PILLOW FIGHT ENDS IN CHAOS! COUNTLESS DEAD AS BLOODSOAKED FEATHERS LINE THE PAVEMENT OF DUNDAS SQUARE!

Was anyone else hoping to read that in Sunday's headlines? There must be a certain neurochemical make-up of people that compulsively organize "events" regardless of their value - and a certain make-up of those that root for them to fail (i.e. me). Maybe I'm a Schadenfreude junkie or maybe Toronto's playdates bent on "urban bliss" are starting to siphon my own. Obviously my reticence to accept an expressly anti-cynicism movement spearheaded by two U of T students who really like the colour pink is going to seem a little, y'know, cynical. That's, uh, because I am. I mean c'mon, who wants to witness other people have fun for no good reason, except maybe those pseudo-spiritual happiness chasers the world over who continually champion these events. Well, mainly in the notoriously pop-psych- and community-health-drenched United States, the only country in the world that considers happiness something we'll one day be able to isolate, grow in a petri dish, and sell as an energy drink.

But the US still produces witty, satirical, perverse, and just generally confrontational urban playground happenings whereas Toronto's remain friendly, earnest and...well...cute. And ecstatic, with Newmindspace, the organizers of said pillow-fights-and-other-whimsy, splashing their website with photos of their events that look like a New Years celebration in the biblical heaven. This "fun!" and social aspect of such groups represents a new trend in mob activity that creates a stark contrast with historical "groups" like the Cacophany Society (still, after 23 years, active today) who were expressly anti-social, so much so that they eschewed the very notion of cohesion. Operating as individualistic coagulations of mischief, they sought not to enjoy their city, but to disrupt it and, potentially, dismantle the whole urban system. It seems, unfortunately, that after the presence these urban mischief (anti)-entities have established in North American cities (and popular culture in general e.g. Fight Club's Project Mayhem), there is an assumption that if any activity, regardless of its inanity, is done on a large scale, it's worthwhile, even epiphanical (quoting Jenny Holzer in Newmindspace's "documentary", which I will call a public service announcement: "the most profound things are inexpressible"). And one would think, given the freedom to develop ones own sense of play within the urban sphere, today's softer, cuddlier groups would at least go beyond scavenger hunts, capture the flag and other teacher-sanctioned frollicks of our youth. After all, this is fun you don't need an adult's permission for, as one of the many liberating aspects of urban play is the freedom from any need for licenses or other bureaucratic nods to execute something. So in kind with our generation's loss of a taste for revolution, today's demonstrations not only lack any spirit of progress, but have resolved to declare the opposite: a regress into childhood frivolity.

That's not to say there haven't been any attempts to mobilize an ideology. Kevin Bracken himself has stated that people's attraction to his Newmindspace activities are rooted in an "underlying frustration with consumer culture," articulating the impulses of these groups to enjoy themselves outside of what's being provided by the corporate octopi. However, he should be careful, since things like discourse can "[suck] all the fun right out of it." This coming from Brian Bernbaum of SFWeekly, who is not only a supporter of urban playground events, but a resident of San Francisco - the home of the Cacophany Society. San Francisco, a city with probably the most colourful legacy of provocative, ideologically-driven urban mischief events in recent history. Ranging from the incendiary to the whimsical, they're all tied to rhetoric on culture jamming, reclamations of public space, challenges to the deadening routines of urban life, etc. Something as simple as a large group publicly freezing in place (a very popular activity, executed all over the United States), can deftly contradict a city's obsession with motion.

Of course, it's easy to wax righteous any time something outrageous is going on. One blog calls the events a reclamation of the city from “the endless creep of advertising”. Okay, but what is the urban playground, but an internal fury of advertising. In fact, the vitally spontaneous nature of these events depends on the use of instantaneous communication (namely mobile internet and texting) to parse out the times and locations of events on the fly. Elaborate schemes (found particularly in an American brand of play centered around of messing with the public's heads) can be coordinated through the synchronization of phone clocks, coupled with the broadcast of silent commands, creating events that sometimes even comically challenge the technology itself (see: the Starbucks simultaneous cell phone conversation). Of course, continuing to entertain ideas of being involved in some sort of "reclamation" is incomplete and hypocritical. These groups are still not using their technological assets to their full revolutionary potential. In the Philippines, China and North Korea mobile communication is used to organize protests. Here, it's being used to not wear pants with a lot of people also not wearing pants. And as far as Toronto's "response to consumer culture" is concerned, it remains completely dependent on its psychological delivery system. After all, what else does most urban play appeal to than the basest of human desires? In doing nothing more than finding different mediums to aim at the early mongoloid parts of the brain, Newmindspace et al is otherwise indistinguishable from the advertising industry. They just don't want to make money...not yet.

Unlike our Asian counterparts, having a "reason" for these elaborate, perception-altering spectacles is too heavy. If Bracken wants to continue to appeal to today's delirious masses, he might want to stick to his other soundbyte: "Free fun in an age where entertainment costs you." And since most entertainment-driven mediums are designed for spectatorship purposes only (movies, sports, video games), the real pricetag is a spiritual one. It seems that the hunger to return to the idyllic days of childhood springs from a back-to-basics spirit of re-appropriating "fun" as something actually immersive, before we were swallowed by the static pleasures of the screen (if there was ever such a time for some of us). If only NMS commitment to this concept was steady. Contradictorily, their New York mass-bubble-blowing hosted a kitschy gameboy-themed after-party complete with a cover charge, suggesting not only that not even our city's cheerleaders of puritanical bliss can resist merchandising, but that their ideology has not been sanitized of media-zombie paraphernalia. And also, perhaps, that it's not about "purity" or "innocence," but youth itself, a fetish so pervasive, so easily tickled, that it guarantees NMS attendance in the 25-to-old range. And, just like moms shopping at the same stores as their daughters, this can be seen as yet another defensive reaction to the spreading generation gaps and telescopic pace of style culture. Each generation is having a harder and harder time understanding the previous one so why not close the gap by doing our youngest functioning children are doing (children are, after all, the most faithful to traditions).

The group's PSA kicks off with a quote from Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world." Kids...I thought you liked playing nice. You see, using the words of a great thinker who fueled the women's liberation movement and sexual revolution of the 1960's to inflate what is a veritable revolution of innocence is enough irony to sink an oceanliner. However, watching the rest of their video, I couldn't accuse them of not being clever. For example they used chalk, plaster of paris and tempera paint to cover queen street with hearts, which are impermanent enough to not be considered vandalism by the city's bylaws. Stamping love on an unwillingly moody environment and getting away with it: it's kind of funny, in a dialectical way. You can't help, but enjoy people's reactions: "I think Toronto's a better place because people are doing crazy, but really quite nice things." It's provocation without the slightest hint of malice. It's art that's pure of heart.

Perhaps too pure? The social politics of their events are a tough nut. They obviously preach inclusivity - come one, come all, engage in your...no, OUR city! - but since the people they attract, says Bracken are "like us", anyone not young, hip and fanciful might get their square asses stuck while spiralling down the urban playground's slides. Lori Kufner (the other half of NMS) concedes that people who use the city functionally (she calls them "business people"; I call them "most people") are more likely to hear about their events in the media or "from their kids." Really? Or how about as they push through the clots street nymphs as they lumber to adultland? People with driven, recession-fueled professional lives are inevitably going to be ostracized from people who have really nothing better to do in their city. To NMS's credit, the pillow fight seemed to expand their market to another type of bourgeoisie by reaching out to kids, which consequently drew a demographic of bored middle class families.

Further evolution of this movement is going to be rapid, care of, naturally, communication technology. The Urban Prankster Network is a veritable mischief laboratory; and they're already merchandising with a DVD and soon-to-be book available for purchase. People post their happenings, i.e. "No pants day, Sao Paolo, Brazil, be there!." Others float ideas, many of which don't get many takers (i.e. "outdoor library!...anyone?...anyone?...") People are already getting a taste for novelty and want to have their stamp on the next new idea. People are becoming very creatively-driven in a whole new medium of expression. And, fittingly, some cities are even making it all into a a game, a competition with marked progress of "our willingness to interact with the city". Although San Francisco just loves being the first, I wonder if the people at SFZero even thought to ask if the activities they award points to are even progressive.

We remain a country waiting for something meaningful to do. All these pillow fights and "complaints choirs" are just a harmless means of catharsis, practice for when it's time to actually make splash. Of course, when everyone finally gets the "storm parliament hill!" message they'll probably come dressed as Che Guevara armed with squirt guns thinking it's some kind of revolution-themed party. I couldn't imagine it any other way. We're a people that create memories for the sake of memories, forming mobs mainly intended to look exciting in pictures (every urban play network implores their members "take pictures!") - constituents of one big urban scrapbook. The question remains: do we really need an adversarial target for our public displays of affectation to count? Do these activities need a vision of a better world, or are they themselves that vision? Perhaps I'm over-analyzing things (wait... no, fuck that) and maybe it's just not so bad to have someone peel back the canopy of the urban jungle and let the sun shine in.

Baseball: A Review

"People pay to see others believe in themselves...on stage in the midst of rock and roll, many things can happen and anything can happen, whether people come as voyeurs or come to submit to the moment," Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth (1983)

"People pay to sit around while watching other people sit around as well as, occasionally, stand around." Stefan Ravalli on Baseball (2009)

Though confined to many "so-not-punk!" rules, many professional sports can generate the same ecstatic wonder as rock and roll. Yet it's difficult to muster the same enthusiasm for a sport that can be played while chewing masseter-contorting amounts of carcinogens (that, to boot, relax the nerves; and if both hands weren't occasionally needed, the other would doubtlessly be holding a beer). As entertainment, suspense is its major stock in trade, which I suppose will inevitably burble out of an environment where nothing is really happening in the first place.

Admittedly, baseball requires no shortage of skill to be excellent, but so does lawn bowling...and darts...and staring competitions. The question is really how awe-inspiring the required physical prowess looks (see: basketball). The dexterity needed to hit a fastball no less the reflexes to rein in some truthful contact is doubtlessly impressive...but also invisible to the viewer. The only compelling dimensions are its flashes of instantaneous scale: speed (pitching) and distance (hitting). Particularly distance. The most famous players usually have the most home runs. That's because the sport would be unwatchable to anyone but die-hard fans without the promise of an "ultimate" achievement of said scale. That's why cricket is worthless to this country. There are no "goal posts" or "fences" demarcating the herculean achievement that stimulates our North American "jackpot" mentality - just smooth gradients of success, incrementally, "boringly" tallied.

Another thing that makes baseball deliciously American is its team's unique system of group individualism. With only fleeting moments of teamwork, building a team is not based on formulating the right dynamic of talents, but just getting as many good players in each position as possible. No one really works together, they just hope that when it's their turn, they don't fuck it up, which unlike virtually every other team sport, leaves only the cold language of numbers to define one's contribution to the whole (averages, jackpots, successful attempts at thievery, more fucking averages).

And it's funny how the pace of the game hasn't changed much, but its players are in increasingly in better shape. How much excitement can a professional athlete get from a sport whose training is more grueling than the game itself? It lends so much more to the concept of baseball as a "pastime" when all one can think of is how foolishly it's been invested; such physical hardship in preparation for a sport that demands almost no real exertion of it. Kind of like getting a phD in English only to work at a library. (Or an honours degree in film only to work at a bar...oh shit).

So a tip of the cap (people don't actually still wear those, do they? Like "fashionably" I mean) to all those in attendance of the home opener today. May the first trickle of statistics quench your thirst for some meaningful dimension of the game. May it fill the riverbed that is otherwise barren of any visual pleasure. May tombs of statistics fill the archives of your hungry mind, flooding out whatever the fuck that Dostoevsky guy was talking about. May you feel comfortable paying to watch your heroes believe in themselves. And don't worry, they're accomplishing no small feat out there on the playing field. After all, what's more stoic than dedicating oneself to something trivial?

Air: A Review

I mean the air you breathe, i.e. the most primary ecological anxiety faced by modern civilization. The sleeziest job I ever had looted this state of fear. I sold air cleaning units to people in their houses (that's right: like vacuum cleaners, but more vague in function). I followed up on direct-marketing leads and, of course, 90% of the people company-poor and itinerarily-wealthy enough to see me were retired. Which was just as well because they were demographically the most vulnerable to my dark preachings. I had a book of scary numbers reporting that apparently what we thought to be a never-ending supply of the elderly is now shriveling in a randomly patterned and exceedingly unnatural selection process directly related to increasing air volatility. As though any breath of a Torontonian O2 cocktail could be the final respiratory jaw-shot. I had thought myself a demagogue, not needing to worry about hard sales, but controlling the vaccine-recipient-esque line-ups for the product like I was Amnesty fucking International. I assumed all they needed was the thought of their bridge partners, ageless hexagenarians performing daily oxidant holocausts, urine the colour of a forest elf's from the deluge of green foods audibly macerating in their digestive tracts at all times, these people suspending time itself getting the switch pulled during mile two of their daily five mile run. Although healthy and vibrant enough to air-box the grim reaper, no regimen can guard against the most inextricably exposed part of the human body. With more surface area than anything organically imaginable, the lungs are susceptible to even the least concentrated air borne counterpunches, a fist of temporality right in the soloplexis.

I didn't work there long and had expected to quit anyway, unable to bear the ethical dilemmas (y'know, exploiting the sick, the scared, the lonely, the stupid, etc.) any longer. But that's not why I quit: in reality the units weren't selling. Everyday I was proudly refused like someone handing out flyers at Dundas Square. I would say "smoke, guilt free!" and they would laugh deviously. How puzzling...

Maybe I was a bad salesman, maybe the units were a rip-off (they were), but today I think their lack of popularity also has something to do with the raunchy allure of bad air. I think people like the idea that every breath is a brooding puff of some big dispersed cigarette. That's right cigarettes: quick-draw smog treats packed with any industrial chemical the heart could desire (and eventually asphyxiate from). There's something incredibly erotic about lighting a girl's cigarette for her. Yes cigarettes themselves are a well-worn accessory of displaced sensuality, but no phase of this sacred social fire dance bears more erogenous connotations than waving that ceremonial torch inches from a woman's lips, a connection welded by a tongue of pure heat.

She'll often leave with at least a thank you, or perhaps even a compliment since she's finally found an excuse to flirt. I once had a girl say "thanks, guy-with-the-amazing-lips." I scratch your mouth you scratch mine. That's really what's going on isn't it? A transfer of satisfaction. Reaching out to give a gal her fix, even though it's killing her, just this once prioritizing desire over cliches of bodily preservation.

I don't smoke, but I understand. Without a coffee I just can't face the waking world. It's not a problem, it's just something to look forward to every single day. There are no addications, only recurring goals. And, just like eating or the failures of those around you, you can ride out and treasure these slow, marginally destructive visceral itches for a lifetime (one statistically "normal" in length to boot). But breakfast, lunch, dinner and sex just aren't enough anymore. I want more set-pieces in my stage of pleasure principles than just the ones rolling down through the ol' mammalian helix inevitably to me. Fuck your genetic gumball machine. That chew lost its flavor years ago. I'll cultivate my own drives, even if they kill me.

What's so sexy about smoking is exactly what's so unsexy about a health nut. Each monoxidal exhalation obscures our allegedly "indubitable" survival instinct. Plumes of human transcendence swivel their hips skyward as we celebrate our freedom from our bodies and the demands they place on our consciousness, trying like real estate developers to buy out the delicate, freefalling meadows of careless psychic reflection. One of the reasons why smoking is so easily tied to contemplation of one's surroundings; when we deliberately opppose self-preservation we spring in automatic retreat from self-directed thought. Thoughts become outside of oneself just as respiration is no longer an internal life process, but an external phantasm.

Whoever said cigarettes imply some sort of infantile Freudian fixation has it backwards. It's the health nuts that live in fear, still clinging to physical growth, heads buried in the bosom of maternal nourishment. Smokers are in a far more advanced state of development for they suckle on the teat of death - now that's an eye for the future. This a difficult argument to make in the face of our culture's traditional representations of smokers i.e. the ones of cinema are often of the "chain" variety, which manage to wordlessly (aside maybe from *cough*) exude a state of arrested development rather than, as I propose, existential progress. Well, the movies have it half right. You see cigarettes facilitate another very human and very crucial ritualistic excuse: really do we essentially regard ourselves lighting a tobacco product or the engines of an escape hatch from the world - from physical involvement, as well as mental. AKA: "Fuck off I'm having a cigarette." On an eternal smoke break, these keepers of the flame live in suspended animation, their progress inverted to an internal rhythm, their meadows always blowing, the breeze a thick nitrate grey. Their earthly involvement is now spiritual.

And thus, because over 20% of people smoke, our air could not possibly improve through public action. The other 79% don't care, and the ones that do are the disenfranchised shrill that the eternally cool scoff at out of erotically wheezing throats. Smokers have checked out of the life-club and most non-smokers wish they could do the same (without slowly dying) or at least tag one of the many hypothetical cocky statements they have tucked away (for any cocky-approved scenario they might encounter) with some kind of resolute plume of toxins, like the ghost of assertions slapping them a high five i.e. "air is old news...get over it" (puff...cough).