Author / Edward Champion

Posts by Edward Champion

Edward Champion is the Managing Editor of Reluctant Habits.
by Edward Champion

Hipster Provenance?

Downsyn: “Anyway, I am sure you are much cooler than I am so you will love this book so don’t pay any attention to this review and go out and buy the book and be fascinated by stories of warehouses and starting magazines and excrement coming out of backed up toilets and meeting Bill Clinton and wanting to kill people because they don’t treat you and your brother like the horrible tragic victims of the worst thing that has ever happened to anyone because God knows that no one has ever lost their parents before and that no one has suffered as much tragedy as you and your family so writing a memoir and whining for 400 pages makes perfect sense and this reviewer is just a big jerk who doesn’t get it.”

I would like to reiterate to my readers that I am by no means cool or hip, nor plan to be in the immediate future.

Exhibit A: Yesterday, I drummed on my steering wheel while blasting Metallica’s “Master of Puppets.” If a balding man drumming along to a twenty-one year old thrash track mostly forgotten by people under the age of thirty isn’t the antithesis of cool, I don’t know what is. But there’s no guilt at all, and certainly nothing to prove, in banging on a makeshift and wholly unsuitable stand-in for Lars Ulrich’s drum kit.

by Edward Champion

Nardwuar: The Great Vancouver Interviewer

I’ve been having some difficulties with the portable locker now holding my brain. You see, I checked it in on Friday, with the hopes of reclaiming it on Tuesday — it being a three-day weekend and all. But the locker is now busted and I’m now thinking at half-mast while trying to raise hell at the incompetents who promised me a “smart and secure locker room.”

nardwuar.jpgSo if you have time to kill as my brain crawls across locker, I direct you to the Vancouver-based Nardwuar the Human Serviette and his interviews with assorted notables. Nardwuar is possessed of an infectious and delightfully strange enthusiasm that frequently has him referring to his guests by first and last name, and asking them bizarre questions. Consider this hilarious interview with Ron Jeremy, whereby Nardwuar insists that Mr. Jeremy smells fine and is perturbed at the various sullies (“hedgehog” and the like) directed his way. Or his interview with Franz Ferdinand, whereby Nardwuar asks, “What did you think, Alex, of your bandmate having to have some flesh taken out? Was that how hard it was in the early days of Franz Ferdinand?” Even Harlan Ellison was puzzled by Nardwuar’s boisterous malapropisms, attempting to play the humor game with Nardwuar, only to see his own lackluster jokes taken seriously by Nardwuar. What can one say when Ron Jeremy gets Nardwuar and Ellison does not?

Thankfully, Nardwuar continues his efforts on Vancouver radio. The man even talked with James Brown in 1999 and asked him what he thought of sweat, getting the following answer: “I think sweat is something that is a very emotional thing in regards to where you put it at. You might put it in different places! Sweat expresses emotion, either way, whether it is hard work, or… uh…, I wish I could get out of here, I’m tired.”

Strange wine often spills the truth.

by Edward Champion

What If They Threw a Zombie Mob and Nobody Came?

This man speaks the truth.

On Saturday at noon, my girl Friday and I went to Justin Herman Plaza to investigate an alleged zombie flashmob.

The zombie “mob” was composed of three people dressed up as zombies (one of them, with impressive laziness, had merely applied a piece of duct tape to his blazer; presumably, he was the “ironic” zombie) and at least thirty photographers looking to photograph various zombie types stumbling around the Ferry Building. It was not to be.

In other words, when it comes to zombies, San Francisco is an observing, rather than a participating town.

I suppose I too could have dressed up as a zombie, but my attendance here was exploratory. How hard-core was my local zombie contingent? In lieu of actual participation, I wore my Night of the Living Dead t-shirt, in part because I figured this sartorial choice would send a not-so-subtle clue to any others who required my assistance.

As it turned, the zombie mob people (were there any organizers?) preferred a kind of flagrant yet secretive silence.

“Dude,” said one random fellow to me, looking around suspiciously, “your shirt totally gives you away.”

I never remarked upon the fact that this fellow had an obtrusive and expensive-looking camera hanging around his neck and that he was standing next to four other twentysomethings with obtrusive and expensive-looking cameras around their necks. Whereas I was merely one guy wearing a movie t-shirt.

I asked several people who had vague authority where the zombies were. I was informed that “people were still waking up” (it was 12:00 PM) and that “more would show, don’t worry.”

While the devoted photographer contingency waited around for additional zombies to show up, many of them trying to conceal their sadness by studying various settings on their incredibly expensive gear, this never happened.

“Let’s go get some brewskis,” said a kid who was clearly under 21 and well aware of the zombie mob. I watched this kid and his peers run away at a stunning velocity, hoping that their mass-sprinting for affordable and illegally imbibed alcohol would make up for the zombie shortfall.

My girl Friday and I decided to call it quits at around 12:30 PM. If zombies could not be counted upon to be reasonably punctilious, what was the point of hanging around?

by Edward Champion

And You Folks Were Complaining About Vollmann A Few Weeks Ago

The London Times: “Hall really wants to be the new David Mitchell, a writer who can give an unforgettable voice to, say, a floating quantum thought particle, but has neither his searing intelligence nor his ability. We are left with only stratospheric pretentious-ness, where the writer’s barely assimilated reading and capacity to invent empty tricks stalk the pages like ghosts….Nevertheless, this is an important cultural marker – of the triumph of the PR machine over that poor, passé little thing called writing.”

Ouch.