Pineapple Express

This weekend we got news that the inventor of Hawaiian pizza has died. You may know - or may have just guessed - that Hawaiian pizza is not actually Hawaiian. In fact, it's not even popular in Hawaii.

I think I heard somewhere that Hawaiian pizza is originally Canadian. But I definitely didn't know that it was from Chatham of all places. So score one for small-town Ontario. It's good to know that between this and Crokinole we've made a lasting mark, of some sort.

It's also interesting that the inventor was of neither Italian or Hawaiian origin, but rather Greek. So a Greek immigrant running an Italian restaurant naming something after a place in the U.S. is either the most Canadian thing ever, or an epic incident of cultural appropriation.

Mostly though, I have to ask, can we please use this moment to end the tiresome argument about pineapples on pizza? Yes, I know, it's supposed to be one of those silly time-wasters where we have passionate discussions of something that doesn't really matter, like over-the-top vs. down-the-wall toilet paper. But this one is just annoying because:

• Hawaiian pizza has been around since the sixties, it's too late now. Watching people in their forties suddenly feigning disgust at a food that's been around their entire lives just sounds forced. It's not like we don't have new foods to get angry about. I mean, who decided salt and caramel have to go together? In what world is caramel not good enough on its own? Or not bad enough for you?
• It goes against the democratic appeal of pizza. As the ultimate personalizable food, I don't really care what disgusting things other people are putting on their pizza. I know someone in the world loves to defile their pizza with brussels sprouts, but I'm okay with that. I disapprove of their pizza, but I will defend to the death their right to eat it.
• Pineapple is constantly dropping down the list of unconventional pizza toppings. Look at Canada's other unconventional pizza institution named after an unrelated part of the U.S.: Boston Pizza. Have you looked at their menu? You can get perogy pizza with potatoes and sour cream on it; how is that not a bigger abomination?

Bully For Billy

I just read that the designer of Ikea's Billy Bookcase has died. If you're not familiar with it, it's one of Ikea's most popular and long-running items.  I have two of them. How popular is it?  Well, you could click that link and read it's Wikipedia page.  Or you could just contemplate that it's Ikea furniture with its own Wikipedia page.

Anyway, the designer was Gillis Lundgren, and he actually died several weeks ago.  I don't remember reading about it then, so I assume it just happened to be the same day that Donald Trump said something.  Apparently, Lundgren not only designed Billy, he's also responsible for Ikea's flat-packing. That's right up there with Allen Keys, wordless instructions, and unpronouncable names in defining the Ikea experience, so he was pretty important.

This article I read was in the Toronto Star, so of course they couldn't pay tribute; they had to give him a backhanded putdown on the way to the grave, by quoting a snobby furniture maker criticizing Billy's effect on furniture.  Fortunately, the article did go on to talk about good design, minimalism, etc.  But the article was framed around the idea that Lundgren's contribution has been mixed.

Of course, I've seen this case made before, that Ikea is the McDonald's of furniture, dumbing-down and commodifying a business that was once a focus of the design world.  Sure your Vejmon coffee table is not the height of furniture.  But I have to ask the Ikea haters, where do you think normal people buy furniture?  No, not your urban hipster friends, I mean the majority of people. Generally, the answer is Walmart, Sears, or one of various furniture warehouse chains with TV ads featuring men shouting that you don't have to pay for six years.  Look at it that way and you realize that Ikea is the most design-sophisticated choice.  If they didn't exist, their customers would be buying clichéd old knock-offs of familiar but dull styles.

Really, I wish there were more big-box chains that could get their balance of style and accessibility to the same level as Ikea.  No, I realize I'm never going to go to Best Buy and get a cheap iPad that I assemble myself.  But if I could get Ikea's level of quality and selection in a general department store, I'd never go to Walmart again.  That would be a great contribution to the world, almost as good as encouraging 41 million people to buy bookcases.

Is He Ever Going To Swing?

You may have seen the quick news item that Jerry Dior, the creator of Major League Baseball's iconic logo, has died.

It's a pretty nice design.  It's recognizable, bright but not gaudy, and it gets across the message of baseball in America. And it's aged fairly well - I had no idea how old it is (since 1968, apparently.)


But it's also led to imitation.  The NBA has a similar logo, featuring a silhouetted player that even borderline fans like myself seem to know is Jerry West. I don't know which league had the idea first, but fine, they both use it. Then someone started using it with a skateboarding image on t-shirts. Still fine: I appreciate pop-art references as much as I like lists. Then the Indy Racing League couldn't think of a better idea for its logo. When the National Lacrosse League used a similar symbol, it's clear that this is some sort of default league logo. Is it even still iconic anymore? At what point does it become a visual cliche?

So please: pop artists and fledgeling sports leagues alike, come up with something else to rip off.  Perhaps the NHL crest, or whatever that new MLS thing is.  Or just copy FIFA.  They won't sue you; I hear they're distracted right now.

Justice For My Inner Eight-Year Old

Glen A. Larson died this week.  If you're in your forties, that name may seem slightly familiar, especially if you picture it on a TV screen prefaced by "executive producer."  But once again, the media is confused as to why to memorialise him.  I've seen different stories refer to him as "creator of Magnum P.I.," "creator of Knight Rider" or "creator of Battlestar Galactica."  But none of them seemed to put those credits together with B.J. and the Bear, The Fall Guy, Buck Rogers and The Six-Million Dollar Man and remember him as the king of Eighties action shows. 

(As an aside, did you know that he put a lot of references to his Mormon faith in Battlestar Galactica?)

Combine that with the recent death of R.A. Montgomery, publisher of the Choose Your Own Adventure books, and we've had a couple of instances of short shrift given to people who had a hand in the entertainment of my childhood.  Both the Eighties and geekery are getting much more respect than they ever have before, so you'd think the media would use this to give a fond bit of nostalgia. 

Instead, I'm just going to have to add them to my ongoing series of people who deserved better obituaries than the media gave them.  Now I call on all of you Gen-X'ers out there to hum the Knight Rider theme, as you go to the web page of your choice.

“Thank God for books and music and things I can think about."

Here's the latest in my apparently continuing series of people who deserved better obituaries than one paragraph in the entertainment section.  It was in this morning's paper that author Daniel Keyes died.

Keyes is best known for the novel Flowers for Algernon, the story of a mentally challenged man who undergoes experimental surgery to improve his intelligence.  You could describe it - as the newspaper did - by repeatedly mentioning that it's often used in high school English classes and then leave it at that without further insight. But I'd just like to add that it's a brilliant examination of how intellect shapes human interaction, and so often ends up holding us apart.