My new Plenty of Fish profile

(Note: my previous Plenty of Fish profile is a few posts back. I have completely rewritten it).

Rant the second (for entertainment purposes only):

Is anyone else like me? The only thing that 95% of the search options I am presented with in trying to find a person I want to meet on PoF have in common is that I never, ever use them. Not once. I mean, forgive me if this offends anyone, but what kind of person actually searches for a mate based on the *pet* they own? Unless you're actually more interested in finding a dog (or such) to be with than a human - which sets off all sorts of red flags, for me - who the hell cares? Hell, I'm ALLERGIC to cats - my eyes puff up and itch, I can't breathe, I need to medicate myself to tolerate their presence, and I've even sneezed because of cat hair on a girlfriend's clothing, when she was in MY apartment, her cat miles away. Yet I would NEVER think to search for someone using the "no pets" filter. If I met someone who I really felt truly compatible with, and she owned a cat - so be it! The girl I'm going to be with for the rest of my life, I don't KNOW if she owns a pet, and nor do I care. Hell, I'd love it if she owned  aquaria filled with snails (like my favourite novelist, Patricia Highsmith, did), but I'm not going to LOOK for her based on that attribute, y’know?

Similarly, I never have yet searched for a possible partner (or rejected anyone) based on eye colour, height, religion, race, hair colour, zodiac sign (!), income level, "easygoingness," whether someone is "people dependent," or whether someone describes themselves as self-confident. My impression is that if someone sets out to describe themselves in a profile as “self-confident,” they are probably hiding massive insecurities (or else just came from a sales training seminar). I do not want to date the female equivalent of Dale Carnegie, folks, I really don’t; my measure of a person’s confidence comes from how they BEHAVE, not how they *say* they behave, and I’m fully prepared to find out about that for myself, without PoF creating a search function for it... I do not care if you have a high school diploma, bachelor's degree or an MA (this is not a job interview, this is LIFE; I've known some fascinating people who never finished high school, and total as$holes with PhDs). I do not care if you have a car, truck, bicycle, a Segway or a camel. I do not need to know if you own a mansion and a yacht. I do not understand why there is apparently a maximum height pre-set at seven feet tall; are the very, very tall unwelcome on PoF? Why do only people afflicted with giantism (there must be a few, since I've encountered a couple dwarfs) actually have to go into the menu and select "I don't care" to get the full range of height options? …and what if they are only looking for someone over seven feet tall, what then?

Admittedly, I can understand a few of these - searching by body type, for instance, or by the use of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, or attitudes toward having children, fine.  Most of these search criteria, though - hell, there are some that I don’t even UNDERSTAND. Maybe I'm just some sort of moron, but I do not even know what the rather tortured phrase "average family centric" designates. Since I’m not a student of sociology, and have no clue what the current median for “family-centricity” is, perhaps an example would help. Is Michael Corleone an example of someone who might be "strongly family-centric?" What exactly would I be committing myself to if I described myself thus?

...And what about the profession thing? Sorry, but - this one's gotta be designed for women, right? Some of y’all have looked to see what doctors and lawyers were available, huh? (Not many, I’d guess!). Again, from my own point of view, I find the idea somewhat objectionable - a materialistic fantasy of how to find your partner, a way of searching based on money and security, not compatibility or love; maybe I'd feel differently if I were a doctor or lawyer, though. My own experience is that I’ve met people I cared about in all manner of jobs, side by side with people that disgusted me. But I mean, there's an option for searching for people who work in "real estate!" Do people who work in real estate really, really want to find other people who work in real estate to date, or is this for people with a real estate fetish, or something?

The fact is, assuming I actually ever do find a life mate - I haven’t yet - there is much that I do not yet know about her. I have no idea what her career is. I don't know what colour her skin or eyes or hair are, and have no feelings in advance on the matter. I have no idea what level of education she completed, because *I don't measure the value of a person that way,* and wouldn’t want to miss out on potentially meeting the “gal o’ my dreams” by setting the search criteria WRONG. For all I know about the woman I love, she could be an albino Jewish taxidermist who stands 7' 2" and practices Rastafarianism. I’m entirely open to this, depending on my chemistry with this person. On the other hand, I’m not about to SEARCH for someone based on such criteria, unless it’s really, really a slow night, and I’ve been smoking things I shouldn’t. (Does the "religion" search function even acknowledge Rastas, by the way?).

You know what I care about, what search preferences I'd actually use?

I’d like to know what kind of *books* people read - or if they read. I'd like to know what their desert island movies might be. I'd love to find out what kinds of music PoF women are passionate about - or even if they are passionate about music. It's not that I require you to have the SAME PASSIONS AS I DO, I'd just like to know that you have passions that aren't incompatible with mine - like, if you're really into UFC and 4X4ing, as a surprising number of PoF women are, you probably wouldn't want to date me, either! The "interests" function, where I should be able to seek out such things, is pretty much useless as it exists, since so few people get specific about their interests in it, and might describe them using any number of words, making searching for exact terms complicated. Searching for people who like "horror movies" or "punk," for instance - both of which have I done - will only find me women if they've put THOSE EXACT WORDS (as opposed to "scary movies" or "punk rock") in their "interests" field. Sometimes people DO get that specific - I once dated a woman solely on the basis of her listing "Ingmar Bergman" as an interest - but mostly doing very specific searches doesn't net me much. Can we find a way to make it a little easier to find people who have the same basic passions as we do, as opposed to categorizing us by our income levels? ... because I would rather be with a broke fan of Fassbinder than a stinking rich enthusiast for the Transformers series.


...and hell, while we’re at it, how about some filters about divisive social issues, like, say, attitudes towards GAY MARRIAGE? Because I’d be happy to forever filter out people who think same-sex unions are sinful and a threat to family values (“go back to Calgary!”). And why isn’t there an option about something as fundamental and divisive as *attitudes towards eating meat?* Because you know, omnivorous as I am, even I know with certainty that Ted Nugent doesn't want to be dating a raw food vegan, and vice-versa...

...and so it goes. Not only have I still not found what I’m looking for, but there’s no way I can even narrow it down much based on the options I’m being presented, here. There could be someone out there who shares several passions with me, who I'd be a perfect match with, but it's highly unlikely I'd be able to find her. At least I can keep myself entertained by writing these... I'll be 50 and single, at this rate...

DVD Review: Busting (MGM Limited Edition Collection)

MGM's Limited Edition Collection has released a no-frills, burn-on-demand DVD of a 1974 Peter Hyams film I've always enjoyed, Busting, which might be described as a police story for people without much fondness for the police. A counterculturally-tilted variant on The French Connection, it stars Elliott Gould and Robert Blake as two disillusioned Los Angeles vice squad cops who, discovering their superiors are in bed with the sleazy, well-to-do gangster responsible for most of the city's drugs and prostitution (played by a cherubic, snickering Allen Garfield), decide to take matters into their own hands. What's interesting about the film is that, unlike your typical vigilante tale, Gould and Blake do not end up as righteous winners; they simply get more and more cynical and disillusioned, suffer greater and greater personal consequences for their unsanctioned antics, and in the end - a minor spoiler follows - end up with a victory so near defeat that it calls into question everything they've done. Along the way, we see them arresting prostitutes and harassing clients at a strip club, a massage parlour and a gay bar; the film extends considerable sympathy for their victims, and repeatedly raises the question of the value and meaning of their activities, especially since no one else around them seems to care much or want them to proceed. This is a question the two will come to ask themselves by the end; this is a highly pessimistic film, though not without considerable dark humour. Blake is under-used - as is Sid Haig, in a supporting role - but Gould is at his most entertaining, reading his character as a slightly angrier variant on Philip Marlowe in Altman's The Long Goodbye, made a couple of years previously: full of wisecracks, cynical shrugs and smartassed one-liners. He even calls a character "cutie-pie" - a term associated with the Altman film - and calls a couple of incompetent and possibly corrupt uniformed cops "pigs," something Marlowe also does at one point; it's a bit more shocking to hear when Gould is playing a cop himself. This was Hyams' debut in theatres, is skilfully crafted throughout - especially a foot chase culminating in a shoot-out at an open air grocery market - and is very much of the time and place of its making, having all the hallmarks of the gritty cinema that flourished in the US in the early 1970's.

While I'm glad for the release, and am generally satisfied that the film is presented in its correct widescreen aspect ratio with a decent transfer, I have two complaints. First, the MGM Limited Edition Collection series generally seems prohibitively priced; it doesn't exactly make sense to sell these at $30, given the no-frills, burn-on-demand presentation (the only extra is a trailer, and there are no subtitles or captions; the DVD further has a generic packaging and menu, made with little love and not looking very impressive on the shelf). Not *that* many people are so enamoured of this film, after all; if MGM actually wants general consumers of DVDs to buy these, coming down a notch would be wise. (There's another MGM burn-on-demand, an early body horror film called The Incredible Melting Man, that I would happily have bought for $15, but am in no way prepared to pay twice that for). Secondly, the playback may be dodgy on cheaper DVD players; this is as much a caveat as a complaint. I switched my Mom's player awhile back to a cheapie $25 Curtis, so I could play AVI's and such (which her better-quality previous machine would not do). Most DVDs work just fine on it, but Busting, while being brand new, had various video and audio glitches, the image fragmenting into mosaics, stuttering, and skipping ahead a few seconds at various points. It plays just fine on my own DVD player (an LG), but all the same, people with cheaper or more sensitive players should be warned that, despite the fairly hefty price, you may be getting a disc that won't work properly in your machine. And that ain't cool.

One place I have no quarrel, however, is with the choice to release this particular film on DVD. Better burn-on-demand than nothing; this is a highly entertaining film, too long neglected. By the by, a much more detailed plot description can be found on DVDTalk, here.

RIP Rodney King

Believe it or not, when I was an ESL teacher, I got my best-ever lesson out of the Rodney King story. The Discussion Skills curriculum - a little thin, as most curricula at the school where I taught were - asked me to do a class on violence in the media, which approached the topic from a typically conservative, "aren't these lyrics awful" PMRC-like place, focusing around a fairly violent Metallica song. I wanted something a bit richer than that, something that put violent lyrical imagery in context. So - after a warm up discussion on censorship, offensive song lyrics, and so forth - I told my students the story of the Rodney King beating, then played them Body Count's "Cop Killer," minus the spoken intro that appears on that clip, but with the lyrics printed out. Without explaining that the song actually ended up being removed from retail history in an act of record label self-censorship, I asked them, given the social relevance, on the one hand, and the extremely violent lyrics on the other, if they thought the song should be censored or not. For mostly Asian and Latin American students choosing to study in Canada, sometimes because they thought America would be "too violent," or were aware of problems with racism in the USA, it was always an interesting and animated discussion, after which I'd get them to brainstorm reasons why the song should be censored or not, after which we took a final vote to see which side students were on. I count it as a measure of the success of the lesson that students generally felt free to weigh in on either side, and that the final vote could go one way or the other.

...I actually saw Body Count perform that song, by the way, at an early Seattle Lollapallooza. It might not look it from that clip, but in person, the experience was terrifying. I was unprepared for what a Body Count performance might look like, had never heard the song before, and - from only a few feet away from the stage - was vastly intimidated by the black-clad, all-black band as they launched into the song. (I remember people coming onto stage dressed in uniforms with fake pistols, but I don't see them in the clip, so...). Scarier yet, the pit was huge and intense and some girl in front of me got sucked under, so I felt obliged to dive down and rescue her. Having gotten her safely out, I elected to skip the next band and go pass out by the merch tables, where I remained through the next few bands - I can remember hearing the Butthole Surfers in the distance and just thinking, "Naaah." (Granted, I was sleep deprived and had taken some really mediocre acid in the hopes that it would wake me up, so it wasn't just Body Count trauma that sidelined me so). I only ever caught Rollins and the Violent Femmes and Body Count at that show... the rest of it, I was either passed out by the merch or asleep in the car.

None of this really has much to do with Rodney King's passing, but I really have nothing much to write about him. It's kind of hard to write about someone whose most important contribution to culture was getting the shit kicked out of him by brutal Los Angeles cops! Still, 47 is far too young to die... My condolences to those who knew him.

Han Bennink, Brodie West, and Terrie Ex: a jazzfest must-see

Han Bennink at the Cobalt 1.0 (RIP), at a 2007 jazzfest splinter show featuring Eugene Chadbourne and Robots on Fire. Photo by Femke van Delft, not to be reused without permission.


Gotta confess: not feeling very excited about the Vancouver International Jazz Festival this year. Last year, despite some dissent on the wings about the way things were being done, there were some really inspired and exciting programming choices, including visits from Sublime Frequencies' recording artists Group Doueh and Japanese sax virtuoso Kazutoki Umezu's KIKI Band. This year - I mean, if I had a lot of money, freetime, and lived in Vancouver, I might go see guitarist Terje Rypdal or improviser Ig Henneman, but there's not a lot else that excites me. The move from Gastown to downtown seems to bring the jazzfest closer to the world of the Canucks, the Olympics, and the Granville Street Entertainment Zone (or whatever the hell it's called); this can only bode an aesthetic move closer to the dispiriting mainstream of popular music -- a worry that is not at all assuaged by the fact that the program circulating around town looks like a brochure for cosmetics. Mostly the trouble is, though, that there's just not many names I recognize in it, let alone names of people whose work I follow and/or am excited to see play. Maybe I'm just out of touch with the improvised music scene? It didn't stop me from getting excited LAST year...

All that aside, there's one gig that I think anyone with even a passing interest in improvised music should go to see: Han Bennink, Brodie West and Terrie Ex of the masterful Dutch avant punk band The Ex, playing 9:00 on June 24th at the Ironworks. Bennink is a living legend of jazz, and beyond a doubt the funniest, most expressive, most performative drummer I've ever encountered - a true wildman virtuoso of free jazz. I haven't heard him play with Brodie and Terrie, but I have no doubt it will be quite unhinged and off-the-map. Some of it can be heard on Brodie West's Myspace here.... "Unhinged and off-the-map" doesn't begin to cover it...

A striking Bobcat Goldthwait synchronicity. Or psychic phenomenon. Or something.

I swear that what I'm about to tell you is 100% accurate, honest, a description of a fresh and rather startling experience had this evening, in the very office chair where I now sit, typing this.

I've just finished watching a streamed press screener of Bobcat Goldthwait's God Bless America - opening this weekend at the Vancity Theatre, with the writer/director in attendance. Midway through the film, I was debating with myself whether I was going to lend it my voice in support. The film has some fundamental problems, which I'll outline presently; it's also pretty damned entertaining, and I admit that more than once it had me quietly laughing and applauding, often at its darkest, least responsible moments. At some point I caught myself thinking of a song, apropos of absolutely nothing; I'd seen no trailers for the film, let alone one that uses this particular tune; the song isn't mentioned in Adrian Mack's interview with Goldthwait in the Straight; and there are no cues in the film - which overtly mentions Alice Cooper, but never The Kinks - that suggest it might turn up, unless they're subliminally buried deep down in the soundtrack, in which case I wouldn't know about them. I swear I had no reason I can think of for the song - The Kinks' "I'm Not Like Everybody Else" - to come into my head. With Ray Davies coming to town in a few weeks, obviously The Kinks have been on my mind lately - see below for more on that - but this isn't even a song of theirs that I know well. Yet as the film played, suddenly I found myself thinking, out of the clear blue, that it would be just perfect to use it on the soundtrack for the film. I sort of hummed it to myself internally as I scribbled a note, then I returned my focus to the screen, prepared to think no more about it.

About fifteen minutes later, this exact song is used, in completion, to great effect.

Imagine my surprise.

Based on this synchronicity, if that's what it is, I've decided that I'm going to lend my support to this film, have decided that Bobcat and I must somehow be on the same team. His unwittingly validating my ideas about what songs would work in the soundtrack seem to oblige me to validate the movie, in spite of various issues I had with it whenever I stopped to think about it. I will nonetheless mention these. For one, God Bless America presumes to take the moral high ground and lecture Americans about having "lost our kindness" and having ceased to be "civilized" - especially re: vulgarity in the media - while beginning with a man vaporizing a crying baby with a shotgun (or at least fantasizing about the same). I actually had no problems with this scene - in terms of outlandish and bold cinematic misanthropy, it scores pretty high, worthy of the sniper-fantasy of Bill Maplewood in Todd Solondz' Happiness. But kindness and civility are not qualities that one thinks of, watching it. That scene plays thus: Frank, the main character - a sad-sack pudgy middle aged white guy - is lying in bed, sleepless, hearing the noise of his neighbours through the wall. His voice-over narration makes clear that he is subject to migraines and that he finds the banality of their conversation - they are heard discussing Michael Jackson and Lindsay Lohan - impossibly irritating, a "constant cacophony of stupidity" that he finds "soul-crushing." The noise of the blaring Entertainment Tonight-style TV show they favour and the interminable squalling of their baby don't help matters. Cut to Frank's fantasy, where he goes next door with a shotgun. He shoots the TV first, then the man, then - as the mother holds her baby up, pleading for him to have mercy - the baby. The mother is covered in her baby's blood. Frank is merely spattered with it. Bits of fluff from the infant's disintegrated clothing float through the air, as happy music rises on the soundtrack. Then Frank shoots the woman, too, and smiles.

There are really only two rational responses to such a scene. You either immediately get up and leave the theatre (or press stop, or do whatever you're doing to exit the experience) or you cheer and grin and applaud Bobcat Goldthwait's audaciousness. I confess that I did the latter; if you think you might do the same, you should probably go see this film, particularly this weekend, with the director on hand.

It remains the case that there are some contradictions at work here. God Bless America rages against homophobic, racist, anti-female elements in our culture, but it has the same basic feel-sorry-for-the-white-guy structure as Falling Down (a far more reactionary film, but equally concerned with a middle class, middle aged white guy who loses it and goes on a rampage). It presents American popular culture - especially shows like American Idol, Fox News-style political pundits, and reality TV - as a vast cesspool of tastelessness and degeneration, but it holds up no positive alternatives short of going on a killing spree; in fact, to the extent that alternative ways of creating culture are mentioned (like punk rock), they are brought up only as objects of ridicule. Frank sits channel surfing, allowing his soul to be destroyed bit by bit, feeling more miserable by the minute, but simple answers to the problem (like not watching TV!) don't seem to occur to him. Finally, the film wants to have it both ways in regard to its core relationship, between Frank and his under-aged female companion, Roxy; it tells a story on the one hand of a middle-aged man whose life is revitalized by a relationship with a younger girl, while actually including in its screenplay a rant against the exploitation of young women by older men, taking a potshot at Woody Allen and including lines like "fuck Vladimir Nabokov!" News for Bobcat: in Japan, where video rental stores actually consider "Lolita" movies as a genre, and shelve them together - including relatively innocent films as Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon or Wim Wenders' Alice in the Cities - God Bless America would likely end up on the same shelf. Not saying that it's not a wee bit fucked up that the Japanese do that - their tolerance for pedophilia is vastly larger than ours - but it still should make clear that there are a few contradictions at work in this film.

All the same, the satire of American popular culture here is pretty damned accurate, and often gleefully savage. Much of the fake TV in God Bless America is as horrifying as real TV, and many of its targets, from the Tea Party to people who use their cellphones in movie theatres - are utterly worthy, if somewhat easily chosen. God Bless America reminded me at various points of some of the crankier later stand-up routines of George Carlin, which I hope Bobcat would take as a compliment; the film is not actually that far removed from being a thinly-disguised stand-up rant, one which would also please fans of people like Bill Hicks or, presumably, Bobcat himself (I actually don't know his stand-up that well; for those who are curious, the Vancity will also be screening a recent performance film he did, tomorrow, in a double bill with God Bless America).

So to hell with it: even if it contradicts itself on a few counts, y'all should go see God Bless America.  Bobcat is probably one of the good guys, and I think pretty much anyone who visits this blog will enjoy his newest film.

Welcome to Vancouver, man.

Don Cherry's Organic Music Society reissued on vinyl!

Haven't heard this yet but I'm very excited to discover that Don Cherry's Organic Music Society - a minor vinyl grail for music fans, originally pressed in Sweden on the Caprice label in a run small enough that it usually sells on eBay for upwards of $200 - has been reissued by Concord Picante. The average price online seems to be $29.99 - you can find it here, for instance, though I should mention that I've never done business with this dealer and can't vouch for their service. This is Cherry at his most spiritually attuned, when he was leading the life of a Bohemian hippie in Europe and exploring world music instruments; there are examples on Youtube. By the way, in case you haven't figured it out, this posting has nothing to do whatsoever with Canadian hockey commentators...

Neil Young pre-sale, plus Americana

Managed to figure out how to negotiate buying Neil Young and Crazy Horse tickets today using the Rock 101 Presale. Pretty uncomplicated, actually. Totally enjoying Americana, too. There are some remarkably bold and effective (and generally very dark) reworkings of what might normally seem annoyingly trite campfire singalongs for kids; to my amazement, my favourite tune on the album is "Jesus' Chariot," a re-interpretation of "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain" that all but obliterates the original and evokes an Appalachian apocalypse, greatly aided by Ralph Molina's tribal drumming. The poorly sublimated, resentment-driven bloodlust of Rapture-ready Christianity courses through the veins of this tune, makes it a very scary and very relevant song about America today. "Oh Susannah," "Clementine," and "Tom Dula" (AKA "Tom Dooley," here re-worked to suggest a "Down by the River"-style crime of passion), all work damn fine, too. Not all the songs are rendered quite so unrecognizable in the treatment, but then, not all of them require such radical measures to make them listenable and new. I haven't really been excited about a Neil Young album (with or without Crazy Horse) since 1996's Broken Arrow (though I've ignored several, to be honest), so I'm delighted that I'm going to get to see them on an album I think I kinda love. Fans of Broken Arrow (or Crazy Horse's unique brand of jamming) will find this a most agreeable disc; I gather some critics are accusing it of being sloppy and indulgent, with songs that go on too long, but it sounds to me like those folks have no business even listening to Crazy Horse...

One suggestion for Mr. Young: how about an album reworking some songs by African-Americans? It's no criticism of (the pretty much all-white) Americana - I'd just love to see you get your hands on some Reverend Gary Davis (or Charley Patton or Bukka White or Howlin' Wolf or Son House or...).

Adstock 2012, plus Adstock fundraiser gig in the sticks, June 15th!

Adstock, for those who have missed it, is an annual, free all-day outdoor festival of music in downtown Maple Ridge; it happens this year on July 8th, and it's looking like a really vibrant year. Long-lived local ska favourites Los Furios headline, but there are a bunch of awesome bands - including the flamin' instrumental hoedown music of Cornshed, whom I caught awhile back at the Hammond United Church Hall at the first of two Adstock fundraisers. They're quite amazing and the band I'm most excited to see again - they play with all the fury of hardcore, but their music is a countrified Celtic-by-way-of-the-Maritimes variety of instrumental folk, with a mandolin and fiddle as lead instruments (it says something that the fiddle player reminded me of Wretched Erin). Mike Usinger has written praisingly about Anchoress and the Jen Huangs, here and here, two bands that I've yet to really do justice to, but am looking forward to seeing live. Even bands representing genres that I'm not so interested in, like North Hill (who have t-shirts that look like hardware store surplus and musically answer the question "What would Lynyrd Skynyrd sound like if they came from rural BC?"), are incredibly talented and tight - classic rockers will love them. All told, it's a pretty cool free day of music, and much more musically varied this year than the usual exclusively punk/ ska/ metal lineups I'd associated with the event in the past; if you like live music of any sort, it's actually worth getting on a bus and coming to visit me in the sticks for this one.

And while it's less likely to inspire a commute, there's also a fundraising gig for the event on June 15th at Hammond United Church Hall - one of the strangest places I've yet to see a gig, out in the biker bar/ pulp mill backwoods of Pitt Meadows. I've seen the Rebel Spell and a bunch of other great bands there (Todd Serious quipped something like "one look at the place and you can tell nothing fun was ever supposed to happen here" - while I'm sure the church is appropriately churchlike, the hall itself where the gig takes place looks like a gymnasium in a rather bleak and under-decorated elementary school. It's actually rather surprising that it doesn't smell like sweatsocks). This gig marks the reunion of the Secondrate Rejects, featuring members of the Bonedaddies, who will also be playing Adstock.

Got no more to say on this at the moment, but here are some photos from the first Adstock fundraiser in April.

(above and below: Cornshed)

Above and below: North Hill

Above: Damn the Eyes, I think! (Not appearing at Adstock, but an awesome Maple Ridge metal band whom I wrote about here).

Above and below: the Jen Huangs

See y'all at Adstock!

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.