Fan

I am almost free of any leanings to celebrity worship.

But there are exceptions, ahem.

Here are several photo representations of that exception: Won Bin, Korean actor (please see Tae Guk Gi, "Brotherhood of War") and now, thanks to Korean military service requirements, a military policeman for the next two years.

He Who Lives Here Now has put a price on sweet Won's head, even though I've explained to him that as a PR professional I am only doing my marketing bit to keep Mr. Won Bin front and centre so his stint in the army doesn't damage his movie career.

ANTLE

Among the rigorous requirements of being conferred a graduate degree from the University of Western Ontario was climbing the considerable academic hurdle of a typing course.

I speak not of an intellectual examination of typing as it might have had an influence on the development of the written language or its impact on publishing or how it ultimately, along with it’s brethren the mechanical printers, put so so many monks out of business in so so many abbeys. Nor do I speak of, perhaps, the (literally) brain surgeons in the university’s neuroscience faculty lecturing on the interface extant in the process of fingers to keyboard, thought to fingers to page.

Nope, I speak of typing as in keystrokes as measured by WPM (words per minute taking into account error rates) as a requirement to gain an MA in Journalism at UWO.

Among the minor gifts my securing of one of those awe-inspiring J-school degrees was that I was exempted from the typing requirement, thanks to what was a pressure filled, heart-stopping typing test which proved to the board of regents, the dean, even, I suspect, the chancellor's office, and the humourless typing teacher that I was an accomplished typist and thus deserving of the robe come the day of convocation (which I skipped, after picking up my cheque, made out to a minor amount, as winner of some humour writing award -- I was, I believe, the ONLY person who wrote anything that year that qualified, so the competition was not precisely intense...).

The major gift I took away from UWO (ahem, besides the profound UWO granted credential the certificate conveys to me) was having met a particularly talented person.

Ms. Angela Antle was my desk partner. In the early '90s computers in universities were still a bit rare outside labs where people lined up to use the computers as word processors, or to wade into Unix based email and thus to type more code than message. People in the MA journalism program were doubled up at pulled together desks and were assigned (if memory serves)one typewriter and one computer to be shared, and then took (ever so diplomatic)turns working on one or the other. Angela, and I shared that tandem arrangement.

As I, she too had (radio!) journalism experience before arriving at UWO. She also had (has) a scathing wit (born, with her, in Newfoundland) which can remove flesh with mirth before tossing some verbal salt on the tender wounds. I mean, what good is language fun if it ain't used to insult!

I also fell in love with Newfoundland without ever, at the time, having been there because of Angela's parents who, if I'm remembering properly, shipped her a crate of fresh cod, from Newfoundland to London, Ontario, as a means to ease their daughter’s homesickness and to treat her school pals--I arrived too late at that party to get any of the cod cheeks. Just something about that act which suggested to me what I've long since confirmed over and over again--that folks in Newfoundland are just so damn "small town" by which I mean to give the most profound compliment and by which I mean not at all any condescension.

Anyway, I left UWO and fell into the dead end life of corporate truth whoring, where I've remained, and Angela has lighted the world with big globs of coloured wax, and with her deft and intelligent dance behind a CBC radio microphone.

This blog is really a shameless endorsement for Angela on two fronts.

1) She is an award winning artist -- Arts & Letters Award recipient; first recipient of the artist in residence program at Toronto's Spadina House in Toronto last year -- and her works are in the collections of both the City of St. John's and the government of Newfoundland and Labradour. The photo above is an example of her recent show (@ sandra goldie gallery in Montreal) and, obviously, an example of stunning, haunting beauty. The medium is encaustic (wax) on panel, which of course, because we’re viewing it as a digital photo means the (perfect for the subject) texture and depth and real colour, are very much lost. Yet, even as a flat photo is's so, so nice. You can see more of her work at angelaantle.com (And if it's a bad thing that I've posted a photo of your work that I don't own Angela, let me know and I'll take it down). The work shown is four panels of 12" x 12" each. Glorious.

2) Angela, long the host of a weekend arts program on cbc radio one in St. John's
and is producing and hosting a weekly arts program on the national network this summer and I think everyone should listen to "Socket" (the program name)and then send messages to cbc audience relations singing the show's praises, while pointing out that more programming about the arts just might be a good fucking idea!

Now go listen to the program (4 p.m., 99.1FM Toronto time and dial on Radio One TODAY, Saturday) and for god's sake buy Angela’s art, even break my heart by choosing the piece above (it’s still available), before I save my pennies enough so I can put the work in my life.

And, oh. I don't remember if Angela had to take those typing classes – You would think I'd remember her bitching bitterly (of which she's capable) about it, if that were the case, but my memory...

Lid Lift

There were two barbershops in my hometown.

They were complete with striped poles out front and big heavy metal and padded leather chairs with foot pedals to pump clients' heads to eye level for the barbers, and for kids, a leather padded board that rested across the two arms of the barber chairs so the short in height and of years would sit on that board, their feet on what was the chair seat for adults.

Both shops were on main street, the same side, but separated by about the total distance of what was then the business district. Each had three or four chairs each, with each chair in turn facing a wall covered in mirrors and with shelves at the bottom end of the mirrors. Those tall, multi sided bottles (with metal domed tops complete with hole through which a large swizzle stick rod sat) filled with coloured disinfecting liquid were prominent, as well, brimming with combs and scissors. Electric clippers hung on hooks on the ends of the shelves, their heavy cloth insulated cords snaking to electrical outlets above the mirrors. There were, along the remaining walls, chairs lined where those waiting for haircuts sat until it was their turn -- pre-set appointments for a haircut? Puhleeze!

Both barbershops were also adorned with regulars, men who were there, presumably most all day long, not for haircuts, but for the company and man gossip (or silence) that went with the places. These were the same men I presume that moved between the barbershops and the pool hall until it was a reasonable hour to either go home for dinner or move to a familiar chair in one of the two hotels -- The Coronation or Royal Inn. (One owner of the pool hall famously had hiccups for months. Occurring before I was born the hiccups were still talked about decades later).

Before anyone climbed into one of the chairs, the barber would whip the seat with a towel, clearing away any hair left from the cut that came before.

Perhaps the most memorable thing for me about the barbershops was the intense rivalry that existed between the two. One either went to one shop, or the other, not both -- unless maybe you were one of the ministers or the mayor. My father always took us to Baldy's, while my friends down the street and their father went to Lloyd's (both first names -- the former, a nickname although I'm sure I never knew his real first name even though I went to school with his kids). Despite the competitive atmosphere I was in Lloyds on occasion 'cause my father tended to ignore (either naturally or because his job fixing furnaces and propane fired appliances took him into everyone's home or shop anyway) such boundaries. But while I visited both shops, I ONLY got my hair cut by Baldy.

After the fact I understand it was most likely Baldy created the tense rivalry. At one point he ran for mayor and I don't recall the specific thing it was but he embarrassed himself profoundly with an inappropriate competitive response on the night he lost that had tongues wagging for a very long time.

My memory is a wonky thing. I was certain I had brush cuts (ordered as a requirement of living in his house by my father) until I was nearly 20 years old. But I'm looking at a photo next to my desk of the time when I would be in grade 8 or 9 and I have hair nearly on my shoulders as was the fashion in the era that also has me wearing blue plaid bell bottoms in the picture. So, let me just say that for most of my existence to say 10 or 11 years of age (at least) a haircut for me was to have my head shaved. Shaved, yes, but also shaped for we all had flat tops, our heads squared off by the precise application of Baldy and his electric shavers. I can still feel the delicious tickle massage of the vibrating shaver as it ran up the back of my neck. Hmmmmm, better even than the vigorous head massage my mother would give when shampooing our heads over the kitchen sink.

The other wonky thing about my memory is that while I had to have had nearly countless visits to that barbershop (even if meager resources meant waiting as long as possible between haircuts, buzz cuts require pretty regular maintenance) I can really only recall all of those trips as a single visit. I was a "queer wee lad" (if only she'd know ) in my mother's words, by which she meant a nervous/frightened wee lad. I'm guessing that's all that was behind my fear of the barber. But, I remember sitting on that red-leather upholstered board in the big barber chair, hiccupping with tears -- almost certainly the end of a wailing journey of resistance resulting from my father's Saturday morning announcement that we were going to Baldy's. But the fear in my memory seems only to apply to the anticipation, with enjoyment coming with the actual barberin'.

My hair is so fine that even with a flat top it falls down and plays dead against my forehead. The smell is strong still in my nostrils, just thinking about the hair stick. Packaged like a round deodorant stick of today the hair version was greasy wax. Grabbing the back of my head with one hand, my mother would plunge the hair stick at my forehead with an upward movement so that the wax cylinder of goop would "spop" against my head and then glide along and hold in place, like a mat of close cropped grass, my incredibly short bangs. Along with the smell I can still feel the tightness of having one's forehead waxed in the process. Luckily that was only on Sundays, for church. And like the haircuts, that process would have been regular (every Sunday -- 'cause we never missed church) yet I remember it happening just once, and very specifically. I'm wearing a two tone tweed jacket -- which would have been worn for the first time in the '50s by my older brother, if not before by someone else given the jacket was likely used before it came to our family. I'm standing in the large closet of the room that was my older brothers' and my mother is telling me to stop squirming so she can wax my hair. I had a brown, clip-on tie too, that was too short for me. And the pants were "floods," even at that age and there are holes in the heels of my socks where I can feel the sticky cold of the insoles of my shoes.

I got a haircut this past Saturday. And got my money's worth. For what's gotta be coming on two years I've had long hair. Well it's gone now. Nothing longer than maybe 2 or 3 inches in places now. In the words of my boss, "... the hippie's gone."

He Who is Here Now is beside himself with the cut -- as he hates long hair. As his very Korean boss said after meeting me: "He's too pretty to be a boy." Not a compliment from a Korean, btw, and directed most specifically in its vieled judgement at my hair length.

Hair length was a big thing in my childhood home. There were major fights that usually sounded like this: "Get yer hair cut or get out of MY house." Hilariously, as I sat down next to my mother at Christmas (with my hair at it's longest) and leaned in to kiss her, she groaned with a Scot's guttural emphasis, "Awwwwk, get yer hair cut, fer heaven's sake!"

Oh well, it's hair, you can always get it cut, or if that doesn't turn out, give it a couple of weeks and it'll grow back. At least for most of us...

Assisted Suicide

If there's anything I know less about than Augustine (see my blog of a few days ago) it's ancient British history. My reading about Augustine, however, led, interestingly enough, to Henry 1 (of England), whom I knew of only in passing -- again due to my political science days at the University of Calgary and the good (ahem) King's influence on creating what today is bureaucracy (that is rule by other than the ruler while the ruler is away -- in them days killin' and/or enjoying the property in Normandy instead of England) and a central accountancy and bank for government. Kind of a Sarbanes/Oxley Act for Kings...

Anyway, those sorts of fact are never what makes history real fun. Henry -- who was the youngest son of someone we all know, William the Conqueror -- it turns out had a bit of a violent streak in him (not completely unheard of I'm sure in the early 12th C.)

Of particular delight (in a sadist moment I was, I'm afraid) Henry had dragged to the top of a tower at Rouen (Hank was King of Normandy too) a traitor (Conan, of all names, the traitor was named) where Henry, the King, gave Conan a good view of the land he, Conan, had tried to, um, acquire by arms from Henry. After the touristy look about, Henry nudged Conan off the tower so's he fell to his death.

Wonder where examples of state violence (e.g. war) would be these days if leaders had to take on such a hands on approach -- ah, assuming the maintenance of such a system didn't result in us having to choose leaders up only to the task of brutish (but in the name of good goverment) acts. After all, the need to attend to only matters of fiscal management has resulted in us choosing people up to only the tasks of budgeting. Clearly Henry could multi-task, whilst today, not so much of that from leadership.

And oh, Henry also had two of his Granddaughters' eyes put out -- something to do with maintaining peace (through sound alliances) in the Kingdom.

Succumbing to Addiction

My brother's got my camera and gear in BC -- he's actually shooting a wedding as a gift to the bride and groom, he having once been a pro photographer for a wee while a long time ago -- so the shot here is taken with He Who is Here Now's point and shoot digital. The combination of low light, the need to all but punch the "button" to take the shot, and the famous lag time between button push and image capture on most P&S digitals leaves us with a pretty blurry photograph...

This portrait in oil is by Toronto painter James Huctwith.

Much of Huctwith's work I love -- very dark, leather, S&M stuff (which I'm not into at all, sexually) but with deep allusions to the Masters or Biblical themes (which raises the works from the realm of fetish; well, of one sort, at least, given what’s more fetishistic than religion?)-- but much of his work is of huge canvas size, and I do mean huge. Interestingly enough, Huctwith is also associated with a Vancouver gallery, where he shows cityscapes in an absolute opposite theme. Here in Toronto his work shows at the O'Connor Gallery (run by the truly wonderful Dennis O'Connor and his master framing wizard husband John -- so for god's sake take all your framing needs there. You'll get incredible framing strategies and beautiful framing results, plus a whole lot of laughs to round out the experience).

Anyway, Huctwith also does quite a few portraits, mostly, I figure, as treatments for the bigger works, and these are much smaller and thus available to those of us who are vertically challenged (e.g. no wall space) and financially unable to fork over the $$ for an oil painting that is measured in metres, not centimetres...

This particular just completed portrait is of the artist’s "long lost love" (so I’m told) and is done from memory and a couple of old photos. I googled the subject's name (as it is unusual) and it would appear he's an artist/art academic in BC. Just nice to know those lips (!) are still up and around, smacking, pursing, pouting, smiling, frowning and being licked.

The colours used to render flesh tones is foolishly remarkable and the eyes, welll... If I have a disappointment it’s that the background is (minus some heavy brush strokes) bereft of any real texture – but the (gasp!) colour works well in my apartment ☺ When I get my camera gear back I plan to do some work with my macro (very close up) lens and show details of skin colour and eyes from several of the paintings I have.

For now, this "soft" photo will need to do as I reveal my glaring fall from the wagon, breaking my self imposed prohibition from buying art. It's He Who is Here Now's fault. His mandated (in matters related to my art buying addiction) "no, no, no" failed him on this painting, he loves it so much (even though he doesn't actually like the lips, go figure).

On the Need to Write and Augustine (!)

Bits of motivation, indeed motivating bits of sage advice, can come from the strangest places.

My first, and then perhaps lasting, impressions of Augustine (e.g. Bishop of Hippo and Mr. Roman Catholicism himself) is that the guy IS the reason Christianity is generally fucked up about sex. That I first read Augustine in a university course on international and strategic relations is pointed out to assure you I know little about either Augustine or the Church. I'm guessing it was St. Augie's original affinity for Plato that put him on my political science reading list, but the fact is the guy, to my own conclusion, is THE original "born again" (refuting as just plain bad all that he'd done before) has always left me fascinated.

Anyway, was reading a bit about some of his first writings, specifically Soliloquies, in which appears this dialogue between the author, Augustine, and Reason:

"Someone, let us call him Reason, said to me: 'Suppose you have discovered a truth. To whom will you entrust it so that you may proceed to further thought?' Augustine: 'To my memory, I suppose." Reason: 'Can your memory realy preserve all your thoughts?' Augustine: 'That would be difficult, actually impossible.' Reason: 'Then you must write it down.'"

Same Street. Different Sector

Big Accounting Inc., the firm I left 10 weeks ago was literally and figuratively on Bay Street, but it was ever so close to King St. Head down King in an fashion easterly in direction (to sound like a cop's notebook) -- btw, does easterly mean toward the east or out of the east. I'm too lazy to look it up and I always forget anyway. Fucking sailors -- anyway, move east along King until the addresses carry "East" and you quickly arrive at the college where I now work.

I don't miss my previous job one little bit, and the best part, the gossip, I still get from a couple of very good pals I have who still work there (although one just got her freedom today, actually, and is moving off to the CBC), but there remain stark differences which work to remind me of my recent career path and of the quite different work worlds -- the one I found refuge from and the one that provided that refuge.

I was thinking of that today when I found myself cleaning the board room table with paper towel and watered down window cleaner (both in short supply always). The table was gross, even lumpy with detrius, as most in my department eat at it at lunch and if we don't clean it ourselves, well... There are cleaning staff, of course, but so short in numbers that our office garbage cans are changed only weekly. We tend to go out into the hallways in search of trash cans to dispose of food waste. I forgot today and tossed an apple core into the boardroom garbage can -- tall and lined with a green garbage bag to hold a week's worth of trash, I guess -- and up went a cacophony of complaints (we tend to all eat at the same time; a crowd of brown baggers -- which is a particular enjoyment of working at the place, actually, as the lunch gatherings are pits of wit and anecdotes).


Then there are the bathrooms. Apparently there are staff washrooms (requiring a key) but I haven't bothered to look for the men's as stories of the women's leads me to believe the public washroom I use on our floor is as clean as those reserved for the exclusive use of those employed by the college. Women I work with tell tales of sitting on the toilet and watching as "drain flies" (what a fabulous description) rise up through the grate covering the floor drains... As recently as when I worked at Big Accounting Inc. there were executive washrooms. Shortly after the democratization of urinals and toilets there, the group I worked for moved to the executive floor and I stood pissing at a urinal with the chair and CEO his very self. I commented, waiting, of course, until we were both at the sink washing, something about the awkwardness or reward (I don't remember now) of having to pee next to the chairman. That particular chairman was not amused. He's also the same guy (who was actually a nice person, just a tight ass executive) who had multiple signs and posters (on each of the firm's high-rise floors) removed (and I know as I was one of those who went floor to floor looking for any straggling posters) 'cause the image used was a drawn graphic of boxer shorts (the message was about not getting caught with your pants down on some issue) and he though the way the fly was drawn looked like a cock, although I'm sure he only suggested his concern, didn't name it.

Then there's the elevator differences. Down at Bay and King they were marvels of efficiency, with fine decor and avoid-your-fellow-riders tv screens with insulting ads and news briefs ripe with typos and grammatical errors. Over at King and Jarvis, well, I'm on the fifth floor but most often take the stairs -- it's faster and allows one to avoid raising questions in one's head about delicate topics such as cable wear and fray, and power supply that only engineers should have to ponder while riding a lift...

No competition though, public sector drain flies win hands (er, wings?) down over the profit mongers any day.

It's all in the mix

A couple of weekends ago one of my nephews asked me to explain what "mix" is after I recounted a story from the days when if you missed the bank closing at 5 on a Friday (two hours later than the rest of the week) you were without cash for the rest of the weekend. Sundays in my small town were served by one retailer, the gas station with a small shack called a grocery store attached, but they were open only for a couple of hours on Sunday, book ending the protestant church service hours, so folks could grab what they needed on the way to church, or on the way home.

One roared question from my father or the father of my best friend would send us scurrying -- "WHO DRANK ALL THE GODDAMN MIX?" Mix, of course, being the pop that one coloured one's glass of whiskey with. We were forbidden to take pop for ourselves from the fridge at that age, but of course we did, gulping it clandestinely, greedily from the big glass bottle (26oz the max at the time) so that the fizz and acid burn would make us gasp and our eyes water.

The danger in that roared question of course was that with no place open to buy more mix, once the mix was gone on a Sunday it was gone. [As the years went on it lost its urgency for a couple of reasons -- we got a Mac's Milk in town that opened late, seven days a week and my father swore off pop mix for water, although he used to hold the glass full of whiskey just to the side of the stream of water coming out of the tap, thinking he was fooling us into thinking he wasn't drinking his poison straight up).

As I entered my teen years jumbo bottles of pop arrived, now standard fare. Problem was those big bottles first arrived in glass bottles and they had a penchant for exploding on the shelf or certainly becoming grenades of glass shrapnel if dropped. There was one of several town drunks (Sorry Bert, if I remembered his name I'd repeat it) who used to always stagger into the grocery store I worked in and order one of us to get him his x number of large bottles of Pepsi. On occasion he'd wander down the aisle and get his own.

Exploding glass pop bottles of the super size became quite an issue for awhile until they were eventually banned, so as this guy would struggle to the front of the store haphazardly carrying four or five of them we always speculated what would happen if he dropped them. Once, shortly after he wandered out of sight down the pop aisle there was a tremendous sound of explosion -- our not so friendly drunk (he was a miserable bastard) had knocked four or five of the big bottles off the shelf and onto the floor. The aisle was awash in liquid sugar, glass everywhere, by the time we raced to see the carnage. Walking out of it, like some hero out of the mist, untouched, was the drunk carrying his several bottles of pop. We found large chunks of glass three or four aisles over as we cleaned up and for months afterward as we cleaned top shelves continued to find glass. I remember too that the new, heavy linoleum which covered the cement floor (the grocery store had once been the GM dealer and auto shop) was cut clean through in places from where the bottles had hit and exploded. The drunk didn't say a word, just payed and left.

The guy had a job, of course, as it was a small town and acute alcoholism was just another personality type. His father and him after his father had owned and operated a pop making and bottling plant in the town. Eventually it was bought out by a larger pop company and was reduced to bottling pop -- they'd receive the syrup, mix it with carbonated water and bottle and cap it. Finally the wee pop plant became simply a distribution centre. The important fact, however, is that it retained all the old equipment.

Our drunk in this story used to famously drink dark rum and Pepsi. He also famously used to use his pop bottling facilities in a way that allowed him to mix dark rum and Pepsi in large pop bottles and cap them, several cases at a time. The son portion of the father and son owners of the grocery store I worked in had, as a teen, worked driving pop truck for the drunk one summer, so the drunk would acknowledge and chat with him sometimes when on his Pepsi buying runs. Once the drunk came in a bit excited and had a pissed off sort of sounding conversation with the son of my boss. Turns out the three or four cases of dark rum and coke (and I can assure you it was almost certainly more rum than coke) had mistakenly been loaded onto one of the trucks and delivered as regular "Kist Cola" to one or more of the stores along the route in Mid Western Ontario. The drunk was angry of course not because some kid might spend his birthday party getting all his 7 year old pals pissed on cola and on their way to liver disease before the age of 10, but because the drunk'd lost all that nicely pre-mixed, finely disguised (although the Police Chief Teddy Zimmer -- ain't making that up -- never arrested nobody for nothing in all the time I ever lived there) booze.

Of course the story spread through the town. The final hilarity is, not a single complaint was ever reported back to the Kist Bottling plant according to anybody who worked there.

Few Blocks Over. Different City

Had lunch at Queen and Parliament on Saturday in a place with "Diner" in the name.

I was called "Hun" and He Who Is Here Now was called "Sweetie" by the incredibly wonderful waitress who was likely 32 but looked 58. When I commented that my fried egg with cheddar sandwich was exactly what I'd needed, the waitress replied, "Yah don't they make good sandwiches here -- no hiding nothin' in them there's so much you can see it all!"

It's easy to forget that such refreshing non-sophisticated and warmly open personality exists outside of where I expect to find it, in the dwindling number of small towns. A young guy came in and sat near the door so he could watch his unlocked bike and the same waitress sent him outside to turn the bike upside down, "at least: There are some bad one's around here and bikes don't last too long -- least now you'll be out of the restaurant to catch 'em before they get your bike set up right to ride away," she said when he came back in, still a bit confused, I thought, as to why he'd just gone and done what she'd asked.

I don't mean to be condescending, for the experience was what I was used to for much of my life, and the taste of it (along with that glorious cholesterol sandwich) was sweet on the tongue indeed. Makes me nostalgic for beer-bar waitresses who keep the bills folded between their fingers and can bring a new round of drinks to a table of 10 people based simply on a nod across the bar. (I wonder how much Loonies and Toonies have fucked that cool bills wrapped around fingers thing?)

The home fries on Saturday were to die for too.

International Relations

Let me see now, as it's been a while since I've sat in a university lecture on international relations. But, I think I've got it: our PM says the Israeli response to Lebanese factions crossing the border and killing and kidnapping is reasonable bombin' and straffin' and the dreaded leaflet droppin'... And Hezbollah leaders say the Israeli response is reason enough for them to shoot some more, and the Israelis then say that the response to the response demands a response especially if there's been a response they need to respond to. Ditto with another response says Hezbollah. And "Oh yah and yer mother!" says the Iranians through the Syrian embassy while no lips in either of those countries actually move 'cause they're not officially responding; all inquiries have been referred to their arms dealers.

SO, it's time (I think, if I'm following my own logic) that Canada bomb Israel since Canadians were killed by Israeli shelling of Lebanon; or perhaps because the deaths occurred on Lebanese territory it's Lebanon Canada should be bombing. No, no, I've got it we should bomb BOTH and Russia too, since our world-stage oil producing dick is much bigger than Russia's...

Should never have thrown out all those IR textbooks...

Barking after immortality

In the '60s a grad student asked, and received, permission to cut down a bristlecone tree in the mountains of California, because his coring tool broke and he wanted to know the age of the tree. He killed the oldest living thing on the planet. A tree nearly 5,000 years old. I'm sure the idiot got his PhD though.

A younger sibling of that tree lives still at an estimated 4,860 plus years of age. Methuselah it's been nicknamed, although as one researcher gloriously suggested, using Methuselah as a benchmark for "old" is ridiculous when talking about bristlecones.

No point to this blog, other than I am generally in awe of trees at the best of times and would find it a religious experience to be in the presence of a tree that is, certainly by human standards, an immortal thing, and that lives successfully so long precisely because its environment is so fundamentally harsh to any life whatsoever that predation of any sort is absent. [Luckily the location of the tree is generally a well kept secret lest another idiot grad student or souvenir hunter (or Toronto fag on a quest for spirituality by tree) find it and do it harm. Even the deadwood of bristlecones, which commonly can last a thousand years, is much wanted by bounty hunters.]

Reminder: Art is dead in Hollywood

I've stopped going to movies, almost entirely. I see some Hollywood crap once in awhile (saw the new Superman, for example, which I found myself saying I liked in an utterly numb way) but 5 years ago, 10 certainly, it wasn't unusual for me to go to a movie many times a week. There simply are no good, even fun entertaining movies coming out of Hollywood anymore, least wise that get distribution. Not even offensive stuff, just boring formula stuff driven by the money boys and accountants who want to get in the pants (for the money) of the post-post-post ironic generation. Lots of good movies still being made by the looks of it (as, for example, appletrailers.com can reveal) but nothing but Hollywood Production machine smelly shit gets to the theatres (and I don't do the film festival ticket dance, so...).

Even finding many good films on video (er, DVD) is a bit of a surprise these days. As with last night's discovery of S. Korean director Song Hae-Seong's film "Failan." He Who is Here Now had seen the film when it came out in 2001 and loves the film, so we rented it.

A stunningly sad plot about a married couple who have seen each other but once and in each instance the other not knowing they have been seen: she a Chinese indentured worker in Korea (who brilliantly--and it turns out, ironically--avoids a life of prostitution); he a bumbling failure as a third-rate gangster who hears, even from the losers around him, that his life is a pathetic failure. An unusal description of a love story, but a brilliantly turned (tragic) loves story just the same.

Anyway, I delight with each announcement that the movie industry is in trouble, for out of failure of the Hollywood Production model may come access to real films.

Flexibility

Here's a thought.

Syria is really responsible ultimately for fucking up Lebanon, more so than even the internal dividing factions. Can't believe Israel isn't going to pay a visit to Syria in the particular style they've been visiting Gaza and Lebanon in the past wee while. Hit Syria and Syria hits back -- most likely the arms will be holding Iranian passports, which gives Dubya a good opening to hit Iran, which will let us know if the Iranians have nukes, which will reveal that, of course, Israel has had them all along....

All in all, I've gotta get back to yoga class to ensure I've got enough hamstring flexibility to kiss my ass good. fucking. bye bye.

Orange

[Well, the nostalgic trip back home didn't exactly ignite a firestorm of interest, so I'll leave that road for a while.]

Hame, commenting on Bert's blog this week, included a list of words (other than orange) that apparently don't rhyme. Given there are 9, 10, 14 types of rhyme or something in the English language (which is, in comparison to the romance languages bereft of rhyming words, I once learned somewhere) -- including the gloriously named male and female rhymes (has to do with final syllable stress) -- I immediately doubted the claim, and in fact Bert rhymed one of the words on the list. But , of course, Hame meant perfect or true rhyming words I suspect.

I'm sure that with all the rhyme types this is covered, but I've written at least one poem which relies on reading the poem(in one's head or out loud) with a Scottish accent if the rhythm and rhyme are to work. When I was a kid, and indeed she was at it again when I saw her a couple of weeks ago, my mother used to recite a wee bit of a rhyme that just doesn't work if spoken in broadcast English.

Here it is (rhyme AAAB):

Granny Walker had a cow
It was yellow black and blue
All the monkies in the zoo
Loved Granny Walker

You Can Never Go Home But I Just Did -- Geography

Where Airport Road meets Highway 9 has changed a whole lot from the few simple houses (still there but now mostly abandoned) that marked the turn toward the city (although we never got deeper in than the airport or the home of friends of my parents who lived around Islington and Dixie in the '60s) on trips from my hometown to Toronto in my father's teal green Biscayne. These were not frequent trips and that rarity is likely why I have such distinct memories of that drive; of my father cursing the maze of roadways once one was on airport property. Runs to the airport were to see my mother fly home to Scotland, or once to pick up my Grandmother and Uncle who came to visit. My father forgot to turn the car lights off on one occasion and we arrived at the car to find the battery dead in the airport parking lot. As fate would have it a car pulled in next to us and my father asked the driver if he could get a boost. My father didn't even hear the no as he popped the other car's hood (no interior hood latches in those days) and had the cables linking the two cars so fast the other guy had no choice but to re-start his car and provide the boost. Small town hick friendly meets big city.

Leaving Toronto now nothing gets very familiar from the past until that turn, then each marker indicates a deeper fall into the past for me: Orangeville (utterly transformed in 40 odd years); then the traffic light at Arthur -- you don't go into town, still associated in my mind with the rough greasers with reputations for dirty hockey and dirtier mouths that were represented by the few Arthur kids who made the 30k bus trip to my high school (not Drayton or Orangeville highschools) and the many more who played against my town's hockey teams.

Then it's Teviotdale (pronounced TIV-eh-dale). By here, in summer, I've stopped noticing the distinct heated, wet smell of cut, baled and drying hay cooking in the sun that has littered the fields, especially since after Orangeville. Thirty years ago Teviotdale was a truck stop in a shack, a heavy equipment repair place, a couple of houses and a baseball diamond (with lights!). It was also where everyone who had remained conscious to last call in the hotels in my hometown, as well as the town I went to high school in made some sort of Mecca. Open 24 hours, the truckstop fed our teen age drunken need for BLTs with a side of fries. Fights were fought over what was right -- gravy on the fries or not. The alcohol in blood levels per kilometer driven might surely be record setting for the short stretch of 10km or so of road between my hometown and Teviotdale, excepting the scene was being played out all over rural Ontario in those days when drinking and driving was part of the day-after myth making. "You mean it was ME who drove home? HA!"

The truckstop is still there, but the shack has been replaced with something bigger, sturdier. I guess the waitresses are still people's mothers, but I doubt they serve their drunken underage sons a 2 a.m. BLT with only a shake of the head and not a word about designated drivers. The ball diamond has an adjoining soccer pitch (with lights!) now. And where the heavy equipment shop sat is now a sprawling place selling wooden outdoor furniture the sort of stuff that makes so many cottages ultra tacky. There are also traffic ramps at the corner now. It also occurs to me with a start that Teviotdale used to have a stockcar race track for several years -- the gas station and garage across the street from our house used to enter a car and keep us up nights revving engines as they worked on the stocks, until my father would yell from his bedroom window (using the garage owner's name) that he had to work in the morning.

Half way from the truckstop to my hometown, on the right side of the road as you head into town, is an old, stone farmhouse (of the type where big multi-coloured quartz rocks are stacked willy nilly and joined with wide seams of caulking) with a big red barn and a couple of red driving sheds. The old steel windmill with its steel frame tower is gone now. Even when I was a kid the windmill's piston had been disconnected from the well pump, an electric pump taking its place. But no one had bothered (or avoided) climbing to the top to wire the blades of the thing so it couldn't turn in the wind. That left the disconnected shaft to pump uselessly and vigorously (and dangerously) in a breeze. More troubling was that in gentle breezes the windmill spun lazily on un-oiled gears and the squeal with each revolution was a hazard to a good night's sleep. Eventually that wiring job got done.

There are a hundred blogs about that farmhouse and the 110 acres it anchored, for there lived my father's best friend and, for much of my pre-high school days, lived by best pal (and his little brother who hung out with us), as well. There too lived that pal of mine's grandmother who treated me as if I was her grandson. I have a handmade quilt with a sewn signature in one corner -- hers. It was also her who demonstrated to me and her real grandson just how painful the bottom end of a corn broom can be when jammed into young boy flesh as it hides under a bed from a not quite out of reach and very angry grandmother wielding the handle end of the broom.

As I pass that farmhouse each visit home I begin to blow my car horn about 500 meters up the road and for another 500 until I've passed by. She won't be young anymore, but there wasn't I time I was in that house that when should a car horn sound in greeting as it passed the farm my friend's mother wouldn't scramble to the big kitchen window in hopes of seeing the car and by virtue of that knowing who had beeped hello. A similar, but much greater event atmosphere arose when an unknown car drove into the farm yard. Disappointment ensured when "Now who's this?" turned to "Ah, they're just using the yard to turn around."

Less than a kilometer later is a crossroads that if taken left will take you to the town I went to high school in or if taken right would have taken you to the old Drive In, visible from the road. Sadly the screen was knocked down years and years ago.

But keeping on straight ahead, quickly comes the "Welcome to..." and population sign announcing I've arrived home.

Ahwhoops

Yeeeoops, been a wee while since I blogged, sorry.

I went to help my mother sort through her stuff as she moves from the apartment she's been in for I guess what must be nearly 20 years -- how is that possible!!? She's actually moved to an old fogey's home apartment (she tells me it's called a retirment home) but the process of giving up much of her possessions is on, as she has a small space now and no longer has a kitchen to worry about so no need for much of anything she's been surounded by for the past two decades, at the very least.

I've brought home much from my childhood and am awash in nosalgia and memory prompts. Didn't get a chance to talk to my mother about what it must be like to see furniture and "things" she's had for decades upon decades be sent off into oblivon -- I don't mean about the value, but about the familiarity of such "things" gone. I am on the other side on that coin with items now back in my possession that were always present in my childhood, whether it's an ornate brass, but tiny (holds a birthday candle) candlestick that always rested on the above-the-sink windowsills that my mother's spaces always had; or a sculpture I did in Grade 8 and my mother too always kept out in view. I also have a fleet of "redline" Hot Wheel cars from the late '60s on my desk... I threw out a tupperwar salt and peppershaker set that would likely pre date my birth or close; the salt shaker still sporting stickers I'd afixed to them, and the guilt at throwing them out is thick. These were ugly plastic, but I'm sick with remorse. Really. Sheesh.

My mother and some other members of my family were also realizing that except for funerals it's unlikely any of us will ever have reason to return to the hometown. Although I suspect I'm going to go back this summer with a notebook and fill it with ideas for poems. The tree I planted in the lawn of the family house is huge now, I noticed as I drove by...

Anyway I have several prompts for blog topics from yesterday's events and will -- if I ever get time to blog again regularly -- set them forth under some master heading such as, say, "You Can Never Go Home, But I Just Did"