Category: Uncategorized

The Cob

This is the TV show I not only want to be in – but host. It may have an alternate title like “What Not To Be”. It is all about the ideal of the average male…or maybe an average ideal about a male.

Here is the premise. Me and portland get a bunch of guys to take the bait and sign up for a reality show. In that show, we promise, somewhat like “The Swan” to recreate you, but as a real guy. Like “What Not To Wear” we promise to renew your ability to interact with humans as a better you – but, unlike these shows, we teach the poor saps who are competing for our good opinion to actually be a good person, not just look like an attractive person. We will not make you richer, get you a better carrer or make your home a mansion. We teach you not to be a jerk or humilate you trying.

In one episode, we take apart the jerk who treats pals’ sisters like crap and leave him a whimpering ball of jelly at around 23 minutes past the hour. We break in on a date gone wrong with the girl of his dreams, show how a slob can treat a lady right (portland’s talent shining here) and leave him in our tracks begging to learn the secrets of being decent. But 57 after the hour, we do. In another show, we start by taunting pro-bowlers from the stands about spending more time with their families instead of on the lanes of mid-sized Mid-West towns. They learn to get real if dullish jobs with reasonable long-term prospects and get a hobby involving something actually useful like homebrewing. I can do that. In the grand finale, we teach a group of the quiet and shy to rock-out, live on gin and condiments for a week and finish a big night out having eggs on toast at dawn in a town where no one speaks your language or takes your currency. The winners of every episode compete for a big final prize at the end of the season, which we award arbitrarily to someone who shares the cash with us as a lesson that life is not based on merit.

It could happen.

The Pixies in Hull

In the late 80s there was an echo of punk that came to be grunge. Nirvana and Pearl Jam came out of Seattle and the Pixies came out of Boston. Like 70s punk with its intellectual anger, these bands spat loud about the question “why?” or rather “WHY????“. Of them all, the Pixies were the most surreal but also presbyterian. At one and the same time the world is not as it is and not as it ought to be.


I know them only through their most popular record Doolittle but I knew a part of my younger life would be renewed by hearing Frank Black scream “and if the Devil is six, then God is seven, God is seven”. I was right.

Some admissions. We sat at the back, my older brothers and I. I wore ear plugs. We left a little early to beat the rush. These were the accomodations of the years and I was not about to go through five days of ear ringing like I dealt with after last year’s Sloan concert. Plus, given the hockey rink setting, the concrete floor and the metal ceiling, it was all distortion falling over itself. Probably the worst venue for a band I have ever been at. The opening acts – one whose name we didn’t even bother catching as well as a quite respectable The Darkness-esque (with out the irony) called The Datsuns – did not get the idea of controlling the wall of sound to meet the venue. They were just loud. The Pixies were loud, too, but sometimes at moments not loud.

It was at first something of a wait for their hits “This Monkey’s Gone to Heaven”, “Debaser” and “Here Comes your Man” [6.9 MB 19 second short] – perhaps waiting most of all for the spectacle of a throat ripping yell from Frank Black (not nee but was Black Francis). But I was struck by the sharp needling guitar of Joey Santiago and the pounding red-hot bass of chain-smoking Kim Deal.

They were very tight and discomforting. Here are some murky photos from the show, including one of the incredibly busy beer vendors right in front of us.

Grey Cup

I watched the Grey Cup last night and was happy to see the Argos win with style. Odd that BC chose to go with the back-up quarterback, expecially as the other one won the league MVP. Dickenson’s choke on two time delays ruining a two-point conversion opportunity followed my a missed kick for one point pretty much lost the game or at least blew the last opportunity for them to win the game. No rouge.

The Grey Cup always brings out memories. Colour TV at Mrs. Hawkins around 1972 watching Angelo Mosca and the Ti-cats win. The fact that once CBC and CVT used to both show the game at the same time – when Canada existed in a pre-cable, two channel universe. I was reminded of 1983 when I was in the Roost at Fish’s above the library at Kings in the fall of third year. The Argos had not win since the 50s and our jumping up and down with every play sent the evening library staff up the stairs to tell us to be quiet. I don’t think that we had considered the power of a librarian’s shooshing powers to extend beyond the library. I was also reminded by my father, after a short funny bit on the broadcast with June Calderwood teaching the art of the field goal, that I had mooned her as a tot in a Toronto waterfront park in the summer 1965. She was in a lawnchair sunning. I was in a diaper half way down me arse on a breakaway from the picnic blanket. I apparently have a winter version of roughly the same story involving less skin, a toboggan and Allen MacPhee.

Nice as always to see someone my age win the game’s MVP – the “other Allen” drilled some sweet passes and even the Argo back-up did well while he was in expecially with a very natty soft rainbow pass to the sideline. It was not all about the punt and field goal after all. Nice also to realize admitting you watch the CFL is not like admitting you lick cat feet.

If you have no clue what this is about, here is a link. Don’t expect the diaper reference to be there.

Pictures from the Paralegal Front

My neighbour across the big river, our correspondent and 10th Mountain Division paralegal in Iraq, Brian, has created a photo gallery confirming that the occupation law is perhaps a little less dynamic than the TV shows would let you think. Despite that, it is an example for me of one of the most interesting things about the US and how it treats its soldiers – it allows them to have blogs and talk about themselves without any censorship other than the good sense of each soldier and no doubt the fear of paralegal Brian’s prosecutorial powers should any breach of good order break out.

Things insteresting to note:

  • His laptop’s screen saver appears to be about Guinness leading me to ask if the goodly black beverage is available and whether Brian would like to post an article on the Guinness of Baghdad on the beer blog.
  • Standard issue US desert fatigues blend in very well in the colour schemes chosen for their homes by former dictatorial tyrant murderers.
  • You still have to wear a visitor’s pass even if you bring your own machine gun.

Looking forward to more glimpses into a world I will never know.

Water Pumps

I get a kick as you may have gathered about learning about a whole bunch of aspects of the life and the history of the City. This week I go to to walk around this room late on an autumn afternoon with the yellow sunlight coming in low from the west. These are the original two steam pumps from the later 1800s which drew water in from Lake Ontario. Click on the pictures for much larger versions.



Secret Law

Perhaps for no other reason than the irony, perhaps we could all post the link to Secrecy News, a project of the Federation of American Scientists. In one report this week, we learn of a former US Republican Congresswoman learning about secret regulations while undergoing an airport security check:

Chenoweth-Hage, an ultra-conservative former Congresswoman (R-ID), requested a copy of the regulation that authorizes such pat-downs.

“She said she wanted to see the regulation that required the additional procedure for secondary screening and she was told that she couldn’t see it,” local TSA security director Julian Gonzales told the Idaho Statesman (10/10/04). “She refused to go through additional screening [without seeing the regulation], and she was not allowed to fly,” he said. “It’s pretty simple.” Chenoweth-Hage wasn’t seeking disclosure of the internal criteria used for screening passengers, only the legal authorization for passenger pat-downs. Why couldn’t they at least let her see that? asked Statesman commentator Dan Popkey. “Because we don’t have to,” Mr. Gonzales replied crisply. “That is called ‘sensitive security information.’ She’s not allowed to see it, nor is anyone else,” he said.

I suppose the list of secret regulation topics is also secret so we can’t know a head of time when we might trip up.