the blog quebecois

From March of 1981: This was -- believe it or not -- something of a breakthrough for my songwriting, at least as far as lyrics went. I was trying to narrow the focus, if only to prevent my too-often habit of creating The Great Cosmic Statement. What's it about? Dunno. Beastiality, probably.

But, but you protest . . . The Girlfriend makes an appearance!

Yes, and a clever bit of stage-business she is -- designed to deflect the accusations of beastiality that surely would be levelled in my direction.

And it almost worked. Save for my big mouth.

The Toronto Star:

Mildred's Temple Kitchen is inviting customers to have sex in its bathrooms.

The Valentine's weekend promotion takes uncomfortable but electrifying sex from the close confines of an airplane and transfers it to the unisex stalls of the Hanna Ave. restaurant.

The Liberty Village restaurant proposes its modern bathrooms become one of the "101 places to have sex before you die."

Mildred's has always elicited a certain response. One customer, who didn't want to be named, remembers going to a wedding at the eatery's old location and seeing a copy of the Kama Sutra in the bathroom.

"They invite it," said the customer.

This time, the invitation is explicit. On its website, Mildred's asks: "Have you given any thought to moving beyond the bedroom?

"Check out Mildred's Sexy Bathrooms throughout the weekend of Big Love. You get the picture."

Actually, the picture is clouded by practicalities. Is the restaurant supplying condoms? What about the health risks of body fluids? And who's cleaning up?

"We've always had little trysts in our bathrooms," says chef/co-owner Donna Dooher, pointing to lingering weekday lunches as a popular time. "We're taking it to the next level on Valentine's weekend."

"Donna Dooher." Heh.

CORNISH, NH - In this big dramatic production that didn't do anyone any good (and was pretty embarrassing, really, if you think about it), thousands upon thousands of phonies across the country mourned the death of author J.D. Salinger, who was 91 years old for crying out loud. "He had a real impact on the literary world and on millions of readers," said hot-shot English professor David Clarke, who is just like the rest of them, and even works at one of those crumby schools that rich people send their kids to so they don't have to look at them for four years.

A melancholic little piece about . . . melancholy, I guess. It hangs together fairly well, save for the accidental overdub of 15 seconds of drums near the end. That certainly is a mood-breaker.

If you want snarky, funny remarks on Obama's SOTU address, Ace of Spades is the place to be when he throws open the floor for comments. I'll post the exact link when it comes up.

Link here.

(By sheer coincidence, this is the 1776th post on this blog.)

There is a shocking lack of songs dedicated to the romance and mystery that is public transit. I've been through the discographies of several bands -- Ted Nugent, Bruce Springsteen and AC/DC most recently -- and I can find no references to the glories of riding the No. 6 Riverfront Express. In fact the only bus-related songs I can think of are: "Magic Bus," by The Who (all links open up YouTube videos); "Bus Rider," which was a minor hit for The Guess Who; " Bus Stop" by the Hollies (which isn't really about buses, but we'll claim it anyway); and Weird Al Yankovic's parody of "Another One Bites The Dust," " Another One Rides The Bus ." And let us not forget The Allman Brothers' " Ramblin' Man" which qualifies because of the following lyric:

My father was a gambler down in Georgia
And he wound up out in the wrong in Alabam’
I was born in the back seat of a Greyhound bus
Rollin’ down Highway 41.

So, by my count, I've written the sixth-best bus song ever. Of course, I might have missed one or two others, but even so, I'm still in the Top Ten.

Note: My apologies for the broken link, which I just discovered. You can now hear Backs Of Heads in all of its glory.

Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe:

[Senator-elect Scott] Brown ran explicitly against Obama’s domestic agenda, above all the radical healthcare overhaul that the president has made his priority. Not long ago, such a strategy would have been dismissed as suicidal. But the harder the administration and congressional Democrats have pushed their health legislation, the more unpopular it, and they, have grown. In Boston on Sunday, it spoke volumes that Obama made not a single direct reference to the healthcare bill he champions - and that Brown promises to oppose.

In this (recorded in the spring of 1980) I introduced a shocking new concept, melody. That's somewhat of a Catch-22 for rookies -- melody in rock is usually driven by the vocal, so you have to be able to consistently sing a passage before you can explore it melodically. How well I succeeded here is up for argument but I was clearly looking for different ways of phrasing and tone.

VH1 Reality Show Bus Crashes In California Causing Major Slut Spill

Warning: Language, (brief) nudity.

Yes, I am still alive. Technically, at least. I got a new computer (well, I had to buy it, kinda spoiling the surprise) for Christmas. I'm pleased to note that with the release of Windows 7, Microsoft has clearly hit one out of the park. I was never a Vista fan, but I had no major problems with it -- just the usual idiosyncracies that plague any OS. But Windows 7 seems unusually robust and well designed. I've yet to find a major (or minor) flaw.

So, I've transferred enough to get started. Now to crawl into that ratsnest of cables beneath my desk (ever notice that "wireless computing" turns out to be as accurate as the "paperless office"?) and hook the new ' puter up. Wish me well, and if you don't hear from me by next week you should probably phone the police or something.

to all of you and I hope the season brings you joy. I'm going to be doing a lot of running around in the next few days, so I probably won't be posting again until the New Year

Wonderful Christmassy picture courtesy of b3ta. That'll cure the damned chimney-spelunker.

Snopes.com:

Christmas carols and other holiday songs, rife as they are with seldom-heard words and phrasings and clever wordplay, are fertile fields for the sowing of mondegreens - especially when children, with their limited vocabularies, are involved. (We note that Mondegreens are based upon a genuine misunderstanding of lyrics, a distinctly different phenomenon than the deliberate creation of parodic lyrics such as "Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg," or "We three kings of Orient are, tried to smoke a rubber cigar.")