Author: Alan

Billy Bragg, Ottawa Concert

So we went to see Billy Bragg in Ottawa last night, eighteen years since the last time when I got the t-shirt and taught Bill suffleboard during a break in a sound check as I held the best table in the place all afternoon. I actually turned down free Sloan tickets a few days earlier as I learned my lesson about the ringing of ears from three years ago. It was a good move as the setting for the Bragg show was great. We got there a bit early and I saw everyone heading for the balcony and the stage I look around and, as God is my witness, there was a sofa and an armchair at the back.

So there I am at the back of the crowd in an armchair. Everytime I feel like having a peek, there is Bill about a hundred feet or so on the stage of the smallish venue and seeing that he is still in a red shirt with a guitar I can sit back down again. My neighbours were similarly comforted by the sofa. A little farther away we were at first slagged for our lack of rocking out effort but then, due to out firm plan to stay comfortable, we got all our cred back and more. Best of all was this honking great big table thing that kept the mob largely from us so that we were not forced into the “my space / your space” argument. Towards the end others were telling me what was going on, who had a lighter up, what Billy was doing with his hands. Very comfy and not unlike if he and 500 people had come over to my house for a concert.

It was all good plenty of early stuff like “New England” and World Turned Upside Down”. It got very sing-along music hall after a while with good story telling and a bit of yap back with the crowd. The theme of goat pee moved through the stories and, during the encore, he sort of lost it when “Sexuality” became “Beastiality” as he giggled and had to stop. Very chummy, though the last sentence probably means you had to be there for that bit. He mixed up the lyrics up dating political tunes with current facts. He also did a mix on “England, Half English” to the tune of and with the first verse of the traditional English song “John Barleycorn“. Perhaps odd to see that I was likely in the middle of the crowd in terms of age. Most photos too shakey. Good two-hour set. The ears do not ring.

One last thing that I found interesting is how he made good fun of bloggers who would be doing what I was doing here but then was on and on about YouTube. Hampsters eating a cookie and animals that talk got about an eight minute monologue. YouTube is killing blogs because it is easier and offers value for less effort.

My New KSPC Hat

 

 

 

It came in the mail today. My 7-1/2 hand made wool 1950s Kansas City hat. This is one serious hat. Leather rim on the inside. Warm real wool on my head. All organic, it’s like having something alive on your head, settling in and finding its place as it learns your real needs.

This is a fine fine hat for the Kingston Society for Playing Catch to consider as its model for this year, not far off this suggestion. A fine hat to listen to Darcey’s Friday night Blues and Beer or NCPR’s The Folk Show under. Well made by the Cooperstown Ballcap Co. Their Keokuk Colonels 1960 cap would make another fine selection as a KSPC hat.

Friday: Chat. Pleeeeeeeeeeese.

Is it summer or fall? I have no idea. I put the furnace on last evening as much to deal with the damp from the rain. It worked. It worked without making a clang, a thump or a low grinding noise of any sort.

  • This will likely be the news of the day as reported in the Times of India:

    Islamabad’s delicate ties with the United States is threatening to come apart at the seams after it was revealed Thursday that the Bush administration threatened to bomb Pakistan into the ”stone age” if it did not cooperate in the war on terror after 9/11.

    If it actually was said, one has to admire what can only be a Frintstones reference working its way into global politics. Given that the government of Pakistan has now signed a cease-fire deal with Taliban militants in North Waziristan, one should pay attention to Pakistan’s military ruler Pervez Musharraf a little more closely than we may have been.

  • Last night, the Red Sox played the game that they wished they had played all year, beating Minnesota six to nuttin’. Big Papi got two homers and Josh Beckett was incredibly sharp for an eight-inning shutout performance. Beckett had the string on the ball thing happening, pulling inside fastballs back to just nick the plate.
  • I want my roll-up computer monitor. Life will be better with a roll-up computer monitor.
  • I think Steve did a good job:

    The Prime Minister made the remarks yesterday during his maiden UN speech, which he also used to reinforce the challenges faced in rebuilding Afghanistan and rooting out the Taliban. He said the world community must stay united, lest division make the mission harder for Canada, which has 2,300 troops in the country and will soon have 2,500. “We have no illusions about the difficulties that still lie before us,” Mr. Harper said. “Difficulties don’t daunt us. But lack of common purpose and will in this body would.”

    Interesting to note the demand that everyone seems to have all of a sudden to make the UN work. So much for rejection of world order. Conversly, I had an Ezra Levant article imposed upon me in on of those legal trade magazines yesterday going on dopey-wise about how the supposedly successful Isreali battle in Lebanon this summer showed how international law and action is a fraud – no one told the nation apparently. I guess there was some delay between writing and publishing or maybe just a delay between brain and keyboard. But I suppose when you can come up with great junior-high phrases like “moral ghoulishness” and then build a political theory around it, you have to be given newspaper and magazine column space…right? This one is gold: “Are you a September 10th person or a September 11th person?” By this he clearly means do you agree with me or disagree with me but loads the latter with a truck load of moral superiority that cannot be questioned. Go ahead and question…and watch out for people who award themselves the moral gold star in any discussion.

  • Somewhere there is a scientist saying “why do magnets always get the rap? This had nothing to do with magnets yet there it is: Magnetic train crashes in Germany“. Time we spoke out against the thin veneer that rests over the anti-magnetism we all share but speak not of.

That’s it – gotta go to work now.

Mets Clinch

Good to see the Mets win their division. If we are not going to see a repeat of the evisceration of the Yankees that was the Sox comeback of 2004 (not quite on point but satisfying photo here), seeing them lose in a subway series to the Mets is the next best thing. Delgado made an amazing first-to-second-to-first double play later in the game. Best news is that Pedro will be back for the division series. And why rush him?

YouTubian Reality

Even though YouTube is drawing all the kids away from bloggging and into gawking, I like it. It is simple to use, provides me with access to most every video I can think of from my university days and even some sports events that I enjoy remembering. Its days, however, may be numbered:

Universal Music Group, the world’s largest record company, contends the wildly popular Web sites YouTube and MySpace are violating copyright laws by allowing users to post music videos and other content involving Universal artists. “We believe these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars,” Universal Music CEO Doug Morris told investors Wednesday at a conference in Pasadena. “How we deal with these companies will be revealed shortly…bwa-haha” [Ed.: ok. I added the “…bwa-haha”.] Universal’s talks with YouTube Inc. have deteriorated and the recording giant is set to file a copyright infringement lawsuit against the video-sharing company if no agreement is reached by the end of the month, according to a person familiar with the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the confidential nature of the negotiations.

Is anyone surprised? If I owned video that I received revenue from and found it was avaliable for free on the next website, I would be gutted as well. And while Napster was all about peer to peer sharing care of a bit of software, YouTube is centralized and therefore far more prone as a concept to being shut down. That is in addition to the question of its unclear business model and how the YouTubians make a buck.

Yet in celebration of what it is and what it soon will be was, I give you the Pretenders playing “Middle of the Road” live (song circa 1983/84, concert much later):

The Day of Fri Is When There Is Chat

What a week – a blur. I swear I was 27 when it started and now I have kids
and a mortgage. Thing I learned? Buying gifts for a kids party was easier when
they were two. You can buy an old shoe and stick some red masking tape on it and
a two-year old would be happy. Now they have taste and ideas. I am doomed.

  • Rummy Update: You know I am a Powellista so find these things Rummy says funny in a really sad and depressing funny kinda way:

    “Many of the terrorists who have not been killed or captured are on the run. They have lost their sanctuary in Afghanistan. And they have lost a supporter in Iraq, which paid $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers…”

    The observation I would make is that the actions the Canadian Forces have made in Afghanistan in the last few weeks to clear an area of the Taliban happened “about 15 kilometres southwest of Kandahar city” and so far “about 65 per cent of the contested area, measuring perhaps four kilometres by five kilometres, has been formally cleared of insurgents.” I am a big booster of what our Canadian Forces are doing there but characterizing what has happening so far after almost five years of continuing warfare as a “loss of sanctuary” in a country of 652,225 square kilometres is not quite an accurate statement.

  • I came across a blog by an English Magistrate, including this
    post     complaining that not enough prosecutions are being brought before
    her/him for short-pouring beer. That is my kinda judge.

  • Everytime I read articles like this about Alberta’s
    oil windfall     I get the giggles over the twit that argued the difference
    between Alberta and the rest of Canada was not the largest oil deposit in the
    universe but the prevalence of socialism elsewhere.

  • I just finished Pete Brown’s book Three Sheets to the Wind. I have to
    do a proper review over at A Good Beer Blog after fellow beer blogger Knut of Norway and I pose the author some
    questions. I reviewed his last book here. This one
    is even better – a romp around the world to figure out how each culture includes
    beer.

  • Was yesterday the day that lame duck
    began in the US presidency?

    Democrats are rapt spectators, however, shielded by
    the stern opposition to the president being expressed by three Republicans with
    impeccable credentials on military matters: Senators John McCain of Arizona,
    John W. Warner of Virginia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The three were
    joined on Thursday by Colin L. Powell, formerly the secretary of state and the
    chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in challenging the administration’s
    approach.

    It is one of those rare Congressional moments when the policy is as
    monumental as the politics.

    When you look ahead, the road to
    January 2009 could be a very long and weird path. That being said, Democrat Eliot Spitzer, the next Governor of
    NY, has really good TV ads. The public good as a matter of responsibility – who
    knew? If I were in the southern sector of Easlakia, I could see myself getting
    involved.

  • Say
    it ain’t so, Dog    .

  • How to identify when you have a Jr. B pope on your
    hands. And get in line, Islamic world. He was giving
    us the gears     last week. Time again for the Avenging Lumberjacks of the
    Reformation, Canada’s moderate protestant underground based in the Yukon, to
    come out of the shadows of the forest to take a stand.

Well, that is
enough for now. What to look forward to this weekend? Syracuse at Illinois
Saturday at noon if you have the 37 billion channel universe. Sox and Yankees if
you like human sacrifice.

Help A Blogger Out

Ian asks an interesting question:

I am not out to solicit praise. Someone please tell me how I can do this blog differently, or what they would do with this space. Dialogue is all but dead, and the rest is gossip. If this is merely a place to put photos, I could do it on Flickr. Are blogs really just the domain of knitters and people who are still dating? If we’ve all made up our minds, why are any of us still talking?

Even as stats crash and the false promise of blogging pans out fully, I often think that this blog and others are geared primarily to trigger response. Seeing as that is part of our CIA funding agreement, it makes sense. So respond – if you have any requests for topics and themes, let me know. Should there be a Tantrama City reunion mini-series? Should I finally make up my mind and join a political party? Should I just stay home and cut out all this travelling?

At least go tell Ian what to do.

I Never Liked Starbucks

I went once in Vancouver, paid waaaaay too much for essentially a 25 cent product and never went back. But apparently some people want their Starbucks coffee quite badly:

A Starbucks customer in the US who was told her free drink voucher was worthless is launching a $114m (£60m) lawsuit against the coffee colossus. Starbucks pulled the free drink offer, saying it had been redistributed beyond its original intent.

There is this thing in law called de minimus, things so tiny that the law can’t see them so it doesn’t bother with them. A free coupon for a coffee is about as de minimus as I can imagine.