the blog quebecois

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.

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.

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.

What a tragedy. Iowahawk is in a terrible rut, monotonously hitting yet another one out of the park. God help us all if he ever discovers steroids.

Spend me to the moon, and let me play around with TARP,
Give the folks some stimulus so they can all buy cars.
In other words, cut the debt.
In other words, fiscal re-spons-i-bility.

Yeah!

Appropriate that cash, just like you're Johnny Maynard Keynes,
We need jobs and health care and some light rail urban trains,
In other words, tighten belts.
In other words, ef-fic-i-ency.

Spend meeeeeee (hit it boys) to the moooo-oooo-oooooon!

Look-out-Old-Barry's-back!

Via Holy Taco

You'd never guess it from my name, but I'm 1/4 Scots and 1/4 Irish, from my mother's side. Indeed, my very nom de blog, "gnotalex," is a slight reworking of her maiden name, "O'Gnotalex," the famous Irish clan, or tribe, or swarm, or whatever it is that they call themselves. So with a rich heritage as that, I felt it was my right -- no, my duty -- to comment on the situation in Northern Ireland during the seventies and eighties, culminating with the hunger-strike death of IRA "soldier" thug (I'm also nominally Catholic, so I can name the IRA for what they were --- murderous Marxist creeps.) Bobby Sands in The Maze, a prison for paramilitary-linked criminals outside Belfast.

Certainly I had more claim to the topic than, say, Paul McCartney, who wrote what might have been his worst-ever song, "Give Ireland Back To The Irish" (link opens a terrible YouTube video of his band Wings rehearsing it.); or The Police, who turned out the better, but forgettable (I can't remember a note of it) "Invisible Sun"; or John Lennon, who confusedly offered to play benefit concerts for both the IRA and its Protestant foes.

Gratuitous literary reference: I stole the first line "Is there a family/Free from sorrow/These days?" from Tolstoy's War And Peace (second line at link). I figured the old buzzard owed me at least that much for the hundreds of hours I spent reading the bloody thing.

N.Y. Daily News:

Doug Fieger, leader of the power pop band The Knack who sang on the 1979 hit "My Sharona," died Sunday. He was 57.

Fieger, a Detroit-area native, died at his home in Woodland Hills near Los Angeles after battling cancer, according to The Knack's manager, Jake Hooker.

Fieger formed The Knack in Los Angeles 1978, and the group quickly became a staple of Sunset Strip rock clubs. A year later he co-wrote and sang lead vocals on "My Sharona."

I've written enough songs to know that they're often only tangentially connected to one's real life. Happy times can lead to sad songs and vice versa. I've written songs about real girls, imaginary girls, and girls whose sole contribution is having a name that makes for an interesting rhyme.

So I must say, I'd never given it much thought; but I was somewhat surprised a few years ago to learn that the eponymous star of "My Sharona" does in fact exist. That's the 17-or-so-year-old Sharona Alperin on the right, pictured on (I'm guessing) the 45 rpm single cover. She's gone on to a successful career as a realtor in the hi-end Los Angeles market. She was a lifelong friend of Fieger's and the band, judging by the music that comes up when you load her web page.

So R.I.P., Doug. Here's to happier days; March, 1979 at Carnegie Hall:
.

Update: Well, duh, Sherlock. This wasn't mentioned on any of the sites that I initially looked at, but according to this, she and Fieger were in fact married (just having celebrated their 30th anniversary) and were the parents of two young children. So my condolences to them as well.

UpUpdate: I give up. The BBC reports their relationship thus: "The pair broke off their engagement, but remained close. Alperin is now an estate agent specialising in celebrities' homes and spent last weekend at Fieger's deathbed."

Ross Rebagliati:

"'He [Harper] is disconnected from society. Only an arrogant man can play The Beatles on the piano wearing a tuxedo."

Hmmm. Looks like the lads didn't get the memo. A grateful Ringo Starr salutes Rebagliati from across the ages with a simple hand gesture that says "Well played, Ross!" Or it might be one of those whimsical Liverpudlian things, inviting him to "sit on it and rotate, mate."

Via BC Blue

In October of 1981 I bought my first electric guitar from a friend for the grand sum of $25. I can't quite recall the name of it -- I would later call it "a piece of crap," but I don't think that's what was engraved on the headstock. He also threw in a wah-wah/fuzztone pedal, which occasionally made me sound like I knew what I was doing.

I brought all my musical expertise to this recording; namely, a bunch of unconnected Beatles' riffs. I think I can hear "Day Tripper" briefly in this, and then a rather psychedelic take on "Come Together." And, yes, that's Fleetwood Mac dropping by at the end, not that they were invited. It was either an incompletely-erased tape -- or more likely, a byproduct of using unshielded guitar and recording cables. Especially when my cousin and I got going early on, our setup was not unlike a Giant Throbbing Antenna (which, now that I think about it, would have been A Pretty Good Name For A Rock Band), sucking in every stray signal around, from AM/FM broadcasts to taxi dispatchers to airplane chatter to police and fire communications. We used to joke that there was no way The Man could sneak up and bust us (for playing completely-innocent, completely drug-free music. I swear.) because we'd hear their radio traffic coming from ten miles away.

metronews.ca halifax:

Shayne Howe returned home from a friend’s 40th birthday party just after midnight Sunday.

Ten minutes later, he said there was a two-metre burning cross on his front lawn, and a group of males outside shouting racial slurs at him.

"They waited for me to come home," said Howe, who has lived in Newport, just outside Windsor, for the past six years. "It’s like they knew I left to go out."

The 31-year-old Howe, who is black, said by the time he went outside to investigate, there was nobody in the yard.

"All I saw was flames, there was nothing else around," he explained. "There was no vehicles, no sound, nothing."

Egads! Only a dedicated, well-funded gang of racists -- I'm thinking the Canadian Human Rights Commission -- would have the command of ninja skills to carry out something like this and then simply disappear. And where is Richard Warman these days, anyway?

Or maybe they made their escape because there was nobody there to begin with.

Sorry, I've got to call shenanigans on this one. These things are almost invariably hoaxes. The credulous MSM is quick to leap on them because it suits their ridiculous fantasy of a society pulsing with hidden racism (and with themselves as Horatio at the Bridge heroically fending off the Tuscan swine).

Google "fake hate crimes" and you'll turn up a long list of examples, such as this partial list from 2006-2007. I haven't made a comprehensive study of the phenomenon, but I wrote about a couple of examples, here and here. People have been caught on security cameras punching themselves in the face to later claim a "racist" attack.

I was disappointed that both Dave Rutherford and Charles Adler fell for this scam -- Rutherford had some race pimp on, demanding "education" (and money for himself, no doubt) as a remedy. Adler had the man and his wife on -- they were unconvincing, to say the least.

"Though raising interest rates is unlikely at the moment, the Fed will of course act appropriately if we . . . if we . . . " said [Federal Reserve chairman Ben] Bernanke, who then paused for a moment, looked down at his prepared statement, and shook his head in utter disbelief. "You know what? It doesn't matter. None of this-this so-called 'money'-really matters at all."

"It's just an illusion," a wide-eyed Bernanke added as he removed bills from his wallet and slowly spread them out before him. "Just look at it: Meaningless pieces of paper with numbers printed on them. Worthless."

According to witnesses, Finance Committee members sat in thunderstruck silence for several moments until Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) finally shouted out, "Oh my God, he's right. It's all a mirage. All of it-the money, our whole economy-it's all a lie!"

So I now had a new instrument to throw into the mix, and this was my first try at writing a song with it. It didn't turn out too badly, and I was pleased with the overall sound, though a bit noisy. The song's a metaphor for struggle -- I wasn't really marching around the basement at the time, though that might have explained my clumsy lead guitar work.