Grumpy

They showed Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in its entirety on Walt Disney last night. That is one great cartoon, despite its child-manipulating gothic/romantic themes. The painted backgrounds and the animation are just beautiful in their gauzy imperfection. Sometimes I wonder whether I'm being a nostalgic old curmudgeon by finding the sheen and precision of computer animation nauseating; other people seem to like it just fine. But no — it really IS better to feel the hands of the artists in there, and this movie proves it. Did you see when she was singing to her own reflection in that wishing well? That's all I'm going to say about it.

My Deal This Morning

We got up late today and listened to Brent Bambury's less-than-superb Go radio show on CBC with our coffee. He was talking to an audience of teenage-to-twenty-something kids, who were eating up his every word, about what makes the perfect pop song. It was a celebration of blandness. Is it just me, or have we not seen a generation so accepting of the status quo since the invention of pop culture after WWII? I can't remember when was the last time I heard about any youth-generated phenomenon that snowballed into a loud buzz by telling us old farts we're doing it all wrong and have made a mess of everything.

Which we definitely are, and have, so why are all these kids just sitting around happily consuming whatever garbage music and clothing and video games and iPacifiers we hand them and tell them they should like? I realize my generation — fittingly labeled with an inexpressive 'x' thanks to faux-punk Billy Idol — wasn't exactly an earth-shattering bunch of political revolutionaries. We definitely disappointed our hippy forebears, who had hoped we'd carry the man-sticking torch for them by the time they'd grown fat and nostalgic. But at least we hated everything. Y'know? Now I'm fat and nostalgic, and the kids are alright with that.

I used to listen to Brent Bambury on Brave New Waves in the 'eighties, when he was a young man, educating me and all my unseen comrades about weird, alien, excitingly anti-establishment music that we never would have found out about otherwise. Record labels hadn't invented the term "alternative" for it yet. He and others made me realize that there was another, oblique-looking possible world out there beyond our immediate bleak-looking one, and even if we might all destroy ourselves tomorrow, we could at least live in that world today simply by believing in it. Now he's an old man telling our youth about the history of popular music by playing Phil Collins and Taylor Swift songs, and instead of throwing eggs at him or at least giving him the finger, they're cheering him on. What gives?

My Deal Tonight

It's late at night and I should be asleep. We'll be helping our friends Meg and KC move into a new apartment tomorrow, a little closer to our neighbourhood. I'm drinking a cup of tea and trying not to drift off before I get into the bed, but I just wanted to say that I'm super busy with work, having been blessed with THREE new clients this week, one of whom was not even referred to me, but found me on the internet on their own. Great stuff, as long as I can actually get all the work done.

Besides work work work, I've been reading a very interesting book about Kurt Gödel's and Albert Einstein's friendship at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study in the 'forties. Specifically, it's about a very surprising physical fact that Gödel was able to prove during that time: that in any universe described by the Theory of Relativity (which of course includes our own), time cannot exist. Einstein himself admitted that he could find no refutation to this proof, and it should have left any minds which hadn't already been blown by G's Incompleteness Theorem of 1931 somewhere in the stratosphere. But instead, it was completely forgotten. Pretty fascinating.

I've also been listening to Elliott Smith a lot. Have you heard of this guy? Kidding, of course, but I don't know why it's taken me till now to get around to giving him a fair shake. I really love it — like Nick Drake and John Lennon and Neil Young all rolled into one guy. What the heck was wrong with me in the 'nineties? I didn't have time for anything that wasn't Beck or Radiohead?

Anyways, that's my deal tonight.

R.I.P. Alex Chilton

"Shakin' the World" - Alex Chilton


"Alex Chilton" - The Replacements

Shop Talk

I just remembered today that I never did show you the other bit of branding I did, for my friends Jen and Aidan's gluten-free baked goods. Here's the front of their business card. The URL on the card redirects to their current website, as the new brand doesn't launch until early next month. If you were wondering.


Vistaprint produced a whole whack of these, along with fridge magnets, for a really good price, and I have to say I'm very impressed with the product. Usually digitally printed business cards are kind of flimsy and crap, but these are virtually indistinguishable from offset printed ones, which would have been multiple times more expensive.

Besides that, there's been plenty of business coming through the old shop these days, with no end in sight so far. Right now there's a couple of posters, a government educational kit for schoolkids, and a whole new look for a classical concert series's marketing in the works, among other things. Today, though, I forced myself to get outside for awhile because it was absolutely gorgeous out. You know that first day that actually feels like spring, and everyone goes around smiling and congratulating each other on getting through the winter, willfully ignoring the fact that there will probably be at least two more rounds of snow before the weather turns dependably like this? That was today.

I met a guy at a party a couple of weekends ago who does silkscreening really cheap just because he likes doing it, so I'm also working on some T-shirt designs now in my spare time. Just for fun. I'll be sure to run them by you when they're done.

Oh yeah, and happy St. Patrick's Day to all my Irish and/or alcoholic friends!

A Mystical Poem

I dreamed I looked through a keyhole
And saw a beautiful tree,
And sitting on the grass below
Was a man who looked like me.

But could he really be myself
While I observed his soul
And even the eye that saw such things
Was less real than the hole?

OK, it's no "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," but then again, what is?

A Song and a Story Before Bed

Here's a song I just finished recording for a compilation that'll be coming out on Gooseberry Records. The album will comprise recent recordings by people who were involved in the Halifax indie rock boom of the '90's. I think it's to be called Aftermath. I hadn't recorded anything for quite awhile, and had recently written this thematically apt song about people who were prominent in that scene but then just kind of dropped out unexpectedly, so this was a perfect excuse to get back on the Garageband horse. It's somewhat scrappy, but I'm happy with it.



There's been a lot of movie-and-TV-watching around here, but that's all about to change as the winter weather breaks and our enthusiam explodes. Can't happen too soon, either, I say. Last weekend we watched the entire Academy Awards ceremony. Why? I have no good answer for that. We hadn't even seen any of the movies that were up for prizes.

Alison had an inspiring spring experience on the bus home today. I guess this kid of around 20 got on, and he had one of those haircuts that's all sticking up in the back, so she reckoned him to be a hipster scene guy. But then she realized his hair was just really messy and he was actually incredibly nerdy. She says he looked exactly like the "McLovin" guy in Superbad. And talked kind of like him too.

The bus was crowded, so he stood up and held onto the overhead bar. He had a plastic bag with something in it in the same hand he was holding on with, and it kept swinging back and forth, hitting the girl beside him in the head. He said to her loudly, "I'm sorry my bag is hitting you repeatedly in the head." She smiled and said it was OK. Taking the smile as a good sign, he continued, "I can't wait to get home so I can put this bag down."

Then some more people got on and he said, "They'll have to use a shoehorn if they want to get any more people on here." The girl didn't really react to that one, so he reiterated, "I can't wait to get home." This time, he elaborated that he had a paper to write for Monday.

"Good luck with that," the girl sympathized.

"Yeah, and I also have to study for a midterm," he said, "which is also on Monday." Another sympathetic look. Further encouraged, he continued, "And I have to make some cold calls related to this private detective case I'm trying to wrap up."

The girl ignored this last admission.

"Long story," he rolled his eyes.

And then... he started singing! Quietly, at first, but no one was complaining, so he continued a little louder. Alison didn't recognize the song, but it was something complicated and prog-rock-y about the nativity scene. He sang it in its entirety, and when he was finished, the bus was very silent. Finally, the girl said, "That was pretty good."

"Oh yeah?" he beamed. "In that case, for my next number, a little Genesis." And this time, there was no holding back as he began to belt out a Gabriel-era crowd-disperser. Alison couldn't even look at him, she was trying so hard not to either hug him or burst out laughing. People were grumbling and looking mad. The bus driver eventually told him to shut up, and he did.

"I didn't realize singing was considered offensive in these parts," he mumbled to the girl.

She looked genuinely sympathetic and said, "Well, everyone in this section was enjoying it, and that's no joke."

And that's how two people's days were made. Three, if you count me.