Je pensè il ya des la bellefleur

Sad news today as local Trois-Rivierès cultural icon Jean-Pierre Bellefleur has been reported as missing in today's edition of local newspaper Le Nouvelliste.

Mr. Bellefleur was last seen heading east up the St. Lawrence seaway in his antique cedar-strip canoe, singing Voyageur tunes, shirtless and wearing his trademark denim shorts and red bandana, using a case of Laurentide as ballast for the front of the canoe.  He was reported as being "extremely agitate, him" by local sources who witnessed Mr. Bellefleur walking down Boulevard Sainte Madeleine smoking, drinking, cursing, yelling and looking for a fight with anyone English-speaking.  His ex-girlfriend of five years, Huguette Lafreniere-Willis, was approached for her reaction Thursday but the notoriously publicity-shy Lafreniere appeared to be rather intent upon finishing her jumbo poutine while simultaneously smoking and drinking three different kinds of beer to offer any intelligible comment.


Mr. Bellefleur was apparently upset over his recent decline as the city's unofficial mascot and good-luck charm after staging a graphic and widely publicized protest against "repressiveness and old-world values" in 2006 that earned him nationwide attention and legions of internet fans.  He had been upstaged lately by Puanter (Stinky) - a smoking, hard-drinking, one-eyed poker-playing bear with a penchant for dropping loose change on the floor near pretty girls.  Bellefleur, who had not been seen in public wearing a shirt since his story went viral, had recently spent his life savings to purchase a large quantity of stock in RIM, convinced it was going to, as he put it, "frickin' shoot to da moon".

There will be a candlelight vigil held this evening near the site of Mr. Bellefleur's disappearance.  There is plenty of free parking - jus' go at the Bière Store lot, you.

Pat Travers - Fidelis

 

---

As anyone who knows me can tell you, I'm one of Pat Travers' biggest fans from way back, and yet somehow I missed this album when it came out over a year ago...  That's what getting older does to you.

After listening for a few weeks, it has become very apparent that this is his best effort since 1982's Black Pearl.  The man is 57, has been recording since 1976, and still has the energy, conviction and drive of someone decades younger. He also seems to have regained his writing touch. Eleven original PT-penned(!) songs with some genuine surprises and lots of smokin' guitar work as always.

Standout tracks include "Edge of Darkness", "Then I'll Fall", "Save Me" and "Josephine" which features an out-of-nowhere reggae-style break that hasn't been heard since his early-80s heyday. There are no duds sprinkled in among the running order, but some "funny voices" threaten to spoil a couple of the songs.

There's a great story on the recording and writing of this album that I'll try to link to when I find it.  The name "Fidelis" alludes to several things including keeping the faith, also the longevity and loyalty of many of his fans.  His lovely wife Monica sings backup on several of the tracks and does a bangup job.

Overall, PT's vocals are among the best he's ever recorded and are finally a match for the power and passion of his guitar work.  Never the strong suit of his early recordings, his voice has matured and has become a powerful instrument on its own and acquired a gritty, soulful feel that perfectly suits his style.



Highly f#$!ing recommended, not the least of which is the fact that it was recorded at an undisclosed remote location in Northern Ontario, which is also name-dropped on the cut "Then I'll Fall". The verse in question never fails to raise the hair on my arms. Always the sign of a good piece of music in my book. Comeback album of the year, even if that year was 2010.

http://www.fabricationshq.com/album-...--fidelis.html

http://www.amazon.com/Fidelis-Pat-Tr...owViewpoints=1

Get it now...  and for God's sake if you get the chance, see him live.

R.I.P. Radio

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”

Creaulx 2.0

That's it - I quit!... is what I'm tempted to say with regards to all forms of social networking - Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, etc - in the hopes that it sticks this time.  Having officially turned into my father sometime last year, I realize what a huge waste of otherwise productive - or at least enjoyable - time it really is.  However, I also know my inner teen slacker self well enough to realize that the internerd ain't going anywhere and neither am I, at least in the short term.  Meanwhile, Web 2.0 is now somewhere up around Version 9 and propagating as rapidly as fruit files on a pile of rotten bananas.  Facebook may be the gold standard, but it's become stagnant, inert, and a vehicle for advertising and 20th-Century media to attempt to remain relevant.  Speaking from experience, it's become a home for the over-40 crowd who are too tired and/or busy to actually go out with friends. Twitter is now a "must-have" although I have yet to figure out why, and Google Plus is hugely - and equally inexplicably - popular.  LinkedIn seems to add credibility to their idea of work-based networking, but there are just as many "friend collectors" there as anywhere else.  How many social network accounts must a man post on before you can call him a man?  Seriously, who has the time for all this electronic faux-interaction and is it worth mortgaging your real relationships for?  The answer is far too many and no, respectively.  Remember that in the end, you're really talking to yourself, an effect that is just as potent and has far more staying power when you aren't glued to a flat-screen monitor.

 The bright promise of electronic communication has fallen far short of what my hopes were just a few years ago largely due to the medium's transience.  No matter how good today's posts, there will be something shiny and new to ogle tomorrow, rendering today quickly forgotten.  I'll bet I'm not the only person to have lost three and four hours at a stretch to mindless link-surfing, and the attendant guilt when you realize your time would have been better spent sleeping...  Because of this, I've essentially given up on television over the last decade, no longer have the attention span to properly digest what I'm reading the few times I actually pick up a newspaper and seem to be more scatterbrained than ever due to the mutiple distractions provided by being always plugged in.  Yet my most vivid memories remain those of the pre-electronic age.  Note:  I did not say the Pleistocene Era, so please don't extrapolate too far out.

I've said it before and am ready to chant the mantra again - long-form writing is one good way to forestall early senility, almost as good as crosswords and Sudoku.  The big problem is anyone who would even be apt to read yet another piece of opinion-based writing has neither the time nor gives a rat's ass.  So, I do it for myself.  I consider it free cognitive therapy that may or may not be read by anyone with the capacity to add to the conversation.  It's very nearly the opposite of the quick buzz given by a funny status update or a detached non-sequitur on a social network.  I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed that everyone on Facebook is trying to be all funny all the time(!), and that's an impossibly high standard to achieve if you even wanted to.  Nothing valuable is shared or experienced when everyone is a sarcastic wiseass.  When everybody's hip, no one is cool. 



So don't read too much into this diatribe as I'm sure Kim Kardashian or Kat von D is up to something far more intellectually stimulating at this very moment.  All I'm really trying to do is give my undertaxed brain a kickstart.  Here's hoping there's enough viable gray matter left in the ol' girl to make this work.

Music,Time and Perspective

I have been reading - a lot - about something near and dear to my heart lately; namely, Canadian music - especially what has used to be called "alternative" or "new" rock by radio stations and the media alike.  As I get older, like many Gen X'ers  - or the Baby Boomers before me - I am naturally looking backward a bit after being let down by what is happening now.  I could just as easily be talking about life in general, and for musically-minded me, one complements and goes hand-in-hand with the other.  Life has sort of settled into a complacency in terms of new ideas once you hit your mid-40s and it becomes increasingly difficult to get your brain out of it's comfortable neural rut.  Or maybe it's just a small rut before the big comeback...

(That's me in the photo above on the right playing our first trial gig of "Singing for Seniors" - 50s and 60s songs intended to shine a little light in the otherwise dark corners of local seniors' residences.)

Once you achieve some stability in life, are reasonable happy in your work, and aren't on the brink of financial disaster at every turn, you start to question what it is that made you passionate about life in the first place.  For me, it was - and remains - music.

Some of the best books I have read on this subject are listed below:

"Have Not Been The Same" chronicles the 1985-1995 renaissance period in Canadian "alternative" rock that most closely coincides with my formative years and talks about and with many of the bands that I would consider to be influential in my own life, and is a highly engaging read whether you were there or not.   A few of the artists that get coverage include The Tragically Hip, The Grapes of Wrath, The Pursuit of Happiness, Rheostatics, Sloan, The Doughboys, 54.40, Blue Rodeo and many more.  Here's Amazon's take on the book, which gives a pretty good rationale for why I picked it up:

According to the authors of Have Not Been the Same--the first comprehensive history of contemporary Canadian rock--1985 was a pivotal year for Canadian music. Generic rockers like Loverboy, Triumph, and Bryan Adams would no longer rule the roost. Instead, "a newer generation looked inside their own country and started to create art for themselves, for the right reasons." The ensuing 10-year window was an amazingly creative and productive time, and artists like the Tragically Hip, Blue Rodeo, Sloan, and the Rheostatics finally made the words "Canadian" and "cool" a plausible combination. The authors examine the history, motivations, and achievements of the era's musicians--both the famous and the undeservedly obscure--with great diligence. Due to the book's considerable girth--nearly 800 pages!--Have Not Been the Same may appeal mainly to fans who were deeply into the underground music scene of the time and still need to know what inspired Eric's Trip to make the album Love Tara or want to learn the weird story of Vancouver proto-grunge band Slow, who made the song for which this book is named. Other readers will be surprised to find out just how much was going on in Canada, and how it was suddenly possible for a band like the Rheostatics to sing songs about hockey hero Wendel Clark and the province of Saskatchewan and be revered for their efforts. --Jason Anderson
Never fear, if you were born before 1975 and lived in Canada for any length of time, had access to a radio, and gave a damn, this book will have something for you.

Dave Bidini's funny and moving "Around the World in 57½ Gigs" nicely dovetails his first solo tour with the 2007 breakup of the Rheostatics, perhaps one of the most influential bands from that era.  They never quite broke into the mainstream like a lot of other acts did, yet are still held in high regard, probably because they simply refused to compromise their music for the sake of a hit.  Their one nod to the Top 40 was the song "Claire" from the 1994 movie of Paul Quarrington's novel "Whale Music", to which they also composed the soundtrack, as well as their 1992 record of the same name.  I finally "got" them this year, and have just come off an eight month aural bender where I played the living hell out of Whale Music, Melville and Night of the Shooting Stars.  I strongly suggest you do the same.

For someone like me who was quite literally raised on radio in the 1970s and 80s, I would venture that new music ceased to matter somewhere around 2002, and commercial radio became instantly redundant at the same time.  I firmly believe that the recent rapid decline in civilization coincides with hip-hop, mp3's, and Nickelback's rise in popularity.  That's not to say that there aren't some great current acts out there, and some great songs and albums produced, they are just pushed further underground, nearly undiscoverable unless you're diligently scouring the interwebbian catacombs every day, something I just don't have the time for.  In the 1970s and 80s, it just came at you from the radio - no special effort required other than a set of really good ears.

 

This one is notable mostly for it's iconic cover as opposed to it's content - I can't conceive of a more Canadian image than the Rheostatics' Martin Tielli wearing a toque while playing his famous doubleneck Ibanez emblazoned with a never-quite-presented idea for the then-new Canadian flag designed by A.Y. Jackson of the Group of Seven.  He painted it himself, of course. The only way to make it more Canadian would be to have a stubby bottle of Labatt 50, a Tim Horton's coffee, and a snowsuited beaver playing bass.

Part Two Coming Soon:

Retro Recall -The Halcyon Days of CFNY and The Rise of "Alternative" Rock

Look into the Mirror

It occurred to me on my quiet way to work today, the day after Canada Day, that Canadians still live in the best country in the world.  You can stop rolling your eyes now, I saw that.  As I was sitting on the nearly empty express bus, watching the sun shine across the Ottawa river, listening to and being ennobled by the message in  "Northern Wish", the Rheostatics' painterly paean to our home and native land,  got off the bus and walked in to my particular workplace overhung with gently waving red-and-white flags, I was struck with an overwhelming sense of national pride and gratitude for being able to live and work here.


Despite all human attempts to destroy the planet that we live on (witness the current, horrific belching of thousands of gallons of crude oil every day in the Gulf of Mexico), economic disaster lurking at every turn, wars and injustices continuously being carried out in countries all across the globe; pointless, ridiculously expensive meetings of world leaders right here at home (see post below) and hundreds of other daily annoyances - some large, some small and insignificant in the broad scheme of things - we still have it better than most.  Hell, you want bad news, you know where to find it.  We're bombarded with it every day from all sorts of different angles. There are a thousand valid reasons why we should all be stalking Parliament Hill with placards, megaphones and possibly molotov cocktails, shouting angrily in protest of one thing or another and demanding justice, fair treatment and funding for our own particular pet cause - what used to be called "special interests". Save for a misguided, vocal minority infected with a virulent, wrongheaded sense of entitlement, Canadians don't do that.  What we do best is quietly go about our daily business to the best of our ability.  The old-fashioned work ethic that saw our predecessors through hard times in the past continues - it just never makes the news.

Don't get me wrong - I'm in favour of many of the things that reasonable, intelligent people write and/or protest about. I also believe our country needs a bit of a political and economic reboot.  There are real problems that I won't diminish.  I'm not naïve enough to believe that Canada really looks like a Group of Seven painting - but if you get far enough out of the city, it does...  What we often forget in our efforts to shout above the din is that there's still an awful lot of good here. Our national identity is something we've struggled with since 1867, but the best thing about the Canada that our parents grew up in was that anyone with a dream could succeed with enough tenacity (and a bit of luck).  Somehow, even with all the doom and gloom of the world today, it's still possible.  Tune out the naysayers - the world, our little corner in particular, is what you make of it.


 Happy Canada Day! 

Time Well Spent

*START SARCASM GENERATOR NOW*

Roughly a week ago, give or take a few days (who's counting) some of the more level-headed members of our society decided to gather together and politely demonstrate to the worlds leaders gathered in Toronto (I like the word "gather"; it's a happy word, full of promise and joy) that they were not happy with the way things were and that perhaps a different way of thinking would be appropriate.

Apparently (I'm going on here-say) the world leaders gathered in Toronto were kinda busy so they were unable to attend any think-tank with the level-headed members of our society but they did send some representatives of the local constabulary to try and maintain peace and order. The more level-headed members of our society decided to try and circumnavigate the local constabulary in order to at least get closer to the world leaders gathered in Toronto but the local constabulary were organized and ably lead and were able (for the most part) to stay one step ahead of the more level-headed members of our society.

In the end the world leaders were able to meet in relative peace and quiet before leaving for their respective countries due largely to the efforts of the local constabulary and their ability to stay one step ahead of the more level-headed members of our society.

TURN OFF SARCASM GENERATOR NOW.

START RANT.

The police do a thankless, difficult job protecting us for ourselves and the latent retarded (in dictionary sense of the word) anti-social tendencies that we have lurking around inside our craniums and more often than not they are vilified in the media, spurned by the public and feared by our youth. We live in a country where anyone caught doing a crime has more rights than the people trying to stop them. We've all seen the images and film of the police cars burning in the downtown core of Toronto and of the pointless vandalism and wanton destruction of shops and businesses up and down Yonge Street.

To what end? Did this make anyone sit and take notice that there was problems in the world that need to be fixed? Really ?!?!

Or did it just make you think, like I did, that large groups of people suffer from terminal brain cramps? Give some reason for the large groups of the criminally stupid to mass together and protest *anything* and watch the fun! Mob mentality! Missing were the torches and pitchforks and just because there wasn't time to find a dark ages-themed shop. The only thing between what happened and what could have happened was the thin, blue line of the men and women of our police force. Working un-thanked and un-appreciated as usual.

Last week made me ashamed (briefly) of being a Canadian who lives in the GTA. What must the rest of the world think of us now.............

Good job police. Keep trying to protect us from ourselves. And Happy Canada Day.

END RANT.

Post Traumatic Stress

So.  What have I been up to?

After seven-and-a-half long months in an Uzbeki prison with little to do but watch a 13" black & white Sylvania TV showing nothing but old Soviet propaganda films and horrendous Eastern European game shows, I'm back - released of my own recognisance, down thirty pounds and full of crossword clues, excellent curse words, and beet recipes I never knew existed... 

*******************************

..is what I would say had I been held in such a manner.  Unfortunately and far less dramatically, I have no real excuse other than laziness and writer's block for not updating this Web Log, or, what we techies call - and try to follow me here if you can - a "blog".  Instead of being honest, I'm trying to lure eyeballs and potential advertising dollars with a sordid, poorly-spun tale of unjustifiable incarceration, and for that I am truly, deeply sorry.  This is me, hanging my head in shame right now.

With that off my chest, I can tell you that there will be all sorts of goodies to look forward to on this - say it with me - "blog" in the coming months.  Oh man, just you wait 'til you see what we have cookin' -  Famous guest columnists! Free music! Great summer recipes! A visit from Oprah! Ticket giveaways, monster trucks, an explanation of the "Twilight" phenomenon that actually makes sense, Spanish hookers, three-legged hamster racing, and the world's largest single piece of cobblestone from the Giant's Causeway!  These are just a few of the things that I cannot procure and are are beyond my grasp. 

Instead, it'll be more of the same stuff you, my loyal readers family ex-girlfriend insomniacs, are used to.
Unless I can convince my Contributing Editors to come back, this is no empty threat.  This is the 21st century equivalent of a gun to a kitten's head. 

 So let's keep everyone happy, including the metaphorical kitten, and get some new stuff up here pronto.  That is all.  You may return to your life, already in progress.

Meanderings of the Directionless

Greetings from real life.  It seems trying to come up with a visual theme and some appeal for a form of technology that lost it's mainstream audience five years ago (blogging) is a Herculean task.  Note:  By Herculean, I mean the low-budget 70's animated Hercules, of course.  Complete with sound effects generated by kids banging on a garage door with a baseball bat, and slow-moving, dull-witted monsters that have a narrow range of expression.  Basically, they all go "HNNNNGGGHHHHGGGHHHH!!!"

Hey, I love long-form writing as much as the next meatbag; but with the limited amount of "leisure" time available to me, I have been avoiding this place like the plague, or at least trying to shorten up the amount of time required to to dress it up with unrelated photos. Look! Here's Frog & Toad™, for no apparent reason other than I like them:

I'm going to pledge nothing in terms of content, but I need to wet my feet here, so bear with me for the short term while I try to conjure up a eureka moment to figure out why this blog should exist.  So far all I've come up with is a smörgåsbord combo of fiction, humour, news, op-ed style writing and personal diary, all related to the central theme of s**t that gets in your way as you try to navigate the deceptively shallow waters of life...

Failure - Not Only An Option, It's Now Encouraged!

What's bothering me this week? Stupidity, gross ignorance, lack of ownership, accountability and indifference of the general and more specific varieties. No one seems to be outraged that children aren't allowed to fail, no matter their grades, in elementary school even if they are, in fact, failures.

If this is the new trend, then hopefully it will spread concentrically to our jobs, and society in general so that we can run over people at will and do nothing (or something, only poorly) all day at work and be rewarded for it.

This country and society are well on their way to ruin and not only because of the complete economic failure that is heading our way. Lessee, Tommy didn't hand in his geography assignment because he was out all night drinking? Give that boy an "A+" and get him into ninth grade ASAP. We need more young men like you, son...

Seriously, what good will come of letting children who are failures believe they are successes?

Comment + thought = Stand-alone article

Posted by my bro in the comments of the post below, thought it worthy of an entry all on it's own:

My favourite take on the auto industry is how it's all the Union's fault that everything is going off the rails. It has nothing to do with GM's greed in needing a competitive vehicle in every single niche market, no matter how insignificant. Also, Chrysler needs to make vans and nothing else. Well maybe the Challenger, but not for $60k. It's not like it's a new design or even a new engine. 

GM released the Chevy HHR after playing catch-up to the PT Cruiser, but about 5 years too late to cash in on the trend. The HHR, much like the PT Cruiser is now D.O.A. and no one would be caught dead in one. This is an example of wasting huge development costs for a trend that's already dead by the time you get your crapwagon to market.

Labour costs are about 10% of the price of a vehicle. Take 10% off every vehicle and you still aren't selling vehicles because people are :
a) afraid they will lose their jobs
b) cannot get a loan from the bank
c) really don't need to replace their three year old car in the first place
d) waiting for the prices to drop.........waiting .......still waiting..........

Toyota had to lease an ocean liner to store unsold vehicles because they have run out of fields and warehouses to store new vehicles. As supply and demand tells us, this glut of unsold vehicles should mean lower prices, but instead government is stealing from us to prop up the Companies for another few days.

.....still waiting........

What's really inferior about north American cars is their design and engineering. But everyone targets the union people who put them together. There's something about a car assembled for minimum wage that would not make me comfortable at 130 kph on the 401, but that's just me.


At GM there are 5 retirees for every line worker. This is simply not the reality at the Japanese branch plants since they only began producing here in the 1980s.

What is inexcusable has been the quality lapse which is narrowing, but honestly should have been met or exceeded in the mid nineties. Japanese vehicles are clearly more reliable if one looks through the well regarded Consumer Report auto edition. If more people did this, GM and Chrysler would have been out of business long ago.

As you bid farewell to iconic manufacturers here in Ontario you need to realize a basic economic rule. Manufacturing creates wealth, and these Companies are the last gasp of big manufacturing here. Countless Ontario part makers will also fail along with the companies they supply. That will mean more unemployment and a lower standard of living for you and I eventually. And Dalton McGuinty, Premier for life, will respond as he always does, by raising taxes. Which further hampers any recovery and punishes anyone still trying to make a living honestly.

Also these parts suppliers are supplying Honda and Toyota here in Canada. If/when they fail, your Canadian made imports will be even more expensive since parts will be made everywhere else in the world but here.

I was on to the greedy business owning bastards as our manufacturing jobs were slowly sent offshore in the nineties, but no one else noticed. Now we cheer with glee as the last of the industrial revolution dies off, leaving service sector jobs and little else. You won't even be able to ask anyone if they want fries with that because there won't be any paying customers.

Professional analysts are saying that a depression will follow the collapse of the big two. This will be a nasty summer for Americans, who will protest violently as jobs evaporate faster than stimulus dollars, and people start to go hungry. I hope they are wrong.

At least my eight year old Ford is still running as I approach summer layoff. I might need to keep it a few more years, peeling paint and rusty bare spots not withstanding.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009 by K.R. Raven

GM Needs To Die

In apparent contradiction to my supposedly Conservative viewpoint (truthfully, pretty malleable on a day-to-day basis) I am responding in knee-jerk fashion to a headlining story I've just read about GM cutting another 1600 jobs cuts in order to qualify for yet another round of government aid.  Gimme, gimme, gimme...  

To me, that's like cutting off your foot to collect your accidental death & dismemberment uinsurance.  Sure, it's a great payoff, but you can't f&*$ing walk anymore.  And to carry the metaphor a little further, unlike private citizens, GM hasn't been paying it's premiums the last little while. 

If GM was a car, it'd be an uninsurable wreck.  To even 

write a news story about them, it's now mandatory to preface the phrase "automaker" with the word"struggling".

Would you  consider buying a GM(or Chrysler) vehicle at this point, knowing that Chapter 11 protection is probably weeks away?  Even if either company had a desirable vehicle, it'd be a no-brainer.  

Governments on both sides of the 49th parallel need to stop pouring buckets of cash down the stinking, clogged drain that is the North American auto industry, let them die their much-deserved death and let everyone get on with their lives.  Out of the ashes, phoenix-like, something better will arise.

This "stimulus package" money that has been bandied about by Obama and Stephen Harper like some sort of saviour has done the sum total of nothing to stimulate the economy.  No one in the auto industry has learned anything.  They've had 33 years since the Honda Civic was introduced to catch up, and the best they can come up with is the Dodge Caliber, Ford Focus (2008 version) or Chevrolet Cobalt.  Put the cane away, guys, the horse is dead.  

It's time to stop this horrible waste of money.  How about incentives for ordinary folks to actually buy vehicles?  How about incentives for Toyota, Honda, Mazda, VW, Hyundai, Kia, etc (you know, SUCCESSFUL auto manufacturers) to build more of their products in North America to keep at least some of the people who comprise the world's largest market employed at more reasonable rates of pay and without some of the more ridiculous union protection?  Contracts need to be renegotiated to keep this kind of protectionism out of the language of all labour contracts.  

There's a reason this nation is failing, and throwing non-existent money around like some sort of drunken moron who just won the lottery is not going to save it.

Arrivederci, GM and Chrysler.  

(I considered saying "It's been a hell of a ride", but the K-car, the Chevy Vega, the Dodge Durango, the Pontiac Aztek, the Pontiac Sunfire, the Pontiac Acadian, the Pontiac Sunbird, the Pontiac Grand Am -  hell, the Pontiac AnyF$%&ingthing pretty much put a nail in that coffin.)

Miley Cyrus defends her older boyfriend

So will a lawyer one day. The only question is what type? Divorce? Criminal? Personal injury?

Shout-out of the week

Bill Maher's Real Time. Great HBO show that cuts through the bolshevik that pervades our media. He tempers his political vitriol with just enough humour to avoid depression and panic.

Very right for the times and of more use than Stephen Colbert and that other guy, whasisname, Jon Stewart. Those guys are so pre-meltdown. Only complaint: Once a week isn't enough!

Good Things Happen To Reasonably Good People

Sometimes, without warning, the obstacles actually recede for a short time, the Red Sea parts and the downtrodden finally make their way to safety. I'm one of the lucky ones. As the economy crumbles like last week's cheesecake, I have once again bucked worldwide trends and been made permanent at my job after 7 months. I can't believe it, it still hasn't sunk in.

I'm cautiously optimistic and a little dazed about the whole thing. I've had a rough three years since moving to Ottawa (truthfully it started long before that, I was never cut out for sales, yet somehow lasted twenty years in that most dishonourable of professions). It was a gamble to move here and it looks like it has finally paid off in a career I can live with. I suppose I should give thanks to some higher power or at least count my lucky stars, whatever that means. I think I have exactly one lucky star and it has come through for me bigtime. This isn't exactly news or even all that interesting, but now I know what it feels like to finally win one.

Now, what to do with the rest of my life...

Dream A Little Materialistic Dream

First of all, let's just get this out of the way:

1. I realize the worldwide economy is in the tank and I should be thinking about hoarding gold and Campbell's soup in my basement, as well as the common good of my fellow man.
2. There are horrible injustices going on every day in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, China, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Toronto and many other third-world countries.
3. I should be out there, somewhere, in dreads and a bloody, sweat-stained Che Guevera t-shirt shouting leftist slogans and brandishing an AK-47, ferociously trying to make a difference in the world while disavowing all things material.
4. They say that Little Mosque on the Prairie is a really good show. I should be watching it.
   

Guess what? It ain't gonna happen. None of it. Beside being too old for ­­!Vive La Revolution¡, I like stuff. It makes me forget about all the horrible crap that's going on in the world, if only until the bills come in. Kind of like Xanax for the soul. Not surprising for a guy who came of age in the 70s and 80s, with the golden promises of a life better than that of our parents. The members of Douglas Coupland's Generation X (birth years approximately 1961-81), myself included, are the first generation to succumb to lowered expectations. It's also not surprising that I often daydream about the open road, cheap gasoline and unencumbered travel in a safe world that doesn't exist anymore (and may never have). Box cutters, anyone?

There, it's out of the way and I can just show off a few pics of the car I'd like to own, which Ford will never import here in its current form. They're far too stupidly cautious, don't trust their customers and a few vehicles like this might actually create some genuine enthusiasm for their products, thereby increasing their profits to slightly above zero. Wouldn't want that in a worldwide recession / depression...

See below for more ranting on this same subject.

Is it wrong to be thinking about something like this when we all seem to be in batten-down-the-hatchbacks mode? Or is this form of escapism harmless? Not sure, but damn, that is one sweet-looking ride that is right for this stressed-out century. 35 mpg and enough room for guitars, amps, beer and the family, if the mood should strike.

I need only ask one question:




Why not, Ford?

Does Your TV Suffer from Constant, Irritating "Judder"?

Well,doesn't it? Of course it does, you idiot!!! You just don't know it yet.

Apparently any flat panel LCD TV that isn't a 120 Hz Sharp does. What about the new, 240 Hz Sonys? According to the lowest-common-denominator-higher-numbers-equals-better crowd at Suture Shop, it must be four times better than regular HDTVs. Absolute horse shite, I say.

Unfortunately for me, that atrocity isn't a typo. I can picture the 24 year old unshaven, hoodie-wearing Justin Long lookalike copywriter creating this gibberish and being congratulated with high-fives from his geeky stoner colleagues as he comes up with the winning adjective five minutes before they're all set to hit the peeler bar, bongs in tow.

Or maybe I'm just a cranky old bastard. Yeah, that's probably it.

According to those in the tech-know, this sort of motion-smoothing technology for home television has nearly no basis in reality, and needs to be turned off when watching anything but the NFL or Venus and Serena battling each other on the clay. Crikey - sign me up!
"Where can I dumps my wheelbarrow full of moneys so's I can walk off wit one a' these babies?"

It's an old caveat, but ferchrissakes, people, don't believe everything you read in a Future Shop or Best Buy flyer. Even if it sounds all Web 3.0-ish. After being in sales for twenty years and seeing some pretty underhanded, shady crap being pulled on a daily basis, never trust a salesman, saleswoman, or any other gendered thing trying to sell you goods and/or services.

In other words, trust your eyes, not some slimy greaseball with the morals of John Wayne Gacy. Now, excuse me while I go check the Leafs game for a surplus of "judder". I'm sure that's what's causing my unhappiness.

Things Continue To Get Extremely Worse.

Original Post From July; quite prescient given the current predictions of depression-esque tendencies in the economy.

How true. Very poorly worded, but true. The title quote was taken from a union representative in Oshawa commenting on the recent GM truck plant closure there after the government threw as much spare cash as they could at GM, but it applies to a lot of things recently. Car companies don't really deserve government bailouts, do they? How about the local Mom & Pop type stores that are constantly going under due to the overkill of retail in this country? Blame Wal-Mart if you will, but there's a simple reason we're getting "extremely worse" in this country and in the US of (DO)A...

We're lazy and greedy, and getting "worser" by the minute. I should know, I work for the Federal Government. You want entitlement issues? Try unionized government workers with strong socialist tendencies who want to do as little as possible and get paid handsomely for their inactivity. Most criticisms levelled at the way Government is conducted are spot-on.

So, greed got us into this mess - how do we propose to get out of it? Why, naturally, by spending our way back into prosperity. If that's true, can I actually justify my recent insane flat panel HDTV purchase merely by it's incremental contribution to the GNP, thereby allowing me to sleep at night? Yes, I Can™! Thanks, Obama!

Unlike Kent Brockman, I'm not pointing the finger squarely at you in particular, as I can be firmly lumped in with the gooey masses. We still have a false sense of entitlement in this country that is to be found nowhere else in the world save the USA, and possibly Sweden.

In many third-world developing nations, the mere act of getting out of bed and walking to the local market can be a matter of life and death. In North America, we still take so much for granted, that when we do fall it'll be ten times harder than what anyone can forecast.

Your stock market performance or new BMW M3 isn't the topic of conversation when you can't scrape together enough to pay the mortgage, and roving bands of starving Liberals are your biggest late-night worry. It's a fine line between comfort and being hungry, but you always know when you've crossed it, and we're not there yet. As a result, I don't hold out much hope for things to improve. Like an addict, we have to hit rock bottom and sleep in a few dumpsters before our friends call an intervention. I wonder what the state of the Union (and Canada) will be like six months from now when all the post-coronation Obama hype has died down and we can all get back to cold hard reality.

Despite my pessimistic tone, I actually think (or is it hope) that we can get through this crisis. Nothing is more inventive than an addict looking for his next fix. After all, you can always find the money somewhere.

SNL - Newly Relevant or a Shadow of the Past?

The wide cast of web-pinion seems divided on whether the current SNL cast is poised on the verge of renewed greatness, or at the edge of the abyss (Check the comments here). Having not been a regular watcher since the mid-90's, I can't vouch for anything other than this 2008 season-opening clip. It's as if Tina Fey was born to play Sarah Palin. Not so much Amy Poehler's Hillary likeness, her mannerisms actually aren't quite shrill or shrewish enough (Does she also play Martha Stewart?) It works because of Fey's fearlessness.
I can see the value of that trait in comedy as well as in life.




I find life a lot less funny since giving up beer and taking on full-time parenting, financial and social anxiety as a replacement. The early 90s were SNL's golden age to me and represent a time in my life when everything wasn't life and death:

Dennis Miller, Chris Farley, Mike Myers, Adam Sandler before he became obnoxious, David Spade, Julia Sweeney, Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman - a veritable laundry list of hilarity, memorable sketches and characters. One of the criticisms of this period is Lorne Michaels' overuse of recurring characters, and I agree. Maybe Rob Schneider wouldn't have been reduced to doing horrendously unfunny movies (see The Animal) if he'd been allowed to stretch his legs a bit instead of being "Copier Guy" for three years straight. Still, say what you will about the cast's post-SNL careers, they were all at the top of their game on the show, and the recent retrospective "SNL In The 90's" only reaffirms my view. Instant (mostly undeserved) nostalgia is all the rage these days but in this case it's warranted.

With all the doom and gloom coming out of the media since the summer, I still believe it's important to be able to laugh at something before you deconstruct and analyze it into the ground. Tina Fey is doing a great job of it.

(Oct. 9th Update: See YouTube for some amazing clips of CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer relaying a similar message, this Palin thing has become quite the phenomenon. Perhaps Palin would do better in interviews and the polls if she paid Fey to impersonate her at press conferences, and quietly drop the folksy Fargo schtick when asked a serious question, about, say, the US government's $700 billion financial bailout. Katie Couric was obviously baiting her. It doesn't excuse Palin's atrocious ignorance or inability to properly deflect the question, but what was the point - unless you or your employer is distincly partisan. I suppose Couric would say the "truth had to be exposed".)

The Steely Dan Show - 2008-07-10 Bethel Woods NY

Here's the link (sorry, now a dead link as MusicWebtown is becoming a paid service) to this well recorded show, not sure if you can download the mp3's and save 'em to your hard drive. All that comes up for me is Apple's much-despised Quicktime web player. Utterly useless.

This is an audience recording but is very clear, decent stereo separation. For all you drummers or wannabees (like myself) out there check Keith Carlock's small break towards the end of track one, an instrumental medley of "Everyone's Gone To the Movies" and "The Fez". The man is a monster, both of the groove and has stellar chops to boot when required. The great thing is he always manages to keep it interesting, probably more for himself than anyone else. The side benefit is if you're a musician or just a really avid music fan, you'll quite often break out in to a smile at some of his references.

Donald Fagens' voice is as good as I've heard it in 15 years of touring and Walter Becker's guitar sounds like he actually rehearsed as opposed to the noodling I was used to from previous tours.

The rearrangements of classic tunes include a funked-up version of "Show Biz Kids" that improves and expands upon the droning one-dimensionality of the original; it's almost a complete rewrite and if you've never heard it, it a real groovin' treat. "Everything You Did" gets the reggae-lite treatment that characterized both the "Gaucho"-era outtake "The Second Arrangement" and Becker's recent solo album Circus Money. See if you can spot the "new" chord in the verses...

Special props to Jon Herington's amazingly lithe adaptation of all the session players in the 'Dan's "magnificent" history while retaining his own style. He really puts a unique personal stamp on every song. The horns are tasty and more up-front than in most of their recorded output.

The Economics Of Stupidity

I live in the suburbs. I like living in the suburbs. I choose to live here, for reasons that will become obvious, and have always aspired to own my own house; not "semi-detached" to someone else's, not a "townhome" which is nothing but a glorified apartment. I grew up in a neighbourhood similar in feel to the one I now reside in, and despite the squalling left's insistence to the contrary, there is still nothing quite like having your own little space, your own trees, your own yard, your own garage. I don't like sharing a common wall with my neighbour. I don't like sharing anything other than idle conversation with them. I realize that my dream is based on an outmoded ideal from the 1950's and am unapologetic about it. On the other hand, I also believe that everyone is entitled to live somewhere decent and most people buy what they can afford. It's unfortunate that our new ideal is cramming as many units per square kilometre as humanly possible. Density breeds discontent, at least in my mind. I've lived in apartments and semi-detached houses, and always feel like I can't quite breathe properly. A quarter of a million dollars doesn't get you much in 2008. So I do apologize if I come across as a gun-toting redneck, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Without getting in to the economics of such a prospect, the tale of which could fill a large book of it's own, suffice to say that I realize that living in Greater Suburbia comes at a cost. It's a lot of work and expense to maintain a small single-family home these days, some would say too much work. It's also a requirement to have at least one, and most often two cars, which contribute to global warming and unnecessarily clog our roads with traffic. I say bosh, flimshaw... Go big or go, uh, to a townhome / birdhouse. Maintenance is part of the deal. Many people I know privately agree with me on this, while publicly applauding the new high-density ideal that is scheduled for this neck of the woods. Yay! More low-income ne'er-do-wells stacked on top of one another!!! I'm literally bursting with anticipation for the density of this area - let's call it "Farrhaven" - to increase to inner-city levels in the faint hopes that the transit system will have more stops here, or that the city might deem it fit to include us in their light-rail plans (currently on indefinite hold). Our fine city counsellor (let's call him or her Jen Hasder) has publicly said so, and is drawing support from a disturbingly large chunk of the brainwashed public. I don't see her, (or him) building a third storey on his (or her) house and letting renters move in. All right, for the sake of clarity, the counsellor in question is a woman.

Sigh. Are people idiots, or is it merely my outsider perspective that sheds some seriously obvious light on the error of this plan? I can hear you saying "both", and you are correct, sir or madam.

Will the roads be appropriately widened to make room for the influx of new citizens driving to work and to shop? Will the newfound tax money be used for anything other than padding City employees' retirement funds and replacing the sodium lights in their private golf courses so they can play at night? Will we get better snowplowing in the winter and road maintenance in the summer? Will anyone explain why there are no f-ing sidewalks in this bloody town? Of course not. Will lip service and studies be paid to determine that none of these things are "within the budget"? Of course they will. In short, I firmly believe that there will be no increase in our services or in the quality of life here. Quite the contrary, in five years this nice little suburb may well already be victim to declining property values, higher crime rates and disintegrating infrastructure. By then, I'll be on my way out of here before the crystal-meth lab next door blows up in the middle of the night.