Juliet Waters's Open Salon Blog

My 11th Sexiest Canuck

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:11:34 -0500

I wasn't going answer this Open Call. For some reason there was just nobody coming to mind this year. But then Salon picked Levi Johnston as their 11th sexiest man of 2009. And as I was ~~cringeing~~ watching Levi and Kathy Griffin flirting away on Larry King, I remembered the secret crush I've been nursing for the last year. So for that reason I've decided to take this bold step and announce the 11th sexiest man in my life.

Yeah, I admit. I've got it Canadian Cougar bad for British Columbia born bad boy, Taylor Kitsch. Older folk who can't stop ~~rationalizing their sad addiction to~~ watching those wonderfully well written teen dramas, will know Kitsch from Friday Night Lights as the endlessly infuriating, dumb as a stick, but ~~chronically fuckable~~ inevitably lovable, Panther half back Tim Riggins.

If I were a Canadian teenager there would be any number of reasons why I would have a huge crush on Kitsch. Before he was cast as a Texas small town football player, Kitsch was heading for a career in the NHL. Then an injury ended his potential as a talented junior league player. What else could he do but head to L.A., take a few acting classes, and get work as an underwear model?

But I'm not a teenager. I should know better by now. So what is it about this kid? Maybe it's because for now he really is what he seems to be. Sure, maybe he'll become the next Mark Wahlberg and start executive producing American versions of popular Israeli television shows (Entourage/In Treatment, tomato/tomahto.). Or maybe a decade from now he'll be adopting African children with his generation's version of Anjelina Jolie. But for today, he's still an irresistably cute, apparently unapologetic asshole.

Don't believe those guys still exist? Here he is on ET Canada, doing some publicity last year for his role in X Men origins: Wolverine:

The Charter For Compassion

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:11:10 -0500

There seems to be something in the air this week expressed best in two excellent posts by Stellaa and Jodi Kasten. So when I came across this today it just seemed very appropriate to post it.

The Ted Prize, awarded every year to three "exceptional individuals," includes $100,000 and the granting of "one wish."

When the renowned scholar of world religions, Karen Amstrong, won it in February of 2008 she gave a wonderful acceptance speech in which she wished: "that you would help with the creation, launch and propagation of a Charter of Compassion crafted by the three Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and based on the fundamental principle of The Golden Rule."

Armstrong's goal with this project is to create a movement among people who want to reclaim their faith from extremists, religious and non-religious, who have hijacked and misrepresented the true values of religious traditions for whatever reason.

In the end Armstrong ended up expanding the project beyond the Abrahamic traditions, including leading thinkers from most of the major religions as well as leading figures from humanitarian groups on a Council of Conscience.

Yesterday Armstrong launched The Charter For Compassion, on a website where it can be affirmed and discussed.

The Charter for Compassion:

The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves.

Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.

It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others–even our enemies–is a denial of our common humanity.

We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion. We therefore call upon all men and women
* to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion.
* to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate
* to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures
* to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity
* to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings ~ even those regarded as enemies

We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries.

Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensible to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.

United We Lose

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:10:12 -0400

The saga of Canadian folk musician Dave Carroll just never seems to end.

Three months ago Carroll became famous for the viral hit song "United Breaks Guitars," a song he composed after United Airlines destroyed his beloved $3500 Taylor guitar on the runway, while he watched from the plane. Last count the video he posted had received almost 6 million hits.

A month later Carroll composed another song in honor of Ms. Irlweg, the customer representative who could do absolutely nothing for him.

Then a few weeks ago Carroll was invited as a keynote speaker at a customer service software convention in Colorado Springs. Unfortunately the only airline with a direct flight between Regina and Denver was, you guessed it, United. And wouldn't you know it they lost his luggage. If that weren't bad enough in itself, the airline insisted he wait several hours at the Denver aiport luggage ramp, until he was eventually kicked out by airport officials. That was Sunday. United finally located his luggage on Wednesday.

Needless to say, Carroll is in the process of composing a third song.

In the meantime, given the ongoing severity of the situation, I think Carroll should consider giving his folksy campaign a little bit more of a hardcore edge.

Maybe he could find some inspiration here:

Ruth Reichl on David Foster Wallace and Magazines

Tue, 6 Oct 2009 07:10:48 -0400

Yesterday Condé Nast shocked the media world with the announcement it would be closing Gourmet Magazine. In 2006 I interviewed editor-in-chief, Ruth Reichl. While we were talking about “Consider The Lobster” the famous essay she commissioned from David Foster Wallace, she made a haunting point about the importance of magazines.

Juliet Waters: How much did you edit the essay David Foster Wallace wrote for Gourmet?

Ruth Reichl: Oh barely. Barely at all.

JW: Really? Because I found it so much more reined in than the rest of his writing, so I’m curious.

RR: Well he seemed to feel that it was edited a lot. We had one enormous fight, he and I, about something that I just wouldn’t put in the magazine, which he hasn’t forgiven me for. But, I mean, it was really long. It ran at 7,000 words and the original might have been, uh, 10,000 words. So we did have to take some out. And he wasn’t happy about it. On the other hand, he was happy enough about it to call his entire collection Consider The Lobster.

JW: It definitely seemed to me the most disciplined essay he’s ever written.

RR: Well, it was one of those things. I think he’s just used to having his stuff run as is. But he argues over every comma. I mean—literally—every comma. But to me one of the great things about a magazine—and magazines everywhere—is that it is the last bastion of serious editing. Books don’t get edited the way magazines do. It’s the kind of thing where a group of us will sit around in a room and argue. And I have to tell you, when that piece of David Foster Wallace’s came in, I truly was terrified. I mean, in retrospect, we were stupid not having thought about what he was going to find when he went to the Maine Lobster Festival. But it hadn’t occurred to me that we were going to get a piece on bioethics. And I truly was prepared for people to cancel their subscriptions in droves and say, you know, “I don’t buy Gourmet magazine to read about what lobsters feel when they get plunked into boiling water.” On the other hand, being faced with it, I mean that’s the thing about being an editor. You send this terrific writer out to do something and he gives you something that is better than anything you had any right to expect, and more important—truly heartfelt—and then you have to run it, even though you know it’s going to be really controversial.

JW: But you’ve always been pretty sensitive to the politics of food, so I’d be surprised if your core readers would dump you.

RR: We got hundreds, literally hundreds of letters and they were 10–1, “Thank you for writing this” and then every 10th letter was, “Are you insane to do this to your readers?” But yeah, one of the things I feel really good about since I’ve been at Gourmet is that we’ve taken a magazine that never, ever thought about the politics of food and we have something in just about every issue that deals with issues of hunger and genetic modification and the politics of food—you know, it’s my really strong-held belief that today, if you’re a passionate cook, you really have to know what’s going on in the food system. It’s just something that we can’t really ignore anymore. And it felt really good that readers have come with us.

WTF Wisconsin

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:09:30 -0400

Poor Wisconsin. In the last year its various tourism boards have really taken a beating in the schoolyard of the Internet.

First, there was This Is My Milwaukee, an alternate reality game which hinged on this hilarous parody of a tourism board video.

Inquiries by ARGsters across the country forced The Milwaukee Tourism board to disassociate itself with this press release.

Now the breaking international news that the Wisconsin Tourism Federation is officially changing its name because it has been made aware that its acronym WTF has become "rude" but standard internet slang.

According to the UK Telegraph: "Commenters wondered whether an expression of foul-mouthed astonishment was the best way of boosting tourism to a state that would not be an obvious choice for most holidaymakers."

Not the obvious choice? WTF Telegraph! Apparently you have never visited the lovely Pabst Mansion, or wandered through the sonorous and busy halls of the Harley Davison Museum!

Or seen all the other amazing things to see in Wisconsin, which unfortunately don't come immediately to mind because the Federation formerly known as WTF is too busy worrying about its own image!

Seems to me the Wisconsin Tourism Federation could learn a thing or two from its neighbour Minnesota, or at least from the immortal words of its recently elected senator: "I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!