journal features

my dinner with Jonathan

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2004.11.22

Tonight I met with my old friend Jonathan Culp and a number of his activist/media friends at a really good vegetarian "Pan-Asian" place called Bo De Duyen on Spadina Ave. The place does a good job of concocting faux meats of all description, even beef.

As always, when hanging around with this crowd, I feel like the ultra-conformist, ultra-conservative type. Having (had, at any rate) a career and wearing name-brand clothing is just the beginning. The way I've devoted years of my life to helping various outfits earn $, through taking "day jobs" is the real kicker. They're an interesting gang, certainly more so than the usual "1700 Club" types you find shuffling about in offices.

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton