Ranting and Roaring

To celebrate the start of the
postbellum
post-SARS era,
I propose we all get together for the First Ever Toronto Warblogger and Poliblogger Bash.

The proposal/options:

• Date option #1: Thursday the 8th of May, 7PM-ish
• Date option #2: Thursday the 15th of May, 7PM-ish
• Date option #3: Friday the 9th of May, 7PM-ish (Rick McGinnis’s preferred option; Mark Wickens, Kathy good; Dr. “SARS? What’s that?” Weevil; Banana Counting Monkey, David Artemiw)
• Location option #1: I know a nice accommodating Italian restaurant on Baldwin (College & University) area with
  $9-14 entrees and a great wine list.
• Location option #2: If this sounds a little too pricey, or it’s not your thing,
  or you prefer to eat supper at home,
  we could meet somewhere downtown on Queen or King Street, where there’s many great pubs,
  bistros, and bars we could use.

Please send me your votes, proposals, comments, at davidjanes at davidjanes dot com
and I’ll make an announcement later this week.
I’ll see if I can dig up some of the long lost Toronto bloggers
also!

The song isn’t “We love Toronto”, Damian, it’s “Wear Gloves, Toronto”.
And if anyone (besides wife and daughter) tries to hold my hand, I’m going to go all WMD on them.

Ron Knowling has chimed in on Canadian music.
Michael Demmons writes why hate crime legislation is good. This later posting deserves a longer response, which I shall give soon, time permitting.

In the last four days, readership is down 2/3rds. I know it’s the weekend, but jebus. I guess I should post more, but I’ve
a new Dell Axim X5 (400Mhz) and
Weber Genesis Silver-B BBQ (in Blue w/ natural gas)
to play with.
Plus a big surprise for everyone, to be unveiled soon…

This is a letter from my brother Robert in wretched flower-coated Victoria,
in reference my point here in response to this posting
from PeakTalk.

• The Toronto of Alberta?
• A Canadian-class city?
• Well, well, well: the secret of our success?

I quite a big fan of INXS’s Kick album (and Empty Glass, it goes without saying),
so I’m quite looking forward to hearing the songs from this album.

Today’s mystery lyrics:

You’re an anti-idiotarian Michael, not right-wing. Look it up.
We’ll talk some sense into you about hate-crime laws though…

Ron should join our Canadian Music discussion. I happen to know he’s a closet TPOH fan.
Come to think of it: an open call to all Canadian bloggers to add your two bits!

I thought I was the only person in the world that knew that Chris Murphy of Sloan used to have a gig as the bass player of Blackpool, a late not-so-lamented Halifax band that had a semi-hit called Days and Days, back around 1989 or 1990 or so. I was sorting through my CD collection about three years ago, when I noticed the connection. How obsure are they? Google finds very little, though if you throw in a reference to Sloan you get a little more.

Days and Days is almost a template for what I look for in a Candian Pop/Rock (Prock? Crock?) song. 4 minutes, catchy riffs, non-challenging themes. Here it is:

I almost typed that in from memory! God knows that Google didn’t have the lyrics stashed away anyway,
so I might be one of the only human beings in the world who can do that
(in much the same way that I was 18 months ago probably the only person in the world who knew how to lease and finance cars in every province in Canada, but that’s a whole other subject).
Graveyard Stones and Pier 21 are pretty good songs too, though the album is really just a wrapper for Days and Days. There’s a whole story about the main guy from Blackpool — apparently a mainstay of the Halifax music scene — but I don’t have the time or energy to do it here.
I had convinced my wife several years ago to move back with Newfoundland with me for a couple of months, where I would document Newfoundland bands from TNT, Da Slyme (Newfie Rastaman, surely you’ve heard?) onwards. Perhaps it’s best not to relive your past too much, and the idea has a market of about 6 people, so it’s best it’s been put aside. Still, I wish I had collected the posters…

Another friend mailed me to profess non-love of Matthew Good.
Given the way he’s plummeting off the charts in charts, I may be the only fan left.
I’ll put a brief plug in for early Sarah McLachlan, back before she became a first-rate hoser.
I heard someone cover the song Vox at the Peace-A-Chord (Doug can blog the stories about this — “Mary Jane’s is closing in 15 minutes…”; “No thanks” to whahisname from The Dervishes looking for change; it’s hard to explain this kind of contextual humor) in Bannerman Park. No Nukes baby, or whatever it is you’re into!
Sorry, losing my train of thought here: Vox — I was absolutely transfixed by the song, and spent months trying to figure out who sang it.
My love of Sarah has petered out over the years: “shut up and sing yer song”, to mangle a phrase!

The Sloan listening guide to come soon.

It looks like James Lileks is in trouble.
Update: the page it goes to is for the Dotster registrar, which is Lilek’s, so there’s a good chance this will get fixed soon.
Final update: Lileks in the comments section of Andrea’s blog says it’s going to be all right,
so I guess that settles it.

Here’s his whois record:

Registrant:    James Lileks    425 Portland Ave S.    Minneapolis, MN 55488    US 

   Registrar: DOTSTER    Domain Name: LILEKS.COM       Created on: 23-APR-98       Expires on: 22-APR-03       Last Updated on: 23-APR-03 

   Administrative Contact:       Lileks, James  lileks@lileks.com       425 Portland Ave S.       Minneapolis, MN  55488       US       612-673-7858 

   Technical Contact:       Lileks, James  lileks@lileks.com       425 Portland Ave S.       Minneapolis, MN  55488       US       612-673-7858 

   Domain servers in listed order:       NS1.NAMERESOLVE.COM        NS2.NAMERESOLVE.COM        NS3.NAMERESOLVE.COM        NS4.NAMERESOLVE.COM  

End of Whois Information 

Now, going to his site lileks.com brings you somewhere
entirely else. Doing a “nslookup”…

. nslookup Default Server:  tordc2.xxxxxx.com Address:  xx.xx.0.85 

> lileks.com Server:  tordc2.xxxxxx.com Address:  xx.xx.0.85 

Non-authoritative answer: Name:    lileks.com Address:  64.85.73.31 

> 64.85.73.31 Server:  tordc2.xxxxxx.com Address:  xx.xx.0.85 

Name:    m1.dnsix.com Address:  64.85.73.31 Aliases:  31.73.85.64.in-addr.arpa 

We see he’s been taken over by a hosting service “m1.dnsix.com“, which doesn’t go anywhere. Googling them we find a lot of mentions that this hosting service is associated with Spam Abuse.
Great.

Another posting says that this is associated with mydomain.com,
so if the problem continues, it may be worth sending polite letters there.

Ironic, that just yesterday Lileks said that blogs come and go, but the Bleat goes on…

Update: it says in the discussion at Ken Laynes‘s site that the domain has been renewed. Hmm, then why is it pointing where it is? mydomain.com and the mysterious dnsix.com are not his hosting provider “dotster”.

Congrats to Doug on his 1000th hit. Please help him on his way to 2000.
(And a note to Canadian bloggers out there to consider adding him and/or Ron to your blogrolls).

Being a “victim” is the 21st century version of the 14th century martyr.
Currently hanging on the cross, being boiled in oil, or having the skin
flayed from their bodies are Madonna,
Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon,
and the Dixie Chicks.
Well, not quite any of the above, but
the little people have actually had the temerity to talk back to them,
which pretty well anyone can see is the same thing.

The Blixie Chicks Being naked on the cover of Entertainment Weekly
(but hiding the naughty bits, of course) will sell lots and lots of
copies of EW no doubt.
And since it’s on the cover, there’s less danger of the pages getting stuck together.
The sales numbers will be trotted out to say “look, everyone loves us still”.
I don’t think so, but there’s only one way really to tell:
in a couple of weeks time, EW should running a “control test”, putting the women
from The Corrs naked on the cover.
Then we’ll compare sales, or something.

And if naked Chicks is good enough for EW, damnit, it’s good enough for this blog.
(Via Tim Blair).

Well, that went well, didn’t it?

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Jason writes below “For a man of his limited abilities, Matthew Good rocks adequately within his chosen genre of ‘pop’ music” (or something like that). Doug
blogs:

Unless they’re truly brilliant, it’s hard to like any band without some sort of context: a party where the song was playing, the time you met that chick, a phenomenal concert. My liking Good’s music was a concert — the songs didn’t make any sense to me before then. Sure, I saw them on Much Music, but hey ho, another bunch of guys playing guitars. Alas, I don’t think you’ll ever get the opportunity. Besides the fact that he thinks (as so many western Canadians do) that Canada ends at the Ontario border, Good’s made it clear that he’s … better than you and me. No screaming drunk fratboy fans for him: it’s morosely standing in the center of the stage, a pissed off expression of contempt on his face, a tape in the background listing all the countries America has invaded (and presumably had their soldiers kill the men, rape the women-folk, and take all the loot in their longboats back home to Transnational Corporations at the Military Industrial Complex. Or so I understand it).

I’m not really selling anyone on MGB (or MG I guess now), am I? Here’s my favorites list.

• Last of the Ghetto Astronauts
  
  • Radio Bomb
  • Fearless
  • The War is Over (Omissions of the Omens)
• Raygun
  
  • Generation X-Wing
• Underdogs
  
  • Everything is Automatic
  • Apparitions
  • Middle Class Gangsters
  • Rico
  • Change of Seasons
• Beautiful Midnight
  
  • Giant
  • Strange Days
  • Load Me Up
  • Suburbia
  • Running for Home
• The Audio of Being
  
  • The Workers Sing a Song of Mass Production
• Avalanche
  
  • While We Were Hunting Rabbits
  • Bright End of Nowhere
  • Near Fantastica
  • Double Life
  • A Long Way Down
  • House of Smoke & Mirrors

Coming soon: the guide to listening to Sloan!

PS. Doug didn’t like Dada either.

C++ programming today. That sound you hear is just me banging my head against a wall, to make the pain go away.

First skinned knee ever, today. Did she care? Not in the slightest: the world around our house is sooo exciting. Kittykats, Nice and Bad Doggies, Pretty Flowers, Green Grass and Rain (water sprinklers)!

Perhaps that last sentence provides the correction I needed:
I love Canadian pop music.
Doesn’t sound right though, does it?
People are going to come out of this thinking I like “Avril”.
No way, dude. Don’t care for Loverboy, April Wine, or Glass Tiger.
Let’s spend a few seconds to have a laugh at The Payolas, which
renamed itself to Whazhisname and the Payolas, maybe because
Whazhisname
didn’t think he wasn’t getting enough credit.

The Kings (do you think “me and Zero” are playing somewhere tonight,
playing the same damned song for the 20,000th time? Dante would be jealous).
The Box. I saw The Spoons several times. The Northern Pikes, as has been previously mention.
Doug and The Slugs.

There’s do doubt that The Hip are something else than these bands,
but they’ve followed the path of Blue Rodeo
of muscians that are enjoying noodling on their instruments for their own amusement
more than constructing rockin’ tunes.
Shame. I really can’t get into much of the way of albums past Day for Night, though
there’s been standout tunes since then.

With some text…

Where to start this?
I haven’t blogged much in the last couple of days,
perhaps because of the shock of the sudden post-game now.

My dirty little secret: I love Canadian music; I think it’s great.
Thursday night, “virtual Friday” as we had dubbed it, allowing
for the three-day weekend we’re enjoying currently,
I met a couple of guitar players
down at the “Duke”, the Duke contextually being
the Duke of Whatever, depending on where you are,
but in this case, Westminster.
“What do you [I] like?”
“Well, I’m still pretty much into Matt Good”.
“Have you heard his new album?”
“About 10,000 times in the last week”.

First digression:
NOW magazine’s review of Matt Good’s latest concert,
and his
response on his “journal” — blog, as you and I know it.
Good has come out recently a major idiotarian (“The new McCarthyism is upon us”)
his reality warped by a deep and long steeping Hate Americanism Tea, but what can one do?
Midnight Oil had a couple of good albums too; I just ignore the “message”.
And hey, next time use Western Union!

So, back to Virtual Friday.
“What else do you like?”
Well, “TPOH, Northern Pikes, Blue Rodeo (first two albums)”.

Second digression, on Blue Rodeo.
Did you see that video where the cops evict the peace loving artists
hippies from their squat?
I thought all squats populated by black-wearing lip-pierced freakazoids
were urine-and-feces soaked rat holes.
I guess that’s just media lies.

“I used to fix Moe Berg’s equipment”.
Cool.
Factoid: Moe Berg doesn’t — or didn’t anyway — have a car license.
Cool.
I did not know that.
Another Canadian Music fan — there’s more of us than I realized.

Where to end this?
Underdogs is definitely Good’s weakest album.
However, the song he hates most on it — “Rico” — is, for me, his defining song.
35 years old, drunk in Bala, surrounded by drunk early-twenties kids-of-rich-cottage-scum,
Good with hands off guitar, middle fingers extended, crowd screaming “Fuck Off, Fuck Off, Fuck Off”
at the top of their lungs.

Brilliant.

I also like Third Eye Blind — the first 5 songs on that album to be precise,
and when I get down to Halifax, Mike and I will have to go out for a couple drinks.
Maybe even soon. My sister lives in “Darkness”, has a new house down there, and it’s been at least 18 months,
so I’m due.

Mike Campbell has more on TotalFinaElf
and its relation to the Chretien/Desmarais family, after one of his readers called him out on this story.
Plus a brief quote from Diane Francis (I went to university with a total babe called Diane Francis; a different woman though).

He was so young. He had so much to give, so much to shovel.
(via DP).

George W. Bush‘s hotmail account.
Hat tip: Tim.