Hands down, the best thing I have read to date about The Tiger Woods Story is the piece in today's Globe and Mail by Stephen Brunt.
For a real sense of perspective, read Brunt's column and then get ready for The Big Return on Thursday at the Masters.
Yesterday, after I had posted an item about mothers who kill their babies and get to have more babies and kill again...
I was walking down Broadway and found myself looking at the headlines in the newspaper boxes for The Sun and The Province.
I had to ask myself, "Do we have some unique law in this neck of the woods on infanticide?"
If in fact a dead baby was found in a plastic bag outside this woman's house one year ago, how is possible that we have allowed her to remain "at large" and apparently repeat this madness with immunity?
How have we rationalized the first instance?
Who did that?
Under what authority and under what medications?
The Globe is to be congratulated for beginning today a three-part series on the history of the Scholarship Scandal.
All of that is fine and good.
But the fact remains that in a case in which $100 Million was stolen under the watch of the Federal Liberals, only one sorry sod, Benoit Corbeil, former director-general of the Quebec wing, has been brought to justice.
Jean Chretien, Paul Martin and a gang of others who were on deck during this disgrace are not even mentioned in the same breath as this crime.
While we thank the Globe for remembering, we aslo have to ask if anyone else will ever be found responsible, or is this just how the business of politics is conducted in this country?
Suddenly Italy and a host of Banana Republics don't look so strange.
Two excellent local journalists, two important local stories:
1. Justine Hunter confirms in her piece today that the new HST being brought in by the provincial Liberals may just be their undoing.
We can only hope.
In Wednesday's list of goods and services that will suddenly cost more - much more - we had included homes, haircuts and bicycles, but we omitted cable bills, newspapers and home repairs.
2. Francis Bula has been taking the pulse - such as it is for such a moribund group - of City Councillors.
What should we do with those pesky and very expensive 252 units of social housing in the Olympic Village - sell, lease or rent?
The issue is of considerable import as we have already paid twice what we were told we would pay and we must now consider how long it takes to get our money back.
It seems clear to me that if we sell these apartments, they will be sold for a song and they will NOT be used for 'social housing.'
And if we rent them out, as I think we should, the question will be, "Who gets to be the landlord?"
I say Rent.
This bio is copied from Crooks & Liars' Mike Finnegan, with thanks...
Jazz guitar legend Herb Ellis has passed away. Perhaps best known for his many years with the Oscar Peterson Trio, Ellis was, for decades, a highly respected and influential voice in jazz.
Herb Ellis (1921) has said he heard the electric guitar for the first time played by George Barnes on a radio program. He was a teenager at the time living just outside Dallas, Texas. The experience of hearing George Barnes encouraged him to get his first guitar. By the time he reached North Texas State University a few years later he was an accomplished guitarist. At North Texas State Ellis majored in music, but because they did not have a guitar program he studied the string bass. While at North Texas State, Ellis met Jimmy Giuffre and he heard Charlie Christian for the first time -- two events that started him playing jazz.
Ellis was forced to drop out of college due to a lack of funds and he went on the road as the guitar player with a college band. He then joined Glen Gray's Casa Loma Band in 1943 and it was with Gray's band that he got his first recognition in the jazz magazines. After Gray's band, Ellis joined the Jimmy Dorsey band where he played some of his first recorded solos. Ellis appears on Perdido, J.D.'s Jump, JD's Boogie Woogie, Super Chief and Sunset Strip to name a few. Herb Ellis stayed with Jimmy Dorsey through 1946 and 1947 and he then formed The Soft Winds with Lou Carter and John Frigo two other Dorsey alumni. The Soft Winds, fashioned after the Nat King Cole Trio, stayed together until 1952. It was then that Herb Ellis joined the Oscar Peterson Trio (replacing Barney Kessel) forming one of the most memorable of all the piano, guitar, and bass trios.
Herb Ellis made many recordings with Peterson during the years they were together and he also began recording under his own name. A series of Herb Ellis LP's appeared during these years: Ellis In Wonderland, Ellis Meets Giuffre, Nothing But The Blues and Thank You, Charlie Christian. These recordings and the work he did with Peterson established Ellis as a major jazz guitar artist.
Ellis has recorded for a number of labels over the years including Dot, Epic, and in recent years, Justice. But the recordings that stand out are those from Verve in the 1950's and 1960's and Concord Jazz in the 1970's and 1980's. The Concord label recordings would be significant just for their number, but it is the quality of the playing that makes these and the Verve recordings some of the best examples of Ellis' guitar. His Concord recordings with Joe Pass and with the great guitars (Barney Kessel and Charlie Byrd) have become modern classics. And, of course, Ellis continued to record at the end of the century. His Burnin CD was released on the Justice label late in 1998. That recording came almost sixty years after his first recordings with Glen Gray.
Like almost every guitarist who came up after 1940, Herb Ellis was influenced by Charlie Christian. But few can claim such a direct linage as Herb Ellis. It was after hearing Christian for the first time that Ellis says he got serious about jazz. In the liner notes for Softly ... But With That Feeling, Ellis tells Leonard Feather, "... the first time I heard Charlie Christian I thought he really wasn't so much, because I felt I could play faster than that. Then after a few more times it really hit me, and I realized that speed wasn't everything. I got quite emotional -- put my guitar away and said I'd never play again. But the next day I got it out and started to tried to play like Charlie."
And he did.
Herb Ellis certainly established his own voice and style of jazz guitar, but he has never strayed far from the voice of Charlie Christian. His tribute album, Thank you, Charlie Christian demonstrated how well Ellis learned his lessons from Christian. And, without exception whether playing straight ahead jazz or the blues, Ellis finds a way to sound very Christian like while displaying the unmistakable Ellis sound.
My main computer has been in and out of the repair shop for one week now.
I'll get it back in some shape or other later today.
I am sorry that email delivery of the blog has ben disrupted, but such is life in Cyber Land.
Hope to be back on track as of tomorrow morning.
Cheers!
Oh yes...he's sorry too.
Last year a dead baby was found in a plastic bag at the side of the house.
That sickening discovery was made only because a neighbour reported it.
What, if anything, happened to the woman who gave birth to this child?
We don't know.
No one will tell us.
All we now know is that the same "mother" is under investigation for the murder of a second child.- a child who has "disappeared."
I am not so concerned about this woman.
She is a scary nut case and such people exist in small numbers in every community.
What I am concerned about - apart from murdered babies - is what have we, the community, the police, the courts, the social workers, what have we been doing in response to any of this?
A woman is found somehow responsible for a baby corpse found in a plastic bag at the side of the house...and a year later, she's still in that house and still manufacturing babies to be abandoned or worse???
This woman may be terribly sick.
But our response to her and her behaviour is equally deranged.
Police have reported that the woman is "getting the care that she needs."
What does that mean exactly?
Does that "care" include keeping her away from babies and seriously limiting her reproductive possibilities?
I am much too simple for the modern world.
I see 'woman throws baby out like trash,' I conclude 'woman is not allowed to stay in my neighbourhood and make more babies.'
I've got her committed to some loony bin or other, not shopping for soy milk at the local Safeway.
This, of course, would explain why I am not a judge or a social worker.
I just lack the subtlety.
As of this morning we don't know where this crazy person is or where her latest dead baby is.
New homes will cost more.
So will bicycles, haircuts and meals in restaurants.
Tourists will be no doubt delighted when their dinner bill arrives with a mysterious extra 12%.
Maybe they'll just mistake it for an automatic gratuity.
But never fear.
Colin is here.
That would be Colin Hansen, your ever optimistic provincial Finance Minister.
Now, HEEEEERE'S Colin!
“Eliminating the PST and replacing it with the HST will make B.C. more competitive, it will stimulate the economy and it will result in more jobs in every region of the province.”
Hahahahahahahahahahaha...
At the Special Presentation Skills workshops that government employees must attend every week, they are coached on how to say things like this with a straight face.
"Now, look. No giggling, gaffawing or chortling. Above all, smile, smile, smile! Remember our motto: ALL OF THE PEOPLE CAN REALLY BE FOOLED ALL OF THE TIME. Now, get out there and dissemble like crazy."
So businesses will collapse.
So families will be stretched way beyond their limits to put food on the table and get their kids into exercise.
So, thank goodness, the government knows better than all of us what we need.
Yesterday, the same government announced $25 Million cuts in social assistance.
From a reduction in dental visits to a cancellation of the province's minimum shelter allowance, the government hopes to save $25 million over the next two years through the reductions — something it says needs to be done in light of a recent explosion in demand for income assistance.
Nice.
"The budget is very tight because of the increase in the number of people on social assistance," said Housing and Social Development Minister Rich Coleman.
"It's a reality of life that you've got to balance your services to what you can pay for."
Last week, the Premier proudly announced his new multi-million dollar 24/7 gambling emporium for downtown Vancouver.
This government's priorities are very clear.
Remember Reader's Digest?
Goes along with the Moffat Range and the Studebaker, right?
Wrong again, Little Grasshopper!
According to (yet another august body) the lordly and gold-plated Print Measurement Bureau (PMB to you, Sidney) the current editions of Reader's Digest attract 6.38 MILLION readers per month.
A simple enough question -
Has anyone in living memory heard some one say something like, "Yah, so I read in Reader's Digest the other day that...?"
Oddness.
Bob Newhart never swore on stage.
He didn't have to.
But he and a few others are the exceptions.
Most so-called stand-up comedians today are Trash Talkers.
Fuck, shit, poop, dink.
And that's just for openers.
So two women go into a club that's featuring an open mike night of comedians.
What did they expect - the Pope's blessing?
So they heckle the comedian-MC, who quickly discerns that the two women are lesbians.
Look out!
What did they expect - a wedding celebration?
They're in a trashy low-down comedy club joint and they are aggressive hecklers and lesbians.
Hello!
The trashy low-talking jiving MC, of course, starts calling them "dykes."
Like they've never heard this word before and appropriated it for themselves with honour, as in "We are righteous dykes, so back off."
All of this horrible, shocking important incident in the black history of Canada happened 3 years ago and now, one of the injured women has taken her complaint to the B.C. Human Rights Commission.
Now is where we need a real comedian.
If ever there was a good argument for the dissolution of this august body - the BC Human Rights Inquisition - this is it.
The MC's lawyer has walked out in disgust saying that "this tribunal is proceeding against the rule of law."
That may or may not be the case.
But it is certainly against all good common sense.
This idiocy and waste of time and public money may soon find itself in front of the BC Supreme Court.
Please spend public money on dental care for poor children and stop the bullshit.
The Prime Minister's idea of a revolution in parliamentary reform is to limit Senate appointments to 8 years.
Oh, brother.
Remember the whole Triple E platform?
The only good answer to the rot that is called The Senate is to abolish it.
Please point out to me One Good Thing this austere body has produced in the last 30 years.
To keep Mike Duffy and Larry Campbell safely off the streets costs Canadian taxpayers about $1,000,000 a year each.
Please spend that money on dental care for poor children, and ask Mike and Larry to go to summer camp at their folk's expense.
"This is our chance for a green, urban casino."
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha...
This man should be writing for The Simpsons.
Unfortunately, he is our City Planning Director.
His name is Brent Toderian and he is speaking, of course, of Gordon's latest Toy, the Big Kahuna Caper on Pacific Boulevard, which we discussed here last Saturday.
Was Brent being particularly clever in calling this piece of public drek "our chance?"
Is he familiar with the traditional list of oxymorons to which he might add, "green urban casino?"
Like, military intelligence
Catholic university
happy marriage
liquor control board
I sat in the rehearsals for "Joseph" the other night, and WOW!
Some incredibly talented kids...great singers and dancers and actors.
Valerie Easton is doing a terrific job directing.
And this show moves!
So...go, go, go the the Royal City website and buy some tickets today.
Or call: 604-521-5050
I want to see you there...
There is a new commercial on TV.
It is the poster child for The Law of Unintended Consequences.
No doubt, the geniuses at the high-powered and mucho muy expensive ad agency that created it and sold it to the dumb clucks called the client are thrilled.
Perhaps you've seen it.
A woman gets out of bed in the morning.
She begins her routine at top speed.
Showers, shampoos, brushes, dresses, puts on the stilettos.
All of this is shot from the floor so we never actually see any of her much above the ankles.
Terribly clever, no?
Then she high tails it uptown. I can't remember if she grabs a subway.
Then she masterfully vaults over a bit of morning dew at the curb.
Finally into her favorite eatery in town.
And the payoff?
A big greasy dripping somethingorother with egg and smoked meat and bad buns.
Let's call it The Heart Stopper.
"I'll have the Double Artery Clog, please...to go, of course. Everything I do is 'to go!"
The commercial is for MacDonald's.
Their so-called breakfast.
Apparently, in the real world - a world I have never experienced (except, of course, for the stilettos) - food is something to be gobbled in high pursuit.
It is also high in cholesterol, fats, white flour and cured meats.
This is a TV commercial designed to get you, you unsuspecting boob, to rush to the Big Arches and wolf down the worst imaginable goop for your first meal of the day.
Instead, I watch in horror asking myself, "What in god's name is wrong with that person? Has she no self-respect?"
Except, of course, for the stilettos.
For those who think I have disappeared...not quite yet.
I re-iterate...
The BIG computer is in the shop getting a lube job.
This little guy just doesn't have my mailing lists, so if you are here, you have faithfully sought me out, for which, "Thank you."
BIG should be ready for a homecoming this afternoon.
All things in CyberLand being equal, I should be emailing the blog by tomorrow morning.
