Video Of The Week: Chris Cornell

Coinciding with the release of a 64-song eponymous collection spanning his time with Soundgarden, Temple Of The Dog, Audioslave and as a failed solo artist, Chris Cornell's estate released this video of the late grunge star featuring his son, Christopher Jr., as a paperboy, tracing back his father's old route and footsteps in the Emerald City, with some of his lyrics and song titles spray-painted all over town:

It was masterfully directed by Kevin Kerslake (Sonic Youth, Liz Phair, Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana) as a tribute both to the man and the city, and in that respect works extremely well.

The song also works as a reminder that Cornell's lyrics were very often sad, depressing and suicidal, which should be both a deterrent and fodder for the conspiracy theorists who think the late singer was murdered ("12 years sober!" is generally their rallying cry).

This wasn't Chris Jr.'s first video appearance, as he was also in Soundgarden's Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart, which was pulled from just about everywhere, as it depicts Cornell as a prisoner in the Old West getting ready to be hung, with one shot of a noose being fitted around his neck.

The boxed set itself contains a lot of live material, including Cornell's One, which meshes the lyrics to Metallica's song of the same name over U2's ballad, a Sirius XM studio rendition of Prince's Nothing Compares 2 U, a live duet with Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam on Wild World, and a duet with Toni Cornell (Chris' daughter) on Bob Marley's Redemption Song (which Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder famously did with Beyoncé).

Other covers include Led Zeppelin's Thank You and Whole Lotta Love, The Beatles' A Day In The Life, Mother Love Bone's Stargazer, Michael Jackson's Billie Jean, and John Lennon's Imagine.

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.

At Year's End

Everybody wants a great Christmas or New Year's story - the emotional kiss goodbye, the romantic kiss hello at a landmark, seeing long-gone friends or family members for the first time in years, new beginnings... the works.

And those who are lonely just feel lonelier, particularly if they happen to fall upon Holiday movies, which are usually centered around people finding others they connect with. Worldwide, the Holidays are the most common time of the year for suicides.

I don't have a dog in either race (that I know of), though I know people who will live those types of situations. I was just making the most out of the extended fall season when winter came back with a vengeance.

I usually live my life on the levels - a two-year plan for the ''big decisions'' (job, place to live, things relating to comfort level versus the problems that come with them), and a minute-to-minute reaction to everything else, which at times can involve big decisions (breakups, where friendships are going) but are mostly just paths, left or right, yes or no and the like.

Mid-term plans aren't usually my thing, which is why I'm not a fan of purchasing show tickets months ahead of time, because I'll forget and remember it's taking place at least a dozen times. The Holidays have that for me in droves, planning to go see my family here and there yet forgetting what day of the week we're at when I wake up in the morning (or afternoon, as was the case for the past few days). ''Yeah, let's meet on the 31st''... then ''oh shit, we're the 31st?'' and having ten minutes to do what I thought I would have three days to do them.

I've been putting off going to the grocery store for over a week now. But I watched all of The Boondocks, though... Netflix and sleep.

As I'm writing this, I realize I'm five days away from going back to work, 9 to 5, staring down an abyss of numbers that don't mean anything, listening to some Robert Schimmel CDs. I wish I could hibernate.

2015 was a year. It wasn't all bad (like, say, 2012), but it wasn't spectacularly nice. It had its moments; I had some good times, a few people made me smile a lot, I laughed, I cried. It would have made a terrible B-movie, or a great one if a character actor (John Turturro, Samuel L. Jackson, Paul Giamatti) played me better than I did.

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.

R.I.P Nicolas Plamondon

I had to write about Expozine recently for someone involved with it (he participated from 2007 to 2011) to go through enough hell to alter the life experience of everyone who knew him...

Artist Nicolas Plamondon took his own life a few days ago, unable to cope with a world he never quite fit in. Ever searching for his place in it, recognizing himself always only in part in what was offered, even his art reflected his dazed outlook:

The above picture was taken from Théâtre Des Souffrances and reprinted in the last edition of Four Minutes To Midnight, which I also occasionally contribute to.

Because life and art often intersect, he participated in the Spring demonstrations to support striking students, getting arrested multiple times. They weren't his first times behind bars, as he wrote about his 10-hour detention for the G20 demos in 2010 here.

The world loses one sensitive young adult who thought the world we live in doesn't make sense. The status quo loses an opponent and rolls on that much closer to victory.

R.I.P. Mindy McCready

She was a tortured soul who felt alone, needed to feel loved and accepted, and never quite got past the brink of happiness. As a teen - some reports (quoting him) say she was 15, others (quoting her) say 16 - she met baseball steroid über-user and star pitcher Roger Clemens and they promptly started a long-term relationship that was ''sexual in its nature''; as a young adult, she entered the country music business on the strength of karaoke tapes she brought to Nashville labels (and was signed by BNA Records); apart from Clemens, she dated pop culture side-dishes Dean Cain and Drake Berehowski; her substance-abuse problems became so rampant that she spent a season on Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew.

That was the public life of Mindy McCready.

In the end, she shot herself on the same porch, in the same exact manner as her boyfriend (and father of her second child) David Wilson, who had done it a month prior. It was at least her fifth suicide attempt.

Most of the conversation regarding her death should center around her talent, then substance abuse and mental health - and hopefully it will.

But we should also reserve a spot to talk about Reality TV, and more specifically Dr. Drew's exploitation show. She is the fifth ''cast member'' of the hack Dr. Drew Pinski - the third from Season 3 alone - to die in the last two years. While some of those were deemed ''accidental'', all of them involved drugs and alcohol directly: Rodney King drowned but was found to have alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and PCP in his blood, and Grease actor Jeff Conway may have died from pneumonia, but the autopsy showed his life-long addiction to painkillers was the cause of it. Alice In Chains bassist Mike Starr and Real World participant Joey Kovar both died of overdoses, Starr on cocaine and heroin, Kovar on heroin and other opiates.

Some cynics claim it'd be a scandal if no one from a series about addiction had died, and Pinski agrees with them, from a CNN interview last night:

One of my hopes was, in bringing ‘Celebrity Rehab’ out, was to teach people how dangerous addiction was. If I was doing a show on cancer, there would not be much surprise when my cancer patient died. In fact, we’d celebrate a few years of good quality life. People don’t understand that addiction has virtually the same prognosis. If you have other mental health issues on top of that, it’s so much worse. This was not an addiction death, interestingly. This was related to - had her boyfriend not died, I don’t think there’s any way we’d be in this position right now.

Really? He drops the fucking towel this easily? ''Meh, I gave it a half-assed shot, spewed out a few clichés here and there, made her (and others) look like a complete ass, and I did all that while also seeing my regular, non-celeb patients on the side, raking money in from all sides while forging myself a reputation as the go-to guy. Come see me, you have a 1-in-3 chance of dying.''

Jack Kevorkian went to jail for helping people who wanted to die get there. This hack's job is to try to save the fuckers and he fails consistently - how is that not also murder?

Truth, Allegations, And Things Left Unsaid

The things that maketh murder...

There are many things fishy about the death of web programmer/activist/Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz, one of which being that he didn't get to see his court case (MIT was suing him for $1M and jail time for hacking into their computers and downloading millions of subscription-based articles from JSTOR, an online academic database, and distributing them for free) go through, where he could have made a very public plea for the advancement of a free internet despite having little chances of actual victory.

 Another was the way in which he died: by hanging. His father claims ''the government killed him'', but whether it's metaphorically or as a matter of fact, a noose around one's neck is, indeed, one of the easiest ways to make murder seem like suicide.

Then again, a web-savvy supernerd would know just how many questions would be raised should he be found hanging from a noose, and could have done it on purpose just to awake suspicions and ''get the people talking'', as Will Ferrell would say.

Even I'm talking about it, and I knew nothing of the case when I woke up yesterday morning. ''Touché'', said the priest to the boy.

R.I.P. Tony Scott

The only thing I could think of when I heard Tony Scott had killed himself by jumping off an L.A. bridge were lyrics from Jim Carroll's song People Who Died:

Herbie said ''Tony, can you fly?''
But Tony couldn't fly, Tony died!

Although Ridley Scott's brother did leave a suicide note in his car office, so he didn't attempt to fly after all...

I'd feel like shit too if the biggest movie I could make these days was the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced Top Gun 2...

The box office provider's movies were hit-and-miss; some directors I like most of their films, other none. His fell in two different categories:

Those I liked: Beverly Hills Cop II, Days Of Thunder, The Last Boy Scout, True Romance, Spy Game.

Those I didn't: Top Gun, Crimson Tide, The Fan, Enemy Of The State, Man On Fire, Domino.

And one entertaining one at first watch but that I don't feel the need to ever see again: The Taking Of Pelham 123. And I really need to see The Hunger.


Upon hearing the news, my first feeling was consternation. Despite never receiving his brother's praise nor ever being an Academy Award nominee, he never seemed to me like someone with (more than daily-life) ''problems''. It serves as another example that anyone can have lapses in reason or control - whether they last an hour, a year or a lifetime.

R.I.P. Don Cornelius

February starts off on a sad note, s the creator of TV's Soul Train, Don Cornelius, shot himself to death this morning.

He was 75.

Do You Know It's Christmas Time At All?

It's disturbingly ironic that today would be Christmas in my City. It's almost 10AM, I haven't slept a wink since I woke up yesterday morning, I had dinner with family last night and yet... it's all so out of place.

Coming out of the subway station and walking towards my home, someone wished me ''Merry Christmas'', which I thought was nice enough, but crossing him through the door I was suddenly outside - in the greyest almost post-apocalyptic setting possible.

Sure, in some suburbs, houses might be decorated to the point where you can see them from the moon, but on Ontario street, there's nothing, just grey; the Subway fast-foo joint is conveniently across the street, but it looks like it's been closed since 1995; the bar that runs diagonally seems a leftover from a bygone era that is about to be brought down through implosion later today; the dollar-pizza place across from it looks like even roaches wouldn't want to approach it. Every single tree is without leaves - as winter would have it - but each one of them, when contrasted to the greyest sky I've seen in ages, looks more like the night after Halloween and the Devil's Night than something as festive as Christmas.

The walk home takes but a couple of minutes, but the only thought that was running through my head was ''hm... this looks like the ideal setting for a suicide''.

So I get home, turn on my computer, and the first news I see is that Vic Chesnutt, songwriter extraordinaire, has attempted just that.

I'm still not in a festive mood, I still don't feel like seeing anyone - I just want to stay home and watch Season 7 of 24, by myself. But I have to attend another family gathering tonight, and must therefore find a way to fall asleep before then. Hopefully aim for 5 hours of Zs, but time seems against me on that one.

There's that saying : ''damned if you do, damned if you don't''. There's also an expression that just says: ''damn''. Neither applies here, so my day just started off by getting fucked - and chances are it'll end fucked up.

Tell-Tale Signs Of Shitty Days To Come

Get to a street that's usually crowded, but it's not. Understandable, 7AM is no time to exist. If anything, early-birds should wake up at this time, or die. Which is the point, isn't it? Because on this Monday morning, on Sainte-Catherine street, a bird commits suicide. Falls right off a tree branch, falls neck first on the asphalt and stops moving. Forever. Right across the street from me, becomes car fodder.

Chances are it was a natural death, and it just fell. Or that it had broken wings and couldn't escape its fate. But it could also be that it couldn't bear to live in this place. Not like this. Not in this day and age. A bird like Hunter S. Thompson, like Elliott Smith. Man we're fucked if it's come to this.

And it does, indeed seem like it's the case, when one of the busiest patches of circulation cement is so desolate, the sky is so grey, the world's economy is on the brink of collapsing, wars are raging, Elections are happening and seemingly complementary with possibilities of hostile Conservatism takeovers... I could understand why a bird wouldn't want to live here anymore.

Sure, there are pieces of paradise in the Caribbean, but can't the birds sense danger looming? Perhaps the prettiest islands on earth are also doomed.

And some species are more apt at survival. Rats, locusts, roaches, vermin. Birds can fly away, but if you take away their desire to fly, break their wings by breaking their minds, their spirit - they will be left with nothing. Just like us. We mostly seem to be able to take it, some of us barely, a few can't at all. It's a wonder why we do, though. We are fully aware that there are too many of us in this world, not only for comfort, but also for the planet's ressources and balance. And billions of us go on with misery, unhappiness, useless stress, obeying corporate or actual masters for no good reason at all. You've got to know Keith Richards knew what he was doing when he fell out of that tree a few years ago. He knew. He had decided. He missed. And The Beast took him back in, told him he had better not do it again, and off he went Rolling Stoning again with his buddies, ridding the world of half of its drug-and-alcohol content selflessly, as a one-man sniffing task force.

But birds, eh? Way to start the day. One has to end for another one to start? Good thing I ever hardly sleep, I'm doing more than my part. But as the sun was coming up this morning on a grey artery that barely keeps the city's blood alive, the light seemed terribly dark.