MONDOmagazine

That's right, readers: This could be YOU!

There’s fighting, there’s fighting dirty, and then there’s fighting MONDO.

By Jacob Kaufman and Sam Linton. Illustration by Dara Gold

Over the course of the MONDOlifestyle section’s run, we’ve covered many things: love, sex, wordplay, politics, the future, fashion, consumerism, countless gripes, and probably much, much more. But one subject has thus far eluded us: fisticuffs. It’s odd to think, but despite the MONDO contributors’ combined fighting prowess, we’ve never taken the time to reflect on our victories in print. Well, no more! Today, we at MONDOlifestyle will dust off our fighting gloves and reveal our secrets for keeping in our fighting prime, that someday you, The MONDO Reader, will be able to fight at the level of the best MONDO contributors.

Lesson one: It’s all about the fist names.

It’s true; the secret to good fighting is having an hilarious pair of names for your fists. Some say it brings luck, others merely confidence, but studies have shown that people with named fists win more fights. Obviously, therefore, the first step for anyone who wants to succeed in MONDO levels of fighting is to come up with some fist names. Now, we here at MONDO cannot name your fists for you; that’s an entirely personal decision. What we can do, however, is offer some suggestions for you to base a decision off, or at least give you a basic idea behind the philosophies informing the fist naming. In that spirit, we offer the following brief list of good fist name candidates, in hopes of inspiring you, the MONDO readership, to new heights of beatitude.

I’m sorry, that’s “Beat-attitude”, not beatitude. I don’t know how I could have possibly gotten those mixed up.

On with the list! Read the rest of this entry »

The pre-Joker poster.

My Bloody Valentine
Directed by Patrick Lussier
Lionsgate, 2009

By Mark Meeks

“Wait… I thought that the third dimension was smell?” — Some girl in the seat in front of me. I’m not kidding.

All my life, things flying at my face have elicited strong emotional responses from me. When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time getting hit in the head by various objects. I would hazard to guess more than is typical. This led to me feeling the emotion known as “fear.” Fear of objects heading towards my face. Later on in my life, when the objects of my youth (baseballs, baseball bats, wooden swings, pencil erasers) began to be replaced by the objects of my young adulthood (breasts, womanly parts in general, delicious pizza), different emotions began to surface when viewing rapidly approaching whatever-it-may-be.

As such, I approached the new 3D remake of My Bloody Valentine with excitement and trepidation. Would the visual effects cause me to have horrible flashbacks to events that I have long suppressed? Worse still, would it cause me to have horrible flashbacks to the recent Hollywood remake of Prom Night? Or would it simply be a ridiculous and hilarious thrill ride that goes extremely well with popcorn and/or candy? I am happy to report that it turned out to be the latter. I was eating Sour Patch Kids, FYI.

MBV3D lifts its basic premise from the original film. I’m going to come clean — I haven’t seen the original film. Whatever. For a long time I thought it was just the name of a really boring band. (Whatever!) The plot is simple. Mining town. Crazy miner. Pickaxe. Splat. Town thinks he’s dead. He mysteriously returns ten years later on Valentine’s Day (hence the title) and people once again start turning up spelunk’d. I don’t think that’s a word.

"No lozenges for me. I prefer Sour Patch Kids."

The plot is unimportant. The film handles the execution of this rote tale with a gleefully by-the-numbers approach. You’ve seen it before, yes, but have you seen it in 3D? Possibly, yes. But nevertheless, MBV3D’s complete lack of pretension and very thorough understanding of what it is serves as the film’s strongest suit. The actors play it as it should be played, sometimes skating deadly close to self-awareness, but never quite reaching that level of ham. Jensen Ackles and Kerr Smith compete in each frame for the “Get This Guy A Lozenge Award,” and a number of the film’s players handily lend themselves as further evidence to support my “Old Men = Amazing” thesis.

The real “stars” of the film, however, are the 3D effects. And what hammy, attention-craving stars they turn out to be. Just when you think “Eyeball on a pickaxe” had won the day, “Old man taking a good long look around with his shotgun” comes in and steals the show. It goes on like that for the duration of the film, which ends just short of overstaying its welcome. (100 minutes is long for this type of movie. When there’s only one booby scene, anyway.)

If you’re looking for an entertaining night at the movies, MBV3D is a great bet for some good, light fun. This is heads and tails above the recent spate of Hollywood horror, friends. Will it spark a 3D horror renaissance, bringing back the bawdy and bloody days of old? One can only hope. Until they reinvent smell-o-vision, anyway.

Isaac’s Book of the Month

Amazing Spider-Man: Extra! #2
Written by Dan Slott and Zeb Wells
Art by Chris Bachalo and Paolo Rivera
Marvel Comics, 2009

Nothing against the first half of this special by Slott and Bachalo, but the Wells and Rivera story is my book of the month: “Birthday Boy” featuring Spider-Man and Wolverine. No wonder it’s amazing!

It’s a straightforward tale of Wolverine wanting a drinking buddy for his birthday and therefore calling up Spider-Man.

Wolverine would never do that! He’d rather grab a beer with Cyclops or somebody, right? This makes no sense.

Aha, but let’s take a moment and give the writers the benefit of the doubt, and ask how COULD this be true? Let’s say Wolverine would actually choose Spider-Man to be his birthday buddy, and now let’s explain the rationale behind this choice and really examine the relationship these two characters would have in the real world.

The story is a character study between innocence and experience, hope and cynicism, and could be told with any of a number of characters based on these archetypes, especially since for the majority of the story there is no wall crawling or clawing around, but two guys having a conversation.

But the fact that these two are characters that have a strong history behind them means we go into their dialogue with certain expectations, and it’s honestly thought-provoking when our expectations are subverted and we get to analyze how the writer is actually right on the mark here.

Delving into a practical example from the story, Wolverine is really the funny one here, and we always expect that to be Spider-Man’s bailiwick. But it’s no surprise that when thrown out of the black-and-white world of “hero thrashing bad guy,” Spider-Man returns to the more nerdish leanings we’d associate with high-school Peter Parker, who doesn’t want to ruffle any feathers and wants to just be done with the whole awkward situation.

Another example is our surprise at Wolverine’s sentimentality, but this is further evidence of the brilliance of pairing Spider-Man and Wolverine. Lots of X-Men comics have Wolverine talking to Cyclops, but it’s rarely in a sentimental fashion. So to even tell this kind of story for Wolverine you have to find a character that doesn’t interact with him regularly; Spider-Man fits the bill nicely.

The art is wonderful, very dark and human, and when there actually is some action Spider-Man is a vision of the very spirit of the original Ditko art style, and that’s a great thing.

The lesson is, as ever, always read Spider-Man books.

Miles’ Book of the Month

X-Factor #39
Written by Peter David
Art by Valentine De Landro
Marvel Comics, 2009

It’s been a rough year for X-Factor. And I don’t mean for the characters in X-Factor, I mean for the title itself. Marvel gave the art chores over to Larry Stroman for some godforsaken reason. I’m sorry, Larry, you’re probably a very nice man, but you have the distinction of being the worst artist employed by a comic book company right now. Under his art, the book became unreadable and I stopped buying it. I couldn’t even bring myself to steal it.

However, now with Toronto’s own Valentine De Landro providing art I can happily return to buying the title, and just in time for one of the coolest fucking things I have ever seen in a comic.

X-Factor has always been about the X factor — the unknown or unexpected. David has continually frustrated my expectations in wonderful and interesting ways throughout the title’s history. So when Jaime Madrox and Teressa Cassady’s child is born, it was bound to be an event that was almost impossible to predict. I sure as hell didn’t see it coming. I’m not going to spoil it here because the recap page has a letter from David asking reviewers not to, but it’s one of those things that makes your mouth open wide, cry “Oh no!” and then say, “That’s fucking amazing.”

Poor X-Factor Investigations, they just can’t get a break.

But beyond the big, series-changing moment, there’s a lot of other things to love in this comic. The greatest strength of X-Factor is David’s layered character work and how he uses it to create a unique team dynamic. X-Factor is one of the only team books I read that feels like a team book.

So, X-Factor is back and it’s a book you should be reading. It’s smart, funny, engaging, and you don’t know what David is going to throw at you next. Gotta love that X factor.

Deborah Hay presents Up Until Now
January 29-31 & February 4-7, 2009 @ Winchester Street Theatre

By Leandra de Valois-Franklin

Have you ever arrived at a party where everyone’s tripping on psychedelics and entactogens and you seem to be the only sober one with no clue as to what’s happening? If not, you can experience a similarly discombobulated feeling at Deborah Hay’s trippy world premiere of Up Until Now. The work, which began as the solo I’ll Crane For You, was taught to 20 dancers/choreographers last summer, and was recently adapted by Toronto Dance Theatre artistic director Christopher House for his company. The result is a drug-fueled disco that invites viewers — if they dare — into the world of the avant-garde club kid of 2009…I think?!

In a choreographic discussion held a week prior to opening night, Deborah Hay confirmed that there is no right or wrong interpretation to the movement, which is composed of directions that challenge and confront each dancer’s separate experience in the field, engaging them on several levels of consciousness at once…whoa, man! The whole spiel deals with the notion of infiltrating the choreographed body in order to transcend it. Hay creates a set of questions, referred to as the “balls in the air,” which the eleven dancers ask themselves while performing. These are huge questions with no answers about grand narratives, with the effect of “continually shocking the performer into a state of awareness”. The dancers are also given impossible tasks, like “turn without turning” which undoubtedly elicits various results from each body. The performance is more about the dancers discovering themselves on a deeper level than it is about audience entertainment. The audience members are invited to make their own assumptions about the cellular body, as opposed to the dancers’ personality.

Without set design or music, the only details which lead my mind to create a party scenario are the dancers’ ultra-glam outfits of glitter and gold. Their sporadic behaviour is what causes my imagination to develop the impression that I’m observing a re-enactment of various drug trips, including the introspective trip (I am at the disco, dancing), the reflective trip (what am I doing at the disco, dancing?), the social trip (can I please stroke your glitters?), and of course the bad trip (your glitters are trying to kill me).

While one performer is experiencing a movement tantrum in the corner, others calmly wonder across the stage and around the bleachers, appearing to search aimless for the next hit. They are aware of each other, sometimes vaguely, but seem to be studying the audience as intently as we are studying them. For the majority of the hour-long experiment, sound is restricted to soft humming, bouts of gibberish, and loud grunts. As the party quietly subsides and the guests congregate into a group, a performer makes absurd statements like “break it in two and it’s still one,” and “don’t underestimate your hair; it will only make you stronger…at the beginning.” What seem like spontaneous ’shroom-driven commentary is in fact well-rehearsed, as the others mime along with the words. I can only imagine how hilarious the rehearsal process must have been!

Hay is renowned for her unconventional methods, stating, “I choreograph my dances after they have been performed.” She honed her unique approach to performance art/dance as a young choreographer in 1960s New York with the radical experimental Judson Dance Theatre. As one of the pioneering post-modern dancers — who were heavily influenced by artists Merce Cunningham, John Cage, and Robert Rauschenberg — Hay, along with the other Judson artists, challenged dance by throwing out conventions and shocking the modern dance world. At 67, Hay continues to be an influential choreographer, performer, teacher, and writer. Acknowledging that “dancers were fairly late to pick up the pen,” Hay stresses the importance of intellectualizing (on paper) the artists’ process and philosophies, so that one may articulate a language for abstraction. “In order to make an esoteric experience, you better put it in writing; otherwise no one will get it.” Um, please pass the programme notes?

Tamara Rojo, principal dancer for the Royal Ballet, once said that “one of the most beautiful things ballet has brought me is that I can escape from reality whenever I want — and I don’t have to take any drugs.” Surely this statement is true for all dancers, but what about the observer? As the audience of serious spectators stared intently at the thought-provoking work, I could hear Christopher House giggling away in the back row. I can only surmise that: 1) he was being reminded of some inside jokes from rehearsal, 2) he was taking the postmodern-piss out of us all, or 3) he was on some sweet drugs.

Perhaps if a complimentary hit of je ne sais quoi was distributed at the door, we would all see the humour in this RETROspective of 60s NYC performance art, and the Winchester Space would have been transformed into a rave of ecstatic dancers and dancers on ecstasy. As it turned out however, Up Until Now proved to be a performance that I enjoyed more during the reflection process than I did watching the work itself. I can only relate my post-performance reaction to that curious day-after-hung-over feeling of OMG, WHAT JUST HAPPENED?! …I’m still not sure.

Source & Inspiration III
The Art of Time Ensemble
January 29th, 2009 @ Harbourfront Centre

By Gabrielle Charron-Merritt

Source. The place from which everything appears, akin to water and its small-stream beginnings, headed for the ocean. In the ocean of music, from where does the water come? The source of music is two-fold; it is part nature (the mind and the body being able to produce sounds) and nurture (the mind and the body being able to reproduce sounds). There are some musicians who write songs, and others who play covers. Most do both, because neither source of inspiration is better than the other, and even original material contains a few stolen ideas from Music’s past.

The Art of Time Ensemble, a chamber music collective, successfully combined three forms of music and three types of musicians during Korngold: Source & Inspiration: classical music and musicians who play the “covers” of dead composers, popular music and singer-songwriters who write original music and lyrics, and modern music and composers who often write music for films and commercials.

The ensemble has hosted such evenings before. For each, a different classical composer was chosen (previous composers include Schumann and Schubert). This year, the early 20th-century composer Erich Korngold (1897-1957) was chosen. The evening first featured Korngold’s Suite for Two Violins, Cello and Piano, Op. 23, played by members of the ensemble.  In the second half of the performance, singer-songwriters Martin Tielli, Danny Michel, and John Southworth performed songs that they wrote, inspired by the suite. These songs were also arranged by present-day composers and accompanied by the Art of Time Ensemble.

Korngold was an interesting choice. Although he composed music for opera, orchestra, and chamber ensemble, a big part of his career was focused on writing music for film. He is best known for scoring The Adventures of Robin Hood, featuring Errol Flynn. This movie music was not much different from the classical music Korngold had been writing in Europe. Written in the 1930s and 1940s, it marks the Golden Age of Hollywood, where production companies hired full-sized orchestras to perform scores. Korngold helped shape this music, and most likely influenced film composers like Carl Stalling, who wrote the music for Looney Tunes. Incidentally, some of the composers involved in this evening also work in professional film.

So, what was the evening like?

Serious. Silly. Charming.

In the first half, I felt the formality of a concert hall. Everyone in the audience was still, leaving applause for the end of the suite rather than clapping between movements. The room seemed to relax when the singer-songwriters came out one-by-one to perform their songs. They delivered their distinctive pre-song banter, talking about anything from their level of nervousness to the song’s history. Before each song, the piano quintet played the excerpt from the suite that had been used as inspiration. The songs featured the stories of sailors, liars, and Korngold himself; the most memorable line came from John Southworth, who sang “werewolves on reefer, androids on ether”, in his song “Athabasca”.

All the performances were captivating and inspiring. The evening celebrated Korngold and many professional musicians of our times; genres mixed well and helped strengthen the idea that collaboration is important in the musical world today.