Ron Nurwisah, Boy Reporter

So I’ll be in Vancouver from Jan. 1-9 (drop me a line if you want to hang out) and I’m looking forward to getting a lot of reading done at home (on the bus, at coffee shops waiting for people, walking from place to place). A few things I’ll be reading:

The Withdrawal Method, Pasha Malla

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A collection of short stories by former Toronto author Pasha Malla. A nice guy, I’ve met him a couple of times and a few of my friends speak highly of the work.

Revolutionary Road

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Because who knows when I’ll see the movie.

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So I can finally tell the lovable schmuck that his book is actually not that bad at all.

Fear of Fighting

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, Stacey May Fowles and Marlena Zuber

Because they are fabulous ladies and I should’ve read their book already

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When I’m through with all of this I will probably want a couple of really good hits of non-fiction.

I realize over the last few weeks that I’ve really soured on 2008. The year started great and just seemed to really fall apart sometime in late October or early November. But right until then it was actually pretty awesome. So just in case things get really grim in the next few months, and they might. I thought it would be a good idea to remind myself of all the really amazing, fun, memorable things that actually happened this year.

In no particular order:

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• Young Guns II video
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• Listened to great music (Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, etc.)
• Reading more than my fair share of great books
• Held tons of dinner parties with great friends
• The new dutch oven
• Really grew to love cooking
• Brunch, bike ride in the park, art galleries (repeat)
• Picnics on the Island
• Late-night drinking session in the bowl at Trinity-Bellwoods
• A rainbow over Manhattan
• Checking out the gardens at P.S. 1 Plaguers dvd
  
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• Being freaked out by Finnish art
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• Eating burgers after a rainstorm outside MOMA
• Bocce at some random bar in Brooklyn
• Receiving more birthday wishes than he knew what to do with
• Having his sister visit
• Making it back to Toronto for Fake Prom with two hours to spare
• Having lunch with Junot Diaz
• Slowdancing with more than one attractive woman
• Seeing his friends become actual working journalists before his very eyes
• Drinking with said work buddies (stir, repeat)
• Seeing nattily dressed columnist Peter Kuitenbrouwer rock out on the dance floor at the Spacing 5th anniversary party
• Putting his Swedish friend in a room with attractive women…
• Summer nights on the Ronnie’s patio
• Kissing more than one beautiful woman
• Playing basketball so hard that I strained a dozen muscles
• Coming back the next week to do it again
• ‘Bullets Fever’
• Dim sum with the basketball crew
• Working Super Tuesday, Election Night, Debate nights and more with really great co-workers at nationalpost.com Get Rich or Die Tryin film
• Writing letters at the Regional Assembly of Text
• Passover dinner at Jonathan Goldsbie’s house
• Seeing Jonathan move out of his house
• Hannukah party at Jonathan’s apartment
• Covering the TTC strike
• Picnic at the Scream in High Park
• Bocce, bread and booze in the park with Craig
• Track Meet(s)
• Seeing Jon-Rae in the city again
• P.S. Kensington
• Winning a fashion competition with a very ridiculous Col. Sanders get-up
• Mad Men
• Live-blogging the Emmy’s
• Live-blogging the Olympic opening ceremony and then going to work
• Geek bonding at The Trekzac Festicon
• Not getting threatened by random drunks at Nuit Blanche
• Drinking in the newsroom watching Jesse Jackson cry as Obama gives his victory speech
• Christmas pot luck with a roomful of people from B.C. I hadn’t met
• Summer bike-rides
• Finding the perfect, cute red Peugeot
• Lunches with Jenn Polk
• Drinks with Mats
• Feeding my friends
• Countless bowls of soup
• Still having my health
• Still having all my friends (and a few new ones)

See ya later 2008.

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Fashion blogger Danielle Meder (who helps run the cheeky fashion/fiction project Rags and Mags

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) pointed me out to amazingly, awesome Vancouver Fashion blog The Sunday Best after I harrumphed and complained about the lack of fashion out in my former hometown.

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I’m hooked and now I can’t wait for the guy to get back from Mexico.

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Damn.

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I’m sure that most people have been using finding cool images on Flickr for years now, but I’m excited about all of the amazing archival stuff on the site. There’s all of the stuff from the Library of Congress (old-time baseball players, America in the 30s!) and a few other places in the mind-blowing Flickr Commons (The freaking New York Public Library

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, the Smithsonian).

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photos. ACL has been picking great photos of the Pacific theatre during WWII. I’ve been ogling these photos of various World’s Fairs, like this one by Alfred Eisenstaedt.

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Off one of the best albums of the year and one that I’ve had on constant rotation on the old iPod. “White Winter Hymnal” by the Fleet Foxes.

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Enjoy, all of you staying cozy in Toronto (and Vancouver by the looks of it). If you want something a bit more morose I will point you to “Skinny Love” by Bon Iver

. For those who are feeling like they want to stay in a rustic and snowy cabin in the woods while pining for some girl who just broke your heart while writing some ridiculously amazing music .

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You know what the problem with Cute Overload Forever Young video is? It’s just too damn treacly and sweet, like cotton candy. If you eat that stuff all the time you’ll end up feeling sick, throwing up all over that cute girl in front of you on the rollercoaster and have cavities to boot. Why would you do that to yourself?

The solution? Fuck You, Penguin.

Cyborg video Yes, it’s another cute animal blog. But this time with swears and angry hipster commentary. Think Cute Overload meets Pitchfork (or the Ronnie’s patio on a nice summer evening). The following post on everyone’s favourite real/fake animal (the Firefox, not the platypus, those guys ain’t real) is pretty hilarious. Enjoy!

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I’m going to be in Vancouver from Jan. 1 to Jan. 9.

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Riders movie Shrek 4-D trailer “Wait, that’s like two weeks away. Why so much notice, Ron?”

Well. I just thought I’d give you advance warning to leave town if you want to avoid me.

I’ve always been unenthused about going back to Vancouver. But somehow, it feels different this time around. I’m spotting awesome things in Vancouver that I want to check out (I’m sure they’ve always been there and I’ve just missed them).

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So for all my friends in Vancouver, let’s hang out, coffee, sushi, karaoke, jumping into puddles, whatever you guys want. I miss a lot of you! It’ll be just like old times, but better because they’re new times.

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Translated loosely, it’s the belief that the world can be better.

With all of the craziness in the world, the fact that this word exists (sadly, only in German) is a small bit of comfort.

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A tip of the hat to Copenhagen Cycle Chic download Chip an’ Dale

for pointing it out to me. And for some people who epitomize the word, I point to the fine men and women at Worldchanging.

The New York Times’ Paper Cuts blog points to a British survey that points out that half of all men (and a third of women) have lied about books they’ve read.

Really, only half?

Anyways, I can think of a few books I’ve lied about:

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Any book by Tolstoy (I think everyone knows how Anna Karenina ends, no?)

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Margaret Atwood’s The Handsmaid Tale (Women are oppressed in a theocratic dystopia. I get it)

There are tons more. But let’s do a little bit of confessing, shall we?

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The Morning News pointed me to this great essay in art magazine Triple Canopy Jack Squad full on how George Lucas and Stanley Kubrick reacted and added to modernism and minimalism. Here’s a tease:

Wild Hogs on dvd In a 1967 essay on minimalism, Clement Greenberg, America’s most influential critic, could have been describing Star Wars: “Everything is rigorously rectilinear or spherical. Development within a given piece is usually repetition of the same modular shape, which may or may not be varied in size.” Greenberg rejected minimalism as pedestrian. “Minimal works are readable as art,” he wrote, “as almost anything is today, including a door, a table, or a blank sheet of paper.” Perhaps because of its fantastic nature, the Death Star has never been recognized as an essential work of minimalism—but it is one.⁴ Its destruction has never been acknowledged as a turning point for modernism—but it was one.⁵

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The diptychs comparing screenshots from 2001, Star Wars and seminal works of modernist and minimalist art alone are worth the price of admission.

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