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.

Many Of Donald Trump's 2017 Twitter Attacks/Rants/Spats

Here was Donald Trump's 2017, essentially, considering he and the Republicans passed just one bill of note:

And that's notwithstanding his Twitter was with North Korean President Kim Jong-un.

I'm sure glad he gets along with everybody, 'cause I'd hate to see a world where he doesn't.

About #MeToo

You may have seen it, all over your Facebook or Twitter feeds, as I have, in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, the #MeToo hashtag with accompanying text:

I have deliberately cut out most of the picture and name to protect her identity for future reference.

Better yet:

The fact that pretty much everyone of my female friends followed suit - some even going so far as detailing when and how it happened - proves this is a generalized issue.

However, I want to point one thing out, for clarification's sake: the results of these stories has to come out for two reasons: 1. in case some people want to prosecute their abusers; and 2. for society to change and build from this for a better future. That being said, we should not, by any means, require victims to share their most intimate secrets in public to get that ball rolling. That's not how it should work.

I'm all for "innocent until proven guilty", I realize some famous folks have been wrongly accused these past few years, that's all good, a crime's punishment should require an actual trial, not an online lynch mob; on the other hand, victims must be believed and protected as well. You can do both in a civilized society. There may even be cases - that's where a true court comes in - where a victim may feel wronged but when the facts come to light, the defense may be able to make a credible case that there was middle ground; in the U.S., that's where civil court comes in, with punitive damages awarded.

Further debate and explanations on that issue, however - as with my own #MeToo because, as a Man, this is not my day to join that side of the argument - is for another day.

Today, my statement is this: I do not consider to have been a torturer in that sense, because just hearing the word "no" calms my manhood down for the rest of the night, as many disappointed role-playing ladies have found out. But there was a time as a child when I was discovering myself and sharing the experience with friends and relatives where now, as an adult, feel were either fucking weird or may have crossed some sort of line, and hopefully I didn't scar anyone for life. I have been told it was "normal childhood behaviour" by professionals, but kids are a mess anyway.

This does not mean I haven't been part of the problem, as an asshole, at an age where I probably knew better and could handle some responsibility.

I try to be a good person, and I try to improve on that every day. Some days I can't. Many times when I can't, I don't cause much damage to anyone but myself, if that.

But I have disrespected women, some of whom I even dated. I have said harsh thing. Terrible things. I even asked someone who had been on my case for an entire night "When will you die?". Jesus Christ. I'm haunted and tormented by the shit I've done - not just to women, to men too; I've said it here before, I've seen both sides, I've been bullied and I've been a bully, but fuck, man.

I'm in my late 30s now. I want kids. Chances are, if I do have some, they'll have some of my DNA. I don't want my kids to do what I did or say the things I've said. And here's the thing: my Mom was an amazing parent. She taught me to want to be - and do - good. She's probably the reason why I didn't turn out a criminal like some of my friends or some of my folk heroes. I don't know if I can do any better than she did, but I know there is shit I've had to learn by trial and error - and ages 8-10, then again around 15-16, I've erred quite a bit - that will look a hell of a lot like History Repeating Itself to me if and when I notice them from my kid(s) or their friends.

Sure, you try to teach them the basics: good, not evil; treat everybody equally, regardless of everything; help those in need. Some of that will have to come with reminders sometimes. Then there'll be the path corrections when they stray.

I have no idea if it'll stick. Because every day, I live with everything I've done in the four decades that I've been on this planet. And today, I'm thinking particularly of what I did and said to one gender. Friends, girlfriends, teachers, strangers.

I haven't always been a part of the solution. I'm trying to be, I really am, because there's only so much weight I can carry. But mostly because it's the Right thing to do.

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:

No Fandango: Anthony Scaramucci Fired After Just 10 Days

Seth Meyers had a few killer jokes about Anthony Scaramucci's firing ten days into his job as White House Communications Director last night:

As a matter of fact, Stephen Colbert had a few choice one-liners himself:

President Donald Trump, for his part, tweeted this:

This is insane.

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

#FuckCancer

The last few weeks have been trying in my immediate circle with health scares and warnings, ranging from heart conditions to burn-outs and depression to erectile dysfunction to my own appointments and checkups regarding diabetes.

But the word that came back the most often this week was cancer.

One of my brother's best friends, in his early 20s, wrote this heart-wrenching piece - in French - about his current condition with leukemia, which in turn brought my immediate family back to memories of a painful past.

I also decided to bring my Twitter profile back to life - I went from having hundreds of followers to between 50 and 60, a figure that seems to change daily for some reason. No, Traci Lords is no longer following me. (insert sad face here). And I wasn't there a week that I learned more people I know were afflicted with cancer. Three people I know well were diagnosed in 2014, all in their thirties.

And that's in addition to Ottawa Senators general manager Bryan Murray's confession that he has Stage-4 colon cancer and whose only hope at this point is to extend his life, because it's too late to cure. He knows he won’t overcome his battle, but joked he wanted to prolong overtime, like during the famous 1980s game between the New York Islanders and Washington Capitals: ''Let’s go to extra overtime and keep playing, like the game we played against the Islanders many years ago, and we went to four overtime periods'', Murray said.

In the long run, no one survives Life. We are all just visiting and must make the most of what we have, try to find happiness and, ideally, try to help mankind evolve. And no one is immune from accidents, but seeing someone who knows his time is up, and trying to make the best of it while not dwelling on the fact that he's nearing the end really hits home. Hard.

And he becomes the second Senators hockey operations member to seemingly spend the end of his life as an actual member of the team in just about a decade, after Roger Nielsen in 2003.

Fucking SPVM Cops

At first I thought it was a joke, a photoshop job that made the rounds on social media...

But no, it seems this picture, of an on-duty cop with a nubile young woman on his lap grinding back and forth (he may not have been protecting, but he seemed of service), is real:

Real enough that his employers have taken notice, have told the population (via Twitter!) that an inquiry is underway, and there may (meaning won't) be consequences:

It reads:

We are looking into the matter. We ask witnesses to contact us at our media relations email (so we can try to diffuse the situation).

The person who took the picture actually took a few more which add credence to their story that both on-duty cops took two (allegedly) underage drunk girls in their car, even letting them drive a bit, then had some sexy time in the car before proceeding to enter the young ladies' residence and have more sex there, while being paid by our tax dollars:

So, we thought cops were just standing around looking the other way (or beating kids nearly to death) while our government was fucking us over; turns out, the cops are also fucking us - in the more classic sense. Well, fucking our girls, then fucking us over by not doing it on their own time.

And - again, allegedly - with underage jail bait. Although we all know cops don't go to jail (or even get fired) for even the worst crimes; but these girls'd be jail bait to us normal folk.

I wonder where all the cynicism comes from.

Jason Spezza's Good Deed Of The Week

If you know me at all (or read my sports-and-collectibles blog), you know I'm a huge hockey fan. Not just of my hometown Montréal Canadiens, mind you, but of the sport as a whole, its history, its personalities.

And while I've been a Habs follower since I was a kid - we even had season tickets from when I was 7 until I was 17 - it has become increasingly difficult to identify with the team of late - with any team in this economy-driven, salary-cap era where they sell you players, almost shove them down your throat, but trade them away seemingly on a whim after you've shelled out your hard-earned money on team items bearing their faces or names. And you're forced to accept it, and love the new guy immediately, and spend your money on him instead. And boo the old guy every time he comes back in town to play against the team he used to bleed for.

It's also why I can't root for ''for my home country of Canada'' and ''all of its players'' at the Olympics when Habs players I'm supposed to cheer for (and do) during the 50 other weeks of the year are separated into 6 teams, while Canada only has two, one of which they decide not to dress for meaningful games, and the rest of its team is comprised mostly of guys I'd rather see never win another hockey game, ever (such as members of the San Jose Sharks).

Still, I root for the Habs as a general rule. But I also wish the Colorado Avalanche the best, especially now that their front-office staff is comprised of Joe Sakic (the best player between the Wayne Gretzky era and the current Evgeni Malkin era) and Patrick Roy (without whom the Habs would be on a 35-year Stanley Cup drought rather than 21, and would have 22 in total instead of 24).

And I'd rather see an Original Six team (except the Toronto Maple Leafs, fuck the Leafs!) or at the very least an Original Twelve-plus-the-Canadian teams (again, except the Leafs). And teams Roy has played for (Habs, Avalanche). That's it. No other team should ever lift the Stanley Cup. That's 16 teams (Montréal, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Minnesota, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Colorado and even on rare occasions Winnipeg) out of 30, which seems like a reasonable number to me.

But I digress. So I love the sport as a whole, and some players more than others. Current (and hopefully career-long) Habs Andrei Markov and Tomas Plekanec top the list, but with them stand former Canadiens Saku Koivu and Mike Ribeiro. And Ottawa Senators captain Jason Spezza, an electrifying stickhandler, and one of the best passers in the game.

I've featured Spezza on my sports blog four times already, but I came across a story that I thought deserved inclusion here instead, where he learned that a ''very sick young boy'' had his autographed pictures of both Spezza and Sens star defenseman Erik Karlsson stolen in a car break-in.

As the article states:

Ottawa Police began searching for the perpetrator but Spezza wasn't interested in waiting for an outcome.

Instead, he got the whole team so sign a Sens jersey (great show of leadership from their new captain!), and he and Karlsson signed tons more stuff for the kid:

Not just a great hockey player, but a great person, and team ambassador (free good publicity). Well done, sir.

Oh, Sochi

If Russia doesn't break you, it will break itself around you.

Apparently, international journalists aren't impressed with the accommodations so far, a day before the Games begin...

Some journalists arriving in Sochi are describing appalling conditions in the housing there, where only six of nine media hotels are ready for guests. Hotels are still under construction. Water, if it’s running, isn’t drinkable. One German photographer told the AP over the weekend that his hotel still had stray dogs and construction workers wandering in and out of rooms.

These are going to be a fun read over the course of two weeks...

Justin Bieber: Not Safe For Life

When it isn't Rob Ford, it's fucking Justin Bieber. Since ''retiring'' a month ago, he has been arrested more times (5) than I know songs of his (1, that Baby thing if it even qualifies as one), and when the cops don't get him on their own, his own friends show the rest of the world just how much of a deranged attention whore he really is:

I mean, she doesn't seem to mind, so I really shouldn't care - and I don't - but isn't Bieber the ''ultra-Christian guy'' who advocates not having sex before marriage? Unless licking tits and anal don't count?

Good morning, by the way, I hope you didn't throw up your breakfast.

R.I.P. Cassandra Lynn Hensley

(reposted from my collectibles blog)

R.I.P. Cassandra Lynn Hensley, who died two nights ago following an evening where cocaine and champagne were consumed after a time of not feeling well. She was 34 and leaves behind a daughter.

I didn't know the February 2006 Playboy Playmate Of The Month, but I do know models who did, and this has come as a shock to two of them in particular.

Her Twitter account still updates with her automatic daily horoscope, and the one published just hours after her death turns out to be eerie in retrospect:

Unspoken obligations prevent you from doing what you wish today. No matter what you do now, you might not feel completely fulfilled. Working harder isn't the answer, but neither is escape.

As a tribute, here is a card I got in a box of Benchwarmer's 2006 Holiday cards, an autographed insert (#15 of 16):

Pearls Of Wisdom: Bill Maher's New Rules, Sept 20, 2013

Anna Kendrick's Pearls Of Wisdom

I will admit I am not well versed in matters pertaining to Anna Kendrick, though I have seen 50/50 and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and plan on seeing Drinking Buddies and Up In The Air.

I hope to never see any of the Twilight movies, and despise musicals so much I ditched an opportunity to watch Pitch Perfect for free...

I guess I may have mistaken her for Isla Fisher's younger sister... maybe I should get to writing a script providing me with just that!

In the meantime, though, The Celebrity Cafe has compiled a list of her top-10 tweets, and I have to admit there's some pretty witty stuff in there!

Generalized Geography Fail

As could have easily been predicted, the internets were full of ignorant, incompetent fools putting their two cents in towards who should receive a free bombing in retaliation for the Boston attacks, and the clear winners were: the Czech Republic, and its 1918-1993 counterpart, Czechoslovakia.

Because, of course, idiots have no clue what Chechnya is, let alone where it's situated. Quick recap: it's one of the few territories Russia refused to let secede when the USSR collapsed, because like the Spaniards and English-Canadians, Russians like to own other people and their land, and to collect their taxes. Empires have a tendency to not be very good at letting go...

For the geographically challenged, here is a map:

It would suck if, say, Bratislava (capital of Slovakia, which seceded from the Czech Republic in the mid-nineties) were to get invaded because uneducated assholes couldn't tell the difference between two completely different peoples and countries. The Czech capital is Prague, and the Chechen capital is Grozny, by the way. They are separated by 10 to 20 countries, depending which route you take and how you define the republics still owned by Russia.

But back to the internets:

I wonder if ''down'' means 'North'' or ''South''

It probably has to do with the U.S. winning silver at hockey at the last Olympics, Czechs don't fuck around with hockey

See previous: hockey. Also, the Czech Republic is up North, far from the devil's heat, although Patrik Elias is Czech and plays for the Devils in New Jersey...

Someone doesn't understand how the Russians invaded the Czechs repeatedly from 1948 to 1988, with 1968 being the biggest show of force

Yep, they killed a guy from the past...

Again, look at the map, those countries are pretty wide apart as well

''Aren't of any'' - does a double-negative cancel out the fact that that Czechoslovakia hasn't existed for 20 years, or does it magically bring it back to life?

Probably by way of New Zealand and Zimbabwe...

Towel heads... really? Who's living in 1620 now?

Yes, let's blame a whole country for 2 guys' work... we couldn't even do that when the two guys were Dick Cheney and George W. Bush...

And for the fuck of it, Italy, too.

I've heard of brothers from another mother, but from another country altogether? Also: Boston Massacre jokes. Well played. If you can't laugh at dead babies, the terrorists win.

''One day''... I guess after Iraq, Afghanistan, the upcoming wars with Iran and North Korea, Syria, and all the other countries with mutual hatred/disdain for one another, the list is getting pretty long...

Also, the Midwest is full of former Brits that probably still love the Queen, the Northwest has a lot of Germans (need I say more) and New York is full of non-whites - who knows how many of them could be scary?

I'm pretty sure not, but 'Super Slayan' might be tweet-talk for ''I failed the fifth grade because I was too busy sucking cock at the back of the class''

And that's just the tip of the iceberg, of course. So much so that - and I shit you not - the Ambassador of the Czech Republic had to issue this fucking statement:

My faith in humanity has almost disappeared completely.

Modern Seinfeld

What would Seinfeld story lines be like in today's TV world? 

Twitter has an answer: Modern Seinfeld. Smart-asses have re-imagined plotlines adapted to today's overwhelming presence of the web, hyper-emphasis on security, and a slew of other comical situations.

Here are a few:

Not only do I like the pop culture references, I like the fake-guest stars they're thinking of as well!

Nicki Minaj Vs Steven Tyler: Battle Of The Dolls

It now seems that Steven Tyler was fired from American Idol, rather than his desire to get back to Aerosmith. He and Jennifer Lopez were replaced with Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj on the self-deflating show that no longer produces top sellers, and now he's saying what I always thought was true of these shows, namely that if Bob Dylan would have applied to such a show in the 1960s, they would have turned one of the best songwriters of all time down because his voice isn't powerful and radio-friendly.

Except Tyler said it specifically about Minaj, and she responded by calling him ''racist''. And now Twitter is aflame.

Chris Brown's Punk Fail

Chris Brown decided to be cool and dress up as a street punk, sporting a leather jacket with the markings of seminal bands he's never heard of, such as Corrosion Of Conformity, Suicidal Tendencies, Dirty Rotten Imbeciles (D.R.I.), Cro-Mags, The Exploited and the like:

Instead, the wife-beating R&B star ended up looking like a brat, which led to Municipal Waste posting a diss on their Twitter page...

Ann Coulter: Foot In Mouth Disease, Part 98

I don't know if Ann Coulter says stupid things just to get the Left riled up and the Right to defend her (and move them even more to the right...), but in a year, she can easily say 300 noteworthy idiocies - and get paid to tell them, be it on Fox News or in conferences.

Thi time, she took to Twitter to spew easy hatred on homosexuals in ''reaction'' to last week's ''Coming Out Day''...

Could she be any more of a cliché? Or a dick?

Plus, you know how often hard-line Conservatives usually end up getting caught as the one thing they were trying hardest to eradicate...?

Rush Limbaugh's Current Faux-Pas

I didn't want to comment on Rush Limbaugh's comments on that law student, because everyone else was doing it, and the internets were aflame. Plus, I had blogged constantly for 4 years without writing a specific article about him yet. But I've been asked to, and I shall. First, his comments:



Thanks to a successful Twitter campaign, a bunch of advertizers are now quitting Limbaugh's show, hitting the loud-mouth where it hurts: the purse strings. Because despite his studio being paid for and production costs nearing zero, and with his constant arguments about each individual having to foot the bill for whatever they want (insurance, health care, welfare, food stamps, pensions, etc.), someone else is always paying Limbaugh's bills, be they current or future.

He's apologized but at the same time is usually the first one to say apologies don't mean anything, that the person thinking what they said probably still feel the same way. But now he sees the threat of being taken off the air and is acting like the pussy he's always been, as most bullies end up doing when they're confronted.

Also, he prefaced his radio apology by saying he'd been using his adversaries' smear tactics despite his better judgement/manners - as if! - seemingly forgetting he insults people for a living, on air, 5 days a week for 3 hours at a time.

For once, the smell of shit around Rush Limbaugh isn't the hate speech coming out of his foul mouth, it's the complete picture of the situation he's in.