Seth draws back the curtain on the “solitary pursuit” that is cartooning
In the September issue of The Walrus, Seth draws back the curtain on the “solitary pursuit” that is cartooning. In the process, he also manages to speak to how we experience our own daily routines, and what it’s like to be alone with ourselves. He was kind enough to respond by email to questions about memory, time, and, of course, cartooning. The second part to this Q&A will follow in a couple days.

Q: In your article “The Quiet Art of Cartooning,” you mention that when you’re drawing and inking your mind is often visiting the past in some manner, and that these reveries often find their way into your work. Do you think that all cartooning might somehow relate back to this sense of memory, or to the act of looking back? Is memory somehow connected with cartooning in a way that isn’t true of other art forms?

A: It is hard for me to generalize on other mediums but I do feel a unique connection between memory and cartooning.I started to formalize some thoughts about this when I was studying the life of Thoreau MacDonald (the son of Canadian painter J.E.H. MacDonald). Thoreau mentioned in an interview that he never drew his pen and ink drawings of the rural landscape while actually out in the field. Instead he would go for a walk and look about and then, when he came home later, he would sit down and draw the scenes from memory. Thoreau understood that he couldn’t capture the reality of the natural world in black and white ink drawings but he could replicate the memory of being there. This struck me. (more…)

I just had to take a quick break from re-writing the movie Red Dawn (it’s a rush job to shoot it before Patrick Swayze passes away and before everyone has jumped on the Cold War resurgence bandwagon) to talk about my Twitter heroes, the truckers.

Early adoption of GPS was mandatory for truckers given their destination-driven vocation. So they have taken to the location awareness services like Brightkite that we 3G iPhone users are just getting into. The iPhone can pinpoint your exact location and, using Brightkite you can check in at that location. (more…)

BEIJING—Last Saturday something incredible happened in the Bird’s Nest. Usain Bolt, the aptly named Jamaican extraterrestrial, demolished the world’s fastest runners with a swagger, cutting three hundredths of a second off his own world record. I was fortunate enough to be there, and I’ve never seen anything like it. The stadium was on fire.

Two days later, just before noon on Monday, something equally incredible happened at the Nest, only the reaction was polar opposite. In a matter of seconds, the energy and excitement of Bolt’s run was sucked out of the stadium—and the Olympics—into a black hole of national sorrow. As famed hurdler and virtual Chinese god Liu Xiang pulled out of the 110-metre hurdles, the crowd of some 80,000 gasped in disbelief, mouths ajar, as they tried to figure out just what the hell was going on. Many broke into tears, including journalists, and an unsuspecting country went into shock.

It’s difficult to put into context the gravity of Liu Xiang’s exit from the hurdles competition. One of the CBC tech guys said it was akin to Wayne Gretzky, in his prime, gingerly skating out for a Stanley Cup game seven warm up, and then failing to show up for the opening face off. Really, though, that’s not even close. Canadians love their hockey, but I doubt the Great One could bring reporters to tears. (more…)

KARAMOJA REGION, UGANDA—We took the hospital by storm—half a dozen cameras, twice as many reporters, all zooming in on a few scores of malnourished children and their petrified mothers. Someone was supposed to have told the hospital administration that the press corps from Kampala was coming with our video recorders and tripods and tape players and questions.  But the message got lost somewhere between the town where we were staying and the place where we arrived. (more…)

Would your country ever steal a colour from another country?

Granted, from a twenty-first century perspective, the question doesn’t make perfect sense. One pictures a team of graphic designers pitted against another team, in some skyscraper in Shanghai or Mumbai or New York, concocting trademark colours for branding purposes. (Canada’s pretty much got the red-and-white scheme cornered, but did Mexico and Italy ever have a design conflict over the red-white-green of their flags?)

However, colour used to be more of a physical commodity than it is today. The raw materials used to produce colourants were costly: costly to produce, costly to transport, and costly to the environment. And, like any precious substance, they were subject to conflict, contention, and theft. Red was one of the most precious colours during colonial times, so an intense rivalry grew up between England and Spain over the mysterious red substance called cochineal. (more…)

Let’s make this clear: This post has nothing to do with a certain issue in the news about a certain post-Soviet country’s recent military activity.

Excerpts taken from a page on the Yukon government’s web site, “In a Bear Encounter…”

- “Except in some remote areas, most bears have had some previous experience with people. Whatever a bear has learned from these experiences will influence its behavior during the next encounter.

While it’s always safest to prevent encounters, there are many situations in which bears and humans interact.”

- “Some bears avoid larger more dominant bears by using areas close to human activity. This increases their risk of conflict with people.

Food-conditioned bears may be bold and approach deliberately to get to your food. They can come right into your camp, rip into your tent, or enter a building.

Your response to a bear encounter or attack should be different depending on the bear’s behavior and the circumstances, not the species.”

- “A predatory bear will be intensely interested and focused on you as a potential meal. A bear that is initially curious or testing you may become predatory if you do not stand up to it.”

- “A defensive bear is a stressed bear. You have entered its personal space and the bear perceives you as a threat. The bear may retreat, or remain nearby, nervous and uncertain. It may approach you… or charge.

Whenever a bear approaches or charges… Stand your ground.”

- “Try to appear non-threatening. Talk to the bear in a firm voice. This may calm the bear as well as yourself.”

- “If an attack is prolonged or the bear starts eating you, it is no longer being defensive. You must now fight back with all you’ve got! Your life depends on it.”

- “The two main types of serious attacks are defensive or predatory …

- “A defensive attack is when the bear is trying to remove a threat. A predatory attack is when the bear is intent on eating you. Your initial response to both should be the same… stand your ground!”

photo credit: Sasha Petite

Last Friday, I attended the Doug Wright Awards for Canadian cartooning at the Toronto Reference Library. Rather than inaugurating this blog with a post detailing a vague statement of intent I probably won’t stick to, I figure dishing about the Wright Awards will serve that introductory purpose just as well. This year, the Wrights helped spotlight everything from long-form comics created over half a century ago, to one of the last good strips in your daily paper, to a burgeoning avant-garde, with many other bright points in between. In other words, the awards share with my plans for this blog a similarly catholic interest in comics — mindful of history, with an eye to the future — as well as a preoccupation with trends and traditions in Canadian cartooning. Well, that’s vague enough, anyway—on with the awards… (more…)

The Olympics are a cesspool of hypocrisy and cold, slimy greed

JEJU-DO, SOUTH KOREA—I’ve read that the Olympics are producing some thrilling moments this year. I wouldn’t know.

During the lead up to the Games, when China blocked journalists from accessing websites such as Amnesty International and the BBC, there was a huge media kerfuffle about broken promises and the absolute need for a climate in which reporting could be done freely and without restriction. The Olympics, the argument went, are about cultural exchange and openness, and limiting access was hostile to the very spirit of the Games.

Yet here I sit in Korea, five days into the Olympic media orgy, and if I want to watch an event or a feature from my home country—because let’s not be naive: the Olympics are also very much about nationalism—I’m shit out of luck. Every attempt I’ve made to access Olympic content on an international website has been a failure, and in general, my quest for online Olympic coverage has been by far the most strangled Internet experience of my life. Not since the sweaty-palmed days of my Catholic school dances have I been so thoroughly denied.

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According to the Associated Press, the Olympics are decidedly lacking in both fans and vibe. “After the first few days of the Beijing Games, some cracks have appeared in China’s perfect party,” including “empty seats at the venues, disappointing crowds at the Olympic grounds… [and] a lack of buzz around the city,” a report said.

According to the report, just 40,000 people passed through the Olympic Green on Monday, and the IOC has told organizers the number should increase to 200,000 people per day. Olympic sponsors, with their lavish—and empty—Olympic Green pavilions, are understandably concerned. As a Canadian listening to a rock band at the Samsung pavilion told the Wall Street Journal, “It’s too bad there aren’t more people… I though this would be more of a party.” (more…)

Picture it: Red Deer, 1992. A young boy, undersized for his age and uncertain of his abilities, steps to the service line on a volleyball court. He has been brought in to close out the first set of an exhibition match. If his serve goes in and he plays solid defence, he will secure a spot as the primary back-row specialist on an elite team competing for Alberta at the Western Canadian finals the following week.
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It all happened yesterday on my porch as I anxiously watched the street for the brown UPS truck.

Weeks of waiting (all long-term customers were punished by Rogers for their patronage by having to call in their iPhone orders instead of picking one up from the now reasonably stocked stores) culminated with me labouring over a way to sound certain about Derrida’s approach to popular culture analysis called “hauntology.”

The truck pulled up and the delivery person asked if the package was for me. He said “I think it’s a phone or something.”

“A phone!” I said. “This is no phone. I’ve been waiting for this all my life. I gave up a kidney for this thing.”

He handed me my box and I sank softly into tech oblivion. (more…)

This past spring, Pasha Malla released his first book, The Withdrawal Method , a collection of stories that is high on my list of 2008 favourites. In addition to his short fiction (and, as you’ll read below, his upcoming long-form fiction), Malla’s also a humour writer, and as his piece in our September issue shows, a particularly good one. Recently, I asked Pasha about his book, his ha-has, and his upcoming projects.

A lot of the work you’ve done—like your Imaginings in our September issue and your pieces for McSweeney’s —is humour writing. How did you start writing humour, and why do you continue?

Well, I think whether or not my Imaginings piece or the McSweeney’s things are "humour" is totally subjective. I wrote them, obviously, trying to be funny, but other people finding my stuff funny—or not—is up to them. That’s the thing about humour: it’s completely individual and subjective, maybe more so than any other form. I can read a poem in a style or about something I don’t care for, but if it’s well-crafted (and I’m in a good mood) I can objectively say, "OK, I don’t like this, but it’s well done." With humour you can only succeed (making people laugh) or fail (not making people laugh). I’m sure some people will read my whisky tasting thing and think it’s just dumb, or boring, or pointless, or whatever—which is OK, because it comes with the territory. But hopefully some people will laugh—and then hopefully they’ll toilet paper the houses of the people who don’t. (more…)

NAIROBI—It was all over. We were gathered on the patio of the national museum’s café , post-morteming in the shade, coffee cups shaking in our hands.

“By the time bodies start piling up, that’s just a detail.” — Ugandan journalist Kalundi Serumaga, speaking at the Kwani Litfest in Nairobi.

NAIROBI—It was all over. We were gathered on the patio of the national museum’s café , post-morteming in the shade, coffee cups shaking in our hands. Binyavanga Wainaina—the next Achebe, or maybe just a good talker—going on about where’s a razor to shave his dreadlocks off: “I just want to see the shape of my skull.”

(”Ah,” said David Kaiza, Kampala’s neurotic genius, “you’re going to scalp yourself before someone else does it for you.”)

Meanwhile, investigative journalist Parselelo Kantai was describing the 1000-shilling bribe he’d paid the cops who caught him smoking a cigarrette on the street at four in the morning last night, while Kalundi was grumbling about everything in a very analytic way—that all the intelligence in this country had been trained outside of it, that everything we’d been talking about throughout the litfest was probably irrelevant, that the waitress had passed him three times without bringing him a menu and it took a blond mzungu to get her attention. “Hey man,” I said, “you could have lifted your hand too.” (more…)

KAMPALA, UGANDA—When you Google “Stephen Batte,” you get over 600 hits. That’s a huge number of Internet references for a nine-year old Ugandan orphan, who up until recently didn’t have enough to eat, shoes, clean clothes, or a blanket, let alone a web presence.

But, now that he’s famous, in part thanks to me, he’s got an online following and about a dozen American and Canadian couples anxious to adopt him. (more…)

BEIJING—A pall fell over the Olympics on the opening weekend, after the bizarre stabbing of an American couple and their Chinese guide Saturday afternoon, and more explosions in Xinjiang Sunday. The weather didn’t help the mood any. It’s just after 5:30 a.m. in Beijing on Monday as I write from the CBC studio at Ling Long and the clouds (fog? smog?) have broken. It’s been raining now for about twelve consecutive hours, but the air, finally, looks to be clearing.

Alas, the Games go on. Michael Phelps won his first gold yesterday and last night’s US-China basketball match drew an estimated one billion television viewers. Crowds have been good so far despite intense security and the heat and humidity. I managed to check out beach volleyball at Chaoyang Park in east Beijing after work Saturday and was impressed with the atmosphere at the stadium. The announcer led the crowd through the wave; dancing girls called “beach babies” wearing lime bikinis filled in down time; and cans of Tsingtao beer were a mere five Yuan (less than $1). (more…)