Joy

Here we are. The closing days of this Year of The Devil 2020. We’re all THISCLOSE to getting the vaccine, friends. Try not to die before Armistice, okay? To celebrate and because end of year lists are always “fun” here are some things that brought me joy this year and a couple that failed to deliver:

Watchmen. A smart concise show that takes the super hero genre to task with humour. My only quibble is with the characterization of the token Asian mother-daughter combo.

Match Made In Hell. Watch it. You won’t be sorry.

Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was A Girl by Jeannie Vanasco. The author interviews the friend who raped her years ago. Provocative, uncomfortable, and everything a memoir should be. Reminds me of Attiyah Khan’s fantastic documentary A Better Man.

Last Seen. Podcast about the biggest art heist in history. I was totally into it for two episodes and then got bored. Not for me.

The Guardian’s Today in Focus had this killer piece in August about a painting that is either a rare Da Vinci or a forgery… or something in between.

Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art. During lock down, Hot Docs streamed free films and we had virtual watch parties with friends. Barry Avrich’s doc about a massive art fraud at New York’s Knoedler Gallery is fantastic. For the record, I’m Team (Fake) Artist.

Queen’s Gambit. To echo Aminatou Sow, the show is “White Excellence.” +1 Elisabeth’s take at Maclean’s. One tiny note: if you’re going to have the Black friend swoop in for a deus ex machina in Act Three then please make her motivation clear (ie. “if you win, I want a cut”).

East Coast Trails 2020 gave the island an exceptional and long summer and Tom and I took advantage of the trails. Cape St. Francis to Pouch Cove is one of the more strenuous and technically difficult ones but worth every step. Spectacular.

RPG. Back in April, when we were deep in lockdown, my friend Joel invited me to join an online RPG (that’s Role Playing Game, to you non-dorks). A mysterious mansion + 1920s Boston + demons. Sure, why not? I didn’t love playing online but since the restrictions relaxed in mid-summer, we’ve been playing in person and it is SO. MUCH. FUN. It’s just imagination and play and all the things we did as children for hours and have forgotten we love.

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia. A quick, compelling, and delicious horror novel. Moreno Garcia takes all the recognized tropes of horror and gothic and turned them upside down. I wish the writing had been stronger.

Evil Eye. Young woman meets the perfect man. Or is he too good to be true? You’ve seen this horror movie before. Except you haven’t because all the characters are Brown. And one of the principals is an older woman. Great cinema, this is not. But it is fun and gore-lite which is perfect for wimps like me.

Return of the Living Dead Turns out, a pandemic is the perfect time to re-visit classic horror and Return surprisingly holds up. Its themes of the environment and capitalism and the massive side-eye it gives the army are all evergreen. By some miracle, the Black character is allowed to live and be heroic for quite a long time. The women are utterly hopeless of course.

Shawn of the Dead. Another re-watch that’s even more satisfying in the context of 2020. This PSA from March was spot on.

Kamala Harris. Hell yes, Auntie K! I cherish this old interview with her even though I don’t agree with everything she says. But her thoughts on race as a security issue were right on the money and I will admit to tearing up a little when she said “don’t forget you have people, you come from people.” It’s something I’m going to hold on to the next time I’m the only one in the room.

House of Anansi has been knocking it out of the park this year. I already gushed about Eva’s All I Ask but you should also add: The Ridgerunner by Gil Adamson and We Two Alone by Jack Wang to your reading lists. Gil’s western is beat-for-best perfection and includes a nuanced and rounded Indigenous supporting character who does not die. Jack’s collection features the Chinese Diaspora as you’ve never seen them. As in, Chinese characters in late 30s Nazi Vienna helping Jewish characters escape to safety. Or Chinese characters in South Africa during Apartheid. Beautiful and ambitious with a killer ending. Bravo to Anansi and their Class of 2020 authors.

Speaking of books, you’ve read Souvankham’s Giller-winning How To Pronounce Knife, right? I had the good fortune of an advance peak last year. Move over, Munro and Gallant, there’s a new Queen in town.

Tiger King. Is this supposed to be compelling television? Not for me, thanks.

Deep cleaning the fridge. Solid stress relief activity. Podcast accompaniment: Reply All’s The Case of The Missing Hit is a delight.

The Border Patrol Agent I Know. Fascinating series of interviews between a public radio reporter and a Mexican-American border patrol agent. There’s a lot of nuance in this exploration of collaboration and complicity. Related: This American Life’s No Where Man.

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli. An American road trip novel I actually wanted to read! Highly literary with an epic sentence that goes on for eternity. The main concern of the book is children crossing the border, children in peril, whose land is this anyway? All up my alley. But. And this is a sizeable but. Dead Apaches ahead. Magical Apaches ahead. Maybe, maybe the author was trying to play with the trope and make a more interesting point here but I fear that’s wishful thinking on my part. SIGH.

Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite. One of the last films I watched surrounded by strangers. Astute, intelligent, laugh-out-loud funny with a proper blood bath. Probably best watched in a theatre, unfortunately.

Corduroy dungarees. Soft-pant adjacent, warm, with a handy pocket in the front. I’m channelling Angela Chase this Covid winter and I’m not sorry.

Kidd Pivot’s Revisor. So many times this year, I’ve thought back to Valentine’s night when a thousand townies packed the rafters of the Arts & Culture Centre to watch Vancouver dance troupe Kidd Pivot pull off a one-night-only performance of their new show Revisor. Revisor was spectacular. Even more special was sharing the extraordinary experience with so many friends.

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan. A history of the world from the vantage of Central Asia. This was our lock-down co-read. Two thumbs up from the Bala-Baird household.

Covid Classics on Instagram. A must follow that buoyed my spirits during lock down.

Dr. Isaac Bogoch. Isaac went to med school with my bestie and his dad treated my mom’s broken collarbone so on those whimsical grounds he’s been my go-to source on everything from is take-out safe (yes) to when are those jabs coming “sooner rather than later” to how’s old Alberta doing? prognosis: fucked. He’s also an infectious diseases specialist, a researcher at TGH, and a prof at UofT. I’m not taking medical advice from Goop.

Jabra Earbuds. A 2019 stocking stuffer that could not have been better timed. Highly recommend.

St. John’s. Three cheers for a cautious and politicians who get the hell out of her way. We’ve avoided a second wave (so far) and life has been safe and felt relatively normal since late summer. You could call that a miracle. I say it’s good public health.