People actually read this crap?

Am I missing something here?

2010-02-07T22:16:00.001-05:00

I just checked my e-mail inbox, and my spam folder had no fewer than 67 (!) messages in it since yesterday. That's frightening enough... but all of them - yes, all of them - were advertising Viagra.

Is someone trying to tell me something?

Is Mark Starowicz a Prophet?

2009-09-21T10:56:00.004-04:00

Okay, first off, for those of you who weren't paying attention, Mark Starowicz is regarded as one of the deans of serious TV documentaries in Canada.

In a recent Doug Saunders article about the current state of the media universe, Starowicz opined:

When linear time no longer governs the airwaves, it puts an end to the shared national experience. People no longer have anything in common with each other.

Now that's some elegant language. What he's referring to is the fact that video recording technology and online video streaming have made program scheduling largely irrelevant. People no longer build their lives around television program schedules; they can watch their favorite shows whenever it's convenient for them. Television no longer helps maintain the family construct; families don't sit together to watch Being Erica like they used to watch Don Messer's Jubilee.

[For what it's worth, I would argue that although TV may no longer be the Great Facilitator of family cohesion, it does serve a similar purpose within broader societal groups. I have plenty of friends and colleagues with whom I share regular discussions and debates about our communal TV-watching experiences. Shows like Mad Men or Dexter or the multiple shades of CSI have infiltrated the zeitgeist as much, or more, than I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners or Ed Sullivan ever did.]

But let's leave that debate to one side for the moment. I have to admit that when I first saw the Starowicz quote, the very first thing that I thought about was the last time I heard the words "linear time" used on television. That's right: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

I've always thought that Mark Starowicz was a little bit more intense than the average human being. Now it all makes sense! He's a Prophet! or a wormhole alien, if you prefer. Maybe that's why - according to rumour, anyway - they used to let him smoke in his office.

As another Star Trek character would say: fascinating.

Yikes...

2009-09-15T11:37:00.003-04:00

Good news: the Conservative candidate in the Calgary-Glenmore byelection gets beaten like the proverbial rented mule. Premier Ed Stelmach's leadership - or lack thereof - is cited as one of the principal issues leading to the defeat.

Bad news: the candidate who wins the byelection is from the Wildrose Alliance, which is to the Alberta Conservatives what the Reform Party was to the federal PCs, lo these many years ago.

Only in Alberta will you find a rightist government being taken to task for not being far enough to the right. It is to weep.

Am I being petty?

2009-08-27T12:53:00.004-04:00

I'm a little embarrassed to be writing this, but I can't get the thought out of my head...

The news wires are reporting that PM Harper is appointing former NHL coach Jacques Demers to the Senate.

Demers admitted in 2005 that he was illiterate. Since that time, he has been learning to read, but he is still unable to read or write at his grade level, so to speak. In spite of all his good qualities, Demers is not the guy I want to be reading legislation with a view to "sober second thought".

Maybe he misunderstood the job offer. Maybe he received a call from someone in Ottawa saying "Hey, Jacques, how about a job with the Senators?"

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, we have the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time. If this is Harper's idea of Senate reform, count me out.

Death wish

2009-08-17T14:02:00.004-04:00

Wow, two blog posts in a day...

I'm sorry I didn't have a camera with me so i could record the moment for posterity. I was walking home from the grocery store yesterday when I saw a person who has obviously decided to shuffle off his mortal coil as soon as he possibly can.

Here's what this Darwin Award wannabe was doing: he was 1) riding a bicycle without a helmet 2) down the middle of the street 3) hands off the handlebars 4) talking animatedly on his cellphone 5) while running a red light.

Full marks for gumption. I hope his karmic balance is on the positive side, 'cause something tells me that this guy's a street pizza just waiting to happen. Sheesh.

University as career factory?

2009-08-17T11:49:00.002-04:00

I read an interesting post the other day on Howard Bernstein's excellent blog, Medium Close Up. I agree with some of his points but I think he's fallen into a bit of a logic trap. Like many people, he believes that if one studies something in university, they should and must go on to a career in that area.

The concept isn't completely without merit. After all, very few people would study veterinary medicine if they didn't want to go on to a career as a vet. The number of available spots in vet. med. faculties is extremely small, and graduates of a vet. med. program tend to find good, stable employment. Bully for them.

I don't think, though,that you can use the same argument for those who study journalism. Bernstein writes: "If we opened more places in the schools – and we do seem to do this all the time – we would fill them instantly. But does anyone tell these kids there are no jobs for them? I have never seen it. Worse, the schools continue to accept these students knowing there are no jobs. It is morally wrong."

With respect, it's not morally wrong, and the argument is specious. If one were to accept Bernstein's viewpoint uncritically, it would be "morally wrong" for universities to accept students in any number of fields of study. How many history majors end up as professional historians? What proportion of math majors end up making a living doing math? What about anthropology? religious studies? comparative literature? Surely Bernstein can't be arguing that these fields of study aren't worthy, or that enrolment in these areas should be severely restricted.

Even the (Canadian) college system, which is much more geared toward career preparation than knowledge for knowledge's sake, has come to the realization that sometimes - just sometimes - people study something because they're interested in it. The line of demarcation between colleges and universities is dissolving as (some) universities are developing more of a market focus, and (some) colleges are increasing the breadth of their course offerings to allow students to enjoy the intellectual challenges of learning, rather than just stuffing knowledge into their brains with the goal of hopefully building a meaningful career.

Another thing that's developed over the past number of years is that the entire concept of "career" has changed. I'm now in my third career - maybe even my fourth, depending on how you count 'em. Each was a perfectly valid career path, and each career has helped lay the foundation for the succeeding ones. Many of my friends and colleagues have had similar experiences.

Coming back to the journalism-specific issue that Bernstein raises in his blog post, I'm a proponent of the j-school-as-a-professional-program model. In other words, I think that by requiring a person to develop their critical thinking skills - and a little real-world knowledge - before they enter a journalism program, one is likely to come out with a better "product". As an old boss of mine used to say, it's easier to take someone with some life experience and teach him what he needs to become a successful journalist than it is to take someone fresh out of j-school and teach him how to be a real person. In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I'm probably partial to that point of view since that was the rationale he used when he hired me as a reporter.

There. I'm glad I got that off my chest. As always, your mileage may vary.

Context is everything

2009-07-24T16:58:00.003-04:00

Anyone who's known me for any length of time knows that I think context is essential. It's impossible to properly understand the meaning or import of anything that's said or written without understanding the context in which the utterance is, well, uttered. Not knowing the context often paves the way to misunderstandings. Sometimes those misunderstandings are tiny, sometimes they're huge, and sometimes they're just hilarious.

To wit: I was looking up a few articles online to get more info on the numerous ethics complaints that have been filed against Sarah Palin over the past months. Predictably, the chattering classes and the blogosphere are all atwitter over the bona fides of the accusations and what she should do, or should have done, about them. (Just as an aside, now that "twitter" has taken on an entirely new and somewhat different meaning, are we going to have to redefine "atwitter"? I'm just sayin'...)

Anyhoo, I stumbled across a recent column by Timothy Shriver in the Washington Post that caught my attention. At least the first paragraph of it did. I quote:

Amid all the babble about Sarah Palin's recent resignation as Alaska's governor and amid all the speculation about her potential presidential bid, few have noted a new job for which she is eminently qualified: civil rights leader for people with intellectual disabilities.

If I'd been drinking coffee I would have done a spit-take. Was this guy serious? Was he actually suggesting that Palin become the poster child for stupid people?

Then I went on and read the rest. Ohhhh, I get it now: Shriver goes on to explain that because the Palins have a child with Down Syndrome and Sarah has a high public profile, she should use him as the poster child and herself as a shill. Hardly better, in my view, but ever so slightly more noble.

I have to admit - to my shame - that I like my initial context-free interpretation better. If anyone thinks that's defamatory, go ahead and sue me.

Maybe Scotiabank is right

2009-05-01T11:37:00.004-04:00

Hey, maybe I am richer than I think.

The hot news on today's wires is that Shaw Communications is buying three television stations from CTV - for a buck apiece. Heck, at that rate I could buy... let me just rummage in my pocket here... hey, an entire nationwide network!

Maybe I should keep an eye out for interesting offerings on eBay or Craigslist. "Older terrestrial-broadcast television network for sale. Analog only - no digital. Selling as-is, where-is. No returns or refunds. We accept PayPal! No bids from Nigeria or Italy please."

Words to live by

2009-04-30T14:59:00.000-04:00

... and a great band name, too:

CBC 70% off! A little gallows humour...

2009-03-26T12:49:00.003-04:00

I was heading in to the CBC's Toronto Broadcasting Centre on Front Street yesterday when I saw this sign outside. It's not often I do a double-take, but I did.

Hopefully you've all been following the goings-on at Canada's public broadcaster. If you haven't, well, surf here and get caught up. I'll wait for you...

Bacon experiment number 3: Nirvana

2009-03-22T11:16:00.004-04:00

PREFACE: Note to all concerned about my health: this is my last bacon adventure. I promise (for now, anyway).

Some time ago I heard about a restaurant in Texas that was serving chicken-fried bacon with cream gravy as an appetizer. What's not to love about that?

I'm not fussed about the gravy part, although I understand it's a key component of traditional chicken-fried steak. For the unitiated, "chicken-fried" means that the food is dredged in a simple flour/milk/egg batter and then fried in oil like fried chicken. No real chickens are involved.

When I started reading and hearing more about chicken-fried bacon, I immediately wondered what the texture and the taste would be like. Soooooo, off to the kitchen.

I won't trouble you with a grand photo sequence on my preparation of this truly heart-stopping dish. I battered the bacon (just saying that makes my mouth water) and deep-fried it in peanut oil, a few strips at a time, in my trusty cast-iron pan. If I had a real deep-fat fryer I would have used that.
As it turned out, the biggest challenge was keeping the oil at a consistent temperature. Everything else was almost ridiculously easy.

And the taste. Wow. I've had deep-fried bacon plenty of times before, as have many of you who have eaten in restaurants; it's an efficient and quick way of cooking larger quantities of bacon. The difference here is the coating; it gives a little extra crunch, and if it's properly seasoned with black pepper, cayenne and such, it gives the bacon a little extra depth. Surprisingly - at least to me, anyway - the frying didn't intensify the traditional smoke and salt flavours of the bacon. What was intensified, of course, was the fat content. As with the Bacon Explosion or its Canadian relative the Bacon Eh-xplosion (see below), a little of this stuff goes a long way. I just tried a couple of strips without any sauce of any kind; if I had used any kind of gravy, I think my arteries would have seized up just on principle.

There. I've done it. I'm not convinced I'll ever do it again, although I have to admit I'm a little curious about how other types of coating (specifically beer batter and tempura batter) might work. Maybe I'll start blogging about other stuff again now.

Return of the Son of Bacon Explosion II: The Revenge

2009-03-01T19:34:00.008-05:00

Nearly exactly a month ago I did a post about the Bacon Explosion. Ever since I made it I've been thinking of possible variations to make it better, or at least different. Behold my latest invention: the Bacon Eh-xplosion.

Probably the toughest part of the original Bacon Explosion was the "woven" exterior. It struck me that the dish would be more attractive if the bacon slices were more regular and rectilinear; it would also make it easier to weave. I also mused that the whole thing would have more structural integrity if the outside of the Explosion were a single piece. It was then that I thought about using back bacon or so-called "Canadian" bacon.

So I bought a single piece, along with a few chorizo sausages for the filling. First I thought about using the denser, less-marbled back bacon to create regular and consistent slices for the outside of the dish, but then decided to just use the shape of the piece itself. So after rinsing off most of the cornmeal coating (I know it's usually called peameal bacon in Ontario, but they've actually been using cornmeal for years) I "filleted" the pork back with a sharp knife.
It got a dusting of cajun spice rub, as well as some chili powder.

I re-seasoned the chorizo much like the Italian sausage I used the first time, using dried basil, ground roasted garlic and cajun spice. I also put in a slurp of chipotle barbecue sauce as well as a bit of maple syrup (!), to cut the heat a bit and add another flavour note. In the meantime, I cooked up about a quarter of the bacon I cut out of the pork back:
Once it was fully cooked, I cut it into small pieces and added it to the sausage meat, then formed it into a chub and wrapped it in the outer layer.
Once formed, it got a coat of Blue Smoke barbecue sauce and another hit of spice rub before going into the oven. I cut a few slits into the outer layer to help drain off the fat during cooking.

The final result was, once again, tasty! This version is a bit leaner because of the lower fat content of the back bacon vs. streaky bacon. I probably should have used a bit of kitchen twine to truss this up - it would have made the final product a little prettier - but overall I'm very happy with the way it turned out.
Maybe I should start coming up with a few dishes that don't involve nearly-pure cholesterol...

I don't know if it's art, but I know what I like

2009-02-01T20:12:00.013-05:00

Wow, once again it's been a ridiculously long time since my last post. I'll spare you my feelings on all the political crap that's occurred since then - and yikes, there was a lot of it - and move straight into the topic of this evening's post: food! Specifically, a Super-Bowl-worthy, artery-clogging, spectacular orgy of pork fat.

For the past few days the Internet has been abuzz over a little something called the Bacon Explosion. It's kind of a catchy name, but I'm not sure it does justice to a dish that is so glorious in its excess. As near as anyone can tell, a couple of hardcore barbecue aficionados in Kansas City came up with this particular recipe, although in and of itself there's nothing all that original about it. Anyway, I saw a few pics online and decided to try my hand. Here's a little photo documentary of the process.

The raw materials are simple: about a kilo each of thick-cut bacon and mild Italian sausage. I got mine at the St. Lawrence Market.
Then I created a lattice of bacon strips, that will serve as a sort of casing for the porky goodness within. I added a good dose of Cajun spice rub.
The next step was to cook the remaining bacon. First I fried four strips in a non-stick pan to render out the fat. Then I cooked the rest in the microwave, finishing them off in the pan. The end result was some seriously crisp, flavourful and gorgeous bacon.
After re-seasoning the sausage meat with more creole spice, dried basil, cayenne pepper and ground roasted garlic, I spread it out on a silicone sheet and placed the bacon on top.
The silicone baking sheet was a real help in helping roll and form this into a loaf. I then brushed it with chipotle barbecue sauce before placing it on top of the "sheet" of woven bacon.
After a little bit of finagling I was able to get the bacon rolled around the sausage, and it got one more coat of BBQ sauce before going onto a roasting rack in a 225-degree oven.
It took about three hours to get the internal temperature of this behemoth up to the recommended 165 degrees (and I generally go a few degrees higher for safety's sake). The final result looked pretty good.
The final result was tasty and incredibly rich, as you might expect with all those spices and fat. A little goes a long way. I think I'll probably end up freezing some of it for a treat later on in the year.
The perfect Super Bowl treat: a slice or two of this bad boy in a kaiser bun with a slice of cheese and some good mustard. Yum.

Hey, the Food Network it ain't, but it was a fun way to kill a little time on a lazy afternoon.

Election time in Canada, when the idiots are in bloom

2008-10-13T18:08:00.007-04:00

It's been quite a while since my last blog post. My apologies. There, now that's out of the way.

What a time it is to be in North America! Seemingly on the verge of a monumental economic Armageddon, with two – count 'em, two – elections on the horizon. It's almost too bad that the vast majority of us can only vote in one of the two, since nearly everyone I know has been following both campaigns with a greater or lesser degree of assiduity. That said, although it's true that when the US sneezes Canada reaches for a tissue, the reverse is seldom the case.

With only a few hours to go before Election Day here in Canada, here are my musings. First, my grades for the federal party leaders.

Harper: D-minus. For someone who was supposedly all about raising the level of discourse in Ottawa and increasing transparency, he's done a remarkable job of doing exactly the opposite. By keeping the entire PMO, Cabinet and Conservative caucus on an incredibly short leash, Harper has shown himself to be a control freak of biblical proportion. That sort of so-called leadership ill behooves a democracy. Harper has committed the unforgivable sin (in politics, anyway) of pretending to be the smartest guy in the room. Sometimes he is, sometimes he isn't, but he doesn't seem to realize that no one likes the smartest guy in the room.
Dion: A solid C. There's no question that Dion knows his stuff. He's always well-prepared and, during the campaign at least, hasn't backed away from the fray. He needs to be better than he is, though. If he were to find a way to create a deeper intellectual or emotional connection with voters he'd do very well. Not this time around, I fear.
Layton: B. Maybe it's my leftie upbringing, but I really like Jack. In a lot of ways Jack is nearly the perfect Canadian politician. He pales, though, in comparison with some of his great political forebears like Ed Broadbent, David Lewis or the great Tommy Douglas.
Duceppe: B-minus. Paradoxically, the most experienced federal leader in this election. He knows what he wants, he's perfectly capable of spelling it out, and he's smart (and honest) enough to state that if you're not in a position to vote for him, he doesn't care whether or not you agree with him. You have to respect that.
May: C-plus. She's capable, and can improve her mark in future campaigns.

Now, for the party campaigns and platforms:

Conservatives: It's been called a Seinfeld campaign, i.e. a campaign about nothing. The Conservative platform was supposedly unveiled last week – one week before the vote – and I still don't have much of an idea of what they really plan on doing. The entire campaign has been built around Harper and his, ahem, leadership. It kinda has to be, since his candidates have shown a distinct inability to run on their own accomplishments. This is the product of the control-freak mentality; when your boss won't let you have or express any ideas of your own, you end up not having much ammunition. The Conservatives spent most of the first couple of weeks of the campaign committing gaffe after gaffe. By and large these incredible cock-ups were the product of arrogant candidates and campaign managers who didn't realize that they really had no idea what they were doing. If I could anthropomorphize the Conservative campaign, it would be Flounder from “Animal House”. To quote Dean Wormer: “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
Liberals: *sigh* The Libs missed the boat on this campaign. The Conservatives goaded the Liberals into thinking that this election was about choosing who was the better leader. If the Libs had concentrated on the issues and – more importantly - their team, I think they could have done much better. To prove it, a quick quiz: who would be the top three Tories to step up if something were to happen to Harper? I'd be willing to bet that it would take you a minute or two to come up with the third, and maybe even with a second, name. Harper has had his caucus on such a tight rein for so long that it's hard to even identify the shining lights. With the Liberals, on the other hand, one at least knows that there is more than one brain in the caucus. I think the Liberals may well do better than projected in the polls, but I'm far from convinced that the Natural Governing Party will return to the top of the heap. As a fictional character, the Liberal campaign is Charlie Brown. People begrudgingly like him, even the people who don't, but he still gets no respect.
New Democrats: It's well documented that Jack Layton's strategy this time around has been to present himself as the Best Alternative to Steve and the Conservatives. And if it were possible to vote for an individual as Prime Minister without regard to the party he/she represents, then Jack would probably do very well indeed. And the party's TV commercials near the end of the campaign have been excellent, although I'm not sure it's a good thing when the cartoon version of you looks better than you do. Full marks, though, for moving to the left and staying there. Who best incarnates the NDP campaign? Pig-Pen: smart, charming in an offbeat sort of way, but no one's gonna ask you on a date.
Greens: This one is easy. The Greens are the Ugly Betty of Canadian politics, with Elizabeth herself playing the title role. With apologies to Rick Mercer, one could also say that the Greens are the broccoli of Canadian politics (Rick said the same thing about the CBC being Canada's broccoli). You know it's good for you. You really want to like it, but you just can't bring yourself to do it.

I would dearly love to do a similar deconstruction of the US campaign, but it might be wiser to do that in a separate rant. Congratulations to those of you who made it through this one.

And one more thing: my brother Neil is ~~suffering~~, er, celebrating a significant birthday today. All the best!

Ach Joni, we hardly knew ye...

2008-07-28T14:06:00.001-04:00

The world is ending. C'est le monde à l'envers. They're tearing down a parking lot and putting up paradise (or at least a Torontonian version of it).

If Joni Mitchell were dead, she'd be spinning in her grave.

Postmodern picnicking

2008-07-13T12:41:00.005-04:00

I saw something fascinating yesterday. I saw a couple with their young (maybe 10-year-old) daughter. They had a baguette, some nice Brie, a few cornichons, some black olives and even a bit of what looked like country pâté. They had picked it all up at the local grocery store and were having a charming little pique-nique, just like something out of Monet... (wait for it) ... at STARBUCKS. They were sitting at the table next to mine, noshing away at the food they'd bought at the Dominion store across the street (and, curiously, not at the St. Lawrence Market, where they could have got better food for less), along with their grande-no-foam-144-degree-three-raw-sugar-go-easy-on-the-caramel soy-because-I-really-love-milk-but-I'm-lactose-intolerant-and-can't-stand-the-taste-of-Lactaid lattes, and an iced lemonade for Princess or Jewel or Mackenzie or whatever the heck the daughter's name is.

I'm an urban* kinda guy. If you offer me the choice between a week in the country and a week in a big city, I'll pick the latter every time. And don't even get me started on cottages or (ugh) camping. As I always say, my idea of 'roughing it' is when room service is late. There are, though, certain activities that should only ever take place outdoors. Suntanning. Golf. Scuba diving. Yes, rugby. But especially picnics. I mean, come on! Make an effort. At least go to a park. If not for you, do it for the children...

* that's urban, i.e. the opposite of rural, not the more recent usage of urban as a euphemism for 'black'. E.g. "Spike Lee is a master of urban cinema" or "Toronto has only one urban music station".

Was Kafka an Aeroplan member?

2008-06-18T19:49:00.010-04:00

Yes, it's time for another screed about the marvels of air travel in Canada. Yet again I find myself in Vancouver, busily not enjoying the scenery or the (not quite fabulous) weather.

My return flight to Toronto was delayed by a couple of hours, so I figured I'd make the best of my down time by booking a trip for my summer holiday, using my Aeroplan points. I've done enough traveling over the years that I have a decent number of miles saved up. (for those of you who were raised post-Imperial system, "miles" are those things that we used to use before kilometres came along. Don't ask me why Aeroplan still uses 'em.)

First off, the new and improved Aeroplan now requires vastly more miles for reward travel than it used to. Back in the early days, there were only a specific number of seats per flight that were available for Aerooplan reward travel. A little while ago Aeroplan made a lot of noise about removing that particular restriction. "Every seat can be a reward seat", they crowed.

Not so fast, Sparky. Although it's true that you can now use your miles to get any seat, the number of miles you need to get said seat can often be ridiculous. Air Canada may have simplified its fare structure when it comes to using hard currency, but the byzantine fare rules didn't actually vanish - they've just been applied to reward seats. So a trip that used to cost just 25 000 miles can now cost 150 000 or even more.

*fume*

But wait: it gets better. After I found an itinerary that wasn't going to involve me shedding my entire stock of hard-earned reward miles, I booked it online. I entered all the flight information, dates, name, address, phone numbers, astrological sign, favourite colour and e-mail address. Then I clicked "submit". (There should be doctoral theses written on the appropriateness of that particular verb in this context.)

The highly sophisticated and no doubt ridiculously expensive reservation system essentially laughed at me. "Error", it said, giving an error code and recommending I call tech support to get past this little hiccup.

Being generally the resourceful type, I changed Web browsers and tried again. Same info; same result. Undeterred, I called up the Aeroplan customer service line (yes, as a matter of fact I do think that's a contradiction in terms) to talk to a human being. I went through the itinerary with her, giving all the required information yet again. She was entering the very same information into the very same database I had been using. Then, just as she was about to click "submit", she mentioned casually that it was going to cost me an extra thirty bucks. The explanation was that there is a mandatory fee for booking reward travel through the telephone system.

My response was something along the lines of "Hulk ANGRY". Why fortheluvva Mike would I go through the rigmarole of booking online, be unsuccessful twice, and then have to pay for the privilege of having someone else enter the same info into the same system, with very possibly the same result? The by-now-very-put-upon agent offered to transfer me to tech support.

*fume some more*

Sooooooooo... another pleasant chat, this time with the customer service guy. (A friend of mine in the IT business calls his customer service reps "monkeys". Until today I thought that was unfair.) It turns out that the error code indicated that my e-mail address was "wrong".

Huh? Wrong? The e-mail address I've been using for something like a dozen years? Why, yes, said the (remember, I didn't coin this term) monkey. "Your e-mail address has only two characters before the @. Our system needs at least three."

That's when I think everyone in the lounge heard all the blood vessels in my head explode at the same time.

The system was expecting more characters? I was speechless. Quoth the monkey: "You could always get another e-mail address". It's funny, but maybe I should quit expecting service from, you know, customer service.

Waving without due care and attention

2008-06-16T18:06:00.005-04:00

The province of Ontario is considering a ban on cellphones while driving. Other provinces - Newfoundland & Labrador, Nova Scotia and Quebec - have already instituted a ban, and even Alberta is considering it.

That's a good thing. I can't tell you how many people I see running red lights, blowing off stop signs, passing or changing lanes unsafely, all because they're too busy yammering. Being a pedestrian in good ol' Muddy York can be a real challenge at times.

Why am I blogging about this?

Today I had a moment of true puzzlement. On my way home from work I walk in front of a large office building. The underground parkade there is so busy at peak times that the place could really use a traffic light outside to help manage the volume of vehicles coming out. In the absence of a stoplight, there's a paid-duty policeman who is there to direct traffic. He holds off oncoming traffic on Front Street so that people can get in or out of the parkade; he also protects the pedestrians from getting run over by the drivers. All that is as it should be.

Until today. Here's the fine, upstanding officer of the forces of order, merrily directing rush-hour traffic... and talking on his cellphone at the same time.

Let's recap. The province wants to stop people from using their cellphones while they're driving. Why? Because the attention they're paying to their conversations is attention they're not paying to driving safely (cf. my post re cabbies and cellphones). They're distracted, and being distracted is bad.

Am I to infer from this that it's okay, though, for a police officer to be distracted while coordinating the movements of eight or ten vehicles at once?

Oh, and before you ask: the conversation wasn't a life-and-death matter, either. I think I heard something about groceries.

Language barrier

2008-05-07T16:42:00.005-04:00

There's a small food court in the building I work in. As you'd expect, there's a predictably bland kiosk that serves Italian (-ish) food like pizza, panzerotti, lasagne... you get the idea. The guy who works at the cash register has, shall we say, a somewhat imperfect command of the English language.

Normally, as I'm walking away after paying for my lunch I expect to hear something along the lines of "See you tomorrow" or perhaps the ubiquitous "Have a nice day". This guy, though, always says "Good luck" as he waves goodbye. Every time he does that, I look at my slowly congealing slice of 'za and wonder whether he's trying to tell me something...

The end of the world as we know it

2008-05-04T23:24:00.003-04:00

I saw this marquee outside the Sony Centre last week. Now, I'm no expert on the Bible, but I have read healthy chunks of it over the years, and I seem to remember this as one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse:

Make sure all your affairs are in order; the end is nigh.

Road apples

2008-04-20T18:35:00.007-04:00

No, I'm not talking about the classic album by the Tragically Hip (sorry Darcy). I'm talking about the genuine article. I'm talking about that brown, round, full-of-oaty-goodness equine product that one finds on the road when horses have been, er, doing their thing.

Why, you ask?

Well, I was walking home from the office t'other day. En route I noticed a number of not-so-pleasant reminders of the fact that the Toronto Police Service still has a mounted unit - that is to say, I nearly stepped in a couple of flapjacks as I crossed the parking lot next to my building.

Wow. Those are some big horses.

Then I asked myself a question. The city seems to have vast numbers of bylaw officers patrolling every square inch of the Greater Toronto Area, hunting out those scofflaws who dare take Rover out for a stroll in the nearest park without immediately bagging their beloved pooch's toxic waste. Who watches the watchers? It would appear that there isn't anyone following these officers (and yes, the horses themselves are deemed officers of the law) and issuing tickets.

Maybe there's a law-enforcement exception to the city bylaw re public pooping. I suppose to test that theory we'd have to see a human officer try it. Er...no; maybe I'll just leave you with that less-than-wholesome image stuck in your head.

dum-de-dum-dum...

On a completely unrelated note, I read in the papers (yes, I still read newspapers from time to time) that the NBA has approved the transfer of the lowly Seattle Super Sonics to Oklahoma City. Now, in the history of the NBA a number of teams have moved without changing the team name. That's why we have such incongruously named teams as the Los Angeles (formerly Minneapolis) Lakers, the Utah (formerly New Orleans) Jazz, and let's not forget the Memphis (formerly Vancouver) Grizzlies. On the other hand, some pro teams change their name when they move, usually hoping to attract a whole new generation of fans (and sell a boatload of new replica jerseys), but often hoping people will forget years of suckage. Think of the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals, the Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans, the Québec Nordiques/Colorado Avalanche and, of course, the California Golden Seals/Cleveland Barons/Minnesota North Stars/Dallas Stars.

To complete my thought (finally!): I can't possibly be the only person on the planet who's wondering whether the new name for the OK City team will be the Bombers. Can I?

Sociology

2008-03-25T08:01:00.007-04:00

I've been thinking about a couple of sociological experiments that would be fun to try. I don't think anyone would get hurt, at least not badly.

The first was inspired by a bunch of long-haired, cheesy-mustachioed guys I saw walking around downtown a week or two ago. They were wearing skinny jeans and black Iron Maiden t-shirts, and I realized that they must all be in town for the Iron Maiden concert that night.

That's when it struck me. Ever since the Beatles, rock bands have had a major influence on the stylistic mores of their fans. I have to wonder what would happen, or rather what would have happened if the guys in Iron Maiden or Black Sabbath or - to be more modern - Van Halen or Guns 'n' Roses or Billy Idol or Henry Rollins had decided, as their little bit of rebellion against society, to wear tuxedos or morning suits as their costumes instead of leather and denim. I'm not sure the world would be prepared for the instant reapparition of dandies. Think about it. [In passing, I do realize that Slash fans haven't created any palpable re-ascendancy of the silk top hat, but perhaps that's the exception to the rule.]

I wonder if parents had the same problems in Mozart's day. "But Mom, all the other kids at school are wearing their wigs backwards like Mozart!" "Johann Chrysostome Josephus Albertus Emmanuel Philipp, as long as you're living under my roof you'll wear your wig the right way around - and don't let me catch you skimping on the cornstarch or sneaking any of your mother's beauty marks!"

Experiment number two popped into my head as I was in a taxi. From the time I got into the cab to the time I got to my destination, and presumably for a good while before and after, the driver was engaged in a high-volume conversation in one Dravidian language or another. The trip itself was obviously a secondary consideration as the cabbie bobbed and weaved in and out of traffic, yelling at his conversation "partner" the whole way. I almost felt badly for interrupting what was obviously a very important discussion to tell the cabbie little things like where I wanted to go and that I needed a receipt for my fare.

This was far from the first time it's happened; in fact, when one cabbie recently apologized to me for answering his phone without asking my permission I nearly fell out of my seat. Good thing the car door was locked.

I asked myself who could possibly use a cellphone continuously like that. Then it came to me: fourteen-year-old girls. So here's my experiment: all cabbies and all fourteen-year-old girls get a phone to use as much as they want, at no charge. The only condition is that any member of each group can only call a member of the other group. A tweenager can only call a cab driver and vice versa. My hypothesis is that within a few days, such an arrangement would free up scads and scads of cellphone bandwidth, and the number of car crashes on Toronto streets, as well as the average blood pressure of parents, would go down significantly.

When setting up this kind of experiment, it's always important to think about what would happen if the experiment goes wrong. Let's look:

1. There would be a run on formal wear. That can only be good news for the retail and rental market, since this might finally give businesses the opportunity to blow out some of those powder-blue and Key lime-green tuxedos they've had in stock since the 1980s;

2. This one is potentially more insidious. I see two potential unwanted outcomes. One might be that we get a new crop of Hindi- or Urdu- or Malayalam - speaking teenagers. Well, being multilingual never hurt anyone. Alternatively, taxi drivers might start obsessing about their hairstyles, or the latest jeans or sneakers, or that cute guy who sits in the back row of fourth-period English class. That, my friends, is too much for my brain to even contemplate.

On a completely unrelated topic: it turns out that the scribblings of one Lord Black of Crossharbour that I revealed in a previous blog post [which were apocryphal, unverified and not even the teensiest bit libelous] turned out not to be his final writings at all. Maybe ol' Tiny wasn't as tough as we thought.

Imagine my surprise when I saw the other day that Tubby had somehow managed to get an e-mail to, of all people, the Canadian Press. Anyone else would have asked for a file to be smuggled in in a cake or something, or maybe a few packs of smokes to use for barter; instead, our favourite ex-press baron sent the equivalent of a letter from camp: "Hi... um, I guess I'm okay. Bye. PS I still think the judge is a meanie."

Schadenfreude - or - a fictional account from the near future

2008-03-03T23:18:00.003-05:00

The note below was found written, presumably in the author's blood, on the walls of a cell at the Coleman Federal Correctional Facility:

My dearest Barbara,

I feel I must give a full account and explication as to the rationale behind my silence over these past several hours. Indeed, it was only that long ago that you and I made our Odyssean voyage to this place from our own personal Xanadu in Palm Beach. I have much to recount to you.

Upon our arrival at this place I was immediately seized [please excuse the somewhat pedestrian pun] by the sheer size and scale of the estate and grounds. I am convinced that the owners – the Federal Bureau of Prisons, I am told – must have hundreds, nay, thousands of minions labouring from dawn 'til dusk at the Protean task of maintaining it. I must hope that the rumours of labour costs of twelve cents per man-hour are true; that would prove beyond any scintilla of doubt that those benighted labour unions have not yet succeeded in spreading their hateful and cancerous message to the peaceful and happy workers of this Utopia.

Imagine my astonishment, then, when I discovered that I will be expected and required to – dare I even say it? - share my accommodations with another gentleman. I daresay I find it quite beyond me that such a fine establishment – thousands of acres and such well-constructed buildings, if perhaps a trifle utilitarian in a Bauhaus sort of way – should want for rooms. I suppose there are some things about this place that I have yet to learn.

Upon my arrival at this fine estate, I was greeted, not without a certain degree of contempt, by a group of men claiming to be “correctional officers”. I found this nomenclature quite amusing when applied in my case; the last time anyone referred to your humble servant being in need of correction was when I was politely asked to quit the hallowed halls of Upper Canada College, my entrepreneurial flair at selling examination papers being, as it was, unappreciated by the educational staff of that heretofore-august establishment. But I digress: the aforementioned correctional officers, or CO's as they wish to be addressed, promptly exhibited their complete lack of even the most elemental form of decency by requiring that I disrobe in their presence. As you well know, dearest love, I am by no means embarrassed of my physique; indeed, in my sixty-third year I must say I am more than favourably impressed by my musculature, and even more so by the even white shade of my skin. When one CO made the request, I laughed politely and demurred, whereupon one of his colleagues drew an instrument which he referred to as a taser and brandished it in my direction. With my expert knowledge of everything that has ever been reported by those alcoholic wretches who claim to “work” in the North American media – even those stories not dealing with me and my vicissitudes with Dame Justice - I was aware of the potential of these tasers to injure my dignity and perhaps – O horror! - inflict harm on my person. Thus I reluctantly complied with the officers' poorly-worded, unreasonable and obtuse demand. Whereupon a group of men approached me and proceeded to ask me a series of questions about my physical and mental health. Mental health! Can you imagine it, my love? These plebeians could not possibly have any understanding of the force of my intellect. Were I to perform an auto-lobotomy – the temporal lobe, I think – still these so-called doctors would still not comprehend the depth of my mental capacity and acumen.

After the physical examination - which I must report was surprisingly invasive and completely medically unnecessary – I was presented with a new suit. As you know, dearest Barbara, although I am by no means a vain man, I do believe that a fine suit looks particularly resplendent on your Lord Black of Crossharbour. I freely admit, however, that I am not completely au courant, as you are, when it comes to the very latest styles from the Continent. The suit which was given me – completely without charge, I might add – is frankly quite odd. It is made of a stuff which must be of the very latest invention; when I asked the minion who presented it to me (in very simple words, of course) he replied that it was a material known to him as “poly-cotton”. This impressed me greatly; indeed, this new wonder material greatly resembles fine linen and is, if you will believe it, softer and more pleasant to the hand. Of course, upon donning the suit I stole (heavens! I thought I had banished that term from my vast personal lexicon) a glimpse of myself in a looking-glass and stopped for a moment to admire the fine figure of a man who looked back at me with Richelieu-like confidence. I was so pleased with my new suit of clothes that I immediately offered to buy one for every guest of the estate. At that moment one of the CO's guffawed in a Falstaffian sort of way and said (and I quote verbatim): “Y'all don't need to do that, convict (what an odd term!). The federal government (he pronounced it “guv-mint”) done already took care of that”. I looked around and discovered that my grotesque interlocutor's utterance was, quite astonishingly in my view, correct; all of the other guests were turned out in a similar fashion to my own - albeit with less panache, of course. Some of your fashion sense appears to have – what is the term the proletariat uses? - “rubbed off” on me, so to speak.

Thus suitably attired, I was escorted – with a colour guard of these bizarre and motley officers – to a small closet. The closet itself, where your humble servant finds himself writing these few lines to you, is an odd affair. It is the tiniest of spaces, obviously conceived to deal with the high heat and humidity of these latitudes, as well as the larcenous nature of domestic help the world over. Put more plainly – and, as Polonius said, brevity is the soul of wit – the closet is a mere six feet by six, and is built with sturdy solid walls and a heavy door of unadorned metal, with naught but a small crenellation by which to view the interior. Perhaps even more oddly, there is a small writing-desk (I note with some bemusement that one of the light-fingered knaves appears to have absconded with the inkwell already), two sturdy metal chairs and what appear to be two sailor's bunks cantilevered from the walls, but no clothes hangers or hooks. As I write this, a sudden epiphany seizes me. I note that there is a bidet, made of something resembling Sheffield steel, in one corner. Upon seeing this, it immediately becomes plain to me that this is no closet at all; it is indubitably a maid's room. It is now obvious that my escorts have decided to play a harmless prank on a new and presumably good-humoured guest.

My forbearance, however, is tested when I attempt to open the door. One of the Neanderthals has, no doubt inadvertently, locked the door to this cubiculum, this ascetic monk's cell. Surely he does not comprehend that this environment is stultifying to an intellect such as mine. Surely this behemoth must know that I shall recover from such a base insult and rise like the phoenix. I am not without humour, but when slighted my vengeance will be terrible.

While I wait for the rude mechanicals to remedy their colleague's great fault, I will cogitate upon how I might best occupy my time here at the estate. I am given to understand that many here are keen to meet me and learn from me, just as Odysseus's son Telemachus learned from Athena in the guise of Mentor. In fact, to continue my conceit of Greek metaphor, the directors of this estate have already recommended that I lecture my peers at my leisure on the topic of hubris, or to use the considerably less poetic but more generally understood concept, “pride goeth before a fall”. Apparently, even before my arrival here I have been put forward as something of a global authority on the subject. As is often the case with the greatest geniuses, I was unaware of the magnitude of my comprehension of the subject, but in any event I shall acquit myself of my duty with brio. I am told that the next topic under discussion will be the concept of poetic irony. I am convinced that I shall be richly compensated for sharing my not inconsiderable intellectual gifts with the other residents of this estate. I also look forward to sharing my thoughts on corporate governance with an audience which will, no doubt, hang on my every word as if I were the oracle of Delphi.

Once I have been esconced in my proper suite, my beloved Barbara, I shall arrange for you to come visit me. I regret deeply that the somewhat arcane rules for this estate do not permit us to be together. I shall endeavour to find out quickly who is responsible for this travesty, and explain why a woman of your breeding and exceptional character belongs here every bit as much as yours truly.

But soft! The motley fools have returned. They have another gentleman – if I may use that term somewhat loosely – with them. He is rather monolithic in appearance, and judging by his countenance I can only surmise that his mind is as small as those of the mindless journalists who have hectored us at every turn over these past years. His name, as I am given to understand it, is Tiny. How pleasant to learn that someone in this place does understand irony after all! Perhaps he is not such an idiot as his physiognomy might lead one to believe. I shall introduce myself and show him how charming a gentleman of my breeding and intellect can be.

At this point the scrawl stops. It is unclear whether the author's death was due to blood loss, or blunt force trauma at the hands of “Tiny”.

The new computer blues

2008-01-16T20:03:00.000-05:00

New year, new computer, same old me.

*sigh*

In an earlier blog post I talked about my musings that machines might be psychic. I now have more proof that lends credence to my theory.

Since early December the geekosphere has been running wild with rumours about the impending new Apple products that are traditionally announced by Steve Jobs in his keynote address at the Macworld conference. The odds-on favourite this year was a super-light, super-slim, extra-sexy new notebook. Bloggers and cognoscenti (real as well as self-defined) opined on what they figured a new svelte Mac would, could and should have. I read the reports with bated breath.

After I saw the reports on the new uber-Mac, I started thinking about replacing my well-worn desktop PC. True to my theory, it went gentle into that good night (to paraphrase Dylan Thomas) last week, leaving me computerless.

I had decided some time ago that my next home computer would be a Mac. I was one of the earliest Mac aficionados/evangelists, going all the way back to (gulp) 1984, when I bought a top-of-the-line (well, actually, only-of-the-line) beige Mac with a whopping 128K of memory. I went through the heady days of disk-swapping, Sad Mac icons, upgrading RAM, the world’s slowest dot-matrix printers… ah, happy times. When my last Mac, a “beast” SE with two megabytes of RAM, two floppy drives and a 20MB external HD, finally chewed up its (second) power supply and gave up the ghost in about 1994 I got a home PC and have lived with Windoze ever since. But I never really abandoned my love for all things Apple.

So on Saturday I bought a sexy black MacBook, knowing that by doing so I was practically guaranteeing that all the rumours would turn out to be true.

And was I right? Steve Jobs announced the MacBook Air (who comes up with these names anyway?) to the enthralled conferenceers in San Francisco on Tuesday morning. I’m convinced that if I had held off on my purchase, the announcement wouldn’t have taken place.

One of the things that any computer buyer has to be prepared to accept is that whatever machine one buys will be obsolete within about fifteen seconds of delivery. But you know what? I’m okay with that. As drool-worthy as the new MacBook Air is (did I mention it fits into a manila envelope? And the flash memory option?), I’m perfectly okay with my not-quite-state-of-the-Apple-art machine.

Maybe this means I’m growing up. I don’t need to have the best and flashiest.

Naaah. I still want the best and flashiest.

Hey, at least I'm honest.

A great typo

2007-11-30T14:17:00.000-05:00

One of the good things about being in a job where I spend much of my time either reading or writing is that I catch a lot of spelling and typographical errors. I even commit the odd one myself.

Sometimes these typos are the innocuous-albeit-annoying ones like teh instead of the, or -toin instead of -tion in words like association. At other times, though, the misspellings create malapropisms that are just plain funny. I've lost count of the number of times I've read about people who have tried to diffuse tense situations instead of defusing them... or the never-ending they're/their/there, it's/its, you're/your or born/borne. And don't even get me started on affect/effect or licence/license.

I think I have a new favourite. As is my wont (not want), I was reading through the comments on a recent CBC News article online. One of the posters wanted, no doubt, to talk about the vicious circle of paying higher rates for a lower level of service on his cellular phone. But the spelling gremlins got there first and our hero ended up referring to a viscous circle.

Ewww.

I couldn't stop myself from thinking about how Gary Larson would have drawn a cartoon to illustrate something like "Gerry suddenly found himself drawn into a viscous circle". Mmmmmmm... imagine all that cartoony goodness.

And, for a bonus point: isn't a spell checker something a wizard should use to make sure his charms are up to snuff? Okay, okay... I suppose a spelling checker isn't much better; imagine a checkers piece rhyming off words like "perspicacious" or "accommodate". How about an "orthographic verification routine"?

Oh, the heartbreak...

2007-10-07T21:00:00.000-04:00

You know, sometimes life just gives you a good swift kick in the teeth, even when you don't deserve it.

Over the years, I've grown used to living in towns that have sports teams that start losing shortly after my arrival. I grew up in Saskatchewan, so I've seen the ups and (ahem, mostly) downs of the Roughriders. My NFL team has always been the Oakland (don't ever call them the Los Angeles) Raiders, who haven't done much of anything since Super Bowl XVIII over twenty years ago. I lived in Boston (Celtics/Bruins/Patriots). Hamilton (Tiger-Cats) and Edmonton (Eskimos and Oilers) came next. And of course, now I live in Toronto where the Maple Leafs are now in season 41 since their last Stanley Cup, Toronto FC will finish the MLS season in the cellar (with the longest scoreless streak in the history of the league), the Jays finished well out of contention and the U of T Varsity Blues are on track to become the losing-est college football team in Canadian history.

And then we have the All-Blacks. I'm not from New Zealand - never even been there - but the way these guys play rugby intrigued me well before I ever played the game. When I did start playing, NZ were the champions of the first-ever Rugby World Cup. Most people spoke of them with a kind of awe. And awe-inspiring they were: strong, tough, inventive and entertaining to watch. And how can you not love any team, in any sport, where there's a traditional war chant/dance before the match?

The poor All-Blacks are, however, not immune from my little personal curse. After winning the inaugural RWC in 1987, they haven't won it since. The only tiny consolation is that arch-enemy France have never won. The sting isn't entirely gone, though, since France has spoiled the All-Blacks' tournament a couple of times, most notably a 1999 contest which some call one of the great rugby matches of all time.

This weekend the All-Blacks managed to break my heart again. Despite being the team to beat in this year's World Cup, they got, well, beaten by (*sigh*) France, 20-18. NZ missed a couple of kicks, and to my dying day I will argue that the pass to Michalak that led to the final French try was forward... but the final result is the final result.

I don't really hold anything against France. It was the French who taught me to love the game, after all. But do they have to crush my haka-chanting, black-jersey-with-silver-fern-wearing heart?

[a word of warning to the wise should suffice: the first person who says "it's only a game" gets a punch in the mouth)

*****
On a cheerier note, something quite funny happened to one of my server friends the other night. A customer asked her what the word "reciprocity" meant. Before she could start to explain the meaning of the term, the customer asked her whether it was a Canadian word. At this point, my friend just started to laugh; it struck her funny that an American would have no idea of the concept of reciprocity. I suggested that the customer might understand it better if put in terms he could understand, i.e. the opposite of unilateralism... but we both thought it better to just leave the poor guy alone.

I know, I know: it's not fair to blithely label all Americans as ignorant of their own language, as well as global politics. But it sure feels good.

The real World Cup is on!

2007-09-16T16:25:00.000-04:00

Mmmmmm.... rugby...

The Rugby World Cup started last week. I'm in heaven. An Irish company called Setanta Sports is carrying all the matches - plus a whole bunch of other rugby (union and league, but no word of sevens yet), soccer, Aussie footie, hurling (!), Gaelic football (!!) and other stuff. A must-have, at least for the four-month minimum subscription.

Adding the channel to my cable TV lineup was a foregone conclusion, although I had to convince the people at the Rogers call centre that since they were advertising the channel on air, they really *should* have it in their subscription system. It took about five tries, with five increasingly-baffled call centre employees, to finally add the channel to my account.

Now my only concern is that the tournament is in full flight just as all my regular must-watch programs are starting up for the fall season. Good thing I have two PVRs.

Jazz is good for you

2007-09-03T15:33:00.000-04:00

No, it's not good for you like, say, broccoli or a good night's sleep, but a group of researchers are studying how the experience of improvised music could serve as a model for collaborative work in other areas.

Quoted in a newspaper article, U. of Guelph professor Ajay Heble says: "A group of people who may have never met, who know very little about one another - may not even speak the same language - can create inspired music. What makes it work and what does this tell us? These are the kinds of questions we are asking." You can read the full Globe & Mail article here.

I can see it now: instead of butting heads with management representatives at a bargaining table, I'll just walk in with a horn and call a couple of tunes. Maybe the choice of song would even have some effect on the tenor of negotiations (pun completely intended): perhaps The Meaning of the Blues if things are going badly; In Your Own Sweet Way if I'm feeling conciliatory; All Of Me for concession bargaining; My Favorite Things during the initial stages when each side presents its initial wish list; Old Folks when we discuss pensions... my mind is spinning with possibilities. I'll leave it up to you as to when I might play a tune like You Don't Know What Love Is or (ahem) Oleo.

And oh yes... Todaybour Day is Labour Day! (sorry for the *-gasp!-* US spellings in the linked cartoon) I think Bennedetto is one of my favourite Homestar Runner characters.

Chairs

2007-08-04T11:04:00.000-04:00

I am one of those people who appreciates having a chair to call my own. It gives me a sense of belonging; an attachment; a home away from home if you will. It's a place where I have at least a certain measure of, not necessarily control, but perhaps droit de regard over the things that go on around me. And come on, what man can resist being told that "that chair over there is for you"?

In the past few weeks, this agreeable experience has happened to me not once, but twice. The first time was at the very end of June, just before I started my summer holidays. After months of griping about how my office chair was broken and how I needed a new one, it finally arrived:

It's very comfortable, and I can work at my desk all day - if I have to, that is.

Those who know me well know that I like to find a watering hole close to my place of work. It's a good place to sit and decompress from the travails of the day, meet and chat with friends, to meet people, to flirt with waitresses... you know, a real neighbourhood-y place.

I've been a regular at this particular bar on Front Street pretty much since the day it opened about five years ago. I've stuck with them and they've stuck with me. After months of teasing about how I should have my own designated spot in the place, they finally came through.

Yes, they put a plaque on one of the chairs designating it as mine. It was immediately pointed out to me that if any other bar patron named Keith comes in, I'll be out of luck.

Being a regular at a bar is just fine with me, as long as no one ever confuses me with that other famous barfly from TV:

Hmmm... come to think of it, I am starting to look a little like ol' Norm - although you're not likely to catch me wearing a tie too often. Okay, maybe he's a bad example. How about Morn from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine?

Nope, not much resemblance there, right? Right?

My summer vacation

2007-07-24T10:38:00.000-04:00

Ahhh... there's nothing quite like the impending end of a summer holiday to remind one that summer holidays are entirely too brief.

This year was much like any other. I spent a week at Humber College at a jazz workshop. I've been doing it for the past six years or so, and it's always entertaining. It's a great opportunity to network with a goodly number of Canada's best jazzers. Just before the Humber workshop there was the annual Toronto Jazz Festival; I was able to get to a few shows, including Metalwood (check them out), guitarist Mike Stern with my favorite (living) electric bassist Alain Caron, and buddy and former Saskatonian Jon Ballantyne.

Also as in past years, it took me a little while to pry myself away from the office. This year, though, it was more because of events and less because of me not being able to disconnect. Of the four weeks I've been officially out of the office I actually did some work for about a week. I do get the time back, though, so it's not like I've done myself out of anything.

One of my work-related activities involved a quick two-day trip to Montreal. My responsibilities kept me there for the full two days, but the meetings were interspersed with lots of downtime, so I was able to catch some of the Just For Laughs comedy festival, as well as Nuits d'Afrique and a snippet of the big international fireworks competition. Mind you, just walking along any of Montreal's major streets is a mini-vacation in itself; the city is sufficiently unlike any other in Canada (or North America, for that matter) that one feels the same dépaysement as one does when vacationing in another country.

Another pseudo-tradition is the time spent catching up on all things Potter. I saw Order of the Phoenix - twice - and read Deathly Hallows - yes, twice. Apparently there is a big international academic conference on Harry Potter here in Toronto in the next couple of weeks. I don't know whether I'll be able to catch any of it, or see any of the conventioneers, although my downtown location (work and home) virtually guarantees that I will bump into some conventioneers at some point. And don't worry, I won't spoil the ending of the HP novels for you - unless you ask me to, of course.

In other news: after years of threatening to do so, I finally got around to getting a busker's permit. Now the question becomes: will I use it? Stay tuned.

In other other news: I read a scary snippet online the other day. Apparently the city of Salzburg has just launched - no, I'm not making this up - a cable TV channel that runs The Sound of Music 24/7.

*shudder*

Just one more reason I'm glad to be living in Canada.

Is it an emergency if it happens all the time?

2007-06-18T14:22:00.000-04:00

A brief rant:

I frequently use taxicabs to get around. More frequently than I'd like, to be honest, but that's another story.

There are only so many things a guy can do to kill time while riding in a taxi, so I've spent a couple of seconds looking at the customer's "bill of rights" as set out by the local taxi commission. A customer has the right to ask the driver to turn the air conditioning on and off; to direct the driver on the route to be taken, and a bunch of other motherhood-type rights.

One expectation we clients are also allowed is that the cabbie will only use his/her cellphone in an emergency. So why is it that nearly every cabbie I've dealt with over the past year or so has a headset welded to their ear? And why is it that they are all so deeply engaged in conversation all the time? I can't figure out to whom they could possibly be talking for such long periods. It strikes me that all the attention they are paying to their long, voluble and (sometimes) high-volume conversation is attention that they are taking away from, you know, the "driving the vehicle and keeping the client safe and comfortable" part.

Nearly every time I get out of the cab at the end of a ride I promise myself I'm going to write to the commission and complain. I've yet to do it.

*harrumph*

We've arrived on the world stage

2007-06-18T00:10:00.000-04:00

It's official, in my books at least: Toronto is now a true soccer city.

What leads me to this bold declaration? Simple: this afternoon, not long after Toronto FC's defeat of FC Dallas, I saw a very drunk TFC supporter weaving his way down the sidewalk in front of Union Station.

Replica jersey? Check.
Scarf? Check.
Shaved head? Check.
Vacant, dazed expression? Check.

The only things missing to make this genius a true yobbo, in my books at least, were a) evidence of a recent violent encounter with a partisan of the opposing team; and b) handcuffs. Mind you, it would probably be pretty difficult to find a Dallas fan here in Toronto...

What I found truly odd about this particular dude was that he was traveling - if you can really call it traveling, he was pretty loaded - by himself. Normally, your garden-variety hooligan tends to prefer to travel in packs. Well, this is Toronto FC's first season after all, so I suppose this guy could just be an early adopter.

In other sporting news, Canada's men's rugby team lost to New Zealand's All Blacks yesterday. It was a squeaker; the final score was, er, only 64-13.

I'm sure the Canadians are thrilled with their performance, though. The All Blacks are the New York Yankees, the Montreal Canadiens, the Edmonton Eskimos and the Oakland Raiders all rolled up into one team. Playing respectably - and the Canadians did play a very respectable game - against the All Blacks is a significant feat. Way to go, boys.

Life imitates art yet again

2007-06-08T11:27:00.000-04:00

How cool is this? We first heard about it on television in the late 60s; then in the late 80s we actually got to "see" it. Now in the 21st century we finally have documented medical proof of a humanoid - a human, in fact - with green blood.

Who cares if the phenomenon turned out to be completely medically explainable? Having green blood is just totally, undeniably cool. I'm glad to hear that the dude in question has made a complete recovery, but I sure hope somebody took some good photos.

I get the feeling that Trekkers around the world are starting up betting pools on when medical science will find the first humanoids with magenta-coloured Klingon blood (remember Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country?) or quadrophonic hearing like the Andorians.

Last month we learned that NASA scientists are looking - I mean actually looking - for a planet in the 40 Eridani system that could conceivably support life. Any longtime Trekker knows that 40 Eridani A (it's a trinary system, dontcha know) was posited by Gene Roddenberry as the main sun of the planet Vulcan. Think about this: we're going out to look for something that just might exist, for the sole reason that a popular, albeit completely fictional, TV program says that's where it is. Cool. Bonus points for being 16 light-years away.

In the meantime, physicists continue to work on 3-D printers - crude replicators, in other words, although they can't yet synthesize food or drink - and they've been working on teleportation, with some limited success, for years.

And people look sideways at those of us who enjoy science fiction?

*scoff*

When pictograms go wrong

2007-06-04T23:47:00.000-04:00

It's been pretty well established that the now-ubiquitous practice of using pictograms on signs instead of perfectly good words came into its own at Expo '67 in Montreal, when Paul Arthur decided that drawing stick men and stick women - among other things - would be easier than writing "the washrooms are over this way, pal" in forty or fifty languages. And since the 1972 Olympics we've all spent too much of our valuable time figuring out the, er, clever pictograms that have been developed to represent each of the Olympic sports. You know, come to think of it, I can't remember what the pictogram for synchronized trampoline looked like, although I expect I can hazard a guess.

After that convoluted introduction, on to today's craziness. We just bought a couple of new Dell laptops for the office. Said computers came in the standard (read far too big) cardboard box, with more cardboard and a disturbingly large and environmentally hostile amount of styrofoam padding. The computers were each wrapped in a protective bag with the following gem printed on it:

After cogitating on this for a moment in its proper context, it eventually came to me that this pictogram is meant to say something along the lines of "It's probably not the best idea in the world to stick your head in this plastic bag". Then I started thinking about some of the other things that the original artist might be trying to say:

- If you're choking, don't whack yourself on the back of the head with a cafeteria tray.

- When on an airplane, don't lie on your back and try to poke your head out the window if you feel the need to cough.

- When trying to fall asleep, don't wrap your fingers around your throat - you'll probably end up opening your mouth too wide and you'll start snoring, and I mean really, who can sleep with all that snoring going on?

- If you want to catch some Z's while riding in a car, make sure your shoulder strap goes behind the pillow. Sure, if you hit something your face will go straight into the dashboard, but won't you be more comfortable without that silly shoulder strap cramping your style? And oh yes, before I forget: to keep your head from doing that stupid bob-bob-nod-whoops thing, just put your hand around your throat and you'll be just fine.

I think I must have been bored at the office today.

PS I saw today that the American Idol 2007 tour (where people get to hear all the losers again, just in case anyone's forgotten why these ninnies were voted off the show in the first place) is starting soon. The main sponsor for the tour is: POP-TARTS! Honest, folks, I'm not making this up...

Good, Evil and the Internet - assorted musings

2007-04-22T18:01:00.000-04:00

Once again, it's been quite a while since my last post. There are quite a number of reasons/excuses, but none of them really matter. I'm back.

Last week's shooting at Virginia Tech got me thinking, as did the somewhat predictable reaction of the media - mainstream and otherwise. Although I'm a great fan of the immediacy and "democratization" of the fourth estate as offered by electronic and online news services, there are some significant disadvantages, namely the immediacy and democratization.

Allow me to elucidate. Since the earliest days of news reporting, the challenge has been not so much to get the best reportage, but rather the most immediate reportage. Print reporters for newspapers and magazines were, of course, the first to adopt the first-person - or even the second-person ("you are there") school of reportage, with the emphasis on superficial reports of the actual event and marginally more interest in the effect of said event upon the people who witnessed or experienced the event. The creation of what we think of now as the "modern" or electronic media, i.e. radio and television, led to the next logical step: the roving microphone, followed several years later by the "creepie peepie" or handheld (if you can call anything that weighs over fifty pounds handheld) television camera, perpetuated the rush to be first on the scene and first with stories, sound and pictures.

Here's where the first problem lies. When a media organization, whether it's NBC or CBC Radio or the New York Times, first gets its grubby hands on a snippet of information, I would submit that there needs to be someone looking at the material and exercising what we in Canada might tend to call "sober second thought" before publishing or broadcasting it. News organizations in particular live for the scoop, that elusive and largely illusory moment when one organization gets the story out first. Too often, though, the push for the scoop means that the first information about an event is too sketchy to be useful or even meaningful. If there's one thing we should have learned by now about any catastrophe that's being reported online or over the air, it's that the first few reports from the scene are nearly useless and often contradictory. So much for immediacy.

The mainstream media (MSM) seem to be always a step or two behind the man on the street in terms of adopting new technologies that can or could be applied to reportage. That's not necessarily a bad thing. The biggest problem with the democratization brought on by the Information Age is that people begin to think that whatever they publish themselves is The Truth. The great forum that is the Internet quickly degenerates into a bedlam of half-baked theories, pontification and - I love this word - codswollop.

A.J. Liebling, who was himself a better-than-average war correspondent, once summed it all up by saying "freedom of the press is limited to those who own one". God only knows what he would say now, when a free e-mail account and access to a computer can potentially expose any idiot (yes, including me) and his/her thoughts to billions of eyeballs. It is to weep.

The other much-loathed (at least by me) facet of the democratization of news is the ability to instantly spew random thoughts under the guise of "comments". To return for a moment to the event that spawned this screed, the VT shooting, I would turn your attention to the comments that have been posted on any news website that allows them. One would have to search far and wide to find a greater collection of uninformed and yet deeply felt opinion on nearly any subject, whether or not it has anything to do with the actual news event in question. Reading some of the comments to a recent Alan Freeman story about the VT killer made me laugh, shake my head and seethe, not necessarily in that order. Readers' rants on this single and innocuous article ran the gamut from violent anti-immigration diatribes to equally violent anti-Big Pharma rants, to wildly polarized bleating about gun control (pro and con, of course), to pro-American, anti-American, left-wing and right-wing political posturing, to moping about the sad experience that can be life away from home when you're in your late teens.

Here endeth my rant on News and New Media.

I think perhaps the biggest reason why I've been cogitating on the VT massacre is that it's made me reflect on some similar traumatic events that I have experienced. Almost exactly twenty years ago I was a faculty advisor in residence at a US university and was involved in a situation that had many similarities to the VT shooting. But for the intervention of a few key people, most notably the campus police, the school's administration and the student's parents, things might have gone very badly indeed.

In December 1989 I was in France when I started to hear sketchy news reports about a shooting in Montreal. It wasn't until several hours and many frantic phone calls later that I learned that the shootout had occurred at the École Polytechnique, and not at McGill University where a close friend of mine was studying at the time.

Some years later, as a TV news producer, I felt twangs of guilt after assigning a colleague to cover the school shooting in Taber, Alberta, and over the years I worked and talked with a number of colleagues who had covered events like the Oklahoma City bombing, the conflict in Rwanda and the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco.

Mere months ago I heard about the shootout at Dawson College, where my Montreal friend had worked for several years, and where her husband works now.

Like my Blogger nom de plume namesake Voltaire, I often think about the nature of good and evil. Like Voltaire, I reject the concept of using "isms" as a crutch to help explain the universe and the actions of the people inhabiting it. In the end I think both Voltaire and I would agree on a marginally less "big picture" view of things, and work to improve those things over which we have some element of control. We will never be able stop bad things from happening to good people, but for all that we shouldn't stop trying.

Yikes. I got all philosophical and sermon-y there for a moment. Maybe I'll sign off now and post something a little less uplifting later on.

Playin' at The Rex

2007-03-14T21:54:00.000-04:00

The Rex Hotel is one of the best-known jazz clubs in Toronto. It would be impossible to name all of the great players who have graced the entirely-too-small stage over the years. The beer is cheap, the food is pretty good, and the people in the audience are always appreciative. The best part about The Rex is that it's not just for the greats; the managers always reserve a big part of the schedule (and it's a pretty ambitious schedule, with several acts every single day of the week) for local amateurs.

Count yours truly among the local amateurs. Along with photography, my other Expensive Hobby™ is playing jazz saxophone. I've been playing for over thirty years; it's a great way of relieving stress, having fun and meeting people. For the past two or three years I've been playing with a group of other amateur jazzers, and a couple of weeks ago we played a Sunday afternoon gig at The Rex for friends, family and whoever happened to stagger in that day.

You can see and hear the band by clicking here.

What's the plural of apocalypse?

2007-03-03T11:30:00.000-05:00

What's next, locusts?

The street directly in front of my office was closed yesterday for much of the afternoon and all evening. Why, you ask? Because, dear reader, the CN Tower - which for many years has stood like a silent sentinel over Canada's largest city - went insane and decided to wreak havoc on its nutty citizens. The weapon of choice: killer ice cubes from outer space.

Okay, well, they're not really ice cubes. And although 1200 or 1500 feet is pretty high up, the ice isn't really coming from outer space either. Still, the chunks of ice that were falling for those few hours were definitely heavy artillery. At last word no humans have been hit, but a number of cars and buildings have taken significant damage. Take a look here and here.

Mercifully Torontonians are actually getting used to having to make adjustments for this sort of crazy event. I think that secretly, many long-time Toronto residents are still mightily embarrassed of the days when the then-mayor called in the Armed Forces to help the city shovel its way out of what was a marginally heavier than average snowfall. Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that people are brighter now than they were eight or nine years ago. They're just taking things in a (slightly) more stoic manner. People in Toronto still don't know how to deal with snow or ice on their streets and sidewalks, but there's less panic.

Many businesses let their employees go home early on Thursday when the storm started. In retrospect that was a lousy idea, since the effect was that everyone was trying to get home at the same time as the storm was at its peak. I talked to a cabbie who told me that it had taken him three hours to get from downtown to Pearson airport (normally a 25-35 minute ride from Union Station).

Friday was a fairly normal, albeit snowy, commute to work. Then the temperatures got a little milder, and sheets of ice began to fall from many tall buildings, including the aforementioned tower. People in the downtown core went into full adaptation mode. In the past number of years we've had any number of real or imagined disasters, starting, I suppose, with September 2001. Over time we've become almost inured to the reality that from time to time our routines are going to be disrupted by life rearing its ugly head in some way. It's funny that we're now reacting to deadly blocks of ice, launched from great heights, with near equanimity; at the same time it's almost uplifting to see that people are refusing to let things get too much in the way of them living a more or less normal life.

On a related note, I should point out that I have not watched Global TV or read the National Pest for a few days now. I do, though, fully expect that another "in-depth investigation" by CanWest Global's crack journos will reveal that the CBC - yes, the CBC - is actually to blame for the falling ice. I can see the clippings now: "Heat from CBC's transmitters in the CN Tower caused the ice to detach in deadly sheets, falling faster than CBC television's ratings onto the poor citizens below. [...] CanWest Global is investigating reports that the Crown corporation had another of its extra-double-secret taxpayer-funded smoking lounges hidden in the aerie-like surroundings of the CN Tower [...] CBC president Robert Rabinovitch has refused to confirm or deny whether the MotherCorp is in fact responsible for global warming, as CanWest Global has alleged for many years."

To be honest I was almost speechless when I saw the Post's so-called investigative story. It's a prime example of slow-news-day "gotcha" journalism, i.e. a story that's not a story, stuck on the front page for want of anything else worthwhile. Although I have spent a fair bit of time in the Canadian Broadcasting Centre 0ver the years I was unaware that these smoking lounges were still operating. I do know there used to be more of them, but now most smokers just go outside where they stand in well-demarcated "paddocks" painted on the sidewalk.

In watching the TV version of the "story" it becomes clear that the original focus was the gap between provincial and federal anti-smoking legislation, i.e. that provincially-regulated workplaces have banned smoking for any number of years whereas federally-regulated industries (like broadcasting, banking and interprovincial transportation, among others) have not gone so far as to implement a full-on ban. This reminds me a bit of the day, not all that many years ago, when the Alberta legislature was declared a non-smoking building, with the little-known exception of the Premier's office. Guess who was still a smoker at the time. [not to reveal any secrets, but his initials were Ralph Klein.]

I'd love to know who the genius was at the editorial meeting who stuck up their hand and said "heyyy... the CBC has smoking rooms... we could really embarrass them and make ourselves look really smart!" Guys, you might want to stick to showing reruns of House if you want to keep your ratings up; your investigative journalism leaves a little to be desired.

The past month in review: Train Wreck City!

2007-02-18T16:13:00.000-05:00

It's been over a month since my last rant. And oy, what a month! One hardly knows where to begin:

- A NASA astronaut manages to reach outer space without the trouble and expense of a ship.

Lisa Nowak was arrested and charged with the attempted murder of fellow astronaut Colleen Shipman. All for the love of yet another astronaut, William Oefelein. I suppose the only positive element to this story is that at least it all happened on Earth. Had this Peyton-Place-in-space happened on the International Space Station or on the Moon or Mars or somewhere, which court would hold jurisdiction? Whose laws would apply? Samuel T. Cogley (from the Star Trek episode "Court Martial") hasn't even been born yet...

- A multi-millionaire (or is she?) ex-Playboy centrefold dies under mysterious circumstances.

Ah, the late, lamented Anna Nicole Smith. Depending on whose bleating you're paying attention to, she was either a postmodern Marilyn Monroe or one of the most addle-pated humans ever to grace the planet. Her demise will fuel conspiracy theories for years to come.

A small confession: when I read the news of Smith's death, I immediately thought of Colonel Tom Parker's famous (albeit apocryphal) utterance upon learning of Elvis Presley's death: "Good career move". Kinda funny but kinda sad at the same time.

It's been said that one of Anna's favourite sayings was "How do you like my body now?" Something tells me that about now she probably wouldn't like the answer to that question.

- Britney Spears - still the odds-on favourite for a Nobel Prize this year.

Yikes. Let me see if I can condense Brit's career and personal travails to date. *ahem*

- Becomes Mouseketeer.
- Meets first love Justin Timberlake and lifelong nemesis (and way better singer) Christina Aguilera.
- Has obscenely successful pop-tart career, showing that style still beats the crap out of substance.
- Dumps (or is dumped by) Timberlake. I forget who did the dumping, and in the end it doesn't really matter.
- Gets married.
- Gets divorced. (it's about here that the insane-chick gene appears to begin asserting itself)
- Takes up Kabbalah.
- Starts behaving more and more erratically, on stage and off.
- Public lip-lock with Madonna starts tongues wagging (I know, I know: poor choice of metaphor)
- Gets married again. Courtship with new hubby fully documented on reality TV.
- Gets pregnant, has kid; shows that her parenting skills leave much to be desired.
- Gets pregnant again and has second kid.
- Dumps and humiliates (if that's possible) second hubby Kevin Federline. Bonus points for (allegedly) dumping FedEx by text message. Extra double bonus points for doing it while said FedEx is on live TV!
- Somehow loses all of her underwear, self-control and self-respect at the same time.
- Strikes up a friendship with professional train wreck and role model Paris Hilton.
- Becomes more famous for flashing photographers and visiting dodgy nightclubs than she was as a performer.
- Checks into rehab; checks out of rehab within 24 hours. Either a miracle cure or the world's lamest attempt to rehabilitate her rapidly-declining image.
- Shaves head and gets two (more) tattoos.

What's next? I'm beginning to think that some newspapers/magazines are going to have to set up a Britney desk, just as they have city, political, and international desks. This girl is a walking (okay, staggering) entertainment section (with or without garish photos) all by herself. And as much as I lament the sad fact that any news organization should know better than to get within 500 metres of anything remotely Britney-ey, the sadder fact is that the public keeps eating it all up with big spoons. Shame on us all for enabling this all-too-public train wreck to continue. Can someone rent this girl a copy of A Star is Born (any version - even the Streisand version) or find her a biography of Judy Garland or Liza Minnelli or something?

- The Conservatives show that they really, really want to be Republicans after all.

Stephen Harper's Conservative government has some freakin' nerve. After spending more than a decade in opposition and doing everything possible to scuttle any effort to respect the Kyoto environmental accord, now they're going after the Liberals in a series of negative TV ads. Let me state this as simply as possible: they're berating the Liberals for not being able to do what the Conservatives never wanted them to do in the first place. Somehow - magically, I suppose - the Conservatives are now trying to paint themselves as the champions of the environment. "Poor stupid Stéphane Dion", they seem to be saying; "he didn't meet the Kyoto targets. Why would anyone want a Liberal government again?"

Until this week. All the opposition parties got together to push through a private member's bill meant to force/cajole/embarrass the government into at least trying to attain the targets set in the Kyoto protocol. A protocol, mind you, that was criticized heavily in 2002 by a certain Stephen Harper as, and I quote, "...essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations". So now Harper is in a rather unenviable position. He now says he believes the environment is important, and his party is now busy lambasting the opposition for not "getting the job done", although the Conservatives were most decidedly *not* on the Kyoto bandwagon from 2002 until, oh, about a week ago. The Conservative spinmeisters must be burning the midnight, er, whatever you can burn at midnight now that isn't fossil-fuel-based, to get out of this shining example of pretzel logic.

Oh, and to come back to the negative ads. I may be wrong, but I'd dearly love to believe that Canadian voters are just a little too smart, and a little too nice, to react to this kind of blatant manipulation. It's not like the Conservatives never did anything stupid (*cough*, GST, *cough).

Whew! There now; that did my curmudgeonly heart a world of good, to get all that off my chest. We now return to your regularly-scheduled Sunday, already in progress.

Psychic machines

2007-01-14T17:08:00.000-05:00

I've noticed this before, but have never dared commit it to writing: machines can read our minds.

All of us have experienced this before. Anyone who has owned a car, or any other (relatively) expensive bit of gear, has had a gremlin that mysteriously vanishes as soon as the car arrives at the shop for repair. I submit to you that gremlins are in fact imaginary beings that Man, in his arrogance and species-centric view, has invented to explain away the simple fact: machines can read our minds.

I have had inklings of this in the past. How else to explain how the transmission on my car mysteriously decided to withhold any and all access to third gear within hours of me telling a friend that I was planning to sell it?

In my last post I mentioned that my iPod Shuffle was misbehaving and was headed for the scrap heap, in favour of a shiny new one. Within five minutes of me posting that statement, the offending instrument stopped behaving like a petulant child, and it's been running like a top ever since. That didn't stop me, I hasten to add, from going out a buying a new iPod. I'd better destroy the old one just in case it decides to go all Christine on me and start running people over, or deafening them or something equally unspeakable.

Hey! Wait a minute. After reading these past couple of paragraphs, it strikes me that perhaps these inanimate objects can't actually read minds, but in fact are listening to me, or reading my online posts. After all, if I apply Occam's razor to my current situation, it's more plausible that a machine could have physical senses than extra-sensory perception, right? Hmmm... maybe I should start writing these posts in Pig Latin; do you think machines can understand Pig Latin?
I-ay ure-say ope-hay ot-nay.

Death of a giant

2007-01-14T13:06:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a day of ups and downs for me.

Plus side: a nice relaxing Saturday afternoon, and my favourite Starbucks wasn't too crowded.

More plus side: A very pleasant evening with a friend (and hey, I even got my Joni Mitchell DVD back!)

Even more plus side: A terrific concert by Michael Occhipinti at the Glenn Gould Studio, and second-row seats!

Not-so-plus side: my iPod Shuffle appears to have given up the ghost. After a bit of reading up online, it turns out this problem is not uncommon. There are even a couple of fixes, but said fixes don't appear to be working. Sooooo... I guess I'll buy one of the second-generation Shuffles (you know, the ones that look like an aluminum matchbook - and for those of you that don't know what a matchbook looks like, you're far too young to be reading this!) to tide me over for a while. Now that the iPhone is out, or I suppose I should say nearly out, I fully expect that the next generation of iPods will move to the hey-where-did-all-the-buttons-go style.

Really awful side: Upon getting home from the concert last night, I went online to surf through my Google Alerts as is my habit. It was then that I read the news I've been dreading for some time now: my musical inspiration Michael Brecker died yesterday.

This image is from Michael's website. You can read the New York Times obituary here.

I was first introduced to Michael's playing by one of my oldest friends, Colin Traquair, at summer camp. Like most teenage saxophonists, I was attracted to dazzling technique, and hearing Michael play on Heavy Metal Bebop was quite literally a life-changing moment. Over the years I listened to more and more of Michael's playing, and was continually amazed, not just by his command of the instrument, but also by his gift for giving shape to his playing. Whether it was just playing a line as part of a horn section, stepping up for a brief solo, or standing alone on stage for an entire evening, Michael knew how to give exactly the right emotional colour to whatever he was called upon to play.

Michael has been called the single most influential saxophonist since Coltrane. It remains to be seen whether Michael will actually surpass his own spiritual mentor in the pantheon of jazz saxophonists. I would argue strenuously that in terms of the sheer breadth, volume and quality of his contributions, Michael is as deserving as anyone of the title of greatest jazz saxophonist of all time.

As a saxophonist myself, my sound, my technique and my soloing style (such as they are) aren't immediately identifiable as "Breckerish". That said, it would be fair to say that a single question has motivated nearly every note I've played for the past twenty-five years or so: "I wonder how Mike would approach this?".

To best honour Mike's memory, I'm going to encourage people - including you, dear reader - to participate in Canada's Unrelated Bone Marrow Donor Registry; in the US, contact your nearest hospital or consider a donation to the Marrow Fund's "Time is of the Essence" fund, which was established by Michael and his family.

If you've never listened to Michael play before (I was going to say "if you've never heard Michael play...", but if you've listened to any pop music since the late 70s that's pretty much impossible) there are a few tunes or albums you should probably give a listen to:

Manhattan Transfer, Operator: a good old-fashioned R&B solo. Short and sweet.

Brecker Brothers, Heavy Metal Bebop: If you don't own this album, along with Back to Back or Dave Sanborn's Taking Off, you don't know anything about New York jazz from the mid-late 70s.

Donald Fagen, Maxine: thirty-four seconds - 16 bars - of perfection. I tell people this may be the most complete saxophone solo ever. I still get goosebumps listening to it.

Steps, Fawlty Tenors: A live recording of a great Don Grolnick tune. Give a listen to Recordame too for a great take on a sometimes-tired standard.

Steps Ahead, Both Sides of the Coin: In a previous post I referred to Zinédine Zidane and his ability to make a bad play - or even a hack - look good. Mike does the same at 3:23 of this tune. The first time I heard this recording my jaw dropped: "They actually kept that take?" But now I can't imagine that tune, and that solo, any other way.

There are too many others to mention. Goodbye Mike; I'll miss you.

A random observation

2007-01-12T13:37:00.000-05:00

I saw the news on the wires the other day about the "big stink" in New York City, and how many people are ascribing it to as-yet-unknown goings-on across the way in New Jersey:

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20070110_new_york_blames_new_jersey_for_stench/

Imagine, if you will, a really big elevator, with the states of New York and New Jersey inside. An unpleasant smell permeates the air. Each state looks at the other, eyes narrowing.

And in the background, a bad instrumental arrangement of "Girl From Ipanema" plays over the speaker.

It's the stuff great sketches are made of.

The commutative property of double negatives

2006-12-20T11:48:00.000-05:00

Those of us who paid attention in school (at least periodically) will recall that, in English at least, double negatives are a bad thing. They cancel each other out; as a result you often end up saying the opposite of what you mean to say. For example, if one were to say "I didn't say nothing", that might be interpreted as meaning that I did in fact say something.

For your edification, I submit the following question: does the same sort of principle apply to other restrictive declarations? This morning I saw a sign that read:

"Faux imitation leather chairs"

Do "faux" and "imitation" cancel each other out? Is this chair really made with good ol' cowhide? Or does "faux" actually intensify the imitationiness, i.e. this is not even imitation leather, but some crude knock-off of imitation leather?

To really have some fun, let's throw another spanner into the works:

"Genuine faux imitation leather chairs"

And people wonder why machine translation still hasn't become a reality...

AARRRGGGHHH! Hulk ANGRY!

2006-12-10T23:27:00.000-05:00

I don't think of myself as a particularly demanding guy. Generally speaking, I'm patient and I'm usually willing to put up with a lot. But I absolutely hate it when the geniuses who run TV channels don't put the flippin' shows on when they say they will.

Let me say right now that I think the PVR (that's Personal Video Recorder for those of you who came late) is one of the great inventions of the past few years. I use mine to record all my favorite programs whenever they come on. Because my schedule can be unpredictable, I count on my PVR, and the digital program guide it runs from, to be accurate so that when I get home all my programs will be there, ready for me to watch at my leisure. The best part of the PVR/program guide integration is that if, for some crazy reason, a show winds up being pre-empted or shown on another night, the PVR will catch the change, as long as the program guide is updated in time.

This evening I was positively giddy about being home to watch the second-season premiere of "Sleeper Cell" on The Movie Network. "Starts December 10 at 10 pm", I read. Being just a little, er, retentive, I checked my digital cable program guide: there it was, 10 pm. Sooooo, at a couple of minutes before 10 I curled up in my comfy leather recliner and switched over to channel 537, all ready to see what kind of trouble Oded Fehr and Michael Ealy and the boys can get into this year...

and what did I discover? To use the vernacular of the TV biz, I joined regular programming already in progress! The #&^%$ show started at 9! Impardonable sin number 1: running a program a full hour early.

Followed closely by impardonable sin number 2. The program ran until (approximately) 10:30. So even if the geniuses had started running the program at the originally scheduled time, the PVR would have dutifully stopped recording after one hour, leaving the last half-hour unrecorded.

I was able to channel my rage into a pithy e-mail to the people at The Movie Network. The answer (if any) that I receive will determine the depth of my indignation over the coming days. It's likely to take me a couple of weeks, though, to have any trust in the program guide.

I mean, geez Louise, it's television, people! Come on! It's not like you're running the space program or anything. Just do what you say you're going to do and I'll be able to put down this baseball bat I'm brandishing wildly right now...

Bad Saturday. Better Sunday: A Really Long Post

2006-11-26T20:42:00.000-05:00

I should get thirty lashes with a wet noodle for neglecting my blog for so long.

Now you know why I never bothered getting a Tamagotchi.
Now you know why not even a cactus would ever survive in my home or in my office.
Now you know why I don’t have children or pets.

Anyhoo, here’s what’s been going on lately.

First off, I spent a good chunk of yesterday (Saturday) at a bar up near Yonge/Eglinton to watch the Vanier Cup game with a few of my fellow U of Saskatchewan alumni.

Fueled by beer, bad chicken wings and better quesadillas (the nachos were somewhere in between), we all watched our U of S Huskies blow home-field advantage and go down to defeat 13-8 at the hands of the Laval Rouge et Or. You would have thought the field conditions - minus-20-something, minus-30 with the wind chill - would have helped the Huskies, but I guess no one plays all that well when they've lost sensation in all their extremities.

My friend Milan and I also discussed the idea of creating a Toronto branch of the Intensely Vigourous College Nine.

Milan (pictured above expounding on his idea) likes the name “Remotely Vigorous College Nine”. I have to admit that that name kinda tickles my fancy too. All we need now is to find some junk horns to play (I’ve, um, learned my lesson about taking a pro horn out on a Nine gig), a few more musically-inclined alums (talent optional), some wacky disguises, and some good excuses to play! We would, of course, have to respect the Nine’s strict no-rehearsal policy. Who knows? This project might actually take wing.

So the day wasn’t a complete loss.

As for today, I spent a chunk of it, as is my wont, at the local Starbucks, reading the paper, people-watching and listening to my iPod.

The “shuffle” function has created a new phenomenon: the instant mix tape. Those of us that came of age (technologically, at least) in the 70s and 80s got into the habit of putting together mix tapes (or mix CDs or, more recently, mp3 playlists). I’ve used them as a good barometer of my mental and emotional state: listening to an old mix tape tells me a lot about where my head was at when I made the tape.

Now, anyone can use their iPod to put together what seems to be a completely random playlist. Every once in a while, though, synchronicity rears its head and what started out as random seems to take on a deeper significance. Today was one of those days. I think this may have been my best iPod day to date. Check out this playlist:

“Stella By Starlight”, Chet Baker – I always think of this tune as a medium ballad, but Baker plays it a little more up-tempo. It almost comes across as perky!

“Lover Lay Down”, Dave Matthews Band – This is a great track by my oldest nephew’s favourite band. These guys do everything well; great lyrics, great feel, great playing, great vocals.

“5/5/7”, Pat Metheny Group – I was living in Paris when I got this album as a Xmas gift. It always triggers pleasant memories, although I wish my dorm room had looked and felt a little less like a prison cell.

“Canary in a Coal Mine”, The Police – A fun little tune that shows why everyone loves, or loved, The Police. Snappy execution, great guitar work, fun lyrics, even (gasp!) danceable, at least by New Wave standards.

“It’s Over”, Level 42 – In retrospect it’s sappy, but there was a time when this was one of my favourite ballads. The remixed version of this tune on the greatest-hits compilation album has a freakin’ steel guitar (!) on it, but this was the original version.

“Presto in G Minor #1 After Bach”, Béla Fleck – Who knew that a banjo player could work out on a classical piece, let alone do it as a duo with marimba? This whole album is a revelation.

“Money Talks”, Living Colour – I love these guys. They’re just intellectual enough, just wacky enough, just in-your-face enough to tickle my fancy. Corey Glover has one of the great rock voices of all time.

“Floating Life”, Level 42 – A fun early track from the founders of the Britfunk sound. I particularly love the doubled bass line in the last half of the guitar solo. Find yourself a good stereo system – a subwoofer is a must – crank it up and feel the sound of the apocalypse!

“What Am I Here For?”, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross – Their first album was entitled The Hottest New Group in Jazz. Hyperbole perhaps, but Dave, Jon and Annie had great jazz chops and sensitivity, and they sang their collective a$$ off.

“Don’t Change Horses (In The Middle of a Stream)”, Tower of Power – My first exposure to TOP was at band camp in 1973. As near as I can figure out, it would have been about 7 am on Monday July 9, when our camp counsellor first blasted “What Is Hip?” as our wake-up call. I’ve been a Tower of Power fan ever since. Chester Thompson (the one who plays keyboards with Santana, not the other one who played drums with Genesis) sounds like a zillion bucks on the B-3 organ, Bruce Conte’s guitar solo is a classic, and no one sings this song like Lenny Williams.

“Changing the Guard”, Mark King – This tune starts out sounding harmonically like an updated version of “Sweet Home Alabama”, but within a few seconds you know that this ain't no Lynyrd Skynyrd. It’s a simple tune, but quickly turns to an almost-anthemic feel, and Mark shows that he’s really a very good singer. His bass chops are conspicuously downplayed on this album, but that only serves to play up the quality of his songs and his singing.

“Nimrod”, Dominic Miller – From Elgar’s Enigma Variations. The recent trend of pop artists re-discovering and re-interpreting legit music doesn’t always work, but Dominic gets it right by not messing with things too much.

“My Old Flame”, Charlie Parker – It would just be wrong for a jazz lover not to have at least some Bird on his/her iPod, but I have to admit that this tune makes me smile for a different reason. Every time I hear it I’m reminded of the version recorded by Spike Jones and his City Slickers.

“Green Earrings”, Steely Dan – I came to Steely Dan fairly late in life; I didn’t really start listening to the band in earnest until Gaucho, the last album before their lengthy hiatus. Over the years, though, I’ve come to appreciate the depth and breadth of their work. This is a simple song structurally, but there’s just so much going on inside of it that it easily bears repeated listening.

“Long Life”, Lyle Mays – This track is from Lyle’s solo recording, which has been under-reviewed and generally underappreciated. Lyle is really a brilliant player, and it’s a bit of a shame that he’s spent so long in the shadow of his long-time musical partner Pat Metheny. He deserves far more recognition as a player and composer than he gets.

“All the Tea in China”, Steps Ahead – From the Magnetic album, the most commercially accessible of the Michael Brecker-era Steps Ahead albums. When I first heard it, I was simultaneously put off by the attempt to reach out to the pop crowd and amazed by the technical and musical pyrotechnics that Mike and the gang were able to put into their playing. In the end the album didn’t enjoy much crossover success, but it stands up very well, even more than twenty years after its release. Mike’s playing on both tenor sax and EWI is inspired.

“Midnight Mood”, Michael Brecker – even more inspiration from The Greatest Living Saxophonist. (Feel free to flame me for my choice, but hey: my blog, my rules!) To me Mike is the strongest argument for a Supreme Being, although his recent health problems might lead one to believe that the aforementioned Supreme Being has a crap sense of humour.

“John And Mary”, Jaco Pastorius – It’s well-known now, although not so well-known at the time, that although Jaco was undeniably a genius and a seminal figure in modern jazz music, he was also wildly bipolar. His daughter Mary has also been diagnosed with the same illness. There’s no dispute, though, that Jaco adored his kids. In this track you can hear him playing with them.

“Jack Cannon”, Alain Caron – Over the years I’ve met and spoken with Alain Caron a few times, first in an interview setting, then (slightly) more informally. He’s a terrific guy as well as being a monster bassist. I’ve always thought of this tune as the best TV theme song ever, although to my knowledge it’s never been used.

“80/81”, Pat Metheny – A few years ago, I started playing saxophone again after a break of nearly two years. My re-introduction to the horn consisted of putting this album on and trying to play along as best I could. I don’t know why I picked this album, but it nearly made me hang up the horn for good! In retrospect there are probably fifty other albums in my collection that would have been a better choice to try and get my chops back up to snuff, but listening to Dewey Redman, Pat Metheny and (yes, my hero) Mike Brecker for an afternoon helped remind me of how much I have yet to learn.

“Cousin Mary”, John Coltrane – One of the must-haves in any saxophonists’ collection is Giant Steps. For a 1959 album, everything sounds remarkably fresh.

“Maiden Voyage”, Herbie Hancock – Everyone, and I mean everyone, has played this tune at one time or another. The original recording from 1965 still rules.

“Willie and the Hand Jive”, Eric Clapton – I’ve never been a great fan of Clapton’s singing, but he’s always been a great guitarist, and this tune is just plain fun.

“Superboy”, The Bears – The Bears were one of Adrian Belew’s pet projects right after the demise of the 1980s Fripp/Belew/Bruford/Levin iteration of King Crimson. I always felt that this band gave Ade more of an opportunity to show his playful side. Although the Crims sometimes sound like full-on anarchy at high volume, the fact is that their tunes are tightly structured and the “improv” is very much buttoned down. In any event, the Twang Bar King has a blast on this album, and he takes what would otherwise be a really good bar band to a whole different level.

“Edith and the Kingpin”, Joni Mitchell – Wow. Joni’s 1979 Shadows & Light tour showcased some of the most influential musicians of the time. Joni on vocals and guitar, along with nearly all my faves: Pat Metheny on guitar, Lyle Mays on keys, Jaco Pastorius on bass, Don Alias on drums and percussion, Mike Brecker on saxophone, and The Persuasions just to round things out a bit vocally. I only wish I’d been able to see this band live. I bought the DVD of this show a couple of years ago, but made the mistake of loaning it to a friend who promptly dropped off the face of the earth. Tanya, if you’re out there, I forgive you, but gimme back my DVD, dammit!

“Back in Black”, Living Colour: A great way to end a nearly perfect day of music listening. Yeah, I know, it may be sacrilege to dig a cover of such a classic tune, but the Living Colour version is every bit as much fun as the AC/DC original. In fact, I kind of enjoy the tongue-in-cheekiness of a black (sorry, African-American) band a) doing one of the great metal tunes of all time; and b) paying respect to it while simultaneously freshening it up.

***
Whew! This is one long post, but hopefully we’ve all learned an important lesson: don’t go two months between posts.

PS: if you're interested in any of these tunes, post a comment to this post and I'll try to hook you up.

A couple of Steven Wright-esque comments/observations

2006-10-01T09:41:00.000-04:00

Last night I dreamt that I wrote my first novel. It was really difficult; I was writing it on a Möbius strip and couldn't get past the first page...

Yesterday I was at Starbucks with my friend Milan and we heard the beeping of one of the alarm clock thingies they always put on their coffee pots. I keep wondering why coffee would need an alarm clock; shouldn't it be able to stay awake on its own?

What happens when you cancel a cancellation?

2006-09-25T18:11:00.000-04:00

I'm returning to Toronto today after a few days in Vancouver. You will recall that there were some, er, events surrounding the outbound leg of this trip; see my previous entry for that.

My few days in Vancouver were unremarkable overall. I wound up doing more work and, consequently, less play than I would have liked, but I was able to take my rented Mustang (!!) out for a couple of nice runs. I got the car back to the nice rental people, got into the departure area of the terminal at YVR, only to discover that my flight was - you guessed it - delayed by an hour. For the second time in a row, it was due to "maintenance issues" with the aircraft.

Now, I'm all for not flying in messed-up airframes. When the agent at the check-in counter told me it was a "flight control" issue, the image of the Weasleys' flying car from the Harry Potter books zoomed through my head. Not the sort of thing I want to be dealing with with a few hundred of my closest friends in an Airbus A340, no sirree. I'll wait for the plane that isn't possessed by gremlins, thank you very much.

I went into the Maple Leaf lounge, where the announcement was made shortly thereafter that my flight was being cancelled altogether. There are plenty of other flights from Vancouver to Toronto, we'll get you onto one of them, I was told. So I left my boarding pass at the desk and went back to drafting my blog about delayed flights.

Less than a half-hour later, I was paged to return to the desk, where my original boarding pass was given back to me. "It's fixed now" was the simple, albeit not completely satisfying answer.

That's when I looked around for Q/Mr. Mxyzptlk/Stephen Hawking/Carl Sagan; someone - anyone - who could explain the bizarro universe into which I had obviously just been sucked. How often does something get cancelled, and then un-cancelled? That's gotta leave a mark on the fabric of the space-time continuum...

When I asked what the exact nature of the original problem was, the agent wasn't able to tell me. So, in about an hour, I'll step onto an airplane with a (hopefully) repaired flight-control issue. If you read something in the newspaper about an airplane that's stuck flying in circles - in reverse - somewhere over the Prairies, that will be me. I just hope we don't run into any Whomping Willows.

Traveling

2006-09-22T10:21:00.000-04:00

I'm on a business trip for a few days. A few years back, my job called for me to travel a great deal more than I do now. There are times when I miss the experience, but yesterday wasn't one of them.

I know that air travel is a more complicated affair than it used to be, at least from a security point of view. And to be fair (and when am I ever unfair?), going through security was probably the least painful thing I did yesterday. But when one is doing everything right, why is it that everything else goes wrong?

I generally like to get to the airport at least half an hour before the airline wants me there. I like having the extra time to go up to the lounge, have a coffee, read the newspaper or get a magazine before having to be herded onto the aircraft. Yesterday there was a lot of traffic coming from downtown, so I didn't get to the airport until just over an hour before departure. No problem, I thought to myself, since I had already printed my boarding pass; since my Aeroplan status allows me to use the executive counter, I should be able to breeze right on in.

I arrived at that section of the airport to find that the express check-in is so popular it has a line-up. Just dropping off one's bags - the part that should arguably take the least amount of time - has become the single most time-consuming part of the ritual. The queue was at least an hour long. Thinking quickly, I went over to the executive checkin queue, which was considerably shorter. Re-doing what I had already done, i.e. checking in, getting a seat assigned (or re-assigned in my case) and checking my suitcase, actually took less time than it would have just to check my bag.

As for the whole issue of checked luggage: I have a carry-on suitcase that I bought a few years ago, when I was traveling a lot. Its dimensions are precisely those set by all the major airlines for carry-on baggage. Why didn't I just carry it on, you may ask? Well, dear reader, I was carrying contact lens solution and deodorant and shampoo, which are verboten on carry-on these days. I have seen so-called dry shampoo, which is essentially cornstarch that you rub into your hair and then comb out. I also know that you can use talcum powder as an effective anti-perspirant/deodorant. And you know, for a few minutes there I was actually tempted to replace my liquid-and-gel toiletries with fine-textured white powders. In the end, I decided not to give the security guards any more excitement than they can stand already, and just checked my suitcase. Never let it be said that I'm inconsiderate.

Then I finally got to the departure lounge, mildly annoyed because now it was only about fifteen minutes to scheduled departure time. When, oh when will I learn that scheduled departure times now mean nothing to Air Canada? The 6 pm departure was blithely changed to 6:30, then to 7, then to 7:15. We were herded onto the plane, whereupon the very polite captain announced that the technicians had nearly finished replacing the tires on the nose wheel, but that the luggage crew had had to take their meal break and the luggage wasn't quite all loaded yet, and oh yes, there were a number of passengers who had checked luggage but who hadn't boarded the plane, and we all know what a bother that can be. So we sat around until 8. Mercifully the flight took less time than anticipated - lack of headwind, I'm guessing - so we got into Vancouver at a decent (ish) hour.

Ah, the excitement of cross-country travel.

What I did over the summer holidays

2006-09-02T12:47:00.000-04:00

Sheesh, it's been a while since my last rant - nearly two months. Let's see, what's happened since July?

Hmmm... well, there was Zinédine Zidane and his meltdown at the World Cup. I mean, what are you supposed to say about a player whose game is so good that even his hacks look like they should be in a textbook somewhere? I'm obviously not condoning violence - heck, I don't even like hockey - but you have to have at least some (grudging) admiration for a guy who can make a vicious head-butt look like a work of art. Not even Wayne Gretzky could do that. I'm just glad that I wasn't at the receiving end; getting a whack like that in the ol' xyphoid (come on, don't be lazy, Google it!) would be supremely painful, and probably left quite a bruise on Materazzi.

And then there was that other meltdown: Floyd Landis. His wasn't so much a meltdown as a complete disintegration, followed by a miraculous, er, re-integration, followed by a completely humiliating letdown, with full media coverage of all aspects. I suppose the jury is ostensibly still out on whether Landis Did Something Naughty, or had a little something not-quite-kosher administered to him without his knowledge, but there are many more questions than there are answers and Floyd doesn't seem to be leading from the front. I'd like to think that if I knew I was completely blameless in this affair I'd be adopting the more aggressive Lance Armstrong "if you've got incontrovertible proof, let's see it" approach. Instead Floyd has faded from view. As much as I hate to use a lazy journalist's bromide, I guess time will tell.

I spent a few days in New York City at the beginning of July. As I've done before, I spent much of my time just wandering around the city, although on this trip the heat and humidity were particularly awful. I saw some great jazz, including the Mingus Dynasty and the Heath Brothers (Jimmy and Tootie), bought a bunch of hard-to-find CDs, and saw some things I didn't expect to see, like this sign:

I guess they mean car horns, but as a saxophone player I felt a bit persecuted for a moment there. And so close to Lincoln Centre and the Juilliard school too!

I also went to a Yankees game. My ticket cost an arm and a leg - maybe two arms and a leg - and baseball isn't my favourite sport in the world either (more on that in a few lines), but hey, going to Yankee Stadium on a steamy Friday night in July strikes me as the sort of rite of passage that a guy should undergo. It was great fun, and I had a great seat. See?

For the detail-oriented, the Yankees played the Chicago White Sox. That's Randy Johnson on the mound for the Yankees. And "we" - I discovered pretty early on that when you're sitting that close to home plate you'd better be cheering for the home team! - won 6-5.

So that was my July. What about August? I guess one bit of big news is that Canada qualified for next year's Rugby World Cup in France. One more reason to start planning next year's vacation on the continent...

And as I write this, Canada is playing at the Women's Rugby World Cup in Edmonton. The girls got shellacked in their first match, losing 66-7 to the New Zealand Black Ferns, but there's no shame in that. Scoring any points at all against the Black Ferns is quite an exploit. Hopefully the Canadians will do well in the tournament this time around.

That's all I can think of, curmudgeonly or otherwise, on a rainy Saturday. I'm sure I'll have more to rant about soon.

Maybe not...

2006-07-03T00:34:00.000-04:00

When I started this blog, I decided to use the snappy line above ("People actually read this crap?") as the title. As it turns out, people don't actually read this crap.

If I were doing this for ego-stroking purposes it would bother me. I'd be lying if I said I was content with the voice-in-the-wildnerness-ness, but I started this as much as a means to vent as anything else. So I shall continue.

There was a jazz festival here in Toronto over the past ten days or so. I actually made it to a couple of shows, although there were a couple I would have liked to have seen that I ended up missing for one reason or another. I just hope that I won't "pull a Jaco" again.

Some context: back in the early 80s I was in Europe for the summer, and kept missing Jaco Pastorius's Word of Mouth tour. He died just a couple of years later. I would have loved to have seen him and his band.

Last spring I got lucky, if you can call it that. By pure happenstance I saw Michael Brecker's last performance before he stopped playing. When I heard he was sick - Myelodysplastic syndrome if I'm spelling it right at this late hour - I was very upset, almost as if Mike were a close friend or a member of the family. I'm very glad to see that he has made some steps back toward recovery; I read the other day that he played one tune at a Herbie Hancock show.

Other happenings in my so-called life: the World Cup is nearly over, and the 2006 Tour de France has begun. The Rugby World Cup isn't until next fall, so I can't say I've hit the trifecta, but having cycling and soccer going on at the same time is pretty cool. And there's so much coverage that I can't watch it all. I've taken to recording the shows on my PVR and watching them - at least in part - on fast-forward. It's sort of like being like Adam Sandler in "Click", without the several million bucks Sandler is getting for playing the role, of course...

Woof! a photo blog

2006-06-11T19:45:00.000-04:00

Tripe cream cones! Get 'em here! Get your tripe cream cones right here!

No, that's not a typo;I checked. These people are actually giving away samples of processed tripe. Ewww. That's the bad news. The good news that this stuff is made for dogs. Think about it: what could possibly be more appetizing to a dog than beef innards? Okay, on second thought, maybe you don't have to think about it if you don't want to.

Where did I see this brilliant example of entrepreneurship? Why, at Woofstock. A healthy chunk of Toronto's Front Street was closed yesterday and today for this festival/fair/trade show/carnival of nuttiness. It was actually a lot of fun - if you like dogs, that is.

Of course there were cool dogs:

And funny dogs:

And others whose owners clearly have way too much time on their hands:
Yup, Poochie is wearing an Oilers jersey, complete with helmet.

A bit of a World Cup theme...

Okay, now this is just cruel. Even a dog knows that hockey season is over - especially for the Leafs!

Oh, and one good-looking cockatoo, er, too:

The prize winner has to be this one. I mean, I'd be hiding my face too if I had actually gone so far as to a) own a toy poodle; and b) dye said toy poodle fuchsia. Or maybe it's just a marginally-less-cringe-inducing hot pink. This poor mutt is going to need psychotherapy for the rest of his/her life:

There are plenty more pics where these came from, but I think I'll just hold onto them and chuckle at 'em at my leisure... aw heck, here are a couple more:

Why do I have this sudden urge to put on a tweed jacket?

"Where's Pumbaa?"

"Hello, water bottle. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
[-or, if you prefer:]
"Oh yeah? Well, maybe you're going to last two hundred years in a landfill, but I'll still be collecting royalties from Frasier reruns! So there!"

Another Sunday, some more random thoughts

2006-06-04T16:31:00.000-04:00

A follow-up to a previous entry: This week I finally got the swishy new flash diffuser for my camera - you remember, the one that would instantly give every photo I took that perfect just-kissed-by-God lighting?

Well, I've been working out with it for the past couple of days. It doesn't help with composition or choice of subject, and it sure as hell doesn't make people better-looking, but hey, if you're gonna be ugly, you might as well be ugly and well-lit. Of course, the event I needed this thingamajig for was two weeks ago, but next time someone asks me to shoot people (come on, you know what I mean...) I'll be ready for anything.

Speaking of, er, shooting people, the recent news about a group of they-might-just-be-terrorists being arrested in the Greater Toronto Area is causing some stir. I've seen just enough detail to realize that I can't arrive at any sort of conclusion as to whether these guys are the real deal or not. There is discussion about the massive amount of ammonium nitrate fertilizer they had on hand (if you're not a farmer, that is). There was a cell phone in a box with wires coming out of it. At their first court appearance, many of their (female) family members arrived in burqas. Just those few elements are enough to keep the pundits yapping for days.

Next question: presuming that they were indeed planning to Blow Something Up, what where they lookin' at? The Toronto Star says that the police were quick to announce that public transit, i.e. the TTC, was not, definitely not, repeat, not a target, no really, we're not kidding, no sir, not a target at all. That's enough to convince me that the TTC was target number one. But what else? The CN Tower? Naah; although it's undeniably a Toronto landmark - how else are you going to figure out which direction is south in this town? - its destruction probably wouldn't generate much in the way of terror. The Toronto Stock Exchange? Not likely. The entire financial district, i.e. King & Bay? Possible. CSIS's Toronto bureau? I've heard that possibility mooted in more than one forum. That's the scariest one yet; not that I have any concerns about Canada's intelligence gathering, it's just that the CSIS offices are uncomfortably close to mine. Call me selfish.

To segue neatly into other international life-and-death struggles: I went to a rugby match yesterday. Scotland A vs. the England Saxons; that is to say, categorically not the international Test teams that we'll see at the World Cup, but pretty darn good. It was a great day for rugby, meaning that it was a bit cool and rain pelted down all afternoon. Fans and players alike were soaked, although I'd venture to say the players had a little more fun, since they could at least run around; those of us in the stands were a miserable bunch of drowned rats by the end. But it was a great game: Scotland looked very strong, particularly on defence. England did fine but looked considerably less disciplined - let's face it, when was the last time the Scots looked more disciplined than the English? There were a few brilliant offensive and defensive plays, and the real highlight of the match was the last few minutes, when the Scots held the line for several minutes against the English. Pretty stirring stuff.

Because of the crappy weather conditions, I only took my camera out of the bag a couple of times to get some action shots:

For the non-rugby-literate out there: if you're looking for the ball, England's #5 has it (please don't ask me his name; after shelling out 15 clams for parking (!!) I didn't feel like blowing another five bucks on a program) and he's about to have his lungs handed to him by a couple of hard-tackling Scots. He has his back to the opposing goal line, which I know doesn't seem very bright, but believe me, it's sound rugby technique. He's just taken the ball in something called a line-out, which actually involves people standing in two lines waiting to have the ball thrown back into play. Sounds orderly, doesn't it? Almost Canadian. Everyone in the photo is looking very intense, particularly those big second-row forwards with the no-cauliflower-ears-for-me-thank-you helmets on. Thanks, guys, for giving my pic that little extra something.

And finally, since I just need to get this off my chest: I saw one of the new Mercedes R-series vehicles today. I call it a vehicle 'cause it doesn't really look like a car, nor a truck, nor an SUV, nor a minivan. In fact, the first thought that popped into my mind when I took a good long three-quarter look at this thing was that it looks liked a kinda swoopy hearse. Go ahead, take a look; am I wrong?

New word! New word!

2006-05-30T20:52:00.000-04:00

I was visiting homestarrunner.com this morning (if you haven't been there, surf there now and visit for a while; I'll just wait here. .. dum de dum dum.. la la la... hmm hmmm HMMMMM hmm hmm hmmmmm... dah doo ba-doo-WAAH! It must have been moonglow, way up in the blue... Oh! you're back... heh heh, wasn't expecting you back quite so soon)

There, wasn't that fun?

Anyhoo, I was watching one of the Teen Girl Squad cartoons, and discovered "woot", as spoken by the cartoon versions of Henry Rollins, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington (holding an axe). Being the keen student of etymology - and yes, also being the geek - that I am, I quickly Googled the term and promptly found four widely-varying theories as to the origin and meaning of the term. In the end, everyone seems to agree that it's a bit of a synonym for "hey cool!" or "wow" or some generic exclamation of pleased surprise (or should that be surprised pleasure?). So woot it is from now on, as in "Woot! I've just learned another bit of geek-speak!"

Worst. Newscast. EVER.

2006-05-25T21:43:00.000-04:00

Wow.

As a former TV journo I've watched a lot of newscasts over the years. I've seen some great shows. I've seen very good shows, and employees who did the best they could with the limited resources available to them. I've watched newscasts from independent stations and from network stations. I've watched shows done by newsrooms of sixty people and others done by newsrooms of ten. I've reported, produced, hosted, directed, edited, even done studio camera and audio. I like to think I know a tiny bit about the TV news biz.

Last night I recorded Canoe Live, the, um, "news" program that's being foisted on viewers by Toronto's Sun TV. Today I pinned myself into my recliner and forced myself, Clockwork Orange-style, to sit through the whole wretched thing.

How much did I hate this craptacular waste of an hour? Let me count the ways:

1. A television news show done out of a newspaper's newsroom. Whatever happened to editorial independence?

2. Who does a newscast these days without a teleprompter? Let's see now: cheap college stations; major stations who suffer a breakdown in the middle of a newscast (at least until the next break, when hopefully a technician or engineer can get the thing working again); and cheap-ass TV stations that operate in Canada's largest single market, are owned by major media conglomerates and for some reason still think it's a good thing to look cheap. Maybe it's meant to be "edgy" - a favorite word of managers who can't think of anything new to do. In any case, it's distracting and just makes viewers think that the anchor can't possibly be as bright as the anchors on all those other stations.

3. Why in the name of everything that's holy would a Toronto station that wants to connect with Toronto viewers, hire a host from Fort Wayne, IN who's never lived in Canada before, let alone Toronto? I'm sure Janette Luu is a lovely person and I have no doubt that her parents love her very much. I still have no idea, though, what the hell she's doing hosting a show mere weeks after a number of other very talented, very hard-working and very Canadian hosts got laid off in March.

4. Why, on a television news program, am I being forced to watch and listen to columnists and reporters from the (freakin' awful) Toronto Sun? And why on God's green Earth is there no original reportage? Call me old-fashioned, but when I tune into a program that purports to be news and/or current affairs, I expect to see some reporting and perhaps a bit of informed commentary. All we get on Canoe Live is commentary wallpapered with the most generic visuals I think I've ever seen. If I wanted to hear what the high foreheads at the Sun think, I'd read their paper. Well... you're right...I wouldn't. Maybe it's because Sun TV laid off all their journalists and all but one of their ENG (that's Electronic News Gathering for those of you who came late to the party) camera operators.

5. Do I really have to tune to one of my HD channels - for which I pay real money - to see a standard-definition program that then goes on to show me a photo of today's Sunshine Girl? (For those of you unfamiliar with the Sunshine Girl, surf to http://www.torontosun.ca/SUNshineGirl/home.html for a sample) If I wanted boilage I'd pick up a copy of the Sun. Well... you're right... I wouldn't do that either.

6. If I'm even remotely interested in getting some modicum of information about what's going on in Toronto, why the hell does Sun TV presume I'd be even remotely interested in photos of viewers' pets?!? I kid you not; there were pics of a flippin' Jack Russell terrier up on screen as long, or perhaps longer, as images of Stephen Harper when they did their exhaustive coverage of Stephen Harper's latest imbroglio with the Parliamentary Press Gallery. And to whom did the lovely Janette talk for in-depth analysis of the issue? Maybe the president of the PPG? Nope. Perhaps Sun TV's intrepid national political reporter? Don't be silly; they don't have one of those. Who else? A Toronto Sun reporter! The mind boggles.

7. News organizations around the world, including the venerable BBC, have already figured out that so-called citizen journalism is anything but reliable; the BBC in fact hired a number of producers for the purpose of vetting the incoming videos and e-mails, in order to avoid the embarrassment of showing or posting material that is inaccurate, defamatory or just plain false. So far Canoe Live is only posting comments - and what educated and pithy comments they are - from unsolicited e-mails that mysteriously appear on the screen mere seconds after the lovely Janette reads the topic. (does anyone else think that's a little dodgy?) I'm severely tempted - and I mean severely tempted - to mount an elaborate hoax, shoot it with my trusty citizen-reporting cellphone/camera/whatsit and fire it off to the executive producer of Canoe Live, just to see how much of it ends up on Canoe Live *and* reported breathlessly as an exclusive by the Toronto Sun. Hmmm... my Scorpio side is already feverishly dreaming up the scenario.

Great googly-moogly! If I get any crankier about this particular hour of my life that I'll never get back, I think I'll give myself a stroke. My fingers were a veritable blur on the remote as I rushed to purge this steaming load of crap off my digital video recorder. I still get the jibblies just thinking about it.

I'm willing to give the show another look-see... someday. The show is supposedly in beta mode while they work out the kinks. Please, for the love of Pete, work out the !^@%$ kinks already! You might want to start by a) giving your audience credit for some intelligence; b) doing what news shows are supposed to do: report the damn news! c) getting yourself a real core of real journalists, as opposed to columnists planted in the Sun's newsroom; d) going out and actually talking to real people, if you're absolutely bound and determined to claim to be a news-ish program.

[wiping foam from corners of mouth]

Thanks, I needed that. Sometimes you just gotta vent, you know?

Back home

2006-05-24T23:37:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since my last rant.

I went to Calgary last weekend for my nephew's wedding and shot about three hundred (!) digital photos. Much to my chagrin, the fact that I'm not a pro photog is still painfully evident. I won't blame my gear (notwithstanding the fact that I still don't have the swishy flash diffuser I mentioned in my previous post "Sizes"); nor will I blame the bloody awful lighting (a large high-ceilinged, darkish room with HUGE picture windows facing south and west... at sunset!). After all, it's a poor workman who blames his tools. Well, I had good tools and I still suck. The upside of shooting three hundred digital pics, though, is that I can get rid of the chaff and still have a reasonable number of pics that look good. Hopefully said nephew and his lovely new bride will be happy with my work.

I started thinking - I mean really thinking - about my summer holidays today. Frankly I should have been concentrating on something else, like perhaps work, but hey, that's life in the big city. I'm hoping to take three weeks off in July. And I mean off; In the past I've taken my laptop or *gasp* my BlackBerry wth me on holiday, and I usually wind up spending half my so-called time off, well, on. Last year I took five days (can you believe it? five whole days!) off without an electronic leash of any kind. It was glorious, although admittedly it came as a bit of a shock to discover that the world actually continued to turn without me being at my desk. Talk about an epiphany...

A random rant

2006-05-14T15:54:00.000-04:00

As is generally the case on weekends, I went to Starbucks this afternoon to sip on a moccacino (decaf, of course) and read the paper. As is also generally the case, I had my MP3 player with me to save me from the, er, music that usually bleats from the speakers.

I like to think my music collection is fairly eclectic, albeit predominated by jazz: today's sampling included Steps Ahead, Miles Davis (early and late), Lyle Lovett, Alain Caron (good to get some CanCon in there), Charlie Parker, Fourplay (a much better band than their crap name might lead one to believe), Crash Test Dummies, Jaco Pastorius, NOJO (more CanCon!) and Keith Jarrett, among others. Good accompaniment for the 'cino and Sunday Star.

Now, I quite like Keith Jarrett. My Song, with Jan Garbarek on saxophones, is a good album. Jan sounds great. Keith's solos are terrific, too... but he has a well-documented and very bad habit of vocalizing during his solos. It's distracting and just plain annoying.

I've heard a few jazzers over the years who sing along with themselves as they play. George Benson has made something of a career out of it (cf. "On Broadway" or "This Masquerade" from Breezin'), and it was an integral part of Slam Stewart's trademark sound. Oscar Peterson is another vocalizer, although he does it almost contrapuntally; he'll often play a lick in a call-and-response style, and then vocalize/hum/sing the response before getting back into it. My old friend, the late Frank Mantooth, was another vocalizer, although he didn't really sing so much as he articulated rhythms to himself (with a soft "t-t-k-t-t-k-t" as he played. It was if he was tonguing the notes like a horn player, as he churned them out on the piano.

Jarrett's squeaking has no redeeming qualities. God bless him, but every time I hear him play I want to teleport myself back in space and time to slap a big ol' patch of gaffer's tape over his yap. Ahhhh... even thinking about doing that makes me feel better. Just breathe through your nose, Keith, you'll be fine.

Sizes

2006-05-11T23:52:00.000-04:00

My eldest nephew is getting married next weekend (the "May two-four weekend", to use the vernacular). He's asked me to be the official photographer (whatever that means; something tells me I won't be getting a press pass). I'm happy to do it, but being something of a Man Of Expensive Hobbies, I just won't feel right unless I get some ridiculously expensive gewgaw that I'll be able to blame when and if the photos don't come out perfect.

So began the hunt for the perfect flash diffuser. I have one already that I don't like much; it's a pain to put on and take off, and the results have never been all that great. I went online to see what the pros and semi-pros are using these days. Opinions seem pretty evenly divided on two different bits of gear, both (mercifully) relatively inexpensive. So I trundled off to the local expensive camera store to try them out. The first one is dead simple and gives good results in most basic situations; "solid but not spectacular" as I like to say. As for the other one, I put it on the store's flash on the store's camera and started taking test shots.

Oh. My. God. Beautiful soft light, no harsh shadows, simple to use... I fell, and fell hard. I was in love. I handed over my Interac card and walked out of the store, visions of gorgeous wedding pics dancing before my eyes.

It wasn't until I got home that reality reared its ugly head. I discovered that my swishy new flash diffuser actually comes in different sizes. The flash I tried the diffuser on in the store was a slightly newer model than the one I have, so of course the diffuser didn't fit. Who would ever have thought that a big ol' camera manufacturer like Canon would actually change the dimensions of a flash head from one year to the next? I mean really... Jeans and shoes come in sizes. Pizza comes in sizes. But flash heads?

*sigh*

I guess planned obsolescence is still alive and well in the photo world.

But no problem, right? I still had my receipt; it would be a simple matter of trundling back to said expensive camera store and exchanging the offending diffuser with the proper one. But noooooo... to paraphrase Yogi Berra, my flash is so popular that no one uses it any more. I called all the pro shops in Toronto, then all the pro shops in Calgary (where the aforementioned wedding is taking place). Finding the right size of swishy new flash diffuser seems like it will be quite a production number. All I can do for the moment is return the one I bought for a refund, use the simpler, cheaper, not-so-in-freaking-credibly-nice diffuser and grumble a lot.

I remain undeterred, although my chances of getting this thing in time for the wedding are starting to look slim. But someday, trust me: my photos will have that just-kissed-by-God look to them. In the meantime, there's always Photoshop.

Let the madness begin...

2006-05-11T02:06:00.000-04:00

I'm a late bloomer when it comes to the blogosphere. I didn't even start reading them until last summer, when the CBC lockout created a flurry of blogs all spouting righteous indignation. Talk about cool!

Over the years I've gone through phases of journal-writing. I've even had jags of letter-writing that might have been worthy of an epistolary novel - if anything interesting happened, that is. The simple fact is that I've spent a great deal of my life actually writing things for a living. And now I'm going to do it for fun? What am I, nuts?

I think this blog is really about catharsis. I'm going to be curmudgeonly, I'm going to vituperate (as you'll soon learn, I love parenthetical comments almost as much as I love using big words) and I think I'm going to have a damn fine time doing it.

Why did I pick Voltaire2006 as a nom de plume? Simple. I think that if François Marie Arouet were alive today, he would be - holy crap - 311 years old. Wait a minute; what I *meant* to say was that if he were alive today, he and I would probably get along just fine. He'd still be 311 years old, though, so I could probably take him in a fair fight. Voltaire had a bit of a problem with authority figures (although he was apparently a great schmoozer), and hated bigotry, pedantry and, above all, intolerance. I think I could advance a strong argument that he may well have been the first curmudgeon. And who doesn't have a big ol' soft spot for the curmudgeons of this world?

I have no idea what the future holds for this blog. I might get tired of it in a week, or it may become a valuable therapeutic tool. Who knows? Someone out there in the blogosphere might even read this. I look forward to your comments.

People actually *read * this crap?