Sir-ly Keef

"I doubt they thought of offering me one," the 58-year-old [Richards] was quoted as saying. "Because they know what I would've said.... They knew I'd tell them where they could put it."

Right on, Keith! Nice to see there are still some of the old guard keeping the flame of rock 'n' roll alive. Not just the music, but the spirit.

Seems they're giving knighthoods out in Cracker Jacks boxes these days. I certainly value the contributions of the arts, and I admire the contributions of Paul McCartney, Elton John and Mick Jagger... but do they really deserve to be knighted? I would think there are many other people doing wonderful, selfless work for charity, toiling in the trenches, bringing food to the homeless, helping AIDs patients in their final days, etc. But I guess that's probably business as usual with the English class system.

When did celebrity become equated with accomplishment?

We pass out these honours so indiscriminately these days, it dilutes the significance of the honour. if half of Hollywood has a star on the Walk Of Fame, it ain't so much of an honour anymore. Oooh look, my star's next to Tim Allen's.

I'm waiting for them to bend the citizenship rules and offer Michael Jackson a knighthood. Was it Nero or Caligula who made his horse a Roman senator?
[by the way, did you see Michael accept what he thought was his "Artist Of The Millennium" award at the MTV Video awards? Mike, we're only 2 years into this millennium, or did you think it was for the previous millennium? He probably did. Here's a guy so divorced from reality he thinks shin guards are a fashion item.]

Man, did I wake up in a bad mood today or something?

Went to see the Flashing Lights last night at Lee's Palace, and they rocked!

Carry that weight

CBC News: Children suffer back pain because of computers

Okay, so this researcher in England studied the way kids use computer workstations, and he concludes that because workstations are designed for adults, this is causing back pain in kids:

"Buckle says his study of 2,000 youngsters found that 36 per cent of 11 to 14-year-olds suffer serious, ongoing back pain. He says the physical effects don't go away.

"The workforce of tomorrow is already damaged before starting the rigours of an adult working life."

Buckle's remarks are supported by a recent study by Cornell University in New York. The research examined children between the ages of eight to 11-and-a-half years old as they used computer workstations at school. Researchers discovered:

* students used monitors and keyboards that were too high
* many did not have hand or palm rests
* children sat either too far forward or too far back
* many lacked back support on their seats and others left their feet dangling

Buckle called for more user-friendly equipment for children. He'd also like to see ergonmic principles in place at schools."

Okay, I'm sure there are ergonomic issues there, but hel-lo! Spurious conclusion warning! Before the media splashed this study all over the newswires, did anyone think to ask Mr. Buckle, "uh, could back pain in kids possibly be caused by any other factors in their lifestyle? Like maybe that 100-lb back pack slung carelessly over their shoulders day-in, day-out for years?" Maybe things are different in England, but 'round here, some of these back packs are as big as the kids that are carrying them! And what do they put in there? Soldiers in full combat gear carry less shit than that!

I tell ya, if you're thinking of going into medical school, go into chiropractics. It's the growth industry of the future.

Anyway, I thought this was an interesting example of both "researcher tunnel vision" and media thought-paralysis.

Remembering/Connecting

Like everybody else, I've been thinking a lot about the 9/11 anniversary, and all that happened one year ago, and in the months since. I've already posted a satirical piece about the media coverage from The Onion. Today on Blogdex I came across this piece from Salon, Forbidden Thoughts About 9/11, which presents a different point of view. Some of these comments are truly abominable, but it's interesting to see them aired and considered.

But what really brings the tragedy of that day into perspective, is this page (thanks Mike W), which lists all the victims from the WTC towers, the Pentagon and Flight 93. It's a long list. Each name is a link ... in the HTML sense, and in the human sense ... and clicking on it gives you a picture of that person, a brief summary of who they were, and an area where people may leave messages, exchange information, thoughts and memories. Some of the messages are incredibly moving.

The list includes these 25 Canadians. And, of course, to that long, long list should be added the names of innocent Afghanis who have been needlessly killed in the past year. They are victims of this as much as anyone in NYC, Washington or Pennsylvania.

And then there's this gentleman: James Kelly, 39. Same name; virtually the same age.

Rest in peace, Jim.

P2P

If you've gone sour on Limewire, you might want to check out Acquisition, which is also a gnutella-based file-sharing app (if I understand these things correctly), but it seems to work a little better. I've been using it for a couple of days, and it seems okay. Sometimes I've had to give the search function a bit of a kick-start to get more results, but other than that it seems fine.

They also offer an Internet radio recorder called Radiofree, but I can't open the file once I've downloaded it. :-(

[Addendum: I should add that these apps are for Mac, and I believe for OS X only]

I never meta-blog I didn't like

I can't recall whether I ever mentioned my friend Katherine's piece on blogging that she did for CBC radio's Definitely Not The Opera. Now, thanks to Josh at crabwalk.com (who makes an appearance near the end of the piece), you can download the audio file. (It's a 11.5MB file, just so you're forewarned.)

Well, they are white

The White Stripes as you've never seen them.

(courtesy of my friend Mike at Randomness Personified)

Fryday

I was considering going to see Fred Eaglesmith tonight at the Horseshoe, but after I got home, I laid down for a nap, and when I woke up and started thinking about having to eat and shower, etc., etc., I just decided to stay in. And blog away the night!

It's just as well, 'cos I'll be having a busy Saturday, what with resuming the Search For Specs. Last weekend I tried a pair of frames at Rapp that were pretty cool. I'd like to hit a couple of more stores, and then make a decision and have it done with.

Besides, apart from apparently being alright for fighting, Saturday night's always a better night for going out. Much better rested.

So I'm gonna take some time tonight and just chill and relax. Gonna do something I almost never do anymoreósit back and listen to cool music under the headphones! I spent half my teenage existence in that state. Had an old swivel, high-backed padded chair in the rec room in the basement, which I could turn to the corner and escape into my own world with The Beatles, The Stones, Neil Young, Dylan, The Police, Bruce Cockburn, The Who, etc.

[ Isn't it great when the very thing that your parents said you were wasting your time with, turns out to be the way you ultimately make your living? :-j ]

Though tonight it may well be Wilco or Neko Case or The Flaming Lips or Beck or Nathan Wiley, whose CD "Bottom Dollar" I just picked up yesterday. I first heard of him when he beat out my friend Colleen Power for the East Coast version of CBC's Big Break contest. But I won't hold that against him, because his CD is pretty good. Check out the samples section on his website. The song Comeback is exquisitely heartbreaking. Plus, he's from my hometown in P.E.I.!

While you're at it, you can also listen to Colleen's songs streamed from her website too. Not just 30-second clips either, the whole damn song! Just click on the shingles. Yes by. You may have seen Colleen perform on the CBC broadcast of the most recent East Coast Music Awards, where she wore a very classy evening gown, or on Speaker's Corner, where she modeled her self-made duct tape dress.

Speaking of the Stones, the remastered reissues of their ABKCO catalogue (all their pre-"Sticky Fingers" albums up until "Let It Bleed" in 1969) are apparently in stores now, and I've heard they sound great.

But enough typy typy from meóI'm headin' under the phones!

Hinterland Who's Hooey

Though it is not widely known, at one time moose roamed the streets of Toronto. Most of these gentle giants are now gone, but another local species which was thought to be extinct, the rare albino squirrel of Parkdale, has recenty reappeared, and can be observedóif you're luckyófrolicking in its natural west-end habitat. For more information on moose and squiddel, contact Canadian Wildlife Federation. Ask for Boris or Natasia.

Tape up your ribs for this one

Found on the GTA Bloggers site, thanks to James and Neilóthis baffling and high-effin-larious item on Amazon.com. Be sure to read the reviews.

As James said "Is this a joke, or has Mattel committed the worst marketing mistake of this decade?"

Nekolepsi

Here's what Didi scooped at the Neko Case garage sale:

"At the sale I got a travel guide to Elvis Presley sites across the usa (but she gave this free), another book (but what was it?), a microwave cart, and a framed autographed promo item of Richard Buckner. Deanna Varagonna beat me to the Barbie liquor cabinet, probably just as well."

I always suspected Barbie was a boozer.

It has layers, like a ... uh, something layery

Irony may or may not be dead after 9/11, but irreverent satire is still alive and well and living in The Onion.

BoomDoggle

Some new drawings over at explodingdog.com, including this one. Hmmmm, looks like Sam's cat may be exerting some pressure behind the scenes. Expect future drawings with titles such as "The Day They Discovered Cats Really Do Run Things".

Ooooh, this one is amazing.

A Case Of Neko

I picked up Neko Case's latest CD, Blacklisted over the weekend, and so far it sounds pretty damn good. This time around Neko's taken on the bulk of the songwriting and plays several instruments, including guitar and drums. I think she learned to play the guitar in the last several years so she could write songs with it, and if that's the case, the proof is in the puddin'.

She's always had a great voice, but this set of songs makes me wish that she'd begun writing songs long before this. I'll qualify that by saying that I've only listened to it a few times, but I get the feeling I'm a-gonna just keep on liking it more and more. There's a great song called "Deep Red Bells", which has a Johnny-Cash-meets-David-Lynch thing goin' on, and another called "I Wish I Was The Moon", which is a wonderful expression of loneliness. So many great songs are built around the clear expression of one concept/idea/thought/feeling. Imagine, being so lonely that you would rather be the moon (surely the Maytag repairman of cellestial orbs). There's also a very nice cover of "Running Out Of Fools".

When I got home, I received an email from my friend Didi in Chicago (Neko's home base these days). I get a kick out of Didi. She tosses off the following as a casual aside in her email: "Oh yeah, Neko Case had a garage sale last week. She had some wacky stuff but I only ended up getting a few things. Beer was served, so its hard to imagine much profit!"

I have yet to receive a response to my reply, which went something like this: "What did you get?! What wacky stuff?! Tell me tell me tell me!" Stay tuned.

Didi is the centre of all musical coincidences (Chicago Chapter, est. 1997). One of the first CD reviews I ever wrote for Chart was for Liz Phair's Whitechocolatespaceegg, in which I utilized a confectionery analogy, something like "hard and crunchy outside, sweet and soft inside. Mmmmm." Turns out that Didi's family doctor is Liz's father. Doc Phair, Didi calls him. So D gives a copy of my review to the good Phair doctor, and he apparently said he'd pass it on to Liz. Only thing is, I learned afterwards that the title of the CD came to Liz when she first saw her son's head just after his birth. And here I am comparing her infant son's head to a yummy chocolate! Yeah, can't wait to run into her. "So you're the guy who wants to eat my son's head!" Bang!

Also, after I had turned Didi into a Rheostatics fan, she happened to end up in the same elevator as the band when they were in Chicago a few years ago. She apparently cornered Tim Vesley in the elevator and railed on for a while about how "Claire" is the greatest song ever written, etc. Poor Tim. I imagine those guys assumed they had a cloak of obscurity with them in Chicago, and all of a sudden they're trapped in an elevator with a crazy red-head ranting about "Claire".

There's some way to wrap this all up with something about "Life isn't Phair..." or "Claire de la lune" or something, and maybe if I worked on it for an hour, something would come to me, but I gotta go to bed, so I'll leave you to you own devices.

This is a nice blog... to poop on!

If you caught the MTV Video Awards the other night, then you probably saw the "brouhaha" when Triumph The Insult Comic Dog found himself and his gravity-stricken cigar in the middle of the tiff between Moby and Eminem (those poop-disturbers!) The subsequent message on TTICD's web page is pretty funny.

TRIUMPH'S MESSAGE TO HIS FANS
"I would like all of you to know that I am fine, that the scuffle at the MTV awards involving Eminem, Moby and Eminem's trusty friend who threw my pooping paper in the air did not result in permanent injury. As soon as Christina Aguilera came out, I licked myself as a test and my pink thing was perfectly functional. You will be glad to know that Moby also licked himself and all systems were go."
[ read more...]

People I met at a barbecue over the weekend were telling me how badly Guns N' Roses sucked on the awards show. They were the big surprise closing act, but it was just Axl Rose and a bunch of other facelessóliterallyóguys. I caught the rerun Sunday night, and my god, in the name of all that is good and holy... did he ever suck! He was horrible! That must have been the worst ever performance on an awards show. I never liked his screeching to begin with (he should have been banned from music for butchering Knockin' On Heaven's Door), but his completely off-key screeching was enough to try anyone's "patience". That is, when he wasn't sucking wind, trying to catch his breath. Mick Jagger is, what, 30 years older, but he would have made Axl look like a flat tire. Now that's embarassing.

I swear, I could literally hear the nails going into the coffin of Axl's career.

And before I go, let me just find one more excuse to use italics. Thank you.

Babylonandon Sistah

Got a nice shout out from Corina over at this Glenn Tilbrook fan site, regarding my blog entry about Glenn's wacky and fantastic Toronto show at the Horseshoe back in May. Hopefully that may spur some of the photographers from that night to send in their pics. I would love to have a visual momento from that gig.

Expecting More

It's late and I should be going to bed, but I have to blog about this before I forget.

Did two things tonight: First, I took my electric guitar in to Long & McQuade to get fixed. I was putting on a new set of slightly heavier strings last night, when the nut broke (that's the part at the end of the neck that saddles the strings before they go to the tuner pegs on the head stock). Thankfully, it's under warrantly for another month, so they'll fix it for free.

Then, I went to C'est What to catch the last installment of Girls With Guitars for a while (they resume in December), hosted by my friend Linda M. It was a nice evening of music with Linda and her guests Elana Harte and Dottie Cormier (Lorraine Segato had been sheduled but had to pull out the day of, due to an illness in the family).

Dottie, about 7 months pregnant, had arguably the best song of the night. It's a new song that she hasn't recorded yet. Being a responsible mom-to-be, she explained how her abstinence from alcohol had given her a certain clarity of mind. She noted that when some people quit booze, they find God. But she also noted the irony that Jesus turned water into wine. So the chorus of the song went like so:

God and liquor
They go hand-in-hand
When you're done dodging one
The other's there to understand

:-j

G'night!

My Definitions

Okay, sorry for all the talk of tumescence. Sometimes a theme just pops up, and you go with it.

On to bigger and bett... well, on to other things...

It's a big day here in Jimbuck2. The dawn of a new beginning. The launch of a fresh start. The virgin flight of a novel endeavour. The nascent birth of a still-wet-behind-the-ears enterprise. The dawn of a ... oh, wait, I used that one already... The howling proto-infancy... of ... um ... a non-old ... uh ... thing of the newest newness.

Yeah.

It's a (possibly) recurring feature I'm calling My Definitions. Enjoy.
------

My Definitions

Tumensance.
Definition: A state of intellectual arousal achieved only by geniuses.

Update

12:41 pm. Crotch seam holding, despite having to write copy for a Jessica Simpson CD. A victory for bachelor sewers everywhere!.

Crotchety Sew And Sew

Just waiting for a couple of pairs of pants in the dryer, and then I can go to bed. I had to sew up a hole in one of them, so I'm curious to see if my handiwork will hold up. While on the subway on my way to work last week, I suddenly noticed that I had a rather noticable hole in the crotch of my black Dockers (just below the zipper). However, it was only apparent if I sat with my legs wider than, say, 40 degrees apart, so I made it through the day without, um, revealing too much.

So, tonight, while I watched a Ken Burns-style documentary on the history of passenger trains, I sewed up the crotch tunnel until no light shone through. Let's hope that does the trick, or at the very least, should my stitchwork prove sub-par, let's hope that I don't have any overly lurid thoughts tomorrow. The centre may not hold.

Mental note to self: remember to wear underwear tomorrow.

Need For Read

I need something new to read. Just finished reading "A&R" by Bill Flanagan.

Flanagan is a music journalist who's written for Rolling Stone and other such publications. I had read a previous book of his, a bio on U2 called U2 - At The End Of The World, which I found quite engrossing. He had complete access to the band around the time leading up to and during the recording of their Achtung Baby album (still one of my faves) and ZooTV tour. It offered a real sense of behind-the-scenes access into the machinations of one of the biggest bands in the world (then in the process of reclaiming its cred).

"A&R" is a novel about the world of big record labelsóthe ethical abuses, the compromises, the power politics, the changing of the guard from the 1960s eccentric, swashbuckling pioneers (one character seems die-cast from Island Records founder Chris Blackwell) to the current reign of the bean-counters. Not a great work of literature, but a good read. Considering Flanagan's experience with the industry, it's also quite insightful.

But now what do I read? I think I feel like something a little mind-bending and perhaps a bit twisted. I'm thinking maybe something in the neighbourhood of Kurt Vonnegut. I've read "Breakfast Of Champions"ówhich I loved!óand, of course, "Slaughterhouse Five". Any suggestions? "Cat's Cradle"? "Timequake"?