In the '90's, Ted Neeley and Carl Anderson, the wonderful actor-singers who played Jesus and Judas in the 1973 Norman Jewison film, came to Vancouver several times with a great stage version of "Jesus Christ Superstar."
It was my great pleasure to hang out with these two guys and get to know them a bit.
Neeley was wonderfully laid-back and relaxed and gracious.
Do you always keep one or two cans of sardines in the cupboard...just in case?
I mean...just in case you feel the urge for a fishy snack or want to top the salad or pasta with something sharp and oily and healthy?
I keep tins of tuna and salmon in the cupboard for exactly these occasions.
They are cheap and heart-smart and simple and have long shelf lives.
When I add tuna or salmon to a salad or pasta - as I will tonight (papardelle with green beans, peppers, tomatoes and fish) - I mix and mash the fish first in a bowl with Dijon mustard.
[Sidebar - Did you know that Dijon mustard last year left the town of Dijon for some obscure economical reasons and moved down the road to one of those French hyphenated places that would be impossible to put on a small jar? Like, Surneims-aux-Plaxeville...or something like that.]
Back to sardines.
The sardine has fallen on hard times.
Or at least, sardine production in the Americas has fallen on hard times.
In Prospect Harbour, Maine, it is an endgame for sure. The NY Times headline is conclusive: Last Sardine Cannery in the U.S. Is Clattering Out.
If you Google "Canadian fish canneries," you get 140,000 responses in 0.37 seconds, which sounds fishy to me and gives me a nosebleed.
But how many are sardines I cannot guess.
You certainly don't see sardines on restaurant menus, do you?
Well, you do in Venice, where there is a famous and delicious local dish of sardines and raisins.
Confession.
Among my happy tins of salmon and tuna, awaiting their fate atop the next pasta or salad or pasta salad, are very few and very occasional tins of sardines.
I guess that is one of the few signs that I haven't totally yet succumbed to senility and toast and tea.
So what if he calls a provincial government cabinet minister with some warnings about how projects may or may not go if certain things are or are not done?
No Problem!
This is Supernatural British Columbia.
Where a little discreet call from the right guy to another right guy is not called Corruption, it's called Business as Usual.
Just one question, if we may.
Do the teachers or the nurses or the doctors or the addiction workers have this kind of grease? This kind of access?
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?
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?"
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.
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.
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.
It can only be hoped that this heinous, cynical HST grab will be the final nail in the BC Liberal government's coffin.
Oppose this legislation and this administration in every reasonable way.
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...?"
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.
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
