Book Review: No Logo

I’m not exactly a fashionista. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the things I wear, nor do I have particularly strong opinions about style or fashion matters. When it comes to buying things to cover my nakedness there’s really only one criterion that I regularly consult in a conscious manner: logos; I’ve never been comfortable wearing them. If I’m in a high-minded mood I might cite the irony of paying a company for the privilege of advertising for them, but really I just don’t like the way they look.

With this in mind, my brother picked up a copy of Naomi Klein’s book No Logo as a Christmas gift to me. Given my introduction, the title is a little bit misleading – it’s not about fashion culture but about globalization, advertising and the emergence of the modern “productless” multinationals.

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Our star burns.

I managed to completely torch the back of my neck and the tops of my forearms yesterday. You would think that after twenty-four odd years of living on this planet I might finally understand that the sun’s rays can be harmful. In my defense, I didn’t expect to spend quite as much time out in the open as I did.

The reason I got so much sun? I spent around two hours walking up and down the middle of Ten Mile and Meadowbrook with a coffee can, collecting donations for a local Iraqi war veteran named Cas. He’s a young guy, naturally, and he was on the receiving end of shrapnel damage to his face that’s left him blind in both eyes. I didn’t actually know him prior to the fundraiser, but simply heard about it while I was getting my hair cut on Monday. It turns out that, like me, he’d been going to Phyl’s Barber Shop since he was very young, and so when Phyllis heard about his injury she decided to help raise money for his rehabilitation.

In a lot of ways, Phyl’s is quite a strange place to find in the suburbs. Surrounded as we are by virtually every major chain and franchise in America, locally owned and connected business like hers are pretty rare. Witnessing the way her employees, customers and the other small businesses nearby all came together to help Cas was like seeing the America we’ve all heard about but never really seen. That probably sounds melodramatic, but I honestly felt proud to donate my time and to see so many others doing the same: the barbers working an eight hour day for free (the shop is normally closed on Wednesdays); the spouses and kids of the barbers making signs, cooking food and cleaning up; even customers and neighbors doing whatever we could to make the event a success.

More than just the sense of charity, I found meaning in the nature of the event itself – raising money for a soldier wounded in Iraq. It reminded me that no matter how we feel about the war itself, the people who are fighting it are real and deserving of our respect and support. I may disagree with the president and hate the way the Iraq occupation has been handled, but that doesn’t mean I can’t (or don’t) want to do everything I can to make the lives of the common soldier a little bit easier.

Contrary to what divisive pundits may want us to believe, you can love the soldier but hate the war.

Blue on black.

This past weekend was a pretty good one. At the behest of Pat I went down to the Detroit River Days festival, and as a bonus I got to hang out with Keith and Marvin. Getting to see Marvin was a particular treat since he’s been away in Iraq not once but twice and, as such, I haven’t really spoken to him in more than a year.

Anyway, we went down primarily for the (free!) Kenny Wayne Shepherd concert down by the newly renovated riverfront and boy, was that worth it. I’ll come clean: prior to Friday I hadn’t really heard much of Kenny’s music, but after that concert I think it’s fair to say that I’m hooked. Good blues guitar music is always hard to dislike, but there’s something about their stuff in particular that was really fun. I can’t really comment on the set list since I wasn’t familiar with 90% of what they played, but I can say that even after getting started late they stuck around for almost two hours. Even if it hadn’t been free, I’d say we got our money’s worth.

I didn’t spend much time with the rest of the festival, but what I saw seemed nice enough. I do want to get back downtown to take a walk along the new riverfront one of these days, though.

Afterwards we stopped by Greektown Casino to see if Marvin and Keith (the other one) had managed to lose all their money yet. It was my first time at that particular casino and, I must say, I wasn’t particularly impressed. When I picture casinos in my head I typically envision grand, glitzy, relentlessly kitschy venues of Vegas or Reno…instead, Greektown was a pretty drab affair. Cramped, poorly organized and a bit rough around the edges. I suppose it was probably nicer when they first built it a couple of years ago, but with the kind of money casinos pull in I just assumed they’d work a little harder on appearances.

Besides that, I spend most of Saturday attending various family graduation parties and a couple of hours on Sunday visiting with Rob, whom I haven’t seen in a year or so. I also wrote up an interview about being a college student and working in the indie game scene. I’m not sure what, exactly, they’re going to use it for, but it was at the behest of someone working at MTU. I’ll let you know if I hear anything back.

I’ve knocked out several books over the past couple of weeks so I’ll be writing more book reviews similar to the one I did for No Logo a week ago. Hopefully they’ll be interesting (or at least useful) to you and can help me get back into the swing of regular updates.