Yet Another

And . . . and . . . and . . .

Here’s my Elton opus

Lyrics (not all used yet):

LEAH COME HOME

Leah won’t you come home
There’s a corner by the fire
On the mantel there’s a photograph
Leah sitting by the phone
With the TV on your favorite show
It’s the one that always makes you laugh

Leah won’t you come home
There’s a spot here in the sun

Leah messing with your comb
With an earring on your nose
And all the puzzles in your gaze

In another world, yeah
The craziness will pass you by
All the favors you have done will finally let you fly

Come on home because it’s here for you
All the things you loved and all the things you used to do
Come on home and grab the easy chair
No one else will ever take it cause it’s you that should be there

Come on home, Leah
Yeah, Leah come on home

No Time Like A Present

There is no time like a present, and the present is you when you walk into my door.

Not A Clue

Very, very raw because I don't have a vehicle to get the guitar on the computer yet, but it's here.

It's a one-take thing and it's tough to play and sing at the same time but I just recorded it with my laptop microphone and it's not too bad, except for the hundreds of mistakes

To err is human.

Lyrics (not all used yet):

NOT A CLUE

Take me down
Wake me up
Just don’t leave me alone

Crying shame
Empty air
But all that’s broken is gone

Can you tell
I can see your face
Your eyes dancing like they do

All the rest
Is just not here
And the universe won’t know
Not a clue
No, not a clue.

Say your name
Come on to me
Every precious moment here

Take my hand
And walk into the wild
With nothing on the earth to fear

All I am
Is inside you
All I have right now is yours
Teach me how
Everything you are
And the universe won’t know
Not a clue
No, not a clue.

Go beyond
The things you have to do
But love me always in your way

Touch me now
And don’t ask how
Because tomorrow is another day

Can you tell
I can see your face
Your eyes dancing like they do

All the rest
Is just not here
And the universe won’t know

Not a clue
No, not a clue.

New Three Major Food Group Guidelines

The FDA is nothing if not fickle, so I've come up with the new guidelines on how to survive in this world:

Domaine Chandon champagne
Té Bheag Gaelic scotch
Opera cake from The Duke (Duc de Lorraine)


Have one of each a day and you'll live to be 50, if not more.

Vegetarian Nick? No WAY! (Yes way?)

Having met a vegetarian, I am having to rethink life on a major scale. Everything I always knew has to be thrown out the window. It's quite massive. But when I look at it carefully, it's not such a major shift. I was never a huge red meat eater, my steak blog notwithstanding, and chicken . . . well, a mushroom can stand in for chicken with no ACTRA repercussions. But this person is not just a vegetarian: throw a picky vegetarian into the mix! No wheat as well! Can you say "cooking challenge"?

Just a major mind shift. When the list of ingredients becomes small, one must really be creative. And I'm nothing if not creative.

Can I say I will become a vegetarian? No, I can't.

But the thought is intriguing, if only from a cooking point of view. The challenge: to convert all my old recipes to vegetarian ones. It can be done.

It can be done.

Full report at 11

New Vegetable

I cooked possibly the first-ever vegetarian meal of my life last night. Okay, not completely vegetarian because there were shrimp involved, but to me, they're vegetables of the sea. The person eating was a pesco-vegetarian and I guess there are rules for that.

But no chicken, no pork, no beef, no lamb -- all absent. And it was great, very liberating . . . rice as the vehicle, all the same other ingredients as usual.

I could get used to this.

Mushroom curry? It's a stretch, but after last night anything is possible.

Maybe even welcome. Nahhh, don't get ready for Nick the vegetable

Ain't happening

Like sausage too much

But education.

Education.

Bars

Not a great fan of bars but last night was at the Tabasco bar in Cote des Neiges, with a friend. How do people stand these places? At least now there is no cigarette smoke, but the music was overpowering: everyone, including the poor waitresses and bartenders, had to shout. Normal conversation in any form is impossible.

But it was great, mainly because the last time I was there was in 1995 and also it made me feel like I was still in 1995.

Pastis . . . Lillet, all good there.

No doubt I’ll be back.

Sea Bugs

It's so odd to think that all insects in the world, as well as all arthropods, including crabs and lobsters, are descended from a single ancestor, a wormlike creature called an onychophoran.

So the shrimp I will be cooking this weekend are close cousins to the mosquito and cockroach . . . yuck.

But the way I make 'em . . . tasty! Bring dem bugs on!

Republished Post Due to Viral Happiness!

Make way for Noddy. Everyone does in his neighborhood, as he drives down Main street in Toyland Village in his delivery car, targeting the terrified citizens with his drug deals, accompanied by a scowling, unshaven Big Ears for backup muscle.

Watch as Jerky Clockwork Clown shoots up in an alleyway with HIV-positive Jimmy Giraffe, scanning the horizon nervously for Mr. Stumps, to whom he owes $36.

Then get ready for Tinky-Winky, the abused-as-a-child gang leader, as he extorts the villagers of Teletubbyland in various schemes, usually accompanied by his thuggish coterie, Dipsy, Laa-laa “Nails” Ianuzzi, and Po.

These are the twisted fantasies of a first-time parent, as I am forced to watch, along with my toddler, the inventions of an army of children’s programmers, day in, day out, ad infinukem.

I am hoping that the theme-song writer for Noddy sleeps well, because at three o’clock in the morning as I toss and turn, the words to “Make Way for Noddy” sear their way through my dendrites and axons, always punctuated with the sharp “Prrp-prrp-prrp” of the car horn and the tuneless bark of “Noddy!” that crops up every second line while my toddler always mindlessly chimes in with a parrot-fashion, semidemiquaver late “Noddy!” in response.

In this Sisyphusian world of children’s daytime programming I am forced to inhabit a twilight existence, continually pushing a boulder up a hill to the strains of the Barney Song, eternally suffering the wrath of Hades as I stumble and we all roll back to the bottom and do it all again.

Couldn’t these people have thought things through a little better? Just piping the Thomas The Tank Engine song repeatedly through a circular array of Bose DeepSound speakers to the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay would elicit scores of confessions within a smattering of hours, with many possibly offering personal jihad within minutes.

When one is forced to actually sit and watch every excruciating moment of “Between The Lions”, one’s nearness to God becomes much, much closer. Because if there happened to be a shotgun nearby, I would be Tinky-Winkying out of existence before even one bar of the theme song was over.

Even Bugs Bunny’s “Kill the Wabbit” would be sheer gold to the ears compared to some of the stuff churned out by contemporary kids’ show composers. One knows that the absolute bottom is reached when one hears some innocuous “educational” program’s theme song burst spontaneously into Rap, with that faux hip-hop charade that’s become all too familiar these days in promotions to packaging, minus of course the downward devil’s horn hand gestures and brutish mugging for the camera. Oh, and flying bullets.

It’s bad enough that we, as parents, should be forced to sit through this stuff. When I was a kid, waaay before that goddamn Sesame Street green frog burst like a blossoming Kudzu Triffid onto the world scene, I thrilled to the Donna Reed Show and Leave it To Beaver. Hell, Cerberus aside, that sly Leave it To Beaver theme song was positively life-affirming. I can summon it today again in a wink without a shred of horror.

If I were a kids’ show composer, I would try to mirror the reality of the world in which we now live. Say, for instance, instead of upbeat major chords and perky lyrics such as “I love you/You love me/We’re a great big family” of the Barney song, we would have “What is wrong with existence/When I and my son/Are forced to sit through/This crap every day”.

One can even find the hijacked original lyrics to the Barney “song” on the Internet: “This Old Man/number one/He played knick-knack on my thumb.” This simple line is several orders of magnitude more original than the hack ripoff “With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you/Won’t you say you love me to!” (sic)

If one bothers to extrapolate (as I often do, given the enormous blocks of time spent trying to concentrate on work while Barney jabbers in the background) one finds it extraordinary that a large, stuffed purple mannequin vaguely resembling a bowling pin can spew so much invective as he sweeps through Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood, scything neighbors’ houses clean with rocket-propelled grenades and cluster bombs, also targeting . . . whoops, lost track for a moment.

“That’s Mr. Rogers!” I say, hopefully, to the toddler on my knee. “Taking off his sweater is totally normal, with no sexual undertones—really!”

Meanwhile, in my tired brain, the Sesame Street set is a scene of chaos, with Elmo senselessly stabbed in the groin by a jealous Count as Big Bird, Bert and Ernie look on in mute horror, and Mother Skittle frantically dials 911 only to get a busy signal.

Make way for Noddy.

Sight Unseen

Witnessed:

At the corner of Cote des Neiges and Queen Mary:

A knot of about twelve pedestrians

The light red to cross

No cars

AND THEY ACTUALLY ALL WAITED

They actually all waited for the light to turn green to walk

Who doesn't believe in miracles?

But In The End

In the end, it's another day, isn't it? So sweet to see the green grass aggressively poking through everything and even the flowers in the cemetery draw life happily from what is below them.

So it can't all be bad.

Hammering On Amber

Just imagine a small hammer, one you could easily hold in your hand

There would be maybe twelve stations

The first would be the consistency of plasticine but each station would get harder, until you were hammering on amber

I feel like I'm hammering the amber station today

Kurt Elling

The newest discovery is Kurt Elling

I've always been a sucker for balladeers, like Frank and Nat and Gino and so I really, really love this guy. Michael Bublé is Vegas compared to this guy's New York.

True talent and perfect music for a glass of wine at 3 a.m.

Odger Reberts Gives it One Thumb Up

There are two or three movies that move me on this planet, and this certainly isn’t one of them, but I’m watching it on my laptop and it simply is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen.

Well, I’m not a complex guy, but this kicks ass on Pink Panther and Peter Sellars in my book.

Not a huge Bill Murray fan but, like in Groundhog Day, he does droll better than any American comedian alive with very little effort—kind of like the American John Cleese, if you will—and makes competitors like Steve Martin look like amateurs.

Really, you simply really have to rent this movie.

—Odger Rebert (my non-Australian alter-ego)

Quoyah Prektis

Last night I was invited to attend a performance at the Eastern Bloc of various choiristic affairs . . .

I was kind of expecting some kind of monkish, quiet place, but the paint is peelin’ from the ceilin’ and they have old armchairs and actually had BEER so I adopted my “Australian” persona (I only do that when I’m alone at a party — it’s a tradition going back to the 80s when I wandered into a party involving the Grateful Dead in San Francisco and was all alone and suddenly decided to say “Yeh, tui bees, mite” to the bartender). It is always accompanied by a leather jacket, as I can’t be Australian without one, for some unknown reason.

And the perversity of the whole thing is, I persist in my accent even when they don’t seem to understand (and trust me, mate, I do a good one — they’re completely fooled).

So last night at the bar it was “Hellai, wotuv you got in the beeah tride, then, deeh?” (Can’t be transliterated—you just have to hear it).

And “Sai, luv, hai dyui aipen thees then?” when presented with a beer with the cap still on. It was highly amusing at all times and I got my share of befuddled looks (and impressed ones too: wow, a Real Australian!) so that’s the way the evening started.

But I digress.

I settled back into my armchair (really!) with my “beeh” and suddenly had to close my eyes—it was impossible not to, because twenty or thirty people were singing all around me, all around the room, in perfect harmony; quite one of the most bizarre and intense experiences I’ve ever had. Imagine the finest pair of headphones ever made and then magnify by 50,000. Had to keep the eyes closed and then the music moved around the room as the singers did. Like having taken good old Owsley’s finest, let me tell you; mesmerizing.

Not being much of a theatre- or performance-goer this was all quite extraordinary. The whole evening was amazing and eclectic . . . really something that even this old armchair-hugging-beer-chugging Australian dude can highly recommend. Go tonight (or the next time).

Punkuation

I'm oddly attracted to the style of no punctuation

My friend Shelley (of oneroastvegetable.com) never capitalises anything, and if you think about it, it really makes sense

I'll have to reference Eats Shoots and Leaves but basically, why on earth do I need the shift key?

I suppose there are limits, but oh, thank, thank god I'm not French

Stalking Beatles

So weird to know that only so long ago, nothing was politically correct, pretty much anything went . . . wife-beating was accepted (as I assume child abuse was, as I seem to be on a theme here) but you know, I was alive then! And nothing ever happened to me. My parents never hit me, no one under the sun ever tried to abuse me except for a bit of a predatory history teacher in British prep school . . . and he never went beyond the "sit in my lap" stage . . . christ alive, a gay young San Francisco English teacher in Zaire was much, much more aggressive (I was 14) but I managed to fend him off nicely and anyway, he only tried it when he was stoned out of his mind, which was the way we all were most of the time in Zaire (if you weren't a missionary, that is, and they were probably busy putting THEIR kids on their laps most of the time).

So it's kind of disturbing to revisit an old favorite of mine, the Beatles' No Reply.

I mean, this is grounds for police action today . . . can you say "school shooting"?

"You said you were not home . . . that's a lie"

Can you say "suspect detained with no struggle"?

What a different world we live in now, eh?

In Case You Didn't Notice . . .

. . . as usual, I'm at a simmering level of being pissed off. All you religious types can just happily close this blog right now and move on to when I write about Chicken Marengo, okay?

But when I see that living corpse of a pope appearing on TV and reading in his ludicrous German accent that he "regrets" the abuse that has been perpetrated on people by . . . what, could it be tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of his faithful employees? I just have to puke.

What a fucking hypocrite with his pious demeanour and looney-tune costume decrying "abuse". Hell, he probably got many jollies with plenty choirboys in his time. Fuckwad. What a lying sack of shit.

Like I told you . . . I need a rant-level-o-meter around here. I'm sure the next one will be equally virulent.

In fact I guarantee it.

Going Into Space 2

Corrado is only 20 years old. He's a smart young French guy from the Basque region (the first time I talked to him of course I hassled him about how to make poulet basquaise--poor kid, he probably doesn't even know how to cook an egg, let alone buy a piece of chicken ...!) but now it seems he wants to enter the French army.

I'm a little old, but when that vapid non-response comes from someone, ie. "Why?" "Enfin, ch'ais pas" one has to batten down the hatches, tighten the screws, give the lecture, if you will. The Lecture.

So I gave him The Lecture.

"Whaaa????" were my first utterances, though they hardly qualify as plural. The meaning was definitely plural, though.

I think the following two words including an "f" capitalised what I was trying to say to him.

So, I lectured. And he listened. Kind of like a small dog when you're telling him he's done a bad thing on the sidewalk. Tail wagging a little bit because you're talking to him calmly but also squirming because he doesn't know what you're so pissed off about.

"Corrado," I said, "why on Earth would you want to give your soul"--and I repeated it in French, "ton âme"--"to a barely-human organisation that is going to crush you during the first year, crush, crush crush like a ripe grape, then try, try and try again to build you back to where you were before they crushed you in the first place?"

“Ch’ai pas.” “Enfin.”

Indeed.

But I guess that like legions before Corrado, they’re gonna do what they wanna do.

Going Into Space

It's a very sunny day and very nice for Montreal. Typical halfway-point between winter and summer that only April can bring--hell,one thinks absently every day in spite of a thaw, there very well may be a blizzard tomorrow.

Hence, the array of usual stuff, all geared to the weather. Hmm, what's it going to be today? The boots now? Or just the regular shoes? Is it the deep-freeze coat or just the refrigerator one? Gotta have the gloves, always gotta have them, and something for the ears because the wind bites even at 15 degrees. But always a T-shirt under all this crap, because going into the Metro, it's 85 degrees and you just have to shed or you're dead. A sauna for the three individuals who work there in shirtsleeves.

And so I will foray out again this afternoon into the biting wind and oppressive heat. Kind of like going into space.

Yes, I like that.

Kind of like going into space.

Why? Dunno

It’s good that I’m not losing my Japanese. My son is half Japanese and lives in Japan with his mother and practically the only conduit I have with him is with my ex-wife’s parents, who thankfully have stuck with me over these now four years and never treat me as “the foreigner”.

But now his tiny 6.5-year-old voice on the phone becomes more hesitant and he can’t answer much more than “Yes” and “No” even when I say, “Tai-chan, you can still understand me 100%, right? Remember Nascar weekends, right? And the big plane I’ll come and pick you up in? You still remember that, right? And the kite in the cemetery? Remember when we flew the kite?”

And he says “Yes”, or more like our loving “Yesh” and when I tell him I love him and say “You remember Montreal, don’t you?” He says in his tiny voice “Yesh” . . . and I feel so bad. I just want to get on a plane RIGHT NOW but I just got off a plane . . . what am I doing?

And then I do the unforgivable: I speak to him in Japanese. I know he hates it, but what can I do? I have to make him understand certain things: tell your mother that I want to chat with you as soon as possible. “Tai-chan, okaa-san ni dekirudake mata chatto shitai tte yutte naa?” and I feel so bad because Dad Is Not Allowed To Speak Japanese according to his rulebook. But he just says “Yesh” now, not “Daddy, don’t speak Japanese” any more. What can I do? What should I do?

Sorry. Late night thoughts. They’re excusable, aren’t they? Yurushite naa. Forgive me.

"We will proceed to offload your luggage."

It must be the longest time I spent at any airport, but not necessarily the worst.

On Thursday after my early morning flight to Schiphol from Bordeaux, my flight to Montreal (in the afternoon) was cancelled due to the usual cryptic "mechanical problems" but then again, I don't want to get on that airplane anyway, even should they fix it that day.

So they told us we could be bussed into the city to stay at a hotel, but I didn't want to get on yet another mode of travel and elected to take my chances with a local airport hotel with my non-existent credit card (well, it existed, but only on my computer and my brain). Stupid me.

When I came back from trying in vain to check in at the Hilton, and tried to get back into the city deal, there was no one around any more at the gate so I decided to pack it in. Bureaucracy can be a terrible thing, and I figured hanging around Schiphol couldn't be so bad.

What I learned in the ensuing 24 hours was that the Dutch are the best English speakers in the world. And the best French. And the best German. They oh-so-reluctantly speak Dutch, it almost seemed furtive. But even Dutch sounded English.

The announcements were all in English first. "Passenger Mayer, you are delaying KLM flight number 678 to Djakarta. Please proceed to gate number E19 immediately." Then, the very odd "We will proceed to offload your luggage."

It was always the same, read either by a mellifluous female voice speaking in an oddly perfect British accent or a mellifluous male voice in a perfect American accent.

Why would they want you to go immediately to the gate and get on your plane only to remove your luggage?

Lost in translation, perhaps.

Safe and sound in Montreal,

Yours.

In France, No One Can Hear You Scream

Yep, dining in France is a no-brainer. Isn’t it? Restaurant. You go. It’s French. End of story, right?

Last night I went to a local place which will always remain local. Madame pegged us immediately as “les autres” and placed us quaintly at easily the worst table in the house; kitty-corner to the entrance to the kitchen, where I could watch grizzled François smoke, cook, smoke, cook. Thank the gods my S.O. did not have to gaze on that loveliness while she put fork to mouth.

The first happiness was when I asked for something—I forget what—and the answer from the matronly owner was “We don’t have that.” But the kicker was when I asked for something else and she said “We don’t have that either.” Off the menu, is it, love? Wot, the reglars din’t quite fancy it? Well, I don’t know the equivalent in French, but transport yourself to a Western country in the vicinity and you’ll get with my drift.

Meanwhile, some young couple drifted in and got the cozy corner table seemingly with no effort whatsoever.

I had made some kind of joke about steak being “sanglante”, meaning of course “saignante” but with the only steak that remained on the menu (remember what was unavailable?) it appeared that the owner and the cook decided to play a little joke on the foreigner and make it truly “sanglante” and thus it arrived: seared for thirty seconds on both sides. How they must have cackled in the kitchen!

I was cursing my mistake in not having ordered the volaille aux champignons, but realising that the cook probably would have put a hefty spitball in that as well, I’m thinking I was lucky to get out of there alive. I sent back my steak to kind of get it cooked a little, but it came back equally inedible; simply just bad meat.

“Excuse me, but where would the bathroom be?” I asked at one point. “Well, there’s always the sidewalk,” was my charming answer.

I can’t believe I put my credit card down and paid 50 euros for this lovely meal, toute authentique and no doubt the finest money can buy here.

What a crock of shit.