A really great concert!

Thursday, November 2nd at the Centrepointe Theatre in Nepean / Ottawa, internationally renowned “Texas blues” * guitarist Sue Foley fronted a show called Guitar Women. The show was partly a chance for her to plug her latest album and her upcoming book about women guitarists, and partly a fundraiser for the Ottawa Folklore Centre’s new bursary for a deserving, would-be scholar of the guitar, under 18 years old (the student that is, not the instrument), whether the student be boy or girl.

* “Texas blues” is a reference more to a style than to geography. In fact, Ms Foley now hails from Perth, Ontario and made a point of thanking “folks” in Perth for bussing a local contingent to this show (! Second Perth citation in a row here.). I could rabbit on about what make some blues “Texas”, but not surprisingly, someone has (or some several have) done a much better job of it on the Wikipedia web site.

I’ve been a big fan of Ms Foley’s for years. She has a clear nasal voice that seems tailor-made for singing girl blues but it is her electric (in every sense of the word!) guitar playing that has always wowed me. Her trademarked instrument of most frequent choice is a pink Fender Telecaster that has been custom painted to give it a vaguely paisley appearance. It (and she) is pictured here.


But a bonus for me was knowing in advance that also on the bill was a slide guitar player I had last seen around about 1972 in a small pub at Carleton University’s Unicentre – Ellen McIlwaine. As it turned out, on this night she was clearly the anchor around whom the concert was framed. Sue Foley was officially introduced as the host, on a bill that would also feature some stunning guitar work by another blues guitarist named Roxanne Potvin and a slide guitar whiz named Rachelle Van Zanten. But when Ellen McIlwaine was onstage, it was clear that she was the grande dame of the guitar to whom the others deferred. She was introduced by Rachelle Van Zanten in what was probably intended to be a deeply moving story about driving across the northern US very late one night and being reduced to tears when the McIlwaine tune, “Say a Single Word”, came up on her mp3 player. As she looked across at Ms McIlwaine, sitting patiently but clearly uncomfortably while a young woman about a third her age lionized her, Van Zanten must have seen the unspoken, “Oh c’mon!” radiating from her idol, because she paused and said, “OK, shut up and play the guitar, right?” It brought the house down and immediately yanked the stage back to the “Let’s have some fun!” atmosphere it would prove to be from beginning to end.

I already own just about everything Sue Foley ever recorded, so I came home with “Mystic Bridge”, Ellen McIlwaine's most recent CD, that is a weirdly hypnotic blend of east and west that she described to us as “an album whose heart is in India, but whose soul is in the south”. And she didn’t mean Bangalore.

The evening’s format allowed for lots of opportunity for each of the women to showcase in turn her incredible abilities on the fret board. And as an added bonus, there were also several style mergers. After telling her story, for example, Ms Van Zanten sang the small, sad “Say a Single Word”, while its writer sat a few feet away providing her own guitar counterpoint.

And Sue Foley let it be known that she and Ms Potvin were in the process of finalizing the assembly of a band to unite for a coming tour and to produce a new album together. The two then united for a blazing preview of just what a show that is going to be! At one point, standing face to face, they traded electric blues licks at a pace that had the audience just bouncing along, erupting in applause when the two guitarists finally backed away from each other.

The finale – and you just knew this was coming – was an onstage showcase of how well four guitar masters can work together, even though the music they played was authored by just one of them – fittingly, a brace of Ellen McIlwaine tunes. (In introducing the numbers, she was hilarious. She had already told the audience she is coming back from two hip replacements and has only recently recovered the ability to be able to do a simple thing like take a shower standing up. So she made a point of saying, “Look, we have an official ‘finale’, but you know the drill. We play it. Then we’re supposed to say good bye, walk off stage while you scream for a while, and then come back on to play our real last song, OK? But I’m getting too old for this walk-off-the-stage-touch-the-back-wall-chat-for-30-seconds-then-come-back-on-after-you’ve-screamed-for-a-bit crap. So I’ll just hang around, let the girls do that thing, and then we’ll do our second finale. Got all that?”)

Which of course was exactly how this fantastic show ended.

I was sufficiently taken with the show that I was moved to seek out the means to contact Ellen McIlwaine and tell her so. The miracle of the Internet led me to her website, a “Contact Ellen” option and, within two days, a reply. I mentioned to her the last time I saw her, and my recollection of a guitar-heavy tune that I remembered as “40 Guitar Band”.

During the concert, she had also mentioned that her most recent CD had been released, for the first time in her long musical career, on her own personal label. She had expressed to the audience that she was motivated to take this enormous step because of her long-standing consternation over having to buy a large number of her own CDs from the label with whom she had been contracted, and then turn around and sell them at her concerts in order to extricate herself from the debt of having had to purchase them in the first place. In this, she told me she was not alone, adding that, in fact, precisely the same requirement is presently constraining two of her three co-performers at the concert. So here’s a thoughtful little plug to buy indie where possible:

“hello! that was 'roosters' at carleton university i think and the song is called '30-piece band'. thanks for all the years! so glad you all enjoyed the show...we did too! i am so proud of the new cd and of finally starting my own label...we did two other dates in ontario (sue, rachelle and i) and i heard that they are both in debt to a label (yet another!) in germany which financed recordings for them and sold them back to them to sell at shows and now they owe big bucks to the company! no more! i will own all my own recordings from now on. i hope they will do the same! thanks again for coming to the show and for all your wonderful kind words!... it keeps me going! i will put you on my concert dates email list and keep you posted if i/we come through again. take good care. ellen”

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The spam game…

After literally years of my complaining to my Internet Service provider – Rogers – about how much “unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail” (that’d be yer “spam”) was landing in my in-box, they finally came up with a not-too-bad filtering system that traps probably 99% of it in an easily-set-up “Bulk” basket that sits on their server’s memory, before it ever gets to my computer.

So spammers have to come up with more creative ways to try to get around it. But Rogers, to their everlasting credit, flags spam not by its subject line, but rather by how many addresses are in a message’s “To” Field. (That could be bad news for anyone who has me on a many-address “family” or “friends” mailing list, because your messages go first to this “Bulk” basket, rather than to my “In” basket. However, it takes me no time at all to scan the “From” field in these messages and exercise my “Move to” option to transfer such messages to my “In” basket before downloading them to my home PC.)

But as I quickly scan the messages flagged as “Bulk” to ensure I don’t miss one that isn’t spam, I can’t help but chuckle over the often sad ways spammers will try to circumvent spam-blockers. A lot of people, for example, have spam-blocking that begins and ends with an embedded instruction to their e-mail program to automatically dump anything into their “Trash” if it contains in its subject line a word like, for example, “penis”, or “bigger penis” (because as any regular receiver of e-mail knows all too well, a sizeable number of spam messages offer the recipient the opportunity to acquire a bigger one). So a spammer will send out a subject line like “Get a biger peni$”. See how that works? If your only spam filter is a command to block a specific, correctly spelled text, you’re still gonna get the “biger peni$” e-mail.

And that’s why I like Rogers’ filtering. They ignore the subject line and dump “biger peni$” automatically because it was sent to hundreds of “To” addresses at the same time. And that suits me just fine.

All of which is a very long-winded introduction to the observation that, when an e-mail message landed in my spam-trap recently under the Subject heading, “Small pen is?”, I chose to fill it in mentally with “… mightier than the letter-opener?”

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Bug o’ de Blog

For the past few years, I have worked myself up to the point where I am now religiously reading the white “Nutritional Information” boxes on the groceries I buy. (By “religiously” I mean of course that halfway through the list of ingredients and the column of numbers, I invariably will have muttered “Jesus H Christ!” to myself at least once, more likely several times.)

I’ve come to reluctant terms with the startling – and disappointing – discovery of just how much salt is packed into processed foods (Powdered and cubed soup base, for example, is just evil. Ingredients in this country have to be listed in descending order of their respective presence in the product, and in at least two of the popular brands of soup stock, salt is the very first ingredient. Soup stock powders, in other words, are essentially just flavoured salt. A single Bovril cube or one of its clones can shoot fully 1/3 the recommended adult daily maximum intake of sodium into your system. But I digress.)

But my main beef (haw haw) with such information is the necessity of determining just what constitutes a “serving”, even on what seems at first glance already to be a simple, single serving portion. Reading that line on a product is a real education in just how much smoke and mirrors a “food” – and don’t think I’m not using that word very, very loosely – producer employs to minimize the visible coronary risks associated with consuming a particular product.

Take, for example, what looks for all the world like a single serving of a bottled beverage – “Minute Maid Pink Grapefruit Cocktail”. It is “single-serving”, as it turns out, in name only. In most convenience stores and supermarkets, it typically is sold in a 473 mL bottle. Now just how in hell anyone decided the fluid in the bottle should total 473 mL was at one time way beyond my rational thinking. But now I understand it to be a sop to the vastly larger markets south of the border, where the imperial measure is still the standard order of the day. And 473 mL converts precisely to 15.994 US fluid ounces. Or to flip the conversion, a 16 US fluid ounce drink converts to 473.176 mL – rounded down to (surprise!) – 473 mL, an amount that for absolutely everyone who buys it and drinks it is a single serving!

But check the “nutritional information”. And note the fluid measure that someone has decided will be a “single serving” – 250 mL (!?). That number, and the percentage daily intake of each of the ingredients, seems to have been based on some God-only-knows-how-it’s-arrived-at portion of the liquid volume of the contents. And the “single serving” is never a simple fraction like “one half” or “one third”. 250mL, for example, works out to 8.453 (plus five more decimal places) fluid ounces. Which doesn’t matter anyway, because no one who has passed his or her fourth birthday is going to drink less than the bottler’s entire danged two cups’ worth at a sitting.

So what can we learn from this? Obviously that the labeled bottle’s size is governed by the vastly larger US market demands, but the label’s information in this country is determined by Government of Canada regulation. The combination offers the consumer all the helpful use of receiving a VHS instruction manual with your new DVD recorder.

But for a real laugh, if you’re given to occasionally snacking on something with “Frito-Lay” or “Humpty Dumpty” on its label, or a sugar-rich breakfast cereal, take a look at what they consider to be a “serving” (usually an odd derivation like “approximately 15 chips” or about 1/3 cup of cereal). Well sure, if you’re a friggin’ anemic squirrel, I guess. But for most humans, it’s maybe a trio of bites, if that much! Try limiting your “serving” of Lay’s potato chips to the label’s guideline. Their marketing types didn’t come up with “Betcha can’t eat just one!” for no reason.

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And finally, from the “Why in heaven’s name do we put up with crap like this?” folder, I really can’t say it much better than did columnist and author Paul Wells in a blog entry he made on Monday, November 6:

From Question Period today:
Bill Graham: How can the Prime Minister pull out of the Canada-EU summit? How can he justify this decision when he will already be in Europe for a meeting of NATO and in the region anyway?

Jason Kenney: First of all, Mr. Speaker, I would note that the last Liberal prime minister cancelled two EU-Canada summits.

————

True. I may have been the only press gallery member with so much time on my hands that I noticed Martin's two cancellations. Still, it's probably not great when your excuse is that you're no lamer than your predecessor.


Vote for us – we’re no lamer than the previous crooks. Now there’s an epitaph for the leaders of the New Millennium.

… But to end on a political news o’ the day upside, as this issue was gong to press, the media coverage of the day was reporting the recapturing of Congress by the Democrats in the US. Anyone interested in starting a pool on the date of the first Presidential veto of House-approved law? For bonus points – name the first new piece of Democrat-driven House of Representatives law that’ll earn the Presidential thumbs-down. (Minimum wage? Structured troop withdrawals from Iraq?) Our lines are open.

Until next time…

Hallowe’en in the federal public service…

In the Government of Canada, every department has its Human Resource (HR, what we used to call “personnel” or in those even more distant, pre-politically-correct days, “manpower”) cheerleaders. By now, you’ve probably seen that TV commercial where the guy says good-night to a half dozen office “types”, including, “Good night overly cheerful HR lady…” That commercial is hilarious, because it’s bang on with its labels. [“Good night nobody-knows-what-you-do guy” gets the biggest laugh in our house. Because (a) my better half knows at least one in her workplace; and (b) I am one in mine.]

On Hallowe’en in the federal public service, you can pretty well identify who works in a unit with just such an overly cheerful HR person. They are the people walking through the common areas in the most outlandish costumes, usually with semi-sullen “Holy shit, I can’t believe I let myself get talked into this!” looks on their faces. But what makes it uniquely Public Service is that they also seem to have commanded themselves to be utterly oblivious to their often-bizarre external appearances and, in every other way, to act as though it’s just another day in the halls of Government.

On Hallowe’en, while returning from a meeting in another of my complex’s quartet of towers, I passed a fellow walking along with three other guys in suits. He, on the other hand, was decked out in a truly magnificent rendering of, as nearly as I could figure, the elder Pharaoh from the old Cecil B DeMille / Charlton Heston take on “The Ten Commandments” – Egyptian headdress, elaborate collar jewellery, flowing white robe, and sandals. As far as I could tell as we passed each other, he was participating in a walking meeting.

And I imagined that his three colleagues were managing only with great difficulty to sustain straight faces in the presence of someone who, really, they probably just wanted to grab, look full in the face and shout, “Let my people GO!” And I also wondered why this guy even bothered to go to all that trouble when it was clear that his day’s work schedule was proceeding unimpeded by any duly costumed acknowledgement to the last day of October’s marketing-bastardized pagan traditions.

Seconds later, several paces on, I passed a line of people waiting for the opportunity to stock themselves from the local Tim Horton’s coffee / donut shop. And amid the variations on standard business dress stood one person encased in a full-blown (literally, because I think it was inflatable) outfit that made her look like a giant cartoon sumo wrestler. At least she was laughing, but that might just as easily have been a function of the fact that, at that moment in time, she was in a coffee line-up rather than at her workspace. The rest of the people waiting in line, on the other hand, made no visible acknowledgement whatsoever of the presence in their midst of a pseudo sumo wrestler roughly three times the size of anyone else.

But to me, far and away the most pathetic (“pathetic” here to mean, “deserving of pathos”) example was a woman who works not too far away from where I do. She had gone to no small amount of trouble to stuff herself into a Winnie the Pooh costume of a quality on the order of a sports team mascot. But when I saw her, it was near the end of the day, when it was apparent that spending the day indoors while completely encased in a mountain of fake yellow fur had perhaps triggered episodes of overheating. Because when I saw her, she was in profile and had peeled the entire upper half of the costume away and rolled it down around her waist.

Now a large Pooh-bear head is not something that rolls, so from where I stood it appeared to protrude oddly from her midriff, looking for all the world as if it were erupting from her. In fact, it looked exactly like someone had poured an entire bottle of tequila into Hollywood Director Ridley Scott, pointed him in the direction of a word processor and issued to him the blunt direction, “Ridley old man, we love the ‘Alien’ idea, but you need to make it more kid-friendly.”

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“Head-scratch-o-the day – 1”:

One has to ask if the US Foreign Policy Association knows something the rest of the world – especially Canada – hasn’t cottoned onto yet…. Like, f’instance, the target of the next major US-led pacification incursion to share the American version of democracy with a world hungry for mid-term elections. The following ad was linked via a web log I read occasionally:

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“Project-Based Linguists
Organization:
Kwikpoint
Location:
United States (Alexandria, VA)
Website: http://www.kwikpoint.com
Contact Information:
Larry Golfer
Phone: etc
Email: etc
Description:
Immediate need for project-based native speaking linguists in Afghan Pashto, Farsi, Dari, and in Canadian French. No translation involved. Project involves creating phonetic pronunciations of translated phrases for military/intelligence use. Pashto, Dari and Farsi linguists selected must have current, colloquial, Afghan "street language" knowledge of their respective language. Canadian French must be Quebecois. The material is not formal or in a literary form of the language. Must be familiar with basic military/intelligence terminology. Compensation is hourly, to be negotiated. Professional references on linguistic ability required. Reply to email listed.”
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“Canadian French”? Specifically “Quebecois”? I’m thinking the Jean Charest government in Quebec might want to send off a quick memo to the Harper government in Ottawa… “Uh Stephen, d’ya think maybe you could put some accelerators on that program you announced to train and arm the guards at Canadian border entry points? And could you upgrade the training beyond ‘How to deal with a rumoured wingnut approaching with a pistol’ [“Run away!”] to ‘How to deal with a mechanized column of US Marines armed to the teeth and supported by Hellfire-missile-equipped Apache attack helicopters’. Like… NOW!!? Love ya. Cheers, Jean”

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“Head-scratch-o-the day – 2”. Here’s the start of a recent Government of Canada news release of the type that crosses my desk ten times a day. Once you get past the process of wondering just what sort of news organ in the entire country could possibly find even a shred of interest in the opening sentence, perhaps you will come to that place where, like me, you have more questions than answers, exactly the opposite of what a news release is supposed to do. (Recently I was asked, in my place of work, to undertake a review of departmental media coverage for the past few months and to include a comment or two about why certain program announcements received no pick-up whatsoever in the media. It’s too bad I didn’t have this news release available at the time. Because the stultifying dullness of its first breathless paragraph is also the answer to that question. But I digress.):

“OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Nov. 1, 2006) -- The Honourable Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources and Social Development, announced today that the Agreements on Social Security between Canada and the Republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will enter into force on November 1, 2006. The Agreements apply to Canada's Old Age Security program and the Canada Pension Plan, and to the comparable respective pension programs of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.”

As the news release itself goes on to explain in the most ponderous language possible, the agreements on Social Security mentioned here are aimed at ensuring that Canadian workers will continue to receive their Canada Pension Plan if they’re sent to work in the Baltic republics, and also that they cannot be compelled to contribute to the Baltic countries’ pension plans while working there. So then I wondered if perhaps I was being overly glib in light of the possible extent of such circumstances.

(GoogleGoogleGoogle, “Canadian workers in Latvia”): From “latvians online”, February 7, 2006: “Small-town Canada man plays hockey in Latvia”…

So in response to the question immediately above (Am I being overly glib?), that’d be a nope. But wait a minute here… OMIGAWD!! “But 23-year-old Vilis Ābele from Perth, Ontario…”.

He’s from my hometown! (So obviously it’s a huge issue.)

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And finally, if you’re feeling at all anti-corporate as you read this update, well then you’ll appreciate this little zing from Maclean’s columnist and regular blogger Paul Wells who, in addition to all his other scribblings, has recently penned an insider’s look at Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s election win earlier this year, entitled “Right Side Up”. As he notes in a recent blog entry, it’s even findable in Ottawa, our nation’s bastion of conservatism, if you know where to look:

“My book is ‘now available in bookstores,’ if by ‘bookstores,’ you understand I mean ‘probably not the store you're looking in.’ Exceptions, in downtown Ottawa, include Nicholas Hoare on Sussex, which is not stocking it prominently but which seems able to cough up copies if you ask; and Smithbooks on Sparks St., which has been restocking its hardy little pile of Right Side Ups as customers have streamed in. Britton's on Bank St. in the Glebe is also selling Right Side Up, I'm told.

The Chapters cornerstone store on Rideau, on the other hand, seems genuinely not to have considered that a book about the Prime Minister of Canada might draw any interest, a block from where the Prime Minister of Canada works. Not a copy. Nary a one. But then, why should I expect better from a chain that has failed, completely, to update the cover art on their website, four weeks after my publisher asked them to?

This explains why my book launches — in Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver, Sarnia and London — will be staffed by independent booksellers, who will keep the profits, and my thanks, for showing slightly quicker wits than the Brezhnevian behemoth of Canadian bookselling.

‘The World Needs More Canada?’ Depends which parts.”

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And a peek head to our next entry… back to things musical and a review of a completely fantastic recent Ottawa concert… plus the second Perth citation in a row!

A la prochaine.