I am no fan of mass-murdering dictators...

...but what in heaven's name will this accomplish? This entire Saddam vs. the Iraqi Tribunal ordeal has been such a monkey trial I'm surprised anyone out there is standing for it. Are we to presume that, in executing Saddam, all dictators on Earth are effectively told "beware: totalitarian regimes are risky, crime-ridden endeavours"? Are we to presume that this signal will effectively challenge or change the behaviour of the likes of Kim Jong-Il, the Iranian Ayatollah, or Fidel Castro? Are we to presume that, in death, Saddam's powers of insurgency rabble-rousing against the U.S. are nullified?

(How about no, no and no...)

The Godfather of Soul, 1933-2006

James Brown, the legend, the creative force, the abuser, the musician, the cat, the polemicist, the rights activist, the addict, the eternal spirit beyond good and evil, passed away this morning at the age of 73. There is a great deal of "James Brown" that cannot be fully understood by a modern audience, the nature of the beast being such that you either had to "be there" to see Brown in action, or you had to be part of Brown's action proper. James Brown went beyond simple grooves and beats; he was part-and-parcel of the entire American experience, the human experience, from the 1960s and onward. His music is inseparable from race relations in post-War America, and the mark he left on American popular is, to be blunt, immense.

I never bowed into the depths of soul very far; my ears stop, on one side of the artistic spectrum, at Miles Davis' 1970s funk-jazz experiments; on the other, at Ray Charles and the Parliament Funkadellic. Back when I was fortunate enough to play in a few bands that covered the standards of soul, funk, R&B and gospel music, however, the figure of James Brown was monolithic; his image, his sound, his vibes; the texture and smell of his rhythms, his basslines, his beats, his shouts — his problems, his triumphs. Soul and funk are not my "safe" idioms, and from a musical standpoint many of my expeditions into this new realm failed miserably (one of these actually had me dug in at Halifax's own Thirsty Duck Pub & Eatery several times a month for nearly a year, until I was replaced by a better trumpeter. That better trumpeter was Rick Waychesko of Tower of Power, thankfully, so my ego survived).

Worse, my relationship with Mr. Brown's music has been necessarily limited to no more than technical voyeurism. Like many of the readers of this blog, I was not alive during the 1960s and 1970s; I was not there to see James Brown in action.

Nor am I part of that action. I am not black, and I am not underprivileged because of the colour of my skin or my socioeconomic background. My "generation" may possess an immense appreciation for the Godfather's art, but, as years pass, there are fewer and fewer individuals with any deep or lasting personal connection to the social context that spewed Brown and his great music forth — the maw of 1960s/1970s American counter-culture and civil activism. Perhaps all we can realistically do to understand this era, all we can do as a human beings born post-hoc, is read about it, find the remnants of it, look at pictures of it, remember it, and think about it, long and hard.

Were he somehow able communicate with us from beyond the pale, though, I think the Godfather would sing a different tune. Despite the passing of the year 1972, racism and racist beliefs are widespread; poverty lies none too far from any doorstep, first world or third; and social injustice, the media tells us, our eyes and ears tell us, and our heart/gut/irrational-human mechanism tells us, is just about everywhere one can look. The world of James Brown still exists, outside of photographs and newsreels; we're a work in progress, a first-draft civilization, and Mr. Brown knew this, to the core, in his bones, in death, everywhere.

"You," he might say, "have a lot to do with my music."

And what music! It cuts and swings, always chasing after that "pure hard-flat-jazz-funk" that Brown once "heard in his dreams," perhaps never quite getting there, but achieving glory along the way, regardless. If all the historical and sociological cleavages that surround Mr. Brown's music are stripped away, we are still left with James Brown's music, the best funk in all the land.

And if all that shit gets thrown back on — dates, rallies, statements, influence, life stories, social threads, the first-draft of all being, all of that — we're still left with James Brown's music, the best funk in all the land.

As the Godfather might have said, Amen to that.

* * *

I've read a few articles on James Brown in my short days, though I cannot pretend to be encyclopedic or even offer a comprehensive opinion on the matter. Still, this is the best piece on Mr. Brown I've ever read. It captures James Brown no less than a year ago, at his most incoherent, at his most prescient, cryptic and/or profound, still having fun, and still going after that pure hard-flat-jazz-funk (the quoted bits in the preceding paragraph are actually pulled from this story).

Being an acolyte of Kurt Vonnegut Jr, I can't help but cite this...

For my part as a witness, if I could convey only one thing about James Brown it would be this: James Brown is, like Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, a man unstuck in time. He's a time traveler, but unlike the HG Wells-ian variety, he lacks any control over his migrations in time, which also seem to be circumscribed to the period of his own allotted lifespan. Indeed, it may be the case that James Brown is often confused as to what moment in time he occupies at any given moment.

Happy Holidays, everyone. May Mr. Brown continue chasing his dream, wherever he ended up.

Plagiarism in the Post?

I read The New Yorker often; I almost never read the National Post. Nevertheless, when I spied the Post's bit on left-winger/bon-vivant-turned-Iraq-War-proponent Christopher Hitchens, I took a gander and read the piece. After finishing, something seemed amiss — I was reminded, particularly by one line, of a Hitchens profile that The New Yorker ran the previous month.

Well, I've finally dragged that issue out of the great stacks of clutter that populate my room. I've compared it to the Post's piece, and I think I've found something.

Take a look at this sentence, written by Joseph Brean and run in "A day in the intellectual glare of Christopher Hitchens," The National Post, November 18, 2006:

In public speaking, which [Hitchens] does frequently and well, he has adopted the politician's trick of eliding the last words of one sentence into the first words of the next, which prevents both stuttering and interruption. Not that either seem much of a danger for him these days. Now, at public events like these, he does the interrupting . No one else would dare.

Now take a look at this line from a New Yorker piece on the same subject, by Ian Parker (October 16, 2006, p. 150):

[Hitchens] is a fine, funny orator, with the mock-heroic manner of an English barrister sure of his ground ("by all means," "if you will"), using derision, a grand diction, and looping subclauses that always carry him back to the main path. He also has the politician's trick of eliding the last word of one sentence to the first word of the next, while stressing both words, in order to close a gate against interruption.

Plagiarism, coincidence, or what?

EDIT: I've received a response from Joseph Brean, the author of the National Post piece. I'll be putting some of our correspondence up here in the forthcoming days.

Also, it occurs to me I haven't done any of my Christmas shopping yet.

I never cease to anticipate myself.

Truth vs. Truthiness vol. 1: Colbert on Rose

I will speak to you in plain, simple English. And that brings us to tonight's word: Truthiness. Now I'm sure some of the word police, the "wordanistas" over at Webster's, are gonna say, "hey, that's not a word." Well, anybody who knows me knows that I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They're elitist, constantly telling us what is or isn't true, or what did or didn't happen. Who's Britannica to tell me that the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? If I want to say it happened in 1941, that's my right. I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart. And that's exactly what's pulling our country apart today — because face it folks, we are a divided nation. Not between democrats and republicans, or conservatives and liberals, or tops and bottoms. No. We are divided between those who think with their head — and those who know with their heart.

Many of you know I am an avid fan of political satire — things like The Onion and The Daily Show. I am also an avid fan of long-form, serious journalism: documentaries, news features, new journalism, biographies, and so on. One of my favourite sources for "serious" journalism, a show I try to never miss, is Charlie Rose on PBS. Nowhere else in the TV idiom (or even in print) can one find hour-long, commercial free "interviews" with the world's leading decision-makers, artists, thinkers, actors, and writers.

If you're a skeptical sort, the show's guest list from last week should convince you otherwise. Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jancis Robinson, and Lou Dobbs all made a showing. Sting made an appearance on Tuesday, while on Wednesday Salman Rushdie, Michael Caine, and the President of Botswana all shared the "other" chair at Charlie's table, one after another. On Dec. 6, Charlie booked the authors of the Baker Report — James Baker and Lee Hamilton — on the same show as Tony Bennett. In the next two days, Clint Eastwood, Angelina Jolie, Matt Damon, and Robert DeNiro will all appear. And I don't need to mention that the famous oak table and black backdrop often plays host to the likes of Bono, Romeo Dallaire, Bill Clinton, and Thomas Friedman, the last of whom virtually lives in Charlie's studio.

Regardless of the billing on any particular night, it goes without saying that Charlie knows his shtick. If an interview is boring, it generally isn't because of Charlie. For his part, Mr. Rose labels what he does as "conversation." The label isn't a lie: Charlie often interrupts guests halfway through an answer. The show suffers from Mr. Rose's poorly-timed exhortations, but they still leave CR leagues above all other interviewing on television — though these days that isn't saying much.

Two things cause CR to falter. Well, three, but the fact CR broadcasts in Halifax at the same time as The Daily Show isn't exactly the show's fault.

Occasionally, Charlie books too many guests. This tends to happen just after a major news event; the show is filmed in New York, which, though a great location for dragging the world's artisans into a TV studio, is terrible for politics. CR's producers tend to patch-in most of their political-oriented guests via satellite links because, of course, none of these impoverished politicos can make the Washington-New York hike. Ahem.

The nature of the crime — politics — means these shows tend to have 4+ guests in one segment, some in the studio, some not. Satellite links make for bloody awful television when there's more than one guest and more than one point of view. Several guests inevitably attempt to make a point at the same time, and their tribulations immediately turn into aural gibberish. When one guest attempts to give another room for a riposte, the other does the same. Dead air ensues. ("Go ahead," the talking heads say in unison, followed by silence. "Um," they say in unison, followed by more silence. In the middle, a flummoxed Charlie Rose attempts to coordinate, his brow furrowed, his shoulders hunched, his hands raised and open like an orchestra conductor trying to conduct a symphony without the score.)

Charlie does much better in a studio-only setting — but even then he sometimes loses interest, or simply doesn't know the subject well enough to fill up an hour of dead space. Take, for example, Charlie's interview with the Dixie Chicks, broadcast last month. I know almost nothing about the Dixie Chicks, including the band members' names or the names of any of their hits. Even still, Rose's shortcomings were evident. Charlie had to ask a lot of dumbfounding questions (Paraphrased: "So... uh... what are you guys about?"), and couldn't contribute much as co-participant in the interview. Charlie is at his best when he fills in gaps that the television viewer may not know — details, anecdotes, clarifications and so on, some of it taken from his encyclopedic daily research, some of it taken from his own experiences in broadcasting and from his life in the who's-who circles of patrician New York haute couture. When he can't do this, CR's vaunted "conversation" turns into a standardized morning show interview. Only this version is longer, drawn out, and punctuated by silence. If you're not a fan of the Dixie Chicks, you won't get much out of this experience aside from 30 minutes of standard information about a band you're not even into.

(On the opposite end of the spectrum, Charlie interviewed a series of rappers and rap execs last year to much aplomb. It is obvious that Charlie doesn't listen to rap, yet his interview with Jay-Z, halfway through here and here, is stellar, especially after he hits on Jay Z's business savvy. Kanye West — see the second link — couldn't stop talking while in the dark studio, egging a smiling Charlie on with his vainglorious proclamations of being, paraphrased, "the best fuckin' rapper evah, dawg.")

Last week, the best of Charlie's game met head-on with Comedy Central's equivalent: Stephen Colbert of Colbert Report fame. The winner of the joust, if we're drawing swords, was Colbert. I've never known Colbert to be much of an improviser; most of the Report is scripted, and so is just about everything else Colbert has done since hitting fame as a fake news reporter on The Daily Show. But Colbert's on-air quips, out-of-character moments, and brilliant interview comebacks should have convinced me otherwise. The man makes for a brilliant interview. It's no surprise he used to be a serious actor. He shines on CR's camera, as most actors do. But he's also fun, intelligent, and surreptitiously unassuming. When he does need to hit the nail of the head and address all those nagging bits of immodesty that come along with becoming a cultural icon, Colbert slips into character to make the point, abandoning all the customary shame someone might experience while making such incantations (to make a in-character not-in-character distinction, Colbert cocks his head, takes on a slightly different disposition of character, with more gravitas, and says something along the lines of, "I'm brilliant, and everyone else is wrong," if not exactly in those words. Then he relaxes, now out of character, and laughs as if nothing he just said is true. True, perhaps not. Truthy? Probably).

As for the Report.... The Daily Show is brilliantly funny. It skewers public hypocrisy like nothing else on TV. The Colbert Report, however, is high art. It skewers hypocrisy, then becomes hypocritical, and then doubles back and skewers itself, which, because it now appears hypocritical, also appears hypocritical. Yet the point is made, and the laugh is achieved. And all of this is done in one beat of satire.

...I'm not particularly articulate, particularly when it comes to the concise, and in particular when it comes to the word particular. So, to offer a second opinion, here's Colbert on Colbert, on Rose:

Let me tell you the difference between me and Jon Stewart, Charlie. Can I do that? Can I call you Charlie? Good. Jon demurs. Jon says he doesn't have an impact, ok? "We don't want to be influential." I'll tell you what, I wanna change the world. I want to change it a little bit everyday. Not much, but give me the wheel. Give me the ball, God — I'll run it down the line.

How can you change the world, though?

[Colbert stares at the desk for a few moments, deep in concentration... he looks up:]

By catching it in the headlights of my justice.

Or this gem on Anderson Cooper:

He's crisp, and that's just not dress. I could have the same suits, and I wouldn't have the.... I wouldn't be as bright as a new dime. You know, the way he is? In the middle of a war zone, he's like, "aaah!" Spit and polish! You know? No one's ever made squalor like that.

Or on Geraldo Rivera:

Geraldo? He has a sense of mission. [...] I read once that when he goes jogging in Central Park, he's like a battleship on patrol. You know? "I'd love to see somebody get mugged.... because I'd bring the hammer down." [...] He's just with the absolute force of his justice... slowly turning the ship of destiny....

If you're a fan of Colbert, or The Daily Show, you should definitely take a gander with this interview. The whole shebang is about 40 minutes long, and Colbert remains out of character for almost all of it (watch as he segues into character near the end and ad-libs a few lines, though — as I described above, it's a treat). Skip to just after the 19 minute mark so you can avoid the New York Times' Baghdad bureau chief (and frizzy-head) John F. Burns, unless you're actually interested in the future of the Middle East and America's place in it, of course.

flying invisible camera anyone?

The New York Times Magazine has "explored human ingenuity" in its 2006 edition of the year in ideas. Most of the contraptions presented in the feature haven't actually been realized yet, but there are a few interesting ones...

The Boomerang Drone

When the Phantom Sentinel takes flight, it looks like an awkward boomerang — a set of three small blades. It spins in a circle, faster and faster as it ascends into the sky. Then, when it reaches about 50 feet, it whirls so fast that something remarkable happens: it vanishes right before your very eyes.

The Sentinel is still there, but you can’t see it. It is the world’s first “invisible spy drone,” a new class of remote-controlled stealth aircraft. Driven by electric-engine propellers on two of its blades, the Sentinel also moves in virtual silence. “You could fly it 75 feet above the Macy’s parade, and nobody would know it was there at all,” says Dean Tangren, president of VeraTech Aero Corporation, which received a patent for the invention this summer.

I am a little aporetic — but does the idea of a spinning-blade camera that is invisible strike anyone else as, say, extremely dangerous?

* * *

This is unquestionably one of the more bizarre news stories I've ever read.

The world's tallest man has saved two dolphins by using his long arms to reach into their stomachs and pull out dangerous plastic shards.

* * *

Thoughts on Senate reform? Simple: it's about time. There is a legitimate argument floating about out there that says elected politicians should take caution when f*&^king up the political apparatus that has served this country since 1867 -- especially when a hit from the batting box has constitutional implications.

Then again, the Canadian political identity is no stranger to major reform, de jure or de facto (read: fancy words for on paper and in practice. Yes, I am a fop). When Canada was birthed under John A. MacDonald's drunken watch in 1867, our country was better characterized as "unitary" than "federalist." Forget "two nations," "just society," or anything remotely multicultural. Canada was centralized, and run by white Anglo ex-Brits who often had obvious penchants for the perverse. Today, Canada's provinces are almost as independent as the states below our border.

Yep, in the spectrum of federalism, only Spain -- home to three separatist territories; a staunchly multilingual and multinational culture; a history encumbered by a debilitating civil war and decades of fascist oppression; and a terrorist organization -- is worse.

Modern politicians do all sorts of things that aren't constitutionally enshrined -- try, say, free voting. Or the fact our Governor General, contrary to the Constitution, is really nothing more than a rubber stamp for an ultra-powerful PMO. None of this was imagined as such when the wigged lot of the House of Lords passed the BNA almost 150 years ago.

Instituting permanent Senate reform through a constitutional amendment should be the ultimate goal of Parliament. But taking baby steps up front isn't a bad idea. So yeah, elect 'em, make 'em accountable, and see what happens.

The Colony of Unrequited Boredom

Life as a post-MA grad with little to do outside of re-editing a master's thesis is, to be frank and curt all in one place, woefully uninspiring.

A conversation with my brain might go like this:

Me: Hello?
Brain: Hullo.
Me: Is there anybody in there?
Brain: Well, am I answering you?
Me: What?
Brain: Am I answering you?
Me: Well... I suppose.
Brain: Right. Now presume there's no one in here.
Me: Right....
Brain: Well, who would answer you?
Me: That was my question.
Brain: But I answered you first.
Me: What?
Brain: Oh bother.

Where did it all go? Have I typed too many words? Why is the best idea I've come up with in weeks something as moronic and silly as "if you're early, does that mean you're still alive?"

Why am I now compelled to type "har, har"?

Have the Gods of All That Is Ripe and Critical and Inane and Stupid and Worthy of Writing About forsaken me? Is the Olypmian union on strike?

Listen: I get up most days. I read the news most days. I even watch movies most days. The other day, a "most" day, I watched Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut -- for the first time. I was engaged. I prepared my cortexes and vortexes and lumpy brain things for thoughts (it was going to be a flood). I drank some V8 (low sodium, of course; I do not want to become a human salt lick, though my dog probably wishes otherwise). I made some popcorn. I sat down, dimmed the lights, pressed play; Kubrick's last film, at last. My eyes were wide open for all of it, and, aside from my latent biological predisposition toward blinking, I took it all in.

And I have no thoughts on the matter.

None! Zippo! I watched, it came, it went, it sputtered, it rolled, and now I am filled with nothing but the giant sucking sound of complete mental aphonia. I am Ross Perot, full of enthusiasm, defeated at the polls. I have been deadened. I might as well become a mime -- a vapid, prosaic, uninspired mime.

Have I not travelled enough? I left the country last exactly one year ago. But I've since been to Toronto twice, Ottawa thrice, Montreal once, and Vancouver for a brief spell. Is the vastness of our country similarly vacant when it comes to the provision of inspiration? I think Richler, Atwood, Thomson, Cohen, and Haggis would attest otherwise. So would a bunch of other people I haven't bothered to write up here. Carr? I could go on.

Obviously I hold myself in too high esteem. I should not expect to be the "next" Richler or Johnson or Ralston Saul, even if such a thing could be picked out of next year's generational writers catalogue.

Still, I seem to remember being inspired at some point, even if the results were trite. I once wrote a nonsensical post about the Bush administration's liberal affectations. It was called, "How The White House Forgot About Nietzsche." As I've already mentioned, it was nonsense. But I felt good writing it. There were some ideas in my head I needed to put down, and out they came, eggs, baskets, and all.

How can I go on? Should I take up pottery? I always had an eye for colour. But clay, well, eh, no thanks. I like architecture; I'd rather make sandcastles. But math and I tend to disagree on fundamental precepts, and I hate the beach.

(Too much sand... yeah.)

Perhaps, taking a cue from what makes news, larceny and grand theft would be more my style. I recently had a two-hour conversation with a group of friends over pints; the topic of discussion: how to get rich, real quick. We started with a well-planned bait-and-switch involving the Canadian mint. We denigrated from there onto the idea of brewing our own beer and trying to sell it in pubs. We then gave up, paid our tab, and went home. A life of 'Costra Nostra,' it seems, ain't suited fa' me, ma.

(To answer the obvious: Movies cost money, and my social life is so dispiriting these days that I'd rather save them for fleeting "what ifs" and hollow aluminum chances at a date. I have plenty of music, all the music in the world, even, but I've given up writing anything sensical about it. Music exists on its own plane; we can document its history, its theory, and its people, but all of this really only amounts to math for animals, records for a deaf man, and the Mona Lisa shown around to a blind tour at the Louvre, unless the reader has actually listened to what you're writing about.)

So where to now? Here's an idea I can soundly steal from Western tradition: books. Books I already own, in fact, thus indicating I should probably read them. As Abraham Lincoln once said, "people who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like." Books are full of ideas and I'm need of a refill. So I'm reading Animal Farm. I haven't before, and it's a small tome. From a cost-benefit point of view, this should work out just fine. The irony is, of course, that I'm done my MA, cursing me as outlined above -- but only as a result of finishing my MA do I now have the time to take up the solution to the post-MA curse...

...I should make my next book Catch-22...

Inspiration, I await you!

Odds and Sods and Clumps of Blog

The quest to find a reasonable, well-located place to live in Toronto for six months rages on....

* * *

I hope I don't get Toronto Syndrome.

I expected Torontonians to be beautiful and elegant.... and when I got there, I found out their character was the complete opposite of my own...

* * *

Here's a dandy of a conversation I had while on the phone with a College St. landlord:

"Can I send someone by to look at the place?"
--silence--
"'Someone'?"
"Yes, I'm in Halifax. I'm moving to Toronto. I'd need to send someone by to look at the place."
--silence--
"Shouldn't you be moving to Edmonton?"

* * *

Last up (w/ thanks to Sepand Siassi): do not fart on a plane and then attempt to cover up the stench by lighting matches.

The Kennedy-Dion Love-In

In the end, it was probably Kennedy who made the biggest difference -- by dropping out of course, and delivering (by my count) the vast majority of his delegates' votes to Dion. A little foreshadowing, anyone?

(As I type this, Dion is sitting in a CBC soundstage with ol' Don "Kermit the Frog" Newman, answering questions about whether he would have supported Kennedy had Dion finished fourth and dropped off: "we share the love.")

Biggest surprise: Rae not going the distance.

Biggest relief: Ontario may still vote Liberal in the next election.

Biggest worry: Dion, despite his francophone-ness, failing to get past Harper's well-oiled Quebec War Machine by this time next year.

Thoughts?

Partisan Self-Service at the Palais des Congres

Last night, the consensus was unanimous: Dion should win the Liberal leadership race.

Well, at least that was the consensus at my table -- one among many at the superbly-organized, well-attended Dal Poli Sci Xmas dinner at the Lord Nelson Hotel in Downtown Halifax.

Also at my table: Eric Lehre, a former bigwig in the Canadian navy and ex-commander of Canada's NATO forces.

His nugget of insight (not quite verbatim):

"What a consensus! A table full of political science graduate students thinks Dion should win, without exception... I suppose that means he probably won't!"

Rather than wax more poetic (or whatever) on the race and take stabs at who should win (Dion-Kennedy Hybrid?), who will win (Rae?), and who won't (Ignatieff?), however, I'll simply offer these two quotes, two "what if's" and "coulda-been's..."

(See if you can decipher the subject matter):

He is the Liberal leadership A-team -- smart, affable and fluently bilingual, an inspirational speaker with years of experience running a successful political party, winning election campaigns by historic margins and delivering good government.

By comparison, the eight remaining Liberal leadership candidates are B-teamers, for sure.

...

[He] cuts a forlorn figure here, wandering the hallways with the same old hangers-on and saying the same old things about his many priorities with his same old earnest urgency.

He was politely ignored amid the frenzy of arm-twisting for second-ballot support between rival camps and negotiations among young (and not so young) delegates seeking to put those free Liberal condoms to good use after the hospitality suites close.

Hints:
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=d02b0bf1-c325-4087-a6da-8249462862bc;
http://www.ottawasun.com/News/National/2006/12/01/2575590-sun.html

Oh, and have you ever wondered what Belinda Stronach might look like with auburn hair? Tune into CBC...