Mansplaining Reactions To The News That Ryan Adams Was An Asshole

The New York Times continued to out public personalities as assholes/abusers today with a researched piece that has seven women (among them his ex-wife Mandy Moore) accuse indie darling Ryan Adams of being a manipulative creep.

It's a tad short (the article, not the women's suffering), but to the point.

I believe the women's suffering, and I believe there being (at least) seven makes for a pattern. Those are statements that are most likely facts, in a legal manner of speaking.

What I have a problem with is the public lynching in lieu of due process and the lumping apples and oranges to create a bigger story than it is.

Case in point, one at a time:

From this post

"95% of the music industry, from the independents to the huge stars, are mediocre pervert dudes." Notwithstanding the fact that almost all pop stars are female, that most of the music paid for in the past five years has been made by or with women, that the most influencial acts of the 1990s that weren't part of the "Seattle grunge quadrinity" (Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains, maybe Mudhoney and Chicagoans Smashing Pumpkins thrown in for good measure) or Nine Inch Nails were women, including a lot of other Seattle acts (Hole, Babes In Toyland, Bikini Kill, L7, Sleater-Kinney, The Fastbacks, The Gits, Heart/The Lovemongers, Sonic Youth, Unwound, Bratmobile, 7 Year Bitch, The Breeders, Veruca Salt, The Pixies, Suture). I'm sure I'm forgetting obvious ones.

The Beastie Boys - not quite my cup of tea -  helped Luscious Jackson and Cibo Matto have success, because friends help friends, and gender doesn't have to be an issue.

One of the best songwriters of all time came from the 1990s, PJ Harvey, in England, but my limited knowledge of British music from my adulthood has me thinking ladies may have been rarefied there indeed. On the American side of the pond, Tori Amos, Ani DiFranco and Liz Phair made a huge dent. In Canada, a jazz singer and pianist, Diana Krall, became a world-renowned jazz legend - the only jazz legend borne out of the 1990s of any gender. I doubt their critically-acclaimed work came only from their looks or men wanting to sleep with them.

I was not a fan of Garbage, Fiona Apple, Björk or Alanis Morrissette, but they had clout.

In the 2000s, the only decent new male rock acts were The Strokes, The Raconteurs and The White Stripes (female drummer). The rest of the fun and quality came from Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Kills, Sahara Hotnights, Arcade Fire, The Donnas, First Aid Kit, The Pack A.D., The Dead Weather and so many others acts that proven women have a lot more balls and talent than their tired and lame male counterparts. Did all of those acts have to sell their bodies to make it?

And about the men...

Artists: Eddie Vedder, Trent Reznor, Beck, Andre 3000, Ben Gibbard, Marilyn Manson, Jack White, Robert Plant...

Executives: David Geffen, Russell Simmons, Bruce Pavitt, Jimmy Iovine, Berry Gordy... all pervert dudes? Each of their public personae go against all of that.

That's a serious fucking accusation, a high fucking number - and completely made up.

I ran a music festival for over a decade and every night, we had at least one woman on stage - usually one in at least two-thirds of the acts, never with a quota in mind - it just happened that way because that's what was good and worth sharing to concert-goers; the only style of music that didn't fit that statistic was noize - which is basically a bunch of solo sound nerds doodling and tweedling on knobs.

Here's another extremely harsh accusation:

From this post

I get the sarcasm, I get the exaggeration for effect, but while we're conducting public lynchings instead of going through the (failed, uneven, biased) Justice System, we are all responsible of our words, for the scope and impact of our comments. Hyperbole is dangerous. It isn't you with your friends in someone's living room; it's public, to the world. It's your public reflection of you.

If a threatening tweet can result in probably cause condemnations, so should false accusations.

Fuck, (wo)man, how many rapists do you think are around?

And all of that is saying nothing about the fact that if any one of the people overreacting to this story in particular played devil's advocate for just a few minutes, they could see that he actually has a half-credible defense if he can get expert testimony from a qualified shrink.

That probably wouldn't be enough to prove he wasn't responsible for the way his victims felt (civil case), but there may be enough evidence that someone who was already recognized as having had bouts of mental illness was just responding the way his brain was letting him, with threats of suicide and bipolarity (not guilty in a criminal case).

We're not there yet, but it helps to once in a while put yourself in the other side's shoes with a clean slate instead of a bias to understand the pattern of behaviour.

Again, I'm not defending his actions. But when he says he can sue over this, he might have a case.

What works for the NYT is having his ex-wife and ex-fiancée on record corroborating his actions in terms of behavioral change, tonal change, and so forth. They likely won't get him on impeding careers (not of all seven anyway, but maybe Moore), and he definitely inquired about the young one's age (she refused to provide ID and they never met in person) enough to get away with what would possibly have been the worst charge of all.

As a "fan" of legalese, this is far from the Bill Cosby case, but it's also far from the Chris Hardwick case.

Video Of The Week: The Tragically Hip

Well, it had to happen, and so it has: The Tragically Hip's lead singer and central figure, Gord Downie, has passed away from his incurable brain cancer.

My own personal history with the Hip began with their 1989 "true" debut Up To Here's second single, New Orleans Is Sinking, the first (Blow At High Dough) not making a dent in what I was listening to at the time at 10-11 years old (Guns N' Roses' Appetite For Destruction and GNR Lies, Kiss' Crazy Nights, N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton, Def Leppard's Hysteria, Michael Jackson's Thriller and Bad, Prince's Batman soundtrack, Queen's The Miracle, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Mother's Milk, and Bon Jovi's New Jersey). But New Orleans had something, a feel, a groove that I could deal with. I say "true" debut, by the way, because I'd seen their self-titled Tragically Hip 1987 EP release in stores at that point, but didn't buy it until 1992 or 1993; Up To Here was their first full-length endeavour. I didn't really think much of the rest of that record, so I waited for the second one, 1991's Road Apples, to be very discounted (under $10) to give it a go, and I loved Little Bones, Twist My Arm, and Cordelia right away. I liked the rest of it, too, but not as much as the one-two-three punch at the beginning of the record, which I still go to in order from time to time.

1992's Fully Completely was a whole new ballgame. All killer, no filler. This was what cemented the band as a force to be reckoned with on the Canadian mainstream rock stage, with reason. Out of the 12 songs on the album, only four do not qualify as "hits". They're great nonetheless, but the Big Eight just pack so much: Courage (for Hugh MacLennan), Looking for a Place to Happen, At the Hundredth Meridian, Locked in the Trunk of a Car, Fully Completely, Fifty Mission Cap and Wheat Kings all became staples of their live shows until the very end, and remain in full rotation on Canadian rock radio to this day.

1994's Day For Night was even better, with such classics as Grace, Too, Greasy Jungle, So Hard Done By, the tear-inducing Nautical Disaster, Inevitability of Death, Scared and An Inch an Hour. With sleeker production, this was a band at the height of songwriting genius made to sound like early R.E.M. - and it worked. It felt real, honest, and raw.

1996's Trouble At The Henhouse might be their finest work, with standouts Gift Shop, Springtime In Vienna, and the masterpiece Ahead by a Century. It has a more acoustic feel to it, it seems warmer and softer then their preceding works.

They released Live Between Us, a live album recorded in Detroit, in 1997, containing most hits, then went in the studio to make 1998's Phantom Power, with standout tracks Poets, Bobcaygeon, Something On, and Fireworks. It was a fine record, but nothing original; it was The Hip sounding like The Hip - not as generic as future releases, but there was a comfort level setting, there wasn't much surprise.

The same can be said of 2000's Music @ Work. If anything, even the four singles (My Music At Work, Lake Fever, The Completists and Freak Turbulence) sound almost sarcastically like keeping with the band's signature sound. And titles like Tiger The Lion do nothing to dispel that notion. This is where I moved on from the Hip a bit, so I bought 2002's In Violet Light because I'd bought all the others, but I played it twice in its entirety and never really went back to it. They made videos for It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken and The Darkest One, and that was my lone contact with this album.

2004's In Between Evolution, however, struck a major chord in me. Perhaps it's the fact that unlike others, it's politically-charged, in the midst of George W. Bush's Iraq War, or maybe they just started trying again, but songs like Heaven Is a Better Place Today, Summer's Killing Us, Gus: The Polar Bear from Central Park, Vaccination Scar, It Can't Be Nashville Every Night, As Makeshift as We Are, One Night in Copenhagen and Goodnight Josephine really resonated. The album was produced by engineer extraordinaire Adam Kasper (Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Queens Of The Stone Age, R.E.M., winner of two Grammys for his work with the Foo Fighters), which probably helped.

2006 brought World Container, which I remember liking, but The Kids Don't Get It is the only song from that album that's made its way into my Permanent Playlist. It's pretty much the same for 2009's We Are The Same: Coffee Girl, Now the Struggle Has a Name, The Depression Suite, and Love Is a First are all fine tunes, but Queen of the Furrows is the only song off that record that I still listen to on a regular basis.

Then there was the two-album conclusion, Now For Plan A and Man Machine Poem, the latter of which is named after a song from the former. Confused? Good. These are good records, introspective, deep in thought, with dark yet groovy pieces of music. Not what I would recommend for someone who has never heard the band (the 1992-96 output would be a better starting point, in my opinion), but for a casual fan or radio listener who was curious to find out how their 1990s sound evovled with age and technical skill, I'd recommend these two ahead of the previous two.

Pretty much as soon as the cancer diagnosis was confirmed, the band embarked on what doubled as the Man Machine Poem tour and its farewell tour, playing 15 shows in 10 cities - it was originally 10, but controversy surrounding ticket scalpers getting the bulk of the tickets (promoter Live Nation estimates upwards of two-thirds of tickets were purchased by bots, not people) forced the band to add a show apiece in Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary, and two in Toronto; the tour did not go farther East than Ottawa, meaning Québec (specifically the rather large Montréal market) and the Maritimes drew blanks. The final concert was held at Kingston's Rogers K-Rock Center, in the heart of the group's hometown.

I bring this post home with the song that first caught my ear, New Orleans Is Sinking:

I don't know who directed it, but if I come by it, I will update this post.

Eminem (& The World) Vs Trump

By now, you've probably heard Eminem's cypher (freestyle rap devoid of music or even straight beats), but in case you haven't, here it is:

That was first released during the BET Awards, which have made a tradition of releasing some throughout the years. This was Eminem's third or fourth such cypher for the event in the past decade.

What I mostly came to post about was the amount of support Em received by doing so:

Video Of The Week: Tom Petty

Tom Petty died last night, but because we live in a 24-hour news cycle where tweets count as "breaking news", the story was ahead of itself, reports of his demise making the rounds on social media while he was still technically alive, angering his family, friends and bandmates:

from Instagram

How sad a world are we living in? TMZ were once again the only ones to get the news right, but instead of leaving it at that, they actually released the audio of the 911 call his wife made when she found his body. For fuck's sake.

This does, as AnnaKim Violette Petty mentioned, overshadow and disrespect the man and the artist's oeuvre. We're talking about a Rock And Roll Hall of Famer (class of 2002), yet another lost member of The Traveling Wilburys (Roy Orbison and George Harrison had passed away before him, Bob Dylan and Jeff Lyne of Electric Light Orchestra fame remain), and a very successful songwriter whose career spanned five decades.

Some of the songs you may know him from include Refugee, Learning To Fly, Free Fallin', It's Good To Be King, Into The Great Wide Open, Don't Do Me Like That, Runnin' Down A Dream, All Of Nothin', Mary Jane's Last Dance, You Wreck Me, and a terrific and perfect cover of Patti Smith's So You Wanna Be A Rock'N'Roll Star.

Oh, and this tremendous piece of 1980s music called I Won't Back Down that I've sung in concert over a dozen times:

Yes, there are a few cameos in the video directed by David Leland, including Lynne (co-songwriter on most of 1989's Full Moon Fever, Petty's first official solo album), Harrison (who played guitar on it), Mike Campbell (lead guitarist of both Petty's band The Heartbreakers and on this record) and former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, who does not play on the actual recording (those are actually Phil Jones' beats). Also missing in the video is Heartbreakers bassist Howie Epstein doing backing vocals.

Notable covers of this song include Pearl Jam's rendition from the Live At The Gorge set, but young'uns will know it best by Sam Smith stealing it for his Grammy-winning Stay With Me...

Chester Bennington Suicide

Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington committed suicide by hanging a few hours ago... on his idol Chris Cornell's birthday, making his death go from "sad" to "tragic".

I was never a fan of his art, and mostly snubbed those who were. LP's collaboration with Jay-Z is probably the only recordings of the rap mogul's that I never listen to.

Still, may he Rest In Peace.

R.I.P. Carrie Fisher

Fuck, 2016 is a killer.

Today, Carrie Fisher was the latest esteemed member of the entertainment and arts community to pass away, the result of a heart attack suffered last week while flying from London to Los Angeles.

She was 60 years old, and is survived by her beloved puppy as well as her mother, actress Debbie Reynolds, and daughter, actress Billie Lourd.

As Princess Leia Organa in the Star Wars movies, she was my first silver screen/celebrity crush. I had always dreamed of writing her into a screenplay. In terms of film writing, she, Demi Moore, Rebecca De Mornay and Deborah Kara Unger were my muses when it came to female parts; I tried writing strong, smart parts for women so that one of them would one day play in one, giving me the credibility I needed to keep making and writing movies.

My most mainstream screenplay - for lack of a better word - about a guy who loses it and starts sending dill pickles by mail, had parts for all four of them as his co-workers and bosses in a call center. It was never sold nor picked up, of course, because I am terrible at selling myself.

She will be missed.

She had recently released her autobiography. It's a fine read.

Video Of The (Last) Week: Velvet Revolver

Fucking December, eh? John Lennon, Darby Crash... now Scott Weiland.

I wrote a (probably) mean post when he passed on my Facebook page:

All I meant was a counterpoint to those who Kurt Cobain-ed him and made him a music god now that he was dead when he was merely a musician. And I cited examples of some not-so-perfect people who had achieved greatness that perhaps may have redeemed some of the bad they'd done in their lives.

And his (second) ex-wife Mary Forsberg, with whom he had two children, agreed:

We read awful show reviews, watch videos of artists falling down, unable to recall their lyrics streaming on a teleprompter just a few feet away. And then we click "add to cart" because what actually belongs in a hospital is now considered art.(...)

I won't say he can rest now, or that he's in a better place. He belongs with his children barbecuing in the backyard and waiting for a Notre Dame game to come on. We are angry and sad about this loss, but we are most devastated that he chose to give up. (...)

Let's choose to make this the first time we don't glorify this tragedy with talk of rock and roll and the demons that, by the way, don't have to come with it. Skip the depressing T-shirt with 1967–2015 on it - use the money to take a kid to a ballgame or out for ice cream.

 So... yeah.

I wasn't sure of I was going to post this or not, and even as last week turned into this week, then late into the week, I hesitated. But I had words to get out there, and I decided to do just that.

So, here's a song that deals with some of the fallings-out Weiland and Forsberg (playing herself) had to deal with, with the Velvet Revolver power ballad Fall To Pieces, which all members (Weiland, guitarist Slash, bassist Duff McKagan, power-drummer Matt Sorum and guitarist Dave Kushner) contributed to and isa nice way for the former members of Guns N' Roses to avoid playing covers of their own songs Sweet Child O'Mine and Patience with their new band too often, as they are of the same type:

Making Her Mark Marking Her Territory

There's no question we're in the age of trolling, from people voting with potato sacks on their heads to a basketball player's fiancée texting all of his ''side chicks''... all 200 of them.

Now, I don't know anything about basketball except that there's a guy named LeBron James, there used to be a guy named Carmelo Anthony, and that Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, ''Magic'' Johnson and Wilt Chamberlain used to play the sport, when they weren't busy scoring off the field.

Which is admittedly what Victor Cruz seems to be doing as well. Good on Elaina Watley to mark her territory, though. I guess.

Here they are in, presumably, happier days:

Here's the group text she sent:

Touché. Literally.

Video Of The Week: Miranda Lambert

I used to think of Miranda Lambert as a boring, new-country singer who may have been a puppet not just from her managers but also the industry; she was married to a rather beige performer (Blake Shelton) who is so into prefabricated crap that he is a judge on The Voice, and I thought it reverberated on her as well.

That was until I heard this week's featured song, Mama's Broken Heart. The 2013 single from her 2011 album Four The Record didn't sound as generic to me as many of her other stuff; in fact, it reminded me of what Nikki Lane does, it had a real sense of danger that was fueled by pain and anger, but also a lust for life.

The song would also work as a ballad, but with its upbeat tempo really is reminiscent of Nikki Lane, especially with the overblown pseudo-rock chorus. It also works really well in light of Lambert's alleged extra-conjugal affairs... (beige never keeps the girl).

The beautiful, light-coloured video was directed by Trey Fanjoy, a regular nominee at country music award shows who has also directed videos for Tim McGraw, Taylor Swift, Alan Jackson, Lee Ann Womack, Keith Urban, George Strait, Lonestar, and Reba McEntire, as well as pop act Atomic Kitten, singer-songwriters Jewel and Sheryl Crow, renegade Steve Earle and whatever Aerosmith's Steven Tyler does now that he's a solo artist.

What Colour Dressed Him Best?

Blue and black, or gold and white?

(yes, that's a dress joke).

But it leads me to Leonard Nimoy, who died today due to complications from COPD (chronic pulmonary disease, something that runs the gamut between severe asthma and lung cancer).

He was an actor, of course, but also a writer, poet, film director (including two of the Star Trek series and Three Men And A Baby), and an inspiration to many. He struggled with his Spock character for a long time, but seemed to come to terms with it in the 1990s, concluding decades of soul-searching with his second autobiography, 1995's I Am Spock (after 1975's I Am Not Spock).

I'll watch Galaxy Quest (in which Alan Rickman's character is a clear homage to Nimoy himself) tonight, to mix some laughs with my sadness.

Live Long And Prosper, concluded the 83-year-old man, in his final tweet earlier this week, publishing his last poem at the same time, for the whole world to ponder:

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.  LLAP
— Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) February 23, 2015

Julian Edelman: Totally Fucked?

NEVER READ THE COMMENTS SECTION. I fail to abide by this rule, pretty much daily.

In the case of this non-news where a reportedly single football star (Julian Edelman) who may or may not be romantically involved with a model (Olivia Frischer, though they are not married) seen in a post-sex selfie, sleeping, with Boston-area girl Sabrina Dudish bragging about it via her Tinder profile icebreaker:

The internet went all mean and all-out on her, calling her the nastiest things, ''whore'' and ''slut'' among the most common - and nicest. One Massachussets bar owner banned her from his establishments - noting he had never done so about anyone else before. That's right: murderers and rapists, politicians, crooked cops, terrorists, kidnappers and wife beaters (three of those may apply to NFL players) are fine, but not Sabrina Dudish. Also, that misogynistic asshole (Michael Winter) went as far as to rate her a ''5'', I guess because if she'd have been a ''10'' it wouldn't have been the same? I'm fairly certain a lot of his bars are full of ''8s'' going to hotel rooms with married athletes (and married men in general), but somehow he's totally cool with that. Unless I'm missing the story about his bars being ''No Hookup'' establishments...

Again: a single woman bragging about fucking a single man, not destroying his family or public life. This is called slut-shaming, though we really need a better term, because nothing here actually proves her to be a slut. She's had to shut down most of her social media accounts because of the backlash, but forgot about her MySpace, so there are pictures of her looking a little too young making the rounds that some folks are searching for and staring at...

Guys are rarely judged by the amount of women they bang, unless it's negatively for not having had enough (''Oh, just 10? Sorry.''), but girls have to be virgin prudes, right? Then who would the guys be fucking?

My only interrogation with this is that she used it on her Tinder profile, meaning she's using it to lure men into contacting her to meet up. As a musician and former athlete, I understand there's an aura around going after men who've had many conquests, and there are plenty of Psychology 101 reasons for that, but I'm not certain it goes both ways: I fail to see how this one woman thinks sleeping with a man who has slept with hundreds of women makes her look attractive. But I guess that's the feminist in me, where I'm not slut-shaming her, but him instead. (I guess that's Psychology 102).

I guess that's the day and age we're in, though, right? Instant celebrity and a global network that renders your most stupid decision of the day a permanent fixture on the interwebs, for generations to marvel at. Like all those idiots from Florida. Paris Hilton showed the world (well, North America, anyway) that a complete dunce could market herself by just exposing herself to the masses, and they'll not only follow but want to join in. We're way past the Decline of Western Civilization, we're going for rock bottom.

On Suicide

Many things have been said about suicide in the past couple of days, what with the death of Robin Williams and the fact that he was so beloved and touched and inspired so many people.

But the smartest thing came from my friend Yan, blogger (and songwriter) extraordinaire, and I will quote most all of it because just one part would not be enough:

A famous person committed suicide so of course tumblr and the rest of the internet is going to be filled with patronizing BS about suicide for the next several days.

I mean no disrespect to Robin Williams or to the people paying tribute to him, but please please please for the love of god spare me your saccharine messages about how suicide is never the answer.

This is a very unpopular opinion but I believe that sometimes suicide is the answer and I wish people would respect that choice. Yes, I know there’s mental illness involved and suicidal people are not always thinking clearly, but I can’t stand the way well-meaning people speak condescendingly to people who are suicidal.

Why can’t we just let people go with dignity? Why not accept the fact that sometimes people reach a point where the pain is so great that it completely obliterate all other consideration and there is only one way out? Yes it sucks for those who are left behind. I know because I’ve been left behind a few times. But don’t you think people who are suicidal already know that? That they will be missed? They’re not stupid babies. They are aware of the pain they are going to cause and they probably already feel a tremendous amount of guilt over it. But when your own pain reaches a certain point, that doesn’t matter anymore.

I don’t want to upset people and I’m certainly not advocating suicide, but stop treating people like babies.

I share that opinion. Deeply.

I find it very selfish for people to ''oppose'' suicide, and the same goes for hastags like #endsuicide. Like Yan said, apart from hurting loved ones - who likely will feel pain at other moments in their lives as well - where is the harm in taking your own life? Aren't there enough humans on earth for whatever purposes you had in mind? And what if this particular human felt they had done what they needed to, or all that they could have, or that every single one of their efforts led to no change for the best for anyone/anything? The species can afford one less, all the better if it's someone who doesn't feel like giving Life another try rather than, say, kids who are collateral damage in a shitty war no one will benefit from.

I say #keepsuicidealive. I'm pro choice. All the time.

That being said, R.I.P. Mr. Williams. I re-watched Death To Smoochy tonight, because it's one of his most under-rated films, and part of when he - as an actor - turned to darker roles rather than all-serious or all-comedy. Maybe I'll watch One Hour Photo tomorrow. And try not to kill myself on Thursday.

About Jack White...

Jack White has been talking a lot of shit about a lot of subjects lately, from how he felt Meg White wasn't exactly an encouraging teammate in The White Stripes (and was a recluse) to how The Black Keys are a watered-down version of his old band.

The thing is... he's not wrong.

The White Stripes were essentially an experiment in making music within a certain set of rules, performed within a certain aesthetic - two band members, few overdubs, based on the blues, in a three-colour peppermint scheme dress code, trying to bring out the best songs possible and the most emotion within this context, as a two-piece. Easy to tour, easy to record. Easy to write.

From one record to the next, they pushed the envelope further, and eventually veered away from the guitar-oriented songwriting to piano and old keyboards, but set to blues progressions.

The Black Keys didn't instill a rule book when they set out to make their tunes, but they made pop based on blues, too. And when WS became really big, BK made their guitar sound fatter to match. When they lacked inspiration, they brought in outside musicians and producers to help with the songwriting process, more often than not making their sound poppier, but they rarely went out of the 4/4 beat with three-or-four chord progressions in fifths or thirds.

Same formula? Check. More pop than rock? Check. Therefore: watered-down version. Absolutely.

And Meg had dated and married Jack before starting the band; by the time they made it big with White Blood Cells, they'd divorced and she was unimpressed with both his bullshit and his genius. That's just normal stuff. So when he came up with one of rock's best riffs of all time for Seven Nation Army (an improved version of something similar to what Soundgarden had come up with for Spoonman, with much better lyrics to boot), well, hourray.

He was proud to have come up with amazing shit, but just may have turned to the wrong person for approval and ''high fives''.

At this point, there is no use for (Jack) White to pretend to be humble. He is the pre-eminent rock songwriter of his generation, and the lone guitar hero ''made'' past 1991. The 1960s and 1970s gave us a slew of real ones, the 1980s tried to sell us a ton more (Slash stayed, just like the instrumental virtuosos à la Joe Satriani and the dead guys, like Dimebag Darrell), but when the grunge/anti-hero thing came along, talent was something to hide, not be proud of. And the 2000s just sucked, so here we are.

He's good, he knows it. Everything he touches turns to gold. He wants the world to acknowledge it. Fine by me.

Next Up On My Wall: 3 Autographed Samantha Fox Posters

Here is a post lifted from my Collectibles blog...

I received this cylinder in the mail two weeks ago and have been waiting to make good use of it ever since:

Yes, that's direct mail from Samantha Fox, my favourite lead singer of the 1980s, my favourite pop music queen, my childhood crush obsession, the lone ''non-rock'' patch on my teenage jean jacket...

I contemplated having its contents laminated, but because they are of ''unusual'' (read: British) dimensions (12x16.5 inches), I would have had to do so on larger-than-the-poster canvasses; it took me a long time to find ideal-sized and affordable frames... until last Sunday.

And so:

Oh, yes, these are going on my wall.

She sells unsigned versions of these at 10 pounds apiece ($20 U.S.), and signed ones for 30 each ($60 U.S.). I got them for much, much less than that - because I'm a musician, proved to be a true fan, did my best to attend every single one of her performances in my part of the world... and took advantage of a sale on her website. 1+1+1= oh yeah.

There are days where I regret some of the choices I've made in my life, like foregoing on a hockey career to pursue my education, or choosing the least faithful out of two possible ladies as a long-term companion, or leading a relatively unhealthy lifestyle without the trade-off of at least feeling like it was worth the damage done.

But there are days where I tell myself that every choice I've made has led me right here, and there is no way I could possibly want to trade that away. This is one of them:

There is a God - he just hasn't made me a photographer. BEST BLACK DRESS, EVER; ALL-TIME GREATEST USE OF WIND. I even noticed the shoes, and I'm neither gay nor a lady! Oh, and superb signature. I nominate this as the greatest piece of human history ever created.

There is also this sexy bustier shot, which I had a blown-up poster of (unsigned) earlier in my life:

And this one, showing a rather large tattoo I had never noticed on her before (let me reiterate that I've seen her perform live and state for the record that I've met her maybe 5 years ago when she came to town to play an outdoors show at out Gay Pride festival):

Another cool black dress, the like of could have been worn in a sexy, almost-goth fashionable wedding à la November Rain, the epic 1992 Guns N' Roses video. I volunteer to be the groom.

Jim Flaherty Is Dead

After attempting to kill the CBC by slicing its budget to death (while financing private-sector TV networks like CTV and Global), I was hoping the network wouldn't cover Canada's Conservative former 8-year Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's death except by holding an office party.

Instead, they first reported on his death like it was just anyone's, then ran a whole other story to say he will have a state funeral in Toronto.

I understand the ''state funeral'' part, not because he was in charge of running Canada into austerity until just a few weeks ago, but because his friends and Party are still in charge and that's what those people do: spend our tax dollars amongst themselves.

But why Toronto? Hold it in Ottawa - the capital - where he worked and did his evil deeds. Picture this:

Flaherty died of a heart attack Thursday. Colleagues, including opposition MPs, are remembering him as a generous friend who could spar heatedly with someone in Parliament and later laugh over a drink outside the House of Commons.

Laugh over a drink. ''We sure screwed most Canadians on that one! No more benefits for the unemployed, let's toast with this 15-year-old bourbon!''

I don't mean to be an asshole, but the media overall are acting like fucking fanboys now that he's dead, and even the NDP's Thomas Mulcair saying how ''great of a man'' he was though pretty much every single thing Mulcair supposedly stands for and has been fighting for his entire political career was in complete and total opposition to Flaherty's views.

One piece stands in contradiction of them all, and I can't just quote from it since all passages are important, so here it is, from Socialist.ca:

Flaherty was part of Mike Harris’ government in Ontario, whose cuts to water inspection services led to an E.Coli outbreak that killed seven people in Walkerton, Ontario. The same government imposed massive cuts to welfare and social housing, killing Kimberly Rogers in the process, and years later people continue to die from homelessness.

Flaherty was also part of cuts to healthcare at both provincial and federal levels. As the Council of Canadians wrote last week in an article titled Broken Promises and Abdication: Flaherty’s Healthcare Legacy, “March 31 marks the end of the 2004 Health Accord and the last day Canadian health care will have equalization payments to have-not provinces, national standards, and federal funding tied to achieving set benchmarks. March 31 is also a day to mourn the fact that we remain the only wealthy country with a universal health-care system and no national pharmacare plan.” Healthcare cuts kill, including the Tories' inhumane cuts to refugee health--denying basic health care to people who had fled rape, torture and war.

Flaherty was also proudly part of the Harper government that turns its back on global health crises—boycotting the International AIDS conference in Toronto, imposing a maternal health plan denying abortion, cutting humanitarian aid to Gaza, and defunding Sisters in Spirit that investigates missing and murdered aboriginal women.

While destroying social services, Flaherty and the federal Tories have poured billions into the military, which has killed countless people in 13 years of occupying Afghanistan, the bombing campaign in Libya, and the UN occupation of Haiti. At the same time, Flaherty’s budget policies included the New Veterans Charter—cutting benefits from veterans despite an epidemic of suicides and protests across the country.

Flaherty also pioneered the technique of using omnibus budgets to hide life-threatening cuts, from Bill C-45’s attacks on environmental protection and indigenous sovereignty that sparked Idle No More, to the more recent Bill C-4 that attacks workers—including their health and safety.

We mourn these countless victims of Flaherty’s policies of austerity.

Too soon? It's never too soon for the truth.

R.I.P. John Pinette

Another beloved talent left us before we could find a cure for mortality, yesterday. John Pinette was a very funny overweight man, who was a regular at the Just For Laughs festival, and he died at age 50 of ''natural causes''... he had long-standing liver and heart problems.

His two stand-up specials remain with us (Show Me the Buffet, I'm Starvin'! and Still Hungry), as does his role in the Seinfeld finale, though most fans of that series would prefer to have it wiped out of their memory.

Here's a sample joke:

Skinny people decide what they want at McDonald's... Now skinny people, I love you, we're all God's children. But the food situation, you piss me off. You browse, you pick... get out of the line! Get out, go over there, and think! Skinny people decide what they want when they get to the front of the line; what were you doing in line, your tax returns? I knew what I wanted before I parked the car.

Celebrities That Look Like Mattresses

Oh God. So good.

Is Sad And Useless the best website at the moment? If not, they're damn close, and their Celebrities That Look Like Matresses (sic) post is the best page I've seen all year...

Here's a sample:

However, their Metal Albums With Googly Eyes post is almost just as good...

R.I.P. Dave Brockie, a.k.a. Oderus Urungus (Of Gwar)

I wasn't the biggest fan of Gwar (I prefered their half-cousin band Green Jellÿ as a kid), but I did love the spectacle that accompanied them whether they were playing a show, doing interviews, or appearing on Jerry Springer...

And, to be honest, as far as heavy metal slapstick goes, Scumdogs Of The Universe (1990) and This Toilet Earth (1994) are pretty much classics, and are still listenable today - provided you know what you're getting into (which is the story of alien characters here to kill off the human race and spread sex and violence).

Their long-time lead vocalist (and one-time bassist and/or guitarist) Dave Brockie, a.k.a. Oderus Urungus was found dead in his apartment yesterday. Though he wasn't the first member to die while an active member (guitarist Cory Smoot, who had portrayed the now-retired character Flattus Maximus since 2002, was found dead by his fellow band members in the band's tour bus in 2011). But Brockie was the lone original member left, the voice of the band - both in song and in the public eye.

R.I.P. Harold Ramis

A very good comedy director passed away today, as Harold Ramis finally lost a battle with an autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis that had gone on since 2010; he had even lost motor function in his legs for a while.

While folks my age will remember his writing and acting credits at SCTV and his performance as Dr. Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989), his better credits are no doubt his work as a director:

Caddyshack (1980)
National Lampoon's Vacation (1983)
Club Paradise (1986)
Groundhog Day (1993)
Stuart Saves His Family (1995)
Multiplicity (1996)
Analyze This (1999)
Bedazzled (2000)
Analyze That (2002)
The Ice Harvest (2005)
The Office (2006) (TV)
Year One (2009)

One could argue against Stuart Saves His Family and Year One (I do, and I'd add the Analyze films as disappointments as well), but the body of work as a whole represents some of the best smart-funny films in the years they were made.

R.I.P. Maggie Estep

Her 1994 record No More Mr. Nice Girl still spins regularly in my ears and will keep doing so for a long while, but from now on, I'll be listening to Maggie Estep's poetry and reading her books as a former artist, since she passed away at the age of 50, two days after suffering a heart attack. She had had issues with heroin for a while, so her health may not have been tip top...

She had performed both on MTV Unplugged and Def (Poetry) Jam, toured with the likes of Henry Rollins and Jim Carroll, and covered Lou Reed's Vicious - and even got him to appear in her video of it.

Her last blog post was dated last Friday, and it's called Strippers, Sluts & Umlauts, and it talks about just that.

She will be missed.