Chairs

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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!

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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?

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

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

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.