Ready for Take-Offs

The Tyee.ca

He calls them “my little photoshops of horrors”. Paul Myers, musician, author, radio and television personality, can add another title to his resume: political cartooning for The Tyee.

Cartooning using pixels rather than pen, that is. If you are reading the popular Too Many Georges http://www.thetyee.ca/George/index.htm novel running on this site, you already know Myers’ ability to merge several digital images into a wicked commentary. Dubya in the King George wig smoking a blunt. That’s the kind of stuff Myers’ loves to do, and will do regularly in the Comics http://www.thetyee.ca/Comics/index.htm section of The Tyee from here on out.

For a taste of what’s to come, see some of his recent work by clicking the Gallery button at the top of this story.

Cut and paste

Myers says his muse is a meld of Marshall McLuhan, who wrote Understanding Media, and Malcolm MacLaren who invented the Sex Pistols. Before computers existed, Myers cut out and overlapped magazine images, loved the sonic illusions made possible by multi-track recording, and was mesmerized by the ability of television to throw any reality behind a person standing before a blue background. “I guess my humour has always been about juxtaposition.” He laughs. “Now they call it deconstruction.”

Myers freely admits to having Attention Deficit Disorder, which went unrecognized formally until he was an adult. “I think the combo of growing up with undiagnosed ADD and in the media age has given me a weird sort of 24-track mind.” He has fronted the Gravelberrys rock band, produced other people’s records, worked as a rock journalist and film critic, hosted an irreverent current affairs radio show on MOJO radio before it went all sports, and now regularly appears on the Vicki Gabereau show. His biography of the Barenaked Ladies, Public Stunts, Private Stories, was published by Raincoast and, in the U.S. last year, by Simon & Schuster.

He also happens to be the brother of comedic film star Mike Myers. “Next to my wife, my best friend,” says Paul. “We riff back and forth all the time, if I can crack him up on the phone, it's a small victory."

Prodigal son returns

If Myers seems a bit drawn to American political themes right now, blame that on a four-year stint in San Francisco that ended when his visa ran out just a month before September 11, 2001.

“In San Francisco, everybody seems violently opposed to everything, everything is voted on. American politics are so big and powerful and colourful, especially the last four years. From the minute that guy got to be president, well, as [historian] Howard Zinn says, ‘You can’t stay neutral on a moving train.’”

Now in Vancouver, Myers says, “I spend a lot of time with blogs, reading The New Yorker, Salon, and getting mad at American television programs.” So he’s glad for a space on The Tyee from which to purvey his little photoshops of horrors. “I like to take in a lot of info and sharpen it into a pointed jab. It’s a way of saying: This thing should not go unnoticed.”

Which means British Columbia too, its culture and politics, will get plenty of jabs from Myers’ pixellated pointer. “I think we want to laugh more than we are allowed to,” says Myers of life in these parts. “We could funk it up a bit.”

David Beers is editor of The Tyee.