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The guys at the Worldcon for this year came up with a bizarre idea. They wanted to crate up everything in my apartment, and recreate my environment at the con. I said no effing way! It would take weeks to pack and weeks to unpack. Things would be broken that couldn't be fixed, and things might be lost or stolen that were irreplaceable. I suggested instead we photograph my apartment, and recreate it with poster sized print-outs of the photos. A friend of mine was recruited to take the digital photos and stitch them together. Earlier today he send email containing photos of a rough model he made of the project.
So that's not me there, that's a seven inch McFarlane figure of Doug MacKenzie in the toque. (I don't wear a toque indoors. Or outdoors either. I don't want to look like some damn Cunuck!)
My floor isn't wood either. That's the full size floor the model sits on. But everything else is weirdly real -- it kind of creeps me out. There are my Mother's houseplants, that I've been watering for 17 years, the little toy spaceships on top of my computer monitor, the stuffed Blossum hanging on a nail, a couple of pieces of art visible on the wall, and an unfamilair electro-plasmic glass sphere above my head... no... wait... that's not in the model. That's just some kind of kipple in the room outside the model.
If all goes well, the files will be printed out in large sections, and assembled similar to this in an enclosure that Worldcon members will be able to walk into. Perhaps there will be a couple of glass cases as well, with a few selected items I think I can trust moving.
So that's not me there, that's a seven inch McFarlane figure of Doug MacKenzie in the toque. (I don't wear a toque indoors. Or outdoors either. I don't want to look like some damn Cunuck!)
My floor isn't wood either. That's the full size floor the model sits on. But everything else is weirdly real -- it kind of creeps me out. There are my Mother's houseplants, that I've been watering for 17 years, the little toy spaceships on top of my computer monitor, the stuffed Blossum hanging on a nail, a couple of pieces of art visible on the wall, and an unfamilair electro-plasmic glass sphere above my head... no... wait... that's not in the model. That's just some kind of kipple in the room outside the model.
If all goes well, the files will be printed out in large sections, and assembled similar to this in an enclosure that Worldcon members will be able to walk into. Perhaps there will be a couple of glass cases as well, with a few selected items I think I can trust moving.
Category All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 645 x 484px
File Size 99.9 kB
It's a plastic figure made by McFarlane Toys. Back in the early 80's there was a Canadian made TV show called SCTV. It was about a seedy TV station, and made fun of the sort of people who make TV, the sort of shows, the advertizing, and everything else. It was a cult hit in its day, and in my opinion much funnier than Saturday Night Live.
Most of the actors were also Canadian, and in fact from my own city, Toronto. Most shots on location during the year years were also in Toronto. I used to get a special laugh whenever I recognized a shopping mall or street location in my neighborhood.
The figure is either Bob or Doug McKenzie. Bob & Doug were actually Mike Myers (who played Austin Powers, later, and was the voice of Shrek), and Dave Thomas played two typical Canadian "hosers" during a public service segment called "The Great White North". It was supposed to be a parody of such segments, but it was funny on other levels too. For one thing, Canadian TV gets a subsidy from the government, but only if there's a certan percentage of Canadian content. So The Great White North *was* the mandatory Canadian content as well as a spoof of such things. And because such mandatory content is usually pointless, there was no content in TGWN. I don't think they ever had scripts. "Bob" and "Doug" would just film about twenty of their two minute segments in an afternoon, doing them off the top of their head in one take. Whether they were finished fooling around or not, the segment would come to an end and they'd be forced to finish all at once. The strange thing was that it was often hilarious. It was a sudden and unexpected hit.
The other joke about TGWN was that the McKenzie brothers were supposedly stereotyped Canadians. Most Americans, who rarely pay Canada much attention, suddenly believed this was what Canadians were actually like. But in fact, it was *our* stereotype of ourselves, and hadn't had the least grounding in realities since the 1950's. Bob & Doug were supposed to be the sort of uneducated low-life who lived in the suburbs or small towns, had no ethnic identity of any sort, and who's only future was to work in the back of a beer store, unloading trucks. In fact, unloading beer was as high as they aspried. It was the stuff of their dreams. Usually they were unemployable. These were the Canadians who told each other to "take off", and said "eh?" after every sentence. (Instead of the sensible American dialect, which was "huh?") They wore toques and boots indoors. Plaid lumberjack shirts were a lifestyle rather than a fashion. They were all named Bob, or Doug, or Gordon, or Norman. But they had all vanished from the urban environment long ago. I suppose a few remants of "hoser" culture could still be found in small towns up north, but in Toronto they had been ensnared by Neiman Marcus and lattes at Starbucks long ago.
That was the ultimate joke. Canadians were laughing at Americans laughing at Canadian stereotypes that were outmoded.
Most of the actors were also Canadian, and in fact from my own city, Toronto. Most shots on location during the year years were also in Toronto. I used to get a special laugh whenever I recognized a shopping mall or street location in my neighborhood.
The figure is either Bob or Doug McKenzie. Bob & Doug were actually Mike Myers (who played Austin Powers, later, and was the voice of Shrek), and Dave Thomas played two typical Canadian "hosers" during a public service segment called "The Great White North". It was supposed to be a parody of such segments, but it was funny on other levels too. For one thing, Canadian TV gets a subsidy from the government, but only if there's a certan percentage of Canadian content. So The Great White North *was* the mandatory Canadian content as well as a spoof of such things. And because such mandatory content is usually pointless, there was no content in TGWN. I don't think they ever had scripts. "Bob" and "Doug" would just film about twenty of their two minute segments in an afternoon, doing them off the top of their head in one take. Whether they were finished fooling around or not, the segment would come to an end and they'd be forced to finish all at once. The strange thing was that it was often hilarious. It was a sudden and unexpected hit.
The other joke about TGWN was that the McKenzie brothers were supposedly stereotyped Canadians. Most Americans, who rarely pay Canada much attention, suddenly believed this was what Canadians were actually like. But in fact, it was *our* stereotype of ourselves, and hadn't had the least grounding in realities since the 1950's. Bob & Doug were supposed to be the sort of uneducated low-life who lived in the suburbs or small towns, had no ethnic identity of any sort, and who's only future was to work in the back of a beer store, unloading trucks. In fact, unloading beer was as high as they aspried. It was the stuff of their dreams. Usually they were unemployable. These were the Canadians who told each other to "take off", and said "eh?" after every sentence. (Instead of the sensible American dialect, which was "huh?") They wore toques and boots indoors. Plaid lumberjack shirts were a lifestyle rather than a fashion. They were all named Bob, or Doug, or Gordon, or Norman. But they had all vanished from the urban environment long ago. I suppose a few remants of "hoser" culture could still be found in small towns up north, but in Toronto they had been ensnared by Neiman Marcus and lattes at Starbucks long ago.
That was the ultimate joke. Canadians were laughing at Americans laughing at Canadian stereotypes that were outmoded.
The figure looks like "Doug" (i.e., Dave Thomas), though at first I thought it looked like Lee Majors (a/k/a Steve Austin, a/k/a The Six Million Dollar Man).
By contrast, the Minnesota stereotypes you see in the movie Fargo may be a little exaggerated, but they are nonetheless disturbingly accurate, don'cha know.
By contrast, the Minnesota stereotypes you see in the movie Fargo may be a little exaggerated, but they are nonetheless disturbingly accurate, don'cha know.
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