Remember He-Man? I don't. Had I grown up during the early to mid-eighties, I would have participated in the 1980's indisputable Golden Age of cartoons and avoided the consequent turmoil of not having known that all problems can be solved with Battle Cats. Such an impoverishment of cultural idioms could have created a flailing social degenerate but luckily, I was instead subjected to cartoons of the 1990's.
Aah, Captain Planet, the moral compass of my childhood: proving that fair-trade environmental armchair-activists really could save the world if only they had the power of Gaia on their side. While some may say that the animation of the early nineties lacked the resonant motifs that distinguished cartoons for a generation (moral ambiguity, giant robots, rippling muscles of justice), I am forced to remind them of the ultimate super power possessed only by Captain Planet: Blatant, unwavering ethical supremacy over all. Hey, Optimus Prime, when was the last time YOU built low-cost housing for the homeless in superhuman speed? While you're off polluting the air in vehicle-form, the Planeteers are fighting the armies of mutant Superbugs produced by the overuse of pesticides in farming towns. And you call yourself a hero!
While liberal-minded cartoons were made after Captain Planet, none managed to maintained the equilibrium of blatant political propaganda, spandex and the narrative ingenuity to literally send its characters back in time, storm Hitler's castle and shut down the entire Nazi regime with the help of the us army. This Peak installment mourns the loss of the early-nineties cartoons and their subliminal messages that we knew and loved.
Well, it's that time of year again, wherein I tell you what is good and am consequently shunned by most of the cinema-going populous. Following on from last year's undeniably nail-biting night, this upcoming Academy Awards ceremony is promising to thwart any and all definitions of entertainment. Remember last year's brilliant hosting by Jon Stewart? Not this time around, folks! It's Ellen Degeneres' turn and she's going to awkwardly stutter puns at us and force you to dance. The nominee list promises to prompt an equal measure of underwhelmed, glazed-over looks and mildly confused reactions: an ex-American Idol contestant, West Philadelphia's Fresh Prince himself, and a handful of nominated films that no one who actually watches the Oscars has ever seen. If this year's Academy Awards proves anything, it is that there has been a complete dearth of major films and that Peter O'Toole is apparently still alive. The principal role of the Oscars has been to award blockbusters, not comparatively small-scale flicks that have only been seen by a fraction of the population. Where last year you couldn't escape 'Brokeback Mountain', has anyone truly heard much of 'The Queen' or 'The Departed' outside of pseudo-intellectual film circles? Even the reasonably epic 'Letters From Iwo Jima' received only limited release within America and was exclusively aimed at Japan. Thus, my nominee predictions are not chosen due to quality or artistic merit so much as through haphazard guessing, general indifference and utter self-indulgence:
Best Actor: Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland, mainly because I think it would be funny to say I voted for Idi Amin.
Best Actress: Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, simply because it will mean that the same actress who won for Sophie's Choice will have won for a movie about shoes.
Best Motion Picture: Little Miss Sunshine, so that I don't get pelted in the hallways with rocks by my indie-film brethren.
Gravity is the force of attraction between massive particles, caused by the curvation of space-time through mass, energy and momentum. This same exact force is supplied as the necessary centripedal force in order to pull objects, such as large, heavy satellites, into a curved path as it attempts to deviate. As this object falls, it gains enough tangible velocity to miss the orbited object; Earth, thereby missing a small, fragile emily. This concept can be described as "free-falling", the ideal falling motion of a body that is subject only to earth's gravitational gield. Free-falling can also be described as a "rapid, uncontrolled decline", originating from the aeronatutical meaning of a free-fall, that is "a fall through the air without any impedance, such as a parachute", usually refering to the plummet of large, heavy, girl-crushing objects.
In conclusion, it is a good idea to stay indoors as much as is possible.
While the Canadian music industry busies itself with its slew of indie critical darlings, it's certainly a difficult time for middle-of-the-road, insipid, and tired college pop. But fear not, intermediate guitarists nation-wide, there is hope for you yet! You too can be just like Vancouver's own Yoko Casionos and fill the airwaves with token gestures to other genres that don't entirely work together in an attempt to cater to both hipper-than-thou indiephiles and mallrats alike.
Reflecting on their triumph in the Toronto NXNE Music Festival's Best Unsigned Artist contest of 2005, and consequently their three-album deal with Universal, I have compiled a complete and concise music-by-numbers formula entitled "How to Be Worryingly Sub Par and Then Later Tour with Sloan."
Step 1: Combine totally disparate references to create a band name that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with your music.
Step 2: Next, blend together needlessly overdriven guitars, lazy power chord variations and easy listening mock-rock lyrics until your music sounds like a mediocre Foo Fighters B-side and release it as your debut single. Just like the Yoko Casionos have done with "Cameras On."
Step 3: Finally, throw in a few misguided and half-hearted glimpses of post-punk revival verses before completely obliterating them in derivative power-pop chorus. This is the approach the Yokos use on both "Hang the World" and "Stars on 11." And surely, if it works for them it will regrettably work for you too.
Follow these mind-numbingly easy steps and soon a Nissan commercial and a guest spot on The O.C. could be yours. If success still eludes you, simply water down even further into a diluted soup of monotonous ballads with almost no discernable genre whatsoever. See the Nickleback recipe for additional information.
