NATIONAL POST ARTS

Extremely Bad Advice: Bitcoin Fever
Dear Cyber-Steve, Please explain bitcoin to me. What can I buy with bitcoin? Is it just a new way to score drugs online without having to go to my offline dealer? (Because he lives really far away in a really shady part of town, but the Internet is, like, everywhere, man.) Do the ladies like bitcoin? Help a bit-brother out.

Extremely Bad Advice: The Smoking Fun

Dear Steve, I love to smoke. I remember when non-smokers were few and far between – the good old days. Of course, Health Canada has demonized the smoking community, so now I find myself surrounded by non-smokers. Here’s my question: I am soon having a party and know that a significant number of guests are non-smokers. Is it socially acceptable to allow smokers to smoke freely in my home at the party, knowing that the clean-air freaks will likely feel choked? Or do I cave to their health-obsessed neuroses and make it a smoke-free party?

Find out the answer here: natpo.st/Xo8hdK

A brief, illustrated history of Quentin Tarantino
From Reservoir Dogs to Django Unchained, U.S. director Quentin Tarantino has joined the canon of great filmmakers with his distinct — if hyper-violent — filmic style. We take a look at his filmography, in a handy illustrated format. Click through for some history on the Tarantino film in which each character stars! (Illustration by Steve Murray)

What can’t be published: A month-long effort to document a sexual assault led to a detailed, engaging piece too difficult to read
Currently, Toronto women are living in fear. There are perpetrators of sexual assaults prowling multiple neighbourhoods. As the number of victims increase, I feel the familiar pulse of fear growing in the people around me, a frenzied hysteria disturbingly similar to that of that era I deeply researched while secluded in my cabin in the woods. And just like the newspaper reports of the ’80s and ’90s that surrounded the Scarborough Rapist, there is a slew of misguided commentary on how women can prevent themselves from being “easy targets.” Women are consistently asked to be “aware,” as if they aren’t already aware every hour of every day.

Words are being used to dictate what women wear, how much they drink, what hours of the night they are allowed to travel in. It is more than 20 years since Paul Bernardo’s gruesome Scarborough attacks, and the conversation still hinges on what women should do to protect themselves. It has become tedium, this multiple-decade standard hum of complete disregard for a woman’s reality. When police “encourage women to be vigilant,” they fail to recognize that women are already living in a constant state of vigilance that is no way to live, under the ceaseless threat of violation, by a stranger or by someone they know. All these years and words and we have failed to learn that no amount of prescribed costume changing or behavioural policing will ever change that.
(Illustration: Steve Murray/National Post)

Celebrity spotting at TIFF: A field guide
Not sure what to do when you see your favourite star in the wild? Steve Murray can help, from how to approach to identifying each celebrity’s distinctive call.

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The adventures of Spidey Steve: City Hall wall crawler
When the Make-A-Wish Foundation asked National Post illustrator and humour writer Steve Murray if he would like to rappel off the top of city hall, he agreed, on one condition: that he be allowed to dress as Spider-Man.

Is beefcake cinema back in action?
The TIFF Bell Lightbox theatre is showing Schwarzenegger/Stallone: The Rise of Beefcake Cinema, to mark the era of the super-buff, superhuman action hero. Whatever happened to the beefcake? In recent times we’ve had regular guy (and gal), heroes such as Liam Neeson kicking everyone’s butt in Taken, and Helen Mirren with a semi-automatic in Red. But perhaps this summer, we’re seeing a resurgence of the meat-head with the gang in The Expendables 2, Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, Captain America and Thor in The Avengers. But are they here to stay? (Illustration by Steve Murray)

How a road trip to Canada in the ’80s inspired Richard Ford’s latest novel
“I loved that landscape,” Richard Ford says. “What struck me was how different it was from just where I was living at the time, across the border in [Missoula] Montana. It didn’t shock me, it pleased me, in a way. There was something about the landscape up in Saskatchewan … that I had such an affinity for. I think it just settled on me in a profound way.

“When an American — this American, anyway — is in Canada, you’re very aware that you’re in a completely different place,” he adds. (Illustration by Steve Murray)