Barkerburgh

I was getting so sick of switching over to CNN during commercial breaks and hearing them dissecting every little aspect of every little primary and every little caucus and every little mouth-fart and every little tic and twitch and hiccup of the candidates, their staffs, the exit-polled, and the results, that I was hoping for different news, real news - an earthquake or a tsunami, maybe.

Well, Gott sei dank, I got a metaphorical one.

You’d think, I mean don’t you think you’d think, that if you were a Democratic politician in a high position, that you won partly by claiming the moral high ground during your earlier career and your campaign, that you’d know better than to schwanz a hooker on the public’s clock. Multiple times. I mean, vey iz mir.

Next thing it’ll be CBC and the Olympics. And the Olympics. And the Olympics. And no weeknight Coronation Street.

What a world.

Avoid the film ‘Cradle Will Rock’!

The well-known radical leftist Tim Robbins wrote and directed this sensationalistic and overblown paean to Communism, anti-Fascism and creeping Trade-Unionism. Only somewhat fictionalized, it is inspired by a particular period in 1937, when the House Committee on Un-American Activities was young, and when labour unrest was rising, the former being demonized while the latter is praised. One does not expect objectivity in films like this, from people like this, and one is never disappointed.

Set in the lead up to WWII, among the actors and artists, magnates and industrialists of New York City, populated by the rich and the poor, the wicked and the kind, the clever and the canny, the story is based around the character of Marc Blitzstein, a left-wing composer, and the production of his pro-union musical, ‘The Cradle Will Rock.’

He is played by Hank Azaria, who, curiously, only ever uses one voice – although I am certain I heard Moe Szyslak in one crowd scene.

The producers managed to reconstruct Diego Rivera’s fresco commissioned for the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center in New York. Then, appropriately, on camera, as in real life, they destroyed it as part of the movie’s action, of course, but also as a subtle warning to Communists and trade-unionists. Fictionally, the destruction was moved from 1933 to 1937, and the scenes of its destruction were intercut with scenes of the impromptu opening night of Blitzstein’s play.

I will admit the casting was quite fine, even including Susan Sarandon’s bad Italian accent. John Turturro, Vanessa Redgrave, Bill Murray, John Cusack, Cary Elwes, Emily Watson, many others, all did a fine job, while revealing their left-wing sympathies, and making sure their names go on secrets lists in Washington and under Cheyenne Mountain (a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dupont Corporation.)

All in all, very enjoyable, for a left-wing, subversive, anti-establishment, hippy, yippy, People’s Republic, beatnik, Tommy Douglas in Ho Chi Minh City out on a Saturday night, kind of movie.

But don’t let it sway you.

I didn’t even know this guy and I just got this email!

So who needs a new house? Whose kids need to go to university abroad? Who needs exotic surgery in foreign climes?

(Italics mine.)

“MANAGING PARTNER
GRAPEVINE & ASSOCIATES LAW FIRM
LONDON - UK.
NOTIFICATION OF BEQUEST

Hello,
On behalf of the Trustees and Executor of the estate of Late Engr.Huish Shearmur;I again try to notify you as my first letter was returned undelivered yet i tried still to reach you again by this same email address stated on the WILL.He left the sum of Seven Million One Hundred Thousand Dollars(USD$7,100.000.00 ) to you in the codicil and last testament of his WILL.
Late Engr. Huish Shearmur died on the 13th day of march, 2006 at the age of 80 years, and his WILL is now ready for execution.Please endeavor to get back to me as soon as possible at grapevinelawfirm@hotmail.co.uk to enable me conclude my job and give you more detailed information about his WILL.

yours in Service,

BARRISTER ANDREW MARTIN ESQ”

The lineup starts now.

Wow, it sure is ugly. What a mess.

It’s more than a little appalling that there’s artistic types all over the city patting each other on the ass and telling themselves the ROMperor’s new clothes are haute cuisine.

Either Firefox, WordPress or Youtube are screwing up my post on the Darby ‘You Suck’ Prank.

So sorry.

1. Make a longhand list entitled “Ten Things To Do During A Power Failure While You’re House-sitting.”
2. Read an entire book. (”X-Treme Latin! Unleash Your Inner Gladiator”; it’s basically a phrase book. From the Country Music Favourites page - ‘Sine Te Tam Miser Sum Ut Videaris Etiamnunc Adesse‘, which translates as ‘I’m So Miserable Without You, It’s Like Having You Here‘.)
3. Read Monday’s Globe and Mail, front to back, even Sports.
4. Ingenuously ask the neighbours if their power’s back on.
5. Disingenuously ask the other neighbours if their power’s back on.
6. Worry about the old lady across the street who seems okay but you’d feel bad if you found out something happened to her when you didn’t check.
7. Stare longingly at the blind TV. It can’t see you, so it’s not fulfilling its destiny. (Me! It can’t see me!)
8. Believe Reality when the power comes back on for about 3 minutes but then, haha, goes off again.
9. Try to teach yourself piano but give up when you realize that while you may never be the new Keith Jarrett, you just might be the new Charles Ives and that’s dissonantly disturbing.
10. Clean out the freezer. By eating.
11. Add some items to the list after #10.
12. Phone some local friends to ask their voice-mail, in all seriousness, “Is your refrigerator running?” But use a funny voice and an accent.
13. Read an entire Mad magazine. (March, 2007)
14. Make anagrams in fridge magnet letters out of “Squarebob Spongepants” (”Barges Squab Opponents”, “Abbess Pang Toque Porns”, etc) and “You talking to me?” (”Image Look Nutty”, ” Teat Ugly Kimono”, etc).
15. Return from the Stone Age when the power comes back on after almost exactly 3 hours.

So I’m watching a White House press conference on CNN in which President Bush plans to announce his veto of the recent bill passed by Congress to fund stem cell research.

He outlines his moral and ethical reasons for his veto and then presents a victim of spina bifida who had her damaged bladder replaced by one grown from adult stem cells in the lab. (I have not independently verified this with my sources.)

Moments later, he refers to her condition (which he had to have been briefed on) as - and I kid you not - spina biffid-eye-da. Spina bifidida.

Why don’t his handlers drill him?

A few weeks ago when he was in Russia, he referred to a conversation he’d had with Putin and quoted himself: “Vladimir - I call him Vladimir…” which name he pronounced to rhyme approximately with polymer, as opposed to the more proper Anglophone pronunciation which should rhyme approximately with polymeer.

Can’t wait for tonight’s ‘Daily Show.’

The bastards have cancelled ‘Jericho’ too.

Just when I was really getting into it.

‘Everybody Loves Fucking Raymond’ gets renewed for 23 years and they gang-probe us on this.

Well, I hope all their walls come a-tumblin’ down.

(Moments later: Then there’s this response from the fans. It’s in a response to a line used in the last episode based on this true story.)

The bastards have cancelled ‘Veronica Mars’ too.

‘According to Fucking Jim’ gets renewed for 23 years and they gang-probe us on this.

Well, they can kiss Mars.

30 Grams Per Week

The Toronto Star has been publishing their weekly TV magazine for decades; Star Week. Up until recently the daily TV listings were presented in narrow columns, maybe five or six to a page. New TV series often had a brief synopsis of the episode’s highlights or the plot, usually with an ‘N’ in brackets to indicate a new episode. Movies usually had a one or two person cast list, the production year, and maybe the genre. There was usually useful information along with the bare listings. It was helpful.

Suddenly they changed to a tabular format with no room for descriptions or synopses. I am not a married-to-the-past traditionalist in any way (ask anybody) and I usually take things like this on a case by case basis. This time, the old way was better.

25 Grams Per Week

A week or two after they made the change they had the gall to tell us in a short article on an inside page of the Saturday Star that people had expressed the opinion that they preferred the tabular format. (Well, nobody asked me. Harumph.) As before they have a section for daytime listing that vary only slightly from day to day, but now they only have a single page for weekday primetime, with almost no detail, then at the back, late night weekdays. Often all we know about a movie in a particular timeslot is that it is a movie, because it just says ‘Movie’, especially in the late night listings. After a few weeks - responding to kudos, I’m sure - they added a sort-of highlights box with synopses of that night’s popular shows’ episodes, maybe Gray’s Anatomy, House or Heros, but forget the others. It’s better now though.

No, it’s cheaper. In more ways than one. The new format reminds me of nothing other than those free regional ad-driven TV magazines you used to find all over the place that had no room for details because of all the ads. This isn’t quite that bad, but you can see the resemblance. It isn’t better; it’s a rip-off, a cop-out and a fuck-up. It’s an increase in the chocolate ration.

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Why the title of this post? It’s a reference to Orwell’s 1984, and Winston Smith’s task of trying to rewrite history by spinning the fact that the chocolate ration went up from 30 grams per week in 1983 to 25 grams per week in 1984.

‘Nuff said?