THE SIMPLE THINGS 2: THE REAL SNOW DOGS

Anyone remember the Disney movie Snow Dogs, starring (and helping with the career downfall of) Cuba Gooding Jr? If you don't remember that's probably a good thing, as its pretty much a piece of dreck. However, a friend gave it to us a few years back. The story involves a border collie who wants to be lead dog of an Alaskan sled dog team. Well, I briefly worked with sled dogs in northern Manitoba and we own a border collie (just the one at that time) so there are moments in the movie that I enjoyed.

But now I have my own snow dogs. One of whom, Terra, got to experience the very first snow day of her life.

Needless to say, Terra seemed to enjoy the cool air and all that frozen water. Because as I've documented in other posts, for Terra, water is border collie crack.

Of course, Miss Hayley is our original snow dog and she too, was happy to quietly express her genteel pleasure on the first snowfall of the season

Border collies love the snow. They are all weather dogs but with those big coats and high energy, they do enjoy the cooler temps. They like to run on/through it as well, I assume it feels good on their pads. And of course, a layer of snow makes them into pirates, sniffing and digging for treasure, even it said snow is covering ground they sniffed only hours before. Hey, its snow, you never know what could be hidden under there.

Above, is rookie treasure hunter Terra, making her first forays into digging. Below, is old pro Miss Hayley, going for a full fledged excavation.

Of course, the one thing snow dogs like to do even more than dig for treasure, is to run ...

Terra really needs very little motivation to run, and Miss Hayley just needs a puppy to chase but Terra is a ball dog and we had some fun with that in the snow. Usually she has launched herself to warp speed before I can even get the ball airborne, so her back is to me as the ball is flying. She usually finds it by sound but in the snow, the impact is muffled. It took her a while to figure out that the ball was on the ground, covered by a layer of snow, sometimes right under her nose. Well, border collies aren't known to be scent dogs. But eventually she got her nose working and learned how to find her ball.

And if you do lose your ball, don't fret, nature is always happy to provide you with a stick ..

And the lovely thing about sticks, they often leave you with little souvenirs you can take home

All Miss Hayley thinks is: Puppy, I don't care what you chase, just get on with it, I need something to herd

So that was our first day in the snow. A simple thing. Just two girls romping around in the white stuff. But yeh, the simple things are good. And I'll keep this post simple as well, and let my girls tell you, that this is the end ..

WOMEN'S BLUES REVIEW 2009

Last month Collette and I saw a terrific blues concert featuring the Downchild Blues Band A great show featuring Downchild, Colin James, Colin Linden, the amazing James Cotton, but it was definitely a testosterone fuelled event. Blues is often associated with men; Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, BB King, et al. But the first superstars of the blues were actually women, like Bessie Smith and Guitar Minnie. And one of favorite annual events in Toronto is The Women's Blues Review.

I love this show because you are always bound to see some familiar performers and get to discover some new women, which was certainly the case this year. You also get to see the Women's Blues Review Band, a group of incredibly talented performers like Suzie Vinnick, Madeline Stowe, Lilly Sass, who only come together for this event. Some of these women have been playing this event for 20 years and it shows. Suzie Vinnick is a fave of ours as an individual performer and she is also showcased in the show.

Other familiar faces included Diana Braithwaite. Diana is awesome, as close to a Canadian Etta James as you're going to get. Many of the women in the show don't make their living singing the blues and Diana is incredibly well rounded but she has a real understanding of the Blue Note sort of blues sound, even to the point of writing original songs that have a truly authentic air to them.

Saidah Baga Talibah is another performer we've seen before in this show. A Toronto local, she's a true professional, performing blues, jazz, show tunes, hip hop, all with a true flair for capturing the audience. I have a small personal connection to this girl. She's the daughter of legendary Toronto performer Salome Bey. Many years ago, I helped Saidah and her mother stage a performance of their original musical Rainbow World as part of a program I ran in Brampton, training youth to do video production. Saidah was just a little girl then. It was great to see her at the show, tall and powerful and confident; but the the bootie shorts were something I didn't want to equate with that little girl back in the day.

Sass Jordan was of course familiar to me. And yes, I knew about her even before Canadian Idol, though I've never before seen her perform live. Sass doesn't sing the blues but she has ballsy, tough, Janis-like voice that still sounds damn good. And the woman can hold your attention.

Now to the to new faces. Terra Hazelton is a local jazz singer who used to work with Jeff Healy and his Jazz Wizards. There is an undeniable connection between jazz (original jazz that is) and the blues. Terra sang two Bessie Smith songs and she carried them off beautifully. Her album art is all dark and moody but in person she was really delightful and had Massey Hall rocking.

Rachelle van Zanten is a Calgary girl who doesn't really do the blues but she absolutely impressed Collette and I. She has a full rich voice and a really unique song writing perspective but what really caught my attention was her powerful, controlled, lyrical slide guitar playing She grew up playing traditional country and toured with the female rock band Painting Daisies but I'd say she has a real solo career in front of her. Women are strong, no question, but this woman's guitar playing was tough, while still being lyrical.

The final performer was Shakura S'Aida. We've seen Shakura before and as a singer, she is power personified. Physically imposing, she prowls the stage in her 6 inch heels, her voice coming from someplace deep inside her, this woman is a force of nature. This year Shakura brought someone special with her. Donna Grantis is a very young woman who came on stage in her gold lame dress, her little open toed gold heels and her sparkly purple guitar .. and proceeded to blow the roof off of Massey Hall. Then Jimi, think Stevie (if you have to ask who Jimi and Stevie are, you're reading the wrong blog) pouring out of this young lady. A ton of technical skill and a ton of confidence. You have to have confidence to play along side Shakura and the two of them complimented each other will, trading Donna's searing electric guitar with Shakura's earth moving natural instrument.

Blues is tough music. These were strong women. It made for a powerful night.

THE SIMPLE THINGS

It's definitely the simple things that are important. The little moments, perhaps unnoticed at the time, but those that linger in the memory for long afterwards. The memory is nice but you wish you had paid more attention at that time, at the moment it occurred, but sometimes its easy to let them pass without proper notice.

Today, I was lucky enough to take note. I had taken the girls for their customary morning walk .. or I should say run. Border collies, be they 10 months old like Terra, or 10 years old like Hayley, would always rather run than walk. This morning we did it in the park, in the cold pouring rain and in the mud. Which means we all came home drenched and mud spattered, some of us happier than the others.

After a quick wipe down of the dogs (yes, my house smells like wet dog, yes my car smells of wet dog, but it also smells of wet hippie, I've learned to lived with it all) they both were happy to take a nap. Terra wipes down easily. She still doesn't have her full adult coat and her short, fluffy puppy fur dries quickly. Miss Hayley is a different story. That is a lot of fur. Even by the standards of border collies, my girl has a massive coat, and in the rain it becomes just an endless mess of curls. Plus, her old bones feel the cold a bit more than the puppy.

So up on the couch Hayley goes and I wrap her up in a blanket. Hey, don't you roll your eyes at me. This is the best method of drying her off and anyway, you look into those beautiful, wise brown eyes and not spoil her rotten. So, I'm a suck. A manly suck, but a suck nonetheless.

I went into my studio to work and came out into the living room hours later. And there it was, that lovely little simple moment of pleasure. My two dogs, my two girls, each in their own space, snoozing happily, satisfied from their morning play, warm and dry and content, both of them now at an age where they are content to relax all on their own.

Come on. Don't be a tough guy. You know you want to say "Awwww"

.

How can you not just feel better looking at these two? Wet-dog-smelly .. yes. Cute-as-shit .. absolutely.

Two sleepy dogs, wrapped in their blankets, just as simple as that ...

... sometimes simple works.

THE "YOU AIN'T EVER TOO OLD TO HAVE THE BLUES" BLUES

Can you to be too old to rock n roll? Rod Stewart, with his failed lounge lizard act says Yes, you can be too old to rock n roll. Mick Jagger, who can still put on an effective live show, says No, you can't be too old to rock and roll ... but you may need oxygen.


Now, can you be too old to make the blues? B.B. King is in his eighties and every time I've seen him, the man amazes me. He may sit on a chair to the do the show, he sometimes loses the lyrics, but when Lucille sings, she still puts the shivers down my spine. Buddy Guy is in his 70's. These days Buddy tends to lose focus during his shows and he tends to gab a bit more but his voice is still powerful and he still plays one of the hardest, meanest, scariest electric guitars I've ever heard.


What inspired this line of thinking was a concert that Collette and I attended this past Saturday night. It was the 40th anniversary of the Downchild Blues Band, held at Massey Hall. Forty years of grinding it out in bars, mostly, a hardcore party band, touring the world, spitting out always enjoyable recordings but making their living on a stage, usually in some place reeking of beer and desperation. The inspiration for the Blues Brothers, according to Dan Akroyd. And for a band with that kind of longevity, a surprisingly cohesive unit.


Founder Donnie Walsh was there, and singer Chuck Jackson, who still has an impressive set of pipes and who has been with the band for 20 years. The "newest" member of the band was the drummer, who has been with the outfit for 17 years. This current version of the band has been touring together for 15 years. As Jackson put it, "We've been through 1,900 band members and two thousand wives. We still keep in touch with the band members"

Blues is certainly a musical form infused with tradition. Its history is well documented by non musical white guys (like me) but more importantly, it's a music aware of its own traditions and it respects them. Blues is a musical form that has survived, from the cotton fields and juke joints of the Delta to the hard urban streets of Chicago and Memphis, to the the stages of England and Europe during the revival of the sixties. Blues is a live music; I don't know how many blues CDs I have, too many to count and I love listening to them but the blues is a living art form and it lives on a stage near you.

Saturday night Downchild kept the blues alive with the their traditional, rollicking, brand of basement blues; two harmonica players, three horns, Donnie's gutsy slide guitar. A comfortable yet thoroughly entertaining middle ground. Forty years, damnit, they have to be doing something right

If Downchild is middle aged, two other ends of the spectrum were well documented. Colin Linden opened the show; you may not know Colin but you should. Besides his own albums, Colin has produced and/or appeared as a sideman on about 300 others and his original tunes have been covered by an awful lot of people. I love Colin's voice, I love his kind of goofy exuberance but man, when he plays that Dobro guitar with a steel slide, it sends shivers up your spine. Colin has been around, not for 40 years, so not quite middle aged.

Downchild brought some players up on stage to jam with them. One of them was a young rock singer called Jonas who had a hell of voice and rocked out with the old men like someone who really appreciated this music. Collin James always showed up and traded licks with Donnie. He didn't sing and I love his voice but this is another guitar that gets the nerve ends tingling. So some blues teenagers in the house, if you get my point.

There was one very special player up on that stage as well, and he represents the blues tradition as well as anyone alive. If I have to put my thumb on a single album that kick started my love affair with the blues, it may be a Muddy Waters album from the 70's called Hard Again. That album featured Johnny Winters and a harmonica player named James Cotton. Cotton is in his eighties, the last living member of Muddy's band and one of the last flesh and blood links back to the Delta. There he was, perched atop his chair, chugging away at his harp, a huge smile on his face. Every person who came up on that stage to play made a point of going to him, shaking his hand or just touching his shoulder. The living blues. No shit.

The other special guest of the evening was Dan Akroyd. He was the emcee, he came on to dance and grunt and play his harp. I have to love Akroyd in this context. I have to. Cuz Akroyd is me. A white guy of no real discernible talent, with a huge passion for this music, who gets to jam with James Cotton. Shit, he may be like my personal deity. And, oh, by the way, as part of the Blues Brothers, also managed to sell a few million dollars. I am so not worthy.

So a great night, one of a kind, blues played in many of its flavours but played hard and soft and sweet and dirty but played to make us stand up and dance and played to help all the men on stage feel connected to that dark, sweet pulse of the Delta

Yes, they were all men but coming up .. the Women's Blues Review.

STATE OF DISUNION

Do we get the system we deserve? Or maybe we rise (or descend) to the level of gov't that we can handle.


To wit: This week I had to take Collette to the emergency dept at North York Gen. Monday she had so much pain she could barely work and it had gotten much worse by Tuesday. She had phoned her doctor, but it was too late to see her, so she suggested we go to the hospital.


When we got to the ER it was moderately busy. Lots of kids. Everyone running around with masks, fearing N1H1 lurking in the vending machines. A little disconcerting actually, all the nurses with the masks on, some even with goggles, like a scene from a B movie where some manufactured plague is about to turn us all into zombies ..


The triage nurse saw Collette pretty quickly and she was officially registered. That was a set up, really, perhaps the hospital's cruel way of toying with us. Because that speed was definitely a misnomer. To cut the story short (OK, I know, that's not like me, but I currently have a cold, and yeh, I should have worn the fucking mask) we sat there for 7 hours. Seven hours, in an ER that wasn't busy and barely had an ambulance come in.


Looking around and overhearing some of the other patients I did get kind of miffed that there were people there who perhaps didn't need to be in an ER. A very loud couple was sitting by us, reeking of booze and the guy's basic complaint sounded a lot like heartburn. Eventually they left, before being seen, after creating a bit of scene. They were inspired to do so by a mother who screamed and wailed because her child was not being attended to in a timely fashion. I don't blame her but it did open the floodgates of people going up to the nurse and yelling. That really didn't work. It only inspired one doctor to tell Security to keep the patients away from him.


Yeh, we wouldn't want that, would we. Doctors interacting with patients. Ewww.


Part of the problem is that after 11 pm, the ER loses one doctor. Yeh, a big hospital in one of the more densely populated areas of Toronto, gosh we won't have any patients after 11 ............ will we?


We all know that Ontario cut back medical services. The same gov't that allowed shop owners to steal millions of dollars of gov't sponsored lottery money and, as an alternative to brick and mortar medical funding, set up online services and the like, like E-health ... which basically turned out to be some kind of pork barrel swindle that wasted billions of dollars of tax payer money. Oh yeh, the same gov't that gave themselves a 23 thousand dollar raise, to improve our quality of service. And we sat our ass for 7 hours in an emerg, before anyone saw us.

When Collette finally saw the doctor, she was out in about 15 minutes with a diagnosis of a kidney infection and a prescription for antibiotics. So we were out there ... too bad the diagnosis was wrong. So not only do we wait for 7 hours, we don't even get the service we needed.

We ended back in the ER the next night. It was even less busy than the night before. Another 6 hrs before being seen by a doctor. At least this time he got the diagnosis right, Collette had a bowel infection. They kept her overnight and sent her home with better drugs. She's doing better now but had to take the week off work.

I'm pretty much pissed about all this. I'm sorry, but I find the quality of service we got verging on shitty. I know I'm not alone in that, and I know, I know, many many people have it way worse. Yet we put up with it. We whine and we bitch and we know its fucked up but we keep getting these inept immoral govts who seem designed to only serve themselves. Like, we'll give ourselves the biggest raise in the history of provincial gov'ts by you all will have to do with fewer doctors.

What?

A recent ombudsman report basically stated that our government's are slow, unresponsive, inept and disenfranchised from their voters and that this has been building for some time. And we built it folks, no doubt about that. We let them lie and bamboozle us and when they fuck up we let them get away with it.

We had to wait 7 hours to see a doctor, but if someone parks the wrong way on my street, they get a ticket in five minutes ...

Yup, we get the gov't we want.

CITY DECORATES OUR HOUSE WITH YELLOW ..

As of this writing, the front of my house is wreathed with yellow crime scene tape, there are three police cars with their flashers on and my lawn is littered with car parts ..

No, I didn't finally lose it after watching Michael Jackson get called a "genius" just because he's dead, and going postal. Earlier today, I'm working here at home and I hear this loud crash, the windows rattle and it causes Terra to jump out of the window where she likes to nap. My first thought was the propane explosion last year that likewise rattled the windows.

What it was, was a car crash, that was actually something more. Our next door neighbour was turning into his driveway and was clipped by another SUV barrelling down the road at a high rate of speed. That car mounted the sidewalk, ripped across my front lawn, hit the street and skidded to a broadside stop, its rear tires blown and the entire passenger side smashed in. Three young guys got out and proceeded to fuck off down through the yards of the neighbourhood.

Luckily, my neighbour is fine but I don't really know how. Both vehicles are pretty wrecked and there literally are bits of cars all over my lawn. The speeding truck missed my nephew Jeff's parked car by inches; after he had the body repaired from being dinged up by a hail storm.

Cops were called of course and we learned that the SUV had actually hit a kid, a teenager, about a block away, by Glencarin subway station. I'm not sure of the status of the young person, but it doesn't sound good. But there is more to the story. These guys were running because they had pulled an armed robbery on a Money Mart. So they're running around my neighbourhood, with guns. The police suggested I not take the dogs down to the local park. Duh.

We seem to be hearing, now, that there may have been a string of robberies, and they have part of the nearby Allen Expressway shut off. They're still investigating the mess out in front of the house. Both vehicles are still out there and I was reprimanded for "stepping on evidence" which turned out to be a tire skid mark.

It makes me angry. All this chaos. For what. I'm no stranger to crime, I'm no stranger to criminals. I understand some of the motivations that put people in these situations. I've committed crimes myself (more than the torture of grammar I submit my readers to here) but I never indulged in crimes of violence. A kid is seriously hurt, maybe dead, my neighbour could have easily been seriously hurt, my street looks like a bomb went off there .. for what? How much fucking money did these guys get? I just hope that they don't create anymore chaos as they run around out there with guns.

So here we are, perfectly safe in our house. Well, not really safe. Instead of the girls getting their customary 90 minutes of exercise in the park, they got 40 minutes of me kicking the soccer ball (under helicopter spotlights) in the yard. So I have a pair of under exercised border collies.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

YOUTUBE ATE MY ZOMBIES: A RANT

I don't use Youtube to host the videos that I post in this blog. I use Vimeo I have used Youtube in the past but I was never satisfied with the quality I got, no matter how I compressed the video. Vimeo allows me to use the Apple H.264 codec and get a very good quality video. The only downside to Vimeo is that using the free version as I do, I'm limited to how much I can upload in a week. Not usually a huge issue, but it can be inconvenient. The other "downside" to Vimeo is that it is not nearly as popular as Youtube.

The video of the Zombie Crawl in the previous post is hosted on Vimeo. But judging by the number (and variety) of motion cams I saw a the zombie crawl, I knew there must be a lot of video out there, probably on Youtube. Collette suggested I post the video on Youtube, so more people could see it.

So I did, and I got a couple of surprises. Firstly, I was pretty shocked at the quality of the video. I uploaded the same 315 mb H.264 file I used on Vimeo and the Youtube quality was good. Really really good. I was very happy with that, in that Youtube doesn't limit the number of vids you can upload and you can load very long vids too. My main purpose for hosting vids is to put them on this blog but it is nice to think that the vid will be hosted on a site accessible to so many people.

But my bliss was quickly demolished by a cold hard reality (isn't that always the way?) Now, I make these vids for fun, I don't use this blog to promote my business or showcase my commercial videos. It's just for entertainment. But i do have a certain standard I like to maintain so I spend some time creating the soundtracks; selecting the music, mixing it with the ambient sound from the video, making a nice mix between different songs, etc. Well, Youtube doesn't give a shit about that. I was totally shocked to find that Youtube had completely removed the audio from my video. All of the audio

The reasoning was copyright violations. Yes, I used commercial music, three songs I think. And yes, I do get the whole creative licence thing. I have had my own work pilfered by other studios and used as their promo, it's not good. But that's business. I'm certainly not making money off this blog or any of the videos on it and it would not be difficult for anyone to take them and use them as their own. I don't like that idea, but I can live with it.

And I get the legal ramifications. And I understand that sharing communities like Youtube are being spanked by entirely greed based entities like the recording industry (and if you think that this kind of legal action actually puts more money in the pockets of the artists, may I visit your planet some day?) So, OK, Youtube scorched my goofy little vid to protect themselves ... I've hosted vids on Google and they do the same thing. Though I have to say I have vids there whose soundtrack Youtube didn't remove and one video they removed entirely for copyright infringements... and since it was home video of Hayley, I'm wondering who's being protected here ...

So, now, what to do. I thought I could always go back and re edit the video using only the natural ambient sound. Creatively, this doesn't appeal to me and it was more work than I was willing to do. Then I find was looks like a solution, a Youtube feature called Audio Swap. They have a library of music that you are allowed to use. It's a pretty good library, with recognizable songs and artists. So although I had put a lot of thought into my original music choices I was willing to live with what the choices with which I was provided. But of course, there is always a rub ...

The problem with Audioswap is that it replaces your entire soundtrack, not just the music. So all the ambient sound was gone as well. So I wondered, was there a way I could download this song from Youtube and use it as my music bed, still maintaining that ambient sound? The answer was yes ... if I was willing to buy the song from iTunes.

OK, take a long pause here. Let's think about this. Youtube removed my audio because it contained music to which I did not have publishing rights, for a video from which I have no expectation of making money. Their solution: Pay them to use a song in my non profit hobby video.

You have to love greed, don't ya?

So the video is living there at the moment with a song from Audioswap, looking dorky because there are moments in the video where people are speaking and even singing but you can no longer here. It's too bad, cuz something has changed at Youtube and I'm finally able to get the quality of video I like, and I like the fact I could post much bigger files and more files there. But you know, I just don't think I can deal with this kind of bullshit. A file sharing site should be about people expressing their creativity to other people, it shouldn't be about said site imposing their concept of economic correctness on to you.

So let's all love Vimeo. Great quality uploads, freedom of expression and a real sense of community.

As for Youtube, clearly, the zombies ate its brain