Second Gen (2003-2016, 2016- )
From this web site of great old comic ads. I think I had half a dozen of the apollo models which had about three snap together pieces. I always wanted the box of green soldiers – little green plastic B-52s set against billowing summer clouds. Not the ghost, though. I think I had nightmares about the ghost when I was five.
I have only read two books by Douglas Coupland, Generation X (1991) and Souvenir of Canada (2002), the cover of the latter shown, and only read them in the last couple of years. I am more impressed by his observation than his storytelling which makes Souvenir of Canada perfect as it is a personal encyclopedia of things noticed about our mutual homeland. Under the entry “Stubbies” he writes
In order to get stubbies to photograph, I put an ad in the local community paper and was besieged by calls from fiftysomething men with a nostalgic lilt in their voices. They all wish that stubbies would return, but young people would probably look at a stubbie and say, “What’s that thing supposed to hold – molasses?” So I think the stubbie’s fate is sealed.
Today, in the bewilderingly diverse selection at the amazingly well named The Beer Store, I picked up a 12 of Waterloo Dark. It came in stubbies – despite the web image. While it was not the useful 6×2 packaging of yore, cracking open the corrugated cardboard box to see 12 cheery stout little pints was an undeniably happy moment. Holding one immediately reminded me of the feeling of holding a beer in a mitten, something you would likely have only done if you were underage in winter in Canada.
Coupland also tells the story of how he went some way to reinstating the brand Extra Old Stock during a grade 12 work experience day spent at an ad agency. The role of beer in being Canadian is particular. In his 1977 edition of The World Guide to Beer, Micahel Jackson (the other one) spends four pages describing product lines which largely no longer exists. Unlike the UK, brands do not necessarily survive (think James Ready or the elaborately but pointlessly marketed Labatt Copper). Unlike the US, what ever the label, our beers are stronger, bigger and a bit sweeter – something of more sustenance than a cause for unzipping and unwrapping the layers under the ski-doo suit while doing the gotta pee dance at 15 below. Whatever the label, it is that generic taste that maybe we collectively recall. And the feel of the stubby in your mitt.
Gwynne Dyer, who frosted the cake of my teen nuclear fears with his TV series War, has written on the situation faced by the US in Iraq as the money starts to tighten. First, good call having the Barbados Advocate as a client, Gwynne. It is always important to organize your tax deductable business trips well. Second, interesting observation:
…many governments are also privately debating whether they want to help save the Bush administration from the consequences of its own folly. Without a lot of military and financial help that can only come via the UN, Bush may be dragged down to defeat by the Iraq war in the November 2004 election. With the extra troops and money, he might contain the problem enough to survive. However, they ask themselves, do we really want that?
Hat nod for the topic to Ron’s Box of Soap, librarian and, with Gwynne, fellow Newf.
All his kids recovering from the blackout of 2003 blackouts. Only grandkids 1500 km to his west. Behind my mother’s voice on the phone, Dad can be heard shouting out his only real concern: “Who are they playing?”
Stenhousemuir, as it turns out, where they, the mighty Greenock Morton, won 2-0 away from home. Arsenal won, too, over an outclassed Everton – despite Arsenal being down a player after the reappearance of Sol Campbell’s boot’s desire to practice proctology. Sol is the best defender in England but has had a bad run of involuntary arse kicking lately. Caught the game on Rogers Sports Net. Oddly, here in Canada we can get more soccer than most anywhere: four live or nearish English league on two channels, German live, French live, Argentine, Spanish, Brazilian and Dutch on tape delay. I may spend another $2.99 a month this winter to get TeleLatino to pick up the Italian league.
Not just a slave to the tube, the August When Saturday Comes showed up yesterday and I am working through a small stack of fitba books from amazon.co.uk. One, Out of His Skin, is about John Barnes – one of my favorite players from the days of TSN’s Soccer Saturday – and the crap he had to put up with from his own Liverpool fans for having the gall to be both black and good at soccer. Even just 15 years after he entered the top level of the English game, it is amazing to this that this was the case watching the diversity of players on Arsenal. The implicit racism of the game is now seen more in the lily white composition of the fans in the stands. If you get ESPN Classics Canada, you can see Barnes play on certain Friday evenings in a few of the late 80’s early 90’s English FA Cup Finals they show from time to time. He taught me everything I know about crossing from the outside – everything I know…not what I can do.
Some of the best writing I have ever read on the web is that of A.A. Gill, the restaurant reviewer in the Style section of the Sunday Times of London. I had stopped reading it for the last few years due to the paper’s use of a survey blocking immediate access to their site. I found him again today without the required layer of personal data extraction. Gill’s most recent review contains the following passage:
A good cheese trolley was driven by an authentically Japanese-ish person. Now there’s no reason why a Japanese shouldn’t be allowed to drive French curds without supervision, except that the Japanese think fermented milk is more disgusting than licking hospital sheets.
Magic.
[I am going to find my saved copy of the text of his article on being “heterogay” from the late 1990’s and link to it here later.] Later. I have found it and I am renewed.