The best - and most terrifying - news I've had this year.

Chomp me.

Because I wasn't insanely busy enough already, I replied to a post on craigslist Vancouver. A "coming soon" comedy website was looking for cast members. The concept was that there would be a main writing cast, and a section where the public could submit their own stuff. The lowest-ranked writer on the main cast would be dropped every week, and the highest-ranked public contributor would be promoted to the main site.

The site's name was chompchompdead.com - the sound it makes when you are eaten by a shark, which evokes the idea of a writer being demoted to the "chum bucket".

I submitted a couple of pieces - one a plea to Vancouver that asked they keep all the pilgrims from across the prairie provinces that make the trek but then return, disillusioned yet morally superior, to the people that stayed behind. They wrote me back and welcomed me to the first cast.

The result is a fun collection of wannabe comedy writers who post random shit in hopes of your approval. Who knows? Maybe I'm a comedy writer. I won't know unless I try - and unless you go over there and Chomp me.

Who represents humanity?

Macleans blogger Andrew Potter posted the following scenario:
So the aliens have finally arrived, the spaceships are hovering over all the major cities of the earth, and the following request arrives: Please send three representatives to meet with your new overlords.

Ok, so, who do we send? Who are humanity's envoys to the men from the stars? His choices were William Shatner, Pamela Anderson and Keanu Reeves - which I can only assume is tongue-in-cheek or an effort to rid the planet of some deadweight. But who do you think it should be?

My vote:
1. Sylvio Berlusconi: the guy won a fourth majority in the most notoriously unstable government in Europe; not only can he talk, but he can listen and judge both alien position and Earth capabilities in moments... he would do what was politically necessary at the time without moral qualms.
2. Some top-trained superspy: the inspiration for Jack Bauer or James Bond, the person who can observe what needs to be seen, MacGyver what needs to be constructed and do what needs to be done in order to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat - with the patience to wait for the right time.
3. Heidi Fleiss: after catering to the peccadillos of Hollywood's A-list, how tough could it be to manage her disgust and source the demands of our new alien overlords?

What do you think?

Peace out.

Up to 566 today!

I'm an avowed self-Googler, which sounds dirtier than it really is. I'm positive that this is a much more widespread phenomenon than is currently reported, especially by the most minor of quasi-celebrity-ish types who fuel the mediaverse with droplets of their heart's blood.

I meant, like me. If the reference was too subtle, let me know. I'll go slower.

Anyway, I found 566 Google returns on "Christopher Thrall" today. Highest-ranked was this lovely blogospot, and the article below was the first piece returned. There are a couple of people that mess up the math: as soon as I've convinced a 25-year-old rowdy, a tech headhunter from Illinois and a Private in WWI to get off the Interweb, it will be all me, baby.

I also have a fan... A gratuitous shout-out to Rochelle. You rock!

Peace out.

Killing Us Sweetly

Out of the 566 Google results for "Christopher Thrall" today, this was my highest-ranked story. I'm such an activist.

Killing us sweetly
By CHRISTOPHER THRALL

As long as aspartame kills fewer than 300 people per year in the United States, the American Food and Drug Administration will continue to consider it “safe.”

This, despite an increase in fibromyalgia, lupus, brain tumours and cancer in heavy users of the product since its approval in 1983. This, despite scientific shenanigans in GD Searle research labs during their efforts to get aspartame approved. This, despite a damning report from the US Center for Disease Control and political maneuverings that forced the FDA to approve aspartame over the objections of its own scientists. In her first film, Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World, Cori Brackett’s personal quest for the facts behind her own medical condition became a scathing indictment of the institutions meant to protect us from harm.

In 2001, Brackett was a health-conscious young video and film producer with a taste for six to 10 cans of diet soda per day. “I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in February of 2002,” she says from her production company office in Arizona. “My diagnosis really helped restructure and refocus my life. I found that I had been planning so much for the future that I wasn’t really living in the now.”

When Brackett’s condition started to improve after cutting out the diet pop, her husband began researching a long-circulated urban legend regarding aspartame’s toxicity. What he found sent them on a 7,000-mile journey across the country, conducting interviews with medical specialists and fellow sufferers. “We financed the project ourselves,” she confides. “We’re not big media moguls, but we were driven to do this film.” She felt that the story behind this all-pervasive artificial sweetener needed to be told.

With Sweet Misery, which is being screened at this year’s North of Nowhere Expo, Brackett exposes aspartame as a toxic compound that affects protein synthesis and synapse function in the brain. While some people may experience immediate reactions including headaches and dizziness, others suffer from the slow accumulation of toxins in their bodies. She delves into the three components of aspartame: aspartic acid, phenylalanine and methyl ester. One is an excitotoxin that leaves holes in the brains of lab mice; one is an amino acid that affects serotonin levels to produce mood swings or seizures; and the last breaks down into formaldehyde, which is a poison the body is unable to eliminate. “Since aspartame is considered a food additive rather than a drug,” states one of her medical sources in a level voice, “any dangerous side effects do not have to be reported to the FDA.”

Brackett found that aspartame experiments in the 1970s resulted in death or grand mal seizures in monkeys and a significantly higher occurrence of brain tumours in mice. GD Searle, the company seeking FDA approval for aspartame, suppressed or manipulated any unfavourable results. In response, the FDA attempted to indict GD Searle for fraud in 1977. In one of the most politically charged conversations of the film, Brackett learns from lawyer Jim Turner that Searle’s new president was none other than current US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. “He moved ahead with the goal on legal and political grounds,” Turner recalls, “not scientific or factual. He put all of his resources into accomplishing the goal at hand.”

According to the film, the Grand Jury prosecuting attorney and his assistant were hired by Searle’s legal firm and the statute of limitations ran out on the case, but the FDA still refused to approve aspartame. In 1981, on the day after his inauguration, Ronald Reagan suspended the FDA commissioner’s authority, and the newly appointed commissioner overruled the Public Board of Inquiry’s demand for further research and approved aspartame for use in dry food. Two years later, he approved this additive for use in carbonated beverages and immediately resigned to become a $1000-a-day consultant for GD Searle. A backroom deal in Great Britain led to its approval there without testing, and the chemical has since been approved in over 90 other countries. Health Canada, which approved its use in 1981, disputes each point of the “aspartame toxicity hoax.”

Brackett keeps Sweet Misery moving from medical experts to personal stories while telling her terrifying story. She speaks to a woman jailed for killing her husband by methanol poisoning and suggests that the aspartame in diet drinks could have been the culprit. People across the United States tell the director stories of their ruined health and careers. When they stopped their aspartame intake, their conditions improved, but their doctors were unwilling to identify the additive as the cause. Brackett also speaks to the organizer of Mission Possible, a non-profit organization that supports and lobbies for people affected of aspartame poisoning.

“A lot of names came up in my research,” Brackett says, “but Betty Francini of Mission Possible was my best resource for victims of aspartame. She does good work.” In her conversation with Francini, the term “coverup” is never spoken, but never far away. Brackett must have been prepared to be lambasted by Searle or the FDA in the courts or the media.

“We haven’t heard a thing from them,” she says with a laugh. Otherwise, the film has seen overwhelmingly positive response. “We have opened a lot of eyes about the subject,” Brackett says with a note of pride, “and we’ve helped a lot of people identify the symptoms they have experienced.” Sweet Misery has relied on word-of-mouth promotion through private viewings in living rooms around the world. Since starting her project, Brackett has noticed more people becoming aware of the aspartame issue. “There was a recent story published in London’s The Ecologist,” she says, “and we have shipped copies of the film to people in Nigeria, Israel, France and all over Canada.”

In the end, Brackett is optimistic about the future of her film, as she has just signed with indie distributor Cinema Libre for wider distribution. The aspartame issue is receiving more attention as well: a recent Italian study reaffirms its link to cancer in mice, a $350 million class action lawsuit has been filed in San Francisco and New Mexico is considering a state-wide ban on the over 6,000 consumer products that contain aspartame. Even Brackett’s own future has taken a turn for the better. She is now almost fully recovered, has published a collection of poetry about her experience with multiple sclerosis and the follow-up to Sweet Misery, titled Sweet Remedy, is in post-production. However, she knows there is still a long way to go.

As long as aspartame kills fewer than 300 people per year, there is no clear resolution in sight. The number of symptoms associated with aspartame poisoning, the slow spread of information about its risks and the economic power of the additive industry make the challenge Sisyphean. At best, Brackett hopes for clearly labeled products that list both ingredients and potential side effects so that consumers can make informed decisions. “I think we have to take back control of our health care, our bodies and our lives,” she says wistfully. “We have surrendered too much to the government already.”

Let the Bodies Hit the Floor - Update

Well, I think I did some pop culture osmosis to catch this line from a Drowning Pool song. (Mainly because I don't think the genteel tune is one that I would have allowed to continue without being physically restrained in some way...)

However, I did find an abso-friggin-lutely hilarious video for the song. Faith healers make me smile.

Keepin' busy

Well, one project is in the hopper, I am cranking through those astrological blurbs and trying to keep on top of Vue work. You know what I need? Another daily writing gig! Check out Edmonton's CityGuide for everything that is fantabulous in this town.

We are planning something pretty special, though. Leonard Cohen announced his first tour in 15 years, and the bride and I are going to try to make a five-year-anniversary trip of it. So far, there are only dates announced in eastern Canada so we'll try to make the Montreal show, or perhaps one around Toronto. If you have tickets that you feel like donating to a romantic cause - in exchange for a rhapsodic elegy on this website, even - let me know!

We intend to let the children spend some quality time with her parents while we're away, which will be a bit more liberating - as much as I adore them, they definitely cramp our style when we have to stay with them in a hotel room from 6 pm to 6 am, y'know?

Tonight, more astrology. Tomorrow, more astrology. Friday night, more astrology - possibly while sitting at Bohemia Cyber Cafe. Swing by to say hi.

Best Restaurant in Edmonton

So I figured I would split up a day's posts with one review, one update. That way, my legions of fans can spend their time on what they wanted to most. Let me know if it rocks your socks off, eh?

As a restaurant reviewer, I get asked all the time for the best restaurant in the city. This totally depends on price, cuisine and "luck o' the draw" in terms of cook and server, but I have one restaurant we go to for our anniversary. I hope that tells you everything you need to know.

Seeking Culina pastures
By CHRISTOPHER THRALL

Dinner without my wife? Ridiculous! Having been married only 14 months, wherever we go, we go together. But she was at her mother’s, and so I asked a friend to join me at Culina, if for no other reason than I wanted a second opinion and another meal to sample. The fact that I would be dining in one of Edmonton’s most romantic spots with a beautiful Japanese writer was completely lost on me—I swear!

Despite its enviable location, the restaurant felt intimately hidden, a secret shared between lovers. Tabletop flames flickered through frosted glass windows, half-lighting an empty patio on a cool October evening. First impressions were sensual and sensational: warm chocolate and cream tones enveloped the tables as soft jazz drifted across the room.

Since both of us had skipped lunch, we needed an appetizer right away. However, we forgot entirely about selection as we lost ourselves in description: the menu, clipboard-mounted to accommodate a rotating wine list, read like tiny poems about exquisite dining experiences. Our server returned to perform the specials, her gestures and words crafting culinary objets d’art in our appetites. I wanted it all. We gave our drink orders and huddled again over the menus.

By the time our drinks arrived—rich cappuccino ($3) for me, refreshing lingonberry soda ($2) for her and water in a chilled white wine bottle (nice touch) for us both—we had remembered our hunger. We requested the calamari in sweet coconut-curry sauce ($9) to start, and for the main course, my guest took the bison meatloaf special ($14) our server had described so well. For me, would it be the exotic goatcheese and channa dal baked in phyllo, or the lamb sausage on spinach leaves with chickpeas, asiago and roast garlic? I was told the chef has a deft touch with meats and I’m a diehard carnivore, so I went with the lamb ($15).

As I watched the restaurant fill up, my companion told me about her last experience at Culina—a Saturday brunch of bacon and eggs on the grandest scale. She’s loved this place ever since, and her description of a Sunday night three-course dinner for an incredible $20 made me a convert. We were just about through our Culina discussion when the appetizer arrived. I’d never had unbreaded calamari before: tender but not chewy in a fresh, spicy chutney, it was fantastic. The dish was also about twice the size I would have expected for "cuisine," so we were well satisfied.

Deep into a chat about her enchanting new boyfriend, we fell silent when our entrées arrived. They deserved fanfare. Size, presentation and aroma were all off the charts. Nestled beside meatloaf swimming in a sea of gravy, her mashed potatoes peeked out from under melted cheese. Two lengths of cobbed corn stood guard over her plate. My dinner, meanwhile, was a symphony of colour: a bed of fresh spinach was strewn with crisp chickpeas and gilded with a light garlic sauce. The lamb sausage was tender and savoury, but I would have traded my magnificent meal for half her bison. Both heavier and with a stronger flavour than the beef I’m accustomed to, her meatloaf put the cattle industry to shame.

We had wrapped up a discussion about her upcoming public reading by the time plates were cleared and dessert broached. Our minds snapped back to an eloquent description of the overbaked pumpkin cheesecake ($5), but my friend claimed it first. It turns out that "overbaked" means light, fluffy and delicious—not at all the kind of dense confection I tend to avoid.

Thrown, I was reaching for the menu when our server stopped me with a suggestion I couldn’t refuse: cambazola toasts dulce de leche ($5). Caramelized cream and sugar are drizzled over toasted French bread and thick slabs of a mild blue cheese are melted on top for a treat that’s simultaneously crispy, salty and sweet. A $5 pot of the Queen’s Jubilee black tea with loose flowers, herbs and grasses settled our fantastic meals.

We tottered out of Culina exquisitely satisfied and aware of just how dangerous a place it is. As friends, we had spent nearly three pleasant hours over dinner. If this had been a date, who knows what could have happened? Just don’t tell my wife.

My posts are too long

I'll fix it - I promise.

SPOON!

Let the Bodies Hit the Floor

I've been muttering that line, over and over, lately. I don't remember hearing it, but it sounds like something rap-oriented. It would sound pretty killer laid over a baseline.

Then I started spinning it the way that Clinton and I used to do on the long drives back and forth from Beaumont to Edmonton: we used to rework advertising lines into amusing one-offs. Imagine these lines laid over the same beats...
"Two times two equals four"
"Washing dishes is a chore"
"The god of thunder's name is Thor"
Hm. I think it loses something in text form.

Anyway - good news! I got the nod as one of the first cast members of that humor site, chompchompdead.com (it's the experience of being consumed by a shark). I sent in an "Open Letter to Vancouver", asking the city to keep all the people it tempts away from prairie cities like Edmonton. (We don't want them back.) I also fired in that "Choose Your Own Adventure" restaurant review I did for the Dish & Runaway Spoon.

It should be fun! The idea is that readers vote on the best pieces of the week, and the lowest-rated contributor is chucked into the "Chum Bucket" area. From that Chum Bucket, the highest-rated contributor gets promoted to the primary cast. Sort of like if SNL had a Second City crew next door, and they would swap lowest-ranked SNLer with highest-ranked SCer.

Wish me luck - come by the site, vote for me and get some chuckles at the same time!

Peace.

For a shorter read today, I raided my (slim) stash of Vuepoint articles. I wrote this one when I heard that the provincial government lowered the minimum age for fast food workers to 12. Yeah, that's right. Twelve.

VuePoint
By CHRISTOPHER THRALL

Well, that fury died down pretty quickly. But I suppose it’s hard to maintain an appropriate level of outrage during Alberta’s too-short summer season, what with all the festivaling, Fringing and camping to do. Which is precisely why our noble provincial government chose this time of year to announce a blanket exception to our child labour laws.

Unable to find people who are willing to work in abysmal conditions for the lowest possible legal wage, any other industry would have to improve in order to attract employees or fall to Darwinian capitalism. Instead, a little over a month ago the restaurant industry lobbied the government for a return to Dickens, and the elected stewards of our public welfare rolled over and dropped the hiring age to 12, giving the industry access to a whole new pool of exploitable kids.

Everyone can relate a horror story of their first job: long, unpaid hours or dipshit managers two years your senior. At the time, few of us felt able to stand up for ourselves or our rights. If children start working at an even younger age, how will they be able to defend themselves? When I was 12, I was in Grade Six. I read, played kick the can and had a totally unfair eight o’clock curfew. I wasn’t standing around in a polyester uniform.

As a completely hypothetical situation, imagine that a restaurant or popular nightclub changes management. They fire all of their employees and tell everyone to reapply for their former jobs. Then, they re-hire only the people they want to keep. Even an adult would be hard pressed to say, “This isn’t right!” But what can a 12 year-old child do?

A child would not know to demand compensation or report their employer. Preteens are not emotionally mature enough to stand up to these gross violations, let alone sexual harassment by older staff or denial of required rest breaks. Of course, there is also the issue of preserving what little childhood preteens have left.

We developed child labour laws for a reason. They were not intended to be bent or modified just to accommodate an industry’s profit margin. Why are we shoveling children into these greedy corporate maws so the industry can stagger a little farther before it collapses under the weight of its own labour practices? Do we legalize 10-year-olds next time?

We can hit the festivals and express our outrage at the same time. Don’t let them get away with this one.

Let's Hear It For The (Robot) Girl!

If I don't keep up the posting pace, I'll lose the drive to keep up the blog. And neither of us want that - how else will I dazzle you with my witty dialogue? How else will I land a lucrative writer/showrunner spot on a remake of Small Wonder? (V.I.C.I. was hot.)

You know, it's not a bad idea. I think it could balance the Sarah Connor Chronicles with something more pure, more wholesome, FAR less expensive and more likely to be picked up by all sorts of networks, spun out into movie, game and merchandise tie-ins, and continue on into syndication for generations to come!

Sorry - got a little excited there. But anyway - call me. My people and your people can do lunch, as long as my people get to take home the leftovers.

Peace.

This one I wrote after watching a documentary film that Vue Weekly wanted reviewed for the Anarchist Book Fair. I enjoyed the documentary and connected with the director. He called me up to say that he loved the story - it's still on the movie's website and I've seen it discussed on a couple of discussion boards. I rock.

Beads of sweatshops
By CHRISTOPHER THRALL

A matronly woman dressed like a Vegas showgirl leers suggestively into the camera. Years of celebration are deeply etched into the painted features beneath her dyed red hair. “You’ll sell your soul at Mardi Gras for a strand of beads,” she laughs, fingering the plastic finery draped around her neck. This is the final scene of David Redmon’s documentary Mardi Gras: Made in China, screening at the Anarchist Book Fair this Friday (March 25), and its impact is staggering.

This exquisite final line is the culmination of an exposé of the migrant Chinese labourers who assemble the trinkets for sale at New Orleans’ annual bacchanal. Mostly women under 20 who earn up to $1.20 (U.S.) a day, the workers’ stories contrast sharply with those of the factory owner who makes $2 million per year, the importer who makes up to $25 million per year and the young Americans who couldn’t care less where their celebration’s accessories come from. Mardi Gras: Made in China forces viewers to reconsider a renegade capitalist system that seeks the lowest price regardless of human cost.

The result of five years’ work for David Redmon, the documentary, which was an official selection at this year’s Sundance Festival, evolved from subjects he explored in his Masters and Ph.D. dissertations. Redmon bought his first video camera four weeks before his first visit to the Tai Kuen Bead Factory in Fuzhou, China; he had no idea what to expect when he arrived. Through his interviews, Redmon realized that he had touched upon a story that needed telling, so he returned a few months after being kicked out of the country for filming without a license. His second visit expanded on the personal stories of the factory workers and included a labourer’s visit home for the Chinese New Year celebration, as well as frank discussions with the factory owner, Roger Wong.

“That Roger was quite a character,” says Redmon, his youthful voice echoing with laughter over the phone. “I think he assumed I was there to make a promotional video about his factory that I would show to American businesses.” The preconception is a relief: otherwise, Wong’s gleeful focus on strict discipline, drastic punishment and fines for the slightest infraction paint him as an absurd ogre. Wong is proud of his working conditions and high production targets, even boasting that he uses 95 per cent female labour because they are easier to control. In fact, Wong is so positive and affable that the viewer ends up wondering if the factory could possibly be as bad as the workers claim. And they have a lot to claim.

Running 24 hours a day, many of the machines lack even the simplest safety features. Shifts are a minimum of 12 hours (and usually average 15 or 16). The factory produces nearly 8,000 pounds of beads every day, and if a worker doesn’t meet her quota, her pay is cut. She is fined for talking during work hours and docked a month’s pay for having a male visitor in the 20-by-24-foot dorm room she shares with nine other women. Workers can only leave the barbed-wire-enclosed compound on Sundays, and only if they are not required to work.

Redmon says that it took a while to get the workers to open up to him. “I could only interview people on their days off,” he reveals, “and we would have to go to an isolated area of the compound.” Slowly, after days of talking through interpreters, the women started to reveal the real conditions at the factory. Each one extracted a promise from Redmon, however: “They were terrified. They said that Roger [Wong] had warned them I was coming and not to say anything bad. Each one begged me not to show the footage to Roger, not to show anyone until after they had left the factory.”

During the interviews, Redmon talks to a dispirited 18-year-old woman with no plans for her future besides helping her younger brother go to school; a 14-year-old girl who never meets her quota is paid less than $1 a day to paint ceramic Mardi Gras masks that sell for up to $20 each on the streets of New Orleans. Somewhat unexpectedly, the documentary shows the workers coping. Dancing together, playing cards and learning English in the few hours they have to themselves, the workers demonstrate a stunning ability to adjust to conditions that were eliminated from Western society so long ago. While yearning for their families, the girls remember home life as boring and oppressive. At the factory, they are able to relieve their parents of a financial burden and even send money home while gaining experiences and freedom they never would have enjoyed otherwise.

The film highlights a jagged contrast between the Chinese factory workers and the partiers at Mardi Gras. The products of their bone-wearying labour are bought 12 strands for a dollar or caught from one of the passing floats, then bartered for flashes of tit-flesh or deep kisses from inebriated women. The tradition started in 1978, and on the streets of New Orleans, there are an estimated 1,000 exposures every three minutes. “It makes me horny,” claims one reveler. Her friend agrees: “Yeah—all that attention is on you!”

The funniest part of the documentary, though the comedy remains black, comes when the factory workers are shown pictures of street scenes from Mardi Gras. “You mean people expose themselves for the beads we make?” one girl asks, almost collapsing with laughter. “They must love them very much.” Another factory worker is more pensive. “On us these beads are very ugly,” she whispers, “but on these Americans, they look very beautiful.” The difference is seen as cultural: Chinese girls would be ashamed to show their bodies in such a way, especially in exchange for such cheap plastic beads.

Back on the streets of New Orleans, the last thing anybody wants to hear about is the medieval conditions of the beads’ origins. During the carnival, Redmon attracted attention by projecting interviews with the workers onto the walls of the French Quarter. “Don’t bring my conscience into this!” pleaded a partier from New York as he walked away to barter his beads. “Ten cents an hour, for them, is a lot of money,” said one MBA grad from the University of Florida, alleviating his guilt. (The mean income in Fuzhou actually falls around 60 cents an hour for an eight-hour day.) The brief twinges of conscience Redmon presents fade quickly, however, and not a single interviewee gave up their beads.

According to Redmon, the original intent for the film was to convey globalization from the perspective of the invisible workers. “At the time I began the project, documentaries on globalization only showed talking heads who said how good it was,” Redmon explains. “I wanted to show and tell the other story.” He feels that he has met this goal, but the results have far surpassed anything he had ever dreamed.

“About two years ago,” Redmon remembers, “I was working, paying for everything, showing rough cuts of the film to anybody who would watch. Anything I made went into translating more of the interviews. I sold a copy for $20 to a couple who couldn’t make it to that night’s screening. They watched it, came to the screening anyway, and three days later sent me $5,000 to finish the project!” Redmon sent his tape to the Sundance Festival two months later, never expecting his would be one of the 16 documentaries selected from the United States. Since then, he has been working on putting together a theatrical release of the film while responding to the unprecedented attention his directorial debut is receiving.

Redmon is enthusiastic about his unexpected success and is eager to discuss his next project. “I’m looking at the globalized concept of intimacy as it’s portrayed in the Victoria’s Secret marketing machine,” he explains. “Behind that, I’m exploring intimacy from the perspective of the Mexican labourers who actually sew the lingerie.” Redmon’s camera will continue to seek those who sell their souls for a strand of beads or a scrap of silk, the global capitalists who collect the fees and the invisible workers who pay the price.