Last year, close to 33 million Americans had their TVs tuned to the Oscars and watched in shock as presenters Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty flubbed the presentation of the Oscar for Best Picture.  Dunaway and Beatty, who were given the wrong envelope by the TV producers, hesitated before declaring La La Land the winner.  As that movie’s producers began their acceptance speech, the Oscar show’s producers came to the stage to announce that the film Moonlight was actually the “Best Picture” of 2016.  It was an odd yet compelling moment that was quite possibly the only real moment of drama in award-show history.

Although the fiasco kept people talking for days, it shouldn’t be overlooked that two more drastically different movies couldn’t be nominated for the Best Picture award.  La La Land, which was actually the most-nominated film of the year’s Oscars, was a cinematically extravagant musical harking back to the Hollywood of the ’50s; while Moonlight, a socially conscious tale of race and sexuality, told the story of a young queer Black American.  And although Moonlight was a noble tale, it was a small picture that lacked the pizzazz of the more exquisite La La Land.  But it may not be surprising that Moonlight won the biggest award of the night, for last year was the year that many in both Hollywood and the media expressed disappointment and regret that few people of colour were being recognized in the world of film.  Interestingly, Dunaway and Beatty had 50 years earlier stared in the legendary Bonnie and Clyde, a violent biopic that helped to usher in the New Hollywood era.  And although it was tied for the lead of Oscar nominations for 1967, it actually lost the Best Picture award to the much different In the Heat of the Night, a Norman Jewison exploration of racial bigotry in the American South.  The late ’60s were a time of racial uprising in the United States, particularly in the South, and the Oscar award show for the 1967 season aired just two days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

I mention this allegory not to draw criticism at Hollywood’s attempt to address race in the movies but rather to note how tricky and naïve it is to attempt to define a Best Picture when politics enters the equation.  Or should I say marketing, for the Academy Awards were founded in the late ’20s by the major studios as an attempt to promote their products — movies.  (To this day, movies that win the big Oscar awards see an upswing at the box office after the awards show.)  And politics may be a factor in this year’s Oscars ceremony, given the #MeToo movement.

The history of the Oscars have left many people scratching their heads.  How did Citizen Kane, long heralded by many as the best movie to ever come out of Hollywood, lose the Best Picture Oscar to How Green Was My Valley, a lesser-quality John Ford picture?  (The answer lies possibly in the meddling of a disgruntled newspaper mogul.)  How is it that the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, never won a competitive Oscar?  And somebody explain to me how the mechanical Crash earned the Best Picture over the more artful Brokeback Mountain and suspenseful Munich.  And then there’s the year 1977, in which Annie Hall, a masterful comedy and possibly Woody Allen’s best cinematic effort, won the Best Picture Oscar over Star Wars, George Lucas’s sci fi opus that sourced ancient myths and epics to reimagine the ’40s and ’50s low-budget shorts that Lucas idolized as a kid.  Both movies are spectacular, yet forcing them to compete within the same set of artistic aesthetics is absurd.

But that’s not to say that the Oscars always get things wrong.  Take the case of Francis Ford Coppola, who directed, produced, and wrote The Godfather, Part II while editing The Conversation at night.  Both movies were nominated for multiple Oscars for the 1974 Oscar season — one of them winning Best Picture — and both have since been hailed as well-received masterpieces.

I’m thoroughly amazed how seriously people take the Oscars, for I’m confused as to why people watch it.  Do people watch the show to see who wins the awards, or do they watch to see what the female actors (why do people still say “actress”?) are wearing?  Do they watch to hear the jokes the host will say at the beginning?  Or do they watch because they want to see celebrities act as themselves?  Or perhaps they want to see moments as real as the Dunaway and Beatty Oscar flub.  I’m not sure.  I’ve sat through Oscar shows, and they’re three- to four-hour bore feasts: awards are given periodically, while in between, songs are sung and other unrelated topics explored.  It’s not something I enjoy, and it’s an approach that has been expanded to other award shows.  I have never seen the Grammys, I would be shocked if anybody watches the Canadian Screen Awards, and the Golden Globes are dull.  I now see award shows like the Oscars as the original reality TV shows: People enjoy watching them in the hopes of seeing the kind of unscripted drama that happened during last year’s Oscars.  Oscar spectators, in a sense, aren’t all that different than people who watch sports on TV.  It’s just the venue that’s different.

As I finish writing this article, the Oscars have probably finished, and I have no idea who won what.   Nor do I care.  Instead of watching the Oscars, I streamed a horrible movie and listened to a podcast.  But I think I share my lack of Oscar enthusiasm with George C Scott, who died in 1999.  A respected and intense thespian of both the stage and screen, Scott may be best remembered for his roles in Dr. Strangelove and Patton.  And when he was nominated for his performance of the titular character in the latter movie in 1971, he warned the Oscar committee that were he to win, he would reject his award on philosophical grounds.  “The whole thing is a goddamn meat parade,” Scott was reported to have said.  “I don’t want to be a part of it.”  Surprisingly, given his lacklustre attitude, Scott won the award anyway.  (His performance was good.  He put a tremendous amount of effort and research to create an effective portrayal.)

At the time his win was announced, Scott was asleep at home.  I admire Scott for his attitude.  He made Oscar ennui cool.  You have my back, George.

I started going to the gym 15 years ago, when I was an overweight university student.  At the time, I applied for a summer student job at the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), who required me to undergo a physical before offering me a position.  In his report, the TTC’s doctor wrote, “Healthy but clinically obese.”  That same summer, my family doctor advised me to have a cholesterol test, as heart disease runs on both sides of my family; it was borderline high.  Since then, through a combination of a relatively healthy diet (I do occasionally eat badly) and regular exercise, I have maintained a healthy weight and lifestyle.  It includes biking (almost) everywhere, doing a lot of outdoor activities during the warm months, and, of course, going to the gym, where I go 4 to 5 times a week.  At the gym I do a combination of strength training and cardio, but one day a week, I take a low-impact class.  I’ll rotate between either yoga, Pilates, or barre; quite often, I’m in room full of women.  At first I felt out of place, being the only guy in the room.  But as I did more classes, I stopped caring and decided to embrace the benefits of the classes.

I’m not sure why more men don’t do these low-impact exercises, but studies have shown that men who work out are far more likelier to focus on building larger upper-body muscles and strength, while women likelier to focus more on losing weight and sculpting their lower bodies, especially their behinds.  I’m certainly not going to try to tell women what they should do at the gym, but I do think more men should do a low-impact class at least once a week.  Below are three reasons men should incorporate classes like yoga, barre and Pilates.

They Exercise Your Core

Studies have show that men will focus on their upper body, especially their arms and chests while ignoring their core and lower bodies.  Don’t get me wrong: building muscle mass is an important part of being healthy, but it shouldn’t be at the neglect at other types of exercise, including cardio-vascular exercise (like running) or core exercises, which target your abdominal muscles, back muscles, and pelvic muscles.  Yoga, barre, and Pilates target your core.  In fact, each of these classes have overlapping exercises,  including the bridge, quadruped, and plank, which strengthen your core and target muscles that you may not be targeting when you’re lifting heavy weights at the gym.

Plus, you have the added benefit of having an instructor who can correct your movement and offer suggestions to improve your performance.  This is an benefit, since most gym memberships include fitness classes — instructor included — with the regular membership rate but charge more if you were to have a fitness instructor help you in the weight room.

They Improve Your Posture and Coordination

Because yoga, Pilates, and barre emphasize breathing, alignment, and strengthening your core, you develop a better posture and coordination.  Yoga, for example, challenges you by forcing you to develop strength by holding poses while breathing regularly; and barre, which is very similar to Pilates but with the added element of a ballet barre and some ballet movements, encourages you to develop a better balance by exercising one side of the body at the time.  Additionally, you’ll quite regularly hold one- or two-pound weights while exercising, encouraging you to build strength on a different level than in the weight room.

Get in Touch with Your Feminine Side

There is more to exercise than building muscle and having a macho physique.  Remember that exercising is also about feeling good.  And health is more than physical — it’s also mental.  And most men can improve their mental health by getting in touch with their inner woman.  I’m not saying that classes like yoga, Pilates, and barre are designed exclusively for female participation, but for whatever reason, these classes attract a largely female audience.  I had been doing Pilates for over a year on a Saturday at the YMCA.  The class right after was barre, and I would watch the class sometimes.  I noticed that the class participants were solely women and that many movements involved dance.  And the instructor used dance music.

I wanted to do the class because it offered the challenge of doing something new and different, and a healthy part of exercise is adding variety to your routine.  But I avoided it for months.  But once I made the decision to plunge in, I was accepted by the instructor, who introduced herself to me after the class (she seemed excited to have me add spice to what was until then an exclusively woman’s class); and the women in the class either ignored my presence or smiled at me. (No, I don’t think they were smiling to pick me up.  I suspect they thought it was neat that I was there.  It’s never even crossed my mind to use an exercise class as a place to attempt to pick up women.)  But I do think that in our culture, which is still learning to embrace a more female-minded perspective, men do need to embrace their inner woman.  Just sayin’.

A Real Conspiracy

On a May 16, 1997, gathering at the White House, then U.S. President Bill Clinton made an apology to victims of a top-secret forty-year study that left lasting scars.  Speaking directly to the handful of living survivors, including a 110-year-old man, Clinton acknowledged that the U.S. government “…did something that was wrong — deeply, profoundly, morally wrong … The people who ran the study at Tuskegee diminished the stature of men by abandoning the most basic ethical precepts.  They forgot their pledge to heal and repair.  They had the power to heal the survivors and all the others, and they did not.  Today, all we can do is apologize.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an arms-length agency of the U.S. government, details the events of the Tuskegee study.  By the mid-1920s, 30 per cent of adults in reproductive age were infected with syphilis (this stat presumably reflects the United States).  Most infected people do not progress beyond the disease’s secondary stage, which involves a horrible outbreak of skin rashes and mucous membrane lesions; however, if the disease is left untreated, it can progress to more serious symptoms, including paralysis and dementia.  Internal organs can also be damaged, leading to death.  By 1929, doctors were treating the disease with mercury and bismuth; it had a success rate of less than 30 per cent and could cause toxic or fatal side effects.  So in 1932, a program called “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” began.  Although the study was run by the Public Health Service, the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), a largely Black-American college, co-sponsored it in hopes of employing Black American doctors and receiving the study’s credit.  Set in Alabama, the study found 600 men, all Black American, to volunteer.  Two thirds had syphilis; the rest did not.  The volunteers were told they were being actively treated for various diseases, including syphilis; however, they were only monitored for the progress of syphilis.  Despite being designed to run six months, the study ran for four decades, and even though penicillin became an effective treatment for the disease by 1945, the men were never treated.  The study didn’t end until 1972, when the Associated Press caught wind of what was happening.  In subsequent years, the government was forced to pay the volunteers millions of dollars in compensation and to provide free lifetime medical care to the volunteers, their spouses, and their children.

The events in Tuskegee prove that actual conspiracies have taken place.  Most people, when pressed to think of a conspiracy, think of over-the-top, extra-ordinary events such as the JFK assassination, dead alien bodies in Nevada, or the 9/11 Truth Movement.  However, provable conspiracies have taken place around the world and across history, and although some have had some degree of outlandish detail, the vast majority are much more grounded in reality than alien-lifted military technology at Area 51.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines conspiracy as “the activity of secretly planning with other people to do something bad or illegal.”  By definition the above-mentioned Tuskegee saga is a conspiracy.  And other historical events, such as Watergate, which covered up a U.S. president’s criminal activity; and the Manhattan Project, which developed the nuclear bomb, are conspiracies.  Some, like the Nazi’s Final Solution, are even more breathtaking in scope.  But they all did real, measurable damage and became public knowledge in relatively short times.  But most importantly, they all have an ending.  That is to say that they became a part of history.

Conspiracies Are the New Religions

The world’s major religions, such as Christianity and Islam, developed at a time when people had no idea where the sun went at night or why people got sick.  So stories of Jesus curing lepers or God sending plagues and famines to punish people could be seen as ways of explaining what were then unknowable and scary.  But in the four-and-a-half centuries since Copernicus’s observations of the solar system sparked the Scientific Revolution, people like Newton, Darwin, and Einstein championed the Scientific Method as a way of understanding the world and the universe through observation and experimentation.  Today’s luxuries — heated homes, global travel, modern medicine — were all developed through modern scientific understanding.  Intuition has given way to deduction.  Spirituality has given way to rationality.  And religion has given way to secularism.

In developed countries, most people have at minimum a high school-level math and science education.  Yet people are still susceptible to irrational beliefs and superstitions.  These modern irrational beliefs — for example, chemtrails and crop circles — indeed cloak themselves with a scientific facade, but they have much more in common with religious dogma than science.  Like religion, they offer a universal explanation riddled with faulty logic and little evidence.  Their believers dismiss any evidence that disproves their explanations.  And like all religions, they are conspiratorial in nature.  (If you don’t think that religions are conspiracy friendly, consider that the Abrahamic religions are named after a prophet who plotted with God to sacrifice a baby.)

Flat Earth Theory as a Religion

On November 27, 2017, 61-year-old Californian “Mad” Mike Hughes was prevented from launching his homemade rocket by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.  The limo driver, who once told the Associated Press, “I don’t believe in science,” had reportedly spent over $20,000 (U.S.) to build a rocket that would blast into space with the aid of a rocket launcher made from a used motor home.  The government apparently didn’t take too kindly to Hughes’s use of public land to soar his amateur rocket at 500 miles per hour in Amboy, California, in his quest to prove that the Earth is flat.  Hughes, who wasn’t fazed by the immense odds stacked against him, said that aerodynamics and thrust are “…not science, that’s [sic] just formula.”  Hughes is taking the setback in stride, telling NPR that he would be launching shortly on private property near where he originally intended to launch.

What would cause somebody to discount thousands of years worth of observation and evidence?  Many scholars believe that the ancient Greeks probably understood that the world was round six centuries before the Common Era; Ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle offered observations of stars and lunar eclipses to prove the spherical shape of Earth.  And as the Greeks’ observations spread throughout the Mediterranean and beyond, Indian mathematician Aryabhata accurately calculated the circumference of the Earth to within 100 kilometres a millennium before the Age of Exploration.  And Columbus used the Ancient Greeks’ observations when he “discovered” the Americas.  But most importantly, in the last six decades, countless satellites and people have taken pictures of Earth. Who can deny the haunting pictures of the earthrise taken from the moon’s orbit by the crew of Apollo 8?

Hughes is apparently financed by Research Flat Earth, an organization that has barely an online presence, save a YouTube channel featuring videos, which, although they are created to appear scientific, are more amateurish than true.  The videos offer scant evidence and little justification for their evidence.  They are neither peer reviewed nor validated by any scientific research.  Yet if their evidence is refuted, it is further proof that they are right.  And how does knowledge of a spherical Earth hurt anybody?

Then there is the strange Twitter reply to Telsa and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who, after tweeting “Why is there no Flat Mars Society!?” received the following tweet back from the Flat Earth Society: “Unlike the Earth, Mars has been observed to be round.  Have a nice day!”   The society’s webpage, which doesn’t identify who the society is or how to contact them, is a barebones site that offers little concrete proof or scientific evidence, yet it includes basketball star Shaquille O’Neill as the biggest (pun intended) proponent of flat earth theory.

Why It Matters

To give flat earth theory any more attention would be a distraction from the victims of actual conspiracies, like the men in the Tuskegee study.  The people who buy into flat earth theory are not too different from people who send money to televangelists, for just as TV viewers cling to hope that televangelists can cure cancer, proponents of flat earth theory cling to a fantasy world in which the pain of the real world is suspended.  They believe in a truth that, if revealed, would make the world better.  They fear those things for which fact and science can provide no answer.  It’s an unprovable concept that will never make the world better; consequently, it’s the hope that makes them happy.  But let’s not give these people much attention.  Let them be wrapped up in their own personal religion, the religion of the fake conspiracy.  Instead, let’s remember real victims of harmful conspiracies: the victims of the Holocaust, victims of the two atomic bombs, and the loss of innocence from the Watergate fallout.  For when people do conspire, bad things almost always happen. It’s not about a flat Earth.  It’s about the victim.

I don’t think that I’m inherently conservative, so it’s interesting that many songs I listen to are older.  I’m certainly not opposed to listening to new releases, and I do keep up to date with trending bands and the newest fads, but when it comes to songs that I play on repeat, they’re hits that have proven the test of time.  Maybe it’s because I grew up listenting to them on the radio, and the background noise ingrained on me; I’m not sure.  So here are five songs that I find myself gravitating towards time and time again.

“God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys

I’m not necessarily a huge Beach Boys fan, for I find their early stuff overly juvenile and simplistic.  But Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson made his masterpiece when he recorded Pet Sounds, which was released 1966.  Wilson had actually retired from touring over a year before going into the studio to record the album with many of Los Angeles’s leading sessions players, who were informally known as the Wrecking Crew.  Wilson effectively left his band mates out of the creative process and brought them into the studio only at the very end to record their vocal tracks.  (His fellow Beach Boys, understandably, were frustrated, and as a result disagreed with Wilson’s creative focus.)  Co‐writing with lyricist Tony Asher, Wilson produced a collection of introspective songs that had harmonies and structures that were unusually complex for pop music then or since.  The album had an immediate and powerful impact, going so far as to inspire the Beatles to record Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Wilson effectively left his band mates out of the creative process and brought them into the studio only at the very end to record their vocal tracks.

And who can deny the power of an album that contains classics like “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “Sloop John B,” and the album’s title track.  But perhaps the album’s true classic is “God Only Knows,” which opened the album’s second side. A gentle, three‐minute tune that begins with french horns, viola, and cellos, instruments typically found in an orchestra, the song is a sweet love song in which the singer speaks about not wanting to be apart from the love of his life.  It has a consistent tempo throughout, but towards the end the song increases in volume, with more complex vocal harmonies and heavier instrumentation adding a melodic and symphonic element.  Yet the song has a simplistic and upbeat message, and as a result, the song has been featured in multiple movies, including Love Actually and Boogie Nights.  It was also the theme song for the TV show Big Love.

“Northern Sky” by Nick Drake

Nick Drake may not be a household name, and that’s a shame.  In his short life (he died aged 26 in 1974) Drake produced only three albums, all of which sold extremely poorly in his lifetime.  Indeed, it wasn’t until a decade after his death that well‐known musicians, including R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and The Cure’s Robert Smith, spoke of how influential Drake had been to their musical education.  And around the same time, The Dream Academy released their hit song, “Life in a Northern Town,” which was inspired by Drake and his tragic life.

Drake remains an enigma, for his music was simultaneously inspired by and hampered by his severe depression.  Drake lived his entire life with his parents, who towards the end were worried enough to hide pills from their son.  When Drake’s music label dropped him, causing him to lose his small weekly retainer, he was unable to buy a new pair of shoes.  Drake had a small network of friends, who all reported that Drake would sleep on their couches and then disappear for weeks at a time; and a week after Drake’s closest female friend ended their relationship (she couldn’t cope with his depression), Drake died from an overdose to anti‐depressants.

Indeed, it wasn’t until a decade after his death that well‐known musicians, including R.E.M’s Peter Buck and The Cure’s Robert Smith, spoke of how influential Drake had been to their musical education.

Yet this doesn’t explain why Drake’s music didn’t get wide attention until his song “Pink Moon” was featured in a Volkswagen internet commercial in 1999.  After all, other musicians achieved fame while experiencing illness and hardship.  Just look at Brian Wilson.

But thanks to that commercial, more people became aware of Drake’s music, which often relied on nothing more than voice, with guitar and piano (though his first two albums had some orchestral arrangements).  His beautiful melodies, augmented by his unusual guitar tuning and cluster chords, are quite hypnotic.  Take in point the song “Northern Sky,” a gorgeous melody with lyrics that equate love with images of nature.   “Would you love me for my money?/Would you love me for my head?/Would you love me through the winter?/Would you love me ’till I”m dead?” illicit a hope from nature. “I never felt crazy magic like this/I never saw moons knew the meaning of the sea/I never held emotion in the palm of my hand…”  I get the sense that Drake isn’t singing to a particular person but rather to the northern sky itself.  And his guitar and piano in the song sound like the wind.  Indeed, many of Drake’s songs are about his observation of nature, seemingly hinting that Drake was more attached to inanimate objects than to people.

“Song in My Head” by Martha and the Muffins

All artists have that one song that defines them: for Queen it’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” for The Police it’s “Roxanne,” and Corey Hart it’s “Sunglasses at Night.”  And while they produced other amazing songs that I enjoy listening to, I dislike their biggest hit.  Maybe it’s because I’ve heard it one too many times.  And Martha and the Muffins is no exception.  This Canadian group, started in the late ’70s by art school graduates, hit it big in 1980 with their one international hit, “Echo Beach,” a song I’ve heard one too many times on Canadian radio stations (thank you Canadian content rules!)  But that doesn’t mean that the band didn’t have other songs that are thoroughly enjoyable, including “Black Stations/White Stations,” about the implicit racism in the recording industry at the time; “Cooling the Medium,” a wickedly fun song that was accompanied by a bizarre video that only art school graduates could have dreamed up; and “Song in My Head,” a great mid‐1980s pop song that actually has a cool video.  It’s an up‐tempo song, complete with a funky bass riff, a quiet guitar, and loud horns and synths playing throughout.  It’s ultimately about the singer breaking up with her romantic partner because, “You started to give me that old refrain/I never wanna hear that song again,” so realistically it shouldn’t be a fun song to listen to.  Yet it is fun precisely because the song is so self‐referential about being a song.  The chorus repeats the lines “There’s a song in my head going round and round/There’s a something in my heart that I never found.”  But for more fun, watch the song’s video, which is readily available on YouTube.  In it, group singer Martha Johnson is in a sound stage (wide shots reveal it to be a sound stage, with a working film crew) while a wardrobe crew dresses her and applies makeup to her face.  She’s standing on a rotating stage as different background scenery and people spin around her.  Get it?  As Johnson sings in the song, “There’s a song in my head going round and round.”

“Give a Little Bit” by Supertramp

Many would argue that Supertramp’s artistic triumph was their 1974 album, Crime of the Century, a collection of songs that share closely related themes of despair, isolation, and ennui, causing group writers Rodger Hodgson and Rick Davies to comment that the album was not a conscious attempt at writing a concept album.  It’s a thoroughly enjoyable album to listen to from beginning to end, but Supertramp’s true anthem came later in the decade with “Give a Little Bit,” a song that Hodgson wrote when he was about 19 but didn’t record with the group until after achieving success with Crime of a Century.  The song is pure pop, with Hodgson’s unique singing voice blending nicely with his 12‐string guitar.  The song is pure anthem, and yeah, it’s a love song, but it’s not necessarily about romantic love.  The song is more about the desire to connect with other people.  Hodgson could probably have retired on the earnings of this one song alone, for it’s been in countless commercials.  It’s in Amazon’s 2017 holiday commercial, and a few years ago Coca‐Cola used it in their brilliant ad, playing the song over video surveillance images of people doing acts of kindness.  It is a feel‐good song, and who doesn’t play air guitar to it?

“Burning Love” by Elvis Presley

I’ve never been a huge Elvis fan.  I know that saying this is as blasphemous as saying the Beatles were overrated (they were, except for George), but Elvis was nothing more than a good‐looking face with a good voice.  He sang songs he didn’t write, barely played guitar, and stole his shaking‐hips routine from black rock ‘n’ roll singers who had spent the previous decade perfecting their acts.  But Elvis brought it into the mainstream, and for that he should be thanked.  But he paid a heavy price, for fame was horrible to him, forcing him to retreat in later years to his palace, where he turned into a bloated drug addict who died tragically young.  Yet it’s from Elvis’s later period‐‐1972 in fact‐‐that I find one of my latest song addictions, “Burning Love,” an amazing song written by Dennis Linde and first recorded by Arthur Alexander, whose original cover of the song came out just months before Elvis’s version.  (Do yourself a favour and listen to Alexander’s version on YouTube; it’s an interesting blend of country and Motown.)  Elvis’s version, which was propelled to fame by his 1972 Hawaii special, is a kinetic song with a cool guitar riff played by Linde and a manic drum beat that actually strengthen Elvis’s already strong vocal performance.  For three minutes I’m an Elvis fan and thoroughly enjoying this song.  I’ll even forgive Elvis for that hideous outfit he wore in Hawaii.

When news of Playboy founder and publisher Hugh Hefner’s death broke three days ago, I mentioned it in passing to a woman about ten years younger than I.  “I didn’t realize it was still cool to keep a harem,” she quipped sardonically.  She was, of course, referring to the fact that Hefner, right up to his dying day at the age of 91, maintained an entourage of young “girlfriends” seven decades his junior.  Hefner’s plethora of lady friends, a long parade of tall blondes smeared in makeup, high heels, and artificially enhanced breasts, were physically indistinguishable.  Hefner kept his girlfriends at his Playboy Mansion, yet if any of these women saw another man (like maybe somebody closer to their own age), they would be reportedly sent packing.

‘I didn’t realize it was still cool to keep a harem,’ she quipped sardonically.

It’s this image of Hefner in his later years that helped damage his facade, further cementing his status as a has been.  But it was an image he put considerable effort to maintain.  From the onset of Playboy‘s initial publication in 1953, Hefner tried to class up pornography: he presented himself as a sophisticated, well-spoken, pipe-smoking gentleman in a tailor-designed house robe.  Just watch this old clip of Hefner’s 1959 episode of Playboy’s Penthouse, which was broadcast on TV.  But given the contempt that people at the time viewed porn and burlesque, Hefner’s effort is understandable.

Hefner began his publishing career writing for U.S. military newspapers during the Second World War.  After supplementing his undergraduate degree in psychology and creative writing with some graduate courses in sociology from the University of Illinois, Hefner became a copywriter for Esquire.  He then borrowed $8000 from 45 investors, including his mother, and started Playboy; the first issue featured nude pictures of Marilyn Monroe taken in 1949.  And Hefner dressed up his publication to match the classy image of himself: nude pictures, including the infamous Centrefold, made up only a small fraction of the magazine.  Most of the magazine matched the literary prowess of The New Yorker or The Atlantic, with a who’s who of literary figures.  Over the years, writers such as Margaret Atwood, Kurt Vonnegut, Arthur C. Clarke, Vladimir Nabokov, Saul Bellow, and others published their short stories in Playboy.  People actually read Playboy for its interviews; in fact, its January 1981 issue, which featured an interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, was on the newsstands the night Lennon was killed.

Hefner liked to place himself in the middle of the social changes of the 1960s, often claiming that it was he who helped spark the changes.  Historian Alex Haley interviewed both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King for the magazine, cementing Hefner’s defense of racial equality.

People actually read Playboy for its interviews; in fact, its January 1981 issue, which featured an interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, was on the newsstands the night Lennon was killed.

And in 1955, Hefner stirred controversy when he published Hugh Beaumont’s short story “The Crooked Man,” about a future in which a majority homosexual society formed mobs to persecute a minority of heterosexuals.  “If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society,” Hefner said, “then the reverse was wrong too.” 

Despite his own claims of sparking the Sexual Revolution, it was the Sexual Revolution, in combination with women’s liberation and technological changes, that saw the downfall of Playboy.  The November 1972 issue sold over 7.1 million copies; one quarter of college men supposedly had a subscription.  Yet in 2016, the circulation was under 700, 000.

I was born after the Sexual Revolution.  By the time I appeared on the scene in the 1970s, Second Wave feminism was at its peak.  So Playboy to me was something old, something some old sexist man would gawk at in a barbershop.  (I actually went to a barbershop about eight years ago and saw a Playboy on the barber’s desk.  I felt out of place, not that it stopped me from taking a peak.)

When I first hit my teen years in the late 1980s, there was no internet porn.  There was no pay-per-view porn on TV.  And because I had no older brother whose room I could sneak into to take a peak at stag magazines, I would periodically go to magazine stores to stealthily look at nudie magazines, but it would be at something more hard core, like Hustler.  Even when I turned 18 in the mid 1990s, and I bought my first and only copy of Playboy, it was kind of a disappointment to me, in part because the pictures of women were too perfect, but mainly because I realized that the Playboy era was antiquated.  Besides, by the ’90s, more exciting porn was easily accessible at the local video store.  Yet as I’ve gotten older, I can reflect on how immature my taste in porn was in my 20s.

So if you peel away Hefner’s classy image, if you peel away his social activism, he was a pornographer who objectified women.  Gloria Steinem, in her 1963 essay “A Bunny’s Tale” for Show, wrote about going undercover at a serving job at the New York Playboy Club.  Steinem noted that during the audition, women with unattractive legs weren’t invited to stay.

And Steinem noted that the costume, a tight corset with a bunny tail attached, “…push[ed] all available flesh up to the bosom.  I was sure it would be perilous to bend over.”  Additionally, dry cleaning bags, gym socks, and silk scarves were used for padding.  The Bunnies, if they weren’t already fit, certainly became fit by bringing drinks up and down the steep stairs for their minimum wage pay.  The club, which lasted until the ’80s, gave ordinary men the chance to fraternize with extremely attractive women.  As Steinem noted, the customers were often lewd and abusive.

And of course there was the famous 1970 debate on the Dick Cavett Show between Hefner and feminist activist Susan Brownmiller, who accused Hefner of not seeing women as fully human.  Brownmiller quipped, “The day you’re willing to come out here with a cottontail attached to your rear end?” It’s a shame that Hefner could never quite admit that sexual objectification has historically been one sided.

As I reflect on the changes since Playboy‘s heyday, I realize that there has been a lot of positive developments, thanks in part to Hefner but also to the efforts of feminists.  More and more women are less likely to allow themselves to be undervalued, unequal to men, or treated as sex objects.  More and more men are more sensitive to sexual objectification of women.  But that’s not to say that we’re in an ideal world.  The gender gap has lessened considerably but hasn’t disappeared.  And sexual violence, which counts women and children as its most bountiful victims, still exits.  But Hefner, and the controversy that surrounded him, deserve credit for helping to bring these issues to the forefront.

As for the younger woman who made that initial sardonic quip to me?  Well known on Toronto’s burlesque scene, she was able to make that joke to me in part because the age gap has made her more insightful than I, but I also suspect that a large part of it is because she has dedicated her living to displaying her body with female empowerment and a female gaze looking back.

How times change.

The rock anthem: a three-minute catchy hook that gets you grooving and makes you feel good.  And maybe you’ll want to dance or play some air guitar.

Rock ‘n’ roll was born in the 1950s, when the first wave of baby boomers hit their teens, complete with a disposable income their Depression-era parents never had.  And these kids didn’t swallow up the new music genre just because it was radically different from the Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra that their parents were listening to.  No, rock focused on fun things: Elvis Presley sang about hound dogs and blue suede shoes; Buddy Holly sang about his drummer’s girlfriend, Peggy Sue; and the overly flamboyant Little Richard sang about Lucille and Miss Molly.  But although rock ‘n’ roll began fun and unassuming, in the tumultuous 1960s, when Bob Dylan sang protest songs and the Beatles experimented in psychedelia, it matured into rock.  Yet rock and its sister musical genre, pop, never lost their playfulness.  Rock and pop music are still predominately created by young people for other young people.  But don’t get fooled by the upbeat grooves, cool hooks, and fast tempos.  If you listen carefully, rock/pop songs quite often have dark, sinister lyrics.  Here is a list of four songs that you probably didn’t realize have very bleak lyrics.

“Alive” by Pearl Jam

When Pearl Jam’s debut album, Ten, was released to commercial and critical acclaim in 1991, it helped to bring grunge music to the forefront.  Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard actually wrote the melody to their first single, Alive, in early 1990, when Pearl Jam didn’t have a singer.  Eddie Vedder, who at the time was working as a security guard in San Diego, heard a recording of the song, came up with some lyrics and sent an tape to Gossard, who immediately invited Vedder for an audition.

Who can deny that “Alive” is a great song?  With its fast pace, happy-sounding melody, and chorus repeating “Alive, I’m still alive,” many people mistake the song as a celebration of life.  But have you really carefully listened to the lyrics? They’re actually eerily shocking.  Vedder’s lyrics partially fictionalize his own teenage experiences.  When Vedder was around 13, he learned that the man he believed to be his real father really wasn’t. Alive, however, takes Vedder’s experience further.  In the song, a mother tells her 13-year-old son, “You’re real father was dying, sorry you didn’t see him…” The boy then informs us that his mother “…walks slowly across a young man’s room /She said ‘I’m ready for you’/I can’t remember anything to this very day.”

Yep, that’s right.  The mother rapes her son.  Uncaring to the harm she’s caused, she goes on. “‘Is something wrong?’ she said/’Of course there is/You’re still alive.'”

So much for being an anthem.  Sorry to ruin it for you.

“Every Breath You Take” by The Police

The Police were huge.  The post-punk band formed in 1977, and found huge success within the year with their debut album, Outlandos d’Amour, which featured their biggest single, “Roxanne,” along with “Can’t Stand Losing You” and “So Lonely.” The band’s brief life was like a hurricane–powerful and loud–witnessing five chart-topping albums in a five-year period and multiple stadium-packed tours.  It’s no wonder with that with their huge success, the band would ultimately implode with infighting.  Although singer-bassist-chief songwriter Sting would go on to have a successful solo career, perhaps the most famous song he wrote was on The Police’s last album, 1983’s Synchronicity.  “Every Breath You Take” topped the US Billboard for nine weeks, and twenty years after the song was released, Sting was reportedly still earning royalties of $2000 per day.

With its gentle melody and medium-pacing, many people failed to carefully listen to or comprehend the lyrics.  Sting once said, “One couple told me ‘Oh, we love that song; it was the song we played at our wedding.’  I thought, ‘Well, good luck.'”  And when he was asked by BBC2 why he looked so angry in the song’s video, Sting explained that “Every Little Breath You Take” is “…very, very sinister and ugly, and people have actually misinterpreted it as being a gentle little love song, when it’s actually quite the opposite.”

Sting wrote the song as his marriage was falling apart: he had left his wife for his wife’s best friend.  With all the complex emotions he was experiencing, Sting created lyrics written from a stalker’s point of view.  “Every move you make/Every vow you break/Every smile you fake/Every claim you stake/I’ll be watching you.”  Love does evoke strong emotions, and emotionally wise people know that love and hate are actually two closely related emotions.  Still, Sting knew how to write from a stalker’s perspective.  Hmm…what does this say about Sting?

“Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People

Foster the People exploded onto the scene in 2010 with their debut album, Torches.  The album’s strength, however, rested on its first single, “Pumped Up Kicks.”  A fast-tempo song with an anthem-inducing chorus and melodic melody that invites you sing along, there’s little to betray the song’s sinister themes to a casual listener.  And the video doesn’t help either, as it features the band cheerfully performing the song to a dancing audience; the concert sequence is edited with scenes of the band surfing and playing pool.  But take a deeper listen.  It’s a dark, disturbing song.

Singer-writer Mark Foster commented that the song was his attempt to understand “gun violence among youth” perpetrated by a “…lack of family, lack of love, and isolation.” Additionally, Foster was bullied in school and bassist Cubie Fink’s cousin survived the Columbine High School shooting.  The song’s title refers to a brand of kids’ shoes that serve as a status symbol.

Need further proof?  Listen to the chorus’s lyrics: “You better run, better run, faster than my bullet/All the other kids with their pumped-up kicks/You better run, better run, outrun my gun.”

Yikes.

“Sex on Fire” by Kings of Leon

I’m throwing this song in for fun.  The lyrics are elusive and vague, but the chorus consists of “You/Your sex is on fire/You/Your sex is on fire.”  I say the song is about STDs, but I have no proof.  If you have a better idea, let me know.

A week ago Monday my grandmother died.

I’ve been putting off writing this, probably because putting my emotions in a public forum has never been my style.  I’ve written about my feelings before–and I can be quite good at it–but it’s something I’d rather avoid at all costs.

My Grandmother’s Last Years

My grandmother was 90–a good ripe age–but she had effectively become a living ghost five years ago, when she suffered a stroke that robbed her of her energy and voice.  But most importantly it robbed her of the ability to live independently on her own.  And this was a striking blow to my grandmother, who by nature was a melancholy loner (Asperger’s runs in our family, and her personality had some faint hints of the syndrome, including her inability to deal with strong emotions).  She had spent the bulk of her retirement years reading vast amounts of books and listening to talk radio, but after her stroke, when it became evident that she no longer had the concentration to read a book or even follow a TV show, her condo was sold and she moved into a retirement home.  Although she had her own apartment there, she had to go to the dining room at a specified time and eat with others, a social act that seemed to be a source of stress for her.  And after a couple of years, when it became clear that my grandmother needed more care than we realized–she couldn’t control her bowel movements and nurses had to clean her almost daily–the retirement home gently suggested that she be moved to the second floor, where they offered palliative care.

How Will I Remember Her?

This isn’t the memory of my grandmother that I want to memorialize, yet I write if for context, for in my eyes she effectively died when she had her stroke.  Of her grandchildren (my brother, sister, and I were her only three), I had perhaps spent the most time with her, including in adulthood (my brother had moved on to law school, and my sister, an extrovert with lots of friends, went to school in Guelph.  And because I had challenges that they didn’t, I suspect my grandmother put a greater effort to be with me).  When I was in my teens, my grandmother and I would go to a movie or venture downtown to see the Hockey Hall of Fame together; when I was in my 20s and early 30s and living in Port Credit, close to where my grandmother lived, we’d still go to a movie or go out for lunch.  Or there was the time we had 100-level Blue Jays tickets behind home plate to a game that Roger Clemons pitched.   Yet she was a big part of my brother’s and sister’s lives too.  Our parents were young parents, and after they separated, when my mother had to start working, my grandmother always made sure her we had the basics.

My Last Visit

Given that she was a large part of my life–our lives– I feel like that I should be wallowing in emotion.  And to an extent, I am.  For a few days I was sad because I would never see her again.  But then again, she had been almost an empty shell for five years.  She had either seemingly given up or was too exhausted to care.  During my last visit with her, which was two weeks before she died, my mother and I sat with her in her apartment while she had her TV tuned to The Chew (she watched daytime talk as background noise, as its meaningless banter requires a minimum effort to follow).  She barely talked that day (she was partially paralyzed in the mouth from the stroke and looked exhausted), and neither did I.  I was in a bit of a bad mood that day.  And I regret not talking more; had I known it would be the last time I would see her before she went to the hospital, I most likely would have talked more.

Death Isn’t Scary, Yet Life Is

A long time ago I came to the realization that death doesn’t scare me.  Don’t get me wrong: I have a strong instinct to live, so I won’t be stepping in front of the bus anytime soon.  But I think a lot of people do have both a fear of death and an egotistical sense that their lives mean something important.  I have no doubt that many people use religion as a comfort for this, as it offers the hope of an everlasting and deeper meaning to life.  I’ve never coiled to religion as a comfort.  I think I’m well equipped at dealing with death.  There were two times that death upset me.  The first was when I was 14, when my dog was struck by a train while I walked her.  But that was an over-the-top experience.  And two years ago, when my cat’s vet told me my cat was dying (my vet was wrong), I was upset out of a selfish prospect of wanting to hold on to a creature who depends on me for food.

However, I had five years to prep myself for the loss of my grandmother.  Her illness effected me in other ways because my family’s dynamic shifted, as my mother and her sisters fought and drifted apart as a direct result. I wondered if the same would happen to me and my siblings when our parents get sick or die.

Comfort

Whereas many people use religion as a comfort from death, I paradoxically use my grandmother’s death a comfort.  For her, I’m sure it’s a comfort from the exhaustion and physical pain from the last five years of her life.  And it’s a comfort from, in part, a sad life.  Had my grandmother been born a few decades later, she probably would have been more equipped to pursue a life of independence, seek a university education, or have a profession.  Or choose a more solitary life (I suspect it would have made her happier).

My grandmother kept a collection of photos of her three grandchildren on her living room table.  They were pictures of us when we were infants, with kindergarten class pictures added.  Each grandchild’s pictures were kept in a separate plastic frame so she could look at them.  When my brother and I helped my mother move my grandmother to palliative care, our mother gave us our pictures and said, “Take them.  You’ll get more use out of them.”

I now keep these pictures on top of my dresser, a connection to my grandmother and my past.  A comfort, perhaps.