Happy Birthday Blog

It doesn’t take much of a detective to figure out that I published the first post here in March.

But, see, I have these places on the web that are my private refuge. I can go there whenever I want, and I can rant and I can rave and I can spew, and I am in the company of likeminded individuals, people whose experience mirror my own sometimes so closely that it can get scary.

And one of those places set us up with profile pages back around last December, and with profile pages came blogs, and so me and my southern confidante, we challenged each other.

"You gonna blog? "

"I dunno. You?"

Now she had a good head start on me. By the time I posted my first post on December 31, 2007, she had a good three posts done.

And so I started blogging. For a while I was able to sustain a pace of a post a day – well six per week anyway. Come February I spent more time commuting and I had to slow down, but I tried to maintain 2 per week.

The problem, though, was this. I didn’t necessarily want the whole world looking at my profile page, and tracing my userID back through all the messageboard posts I’d done and who knows, even into the chat room.

So I came up with a brilliant, and what should have been obvious, plan. I started a “mirror blog.” And so for a while I posted each post in two places. I picked up some of the good posts from the old blog and reprinted them here. After a bit I stopped posting there altogether. Then I branched out and started dj’s groovy sounds, and here I am.

So while my blogging partner writes about her feelings, her life, her search for meaning and fulfillment, I write about beer, and obscure 50s recording artists.

But hey, I’m having fun.

Happy birthday blog.

Montréal

Montreal - Good

Ok overdue, but here it is.

Why I like Montreal:

Beer: Ok you can get beer anywhere, but in Quebec you can get it in the supermarket. That alone makes life worthwhile.

Service: Ok, I know I put this down in the bad category, but consistency was never one of my strong points. I don’t know if this is province-wide, or unique to provincial services offered in this city, but I have never met a rude or unco-operative beaureaucrat. Every single person working for the province in a serve-the-public capacity, RAMQ (medical), drivers licence guys, income tax, Régie de logement (residential tenacies), doesn’t matter, has been helpful and courteous, sometimes going beyond the call of duty.

Music: I have heard Irish music and modern jazz in pubs, I have heard classical music by the Montreal Chamber Orchestra and various student performances. All you have to do is open the Gazette on Friday, and there are all kinds of musical events going on, often for free or almost free. The McGill School of Music will be presenting Britten’s The Rape Of Lucretia in January, and I have this hankering to go…

Art: I know I am making myself sound highbrow but I think the opposite is true – if I were really highbrow I would probably recognize all the sculptures around the city for the kitch that they probably are. But I’m ignorant, and so I enjoy the random works or art scattered around here and there. I also like the Musée des beaux arts.

French: Another entry from the bad category. But there is a good side to it. Living in a city that uses a language that I don’t know gives life a kind of piquant flavour. It keeps me challenged and focused. It makes this city different from any other major city in North America.

La Grande Bibliotheque: well I go there usually once a week. It has an incredible CD collection, about which I’ve written elsewhere. If I left Montreal, I would be as sorry about leaving that library as about anything else.

Having a coffee and danish in the morning at Jewish General Hospital restaurant in the morning before work: I do this about once every two weeks, and it costs me $2.35.

I live here: I don’t live anywhere else. I live here. I don’t live where I used to live, which wasn’t a bad place really, but I didn’t want to live there anymore, and I got to come and live here, and I like that.

Two Holiday Parties

I was at two holiday parties this week.

One was the office party. It was bearable. I got three glasses of blonde, courtesy of my employer, so it wasn’t a total loss. I palled around with the same people I pal around with every day. But I got to drink beer while I did it.

There was no beer at the other party, no alcohol at all, no caffeine, not even in the soft drinks.

I wasn’t sure what I expected when I showed up Sunday afternoon at the annual AMIQuebec[1] holiday party. I’d never gone before, so this year I made up my mind that I’d be there.

I knew almost nobody, a few facilitators, administrators. There was a music man playing a keyboard, and people were dancing, awkwardly, but they were having fun. I parked myself and watched.

It was something I needed to do – to show my face, to be there, to show support. They were there when I needed them, the support group meetings, the one-on-one.

Back when, when I started going, I told my story and blew everyone else out of the water. I went to a number of meetings, told my story a number of times, and it was always the showstopper. How many kids!?? they’d ask Married how long?? At the first meeting there was a girl who looked like a blonde Carly Simon. She was struggling with bipolar disorder, had been in and out of treatment, was separated from her husband who had the two boys. She heard a bit and started filling in the details. I bet this, she said, and that, and I said how did you know, and she said I lived it. That was me, said blonde Carly.

This is not your fault they said to me, what should have been obvious. Get perspective, they said. You’re not alone they said.

Later I found more support online, and I made friends, and I get some personal counselling. But it was that first contact with AMIQuebec that turned my head around in the right direction. And I am their fan ever since.

There was a gift exchange, and I brought a cheap gift, and got a cheap gift back. I guess I stayed about 30 minutes.

I stayed at the office party longer, and I talked to more people, and I had beer, but that first party left me at peace, and with a strange feeling that my being there made a small difference in the world…


[1] Action on Mental Illness

The Suit

I had two suits. One was black and one was navy. The black one was newer, I’d had it about 8 years. The navy suit was older; I’d had it for ages, and obviously it was quite worn, in both senses of the word. But I still wore it, and it was still a suit.

We moved, that was in 2006, and I remember hauling clothes out of the van into the new house, and I remember taking the suit and putting into the house.

And that was the last time I saw it.

That was a very journalistic thing to do, putting that sentence into its own paragraph.

But back to the suit – I never saw it again. I can’t imagine where it went, but it went somewhere. Maybe someone put it in the garbage my mistake. You never know.

Two years later we were getting ready to move again. And someone gave me a bunch of clothes. That’s unusual. When people give us clothes it’s generally girls’ clothes. that doesn’t help me much, except maybe saves us some money. But I can’t wear any of it, much as I’d like to.

But I got this big care package, and it was nice stuff, expensive stuff, but useless – not my style, not my size. But – guess what – there was one nice suit. It was navy and it fit. It had a vest that I could ignore, and two buttons on the jacket. (I could not bring myself to wear a three button jacket). So I put it aside, with plans to get the trousers shortened after we moved.

And so it went. We moved. And the suit moved with us. And I put it into my closet, because that’s the right place for a suit. And I went to see the tailor, and he said bring in the trousers, I am open every day at 6 am.

So I took the trousers and …. Oh no… where are the trousers?? The trousers hanging on the suit hanger are not the right ones!!?? Oh no!!

No idea where the trousers are, no idea where to look, very likely they got into the give-away bag and they are gone forever….

…..

So much for the suit…

So I wandered into a store called Henry Marks. That was on a coffee break. And the suits there are $900. Seriously. They have a few clearance items for $300. they are nice suits. The salesman, his name is Glen, he says you want a 36 short. He’s right. I say for a while I needed a 38. He says you don’t need a 38. We try some on. I tell him what I’m looking for. He says I’ll bring some in and call you. I say I’m not making promises. He says that’s ok.

A day or so later he calls and I go down and try on a navy suit. $300 he tells me. Pure wool of course. I put it on and he starts to measure and mark the adjustments. I say I don’t know if I’m buying it. He says that’s ok.

I go home. My wife says if you want the suit buy the suit. So I bought the suit. I went in and paid and said go ahead and do the adjustments.

Two days later I found the missing trousers…

Pens

The pen I use doesn’t look very nice. It used to look nice. It came in a velvet pen holder kind of thing, which I still have, and it’s fancy, but not so practical. The pen was a promotional item given to me by the company that laid me off in 2006. I got two, and the other one still looks new. The new one is really nice. The one I am using, though, is all scratched up. It looks like they impressed gold letters on red paint on top of a gold base. Then the red paint comes off so it has gold letters on gold. Can’t read it so well. Doesn’t matter though; I know who gave me the pen, and I’m not about to avail myself of their services anytime soon.

The company that I’m writing about, I didn’t start out working for them. I started out working for an entirely different company, and I have their pen also. It’s not as fancy, and it’s all wrapped up in plastic, and I’ve had a few of them, and they don’t write very well. But they look nice.

The last company I worked for, not counting the one I work for now, they also had pens, and I have one. It also writes black. It’s a fat one, blue sparkly with a black rubber bottom part where you put your fingers, white lettering.

All of my former-employer pens write black.

I have four Microsoft pens. Two are black and two are blue. They write nicely, and I don’t supposed Microsoft made the pens, anymore than they made DOS. One is a black pen with an orange cap. It says “Microsoft.” You can’t get more direct than that. Two of them are TechNet pens. They have this kind of weird triangle shape. TechNet is Microsoft’s network for technical people like system administrators and the like. Maybe all sysadmins have mucked up fingers from plugging in too many cables, so they have make special triangle pens for their fingers. Maybe not. And then I have an MSDN pen. That’s Microsoft Developer Network, for programmers and developers. I got all these MS pens going to Microsoft events at the Paramount and at the Convention Centre and places like that. They used to give away not just pens, but backpacks and software and books and stuff. After a while all they gave away was paper and a pen, and I quit going. I think they quit having them.

All the rest of my special pens write blue, except the Novell pen. But the rest are blue.

I have a pen from fuze HR, that’s a recruiting company. They tried to set me up with a company that specialized in XML, but they didn’t want.me, and the truth is that I didn’t want to work for them either. But I got a pen. I have a CGI pen, and I don’t remember exactly where I got that, but it’s got an hourglass figure. And then there is LMB Systems Services Inc., that’s a company that provides simultaneous translation services, and the pen only writes in one language at a time, and the colour scheme looks black, the it writes blue, and I don’t know what that means, but I’m sure it means something.

The last tech pen I have says “Novell” on it, and it doesn’t work. So I don’t know what colour it doesn’t write.

Well that’s almost it; I have an FRI pen, it’s a translucent red, and I’m not sure that a financial company should distribute red coloured pens, although it does write blue, and I have a pen that says “Mon Frére” on it; my sister gave me that, sweet eh? It’s a big fat green one. And it… oh no oh no, my sister is *not* green.

---

I keep all my pens in a plastic box in a space in my desk, and they will stay there for a very long time. I will bequeath them to my children, and perhaps to my grandchildren. As it is I probably write about 20 words a week, mostly just grocery lists, and I think that the average pen has the capacity for 4,567,789 words. So I would have to live 4392 years to use all these pens, at the rate of 20 words per week, and Methusela only lived 969 years, and he didn’t buy groceries. And he used a pencil…

Montreal - Bad

Everyone rags on this city. Indeed he does.

I don’t. Not much. I like this city. But I can’t deny that living here can be a royal pain in the foot.

So here are some things that I don’t like about this place. Some are city specific, some are province wide; I don’t bother to diffrentiate.

Weather. Hey, I’ve was born and raised in this country, the only winter I ever missed was the winter of 1975 – 76. So It’s not like I’m not used to the cold. But here, it’s that melting – freezing – melting – freezing thing that goes on, making the sidewalks into deathtraps, while all the while these vile ice pellets plummet down on your head.

And then there’s the snow storms, last winter we had about 20, each one paralyzing the city. If you happen to have a dentist appointment that day, well then you’re lucky, but if you have a job interview, then you’re not so lucky.

And, well, cold. I’m from the praries. It’s cold there eh? Says everyone. It’s cold here too, I say. Not like there, they say. Yes like there, I say. Sheesh.

Which brings me to:

Services: let’s start with snow removal. This deserves a post unto itself. Suffice it to say that it’s bad. Very bad. The city congratulates itself each time on a job well done, and it makes public statements to the effect that the crews are doing an excellent job, and that they are doing it very quickly, and the truth is the opposite. They are doing a terrible job, and they are doing it very slowly. So traffic slows down to nothing, and parking becomes nonexistent. Heaven help you if you have to go anywhere.

Transit

This is like the little girl with curl, when it’s good it’s very very good, and when it’s bad it’s horrid. They go on stike, or threaten to go on strike, every five days. The Métro is great until it breaks down, then there are a series of announcements over the loudspeakers that garble everything, and anyway it’s all in French. But at least on the métro you get the courtesy of an announcement.

When you’re waiting for the bus, there’s no way to know why the bus that’s supposed to come every 6 minutes hasn’t shown up for half an hour. And then of course when it finally appears it’s so full that it sails right by. And of course this is most likely to happen in winter while the ice pellets are pounding on your head…

Parking Signs

Really this is No Parking Signs. On one side of the street it’s between 12 and 2 every Tuesday and Thursday from March 15 until November 22. Then on the other side of the street it’s every Monday and Wednesday between 10 and 12:12 from February 21 until September 22. Then you have to watch for registered parking. This isn’t easy to spot, but in some neighbourhoods you must have a permit, and it is indicated on the signs but it’s difficult to see.

There is a street in my neighbourhood which is a one way street, and there are no parking signs all along the right hand side of the road, then at the bus stop it says no parking until the bus stop, then after the bus stop it says no parking.

Everything here is in French, the stops signs say “Arrêt” and the French word for parking is “stationnement” but the parking signs all have “P”. Call the language police.

French: I don’t have any thing against French, not the language, though it’s impossible to understand, nor the people, but having to live in an environment where your ability to communicate is limited by language issues is difficult. I have run into very few people in this city who don’t speak any English, but they exist. And so I am talking to the animal control person, called out by our neighbour because of a gopher that happens to live in our backyard. But I don’t know how to say gopher (gaufre, apparently), nor do I even know that it’s a gopher, could be a groundhog (marmotte d’Amérique – I kid you not) and I get that he’s here to find and I guess dispose of the unwanted creature, but I can’t really talk to him very much, il y a un petit animal I say, there is a small animal, mais il se cache, but it is hiding, and that is the best French I can do. He goes away. Tell your neighbour I was here, he tells me. I think. I don’t really understand.

I’ve already mentioned the métro issue, annoucements I can’t understand, do I sit and wait? Do I get off and take the bus? Do I ask someone? Do I expect to get an answer if I do?

The premier, who is a Liberal, and who gets all the anglophone votes, complains that there is too much English spoken in downtown Montreal. If the premier of Ontario complained that there was too much French in downtown Toronto, he’d be roasted alive.

Pedestrian walk lights: being neurotic, I have this unfortunate tendency to walk when the sign says walk, and not to walk when the sign says don’t walk. That leaves me in a minority of one in this city, where people tend to stampede across the city without regard for lights, traffic, weather, astrology, anything. I told someone not long after I arrived, when it says don’t walk, I don't walk, if nothing else I am making a statement. The only statement you’re making, says he, is that you are from out of town. But that’s not what I hate. What I have difficulty with is this. Not every traffic light has a pedestrian light, and those that do are highly inconsistent. Usually all four directions say walk at the same time, making it impossible to cross both ways in one go. And the busiest and widest corners, like the ones on Réne Levesque Blvd which I cross every day going to and from work, have none. So you step off the curb when the light is green, and I have no idea how long it’s been green, and chances are that it turns yellow, and then red, and I’m only half way across, and do I have a prayer book with me.

Animals. Okay, I don’t mind the gophers. But I could do without the skunks…

Holiday Memories

Let’s take a break for a bit. I've been thinking of the ghosts of holidays past, with apologies as appropriate to Charles Dickens. So here, in no particular order, without further ado, are some random holiday memories:

1. Tashlich. Now this is a walk to the river. That’s where we cast our “sins,” on the first afternoon, or on the second if the first day happens to be Saturday, and back home I’d walk down to the Red River, because it wasn’t so far, I could go to Kildonan Park, that was pleasant, or just walk up to Scotia Blvd and there were a few open spots there where you could stand on the river bank, and I used to go by myself, until the kids got old enough to walk, it was a long journey altogether, because it’s about 40 minutes there, at my pace, and then another 30 minutes or so to the Chabad House, and afternoon services, although usually one does tashlich after the afternoon service, then a 30 minute walk home, so by the time we’re done, it’s quite the safari.

I always remember one particular year, it was a while back, I’m guessing now about 17 years ago, and I happened to be reading a biography of Bob Dylan, not very holiday appropriate, but that’s what I’d been reading, and I guess the songs from Blood On The Tracks were running through my head, and it’s good that they were, because I remember what a miserable day it was, raining, this nasty miserable rain, the whole way, and I just got soaked, and it was cold. “It’s a wonder that we still know how to breathe.”

2. The old man who yelled. Ok this one is a bit strange, and this goes back a long way, back to when I attended services at the CT, and that last year I went there was 1984. Well, there was this old man who sat in the back, and he only ever came during the high holidays. That part is not so strange. But he was very intense, he followed the service with great intensity, you could see how he followed every word on every page, and during the responsive prayer he would respond; boy would he respond, he would get louder and louder as he got more and more excited. So we came to call him the old man who yelled. I assumed he was from out of town; it made no sense that someone that enjoyed the services that much would not be a regular. But no, he lived a few blocks away…

3. The lady with the harelip. Sorry about this one. I don’t feel good about it. But it’s how it was. She used to look after the kids. It seems to me that wherever I was, she was, she gravitated from one place one year to another place the next. I don’t think that’s really true; she was at the BA, and she may have been at the TT for some years. But everyone knew her, and that’s what we called her, the lady with the harelip. And she always looked after the kids...

4. Headache. We all get headaches from fasting. Hunger, dehydration, and, worst of all, caffiene withdrawal. That’s normal. We bear it. One year, though, I’m still traumatized from that year. It was Yom Kippur, by the end of the day, it just felt like there was a vice around my head, I couldn’t stand, literally, not figuratively, literally, I could not stand up so I had to sit during the final Ne’ilah service, throughout which one is really supposed to stand, and I was fainting and feeling nauseous, and it seemed as if it would be better to break the fast, and get some strength back, and finish the service properly, because I could not concentrate on a single word. So I went down into the kitchen, fully intending to make a quick cup of coffee and go back in, but I could not bring myself to do it. So I sat in the kitchen and listened from there, until the final shofar blowing, after which the fast is officially over, although we still have to go through the end of the ne’ilah service, about another five minutes, and then the evening service, say another 15 minutes, then havdalah, before we eat, but given my condition those were formalities, so I made myself coffee right then, and it rejuvenated me, like a miracle cure, but the experience traumatized me from then till now. And it was a long time ago, maybe even 20 years ago, and I’ve always kept an emergency supply of pills since. I should keep an emergency cup of espresso.

5. Cigarettes. Ok I’m sorry if my kids are reading this. But yes I used to smoke, and this was before I was married, I used to go to the aforementioned tashlich with my friends, we’d walk together, and we’d have smokes, but no way to light them. So we’d look to find someone smoking, and get a light, and it was a problem if he / she would hand us a lighter, we had to say no please just give me your cigarette, because we couldn’t use the lighter, it being Rosh Hashana and all, but we had to keep smoking once we got lit, so we would take turns, so we would always have a light. It was a smoking-go-round, the whole way there and back…

6. Kreplach. Look it up. It is a tradition to have kreplach on the eve of Yom Kippur. And so, being traditional, we have kreplach on the eve of Yom Kippur. My wife makes them, and makes them well. She makes everything well, and I don't say that just because she will read this. I happen to be writing about kreplach. She fills them with ground beef.

Okay this was totally random. I’ll do better next time…

Autumn

Autumn is not my favourite time of year. Oh it has its beauty alright. Sure we get the leaves changing colours and stuff. And there are some really really nice days here and there.

The word “autumn” sounds kind of poetic, doesn’t it. The English, that is people from England, they say “autumn,” but here in North America I guess we say “fall.” Still, I like to call it autumn, but then I’m partial to certain anglo expression: I wear trousers, I eat biscuits, etc.

So autumn, that’s actually our holiday season. People try to neutralize Christmas by wishing one another “season’s greetings” instead of Merry Christmas; but our season is autumn, usually mid-September, this year early October. People should wish us Season’s Greetings in autumn I think. But after we get through the high holidays, which can be intense, we come to Succot, and we eat outside, well we’re surrounded by walls but it’s still outside, and so when it’s nice out it’s the quintessential autumn experience.

But that’s a bone, compensation for the fact that summer is over and we are transitioning to winter, and winter in Canada is not a trivial exercise.

Here is a story. It’s a true story about a vacation we did one year, my family did, and at the time I think that my family was three people.

We headed straight south. It was near the end of August, and I guess it was 1986. One hour to the border, then into the US. We did not take the usual route which if I remember is Interstate 29; we headed south on highway 59, which is less used, with less traffic, and I remember stopping at some playground, in some town, about an hour south of the US border, and our son played and we sat and had lunch, and it was a beautiful sunny Sunday morning.

And so we carried on, to Detroit Lakes, to Bemidji, to Minneapolis. And when it was time to go home, we made a point of going back up the same highway, thinking we’d stop in Detroit Lakes maybe for a picnic if it was nice, take a nice leisurely ride back home.

So we headed out from the twin cities, and I remember that it was September 1, and that’s still officially summer, but everyone knows how bogus that is, September 1 is fall, autumn, and no climatologist or meteorologist can convince me otherwise. So here it was September, and it was a cold, miserable, rainy day, and I noticed as we headed back north up highway 59, and we passed that same playground we’d stopped at only a week before, and we just passed it without stopping, there was nobody there and no kids playing, and it seemed like the whole world had changed, changed from happy summer holiday to rainy cold miserable autumn.

I could make this into a metaphor but I won’t. Because I’ve learned that the misery that the world threw at me that day is bogus, there is no misery except what we choose to let in. So let autumn, and even winter, do its worst. I’m ready.

Food

Alright why not. Here is what I like to consume:

1. Cinnamon Danishes. Some of the bakeries around here make really good ones, chalk full of shortening. They taste best on Saturday morning
   
   
   
   
2. Vanilla Cappuccino. This is really bush, because I like the instant stuff, President’s Choice, and it’s odd because I don’t even normally put sugar in my coffee. Also best on Saturday morning. The stuff that comes out of the machine at Cheskie’s Bakery is good too.
   
   
   
   
3. Stella Doro Swiss Fudge Cookies. Also full of shortening. Are we seeing a pattern here?
   
   
   
   
4. Pizza. Best the way my wife makes it. But if it’s from a restaurant, then best not from a pizza restaurant.
   
   
   
   
5. Fries. No point in going out to eat if you don’t get fries. I’ll take poutine in a pinch. But not with pizza. No fries with my pizza please.
   
   
   
   
6. Crab Salad. Not real real crab of course, Pollock that looks like crab, and maybe it taste like crab and maybe it doesn’t; I wouldn’t know. It’s gotta have onions, and hot pepper rings, and some good dressing
   
   
   
   
7. Beer. Corona, Coors Light, Miller’s Genuine Draft, Labatt’s Light, oh I’m not fussy. Just nothing more than 5% please.
   
   
   
   
8. Coffee. Best from my own Black & Decker One Cup Coffee Maker. My wife bought it for me. Thank you dear.
   
   
   
   
9. Bean soup, or minestrone soup, or cabbage soup, or… I make one mean soup
   
   
   
   
10. Lentil soup, or vegetable soup, or chicken soup, or … my wife makes one mean soup.
    
    
    
    
11. Boloney. Not easy to get. We have salami they say. I want boloney I say. It tastes the same they say. It doesn’t taste the bloody same I say. Anyway, baloney.

The Easier It Gets, The Harder It Gets...

I develop applications for mobile devices. Well, that’s an exaggeration; I am working on one application which, I suppose, will run on more than one device, assuming it ever gets finished.

Here’s the thing. When I read about the pioneers of computer programming, the guys who started doing Fortran, who wrote the internet protocols, the guys at the Xerox Parlo Alto Research Center who developed the graphical user interface back in the 70’s when there were no PCs to run it on, Tim Berners-Lee who invented hypertext and therefore the world wide web, well I kind of feel like a pretender.

I mean I can’t count in binary nor in hexadecimal, I don’t know squat about memory addressing, the only assembly language I know is the sheet that comes with the pantry you buy at Reno Depot, and I don’t understand that either. I’ve never stayed up all night working against an ever-getting-closer deadline, surrounded by cardboard pizza boxes and dozens of discarded coffee cups. Not me. I go home at 5.

We have high-level tools that make it easy to program. All the drudgery is taken out of it. No counting bits, no convoluted API calls that requiring marshalling or thunking. No memory management. Easy.

So the mobile app, you know. It’s supposed to run on a Windows Mobile Pocket PC, or a Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone. If that means something to you I’m glad because it means nothing to me. But I’m doing it.

So here is the setup. I use a program called Visual Studio 2005, which we use to create applications for Windows and for the Web. To do mobile you need an add-on. I don’t remember how I got the add-on, so if my PC fries and I have to reinstall, I’m in trouble.

Here’s what I know I have.

· Microsoft Windows Mobile Pocket PC SDK [Software Development Kit]
· Microsoft ActiveSync (to synchronize a mobile device with a PC, and to allow one to use the environment of the other, but don’t ask me what that means)
· Microsoft Mobile 6 SDK
· Microsoft Virtual PC (this may or may not be involved)
· An actual physical mobile device sitting in a cradle which is connected to my PC

These various pieces work together in ways that I can’t fathom. There is something called an emulator. It simulates a mobile device on your desktop, working in its own virtual space. It works with ActiveSync and it doesn’t work with ActiveSync. I can’t get the emulator to work outside Visual Studio but other people at my workplace can. Sometimes one emulator will work and another won’t. I have two pocket pc’s on my desk. One connects to the internet, one doesn’t. We’ve spent hours trying to get these devices to connect to my web server with no luck; I had the best networking guys helping me. Then I pull a handheld out of the box by my desk, they all look the same but apparently I’ve not used this one before, and voila, it connects to my web server, it connects to the internet, it doesn’t even have to be in its cradle, and ActiveSync is in disconnected mode so it’s not in the picture. I showed my networking guy; he is impressed but he has no idea why this one is working. Believe me, neither do I. but at least it proves that my application is working.
And just today the whole structure was crashing and burning. Nothing would run; I was getting esoteric messages telling me that the device was already running (it wasn’t), that there was an error in ConmanClient2.exe, a file that doesn’t apparently exist on my hard drive, or that there was some other deep-in-the-kernel-of-the-virtual-device error that suggests that something somewhere is utterly corrupt. And there are so many places to change configuration settings. Should the transport be DMA or TCP? Do I enable the NE2000 PCMCIA network adapter? Do I bind to the Fast Ethernet Adapter or the connected network card (which, as far as I know, is the Fast Ethernet Adapter – you following this?) Do I map any serial ports? And if so to what? Should I reset the virtual device? And if so do I do a hard reset or a soft reset?

Oh my goodness.

And, there is no information about this. No real help files, no real information on the web, you’re on your own. I don’t know if Microsoft would offer tech support, probably not.

Not even Dennis Ritchie could figure this one out. Meanwhile I have this sudden craving for pizza…

Things That Make Me Happy

This is about Things that make me happy. I don’t mean things like health and warm weather and the sound of rain falling on the living room window. No. I mean Things, things you buy with money, and that exist in the corporeal world. Things I have, that I bought, or that someone bought for me. Money can’t buy happiness? Yes it can. I buy things with money and they make me happy. It’s that simple.

So here are some Things that make me happy:

1. My Sony Discman – this was a birthday present from my wife 3 years ago. It sits in my bedroom and I use it before I sleep. It remembers where I left off, even if I stop in the middle of a track. And it plays regular CDs and MP3s, so how could I not love it.

2. My desk. This is my spot. I don’t have an office; the desk is in the basement where the kids have their desk / computer set up, but that doesn’t matter. This is my spot. It is an L-shape secretary’s desk and it has a pull-out thing for my keyboard and one drawer and on my left I have…

3. My boom box. I bought this in December of 2006 at Sears, and buying it was an adventure unto itself, but I got it, and I have it, and it plays regular CDs, and MP3s, and cassettes, so what more could I want. It has a sub-woofer which I have not used since we moved, because I can’t quite figure where to put it, but that’s ok, I’m happy.

4. My coffee cups. One is a straight black cup, on which my wife painted the Batman logo, and it could not look more genuine, and the other is a Conordia University cup that I bought myself not long ago, and I’m not sure why but it makes me happy.

5. My Sony Walkman. Ok this is all about music so maybe this should be on my other blog. But whatever, I have 3 of these, walkmans (walkmen?). One is in the kitchen plugged into a pair of computer speakers, another I take with me when I walk at night and when I go to work and come home from work, and a third one has not yet been opened. I bought all three on eBay.

6. Shelves. We bought these shelves 2 years ago when we moved into the house that we so recently moved out of, and they are shelves meant I think for CDs or VHS tapes, but I use them for music tapes – cassettes – and it is the first time that all my cassettes have a place to live. So that makes me very happy.

7. My plants. Some I bought for various places that I’ve worked and they came home went the job went south, some I got for my birthdays. I like them. That’s all. They all live in the kitchen now.

8. My Concordia bag. I borrowed a bag with a strap from my sister when she was here two years ago and I said boy I need to get me one of these. And I did but it broke. So I got another and it broke. These bags were very cheap. So I didn’t know what to do. Then I found this one at the book store at Concordia University, and it wasn’t so cheap, about $15, which seems like a lot for a bag with a zipper and a strap, but I got it, and it’s good, and I use it, and it has its designated function in my life, and it makes me happy.

9. My Batman keychain. Surely I don’t have to explain this one…

I Don't Know Much About Art, And I Have No Clue What I Like...

Now I remember visiting the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and you walk into this foyer type place, you’re facing a stair case which leads to the main exhibits, and on the facing wall there was this frame with nothing in it. And we said they must have taken the picture out for some reason, but of course there was a picture there, it was just all white was all. So here is a white canvass, I guess it had white paint on it, and it was art. Ok it was art.

And last week I saw something similar, a white picture. This one was called (Steps) December, and it was by Charles Gagnon. And then there are the usual abstracts, stripes and splotches, and couple of works that look like stuff my kids bring home from school. Literally. They deliberately look like kids’ drawings.

This occurs to me because I was recently at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal (which is the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts) and I got to see Monet, Cezanne, Rodin, Picasso. Then they have the contemporary Art Exhibit, which is mild next to what’s at the Musuem of Contemporary Art.

So people look at that stuff, and the usual refrain goes, anyone could have done that, why is it art. And the usual answer is anyone didn’t do it, that guy did, and he’s an artist, so it’s art.

So what that means is this. If I break a dish, then arrange the pieces on a canvas randomly, and call it “Porcelain Rapture” or something, nobody will pay attention, and it’s not worth anything. But once I’ve done something, anything, that people recognize as “art,” and say I’ve got a government grant (that helps), and now my name is known in the right circles, and I break a dish, then arrange the pieces on a canvas randomly, and call it “Porcelain Rapture” or something, now it’s a work of art, and people pay attention, and pundits will write about it, and say that it bespeaks the reality of bourgeois disillusionment with fragmented consumption, or something like that.

And people have a lot of trouble with this. I don’t. I don’t have trouble with this. I don’t think that art is about pictures hanging on a wall, not anymore. Nor is about beauty, or even creativity per se. Art isn’t just about what you create. It’s about who you are when you create it, it’s about who you know, it’s about who knows you, it’s about your place in the artistic community, or lack thereof. Art is a process, a vision of reality, a version of reality, it’s very serious, and it’s completely and totally funny.

I guess it’s a metaphor. It has to be a metaphor, or what’s the point right?

The point is that a pile of stuff sitting on a table could be a pile of stuff sitting on a table, or it could be a great work of art (or at least a work of art). Nothing we do, nothing we have, nothing we create, nothing we say, none of it exists in a vacuum. It all comes down to context, and the context is what gives it, not just meaning, but reality. And that’s how it is with everything. Had Sargent Pepper been made last week it wouldn’t be a great album. A guy can break the record for the 100 yard dash 5000 times in his backyard, but if he doesn’t do it at the Olympics it isn’t squat. And if Joe Not-an-artist paints a white canvass white then so what. But when Joe Artist does it…

Rocks Rock...

The Dark Knight guards a small piece of the Canadian Shield, on the desk of the VSL Poltroon...

My mother used to have a rock tumbler. You’d throw in a bunch of ugly stones, add this polishing gunk, and let it go for about a week. Then you’d change the gunk and let it run again. You’d keep doing this until the rocks were rounded and polished to a shine. Not all of them made it. Not all had the wherewithal to withstand all that punishment. But the ones that did revealed an aesthetic quality that was not apparent to the untrained eye.

And so it’s my untrained eye that failed to detect the presence of the Redpath Musuem until a few weeks ago. Now I’ve been living here for, what, 6 years? And I’ve been working downtown since mid-June, and I worked in Westmount for 4 years, and that’s a 15 minute journey from McGill University, and this treasure chest of rocks and minerals, crystals and fossils, has been just waiting for me, less than 10 minutes away from here by foot.

I confess. I am a closet rockhound.

My wife and I visited the Royal Alberta Museum, in Edmonton, during the summer of 1984. They had, presumably still have, a geology exhibit that would melt the heart of any mineralogist. My wife couldn’t get me out the room.

In the autumn of 1997 I took a geology course at the University of Winnipeg, and in October we did a field trip that took us to Whiteshell Provincial Park on the Manitoba – Ontario border. Now Manitoba consists of farms; the only geology one is likely to encounter is the hard kernel of a germ of wheat – farms and trees, farms and trees, no hills or mountains and rock outcrops or mesas or canyons or…

But at the east edge of the province, it turns out the big slab of rock called the Canadian Sheild, which gets deeper as you go west, peeks out from the depths. And so, it turns out, it’s not so boring after all. I took my kid on the field trip, he was 10, and he made friends with the prof, who offered a beer to anyone who could explain a particular petrologic phenomenon, and my kid refrained from answering, although he knew the answer, because he didn’t want beer, but the prof said too bad, I would have gotten you a root beer.

I brought home a few pieces of a not-quite-granite rock called diorite, with bits of garnet in them, and some fossils contained in Manitoba limestone, and a few other odds and ends. And they sit in boxes, and we cart them from house to house, and I keep saying I will put them out on display, but I forget. But I do have a piece of greenstone sitting on my desk, just a little piece of the Canadian Shield to keep me humble…

When I was a kid I used to hunt around the train tracks, then later when we went on holidays I’d be on the lookout for cool specimens. My mother was always looking for rocks that she could polish; she would have polished a beautiful crystal sample if I’d have let her.

And so here is the Redpath Museum, with hundreds of samples of minerals I’ve never heard of, beautiful crystals, incredible fossils, entire dinosaur skeletons. And I didn’t even know about it.

It’s the geode phenomenon. A geode is a big round ugly rock from the outside, but crack it open…

Life can be a geode. We have treasures around the corner, great places and experiences a mile or two miles away, and we don’t know about it until we make it our business to know about it. Sometimes it means pulling ourselves away from our PCs for longer than we’d like to, or it means going out when the weather isn’t as nice as we’d like it to be, or it means having to stay up an hour or two later than we’d normally do, but then we discover fireworks on national holidays, and Irish musicians in downtown pubs, free classical music concerts, or just these incredible places where there are lots of trees…

Anyone for rock hunting?

Soup with Green Pepper!

Sunday I made supper. I do that sometimes.
Here's what I made:

• soup
  
• salad
  
• salmon patties
  
• potatoes
  
• peas

I didn't use any recipes. Here's how I made the soup:

• chop up onion, celery, green pepper, and fry
  
• chop up garlic, and add to frying vegetables
  
• add water
  
• slice carrots and put them in the water
  
• add barley
  
• add salt and pepper, and find other fun spices, and add randomly: oregano, cumin, cayenne pepper, etc
  
• add a can of romano beans
  
• boil soup for a while
  
• add thin egg noodles
  

  My kids bug me that I make the same soup every week. Of course this is patently untrue. The soup they think I make every week is chickpea soup, which has chickpeas, tomatoes, and onions. So now I can't put tomatoes and beans into the same soup ever, or I get daddy you made the same soup again!
  

  This time I had this scintillating talk with my 17 year old daughter:
  

  You put GREEN PEPPER in the soup. Daddy you are so FUNNY!
  

  So what. There are soup recipes with green pepper
  

  They are FUNNY recipes!
  

  They liked the soup.
  

  I have been told in no uncertain terms not to put celery into salad. The salad is therefore:
  

  • green leaf lettuce
    
  • 
    grape tomatoes
    
  • 
    green pepper
    
  • 
    English cucumber
    
  
  They like the salmon patties too. Here's the recipe:
  
  
  
  • 2 cans of salmon
    
  • 3 eggs
    
  • Salt
    
  • Pepper
    
  • Garlic powder
    
  • Onion powder
    
  • Something else
    
  • A couple spoonfuls of hot vegetable sauce, which has been sitting in the fridge for months, and which really isn't so hot after all
    
  • A bit of barbecue sauce
    
  • Fry
    

  The potatoes are just potatoes and the peas are just peas. My wife said I want mashed potatoes. She said, make the potatoes and I will mash some. She said make lots. I made 15 potatoes. I think we ate about 9. I think she mashed one.
  The other thing I get is you ALWAYS make salmon patties (or tuna patties, as the case may be). Or course I only make one or the other every two months or so, but it doesn't matter. I could make once every ten years, and I would still get you ALWAYS make etc etc.
  

  Next Sunday I think I will make bean casserole. Let them complain about that.

"Let Me Be Your Yoko Ono"

I have an album called Live Peace In Toronto, 1969. The album was released in December of 1969, and it's by The Plastic Ono Band. Now if you look that album up on, say, Amazon, the artist listed is "John Lennon," which is no surprise, but when the album was released, the label said "Plastic Ono Band."

I call it the "divorce album." I call it that because my wife told me that if I ever play it again in her hearing she will divorce me.

When Lennon went on stage that day in September, he hadn't played live since Candlestick Park in San Francisco, which was where the Beatles played their last concert in 1966, not counting the rooftop concert they did in London in January '69. And here he was, having rehearsed on the plane with Yoko, and with Eric Clapton, and Klaus Voorman, and Alan White, who would go on to play drums with Yes, replacing the irreplaceable Bill Bruford. So it was a bit of a surprise when they showed up, because he (Lennon) had been invited to play, but nobody really expected him I don't think.

But he showed up. I don't know if this album was the whole concert, it may have been. They played oldies "("Blue Suede Shoes," "Dizzy Miss Lizzy"), "Give Peace A Chance" which had recently been recorded at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal and was riding up the pop charts at that very moment, "Cold Turkey" which would be the next single, and on which Yoko's voice could be heard, bleating like a sheep - a sick sheep.

Side 2 of the album, the latter part of the performance presumably, was given over to Yoko. She does her "signature song," which is called "Don't Worry Kyoko (Mommy's Only Looking For Her Hand In The Snow"), the lyrics of which consist chiefly of the words "don't worry" played over a super grungy guitar riff. It actually kind of rocks, although it's still Yoko and all, and then comes "John, John Let's Hope For Peace," during which the band members stack their various instruments next to the amps, creating a howling raging feedback, while Yoko screams her head off. This goes on for quite a while. At the end she stops singing, um, screaming, but it takes a while before anyone actually turns off the amps, or removes the instruments, and so the album finishes with this droning screech that goes on for 2 or 3 minutes.

I can't imagine what the audience was thinking. They were probably expecting "Norwegian Wood." Richard Ginell at allmusic says this "was Lennon's declaration of independence from the Beatles," and so it may have been, but he dismisses side two as being "just as irritating today as it was in 1969." So he doesn't get it. It was putting Yoko on the stage and letting her loose that was his independence, that was the point, kind of like the anti-Beatles.

Ok, so I like side 2 of the album. It's noisy, no not just noisy, but ear-splitting, deafening, piercing noisy. Most of it isn't what any typical person would call "music." It is challenging; it is surprising, and it is insolent, more so than the three experimental albums he'd done with Yoko till then. It is Lennon standing up to the world and saying I'm not what you think I am, I don't have to wear any kind of clothes or hat, I don't have to give you what you want, I don't have to be whom the world thinks of as John Lennon.

I kinda get that…

Matisyahu, Trudeau, And Slow Trains Coming

This is about Pierre Elliot Trudeau Park. I was walking there last night. There is a pond and some fountains, and some trees, and adjacent there were two baseball games going on, one kid one adult, and it’s cool that, summer time and baseball games, it makes me nostalgic for a past I didn’t even have. But that’s the park. It used to be called Centennial Park, and I don’t know when they changed it, but I know that the first time I was there it was with my family and it was at a Lag Ba’Omer celebration hosted by the local Chabad organization, and that was about 4 years ago. And one of the reasons we went was to hear Matisyahu.

And that’s what this is about really. It’s about Matisyahu, not about the park at all. That was about 4 years ago, before anyone knew about Matisyahu; he was billed then as a Lubavitcher who played reggae. And my wife, she likes reggae. So do I really. But she was interested in hearing this guy.

But it got late and we couldn’t stay, so she never did get to hear him. Later, though, I got my hands on Live At Stubb’s, mostly for my wife who was interested, but she didn’t like it in the end, and I can’t say I blame her.

But I was thinking about that a bit the other night when I was listening to Slow Train Coming by Bob Dylan. And that’s what this is really about. It’s not about Matisyahu at all. It’s about Dylan being a “born-again Christian.” Of course Dylan couldn’t be a born again Christian because to be born again you have to be born once. And Dylan was born alright, or so I presume, in the complete absence of stories of storks, but he wasn’t born a Christian, not with a name like “Zimmerman” he wasn’t.

This album is 30 years old, well 29 actually – it was release in August, 1979 – so surely others have written about it and done so more elegantly. But thing with me is, that I hate this album, and I hate it because it’s so damned good. Lyrically the album is a pure rant. “Ya either got faith or ya got unbelief and there ain't no neutral ground” sings Dylan on “Precious Angel.” And that pretty much sums up the album. Dylan sings of a vengeful God, uncompromising in His demands, and of the massive unrelenting unparalleled corruption of mankind. Not much about love and brotherhood here. But here’s the rub. Dylan had Barry Beckett of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section playing keyboards, he has legendary producer Jerry Wexler, with Beckett, on the console; he has Mark Knopfler playing lead guitar and Pick Withers on drums, and so Dylan delivers his pinhead theology with a force that nails you to the wall. He creates a thing of great beauty out of platitudes and clichéd claptrap. Not just beauty, no, what he creates is riveting, you can’t argue with it, because the lyrics, one dimensional as they are, move in a context of such power and conviction. It’s so beautiful that I hate it.

That’s side one (it used to be vinyl remember?) Side two kind of lapses into “do unto others” platitiudes without quite the musical punch of side one. Let’s leave that for now.

So that’s what I was thinking about as I walked through Pierre Elliot Trudeau Park, formerly known as Centennial Park, and about how we missed Matisyah – Matisyahu with his lyrics like:

Dirt covered earth lays beneath my rib cage

Giving birth to overgrowth invading on to path ways

Burnt out trees cover streets where children once played

Sown seeds decay through sacred stepping stones in disarray

…

Aish tamid eternally

A fire burns continuously

Wondering where you been

Won't you come on home to me?

They are nice words, and different from Dylan, but Matisyahu is no Dylan, and he doesn’t have a Mark Knopfler or Jerry Wexler to bring him home, either. He is a showman, and many like him, but there is no personal dimension to his music, no filtering of meaning through the lense of experience. Ultimately, it’s plastic, nice words notwithstanding.

And it’s a microcosm. And that’s really what this is about. This isn’t about the park, or about Dylan, or about Matisyahu. This is about the meaning that we bring to our experience. This is about those whose words are hidebound, but who bring such meaning and intensity into their lives that no one can argue. This is about people who do and are the opposite. This is about how it’s not always what we say, but it’s how we say it, and what we do with it.

But in the end, it’s not quite true, because while I wouldn’t want to be a Matisyahu with all the superficiality that that entails, I wouldn’t want to be the Dylan of Slow Train either, because notwithstanding the beauty of the delivery, the message is still ugly.

So I’m going to go back to Pierre Elliot Trudeau Park, and maybe stop and watch a game for a while if I’m lucky enough to catch one again, and breathe the air under the trees, and next time I’ll listen to Gordon Lightfoot…

I used to like Jackson Browne. I say that, I used to like him, because I don't think that he's done anything worthwhile since 1978, that was Running On Empty.

The critics were always partial to For Everyman which was his second LP, but I'm not a critic, so that doesn't have to be my favourite, and it isn't, though "Ready Or Not" has been known to make me cry. It's not sad, but at some point I suppose my life was sad, and the song just cracked something inside me. But I didn't bawl or anything, just sniffed a bit, being a guy and all. And my kids were in the car, and so it wouldn't do if Dad just suddenly started to "greet," as the Scots would have it…

It's that line about "she's gonna be a mother…" Gets me every time…

But never mind that. I've always favoured Browne's first album, which either doesn't have a title, or is called "Jackson Browne," not very creative that, or is called "Saturate Before Using," which it isn't called that, not at all, but those words are on the cover, so it looks like it's called that, though it isn't. But I'm partial to that album anyway. It drills into your soul if you let it. It's sad stuff a lot of it, and it was done even before his life got majorly sad, which it did between Late For The Sky and The Pretender, and at the moment I don't want to think too much about that, what he went through, I can't think about that.

Did someone say "Late For The Sky?" There's no point, no point at all, saying anything about that song. I have a cyberfriend, he's a clergyman, Protestant, and he posted the lyrcs to that song on a messageboard around the time his marriage was collapsing, and it seems trite in a way to post pop song lyrics when your life is collapsing around into fragments, but he did it, and it wasn't trite, because if I were to say anything about "Late For The Sky," which I'm not, I would try to relate the power that's in there, no not power really, more like pain, real pain, not just pop music pain, and I don't know how he does that , though David Lindley has something to do with it, and I would describe it, but here I've undertaken not to say anything about it.

Late For The Sky

Now the words had all been spoken
And somehow the feeling still wasn't right
And still we continued on through the night
Tracing our steps from the beginning
Until they vanished into the air
Trying to understand how our lives has led us there

Looking hard into your eyes
There was nobody I'd ever known
Such an empty surprise to feel so alone

Now for me some words come easy
But I know that they don't mean that much
Compared with the things that are said when lovers touch
You never knew what I loved in you
I don't know what you loved in me
Maybe the picture of somebody you were hoping I might be

Awake again I can't pretend and I know I'm alone
And close to the end of the feeling we've known

How long have I been sleeping
How long have I been drifting alone through the night
How long have I been dreaming I could make it right
If I closed my eyes and tried with all my might
To be the one you need

Awake again I can't pretend and I know I'm alone
And close to the end of the feeling we've known

How long have I been sleeping
How long have I been drifting alone through the night
How long have I been running for that morning flight
Through the whispered promises and the changing light
Of the bed where we both lie
Late for the sky

Next Time You Hire A Clerk...

Roxy’s was a store on Kennedy Street north of Portage Avenue, back when such a thing existed. It was in the paper once, Roxy’s, not Kennedy, though Kennedy must have been in the paper occasionally, the street that is, not the president, although here in Montreal there is a President Kennedy Street, which may or may not be in the paper. Anyway, there were people who felt that the window display was sexist and that it objectified women. What they had done, the store people, was this. They took mannequins, plastic ladies, just the bottoms, and dressed them in bikini bottoms, then stuck LPs into the waist band. So people didn’t like that, some people. The store management was unrepentant. And rightly so – it was tasteless perhaps, but there is no law against being tasteless.

I tried to made a swap with them – not the mannequins. The store offered to tape any LP in the store for $10 but I had a better deal. I gave them some LPs, and in return they would tape Bobby’s Big Hits by Bobby Rydell together with some other odds and ends that appealed to me. You have to understand, the LP was selling for about $20; Bobby Rydell’s music was incredibly difficult to find. Ok, so I left there happy, and came back after the specified interval, and found a woman behind the cash, and I inquired about my tape and she knew nothing about it. Who did you talk to she said. The manager I said. Did he have a beard she asked. Oh yes. Oh she said. My CLERK. She looked contemptuous. I will look into it she said. Come back later.

I went back and the “clerk” handed me my blank tape and the LPs I’d left for him. Couldn’t do it he said. I was disappointed, and I took my stuff and left. Later I brought the tape back, and there was another clerk, and I gave him $10 and asked him to tape the Bobby Rydell.

Fast forward I don’t remember how many years. Roxy’s was long gone. Guy walks into my office, charged with petty theft. He had taken magazines from the Coles at Eaton Place and had forgotten to pay. He walked as far as the escalator in the concourse, realized what he’d done, turned around to go back, and got nabbed my store security. After I’d met with him a few times, and we’d gone to court for adjournments and such, I remember who he was. You used to work at that stored on Kennedy I said. Roxy’s he said. I owned it. Owned it? The clerk? I kept quiet.

We set the matter down for trial. His wife came to support him. Yup, it was the same woman. For the life of me, I have no idea what that was about.

He was convicted…

Sappy And Proud Of It...

When I was a kid we used to have this Gary Lewis & the Playboys album (my big sis was a big fan - she had a crush on Gary) called This Diamond Ring. It had "Dream Lover" by Bobby Darin, and "Forget Him" by Bobby Rydell, and "The Night Has A Thousand Eyes" by Bobby Vee. I never knew the original of those until so many years later.

We also had a Herman's Hermits album that my parents bought for us when my youngest sister was born. I think I still have that. It had "I'll Never Dance Again." That's also by Bobby Rydell.

I used to sing those songs to my kids. All my kids were cranky babies and they never slept. Sometimes I would hold them and we would listen to music and they would fall asleep on my shoulders. I remember one time listening to the Doors (YOU CANNOT PETITION THE LORD WITH PRAYER!!!!!) and I remember one time listening to Carlos Kleiber and the Vienna Philharmonic playing Brahms' 4th Symphony.

Often I would hold them and walk around and sing. I would also sing "Rock and Roll Lullaby" and "Flying On The Ground Is Wrong" and "Count Me In."

Those are all songs I think that are transcendently sappy. They never make it into the books of great recordings (except "Dream Lover" which was in Dave Marsh's book The Heart Of Rock And Soul). But check out YouTube and you can see where the truth lies…

"Because" by The Dave Clark Five is another one. It's not to be confused with "Because" by the Beatles, which was on Abbey Road and which was pretty, but not nearly as innocent. I remember playing the DC5 version to my wife, who wasn't my wife yet, back when I was wooing her. A lot has changed between then and now, but that song still belongs on that long-gone couch, in that far-away-and-never-seen-again living room, in that $130 / month apartment.

That sappiness doesn't exist anymore. Oh there is sappy alright, but it's plastic sappy, not from-the-heart sappy, not like the Phil Spector brand of human-spritual-salvation-through-teenage-romance sappy. Do people sing the Backstreet Boys to their babies? I feel sorry for them if they do. I feel sorrier for the babies.

This all comes to mind because I grabbed a Bobby Rydell album from the library this week. All those Cameo Parkway recordings were unavailable for so long, and now here it is. I have most of it on tape anyway, and how I got it, well that's a story that deserves a post of its own. But I got this CD, and the truth is that most of it is, I hate to admit, pretty lame, but then towards the end of about 70 minutes worth of music comes on "Forget Him" and all the lameness is forgiven.

(Forget him)
(Forget him)
Forget him, if he doesn't love you
Forget him, if he doesn't ca-a-a-a-are
Don't let him tell you that he wants you
'Cause he can't give you love which isn't there
Oh, little girl, he's never dreaming of you
He'll break your heart, ya wait and see-e-e
So don't you cry now, just tell him goodbye now
Forget him and please come home to me

(Forget him, if he doesn't love you)
(Forget him, if he doesn't care)
Don't let him tell ya that he wants you
'Cause he can't give you love which isn't there
Oh, little girl, he's never dreaming of you
He'll break your heart, ya wait and see-e-e So don't you cry now, just tell him goodbye now
Forget him and please come home to me

No, don't you cry now
Better tell him, goodbye now
Forget him, and please come home to meeeee

Personal Reflections and Echoes...

Pink Floyd played Winnipeg on July 1, 1994. I didn't go. Even had I liked Pink Floyd enough to go, I wouldn't have gone, if for no other reason than that Roger Waters was gone, and the band was left more or less headless.

I came to Pink Floyd not via Pink Floyd but via Chilliwack. Now Chilliwack was a Canadian band, and they may be still around; I can't tell. They have been recording top 40 wallpaper since about 1972, but I remember their second album. It was reviewed in the Winnipeg Free Press by Andy Mellon.

Mellon was a Winnipeg music-type-guy; he wrote music columns in Youthbeat, then in the Free Press, he did a brief stint as a DJ at CFRW FM, Winnipeg's "underground" station, and managed a record store for a while. Well he reviewed the second Chilliwack album, which happened to be called "Chilliwack," which also happened to be the name of the group's first album, and that can be confusing.

Their second LP was a double, and following the pattern set by The Rascals on Freedom Suite and Canned Heat on Living The Blues, side 1 and side 2 had "normal" music, and sides 3 and 4 were experimental. Remember, this was 1971, when bands could do that.

Side 4 was occupied entirely by a piece called "Night-Morning," which Mellon compared to Pink Floyd. He said it sounded reminiscent of what Pink Floyd had been doing recently. And there's the nexus. I bought the album, and noticed, among other things, that Mellon got the details wrong. He wrote of Bill Henderson's guitar on "Night-Morning" when there was no guitar on the track. Oh, that Andy Mellon.

And there I was one day listening to CFRW FM, that was Winnipeg's "underground" station, remember, and I heard this music that sounded like "Night-Morning." I said that must be Pink Floyd. And I was right. It was "Echoes."

That, for me, has been Pink Floyd ever since. I have, I think, every album they've done, at least those with Syd Barrett and Roger Waters. I even have a bootleg, Live At Pompeii . I am partial, not surprisingly I suppose, to the earlier stuff, especially the tracks with the over-the-top song titles like "Careful With That Axe Eugene" and "Several Species Of Small Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict." But "Echoes" will always be my favourite. Keep Dark Side Of The Moon and The Wall. I will keep "Echoes" - which, by the way, they did not perform at their Winnipeg appearance…

Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air
And deep beneath the rolling waves
In labyrinths of coral caves
The echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand
And everything is green and submarine.

And no-one called us to the land
And no-one knows the wheres or whys
But something stirs and something tries
And starts to climb towards the light

Strangers passing in the street
By chance two separate glances meet
And I am you and what I see is me
And do I take you by the hand
And lead you through the land
And help me understand the best I can

And no-one calls us to move on
And no-one forces down our eyes
And no-one speaks and no-one tries
And no-one flies around the sun

Cloudless everyday you fall upon my waking eyes
inciting and inviting me to rise
And through the window in the wall
Come streaming in on sunlight wings
A million bright ambassadors of morning

And no-one sings me lullabies
And no-one makes me close my eyes
And so I throw the windows wide
And call to you across the sky

Urban Chic and Old Technologies...

I did not realize that you could plug a turntable directly into a PC until a friend of mine told me of such a unit about one year ago. She said they sell them at Urban Outfitters, and so I had to go and see for myself.

I found Urban Outfitters; it’s in the heart of downtown, on St. Catherine between de la Montagne and Drummond. What they sell is clothes: t-shirts, hats, vests, trousers, more t-shirts. They also had quite a bit of accessory-type stuff: books, deco-art, lamps, key-chains, games. What they didn’t have was this – what they didn’t have was a turntable.

My friend, however, not to be contradicted, sent me a link to the web catalogue page with the turntable. She thinks she is smart, and perhaps she is.

I think of this because I have rescued my record player. I wasn’t going to take it with us when we moved. But at the last minute I jammed. I jammed, and I grabbed it from the kitchen where the owner had put it while he renovated, and I grabbed the old Sony receiver also.

This was not my first turntable. In fact, I didn’t even buy this one; it was my kid sister’s at one point, my father having bought it for her when I left home and took the stereo with me. The record player I took at that time was a Sony direct drive; I don’t remember exactly what happened to it – possibly nothing, could be that I had one too many at one point, and I sold it.

I remember that in its latter days it ran a bit fast, the Sony that is. The speed was adjustable, but even at its lowest setting it could be fast. I couldn’t figure that out really; how could a direct drive run fast? But I replaced it with a Technics that someone had the courtesy to steal from me one fine day in 1993. They stole a tuner also then, but left me the amplifier and the CD player. Strange thieves. Anyway that was probably when I retrieved my current one.

But even the Sony wasn’t my first, oh no. The first turntable I got was a Garrard. It was a bit clunky, but it worked well enough, except for a constant rumble, which was an accepted hazard of high quality record playing equipment. The rumble made me proud, really, because cheap turntables didn’t have it.

But the one I have now, I don’t use it much. Really I don’t use it at all. I still have LPs, and I have a stereo receiver with phono preamp, but when I put the whole thing together only one channel plays. I’m sure it’s easily fixed, and I’m sure I’m not going to fix it any time soon. But I will put it on my list, and get that thing working again, if it’s the penultimate thing I do.

The sound systems they make now (I don’t think they call them “stereo systems” anymore) don’t have phono pre-amps, so all the turntables they make now have them built-in. There was a secret equalization they used called RIAA equalization, so you can’t just plug a regular turntable into, say, an auxiliary jack, and expect it to work. The other thing is the stylus – that’s the “needle.” Last time I replaced a stylus was in 2001, and there was only one place in the city that sold them. I worked then with a 20 something year old kid, and I asked him to stop by on his way to school and pick me up a stylus, and I gave him the specs, and he did it, but he had no idea what it was he was buying.

So I went back to Urban Outfitters last week and there it was on the mezzanine, in all its $145.00 plus tax glory. Plug it into your USB port, and convert your vinyl to digital music, scratches and all…

The first thing I ever bought on EBay was a Hollies album called Buddy Holly. I bought the vinyl LP, one of the last 4 I ever bought. And I have since gotten the CD, also on EBay.

The album was released in 1980, and it was the last LP ever released by the Hollies as they had evolved up to that point. Is it good? Imagine what The Hollies would sound like doing Buddy Holly. Now imagine the opposite. No, it's not particularly good.

Does it matter? No. Not really.

See, I'm a Hollies fan. I don't have every album they ever released. The ones I don't have are available as imports and cost around $30 on Amazon, more than I can spend on a CD right now.

In 2000 Alan Zweig made a documentary movie called Vinyl, in which he featured the lives and eccentricities of various record collectors in various mostly Canadian cities. The movie is grungy, neurotic, claustrophobic, and fascinating. The characters, including Zweig himself, come off as various shades of bizarre. They live in rooms with records and records and records. None are married; one is in a relationship and he is seen as being the oddball.

And the thing is that no matter how much they insist that they are driven by the love of music, the fact is that they are not driven by the love of music. They are simply driven. There is no way, no way ever, that they could ever listen to everything they own.

I can relate to those guys. My wife and I watched this movie a few years ago, and she looked at me and said you know, there but for me goes you. Probably.

I don't do it so much anymore, but I have spent more hours than I care to admit in second hand music shops (and second hand shops generally) digging and searching, getting dusty and losing myself in the thrill of the hunt. Finding that record you've been looking for and looking for, there are no words to describe it.

As I say, I don't do it so much anymore. Why not? Because it's getting to where I don't have enough years left to listen to what I have. And vinyl - I've finally admitted defeat. My equipment is dying, and I just don't have the wherewithal to resurrect it. Hunting for CDs is just not the same.

But for me it's about the music. It's about good music and bad music.

See I like the Hollies. And so I'm willing to forgive them the occasional lapse. I see the bad albums and the good albums as part of a whole, the Hollies whole. It's like we're friends. So what if they have a bad day? Some times having a bad time with a friend than is better than having a good time with a stranger.

And about those albums I don't have yet - my birthday is in March…

Us vs. "Them"

Where do we stand on the use of the “they” and “them” for third person singular? It seems that it’s becoming standard: “Each user must enter their username and their password.” In that sentence I would use “his:”

Each user must enter his username.

The problem obviously is a gender issue. We feel that “his” somehow excludes the females among us. I think that until some time recently it was generally conceded that “he,” “his,” etc were universal pronouns, and “she” was subsumed under “he.” In today’s world, this, apparently, will no longer do.

I have, of course, seen “she” used as a universal pronoun, but I will say no more about it.

There are unquestionably certain cases where the masculine would be awkward - books on marriage, for example. “Always remind your spouse how much you care for them.” Using “him” in this context suggests that the advice only applies to wives, while using “him or her” becomes onerous after a bit. At the same time, use of the gender-neutral can become silly. “If the patient is pregnant, they must tell the staff immediately.”

Then we get into collective nouns, like “company” and “group.” I often see things like “the company filed their annual report.” I don’t think so. “Company” is an “it,” not a “they.” But you have, say, “the board met on Monday morning, and they discussed the annual budget.” “It discussed the annual budget” doesn’t sound right at all. (Of course you could omit the pronoun altogether, but then I wouldn’t have my example.)

The group is touring North America. They are playing better than ever. Or “it” is playing better than ever?

And what about “everyone” and “everybody.” Both words are technically singular. “Everyone has one” not “everyone have one.”

Nothing wrong with “everyone has his favourite” but one will more often encounter “everyone has their favourite,” which, or course, brings us back to the use of singular “they.”

Or perhaps not. “Everyone left the building before the fire started, and he was glad he did” is grammatically correct, but downright silly. That leaves the grammatically neurotic among us wringing our hands; the only solution is to reframe the sentence: “Everyone left the building before the fire started, except one guy, who was too immersed in Strunk and White to notice.”

à louer

We got a message on our voicemail:

“Sorry the apartment is rented.”

Five words, no identity, no address.

This is what it’s like looking for a house in Montreal.

The first thing you have to do is decipher the classifieds. Each dwelling is identified by an esoteric number, meant to represent the number of rooms. So a bachelor may want a 2 ½ or a 3 ½ , a family will look for a 5 ½ or a 6 ½, depending of course on the number of people. In theory, a 6 ½ has 6 rooms, not counting the bathrooms. It could have 15 bathrooms – it’s still a 6 ½.

In reality of course there is usually no correlation between the number they give you in the ad and the actual number of rooms in the house. We look for a 7 ½ and up, but that’s just the start. These ads typically have very little information. What you see is:

7 ½ lower duplex, near Metro, appliances, unheated, July 1

No address, no rent. How many bedrooms? Garage? Basement?

And unheated. I love that. That doesn’t mean that there is no heat. Can’t have that in Canada. It means that the tenant pays for the heat. That’s good to know, but kind of meaningless where the rent isn’t stated.

So it’s to the phone we go. Make a list of possibilities, then start calling.

First, there are those who don’t return messages. I guess they’re not so eager to rent.

Then there are those who don’t know anything, or who can’t make arrangements for viewing.

“It’s my sister’s place; I really don’t know too much about it.”
“Can we see it?”
“I don’t know, I will have to call the tenant and see when she is home.”
“Could you call me back?”
“Of course not, that would be too easy wouldn’t it?”

And there are the landlords who refuse to tell you anything.

“Hi you have a duplex for rent?”
“Yes we do…”
“How many bedrooms?”
“How many people is it for?”
“It’s for my family. How many bedrooms are there?”
“How many people in your family?”
“Me and my wife and my kids. How many bedrooms?”
“How many kids?”
“How about if you let us come and see it?”
“How many people is it for?”

Not all ads are in the paper. Often there are signs on houses. I saw one such sign about 5 weeks ago. It said “à louer: 6 ½ or 3 ½.” That’s good I thought; we could take both. So I call up and the lady tells me Sorry the apartment is rented. Fair enough.

This past weekend I noticed a sign up that said “à louer: 6 ½ or 3 ½..” So I went home and called, and when I heard the voicemail I realized that it was the one I’d called before. So why were the signs still up I wondered. Could be the lease fell through. So anyway I left them a message and they did call back. Left us a message. “Sorry the apartment is rented.” It’s amazing that I actually knew to which “apartment” she was referring.

(That’s another thing. There is a breed of people out there who refer to all residential rental units as “apartments.” You could be renting Buckingham Palace; it’s a “apartment.”)

Sunday there was an ad for house with 2 units. And the lady on the phone gave me the address, and told me to come between 2 and 4. “There’s an open house” she said. She even gave me directions. This is too good I thought.

It was. I went at 2:30. The house existed, but there was no “for rent” (or “à louer”) sign, and nobody answered the door. Maybe I had the address wrong. I didn’t take the phone number with me – not too smart that. So I anyway I trooped up and down the street looking for the right house, and I came upon a house at the end of the block with a sign, 2 units. Maybe this is it. I knock. An old lady comes. She says no there is no open house. Can I look anyway? I’m here. She says how many people.

“For my family.”
"How many in your family?"
"Not too many. Can I see your house?"
"Not too many? How many?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know how many kids you have?"
"Some many be leaving home. We don't know yet. Can we see the house?"
“Where is your wife?”
“She ran off with the TV repairman. Now can I see your damned house???”
"I think it's too small for you......"