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Arts & Culture Archive

The Eh-List

by JOHN SEMLEY You’ve heard of grindhouse, blaxploitation and kung fu flicks. But Canada has its own unique B-movie tradition—Canuxploitation—and new directors are catching on.

Photograph by Tammy Hoy

A WHEEZING PERVERT makes obscene phone calls to a sorority house. Michael Ironside stews in a bachelor pad, writing angry letters to a feminist talk show host. Five horny students at T & A High make a pact to see their virginal classmate naked by graduation. Ex-beauty queen and kick-boxer Shannon Tweed defeats hostage-taker Andrew Dice Clay …

Things That Make Us Muslim

by RAHAT KURD At the height of Michaelmania, everyone moonwalked—even Muslim kids in Hamilton, Ontario.

Illustration by John Perlock

At the corner of Lottridge and Barton, on a winter morning in 1977, a big girl stands next to me, waiting for the light to change. She must be on her way to Scott Park, the high school. Her arms are stiff at her sides, her hand curled around a cigarette. Why doesn’t she zip …

13 Aphorisms

by GEORGE MURRAY A selection from George Murray’s new book, Glimpse.

  1. After happy hour, things get back to how they were—an overpriced sadness, or acceptance, which is just sadness without regret.
  2. Second to none does not mean the best, unless you believe in absences.
  3. All writing is a bit like wearing a toupée—those who can get away with it do,  but those who can’t look like fools …

Interview with Matthew Tierney

by LINDA BESNER The award-winning Toronto poet talks about the theory of relativity, Paul Muldoon and being marooned in your own head.

Matthew Tierney is the author of two books of poetry, Full speed through the morning dark (Wolsak and Wynn, 2004) and The Hayflick Limit (Coach House, 2009) which was shortlisted for the 2010 Trillium Book Award for Poetry. He has been published in journals and magazines across Canada. In 2005, he won first and second place in This Magazine’s …

Culture Wars

by SOPHIA LADOVRECHIS Can a friendship survive different tastes in TV?

Picture yourself discussing the recent late night debacle involving everyone’s favorite ginger Conan O’Brien and a large chin named Jay Leno. Your boyfriend tells you that he can’t possibly understand why people love Conan so much, insisting that Leno’s humor is far more clever and original. In his opinion, Leno deserved to reclaim his Tonight Show …

The Intelligent Universe

by ABOU FARMAN The next stage in evolution—a machine consciousness able to manipulate time and space—is just around the corner. The catch: humans will no longer be in charge.

ASSUME, FOR A MOMENT, the point of view of Intelligence. Not an intelligent point of view, but the perspective of Intelligence itself, gazing out on the cold and gaseous 13.5-billion-year-old universe.

It would seem, would it not, that you ought to give yourself a pat on the back. You’ve done a damn good job of progressing from a …

Summer

ISSUE 36 Summer 2010

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