the blog quebecois

Wall Street Journal Online:

. . . bloggers face the inevitable question: to blog on break or put the blog on a break? Fearing a decline in readership, some writers opt not to take vacations. Others keep posting while on location, to the chagrin of their families. Those brave enough to detach themselves from their keyboards for a few days must choose between leaving the site dormant or having someone blog-sit.

Eh, not really. I've got a number of things to do over the next week or so, so blogging will be (more) sporadic. I'm finishing up a longer piece that I hope will be ready by Wednesday, but expect the wheels to fall off after that.

I'm coming to the end of a little project, and I think it only fair to share the joy -- or pain -- of it with you, my loyal readers.

Back more years than I care to contemplate, I started a band with my cousin. To be sure, it wasn't much of a band; there was just the two of us and a drum machine. I played bass and rhythm guitar and was the main vocalist and songwriter. My cousin had to play lead guitar. (Mainly because he wouldn't let me play lead guitar, in spite of the fact that my nom de stage was "Eric Crapton.")

(Now that I've mulled it over, I'm beginning to think that that was one of those "backhanded" compliments.)

We didn't even have amps, let alone a full PA setup. I rigged up a way to play through my stereo (not recommended, if you value your speakers). Nor did we have any adequate rehearsal space, pretty much a necessity once you start adding real drums and amps into the equation.

To fatten up our sound somewhat, we'd multirecord. That is, I had two cassette decks and a cheap 4-channel mixer. So we'd record the first track with, say, bass on the left channel and guitar on the right, with the drums spread across both. Then we'd play that back and add, for example, lead guitar and vocals. Then maybe a third pass with more guitars, percussion, backing vocals, or whatever else came to mind. More layering than that became problematic, with cumulative tape hiss tending to muddy up the initial recording, especially the bass and drums.

We lasted about a year and-a-half together; the first third of which was devoted to long, noodling jam sessions that I will not further trouble you with. But like the proverbial thousand monkeys hammering on a thousand typewriters, we did eventually produce some things of interest. I wrote maybe 200 songs in that time, a handful of which today stand up (i.e. don't send me crawling under the kitchen table with embarrassment). We didn't have great ambitions of being the Next Big Thing. There never was an effort to recruit a drummer, and we knew nobody in the business. We never even discussed naming the band. (Though I finally did think of a good name, twenty years later.)

There were other distractions, like my cousin's girlfriend (or as I nicknamed her, Damn Yoko). But the biggest stumbling-block in our way would have been was a certain bass player and vocalist. I don't know if that guy had stage fright, but I had no intention of finding out.

Actually, I probably could have handled playing an instrument, and bass would have been ideal. You just stand there and plunk away, the invisible man. You could go wander off behind the Marshall stacks and do a couple of lines of coke or your new girlfriend and nobody would notice. (Well, your new girlfriend would, ideally.) John Entwhistle and Bill Wyman had the best jobs in the universe, if you ask me.

That would have been fun. But singing? Three syllables: For-get it. It took me two months to work up the courage to sing in front of my cousin, and for some time after that I could only manage it by screwing my eyes shut and pretending he wasn't there.

As you know, the lead singer has to be out in front, jumping around like a Ritalin-deprived baboon, wiggling his butt and dodging thrown gifts of panties (or beer bottles).

Well, phooey to that. I am an introspective songwriter, sort of like James Taylor, without the wimpy songs. So such antics are beneath my dignity.

That would have been a problem to most record companies, who, to my knowledge, have only ever bankrolled two bands who declined live performances: The Beatles and Steely Dan. Even at my most delusional, I doubted we were in that category.

My vocals? Meh. Nothing to write home about, but serviceable, I guess. I could sing like a choirboy in the upper register, but that's only useful if you're auditioning for castrato in the Vienna Boys' Choir. Midrange I'd usually hit the right notes, but with no real oomph behind them. So, no power ballads. Which is OK with me, 'cause I sucked at writing power ballads.

My voice is rather nasal and flat. That's the bad news. The good news is that rock vocalists depend more on timing, tone and 'tude (or was that timing, tone and 'ludes?) and that I can deliver a perfect Johnny Rotten sneer any time I want. Believe it or not, this is only a significant advantage if you intend to become a rock singer. Witness:

Boss: Is the paperwork on the Anderson leases ready?

Me: [gesticulating wildly] Right! Now? Hahaha! / I am an anti-Christ! / I am an anarc--

Boss: You are unemployed.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I've been converting the tapes to MP3s (with
Audacity, a very good open-source audio recorder). This is the first of them. There will be more, unless I get massacred in the comments. Be gentle.

To forestall the inevitable drunken arguments about whether I am including secret Satanic messages, here are the lyrics (no, I have no idea what the first verse is about either, but it sounds profound, so I'm sticking with it) (Oh, yeah: I'm aware that Bob Dylan had a song with the same title; but titles can't be copywrited, and anyway I sang it with a Dylanesque twang to pay him proper tribute. Maybe he can sue me for that.):

Yeah yeah
Life is short but love is long
And love is a tune with a fatal sound
She was perched on a rock in the middle of the sea
I loved the siren and the siren loved me

We were forty brave men, brothers all
Through tropical storms and dockside brawls
We faced unblinking the horror and noise
And we were happy to be just one of the boys

[chorus]

But then a woman
Ended the camaraderie
Just like a woman
She broke our solidarity
She won't let me drink
It's one of her whims
I can't punch her like my buddies
Get paid back with a grin
She holds me up
And says to me:
It's time to start
A new family

[rpt. chorus]

Adrift in a world
Of curses and sweat
I gotta get out
If I hafta hijack a jet

I'm tired of beerhalls
and football and the guys
I'm bored with bravado
And swaggering lies

[chorus]

But then a woman . . .

Though if you play it backwards, God knows what you'll come up with. Here's the
link. Warning: Embedded QuickTime audio.

Update: The reviews are is in! Andrew Dodge of Dodgeblogium (where I crosspost some of these pieces), a man with a band of his own, and not inconsiderable contacts in the music industry (alas, not considerable enough to get me a recording contract), offers this:

Sounds like a pretty good demo mate. Get thee into a studio and you might be onto something. I got stuff in my review pile that is far less appealing tha[n] this track.

UpUpdate: Stupid file-sharing company has been down for the last day or so, allegedly for maintenance. Well, you get what you pay for, I guess.

However, if you've got a (free) Yahoo! account, you can upload pictures and songs to your own little piece of its giant disk drive. You're limited to 30MB, but it's a fairly good bet that it'll be working a week from now. While the above link is broken, you can play the song here.

UpUpUpdate: Now the Yahoo! link is dead. So try the stupid file-sharing company link instead.

A guy walks into the street and manages to hail a taxi just as it's passing by. He hops into the taxi, and the cabby says, "Perfect timing. You're just like Frank."

Passenger: "Who?"

Cabby: "Frank. Frank Feldman. He's a guy who did everything right, all the time. Like my coming along just when you needed a cab, things happened like that to Frank each and every single time."

Passenger: "Yeah, but there are always a few clouds over everybody."

Cabby: "Not over Frank. He was a terrific athlete. He could have won the Grand-Slam at tennis. He could golf with the pros. He sang like an opera baritone and danced like a Broadway star and you should have heard him play the piano. He was just one amazing guy."

Passenger: "Sounds like he was something really special."

Cabby: "Oh, there's more. He had a memory like a computer. Could remember everybody's birthday. He knew all about wine, which foods to order and which fork to eat them with. He could fix anything. Not like me. I change a fuse, and the whole street blacks out. But Frank, he could do everything right."

Passenger. "Wow, some guy then."

Cabby: "He always knew the quickest way to go in traffic and avoid traffic jams, not like me, I always seem to get stuck in them. But Frank, he never made a mistake. Never."

Passenger. "Mmm, there's not many like him around."

Cabby: "And he really knew how to treat a woman and make her feel good and never answer her back, even if she was in the wrong. And his clothing was always immaculate, his shoes highly polished -- like mirrors, they were. Frank was the Perfect Man! He never made a mistake. No one could ever measure up to Frank Feldman."

Passenger: "An amazing fellow. How did you meet him?"

Cabby: "Well, I never actually met Frank."

Passenger: "Then how do you know so much about him?"

This cheese is a delicacy in Sardinia, where it is illegal. That's right. It is illegal in the only place where people actually want to eat it. If this does not communicate a very clear message, perhaps the larvae will, as they leap desperately toward your face in an effort to escape the putrescent horror of the only home they have ever known. Even the cheese itself is ashamed; when prodded, it weeps an odorous liquid called lagrima, Sardinian for "tears."

Cracked takes a (thankfully, brief) look at some of the world's scariest food.

Warning: Language.

Via A Welsh View

The school bus accident last Thursday that killed a nine-year-old child and injured others was a sorrowful tragedy.

The amount of media coverage of the accident was appropriate: Children should never predecease their parents.

Calgary's radio stations, newspapers and TV news covered the event exhaustively -- inspecting every detail, and asking good questions about how such accidents might be avoided in the future.

Every detail was examined except one:

I noticed the same thing as Ezra Levant.

Update: Via Halls of Macadamia, I learned that the Sun, apparently under heat from some people, have pulled the column from their website. I've reprinted it in the extended entry:

. . . gets in touch with his inner Cookie Monster:

SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK COUNTY OF NEW YORK

----------------------------------------X
BRIAN SACK AKA DAD
PLAINTIFF

VS.

SESAME PLACE
DEFENDANT
----------------------------------------X

Plaintiff, complaining as he does about many things, alleges as follows:

1. That plaintiff is a resident of New York.

2. That defendant, Sesame Place amusement park, is located somewhere in Pennsylvania, conveniently located only 90 minutes from Manhattan assuming you use your fancy GPS device properly.

3. That prior to incident, plaintiff had a long-term childhood relationship with Sesame Street, fond memories of Sesame Street, and considered Sesame Street a friend and by extension assumed Sesame Place was filled with friendly characters and honest Muppetry.

all over this . . . any day now:

U.S. combat troop deaths and other violence in Iraq are down significantly in some of the most dangerous places of insurgent activity, including Al Anbar province, military officials in Washington and Baghdad said Wednesday.

Maybe most significant was that last week there was not a single military casualty - Iraqi or U.S. - in Anbar, said Maj. Gen. Richard Sherlock, a Joint Chiefs spokesman. It is apparently the first time since March 2003 that could be said.

[ . . . ]

- Violence in and around Baghdad is down 59 percent.

- Car bombs are down 65 percent.

- Casualties from car bombs and roadside bombs are down by 80 percent.

- Casualties from enemy attacks down 77 percent.

- Operations against Iraqi security forces are down 62 percent.

- Assassination attempts for sectarian reasons are down 72 percent.

Via the corner

Depressed because you can't find the right disguise for Halloween? Fret no more -- the blog quebecois is on the case!

For some years now (and for some strange reason), Forbes.com has been putting up pictures of the famous and infamous, suitable for downloading, printing and cutting out for Halloween masks. (They print out at a larger size than illustrated.) If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad doesn't do it for you, there are 17 others, ranging from Britney Spears to the entire cast of 2008 Presidential candidates. Or you can scroll down the page and select someone from their archives, dating back to 2003.

No, don't thank me. It's all part of the service. Now dry those tears (not good for the masks, especially if you use the same cheap paper as me) and get out there and party like it's 1999.

and other rejected titles for kids' books:

7. Kathy Was So Bad Her Mom Stopped Loving Her
8. Curious George and the High-Voltage Fence
9. All Cats Go to Hell
10. The Little Sissy Who Snitched
11. Some Kittens Can Fly