Take me to -- your leader

Just barely keeping my head above water. On the positive side, I did make headway on my Christmas cards today.

When I learned of the death of Lou Reed, I also learned he had been married for some years to Laurie Anderson. Clearly, I haven't been paying enough attention. I quite like Laurie Anderson. Here's one of my favourite songs by her. It's from the 1989 album Strange Angels, although I think the song is quite a bit older than that:
The person who posted this appears to have had only two pictures of Anderson, but the sound is nice and clear.

I don't know about your brain- but mine is really bossy
I come home from a day on the golf course and I find all these messages scribbled on wrinkled up scraps of paper
And they say things like:
Why don't you get a real job?
Or: You and what army?
Or: Get a horse.
And then I hear this voice comin from the back of my head
Uh huh (Whoa-ho) Yep! It's my brain again
And when my brain talks to me, he says:
Take me out to the ballgame
Take me out to the park
Take me to the movies
Cause I love to sit in the dark
Take me to Tahiti
Cause I love to be hot
And take me out on the town tonight
Cause I know the new hot spot.
He says: Babydoll!
Ooo oo oo Babydoll
Ooo He says: Babydoll!
I love it when you come when I call Babydoll!
You don't have to talk I know it all Babydoll!
Ooo oo oo Babydoll Ooo
Well I'm sitting around trying to write a letter
I'm wracking my brains trying to think of another word for horse
I ask my brain for some assistance.
And he says: Huh...Let's see...How about cow? That's close.
He says: Take me out to the ballgame
Take me out to the park
Take me to the movies
Cause I love to sit in the dark
Take me to your leader
And I say: Do you mean George?
And he says: I just want to meet him
And I say: Come on I mean I don't even know George!

The afternoon of a fat lip

I don't even like after-dinner mints that much. The trouble is, I keep hoping it's a liquorice one, so a couple of weeks ago, I gave into temptation and I lost part of a molar. Again. For the third time, in fact. Feeling foolish doesn't begin to cover it.

So I went into the dentist for my temporary cap today and he asked if I had any questions.
"Is this going to be a Maurice Chevalier afternoon?"
"Pardon?"
"Last time you did this I spent the afternoon singing Maurice Chevalier songs and drooling. People kept moving away from me on the bus."
"Oh well. At least you get a seat that way…"

What Maurice Chevalier song would I sing? Well, anything from Gigi would do, but my favourite Maurice Chevalier music moment doesn't actually have Maurice Chevalier in it. It's the classic scene from the 1931 Marx Brothers movie Monkey Business when all four Marx Brothers (this was back in the days when Zeppo was still in the act) attempt to get off an international liner using Maurice Chevalier's passport. Now every single video of this on YouTube has been blocked for some sort of copyright reason, but Turner Classic Movies, bless 'em, has this very scene on their web site.

And here's Maurice himself singing to an impossibly young Claudette Colbert in the 1930 movie The Big Pond:

As it happened, I got my tongue back within the hour, then my upper lip, then my lower lip, so my fellow passengers were spared.

Just might not make it, folks….

A follower of this blog (I know there's a handful of you) might know that I was planning to NaBloPoMo December. It would have been my twelfth time doing a "blog posting month"; I've done eleven (a different month each time) since February 2009. While it's true I've managed a post a day so far this December, I haven't dared sign up for NaBloPoMo this time.  I have a major presentation early in the new year, and though I'd like to make it to the end of the month -- or at least submit a minimum of one hundred posts for 2013 -- frankly, I may fumble when I come down to the wire.

Speaking of which, this has been my favourite song during the past couple of weeks:

There's all sorts of reasons that I like this song. I love the driving rhythm, the it's-not-you-it's-me lyrics (I-know-I-know-I-know you're going to be okay anyway -- ha!). We've all heard that one, right? I love that the Haim sisters look like real people, that they clearly play their own instruments and sing with their own voices.

However, I'm not sure that I feel much affection for the official video for this song. Oh, I get the joke; the Haim girls dump three sweet sensitive types in much the fashion that women are usually dumped, and the guys react in stereotypical feminine floods of tears, but I think the song deserves better. I'm glad I heard it on the radio first, without visuals.

There. At least ninety posts for 2013. But I'm not promising anything...

Running out of light

With the sun disappearing at 4:30 in the afternoon, it has been two weeks or so since I have taken the dog to the park. Usually the day has fled by the time the Resident Fan Boy gets home from work and I've been choosing shorter walks around the block in the dark.  This afternoon, I set off at before twilight. I see stepladders. Many lights have gone up today; ours went up Friday. The Resident Fan Boy managed to blow a breaker with a rogue coloured light, then, panicking, cut the power to the computer, so I lost what I was working on. I was livid, of course, but better to discover a weak breaker now, I guess…

Along the Rideau River, I'm startled by the unobstructed view. I don't know why I should be so surprised; it's an annual thing, after all, but the last time I was here, there were still quite a few leaves.

The light is going fast. Looking back at the houses, I can see what appears to be this year's fashion in house decoration -- large stars dominating the side of a house, or taking up an entire picture window. The bike path is gone, buried until March or even April. I pick my way along where the dirt path by the river bank is now tightly packed snow, beaten down by the feet of other dog-walkers, urban hikers, and determined joggers. It's knobby and knurled; slick and shiny. I walk in the snow at the edges of the path, which staggers my gait, but provides a more reasonable foothold.

The Accent Snob is now pulling at the lead, a bit nerve-wracking where there are patches of ice, and it's harder to lock the retractable lease in heavy mittens, but he's right. Time to go home. It's dark, and elder daughter came home for Christmas today.

Brought to you by Coca-Cola

Like millions of kids in North America, I grew up with A Charlie Brown Christmas being an indispensable part of December. It became equally integral to the Christmases of both daughters, not only repeated required viewings, but the CD also being the first requested for tree-decoration or present-opening.

When I saw the poster for a concert featuring the music from this ancient television special on a telephone pole in downtown Hades back in October, I knew we had to take younger daughter. Christmas? Jazz? Peanuts? Animation? It's everything she adores rolled into one. I figured it would be relatively painless for me, even after years of exposure, and besides, it was a fundraiser for the Ottawa International Children's Festival. I ordered tickets quite promptly.

Good thing, too. When the Resident Fan Boy, younger daughter and I turned up at the Ottawa Little Theatre shortly after noon today, the sign outside informed us that both performances had sold out. In the Ottawa tradition of festival seating, arriving half an hour ahead of time got us seats more than halfway back in the auditorium. We were surrounded by large family groups of very young children, but we had expected that.

The concert was being put on by the Jerry Granelli Trio, with the support of two local children's choirs, one for each performance. Jerry Granelli was the drummer in the Vince Guaraldi Trio in the mid-1960s, and now he's pretty well the sole surviving member of the entire creative team that put A Charlie Brown Christmas together back in 1965. As is usual in the creation of a classic, the television executives at CBS nearly vetoed the show for several reasons, two of which were: Linus' recital of the passage from St Luke in response to Charlie Brown's anguished "Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about??"; and the jazz music, which I guess wasn't considered accessible enough. It was the executives at Coca-Cola (of all people)who insisted that the special be broadcast. They had, after all, sponsored the thing and darn it, it was going to go on the air. The response, that evening of December 9th, 1965, was overwhelmingly positive.

After the Goulbourn Junior Jubilee Singers sang the opening "Christmastime is Here", the three jazz musicians (drummer Granelli, bassist Simon Fisk, and pianist Chris Gestrin) launched into the well-worn instrumentals. To my astonishment, I got goose-pimples and a lump in my throat. Part of this was, no doubt, from the emotions attached to these pieces, chunks of my own childhood and that of my children, but the other factor was the sheer musicianship. We weren't getting note-for-note replications of the original recordings; we were getting some proper jazz improvisation.

I think some of the tinier kids were getting a bit restless, but to the rest of the audience, hearing and seeing this music played live was a revelation. I noticed a kind of quiver on the front of Fisk's base with a bow in it and realized as they finally began the classic "Linus and Lucy", that part of the magic comes from the bowed bass during the familiar recurring theme. Listen for it:

(This evening, while looking up the music for this post, I listened to Vince Guaraldi's first big hit from 1963 and realized the bass is also bowed for parts of "Cast Your Fate to the Wind: )

Heck, I even got choked up when a young choir-member named Jacob recited the lines from the King James Bible that almost got A Charlie Brown Christmas yanked in the first place.

Never thought I'd be grateful to Coca-Cola for anything.

Can't resist slipping this interpretation in. It's become somewhat of a classic itself, at least on YouTube.

A Canadian postal poser

I try to keep a positive attitude towards the task of sending out the Christmas cards. After all, it's an opportunity, right? An excuse to reach out to friends and family... I keep telling myself this, as we receive fewer cards, and more emails, and as the cost of wishing people well rises inexorably.

So, part of the process is working out what stamps I will need. Generally, I write and send cards according to the distance they have to travel, starting with Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore, then England, then the States, then the West Coast of Canada, followed by the Prairies, and finishing with Ontario and the very few cards we send within Hades. This year, I drew up the list, counted the stamps left over from last year, and worked out the five-cent and ten-cent stamps required to cover the rise in price. Then I figured out the rest according to category, wrote down the figures, and made my way to main Post Office where they seem to be particularly congenial and more importantly, actually seem to know what's going on.

I smiled brightly at the lovely lady and explained I would need three five-cent stamps, four ten-cent stamps, three packages of overseas stamps, about a dozen US stamps and six packages of Canadian stamps. She offered a choice of Christmas designs for the US and Canadian packages, but nothing for the overseas stamps. I was disappointed but said nothing as Christmas designs often sell out early.

A few days later, I was in a coffee shop setting about the business of addressing envelopes. I started with the overseas addresses first and did a double-take. I had three packages of over-sized stamps. Oh, the stamps were the usual size, but the postage ($1.34) was not the $1.85 I need this year for destinations that are neither in Canada nor the United States. I was nonplussed. For one thing, I'd never encountered these kind of stamps before and wondered what on earth I had said to receive them.

It took me a few minutes to figure out what had happened. Nearly everyone I encounter who works at a post office in Hades is francophone. Fluently bilingual of course, but francophone by birth. Somehow, this lady misheard "overseas" as "over-sized", mainly because the stamps are officially labelled "international". I think of the "international" rate as "overseas" because anything sent between Canada and the US is also international, right?

I made another trip to the post office and explained the problem to two bemused and amused old hands (fluently bilingual francophones, of course). One of them cocked his head to one side and mused: "Hmmmn. Overseas. Over-sized. Overseas; over-sized... I can see it, I guess."
"I should have said 'international'," I sighed.
"Foreign!" laughed the guy, who looks like he plays in a Beau Dommage cover band at the brasserie on weekends.
"Well, the US is foreign, too!" I pointed out.

The other guy made me produce my receipt (understandably) and some ID (rather more mystifyingly), then carefully worked out the price difference before picking out three packages of --- "International!" we chorused, pointing at each other for emphasis.

As I pocketed the stamp-books, it occurred to me that this was probably something that could only happen in Canada. Still didn't get a Christmas design. They had just sold out.

Because I have to

In the album version, Stephen Biko's name is mentioned and that got me thinking about this performance at the 1987 Secret Policemen's Ball, back when Nelson Mandela was still in prison:
And yes, you can glimpse Lou Reed right at the end. Another big year for losses. But I guess it always is.

Something familiar, something peculiar...

I've always been rather lucky with door-prizes. I've toyed briefly with the idea if seeing if this luck extends to lottery tickets, but even a math-phobe like myself would see the futility in this.

Last January, I won two complimentary tickets to the Great Canadian Theatre Company at A Company of Fool's annual Twelfth Night, which meant I had to redeem my coupon before the next January 5th. Luckily, the very play I wanted to see began its run last week.

Ann-Marie MacDonald is one of those terrifying people who seem to be able to do anything. In Canada, she's a highly visible broadcast journalist for the CBC, has also acted, and written award-winning plays, screenplays and books -- including Fall on Your Knees which put me in such a blue funk I couldn't finish it. Fortunately, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is not one bit depressing. It's a witty and whimsical fairy tale in which a dowdy, naive and put-upon English professor named Constance finds her thesis -- the possibilities of Othello and Romeo & Juliet as comedies -- suddenly coming to life.

The problems are in the consequences of halting the tragedies at their respective points of no return. When Othello is handed the incriminating handkerchief and shown it was Iago leading him into madness and jealousy, Iago becomes a danger to Constance and Desdemona is revealed to be something like a lady pirate. When the deadly confrontation between Romeo and Tybalt is averted with the news that they are now cousins by marriage, Juliet rapidly deteriorates into a bored teenage bride with the hots for Constance whom she has mistaken, in true Shakespearean comedic fashion, for a man.

How does it all work out? It's a comedy; there's a happy ending, of course.

The cast consisted of five able actors led by Margot MacDonald, co-founder of the Fools and "Restes!!!" (crowed younger daughter who remembers A Midwinter Dream's Tale with pleasure). We also had Geoff McBride and Zach Counsil playing all the male roles; we've seen both of them many times before - they're very good. Sascha Cole and Pippa Lawrence played all the female roles (with maybe one male role snuck in); we've seen neither of them before - they're also very good.

So a lovely afternoon, enhanced by the mini-drama behind us involving a pretty young man informing those sitting next to them that he was sitting there in hopes of not getting kicked out. I don't know where he got this idea, as the performance was sold out and a burly young man appeared in due course and claimed his seat. Later, we discovered there were "Latecomer's Seats" to avoid interruptions in the performance and pretty young man was -- sitting pretty. Another happy ending, of course.

Name that tune

It's 4:15 in the afternoon, so the sun has nearly set and the relatively balmy afternoon that has hovered around 0○ Celsius with golden sunshine slanting off the melting snow suddenly plummets to a markedly cooler evening with the wet pavement whitening into ice.

Younger daughter has homework and thus has requested that we duck into our neighbourhood Second Cup for a consoling hot chocolate. All tables are in use, but a couple of armchairs are available. A dapper gentleman occupies the third, studying his laptop.

I get the warm drinks. As I carefully settle into the unaccustomed seat, I focus on the music playing in the background and search my daughter's face for signs of recognition.
"I don't know it, Mom,"
"You heard it last summer when we went to see Jersey Boys," I tell her.
"Oh, yea-ah!" She brightens. "Which song is this?"
"It's 'Sherry' by the Four Seasons, and the song before it was popular when I was your age."
She doesn't seem particularly keen to know, so we go back to sipping our drinks.

A lady standing by the pick-up counter is checking her cellphone and absently croons, "Sherry, won't you come out tonight?" I also detect a rather tuneless croak from the neighbouring armchair, but I may be imagining it.

Cradling my vanilla bean latte, I strain a little to hear the next song. Younger daughter excuses herself. Another tune begins, and I'm nodding my head to it, when the dapper gentleman smiles at me.
"I was about to ask you what this one is."
"It's the Traveling Wilburys. 'Last Night'.
"Really? You get a point, then."
"Yep. And the one before it was 'Wild Life' by the Talking Heads."
"Wow, you really know your music!"
"Well, certain eras. If you asked me about hip-hop…"
Or Lady Gaga, I think to myself. I could manage "Judas"...

The fella is packing up.
"I know this one," he says, rising and leaving.

It's "Eight Days a Week". Well, anyone would know that one.

In my ears and in my eyes

Is it just me, or is American Thanksgiving getting stranger by the year?  Up here in Canada, life went on pretty much as usual, our Thanksgiving being in October, but strains of the weirdness next door kept    seeping in.  For one thing, Canadian retailers have, for the past two years, been adopting the completely reprehensible tradition of Black Friday, which sounds like the anniversary for a massacre, but is in fact the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States as it is the day after the American Thanksgiving.  So why should we, non-observers of American holidays, be observing this orgy of consumerism and spending - especially when we go through a similar state of madness on Boxing Day?  Because Canadian merchants want in on the money, of course.  And Merry Christmas to you, too.

This particular Black Friday Eve (shudder), we were eating out prior to going to a special concert.  More on that later.  We were flanked by the now ubiquitous big screens that haunt any relatively affordable eatery these days, and they were tuned to an American Thanksgiving football game.  It was halftime.  Selena Gomez and the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders were gyrating on a large platform in the shape of the Salvation Army insignia.  The sound was off, and I really didn't want to know anymore.

After dinner, we walked as quickly as the ice would allow, making our way to the utterly beautiful Dominion-Chalmers United Church, host to many wonderful concerts, especially for the Ottawa Chamber Society.  We would be seeing what would be essentially a Canadian super-quartet:  Craig Northey of the Odds; John Mann of Spirit of the West; Steven Page - former lead singer of the Barenaked Ladies; and Andy Maize of the Skydiggers.  If these names mean nothing to you, try to imagine the lead singers of four well-known indie/pop bands in your particular country coming together to re-interpret the Beatles, backed by a top-notch arranger and a chamber group of gifted musicians.

We were seated in a centre pew, about half a dozen rows back from the stage and watched the church fill with people of all ages, kids and teens, university students, middle-aged civil servant types and people obviously in their seventies.  With a pang, I realized that this last category were the Beatles' contemporaries.

The concert began with a kind of overture which began with a quasi-classical feel and glided into familiar queasy chords as Craig Northey appeared, looking boyish as ever, but rather greyer than I remembered him from the nineties.  Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to. . . . Soon he was joined by the other three, supplying the harmonies for "Strawberry Fields".

After an enthusiastic response from the crowd, pianist and arranger Andrew Burashko explained to us that they were trying to "dis-orient" us because, as most of the audience knew, "Strawberry Fields" doesn't appear on Sergeant Pepper.  (Neither did it appear on the programme nor on the CD for sale in the lobby.)

From there, they marched on, with no further explanation (none being needed, really) into the songs from the Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, each song with a different arranger, with the singers taking turns in the lead.  Of the four, Steven Page is the best-known - younger daughter recognized him with some excitement - and he and John Mann have the strongest and most versatile voices, so I guessed correctly that Mann would be singing stuff like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and Page would be singing stuff like "She's Leaving Home".  However, Craig Northey isn't chopped liver either, and I was surprised by how moved I was by Andy Maize's interpretations of "Within You Without You" and "A Day in the Life", perhaps partially because George and John are no longer with us.

There was an intermission between the "sides" - you used to have to turn the record over, kids - and the crowd was unusually loose and friendly.  Maybe Ottawa was a nicer place in the sixties.  Several people complimented younger daughter on the Sergeant Pepper logo top she had carefully selected for the occasion.

We had permission to take non-flash photos during the concert, but the lighting was such that the handful of pictures I took were washed out and not much helped by editing with iPhoto.  I wanted to concentrate on the music anyway which ranged from classical to rock to full-blown swing.  I was amused that certain elements were carefully preserved.  In "Lucy in the Sky", for example, the singers and musicians stomped three times before each chorus.

I did dare to video a snippet of "Lovely Rita" with my iPod. The singers are washed out visually, but the sound is good.  Steven Page is the lead vocal (he's second from the right) here, occasionally forgetting the lyrics, but letting his voice power him through.  Just before I stopped recording to listen again, you can hear younger daughter laughing delightedly as those fabulous musicians in the Art of Time Ensemble veer into big band.
As the chamber musicians faded into that final long chord, the audience applauded, whistled and cheered its appreciation before being given, as promised, two encores: "Penny Lane" and "All You Need is Love", the latter, once again, movingly sung by Andy Maize with chorus and harmonies provided by the other three and the whole damn audience.

I was genuinely sorry that it was over and we found our way back into the cold winter's night with the CD carefully tucked away. At home, we were confronted with Lady Gaga and the Muppets presenting some kind of holiday special with five-minute commercials every five minutes.

Very strange.

I can't leave without making sure that you understand the calibre of the singers at this concert. It was, as I told the Resident Fan Boy, my iPod playlist come to life. Here are four of my favourite songs and videos featuring each of the night's artists.

First, Craig Northey and the Odds with this song and video from 1996 in which Bruce McCullough from The Kids in the Hall takes a girl to the roller rink (does anyone roller-skate anymore?) and gets dumped. I'm not sure where this was filmed, but it feels like the Maritimes to me:

On the West Coast in 1988, we have early Spirit of the West and John Mann with hair. (He's been elegantly bald since the nineties.)

And here's Andy Maize with the Skydiggers in 1993 in a rather unstable copy of the video for "I'm Wondering". He's the one in the tractor cap.

And finally, this heart-breaking song and video from 1992. I think both illustrate how mind-boggling awful school can be.
Very strange.