“Mr. Baseball,” Bob Uecker is scheduled for heart surgery today to repair an aortic aneurysm. Uecker, 75, has been the voice of the Milwaukee Brewers for almost 40 years, as well as being nationally known for his Miller Lite commercials and acting roles.
Best wishes to Bob Eucker for a speedy recovery.
A few elections ago then Ontario NDP leader Howard Hampton said of the electricity market: It’s too important to be left to the private sector. A few people I knew agreed with this, to which I always answered, just hope Howard Hampton never notices how you buy your food:
the last time some one decided food was too important for the private sector, the Russian people were relegated to 50 years of cabbage soup and black bread. Well don’t look now but…
Michael Ignatieff, who, of course has cake, has proposed a National Food Policy. The Government of Canada would get in the farmers market and local food game. Fourty-million dollars here for a national healthy start (breakfast for brats) program, eighty-million dollars there for a buy local fund and pretty soon your talking real money. Then there’s this:
Reward farmers for environmentally sustainable initiatives such as setting aside land for wildlife habitats or carbon sequestration (emphasis theirs… and mine)
The Liberal government will spend untold millions, hundreds of millions more like, to pay farmers to not grow food. This plan talks of spending $170M, but has hundreds of millions more not factored in. Government food programs in action: more money out the door, less food in.
Then there’s the City of Toronto. I have spent considerable energy on this blog highlighting the folly of the City of Toronto and it’s elected representatives. So it is with some shock I report, they are on to a good idea. Yesterday’s Sun reports the City is considering allowing people to keep chickens in their backyard. Frankly as long as there’s no health hazard – and there isn’t – why it’s the City of anybody’s business if you keep chickens I have no idea. None the less if the chicken lobby gets it’s way, soon you’ll be able to have a couple of chickens producing fresh eggs in a coop on your very own property in Toronto. A few years down the road when the eggs stop coming it’s Ann Boleyn meets Colonel Sanders and dinner has never been so fresh.
Alas, this is the City of Toronto, the people who could screw up letting street vendors sell food. All chickens would have to be registered. That’s right, a chicken registry which, surprisingly, isn’t in Michael Ignatieff’s plan. Presumably the chicken registry is not in case some chicken goes wild and it’s owner needs to be identified, but so that City Hall can tax your free eggs. No doubt you’ll need their permission before putting Betsy in the deep fryer.
Sad to say this scheme also falls under a food plan, in this case the “urban food strategy” that Toronto Public Health is putting together.
The politicians have noticed: look for less food, less selection and higher prices in the food market in coming years.
go to Osgoode Hall:
The Supreme Court of Canada/La court suprême du Canada has dismissed an application for leave to appeal the convictions of reverend Michael Baldasaro and Reverend Wally Tucker of the Church of the Universe. The church’s founders were found guilty of selling “small quantities of pot to an undercover officer,” which they consider a sacrament.
That’s the newsy bit out of the way. The Church of the Universe is a bit of a legend in these parts. Officially considered a big pain in the ass wherever they go, the Reverend Brothers, Baldasarro 77 and Tucker 61 just finished five and three-month prison terms respectively, got chased out of Guelph and set up shop in an old foundry here in Cambridge back in the 90’s. Curtis Gloade at the K-W Record penned a piece in 1998 about Cambridge’s attempts to move the practitioners out of town.
I have met both men, having shared gym facilities with the pair during their Cambridge stay. I’m trying to fathom the vast amounts of money spent in police, court time, lawyers fees and various appeals in order to give a combined eight-month jail term to two harmless old men.
Conservatives will remember Reverend Michael as a leadership candidate in 1998 for the federal PC’s. Sadly, Joe Clark won instead and the party became a laughingstock.
For more background, read this 1999 piece from Cannabis Culture Magazine and remember, thousands and thousands of dollars were spent to send these two fools to prison for eight-months. Somethings not right.
A great big shout out and thank you to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who last week said immodestly dressed women cause earthquakes. This has caused the women to dress immodestly. One question though: what if there’s an earthquake today?
Either way, taking their chances are Kathy and Wendy, and dipping his toe into the fun is the Fiery Kitty.
As for me, I’ll be watching for you today – just to cheer you on you understand. And remember, garter, stockings and stilettos cause hurricanes.
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Update: I knew the fabulous Wonder Woman wouldn’t be able to stay out of the fray. Now about that stockings and stilettos thing…
One likes to believe in the freedom of music.Rush – Spirit of Radio.
I’ve discussed the return of the LP in this feature before. In fact, this feature could almost be called “The Return of the LP,” some weeks. The music industry looking backwards in order to move forward comes up a lot, it seems. This week, for instance, Foo Fighter’s drummer and Dave Grohl pal Taylor Hawkins released his second album with his non-Foo’s band, Taylor Hawkins & the Coat Tail Riders. The album, Red Light Fever, is available in the usual sources: iTunes download, CD and LP. What’s new in the last year is, the LP sales are featured prominently on the bands websites. Buy it today on…, and LP is right there with the other two getting front billing. There was something else, something different and entirely new to me at the TH&TCTR web site: mention of eight-tracks. There was a twitter contest were you could win an eight-track of Red Light Fever and they would throw in the 8-track player. You could also listen to a streamed version of the album by taking a virtual eight-track and putting it in an virtual eight-track player.
So are eight-tracks back?
In his self-proclaimed classic rock manifesto, I Hate New Music, Dave Thompson argues the eight-track was the best delivery method of music ever devised:
…Vinyl? Scratchy, warped and needs too much cleaning. Cassettes? Hissy, fragile and they look like crap. CDs? Coasters with a superiority complex.
MP3s? Great! I’ll happily pay ninety-nine cents for nothing whatsoever. Eight-tracks, on the other hand – you know you’ve got a pocketful of something with an eight-track. Plus, they have the greatest sound reproduction you’ve ever heard.
I’ve never owned a pre-recorded eight-track. I had an eight-track player/recorder as an adolescent, and used it to turn my brothers LPs into something I could listen to without pissing him off three times a day. Pirating they call it now, which it was in as much as I had to gain access to his room and leave again, with an album I wanted, without getting caught. Making an eight-track and getting the album back in less than an hour was survival more than piracy, but pirates had to survive too.
So while I learnt all the words to Bat Out of Hell, and had my introduction to Led Zeppelin IV – the greatest album of all time – off of an eight-track, I have never owned a store bought one. Never had Houses of the Holy with the fade-out-click-and-fade-in during No Quarter, may be the only person of my generation not to have owned Frampton Comes Alive on the format and certainly never had Venus and Mars on the format – which Thompson claims is the greatest aural experience a human can have, or something like that. No, I owned all that stuff on album, and made eight-track mixed tapes of the best of it.
Taylor Hawkins, however, apparently agrees with Dave Thompson about eight-tracks sound reproduction. The web site that streams his album brags of being in “eight-track quality.” It’s a cool page, where you place the eight-track tape into the animated deck, and it plays. You can’t skip songs, but you can click through the tracks the same as with a regular eight-track player. Nice.
But does it mark the return of eight-tracks? To answer, an observation: they don’t sell eight-tracks on the web site. It’s possible Taylor Hawkins is waaay out ahead of a trend, however, he doesn’t have enough faith in the trend to actually sell eight-tracks. Furthermore, I could find no other artist making their music available in the format, no stores specializing in it, not even any one selling new eight-track players. There are some web sites that specialize in eight-tracks, but they are nostalgic in nature.
Eight-tracks inherent strength in it’s day was it’s portability. When the car companies started putting eight-track players in cars in the mid-late 60’s, a time when AM radio was the norm, they created a drive around music system where you could chose what you would listen to when you drive. It created a demand, and eight-tracks took off. With in car entertainment systems that include DVD players, CD/MP3 players and iPod connectors, modern cars have no need for eight-track players.
It seems unlikely that any real demand for eight-tracks will be forthcoming, which means it seems unlikely eight-track tapes are about to achieve any kind of renaissance. Sorry Taylor Hawkins.
All the fluffy news about those nutty celebrities
The latest entry into the Bond fare, Cry Like a Baby starring Daniel Craig has been put on hold due to financial disaster at parent company MGM. 
MGM studios is for sale, and with a $3.7B debt, unable to continue as is. This has caused EON Productions, which make the Bond movies, to halt “indefinitely” the making of the next Bond film, tentatively called Bond 23. The movie was scheduled for a 2011 or 2012 release.
Headline in a newspaper this week:
European Airlines hoping for ash hole to fly through.
I can’t be the only person who thought, “finally, a natural disaster in which Sean Penn will be useful.”
Newsflash: Sandra Bullock this week was spotted shopping, without her wedding ring
Her husband has been caught fooling around with what might be the skankiest skank in all of skank-ville, and it’s news she isn’t wearing her wedding ring? Not in prison for killing the stupid bastard, that’s news. The wedding thing ring is up there with McDonalds makes a hamburger.
While on the subject of Sandra Bullock, she has been asked to return her Razzy for worst actress, which she good naturedly accepted the Saturday before the Oscars. The Razzy she took home was a one-off highly valuable trophy. The winners get a replica to take home, instead of the original. Bullock accidentally left with the good one, and her people offered to return it immediately upon hearing the story that she had the wrong one.
Want to know why America loves Sandra Bullock, look at how she has handled the entire Razzy award episode.
Former Poison singer and current reality TV guy Brett Michaels was rushed to hospital Friday with a brain hemorrhage. Michaels is in critical condition after being rushed to the hospital with a headache. The doctors discovered bleeding at the base of the brain stem.
Michaels had an emergency appendectomy last week after complaining of stomach pains. Next week he is anticipated to have leg pains, resulting in hip replacement surgery.
Michaels is expected to make a full recovery.
I told them [The Liberal Party of Canada] that they should invoke a culture war. Cosmopolitan versus parochialism, secularism versus muralism, Obama versus Palin, tolerance versus racism and homophobia, democracy versus autocracy. If the cranky old men in Alberta don’t like it, they can go south and vote for Palin.
Note the subtext: they’re tolerant, you’re a parochial, racist, homophobic, autocratic, moralistic tea partier. As Conservative Party of Canada president John Walsh asks, “does the [public funded] CBC share Mr. Graves call for a ‘culture war…’”
With a little help from my friends:
It’s become pretty obvious to us that we need to give this (changing the provinces sex-ed curriculum)a serious rethink. I know that parents are in fact, supportive of the idea that children should be taught about their body parts, and relationships, and those kinds of things, but they are obviously not comfortable with the proposal we’ve put forward.
I’m giving myself (and Kate, especially Kate) the credit because, hey, Dalton’s not going to.
Peter Frampton is much maligned as an artist. He played with Steve Marriott in Humble Pie, before beginning a solo career in 1971. Considered by many to be the king of soft rock, example A for all that is wrong with music and the guy who ruined rock and roll by selling so many damn records, the truth is Frampton is a very good guitar player and an excellent performer. But more than anything else, Peter Frampton brought the talk box to millions of people who otherwise never would have heard one.
So happy 60th birthday, for Show Me the Way and the rest of Frampton Comes Alive!
Um, hey, Toronto Sun. Isn’t a “Pot Demo,” a rally were people smoke pot in protest against pot laws, by it’s very nature “lawlessness.”
Isn’t lawlessness erupting at a pot demo kind of like hockey erupting at a Senators Penguins game?
If you knocked on 1,000 Ontario families’ doors and ask them for their top three concerns, you’d be surprised if anybody said, `Well … one of those is we’ve got to start this new kind of mixed martial arts in Ontario. That’s going to mean a lot to me and my family.’
As Dalton himself said:
It’s just not a priority for our families and it’s not a priority for me
But if you knocked on 1,000 Ontario families’ doors and ask them for their top three concerns, they apparently would say I want eight year olds to be taught about homosexuality, twelve year olds the magic of oral sex.
Or is this about Dalton’s sick, twisted priorities, not Ontario families?
Next up, flavoured condoms for high school? Hey, they’re your priorities, people.
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Welcome to readers of Small Dead Animals. More In Dalton McGuinty’s Ontario.
Talk about sinking to new lows. The Toronto Sun today goes where they would have mocked ten years ago. In their lead editorial, Paul Berton argues tax increases are necessary and coming:
Whatever the reasons, leaders are afraid to say what they know to be true: Taxes must rise, or services must be cut. Either one — and more likely both — is as inevitable as the setting sun.
Berton, for those who don’t know, argued strenuously that we needed government to save us from the world burning up into fiery ball. He was literally one of those “the earth will be a burnt rock,” guys until six months ago. It’s been a while since we’ve heard that nonsense from this fool, but apparently economics is still a subject Berton has a yet to prove how little he knows.
Here’s something to digest. One-third of every dollar earned, produced or extorted in this country, one-third of GDP, winds up in government coffers. That means every person, every business for every dollar they earn, they must produce approximately $1.40. That’s too much productivity being spent on non-productive activities.
The time has come for an extreme curtailing of what governments do, not an increase in what they cost. And if the Toronto Sun wants to be The Star lite, then the time has come for one less paper in Toronto.
One likes to believe in the freedom of music.Rush – Spirit of Radio.
Yesterday was Independent Record Store Day. Did you miss it? Are you, at this moment, slapping your forehead because you forgot all about it? Not likely. More like your saying to yourself, “there’s an independent record store day?” Why, yes there is, it’s a promotional event by some players in the music industry, and is significant because a number of artists supported the idea, and got behind it. 
Of course, if you go the right websites, are on the right mailing lists, you knew about it. And quite a few people go to those websites, subscribe to those mailing lists. At Other Music in New York City, they lined up around the block to get in. Easy for them, you might think. They still have record stores in New York. While it’s true New York has everything, including a street with two chess shops across the road from each other and a peanut butter restaurant, you didn’t have to be in Manhattan to enjoy Record Store Day. Chances were there was someplace within a short enough drive. Out here in Cambridge, I had four or five options nearby, more than ten if I was willing to put in an hours driving.
Why, on the other hand, would you want to attend Independent Record Store Day? Why stand in line on Saturday to shop at a store that was there Friday, and still will be, presumably, Monday. The reason is that, as I mentioned earlier, a number of artists got behind the idea. Real, artists, significant artists, with long histories in the music world, released new material specifically for this event. We aren’t talking a new Lady Gaga video here, although she may have done so. How about a new Rolling Stones single, only on vinyl? The song, Plundered My Soul, is a find from the vaults. A lost song from the Exile on Main St. sessions, Plundered My Soul is a great rocker. Proof that The Rolling Stones were once a great band, especially considering Plunder My Soul didn’t make the final cut.
Plunder My Soul singles, which sadly were gone by the time I got off my lazy ass and wandered over to Encore Records, are already selling on eBay in the $30 to $60 range . As an aside, the Kitchener Record claims there was also a line-up at Encore Records at opening time. They did have a number of the items specially released for Record Store Day. A number of vinyl albums, Jeff Beck’s new one, and John Hiatt’s newest for example. Myself, I picked up two 10” singles, a new, Bruce Springsteen and a Them Crooked Vultures picture disk.
The Springsteen features two previously released tracks, but tracks that have never been out in a physical format before. Both have gotten the iTunes treatment, but the limited edition 10” is just for Record Store Day. The A side, Wrecking Ball, was recorded and written specifically for his 2009 Giant’s Stadium concerts. Giant’s Stadium will go under the wrecking ball itself. The song itself, according to Pitchfork upon it’s iTunes release, is:
dedicated to the big building, New Jersey, living, dying, turning 60, and trying to hold onto memories in the age of parking lots.
B side is a live version of Ghost of Tom Joad from 2008.
The real treat of my day, the real keeper, is the Them Crooked Vultures 10” picture disc. In case you haven’t been keeping track, Them Crooked Vultures is a new “super group,” with Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, Foo Fighters frontman, and ex-Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl back on the drums, and Queens of the Stone Age front man Josh Homme on guitar and vocals. They are loud, brash, ballsy and real, real good. Their imagery, various drawings of a humanoid with a vulture head, is always excellent. Displayed in a Crooked Vultures red see through envelope, the picture disc is an excellent piece. The disc contains an album cut Mind Eraser, No Chaser, and a new live song, Hwy 1 on side one, and an interview on side two.
Over all Independent Record Store Day seems to have been a success, both for the stores that took part, and for me personally. It is simply great to be buying a new song, on vinyl, by some favourite artists, at a favourite record store. What more could a music fan ask for?
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