http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs Fearless. Thoughtful. Witty. Canadian. And Opinionated. Wed, 14 May 2008 01:49:27 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en In vague honour of the recent release of The McSweeney's Joke Book of Book JokesIn vague honour of the recent release of The McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes (featuring a riff on Borgès by occasional Walrus contributor David Ng),*I shouldn't be honouring them, given that they turned down my ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/05/07/true-book-jokes/ My friend the Baronist recently loaned me the Simon Schama's Power of Art DVDs. The BBC series, which first aired in 2006, crafts episodes around eight seminal works, combining biography, social history, and criticism to give a sense of what made each one significant during its time and what keeps ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/04/29/its-hard-to-be-a-saint-on-a-slave-ship/ A few last thoughts on the subject of mixed martial arts*Before I get back to my true passion: Bennett Buggy repair. in the wake of UFC 83, which went off last Saturday in Montreal, and of an interview Robin Brown conducted with me for The Inside Track, which will air ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/04/25/mma-wrap-up-xs-and-os/ So I'm going to piggyback on the recent blogosphere success of The Walrus's resident Man, Ed Keenan, by responding to his latest post, "The Manly Art, Minus the Artifice," as well as to Frank Deford's recent article on Sports Illustrated's website, "Has boxing been quashed for blood sport?"*Subtitle: "Why we're ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/04/17/fight-fight-fight/ I went to see the New Pornographers and Okkervil River play at the Phoenix in Toronto on Wednesday night. The concert was surprisingly good. I say surprisingly first of all because the New Pornographers were excellent, though they don't have much of a reputation as a live act. Carl Newman ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/04/11/my-rights-versus-yours-mine-win/ The May issue of The Walrus features a story I wrote with Jan Dutkiewicz on mixed martial arts. I promised when we went to press that I would write a blog post on the subject of Barthes and MMA, which will hopefully not prove as obnoxious as it sounds. I'm ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/04/07/barthes-vs-mixed-martial-arts/ As part of my ongoing efforts to make this blog as random as possible, I recently subscribed to zip.ca, a site that allows you to rent DVDs by mail. Notwithstanding Zip's impossible-to-browse catalogue and persistent inability to send me any movie ranked above #9 on my "Ziplist," it's a fun ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/02/14/the-thin-line-twixt-smart-and-dumb/ Above: Centre Block Fire, Parliament, 1916, hours after being started by the Bironist JB Reid, Library and Archives Canada, C-010079 I have a confession to make. Several confessions, really. And I want to get them out of the way before some muckety-muck justice department lawyer spills the beans to Amnesty International, the ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/01/25/more-true-ottawa-confessions/ Hello one and all. The Bironist is back, and will hopefully become more frequent soon. My extended absences are not, as with other bloggers, a matter of laziness or indifference—simply an extension of my bironic mystique. Have I been galavanting about the world, romancing lasses and enjoying fine scotch? You ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/01/17/great-smackdowns-in-canadian-political-history-ii/ As noted in my previous post, I met Norman Mailer at a conference at Harvard three years ago. At the time, I'd read almost none of his work and was completely nonplussed by the experience. Being of a generation for whom practically everything is held up as larger than life, ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2007/11/13/mailers-fights/