http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs Fearless. Thoughtful. Witty. Canadian. And Opinionated. Tue, 08 Jul 2008 21:04:07 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I just finished reading David Giffels's All the Way Home, which I'll soon be reviewing for a different publication. It's a memoir of a man who, with his pregnant wife and infant child, buys a falling-down mansion and begins trying to make it a home, with minimal help from contractors ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/06/25/all-in-your-head/ From Jamie Allen at McSweeney's, a campaign speech on the occassion of the narrator's 40th birthday: And from those words, I have sensed what you might be thinking: Should we keep this person as our son ... or should we legally disown him? I want you to know, Mom and Dad: ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/06/20/the-son-almost-rises/ James Bond, shaken and stirring, from "Crying Men," by photographer Sam Taylor-Wood. The whole series is really beautiful. From The Arab Acquarius: Taylor-Wood explains, "Some of the men cried before I even finished loading the camera, but others found it really difficult. People can decide for themselves which they think are ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/06/18/live-and-let-cry/ The late, lamented Canadian men's mag Toro is back, sort of. As my good friend Marc Weisblott of Eye Weekly's Scrolling Eye puts it: [Of the relaunched, internet-only Toro] “It’s an example of how a men’s magazine looks and acts when taking advantage of state-of-the-art 21st century digital technology — as ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/05/22/toro-was-a-friend-of-mine-and-you-sir/ CBC Radio Ideas producer Richard Handler summarizes Dr. Leonard Sax's book, Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men: But then he bucks up and gives us five reasons for this epidemic. Many are familiar but Sax puts them all together like a ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/05/22/thats-what-im-talking-about/ Picture this: it's 2012 and a new Rick Rubin-produced American Recordings masterpiece hits the (by then entirely virtual) record store shelves. The album art features, in arty black and white, a solitary figure, perhaps hunched slightly, but with his chin held defiantly high, sitting at a grand piano in the ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/05/21/did-someone-order-a-theme-song/ OK, I can kind of understand the general thrust of Canadian Club's new ad campaign, with the tagline "Damn right your Dad drank it." I imagine that if you are in the business of trying to sell rye whiskey (No, not scotch, the other whiskey. No, that's bourbon, we mean the ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/05/18/picture-your-dad-having-sex-now-drink-up/ ...is you don't talk about acting like a man. The second rule of acting like a man is, well, you know. Forgive me if this post descends into an exercise in free association but this is a truth of traditional masculinity so self-evident that it's hard to understate, or to quickly ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/05/09/the-first-rule-of-acting-like-a-man/ Last Friday, just as I became preoccupied with planning and hosting a two-year-old's birthday party and then launching into a nightmarish hell of day-job research, The Shelf cried out to me for my opinion about Tree of Smoke and its particular appeal to male-type people and further, the relationship of ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/05/08/genre-bending/ Consider this the start of a blogroll with benefits -- I'll update it periodically and your own additions, objections and suggestions in the comments section give it a whole Web 2.0 interactivity thing that's been missing from so many inaccessible blog sidebars. Cause as you can see, this blog ain't ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/05/07/act-like-a-man-reading-list/