Graham Milne2013-05-18T19:07:54-04:00Graham Milnehttp://www.news.moviefone.com/author/index.php?author=graham-milneCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Graham MilneGood old fashioned elbow grease.Breaking the Silence of Suicide With a Siren Songtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32367232013-05-10T14:44:30-04:002013-05-10T14:44:36-04:00Graham Milnehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-milne/
Without, by the way, having published a single word.
And yet the numbers -- undoubtedly the envy of thousands of aspiring authors struggling to establish an audience for themselves -- aren't the most remarkable aspect of Anske's personal story, one that has seen her transform from victim to inspiration. Her forthcoming debut novel, Siren Suicides, is the wrenching tale of a teenage girl, Ailen Bright, who jumps off a bridge to escape an abusive father, and is transformed into a mythological siren who can kill with her voice -- only to find that her father is actually a siren hunter, and that death hasn't been an escape after all. The cathartic tale weaves a spell of dreamlike yet fiery imagery, prying at your ribcage with claws of emotional torment, raw pain carved across the pages in a series of ink-shaped scars. In the midst of Ailen's despair, however, lies the promise of redemption, of forgiveness, of hope and of love. Our greatest truths are often found in our works of fiction, and Siren Suicides is no exception, birthed whole and screaming its haunting, aching and seductive song from the agonizingly real corners of Anske's past.
Candidly, Anske relates this most difficult truth -- that she suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her father and step-grandfather, and when the memories of that trauma resurfaced after years of repression, she was driven to the brink of suicide. She recalls with vivid horror the exact moment she had decided to do it, standing in her kitchen, holding a knife to her stomach, thinking of trying to cut the pain out of her body. What saved her, she says, was the realization that her father could not hurt her anymore, the wish not to hurt her children by depriving them of their mother, and the plain fact that she wasn't strong enough to do lethal damage with the dull blade. Here, in her darkest moment, much like her character Ailen, she found her voice. Having seen that death was not the answer, "I decided to start talking about everything I've been through. I started writing. It helped me heal. It helped me so much that I couldn't wait to share it with the world. I felt so much pain and yet I somehow managed to recover. I want to help others see that writing can mend broken souls."
Suicide claims the lives of more Americans every year than automobile accidents. It is the third leading cause of death for children aged 15 to 24. Names like Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons have brought this sad fact into the forefront of public awareness, and yet there is still a reluctance to talk about it -- fear, shame, societal stigma, or, a complete lack of understanding, as Anske observes. "Unless you've been on the 'other side,' unless you've felt what it's like to hate yourself and your life so much that you want to end it, you won't be able to grasp the full extent of emotions it takes to decide to kill yourself," she says. "The psychological pain is overwhelming to the point where it hurts physically, and the only way out seems death. That is a scary thing to behold, and an even scarier thing for others to talk about."
Anske wants to talk about it. She has kickstarted the conversation by baring her soul in the digital space -- a realm that can often be unforgiving and full of schadenfreude, as the aforementioned two cases of cyberbullying have proven. But according to Anske, "the idea of sharing my pain became my reason to live. The ability to talk about it gave me new purpose. After having been very close to taking my own life, the typical angst of exposing my history was gone. I did have a very hard time beginning to talk about it -- incest is a very dirty word, and the fact that I was sexually abused by my family members, my father especially, caused people to step away from me at parties. Like I carried a disease, like I was contagious. But then I remembered it's my mission in life, to talk about it, to expose it and to make people aware of it, to help others, so the next day I would talk about it again. And again. Until it became easier and easier."
A key component of that mission, for Anske, is making Siren Suicides available for free, forever. She's been approached by interested publishers who have balked when she's refused to budge on this demand -- a revelation that likely provokes other aspiring novelists to facepalm as they flail under a pile of rejected query letters. It has never been about money, says Anske, and she shares one moving anecdote that proves as much: "One of my beta readers in Austria, unbeknownst to me, was reading Draft 4 aloud to a group of troubled teens. One teenager, a boy, came up to her after and talked to her about having suicidal thoughts. He said listening to Ailen's struggles helped him open up and talk about it. When my beta reader told me this, I bawled my eyes out all day, thinking, I did it. If I managed to maybe save this one teenager's life, my job is done."
Online, complete strangers have embraced Ksenia Anske like a sister, a daughter, a mom, a best friend. Her avatar is a self-portrait with arms raised toward the camera, inviting you in, telling you it's okay, I'm here, have a hug if you need one. Siren Suicides has become a community with Anske as a fun and friendly mayor, only too eager to share copies of it, even in draft form (typos and all) to ravenous readers who've been as bewitched as Odysseus' crew by the stirring words of this literary siren and the encouragement that she provides. Anske makes it a point to answer every tweet, comment or post directed her way, and, emboldened by this genuine sense of openness and engagement, fans respond with artwork and photographs and even personal journeys inspired by the novel. Two admirers in particular, having been introduced to each other by Anske through her Twitter feed, have even begun collaborating on a screenplay adaptation. Still, she's humble when asked why she thinks people respond to her in the way they do, as if she can't really believe that she deserves it, and she blushes at the thought of being considered a writing guru: "I simply tweet about things that come to my head, which mostly are encouragement to myself to keep writing, because I have a lot of fear around it still. When people told me that my encouragement helped them, I became bolder and less afraid. And, I always try to make it funny, to give love to my followers, to make them smile and make their day better. My Twitter followers are like my new family. Whenever I'm down, they pull me out, never letting me slide into my dark moods. They crack jokes back at me, they encourage me to keep going, they share their successes and failures with me -- it's the best thing ever."
The enthusiasm of those followers has moved Anske to make her next work, Blue Sparrow, a compilation of her best and most popular inspirational tweets. After that comes Rosehead, another dark tale rooted in Anske's past about a young girl who discovers that her grandfather is murdering women and turning them into roses. Mentor, friend and fellow author Michael Gruber is also encouraging her to write a literary novel, Irkadura, about her childhood in the Soviet Union. Her dream project is working with a professional team to bring Siren Suicides to the big screen, to further the spread of its most important message:
"That it will be okay. You will be okay. We will be okay. Life is horrible and painful at times, but there is love there too, if only we're willing to give it to each other. Because the only way to love is to give unconditionally, without expecting anything in return. Underneath that, I want to show how it feels when you want to take your life, how horrifying, confusing, and debilitating this desire is, and how one can overcome it. And given my personal history, I want to expose the problem of abuse in families, specifically, the abuse of women and children, that it's still very much a problem in our society."
The sirens of myth preyed on the loneliness of sailors, using the tantalizing promise of connection as their most lethal lure. In a far more benevolent sense, Ksenia Anske understands that connection is the heart of storytelling, and that the human value of a great story far exceeds anything anyone could possibly pay for it. Her advice to others who aspire to her example speaks to the importance of seeking that connection through honesty and genuine emotion: "Be yourself. Share yourself as you are, with your failures, your successes, your everything. Be as emotional as you can, let people glimpse inside your soul, and they will want to know more. Because it's how we connect; not over facts, but over feelings."
And perhaps most importantly, connection can stop a suicide -- a lesson that Ksenia Anske learned firsthand and will continue to sing in her clarion and captivating voice to anyone within earshot.
In postscript, a few fun facts about Ksenia, with apologies to James Lipton:
Favorite word? "Right. I often start my tweets with, right..."
Least favorite word? "Consciousness. I can never spell it right the first time and I never remember how to spell it right! (See, I used right twice just now!)"
Favorite curse word? The four-letter euphemism for excrement, in all caps, with an exclamation point (author's translation).
And finally, "In heaven, I want them to tell me: 'Hey, lady? Yeah, you. You're early. Get out of here. You have ten more years to live. So, shoo!'"
To learn more about Ksenia and Siren Suicides, check out her website, www.kseniaanske.com, or join her Twitter following: @kseniaanske.]]>An Open Letter to the People Posting Spam in My Comments Sectiontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31538342013-04-30T18:41:30-04:002013-04-30T18:41:41-04:00Graham Milnehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-milne/
I'm not going to take the usual approach. I'm not going to be hateful. I'm not going to hurl a string of foul-mouthed yet literate abuse at you or imply that you should die painfully in a fire while you are mauled simultaneously by giant hogs wearing flame-retardant suits. I'm going to assume that somewhere behind the paragraphs of misspelled offers of search engine optimization or male enhancement meds or Prince Mbale Ntubu's missing Nigerian fortune there is a lonely soul crying out for connection, however fleeting. And I just want to say, you know, it's okay.
I know you're just doing your job. I know that you never dreamed when you were a child looking up at the stars that one day you'd be forced to try to put food on your table by advising humanity anonymously on the benefits of legal online horse betting. No one grows up wanting to do that. We want to announce our names in a clarion voice to the entire world and say that I matter, and what I believe about making $6382 a month working part-time from my laptop matters.
I just want you to know that I get it. I understand the agony of thinking that you're not being heard. Of feeling like you've poured your deepest emotions into your words and bared your heart only to see it scattered, forgotten, upon the wind. To see your most cherished thoughts flouted by a civilization that professes to care but can't be bothered to spare a half second of its valuable time to click on the suspicious URL to see more, or to enter its precious credit card number for a once-in-a-lifetime offer.
How dare they diminish you. How dare they ignore you.
So the next time I sweep my spam filter clean of your sometimes awkward observations, please know that I do so with a heavy heart and an understanding mind. That I know you weren't born wanting to do this. That I know that behind every spammer is a failed writer who couldn't get anyone to listen, and that spam comments are the poetry of the wannabes and the never-weres.
Unless you are using a computer to generate this crap randomly and you're off sunning yourself in the Riviera next to a couple of bikini models, you degenerate moocher. In that case, go f*** yourself.
Respectfully yours,
Graham]]>Becoming an Adoptive Dadtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30208232013-04-11T10:41:39-04:002013-04-11T10:41:44-04:00Graham Milnehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-milne/
My journey to paternity has followed a different path; after struggling with fertility and even the question of whether we wanted to be parents at all, my wife and I decided that our family would expand through adoption. That was well over a year and a half ago, and since then, we've been through extensive training and invasive interview and traumatic phone calls. We've logged a few thousand miles in the car, had our hopes both raised and dashed and experienced a thorough exploration of every single point on the emotional spectrum. Was it worth it? Listening to my new son laughing when my wife chases him up the stairs after he's stolen her slippers should be evidence enough.
Fatherhood was never really on my radar. My father died when I was 11, and strong, positive and consistent male role models were largely absent from the years that followed. Like President Obama, I've had to rely on dreams of my father, the images growing cloudier as the years slip away. And it doesn't feel that long since the days of the smoke-filled dance clubs (back when you could still smoke in them), when I'd share crude opinions on the hotness of the assorted females with no greater aspirations for myself than a night of physical fun with a nameless partner. Sometimes, I wake up in the morning incredulous that I even managed to get married -- how in the hell did I suddenly become somebody's father? Yet there he is, playing on his laptop and asking if he can watch Star Wars again. Every time he calls me "Dad," I have to stop myself from turning to see if he's talking to the guy behind me. Even after a mere three weeks together, I'm humming the lyrics to Harry Chapin's melancholy anthem about fathers and sons and wondering if we're losing out on oh-so precious time.
My son was one of the thousands of older children living in foster care waiting for a forever family, because a large swath of parents looking to adopt insist on babies. They want to give their child his or her name, witness the first steps and first words and other milestones they can photograph and post for their Facebook friends. However, if you don't have the financial resources to look privately or overseas, or you're unable to take on a baby with a lot of special needs (and heaps of praise are due to those who do), you'll likely see retirement checks before you find an infant in the public system. And as the years go by and so many of these kids linger on in foster care, it's almost as though they pass their "use-by" date. Couples start to think that if no one has adopted them by now, there must be something seriously wrong with them. But there isn't. Of course, there will be emotional trauma that needs to be addressed with patience and love for some, and perhaps even a few minor medical issues, but for the most part, these are kids like our son -- a good boy who's had a rough start to his life and just wants a mom and dad to love him. And not to diminish the hard work of the many giving foster parents out there, but according to the National Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention, 40% of kids in foster care don't graduate high school, and only 3% of them go on to any kind of post-secondary education. These boys and girls need more than parents; they need relentless, even to the point of being obnoxious at times, bullhorn-wielding advocates who will scrape and claw for every precious inch of progress. They need a family who will never give up on them, no matter how rocky the road gets.
Is that me?
There's an exchange between Peter Facinelli and Kevin Spacey in The Big Kahuna that comes to mind. Facinelli's character, a junior salesman about to experience his first convention, says that it's time to throw him in the water to see if I can swim. Spacey retorts that no, we're actually going to throw you off a cliff to see if you can fly. Adopting an older child, a little person with his own name and with a personality already shaped and molded by total strangers, is kind of like the instant coffee of fatherhood: It's immediate and occasionally might not taste that great. You do have to grieve the loss of a lot of those firsts, including the loss of the not-unsubtle desire to pass on one's genes and traits, the loss of ever seeing what that indelible combination of you and your spouse would have looked like. During initial weekend visits as the new family adjusts to each other before final placement, it feels at times like you're just babysitting someone else's problem, resulting in massive feelings of guilt when you feel relieved after he's picked up on Sunday evening. And you have to try and "deprogram" a bit of the stuff that you likely would not have encouraged had you been raising him from birth, and replace it with hobbies and habits that you know will help him grow (i.e., perhaps we can cut back a little on the 10 hours of video games per Saturday and replace it with at least one hour of reading -- no, doesn't have to be Hemingway or Dostoevsky just yet -- and put away the Nerf gun before we accidentally shoot the cat?) But at the same time, there are still lots of firsts to look forward to. First birthday and Christmas together. First date. First time driving the car. First overnight away from us. Figuring out how to have "The Talk." Graduation day. Heading off to college. Watching him grow from this shy, awkward kid into the amazing, confident man you know he has the potential to be, terrified all the while that you're just making things worse. I suppose there is a term for all of that: Being a parent.
I didn't have my father to guide me through my teenage years, so I have no point of reference on which to base how I'm going to do it with my son. My father was long-gone before I could talk to him about my huge crush on the beautiful blonde in the other Grade 6 class, or the boundless depth of my everlasting 13-year-old love for the 18-year-old brunette who used to drive me to band practice, and my utter cowardice in being able to verbalize those feelings to their subjects. I want my son to be able to seize the moment and not be caught up in his feelings. I want him to be able to avoid some of the mistakes I made, and yet instinctively, I know he has to be free to make them and learn from his failure. Put simply, I want to be the example I never had, and as I sit here typing this, I'm increasingly doubtful of my ability to do it. I've had a lot of friends and colleagues tell me how touched they are about our adoption of our son, and how lucky our son is to have us. Yet, I still feel like a bumbling idiot who's doing everything wrong. Chapin's words haunt me in my sleep. I can't figure out my own life most days. Do I really want him to grow up to be just like me?
Perhaps the best advice is to draw from the Buddha (or Winnie the Pooh) and to just be. To let the good times roll with the bad and to take each day as it comes without ruminating endlessly on the shape of the overall to the point that it distracts from the little moments that truly matter. Without letting the perfect become the enemy of the necessary. For better or worse, I'm this kid's father now. He is part of the legacy that I will leave behind long after everyone's forgotten about little 'ole me -- a legacy that includes my father as well. I may not be passing on my genes, but I can pass on my values, my beliefs, the things I consider important to cherish in our ever-so-brief walk across this world. The same stuff I got from my dad in the times we were able to share.
Maybe one day, my son will sit down and write a blog post (or whatever the new equivalent is by the time he's ready for it) about what he thinks about becoming a father himself, and maybe he'll praise or damn the example set by his old man. Maybe he'll understand some of what I'm feeling right now. Maybe he'll finally understand why I don't want him signing up for that online game that requires a valid credit card number. Maybe the stern looks and the lectures and the occasionally too-obvious frustration on my face will finally make sense. Maybe he'll think it was silly that I worried so much. Sure hope so.
Harry Chapin tells us that the lives of a father and son are cyclical, repeating themselves in familiar patterns as each succeeding generation emulates the precedent it was shown. What better advice is there, then, than to work even harder to be a better me? I told my son last night that if he looks after himself, he has a chance to see the dawn of the 22nd Century. (Wonder if there will be phasers?) The greatest gift I can give him is to do my best to ensure that he will watch sunrise on January 1, 2101 with a big smile on his face, secure in the knowledge that it was, indeed, all worth it in the end. That's what this strange concept of "fatherhood" has come to mean to me, even after just a few weeks. In the meantime, I know when I'll be coming home, son, and we'll get together then. You know we'll have a good time then.]]>Being a Man on International Women's Daytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28364412013-03-08T10:27:50-05:002013-05-08T05:12:01-04:00Graham Milnehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-milne/
It is International Women's Day today, and when I look back at where we were last year at this time, I'm ashamed that we haven't made much progress. A few months ago we heard the story of the Saudi cleric who allegedly murdered his 5-year-old daughter because he had doubts about her virginity, and who subsequently got off with a slap on the wrist. And despite an avalanche of angry op-eds, the worldwide reaction was very much a variation of "boys will be boys." Where were the trade sanctions, the embargoes, resolutions of condemnation and military threats to announce in a united, clarion voice that this grotesque display of misogyny will not stand in our world any longer? A frequent critique of feminism is that it suggests that men should be embarrassed for being men. Well, I was embarrassed to be a man that day. I was embarrassed that I share chromosomes with the bottom-feeding parasite who perpetrated this unforgivable crime, and with the equally reprehensible glorified frat boys who let him off. Every man should have been embarrassed.
When something like that happens -- indeed, when any violence against any woman by any man happens -- you are forced to ask yourself why. Where does such seething, consuming hatred come from? The Freudians amongst us would suggest that it is a primal thing. The most talked-about episode of "Game of Thrones" last year was the one that ended with the priestess Melisandre giving literal birth to a monster of shadow and darkness. Watching Republican legislatures pass mandatory transvaginal ultrasound laws suggests that many men believe on some level that's actually what lurks inside there. That this place of both soul-rattling fear and uncontrollable fascination and arousal must be controlled whatever the cost, lest it consume them utterly. Such laws are only the latest weapon in an extensive arsenal wielded in this quest, going all the way back to the suggestion that humanity is a fallen race because Eve couldn't control her womanly urges when that pesky serpent came a-tempting. The hatred of women has been justified by codifying it into our religions and our laws for thousands of years. When the left accused the right of fomenting a war on women during the presidential campaign, I had to laugh, and not because I agreed with the protestations of Fox News that there wasn't one. There has always been a war on women. The fact that women have had to fight for equality of representation and pay and even basic respect instead of it being granted to them by virtue of their humanity is proof of this. I would ask my fellow men, especially on this day, what it is we think we have to win by continuing what is essentially a campaign of attrition.
Perhaps we should be grateful that women do not collectively take up the mantle of Lysistrata, the heroine of Aristophanes' classic play who stopped a war by convincing her fellow women to deny all their husbands sex. Can you imagine if that were to happen? You'd see fundamental, irreversible change for the better faster than you can say "bipartisan agreement." It speaks greatly of the faith women have in men that they continue to place their trust in us to do the right thing, no matter how difficult we make life for them. It is a capacity that does not seem to be shared the other way, and that needs to change. We -- that is, men -- need to be celebrating smart, strong and successful women and their accomplishments, instead of hissing to our bros that she must be a lesbian because she didn't want to make out with our drunken, slobbering selves on the dance floor. We need to stop judging the worth of a woman solely on how she conforms to a Photoshopped bikini model stereotype. (How many more awards for her incredible musical achievement must Adele win before juvenile male trolls with less talent and drive in their entire bodies than she has in the last sixteenth-of-an-inch of her little finger stop knocking her for her weight?) We need to remind ourselves to appreciate the many inner elements that contribute to a woman's beauty besides the superficiality of the curves.
I felt today in my coffee shop how enchanting it was to be surrounded by positive, confident women. There are so many more lasting rewards to be achieved by making a woman smile -- by encouraging her and doing whatever we can to make her day a little easier and a little brighter -- than by belittling her in some comical testosterone-fueled assertion of masculine "dominance." And on International Women's Day and every day that follows, that is the best way to be a man.]]>Life Has No Cheat Codestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26461702013-02-08T18:02:31-05:002013-04-10T05:12:01-04:00Graham Milnehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-milne/ duck. If you're an adult and that's the gaming experience you want, bully for you. But for kids, being able to quickly button-mash their way out of the effort required to finish a game legitimately with its puzzles and dangers intact is one of the worst life lessons they can learn in their formative years. Just a few short years ago I swore I'd never give a "kids these days" speech, but here I am, as inevitably as the tides.
I grew up in the era of the quarter-sucking arcade and the first home video game console systems, when the kid whose dad got him the Atari for Christmas was the epicenter of the neighborhood social scene. In those days, you started with three lives, and no matter how far you got in the game, the exhaustion of those lives meant starting again from the beginning. The game might be magnanimous enough to offer you an extra life or two when you reached a certain point threshold, but if you were an amateur gamer like myself, struggling to elude those infuriating multicolored ghosts as you wheeled Pac-Man wildly through his maze of blinking dots, that was a rare prize indeed. There was no such thing as "leveling up" -- the aliens descended progressively faster while your skill set remained constant, limited to the extent of your hand-eye coordination. No armor upgrades, invincibility potions or uber-mega-cannons to be found. Mario was forever a lone soldier with nothing more than his ability to jump to a finite height pitted against the merciless barrel throwing of Donkey Kong. And even though the frustration factor was enough to make us want to punch through the screen as we watched our Galaga fighter explode into pixel shards, the challenge, and the fun, kept us coming back. If we'd all hated the experience that much, the nostalgic Wreck-It Ralph never would have been made.
In today's games, along with increasingly sophisticated graphics and cinematic behind-the-scenes talent has come checkpoints, save points, official strategy guides and enough in-game cheats both hidden and obvious to let you plow through to the end in a few meager hours of play. You never die in a game anymore; it merely pauses for a few seconds before you respawn in the same place (maybe back a few hundred in-game meters) with little to no penalty. And almost every single in-game danger or problem can be mitigated by a cheat code. Running out of ammo? There's a cheat for that. Missing a crucial key to unlock the next door? There's a cheat for that too.
SimCity remains a magnificent recreation of the trials of urban planning and municipal management, where success depends on learning how to allocate scarce resources and resolve the political consequences of important decisions. Without a landfill, garbage will pile up on your streets, but residents will complain and move away if you put it too close to them, and so on. But even SimCity has a cheat that gifts you with infinite cash and reduces the cost of all city improvements to zero. (I'm sure plenty of mayors and planners would love access to that!)
Instead of putting in the mental exertion or the time commitment to try and solve the puzzle -- and develop their critical thinking at the same time -= a kid's first recourse is to beg Dad if he can go online for a code. Unfortunately, for most gaming kids, getting to the end as quickly as possible, enjoying the spoils without the effort, is their primary goal. But they're wrong -- the essence and purpose of the game is the journey.
Funnily enough, the reward for reaching the end absent any risk or need to think about what you're doing is usually just a brief cut-scene followed by developer credits. I don't know about you, but I'm not that interested in who the second graphics assistant coordinator is for Halo, and I don't suspect Junior cares or understands either. I also know that giving in to the temptation of cheat codes is the quickest way to lose interest in a game. I remember racing through the Facility level on GoldenEye 64 time and again, dodging bullet hits left and right from digital Soviet soldiers to complete the mission in under two minutes and five seconds and unlock the invincibility achievement. Sure, there were times I wanted to chuck the controller against the wall, but I kept playing, kept trying to shave off crucial seconds. Then I discovered that you could actually achieve the same feat with a few button pushes instead. Once I did that, the challenge of beating the game was gone, and so was my joy in playing it. I played it perhaps a half-dozen times after that before it was consigned to a basement box.
In an era when everyone is a beautiful snowflake and no one is allowed to fail lest their precious feelings be hurt, cheat codes are another message to children that they don't really need to try, that they will be carried along to the next level regardless of how mediocre their performance is. There is no point in trying, because there's always a way to cheat yourself out of a tight spot. The nobility of effort is a lost concept, and the video games we give our kids to play are emblematic of this problem. Getting crushed by Donkey Kong's barrels or caught by Inky, Blinky, Pinky or Sue were, in own their strange way, important rites of passage. They taught us that we had to consider different approaches and to try harder if we wanted to get ahead and save the princess. One shudders at the thought of a generation of adults raised to believe that they need only to touch the right combination of buttons in order to be granted whatever they desire. (That worked really well the last time I wanted a new car, and infinite ammo for my bazooka.) Or worse -- rushing through life to get to the disappointing cut-scene at the end.
Life has no cheat codes. Video games shouldn't either.]]>Challenger's Legacytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25689732013-01-29T08:39:54-05:002013-03-31T05:12:01-04:00Graham Milnehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-milne/
When my friend Robbie told me that in the afternoon of January 28, 1986, I thought he was kidding. I may have even said "You're kidding," in response. For a ten-year-old who'd been fascinated with space exploration and NASA ever since he first asked his father what those little twinkling lights in the night sky were, and indeed for a country accustomed to unqualified success in the exploration of space, it was a kick to the gut. The Space Shuttle Challenger, lost only a few moments after launch on a beautiful Florida morning. How could this have happened? Over the months and years that followed we'd learn about SRB's, Morton Thiokol and O-rings and shake our heads at the realization that a faulty piece of rubber could have cost the lives of seven courageous astronauts (including the first schoolteacher in space) and dragged the triumphant American space program into a downward spiral of limited ambition.
It's perhaps a lingering tragedy of the human experience that we quickly become inured to being awed, that the miraculous can become routine in the course of time. The Apollo program ended when the voices questioning its cost finally became the majority, when it seemed that after achieving the ideological goal of beating the Soviets, the moon was "been there, done that." And the shuttle looked more like the beginnings of the starships we'd watched whipping across the galaxy in our favourite science fiction adventures, but its missions had become predictable, stale -- Challenger and her sister ships were workhorses instead of explorers, deploying satellites and touching down again like an orbital version of FedEx. Forgotten, largely, in that routine, was how dangerous space flight remained, even after nearly thirty years. Until 1986, no American had ever died in space -- the fire that claimed the lives of the three Apollo 1 astronauts occurred during a routine test on the launch pad. Even the infamous Apollo 13 "successful failure" returned its crew unharmed. It was inconceivable, even as we looked at that strange image of the two-pronged trail of smoke in the sky that such a thing could happen, given the reach of our technological genius. When it did, we were shattered, and we stepped back. And failure became a meme -- telescopes broke, probes disappeared without trace and Columbia broke apart, killing its entire crew (including another first, the first Israeli astronaut), on re-entry in 2003.
Twenty-seven years after the Challenger tragedy, the space shuttle has flown for the last time. In a political climate where the number one obsession is deficit and debt, the expensive notion of space exploration, where the financial return on billion-dollar missions is difficult to explain to the Tea Party congressmen who control NASA's budget, is unpalatable to say the least. Yet the promise and the appeal of what waits up there remain potent and meaningful, and retain their ability to stir the soul and set dreams alight. Over the last several weeks, Canada's astronaut Chris Hadfield has been tweeting from the International Space Station, offering stunning pictures of our world from high above, where one cannot see a single trace of war, hunger, poverty or pop star shenanigans -- merely the peace of a beautiful planet. Hadfield nearly broke the Internet with his much-retweeted exchange with William Shatner, advising the "Captain" that he was in standard orbit and detecting signs of life. When considering the scope of the universe beyond our little world, our recurring conflicts over lines on maps and ever-dwindling resources seem to be the apex of Lilliputian pettiness and futility. Yet we still hope. Could the final frontier unite us as everyone who's ever seen an episode of Star Trek hopes it will? Could we at long last stop obsessing about who has the most toys and instead devote those energies toward a higher pursuit?
It seems to me that when Challenger died, much of our collective imagination went with it. We chose to cut back, to scale down, to play things safe. To outsource much of the work and the risk to the same Russians everyone was once desperate to defeat in the cosmic theatre. When it comes to the exploration of space, we think small, cheap and forgettable. Newt Gingrich absorbed his fair share of ridicule for suggesting during the GOP presidential primaries that the U.S. should try to build a lunar colony, and as far-fetched as that might seem, so was John F. Kennedy's declaration in 1961 that America intended to land a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth by the end of the decade. Between promise and realization it took 8 years. What's even more frustrating is that when Kennedy spoke those words, scientists had no idea how to accomplish the task. Today, we have all the technology we need to get us back to the moon or to Mars or even beyond; we lack only the will to do so. (The cynic in me believes we might get there faster if one of these heavenly bodies is proved to contain vast reserves of oil.)
In his commemorative address offered to the nation on the evening of January 28, 1986, President Ronald Reagan spoke about the sacrifice of the Challenger crew and promised that they would never be forgotten; that the exploration of space would continue. Yet I don't believe that the lethargic careful dipping of our toes into the interstellar ocean is paying tribute to them in the way the substance of Reagan's speech intended. We should be doing more. If humanity is fated to disappear from the universe without ever spreading itself beyond the confines of the pale blue dot it inhabits, it will be solely because of our lack of will. Do we truly want our epitaph to be a Douglas Adams-esque pronouncement like "Galactic Chickens"? Or is getting the chance to touch the face of God, as Reagan described it, worth the risk? The Challenger crew believed it was. The Columbia crew believed it was. Deep down we know it is too. The greatest tribute we can pay those who have lost their lives is to make their sacrifice mean something - to go on, to shake off the creep of apathy and to continue charging toward the blinking lights in the night sky on a tail of flame, carried by our science and propelled by our dreams - for they, like the spirits of the Challenger crew, truly have no limits.]]>For Your Consideration: Skyfall's Oscar Chancestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.24487582013-01-10T14:18:45-05:002013-03-12T05:12:02-04:00Graham Milnehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-milne/
Even though they've been shepherded since their inception by an American family, the Bond films remain very much a British institution, whereas the Oscars prefer to reward homegrown red-white-and-blue talent. I have a feeling that Bond clawing his way into the more "artistic" categories will require a few more films of Skyfall's caliber, to the point where he becomes impossible to ignore. Either that, or a 007 movie set in a single room in a historical period where Bond struggles with a personality disorder while a tiger watches him sing his plan to rescue hostages from an embassy and kill the world's most wanted terrorist.
Anyway, let's look at the five categories where Skyfall did receive a nomination and guess how good its chances are for winning the first 007 Oscar since 1965. A proviso that these predictions are based on my own entirely un-scientific method that results in me usually placing fourth in my office Oscar pool.
1. Best Cinematography
Along with Skyfall's theme song, this was considered the most likely slot for Bond's Oscar hopes. Roger Deakins has been nominated nine times previously without a win - he's becoming the Susan Lucci of cinematographers -- which makes recognition long overdue. He's up against Seamus McGarvey for Anna Karenina, Robert Richardson for Django Unchained, Claudio Miranda for Life of Pi and Janusz Kaminski for Lincoln. (Richardson and Kaminski are both previous winners.) This award will tend to go to whichever movie is sweeping its way through to Best Picture, unless the images are so out there and groundbreaking as to be something never seen before. So as remarkable as Deakins' work on Skyfall was, I think there are a couple of factors working against him: Skyfall was shot digitally, and Academy voters are biased towards old-fashioned film. Also, because Skyfall is not up for any major awards, it will tend to be forgotten amidst the other, more nominated contenders. Unless there is a groundswell sympathy vote for Deakins, I'm guessing here that he makes it an even 0-for-10, with Kaminski or Miranda the more likely choices for the podium.
2. Best Original Score
Thomas Newman, like his more famous cousin Randy, is a perennial Oscar nomination favourite, now on his eleventh waiting for that first win, and I'm not thinking he's likely to get it for Skyfall either, unless, like Deakins, he gets a sympathy vote. His competition includes Dario Marinelli for Anna Karenina, Alexandre Desplat for Argo, Mychael Danna for Life of Pi and the legendary John Williams for Lincoln. I actually wasn't that impressed with Skyfall's score, as it seems to wander without focus and without, disappointingly, the haunting emotional moments Newman has been able to craft in his past work. Simply put -- if Newman didn't win for the vastly superior American Beauty or The Shawshank Redemption, he's not going to win for this. His nomination is much like Marvin Hamlisch's for The Spy Who Loved Me, which is the sparest and weakest of any of Hamlisch's many scores -- an acknowledgement of a highly-respected colleague because he's a good guy rather than for the quality of the specific work. For the winner, I'll guess Dario Marinelli for Anna Karenina, because it's a fancy dress period drama, and the score likely evokes the classical music of the era, which is always a plus for Academy voters.
3. Best Sound Editing
No matter how many times they explain it, no one understands the difference between this category and Best Sound Mixing, in which Skyfall is also nominated. As far as I can tell, sound editing is more about sound effects, like explosions, bullets flying, high-tech doors opening and so on, which is why blockbusters that wouldn't otherwise be anywhere within the Academy's field of view tend to win here. The other nominees are Argo, Django Unchained, Life of Pi and Zero Dark Thirty. Skyfall could get tossed a bone here, but I'm going with Zero Dark Thirty because it's also a high-tech thriller that has the advantage of being based in reality -- and the Academy always goes with reality over fiction. They seem to consider it more of an achievement to be true to a historical event -- creativity within constraints, as it were -- rather than having free reign to make stuff up, no matter how big the explosions are.
4. Best Sound Mixing
Skyfall hasn't a chance here. Like cinematography, this one generally goes to whichever movie is on its way to Best Picture. Of the fellow nominees, Argo, Les Miserables, Life of Pi and Lincoln, I'd favour Les Miz here; because it's a musical and has achieved renown for having the actors sing live instead of lip-synching, viewers (i.e. Oscar voters) are more aware of the sound and thus more likely to propel it over the top.
5. Best Original Song
Get used to saying "Academy Award winner Adele," because when all is said and done, this is Skyfall's one indisputable lock for Oscar night. Adele has already won more awards than any other female singer in recent memory, and the Oscar statuette will be seen as a fitting cap to her meteoric rise. The song isn't the best thing you've ever heard, nor is it Adele's best work, but the Academy will be positively giddy over the possibility of watching her give an acceptance speech in Cockney. In this category the performers aren't nominated, only the songwriters; but because Adele penned "Skyfall's" lyrics, she gets to share in any potential golden glory. As for the other nominees, we have longshots from Ted and Life of Pi, and the trend of awards bait is continued this year with Les Miserables, where a movie based on a decades-old musical has a single new song written for it just so its composers can secure an Oscar nomination. The only serious competition I foresee for "Skyfall" is J. Ralph's "Before My Time" from Chasing Ice, but it shouldn't be enough to deprive Adele of her moment racing through her list of "thank yers" before the orchestra plays her off.
Of course, I could be completely wrong, and as a Bond fan I hope Skyfall merits enough goodwill to rack up more than just the one likely win. It's a testament to the sheer craft of this movie, particularly to those of us who remember the clown show that was A View to a Kill, that we're even talking about James Bond and Academy Awards on the same page. And who would have ever thought that the year's 007 movie not getting a Best Picture nomination would be considered an actual snub?
Anyway, all yours, Academy voters. Prove me wrong!]]>Counting Down to Skyfall: Dr. Notag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19733962012-10-22T18:08:13-04:002012-12-22T05:12:01-05:00Graham Milnehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-milne/Skyfall can attest, he's ready to roar back in a big way, with Academy Award-winning director Sam Mendes at the helm and a powerhouse A-list cast including the likes of Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes and Albert Finney. It occurred to me this morning that there are 24 days until the movie is released here in North America, and that there have been 24 James Bond films preceding this one (if you include the "non-official" 1967 Casino Royale and Never Say Never Again). What better way to celebrate this new Bond than to review one 007 adventure a day culminating with a take on Skyfall (because you know I'll be there on opening night)? So let's get down to it then -- with the movie that started this 50-year rollercoaster ride.
Dr. No seemed an unlikely choice to kick off the film series in 1962 -- it was Ian Fleming's sixth James Bond novel and hardly the most cinematic of the ones he had written up to that date -- to say nothing of that oddball title, a moniker probably more suited to a goofy 1930's Flash Gordon-type serial. True enough, producers Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli and Harry Saltzman had wanted to make Thunderball first, but it was tied up in litigation. And the unknown Sean Connery was not anybody's first choice for the leading role -- Fleming himself wanted David Niven, and offers had been rejected by bankable stars of the day like Cary Grant, James Mason and Patrick McGoohan. Yet it's difficult to imagine any of them defining the role the way Connery did, particularly in his introductory scene. There's a laissez-faire to the way Connery announces, "Bond... James Bond," cigarette dangling from his lips, like he just doesn't give a rat's arse whether you care who he is -- he's that confident in his awesomeness. (One can imagine Grant delivering the line with his customary wink and smile -- James Bond would have been Cary Grant, not the other way around.)
There has been a copious amount of criticism written around the "James Bond formula" -- the exotic locations, the women, the cartoonish megalomania of the villains. Many of the elements are introduced in Dr. No, but almost seem like they're in rough draft form; indeed, it's difficult to look at the movie objectively 50 years on. The plot is probably one of the simplest of the film series -- a British agent is murdered in Jamaica after looking into reports of radio interference with American space launches, and James Bond is sent in to investigate. Bond is assisted by CIA operative Felix Leiter (Jack Lord) and local boatman Quarrel (John Kitzmiller), and eventually crosses paths with the half-German, half-Chinese, handless Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman), agent of SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion), who is using his private nuclear reactor to knock the American rockets out of the sky. And of course there's eye candy in the form of Eunice Gayson as Sylvia Trench, Zena Marshall as Miss Taro, 1961's Miss Jamaica Marguerite LeWars as a photographer, and most famously, the voluptuous Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress), whom Bond famously encounters as she strolls out of the ocean in a white bikini, knife on her hip, singing "Underneath the Mango Tree."
Dr. No is a tough sell to modern audiences if it isn't the first Bond movie you've ever seen. It was made on a shoestring budget of $1 million (nowadays, that wouldn't even pay for a third of an episode of CSI) and a lot of it does look very cheap. The acting is pretty painful across the board, and Connery himself tends to flap his gums and yell his lines as he tries to figure out the character, not yet realizing that intensity doesn't require volume. Andress begins a long tradition of Bond girls having their lines completely dubbed by another actress, and the effect can be greatly distracting. Apart from Wiseman, who is aware of his character's cartoonishness and underplays to compensate, none of the villains are terribly menacing. The fight and chase scenes are nothing special. The "dragon tank" is a goofy excuse for a prop that belongs on Gilligan's Island. The latter half of the film, once Dr. No finally enters the picture, slows down and drags where it should be building tension to a breaking point, such that the climactic battle between Bond and the villain seems a bit like an afterthought. Apart from the singular James Bond theme (which is regrettably hacked up in the opening credits) the musical score is cheesy and instantly forgettable. Yet compared to the largesse of some of the later films, there is a rawness to this adventure and more of a sense of Bond as a bruiser of a man relying on his skills, wits and fists to extricate himself from sticky situations, rather than the finely-tailored dandy with nary a hair out of place who always has the right gadget at the right time. When a bloodied, battered Bond is crawling through an air vent to escape Dr. No's lair, you truly worry whether he's going to make it out alive. And there are several iconic scenes that help to define Bond as a new kind of morally uncompromising hero, most notably when he shoots an unarmed man in cold blood, and callously turns a woman he's just slept with over to the police. Bond is always at his best when he's being an unrepentant badass.
In most recaps of the Bond series, Dr. No tends to rate around the middle, which is where I'd probably place it. It's a little low-key for how I like my James Bond, and really shows its age in certain places, particularly in its pacing. It has not yet acquired the panache and greater sense of fun of the mid-'60s Bond pictures, and the cheapness of its budget is quite evident throughout. In recipe terms, Dr. No is a soufflé with all the right ingredients that doesn't quite manage to rise all the way. But you certainly cannot argue that without it and its success to set the stage, we would never have had the James Bond that we've grown up with all these decades and continue to love. That alone tends to earn it both a pass for its faults, and a greater appreciation of what it is -- a competently-executed thriller bursting with promise for what is to come.
Tomorrow: From Russia With Love raises the bar.]]>Happy Birthday, John Lennontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19507442012-10-10T11:20:00-04:002012-12-10T05:12:02-05:00Graham Milnehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-milne/
Why does John Lennon have such a hold on the world 32 years after his death? In the pantheon of artists who passed away before their time, why is Lennon the most singular figure? It can be argued that in terms of their relative impact on music, Elvis Presley was more significant -- the man who basically took blues and melded it with country to forge it into rock and roll. But what is Elvis today? A punchline, fodder for cheesy impersonators in bad wigs mumbling "Thank you, thank you very much." Towards the end of his life, Elvis became symbolic of the worst excesses of the rock star -- bloated, hiding in a cavernous mansion, shooting televisions, eating deep-fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches and finally succumbing to drugs in his bathroom. While John Lennon certainly had his eccentricities -- the bed-ins, the strange recordings of screaming and warbling passed off as "art" -- the main reason he doesn't turn up in the pages of the Enquirer having just been spotted at a supermarket is that in his message -- one of a lasting hope for peace -- there is nothing to mock.
Some stars seem more than human. They appear, whether intentionally on their part or not, to inhabit a celestial echelon unattainable by we mortals who gaze upon them from afar with admiration. While John and indeed all four of the Beatles were arguably the greatest and most influential stars of music of all time, what endeared them most to their fans was that throughout the peaks and pitfalls of their career, they always seemed human. They never took themselves as seriously as they could have given the astronomical heights of their achievements, and remained for all intents and purposes, regular lads. They were not perfect nor did they pretend to be; they made mistakes, they fought amongst themselves, they spoke from their hearts without filters and without poll-testing and clearing everything through publicists first. Like the Buddha, they simply were. The honesty of their music and the positivity of the message that resulted from that honesty could not help but touch the soul.
As the Beatles wound down, John chose to devote himself to the cause of peace. He was an unlikely messenger for it -- a man who admitted his faults, who did not attempt to veil the rage inside. He could be horrible to those closest to him, particularly to his own family and dearest friends. But just as only Nixon could go to China, a man like John, full of anger and bitterness towards the world, was the only one who could communicate the need for peace so vividly, so completely and so perfectly. We all have that rage inside. We resent the misfortunes that have been thrust upon us through what we feel is not our fault. We want to scream and curse at the whole world. We are all that angry boy crying for his lost mother. And we can overcome it.
John Lennon asked us in the simplest terms, only to imagine peace -- knowing that imagining is the first step to making it happen. Most importantly, he recognized that peace was too important a message to be limited to the leadership of one, it must be a mantle taken up by the many. In one of his last interviews, John scoffed at the idea that people considered him a guru, or a messiah. He didn't want that. He wanted to make his music and be left alone. More than that, he specifically did not want people to rely on him to tell them how to look at the world. In "God," John steps back from that leadership role, singing, "I was the walrus, but now I'm John. And so, dear friends, you'll just have to carry on." This line isn't a cynical rejection. He knew that people had the capacity to make peace in their own way and that was the only way peace was going to happen. He still sings it to us today and challenges us to take up the torch in his absence.
In one of his most notorious quotes, John once observed that the Beatles had become more popular than Jesus. It's perhaps dangerous ground to tread, but the popularity of the Beatles and of John Lennon can be likened to that of Christianity in its appeal -- in its ideal, most uncorrupted form -- to the best parts of ourselves. No matter our stripe, we're all looking for the answer. John told us that it was love, but he left it up to us to find that love on our own. The challenge of faith is in maintaining the devotion to the search, in the recognition that the realization of the objective may never come until the very end. But the road is worth the walk. And so on John Lennon's 72nd birthday, we lace up our shoes and set out again with his songs playing on our iPod and his dream alive forever in our hearts.]]>7 Tips For Improving Your Next Flighttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19235462012-10-01T08:00:00-04:002012-12-01T05:12:01-05:00Graham Milnehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-milne/
It seems too, of late, that austerity has conspired to make the experience as miserable as possible for the vast majority of passengers. We cringe at stories of airlines reducing leg room so they can cram in more rows of seats. Advertising to the contrary, getting there isn't half the fun, it's something you endure.
But we passengers make it worse for ourselves.
There are a few things that could be adjusted to make the trip moderately more enjoyable, and none of them require the airline doing a blessed thing. It's just a question of some additional personal responsibility:
Pre-boarding. When the gate attendant advises that passengers with small children or those requiring special assistance in getting onboard the aircraft can come up first, why does it seem like every single damn other person in the departure lounge assumes they can as well? Unless you are carrying three screaming terrors or are so elderly you can barely stand, wait for your turn. What perplexes me most is that there's no prize for boarding first. You don't get to leave earlier, and you certainly don't get a lapdance from the stewardess or even an extra bag of peanuts. You are trading in a precious few more minutes in the wide open lounge with its ready access to expansive, clean washrooms for the claustrophobia of the passenger cabin and the smelly steamer-trunk sized toilet. Just chill and stand up when they call you.
The "fresh air vents" above the seats. I have opened these exactly twice during my history of air travel. Both times I have come down with horrendous hacking coughs and colds. The problem is that when the outside temperature up above the clouds is about -40, real "fresh air" would freeze the plane. So the dirty secret -- pun intended -- is that this so-called fresh air is just recycled cabin air, which means you're inhaling every filthy little germ that has had the temerity to sneak through security to make the journey with you. You are basically asking to get sick by opening these things. If you don't know the person you're sitting next to, do them a solid and keep your vent closed, no matter how much you want to feel any semblance of breeze on your face. Their lungs will thank you, and so will yours.
On the subject of germs, personal hygiene. I don't care if you think you're one of those people who can get away with bathing every other day. You're about to inflict your natural odor on dozens of strangers who, stunningly enough, won't find it as sexy as you think your partner does. When you know you're going to be flying within the next six hours, please, shower, slap on that Speed Stick and keep your arms at your sides at all times.
Reclining seats. I have noted above the progressive decrease in the amount of leg room available on each flight, and while you at five-foot-two may see nothing wrong with kicking back after the seatbelt sign has been turned off, the gentleman behind you who exceeds six feet (e.g. me) doesn't relish feeling like the proverbial sardine for the next three and a half hours. The very least you can do is ask. I might be in a good mood and have absolutely no problem with it. But if you just arbitrarily decide to force your seat back into my face without asking, I reserve the right to shove it back upright with equal discourtesy, and you shouldn't act shocked. And let's be honest, these aren't exactly La-Z-Boys -- the amount of extra comfort you'll achieve by reclining those three entire inches is infinitesimal at best, particularly when it compares to my level of frustration at having your seat back under my nose for the whole flight. Stay vertical and keep the peace.
Freaking out audibly at every little bump. It can be a little unnerving, but let's try to accept that air is constantly changing and the same forces that give us the rain we need to grow things for us to eat and keep our lawns green are what cause our planes to rattle around sometimes. There are thousands of flights all over the world every single day and the media's propensity to hype the hell out of the exceedingly rare one that goes wrong has led average people to believe that they have something like a one in three chance of actually surviving a flight through rough weather. The airline has nothing to gain by killing two hundred of its customers, so they don't fly through this stuff if they don't think they can make it. Just pretend you're on a roller coaster.
Clapping when the flight lands. I get that it's ostensibly a way to thank the pilots, but the clapping always sounds like it's less out of gratitude and more out of white-knuckled relief, like it's somehow a God-ordained miracle that the plane arrived safely, and the same thing didn't actually happen twelve hundred more times across the world that very same day. I know this isn't likely to change, but while we're on the subject of the end of the flight, can we perhaps not all jump up at once the instant the seatbelt sign is off and perhaps just file out in a little more orderly fashion -- again, recognizing that between Customs and the wait for your bags you still won't get out of the airport any faster?
Complaining and acting as though the airline has engaged in a massive conspiracy specifically to screw you. We are all in the same flying metal tube of doom, brah, and what's happening to you is happening to all of us. I was flying home from Calgary once and what was meant to be a short stop in Edmonton turned into a two-hour stay on the tarmac while a thunderstorm moved overhead (ground crews aren't allowed out if there's risk of lightning). While we sat there, hot, frustrated and increasingly impatient, the drunken idiot next to me felt it necessary, every five minutes or so, to exclaim with great erudition and wit, "Get this f--in' thing in the air!" Hearing this, the pilots sprang to action and revved up the engine and -- well, no, they didn't do anything other than continue to wait for safety clearance, as they would have had this dope remained silent. The only difference would have been a much calmer, more congenial atmosphere in the cabin, manna for some very tired and upset passengers. You're not being funny, or any kind of hero by expressing aloud what we might be thinking. You're just being a jerk.
So there you have it: seven easy tips that will cost you absolutely nothing, require the airline crew to expend zero effort and may result in a much more pleasant trip for all involved. What the airlines themselves can do to ameliorate the trip is a much longer list and is more of a pipe dream in terms of it possibly happening in my lifetime. But there is one thing: during the safety presentation, I think we can agree that at this point we all basically understand the general principles of how to operate a seatbelt, right?]]>The American Politics of Canadian Health Caretag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.18580112012-09-06T14:15:24-04:002012-11-06T05:12:01-05:00Graham Milnehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-milne/starring in a new Koch Brothers-funded Super PAC ad warning voters about the pitfalls of socialized medicine -- and not only that, she's hanging around the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte all week and available for interviews. Given all the talk about the tidal influx of corporate money into the American electoral process since the Citizens United decision, if the best spokesperson the Kochs can come up with to star in their $27-million fear-mongering campaign against the ACA is an outsider whose complaints about her native land's health care system have been thoroughly debunked, that's some pretty weak-ass sauce. Can you imagine the reaction on the right if an Obama-supporting Super PAC ran an ad featuring Canadians demanding higher taxes on the rich? Cries from the Fox News cabal about filthy foreigners tampering with the sacred trust of American elections would be positively deafening.
The message of the ad is that because the Canadian health care system allegedly failed Ms. Holmes, Americans should run as fast as they can in the opposite direction. This one Canadian (out of about 34 million) claims she had a bad experience, so let's stick with the disastrous version we have now rather than pursuing a model that is so treasured by the Canadian people because of its success that no party dares broach the subject of changing it lest they suffer massive electoral blowback. I find the right wing's approach to attacking programs they don't like (read: They haven't figured out a way to make money off) amusing in that it's always the all-or-nothing gambit. They're always looking for the insignificant opening into which they can bludgeon the moneyed weight of their angry wedge. A single slip-up, to them, warrants the dismantling of an entire organization -- just as the appearance of a couple of bad apples in a malicious, heavily edited, out-of-context amateur video was grounds for taking apart ACORN (the real reason being that ACORN was instrumental in getting a lot of Democratic voters to the polls). It's as facetious and flimsy a position on which to build an argument as suggesting that if a single brick in the Great Pyramid of Giza cracks, the entire thing might as well be dynamited. But it's all you have when the only reason you can offer for being against something is that you don't happen to like it very much.
It's telling indeed that Shona Holmes would be dragged out again three years after her initial appearance on the scene. The Kochs probably couldn't find anyone else. For Canadians, what is almost as universal as our health coverage is our pride in our system -- and our gratitude that getting sick in Canada doesn't mean a financial death sentence. Several years ago I was hospitalized for a serious lung condition, requiring X-rays, painkillers, and finally an intercostal tube drainage treatment. My total bill for my week-long stay: $12, for the optional phone at my bedside. Everything else was covered by the program I pay into with my taxes, and nothing required was withheld because it wasn't on my plan or whatever other spurious reasons the private companies invent to deny care in the U.S. And my experience is not unique. As to the myth of Canadians dying as they wait for needed surgery, it's just that. The Canadian system is based on triage -- urgent cases go to the front of the line and everyone else is placed in priority sequence. Decisions about who goes first are made by medical personnel (with apologies to the ex-Governor of Alaska, not once has any Canadian been forced to file a request with their local Member of Parliament before calling their doctor). In the case of Shona Holmes, she was diagnosed with a benign cyst, and rather than waiting as recommended by a doctor she chose to cross the border and pay over $100,000 to the Mayo Clinic to have it removed immediately. And with respect to her complaints about being attacked for expressing her opinion, if you are going to become a shill for U.S. corporate and political interests by spreading specious half-truths to every camera in sight because you didn't get your lollipop right when you wanted it, you can't be that shocked if more than a handful of folks decide to disagree with you. Free speech goes both ways -- that's how the concept works. (People shouldn't have been calling her home to yell at her of course, but that's just more proof of how passionately Canadians support and believe in their system of health care.)
It took an incredible effort on the part of President Obama, the Democratic Party and its supporters to overcome the blockades thrown up by Republican obstructionists, corporate lobbyists, lawsuit-happy state attorneys general and Tea Party zealots to get the ACA passed, half-baked half-measure as it may seem to many liberals and progressives who were longing for something more transformative. Building on this act to craft a truly fair health care system where no one ever needs to fear getting sick in America ever again is going to take even more, and unfortunately the political damage borne by the Democrats for taking it on has made the issue something of a third rail. But it should provide some comfort to those Americans dreaming of a single-payer program like Canada's to know that the side fighting to keep the status quo has no real argument to make. They may have more financial resources, more members of Congress in their pocket, but at the end of the day, it's all smoke and mirrors -- their hand is empty. They just don't like health care, and if you're looking to win the conversation with the people, truth is a much better starting point.]]>Following the Money, Missing the Pointtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.17638372012-08-13T12:45:42-04:002012-10-13T05:12:11-04:00Graham Milnehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-milne/Breaking Dawn, Part II. Nor is it any stretch of the imagination to suspect that the morning following the Aurora massacre an emergency meeting may have been called in a studio boardroom somewhere to discuss how that tragedy would impact the ticket sales for The Dark Knight Rises. The biggest questions in the presidential election revolve around money -- how much of it Mitt Romney may or may not have paid in taxes, how much his campaign is raking in from billionaire Super PAC donors, whether or not Barack Obama can become the first incumbent president to be outspent and still secure re-election, whether the United States stands on the cusp of transforming into a plutocracy supported, ironically, by its poorest voters. Austerity, whether advisable or not, and deficit reduction dominate the agenda of every government on the planet. The rich are attacked in one circle for acting like feudal overlords and praised in another as job creators. Money is the filter through which we examine everything -- we have become a species of accountants obsessed with numbers and the bottom line. And yet we're more miserable than we've ever been: impatient, demanding, and more prone to outbursts of rage for the most insignificant reasons. Something is clearly askew. Is it perhaps time to undertake the first step in recovery and admit that we have a problem -- that obsessing over money isn't getting us anywhere?
I'm not naïve enough to suggest that the acquisition of wealth is ever going to fade away as a motivating factor in human behavior; it's been that way ever since the first Australopithecus looked out with longing at the bigger, cosier cave his neighbor across the way was occupying. But that motivation is rooted in the biggest lie of all -- that having more means being happier. Marketers and advertisers understand this, which is why every commercial you've ever seen is designed to make you feel inadequate and envious and to suggest, in somewhat the same manner as a drug dealer would, that you just need a hit of whatever is being sold -- cars, shoes, cologne or designer jeans -- to ease the pain of your unendingly terrible existence. We all know better, and yet we buy in -- pun most depressingly intended -- to the lie, sacrificing what we've earned for temporary relief, at least until the next ad comes on and we begin to think ourselves lacking in some other area. It does not have to be this way, and yet we have been conditioned in the same manner to define success in dollars alone -- not influence or reach or the fundamental amelioration of our collective humanity. Somewhere along the way, the virtue of working hard as its own reward transformed into only a means to the end of securing one's fortune at the expense of the well-being of our peers. Men of business the world over with less moral integrity than the average cockroach are revered as leaders and held up as ideals to emulate because they have managed to accumulate piles and piles of cash, with little, if any, consideration given to the lives that have been destroyed by their greed. We are forced to listen to their obscene rants and give credence to their perverted worldviews because we have decided that they deserve our attention based on the size of their bank accounts. Opinions that would otherwise be dismissed the ravings of lunacy shape policy for billions of people, because money defines the parameters of the conversation. To our everlasting shame, we have allowed it to -- in whom we have voted for and whom we have chosen to place upon gilded pedestals to admire.
Enough is enough.
Some would argue that there is a moral imperative within each soul born upon this planet to leave it in a better state than which they found it. This is an aim hardly served by pillaging and plundering the earth's treasures for the benefit of a select few. What is needed is a reorienting of our values and a new form of currency, one that cannot be tied to the whims of banks: a currency of ideas, in which the ideas are evaluated on their substance and not on how much cash is flowing behind them. Do I think this is ever going to happen? Well, probably not in my lifetime. The forces of money are too deeply entrenched within the corridors of power. But we can get the process started -- by refusing to grant those forces our slavish attention, and by shedding the ridiculous belief that someone is better than we are because they are wealthier. By not caring anymore how much so-and-so gets paid for his latest album or her starring debut. By emphasizing quality over quantity, and evaluating character completely independently of the size of a person's wallet. By making "successful businessman" roughly the same estimation of a man's worth as "frequent water drinker." Not going so far as vilifying financial success outright, but making it the very least important of the measures of a human being. Saying "Oh, you're a billionaire casino entrepreneur? How nice for you -- my kid just scored three goals at his soccer game last Saturday."
We cannot achieve true fairness in this world until we stop worshipping those things that make the world unfair. What's most encouraging is that we still have the choice to do that. We just have to make it.]]>What Trudeau Lacks in Years, He Makes Up in Spirittag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.16283632012-06-29T14:13:25-04:002012-08-29T05:12:05-04:00Graham Milnehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-milne/defines a "concern troll" as "someone who is on one side of the discussion, but pretends to be a supporter of the other side with 'concerns.' The idea behind this is that your opponents will take your arguments more seriously if they think you're an ally."
There is no better description for the dozens of op-ed writers (and thousands of anonymous commenters) cautioning Liberals against rallying behind Justin Trudeau as their next leader. The opinions are widely disseminated, but all come back to the same litany of talking points: It's not his time, he's too young, his last name is poison in parts of the country, he hasn't run a successful business, he hasn't accomplished anything noteworthy.
If any of these tropes sound familiar, it's because they're the same weak sauce flung at up-and-coming senator Barack Obama in 2008. This clearly indicated that none of what the concern trolls are falling over themselves will make any damn bit of difference in Trudeau's ability to lead his party to victory in a national election. Instead, these pleas sound like attempts to nudge the Grits towards picking an unexciting candidate who will make Stephen Harper look like George Clooney -- so Canadian readers can suffer another few years' worth of pedantic "Is the Liberal Party Dead?" articles.
Canadian politicians have never been particularly renowned for their charisma. Ours is a history of electing the safe and the bland, of choosing managers over leaders. Ironically, the turning point in virtually every Canadian election has come when we've seen a flash of personality, a quotable moment that provokes headlines and water cooler discussion. Brian Mulroney telling John Turner "You had an option, sir." Jean Chretien's speech about his facial paralysis following a cruel attack ad from the other side. Jack Layton shredding Michael Ignatieff's election hopes with "If Canadians don't show up for work, they don't get a promotion."
Those are the president Bartlet moments we hunger for and latch onto because they are so rare. We may claim we want only the seasoned, sensible accountant to watch the public purse, but we need that firebrand to stir our emotions, to get us thinking, and to spur a true and fair debate on who we are as Canadians and what kind of country we want to create for ourselves: To engage us in the fate of our nation once again. It's quite possible we'd experience a collective freak-out were someone like that to emerge on the scene again; our stolid nature simply wouldn't know how to handle it.
But that would be a good thing.
Justin Trudeau's reluctance to take on the challenge of restoring the bruised and battered Liberal Party suggests that much unlike the copious evidence pouring out of Stephen Harper's every extremity, he has not spent his entire life dreaming of power.
Trudeau could have parachuted into a safe seat during the Chretien heyday and squatted on the backbenches, quietly building an organization of loyalists and working towards an eventual leadership coup. Would this have been considered the more appropriate path to the top by the pundits? Perhaps, but instead, Trudeau chose to run in a Bloc Quebecois riding in an election where the Liberals had already been mired in opposition for an uncomfortable two years under Stephane Dion, who despite good intentions could not connect with a lackadaisical public force-fed with the Conservative "not a leader" meme by a compliant media.
Against odds, Trudeau took the fight to the enemy and won it. He did not coast in on fame and memories of Liberal glories past, nor did he simply promise to cut taxes and be a puppet for his party. He won Papineau by going door to door advancing the ideals that government can be a place for good work when the best people are in charge of it. One does not need to be an exceptional person to keep a corporate balance sheet in the black; the ability to inspire people with deeds, images and words, is a much rarer gift. In Justin Trudeau, one can see these glimmers of the stuff of leadership. Where the concern trolls get the idea that this translates to a lack of life accomplishment is a bit bewildering.
In his four years as an MP, Trudeau has been an advocate for youth, the environment and a vigorous democracy, and has done so while raising a young family. He's shown passion and an unwillingness to moderate his tone when it comes to speaking about what he believes; advancing the notion that principles are more important than electoral totals. And famously, earlier this year, he stood his ground against a hulk of a Conservative Senator and trounced him in a boxing match the Sun News crowd were salivating over the prospect of watching him lose.
In the ring, Trudeau gives everything he's got. The nobility of the fight, what it truly means to the people watching, and not the aggrandizement of the ego of the man, is what matters to him. Do you want to follow the leader because he's leading for your benefit, or for his own? Contrast this against the guy apparently so insecure he has to use your tax dollars to rename the government after himself.
The important thing to keep in mind when concern trolls spout off about a dearth of executive experience on Trudeau's shoulders is Harper's attitude to the contrary: the prime minister is not the president -- and even the president delegates. Even as a rump of its former self the Liberal bench is deep with former cabinet ministers and seasoned professionals who would be well equipped to counsel a potential future prime minister Trudeau on any policies where he felt his own expertise wanting -- to say nothing of who else might choose to stand for election with Trudeau leading the party. And you get the sense that Trudeau would not be afraid to ask, either; that he understands the virtue of surrounding himself with smart people and letting them shine. Again, one must look at this in comparison to Harper's approach of farming out cabinet posts to party hacks and running everything out of the PMO. This strategy leads inevitably to taxpayers footing the bill for $16 orange juice.
We've had enough managers, we've had enough boring old guys droning on about their 18 point plans to reduce the deficit and ensure economic growth to 2050. What will get Canadians excited, what the Liberals need, and what terrifies the concern trolls, is someone who can appeal to our better angels on a visceral level. Someone who can get the cynical back to the polls and who can mobilize the divided yet potent, growing energies on the progressive side into a force that overwhelms the cash-heavy Conservative smear machine. For all his skill as a parliamentarian, I don't see that quality in the dour Thomas Mulcair, and Bob Rae obviously wasn't sure he was that man either. I'll admit that we don't know for certain if Justin Trudeau has that in him. But the volume of ink being expended against his candidacy in the guise of ensuring the long-term future of the Liberals suggests a lot of people on the other side of the spectrum are panicked and are trying, ever so gently, to urge him to stay out of the race, lest a dragon they cannot slay rear its big red head.
That Trudeau is not responding immediately to the media storm about his candidacy (or lack thereof) is encouraging. He's considering his options, consulting his family, and hopefully letting the background noise of the concern trolls wash over him. If he lets any of their feigned worries become the deciding factor, then he wasn't the guy to begin with. But if he decides to step up, I suspect he'll end up doing to the naysayers -- metaphorically, at least -- what he did to Senator Patrick Brazeau.]]>To Paul on His 70th Birthdaytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.16054792012-06-18T11:38:42-04:002012-08-18T05:12:12-04:00Graham Milnehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-milne/Thriller, you could tell there was something singular about Beatles music, something visceral. Even the lesser songs possessed a purity of emotion and a unique ability to connect to each person who heard them, as if they had tapped into the very life stream of all human consciousness. Love, longing, loss, hope and dreams of a better world flowed through each twang of their guitars, each perfectly harmonized note. They were on to something, those four lads, and billions are forever grateful that they chose to share it with us.
They could not have had any idea, one supposes, as Paul McCartney said hello to John Lennon for the first time at the St. Peter's Church hall fete in Woolton on July 6, 1957. Beatles fans can rattle off these dates and events as though they are gospel; these many accidental confluences of events have grown into the stuff of legend. The heady days of Hamburg, the passing of Stu Sutcliffe, sweaty nights in the Cavern, the firing of Pete Best, the first appearance on Ed Sullivan, A Hard Day's Night, "Bigger than Jesus," LSD and Sgt. Pepper, sojourns in India with the Maharishi, Yoko, marching across Abbey Road, the rooftop concert in London, the decline, drift and eventual collapse, and all the while turning out works of inspirational genius. No other band -- indeed, few other men -- has lived as boldly as they did, scoring the lives of an entire generation of humanity, and remaining, in their own quiet, Liverpudlian way, regular lads.
I was lucky to see Sir Paul McCartney play two years ago -- he blew apart the stage in a three-hour tour of the highlights of his unfathomably massive career at a pace that would have shattered men a third his age, with nary as much as a sip of water in between songs. Turning 70 today, he shows little sign of letting up. There seems to be a fragment of divine fire burning inside that man, pushing him on an endless pilgrimage from one musical venture to the next, one concert after another, whether it is in hurling showers of light into the sky in front of Buckingham Palace for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee or crooning the quieter sentiments of his standards album Kisses on the Bottom. People joke about the creaky Rolling Stones heading out for their hundredth world tour playing the same old songs; Paul never endures that kind of mockery, because his spirit remains young. He's perpetually that dreamy 22-year-old bopping his mop-topped head as he plucks away at his bass. No one's told him otherwise. No one would dare.
John Lennon's voice was taken from us by a madman, and George Harrison's silenced by cancer, but Paul McCartney's endures, and grows louder still. If there is a leader of the music world, a President of the United States of Rock, Paul wins unopposed on the first ballot. Since the fateful day he first picked up a guitar he has devoted himself to the cause of entertaining his fellow men -- to regale them with a silly love song and remind them that the things they're feeling, the questions they have about their world and their place in it, aren't unique, that ours is indeed a collective human experience. We're all in this thing together, man, and Paul McCartney is a shining example of what it means to bite into life and devour it whole, even if it's on a strictly vegetarian diet. Happy birthday, Macca, thank you, and hail to the chief -- yesterday and today and for many tomorrows to come.]]>Changing the World, One Letter at a Timetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15895952012-06-12T17:02:18-04:002012-08-12T05:12:06-04:00Graham Milnehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-milne/Peace Love & Photography is Ashley Cooper, a Canadian artist and performer, and Filip Cederholm, a Swedish photographer, who are traveling the globe to capture images of thousands of the world's children forming each letter of the alphabet, one country per letter.
Cape Town, South Africa's Blouberg Beach was the site of the first venture, with over 500 local kids arranged to form the "A." Next stop: Namibia's Swakopmund Dunes, and the letter "B." When completed, the twenty-six individual images will be made available for purchase, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to charities helping children in the countries where the photos were taken. Cooper and Cederholm, whose goal is to raise $10 million by December 2016, have even received an endorsement from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who calls their work "a very important project."
In an age where many people equate activism with changing their Facebook profile picture, what makes a couple of first-worlders want to give everything up to live out of their backpacks for four years straight?
In a word, hope.
"We wanted to join the millions of men and women out there trying to affect positive change in the world," says Cooper. "Peace Love & Photography is really about branding a helping and caring lifestyle as being fun and appealing for our youth. We want you to feel positive, inspired and empowered."
The images on their website radiate that sense of inspiration: Dozens of smiling faces, presided over by Cederholm's stunning "A", with Cape Town's famous Tabletop Mountain in the background beneath a dramatic sky. It suggests a world of possibility and positivity. That positivity helps keep the pair going: entirely self-funded and absent the resources of say, Bono, they have to strike a balance as they travel between working on the project and feeding themselves. As Cooper points out though, they are encouraged by the connections they form with the people they meet along the way. "One thing that really resonated with Filip and I when we started out was how many people really want to do good, and how fun it is to work together for a greater purpose. It feels as though no matter what door closes there is always someone there to open another."
Archbishop Tutu helped open one of those doors, by signing several portraits for the duo to assist in their fundraising. Cooper calls meeting the human rights leader a "personal and career milestone" and a validation of what they are trying to accomplish. "To be able to sit and speak with someone of his experience about peace and the meaning of life, you could sense the power of someone who really practices what he preaches. The smile on his face when he saw the "A" meant more than words can say." And yet it was their time with the children from the townships of South Africa who formed that "A" that seems to have had the most lasting impact on the pair. "With so little of their own they gave what is important -- love -- and that's a good life lesson."
There is an unfortunate tendency of late to become cynical about charitable endeavors for Africa -- to think that they are focusing on the wrong issues, creating a culture of dependency, or are increasingly the domain of celebrities looking to assuage guilt or secure a tax write-off. But Ashley Cooper and Filip Cederholm are a reminder of what charity is supposed to mean -- giving of oneself without thought of reward, and spreading that ideal to others. Asked what they hope to gain from this experience for themselves, Cooper's answer is refreshingly altruistic:
We always say 'have fun, do good, live life' -- those are words we hope we can continue living by. We hope that we can help others achieve that philosophy as well. We also hope that we can gain a greater understanding of the world and its people and to continue to give and help as much as we can. We would love for Peace Love & Photography to become a platform where other artists can create socially conscious work and share their experiences.
It would seem that the path to a better world does indeed begin with A, B, C.
For more information on Peace Love & Photography and the ABCharity, please check out their website: www.peaceloveandphotography.tv]]>