red-handed

New Year's, Eve ; mixed media on canvas, 22 x 28 inches, the second half of a commission. The string series continues. *Sold*. * * * * * Another year, more abject terror in the skies. No, I'm not talking about the lunatic who immolated himself on Christmas Day. I'm talking about the new security measures, which reduce air travellers to the status of inmates during a lockdown. No coats or blankets on your lap. No going to the bathroom during the last hour of the flight. Body searches, body scans. Bring out the sniffing dogs. Bring out the Ukrainian guards and the German officers, the long march to the gate. Okay, maybe not the last one. But the effect amounts to just as much theatre . I have never been to the bathroom on an airplane. Never. It's a personal record. Like I've said here before, they could have lions in there for all I know. But people do go. It seems like they have to, because if it's anything like other public facilities, I'm guessing it&#

*Of course* ... the day that looked the most like Christmas came three days later, by way of dawn snow like shredded pillows, wafting its way down. Cleaning things up nicely. Even Division, which most mornings is more of a scar than a street, looked like it was populated by human beings. The day before had been mild but ugly, all the city's garbage with nowhere to hide, wet and glaring, and even the old drunk who I surprised pissing against the downstairs door to the studio seemed mildly embarrassed by the contradiction of mild sunshine in the sky and the styrofoam takeaway containers in the gutter, spilling over with half-chewed vomit. The day before *that* -- Boxing Day -- had been filled with rain, almost literally, so that when me and C and Oona ventured out to return library books and get videos and maybe even a "fancy" coffee, our navigations were constantly thwarted by spreading pools and devolving ice. At the video store I almost went silently insane because they

Last night I listened to a CBC radio story trying to sell the frenzy of last-minute shopping as "a Canadian Christmas tradition". Really? They even tacked on the mad scramble for airplanes, buses and trains. "It wouldn't be Christmas if I wasn't sleeping in an airport," some clueless traveller said. Well, CBC radio, I have been on a packed Greyhound bus in the days before Christmas and I can tell you that the only tradition is mindless suffering, ruinous indignity and the rolling smell of old, cold farts. If you're at the back of the bus then you get the bonus stink of chemically-treated piss, not to mention the cheery company of the miscreants and lunatics who congregate there (indeed, the back of the Greyhound bus past midnight just might be the 20th century's cathedral for aspiring criminals). Anyone who would be caught dead in a store this time of year is either hapless or mad. And if *that's* your tradition, so be it. I'll stick with pra

Rachel, me, Jaime, about a million years ago. I have a Steve Austin doll and some kind of bionic GI Joe. Obviously, Steve Austin is taller. * * * * * Why, exactly, do people send out those Merry-Christmas, family-update, form-type, end-of-year letters? We've already received a few this season and they seem to distinguish themselves in only two ways: a) a grinning, ham-fisted attempt at bragging and b) grammar and spelling so awful that it comes as a shock. I can swallow the 'friendly' typeface they've chosen (Comic Sans, anyone?), the opening remarks about the arrival of winter (what, did you think it might not come this year?), the reminder of what grades the kids are in (oh yeah, that's Mr. Mugs territory), who died and who's in ill health (a couple of lines, tossed in at the end), but what I don't understand is the renovation news, the holiday-cruise news, the too-wholehearted retirement news (is it *really* that awesome to be old?), the my-son-in-la

... is currently being won by the little guy gal. We'll be setting up our own version of Guantanamo Happy Land upstairs.

The best Christmas gift I ever gave was a video game called Godzilla : Destroy All Monsters - Melee . I gave it to my nephews Ryer and Landon for their Nintendo GameCube. It seems like a lifetime ago but I'd have to guess it was when they were eight and five years old. Ohmygod they loved that game. And how could they not? Even as a guy in his thirties I could see the throaty charm of controlling a vintage, out-sized monster in an utterly destructible cityscape. This is a old-school rampage. This is a some kind of Japanese-nerd version of Götterdämmerung. This is better than ultra-violence Alex imagining his part in the good book (in the novel, I seem to remember the sequence escalating to the point of him slicing open the entire world with a knife). I mean, there's a monster who's actually named Destoroyah . He is King Kong's ultimate foe! Of course, Ryer and Landon -- being mentalists of the first order even at that age -- became hopelessly enmeshed and fascinated and

untitled ; mixed media on canvas, 8 x 10 inches. A friend of mine has been having a hard time lately. Of course, the hard time has been compounded by near-German levels of perfectionism and self-pity. But you don't say these things, do you? So when the phone rings and my friend orders/demands (her calls are often like shotgun blasts) some artwork to give to her boss for Christmas, and instructs me that the work has to be (a) for $50 and (b) *specifically* of a woman battling a baleful dragon, I can hardly refuse (there is also, unfortunately, something very small-town or prairie in me that makes it almost shameful to turn my nose up at any work). Still, the whole thing smells a little bit like this . But I do it, in the few days (read: actually just a few hours I can get at my studio) I have left before her 'deadline' (read: her going away on vacation). And I duly send her an email with a scan of the image telling her it's ready. When she picks it up, she makes a comme

Already done a whack of work in the new studio, four paintings and a bundle of new cigar-tin stories, this on only one morning and one night a week. The trick? Deadlines. Nothing inspires like insistent need. The right studio mates help. I'm sharing this space with my friend Phileen, a painter and watercolourist who will do great things if she only gives herself the time. An example of her work ... And sometimes my pal Oona drops by, to do some snoring and hang with dad while mom goes for a run.

cigar-tin story #53 . Cigar-tin stories are available at Novel Idea through the month of December. * * * * * First snowstorm of the season last night. Or for me: this morning. Not really sure what I was dealing with at first, this piled darkness on the other side of the window. Difficult to judge a storm from your bedroom, and the weatherman had already been talking shit on the radio all week. Still, taking a tentative step out the front door seemed to indicate it was the real deal. It also seemed as good a time as any to break in the new parka (yes, I can be positive ... sometimes). So I set out. And what did I learn? Being forced to walk down the middle of the street feels very day-after-ish, doesn't it? Like zombies are right around the corner. It is also slightly dangerous, as the giant trucks with the blue strobe lights always have the right of way during snowstorms. Even if they don't. The few people you see will say hello during snowstorms. Cities can be quite pretty

New Year's Eve, while I waited ; mixed media on canvas, 24 x 24 inches. The string series continues. First painting I've done in the new studio, first half of a very fun commission. * * * * * In lieu of posting much this month, here's some notes of note from the last year. No, it's not a Best-of, but it would give a stranger a pretty good idea of what I'm carrying inside (fiery pits, leaden skies, black stuff). * about the flawed, precarious nature of painting * not playing nicely with others * the basics of math * red jacket * hierarchy * just an awful movie * coming home * heat * craziness * peanut * an open letter to my former studio studio

So ... November is almost gone and I have a few commitments to finish for December ... I might be lucky enough to get to my new studio one morning and one night a week. That's with writing group going out the window for a few months. Basically it's: go to work, work, come home from work, make supper, take baby, go to bed. Which is fine, you just have to triage everything else. So ... I probably won't be posting much for the next few weeks. Actually, let's just say I won't be posting anything until the New Year.

untitled ; pen and ink on paper, 4 x 8 inches, illustration for a story. You'll have to click on the image to see a decently-sized version. And yes: the little black cloud is back.

We watched The Big Heat on Friday night ... a Fritz Lang vehicle for Glenn Ford to be a completely heartless bastard ... even Lee Marvin has more anthropomorphic qualities when he throws boiling coffee in his girlfriend's face. Then on Saturday morning (while C went to yoga), I drugged Miss Fartsalot with formula and watched The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford , a great movie that is too long by about twenty minutes. But it looks good and sounds even better and is almost all about character instead of the plot-driven engine that makes most westerns. Okay, some more baby for Grandma ...

Well, I better put up a new Oona movie or grandma's head will explode. Also: in keeping with my Christmas mood, today's word is better .

The Kid ; pen and ink on paper. Blood Meridian (Or the Evening Redness in the West) What a damnable, difficult book. It is violence and death and the Book of Daniel if it was about the Old West. If it was an animal it would be obviously, drunkenly, ferociously male, completely bereft of anything to redeem it to the female species save for a bloodied but impressive sense of fate (sorry, Nathan's girlfriend). It is as western as No Country for Old Men and as doomed as The Road but it has none of their collected sense of impetus and danger. Instead it shows itself like a tintype held up to a campfire, this wondrous but foiling language that you have to squeeze away at with your thumb to only half understand the terrible picture underneath. Beware that this is a gifted author who is not above just making up words, full stop. The story is about a character we know only as The Kid but he's more like a welcome vantage point than any creature that we could claim to know. He disappear

Here's C, looking all Santa-is-magic . Which is fine and good and heartwarming (even if the inflatable reindeer is a bit sad). And this is what Christmas should be -- a kid's holiday, centred around the idea of giving. (And let's not even pretend with the whole Jesus thing because I don't know any kids who have the faintest idea who Jesus is. They don't even do the play anymore in school, do they?) It's all the rest of it that makes me wish Christmas didn't exist. The relentless marketing, the endless heaps of crap in the stores, the tinned music, the forced cheer and obligatory social events. Who has not been late and crowded and half sick with cold or flu or stress on a plane, train or automobile at some point during the Christmas season and wished that they were dead? There was a story on the radio this morning about a poll showing that Canadians intended to spend less this Christmas. What a load of horseshit. The same people will always go grinning int

There was a time in my life when I grieved for all the stupid things I did in my youth. This is not to say that stupid things have left my life, or that I consider myself above or beyond their reach. But there is a particular kind of stupid thing -- a kind of stupid thing that can only be possible (I hope) in one's teens or twenties -- that still makes me wince from its memory. Like walking to school with wet hair in the dead of winter. Or making a joke about mamma's boys to the guy whose mother just died. Or shouting expletives at my friends when a gaggle of teachers was standing right behind me. And these are the examples that are fit for public consumption. This morning -- this brisk November morning in Canada -- I walked by a teenage girl waiting at the edge of her front lawn for her ride to school, and quite suddenly this girl appeared to me like some kind of mixed-up medieval beast, the half-man-half-wolf kind of thing, because while I could make sense of her top half --

Welcome to a movie that is not a movie. Of course, there are many movies like this, these things on film more monument than story, but so often those feel like mistakes, like stories that never started, while this is a movie that doesn't try, that simply pulls back a heavy red curtain to reveal something endlessly charming and somewhat tired, in every noble sense of that word. Bill Murray at his weary, deadpan best; Willem Dafoe as the boyish German; Owen Wilson with that nose again; Anjelica Huston looking like Iggy Pop in drag; Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum and Seu Jorge singing David Bowie in Portuguese. The sets alone are the stuff of little boy's dreams ... all sixties gadgetry and fantastical forts and all things miniature that fly and sail and slide underwater. What more do you want?

Yes, eeeek. Every artist has heard that reaction before. After awhile, you learn to face it. Even dig it. In fact, I had a friend in design school who was never sure of his work until he showed it to his wife; if she hated it, then he knew it was good. This is the second part of an essay about online connectivity. In the first part I talked about the 'usefulness' of blogging (and social media in general) -- in terms of creating a presence and cultivating relationships -- and its specific contribution to my life as a writer. Today I'll talk about these things from my perspective as a visual artist . The web is a highly visual experience, full stop. Suddenly, just about any image you can think of is available. Flickr, a popular Yahoo image-hosting site, just uploaded its four billionth photo . That's four billion photos of birthday parties and wild flowers and vintage motorcycles and artsy girls in their twenties running around the forest at night wearing nothing but a

Recently I was asked to talk about my experience with having a blog and my ideas about online connectivity. I thought I would make a better (and more appropriate) job of it by writing here. For people on the outside looking in, these discussions always seems to boil down to one question: how is social media useful? Yes, the 'useful' thing. This goes back to the bad old days of the web, where the whole thing seemed a bit like Alice's adventures in Wonderland: illusory and quixotic, this wandering adventure that you couldn't hold in your hands let alone understand what the point was. And then the tech bubble burst, and all those dot-coms went bust, and all the skeptical people on earth said I told you so . And those same people look at things like Blogger and Twitter and Facebook and say It seems like a waste of time. And for many people it is. I mean, online landscapes are fun to roam around in but like any tourist (or Alice) you'll eventually just want to go home

> Hey dad, I heard you have the day off tomorrow. >> Yes I do, you gorgeous little cupcake. >But dad, you *do* realize ... >... that you won't *really* have the day off. FYI, I like my bottle just above room temperature. Oh, and mommy would really appreciate something in the oven for when she comes home from the bar. Now tickle my feet and sing to me, you big bozo!

Finally: the topic that just won't go away. I wonder how we'll feel when it finally *does* go away? * * * * * And while we're flirting with the subject of end-times, I can tell you that I just started reading Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian . Just started. Already it's so much denser and knotted than either No Country for Old Men or The Road . Already there's been beatings, stabbings, shootings and malicious fires, thieving and privation and flight across a nightmare landscape. Just like H1N1!

Dug out of a box from all my recent re-shiftings. The author is a mental patient. I don't remember taking her to Wally's Foodbasket. What I do remember is taking her by the arm and walking her up and down the hallway while her giggled breathing spilled out of control. It was a just-before-bed kind of thing. She called it "her exercises". She also called me Bernie a lot of the time.

Things in my extra carry bag (stenciled "Eat From Kingston's Countryside") this morning: one thermos cup of coffee with lid tightly secured, one peanut butter sandwich in a sandwich bag, one single-serving yoghurt, two overripe bananas (C won't eat them), one metal pencil holder, one cereal bar (sweet & salty), one old copy of Communication Arts (Illustration Annual 42), one copy of Surrealist Painting (soft cover, Phaidon). * * * * * Things I've overheard this week, walking home from work: Shaggy, snaggle-toothed man >> You like her. She's your buddy. Middle-aged woman wearing a hoodie over a nightgown >> She's lucky I don't punch her in the neck.* * I have to say, the phrase "punch in the neck" has gained considerably more currency in the last couple of years. * * * * * Fell asleep on the couch last night with Oona on my chest. Total heat-seeking suckyfest. I think that was around 8:30. C says she came and 'res

An Open Letter To My Painting Studio Well, *former* studio. I know, you hate to hear that. And yes, it was rough, seeing me move out the way I did -- little by little over the last month, stealing away a canvas here, a pile of books there, until that last awful day found me moving boxes in the rain, looking distracted and wild and utterly tired, tramping around in muddy shoes, up and down those stairs, over and over, disappearing with a bang, and then coming back at night, almost slumped over, just tearing down what remained and throwing it in plastic bins, like I didn't even care, like I just wanted to be done with you. Well, you saw correctly. Don't get me wrong, you have loads to offer to the right guy. For starters, your location is marvellous. I mean, you're pretty much exactly halfway between home and work. And for a guy who walks, that's pretty seductive. I loved being downtown, loved being able to pop around the corner for a coffee or across the street for a mea

What do you mean mommy is getting tired of breast-feeding already? It's only been three weeks! Where is she anyway? What do you mean "unsupervised"? What happened to all of daddy's beer, anyway? What do you mean it's safe to drink and breast-feed? What do you mean I have blackouts? What are blackouts? What do you mean it doesn't matter? What do you mean by "magic formula"? What do you mean by disambiguation? Who left the back door open anyway?

Accidentally, bewilderingly, I watched CBC's The National the other night. I see they're making Peter Mansbridge stand up now. No more sitting down on the job for you, Peter. CBC is getting serious about selling the news! How making Peter Mansbridge stand around, looking sheepish, will accomplish this, I don't know. Maybe it makes him seem more dynamic. Certainly it makes him less anchored behind the news desk. You know: like a news anchor. Now he looks like he's in line for something. Now it's like the coffee counter at Starbucks. Or the line-up for some H1N1 vaccine. They have snappy music, too. Crystalline new-media-type music, the kind that even *sounds* shiny. The new set is vast, expansive ... so much so that I thought the weather guy -- just within shouting distance of Peter -- might get sucked into the whirling-cloud vortex of his own map. Why does CBC do this? If they want to more people to watch the news, all they have to do is tell richer stories. I don&

Possibly Inappropriate Responses to "How's the new baby?" What new baby? Oh no, we couldn't afford a new baby. This one's previously-enjoyed. Not really fitting in, I'm afraid. Let's just say that some people aren't always who they say they are. Let's just say that sometimes evil things come in small packages. And diapers. Never attends team meetings. You know, that pilot license of hers is only good if she uses it. Really, really lazy. Fine, thanks. We visit her at least twice a week. Hangin' out, trying to make it happen. Crunch, crunch. Honestly? She's kiiiiiiiiiind .... of a weirdo. The kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the

Peanut, Pooper, The Poop, Stinky, Stinker, Little Stinker, Stinkmaster Flash, Screamy, Miss Screamsalot, Screamer McScreamerton ... so many aliases, so many diapers to fill. * * * * * Hey ... the Leafs finally won a game. One game . That was enough for CBC morning radio to justify a play-by-play clip of Niklas Hagman scoring a goal. It was also enough to remind me why I and everyone else outside of the GTA pray with all the power of our wretched hearts that the Leafs never, ever, make the playoffs again. Can you imagine how strenuous and relentless the coverage would be? It would be like orangutang mating season, only with more howling and blue blazers. * * * * * The word for today is wait .