Richard Harris's Blog, page 36

Rest in Peace, Stuart McLean (& Dave)

Few radio personalities are rock stars like Stuart McLean (1948-2017) was for almost four decades. Although he was little known outside of Canada, he will remain a rock star in the eyes (and ears) of countless Canucks even though he is no longer with us. Why? Simply put, he was an ingenuous storyteller with a voice and flair like nobody else out there. This was most poignantly captured over the last 20 years through The Vinyl Café, arguably the best radio show we’ve heard in Canada in a generation.

I not only have fond memories of listening to him on CBC Radio 1 every Saturday morning, but had the pleasure of seeing him live in London, Ontario years ago. Mr. McLean was a one-man wrecking crew in the best possible way: he captured your attention immediately, held it with gravitas, then sucker-punched you with a quip or out-of-left-field one-liner that brought down the house.

The feckless yet impossible-not-to-love character of Dave, owner of the Vinyl Café record shop, will go down as one of the truly great radio characters in that medium’s history.

Click here to read about the extraordinary Stuart McLean, watch a video about his life, listen to a tribute in his honour, and relive some of his vintage stories.

Quote of the Day

“[H]uman consciousness has been reduced to a panicked blur, a zoetrope of galloping despair.”

I love this line! I didn’t even know what on god’s green earth a “zoetrope” was before reading it this morning and I STILL loved it. Awesomeness as its most awesome.

This quote comes from an op-ed by Lindy West in The Guardian yesterday called “The first 25 days of Trump have been a zoetrope of galloping despair.” The preamble is as follows:

Today, during my morning routine of opening my laptop, clicking on literally anything, and just screaming and screaming, I made the astonishing discovery that Donald Trump has only been president of the United States for about three weeks. Which is weird, because I could have sworn we had fallen through a tesseract into the airless crush of a two-dimensional void at least seven eternities ago, or what would have constituted seven eternities if such a place had a linear concept of time. Turns out, though, it has only been 25 days, we are still on earth, and every cell in my body has not been excruciatingly flattened into pure math. It just feels like it.

It’s an understandable mistake, I think. Trump has really been eat-pray-loving his way through his first month as the most dangerous man on earth, seeding so many potential atrocities – including, perhaps, the breakdown of the republic itself – that human consciousness has been reduced to a panicked blur, a zoetrope of galloping despair. There are simply too many emergencies to hold all of them in your mind at once. Cecily Strong captured the feeling on this week’s Saturday Night Live: “Let me just say, you’re doing too much. I want one day without a CNN alert that scares the hell out of me.”

Spicy Spice might like using dolls to explain things to the media on a certain TV show, but with Donnie T. I think his pictures speak more words than any painter at anytime in history could ever evoke if not for the T.’s sage choice in art.

I’m not really sure what that means exactly, but here goes my poor attempt to capture the essence of it.

This is your brain.

This is your brain in the Donnie T. era

 

Spicy Spice: The 6th Spice Girl

(Siobhan Spicer shares a light moment with himself after mistakenly referring to the “Cold War” as the “Frigid Battle.”) 

Semantics matter. So do names. After referring to the Canadian prime minister, a man we Kanadians (oh, spelling matters, too!) call Justin Trudeau – or simply “The poster boy for the Hair Club for Men” – as Joe Trudeau, Siobhan Spicer has officially earned himself a place in the world’s most famous girly girl band.

Now known as Spicy Spice, or the 6th Spice Girl, S.S. (not to be confused with the Schutzstaffel…you can look that one up, Spicy Spice ) has not only become a household name in many countries around the world (e.g. Kanada, Mehiko, Ymn, Searia, etc.), but has also landed himself a place on SNL. Well, vicariously, at least.

See, the issue here is that the current White House keeps falling back on idioms like “The devil is in the details.” The problem is that there really is no catch or mysteriousness to the details that the Donnie T. administration keep screwing up. This is not a case of slippery semantics, wily words, complicated conundrums or any other alliterative term you can think of to defend these egregious errors. (Ooh ooh ooh! I just earned a Spicy Point for that one!)

Seriously, though, do we as a planet have to put up with this Banana Republic (No, not the clothing chain, Spicy Spice) for another three years, four months and eleven days? Don’t believe my math? There’s actually a UK site counting it down to the second.

Here’s another idiom: “The blind leading the blind.” That’s a good one because it dates back to the Upanishads, which…oh, forget it. Perhaps a good ol’ Dutch oven from that hilarious Hollander, Erasmus, will do the trick: “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

At this point, I think many of us who could not vote in the U.S. election but must endure its consequences would happily accept a thoughtful, well-spoken cyclops in the Oval Office than what we have now.

But if you want to brush up on your langwage skillz before yer next press briefing, Spicy Spice, I highly reco you reed this beaut of a short story, “Everybody’s Dictionary.”

Quote of the Day

In honour of Valentine’s Day, I present to you some literary gems about that mysterious, all-encompassing, ever-absorbing, selflessly selfish and painfully blissful notion we in English call  .

 

“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.”

― Ernest Hemingway, Men Without Women

“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.”

― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights   

“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”

― Maya Angelou

“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”

― Robert Frost

And finally, from the master of the written word himself:

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls…For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”

― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Where Will You Be in 5 Years?

The answer to the title of this post, according to Jimi Smoot (not to be confused with Jimmy Smits), and vis a vis motivational speaker Charlie Jones, is (1) the people you meet over this time and (2) the books you get through over the next 60 months.

In an article titled “Here Are the 10 Books You Should Read This Year,” Jimi S. argues:

“Of all of the activities or resolutions that we will partake in this year, very few will have the short and long-term impact that reading will. The reason for this is simple. Our perception is a critical part of how we treat people or analyze new ideas. By reading a good book we are able to shift our perception. The world has become more noisy lately, so having the right lens to see things through is more critical than ever.”

Smoot then comes up with a list of 10 books that are must-reads (none of which have ever been in my kitchen), but if you want one person’s recommendation on what to delve into this year, check out the list and judge for yourself.

Quote of the Day

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”

Although many people automatically associate Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) with the statement “God is dead,” a line first published in Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, the great German philosopher was actually pretty optimistic about things, as evidenced by his love of music and the above quote, which comes from Twilight of the Idols (and, no, this wasn’t the prequel to the modern Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer).

Over his lifetime, Nietzsche wrote on pretty much every important subject in the world. And while a lot of people mistakenly think of him as an angry pessimist, I believe he was merely ahead of his time and interested not in turning a blind eye to reality, but to – as he described it – “Philosophizing with a hammer.”

Nietzsche sought to deconstruct our closely held beliefs and value systems, especially the corruption and flawed nature inherent in all human beings. What made him an optimist, however, was his faith that mankind could overcome these “defects.” In fact, in Nietzsche’s later years he “became increasingly preoccupied with the creative powers of the individual to overcome social, cultural, and moral contexts in pursuit of new values and aesthetic health.”

Interestingly, one of the most influential figures on Nietzsche’s writing was another titan of German philosophy, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). I say interesting because Schopenhauer also shared a profound love and respect for music, once stating, “The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.”

Learn to Be a Screenwriter Online

Ever dreamed of writing for TV shows and films but just don’t have the time or financial freedom to quit your day job?. Well, you’re in luck. The Toronto Film School (TFS) offers online courses to become a screenwriter. Per the school’s website:

Be mentored by working, industry professionals, have the chance to collaborate with other creative programs, jump start your career with our accelerated programs and engage in practical, hands-on learning.

Click here to learn more about the program and how you can become the next Aaron Sorkin/Mindy Kaling/Randall Wallace/Aisha Muharrar/Quentin Tarantino.

Quote of the Day

Not only is The Great American Novel my favourite Philip Roth novel, but it’s without doubt one of the funniest and satirically biting stories I’ve ever read. You don’t even have to like baseball (the backdrop to the story) to appreciate the plot; you’ll be too busy wiping away your tears of nitrous oxide-induced laughter to care about “Who’s on First?”

The year is 1943. America is deep into the Second World War, but the country’s pastime must go on! Thus is borne the Patriot League (a fictional baseball league in the U.S.) as a nationwide communist conspiracy attempts to erase its history because it’s become a fully open communist organization.

Roth, who like Alice Munro has “retired” from writing, may have published this book in 1973, and it may be set over 70 years ago, but its message still rings true today. Furthermore and therefore moreover, it’s still a great read all these decades on.

As proof positive of said claim, savour this passage:

“America?” said Gamesh, smiling. “Roland, what’s American to you? Or me, or those tens of thousands up in the stands? It’s just a word they use to keep your nose to the grindstone and your toes to the line. America is the opiate of the people.”

Toronto’s Winter Art Scene

Toronto Life recently ran a piece on six “dazzling” new art galleries in Toronto, information on and interviews with artists participating in Long Winter, Toronto’s most eclectic indoor arts festival, and lots of other art-related things going on in and around the city.

For all you aesthetes out there looking for something to do on these chilly winter days besides binge-watching TV/Netflix shows or drowning your sorrows over events transpiring south of the border, west of the sun, check out the TL piece here.

The CAMH One Brave Night Challenge

[image error]In the wake of Bell’s successful Let’s Talk campaign, and in support of the good folks at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) – the leading institute of its kind in Canada – my book club is taking part in the challenge, which  just launched its 2017 campaign and runs through to Friday, April 7, 2017, in an effort to “defeat mental illness.”

Per the website:

CAMH One Brave Night for Mental Health™ is a Canada-wide challenge to share one night to inspire hope for the one in five Canadians living with mental illness in any given year.

You can participate as an individual or, like me and my Curling Was Full book club, as a team.

Check out the above link to get more details, but every dollar counts and CAMH really is doing great things for the 20% of us Great White Northerners who is/will experience mental health issues in their lifetime.

As a related aside, peruse this article on addiction and the fallacy of willpower, entitled “How To Overcome Addiction And Make Lasting Changes In Your Life,” by Benjamin P. Hardy. If you think “addiction” is strictly limited to alcohol and drugs, you’re sorely mistaken and could benefit from this thought-provoking piece.

Otherwise, I hope you take a moment to consider if you, your friends/colleagues/co-workers, and your family can contribute to a genuinely worthy cause through CAMH.

All the best in staying up as late as you can in helping make a difference to so many men, women and children out there among us.