Author: Peter

Making one’s point

There is no pain too severe for the makers of this travesty. They are the offspring of dogs without genitals and maggots fed only on the excreta of diseased lizards. May Bolivian drug lords seize their only daughter as hostages in a tense geopolitical drama. May their next cruise-ship vacation remembered for the simultaneous outbreak of Norwalk Virus, an crunching encounter with an uncharted reef, and a record-breaking series of Nor’wester gales. May ruthless investment bankers place their retirement savings in airline shares. A green, crapulent, morbid, fulminating, metastasizing pox upon them!

Tim Bray, Lizard Excreta

Driving in Detroit

Scott Andrew LePera has a short anecdote about insane drivers that recalled an experience I had last summer.

My parents and brother and I had decided to take in a Tigers game at Comerica Park in Detroit–more to see the new stadium than out of any desire to see the team, I should point out, all of us being hardcore Blue Jays fans. So I was tooling down one of the relatively uncrowded city highways at 55mph (that’s 88km/h for anyone outside the U.S., or 147840 furlongs/fortnight) in my parents’ minivan when the taillights of the car in front of me came on and it jerked and started spewing smoke. It was only after I swerved, braked, and whatever else I wound up doing that we realized what happened: the guy shifted into reverse in the middle of the road!

Like Scott, I shudder to think what might have happened. If we’d been in heavier traffic or I’d been driving a little closer than I should have been things would have turned out differently.

It’s an experience I’m not eager to repeat.

De-marsmanned

marsman [f. the name of M. Marsman.] v., sl. Known in colloquial use among current and former employees of Liberate Technologies Canada since 2002.
To stop abruptly and without warning; to abandon.
2003 J. GREEN correspondence: Now who’s marsmaning [his weblog]?

1 out of 7

Sometimes I don’t understand this town.

Thanks Peter! You helped me enjoy the evening!!

May 15, Call the Office

You were 1 out of 7

John

Seven is a slight exaggeration; my friend Greg and I counted 12 people in the audience for John Mann‘s solo concert this evening.

John, in case you kinda recognize the name but don’t know from where, is one of the founders of Spirit of the West. He recently released a solo album, Acoustic Kitty, that has been in my car CD changer since the day I bought it. (The title and eponymous track take their name from a CIA research project that was almost comically unsuccessful.) Tonight’s performance was a solo acoustic show to a highly appreciative, if tragically small, crowd.

The performance highlight of the night for me was his encore, an a cappella version of Robert Burns’ To A Mouse that he wrote while performing in Of Mice And Men in Vancouver. The fanboy highlight, of course, was chatting with John for a couple of minutes after the show and having him sign a second copy of the CD; he’s a genuinely nice guy, and was gracious about the lack of an audience. I hope tonight’s show hasn’t turned him off London terribly, and that Friday’s performance at Ottawa’s Tulip Festival is better attended–my brother will be there (won’t you, Ed?).

Here are two short samples of what all but the 12 of us missed: Acoustic Kitty (ogg and mp3) and American TV (ogg and mp3).

For the Folk

Another Wednesday, another For the Folk. Allison Brown hosted tonight; after hearing three shows from each host, I think I can say I prefer her selections to Ian’s. (On an unrelated note, there will be no playlist next week; I’m going to the inaugural game of the Canadian Baseball League, featuring the London Monarchs and Montreal Royales.)

  • Set 1
    • Foxtail Bluegrass Band, If God Be For Us
    • Gillian Welch, Pass You By
    • Be Good Tanyas, Rowdy Blues
    • Iris Dement, Pretty Sorrow
    • Jennifer Noxen, Lay Your Burden Down
  • Set 2
    • Laura Smith, Gypsy Dream
    • Over the Rime, The Seahorse
    • Patty Griffin, Long Ride Home
    • Emmylou Harris, The Boy From Tupelo
  • Set 3
    • Dar Williams, As Cool As I Am
    • Lucy Kaplansky, When I Get to the Border
    • Richard Shindell, The Ballad of Mary Magdalene
    • Dar Williams, Lucy Kaplansky, Richard Shindell, A Place in My Heart
  • Set 4
    • Ralph Blizzard and the New Southern Ramblers, Blackberry Blossom
    • Zubot and Dawson, The Wedding Song
  • Set 5
    • Foxtail, Cryin’ Shame
    • Fruit Bats, Seaweed
    • Fruit Bats, The Magic Hour
    • Tom Savage and Vanessa Longo, We All Make Mistakes
  • Set 6
    • Heartbreak Hill, Pack My Bags
    • David Francey, Broken Glass
    • Mark Reeves, If I Had You

Concerts:

Foxtail
May 21, Aeolian Hall, 8pm, $10
Tom Savage and Vanessa Longo
May 22, Central Library (upstairs), 7pm, free
Fruit Bats and Deers
May 16, Call the Office

The Front

I’ve been a Woody Allen fan for quite a while, probably since I sat down and actually watched Annie Hall instead of griping about how it won the Oscar for Best Picture over Star Wars. (For what it’s worth, and as may be evident, it’s an opinion I no longer hold.) I don’t like everything he’s done–I couldn’t get through Interiors, though I thought the idea was interesting, and Stardust Memories and Bananas don’t do much for me either–but they’re the rare exceptions.

There’s one Allen film, though, that I’ve wanted to get my hands on since I found out it existed a year ago. It’s not in local video rental stores, and according to the IMDb it’s not available on DVD. Interestingly, he made it the same year that Annie Hall (and that other movie) came out. (Oops. Annie Hall and Star Wars were released in 1977; The Front was released in 1976.) The movie is The Front, and thanks to MoviePix I’m finally going to get to see it on Wednesday night.

McCarthyism and the Hollywood blacklist are things I’ve had an interest in for some time–thanks in large part to Joe Straczynski and Babylon 5, in fact–though I’ve never investigated them in much depth. I know a little more than the basics thanks to JMS’ Usenet posts and the similar issues at the core of Tim Robbins’ Cradle Will Rock, but that’s about it. So when I heard that Allen had made a picture scripted by blacklisted writer Walter Bernstein (who, I just discovered, wrote the script for another favourite, the recent live broadcast of Fail Safe) I immediately put it on my must-see list.

Now I just have to find Wild Man Blues (also not available on DVD) and I’ll be happy… for a while, anyway.

For the Folk

Another playlist; tonight’s host was Ian Gifford. Ian doesn’t play extended sets of music, so it’s just a list.

  • Willie P. Bennett, What Am I Supposed To Do
  • Fred Eaglesmith, Rainy Day Blues
  • Fred Eaglesmith, Dancing on the Bar
  • JP Cormier, Now That The Work Is Done
  • Allison Brown, Pizza & Beer (ogg, mp3)
  • Allison Brown, Saving Daylight (ogg, mp3)
  • Trevor Mills, Military Governmental Contract
  • Eve Goldberg, Mama’s Opry
  • Tannis Slimmon, It’s Quite A Job
  • Suzie Vinnick, Something So Sweet
  • Marianne Girard, Maverick Boy
  • Ray Bonneville, July Son
  • Fred Eaglesmith, Harold Wilson
  • Tony Furtado Band, ?
  • Tom Russell, Crucifix and A Death Hand
  • Tom Russell, Carmelita
  • Tannis Slimmon, There’s A Lift

Ian only mentioned one concert not part of Allison’s list last week: a group called Wild Turkeys is playing at Suz Blues House tomorrow.

So far behind

I really need to get caught up on CSS; I didn’t even know that :last-child was in the CSS3 draft specification, let alone that it’s supported by Mozilla. (Er, Phoenix… um, make that Firebird… oh, no, wait, Mozilla Firebird… oh, let’s just say it’s supported by Gecko and get it over with.) An unrelated trail led me to this message on Daniel Glazman’s weblog, and trying to figure out how to duplicate :last-child by applying :nth-child() led to the spec.