“Arguably the greatest cultural achievement of the Net has been to create a global network of closets and give the rest of the world a peek at what’s inside. Like no other medium before it, the Internet allows society’s marginal elements to find each other, the combined weight of their numbers revealing they’re not so marginal after all. In this sense, the World Wide Web functions as a self-help room for nerds, a cafeteria where the weirdos get the choice tables. Thanks to the web, we now know we’re not the only Christian Communists on the planet, or even, possibly, in our section of town. Just about any proclivity or persuasion finds expression on the web, from Jews Against Circumcision to Adult Babies to Force, the platform for pro-smoking activists.

Abnormal is the new normal, the white picket fence in danger of being battered beyond repair. The onus is now on Joe Average, whoever he is, to defend his shrinking domain.”

From “Un is In, asexuals, unschoolers, anarchists: thanks mainly to the Internet, abnormal is the new normal. You are what you aren’t.”
By Gabrielle Bauer in the February 2005 issue of Saturday Night.

I know a lot of parents who are going to see this story as one more excuse to keep their daughters at home, away from boys.

This being said, it’s a really sad story.

Je cherchais une photo dans le fouillis des images sur mon ordinateur ce matin et je suis tomb�e sur ce dessin que j’avais pris sur le Web il y a quelques ann�es. J’adorais ce dessin anim� quand il jouait � la t�l� (probablement dans le cadre de l’�mission Bagatelle) mais je ne me rappelais pas son nom ou son cr�ateur.

J’ai mis l’image sur Flickr et �ric s’est rappel� qu’il s’agissait d’un dessinateur italien. Quelques recherches sur le Web m’on permis de d�couvrir que le grognon petit bonhomme confin� � une tr�s simple “ligne de vie” s’appelait La Linea et qu’il �tait une cr�ation de Osvaldo Cavandoli. Ce dessin anim� a connu un grand succ�s dans les ann�es 70. On en a fait des DVDs et m�me une trame sonore (jolis objets � ajouter � un bas de No�l…).

Il semble bien que La Linea soit dans l’air. J’ai trouv� sur Flickr une photo d’une murale montrant la fameuse main du dessinateur et le petit monsieur grognon. Cette murale vient d’�tre peinte… � Montr�al, derri�re l’ancien Warshaw. Vive les coincidences!

Extraits vid�o de La Linea: 1, 2 et 3.

Pour encourager Le Capitaine Laurent � d�m�nager au Qu�bec au plus vite, je lui ai fait faire une belle paire de bottes en poils de chat. Comme vous pouvez le constater sur cette �tonnante collection de photos, les bottes de poils repr�sentent l’ultime accessoire chic au Qu�bec cet hiver.

(Non, non, n’ayez crainte. Je n’ai pas achet� ces bottes. Elles m’ont �t� offertes lors d’un tournage en Abitibi il y a quelques ann�es.)

“I think personal blogging (if done properly) is a bit like when you have had way too much ‘nog at the office Xmas party and you wind up taking the new guy home. You do all that kinky stuff with strap-on bunny tails, riding crops and grenadine syrup, and then you bump into each other the next day at the water cooler. You know, that awkward “what now?” feeling?”

From Random Acts By Design.

Two screenwriters (one of them also a blogger) who work on the tv series Lost have recorded a podcast offering their comments on tonight’s episode in real time. You can watch the episode while you record it and then watch it again with the sound off while listening to the commentaries, just like you would do with a DVD (except for the fact that you’ll need something to play an mp3 file).

You can download the podcast tomorrow, Thursday, from ABC.com or from iTunes. This will be the 4th podcast offered by ABC and the Lost team. The previous ones can be found here.

It’s a great use of podcasting and I hope more tv writers will do the same in the future.

�a fait deux ans que nous vivons ensemble et comme �a se passe plut�t bien, je vous annonce fi�rement que nous avons enfin d�cid� de faire le grand saut: nous venons tout juste de joindre nos deux �tag�res � �pices (de l’�poque pr�-cohabitation). Allez, soyez gentils et ne vous moquez pas de ceux qui ont la peur de l’engagement!

Nous y avons consacr� toute une matin�e la fin de semaine derni�re, � sniffer des pots d’herbes pour voir si elles �taient encore fra�ches (c’est dur pour les narines, le thym en poudre), � d�terminer si mon romarin �tait de meilleure qualit� que le sien, � d�cider si �a vaut la peine de garder les �tranges petites boules nomm�es Allspice, � se rappeler avec nostalgie des fourmis que j’avais chass�es gr�ce aux clous de girofle. Rien de mieux pour mettre du piquant dans sa vie de couple!

J’ai m�me r�ussi � le convaincre d’alphab�tiser les petits pots, lui qui me dit toujours avec un ton d�fensif: “I’m a piler, you’re a filer.” Nous avons pass� le reste de la journ�e au march� Jean-Talon o� nous avons renouvel� notre stock d’�pices apr�s avoir d�gust� un d�licieux sandwich-merguez et quelques chocolats fins. La soir�e s’est conclue � jouer aux boules avec des amis qui veulent s�rement que je garde leur nom secret.

P’tit couple, notre affaire? Ben non! Nos collections de CDs et nos biblioth�ques ne sont pas encore m�lang�es et se snobbent chacune dans leur coin du salon. La fusion, c’est bon pour les cuisines, pas pour les individus. ;-)

In a Salon article called Neo-bohemian rhapsody, Andrew O’Hehir talks about living in The Mission neighborhood in the late 80s in San Francisco. His text is an echo to a new book by sociologist Richard Lloyd called: Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City, which uses Chicago’s hipster enclave Wicker Park to talk about neighborhoods that become gentrified through alternative culture.

I recognized a lot of what O’Hehir describes about the Mission even though I was there in the early 1990s and not the 80s (check out my old place). A lot of what he describes also applies to Montreal’s Plateau and the Mile-End.

“Wicker Park, as Lloyd tells the tale, was a relatively late neo-bohemia; no sooner was the “scene” created than it was discovered. He recounts an amusing anecdote about several neighborhood locals, some of whom had lived there as briefly as six months, deriding the crowd of “708ers” (invaders from the northern suburbs) outside a Veruca Salt show. Obviously, Lloyd’s friends don’t really know where the Veruca Salt fans live; given the rising rents in Wicker Park, many of them may live there. But “the performance of cultural distinction,” that is, the ability to define oneself as a member of a select in-group, has always been important to bohemians, neo- or not.”

In Montreal, they make fun of the “450s”. Different cities, same hipster attitude.

“Neo-bohemia is always contaminated by nostalgia, by the belief that the scene is over, and has been over since the yuppies moved in, the old bookstore closed, the Starbucks opened and so on. […]

This is fascinating, original and deeply humane sociology at its finest; he demonstrates that in the name of freedom, young people working in allegedly relaxed service-sector jobs waste years of their lives in a whirl of drugs, alcohol and deceptively low wages. It’s a classic example of a circular economy: While a bartender at an upscale Wicker Park club may earn $250 or more in tips from a shift, he or she is likely to go right out to an after-hours club with friends and spend it all on lavish tips to another bartender on the circuit. To anyone who’s ever worked in the nightlife business, all this will ring sad but true. […]

Contrary to the way some of its residents feel (to the way I felt in 1995, for instance) neo-bohemia is not “over” when it has been discovered by hordes of Oxford-clad yuppies and blathering newspaper reporters. In fact, it’s only coming into its own. Neighborhoods like the Mission and Wicker Park (and even older bohemias like Greenwich Village or San Francisco’s North Beach) retain much of their power as bohemian signifiers even when they’ve become too expensive for many young artists. This is just another of the numerous contradictions they embody; to be neo-bohemian at all, they must remain superficially hospitable to anti-establishment values while becoming both a “bohemian-themed entertainment zone” and a site of postindustrial production.”

On me trouve avant elle sur Google mais elle a droit � une grosse affiche � la station de m�tro Berri. Je devrais peut-�tre la convaincre de m’apprendre un peu de comptabilit� puisqu’elle est si talentueuse.