One Apostrophe More Or Less...

I have this CD by Matthew’s Southern Comfort [sic] called The Essential Collection. It wouldn’t do to have called it Greatest Hits, because the group (actually called Matthews Southern Comfort) didn’t have all that many hits – one, in fact, if by “hit” we mean a song that did better than number 96 on Billboard. If we are more liberal, then the group can be said to have had three “hits.” So their greatest hits would have made for a very paltry collection indeed, especially given the fact the “greatest” is presumably a selection from a bigger selection, which I don’t know how you’d manage to do with only 3 tracks to begin with.

So The Essential Collection it is, and here is where it gets interesting. The selections are taken from 3 albums, released in 1969 / 1970, and this is a bit odd because the group only released 2 albums. The 3rd, which was actually the 1st (confusing, see?) was a solo LP by Ian Matthews, called Matthews’ Southern Comfort. Good title, so good that he adopted it for his band (minus the apostrophe – though Whitburn included it), a six-piece unit which went on to record, as I said, 2 albums, one called Second Spring and one called Later That Same Year, the latter of which yielded Woodstock, the one real hit, and both of the other chart singles, which were, in case you are curious, and even if you aren’t, Tell Me Why, a cover of Neil Young’s song from After The Goldrush, and Mare, Take Me Home.

Another interesting point is that whoever put this collection together didn’t seem to have listened to it. The liner notes make several reference to this being “country rock,” which it decidedly isn’t – acoustic, yes; folky, yes; country, no.

And being the odd type of person that I am, I do this thing where I like to post YouTube videos of music I’ve been listening to on Facebook (no, not listening to on Facebook – go ahead, you reframe that sentence). And what I found in my quest to find some suitable postable content by MSC was this: 1. There are, altogether, not many songs by MSC on YouTube; 2. Most of the songs posted are not on The Essential Collection, and this makes me wonder how Essential the collection really is; 3. There are no live videos from the original group; 4. There are live performances from 2011, some in someone’s living room, and some in some concert hall somewhere, by group calling itself Matthews Southern Comfort, which patently and obviously is not Matthews Southern Comfort, having only 3 members (the original group had 6), one of whom is female (there were no girls in the group), and none of whom is Ian Matthews. Now it could be, possibly, that one or both of these guys were at one time in the original band, but so what? Imagine Ringo Starr picking up a kazoo player and the two of them touring as The Beatles; 5. There are more videos of Woodstock than of all the other songs together.

None of this is bad, I say. Their music is nice to listen to in the same way the Joan Baez’ early stuff is nice to listen to, well played, easy on the ear, not especially engaging. But there are exceptions, and if you’re going to post something, I suggest you start with their cover of James Taylor’s Something In The Way She Moves…

Turcotte

Back in the days when I sat behind a lawyer’s desk, a woman came to see me wanting a divorce. I don’t remember her name; let’s just call her “Mrs. Callous.” My husband is in the hospital, she told me, in the psychiatric ward. Can he accept service, I wondered out loud. Oh sure, she said, he’s depressed, but he’s not “out of it.” Ok.

Now Turcotte is in the news again, Guy Turcotte. You know the story if you live in Quebec. You probably know the story if you live elsewhere in Canada and you read out of province news. Anywhere else, I doubt it. So here’s a recap:

The man is a cardiologist, not practicing at the moment. His ex-wife is an EMO. They had two kids, and a few years ago, the wife decided that having an affair with their personal trainer (who was a friend to both of them) was a good idea. Dr. T had a different opinion. Traumatized by what was going on in his life, he got hit by a serious bout of depression, and, in what is alleged to have been a psychotic (though I have not yet seen the word actually used) episode, he murdered his two very young children, rather brutally. He then drank a bottle of windshield wiper fluid, in an apparent attempt to commit suicide (though it’s been pointed out that being a doctor and all, he ought to have known about better and more reliable methods).

That’s the story. He was tried and found not criminally responsible for his actions. (They don’t use “insanity” here). There was an uproar. People are outraged. There is an appeal pending.

I’m not sure why people are so upset by the verdict. I guess there’s a feeling that this guy is responsible, and should be held accountable. I was not at the trial. I did not hear the evidence. But I read the same news reports as everyone else. From what I understand, they couldn’t possibly convict. He had no history of violence. He had no history of “abnormal” behaviour. The psychiatric evidence of his having “snapped,” (as the papers now put it) was fairly strong. The jury, as far as I can tell, made the right decision.

We like to think that there is a one-to-one correspondence between criminal responsibility and moral responsibility. Anyone with any familiarity with how the justice system really works is disabused of that notion fairly quickly, but from a distance the system seems to work well enough, and the correlation seems intact. Throw a bit of “insanity” into the mix, though, and the system breaks down.

And here is where people are confused. “Not criminally responsible” does not mean that whatever the guy did is ok. Killed his kids? Sure. Ok. No problem.

Not so.

Now here is Dr. Turcotte (never referred to as “Dr” in the press, note), subject to a hearing to determine whether he can be released from the institute in which he has been incarcerated since his trial. It’s very difficult to tell from the press reports what is really going on. But the sense that one gets is that he is taking back control of his life, he is moving on, he feels that he is emotionally much healthier than he was a few years ago. He feels “less shame, less guilt, and has more self-esteem.” Therapy “has worked wonders” says the article in Friday’s Gazette. He is no longer depressed, it says, nor on medication.

Well, that’s wonderful news, isn’t it? For him. Sure. And the crown attorney, who wants to keep him where he is, is correctly pointing out, echoing psychiatrist Pierre Rochette, that there is a “missing link” here, a piece of the story that’s not being addressed. “We don’t know why he was able to snap,” she says, “how do we know what danger he represents to society now?” True enough, and hopefully enough to keep him locked up. But there’s more.

Have they addressed the question of how Turcotte can look at himself in the mirror every day? How much ownership has he taken of the destruction that he’s caused, how much responsibility has he expressed. He’s ready to go on and face life’s challenges as a healed man? Very nice. What about the rest of us? What about his ex-wife, the mother of the children he murdered, who is left to deal with a trauma none of us can imagine. What about the family’s inner and outer circle, everyone who’s been touched by the tragedy, whose lives have been altered in ways that life can never prepare you for? The good doctor asserts that he was sick and now he’s better and everything’s ok? So that takes care of everything. “Not criminally responsible” means what? That he gets “better” and walks away? If so, then no wonder people are outraged.

Criminally responsible? No. Morally responsible? Yes. Let’s hope that the verdict is upheld and that Turcotte stays where he is, at least until the guy can show a realistically human attitude to his own malfeasance, and until those treating him have a better understanding of what happened. May never happen? You kill your kids, you take your chances…

So Mrs. Callous came back to sign her papers. By the way, she said, he’s out of the hospital. She gave me an address. What will happen, I asked, thinking about the process server who had to hand the guy a divorce petition, when he gets served? Oh, she said, with a tone of utter contempt, it’ll probably send him right back to the hospital. I could not, at the time, understand her utter callousness. I get it now. And she got her divorce. And I don’t know what happened to him.

The "Expert" Speaks...

The thing about bad writing is this: as the T-shirt says, good grammar costs nothing. So does good syntax, correct word usage, and correct punctuation. I will leave for another day a discussion about whether rules are still relevant. Let us assume, for the purpose of discussion, that they are. So here are the VSL Poltroon’s rules for writing:

• Don’t say “amount” when you mean number. I can’t count the number of times I’ve read “the amount of people.”
• Don’t say “less” when you mean “fewer.” I saw a Starbucks napkin that read: “more trees, less napkins.”
• Don’t use “disinterested” when you mean “uninterested.” I know it sounds fancier, but it’s wrong.
• Don’t use “insure” when you mean “ensure.” Don’t use “assure” either. Unless there is insurance involved, use an “e.”
• “Candelabra” is plural. The singular is “candelabrum.”
• “It begs the question” does not mean “it raises the question.” If you don’t understand the expression, don’t use it.
• Don’t use “what’s more.” It’s dumb. Say “moreover.”
• Never never never never never never never use “to be sure.” Use “certainly” or “indeed.” Use anything else. DO NOT use “to be sure.”
• Don’t say “leverage” when you mean “use.”
• Never use “utilize” unless you are a scientist. It is an exact synonym for “use,” so save the earth the two syllables.
• Don’t use “is able to;” just say “can.”
• Try very hard to avoid claptrap clichés like “to say the least,” “to name a few,” “says it all,” “not to mention.”
• “However” should always begin a sentence.
• “Which” should never begin a sentence, unless it’s a question.
• Do not put a comma after “is” –“the problem is, I have no friends." Just use “that.” The problem is that I have no friends.
• Speaking of which, restore “that” to its rightful place. Consider: “I saw the people walking very quickly around the room like they’d all had too much of a very intoxicating substance mixed with some mind-debilitating drug purchased from some faraway foreign shady dealers were happy.” Now put a “that” after “saw” and see what happens.
• Don’t write long stupid sentences like that last one, even with a “that.”
• Don’t split infinitives. I know the rule is silly. I know that it’s arcane. I know that it’s not even a “rule.” I don’t give a flying f**k about that. Just don’t do it. Star Trek be damned.
• Don’t use “they” if the gender of the subject is unambiguous. “The patient must inform the nurse if they are pregnant.”
• I know that otherwise it’s difficult to avoid the use of “they” in the singular. The world today does not tolerate “he” as a universal pronoun. Too bad. Still, no excuse when you are referring to an inanimate subject. “The company must file their annual report.” Hello? (Still, don’t use “she” as a universal pronoun. If “he” doesn’t work, neither does “she.”)
• Do not drop the subject of the sentence, like I just did. In fact, I dropped the predicate too. “No excuse” should be “there is no excuse.” Unless you are me. Then you can do what you want.
• Do not use sentence fragments, like “unless you are me.”
• Unless you are me.
• Don’t use qualifiers that don’t work: “almost infinite,” “very unique.”
• Remember that “almost taller” means shorter.
• Don’t qualify the wrong word. “We offer limitless possibilities.” I wonder how many limitless possibilities they offer.
• Don’t use “infinite” when you mean many. “There are infinite possibilities.” No there are not.
• Never use “deeply” for any reason whatsoever. “He loved her very deeply.” Yuck. And he probably didn’t even.
• Never end a sentence with “even.”
• Don’t say “shocked” when you mean “surprised.” Don’t say “devastated” when you mean “disappointed.” Don’t use “slammed” when you mean “criticized.”
• Never use “that said.” Never use “going forward.”
• Don’t use “if” if you mean “whether.” “The test indicates if you are pregnant.” Whether.
• Don’t put two time-frame expressions in the same sentence. “They released their second LP two years later in 1965. “ I can do the math, both ways.
• Don’t use exclamation points ever, unless it’s within a quote.
• It’s “try to,” not “try and.” UK writers seem to think “try and” is ok. I’ve seen it across the board, from Ian Fleming to J. K. Rowling.
• “All of a sudden” can be “suddenly,” and you haven’t lost anything except three unnecessary words.
• The present tense of “lie,” as in to recline, is “lie,” not “lay.” “We were laying in bed” means something entirely different. Be careful. I bet even Bob Dylan didn’t know that he was getting it wrong (nor did he care, I’m sure).
• Don’t put “and” after a semi-colon. It may be technically correct, but it’s definitely stupid.
• The reason is “that,” not “because.” I ate because I was hungry. The reason I ate was that I was hungry.
• Don’t follow “including” with another participle.
• When you write a negative statement followed by a reason, it’s not clear whether the statement is really negative. “We didn’t implement the system because of security concerns.” Well, then, why did you implement it?
• Don’t use expressions that are absolutely completely totally meaningless, like “accused killer.”
• “You can buy margarine the colour of a sunset in Ireland.” Is the sunset in Ireland? Or is that where you can buy it?
• Why would anybody want to buy sunset coloured margarine?
• Watch out for pleonasms: “ATM machine,” “NDP Party.” Look it up.
• Watch your pronouns: “The lawyer stopped representing his client when he was deported.”

So you can learn these rules, then feel free to break them to achieve you own personal style (except for the rule about “to be sure;” no exceptions will be tolerated).

Or you could forget about them, and get a job writing for the Montreal Gazette…

What About Noodles?

I am not the world’s most sophisticated cook, but I make soup.

I don’t make the world’s most sophisticated soup. I have limits. I don’t use meat. I don’t use chicken, which may or may not be meat. That depends on how you feel about chicken being meat. I don’t use fish. My chicken soup has no chicken, and my chowder has no existence.

I have 4 soup recipes, and I alternate among them. All of them have beans. Besides those four, I have more. That means, doing a quick calculation, that I have more than four soup recipes. But I have four that I keep on an Excel spreadsheet, because they came from a cook book to which I no longer have access. I typed up the ingredients into an Excel file, without quantities, but that matters little, because I have no use for quantities. I don’t believe that quantities have any real meaning in soup. In cake, yes. In soup, no. The four recipes have names like white bean soup, black bean soup, Israeli bean soup. There is nothing, as far as I can determine, Israeli about Israeli bean soup. It doesn’t spit sunflower seeds on the bus or speak Hebrew or drive like a psychotic orangutan. It is tasty, which it has in common with many fine Israeli dishes, but it does not taste like hummous or bamba or chocolate lentils or noga bars.

One of the four is called Caribbean chicken soup. As the astute reader may have guessed, I don’t put any actual chicken into it, which is particularly fortunate, given that I have never seen Caribbean chicken on sale here. I put curry powder into it.

One of the soup recipes that I’ve been using the longest is for chickpea soup. I found it on the back of the label on a can of chickpeas. I don’t have that can anymore, but I remembered the recipe. It’s an easy one because you don’t have to fry anything. The onions, you could fry them if you want, but the recipe doesn’t call for it. Just chop them up and throw them in. Me, I fry the onions. I didn’t used to. I do now. Someone convinced me once that frying them brings out the flavour. If there’s one thing I like to bring out, it’s flavour.

Another one I like a lot is minestrone. I’m not sure if it’s ok to say "minestrone soup," because minestrone, as far as I know, is soup. It could be like saying "tuna fish," which is ok, or "salmon fish," which isn’t. Minestrone [soup] is really just chili, without the meat, and wetter. And with macaroni. And with some other different stuff. Minestrone isn’t really anything like chili.

The thing though, to think about, is soup powder. Soup powder is powder that you mix into water and heat up, and it becomes some kind of faux soup. It’s usually very salty, and full of MSG. And it’s a cheat. I buy chicken soup powder and vegetable soup powder and beef soup powder. None of it has any meat in it. None of it has anything with any nutritional value in it. Each flavour tastes like every other flavour. And I always add some to my soup. I do that because if I don’t do that there is never enough flavour in my soup. I’m still working on that, trying to wean my soup off of soup powder. And when I say always, I mean sometimes. Soup with tomatoes doesn’t need powder so much, because the tomatoes give it enough flavour. If I put soup powder into soup that has tomatoes, it could kill you.

And so I have soup for supper every day. I feed soup to my kids; some eat it; some don’t. Some of them are big soup eaters, meaning that they are small people who eat a lot of soup. Big soup eaters are small. I am a big soup eater. And I shall continue to make soup until I can make soup no more…

Floyd The Barber

I don’t remember the name of the barber that cut my hair in the summer of 1970. It wasn’t Pete. Pete was my regular barber, but he was away. It probably wasn’t Floyd. He didn’t listen to me when I told him how I wanted my hair cut. He interrupted me. He was very nasty, cut my hair too short. I spent the entire summer feeling bad about my hair. No 13 year old in 1970 wanted his hair to be short. In August I went with my family to Minneapolis. I bought a copy of Let It Be, an American copy with a red Apple label on it (the Canadian pressings had a green apple). I felt bad listening to it, because my hair was too short.

My barber’s name is Norma, and I’m betting that she’s a hair stylist, not a “barber.” She talks to me when she cuts my hair, and she cuts it how I like it.

Pete was ok but he was allergic to hair. His place was called Scissors Inn. (It’s still there.) He wore a mask because of his allergy. It seemed odd that someone with a hair allergy should become a barber, but it seems that his allergy developed from his occupation. He worked with a couple of other guys, and they had contests and magazines. The contests were you put your name on a paper, and they put the paper in a box, and once a month someone would win a scale model. One month I won a model of Quasimodo. The magazines were Playboy. They probably had others. I remember a mother reading one. She had a small boy with her, who presumably was the haircut patron. “Look,” she said to the small boy, pointing to something in the magazine. “Wow,” said the boy, glaring at something in Playboy. “I’ve never seen that before!” They both stared for a while. I worked very hard at surreptitiously finding out whether they were looking at a blonde or a brunette.

They were looking at a double page spread of sports cars.

When Pete left town, though, I got stuck with the evil barber on McGregor. He plays a part in my psyche to this day.

I outgrew Pete and ended up with Sal. He was at Garden City and eventually opened his own place. Last time I saw Sal, he was whining about his life to one of his colleagues. I didn’t enjoy that haircut. That’s why it was the last time I saw Sal.

I lived in haircut wilderness for a while until I found Pat. Pat, short, presumably, for Patrick, not Patricia, not only cut my hair how I liked it, but he had a perfect length beard. So I’d say trim it like yours and voila! Perfect beard.

The Greek barber near the IGA asked about my beard. ¼ inch I told him. He made it ¼ of ¼ of an inch. You could see parts of my face that had been hidden since I was 18. You have a fat face, said my second son. He didn’t use those exact words. What he actually said was something like you look different. But I knew what he meant.

I do my own beard now.

I’m happy with Norma the hairdresser. She asks me about my life, about my kids, about the holidays that are invariably coming up. There are always holidays coming up. She isn’t too chatty. She isn’t too quiet. She doesn’t whine. She doesn’t thrash what’s left of my hair to within a micron of its life.

The call came at about 3:00 PM one typical workday. “Are you interested in new opportunities? We have a position downtown.” It was a local headhunter. “No.” I said. “I’m very happy here,” I said. After all, I don’t want to lose Norma the hairdresser…

Saturday In The Park

Actually is was Sunday and it was the 14th of August...

It's still radio...

I listen to internet radio.

I have a real radio. It’s a clock radio that I bought at Zeller’s. It wakes me up to some random station I set it to. When I hit the snooze button it tells me the time. “Good morning, 4:54 AM” it tells me, in a woman’s voice. There is only one voice. No choices. In the PM, it just says “Hello” followed by the time.

I don’t use the radio for actual radio purposes. I haven’t listened to an old-fashioned radio since about 1980. Well, not on the radio, anyway.

I have taken, though, to listening to radio while I work. It helps to pass the day and to keep my soul from dying. I’m lucky that my young colleague, with whom I share an office, is indulgent. Indeed, he comments every so often. “This is pretty old” he says, referring to something that may have been recorded in 1990.

The real challenge, though, is finding suitable stations. You wouldn’t think it would be so hard. There are thousands of stations.

Try it. How many jazz stations can you find that play a good mix of 50s and 60s jazz. The answer, so far, is zero. You find stations that play Dixieland, classic jazz (that means Dixieland), cool jazz, bop, “smooth jazz” (as if there could be such a thing), vocal jazz, jazz trumpet, jazz saxophone. I like Mingus, Davis, Coltrane, Cannonball, Monk. But I can’t imagine listening to nothing but bebop from 7:30 AM until 4:30 PM. Mercifully AOL has a station called “Jazz Mix.” It’s not bad, eclectic style, but with a limited artist repertoire. So if you don’t mind hearing Louis Armstrong followed by Ella Fitzgerald followed by Miles Davis followed by Vince Guaraldi followed by Louis Armstrong followed by Ella Fitzgerald etc etc then you’ll be happy.

Classical music stations suffer from the same disease. Take your pick: piano music, vocal music, baroque, chamber music, symphonies. Baroque music is nice and all, but with all those staccato notes all day long, I’d get so jittery that I wouldn’t need my caffeine fix. Vocal music is an ok diversion, but listening to those sopranos and tenors scream their heads off all day… well… And hey, I love chamber music, nothing better than a good string quartet, but after a few hours it all starts to get kind of screechy. Again, AOL to the rescue: they have a decent “classical mix” station among their more narrowly focused selections.

Some of these internet-only stations play nothing but music streams; other mimic real-world stations with ads, station jingles, “announcements,” and the like. And I listen to those too. But the best, hands down, are the real-world radio stations, the ones that have news, and real life announcers, and up-to-the minute traffic and weather reports (and who cares if the traffic report is about the 401 into Toronto and the weather is the forecast for the Boston area), and even real commercials. I’ve tuned into classical music from Toronto and from The Netherlands, jazz from Hamilton, (pure coincidence that some of the best stations are Canadian?) country from San Francisco, oldies from Toronto (again), and even some stations from right here in Montreal (check out 99.5, quatre-vingt dix-neuf virgule cinq – ecoutez comme c’est beau! – one of the most idiosyncratic classical stations I’ve heard yet).

So having abandoned radio in my early adulthood, I have come back to it in my dotage. What goes around comes around. And what comes around is radio Bop, playing “all the hits YOU REMEMBER” from the first decade of rock and roll!, Merle Haggard and Kitty Wells from Loud City, Shostakovitch on NPR. My grandmother had a floor standing radio that I remember from her house and which now sits in my sister’s living room, and I had a vacuum tube desktop radio and then a little black transistor, and I now have high speed internet access that gets me Myrtle Beach in full fidelity, and I can email my request half way across the continent in a few seconds, but radio is still radio, and the feeling of having company while you work hasn’t changed.

So, what IS the forecast for Boston, anyway…

"Hear how nice it is..."