Shulgan.com

Free Martin Goodman

In conjunction with this essay I wrote for the Toronto section of the Globe and Mail, I cut together a short film about snow-clearing on the Martin Goodman trail. The film is about the runners, cyclists and pedestrians who use the lakeshore trail in the winter, and the way this season's snow-clearing has changed their lives. Thanks to everyone who participated. Take a look and let me know what you think!

Canadian Death Race

Begin forwarded message:

From: Mark S
Date: January 23, 2009 9:13:01 AM EST (CA)
To: Ben Kaplan, Myles M
Cc: Chris Shulgan
Subject: RE: DR2009

C’mon, now.  Let me just say a couple of things about the death race.  First, it is awesome.  Second, it is hard.  I don’t mean to sound lame but I think the second time was harder than the first, I was shaking before beginning my leg of the race because I knew what to expect.  The fear of the known was greater than the unknown.  When I reached the summit of Grande Mt. in shorts and a long sleeve shirt in 0 degree weather at the beginning of August and began slushing through snow with freezing rain the size of gumballs pelting my face (hands too cold to access my gels for a little oomph) I couldn’t stop asking myself why I was doing this for a second time.  Sometime running long distances is more about the little goals than the ultimate, like making it to that bend in the road 100 metres ahead and then the boulder 50 metres beyond that…if marathons are a test then this is the final exam.  In my final 100 metres, which has the slope of your basement floor, I was trying to figure out how I was going to pull myself across the finish line because I really thought I was going to collapse and ultimately I did but fortunately had made it past the finish line.  Did I mention that Johnny K saw a family of bears on his leg?

The thing about death race is that it’s not just the weekend you need to commit to, it’s really months of hard work and two months of ridiculously time-consuming punishment.  A few words of advice, if you’re going to do it you need to commit or it’s just not worth doing it.  Committing means marathon-style training with a day of hills and a day of yassos in your routine.  I’ll be happy to coach you guys from a distance but this year a combination of factors is going to keep me from doing it.  It sounds like you’re assembling a team with the right amount of brawn, stupidity and dedication to make this a success but unfortunately I’ll have to catch you in another year.

On 1/22/09 3:41 PM, "Christopher Shulgan" wrote:

Boys...

A couple notes / updates / thoughts on DR 2009

Charitable component
--As Johnny K suggested, incorporating a public service element and using this as an opportunity to fight colon cancer will make everyone feel nice about themselves. So far as I am concerned, colon cancer it is. Start the cleansing! Er, I mean training.

Actual peeps
--You will notice from the email CC: fields a couple of new names up there. Ben Kaplan is a features writer for Toronto's National Post newspaper and Myles M. is a photo editor for a mag up here and both are down to do the race as well as just generally being stellar individuals. Just stellar. This means we have more than enough people to fill one team and probably can do two teams. Witness the following arithmetic:

Currently committed to doing the race are the following names: Brad, Johnny K, Chris Shulgan, Mark H., Ben Kaplan and Myles.

Maybes: Mark S. Mike D., Lucy, Rich

Let's all work on making those maybes into affirmatives. I have called Richie a couple of times over the last couple of days. He may be hibernating. Any word from Lucy? She sounds amazing.

So far as my brother goes I have committed to giving him Indian wrist burns until he agrees to run. He is too good a runner not to have aboard the team.

Brad I am hereby assigning you to do the same thing to Mike D.

That makes the biggest wild card Rich. Please devote some time to thinking about whether anyone knows a possible 10th runner if Richie is not able to run this year because of his stress fracture injury.

Basically, at some point we will have to figure out whether we have 10 firmly committed, then determine how to divvy up teams (US v. Canada?), (Bankers v. Decent People?), (Vets v. First-Timers?). If we do have two separate teams then I'll try to work out a way to secure additional accommodation.

Oh, one more thing: Johnny K already has booked his flights -- his info is below, he's flying in on Thursday, July 30, and then flying out on Sunday, Aug. 2. Johnny also has a van booked. Let's all try to book flights that get us in at similar times.

To sum up, your homework is:
--work on Mark S. Mike D., Lucy and Rich to commit to the race
--failing any of above, find additional people to have two full teams committed
--think about creative ways to raise money for our trip and the fight against colon cancer
--train, train, train

In other words, things are progressing, this will be mind-blowing fun, I'm excited.

Best,
Chris

A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows

Photo by afagen

Important things afoot today, and you can feel it. Never before have so many pundits and political commentators begun columns like this one with the words "never before." I mean, I'm excited too. But did you see the lead story in this morning's NY Times?

"More than any president since he was an infant, Mr. Obama has taken a place in society that extends beyond political leadership. He is as much symbol as substance, an icon for the young and a sign of deliverance for an older generation that never believed a man with his skin color would ascend those steps to vow to preserve, protect and defend a Constitution that originally counted a black man as three-fifths of a person. He is a celebrity president in a celebrity culture, cooed over for his shirtless physique on the beach and splashed on the cover of every magazine from Foreign Policy to People. What his political opponents sought to portray in the campaign as arrogance is now presented by his aides as comfort with power and the responsibilities that go along with it."

Expectations like the kind the above rhetoric illustrates cannot be fulfilled. They just can't. Obama-mania today resembles the sort of consumer fads that gripped North America over, say, the Rubik's Cube or the Hammer dance. How long before the inevitable backlash?

I hope long enough to erase the effects of his predecessor, who haunts us still. Two vestiges of Bush 43 made it to front pages in recent days: The fact that Canadian border services turned back at the border the founder of the Weather Underground, William Ayers, who was due to speak at the University of Toronto Monday night. And the revelation that Omar Khadr placed Maher Arar at an al-Qaeda safehouse in Afghanistan.

Both events deserve a giant give-me-a-break. Khadr's placing Arar at the safehouse is clearly an accusation made under the influence of torture, and has as much credibility as any other accusation made during torture. Accusations like Khadr's are the reason torture has a stigma as an interrogation technique: It doesn't work. And the fact that Ayers was turned back at the border is reflective of the grim us-versus-them human-rights-be-damned militancy that trickled down from the White House and evidently pervaded even the ranks of Canada's border services.

Hopefully today marks the end of such tactics. Hopefully. Cripes, I hope Obama doesn't blow it.

Minus 30

The Eight-Year Zimbardo Experiment

Late last night I finished the Jane Mayer book, The Dark Side, which was chilling and scary and alarming. Basically the book splices together the cruelties propagated by the Bush administration in the name of the fight against global terrorism. Most of it we already know -- Arar, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo. But once it all comes at you in chronological order, you begin to understand how the time since 9/11 has amounted to the Stanford prison experiment writ large. I mean, I knew it was wrong for the United States to suspend the Geneva Convention for "illegal combatants." Just like I knew there was something startling about America authorizing low-level prison officials to dictate when and where to use torture to extract information from prisoners. But Mayer's book underlined for me just how disturbing these things were.

Mayer depicts the war crimes of the Bush administration as a temporary turn away from American values; her subtitle refers to the war on terror turning into a "war on American ideals." But what's troubling is how frequently things like this turn up in American history. Mayer frequently goes back in her book to the Second World War and America's internment of Japanese-American civilians as another instance when zealous government workers abused human rights in an effort to safeguard national security. You don't have to go back that far, though. The Cold War featured human rights abuses from McCarthyism in the '50s on up to the Reagan White House's shenanigans in Latin America. What is it about the American character that leaves itself open to such excesses?

I don't think I have anything brilliant to say about this book other than to recommend it. Lessons I'll take away include the need never to put ends before means, as well as the perpetual need to  question, question, question. It also emphasizes why books are so important—books like the Dark Side, that is, long-form non-fiction narrative, continues to be the only cultural construct that is able to reframe attitudes toward recent history. To change society. As a book lover who has been wondering about the book's relevance recently, this latest read has for that reason created a bit of a paradox: It's a depressing read that has lifted my spirits.

How Much I Love Winter Running

Dude, did I ever mention how tough you have to be to run through the Canadian winter? Never mind football linebackers or MMA psychopaths, the toughest schmucks around are the ones pulling on running tights these days to get out there and eat some miles. It was minus 10 this morning! Also did I mention how badly I need new running stuff? My jacket is about nine years old. And so obviously orange that I'm like a giant pumpkin, no, the great pumpkin, as I'm slipping and crunching over the nastiness that covers sidewalks around here.

But a little cold weather won't stop me. No! Not me! Because this week I got all inspired and in a fit of enthusiasm signed up for March's 30k, Around The Bay ($65! Ouch!), and then started organizing a team for the Canadian Death Race. And also talking about which spring marathon I'm going to run. Probably Ottawa, or maybe something more glamorous in the States. Because this is the year I'm going to qualify for Boston. I said. Why did I say that again? It's the perpetual battle, one part of me forcing the lazier part of me outside despite the aforementioned pumpkin-esque appearance and the possibly more pertinent fact involving said exterior Nunavut-esque temperature. I'm not sure about this!

Resolutions: A Short Film

Rant about AMC Yonge and Dundas

An image from an earlier visit. 

Over the holidays I temporarily suspended my anti-mouse-movie ban and accompanied the rest of the family to The Tale of Despereaux. It was a bit of a debacle. The movie didn't really hold Myron's attention so about a third of the way into it he was crawling under his theatre seat and eating popcorn off the floor. We left shortly after that. The point of this post is my incredible hatred for the design of AMC Yonge and Dundas theatre. Every time I attend the place I hate it more, which is too bad because it's just down the streetcar line from our place. 

My biggest problem with it is the way the design puts the needs of the corporation before the needs of the customers / movie viewers. The place forces you to go up three escalators before you get to the cinema on the third floor. As you go up the escalators you pass literally dozens of food court kiosks, movie advertisements and retailers. 

Wait a second, you say, doesn't it make more sense to make it as easy as possible to get to the movie theatre? Well, you would think. But at AMC Yonge and Dundas the corporation has realized that theatre goers are a captive audience. They've realized they can maximize the amount of advertisements they expose the theatre goers to by stretching out the trip to the ultimate destination, the actual movie theatre. A similar philosophy dictates the design of another place I despise, Ikea. I can avoid going to Ikea. I can't avoid going to AMC Yonge and Dundas—sometimes, that's the only place showing the movie I want to see. They place the needs of the corporation before the needs of their customers! And so I stand on the escalators, stewing and tossed into a foul mood before what should be a special occasion, going to see a movie.

Oh, another thing I don't like about AMC Yonge and Dundas is their butter dispensers. When you order popcorn they hand it to you and then you have to put the butter on the popcorn yourself—you bring it over to this station at the side of the concession stand and have to press a button to squirt out the butter. WHICH IS PROFOUNDLY UNHYGIENIC! It's disgusting, actually. You press a button touched by thousands of other people's fingers and then you presumably use the same finger to eat your popcorn. Gross! 

A feeling of cautious optimism

Over the holidays I've been reading The Dark Side, the Jane Mayer history of the Bush administration's war on terror. After a dense beginning it turns into a remarkable read, bringing everything from Maher Arar to Abu Ghraib into a narrative that effectively underscores the ends-justifies-means ruthlessness of Dick Cheney and the other presidential advisers. 

It also underscores how different Obama is bound to be. The president-elect moved from Chicago to Washington this past weekend. His family left a day before him, and in a New York Times story, Obama described getting choked up before he left his Chicago home for the last time before the move. "Malia's friend had dropped off an album of the two of them together. They've been friends since preschool, and I just looked through the pages. The house was empty, and it was a little tough. It got me." 

Can you imagine Bush making a similar admission? This new president seems so much more human than the last one, and I think that helps to explain the mood of cautious optimism that marks everyone's post-holiday return to work. Amid bad economic news and increasing troubles in the Mid-East, the world is poised for mid-January's inauguration—and a similar improvement in affairs across the board. Geez, I hope he doesn't blow it.