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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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R.M Vaughan's Top Ten of 2008
1) The Whole Jacob Scheier Mess
Jacob Scheier is this year's winner of the Governor General's Award for Poetry. He is not even 30, and his book, More To Keep Us Warm, is his first. Normally, a breakthrough such as this is cause for celebration, the CanLit scene being the stodgy old fartsack it is. But because Mr. Scheier was close friends with two of the jurors (both senior poets who were close friends with his late mother, the poet Libby Scheier) and because he is a sometime collaborator with the juror Di Brandt, his award has been poisoned by accusations of cronyism and nepotism. Why is this so wonderful (for me, not for Mr. Scheier, nor for his editor, Michael Holmes, my good friend and also often my editor)? Because it made people talk about poetry, and made people mad about poetry, and made people value poetry (even if it was just for the sake of scandal). I have now officially lived long enough.
[update from R.M.:
"Since my posting, I have learned that some of the information I collected about Jacob Scheier, from various media sources, was incorrect -- namely, while he and his mother were both well acquainted with one of the jurors, Mr. Di Cicco, neither he nor his mother could be considered a "close friend" of said gentleman. Mr. Di Cicco did, however, blurb Mr. Scheier's award-winning book, and perhaps that is why they have been depicted as "close friends".
In the world of poetry, a switchblade jungle if there ever was one, you can count your real friends on one hand."]
2) The Return of Feudalism
We do not currently have a functioning federal government, because the nice lady appointed to represent Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth (who owes her glistening thrown entirely to heredity), agreed to shut down Parliament. For an opposition, we have a newly minted leader who is the descendant, within grandparent range, of White Russian counts and princesses. By this time next year, the Senate will be declared The House of Lords and we will have to give over all our best wheat and game to our local Boyars, or be buried in mud up to our necks and have our children sold to Ottoman slave traders. The return of the tunic, however, and mead-based drinks, not to mention bleeding cures, will be a boon to us fatties.
3) OMG! Britney!!!!!!
Britney's "comeback" would be remarkable (not everyone can go full mental and then make a hit record - just ask Whitney Houston) if not for the fact that Britney Never Went Away. Her last record was a hit. She was on the news practically every damned day in 2008. What constitutes a comeback now - getting up in the morning? By these low standards of media peak-and-valleyism, Patrick Swayze is enjoying a comeback by getting cancer. I am having a comeback simply by writing this Top Ten list. Did you make a phone call today, or buy some socks? Bitch, you are So, So Back!
4) Bernie Mac
Best dead person of 2008. Elizabeth Taylor continues to disappoint.
5) Team Macho
I do not trust these fake gays and fake outsider artists any farther than I could roll them up a hill. It's all so calculated, that "doodling in my notebook in grade 9" look, so Vice Magazine, circa 2003. The only consolation comes from knowing that one or two of them will inevitably move to Berlin or New York in the next year, have a (fake) affair with AA Bronson, become very rich, and then fuck over the rest of the team. There is nothing new under the sun, or on the walls.
6) RRSP Cash Outs
Retirement rumours have been swirling all year around Toronto's grand old men of art writing - Peter Godard and Gary Michael Dault. Personally, I would miss them both. But then, I'm a poet (this year, at least). The saddest thing about these possible career conclusions is that Toronto, Canada's true art powerhouse, only has two full-time art critics in the first place. I am taking bets both for and against the assumption that either or both will be replaced by new writers, it being a 50/50 proposition. We need a new Lola. And speaking of which ….
7) Hunter And Cook Magazine
Jay Isaac and his band of merry drunks launched the first viable Toronto art mag to come along since, well, Lola. H&C is gorgeously produced, packed with colour and glossy artists' projects, and even has some words in it. Words you actually want to read, not shred for hamster litter. If H&C makes it to three solid issues, they'll have done more for Toronto art than mainstream media have done in the last 5 years.
8) Iceland
I went to Iceland in October and it was just delightful. Imagine Newfoundland run by Manitobans - Manitobans who eat rotted shark meat and tell long, windy stories about giants, elves, giant elves, and rough sex. Nicest folks in the world. And their economy is even more fucked than ours! We really should just adopt them.
9) AGO Transformation
Blingee by Sallee
Ok, it's not as bad as I expected. But, I will say this: like a lot of international superstar zillionaire architects, Frank Gehry has obviously not stuck his hand in a bucket of soapy water in a long, long time. That window - that wondrously, achingly arched convexity, that dancer's-bare-foot-in-feline-flight captured in glass - is already filthy fucking dirty. Have you ever been to the basement of the Eaton Centre, where the giant prism fountain sits, unloved? It is yellow-brown with spores and grime, from decades of contact with the unwashed and Toronto tap water. The future is dusty.
10) My Book
His Book
I had a book published in May, and people are buying it and the media loves it (not that I read things written about myself, but I hear things) and, well, if P. Diddy can give a party a week for himself, I can give myself one miserable paragraph a year. I rock. Haters go home.