “organic” methods to breaking it in that have been passed down through the ages. You can wear it in the shower, put it through a wash cycle or even sit on it for a few hours. Everyone used to have their own way to break something in. I remember hearing stories from the 1970s of girls showering in their jeans to get that “fitted” look. Big companies have felt their customers’ pain and they’ve taken steps to try to curtail the breaking-in process. It’s not new that you can buy worn-in jeans, hats, shirts, shoes and pretty much anything else that can be worn, used or even swung. I was shopping one day, milling around a golf shop while my friends tried some clubs and I came about a set of wedges with a “vintage” finish. They were rusted, chipped and scuffed. By design. For years casual clothing labels have been making millions selling hats that looks like they were just picked off of a mechanic shop floor, jeans that look like they were washed incorrectly and vintage-look college shirts with crested letters falling off. And people are buying them hand over fist. Maybe it’s a style or maybe it’s just an extension of this era’s “I need it now” attitude, but I still don’t mind putting in the work to break something in. After all, it was my Red Sox hat being in state of being “extremely broken in” that lead me to the store to buy a new one in the first place. So the breaking-in process is ongoing, whether it’s popular or not. Breaking it in In the first half of 2011, I will see one tradition end and hopefully see the creation of a new one. For a long time I’ve been used to Christmas gifts being things I needed. That isn’t written with any regret or disappointment, it was a welcome part of growing up. Starting with getting my driver’s licence and licence plates renewed on my birthday through getting snow tires for my car for Christmas, I’ve learned that family gives you what you need, in more ways than one. However this year has proven to be a very special Christmas for me. I’d like to think I’ve lived an average life, but when comparing travel stories with my friends, I realize there is no real average. Like a few families in my area when I was growing up, I travelled out of the country, however there was seldom any variation in where I travelled. My grandparents own (but not for long) a vacation home in Florida where they used to spend about half of the year. During my youth, a year seldom went by without me visiting there, and I treasured nearly every moment. Most people talk about the weather and the beaches, but for me, the trip was all about three things. First, it was about cereal. I love cereal. I would eat it for every meal if I could. When I went down to see my grandparents, I was able to try all sorts of cereal that, then, wasn’t available in Canada. It may seem odd, but it was probably the best part of the trip as far as my younger self was concerned. The second was being able to walk around in shorts in the middle of the winter. While you may tie this in to the beaches and warm weather, what it was really about was continuity. I’m not sure if I’m just a warmer-than- average individual, but I usually find what other people find comfortable is just far too warm for me. Stopping by my apartment, you’ll usually find me in shorts and a t-shirt unless I’m going somewhere. Being able to wear shorts and a t-shirt (and a windbreaker, if there was too much of a breeze) in the midst of December or March weather was something I always looked forward to. The third thing I always looked forward to was visiting the amusement parks. Universal Studios and Disney World were my favourite places on the planet. I still remember taking the Back To The Future and Honey I Shrunk The Kids video rides. Those visits, and all the stops in between when we drove, were the only true travelling I did besides a trip to Ottawa with my family. I’ve never been outside of the province except on those trips. I’ve never been anywhere off the path to Florida, and it’s actually very humbling, when I think about it. A quarter of my maximum life span (probably closer to a third of my actual lifespan) has been spent in one very narrow strip of North America. Compared to my friends, girlfriend and family who have travelled to both coasts, the United Kingdom and every Caribbean destination, I’ve travelled very little. That will change this year. My girlfriend decided that I had spent enough time saying I was a Montreal Canadiens fan without having actually visited there. For Christmas she decided she would take me to Montreal, and we would see the Canadiens play. I was in shock. It was an amazing gift for so many reasons. I’ll be visiting a place where I don’t speak the language, I’ll be visiting somewhere other than my trips to Florida, and I’ll actually be able to absorb first-hand knowledge from a different culture. Seeing the Canadiens game will definitely be the highlight of the trip for me, but seeing all the unique architecture and historical points will be something I will very much enjoy. And so I hope this becomes a tradition of sorts for me. I don’t expect to visit Montreal every year. What I hope is that I can begin travelling within my own great nation. I wish to visit more than what I’ve already seen, I want to see the parts of this continent, and the world, that I’ve missed out on. No sooner had I dedicated myself to this idea, I found out I wouldn’t have much of a choice in the matter. My grandparents holiday home, in what seems like less than a month of it being on the market had been scooped up by a buyer. The deal is set to close in April. I’m not disappointed in the decision. It costs money to have a place like that, and I myself had become part of the upkeep, travelling to Florida to drive their car back with my mother and help hurricane-proof the building. It made me think that, as much as I look forward to seeing things I haven’t seen before, I would miss that place deeply. Those trips, the time spent with family and the time spent being on vacation are memories I will always hold dear. I guess it’s just part of growing up that I would have to accept those memories as unrepeatable actions, I just wasn’t ready when the time came. Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense A Christmas season to remember Denny Scott Denny’s Den