Writer extraordinaire, genius in every way, Douglas Coupland was in town yesterday promoting his new book JPod--The sort of sequel to Microserfs...or the Microserfs for the Google generation, as the book jacket says. The man is seriously my hero. He's way too insane not to be, honestly! I mean, anyone who can go from an innocent survey about American Idol to reading an excerpt about forcing Ronald Macdonald to strip at gunpoint just has to be cool by default...in a twisted sort of way of course. He covered everything from American Idol, to the Simpsons, to the Sopranos, his new art show in Newfoundland...and finally, the book. If he never got to the book it really would've been okay because getting to sit and listen to him ramble is a treat in itself. SO funny! He never ceases to make me laugh=). I found a comment he made about Google to be particularely interesting. He was talking about the eerie experience of Googling yourself, which everyone has done at least once on a lark. He pointed out the fact that because in this point in time he is more of a celebrity than your average person, he has more results. But in 15 years we will all have as many results and it will have nothing to do with celebrity. He's probably right. We're living in the Internet age. It's become such a norm that we ignore it. Though...computers control us!
First he warmed up by reading one of the random E-mails and strange additions that are scattered throughout the book, like entire pages of number sequences, which he describes as Warhol inspired and then said "God this is so boring! I actually put this in print?" *hehe* then he read an excerpt featuring a conversation between the main character Ethan and himself...then of course the freaky Ronald Macdonald thing. I probably wouldn't have ended on that note but, somehow the dark humor worked. It's hard to describe Douglas Coupland, his books are generally a pretty good indication, but he's somewhere in the vein of extremely intelligent, possibly mildly autistic...kind of like those ADHD kids that you just want to smack sometimes to get them to shut up for two seconds, but know they're going to grow up to discover society's next important cultural or technological advancement.
I'm also very excited to find that Coupland's documentary Souvenir of Canada, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival (and which I missed) is making it's commercial debut at Canada Square on Friday. I'm finally going to get the chance to see it. I thought it was just one of those obscure film fest things that show once and then are never seen again. I guess I take Coupland's popularity for granted sometimes. I like to think I'm reading some quirky Canadian indie book but he's actually hugely popular. I guess it's not exactly surprising that the film is getting a wider release.
The annoying thing about the night was the signing half though. They held the event in a lecture hall at UofT that was completely not wheelchair accessible. Luckily I was able to transfer into a seat. Though not without the risk of pitching myself down to my death-- Someone who wasn't able to get out of their chair would've had to put themselves in a percarious position at the top of the stairs...So not safe! Anyway, to add insult to injury, they decided to have the signing on the stage. at the BOTTOM of the stairs. Meaning that of course I couldn't participate. So, my friend went and talked to one of the presenters to see if there was an alternate way to get to the stage and he was really nice and said that he would just save us the trouble and send Coupland up to us. Full marks to Douglas Coupland who stopped the signing while he still had TONS of people in line and came up specially to sign my book. Nobody does that...so nice! The only problem was that instead of discreetly telling DC the situation, the guy totally singled me out and made this big loud announcement about "the girl in the wheelchair" at the back. --Not to mention introducing my friend as my "helper". Oy, what is with people?! I sent the organizers an E-mail talking about the inaccessibility of the event and pointing out the fact that the guy could've been a little more discreet. Hopefully it'll make them think. Coupland was really nice though and he commented on my name again.=)
I'll write about the film when I see it.
On an unrelated note. I noticed that my complete lack of comments has all of a sudden turned into at least 1-4 comments per post. There was one real one from ^Kat^ but the rest were all pretty much the same comment from "Anonymous" and were completely unrelated to anything...weird!
First he warmed up by reading one of the random E-mails and strange additions that are scattered throughout the book, like entire pages of number sequences, which he describes as Warhol inspired and then said "God this is so boring! I actually put this in print?" *hehe* then he read an excerpt featuring a conversation between the main character Ethan and himself...then of course the freaky Ronald Macdonald thing. I probably wouldn't have ended on that note but, somehow the dark humor worked. It's hard to describe Douglas Coupland, his books are generally a pretty good indication, but he's somewhere in the vein of extremely intelligent, possibly mildly autistic...kind of like those ADHD kids that you just want to smack sometimes to get them to shut up for two seconds, but know they're going to grow up to discover society's next important cultural or technological advancement.
I'm also very excited to find that Coupland's documentary Souvenir of Canada, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival (and which I missed) is making it's commercial debut at Canada Square on Friday. I'm finally going to get the chance to see it. I thought it was just one of those obscure film fest things that show once and then are never seen again. I guess I take Coupland's popularity for granted sometimes. I like to think I'm reading some quirky Canadian indie book but he's actually hugely popular. I guess it's not exactly surprising that the film is getting a wider release.
The annoying thing about the night was the signing half though. They held the event in a lecture hall at UofT that was completely not wheelchair accessible. Luckily I was able to transfer into a seat. Though not without the risk of pitching myself down to my death-- Someone who wasn't able to get out of their chair would've had to put themselves in a percarious position at the top of the stairs...So not safe! Anyway, to add insult to injury, they decided to have the signing on the stage. at the BOTTOM of the stairs. Meaning that of course I couldn't participate. So, my friend went and talked to one of the presenters to see if there was an alternate way to get to the stage and he was really nice and said that he would just save us the trouble and send Coupland up to us. Full marks to Douglas Coupland who stopped the signing while he still had TONS of people in line and came up specially to sign my book. Nobody does that...so nice! The only problem was that instead of discreetly telling DC the situation, the guy totally singled me out and made this big loud announcement about "the girl in the wheelchair" at the back. --Not to mention introducing my friend as my "helper". Oy, what is with people?! I sent the organizers an E-mail talking about the inaccessibility of the event and pointing out the fact that the guy could've been a little more discreet. Hopefully it'll make them think. Coupland was really nice though and he commented on my name again.=)
I'll write about the film when I see it.
On an unrelated note. I noticed that my complete lack of comments has all of a sudden turned into at least 1-4 comments per post. There was one real one from ^Kat^ but the rest were all pretty much the same comment from "Anonymous" and were completely unrelated to anything...weird!
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