Shit! Mr. Wrong plays the Cobalt, June 20th

Having expressed my dismay at feelin' I had to miss the Hanson Brothers gig because I didn't feel comfortable attending punk shows at the "new" Cobalt, I am even more deeply dismayed to see Mr. Wrong is having a gig there - not because I disapprove, but because, unlike the Hansons, whom I've seen several times, I've never ONCE seen a Mr. Wrong gig! I would LOVE to go to this show, but still don't feel right about attending shows at that particular venue. Shit!

Inner conflict is a bitch.

Give The Kinks their due

The other day, I was talking to a youthful music writer (one who shall remain nameless) and mentioned my excitement that Ray Davies is coming to town. The response was, "who?"

I mean, that makes me rather sad, actually - not just because it reminds me that I'm getting old, but because it suggests that Davies' name is nowhere as known nowadays as it should be. Personally, I consider Ray Davies a better songwriter than Pete Townshend, or the teams of Jagger and Richards and Lennon and McCartney; I certainly care more about the songs of The Kinks than those of The Who, Stones, or Beatles. Starting with Something Else, in 1967 (or maybe even Face to Face, in '66) the band released a string of  albums seldom equalled for pop craftsmanship anywhere, building to what I consider the single best rock album to come from Britain, ever, Muswell Hillbillies. Every song on that album is brilliant - but check out "Holiday" if you want a sample; or, if you're a tea drinker, try this. (These are two of the more playful songs, bear in mind, and really should be heard in the context of the album as a cohesive whole; they are NOT singles). And while another local music personality (who will also go nameless) quipped in conversation that Davies hasn't really done anything significant since 1971, when Muswell Hillbillies came out, I beg to differ. There are great songs throughout The Kinks' '70's and '80's material, even as the band entered their arena rock phase. Check out, for instance, "The Hard Way" and "No More Looking Back," from 1975's Schoolboys in Disgrace; granted, the album as a whole is nowhere as consistently brilliant as their streak from 1966/7-1971, but there's still a lot of charm to it, even on its lesser cuts. The same is true with Misfits (title track here - a bit maudlin, but sometimes maudlin is what you want); or Low Budget (check out "A Little Bit of Emotion" on that one). For more consistent brilliance, I'd direct listeners to 1981's Give the People What They Want, with songs ranging from the quasi-punk tongue-clucking of "Add It Up" to the painfully insightful "Yo Yo" to the downright creepy "Art Lover," sung from the point of view of a somewhat civilized pedophile in a park. Songs like "Better Things" are doing everything in 1981 that the Replacements would get recognition for from the next generation in 1985; to my eyes that tune sounds as fresh today as it did then (and speaking of the 'placemats, compare "Around the Dial" with "Left of the Dial"). And not many songs about domestic violence equal "A Little Bit of Abuse." Things do start go downhill after 1981, with annoying hit pop hits like "Come Dancin'," but even on that album, there's the great title track, "State of Confusion." Part of my love for The Kinks no doubt has to do with the fact that they always had a kind of underdog status, compared to the Who/ Beatles/ Stones, and part of it may have something to do with the fact that their songs (besides "Lola" and "You Really Got Me" and a few of their early singles, which truth be known I have little interest in) never got that much airplay, keeping them fresh and safe from the radio syndrome of repeating the same goddamn handful of songs over and over and over... but I also just think these are absolutely terrific pieces of pop craftsmanship. This is true, too, of Davies' recent solo stuff; check out "The Morphine Song" off Working Man's Cafe for an example. I don't see any members of the Stones/ Who or any surviving Beatles writing anything that strong, these days, or any other old timers. In fact - I can say this without hyperbole - I'm as excited to see Ray Davies as I am to see Neil Young; maybe even moreso, since tickets are about a quarter of the price, for a far more intimate venue. Even though Davies' last couple of albums have been less interesting, buying time and recycling Kinks classics in different formats, with choral accompaniment, on one, and with various musical guests on the most recent (ranging from the sensible, like Alex Chilton, to the embarrassing, like "You Really Got Me" with Metallica), Davies is a God of pop, and Vancouverites should be more excited that they're getting another chance to see him, July 13th at the Vogue. It'll be my first time seeing Davies sing any of these songs since I saw The Kinks on the Give the People What They Want tour at the Pacific Coliseum, when I was 13. I've missed a few of Davies' Vancouver performances since then, out of sheer neglectfulness, but I won't be missing this one.

By the way: RIP Pete Quaife. (I didn't note his passing in 2010 but it only seems right to mention it now).

Death in Maple Ridge

Excepting maybe five or six days a month when I go into the city to do business, meet friends, or see the odd concert or film, I look in on my mother every day. I cook her dinner (and mine, too - I almost always eat with her), help with clean-up, read her mail to her - she will likely never fully recover the language functions lost in her stroke - take care of her shopping and phone calls, and mostly keep her company. She isn't very social, isn't very inclined (unless there's a slot machine involved) to leave the apartment, so mostly we watch her favourite TV shows, or movies that I bring over. She favours courtroom movies, and loved And Justice For All, Trial By Jury, Runaway Jury, 12 Angry Men, Class Action, and so forth, though I will occasionally make her watch some weird movie that I want to see; she has very low tolerance for SF or horror, alas, considering most such films "ridiculous." Couldn't even get her into Close Encounters, the other week... After one or two movies, we listen to music mixes I made to accompany Scrabble games when my father was alive, mostly of oldies and country music that they grew up with, and play gin rummy, which, her math difficulties aside, she sometimes wins (I don't always try very hard to beat her but even when I do...). She's very sweet, very playful, very appreciative, and pretty much alone in the world besides me, with the exception of a friend she sometimes goes to casinos with. I take looking after her pretty seriously, and I actually think I do a pretty good job of it. She's getting by okay.

Every day, between my apartment and Mom's, I walk past a piece of graffiti on a fence, sprayed in white by a local youth, no doubt: the word "Death," in enormous white capitals. It is a hard thing to ignore, especially when you pass it by twice a day. At first it was a sort of cynical validation of  my lifelong feelings about this rather bleak little burg, a comment on the creative death that one finds here. Then it started to shift, becoming a reminder that Mom will not be with me much longer, and that - particularly given all the regrets I had after my father's death - I should treat her very, very well. Lately, though, when I walk past it, I feel like it's reminding me of my own inevitable death. Here I am, 44, overweight, single, pretty much jobless, at a considerable remove from my friends and the places and things that interest me.  Now that it seems my UBC experience is dead in the water - they never even officially wrote me to tell me that I wasn't being accepted to the MA program, despite six-for-six A+ grades, a substantial list of publications, and some amazing references - I have no clue what I want to do with my life, and I spend a third of my time looking after someone else's needs, which makes it very hard for me to get my own shit together. What about my own needs? What about me? How much longer am I going to be alive? (Unless I get a lot healthier, I'll be lucky to get another thirty years). Will I accomplish enough to feel like my being alive is vindicated? Will I actually get to experience a real love relationship, ever, in my life? (Because my relationships have been few and far between,  seldom very deep, and often measurable in weeks; and the sort of women I meet in Maple Ridge are somewhat uninspiring. Yet to meet a woman who was actually enthusiastic about being in a relationship with me, with the exception of one kind of scary one I won't discuss at length here). I don't really want to have kids, but it would be nice to be in a position to do so, which means being financially secure and in a position to take care of them properly; I'm starting to doubt that will ever happen, that I'll ever own my own home, have a wife, a dog, a child... When I die, there'll be nothing left of me but a few traces online and a big pile of (admittedly somewhat neat) shit to distribute between my friends and/or thrift stores (which is where about 1/3 of what I own came from in the first place, anyhow). Nevermind my regrets after my father died - what will my regrets be like when it's my time to go? 

Nowadays I actually get a little uncomfortable passing that piece of graffiti, truth be known. Things are starting to weigh on me, out here. 

Alberta Pipeline bust

BUSTED! (Me, that is. I hurriedly threw the above photo and the piece of writing below up on my blog without researching it properly; the photo is NOT from the recent Alberta spill. See comments section - someone has caught me in my carelessness. Still, I'll leave the photo and the text where they are...)

I mean not to disrespect copyright but to keep this photo online and make sure as many Canadians see it as possible. I'm not sure if it ran originally in the Huffington Post or in Common Ground magazine, but it depicts a spill from the pipeline the other day in Alberta; Common Ground posted it on Facebook and said it was quickly taken down, so I'm doing my duty as a Canadian and putting it up where I can: this blog.

Can't wait to get some of this action here in BC.

Prometheus: Wholly Engaging and Utterly Without Redeeming Value

Warning: the following piece of writing goes on for far too long. 

The remarkable thing about the first Alien film is that its makers seem very clearly (to me, anyhow) to have had nothing much on their minds. Whatever may be said about the film - that it deals with rape, capitalism, and/ or the menacing violence of the phallus, say - with the possible exceptions of H.R. Giger's self-consciously sexual design sensibility, or any borrowings that may have taken place from David Cronenberg's Shivers, one gets the impression that no one involved, from Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett to Ridley Scott, was consciously, intelligently TRYING to craft a story that was an allegory for anything. No: they were pretty clearly TRYING to tell a story about a bunch of people on a spacecraft being menaced by an alien, and not a whole lot more. However coherent an interpretation of a film might be arrived at after the fact of its making - and I fully grant that Alien is a rich, rich film to interpret - it's often ultimately like an interpretation of a dream; just because a dream has meaning and coherence doesn't mean that someone consciously planted it there. The stuff of dreams just swims up from the soup of your subconscious, often fully formed, and is greatly expanded upon and enriched by interpretation after the fact. While there are storytellers - often cinema's more serious artists, like Cronenberg - who operate in a different way, beginning with ideas and crafting stories to expand upon and explore them - the vast majority of meanings in stories likely emerge far more by accident than design, especially in genre cinema. Anyone who has ever written anything without realizing what they were writing about until they read it back knows how this stuff works; it's a testament to the richness of human creativity that it does. Surrealists invested a vast amount of time and energy trying to create works of art - or to find methods of creating the same - that directly tapped into the subconscious, but all you really need to do is to tell a story and not think too much about what it means, and let the meaning emerge naturally, as a bi-product. Alien is the perfect example of this; no matter how rich an interpretation of the film one arrives at, one would be foolish to give Ridley Scott, or Dan O'Bannon, or Ronald Shusett a whole lot of credit for it (or to hold them too much to task, if one's reading of the film happens to be negative).They weren't TRYING to say a damn thing with Alien, but produced a very meaningful, provocative, and enduring piece of cinema nonetheless. Neat how that works, eh?

The main trouble with Prometheus is that the film TRIES to engage in conscious meaning making more or less from the outset. It strains, it struggles, it strives to pack its narrative with allegorical import. It announces at every turn that it is a film about the origins of life; about the need for faith; about the questing nature of science; and about the nature of death, destruction, and self-sacrifice. It does this in part by having pretty much all of these themes come up in explicit conversation (because visually, there aren't many new ideas here beyond Giger's; there are some cool bits of imaginary technology, but that's about all). It invests great import in certain loaded symbols, too, like the crucifix worn by the main scientist (Noomi Rapace, of the original Swedish Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels). Finally, in keeping with a film about serious themes, it creates a somber mood and underscores its portent with a heavy, brooding, dramatic score. One reason it does all this is presumably because Ridley Scott has been somehow along the way been mistaken for an "important" filmmaker with things to say, and therefore is expected to make an important film (I have said elsewhere that I'm presently more interested in his brother, Tony's, films, because while they are often asinine, they are at least completely devoid of pretense). Another might be because someone somewhere feels the need to justify the existence of the story, by making it seem like it is about something - likely because they figure they can convince more people to pay to see it, that way. All of this is very different from having an IDEA that you wish to impart, however. Wanting to SEEM like you  have something to say and HAVING SOMETHING TO SAY are two very different things indeed, just like TRYING to do something and DOING it are kind of antithetical. While in Alien, meaning emerges naturally in spite of the lack of an intelligent designer, in Prometheus, meaning cannot emerge naturally because several not-so-intelligent designers - including Ridley Scott and the writing team of Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof, one of whom was involved in the similarly manipulative Lost - are striving at every juncture to create the illusion of meaning, to, essentially, fake it, to dupe the audience into believing that they're seeing something of value. This striving to fake meaning does nothing but inhibit any natural human creativity or spontaneous access to the subconscious that can emerge through the act of storytelling; it creates, in fact, a kind of oppressive miasma around Prometheus, a heavy-handed seriousness in no way justified by any coherent interpretation that may be made of the film (least as far as *I* can see). As the saying goes, "if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit" - or better yet, make them THINK you're brilliant, while having absolutely not one fucking thing to say.

If anything, what Prometheus seems to be "about" in fact has less to do with the origins of life, the need for faith, or so forth, but the conditions of production and reception of the film. Besides needing to seem like it has something on its mind when it doesn't, and thus perpetuate the illusion that Ridley Scott is some sort of serious artist or  auteur, which is patently not the case, the film has to fulfill at least three functions, as part of the income-generating process it is caught up in: to give the audience an immersive, engaging cinematic experience that they will recommend to others; to set up, like the recent prequel to The Thing, the circumstances that we encounter in the first Alien movie; and to justify a franchise to follow.


Prometheus succeeds spectacularly on the first and third counts; aside from exactly one jackass who kept checking his cellphone, creating a little blue pocket of light around him in the midst of the multiplex, the rather large opening weekend audience was as rapt and attentive throughout the film as any I have seen. I was in a position to know, because I sat in the very back row, and could observe them: for the most part, they did not chat, rustle their popcorn, get up to go to the washroom, laugh at inappropriate points, snore, make out, or do anything to suggest impatience, derision, or distraction. Through the 124 minute runtime, they sat in utter attentive silence, completely captured by the film, watching to see where it would go, meeting it in good faith with all their faculties, hoping their investment would be rewarded. Insofar as I heard no one but myself, when I told the people I was with that I thought the film was crap, say anything negative on emerging from the theatre - everybody seemed to have liked it - I have to acknowledge that Prometheus does succeed on some level. Even I found it interesting to look at. The production design, superb 3D effects, and the skill with which the film is crafted should all be applauded. There are also interesting creatures and a talented cast, including various lesser-known actors that more devoted cinema buffs will recognize, like Sean Harris (the superbly reptilian junkie drug dealer in Harry Brown) or Red Road's Kate Dickie, who goes somewhat to waste. There's also a high profile role for Michael Fassbender, who seems so prodigiously talented in films made by Steve McQueen that I fail to understand why I've yet to really like him in anything by anyone else. Mostly, though, suspense is created in the film by continually deferring payoffs, by putting characters in situations neither we nor they understand, then failing to explain them in any satisfying way. Weird things happen; we don't know what they mean; we are compelled to want to investigate further, with the crew of the ship (also investigators) as our representatives; and our investigations are often only rewarded with more weird stuff, more questions, more deferrals.

This is also, alas, how the film sets up its following franchise: just when you think the film might actually explain why the hell you've been watching it, to answer some of the questions its posed, it defers coming to any resolution, ending in such a way that the words "To Be Continued" could easily have popped onto the screen, if people still did that. In short, the film builds suspense for two hours, then cops out; people who don't want to feel ripped off will thus have to go see the second film - good money after bad - to see if it all amounts to anything. That's showbiz.

Other than by being a fake, contrived, if brilliantly executed piece of crap, there are various other levels on which Prometheus fails. Perhaps the strangest of these - lessons could be learned from The Thing prequel, here - is that after spending two hours setting up the circumstances where we might find the dead alien "pilot" of the craft that the crew of Alien explore, the film seems to forget utterly what it's been doing, and changes the location where said alien dies. This is a puzzlingly incompetent move, but perhaps the people behind Prometheus have such a low estimate of the intelligence of their audience that they don't think anyone will notice? I'm sure I won't be alone, here, though. There are also various questions of plausibility. Throughout the film, the scientists chosen for the film's deep space mission behave pretty much with all the intelligence and caution of camp counsellors in a slasher film, doing all sorts of things that are obviously stupid, if nonetheless helpful in propelling the story forward. The first alien attack of the film occurs, for instance, when someone decides to touch a creature that appears about which he knows absolutely nothing. Supposed scientists further take off their helmets in alien environments without checking for contagion, wander off and get lost, and do various other things to hasten their demise, which we observe without feeling much interest in what's happening to them - it feels just like "stuff that happens in movies," lacking any particular human drama. In some cases, they experience transformations which are never explained, as with one character who suddenly turns up, after having been left for dead, seemingly grown in stature and able to breathe the supposedly toxic atmosphere of the planet he's on. The film's incompetence in creating characters we believe or care about is perhaps best exemplified by the scientist played by Noomi Rapace, who is driven in part (we come to understand) by the death of her parents (or such) and her desire to believe in some sort of God; though we are given all of this information and set up to understand that the cross around her neck is significant to her, none of it seems like anything more than details that might emerge in a "how to create a character" workshop in an undergraduate screenwriting course. The film fails utterly in making her seem believably human or interesting; it might be important to her, at one point, that she find a crucifix she's had taken from her, but it surely won't be important to anyone watching the film, except insofar as it leads her, predictably, into danger.

Tellingly, the only character that the filmmakers seem to have any genuine interest in or liking for is Fassbender's android, who, because he is the character most obviously driven by sheer amoral curiosity, is perhaps the best analog in the film for its ideal viewer - someone who doesn't care much what the meaning or value of anything is, as long as it is interesting. It fits that we see more of the film through the android's eyes than the protagonist's, because like an android, Prometheus itself is a soullessly mechanical creation. It is almost offensive that so cold and indifferent a product presumes to somehow deal with the origins and meaning of human life - except this paradox is also the most interesting thing about the movie, the level where maybe meaning really does start to creep into the film, unobserved by the non-authors at the helm. If Prometheus is about anything, it's about how cinema these days tends to look at the world through eyes that have no soul behind them, about how the human capacity for meaning making and understanding is gradually being replaced by commerce and technology, at least insofar as cinema is concerned. As Romy Schneider's character says of TV in Death Watch, it's a world where everything is interesting, and nothing matters (except, of course, making money). The image from the film above is perhaps the key one in the film - and even it betrays a certain incoherence in Prometheus, since Fassbender's android is supposed to be completely devoid of emotions, but shows wonder and excitement at various points in the film.

Prometheus is  interesting, entertaining, and enjoyable as an immersive film experience. It is also depressing, vacuous, and cynical - a fake story, told by fake storytellers, who really only want your money, while pretending to care about so much more. While attendees of the multiplex may not realize this, such cynical vacuity is not, in fact, a necessary precondition to the cinema transaction. There are films out there that really ARE about important issues, filmmakers for whom meaning-making and storytelling are not simply a pretext for separating you from your dollars. One such film, for instance, is David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, which opened on the same day as Prometheus. Maybe you should consider going to see it, instead? It's better for you, believe me, even if you'll probably have more fun at Prometheus.

You ever feel like you've been cheated?

AFTERWORD: Tom Charity sends this link to a very funny working through of some of Prometheus' incoherences.

Cosmopolis mini-review

Just for the record, I thought Cosmopolis a remarkable, finely crafted, and thought-provoking film, and very, very interesting when viewed in light of Cronenberg's body of work; for all his faithfulness to DeLillo's text, he's made it his own, and the film will be very rewarding to anyone who has thought in depth about the themes and motifs in his earlier films. There's even what seems to be a deliberate backwards-looking element to the film, a conscious evocation of Cronenberg's previous cinema, with music designed to remind one of Crash, a title sequence that does with abstract expressionism what Spider did with mold, an old-fashioned barbershop at the film's climax that suggests Eastern Promises, and an intense engagement with language that brings to mind Stereo. In ways, it would be a perfect film for the director to retire on, though I hope he has no plans to do anything of the sort. Be prepared to do mental work, however, if you see it; lazy viewing (a passive desire to be entertained) will not be rewarded, and it IS a talky film. And it's dark - very much a film about (if I can presume to give a mild thematic spoiler) death and the death instinct. The Straight title for Ken Eisner's pan of the film describes it as "a long drive to nowhere," but that's kind of the point - the film to me seems less a failed political allegory than a (mostly*) successful allegory for human life, and the ways in which we go to meet our death. The trappings of politics are everywhere, but may be a bit of a red herring - the relentlessly slow creep of the limousine forward is more the to the point than what we see going on on either side of the window...

However, I don't really understand the point of reviewing the film, since anyone I imagine caring about Cronenberg's cinema will see it and be rewarded (certainly the friends I was with all enjoyed it, and our conversation afterwards was animated indeed). If you like idea-rich, carefully crafted films, Cosmopolis is for you; if not, why are you even reading about it? ...Truth is, my head has been so deeply plunged in Cronenberg's peculiar cinematic orifice in recent months that I have no idea at this point how to address a reader who is not of that mindframe; I can in no way be "objective" about this film.

...and really, why would I want to be? This is the latest work by Canada's most important filmmaker. It is very  much of a piece with his corpus, which is a welcome relief with the not-very-inspired or particularly Cronenbergian walk-through of A Dangerous Method. That film I have not yet been able to bring myself to revisit; Cosmopolis I am eager to see again, soon. The only question with this film, as with any true work of cinematic art, is not so much of it being a "good or bad movie" as much as it is about our being good or bad viewers: the burden is on us, and it's been obvious for years that Vancouverites as a population (with obvious exceptions) are failing that particular test, so...

*(I say mostly because I actually think the final scenes with Paul Giamatti needed to be trimmed a bit, as they go on at such length that they diminish the impact of the scene, risk losing the attention of the viewer. Nowhere else did I feel this in the film, but at the end - an important point in a film! - I admit that I did. Maybe on subsequent viewings these scenes will play better, however...)

Neil Young and Crazy Horse live in Japan 2001

I've only ever seen Neil Young once, with Crazy Horse at the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan in 2001. The three day fest was almost more of an ordeal than it was worth - it was dusty as hell, camping was really uncomfortable, and the water for the showers was piped in direct from the mountain rivers. Despite Patti Smith's earnest onstage prayers to "beautiful Mount Fuji" in her run-up to "Rock'n'Roll Nigger," the Fuji Rock Festival has long been located in the mountains of Niigata, at the Naeba Ski Resort, and trust me, even in July, the water coming down from the mountains there is fucking cold. Any westerners, including myself, tended to scream when the blast first hit (the young Japanese men in the lineup were far more stoic when their turns came). It was so uncomfortable that when the then-unknown duo of Tegan and Sara, doing an opening set in a side tent, joked between-songs to the audience about how it must suck that we had to camp, because *they* were staying in a hotel, I gave them the finger over my shoulder as I walked out, homegirls or not. I missed several bands that I was curious about (Oasis, Tool) either because I was sick with fatigue in my tent or was at another stage where something more important to me was going on. I even got a horrific sunburn on my left thigh when I fell asleep in shorts while the Boredoms were doing a kind of uninteresting daytime rave thing. None of this would matter if I cared about every single band on the lineup, but at least some of them (like Stereophonics), were, I thought, quite thoroughly mediocre, in a why-the-fuck-are-these-guys-successful kind of way. Best of all, I had to spend something like $500, all told - for the tent, transportation, wristband, and so forth - for the privilege of being there. Even with generous JET Programme paycheques, that was a bit of a hit to the pocket.

All the same, there were highlights. I got to see the excellent Japanese reggae band Dry & Heavy at the show where their bassist, Heavy, announced to a shocked crowd that he was leaving; a friendly Japanese hippie-dude delighted by my white-guy approval of Dry & Heavy's music helpfully translated the announcement, which, coming at the end of their concert, sent a real shockwave through the crowd, a huge collective gasp/moan rising up into the dust. Earlier that afternoon, I'd discovered in the sunlit field in front of the main stage that what I'd read online was true, that dragonflies were so plentiful that if you stuck a finger into the air, one would presently land on it. Seeing Patti Smith was a treat, of course, and I got to see the full set by System of a Down, which was pretty impressive, even though I was still in my anti-metal phase then and resistant. Watching what a weird performer Alanis Morissette was (she spent most of her set seeming to hide behind her hair) had its interesting moments, too, as did the enthusiastic Japanese reception of the Hothouse Flowers. They seemed even then to have been forgotten most everywhere else, but Japanese girls flocked to pose with the obliging singer for photos, afterwards. There were other weird details - like passing checkpoints manned by enormous black US military dudes hired as security for maximum intimidation value; I don't get to see that many African American people in Vancouver, and when they're seven feet tall, five feet wide, and talking in Ebonics, it makes an impression. I can remember the Thai noodle soup (with plentiful cilantro) from one vendor, and gawking in horror on the last day at an enormous mountain of plastic bottles piled up in one field by the cleanup crew (and no doubt, because this was Japan, slated for burning). Best of all was getting to see Brian Eno do a rare live set, mostly of instrumental material that would be shaped into the Drawn from Life album, but closing on a welcome rendition of "No One Receiving," with Eno singing, which was a privilege indeed to see. I remember still the feeling, dancing with my eyes closed to Eno's music, imagining myself a happy sperm wriggling my way towards the light...

And then there was Neil Young and Crazy Horse.

I've revered Neil Young and Crazy Horse since I was a teenager. During my teen punk years, when I sold off all my classic rock because it was "too status quo," as far as I remember, I kept Re*Ac*Tor and Everybody Knows This is Nowhere and Rust Never Sleeps (I hadn't found out about Zuma yet). In fact, getting to see Crazy Horse live after some twenty years of fandom was such a big deal for me that it nearly ruined the experience: I was so intent on reality checking myself and critiquing my reactions, trying to find the appropriate mindframe to FOCUS from, that it was almost like I missed the set; my own self-consciousness took away from my ability to be present. (Marijuana would have been really useful, in fact, but is massively taboo in Japan, and I avoided it all the time that I was there. Some Japanese kid was smoking it in front of me, I remember, but he couldn't handle it at all and ended up sitting on the ground in the midst of the crowd, where he remained the whole show. No way was I going to try to get a hit off THAT joint!). Scanning the various songs that I can find online, in fact, I'm surprised to see some I've forgotten completely - like this stunning version of "Hey Hey My My." (I confess to pausing the video during the various crowd shots to see if my face is visible, but it isn't). I have a bit more recollection of "Tonight's The Night," and dim recollections of a Crazy-Horse-less acoustic digression that Neil took, mid-concert, doing, I think, "The Needle and the Damage Done," "From Hank to Hendrix," and other songs - like a few new ones that would pop up on Are You Passionate? - that I didn't really need to hear at a Crazy Horse show. I confess to further being disappointed that they didn't do "Cortez the Killer," which, in the realms of what can be called classic rock, is probably my favourite song. The 10-minute-plus closer of "Like a Hurricane" was amazing, however; I was standing near enough to the stage to see the wax in those huge candles sputtering as they melted down. For some odd reason, though, the song that really stood out, maybe because before seeing it live I thought it kind of a throwaway, was "Piece of Crap." They did it earlier in the night, and they pumped up not only the audience's energy, but their own; it made that song come vividly alive for me in a very exciting way,which had the dual effect of lodging it in my mind. It blows me away to discover that I can re-visit most of the show anytime I want on Youtube. (And once this torrent finishes, any time I want on TV, too...).

Tickets go on sale for Neil Young and Crazy Horse next Thursday, apparently. In no way can I afford to go to this, but if I can get a ticket, I suspect I shall... This is one experience I don't want to miss - it's not like there'll be a lot of other opportunities.

Jeezus

Sigh. A human hand and foot were apparently mailed to two Vancouver schools; the news story linked gives no indication if these are parts missing from the Lin fellow who was killed in Montreal. Meanwhile, there have been numerous killings in my rather sleepy town in recent weeks, of both humans and cats, some altogether too close for my comfort. Seems like a good time to become a shut-in.

My Current Plenty of Fish Profile

Currently running under the title "Of boob shots, self-contradiction, & the internet" (if more space were available to me, that last bit would read, "& the erotic life of Ernest Borgnine"):

Ah,ladies. Such odd creatures you are. Less tediously single-minded than we men, I know, but still... I wish I'd kept a count of PoF profiles I've seen by women who have placed themselves in the "Intimate Encounters" section then included a proviso that the man emailing them "must not have contacted anyone about Intimate Encounters or sex." It always reminds me about the Woody Allen line about not wanting to belong to any club that would have someone like oneself for a member. Seldom do such blatant contradictions occur in nature: smoke from frying circuitry could emit from a man's ears from just trying to contemplate such things...

 ...and then there are the women who are looking for a long term relationship while posting enormous boob shots of themselves on their profile, sometimes as their main picture (and often also imposing the "no sex" filter mentioned above). As much as I love a good boob shot, just for the record, unless you REALLY HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO LEAD WITH, ladies - unless you have no personality, wit, natural charm, or so forth with which to spice up your profile - a boob shot in a "long term relationship" profile likely says one of three things to most men, no matter how horny we may be: that you have a very low opinion of MEN (ie., you figure we're all just horny morons who will do anything for anyone if the boobs are big enough); that you have a very low opinion of yourself; or that you are very, very lazy. Exceptions exist, but in most cases, this is where men will go, unless maybe you look like Don Rickles, in which case, boob shots are forgiven and not a bad idea. Otherwise, since no man in his right mind would want to get serious with a woman with a low opinion of men or herself - or with someone who is very very lazy - you will likely attract only three types of men with such a profile: predators who want to take advantage of you, the broken and desperate, or people as lazy and without character as you've made your own profile seem... In all cases, a recipe for disaster and disappointment, if what you really want is love.

 None of this applies, I must emphasize, to any horny women out there in PoF-land who are advertising their assets for all to see, because they want a quick lay, a discreet affair, a FWB, or an online masturbatory partner with typing skills, or such. In these cases, by all means, stick your boobs out there, it makes perfect sense and will get you exactly the sort of attention you seek. YGG, and all that. Boob shots are also, I should add, entirely forgiven if part of an overall aesthetic that warrants them (Goth/metal/punk girls especially - if you're covered in tattoos, dressed in leather and fishnets, have ambitions to succeed as a burlesque dancer, and your idea of a dream man is Lux Interior, by all means, stick those mammaries out there!). For all you STRAIGHT girls, though - you lonely, normal ordinaries looking here for love, 'specially if you're over age 25 - heed my advice here, and do NOT bare any significant portion of your cleavage and hope to attract a man who is actually serious about you, who might actually want to be BE with you long-term. We just aren't MADE like that - honestly! For a SERIOUS MAN, what you have under your bra is VERY VERY FAR DOWN THE LIST OF THINGS HE'S LOOKING FOR IN A LIFE PARTNER, after common interests, compatible values, a sense of humour and an interesting character. Hell, even good hygiene and adequate spelling come before bra capacity, on my checklist; if you have a huge chest, but spell "truly" with an "e" - regardless of where you put it - just see how far I'm willing to go with you... If you want to attract a solid, sane, intelligent, and well-grounded male as a mate, who actually takes you seriously and treats you respectfully, then for your own sake, WRITE A PROFILE THAT SPEAKS TO SUCH A PERSON. Save the boobs for later. We adult males have a pretty good sense of what boobs look like and can wait to see yours, if you actually interest us.

Of course, we men are not without our contradictions, as well. You might want to bear in mind that when you encounter him online, even said serious man may be masturbating, or considering it, or just wiping up, or such, because (alas) unless he has some computer-oriented job or such, if he's single, that's probably what he's doing at least half the time he's on his computer, including when he's on dating sites. As frustrating as it is to be corralled by endlessly, mindlessly, brainlessly horny men, be prepared to forgive him that, okay? Or to simply ignore it: because the internet happens to be a vast autoerotic paradise for us guys (see, in this regard, the South Park "Over Logging" episode). Even the most serious and committed of us, unless he's getting laid regularly or is deep in the grips of some weird new age philosophy about saving his seed as a pathway to enlightenment or salvation (- a definite minority of men and probably not who you're looking for as a partner) masturbates a few times a week, and odds are (unless he has a very large stack of magazines under his bed and a very slow internet connection, OR has a vastly less visually-attuned sexuality than the average man) is probably doing his masturbating in the very chair where he is seated when typing “hello” to you (presuming he has a desktop). You can’t escape this, you can’t deny it, you can’t avoid it - so find a way to play past it. Hell, even Ernest Borgnine, in his 90s, has said that the secret to his youthfulness - look this one up online - is that he masturbates a lot, AND HE'S IN HIS 90s! (I wonder what he masturbates to? No, cancel that thought. Just as well not to know. But I’d lay odds that whatever it is, he’s finding it online. YGE!).

Do NOT make the mistake of presuming, however, that because a man is horny, is in the Intimate Encounters category, or masturbating when you find him online, that he's not capable of or interested in a relationship. This is a very common mistake, and the reason "no sex" filters are foolish indeed. If a man is approaching you on that level, what it really means is, he didn't really see anything else in your profile that interested him besides the prospect of sex. Take it not as a comment on him - because he may be approaching women OTHER THAN YOU about long term relationships. Take it AS A COMMENT ON YOUR PROFILE. He probably saw the boob shot, yawned, and thought to himself, “well, there’s nothing much going on HERE… but I wonder if she puts out?” Are you catching on yet? The secret to attracting a serious, interesting man is, be serious and interesting yourself. (Are you familiar with the concept of GIGO?) You want an exceptional man, put some work into being exceptional yourself, and make your profile exceptional, too. Appealing as your cleavage may be, it may just be the WRONG BAIT, depending on what you're looking for.

 End rant!

Green Chalk Can Taste Like Hippies: In which Robin Bougie makes me cry with laughter

Robin (of Cinema Sewer) didn't make this video, but he posted a link to it on Facebook today (yes, I do actually spend some time on Facebook these days). For fans of Soramimi Kashi, which I wrote about here, this does the same thing, at great length, with Carl Orff's "Oh Fortuna" - which some helpful Youtuber has added the real lyrics for, here. About the time they start trying to fit the octopus with boots, I was in danger of peeing myself. I must now go and figure out how to use the Facebook "share" function.

Metal night at the Astoria, featuring Scythia!

I'm planning a large-ish piece on folk metal, involving last years' Scythia, Arkona, and Korpiklaani concert in Vancouver, but there's still stuff in the way of it. Still, anyone with a fondness for D&D, (non-sexual) fantasy role playing, or tuneful, playfully presented, shamelessly geeky and sincere metal, who might want to see it played by people in cool costumes (including a fetching female oboe player, Morgan Zentner, to the left in the above photo) should check out the Astoria tonight (ie., Saturday, June 2nd), where Scythia - whom I interviewed for the Straight here - will perform with Cradle to Grave, Aeterna, and Nanaimo Viking metal band Eye of Odin (none of whom I have yet checked out, but presume are all fine bands in their own right - I didn't even know we HAD any Viking metal in BC). Scythia have been incorporating some folky Quebec reels into their metal, which is a really appealing and pleasing move, by me - I'm totally jealous of bands like Arkona and Korpiklaani who can draw on their own people's pagan heritage while leaving us North Americans with LARPing and Tolkein or at fantasy reconstructions of our somewhat distant ancestry before the emigration to North America took place, so seeing *actual, indisputable Canadian content* in a metal show - even if it's French Canadian! - does my heart some good. Proceeds to the Richmond Animal Protection Society - Scythia's Dave Khan, in the press release, says the band is "stoked to rock out for an honourable cause like animals. A huge inspiration for our breed of folk metal is having a symbiosis with animals and nature... Especially bears, but dogs and cats are awesome as well."

Miami cannibal high on bath salts?

I always thought there was a movie to be made adapting an old Eerie story called "Night of the Jackass," about a drug that turns people into homicidal monsters. Disturbingly, the recent face-eater in the news appears to have been smoking a new drug called bath salts, which triggered his violent episode (when I first read the headline I thought he'd been sent over the edge by mere bathing). An actual user of the drug describes the effects here. When real life begins resembling an Eerie comic...

By the way -

- Cronenberg's Cosmopolis opens in Vancouver June 8th.

Edit: I said July 8th, previously. Sorry to mislead y'all. It opens NEXT FRIDAY, folks. Yay.

More Bats

Lee Shoal of the Creaking Planks shares this useful Yukon instruction manual for "building a bat nursery home."   If only building bat houses could help the bats of Maple Ridge! There have to be some bats LEFT before you can house them; from my Googling, it seems like many bat species in North America are threatened with extinction, or at least a massive depletion in numbers. First bees, then bats... does anyone detect a very scary pattern, here?

By the way, inspired by the bats of Japan, which I frequently saw when riding my (three-wheeled) bicycle home from the school where I taught, I wrote a lyric years ago that I would love to see adapted into a country or bluegrass song, if anyone wants to do it. Get in touch and I'll sing it to you, so you know the tune (I want to know it's found a good home). There should be a fiddle or a banjo in your band, to make this work properly:

If I Was a Bat
by Allan MacInnis

If I was a bat, lord, if I was a bat
I'd eat lots of mosquitoes
Til I got really fat
I'd come out in the evening
And fly around so free
If I was a bat, girl, would you still love me?

If I was a bat,
I guess I would be blind
to all your imperfections
or at least I wouldn't mind
I'd hear your voice ring clearer
for all I could not see
If I was a bat, girl, would you still love me?

If I was a bat
I'd fly by every night
I'd hang outside your window
Til it started to get light
Then I'd creep into your attic
And sleep so safe and sound
If I was a bat, would you let me hang around?

If I was
If I was
If I was a bat
If I was a bat
How would you feel 'bout that?

Upcoming Vancouver arthouse fare

Many interesting Iranian films playing the Vancity Theatre soon - the most celebrated of which, This is Not a Film, is Jafar Panahi's response to being forbidden to make films by the Iranian government. Haven't seen it yet;  the one that I have seen that's upcoming, which impressed me greatly, was The White Meadows, a symbolically rich, beautifully photographed, highly poetic film that brought Cocteau to mind; a more thorough and revealing piece of writing on it can be found here, though western audiences may not be as attuned to the film's political allegories as that writer (I've seen some cinema blogger online likening it to Jodorowsky, which says more about the person writing it than the film, but it is quite a surreal trip of a film, so it's not like I don't understand where said writer was comin' from). A few interesting one-offs coming up, too, like Kurosawa Akira's stunning, richly cinematic black and white adaptation of Macbeth, Throne of Blood. (Rather than trying to translate Shakespeare into Japanese, Kurosawa lets the images tell the story, which is a very, very good idea). There's also a screening of Apocalypse Now next Tuesday, recently abused by me in my Pink Floyd post, below (like "Comfortably Numb" and Dark Side of the Moon - or like the other most over-represented, over-emphasized, over-marketed film in recent history, Blade Runner - it's a piece of cultural product that I think needs to be locked away in a bunker for at least a decade, so people have a chance to experience other films and so that it can regain a little freshness. Clearly Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, the Cinema Salon presenter, disagrees). More surprisingly, there's also a series of Bobcat Goldthwait films, including one based on a recent standup routine. I didn't like the one Goldthwait directorial effort that I saw, the rather cruel/ maudlin World's Greatest Dad, starring Robin Williams as a father trying to cover up the fact that his son has hanged himself in an act of autoerotic asphyxia, but maybe I shouldn't have watched it with my Mom. All the same, Shakes the Clown has enough of a reputation that I'm curious, and God Bless America really does sound like a movie after my misanthropic heart, so...

Meantime at the Cinematheque - I missed plugging the Highway 61 night and the opportunity to repeat the anecdote about how I once got Art Bergmann to sign a rental copy of the VHS at the Maple Ridge Rogers Video where I worked. Those sore about missing this wonderful film (and the various short tributes constructed to it) can console themselves by catching the new 35mm print of Bruce McDonald's most celebrated movie, Hard Core Logo, tomorrow and the next night - a must-see for anyone interested in Vancouver punk, and a delightful, character driven comedy-drama to boot, brilliantly shot by local cinematographer and former Spores singer Danny Nowak (for some reason the only Spores song on Youtube is their Christmas putdown, but if you don't own News Weather and Spores, you're missing out. The Spores at their best combine a love of horror movies with punk politics and really crafty instrumentation; many members of the band continue to play together as part of Aging Youth Gang).  To be honest - having seen Hard Core Logo more times than I can count, and even having caught the live theatrical adaptation of it last year - I don't really need to see it again for a looooong time (though unlike with Apocalypse Now, I don't wish to condemn it to a locked door; it's not like EVERYBODY has seen it yet). Personally, tho', I'm much more curious about the Alexei Gherman series, as I'm assured by a Russian cinephile friend that he's a masterful filmmaker, honest to the point of being cruel and brutal; she suggested I seek him out when she discovered my passions for Cassavetes and Ingmar Bergman, which is more than enough to get me curious. These are films Vancouver cineastes will likely have few opportunities to see otherwise - I'm sure many of them are unavailable on DVD. By comparison, Hard Core Logo - hell, I bet it plays the Rio at midnight at least once a year, eh?

I don't know a single one of the Kibatsu cinema films this year, though there are always gems in that series. I'm more excited about the Jan Svankmajer retrospective coming later this summer, since - I confess - I have seen far fewer of Svankmajer's films than I should. Rather than trying to explain what he's up to as a filmmaker, though, may I direct y'all to Darkness Light Darkness on Youtube - a 7 minute film that I guarantee will make an impression on you...? The above image is also from a Svankmajer film, but not that one. The man is a genius of cinema whom I have yet to fully wrap my head around; it may prove impossible to do so...

Yet More Vancouver Store Closures and Sales: sad news that YOU can take advantage of!

Al at Carson Books

Some of y'all might be mourning the much-publicized closure of Book Warehouse*, but as the son of a man raised during the depression, who used to religiously go through the coupons every week and do all his shopping based on what was on sale, the discounts there have never been sufficient to get me that excited. I don't want books at 20% off, I want them for 50% off or less - or better yet, I want to buy them for 50 cents at a thrift store and sell them for $2 or more to the bookstore, getting effectively paid to shop. As a bookscout - the name for that particular avocation, which I've pursued all my adult life - the next three used bookstore closures in this city hit me far closer to home than any previously, though those of you with a mind to shop may have cause to be briefly happy to hear the news.

Tim Carson in action

Later this summer, Carson Books and Records will be closing its Broadway store (3425 West Broadway - if you're coming from the east, get off the bus at Blenheim and walk towards Alma one block). In preparation for this, all books are at a substantial discount as of now (I think the proprietor, Tim Carson, told me 20% off everything, plus an added discount if you buy five or more items). Carson's has a great selection of SF, fantasy, self-help and spirituality, bestselling crime, literature, and lots of surprising nonfiction gems to be found (there was even a leprosy treatment manual in the medical section, last I looked - you don't see those around very often!). He's the man to see in this town if you're interested in Philip K. Dick, and I know for a fact he has several Osho books around at the moment (unless he sold them already), because he got them from me. There are sections devoted to Beat writers, drugs, conspiracy theory, Buddhism, yoga, philosophy, travel - all the staples of a good Vancouver used bookstore.

There are also some amazing records at the store - especially blues, bluegrass and folk; Tim bought a great collection last year and still has a lot of cool stuff around. I sometimes work at this location myself (usually when the Minimalist Jug Band is on tour), so I'm very sad to see the store closing. I've sold books (and sometimes records) to Tim for close to twenty years now - he's actually one of my oldest acquaintances! - and have always found him very fair, honest, polite and knowledgeable; he has a great little shop - perhaps a little overshadowed in recent years by the hipster cachet of Pulp Fiction, but still, one of my favourite bookstores in the city. The end of the road is in August, though Tim will keep his Dunbar location open after that; meantime, over the next couple of months, you have a  chance to get some great deals.

I'm equally sad to note that Canada's only Book Off - a Japanese chain store specializing in Japanese and English-language comics, books, DVDs, and CDs - will be closing on June 23rd. They're located on Hornby between West Georgia and Dunsmuir. If you have no passion for manga or Japanese novels and magazines, the draw for Book Off is indubitably going to be that THEY HAVE THE ALL-ROUND CHEAPEST PRICES in Vancouver for CDs and DVDs. As CD sales have dropped off in recent years, they haven't kept their stock up quite so much, but still, the baseline price for non-Japanese music is $3.50; you can hardly go wrong with prices like that, and devoted scavengers are bound to find one or two cool albums (speaking of punk alone, I've found CDs there over the years by Fear, Bad Brains, Nomeansno, the Dreadnoughts, the Damned, Fugazi, the Cramps, the Melvins and many other bands, all for super-cheap prices, though usually it was a matter of spending forty minutes looking through their entire stock before I found any one of those CDs, which was usually the only CD I ended up buying on that day). DVDs start at $3, with most of the stock priced at $5, and there are some great deals there, too; in the last year, they've figured out that Criterions should be priced for MORE than $3, but they still don't always stick to that rule, when Criterions turn up (very infrequently). Sometimes they overprice things, as well - they had copies of Cannibal Holocaust and Bad Taste priced at $30 for the longest time, which I think is around what either cost new. But again, with diligence, you can usually find one or two movies you're willing to pay $3 or $5 for, and every so often you'll end up with a total gem at a bargain price. They also have two large sections of English language books - one where softcovers range generally from $5-9 and another where all books, softcover or hardcover, are $2 each - often enough of a discount to make it worth the while of bookscouts and bookdealers to shop there, unlike, say, the rather extreme-for-a-supposed-thrift-store prices of Value Village. A lot of their $2 stock is stuff that didn't sell in the $5-9 section - they're very pragmatic about their markdowns - but sometimes they'll stick stuff directly into the $2 section that you'd have happily bought at new prices (I've bought, over the years, two copies of Chomsky and Hermann's Manufacturing Consent there, for $2 each time, which I promptly bused down to Tim's; I've also found $2 Kerouacs, Patricia Highsmiths, Cormac McCarthys... you get the idea). I'm not sure when Book Off's discount sale kicks into gear, or what the details will be, but there will definitely be a sale happening soon; given their usual low prices, a storewide sale should be enough to inspire quite a feeding frenzy, so I would advise checking them out sooner rather than later. Even if the sale hasn't started, the prices generally cannot be beat. The store closure will be a huge loss to the Japanese community in Vancouver, but will also make scavengers like me very, very sad; it's probably my favourite place to shop in Vancouver (and no, I don't JUST buy the super-cheap items).

Finally: though I haven't shopped there so often lately, I've retained fondness for the former Granville Book and Comic Emporium, which is now located on West Broadway by Oscar's Art Books, and usually pops up in phone books with names like "ABC Books" and such. Under their former incarnation, the Aabaca Book Bin (I believe it was), they were one of the first used bookstores I recall shopping at in Vancouver; only McLeod's Books has been part of my experience for so long. Used to be that whatever I picked up in my scouting that Tim didn't want, I'd take to the Granville location, which was one of the largest used bookstores in the city, and thus a bit more generous with what they'd give credit for; that was my habit for years, a fine way to cut my losses, and often led to my finding a book I wouldn't have otherwise realized I needed. The Broadway location simply hasn't worked out for them - high rents and a general downturn in the used book business are a bad combination - and they'll either be closing or moving 'round about August, last I heard (I haven't checked in with Skip and Gavin lately about their plans). As you might expect, they have an ongoing sale, and have some great stock - especially comics and old magazines, if you're into such stuff. Some of their comic stuff is tempting even to a non-comic reader like me; the last time I was there, they had a huge selection of brand new hardbound anthologies of Creepy and Eerie magazine, selling at nearly half-price. I used to love the old Warren magazines, though I've talked myself out of buying them, myself. Maybe someone else has already swooped in and snagged them all? They're lovely objects, but an indulgence I can ill afford at the moment.

It's very, very sad that these three stores are closing - but I like a sale as much as the next guy. Those of you who feel the same way might want to take advantage of these...


*By the way, I gather that one location of Book Warehouse is being bought by Black Bond Books, who will  keep it open in some form or other, but I have no idea what the details of that are. Presumably they will continue to sell new books at a discount - though how long they'll be able to keep that going is anyone's guess. Good luck to'em, tho'!

Batquest 2012: where have all the bats gone?

There once were abundant bats in Maple Ridge. Some of my earliest memories are of going to my old elementary school field as dusk descended to watch the bats fly overhead. My friends and I, standing in the back parking lot of a local bar - not one of us older than seven years old, I'd guess - would throw rocks, not aiming to HIT the bats, but to deke them out into thinking that a singularly large moth or mosquito had entered their sonar range. We made a bit of a competition out of it, as I recall: a successful throw was a throw that a bat actually mistook for a bug and dived for, which they often did. Sometimes, the bats would actually catch the rock, scooping it up in their tail membrane, then inspect it midflight, discovering that it was inedible; we would laugh and cheer as the bat - which often seemed, perhaps from an anthropomorphic perspective, at least a bit pissed with us - "threw the rock back at us," or so we would describe it amongst ourselves. I heard that some of the crueller, bigger kids would do a similar thing with fishing rods and tied flies, hoping to snag a bat, which I recall hearing they did, once, but I was never on hand for such a thing and feel nothing but sorry for the bat in such an instance, since I imagine these guys, being bully-types, most likely killed it. Don't judge them too harshly, though, these boys: this was around 1975, before VHS tapes, personal computers, Super Nintendo or so forth had made their way into Maple Ridge, and they had no Street Fighter type games or extreme horror movies or such to help them sublimate their natural primate aggression. And there wasn't even that much to keep gentler, more cerebral children like myself amused in the evening, especially if there was nothing good on TV. As strange as it may seem to kids today, throwing rocks for bats to catch seemed as valid an amusement as turning over boards and looking for snakes and salamanders, or catching bees in jars, or digging holes in the front yard so I could bury myself up to my waist, or putting leeches on myself at the local frog pond (long since made into a condo) to see how difficult they were to get off, all of which I also did in my childhood. The other kids in Richmond Court swapped stories and half-baked childish theories with me about rabies, or about bats trying to get into your hair. We went to our elementary school library to read up on bats - I remember big illustrations of how bat sonar worked. Bats were a part of our lives, back then, something - even without the influence of horror movies - that occupied a corner of the imagination of at least some of the children of this town. They were neater than raccoons or squirrels, and thanks to the rock trick, we could make a game out of interacting with them: go throw a rock at a raccoon and see where it gets you. Somewhere back there, as I recall, I even dreamed I was a bat, flying through the skies above this town.

In the late 1990's, I left Maple Ridge. At that time, it was commonplace to see bats pretty much anywhere in the town at night, swooping and diving around streetlights, feasting on the huge swarms of flying insects that sought out the light. There were never a lot of them - if you saw more than two around one light, it was something to remark upon, and very often there'd be no bat at all - but they were present nonetheless, in pretty much the same numbers as they'd been in the 1970's. I remember, in my mid-20's, sitting at dusk on the banks of the Alouette River, a couple miles north of town, and watching in delight and amazement as bats swept along the surface of the water, catching bugs, but also occasionally dipping into the water itself for a drink - a brief splash that made it look rather like someone was standing downriver and skipping a bat against the current. Hell, in the late 1990's, I even recall seeing a small bat clinging to the stucco'd wall of the local bingoplex, which - now mostly filled with slot machines - is just around the corner from where I write this. I examined it from all angles before leaving it alone; if I'd had a cellphone, I'd have taken its picture. As far as memory serves me, there were bats aplenty, right up to 1999, when I moved to Japan.

I don't want to spend too much time talking about the bats of Japan, or the bats of Vancouver, when I moved there in 2002 (because unless memory fails, I did see the odd bat around Kits Beach at night). I'm not obsessed about bats or anything - I just kind of like them. Flying mammals, creatures of folklore, nearly blind, hunting by sound, eating the mosquitos that would otherwise feed on us - they're funky little creatures for whom I have lingering fondness. Sufficiently so that, after I moved back to Maple Ridge in October 2009, after awhile - when spring and summer 2010 rolled around, say - I started to notice a curious absence. There are no bats to be seen anywhere in this town, these days - certainly not in the downtown core (or what used to be the downtown core; development has been creeping further and further west in recent years). In fact, the same streetlights where bats once flew now barely even have any bugs around them, these days. And both of these developments worry the hell out of me, in the same quietly paranoid way that I've been worried about colony crashes in the bee population, because if there IS some problem being caused by GM foods - if, say, some genetically engineered pesticidal gene has leapt the barrier from one food crop to other plants, and spread throughout North America, which is what I'm afraid might be happening - then we would start to notice that other insect species are also declining, and that the predators that prey on them - like BATS - would also be dwindling, along with their food supply.

I mean, maybe there are just a lot more condos in Maple Ridge, and a lot fewer barns for bats to roost, but like I say, this whole part of town hasn't seen that much development in the last ten years or so; most of the major new malls and townhouse-clusters and so forth are happening closer to Pitt Meadows. It's been over two years since I've seen a bat, though, on these same streets where they once were quite commonplace. There may be an entirely undramatic explanation for this absence - but until I encounter that explanation, some small corner of my mind is growing slowly more and more concerned. Especially since I doubt very much that if there were sharp declines in the mosquito or moth populations of North America - which might explain a concomitant drop amongst bats - it would attract a lot of public concern or worry. We noticed the decline in bee populations because we humans get something from bees. If moths, on the other hand, or other such insects that we count as a nuisance if we deign to notice them at all, suddenly started to also disappear, how long would it take before anyone kicked up a fuss? Since I've heard no one else remark on this phenomenon, I wonder if it's possible that I'm seeing something no one else is. Do I just have way too much time on my hands, or are there a whole lot of other people out there wandering the streets in the countryside, looking up, hoping to see a bat swoop by, and not remembering the last time they did?

I was restless and feeling the need of a bit of exercise tonight, and since - then as now - I don't always want to just stay home and stare into a screen, for my evening's entertainment, I decided, as dusk fell - around 9pm - to deliberately walk out into the country north of here, to stroll down 224th until the townhouses and condos gradually start to be replaced with farmhouses and fields and deer crossing signs and the odd clump of horseshit on the gravel shoulder. It's not exactly summer, but the day has been temperate, enough so that I wore only a thin fleece for the walk; it doesn't seem unreasonable to think that on a night such as tonight in the 1970's, or 1980's, or 1990's, there would have been bats around at least every second streetlight, increasing in number as I got further out into the sticks. As you might expect, though, during my half-hour walk north, I saw not a single bat. I sat down by the Alouette river on some concrete siding and looked back and forth from streetlight to streetlight, at either end of the bridge. I leaned over the railing, to see if bats could be seen flying up and down the river, as I'd seen before. I didn't, given the past two years of total batlessness in Maple Ridge, expect that my conclusions would be anything but thus, but still, I'm disturbed: there really are no bats here. And there sure seem to be fewer bugs around, too.

Again, I have yet to establish why any of this might be. Part of it might be due to the fact that in the more recently-developed areas, what I presume are halogen streetlights are being used, which seem to attract fewer insects than old fashioned yellow light. Until I caught onto this, I was rather freaked out by the near total absence of insects in the white light - and kept a count for several blocks of what few bugs I did see (averaging about one a block - a lone cranefly, a small moth, a couple tiny specks glimpsed flying with a streetlight in the background). But once I got to the river, out into the areas where people keep stables and some farmer, based on the odd kya-KYAAA cries I heard, apparently keeps a peacock on his property - the lights were all yellow, and I was relieved to see that there WERE lots of little bugs - small motes of reflected light, moving in odd patterns, like ash floating in the wind or particulate from a 3D movie. None of them were very big - I only saw one moth the entire walk that was big enough to cast a notable shadow, as it flitted about a light. But there was at least SOMETHING of a recognizable cloud of life swarming in the yellow.

Still no bats, tho'.

I must persist in my investigations, to see if this is the same elsewhere in town, or in other parts of the world... I wonder if I Google "where have all the bats gone," if I'll get many hits?

In which Sam Peckinpah directs my dream

I dream that I have a female friend visit me in my apartment (not my actual apartment - my dreaming brain gives me one completely different, unlike any I have lived in). This is a woman to whom I've hoped (in the dream as in life) to get closer for some time. Unfortunately, when I take her out on the balcony to show her the view, it transpires that my neighbours have decided to throw a party, and since the balcony space is, in fact, enormous - larger than the apartment itself! - and connected to theirs, they have spilled out and are everywhere. They are full-of-themselves drunken redneck types who expect me to be "be cool" about their party when it's fucking with my life, but after my initial outrage, I decide to try to be understanding towards them - "okay, okay, have fun, if it's just for one night," rationalizing to myself that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, only to discover that the woman I've brought over is unimpressed with my territorial cowardice, and is disgusted by the complete lack of privacy. She leaves by a long flight of stone steps, descending into the night; my hopes are dashed. As my obnoxious neighbours look on, chuckling, I race back into the apartment, thinking at first that I will catch the elevator, beat her down, and meet her on the other side; but I discover that somehow - no doubt due to my neighbours - one of my doors has been forced off its hinges and is hanging damaged in the frame. I try to repair it (this being an apparent reference to a piece of writing I've been working on, by the by) but am growing in my frustration, and a sort of rage at my neighbours is building - plus a valuable print of mine on the wall has been damaged along with the door. I race to the window - my window! - where, outside, my neighbours have stacked their stereo, and I wrathfully push it over, screaming at them to get out, flailing at anyone within reach. I hear some of them chuckling at my impotent rage and others clucking about how they'll charge me with assault of various forms ("he touched me and I'm only 15, do you think we can get him for sexually assaulting a minor?"). I race to my phone, to call the police, but it's been disconnected, no doubt by my neighbours, in anticipation of possible trouble. I stumble to find my cellphone, but when I start pressing buttons, it also doesn't work. I can hear my neighbours hammering at the damaged door. It's shaping up to be a bad night.

That's the last I recall of the dream - it ends like the whole thing has been an overture to my own personal version of Straw Dogs. Not all my dreams are quite so disturbing these days, but the ones I remember have been.

Thanks to all who came out

Death Watch was quite a success. Thanks to the Vancity Theatre, the Creaking Planks, Clayton Holmes, the Rebel Spell, and, especially, everyone who came out - 'specially if you paid to be there, because we have to pay the rights holders of the film, even though they couldn't provide us a film print. I'd love to just guestlist everyone, frankly, but, I mean, I'm not exactly holding these screenings in my living room... Anyhow, people seemed to enjoy the film, which I'm very glad for - it's almost a forgotten film at this point, so I'm very glad so many people came and (apparently, from the feedback I heard) had a good time.

Un-"Comfortably Numb": the case against a "classic"

Were I a crueller man, I would have posted this as a comment directly on the Georgia Straight website, where Steve Newton and Martin Dunphy (and who-knows-who-all-else) have been writing about their experiences of seeing Roger Waters perform The Wall in Vancouver tonight (or last night, or however you wish to think of it). A whole post was devoted, in fact, to "Comfortably Numb." I really don't want to seem a party pooper, or otherwise subtract from Martin and Newt's enjoyment of the concert - because I've abused this song before and thus hurt people who remain attached to it, which proved far less satisfying than I'd hoped - but having had my spleen stirred, it must be vented somewhere: because I cannot believe anyone (certainly not someone who was alive and listening to music when The Wall was first released) would actually want to listen to "Comfortably Numb" by choice, given the massive number of times one must INVOLUNTARILY listen to it in public. Certainly for one such as I - who was already starting to skip that side of the album out of weariness for the song when I was 13 or so, back when I still had The Wall in my collection - the experience of having it come on the radio in a car, or hearing it while shopping, or eating, or sitting in a dentist's office (which is sort of a fitting environment for it, actually) has long since ceased to be welcome. Its ubiquity has transformed it from a song that once was about something (however minor) to a sort of cultural wallpaper that serves to validate the identity of a generation, to affirm their tastes and ratify their horizons and help block out any new musical experiences; my own frustration on hearing it is such that I cannot but be suspicious of anyone who is not as sick of it as I: What are they getting out of it, REALLY? What craving for security and validation keeps them returning to THIS song, when there are so many other ones out there? ...Because let's face it, folks, there is only one more tediously overplayed rock classic in existence, and THAT one involves bustles in hedgerows. (At least people don't badly busk "Comfortably Numb" on Granville Street over and over and over and over and over. How much sicker still would I be of it, then?). If there were one Pink Floyd song that needed to be locked in a bunker for at least thirty years, to give the world a chance to listen to something else (or at least give the song back some of its long-lost freshness), this is the one, this is the one. Given a choice between having to listen to "Comfortably  Numb" and pretty much any other music in the world, from Barry Manilow to Pakistani disco to fuckin' Def Leppard, I'd -- well, I might have to think for a bit about it if the other choice was Def Leppard, but you see where I'm going. Pakistani disco, on the other hand... I mean, I don't have any clue what that might sound like, but I'd take an hour of it over "Comfortably Numb" in a second, you know? Christ, wouldn't YOU?

None of this is really the song's FAULT, of course - because how many songs out there are good enough to bear up to being overplayed and overpraised to the extent THIS one is? If I had to listen to , I dunno, the Clash's "London Calling" or X's "Los Angeles" as often as I've had to listen to "Comfortably Numb," I'd probably feel the same way about them, too. In fact, sad as it makes me, I very nearly do.

End rant.

Oh, a little note for Ray Davies, who I'll be seeing when he plays Vancouver in July: I kinda feel this way about "Lola," "You Really Got Me," and "All the Day and All of the Night," too, and would MUCH rather hear anything off Working Man's Cafe (or if we must have classics, Muswell Hillbillies or The Village Green Preservation Society, say) than any one of those tunes, 'kay? So don't feel, like, obliged or anything...