Category Archives: Lifestyle (MC Archive)

Lifestyle-related columns that appeared on Jason Menard’s previous Web site, Menard Communications.

DVD Double-Dipping Plays on Fans’ Folly

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By Jason Menard

The next time you have a party, you may want to cross those Hollywood movie moguls off of your invite list – they’re proving to be notorious double-dippers.

Earlier this week Francis Ford Coppola released Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier, calling it the definitive presentation of his legendary film. Well, definitive until the next opportunity to dip into fans’ pockets presents itself.

Looking over at my DVD collection I find my copy of Apocalypse Now: Redux, which in itself was – at the time – the definitive rendering of the film. You know, the movie the way the director intended it to be, before all those nasty Imperialistic Forces like society, studios, and financiers got in the way of Coppola’s vision.

So, in the end, the more committed fans of the film could find three versions of one film staring back at them from their shelves. That’s three times one person has shelled out for the same movie.

At least Coppola’s first and second releases were markedly different in presentation. And this third one combines both presentations, so for those still slowly replacing their old VHS tapes (or, shudder, BETA), this isn’t a bad release to start off with. But increasingly film studios are re-releasing films, with minor tweaks or extra additions, just because they can – and a gullible public will continue to buy their films.

No genre is immune from this cash grab. Good films and schlock alike will exist in multiple versions. Didn’t buy the 1996 release of Swingers? Fret not because you can still get the 2003 Collector’s Series edition. Liked Clerks? Well, you can pick up the original release of the film on DVD, but the true fan knows they’ve also got to have Clerk X – the 10 th anniversary edition. Hell, George Lucas has developed a cottage industry in releasing and re-releasing versions of the original Star Wars trilogy? And if the gazillion versions out there weren’t enough, there’s another one on the way, just in time for Christmas!

Remember The Lord of the Rings trilogy? Remember how fans breathless with anticipation could purchase an impressive DVD reproduction of the film – all the while knowing that a more robust version would be released the following November! And that doesn’t even count the special boxed versions with your collectable Gollum figurine.

Even Jennifer Garner’s star turn in 13 Going on 30, released on DVD in 2004 received a make-over with the release of the Fun ‘n’ Flirty edition less than two years later!!!! I mean, c’mon. It was a cute film and all, but was anyone’s life seriously lacking from the omission of the “pick the right 80’s outfit” or Rick Springfield’s Jessie’s Girl video?

While the movie studios will altruistically claim that they’re simply giving the fans what they want, and providing them with a greater film experience, the truth of the matter is that these re-releases and re-re-releases simply show the level of contempt that studios have for their viewing audience. They know that people, for whatever reason, get emotionally involved in these films, and by offering more film-centric experiences they’re able to tug at the fans’ heartstrings hard enough to make that wallet fly open.

The great fear was that our DVDs, like VHS and film reels before them, would become obsolete via the advent of the next great technology. The truth is that our DVDs will be made obsolete by the advent of the next great version of the film.

Film is not the only medium that is guilty of turning to its loyal fan base for a cash grab. Some video game producers do this annually! One of the most popular video game franchises, the Madden football series, enjoys the financial windfall of annual revisions. And while in the past some revisions have only been minor tweaks to game play, that hasn’t prevented the game developer from charging full price for essentially the same game, only with a new cover and another year added to the title.

Of course, video games have also used the power of re-releases for good. Greatest Hits designations involve a reissuing of popular games, at a much lower price, thereby increasing the penetration to a less-affluent segment of the game-buying public. Unfortunately, there is no correlating drop-off in price for films entering their second edition.

It’s only the most avid film buff that will even benefit from many of the additions that re-released versions include. I own a substantial number of DVDs and I can count on one hand those on which I’ve actually explored the special features. I’ve yet to watch a film with the director’s or the actor’s commentary overlapping. In fact, I quite enjoy the film just as it is, thank you very much.

And perhaps that attitude will be my salvation. As I look at my collection, I can say that there are no duplicates of films. Although there may be those bearing the Special Edition, Collectors Edition, or even the Awesome! Totally Awesome Edition (in the case of Fast Times at Ridgemont High), they were chosen because I liked the film and that’s the version I found – not for any desire to expand my experience through DVD-ROM games or exclusive interviews with the costume designer.

Films in themselves are an experience. We fans get attached to our favourite authors, directors, and production, but that doesn’t mean we have to be slaves to their every whim. And if movie companies really want to respect their fans and give them what they want, why not get it right the first time? Cram everything you have in the first release – don’t dole it out piecemeal, reserving the juicier bits for subsequent releases.

Of course, that would show that the movie studios respect their fans more than the mighty dollar – and as much as I love a good comedy, I’m not prepared to suspend my disbelief that much.

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved

The Average Person? Fishing for Information

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By Jason Menard

Every once in a while we realize we’re not as smart as we think we are. And while I’ve always believed myself to be diverse, well-read, and knowledgeable about a number of topics, when I’m ignorant of something I’m spectacularly bereft of information.

I’ve always felt an affinity to the Ramsay character from Robertson Davies’ Deptford Trilogy of books. Early on in his life, he dedicated himself to being a polymath – a person with an encyclopedic knowledge of a wide variety of topics. Myself, I find my interest easily piqued – and the advent of the Internet has made sating my thirst for knowledge even easier.

Yet, as broad of a spectrum of knowledge I believe I can cover, there are some areas in the old cranium that light just won’t penetrate. Last night my wife and I shone a flashlight into one of those areas and were overwhelmed by the cobwebs.

You see, yesterday we were trying to come up with names for our three new fish. Fortunately we didn’t have to come up with names for the other three new fish we had purchased during the day who made a spectacular dash for freedom through a well-coordinated dive and swim to the water system via our kitchen sink, but that’s another tragic story for another day.

My wife, my son, and my daughter like fish. I don’t. We had one male Betta (more coolly known as Japanese Fighting Fish) who passed away about a month ago after two years of bouncing back and forth in a bowl. Enough time had passed that we decided it was time to get another. But this time we went for three female Bettas mainly because they can live in the same bowl without ripping each other to shreds.

I say I don’t like fish, but that’s not entirely true. I just am supremely indifferent to them. To me they’re not pets in the same way my cat is. You can’t interact with a fish, you can’t have any sort of relationship with a fish – they’re just moving art. And, in celebration of their superlative uselessness, we’ve chosen to name our fish appropriately.

Our first fish, who didn’t last long due to the fact that he was sick the day we brought him home, was named Art. The second fish, the one that lasted two years, was also named Art. After all, the name made me laugh and it was only used for a couple of days. For differentiation sake, Art Mark II was a short form for Modern Art. We had determined that our new fish would be called Ren, for the Renaissance period, but that was before we went the female route.

No problem, my wife and I thought, we’ll just name them after famous female painters. Yeah. OK. You try it. If you come up with three then my hat is off to you. It was at this moment that all my thoughts of being a polymath came crashing down.

I started off strong with Emily. I mean, good solid Can-Con there. Then we decided to name the firery red fish after Frida Kahlo. And I’d like to say that choice was a result of my intense study of her genre and the life and influences of Diego Rivera, but it’s probably more true that my fondness for Salma Hayek has more to do with this knowledge than any artistic inclinations.

That was it. Two. Which is a problem when you have three fish to name. Right now it’s Emily, Frida, and Hey You! Not that the fish answer or even remember who I am after 10 seconds, but that’s beside the point. The principle of the matter is that I need a third name.

A search of the Internet was little help. My mind blanked as it was overwhelmed by a total lack of recognition for any of the names that appeared on any list I encountered. Not even the semblance of a hint of potential recognition. These are women who, I assume, are revered for their contribution to the arts world, and I could trip over them without having any inkling of who they are.

Recently I had the interesting experience of working with someone who reveled in her lack of knowledge. She was proud of her ignorance. Politics, sports, and other issues didn’t interest her. When interviewing she chose to actively avoid research, preferring to ask questions that “the people” would ask.

She describes herself as “the Everyperson.” I’m not so sure that’s what the Everyperson is. In her world, the Everyperson wouldn’t be disturbed by not knowing a third female artist – the Everyperson would move on to the next topic, uninterested in filling a gaping hole in their experience.

In fact, I’d like to think that people are more like me – interested in life and desirous of improving our knowledge base. We want to understand the world around us beyond the superficial, we want to feel attached to the events that shape our lives, and the only way we can do that is to get informed about them.

It’s not enough to sit back in the boat, fishing for information, and hoping it jumps onto your lap. To be successful you actively have to bait the hook, learn the right technique, and know the right places to find the fish.

After all, as the old Schoolhouse Rock cartoon proclaimed, knowledge is power. And every person I know is interested in that.

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved

Home for a Rest

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By Jason Menard

The Canadian band Spirit of the West once penned a rollicking pub anthem recounting about how their bar-hopping vacation travels often leave them more exhausted than when they left. Married with two kids, pub crawling is no longer a part of our vacations, but the sentiment is still the same. Although our current lifestyle is more akin to the Spirit of the Mid-West, these so-called vacations do leave us in need of coming Home for a Rest.

Due to the fact that a majority of our family and friends live in Montreal, our vacations consist of heading back home, staying at the in-laws, and using it as a base from which we can do our daily forays throughout la belle province to catch up with old friends, revisit old haunts, and re-clog arteries at favoured restaurants. Compounding the itinerary is the desire to visit other family living in the Ottawa region.

What it amounts to is a lot of time behind the wheel, a lot of wonderful times and delicious meals, a lot of packing and unpacking, and – of course – a long day of travel home culminating in a scant few hours before waking up and going to work the next day (or that same day, as the case may be.)

Now, while I may be able to leave the day-to-day office job behind physically, mentally the separation is a different matter. Not only is there the multiple-day hustle before you leave to ensure that everything runs smoothly once you leave, but there’s also the knowledge that there’s going to be a stack of work waiting for you upon your return. And that lovely invention known as e-mail only makes it worse – and many of us count our e-mails in the hundreds on a good day.

And for those of us with our own businesses, vacations rarely are actual vacations. There’s still the matter of keeping up with clients, meeting deadlines when the mind would rather be elsewhere, and sneaking a few minutes of work time here and there during the day.

Getting back to work is like trying to merge onto the Autobahn from a dead stop. Everyone else is in fifth gear moving with the flow of traffic, and you’re stuck trying to get back into the game while your mind would still rather be playing. In fact, the stress of picking up where you left off is often worse than whatever stresses you were trying to put behind you in the first place! The first day is overwhelming, so many things needing your attention, so little capability to get moving, and so little desire to tackle anything. Eventually you just have to start somewhere and chip away at the pile.

We got home early Thursday morning. We unpacked this weekend. We’ve yet to go to the grocery store, preferring to pick up what we need for the day. Vacation may be over, but real life hasn’t yet caught up. Oddly enough, while vacation is enjoyable, the routine of day-to-day may be the most relaxing. There’s a comfort in familiarity, there’s something relaxing about being surrounded by your own things, and – no matter how hospitable your hosts may be – there’s nothing like sleeping in your own bed.

Yes, the key to surviving vacations is that first weekend back. Forget the chores, forget the obligations, just rest. A couple of lazy days are the key to transitioning back to life and making any vacation successful.

Now, there are a few obvious solutions to combating vacation fatigue and the subsequent work re-integration stresses. One, you could forgo vacations. OK, there are a couple of realistic solutions at hand: vacation at home, or head south to an all-inclusive resort.

Unfortunately, both of those, while appealing, miss out on what the best part of vacations is: sharing time with friends and family, in a more relaxed atmosphere, without the pressures of schedules, obligations, or deadlines. Sure, those stressors exist, but getting away from it all – even if means that you’re only able to loosen the tether that’s binding you to the everyday – makes it all worthwhile in the long run.

Spirit of the West had it right all along. And although nights of drunken revelry are long behind me, pub crawls have been replaced by cross-province jaunts to catch up with friends and family, and the only ones having too much to drink and throwing up now are our friends’ babies, vacations are truly just a prelude to the real relaxation – when we get to come home for a rest.

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved

The Geeks Have Inherited the Earth

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By Jason Menard

Have the meek truly inherited the Earth? Is geek the new standard to which we all aspire? Or has the new ostracization model shifted from jock/nerd to a more subtle shades of geekdom?

Video games, comic books, and computer technology – once the Holy Trinity of Impending Wedgies, now are cultural norms. Not just accepted, but embraced by all members of society. It appears The Geek’s passive revolution has managed to assimilate all that once opposed it.

When I was younger, there was a well-defined line between geek and what was thought of as cool. I straddled the middle, never fully falling into the pit of geekdom, but retaining enough interest in certain things that I refused to reject my interests to sit at the jock table. Basically I enjoyed all the meats in our cultural stew and got along with everyone.

Growing up in an age where the Commodore Pet was a novelty in the elementary classroom and our advanced computer classes in high school consisted of creating spreadsheets on Lotus 1-2-3, those with an affinity for computers were considered outside the acceptable norm.

Now, those same kids would be considered wise social investments, as technology-based jobs hold a certain appeal to both sexes – that being a lucrative income potential. The idea of a sexy computer programmer or hot information technology specialist was once the stuff of oxymoron – now, they’re increasingly becoming a reality.

Again, reflecting upon my youth, video games were once the salvation of the physically challenged. Not the physically challenged with actual debilitating conditions, but rather the physically challenged sub-culture that recoiled in fear at the thought of playground physical competition. Now, everyone is a gamer.

The fact that the term Gamer exists (supplanting its forebear – loser) shows how video gaming has moved into the modern realm. Perhaps a result of our continued experience with computers (again, thank you pencil-pusher-formerly-known-as-geek), we are no longer simply content to be pandered to. A movie, despite all its grandeur, is a one-way experience. We demand more from our entertainment! We demand interactivity. We demand engagement. And we demand shorter load times!

Yet, video games are fast supplanting passive media as the engagement activity of choice for men and women. I grew up at the time when the console game market was just beginning to flourish. Although it was still a time when a young boy could go to the arcade and watch in amazement the chosen few who knew the battle codes for Street Fighter, we began to embrace the home entertainment model.

Personally, I was proud to have a Gemini system. No choosing between Atari and ColecoVision for me! I could have both! Yet, I did look on in mild envy at the kid who had the ADAM.

Yes, we ventured into the personal computer market with the Commodore 64, experimenting with the precursor to the Internet – the BBS. Then came the Sega Genesis. Now, it’s not unusual for people of my generation to own multiple systems. At home we have a PlayStation 2 and a Nintendo GameBoy – and there’s still a Nintendo 64, an original PlayStation, and even a Sega Genesis and a Nintendo NES in mothballs somewhere.

Grown men and women of my age, 33, continue to play games, viewing them as an entertainment alternative to TV and movies. As games continue to improve, so too will our infatuation with the market increase. It’s all about the interactivity.

Even the geek’s secured bastion of fantasy – the comic book – has been usurped by the cool kids. Top-grossing franchises like Spider-man, Superman, and Batman show that there’s a mass market for these films – and chances are many of the viewers have never set foot and inhaled the musty air of a comic book store. Even lesser-known characters (outside the traditional geek spectrum, that is) like Hellboy, Daredevil, and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen have received on-screen treatments, not to mention the Sin City and Road to Perdition films.

And while the geek was once mocked for their borderline-concerning fascination with pen-and-ink breasts at the expense of finding real flesh-and-blood ones, it is not uncommon for the so-called cool kids to drool over the sight of Angelina Jolie or Jessica Alba lithely maneuvering across the silver screen in their respective video game (Tomb Raider) and comic book (Fantastic Four) adaptations.

So does the true geek exist anymore? Probably. There’s the über-geek faction that camps out for days for Star Wars films, criticizes two-hour movies for not adhering strictly to a 50-year detailed history of a comic book character, and, of course, there’s the supercilious losers who are masters of their own dorky domain – whether it be comics, television, computer technology, or any other interest – and possess an encylopaedic knowledge of such minutiae that they revel in mocking (privately, of course, lest they engage in actual conflict) those who are interested in a topic, but have yet to devote an unhealthy amount of time to it.

But that behaviour’s not exclusive to the geek culture. Is there any difference between camping out overnight to see the latest Star Wars chapter and camping out to score a wristband that entitles you to buy tickets for a favourite band? Is there any difference between the continuity-obsessed filmgoer obsessed with discrepencies in Ben Affleck’s portrayl of Daredevil and those who criticize period pieces and historical dramas for their creative license? Or what’s the difference between a comic history snob and those obnoxious music fans who revel in their favourite band’s obscurity, only to reject them when they become popular and lament that they were much cooler before they sold out and everyone got on the bandwagon?

Maybe we’re finally coming to the appreciation that there’s a little geek in all of us. The Geeks, finally, have inherited the Earth.

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved

Corporate Verbal Hamster Bane of Commerce

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By Jason Menard

Navigating the murky waters of corporate communications can be an eventful journey – creatures once thought to be extinct in the real world continue to thrive. In fact, there is one creature that does not just ignore Darwinian teaching – it literally defies evolutionary theory by its existence: the Corporate Verbal Hamster.

Those who suffer from Corporate Verbal Hamster Syndrome (heretofore known as CVHS) are amazingly adept at grinding the wheels of commerce to a halt. While the condition is not contagious and – unfortunately – not fatal, it does impact the lives and attitudes of those who are subjected to the corporate denizen infected with this condition.

The Corporate Verbal Hamster is so named because it continuously spews forth a stream of words, regardless of whether or not their opinion has been solicited or is even warranted. In meetings, this is the one person who must insert their commentary – I refrain from saying two cents, because I don’t want to overvalue their input – not just into each and every discussion, but into each and every phrase.

Like a human punctuation mark, one’s sentence apparently isn’t complete without the Corporate Verbal Hamster adding his or her words.

The sad thing about the Corporate Verbal Hamster is that they rarely add anything new or interesting to the conversation. Most often, the recycle or summarize statements that were able to stand up quite nicely on their own, thank you. Due to the fact that their mouths are constantly moving, their brains do not have the opportunity to engage in free and original thought, occupied instead by the need to focus on parroting back what is said.

Although perhaps that statement is not exactly fair. To the parrot.

You see, the average parrot has a little more common courtesy and social grace than the Corporate Verbal Hamster. To parrot is to repeat what someone else has said – thereby inferring that the parrot has at least allowed the original speaker (with the original thought) to finish the statement. The Corporate Verbal Hamster begins the repetition often in the middle of the original speaker’s sentence, preferring to complete it for him or her – and usually getting the idea or concept wrong, due to the fact that CVHS does not include premonitions or psychic ability as a side effect.

So frustrations mount, those who are easily dominated in speech sit back preferring not to engage in a war of uttering words with the Hamster, and nothing gets done. Because the Hamster has no original ideas and continues to utter the same things, pausing only briefly for half-breaths (taking a full one is too long), nothing new gets discussed and hours of potentially lucrative and innovative work time gets sacrificed at the feet of the Hamster’s affliction.

Unfortunately, management is often blind to CVHS, or unwilling to get involved. Putting it out of its – or more likely our own – misery is not an option either. Not for any moral or legal reasons, but rather simply physiological ones. Nay, one cannot starve this vile creature into submission as it feeds upon its own ego. Much as a flower uses photosynthesis to convert light energy into life-sustaining chemical energy like glucose, the Corporate Verbal Hamster is able to appropriate other people’s ideas and words and rehash them, making them their own and sustaining their very livelihood at the expense of others.

Like the Colgate Flip-Top Kids, this nefarious corporate beast suffers from a jaw seemingly on a hinge, unable to stay closed of its own volition. As such, it continues to open and shut, uttering inanities and filling the air with unwanted air pollution.

Yet, instead of simply filtering into the background like ambient noise, the Corporate Verbal Hamster’s words hang heavily around the meeting table, like the Sword of Damocles, weighing people down into submission.

So is there a solution? Should not the Hamster’s aura of intelligence be pierced by those realizing that the ideas and thoughts spewed forth are appropriated and not originated? Sadly, no. That’s not the way corporations work. The work gets done, often in spite of these people. They become isolated from the group, which only serves to feed the beast as the resentment of being ostracized only causes the Hamster to increase its sense of superiority.

Thankfully, with e-mail and new technologies, the Corporate Verbal Hamster is often restricted in its environment – its reach stunted by turn-based communications devices. And in today’s increasingly global and technologically based economy, that’s all we can hope for.

Corporations will survive in spite of themselves. And like groundhogs on a golf course, the Corporate Verbal Hamster is just one rodent that we’ve grown to work around. Until there’s a cure for CVHS, that’s the best we can do.

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved