Don McKellar’s success in the Canadian entertainment industry amazes me.  He’s one of the few Canadian actors that has become as successful as he is while remaining an indigenous talent.

Why he chooses the projects he does, though, is beyond me.  There’s the Don McKellar that won a Cannes Prix de la Jeunesse for his debut directorial effort Last Night and has become a familiar figure in arthouse cinema.  There’s also the Don McKellar that lends his voice talents to Odd Job Jack, one of the most badly written and miserable “adult” cartoons I’ve seen in recent years.  He’s a charismatic actor, but he’s essentially played the same low-key slacker character for years – he’s 42 and still plays slacker archetypes – and has a limited range.  Still, he’s one of Canada’s success stories, which means he gets series like High Definition almost by default.

High Definition is a radio program trying to explain the relationship between television, its viewers and the wider world.  It’s a good idea – O’Reilly on Advertising recently applied media criticism to the advertising business, and the result was one of the more entertaining CBC Radio programs in recent years.  At the same time, programs like Definitely Not the Opera – and keep in mind I’m pitching ideas to this program, for the sake of disclosure – have produced some of the worst pieces on popular culture I’ve ever had the displeasure to witness, airing couldn’t-tax-the-brain-of-a-recessed-hamster segments like “Celebrities on Helium” that prove how funny pitchshifting is.  (Hint: it’s not.)  High Definition is the middle ground between the two programs.

Taking February 18’s program as an example, the episode description comes across as a typical, condescending DNTO segment given 24 minutes.  To wit:

Tune in this Saturday for a special episode of High Definition…On Ice. Host Don McKellar asks “Is figure skating the best soap opera on TV?” CBC Radio One’s new program about television ventures into the dramatic world of figure skating and tries to understand why it’s the most watched television sport after football.

Keep in mind, the previous two programs dealt with the topics of “Is Oprah REALLY saving the world?” and “How does 24 relate to the actual world of terrorism?”  These topics are covered in the usual CBC style – the analysis is slight to mildly probing, and McKellar isn’t really explaining how television works like Terry O’Reilly did advertising.  O’Reilly’s program gave a true insight into how advertising works, while McKellar plays his usual “detached observer” role.

High Definition’s saving grace, though, is in the fact that McKellar at least tries for a more intelligent way of answering the questions he’s given.  High Definition has less attendant bias than usual for a CBC program, and McKellar proves a natural on radio.  His personality is such that he doesn’t come across as stupid for asking the questions he does.  It’s obvious that this program is a work in progress – while High Definition is trying to be immediate and more journalistically sound than usual, it’s not nearly as near-the-knuckle as it needs to be.  I’m not looking for Undercurrents-esque “investigating the media” pieces on Saturday morning radio, but McKellar didn’t come across to me as digging deep enough into his slight questions to say something truly profound about the television medium.  It’s nice to see him interview figure skaters and right-wing media types with equal fervour, but McKellar has done well in the Canadian television industry.  He doesn’t seem to be showing enough insight as a successful Canadian director and writer to explain why television influences the world the way it does.  Teddy O’Reilly at least lifted the veil a bit and explained the business from his perspective, something Don McKellar needs to do on his program.

Is High Definition bad, though?  No, and neither was O’Reilly on Advertising.  CBC can do media criticism well when it wants to, and in High Definition CBC Radio One has a program that can analyze the television medium – and possibly the CBC itself – while being entertaining and funny.  So far, High Definition has escaped the insipidity of typical CBC pop culture analysis, but the program needs to display more than it has if it hopes to last beyond its eight-week trial balloon.

High Definition has the ball.  Now it needs to run with it.

Relevant Info

High Definition
CBC Radio One, 02/04/2006-03/25/2006 (limited-run series)
Saturday, 11:30-11:54 AM EST

British nostalgia site TV Cream has been a personal favourite of mine for years.  I’ve remained a fan because TV Cream has remained fairly consistent as a site.  The contributors are tastemakers, to be sure – TV Cream actually uses the term “The Wrong Kind of Nostalgia,” the site relying on comments of the “this is bag”/”this is ace” variety.  Still, TV Cream is not afraid to go obscure or esoteric, and that’s where TV Cream’s strengths have always been.

Parts of the site seem to have been spun off into books lately, TV Cream itself with a Virgin Books release and this article as The Ultimate Book of British Comics.  Written by TVC’s own Graham Kibble-White, the book acquits itself very well as an unofficial TVC tie-in.  While not perfect, The Ultimate Book of British Comics is a very good attempt at trying to sum up decades of British comic books.  It’s informative, entertaining and personal, and it touches on both the milestones and notable failures of the British comics scene.  Chris Claremont and Alan Moore, after all, had to launch their careers somewhere.

The Ultimate Book of British Comics isn’t an overly exhaustive look at British comics – by the author’s own admission, it’s targeting modern British comic books and not the story papers that they emerged from.  Old standbys like The Beano, Hotspur and The Dandy are included in The Ultimate Book of British Comics, but text-based papers are anathema to the book’s purpose.  The book also doesn’t list “adult” humour comics in the vein of Viz, mainly going after the more ambitious attempts at reaching the adult market.  Frankly, the exclusions make for a far more interesting book as ninety-eight comics are looked at in-depth and in a critical manner.

A lot can be learned from The Ultimate Book of British Comics.  Pat Mills of 2000 AD, Crisis and Toxic! fame got his start, for instance, involving himself in girls’ comics like Tammy, Jinty and Misty.  In fact, Mills comes across as being the latter-day British comics industry in and of himself, exploiting every niche he could.  Gory “boys’ comics” like the infamous Action, girls’ comics with more action and suffering, a comic book trying to shoehorn role-playing with Judge Dredd – all are given mention in The Ultimate Book of British Comics, enough that Mills’ name starts to become more repetitive with every comic he’s involved with.

It’s not all Pat Mills worship, though, as the main focus of The Ultimate Book of British Comics is on IPC Magazines’ and DC Thomson’s output.  Polystyle Publications and other companies also get a look-in, as does…well, Look-In.  A lot of the cornerstones of British comics, from Tank Girl and Judge Dredd to Dennis the Menace and Bananaman, are at least touched.  The Ultimate Book of British Comics is fun for reading about middling titles like the aforementioned RPG/2000 AD spinoff 2000 AD’s Diceman and Marvel UK’s non-reprint output like It’s Wicked!  Alan Grant, John Wagner, Dave Gibbons (a/k/a Tornado’s “editor” Big E), Mark Millar and Neil Gaiman came from the British comics industry, and North Americans unfamiliar with the origins of such comics names would do well to read this book.  There’s a rich font of information within The Ultimate Book of British Comics.  There are a few contradictions and typos that are normal for the first edition of a book, but Graham Kibble-White’s overview is by and large well-researched.  The Ultimate Book of British Comics is not impartial, ohhh no, but Kibble-White knows how to keep his readers interested.

If there’s a sad note to The Ultimate Book of British Comics, it’s that there’s little of a British comic book industry these days.  Most comics either died or merged with other publications, as is the style in Britain.  Of the ninety-eight comic books listed in this book, only 2000 AD, The Beano, Commando, The Dandy and Judge Dredd Megazine continue to exist.  Doctor Who Weekly became Doctor Who Magazine, more a monthly paean to the world’s most famous Time Lord as opposed to being an actual comic.  Some comics didn’t even manage a year in print, while some shouldn’t have.  IPC Magazines’ successor Fleetway (itself now an Egmont UK company) sold 2000 AD and rights to its spinoffs to computer games concern Rebellion A/S in 1999.

As a Canadian who acknowledges how utterly weak the North American comics industry currently is, it’s easy to relate to Britain’s comics industry.  While comics aren’t dead, it’s sad to know that comic characters do better now through spinoff ventures than in the actual comic books they were spawned from.  Maybe that’s just as well – as much as DC Comics, Marvel, DC Thomson and Egmont keep their foot warm in the comics industry, that’s just not where the big money is anymore. The Ultimate Book of British Comics is as much a farewell to the British comics industry as it is a celebration of it.

I’m wondering why the hell The Bog Paper wasn’t included in the pages of The Ultimate Book of British Comics, by the way.  One of the few comics dealing exclusively in the field of feces and Graham Kibble-White neglects to talk about it?  The Bog Paper was a Marvel humour book, granted, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised by its exclusion.  It’s not my nostalgia, after all.

Further Info
The Ultimate Book of British Comics
Allison & Busby, 2005
296 pages, 16 pages of illustrations

Rottrevore is an Indonesian record company and metal webzine that has existed since the late 1990s.  When the site came up with its first issue…well, let me explain.  I was trying to establish myself in the metal webzine world in 1999-2000 by fishing for e-mail addresses and band contacts.  It took me until mid-2003 to realize that spamming bands is a terrible way to procure review material.  I still read a few music sites and try to immerse myself in the metal scene as a contributor to Unrestrained!, but back in my formative years (essentially everything I did until 2003) I used to read a lot of metal webzines.  I know, “fanzines are shit,” that’s the retarded generalization some people use.  Those people are even more stunted intellectually than I am.

Rottrevore #1, essentially a page of reviews and an interview, was the worst attempt at a webzine that I’d ever seen.  It still is, really – blood bars and sites done entirely in Netscape Composer aren’t de rigueur these days, not when there’s Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Dreamweaver to pirate and half of America has high-speed Internet.  Rottrevore has improved greatly and actually become respectable these days, but the early days of the Internet saw some frankly horrid writing and site design.  Everyone who had an opinion, a computer and a Geocities account could start a webzine, and that’s what the underground metal site world pretty much was in those days.

Even for the standards of the time, though, Rottrevore was shit.  I’m not picking on Indonesians, but some of the most horrible attempts at promoting the metal scene on the Internet came (still come?) from that country.  People familiar with sites like Atifah Netzine might understand what I’m talking about.  For those that don’t, here are some reviews from the first, FortuneCity-hosted Rottrevore.

FORGOTTEN – OBSESI MATI promo 1999
More sick and more,more,more,more and more !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This extreme death/grind concept and destructive has bring them to create second full lenght under two lables
on April 1999.Their line up is perfectly enough to kill your girlfriend and give the meet to dogs.This promo contains of two dangerous songs so much hateful energy that even
an angel must be like to kill………
for more info/interview click here

There is nothing funnier than the opening tirade to this review.  When I read this site in 2000, I laughed at that “More sick and more,more,more,more and more !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” line for at least five minutes.  In 2006, I still laugh at that line for more than five minutes.  It is the worst line to ever appear in a music review.  Indonesian sites are (or were, I don’t know how much death metal and/or its fans have improved over there – at least Rottrevore has) written in the worst English allowable by law.  This was bad even for the relaxed grammar of Indonesian metal sites back then.  Frankly, there’s no way reviews could be worse than this, as evinced by the fact that I haven’t found a site worse than what Rottrevore started out as.

That’s a good thing, by the way.  That doesn’t mean I don’t come face to BLOODY ROTTING SKULL with bad English and “HAIL SETAN”-isms to this day.  It’s a willfully stupid music genre, this “metal.”

BRUTAL CORPSE – FUCKED BY MAGGOTS SKULL!!!!
Quite extreme,sadist,high voltage…………..
BRUTAL CORPSE has won over the most ultra high of Death metal enthusiast with excited tempo and powerful phenomenal drumworks.
Check out “Resurrection”,”suicide”,”Out of normallity” are their no speed limits.Born from DEATHVOMIT city has losed all bands before them.
This is agrressive force!!!!!!!!!Yeahhhhhh….god give me nothing!!!!
contact : Anggeng
APIKRI
Jl.menukan 10
Yogyakarta 55153
Indonesia

I love the interjections coming from the Rottrevore writer.  There’s the usual “this is brutal” and “God sucks” patter, written so poorly as to be comedy classics.  Considering this is from an Asian source, I wonder which god the writer’s talking about.  It might be the Christian God, it might be a Hindu god or it might be a piece of sidewalk.  Whatever God is being talked about must obviously suck, of course – you know, metal kayfabe.  FUCK YOU, GENERIC GODLIKE BEING!  HAIL GENERIC POLAR OPPOSITE!

I will admit there are some lucid words in this review, but those words are limited to “powerful phenomenal drumworks.”  The rest is all broken English and cliché.

For years, I thought Brutal Corpse’s album title included the word “skull!!!!”  It turns out that whatever browser I was using (I was an early user of Opera until the browser started crashing every five seconds) didn’t recognize the blink tag.  Yes, I included the blink tag in this article to recreate the true Rottrevore experience.  I didn’t include the blood bar, though.  Those things are always dire.

DELIRIUM TREMENS – DEMOSYNDROME
One of the most brutal “high class” death band in Jakarta has already prove theirself to spread their sickness and wild to exterminate things as far as we can see
Blasting drums,intense riffs guitars make your ears bleed.
It put DELIRIUM TREMENS is one of incredible band in Indonesia,you must enjoy this bloody brutal death gore!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
contact : Jolly
Jl. Kramat Lontar VI/j 141
Jakarta 10440
Indonesia

I MUST ENJOY THIS BLOODY BRUTAL DEATH GORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  MORE SICK AND MORE,MORE,MORE,MORE AND MORE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  YEAHHHHHH….GOD GIVE ME NOTHING!!!!  I know Indonesia isn’t nearly as developed a country as Canada.  Still, even factoring in Australasian enthusiasm for metal and grindcore, I’m surprised no one was embarrassed putting that on the Internet.  A “high class” gore band?  Aren’t the terms “gore” and “high class” mutually exclusive?  At least the Rottrevore writer describes what Delirium Tremens do, so that’s a plus.

Funnily, I don’t think any of the bands reviewed by Rottrevore managed to break out of their local scenes, not that being local is in any way a bad thing.  I somehow always manage to confuse this band with the Swedish label of the same name.  Considering most Indonesian bands are anathema to a lot of the civilized world I don’t think Delirium Tremens have much of a name on the world stage.  Hell, they may have broken up four years ago.  I don’t follow the Indonesian metal scene that closely.

IMPIOUS – ELEVATION OF THE CROSS
Contain six songs brutal grind showing the drummers power which is unbelievable,very very fast than
even FERRARY will think before it act!”stamping on holy cross”and “rotten smell” as prove.
Horrific vocals from IMPIOUS is enough to kill your mama!!!!!
Dave from LIVIDITY must be aggree about that.
contact : IMPIOUS
Jl.jeruk no.62 B BINTARO
Pesanggarahan Jakarta Selatan 12320
Indonesia

One thing that’s notable about the Indonesian death metal and grindcore scenes is that bands employ very fast drummers.  Those Indonesians love speed.  Still, who is this Ferrary?  Is he/she/it one of those transforming robot cars from Space Thunder Kids or just some random Indonesian?  Whatever Ferrary is, he/she/it better think before rushing headlong into brutal grind.

I learned a lot from this review.  A member of an underground American death metal band must agree that Impious’ vocalist can kill mothers with sound, for instance.  The drummer’s power is unbelievable, too.  Songs like “Rotten Smell” and “Stamping on Holy Cross” prove it!  This is in no way a badly worded review!  How could something from FortuneCity be crap, anyway?  I suck!

CORPORATION OF BLEEDING – BLOOD FEAST SKULL!!!!
COB is brutal gore influenced by CANNIBAL CORPSE,just hear the hammer-on technic guitars,and half of
CRYPTOPSY (godz!)
High speed running tempo,arise from Jakarta.This is fucking sick album!intense riffs,growl vocals
clench hands into fists,it make grinding our teeth!
contact : Porry
Jl.kamboja II no.14
Rawamangun jakarta 13220
Indonesia

Somewhere in that morass of improper sentence structure and descriptors can be found what needs to be known about Corporation of Bleeding (dumb name for a band, but this is Indonesia.)  They sound like Cryptopsy, have Cannibal Corpse-like lyrics, and are high-tempo.  Why not just say that instead of writing this stream-of-consciousness shit?

I was going to make a cheap joke about technical guitars being hit with hammers, but the review’s so nondescript that it’s just not worth the bother.  I might complain about bad metal bands, the metal scene’s celebration of its own ignorance and/or band names like I Shit On Your Face.  I can’t remember any metal sites on the web that were or all poorer overall than original Rottrevore, and I’ve been following this shit since 1999.  It’s a good thing Rottrevore improved, because I can’t really see how the site could get worse.

I’m sure I’ve offended some metal fans by writing this article.  If me making fun of half-assed reviews is enough for you to tell me off for doing so, please get a hobby.  Alternatively, drink some cyanide.  Do some of you anal-retentive types even know how to smile?  I know it’s not kvlt, but just try.