Impersonating a Soldier

Big news this week, as someone was discovered to have impersonated a soldier at the Remembrance Day ceremonies in Ottawa. The ensuing uproar and demands that he be prosecuted have missed the point about the purpose of that article of the Criminal Code forbidding the impersonation of a police officer or a soldier (or a priest, for that matter, but I think that’s in a different article).

The true intent of those measures, even if the text of the law is not clear on this point, is to prevent people from assuming and presumably exploiting official positions of authority, using the legal status of those positions for some personal gain or other antisocial purpose. This is not about “disrespecting the uniform” or any other such nonsense. I don’t see any allegations of this guy doing anything other than pretending to be a soldier, not compelling people to do things because of his supposed role, nothing. Should everyone dressing up as a “police officer” on Halloween be arrested and charged with this? Of course not.

Is the act disrespectful? Yes. Is it extra disrespectful at an official ceremony on Remembrance Day. Certainly. Does that make it criminal. Uh….no.

Untwist your knickers, people.

The Comedian of Montréal

Second time around (for me) for a production of The Barber of Seville by the Opéra de Montréal. Yesterday afternoon, as I waited for the clock to advance to departure time, I tweeted my anticipatory musings: how would it be different from the last time I saw it? The Opéra de Montréal answered that tweet with the star, Étienne Dupuis, who would presumably make all the difference. They weren’t wrong, but that wasn’t the whole story, either.

Let me take pains to point out that I am not an expert in opera or any kind of music, so what you’re getting is the uninformed ramblings of someone who just goes to enjoy the show and the music without necessarily understanding what would make it brilliant or not for said experts. “I don’t know music, I just know what I like.”

If I got a smile from the afternoon tweet, it broadened as I drew the connection between the visual representation of the production and the Movember men’s health fundraising efforts. Intentional, it seems, which is a lovely development. The little video clips projected in the Salle Wilfrid Pelletier also showed those involved in the production with their moustaches or holding little moustaches in fron of themselves. The smile morphed into a beam when I got close to the doors and saw the effort to decorate the entry in barbershop colours with the Movember moustache on the doors. Nice play.

Something this particular opera does for me is evoke some childhood memories. I am familiar with the whole of the overture thanks to The Rabbit of Seville, starring Bugs Bunny. As the music plays for such a long time before the curtain rises, my mind wanders through all of the images and lyric adaptations. “Come into my shop. Let me cut your mop. Who’s next? You’re next.” The application and massaging of various tonics into Elmer Fudd’s head, producing wild growth to be mowed and shaved off, racing upward on the side-by-side barber chairs. It all has little to do with the plot of the opera, but everything to do with making the music a part of my childhood and probably yours, too.

Back to the real thing from last night. The set looked highly familiar, like I saw it six years ago when I saw this opera here for the first time. In fact, looking for images online, I found a current production image of the exterior of the house and a previous production image of the interior — I think the only thing that changed in the interior was the recovering of some pieces of furniture. This is not a criticism, however, as the set worked very well as a backdrop to the performances (that’s what it’s for, no?) and shouldn’t we all be in favour of reusing what works well?

Things started changing with the entrance of Etienne Dupuis as Figaro, just as the afternoon response to my tweet would have it. He came in through the audience and leapt up on the stage, taking a moment to invite applause, which he got. If his voice is a beautiful baritone, his acting was comic genius. Everything well-timed and played for laughs, with no small amount of cheekiness and plenty of fun. I think one of my favourite moments, bringing me right back to the Bugs Bunny experiences, was when he inserted himself into a little twirl of dance between Bartolo and Rosina, liberating Rosina to go to her beloved and setting himself up to be the recipient of Bartolo’s series of kisses up his arm. Classic Looney Tunes!

Dupuis also rocks a mean moustache for Movember, I must say. (There are not nearly enough photos of him on the Barihunks blog.)



There were a few other elements I would like to highlight as brilliant and/or hilarious. The brilliance of the representation of slander as creepy, balloon-headed creatures multiplying as they spread across the stage was fabulous. A little fog makes the moment more surreal as the plot to undermine Count Almaviva is described to a very receptive Bartolo. You can see an extremely brief view of the creatures at 1:26 in the photomontage video above. A comic moment that drew a laugh each time it repeated was the sound that emerged from the piano as Don Alonso (Almaviva in disguise) accompanies Rosina in her music lesson: not piano at all, but the full orchestra, with an emphasis on the strings and the flutes. You will also see in the photomontage stills of the many dance numbers, all played for their comedy and well-timed with the music.

We had a sneak preview of a part of the grand finale in Act I when a single piece of glittery confetti floated down from above. The finale itself, however, was not entirely given away, as wave after wave of the stuff came down, followed by balloons, really underscoring that this was the wrap-up number.

In all, these things I have highlighted were great additions to an opera I love to listen to. I have a certain weakness for the light and happy tunes that seem to come best from Italian operas, and for the lovely sections sung in parallel as duets or more. Beyond the familiarity of the music from my youth, it is happy and very catchy music to listen to.

Something else to note that amused me to no end. Behind me were seated a loud curmudgeon and his long-suffering friend. The curmudgeon complained before the opera and during the intermission that the Montréal audience was ignorant. I, of course, have already disclosed my own failings as a music or opera expert, but I embrace that and reject the idea that the opera is only for the well-instructed. If I find beauty in it, should I not enjoy it? I will give him one point, though: he decried the horrible propensity of the audience to give a standing ovation for anything whatsoever, demonstrating by poking his friend and complaining that even that would earn a standing “o” in Montréal. In my own defence, I have to say that I would have waited for some of the more consequential performers to arrive for their bows before standing up were it not for the fact that the people in front of me standing were already obstructing my view and would have obscured the arrival of my choices. So up I got with almost everyone else (didn’t turn around to see if the curmudgeon or his friend had risen), when the first of the chorus came forward to bow.



A bit more well-deserved praise for the Opéra de Montréal, too, for its use of social media. Responded to on Twitter, sometimes retweeted, was one element. Another was seeing on Facebook in the afternoon that they have a mobile app that you can use to register yourself for a possible seating upgrade or other bonus for the performance. Brilliant! This is the kind of use of social media that rewards the exchanges with the audience and capitalizes on the interaction.

Opera 2.0 indeed.

Scary, or just ridiculous?

Well, we’ve done it. Our delightful right wing government, which has at least persuaded itself that we are on the ever-rising crest of a crime wave, has gone the way of prolonging sentences to their extreme. It doesn’t matter that statistics show a steady downward trend in crime rates — let’s just put an end to that particular information gathering activity if it doesn’t show what we want it to.

I always thought it laughable to hear those law and order sentences coming from the United States: 300 years in prison! And now we are there in Canada. The federal government changed the Criminal Code to allow for consecutive, rather than concurrent, sentences. So if the penalty for homicide is life and you commit three of them, you will spend three lifetimes in prison! That’ll teach you!

In fact, the penalty for first-degree murder in Canada is life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.  First-degree murder means it was pre-meditated or the person killed was a police officer on duty. Today, a person convicted of the murder of three police officers was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 75 years. The 24-year-old will be 99 when he becomes eligible for parole. If he is still alive at age 99 and not deemed a risk for society and sufficiently penitent, he will presumably be released into poverty to suffer on his own dime. But the question that begs to be answered: if he dares to die earlier than that, will they keep his corpse around for the reminder of the sentence?

I don’t want to make light of a serious criminal offence. Someone who commits murder must be punished. But it used to be that the criminal law had more purposes than just punishment, like rehabilitation. I’m not sure how much is left of the programs that would serve to help people rehabilitate themselves while in prison, but I’m willing to bet that they are less available than they ought to be, and even less so when we have to plan to feed and house a prisoner for the next 75 years. How soon do you think this guy might have access to a program?

We also have a parole board that, with the advice of a number of experts, assesses whether the person will be able to return to society and lead a productive and peaceable life, but this government doesn’t seem to trust that body at all. They will point to the spectre of recidivism when in fact the cases of people committing crimes after their release are actually much rarer than we are led to believe.

As usual, the facts matter little. The fear of crime we have trumped up wins and we look good by meting out a mockery of a sentence. Way to go. If only this philosophy of sentencing applied to electoral fraud we might be rid of some of these politicians for a good long time.

Rings a little untrue…

Something funny happened during my sleep-deprived morning wandering in Paris waiting for my hotel room to be ready. An attempted scam that I almost fell for…until it happened all over again just minutes later.

We're walking down the street and suddenly a man stoops and "picks up" a gold (coloured) ring to ask if I have dropped it. I know it's not mine – I don't wear jewellery. But he continues and almost talks me into keeping it, although I am sure there is some kind of catch that he didn't quite get to that would have removed some of the weight from my wallet. We walked away.

Literally moments later, a woman made the same move. By now I was completely jaded and onto her and we just kept walking. But it made me think of what should have been inscribed on the inside of the ring:

One ring to scam them all,

One ring to fool them,

One ring to reel them in

and in the confusion rob them.

Apps and Disclosure (There's HIV on my Phone!)

I don't claim to be a pioneer of the online dating world, despite my great age. I do, however, remember a time when BB meant bulletin board and the advent of the gay chat rooms was the great leap forward. Now I don't even know how much people still use those chats, but that isn't necessarily because I have sped ahead and moved on to other things, either. I've just moved from looking to, well, just looking, and those apps on your (okay my) smart phone are lovely for that. But let's take a moment to look back at the olden days before plunging headlong into the present.

When I first ventured into those chat rooms, disclosing one's HIV status was not the norm. Very few included their status in their profiles, other than those usual intolerant "D&D Free, UB2" statements, and the chat room reserved for Poz guys, at least on the Priape Chat that was my go-to, was most often empty (and you could see by nicknames who was in it, so that probably explains the emptiness). The disclosure, if there was one, took place in a private conversation with someone. I actually used that forum to test out my disclosure skills, as being rejected by someone with a fake name whose photo I couldn't see and who couldn't see mine was not nearly as hard to take as the face-to-face rejection you could go find in a club.

Fast forward to now and there are some interesting things going on via those apps. A lot more people are disclosing their HIV+ status in profiles that include head shots and often with some very clever text to accompany the news. I am also seeing more and more discussion (or notation, at least) of PrEP and declarations of openness from HIV negative guys. A couple of my recent favourites:

“HIV neutral, ub2. Life’s too short to be a douche.”

“Status I am STD free…and I want to keep it negative for life…But I’m not serophobic!”

I have three of these apps on my phone, each with its own advantages.

Grindr, probably the most used historically at least, now allows you to choose "poz" as one (or more) of your "tribes", but offers kind of a limited space to express yourself. The casual reader (notice how I have turned myself into a "reader" of profiles – sounds so much less offensive than "creeper", no?) has to click through to see the "tribes" and any other details you choose to share, including your brief texts, divided into "Headline" and "About me". The boys (oops, did I say that out loud?) tend to be younger on Grindr, with the usual exceptions. Downsides: you can't see who has looked at your profile (not with the free version, anyway), but (upside) you can creep away with impunity, even mark your favourites to keep track of their distance from you at all times, not that I would ever do such a thing.

Also of note: Grindr has won awards for the accuracy of its geolocation aspect. As an aside, I happened to be having a drink (or was it dinner?) on a patio in Toronto many years ago with my dedicated PositiveLite editor and I was showing him how Grindr worked. Much to our surprise and delight, and no small amount of embarrassment on the part of this WASP, the guy who showed up as being "a few steps away" was actually seated at the next table!

Scruff is probably my favourite of the apps for the level of self-expression it permits (oh, and scruffy guys are a big plus for me, so that helps). No, not everyone writes a short story that gives you a glimpse into their personality and some do write a novella that you have to be really dedicated (or entertained) to make it through, but the option is there and enough guys take the time to express themselves that it makes for good reading sometimes. That's where I have found gems like these:

"You wanna know if I'm 'clean'? Just so happens I shower every morning, I brush my teeth and even put on fresh underwear every day! I also happen to be Poz."

“Your tested date means only one thing…you have no idea about HIV. Post you’re on PrEP then it will show you’re responsible.”

Scruff also allows you to identify yourself as Poz with a click and to identify that you are interested in Poz guys with a click, but I think the open-ended text areas are the most fun and interesting. Scruff also offers a couple of services like "woofs" and "would you meet"…you can see who has woofed you, but I don't know how exactly the "would you meet" function works, as I have never used it…and I guess no one has wanted to meet me…*sob*. Scruff also has several screens…international, which seems to pluck people at random from around the world (or maybe it's the most looked-at profiles?), local, by distance from oneself, and then the favourites, which allows for that stalking thing we don't ever do, right? And on that note, the other plus (or minus?) of Scruff: you can see who has looked at your profile and look back at theirs – really the closest thing to classic cruising that I have seen on an electronic device.

The third one I have on my phone is Hornet. Hornet has a few of the same limitations in terms of the space that is provided for self-expression, but it has two exceptional features and another one that I will discuss in greater depth after gushing about the first two. First, you can add multiple public and private photos to your profile. Okay, not completely unknown, but the ease of scrolling through them, I believe, is unmatched. I also can't decide whether the "Explore" feature trumps even that photo aspect: it allows you to search by the name of a place anywhere in the world and then explore the Hornet profiles in the general vicinity. Planning a vacation and don't want to be lonely? Want to anticipate the eye candy? This may be the app for you.

The feature I want to talk about more is called KYS (know your status). It is an optional feature by which you can choose to disclose the date of your last test and the result. It's interesting to be able to see the testing frequency (or recentness) of some of the guys, but, like the Scruff comment above, it might not tell you much about your status today, depending on what you've been doing since a few weeks before that last test. I tried to use this feature to disclose of my status and made it public, but it does not show up on my profile when I look for it. I wrote to the company to complain about that and was told that it shows up fine on an iPhone (I'm on Android), but none of the umpteen software updates that have eaten into my data quota since I wrote to them has fixed the problem. And come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen a KYS that says the guy is positive. Protecting us from ourselves, Hornet? I have gone on to incorporate that into the brief text which is allowed for me to write "about me", but I have apparently not let go of the bitterness!

Probably the most surprising feature of all of these apps is the possibility to have a brief chat with someone you might not otherwise have the occasion to meet. I haven't been using the apps to actually meet people (as my profile on each of them says, "Not looking, just looking"), but I have had some rewarding and heartbreaking chats. An inquiry from a poz guy in France who was thinking of moving to Montréal and wanted to get information about immigration to Canada as a poz guy. Someone local for whom this was the first time he'd had a discussion about HIV with someone who actually has it. A guy in Morocco who hadn't been tested, but who I was able to assure of the openness of the local organization, which works with gay men despite the institutionalized homophobia in the country's laws. A recent trip to Burundi yielded both an occasion to share information about what treatments are like, especially in a developed country like Canada, and the worst heartbreak in the form of a young gay man in Uganda who was just hoping to live more freely somewhere else where, in his words, "gayism is legal".

So you see, I am not just stalking when I open up those apps on my phone – I'm educating, I'm observing the dynamics of communication around HIV in this new electronic context. Oh, and if you're into that sort of thing, I understand they can also be used to meet guys and have sex. ;-)

(This article is also published on PositiveLite.com)

UPDATE! The people from Hornet have contacted me anew to express their concern that the KYS positive status affirmations seem not to be visible on Android phones. I have to admire their reactivity and I’m looking forward to seeing this fixed in a future app update. 

Second UPDATE! I can now see my status on my profile in Hornet. Excellent and efficient responsiveness. Thanks!
 

Nabucco!

I just had a very lovely evening. Dinner with a friend at Nyk’s on Bleury and then we went for the première of Nabucco, first opera of the season for the Opéra de Montréal. I try to tweet from the opera, but only in the intermissions, so I have saved my observations of the third and fourth acts for this blog entry. But let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

An opening parenthesis: the première of the opera was performed at La Scala in 1842 in an Italy under the domination of Austria. The performance begins with a well-heeled Austrian public arriving at La Scala for the show, taking their places in three levels of loges off to the left of the stage. They watched the opera with us.


Photomontage from the Montréal production

This historical parenthesis (remember that parentheses come in twos, so you will see how that closes toward the end) excused the set, which I found rather flat and painted, unlike the inventive and dynamic sets I am used to from the Opéra de Montréal. But when I say it was excused, I mean it: the set for Nabucco was as a set would have been at La Scala in 1842. Once I accepted that, I calmed down about the quality of the set and appreciated it.

Costumes! There was a whole lot of fabric on that stage tonight. From the fabric-draped Hebrews (no exposing the hair!) to the rich robes of the Assyrians and especially the red and yellow burka-like robes of the priests of Baal all the way back to the front of the stage on the left where the Austrian opera-goers and the soldiers of the 19th century were installed — this was an amazing feat of costuming. Just the notion of producing outfits from two very different eras for the same production earns my applause, doing it well gets me on my feet.


Hebrew Slave Chorus (not from the Montréal production)

The singing! Apart from the fact that the music is quite lovely — there’s something I like about Italian operas with multiple duets, trios and quartets singing in parallel and backed up by a large chorus — the performers here acquitted themselves with flair and talent. Baritone Paolo Gavanelli in the role of Nabucco was excellent, and I so enjoyed soprano Tatiana Melnychenko in the role of Abigaille that I found myself coming down on her side, even if she was evil and doomed to die by the end. Team Abigaille all the way! I would also make special mention of bass Ievgen Orlov in the role of Zaccaria, who sang quite beautifully. I’m not trying to slight anyone else by not naming them; these three really stood out for me.

The closing parenthesis was the twist that really sold me. The opera finished, the principal characters come to take their bows. Not to us, mind you, but to the Austrian audience off to the side. A small bouquet is thrown for the baritone lead. He looks at it, picks it up and throws it angrily back toward the Austrian audience. The whole cast emerges to sing a patriotic Italian song set to the tune of the Hebrew Slave Chorus, with Italian flags held aloft in the background. While the use of the modern tricolour flag lacks historical accuracy, it helped us to understand in a glance what was going on and to appreciate the brilliance of the parentheses around the opera. Bravo!

Of course, there is always the possibility that this is the way Nabucco is always staged and I have just exposed my ignorance for all to see. Oh well.

Oh, and as an extra: swag! Because I am a subscriber, I and my friend both made off with a lovely reusable Opéra de Montréal bag. It will be my pleasure to promote them as I parade around town with it.

Throwing Cold Water on Things

By now, we are probably almost as tired of the critiques of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge as we are of the videos of people dumping ice water on their heads or the videos of people failing to do so in hilarious ways. Well, I have never shied away from going where others have already been, so I’m going to wade into the fray, head held high and dry.

As someone who has worked in charities and continues to be associated with an identifiable health cause, I’m terribly jealous of what the ALS organization that started this has managed to achieve. Not only have they succeeded in mobilizing a whole lot of people, many of them famous (more about this later), but they really managed to translate their internet phenomenon into actual donations. Watching the countless videos and the one live version I saw while waiting for a bus the other day, it is not really clear that the challengers and the challenged actually understand anything about the disease or that they are particularly attached to charitable giving. After all, the challenge is to do this OR give to the ALS cause in the next 24 hours. To go from that to tens of millions of dollars in donations over the course of the summer is phenomenal.

The critiques are as predictable as they are valid. The waste of potable water in a context in which large portions of humanity have no access to it, and even in the US there are serious water issues like drought in California and heartlessness toward the poor in Detroit. There is also no apparent link to anything relating to ALS in the action or in most of the words spoken in the videos.

I’ll add one more objection: name-dropping. I roll my eyes every time a minor star “nominates” three (sometimes more) people in that casual way that suggests they hang out on weekends. I doubt it. When that happens, the whole exercise becomes something more about promoting one’s own brand than actually helping with support and research.

The HIV/AIDS movement has challenges in fundraising, especially at the grassroots level, and especially since things got better on the treatment front. Oh, there are some big headline events that raise significant amounts of money, but the big stars seem to have moved on to other issues, some not even stooping to acknowledge the cause when they win major awards for depicting stories from our bad old days, right, Matthew McConaughey?

Our challenge now is to try not to undo our work with our fundraising messages (and to not undermine our prevention messages as we work to make a place in society for people living with HIV). No more death messages, no pity messages…we try to do actions that raise awareness of HIV and familiarize people in order to reduce stigma, but these have not proven to be very lucrative.

Maybe it’s because the organization I work for now is actually not a charity (non-profit, but we kept away from charitable status to avoid restrictions on our advocacy activities), but I prefer to spend time and effort encouraging people to get a better understanding of the realities of HIV today. How is and — more importantly — isn’t HIV transmitted? What might HIV stigma feel like from the receiving end? What can I do to prevent transmission of HIV and what can I do to help improve the quality of life of people living in my community with HIV?

So, ALS, you won this summer’s internet and you managed to translate that into cash for your cause, too. But very few people who have been literally or figuratively swamped by your challenge have any better understanding of the realities of your disease. And let me tell you that living with HIV today, with all of the advanced treatments that have made our physical health better, can still be like getting a bucket of cold water dumped on you when you run headlong into the stigma and discrimination that many in our society reserve for us.

With a nod to people living with ALS (hey — do they call themselves PALS?), here is the ice bucket challenge of someone living with the disease, and then the video of an astute Australian newsreader who has some pertinent advice for us all.