I don't really care about KISS but...

...I sure was pleased and surprised to see Julian Richings - best known to Vancouver punk types as Hard Core Logo's Bucky Haight - pop up near the climax of Detroit Rock City! (A really fun little film, actually, about four teenagers on a quest to see KISS in Detroit; I put off seeing it because I wasn't sure I'd like it, but was thoroughly entertained).

Does any (mostly) Canadian actor have a face as great as Julian Richings? I don't think so.

Black Flag!

Those of you kicking yourself for missing Art Bergmann - and well you should! - really ought to take a lesson and break out some cash for Black Flag (tickets are a bit pricy but the upside of that is that plenty are available). If you've never seen him sing, or only caught him with Piggy, Ron Reyes is an AMAZING punk vocalist - I was blown away at his birthday bash a few years ago by the power in his pipes, which I figured would be all rusty from disuse. Nope: he has one of the most intimidating roars I've encountered, he's looking to be in great shape after his European tour with the band, and I imagine this is going to be a fantastic-beyond-words punk show. In all seriousness - the odd spin of My War aside - I barely even listen to Rollins-era 'Flag anymore; the Jealous Again EP (with Reyes on vocals, under a despised name the band saddled him with) is where it's at...

I mean, I probably won't attend, lest a bunch of Art Bergmann fans incensed by my review on the Straight blog kick the shit out of me, but seriously: YOU should go...

oh noooo: the return of bedbugs?

Crap me.

I found a cluster of four itchy red bites on my body today, spaced a few inches apart, so as to suggest the meanderings of a sucking bedbug. This is not my first encounter with these unwholesome beasts, but I'd hoped I was rid of them when I relocated to the suburbs in 2009. To make it even more stressful, I have no idea where my path may have crossed said bugs: in the last few days, I've crashed at a friend's, slept at my girlfriend's, ridden a bus, watched a play at SFU Woodwards', sat on a bench outside Audiopile waiting for it to open, and reclined on my Mom's couch; I could have been fed upon at any spot. Most frighteningly, I also, earlier today, took a nap in my own bed, which happens to mark the turning point between my not noticing the bites... and noticing them.

I really, really don't want to have to deal with bedbugs again right now. (I bet the pigeons are pleased, and maybe Art Bergmann...).

GODDAMN PIGEONS! (the continuing story of...)

So a few posts back, I mentioned that the pigeons that I have been waging an on-again-off-again war with over whose balcony they get to shit all over had INVADED MY APARTMENT and shat on my chairs and bed. That was on June 18th. Since that time, I have been in and out of the apartment and not monitoring developments on the balcony closely, but I have scared off pigeons at least once, and at that point all that I had to contend with was the usual crusty shitpiles they leave and maybe a twig that they'd experimentally placed down as an index of future plans. Which I really did mean to sweep up, you know?

Yesterday morning, I heard the telltale flutter of wings and that weird "I'm coming in for a landing" cooing sound they make, and - from my bed - grabbed my Indonesian rattle and reached over to the window and banged it a few times. Normally I can hear the pigeons fly away after I do this, and don't always get out of bed to investigate; but I did, slid the door open, saw that there was a pigeon, and went RAAAAUGHHH at it to make it fly away.

It didn't move. It tilted its head, affected a look of defiant, stupid innocence, and held its ground. That's when I realized that it was sitting on top of... a nest.

I went to my kitchen, grabbed the first thing that I didn't care much about throwing onto the balcony (a half-empty roll of packing tape), chucked at the bird, and it hopped aside...

To reveal two eggs.

Ferk. 

I am now in a crisis of conscience, torn about what to do. Should I:

a) Surrender for yet another year, reconcile myself to my role as shit-scraper, and let them have yet another two goslings or pigeonlings (or whatever the fuck a baby pigeon is called) on my balcony? They're obviously never going to give up and go away, so scraping up their shit every month or so might be the easiest course of action to take, rather than prolonging this war.

b)  Storm out onto the balcony, smash the eggs, destroy the nest, and really SHOW THESE BIRDS THAT I MEAN BUSINESS? I might even be able to kill the Mama, if she's determined to sit on her nest and guard the eggs. I don't want to do either, but if it means being pigeon-free - they're filthy birds, pests, and I don't want to surrender my balcony to them altogether, you know? It's nice to go out there on an evening, especially when it's not COVERED IN PIGEON SHIT.

c) Or shall I try something in-between? (I could try to scoop the nest into a box and leave it out there so the birds at least tend to shit in one place. Presumably toilet-training them would not be so easy to do, but I might at least localize the damage. Maybe they'll smother their own eggs under their shit, that way.

I mean, they're not mice, they're not bedbugs, they're not cockroaches - it's not 1058 Nelson all over. But... these birds are a real pain the ass!

Art Bergmann review!

Written quickly, with a few glitches, but still pretty good, I think!

All bad cellphone photographs by Allan MacInnis....

Two weekends of free music in Maple Ridge!

Hey, blogfollowers: don't know if any of you are looking for free entertainment this summer but Adstock is upon us, our punk/ metal/ alternative music fest, happening July 7th. I've been wanting an excuse to get out to see Alxs Ness sing with Abriosis, and am delighted to learn that she'll be coming to me! Ninjaspy, Damn The Eyes, and the Bone Daddies also play, and three bands I don't know, like the Easy Brothers, Within The Hours, and Mountain Man. The next weekend it's the Caribbean fest, July 13th and 14th, which is, in fact, even cooler than Adstock, drawing huge crowds to the centre of town. Local ska favourites Los Furios headline on Saturday, while Toronto reggae musician Steele headlines Sunday, but there's music all day both days, as well as a vibrant market, tasty food, and a warm, happy vibe. There's a specific type of all-purpose Caribbean spice I buy every year at this - one container lasts me until the next year, but it's tasty as heck (and great with eggs). Both events are right in the centre of town in the WWI Memorial park on 224th. Say hi if you see me!

Big Star Doc at the Rio

 ...calling Judith Beeman... are you listening Judith Beeman... Big Star doc at the Rio Theatre this Wednesday and Thursday...!

(Adrian Mack writes about the film here, official site here).

The Secret Doctrine: a chat with Gabrielle Rose and Patricia Gruben

As seen in the Georgia Straight, I recently had the chance to talk with actor Gabrielle Rose and filmmaker/ playwright Patricia Gruben about their upcoming collaboration, The Secret Doctrine, which investigates the beliefs and work of influential occultist Helena Blavatsky. The play opens Tuesday at SFU Woodwards; there is also a freestanding installation called The Veil of Nature - a hands-on, multimedia display on the 4th floor of the building that combines elements of 19th century scientific inquiry with a mysterious, meditative, atmospheric mood. 

The title for the installation, as with the play, comes from Blavatsky’s writings. “It’s what everybody wants - to find the design of it all,” Gabrielle Rose explained over lunch, when she, Gruben and I met for the Straight article. It refers to "the invisible realm that lies behind the frame of nature." Prompted by Gruben, Rose quoted from memory from a piece of Blavatsky's writing, incorporated into the play: " ‘one by one, the forces in nature’s workshops are accepted into the exact sciences, while mysterious help is given to certain individuals in unraveling its arcana… in a few years, a rent will be made in the veil of nature, and material science will receive a death blow.’”

“She wrote that in 1889,” Gruben added. “In 1896, I think, the X-ray was discovered. In 1897, the electron. 1905, quantum theory… within ten years, the whole think cracked open, in terms of the way people thought. People had thought atoms were little bits of matter, and then suddenly they realized they’re not only divisible, but they’re not strictly matter, they’re interchangeable between matter and energy" - ideas very much in keeping with Blavatsky's writings. 

One area I couldn't explore in the article, given my word count, was whether the play (which centers on a male skeptic's investigations into a powerful female) was meant to have a feminist aspect, or if Blavatsky herself was at all describable as a feminist.

Gabrielle Rose, who had discussed Blavatsky's more humanist side, laughed and said that, because "she liked to be the centre," she "was more of a 'Helenist!'"

Gruben seemed to allow that there was indeed something liberated about Blavatsky as an influential female. 

"One thing that I found really interesting about her, having seen so many 19^th century novels turned into films, back when I wanted to make a film out of it, was that she didn’t really use her ‘feminine wiles’ in the way that all these Henry James characters did," she said. "These novelistic women were focused on who they were going to marry and how they would get ahead by climbing the social ladder or mimicking men in some way - she wasn’t like that at all..."
Rose picked up the thread: "She was not a vain woman, which was an interesting juxtaposition to her desire to be the centre of attention. She wore dressing gowns and she smoked 200 cigarettes a day and suffered from being overly overweight, and she wasn’t really into what she looked like at all..."

Indeed, I said - thinking of photos I've seen of her - there was something of the Russian peasant to her.

"That’s what people would say," Rose nodded. "They’d see this stout woman who looked a bit like a Russian peasant and then she’d look into their eyes and they couldn’t remember what she looked like, other than her eyes - she had the most mesmeric eyes. Big blue eyes."

Rose shares with Blavatsky an intense gaze, but her eyes are brown, not blue. The posters for The Secret Doctrine tweak her eye colour, but Rose will not be wearing contacts or such to change her eye colour as she acts ("from a distance, I don't think people will know.") As for the question of weight,  "We decided not to plump me up," Rose explained, "but the costume we have is many layers, so it gives me quite a lot of girth…"

As the Straight article explores, Gruben and Rose have considerable respect for Blavatsky, as well as healthy skepticism about some of her stunts. Rose used both the words "honorable" and "fraudulent" in describing her character, and laughed when I asked her if it was difficult for her to play someone she had such contradictory feelings about, saying, "How do I stand on the fence? I'm a Canadian, come on!" Gruben had said - as quoted in the Straight - that her own mixed feelings about her subject matter (skepticism versus belief) were a driving force behind the play; I asked Rose as well, to weigh in on her feelings about the New Age.

“Do I believe everything? Absolutely not," she replied. "I was extremely skeptical as a young woman. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve seen many things which confused me, in my life, which someone might say were miracles or wonders. So my mind is a little more open...” 

As for Blavatsky, she thinks she “was all things: fraudulent, and at the same time extremely gifted as a human being; she must have been!” Both sides of Blavatsky's nature will be explored in the play, which runs July 2nd-6th at SFU Woodwards.

Werewolf T-Shirts Records' Just Like Nettwerk Records' Only Spelled Properly For God's Sake Memorabilia Sale

A David M. garage sale is just like having No Fun At Christmas (photo by Femke van Delft, not to be reused, etc).

Hey, No Fun fans! David M. fans! Obsessive Vancouver punk rock memorabilia collectors! People with loose cash! Garage sale addicts! Here's an exciting opportunity to exploit the poverty of David "used to work at Chapters" M. and buy up all his precious one-or-two-of-a-kind collectibles for PEANUTS, probably: the Werewolf T-Shirts Records' Just Like Nettwerk Records' Only Spelled Properly For God's Sake Memorabilia Sale, this Saturday, in Surrey, of course! Be there!

Art Bergmann for dummies

Photo by bev.davies, not to be reused without permission

There was a time when I didn't have much interest in Art Bergmann's music. I had him filed on a shelf with "Canadian rock stars" - an oxymoronic concept, that placed him along Paul Hyde, Carol Pope, Doug Bennett, and Kim Mitchell... all people with brilliance to them, but whose music never really broke that big outside our country, was dependent on Canadian content broadcast regulations for the exposure it got, and whose recordings often bear the mark of a struggle to get radio play and notice outside the regions that supported them, especially (dare we hope) across the border. It almost always happens that the earliest recordings are the best, with artists like this, before the grab for the brass ring dilutes their genius, introduces the dread concept of "commercial compromise" to their recordings...

Art's stuff from the Vancouver scene is brilliant mind you - especially his two EP's with the Young Canadians (formerly the K-Tels). Check out: "I Hate Music," "Hawaii," "Automan," and the best of them, "Data Redux," all on Youtube (sadly, "No Escape" isn't, but you can get audio of it on the Art Bergmann fansite). A fantastic trio - but one that will never again play, sadly; Jim Bescott, the bassist, furthest in the background in the pic below, and Art's co-songwriter, was killed in an accident a few years ago. These are must-have albums, bristling with energy and inventiveness (and available on a terrific CD retrospective that also contains live tracks, songs off compilations, and so forth).

In the 1980's, Art Bergmann put out an EP and a cassette with his band at the time called Poisoned, that showed him going for more of a mainstream singer/ songwriter thing, even though they mostly only had local distribution. The music doesn't age so well; there's some real songcraft present, but there's also a visible attempt to make Art palatable for the Much Music scene - for instance, with the rock video for "Yeah I Guess." ("Emotion" was first recorded around this time, too, though I'm not sure when the video got made). There's also a song from this period called "Deathwatch" on Youtube - I think this might have been one of the cassette releases, originally, though it surfaced on CD much later. Art's voice is great, but the production isn't...

And that's the thing. You have to learn how to listen THROUGH stuff, around it, over it, because that commercial compromise thing is there, already, the attempt to present Art for the widest possible audience. But there's also brilliant songcraft present - something that actually deserves national exposure. It gets better, too - the demos produced for what was going to be Art's major label debut surfaced a few years ago, as Lost Art Bergmann, and they show Art and Poisoned in fine form. "The Junkie Don't Care" has a bit of a bad Billy Idol-esque  intro that doesn't age so well, but once Art starts singing, you realize it's a great song.  There's a bitter, biting aspect to the lyrics, and some terrific storytelling, and it sounds better than the Poisoned EP - there's a strong, self-confident band here, ready for the bigtime. Another example - "My Empty House," about murdering your family. Chillingly effective stuff, and not even my favourite song off the album! 

Enter John Cale. Cale had some amazing, edgy albums to his credit as producer - the Stooges, Patti Smith, the Modern Lovers, Nico - and had written songs that bore affinities to Art's material, dark and introspective (like "Fear is a Man's Best Friend," say, or "Sabotage" - that last being some of his toughest rock, from 1980, with Cale in a heavy place, no doubt - drinking and drugging a fair bit - but making powerful, honest, highly creative music). Unfortunately - for Art, anyhow - by the time Cale was brought on board by Duke Street Records to produce what was to be Art Bergmann's national breakthrough, Crawl With Me, in 1988, he had cleaned up, was doing things like JOGGING, and his own music was changing considerably, towards something with a lot fewer teeth. 

Sadly, that toothlessness was exactly what Cale brought to Art Bergmann's music. He neutered it, watered it down, overpolished it - pick a metaphor, the production on that album kind of blew. The single off it, "Our Little Secret," with Cale on background vocals and piano, was sung from the point of view of a man dating a woman who had been sexually abused by her father. It's a good song - the version on Lost Art Begmann was much better, naturally - but the Cale treatment was syrupy and fake-sounding, and came complete with an embarrassing, old-fashioned rock video that got pretty heavy rotation on Canada's video channel, Much Music. For someone like me - who, in the mid-1980's, actually was doing things like weeding out albums from his collection that he didn't think were "punk rock" enough (like, say, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere), Crawl With Me was pretty disappointing - as we gather it was for everyone in Poisoned, too.

There were a few songs that Cale didn't ruin, mind you. "The Final Cliche" is pretty great however you slice it, or "Inside Your Love" (not on Youtube). There's not a lot of stuff online that allows you to really compare the demos with the Cale production, but everything you need to know about what the album could have been and what it finally turned out to be can be gleaned by comparing Art's later recording of "Crawl With Me," with Chris Spedding, with the Cale version. I can barely listen to the Cale, but the Spedding collaboration - off an album called Design Flaw, which is my favourite of Art's solo output - is spare, soul-scorched, and absolutely brilliant. So is the cover of the Flying Burrito Brother's "Sin City," which I hope we'll get to hear Monday night...

After the Crawl With Me fiasco, people like me were tuning out. I remember standing in the now long-defunct A&A Records on Granville Street - the relationship of the name of that chain to A&B Sound remains mysterious to me - and contemplating for some time whether to buy Art's next album, 1990's Sexual Roulette, or not. CFOX was spinning the single "Bound for Vegas" - which is pretty great, bad rock video or not - and it sounded a lot heavier than Crawl With Me - seemed truer to what I understood Art Bergmann to be about. And indeed, the album is; it's probably the best recorded example of Art's songcraft from his solo years; check out "Gambol," here, or "Dirge No. 1". ("The Hospital Song," the best - and creepiest - song on the album, appears not to be online; it takes a wry, caustic look at spousal abuse).

The thing about Sexual Roulette, though, is that these are songs of EXPERIENCE, songs that require an adult listener to really enter and appreciate. I was 22 and listening to Black Flag and the Butthole Surfers; suffice to say that I didn't get it. I did end up buying the album - and while it was clearly better than Crawl With Me, I only played it a few times, and decided that I didn't really care about Art Bergmann anymore and sold it. I kept my Young Canadians EPs and that was all I really felt I needed. 

So then there's the 1990's. I might have liked songs like 1991's "Crackin' Up," if I'd heard them - there's some noisy, Lou Reed-y guitar-rock grandeur there - but I didn't even notice this album. And isn't "Faithlessly Yours" a great piece of popcraft? Maybe it is, but - this is how I felt at the time - so what? Bergmann had two big label albums in this period - for Polygram and Sony -  and won a Juno, for 1995's What Fresh Hell Is This, but sales were slight and the albums soon were allowed to go out of print; I heard neither of them at the time. Art was relocated to Toronto for much of this, which futher alienated me - he wasn't playin' for the home team anymore - and when he did show up in Vancouver, there were stories about trainwreck gigs, where the self-destructive, addictive aspects of Art's muse pushed him beyond being able to present his material professionally. At least some of his old fans hopped off the train, content to spin his earliest albums, and a new, more mainstream fan base - of who, Bryan Adams fans? who was ever going to "get" Art Bergmann in the mainstream? - simply didn't materialize. And so it went. Art went through some pretty tough years - I remember hearing about him washing dishes in Toronto, arthritic and destitute - and for awhile seemed to be on the verge of being forgotten; I remember standing at the now defunct Otis Music on Davie Street, maybe ten years ago, contemplating a signed copy of What Fresh Hell Is This? that Todd was selling for under $8, and not buying it.  

I kick myself for that, now (I do now own the CD but it ain't signed). It took a couple of friends and coworkers (thanks, Will; thanks, Kevin) to get me to reconsider Bergmann's music, starting shortly after that. (Susanne Tabata's essential documentary of the Vancouver scene, Bloodied But Unbowed, helped a lot, too, though the Art Bergmann stuff therein is pretty painful to watch; he is, you might understand, a little bit bitter about his career trajectory). I was really glad to be at the 2009 Poisoned reunion gig - a complex but memorable event, which I blogged a bunch about back then at some length. Though I'd met the man previously, I had never actually seen Art play until then, and was very, very grateful for the opportunity (there are a couple of great clips of the show on Youtube, like "Dirge No. 1," one of the high points of the night).

It takes a bit of WORK to get into Art Bergmann, like I say. There's stuff you have to play past, to work around, to contextualize. It's worth the effort, though. Eventually you might just come around to a place where you realize that he is one of the finest songwriters that Vancouver (or, um, White Rock - or maybe it's Canada?) ever produced - maybe THE finest. It's a great privilege to be given a chance to see him play again, July 1st at the WISE Hall. I have no idea what to expect, but I hope you'll be there (and I'll be looking at the Straight tomorrow to see if there are any clues as to what's to come...).

Oh: and come early, because the Ford Pier Vengeance Trio kicks ass.  

James Gandolfini Tribute at the Vancity!

There's not a lot I can say about James Gandolfini. I haven't yet gotten around to The Sopranos, haven't really followed his career closely; I loved his sequence with Patricia Arquette in Tony Scott's Tarantino adaptation, True Romance, and I loved him in Killing Them Softly, but I didn't bother with an obit when he died since I have no special insight into his work or personal connection to it. However, Killing Them Softly is an interesting enough film, sorely under-appreciated, politically brave, and at times brilliantly acted - especially by Gandolfini, in the role of a washed up hitman on the brink of total personal failure - that I am considering seeing it again this Sunday, as part of a matinee tribute to Gandolfini at the Vancity Theatre, and would urge those who have not seen it (which is pretty much everyone, I imagine) to consider giving it a look. My own past writing on it was quite critical, but since the film is good enough that it should be seen, regardless of any imperfections, perhaps I might direct you to Tom Charity's perceptive, but more forgiving review of it, instead? I agree with everything he says, was just more irritated than he was by the unsubtlety of certain choices, which I hope will be less annoying the second time around...

 For true fans of Gandolfini, note that the film will play with Not Fade Away, which I have not seen, but which also stars Gandolfini and is supposedly quite good. For cinema die-hards, or those with something to prove, note that if you feel really ambitious (and have nothing else to do on Sunday), you can also catch Margarethe von Trotta's film Hannah Arendt - starring the excellent Barbara Sukowa, who acted in Fassbinder's Lola and Berlin Alexanderplatz, Lars von Trier's Europa, Volker Schlondorff's Voyager, David Cronenberg's M. Butterfly, and many other films.... and then round out the day with the Vancouver-made thriller Blood Pressure,, directed by Sean Garrity, who made a strange and fairly Phildickian SF film called Lucid a few years back (the only one of his films I've seen; I don't remember it that clearly but I remembered enjoying it).  Four films in one day, in a theatre with seats so comfortable your ass won't hate you afterwards! (Hopefully there are long enough breaks between films to caffeinate and snack and such).

RIP Richard Matheson; in praise of Hell House

Note: the following piece has been edited and improved slightly since first posted.

I was thinking just this morning, while checking the obits page, that it was kind of pleasant that no one I particularly had investments in had died in the last while. I knew that it couldn't last long.

I cannot say I knew all his writing, but one of my favourite novels in any genre is Richard Matheson's Hell House. While offering what on the surface seems like a sexually-charged Gothic ghost story, it actually is - according to me, anyhow - a parable about the ways in which ego investments can foil ostensibly cooperative endeavours; or maybe a work of Nietzschean psychology, showing how different "Wills to Power" clash in the arena of belief. The plot goes like this: four people are given the challenge of spending time in a haunted house - "the Belasco house in Maine," we are told in ominous tones - where past investigations have ended in disaster, earning the house its other name. Two of the investigators - a crippled, skeptical male scientist seeking a rational, natural explanation for the horrors on hand, and an emotion-driven female psychic who needs to feel she can redeem the lost souls that she encounters - clash over what is happening, and are each driven by the other's maddening insistence on their own framework of interpretation into stubborn entrenchments and excess, determined to prove they are right. Along for the ride are a cynical former psychic who is the sole sane survivor of a previous expedition to Hell House - he's wonderfully played by Roddy McDowell in John Hough's film adaptation, The Legend of Hell House - and the wife of the scientist, who is supportive and kind and stays very much in her husband's shadow, until the house starts to work on her frustrated sexual needs...

I won't spoil the ending by describing how things go wrong - and I can't rightfully compare it to The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson, since I've never read the book, which I gather from the film has similar elements - but the ways in which Hell House works its theme of ego, hinting at patterns and meanings, while remaining entirely character-driven, only very briefly getting overt at the climax - fascinated me as a kid: how simple the book is - a mere horror novel, a thriller, a piece of pulp - and yet how richly meaningful, how perfect! I discovered it in junior high school, before I knew what the word "subtext" even meant, and was so taken by the ways the drama between the characters hinted at a deeper meaning, and was so engaged by its more obvious theme, of conflict between New Agey and skeptical/ rationalistic interpretations of the world, that I read it four times through, end to end: I finished the book and started it again, immediately, taking it with me to class, reading it in my bed at night, and loving it more with each read. Never since have I even felt tempted to do that with a novel. The copy I had - bought at Haney Book and Novelty, a used paperback shop on the Dewdney, which later became Haney Books and Comics, then got bought out by a gamer geek, and now stands vacant - had the cover below; if I ever see this edition again, I'll buy it for its sheer sentimental value, even though it is neither a story of "demonic possession," nor a "novel of the occult," as is claimed (I think they were trying to cash in on the success of the The Exorcist with such copy):

Back then, I was reading mostly Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, Kurt Vonnegut and Robert Bloch. None of those writers mean so much to me these days - though I occasionally revisit them as the mood strikes me. The thing that I love most about Hell House is that it holds up; I picked up a copy again a few years ago, almost on a nostalgic whim, and read it and found it just as compelling and entertaining. (I've read it again since). It stands as my favourite horror novel, and no doubt I will read it again someday).

As I say, I don't care about everything Richard Matheson wrote, however. Even I Am Legend fails to excite me much (though note that no one yet has done a faithful adaptation of that novel; since it does have a fairly unique and provocative ending, it deserves to be adapted properly at least once, eh?). I haven't read The Incredible Shrinking Man or Stir of Echoes or Duel - though I enjoyed the movies based on them. In fact, about the only other things I've actually read by Matheson are short stories - I used to like a fairly dark one called "The Distributor" a lot, which is sort of a concise, suburban distillation of the evilest of Jim Thompson. Oh, and of course Matheson wrote my favourite-ever Twilight Zone epîsode, "Nick of Time" (as well as many others, including the more famous "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet").

As I`ve said before, I don`t feel that mournful when someone makes it to a ripe old age after a momentously productive life. Richard Matheson is a case in point - an immensely prolific, highly creative writer who deserves to be much more widely read. Rather than waste time with sorrow, then, let me just urge you, if you haven`t done it - if you`re at all fond of horror fiction, or just like a great, rich work of pulp - read Hell House. It`s a lot of fun...

Mom channels Nardwuar

My 82 year old Mom and I play around with language a lot. She suffers from aphasia from her stroke of 2009, and has a hard time articulating herself; she's regained a lot of her ability in the last four years but she's likely running around 50% of her pre-stroke speech ability or less, and she occasionally still loses control of her sentences. Though sometimes she gets frustrated with herself, and ends up growling and shaking her fist in rage at her difficulties, sometimes she just surfs along with her errors, producing nonsense syllables - "I want you...to buy me... some... co... ku? ... ker... kogodoogoodoo!" She then laughs at herself and tries again, which is probably healthier for her than getting angry. I try to encourage this sort of playfulness a bit, as a coping mechanism, so sometimes we have short conversations of nothing but nonsense - for instance, in well-routinized social circumstances, as when I'm calling to say hello, instead of the usual "how are you"/ "I'm fine," we might have something like:

Allan: Habadoo?
Mom: Ackackack.  

...Which serves the purpose just as well, though perhaps wouldn't make a lot of sense to a bystander.  We also have various routines that make things easier for her. She raises her cup and points into the kitchen and I know it's code for, "make me a cup of tea," for instance; no language required. At other times, we employ set phrases that she's gotten down pat, like when we say goodnight to each other: she stands at the door and says, "toodaloo!" and I say "toodaloo" back.

She usually doesn't have trouble with phrases that she uses often, but tonight, at the door, instead of "toodaloo," she said something a lot more like, "doot doola doot doo."

To which I responded "doot doo." Hearing which, she broke into a laugh; the pop culture dimension of the transaction was lost to her - she has no clue who Nardwuar is, I'm sure - but she enjoyed the moment no less.

I, however, do indeed know who Nardwuar is, so I went, "doot doola doot doo" myself, and she went "doot doo" right back at me, having fun with it.

I would like to thank Nardwuar for this sweet moment with my Mom.

Moon, water

Went down to the Fraser River with my girl at magic hour tonight to check on the rising water and see the big moon. Funny how the moon can look huge in the sky but only comes out as a tiny dot in a picture...

Terms and Conditions May Apply

The most entertaining story I have encountered about a surveillance state misfire involves The Clash's song "Tommy Gun." As Clash fans may know, there is a segment at the end that was frequently not rendered in songbooks and on lyric sheets, back in the days prior to the Internet. A portion reads:

So let's agree about the price
And make it one jet airliner
For ten prisoners

In 2004 Bristol man named Mark Devine, who played bass in a Clash tribute band, attempted to text these lyrics to the band's singer, who apparently couldn't decode Joe Strummer's blustery vocal; he reached a wrong number, and shortly thereafter was visited at work by members of the Special Branch, concerned that he might be a terrorist (original news story here).

Though this anecdote does not appear in Terms and Conditions May Apply, the new documentary about state surveillance and the complicity of  various internet companies (including Google and Facebook) in facilitating it, having watched the film, the part of the anecdote involving a "wrong number" seems fishy. It seems more likely that the government was simply monitoring internet traffic and text messages, even back then, and just used the "wrong number" story to cover up their activities; if they weren't doing such things as a matter of course in 2004, they certainly are now.

Terms and Conditions May Apply - screening this weekend at the Vancity Theatre - offers ample stories of equally absurd (and sometimes quite brazen and frightening) misfires, such as that of a tourist who says he's going to "destroy America" in a text, and then finds himself welcomed at a US airport like he's Maher Arar. Anyone with any real-world knowledge can see he means the word "destroy" as a metaphor for irresponsible drinking and carousing, particularly since he signs off with a little "x," indicating a kiss; security-state spooks apparently aren't that skilled in decoding such things, alas. The film doesn't offer any examples of how infringement of online privacy has actually been EFFECTIVE in averting crimes or terrorism - it didn't seem to do much good in Boston! - but while surely such examples could be found, the entire idea of monitoring internet behaviour to PREVENT crime raises some serious red flags for director Cullen Hoback, who cuts at a key point to scenes of the Minority Report "pre-crime" unit at work, to underscore the scary implications of the idea of preventative surveillance...

The film is quite adept at stitching pop-culture references into its tapestry, actually - including the South Park "Human Cent-i-Pad" episode (which should be viewed as soon as you finish reading this, if you haven't seen it already). Such nods give the film considerable entertainment value, as Adrian Mack notes here, while not detracting from its seriousness. There's also a Michael-Moore style ambush of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, and, I gather, added material in the cut to screen Saturday to take in the highly relevant Eric Snowden NSA whistleblowing affair. (Trivially, Jello Biafra weighs in on some of these matters here, in a recent webisode of What Would Jello Do?). About the only way they could have made the film better, by me, would have been to include The Rebel Spell's "It Can't Be Just Me" as the credits rolled - but that's obviously a bit much to hope for...

All the same, the truth is, I'm personally not really one to care that much about matters of privacy or the surveillance state; no doubt there has been some attention paid to my behaviour online, given some of the things I write about and some of the people I'm in touch with, but for the most part, I like the idea of living somewhat transparently anyhow - I'm a bit of "TMI" kind of guy; the only compromising information that CSIS or such is going to get about me involves my masturbatory habits. If they've got nothing better to concern themselves with, the nation is doomed anyhow - which I believe it is, by the by; as dwindling resources, growing unemployment, social disenfranchisement and increasingly authoritarian government policy lead to greater and greater social unrest, I think the day will come that much of the apparatus being built below-the-radar to monitor everything we buy, say, or jack off to will prove comically irrelevant, useless, superfluous. You won't have to monitor internet activity to find out who is threatening the status quo; at some point soon, you'll just have to look out the window.

The film is still essential viewing, if any of these matters move you...

Melechesh returns to Vancouver: welcome!

I doubt I will have the jam to make it to the show, but Melechesh plays the Rickshaw tomorrow night, and they deserve at least some sort of welcome to the city. Those unfamiliar with the band should note that they started in Jerusalem, are now based in Amsterdam, and make a unique variety of black metal that draws on non-Christian Middle Eastern sources (which I know next to nothing about; they describe themselves as making Assyrian metal, apparently, and make references in their lyrics to djinni and sphinxes and such). For reasons unclear to me, I haven't been able to get my hooks into their last album, 2010's The Epigenesis, but I absolutely loved their previous release, Emissaries. Those unfamiliar with the band are highly advised to click that link and give them a taste...

ART BERGMANN!

My music-loving self has been depressed that (it seems) I'm going to miss BOTH Black Sabbath and Kris Kristofferson, the two concerts this summer that I really, really would like to see. Tickets too expensive, good seats gone, no way to justify it when I'm a broke-ass, barely-employed bum.

So I'm totally stoked that an even MORE exciting concert has been scheduled: Art Bergmann plays the WISE on July 1st!  Plus the opening act is the Ford Pier Vengeance Trio, which I think of as the "maximum Ford Pier unit thus far attained." (My glowing review of their CD here). Those unfamiliar with Art Bergmann's caustic genius (or who only know the Young Canadians material) should check out Design Flaw, if you can find it - acoustic renderings of some of Art's best songs, done with Chris Spedding. Not so easy to track down these days, in fact, but the version of "Crawl With Me" on that album is on Youtube... check it out!

Double Indemnity this weekend!

A striking number of the truly great films noir are deeply, deeply Oedipal. Take The Postman Always Rings Twice, for one example: the errant "son" (a hitchhiker just passing through) schemes to replace the father (a benevolent Greek businessman) and get the mother (a steaming sexpot whom the father can no longer satisfy) all to himself (a fate which, I should note from experience, is not all that it's cracked up to be). Out of the Past and Criss Cross work similar angles, but in each case the man-to-be-replaced is himself occupying an illegitimate position - he's a gangster, a tough guy, deserving his fate, so the protagonist's plot is made a bit more sympathetic. For maximum noir poignancy, James M. Cain (or Jim Thompson) style, the protagonist should be transgressing the law of the father from the gitgo, entirely illegitimately, his desire understandable but sinful from the roots up. We know he's doomed, but we can't help wanting him to get away with it, because our own transgressive desires have been so powerfully invoked...

Such is the case with Double Indemnity, playing this weekend at the Cinematheque, which is surely up there in ANY critic's top five list of films noir in cinema history; it also features one of the great femme fatales, played by Barbara Stanwyck, and one of the most touching "father-son" relationships in the subgenre (between Fred MacMurray, as an insurance salesman drawn into a murder plot, and Edward G. Robinson, a senior investigator at the same firm, who is the real father figure in the film, not the man that Stanwyck and MacMurray plot to murder). The film has such a dark vision of human psychology that Charles Brackett reputedly walked away from it, being replaced by Raymond Chandler; yet you're wholly caught up in the story, even knowing from the outset that things will end badly. (This is no spoiler, since the film is narrated by a man who has been shot, taking the form of a confession; the shadow of doom hangs heavy over the entire film). If you haven't seen Double Indemnity, it's a great film, deserving to be seen in a theatre (though my experience of seeing it at the Cinematheque a few years ago is that it came across as far funnier to the audience than it was intended to be - so it also merits a private viewing, where its darkness can actually still unsettle...). The Cinematheque is screening it over four nights - it's the most-played film in their Wilder and Brackett retrospective - so you have lots of chances to see it; I'll be checking it out again myself...

What you missed: Jello Biafra's Birthday Bash

The Jello Biafra birthday bash on Monday got off to a slightly rocky start - neither Nardwuar's videos nor Ani's film were very well-projected, which is unfortunate, considering that the Rickshaw is obviously a former movie theatre. Maybe a real, screen-shaped screen and a better projector would be a good investment for events like these? Ani's film was a bit glitchy, too - so it might be worth your time to check it out on Youtube, even if you were in attendance; Jello does some of his best acting work as Francis, the sculptor (because we all know he can do broad and intense, but he's quite subtle here, seems broken and sad and defeated, which are not attributes of his character I've ever noticed...).

The scariest thing Jello brought up during his spoken word was the "NAFTA on crack" Trans-Pacific Partnership proposal, which almost no one (including me) had heard about before he spoke on it (he surveyed the audience, but spared us blame for our ignorance, since apparently this malicious bit of corporation-privileging international politicking is a well-kept secret at present). Jello was sharp as ever, despite having to don what he called "old man glasses" to read his notes; I can't recapitulate the whole thing (an hour long talk at least) from memory, but it was nice that he ended on an updated version of an old crowd pleaser, a routine I remember from his earliest spoken word albums, about ideas for band names. Cuntstubble and Brown Sabbath were my favourites; I remembered the Earthfahrt one from the original recording, and his joke about a metal band named Cheney harkened back to the his past proposal for a metal band named Mondale, which lets you know how long this routine has been around. (Jello updated the idea of an album called Lest We Forget by Six Million Jews by putting the face of Bush II on the album cover, instead of Reagan; he seemed appropriately outraged that Obama has done nothing to shut down Gitmo or prosecute the Bushies for their crimes, something more Americans should be vocally upset about).

Strangely, considering that spoken word was mentioned everywhere that I read (or wrote) about the event, some people were actually upset, on arriving, to find Jello talking, when they wanted to be hearing music; I gather there were even a couple of walkouts, and a few people seated near me were none too quiet while Jello was up there - something I don't really understand; why attend a Jello Biafra birthday bash if you aren't prepared to listen to him?

Jello and Thee Goblins, by Erika Lax

The evening picked up considerably with Thee Goblins, beginning in Acetone-and-drums mode before Jello and various Evaporators got onstage. Nardwuar recruited various members of the audience to contribute expressive dance and background grunts. He's every bit as entertaining in Goblins mode as he is as the Evaporators frontman, though his Goblins persona is considerably different from his Evaporators one; he comes off like some warped fairytale grandmother, is really quite odd to behold. The more I see of Nardwuar the more I'm convinced he's some sort of genius; I know people who still think of him as irritating and aggressive, as an interviewer ("the doot-doo-doo-loot-doo is all about power, he forces you to do it with him..."), but they really, really should see him play music to begin to understand what he's about... He's truly one of the MVP's on Team Vancouver's music scene...

The night's real fun began with a variant on "Mario Cuomo Works At Domo," with Jello getting onstage in a Domo uniform provided by Nardwuar (which reminded me of an orange Gitmo jumpsuit, appropriately enough). The songs that followed were the high point of the night; while Fuel Injected .45 disappeared into the role of Jello's backing band every bit as skillfully as the Melvins did a few years ago (though they didn't don masks to hide their faces), Thee Goblins kept much of their identity - since they just have too much identity to ever really efface themselves - and thus recontextualized Jello in such a way to really foreground his playful, music-fan side. Hearing "Let's Lynch The Landlord," "California Uber Alles," "Too Drunk To Fuck," and "Viva Las Vegas" played with Nardwuar on Acetone organ was new and unexpectedly delightful, as was the final song: David Clayton Thomas' "Brainwashed," with Nardwuar joining Jello on vocals - an amazing piece of Can-rock that I didn't know before last night; thanks to Jello and Nardwuar for educating me. It was every bit as special as hearing Jello do Wesley Willis' "Rock'n'Roll McDonalds" at the Croatian Cultural Centre a few years ago...

Sadly, given how special that set was, the Rickshaw was nowhere near capacity. I sure am glad I was there...

If Thee Goblins plus Jello was a giddy delight, Fuel Injected .45 were formidable and forceful and a far more serious heavy-rock commitment, with a very sexy Ani Kyd strutting about in business attire (maybe reflecting an apparent burst of ambition on her part; she's changed her image a lot, and has a bunch of projects in the chute, seems to be preparing for a big push out there, which I hope to document more of in the future). I was wearing out by then - I'd slept poorly the night before - but stuck it out for their entire set, mostly drawn from Past Demo(n)s; the coolest song by me was entitled, unless I got it wrong, "Is This a Joke?" - a great idea for a tune and a reaction to life that I am all too familiar with. Jello, when he got onstage, seemed kind of at a loss as to how to react to Ani sitting him down centre-stage and performing "The Sex Song" for him, with her making a joking reference to a lapdance and initiating a fair bit of contact between them; when he started performing back, it was with exaggerated, theatrical discomfort, rather than lechery, which might say something about how he actually felt! Ani definitely had the upper hand for that one...

Still, once Jello and Ani got on the mike together, we got a very cool punk rock climax to the night,  with a rare version of the Dead Kennedys' "I Spy," a song I'd all but forgotten, as well as "Police Truck" and, of course, "Holiday in Cambodia." By that point, it was after midnight, four hours since I'd entered the theatre, so I didn't have a whole lot of energy left, and slunk away without giving Jello his birthday present - a Christian themed album with a great cover, very much in keeping with his aesthetic (the Reverend Bob Bateman's No Place To Hide, which he doesn't have). I'll mail that to him tomorrow, along with my Oscar Brand album with the "Guantanamo Bay" song on it, and an album I snagged by the NORAD band - the North American missile defense of yore... He probably has that, though... how could he not?

Happy birthday, Jello! Thanks for celebrating it in Vancouver... come again with the Guantanamo School of Medicine sometime soon, okay?

Pigeon home invasion

Sweet Jesus. I've had pigeon issues before - see here and here for more - but never anything quite like this.

Despite preventative measures I've taken to make my balcony not so welcoming, like strategically placed strips of packing tape and fishing wire complicating their access, my involuntary pets of last year have been persistently trying to reclaim the space that they regard as their own. Every time I hear them land or start their cooing I pound on the window with an Indonesian wooden rattle that I own and scream and flail to startle them away, and I've swept up tentative sticks they placed in the hope of building a new nest, but they won't take the hint, and keep returning. Today marks the height of their boldness, though - they've taken things to a new level.

Understand: I don't *think* I left my sliding screen open when I left for the Jello Biafra event last night. Usually I lock the balcony door outright; that much I accept that I forgot to do, but I always make sure at least my screen door is closed, precisely so no birds can get in. If I did close the screen, that means that the pigeons found a way to force it open about five inches with their beaks - something I am willing to accept is within the urban bird skill set - because when I got home this morning from my overnighter, there was a pigeon sitting on each of my arm chairs, looking rather pleased with themselves.

After a moment of stunned silence, in which we regarded each other, I yelled, I flailed, and they gave a panicked flight into the half-shut screen, then flew in the opposite direction, into my kitchen. I opened the screen wider, went into the kitchen, and shooed them out, briefly having both pigeons flying directly over my head, making that high-pitched whooping sound they make. I covered my head, fearing they might shit on me. They made another flight to the screen, found it open, and took off.

I inspected my armchairs, and sure enough - they've shit on both of them. I had to scoop up five little deposits of bird poop just now. I only hope they haven't shit in my bed.

This, of course, means war. I kind of regret not  having swatted at them when I had them in close quarters, to be honest. Anything less than actual violence seems not to be working.