Mondoville’s 10 most newsworthy characters of the first half of 2010
Justin Bieber has proven 40 years of Canadian Content regulations for music obsolete — the pubescent singer’s Stratford, Ontario origins are sufficient for the Toronto media to consider him a local discovery, even if he was found on YouTube by manager Scooter Braun, who lured Justin to Atlanta. And this was despite his mid-30s chaperone mother Pattie Mallette’s initial reservation over her son’s suitor: “I prayed, ‘God, you don’t want this Jewish kid to be Justin’s man, do you?’,” she recalled to The New York Times on January 3. From there, the story of Bieber was prominently examined by both national newspapers in Canada, even though there’s so little left to say that his mom has been reduced to being subject to rumours that she’ll be posing for Playboy.
Ann Coulter was kind of passé in recessionary America when she was booked for three Canadian campuses in mid-March, and all it took was her retort to a convoluted question from a 17-year-old Muslim girl at the University of Western Ontario, stammering to spit an old flying carpet joke back at its originator — culminating in Coulter’s suggestion to “take a camel” — for the visit to stir up all the commotion her career needed. The provost of the University of Ottawa, who issued an advance admonishment, helped Coulter justify not following through on a free speech the next night. Then she was warmly welcomed on patron Ezra Levant’s home turf of Calgary — who surely helped re-establish Coulter’s cachet at Tea Party pow-wows like the forthcoming Taking America Back.
Adam Giambrone spent New Year’s Eve grappling with the fact that an endorsement of his imminent mayoral bid in NOW described him as gay — then hastily debuted his longtime live-in partner Sarah McQuarrie for a January 2 photo op at an Ethiopian restaurant, much to the dismay of one Kristen Lucas who allegedly had news of TTC fare hikes whispered in her ear during trysts on his City Hall office couch. When the Toronto Star broke the sordid affair story a week after Giambrone’s awkward campaign launch, there was nothing else worth dwelling on for 48 hours — then he took off to France, then went back to work, and reverted to being razzed only for standard political reasons. And he remains “In a Relationship” according to Facebook.
Corey Haim was the answer to trivia questions nobody was asking when he died March 10, but there was a special place for him in Hollywood, and it meant making movie after movie after movie of questionable quality — which left the former teenage pin-up with no money in the bank after years of substance abuse. Word from his confused mother that the City of Toronto was going to pay for his funeral a few days later required public statement from the mayor’s office that no request for routine assistance was actually filed. When longtime sidekick Corey Feldman made clear he wouldn’t be attending the burial, though, the best the media could do for soundbites outside the private ceremony was interview a nurse from Philadelphia who drove for 18 hours to lurk outside.
David Kam wants to produce the biggest concert in Toronto history — to the point of announcing his IMAGINE Concert at Downsview Park in conjunction with Artie Kornfeld, one of the promoters of the original Woodstock, for July 10-11 at Downsview Park in conjunction with the Earthship Festival, all of which was explained as a natural eco-conscious reaction to the G20 Summit. A scheme which seemed far-fetched to begin with in February was sketched out in public with modest goals in March, and then Kam started tweeting about frustrations from trying to book his dream lineup of performers in April. Current status of the project are two days of love and music is some sketchy scheduling for September, at which time he will be ready to rock.
Lara Lavi has apparently spent the first half of the year waiting to get her hands back on Death Row Records, the gangsta rap label she was tapped to resurrect on behalf of private Toronto bank New Solutions Capital who won its recording assets in an $18 million auction — making the brand an attention-getting cornerstone of their company WIDEawake Entertainment. A restraining order was issued over differences in how to handle the brand, and an article in Canadian Business detailed how the investors would be happy to rid of the music for the money they paid, a deal self-proclaimed soccer mom Lavi is trying to swing from south of the border. Death Row can’t even be killed by Dr. Dre, who sued over a re-issue of The Chronic, only to have it thrown out of court.
Yann Martel was expected to write the greatest book ever after sending Prime Minister Stephen Harper an unsolicited volume every month — and, if he wouldn’t read the enclosed endorsement letters, presumably a nation of Harper-haters would. So, when Beatrice and Virgil turned out to be the worst book ever according to influential reviewers — Canadian newspapers were more charitable, but The Walrus and Literary Review of Canada and were perplexed by the meta-tale of a stuffed donkey and monkey reliving the Holocaust in a taxidermy shop — Martel could at least count on the sympathy of legions of Life of Pi fans, although his American publisher encouraged indie bookstores to cash in on the negative attention by hosting discussion groups about it.
Maryam Rahimi was desperate to get a job in the television industry, so haphazardly posted a Craigslist ad looking for local Persians who wanted to audition for a Toronto version of Jersey Shore. The premise already made the rounds on American gossip websites in early April — even though it wasn’t necessarily true. But this city is more gullible when it comes to ideas like these: and, within a matter of days, she was profiled in The Globe and Mail for her multicultural initiative. Alas, there will be auditions on July 16-17 for eight housemate slots on the show Lake Shore: “Like many Canadians,” reads the description, “these wild youths are from different backgrounds and sexual orientations.” What happened to the focus on Persians? Just a means to an end in the reality television racket.
Kory Teneycke, the former communications director for the Prime Minister’s Office, figured out that the best way to be some kind of conservative media maverick in this country was to get hired by Quebecor, the tabloid publisher that couldn’t figure out what to do with a Toronto Sun television channel — thus Sun TV News is being incubated as “Canada’s Home for Hard News and Straight Talk.” Hey, it’s worked for Fox, only they didn’t have to make the case to the government that their idea of balance needed to be forced upon all cable subscribers in order to launch. Rather than the partisan argument, though, Teneycke is better off arguing that channels run by CBC and CTV are just plain dull. Besides, if there were demand for right-wing TV for the sake of anything but entertainment, wouldn’t another channel have tried it already?
Margaret Wente knows exactly how to get the relic known as a newspaper column noticed online — compose a fallacious rant for The Globe and Mail about why most bloggers are male, then let collective heads spin to the point where she’s the only one who hasn’t collapsed from dizziness. That happened in mid-March, one year after she was defiantly dismissive of Twitter, which most newspapers bewilderingly decided they had to try and contain. And now what? The action surrounding the G20 protests emphasized the power of new tools, new methods, new voices — and still no business model to readily displace the idea that the newspaper mugshot trumps every social media avatar. So, here comes yet another summer of wondering what’s next.