Thank you for having to get this crash out of the way so everyone on every plane in the world (especially the ones flying them) will have the heebie-jeebies for months to come.
I feel like I dodged a bullet. Let's hope the "It happens in threes" rule doesn't apply.
Oh, and by the way, that would have been MY footage of the crash you would be watching over and over again on CNN. I always video my takeoffs and landings.
(You can hear me vaguely above the jet roar saying first "We're awfully close to the mountains . . . I wonder if the pilot knows . . ." [we're nowhere near the mountains] and then in a high-pitched Indian accent "Ve are going to crash into the vater now . . . ve are going to crash into the vater!") Trust me, you wouldn't want to fly with me.
On Wednesday, my good friend and collaborator on this site (Ironman) drove in from Ottawa and we had a jolly time driving around. We made it to Atwater market, at which I went to Douceurs du Marché and spent a cringe-inducing $78 or so on a bottle of Frantoia olive oil and a bottle of truffle oil. What can I say? These things have to be done.
And afterwards we taxied over to L'Express to delight in what only L'Express can do -- the best steak-frites in North America. NOBODY does it better. Their rare (saignant) onglet (hanger) steak is just the beefiest beef in the world.
Don't be fooled by promises of "Kobé" beef (I've said it once, and I will say it again and again until my last dying breath: there is NO KOBÉ beef in North America and there never will be. Any restaurant that advertises Kobé ANYTHING is lying, lying, lying. Even the one that offer "Wagyu" beef are usually lying their hides off). The L'Express steak-frites is about the best steak you will ever enjoy, period.
Anyway, Patrick brought his Nikon rig and did me the honor of taking a couple of "portrait" shots of me, which is extremely rare, as I don't know anyone who is a friend and who lives in Montreal and who is a good photographer, so there are very few portraits of me anywhere.
Patrick took a couple of "Patraits" and I messed with them in Photoshop a bit and here they are, in no particular sequence (as usual, right click on them to open in a new window to get them at full resolution):
At L'Express
Half colored man
Monet man
Thank you, my good friend, for such wonderful records of yours truly. One day I shall return the favor except sans the Photoshop mucking about.
When Brigitte disappeared to Israel May 1 or so (to return July 2) poor ol' Nick got lonesome.
Lonesome enough to check out the pet ads and respond to one for kittens -- there was a black one that sounded really great. So I taxied all the way to Cartierville to pick up the little runt, only to find out that she was, like, only four weeks old.
For those who don't know cats, this is, like, WAY too young to take a kitten away from its mother. It needs at LEAST another month.
But I, being the "cat expert" I thought I was, took her anyway. I named her Pika, which means "flash" in Japanese.
Well, we already have a cat, Lulu, who is about 6 years old. And I quickly found myself overwhelmed. This little kitty was so young it would have to be fed with an eye dropper every four hours. And I was looking at a month of this. So I put an ad on a bulletin board and someone responded and came and picked up Pika that very night. Thank God for Sue!
So that, I thought, was that. I was actually in tears when I handed her over to her new owner.
But apparently, she thrived. I had asked Sue to keep me up to date with photos etc. and she did exactly that.
But then two days ago, I got a totally surprise email: Sue and her companions were going on a wilderness trek for a few weeks -- would I take Pika (whom they had renamed Madonna)?
Well, garsh, OF COURSE I would take her. Sue told me I was the only one she could trust -- that made me feel pretty good.
So now, as I type, there is a fuzzy little monster roaming the halls of this quiet house . . .
I wanted to document her for Brigitte, but she is AS BLACK AS A LUMP OF COAL and is almost impossible to film. All that shows up are her little beady yellow eyes. That used to be blue.
This morning I filmed her, and by coincidence, I was playing her with the same little USB cord that I was playing with her the first time I filmed her -- almost two months ago.
So, here you see two visions of the same cat, in the same location, playing with the same thing just two months apart. Note how her eyes are BLUE in the first video and YELLOW in the second (it's not easy to see, but you can go here to see ol' Blue Eyes) . . .
Where were YOUR ancestors while this was happening?
The world's treatment of the Jews during WWII was absolutely appalling, on a par with that of the Nazis themselves.
The Catholic church was a major contributor to anti-semitism and wept crocodile tears while watching millions of Jews being dragged off to the slaughter.
Countries turned away ships full of escaping Jews who had nowhere to turn and in some cases they were forced to go back to Germany. England imposed strict quotas on the numbers of Jews allowed into Palestine and America wasn't much better.
The amazing hypocrisy of the United States to intern whole rafts of Japanese Americans while confiscating their property yet doing nothing of the sort with the German Americans is breathtaking in its cynicism.
Basically, the rest of the world looked on as the Jews burned -- the so-called "Good War" was only good if you were white and American or British.
And after the war, the Catholic church provided many, many vicious animals like the Kommandant of Treblinka, Franz Stangl with "ratlines" to third countries, issuing them with false papers, which is why so many human butchers ended up in places like Uruguay and Argentina. Josef Mengele, for one, Adolf Eichmann for two.
Still worship the Catholic God? Well, they just switched from protecting vicious, mass-murdering Nazis to abusing small children -- no major difference in levels of barbarity.
The whole of the Allied world was fully aware of the death camps but they did nothing to intervene whatsoever and indeed, aided the Nazis in the extermination by making it so difficult for the Jews to find a place to hide.
According to Wikipedia:
"Antisemitism in the United States reached its peak during the 1920s and 1930s. The pioneer automobile manufacturer Henry Ford propagated antisemitic ideas in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent. During the 1940s, the pioneer aviator Charles Lindbergh and many other prominent Americans led the America First Committee in opposing any involvement in the war against fascism. Following a visit to Germany in 1936, Lindbergh (that fucking slimeball) wrote: "While I still have my reservations, I have come away with great admiration for the German people... Hitler must have far more vision and character than I thought… With all the things we criticize he is undoubtedly a great man…"
Forget Rwanda. Almost the entire world was responsible for the Holocaust, and it's extremely convenient to forget that little detail when we examine the shameful history of the behavior of the Allies.
Here's a "heroic" account of one of the Allies' stunts (that's you and me, people, unless you're Nazis):
"The MS St. Louis was a German ocean liner most notable for a single voyage in 1939, in which her captain, Gustav Schröder, tried to find homes for 937 German Jewish refugees after they were denied entry to Cuba, the United States and Canada, until finally accepted to various countries of Europe. Historians have estimated that, after their return to Europe, approximately a quarter of the ship's passengers died in concentration camps."
What the world tends to forget is that the physicists who made up the bulk of the team at Los Alamos and who basically invented the atomic bomb and stopped WWII were primarily European-Jewish émigrés, such as Leo Szilard, a Hungarian Jew who first proposed to Einstein that he write to President Roosevelt and raise the alarm the the Germans might get the atomic bomb first.
IF NOT FOR THESE PEOPLE WE WOULD ALL BE SPEAKING GERMAN, JAPANESE OR BOTH.
As much as I despise the Japanese for their role in the war, it can't be said that it hunted down and mercilessly exterminated the members of any particular ethnic group, unless, of course you happen to be Chinese or Korean.
Take a GOOD LOOK at this documentary, and PLEASE BUY IT so that it will support the makers and keep spreading the message:
Listen especially the words of Niklas Frank, son of Hans Frank, the human demon sent personally from Hell who was the Governor-General of Poland during the war, who was once quoted as saying "But what should we do with the Jews? Do you think they will be settled in Ostland, in villages? We were told in Berlin, 'Why all this bother? We can do nothing with them either in Ostland or in the Reichskommissariat. So liquidate them yourselves.' Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourself of all feelings of pity. We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them and whenever it is possible."
I for one will not let this rest. I'm not Jewish, Catholic or any religion and the only connection I have with WWII is that my father proudly BOMBED THE FUCK out of the Nazis and probably had a lot of fun doing it, to which of course he would never have admitted.
So what the fuck does all this have to do with YOU, you ask?
Well, in less than ten years the last survivors of the Holocaust, who were only little children back then, will all be dead. The will be no one left alive to be able to say, "I was there."
And you should carry the responsibility for their sufferings along with you until YOUR last breaths.
But don't worry, lest you forget, I will always be here to tirelessly remind you.
I'd be an executioner. And the first to go under Madame Guillotine would be YOU, the lurkers.
That's right, you quivering balls of spineless indecision. How do you go through your days, wringing your hands together as you shamble along the silent sidewalks, glancing furtively over your shoulder for some unseen assailant that MIGHT JUST POP OUT OF THE SHADOWS and ASK YOU FOR A CIGARETTE?
You get your vampiristic BLOOD-SUCKING JOLLIES just FEEDING ON MY outpourings of vitriol understated with a VAST HUMOUR you wouldn't recognize if JIMMY HOFFA ROSE FROM HIS CONCRETE TOMB AND WHACKED YOU WITH IT.
Yes, it's time to put out my MANIFESTO about you cowardly, misanthropic, microcephalic TROGLODYTES who, if struck one day with an ACTUAL OPINION would fall, slavering and moaning to the floor in a FIT OF TRICHOTIILOMANIA incurable by any of your Levadopa or Lithium or Thallium or whatever it is the guys in the white coats FEED YOU JUST TO KEEP YOU CONSCIOUS.
With your PRE-CAMBRIAN epithalamuses working HYPERTIME to spew out a semi-coherent pseudo-thought once in a year of Sundays I suppose it's HARDLY TO BE EXPECTED that you should expose your bone-china-white flesh that hasn't seen sunlight in decades, and, GOLLUM-LIKE, actually grunt forth an ACTUAL OPINION about what it is YOU READ and I WRITE HERE.
YOU'RE SO FATHEADED THAT YOU PUT MAYONNAISE ON YOUR ASPIRINS. YOUR MOTHER SHOULD HAVE THROWN YOU AWAY AND KEPT THE STORK.
I told you, ya lurking bunch of goth-wannabe benthic-zone dwellers, YOU HAVE GEORGE BUSH'S APPRECIATION FOR GOOD WRITING and also HIS TASTE IN WOMEN'S UNDERWEAR.
You would not know how to spell C-A-T if your fucking NAME WAS CATHERINE and if you stumbled upon a treasure map with a huge "X MARKS THE SPOT" on it YOU'D GET OUT THE FUCKING OXI-CLEAN.
Who ARE you, ya scuttling bedbugs that drop by for a dose of HEALTHY MIND EXPANSION and leave not ONE FUCKING NOTE of appreciation for the hundreds of thousands of words, 80% of who are being READ BY YOU FOR THE FIRST TIME, WHOSE DICTIONARIES ARE ON SPEED-DIAL, who can't even put forth a mumbling "Can't you stop swearing all the time?"
YES. YES!!!! That would count as an actual comment! It would count as an OPINION! Something with which you seem to have only a NODDING ACQUAINTANCE!
Well, batten down the hatches, ya lurking three-celled brachiopods, because this is only JUST THE BEGINNING.
Fuck, my caps-lock key is now SO OVERHEATED that it wants to have sex with the space bar.
You have spoken, and I have heard you. But NOW HEAR THIS:
I used to be such a sweet, sweet thing 'Til they got a hold of me. I opened doors for little old ladies, I helped the blind to see. I got no friends 'cause they read the papers. They can't be seen, with me and I'm gettin' real shot down And I'm feeling mean.
No more Mister Nice Guy No more Mister Clean No more Mister Nice Guy They say, he's sick he's obscene
I got no friends 'cause they read the papers. They can't be seen, with me and I'm gettin' real shot down And I'm, I'm gettin' mean.
No more Mister Nice Guy No more Mister Clean No more Mister Nice Guy They say, he's sick he's obscene
My dog bit me in the leg today My cat clawwed my eyes Mom's been thrown out the social circle And dad has to hide I went to church, incognito When everybody rose, the Reverand Smith, He recognized me, And punched me in the nose He said,
No more Mister Nice Guy No more Mister Clean No more Mister Nice Guy He said, you're sick, you're obscene
For those with pacemakers PLEASE HAVE THEM ADJUSTED BEFORE VISITING THIS PAGE.
I just shut this blog down for a few days to weed out the random idiots, of whom, it seems, there are legion.
I'm in a leaner, meaner frame of mind. That means no dealing with idiots and morons. I hate that so many people come here because of long-dead posts . . . hopefully the cutting off of "visible to search engines" should put a stop to the random rabble that comes by here.
Basically I'm a bit pissed off at having a random audience of idiots. You would not believe the search terms that bring idiots here . . .
So, I'm hoping that proportion of Internet rabble will disappear. If they keep coming, I'll shut down the blog again, until they finally give up and stop coming. If I knew who my loyal readers were, I'd put you on a list and allow just you to read this blog.
If you want to put yourself on that list, do so by emailing me at nick(at)montrealfood(dot)com and I'll add you to the list of readers. Then I'll shut the blog down and only you will be able to read it.
Basically, I have a lot to say, but I want to start minimizing my Internet footprint and I'd rather just address people who are interested instead of the large group of transients which this blog currently attracts. I'd just as soon delete the entire blog and start again, but I won't do that, because there is so much on it that is useful and maybe funny and it has been almost 8 years since I first posted.
So if you wish to remain a reader, a simple email will suffice. I'll wait about thirty days and then shut it down again, this time permanently, at least to the non-readers.
Got it? If I have a small hard core of readers I can post much more interesting and personal stuff which ail interest just us and not a traveling coterie of indigent web crawlers.
Ich habe leider meine Faszination mit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg wieder aufgenommen. Schade nicht für mich, sondern für Sie, denn wahrscheinlich haben Sie hier für ein Rezept für Thai-Curry kommen. Nun, Sie gonna haben, um nach einem Rezept für Schnitzel begleichen. Schlecht, hergestellt, auch.
Dieses Mal ist es eine Biographie von Paladin von Hitler, Hermann Göring. Eine unbeholfene, Fett-Finger, gierig, Greifen, bösartigen Stück Deutsche porkiness kann unmöglich vorstellen. Wenn er nicht über diese unglaublich cobra-like Bösartigkeit tief in seiner Persönlichkeit, leicht von den Persönlichkeiten der Himmler und Heyderich (lasst Adolf verlassen aus ihm abgestimmt - er war ein verdammter hoffnungsloser Fall aus dem Tag, als er in die Welt ausgeworfen wurde ), dann könnte man ihn als den "comic relief" von Nazismus zu sehen.
Oh, versuchte er, aber er war zu beschäftigt vergewaltigen Europas Kunstschätze zu viel Aufmerksamkeit auf den Krieg zu zahlen.
In der Tat, aus dieser Biographie Sicht, waren die Nazi-Oberkommando (all die üblichen Verdächtigen) eine solche Mischung von inkompetenten Idioten, dass es eine große Wunder, dass sie überall bekam überhaupt ist. Stellen Sie sich vor Hitler eine "soft spot" für England, dadurch verzögerte sich seine geplante Invasion statt Schlagen gegen den "Flathead" Bolschewiki, den er sicher zu seinen Füßen wurde kriechen würde nach ein paar Tagen der Bombardierung. Ja, Dolfy, wie, uh-huh.
Er war in der Tat eine solche komische inkompetent Taktiker, dass es das Gerücht, dass ist nach einem Historiker, es wurde ausdrücklich durch die Alliierten für Hitler ermordet zu werden verboten, weil sie tödliche Angst, dass jemand waren - jeder - wer seinen Platz könnte tatsächlich besitzen ein Gehirn und damit weit eher in den Strategien des Krieges durchsetzen. Rommel, geben ein gutes Beispiel.
Hitler war so ein microcephalic doofus, dass alles, was er nach seinem ersten erstaunlichen Siegen berührt all wandte sich führen, Einer nach dem anderen, jede mögliche Entscheidung, die er machte, war die falsche.
Gott sei Dank, nicht wahr? Ansonsten, und ich würde wahrscheinlich "sprechen zie Deutsch."
Through the miracle of a camera of whose existence I was unaware until very recently, I took this little video of an outing to Atwater market. But this little thing, which I managed to hustle for only around $25 on eBay, takes fantastic 1080p HD videos -- up to two hours' worth at a time, although I've never tried it that long -- and is smaller than an iPhone. It even has a snap out USB plug and takes seconds to upload a movie to your computer. And as I just did a search, I realized that mine is almost the first, if not THE first of these beasts.
I did mix this in iMovie, I must admit, but do go gaga over how far technology has come. Last year I bought a Canon MiniDV HV10, which, with all its tapes and cables and such, doesn't hold a candle to this little thing.
Be sure to watch this full screen on YouTube and choose the 1080p setting. Your connection might buffer a bit, but it's worth it. And the subject matter is not the best, nor the camerawork -- but the sheer ease in which it was all done is what's impressive about it. Not to mention that it cost me under $30.
The past is there to be examined in infinite detail. Just what you just finished doing not half an hour ago is done; it cannot be undone, no matter by what process you propose. something that you did with the immediate intention of undoing can, at best, be put back into a semblance of its former self.
This is inarguably impossible. once done, no matter how tiny, a thing cannot be back as it was exactly the moment you did it. Some details will invariably be overlooked. even under controlled, scientific conditions, what is done IS DONE FOREVER, be it on a molecular or even atomic level.
You simply cannot duplicate something which is past, no matter how hard you try.
The further, however, is very much in YOUR HANDS. What is not yet does not exist -- you CAN change the future. In front of you is an apple; you might take a bite of it, or you might not. If you decide to, you have just created a past state that is irrevocable. IF YOU DO NOT DO so, however, the apple will be there, sitting on the table, exactly the same as it was a minute ago. Whole, unbroken by you -- indeed, completely unmoved from its position of just one minute ago.
But regrettably, while it seems unchanged, it has changed on ten billion levels, just in the minute you have sat watching it. Its atoms have been busy, infinitely busy, rearranging themselves. Not ONE SINGLE atom of that apple remains in the same state that it had been in one minute ago, except in your slow and impossibly limited powers of observation.
Now once we accept that the past is the past and is unchangeable, and that the future is infinitely changeable, possibilities radiating out in ten trillion different directions DEPENDING UPON WHAT YOU DECIDE TO DO OR NOT DO AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT, it must give one pause to reconsider the past.
Because now, because now that it IS the past, we are presented with an opportunity to consider what WOULD have happened or NOT happened, had you, or someone else, or something beyond your control, had not intervened.
Seeing as how this is easily the most widely read of my multiple blogs, I thought I'd summarize the state of air travel in the past two weeks, judging from my trip to California (blogged thoroughly at CA Blog).
The friendly skies are not friendly any more, but they are not unfriendly. If you consider that I was hitting the airways at a completely random time of the year, not in the middle of some holiday or other, I would take that as a snapshot of the industry as a whole; I saw nothing whatsoever of air rage or flared tempers or anything at ALL that is so popular to plaster all over the media these days.
At Montreal, where I was to board a 6:45 a.m. flight, the Delta agent at the counter was incredibly nice and we had some comments about the olden days of air travel, because I was in a pink jacket with a silk vintage tie and black shirt and most folk don't travel that way any more. I asked him if the pink jacket would be a problem anywhere and he said "Hell no, it's great to see someone dressed up like you are."
For some unknown reason the letters SSSS were stamped on my boarding card so at security, which was not very busy, I was pulled aside for a special check during which I was put through a body scanner and pretty much had to take off everything I was wearing. But everyone was very pleasant, and the CATSA guy who informed me that he had to look in my bag was very polite, and when I said "A lot of junk is probably going to fly out -- maybe we shouldn't do it on the conveyor" he didn't blink an eye, took the bag off to another table and patiently waited for me to get all my things back together before he let me open the bag. It was packed okay, although the bulk of it was my large camera case which was packed with gadgets: iPad, video camera, four lenses, cables, and other paraphernalia.
I explained to him what everything was even though he didn't ask me to, and I was quickly on my way. US customs was crowded due to the "sequester" but my agent was a very pleasant fellow who asked about my Pan Am bag and again, we reminisced about the golden days of air travel.
I even had the temerity to ask him what the designation SSSS meant, something technically maybe you shouldn't ask border personnel, but without a blink he said "Oh, it's just a random pullout for special screening." My left foot, but I'm all for profiling. I don't "look" Arabic but these days you don't have to, and I was in the right demographic (55) and who knows, maybe that day Al Qaeda was trying yet another one of their fucked up little experiments that only their ragheads and Neanderthal motivations could come up with.
And my flights, although not "fun" in the ordinary sense of the word, were okay -- to ATL and then LAX and then OAK, two legs of which were on regional jets, so everything was cramped as usual but I was delighted with the new innovation of FREE online Internet. I was, quite frankly, blown away. Now if they had only thought of a power plug in my seat I would have been in Heaven.
In fact, ALL the airports I was in had free, fast wi-fi, and for someone who likes to blog a sneeze, that was very pleasurable.
The walks between gates in some cases were a drag -- Minneapolis is easily the worst airport, up there with Dorval as being the airports with the most distance between gates (and gates and Immigration) but as long as you can walk you're okay.
The flights themselves were completely thrill-free, which is just how I like them, and all the pilots laughed at my worn out "Paper wasp in the pitot tube" joke (a practically new 757 was brought down by wasps having built nests in their pitot tubes, little things on the side of the plane that gauge airspeed and altitude -- somewhat important data for pilots to know) because the plane had been parked for three weeks at some airport in Costa Rica and no one had thought to cover them.
All in all, it's very good to know the system; to treat all the workers as the human beings they are; that in difficult situations like delays the operations personnel are just as anxious to get you on your way as you are and there is no point at all in making a fuss about something almost no one has any control over (weather delays) and to remember at all times that most of these people are making annual salaries (pilots as well) about equal to your average city bus driver.
Moral of the story: treat others as you would have them treat you in any and all occasions. And trust me, somehow you'll get from A to B. I promise you that.
In my and many, many others' view, he is an insane maniac who seems determined to die in very bad ways, and have a bad time while he's on his way to doing it. The book is called Facing the Congo.
Towards the beginning he describes a scene in downtown Kinshasa, a place where I lived and went to school for three years, from 1970 - 73. If there were ever a golden age for what some wag quipped was "A deep hole in central Africa that is exactly the shape of Zaïre" (Zaïre was the former name for what is now called the DRC -- Democratic Republic of the Congo. The dictator, Mobutu, who created that hole in the exact shape of the DRC over a period of years, is gone now, but Kinshasa remains) that was it.
The guy who wrote this book had made a decision to basically canoe down the Congo river alone, following in the wake of H.M. Stanley, the explorer.
Tayler was in Kinshasa 1n 1995, while Mobutu was still nominally in power, but long ago removed to a palace in the jungle, where he spent his billions and nurtured his prostate cancer.
But here is Tayler's descripton of a place I used to know very well and even hung out in with friends at modern cafés -- the center of Kinshasa, Boulevard du 20 juin. I remembered it as a modern, bustling city, but Tayler says this, in a view from a taxi:
"Ahead rose the modern apartments and office towers I had seen from across the river. Beneath them, on Boulevard du 30 Juin, between the palms, faded billboards promoted Miki-skin-lightening cream and Sahabair, Primus beer and Scibé-Airlift, all with cheery, 1950s-style painted advertisements. Men -- little more than skeletons in rags -- wandered down sun-bleached, trashed-out side streets, stirring up ash-colored dust. In the garbage heaps, which were still smoldering from last evening, starvelings scavenged on their knees, or twitched or groaned, prostrate in the offal and debris, too weak to move.
"I could not stomach the sight and turned away.
"Dust, decay, crazed men in uniforms, starvelings and cripples -- it all hit me and I nearly broke. I felt nausea rising within me; pity and revulsion and shock swamped me and kept at bay the fear I had thought I would feel.
"Although I had expected to see poverty, I had no idea it would upset me so thoroughly, so viscerally."
I had no idea that things that I myself witnessed could deteriorate into the hell Tayler witnessed. Let this be a warning to all . . . if it can happen to the largest country in Africa, who can't it happen to?
I highly recommend that you watch this video, which will illustrate very clearly to you that there are many Hells right here on Earth:
I think I told you a while back that I paid $99 to have myself "genotyped" by an outfit called 23andme.com . . . well, I got my results back today, and I have to say, they're very puzzling . . . I took a screenshot of the results page, so you can see for yourselves (right-click to enlarge in a new window). . .
Does anyone besides yourself remember the name of your math teacher when you were 15 years old? Do YOU even remember his/her name?
Moreover, who the fuck cares?
Well, I for one think YOU do. If you were killed in a car crash tomorrow, how much of your life and everything you did in it would get totally obliterated, just like your slowly-festering corpse?
And like I said — you probably don’t think anyone alive today could possibly give a shit what your math teacher’s name was or whether or not you did well in his/her class or any one of a trillion details of your life — YOUR life, not anyone else’s — and of course, why should they? They have enough trouble getting the details of their OWN adolescence straight, let alone someone else’s.
My problem is, sure, no one SHOULD be expected to gve a shit. After all, you’re still kicking around, just a phone call or an email away. No need to know these things, to ever HAVE to know these things, because they’re so insignificant in the Grand Scheme of Things, what with Al Qaeda burgeoning through the Dune Belt in Africa and ruining everyone’s day, the Boston Marathon Bombing (holy cow, Batman! Boston! Quick, summon the Teaparty Mobile!)
But what happens when you, and the trillions or so neurons that hold the memory of yes, what you had for breakfast on January 8th, 1987, just get erased, like the data in the clumsy spilling of a pint of beer onto your fully-running laptop?
All of a sudden, even if for whatever reason, someone WANTS to know the name of your math teacher at Las Lomas High in the spring of 1974, that information simply is no longer available. That information, folks, has disappeared forever, not there, folks, the party is over and you can all go home now. Unless, of course, the person wanting the info can hire a private detective or painstakingly do the research himself of writing to the school and asking them to consult their records blah blah blah. — a rather large hassle, I’d say, compared to just consulting a digital database of your memoirs with a search string of “math+teacher+1975” or even “schools 1975” or what have you.
But if such a database did not EXIST, mind you, in any form — a handwritten diary, a snippet of videotape from graduation of ‘77 — then it’s gone forever.
So what, you ask, perfectly reasonably. No one, yourself included, needs to know what you had for dinner on Jan 19th, 1987. But I have a question: where WERE you on January 18th, 1987?
What did you DO on that day?
Now, not being a squarish diarist, recording a little of what I did that day — and believe me, there are a LOT more people like that than you can imagine — I might be able to place around WHERE I was that day, as in, what country, probably what state and what city, but as I sit here in 2013, I really couldn’t tell you what street I was living on on that day. I know from a process of elimination — where I WASN’T — where I probably was on that day, even the street, and I could, based on my recollections from that general period of my life, come up with a reasonably accurate summary of what I probably was doing that day, but I’d probably be off by miles on most of the fine details.
I’d be able to tell you what car I was driving at the time — that’s easy — but I can’t even remember whether or not I was involved with anyone at the time, and if I was, who that might have been. Not that I had so many girlfriends it’s all a fog of war — indeed, exactly the opposite — but as far as I know, I was not involved with anyone at the time.
Now wouldn’t it be nice if someone came up to you — we’re talking about YOU, now — and told you, down to the minute, what you did, where you were, what you ate and what you drank, who you spoke to during the course of the day, your telephone number and exact address at the time — wouldn’t that be just great? No? Okay, maybe it wouldn’t, but I’d be at least curious. In fact, armed with that day’s information, I’d be able to piece together the shape of the whole month, more or less, and maybe recall stuff that I haven’t thought of, well, since that very day.
Now imagine if you could nail your parents down to, say, the third month of your mother’s pregnancy with you. What were they doing at the time? Was your mother smoking and drinking? (in my case, I know that answer — regrettably, YES.) Who were they hanging around with? What records were on the turntable? (they were in Calcutta, India, and had no radio or television — only vinyl LPs and a large mono record player).
Now that’s great, but imagine if you could somehow know what your GRANDMOTHER was doing on the third day of the third month she was pregnant with your father, say.
I don’t even have to guess the answer. You have no idea, and have no idea how you would go about getting that information. If your father is still alive, at least he could nail down where his mother probably WAS on that day, but any further than that, and he’d draw a complete blank. And if you father isn’t around any more, well, just forget about any of it.
I don’t even know what my father’s mother’s first name was, or what her family name was before she married my grandfather. I don’t remember my father’s father at all. I may never have met him. I don’t know hat his first name was, although I can pretty much be assured his last name was Robinson.
And HE was probably born in the 1800s . . . my father was born in 1922, so there’s a good chance his parents were both born in the 1800s. That’s like, a seriously LONG TIME AGO.
But he’s not around to tell me any of this. My mother may know all of this. Indeed, I am going to Califrnia on May 1 with the express purpose of setting up a camcorder every single of the five full days I will be there, and grill my mother about as much as I can get out of her. Because she is 85 years old, and I know that I will probably never get this chance again.
Luckily — VERY luckily, in retrospect, although I can also say it wasn’t luck, it was because I was smart — at the beginning of the 2000s I sat my father down and got at least six good hours of videotape out of him about his life, his parents, his upbringing, how he met my mother — and even HE had the foresight to take a stack of old Con Aereo/Par Avion aerogrammes written by my mother from various places back in the late 50s and early 60s to my father, and he sat down and typed out every single one of them. I believe it comes out to around 10 binders of about 40 pages each. I will OCR them (optical-character-recognition) them and get them into digital form, then get my father’s voice from all those tapes into a written (digital) format, then add what my mother is going to say, then maybe scan all the 50 or so photo albums hanging around my mother’s house and then create a monster database for my descendants.
Can you imagine what a huge gift that will be to them? And to the memory of all those of my family who are now pushing up daisies and have been in some cases, for over 100 years?
I’ve also taken the what used to be unheard-of step of having myself genotyped through an outfit called 23andme.com, which should provide a DNA rough lineage of my paternal and maternal lines going back who knows how far . . . plus provide a medical database of sorts that will remain even if I get hit by a truck tomorrow (I don’t think that while doing the funeral arrangements, my family would think to have my DNA sequenced, but if I were you, I’d put it into my living will, especially considering that it can now be done for around $100).
At any rate, when I’m ashes to ashes, my son will have a massive gift to keep with him . . . personal diaries that I’m keeping, video diaries that I’m also keeping (about one minute a day’s summary of recent events taken by my computer camera and placed in a folder called “Videodiaries”) plus whatever else I can create or get my hands on before the next Rapture/Resurrection/Alien unveiling . . . hopefully in a nice, neat little package that wouldn’t be so out of place next to the stuff they put into that box that went along with Voyager 1, which I think has just passed through the Heliopause . . .
Of course, I will have no presidents singing my praises but I might get Lulu to miaow once or twice. That should be enough for the eight-limbed wingless parasitic entities that humans will be evolving into in the next 500,000 years or so to crack a Boréale Dry and sit around the Lasertron reminiscing while looking at holograms of me playing “Stairway to Dubrovnik” on my 43-stringed guitarkoto that I hope I’ll be able to afford when I become 120 or so.
And what preparations for YOUR descendants will YOU have been making, if I might be so bold?
It was the autumn of 1977, and in Montreal it was gearing up to become one of the colder winters in recent memory. For me, it was to be my second and last entire winter here before I was off to California and art college. I had the winter to kill while attending CEGEP Vanier on and off so I did what I always did in a new place: joined a band.
Rehearsing in George's basement
It always guaranteed a minty-fresh new group of friends and heralded unforeseen adventure and camaraderie that always came with being in a band. I'd just left a band with whom I'd played over the summer as a bass player. We had been doing a lot of cover tunes, the most adventurous of which was "Carry On My Wayward Son" by the group Kansas. We were pretty good but had ended up only doing one gig, a freebie on a flatbed truck in Chateauguay at some festival. After that we drifted apart, Chateauguay being way too far for me to commute to for rehearsal and just a general lack of interest. So I either put an ad looking for a band in the Montreal Star, or the band put an ad in looking for a bass player; I don't remember which.
But I do remember a cool autumn day when I trudged downtown, accompanied by my sister and her boyfriend, a French transplant who'd been the drummer in a band I'd been in in Dakar, Senegal, two years previously, and who was just passing through.
I was going to meet the band, which called itself White Lightning and played what at the time was called "hard rock." It was a non-style of music that included everything from covers of the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, and dozens of others that were typical for garage bands at the time. It had already been together for a couple of years, and the personnel were George, who sang lead and played a double-neck electric guitar, Adrian, who played drums, and Tom, another guitarist who for no reason at all had been nicknamed "Dilton." When asked why this was so, Adrian, the main troublemaker in the band said "He just looks like a Dilton. Don't you think so?" I reluctantly had to agree that this was so.
Adrian getting set up for the gig at John XXIII high school
Of the band up until my arrival, Adrian has this to say:
"The origins of White Lightning actually date back to September of 1975, when as a tenth grader at Malcolm Campbell High School, I answered an ad in the school newspaper for a drummer. The band was called Transfusion, and consisted of myself, Howard Leznoff on guitar, Greg Cameron on bass, and the incomparable Eric Squire on lead guitar.
"We played Zeppelin, Hendrix, the Stones, a few originals, and a lot of blues. We played a couple of local churches and schools, mostly for free. We won the prestigious "Golden Burst Eardrum Award" in the yearbook. Then school ended and the band broke up. The other 3 guys moved on to college and I remained behind to complete my senior year at Malcolm."
George, our dashing lead singer
"The summer of 1976 I answered an ad in the Gazette: 'Guitarist looking for musicians,' or something to that effect. It was George. He came over to my place and we jammed, just the two of us. I told my parents I was auditioning for him. My dad said 'it sounded the other way round to me.' So there we were, me and George, but we needed two more guys. I called the bass player from my last band, Greg Cameron, and asked if he'd be interested.
"He came over to George's (where my drums now resided) and while he wasn't an outstanding bassist he was adequate, and very well connected socially. He knew a lot of people and taught us how to approach student councils for bookings.
"Another ad in the Gazette for a rhythm guitarist brought a few responses but Tom was the best we could find. As I recall he actually stood out, which tells you how good the rest were.
Banging the drum, slowly
"Our first gig came late that summer at of all things, a golf club. There were lots of kids there so we went over pretty well. I believe a booking agent got us that one. We made $150 between us. Brad, my friend from school, transported us in his van.
"Next gig was at some dive downtown (another agency booking) around late October '76. We moved our stuff in cars with the help of Greg's friend Douglas Stansbury. I don't remember how much we got for that one. I do remember the crowd went absolutely nuts; we thought we were The Beatles. We were playing the usual standards: Stones, American Band by Grand Funk Railroad, Bad Company, Slow Ride by Foghat . . . typical dinosaur rock.
"One of the most infamous gigs we ever did took place during the winter carnival at my alma mater in February of 1977. We had a sound system courtesy of a friend of Greg's named Brian McNab. The PA was a couple of big JBL's, but no mixing board, just everything hooked directly to the PA. No sound check, no monitors, 15 minutes to set up. We were playing a huge gymnasium in front of the whole school, maybe 8 or 9 hundred of my classmates. I really don't know how bad the sound was because I couldn't hear anything.
"George was doing his Mick Jagger impression. We had gotten a hold of a 5-foot-long stuffed wiener from somewhere and George was sticking it between his legs and rubbing it like it was a giant cock. Then I had the bright idea that to end the show we should toss cans of beer into the crowd, because I'd seen Frank Zappa do it. The yearbook entry from this date really sums it up: "White Lightning literally struck everyone dead! A few of the more slovenly students helped clean up the beer with straws." Apparently one or two people got conked on the head by flying beer cans and had to see the nurse. I hadn't thought of that. I also hadn't anticipated a two- day suspension from school for the stunt."
"After the debacle at Malcolm Campbell High we were so down we actually considered packing it in. We decided to give it one more shot with everything we could muster. This time we had a mixing board, the big PA, light show, smoke machine, strobe light, rotating cop lights, you name it. The gig took place at Father MacDonald High, April 1977.
"It went over well enough that we started to get a reputation for putting on a big show. But it cost a lot. Of the 4 or 5 hundred we got paid probably two thirds of it went to expenses.
"Later that spring came one of White Lightning's finest moments. May 1977, Vanier Snowdon. We shared the bill with a band called Chocolate Speedway featuring Ricky Rice (a mainstay on the local band scene for years) and guest starring Brian Greenaway of April Wine. We had separate stages at opposite ends of the cafeteria. They were by far the more seasoned pros to us rank amateurs, but on this night we got the better of them. The crowd preferred our loud, flamboyant, over-the-top rock to Chocolate Speedway's slick, commercial pop sound. We stole the show, we really did! This was the first time George threw buckets of confetti into the crowd, the beginning of a fine tradition -- and safer than throwing cans of beer.
"We were now rehearsing at Brian McNab's downtown loft, auditioning, once again for a bass player. It was the fall of 1977 and I'd just turned 18. In walks this guy with long black hair, a funny cap on his head, talking like a Beatle. He brought a couple of other people with him, which was unusual for someone who was auditioning for a band. I don't really recall how the audition went, but at the end of it we had a new bass player, Nick Robinson. Afterwards we went for a drink at the St. James Pub. It was there that George suggested to me "I think this guy might be gay."
"We were rehearsing at McNab's place for a few weeks before he got sick of us and kicked us out. Which he did most politely by simply raising the rent so we couldn't afford to stay. I don't blame him. We weren't just rehearsing there, we were partying. There were all kinds of low lifes from Baron Byng high school hanging around. One day Brian came in with his girlfriend in tow hoping for a little privacy only to find White Lightning putting on an impromptu concert for about a hundred kids from Byng Bong. 'Who are all these people?' he exclaimed. That was it for him, poor guy. We had definitely overstayed our welcome. Thankfully he continued to work with us. If George Martin was the fifth Beatle, Brian McNab was the fifth White Lightning.
"During that past summer I had heard God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols and became interested in the punk movement, from a musical standpoint. I saw that it represented the future and urged George to consider taking the band in that direction. He would have none of it. He wanted to stay in his comfort zone, where he was clearly in charge. Nick and I used to play it during lulls in rehearsal and it was obvious it pissed George off quite a bit."
The band performs "The Boys are back" by Thin Lizzy at John XXIIIrd high school
The band went to George's basement to prepare for the next gig, Lachine High, and I started my endless freezing commutes. To me now it boggles the mind, but back then it just seemed like fun. Board the 65 bus from Cote des neiges to Guy Metro. Ride the green line, change at Berri de Montigny. Ride to Henri Bourassa. Take a bus all the way to the corner of George's street. It took about an hour if all the vehicles arrived promptly, an hour and a half if they didn't. There were no iPods back then. I'd entertain myself by sitting facing the back of the train, closing my eyes and trying to force my brain into thinking we were travelling forwards instead of backwards (try it -- it's better than drugs).
George's basement was extremely cramped and all our amps were turned up to 11; I attribute those days to the ringing in my right ear that began last summer and has not stopped since. The basement must have been insulated like a nuclear bunker, because no one ever protested.
Adrian continues: "We played Lachine High Dec. 15, 1977. By all accounts it was our most polished perfomance to date. It was one of the few times we had monitors that worked, so we could hear what we were doing. And we had, for the first time, some great backing vocals (actually better than the lead) courtesy of our new bassist Nick Robinson. He was what band needed to get to the next level -- somebody with talent. At this gig was the president of the student council from Vanier College scouting for a band for their Easter break shindig. He was extremely impressed and offered us the job.
"These high school gigs were paying us around $550.00 gross; the net was slightly less than half split four ways. So we probably ended up with about 60 bucks in our pockets each. But we all had to cough up our share of the monthly PA rental, about $15 or $20. The Vanier gig was going to pay more, $650.00 I think. We also had a couple of other irons in the fire at two other high schools totalling around $1000.00 between them. We had been blitzing the high schools with our business cards and posters, and we had a demo tape. But what really got us noticed was our reputation, which had spread by word of mouth. We had done a free concert at Lasalle Park in Lachine the previous summer which had gone over very well. A lot of the people that were at that concert, of course, went to Lachine High. That's how we got that gig. We'd always nurtured this wild reputation. Our business cards read "White Lightning: Guaranteed to Give you a Jolt." What we'd lacked was the music to back it up. With our new bassist we became a tight, professional act. Unfortunately it was all too fleeting."
Brian McNab at the mixing board
Somehow we got a gig at The Commons Hotel, up north in the Tremblant region, in Morin Heights. We were in there scouting the place the week before we started and the place was dead. Some local country band was playing to about five people.
We stormed the sleepy town like an infantry division. Our run there lasted for five weeks, five Saturdays, starting Dec 31, 1977 -- New Years's Eve. We put on a great show to a packed house. The weeks at The Commons went buy with good crowds, and we were developing a following. We had converted the club from a sleepy country club to a hard rock Musikpalast. Things got rowdy after we were done for the night -- we'd drive to a nearby late-night diner and wolf down bugers while swigging from scotch bottles. One night the band thoughtit would be hilarious to pull me and my mattress out onto the landing and leave me there. I awoke to a puzzled parade of hotel-goers on their way to the communal bathroom; I just moaned and turned over and went back to sleep, I was so hungover.
We were paid $150.00 a night less expenses split four ways, so we made almost nothing. The Commons was the only club where White lightning became a house band. We could've stayed longer if we'd wished, but we left of our own accord claiming we had "bigger fish to fry." All those lucrative high school bookings; we ended up never playing any of them.
I was with the band for about seven months. After that, it was goodbyes all around as I relocated to California to attend art college at the renowned California College of Arts and Crafts. I formed and broke up many a band after that, but White Lightning was my real introduction to what life in a professional band could be like -- and I wanted none of it.
George: Whereabouts unknown.
Adrian, however, didn't stop. He took his drumming chops to new heights and went on to a multi-year stint as a professional drummer:
"I first got a job with a singer named Shirleen Hayes. Shirleen was a powerfull black singer along the lines of a Shirley Bassey or Dionne Warwick. The piano trio backing her up were top notch. I went home that night and the next morning and pored over the tapes I'd made, learning their material. Then I went for my audition. The first thing they hit me with was Copa Cabanna by Barry Manilow. This is where the six years of drum lessons my parents had paid for paid off. It was as far removed from White Lightning as you could get, but I had been trained in all musical styles and was well prepared. I passed my audition, or so I thought, "we'll call you" they said. Then nothing for about six months.
"April 1979 I got the call for one of the best gigs I ever had, at La Diligence, a high-end bar and restaurant located at the intersection of Jean-Talon and Decarie. I had to join the musician's union and buy a new set of clothes for this job -- it was the big time. Four nights, two hundred bucks a week, (that was good money in those days) for almost an entire year. We were advertised on the radio, members of the Expos and Canadiens came in. I was part of the Shirleen Hayes Trio, Ron Jenkins on piano and Les Leroux an bass (no guitar -- how refreshing). We were playing Natalie Cole, Barbra Striesand, Dionne Warwick, Donna Summer, Shirley Bassey, Bee Gees, Captain & Tennille, Barry Manilow, Beatles, Billy Joel and Dave Brubeck, just to name a few. It was the height of the disco era and we played to that element too.
"My last job as a drummer was the best. From 1985 to 1988 I was a member of Remember When, the house band at Maz, a little bar on Sherbrooke St. in NDG. Remember When was Ricky Clyde (guitar/vocal), Peter Sutherland (keys/vocal), Doug Martin (bass/vocal), and myself. We played 50's & 60's rock & roll to packed houses every Friday and Saturday night. 150 bucks each for two nights work was pretty good coin.
"That gig finally ended in May 1988 just as I began a new job as a customs rater for Lep International at Mirabel Airport. It was the proverbial fork in the road in my life. I never worked as a drummer again.
We've had the privilege of cat-sitting our friend Pierre's two juvenile cats, Oskar and ViVi for the past few days. I thought I would take the opportunity to pull out my 60mm macro lens. With no tripod, it was insanely difficult to get them when they were actually still for a second. FYI, Oskar is the scaredy-cat and ViVi is the friendly motor kitty (purrs like a mini motorbike). Can you tell just by looking?
It was great having them, but three cats is two cats too many.
There should be a law against cuteness. Somehow you just want to wear this cat around your neck all day, even on trips to the bank and the grocery store.
ViVi is a certifiable lunatic
The Catfather
She has a look on her face that really makes you question whether or not her skull is completely hollow.
