Air Canada – do you want it, or do you want to live?

My local CBC radio station led this morning with: “Air Canada: do we need it?”

I guess that’s a rhetorical question, like, “use of your left hand; do you care?”

As usual, the Harperites are stepping in to attempt to back up merit-deprived CEOs against the people who put Jaguars in their driveways.  For the Tories, it’s a zero-sum game; labour consequences could ensue for years, but if the ultimate horizon is getting rid of unions and collective bargaining, period, and putting Jaguars _and_ Bentleys in the driveways, then that’s an anthill in the history of humanity worth dying on.

As usual, the popular media (the only kind we have in Canada, that represents maybe 30% of the people, but those 30% are the ones who keep them in jobs) has been playing up airline labour strife, attempting to whip the public up into a frenzy of airline-staff hating mad people.  To what end?  I shall come back to this. 

On every news show, we get frustrated travelers saying, “oh, I can’t believe this.”  Yeah, sure you can’t, until your employer comes to you and says, “look, I want you to keep doing the same job you’ve always done, but better, for a lot less money and security.”  Ok all you free agents, you just go with it.  Maybe next time you’re drilling a well, I’ll kinda like just, sidle up to you and say, “oh, and, by the way, I’m giving you $65, not $85/hr today, tomorrow you’re starting at 3 a.m., not 6, and my girlfriend just borrowed your pickup.”  By attempting to destroy incentive and initiative, and create employees who don’t care at all about their pointless jobs, the Harperites with their unmatchable pensions are effectively ensuring a lack of public safety _and_ poor people who can never complain about Harper pensions.

Travel.  Travel has always been contingent, throughout all recorded history.  No-one ever had a right or a privilege to just pick up and go anywhere on the planet anytime; that never was and isn’t now the case.  There are other factors.  Weather, wars (an ancient place like Baghdad is now off-limits to me; it wasn’t to me when I was younger, but now it probably is for my whole life, because of the people I share the continent with), technology, politics, infirmity—virtually anything can and always has limited travel.

So how about those greedy “unionized” airline staff?  Well, let’s take easily the most visible of all airline staff to us, flight attendants.  If you worked for Air Canada for 25 years, if you were amongst its very most senior and experienced flight attendants, you, yes you, could be eligible for a princely salary of about 45k C.  You’ve got lots of training, you speak 2 or more languages, you have a gruelling and variable schedule, and, after a quarter of a century, you too can make about 45k.  In other words, maybe a third or a quarter at best of Lisa Raitt’s pension when she’s not even working or doing anything.  With that wage, you couldn’t even rent an apartment in a city like Vancouver, and you couldn’t even hope to buy so much as a lean-to on the Canadian Shield.  But oh, yes, all those aggrieved travelers think that *they’re* the only people who work, not you.  It must take skill _and_ determination not to spill coffee in people’s laps.

Or take “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot who, with experience (experience, anyone?) and nerves of steel, landed a plane on the Hudson river (on a river!!!) and saved everyone on board from what had almost certainly been complete disaster—he went before Congress and noted how his pay had been cut 40% and how the greatest aid to public safety was a trained pilot.  Now take the pilots of the recent Buffalo crash, which killed 50 and all on board (http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2009/05/13/buffalo-crash-probe051309.html); the co-pilot was sleep-deprived out of her mind trying to make it to her awesome 16k p/a gig.  The news reports mostly focused on important people on the plane who died, but if they cared why it happened, they might look at desperate, highly educated professionals who couldn’t eat unless they did things most people wouldn’t even try with a paring knife in their own kitchens.

Meantime, over at Air Canada, in the depths of a worldwide recession, CEO Calin Rovinescu picked up a 75% wage increase in 2010, to 4.6 million.  On his salary alone, he probably could have paid enough for pretty well every citizen of Regina to be a pilot like those who crashed a plane in Buffalo.

But ah yes, those greedy unionized workers.  Never “sexy” enough for Lisa Raitt.  (Why has no-one ever asked Lisa Raitt what she thinks a “sexy” issue is?) 

I remember once when I was in Italy and there was a threat of a train strike.  Still, I got on the train.  It was my first time in Italy, it was late on a hot night in the summer, I was alone and I had a definite itinerary and nowhere else to go, not speaking the language, really, and not knowing anyone.  Locals, or habitués, seemed to take the matter a bit in stride.  I sat in a foetid compartment in the wee hours.  I did walk down the corridor and see Italian train employees in natty blue uniforms coolly playing cards in a first-class compartment.  In my compartment was a sweet, ample young (older than me) couple from America, heavily perspiring.  They thought the world was ending, and they were seeing it.  The tide of the red scourge was upon them, enveloping them completely.  Their despair and hopelessness left them utterly without resources or cognitive abilities.  They knew the end was nigh—people, not working, so that they could negotiate—unthinkable!!—and so they hoofed their heavy gear (they were American—and we all know how much Americans have to teach Italians about debt) off the train and sat for a bit, motionless, in the still humid night on the dark platform.  Through the open windows of the motionless carriage, I exchanged a few words with them.  They thought the world, and they, were really quite helpless before a nameless, godless, all-enveloping communism—they’d learned about it in Virginia, and yes, Virginia, they were seeing it, firsthand.  They knew they had to wander off, somewhere, though where they and their god would have to decide later.  And no sooner had they heaved their heavy gear onto their backs and started to trundle away, dismally, into the moist darkness, then there was a k-chunka, chunka, and the train started to roll.  And I got where I was going, to the northern tip of Denmark, all on time.  I was naturally very worried about being stuck in a place where I had no money or friends or ways of communicating, but I had a sense that cooler heads could prevail.  When I think of this micro-second in my life, I’m reminded of Michael Moore’s _Sicko_ movie, wherein he meets with a group of American ex-pats in a restaurant in France, and one of the women points out that, in Europe, people don’t fear their leaders.  People in Europe have high expectations of their leaders; they don’t just want to have beers with them, and they don’t fear that their leaders, birthing a nation, will come after them as coneheads. They don’t want to go hunting with them, and they don’t fear getting hunted by them; they have a rule of law for that, one not subject to the whims of activist leaders. A perception—an expectation--of a relationship of respect and trust exists.

Now let’s come back to Harper.  His government, rather than governing, runs attack ads, and, rather than facilitating business-labour relations to promote a strong economy, eagerly takes the business side in an effort to cow and destroy labour.  In their ideologically driven minds, this makes sense to the Harperites.  Sure, they belong to a party that interned honourable citizens during wars, tried to prevent women from voting, eagerly followed Republican precedents (that earnestly or violently supported slavery) and on and on.  Being on the wrong side of development, progress, knowledge, education, science, and history and so on just doesn’t bother the Harperites, because they have massive personal gains to make from catering to those who like to sleep through veterans’ meetings, like Rob Anders.  There is huge cash to be made.  So that Stephen Harper can sit, anaesthetized on gin and tonics on a cottage-country dock somewhere when he’s 70, gazing dully at the too-bright water and reflecting, between naps, on all the great things he did.

It’s a public safety issue.  If Air Canada can pay its CEO, per year, more than 10 000 times what it pays its most experienced cabin crew, then I, as someone who flies, have safety concerns.  Something is seriously, seriously, structurally wrong with this company, and anyone who values their safety should be concerned. That the government should be jeopardizing public safety with knee-jerk support for millionaire CEOs over collective bargaining should be a concern to every Canadian.

zr

Graham James coaches the Canadian Hypocrites – who win the Immoral Cup

Let me see if I get this.  Graham James was a junior hockey coach, trainer, etc., who worked for years in the Canadian hockey system.  He had remarkable success, and was hailed by members of the hockey establishment repeatedly.  He was one of their guys. 

His wins led to honours and accolades.

But it turns out that, like innumerable adults, he was *also* absorbed with engaging in sexual relationships with the teens he worked with.  You always wonder, with these guys (for it is almost always guys), how they do it.   Well, he was successful, so people liked him.  It’s not like he was a banker losing millions and getting millions as a consequence, for example.  Russell Williams flew Peter McKay around half the world wearing panties of women he’d murdered, but he just kept on getting kicked higher and higher and higher.  Ask ‘em today, not one Tory would not kick Russell Williams, pervert and murderer, higher and higher and higher.

So Sheldon Kennedy came out, and James was arrested and charged and tried and sentenced and jailed and then paroled.  Was he paroled too early?  I don’t know.  I’m not the parole board.  He did the crime, he did the time.

Then intrepid CBC reporter Bob McKeown (who also brought us the incredible investigative Fifth Estate report—“oh gee, American guns are showing up in Canada—oh gee, oh gee”) found Graham James under the cover of a. . .baseball hat (no budgets blown on that one) doing his laundry in Mexico.  Caught, in the act. 

So James gets tried again, after multi-millionaire Theoren Fleury removes the coke spoon from his nose long enough, for the same crime.  I thought there was something like double indemnity for crime.  I mean, say I rip off a 7-11 with a knife tomorrow, and I get 6 months for it, and then I finish my law degree 6 years later, and somebody sees me walking down the street and says, “yeah, I remember you, you said you’d wash my windows for $50—I gave you $60 and you ran away”—does that mean I go to jail again?

What was Graham James doing in Mexico?  Well, who knows.  The media sure isn’t interested in telling us.  Apparently he was working with computers or something.  It is doubtful that he was coaching hockey.  Maybe he was diddling soccer kids.  Who knows?  It’s unlikely he could apply for a job and do anything useful in Canada.

Theoren Fleury didn’t come out when Kennedy did because Fleury still had massive amounts of cash to make—which he made—while being in the NHL.  So he waited, until he was really, really rich, and his hockey career was over, so he could write a book about how, gee, he was hurt, too, and now he wanted to see some millions flow from the book.  If you check into Fleury’s life, you might think Graham James was not the only thing that could have led to him being traumatized by his millions. Holocaust survivors should be so lucky.  Anyone who has been abused should be so lucky.  To pick up millions while not saying a crime was done, so that later millions could be made for saying a crime was done.  There’s Theoren setting a great example—“never say a crime was done if you can make millions before you say it.”  What a role model.

Greg Gilhooley is now being pitched as the intellectual post-abusee.  He went along with James for some time, reached sexual maturity at a time older than a whole hell of a lot of people, went to Princeton, had a successful law career, house and family in the most desirable of neighborhoods, and now, he’s, “gee, it’s tough,”  Tough being a millionaire, sure it is.

It is impossible not to get the feeling that it would be an excellent recuperative if any of these people—Kennedy, Fleury, Gilhooley—all massive millionaires—could take a minute to meet a holocaust survivor or two, those that still exist, and learn something about the complete liquidation of entire families and physical, emotional, sexual, and mortal abuse they couldn’t even begin to imagine.  More than that—they could learn about how it wasn’t just a question of figuring out how to deal with millions, but, rather, surviving and then struggling to find a place and find a community and find a way to do something useful and thrive within it.  Sheldon Kennedy set up a ranch so kids could ride on horseback.  Theoren Fleury wrote a book.  Greg Gilhoolhey went to the _Globe and Mail_.  None tried to do anything that would make tangible change.  Not one sat on a committee, joined a community organization, decided to enter politics—not one.  Plenty of charity golf tournaments, though.  Golf always helps.

You simply can’t expect anyone to act in any way but their own self-interests when it comes to cases such as this, and this is sad.  Take Elliotte Friedman, whose life and wife and kids depend upon his never saying anything critical about hockey:  he noted that, well, if he’d been one of those affected, he’d have been disappointed that James didn’t get more time.  At once covering and spreading his ample hind, Friedman took a time-out on morality so he, like Theoren, could get rich.

Most people in the sports media simply won’t touch this issue, like the aforesaid Friedman (Duhatschek, anyone?—they simply have so much to lose, and nothing to gain).  You won’t find it on HNIC.  Don Cherry won’t talk about it—even Bruce the plagiarizer Dowbiggin won’t speak of it.  Gerbil-mouthed Bob McCown thinks a hockey puck is something he cooked on the bbq. Mealy-mouthed Stephen Brunt can be expected to say nothing, of course.  All of these “men” have a lot of money to make by saying nothing, nothing at all.  Lots of money by saying nothing at all.  They contribute to the problem by refusing to speak so that they can keep their cash.

Pretty well anyone who has lived on earth for a few decades has some experience of, say, cancer.  And pretty well anyone who has lived on earth has some experience of difficult sexual experiences.  Some people have their entire families killed and mutilated and still find a way to fight and struggle their way to having productive families and lives of their own that don’t include millions like the plaintiffs against Graham James.  How do they do it?  Where is the media uproar about them? 

Everyone is falling all over themselves to say that “Graham James is not rehabilitated,” but there is no way to say that this is anything but bitterness.  They all insist that he is not, and that his sentence is a joke.  In other words, rehabilitation is impossible, so lock him up and throw away and the key and gas him while you’re doing it.  I’m right in there with that, but is there not something uncomfortable with people who say, “hey, I’m recovering from abuse, and I’m trying to get better,” also saying “hey, an abuser cannot be rehabilitated, so kill him?”  I mean, what’s the point?  If Theoren Fleury or people making huge money out of Graham James now, like Glori Meldrum, could see James killed off, would they be happy?  Would they keep making money off James?  They need to keep James alive to keep themselves out there and raking in millions.  There’s a lot of money to be made off the perpetual incrimination of Graham James, and people like Glori Meldrum know it; they’d go broke otherwise.  How come Theoren Fleury can make millions over millions by saying “I’m not a crack addict now”, but he can say, to add to his millions, “Graham James is not rehabilitated.”  How come Theoren Fleury, who was undeniably helped to make millions by James, can admit to his own faults and say he’s conquered them, but say someone else never can?   How does this, morally, work?  Say I say I’ve got a problem, but I’ve overcome it, but I look at another person, and I say “no, she hasn’t overcome it.”  How does that work?

It is impossible that one could ever “stop” people like Graham James—priests, scout leaders, etc.  No amount of background checks or whatever will ever stop that.  What we need to stop is our adulation of success at any cost, of wins, of the richest, most faithful, most successful, and so on, as being our moral guides.  We could look, instead, to those who just offered a helping hand, did a good service, took an interest, tried to help, noticed a problem and tried to fix it.  But we can’t do that.  Like our NHL stars, we’re fixated on the star system.  We don’t believe, like Glori Meldrum, that people can get better.  We don’t accept that; we all want to be stars, like Glori Meldrum.  Like Theoren Fleury, after making countless millions, coming out to say “oh, yeah, by the way, I was abused and it hurt me.”  Tough, tough.

We love the abusers, we hail them and love them.  Those who can take over a company, lose millions or billions and get millions in return for losing millions—we hail them.  We love them, lionize them—Glori Meldrum goes to them and says: “help us” and those massive losers throw her a bone and she goes to her website and she says “oh, those people who destroyed so many others, we love them, because they destroyed so many.”

We see someone who makes millions to destroy shareholder wealth—careers, lives, families—as a hero.  Glori does—she takes their cash, eagerly, setting up the cycle of abuse she says (before she gets really rich herself) she’d like to stop.  To see her stunningly sick, slick attempt to profit by the pain of others, go here: http://glorimeldrum.com/  Here you can learn about how she can talk to you, how you can feed money to her, how you can book her, etc.  The sheer disgustingness of how she is profiting off of abuse is amazing.

It’s impossible to stop people like Graham James.  We have to stop the culture that promotes Graham James.  Glori and her acolytes don’t ever want to see Graham James stopped—that way, she’d never get paid, and her profit from abuse would stop.  She needs the money from the abusers to keep her going, keep her rich, keep her in Jaguars.

What we need to do is start aligning our views of morality not with money and success, but, rather, with what kind of social and communal good our morals create.  Again, someone like Glori Meldrum could never imagine such a thing, because she is driven above all by a money motive—whatever gives her money, is good.  And most of us are like that—whatever, and whoever, has money, is good.  And as long as we base our views on money, or wins or success, then we’ll get more abuse.

It’s hard to imagine what would stop another Graham James, but the saddest comment of all is that the *last* person in the world who could ever contribute to stopping another Graham James is Glori Meldrum, the person most fixated on cash and its motive.

Her biggest contributors now—the most successful, the most hailed—like Graham James, are probably the greatest abusers, and she loves it, because she’s getting rich.

The culture of abuse is the one we adore.  We’ve got to stop adoring the abusers, and start teaching ourselves to admire the people who just do good, without, like Glori and Graham and their corporate supporters and friends who shower them with awards, making money from the misery of others.

zr

Obnoxious British accents - Americans Can't Get Enough

Why is it that Americans have become so drawn, in this twilight of their empire, towards cockneyesque abrasive annoying British accents?  One hears it more and more, every day.  Time was, one would hear some rich, or even unaccented American tones, urging you to save lard, smoke Chesterfield, enjoy Roma sherry, try tough cuts of beef, and so forth.  But now, Americans seem to have made a firm compact by which they will not buy useless crap they’re going to have to throw away anyway, unless it comes along with a more-or-less fake adenoidal British accent.  What is the American love for this?  Why have Americans given over their late-night splice and dice ab machine mercials to fake-o British accents?

Sleepin' Forzanis

Sportchek – a business going sideways, fast.

A close friend was talking about getting some new shoes lately, and that made me think back on Sportchek, a business that used to be private, but that is now part of a public, shareholder-driven conglomerate, Forzani Group.  You may know Sportchek as the king of inflated pricing.  For what seems like decades now, Sportchek has used what, in the 70s, must have been a canny ploy—you put up a pair of shoes, say the regular price is $400, then say the sale price is $250—on virtually every item, and then maybe add a little bit more, like, “Ok, we say these shoes cost $400; we’ll sell them for $250, but this week only, you can have them for $180.”  It’s baffling to imagine when or for how long this ploy worked, but still it’s the one Sportchek clings to.

Further, for what does indeed seem like decades, Sportchek has had one special, and one special only, for what surely seems like 365 days a year: “buy one get one ½ price.”  Who, thinking s/he needs a pair of shoes, instantly thinks: "oh, yeah, I better get 2 pair"?  ??  Well, admittedly, I do live in an extremely rich jurisdiction (though not all Sportchek stores are in or near extremely rich jurisdictions), and clearly Sportchek figures, "hey, these people are rich, they'll buy all kinds of stuff they don't need."  Also, there are rich young families, and Sportchek is obviously counting on this, though what dork or responsible parent would be impressed by the inflated pricing in the first place is beyond me.  Obviously, this eternal “special” puts the lie completely to their phony pricing, and makes you know everything they advertise is a joke, but Sportchek ain’t all that swift on the uptake.  And, clearly, they don’t have to be.  They’ve known their ups and downs, but shareholders strangely stick with them, despite their modest achievements (it's the monopoly thing, for sure).  It’d be a strange thing to sit in on one of those Forzani Group (who own Sportchek and their similars) board meetings—a band of brothers so bloated on meatballs their snoozing snoring guts must rock the mahogany table back and forth until one of them snorts to life and says, “ok, this is over, let’s get outta here”  It’s a wonder shareholders put up with it.

Rather than transparent pricing, actually having stock on hand (shoes, shorts—forget it—virtually every Sportchek employee has it drilled into their heads to say “you should try the bigger location.”  Not, “we can call and see if another location has it,” but “_you_ should try to find another location”).  Genius marketing, and again, good enough for the fatboys on the board and their skinnier shareholders.

Sportchek has always of course relied on highschool labour, kids who work part-time for a few months.  You don’t expect them to know anything, and they don’t.  (Recently, I was in an always empty store in a dismal mall I visit once every 3 years, and I was standing there with a rep., and an Asian woman came in looking for birdies—shuttlecocks—and a girl and a boi just looked at her like she was a complete alien until *I*, the customer, finally had to help her out.)  You can’t blame the kids for not knowing anything—why should they?  They’re not getting paid and they’ll only be there for a few weeks, anyway, so who cares?  But what Sportchek really has amped up—and apparently shareholders love it—is the fake customer service end.  What this means is that, say you want to buy a pair of shoes.  It says $299 for $199, but this week $149 (70s marketing).  You get the kid to get you a box of shoes (there's never much staff, so this could take some time).  He brings them.  He hands them to you.  He says: “did I hand you that box of shoes ok?”  You try on your shoes.  He says: “did I watch you try on your shoes enough?”  You don’t buy the shoes, but you look at some socks for your girlfriend (inevitably, buy one get one ½ price).  You go for those.  He says: “please tell them Darren sold these to you.”  You get to the till.  The girl says: “did you get really great service?”  It is just beyond belief cartoonish.  Leave me alone. Rather than do business like professionals, the Forzani Group just wants to coast as fatboys on a 70s wave they never have to get off, and shareholders seem incomprehensibly impressed by how minimum wage highschool kids are made to ask if people are happy.

(No airmiles anymore, either.  Hardly a gamebreaker for me, but a bit of an incentive.  Sportchek isn't on the program anymore, so one slight reason less even to go in to the store and be told that the "NEW STOCK" they're hyping isn't really in that store and you should go somewhere else, etc.)

Business lesson #1:  Be lazy.  Very lazy.  Never think.

The Ever-Incredibly Depressing Jian Ghomeshi of CBC’s Q -- redux

Uuuuuhhhhh, people (now I'm chanelling Jian) -- I wrote one post on this blog, and then a followup; you can read both. Inasmuch as many people offered their colourful responses, Jian's handlers will look like Gordon Pinsent's croquet partners by the time they stop reading this. Told you once--check the date--in 2011--that I was all hacked off about the Ghomeshi show; told you twice in a brief aside--in 2012--that I was still upset but had said all I had to say; and I kept to my word; only in 2013 did I feel obligated by comments both positive and negative to come back on and reflect on comments I'd already made. What is it that people don't get? http://zorgreport.blogspot.ca/2013/02/the-ever-incredibly-depressingjian.html

(Please read or scroll to the bottom to see the actual record of this thread!)

The Ever-Incredibly Depressing Jian Ghomeshi redux

Well, I already wrote another post.  This one I jotted and set aside.  But anyway. Jian is interviewing Eugene Levy, and throughout the whole “chat,” Jian is sucking and blowing and wheedling and whinging and desperately trying to out-Oprah Oprah, and he’s doing it with an intelligent person!!.  I mean, Levy must have slipped on his way out.  Towards the end, though, Jian built to his climax (I am sure it is available on cbc.ca/q, I’m sure), and he suckingly, blowingly, wheedlingly, desperately asked Eugene Levy if he felt that he, Levy, just hadn’t been recognized enough.  I mean, this is so totally beyond bizarre.  You’re talking to a guy who’s Order of Canada, writer, comedian, Academy Award nominee, actor, done his whole career completely on his own terms, and Jian, sucking and wheedling, is saying “d’you, djew, dju, djeeoo ever feel you didn’t get enough recognition?”  I mean, Christ.  This is so impalpable as to require a palimpsest.  What, in the world, was Eugene Levy supposed to say?  “Oh yeah, I always figured I should have been Gary Cooper, or Eastwood or Stallone.”  I mean, think about it.  You’re speaking with someone who has completely achieved his own success according to his own terms in pretty well every dimension of the industry, and, sucking and wheedlingly, you wonder if he thinks he didn’t get enough recognition?  I swear, I would have killed to be there to see Levy’s creepy crawly eyebrows for that one.  Again, pure Jian thinking only of himself, totally incapable of imagining the lives of others.

Probably about the next day or whatever, Jian had his massive FEATURE CHAT with Coldplay.  Anyway.  I’m dating myself now.  I do remember the first hit of Coldplay, that poxy guy trudging along the shore at dusk (maybe dawn) in a trenchcoat saying “it was all . . .yellow.”  Such poetry.  And that man just never ran out of beach.

If you weren’t there for it, I’ll remind you.  It went:

“It was all. . .

. . .yellow.”

Genius.

At the time I do remember thinking (hoo no, you are NOT going to get me to think what Jian was thinking), well, here’s a one-hit wonder.  Shows what I know. 

Anyway so I did hear some of Jian’s “feature chat” with Coldplay, and the astounding thing about it all was that, over the course of what surely must have been nearly an hour, there wasn’t one. . .single. . .thing. . .that had anything to do with anything.  Nothing about the songs, where they came from, the trajectory of their career(s) and the stops along the way, what they thought they were doing as pop artists—nothing.  Families, the industry, producers, travel, evolution of pop forms, crowds and places. . . .  Poof!  Nothing.  Just Jian sucking and wheedling and wondering, “oh, jeeeee, is it so haaaaard to be a popstar??” “Oh, jeeee, it must be so tough, when people say, like, you’re, like, so, like, like, famous.”  “Jeee.”   Linehan was sooooo deep.

Actually my tv was on the other day and CBC, relentlessly pressing the Persian, had Jian on the tv, and I was pleased to see him looking doughy and greasy and fat like a roadie for a Mexican blues band I’d see on the way out of town in an Econoline at Denny’s at 3 a.m..  He did not look like the mo-delle he’s always pitched as, and I kind of liked him for that.  He looked like an actual working man.  I do think Jian works hard.  He just isn’t very smart, and never learned to think of others during his upbringing.  Give me Jian at 2 in the afternoon, and he’s my eeezzylistenin’ compadre.  10 a.m. is too early for Oprah, anywhere in the world.  That’s “Price is Right” time.

It is just a tremendous pity that Jian can never escape himself, or think.  One of Jian’s signature phrases is: “I’m curious about. . .”.  And then he just says, “what it’s like to be so famous.”  Uh, no, Jian—that is not curiosity.  That is just shallow as a wading pool.  Being curious about your grade 7 pimply desires just doesn’t count as curious, but to know that, you’d have to have been exposed to thought, to be able to think of others not yourself.

Anyway, Jian will never be able to stop batting his lashes at himself; he just is what he is, and I won’t flog him anymore.  He does belong in the dreamy enclosed dusky afternoon of general hospitals and gossipy mean girls he can redeem with a wand.

Jian makes Brian Linehan look like Christopher Hitchens.  And with his hushy-gushy "I'm Leif Garrett and so can you!!" attitude, Jian bombs arts back to the margins they’ve always tried to escape from.  Jian’s frothy sucking and blowing insists upon the continued marginalization of the arts.  In Jian’s self-cradled mind, he probably feels he is doing the opposite.  Good for him.  The effects of his Coldplay “chat” are no doubt even still reverberating around the universe.  Late at night, Jian must think: “man, I really nailed that Coldplay chat.”  To what effect?  So Tories could tee off on it?  So people concerned about the arts could be perplexed?  Yes, Jian, you sucked and blowed with Coldplay, but what, other than personal satisfaction, did you achieve?  We sure didn't learn anything about Coldplay.  I'd read TeenBeat for that.

You can see, just by the dates of my posts, that I have tried _not_ to comment.  And I’ll keep trying not to comment.  If I comment again, maybe it’ll be a mockup interview (sorry, sorry, “chat”)—but really I’ll try to stay away.  You can see by the dates of my posts that I really have tuned out.

I really have been able to turn off Jian lately, and that's good, but it is hard to turn off a station you would like to tune to.

Ok, it’s Jian Ghomeshi interviewing Atom Egoyan.

JG:  Huh-eye.

AE: Hi

JG:  So let me see, you’ve been so famous, for so loooooong.

AE: Well. Probably not here, but….

JG:  I mean, you go around the world, and there’s all these people, and you’re like, so famous!!!

AE: Well, maybe it’s different, but. . . .

JG: It’s gotta be so haaaaaaarrrrrddd!  I mean, you’re so famous, and, it’s like, how can you, like, eat in a restaurant, and, it’s like, I’d find that so, like, haaaaarrrrd.

AE: Well, we lead a pretty normal—

JG: --but that’s just it, it’s gotta be so haaaaaarrrrrddd.

AE:  Well, we. . . .

JG: Haaaaarrrd.  But it’s like you say, it’s gotta be so haaaaarrrrrrdd.

AE: Sure, but you, . . .

JG: Find it so haaaaaaarrrrrrd.  I know.  I know.  It’s haaaaaarrrrrrrrd.  Oh man it’s haaaaaaaaaaaard.  I don’t know how you do it.  You must find it. . .

AE: We …

JG: so .haaaaaaaaaarrrrrrd.  Yeah.

Hey wait, Ato, Ato, listen, we’re going to have a feature chat with Scott Baio next Thursday, then we’ve got a world exclusive with Dolly Parton—she’s never been interviewed before in Canada—and Ron Popiel’s coming in, and—look out—we’ve got Suzanne Sommers back again to talk about all the amazing contributions she’s been making to the arts since we talked to her a few weeks ago.  She’ll have lots to say, for sure.  This is going to be the first time in Canada in three weeks Suzanne Sommers has done a feature chat with anyone!!  And then we’re gonna be in Gander for a feature chat with Vic Tayback, with special guests Codmen, and if you want to get tickets, you’ve got to get to our site by Thursday.  Uh, uuhhhh.

And now we get back to out feature chat with Atom Egoyan; hang on, Eggie, we’ve got Dorkbird live in studio today, singing her “I don’t know about art but I heard it on the subway” song!

JG:  Man.  That was great.  Nice stuff.  Dorkbird!!  Live on feature CBC world exclusive.

You'll be back in a minute.

 

JG: you were saying when you took off your glasses—why don’t you do that more often, man, it’s sexee!!  You’re like, so famous, and, I bet, damn those glasses—who’d you get them from anyway?

AE: Probably worn. . .

JG: My guy too!!  I saw this guy and he was like, no, you gotta have it!  Man.

AE: Mm.

JG: Movies—it’s like, you get famous with that, all the time, right?

AE: Well, I, uh. . .

JG: an it’s like so, so, cool to be famous, but what I bet a lot of people don’t realize is that, is that, it’s, like, so hard, to be famous.  Right?

AE: Well, not famous.

JG: That’s what I meeeeeaaaaan.  It’s sooo haaaaaarrrrrddd!  You know, you know, I’m curious.  I’m curious.  I’m just curious.  Curious about just just, just what it means to be so. . .famous?  What is that like, I mean, to be so so famous, like, I mean. . . .  Aw, man.

AE: Well,   

Always pullin’ for Jian, but despairing largely. Always pullin,’ yankin’ in a 3-foot depth.

--zr
{{4 years, 4 posts on this blog.

(I don't blame you for getting bored, but I've as much a right and a responsibility as anyone to be held to complete account for what I have written.)

The first post, the one that EVERYONE read:
The Ever-Incredibly Depressing Jian Ghomeshi of CBC’s Q -- 17/09/2011

The next and final post, that a few read.
The Ever-Incredibly Depressing Jian Ghomeshi of CBC’s Q -- redux 02/03/2012

3rd post (that a few more read):
My decision to at last address some of the so many comments I got about my *2* Ghomeshi posts (my antique internet attitude has always been that you can respond and say whatever you want to say, and I won't editorialize.  However, after many comments, I decided to take up a few of the most common ones).
The ever-incredibly depressing Jian Ghomeshi treedux -- 11/02/2013

The recent post, that a few have read, now that he's really famous (and a post that's already starting to look really antique, like the once-powerful "Copps-May-Shelaghlah Swoonferit Theory of General Sexual Moral Infallibility"):
50 Shades of Jian Ghomeshi: Parsing Jian’s Infinite Self-Regard -- 28/10/2014}}
 

Fixed Elections, F**ked Democracy

 Ensuring dictatorships, as in Russia, one step at a time.

 Of course, political scientists have already dilated at endless length on this subject, so far be it from me to invade that virgin unread territory with any comment I might have.

 Still, I’d like to comment, specifically with reference to Canada, and also perhaps with reference to other countries.

 First of all, let’s consider the nature of “fixed.”  Voters often love this term, for they feel that the word “fixed” somehow allows them to “fix” their representatives to a particular term, and jettison those representatives if the voters don’t like them.  Yes Virginia.

What voters fail to grasp, of course, is that anything “fixed” allows “fixers” to “fix” elections all the more easily.  Thus rendering voting more or less useless.

 Let’s take Canada.  Provincially or federally, parties had up until five years to make up their minds about elections.  Typically, they chose somewhere around four.  If a party went for three (Peterson in Ontario for example), that party got smacked for hubris.  If a party had to drag it out for five (Rae, Mulroney), it likewise was smacked.  Four was the norm.  Canadians knew this, intuitively, as they had for generations.

Now, though, Canada chosen to go with fixed elections, all the time.  (In a precedent-setting unprecedented setting move, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives announced and then lied about their intentions and did not hold fixed elections.) And that means one thing—all campaigning, all the time.  No more policy, no more thought.  Just trying to catch up to the party that has the most cash for attack ads.  It’s sleazy, it’s cheesy, but Canadians love it like Cheez-Whiz on celery.

One year (at best) of policy, three years of campaigning and fundraising.  We have done it to ourselves.  Smugly, stupidly, we feel good about it.  It will beggar our country and bomb our children back to the nineteenth century, but our arrogance will ensure that we wreck the future for our children.  Way to go!!  Now we can be just like Americans, who have no policy debates, only superpac campaigning that leaves 99% of Americans completely out of a say in how their country is governed.

zr

Dreams and Questions (ongoing)

Why do actors in Canadian tv commercials seem to turn up and be in every second ad for a while, and then disappear? I mean, yes, there are some who appear in an ad series, but there's a striking number who appear in several ads for different companies within the space of a few months or a year, and then disappear. Why is that? Obviously voiceovers is a surer gig, because there you can hear the same voices forever. I just kinda don't get it. Is it agents, the industry, the. . .? There's a tall guy on now whose been in ads for at least four or five different companies. . .what will happen to him? Companies who use tv advertising obviously aren't too concerned about actors turning up in various commercials at almost the same time, so being a fresh face isn't much of a big deal. But after a few ads, poof and that actor is gone. Or there's the attractive blonde middle-aged woman who appears in one ad playing, quite impossibly, an impeccably tailored, cheery sales telemarketing slave for a company hawking insurance for old people, and then in another ad for a company that helps you find out about dead people you may be related to. She may be typecast, but will she be recast? I don't get this phenomenon. I mean, yeah, sure, I suppose that, once in a blue moon, one of these actors does go on to something of a tv career of some sort (and many work on the stage, say). It kind of makes me think of small European countries where I've spent lots of time and where it seems every second movie has the same actors. You almost feel bad for any other actors in a the small country, because it seems only a handful ever get a chance. Then again, there's also a kind of wry or warm familiarity one feels upon seeing the same face, yet again, in yet another different role. And of course small countries with unique languages, or maybe just small countries, period, have supported domestic film and tv industries, unlike Canada, where it's a no-brainer if you're CTV, or even CBC alas, to show _Wheel of Fortune_. Maybe Canada was once like some of these other small--but independent--countries of today. I could well imagine that, decades ago, if John Vernon's or Barry Morse's car broke down near your house and he came by to ask to use the phone, you'd just welcome him in with a "hello John" and offer him a coffee or a beer, just as if he were a close relation (for, in some ways or metaphorically, that is what he was). Does that, could that happen in Canada now? I doubt it. Anyway, long-winded post, but I'm sure you get my drift.

Why is it that so many obvious computerese words are still picked up by spellcheckers?  I mean words like “internet,” for example.  Were spellcheckers pre-invented in the 1950s?

Why does it take your printer so long to grasp that you wish to print something?  Is it a _printer_, or does it secretly have many other activities it routinely performs, like balancing a beachball on its nose, that it does not tell you about?  Why does my computer want to tell me that “beachball” should be two words?  After a week end pick up base ball game, do programmers routinely have hi balls at balls on beaches?

Picture a standard 4-sided stand-up metal grater.  What is the side with the holes that are kind of star-shaped and like tiny grapeshot extrusions for?  Oh, I’m sure I’ve used it.  But every time I grate something, I kind of look at it and wonder.  The other three I understand.  Is the mini-bullet-hole meant mainly for garlic and ginger, or. . . ?  What do you use it for?

What is the real significance of Bill Haley and the Comets in the history of rock n' roll?  I am a bit of an expert in this field, believe me (radio, record, writing experience--so, naturally, I'd need fairly serious responses).  Sometimes I try to situate it, and I'm sure I have, but maybe I've forgotten now.  I can do it again (determine the real significance of. . .), but anyway, I leave it there.

Why do guys sit on pec-deck machines at gyms and stare dully like zombies in front of themselves forever?  Sorry, tricked ya.'  Rhetorical question.  Same reason they sit on ab-cruncher machines and stare, dully, forever.  Because they are vain and hope that, if they can only improve their pecs and abs, they will be much hotter to girls.  In all the years I've used gyms, I've seen so many of these guys, who sit, dully, staring, hogging one machine to themselves, so that they may eventually heave themselves into the activity of doing *1 or 2* more reps (so powerful to them is the notion of their potential super-attractiveness, that if they can do just one more pull, one more crunch, they will attract girls like flies on scat, that, like children keeping a toy, they will not leave that machine until their energy fails utterly, and their dreams of being *that* scat go on hold for a few minutes more).  "Oh good for you," I want to clap.  That's the internal reasoning.  The external reason they stare dully is because they know they look stupid--anyone sitting or standing there, staring, forever, doing nothing, does tend to look pretty stupid.  They know they should at least be looking at a magazine, or looking at the menu at McDonald's, or putting gas in their trucks, or doing _something_--they feel how stupid they look, too.  So they stare, dully, trying, hopefully, to look _really really serious_, as if they are about to do one great massive set, and as if they are real bodybuilders, despite the fact that they'd probably have to be rescued by emergency personnel if they tried another machine. 

--Ok sure it has to do with bubbling thicker-consistency milk, but how come the *ONLY* kind of soup that ever seems to boil over and make a %&UTFVKJ()&*!Z!! of a mess is something like cream or celery or cream of mushroom or whatever?

--Why, when it takes longer actually to think "Ok, I am not going to signal now.  I won't.  Ha ha.  I won't do it," do people not just signal??  Sorry, rhetorical question again.  It's a passive-aggressive thing.  People in long left-hand lane lineups who fail to indicate that they want to turn are expressing their tinytude and desperate desire to feel big and important, like guys who need big dogs or trucks to make themselves feel well endowed.  But I still have always wondered how it is that it can be easier, somehow, to tense up and consciously decide, ok, I am now not going to signal, rather than just going ahead and signalling as a matter of routine, like your goddamn mother would have told you.  You almost never see this in Europe, but daily in the U.S.  Maturity, power, shrivelled appendages, etc., whatever.

--Why do Indians in (First Nations peoples etc.) old radio shows or old tv shows or movies often say things like "me wantum"?  Did this start with some white actor or writer who heard "um" in a Native language and started using it?  How did this particular cliche or stereotype get going?  Was it Tonto, Little Beaver, the people who wrote those parts?  "Me think, me wantum" etc.  Where did this linguistic cliche originate?  Who was responsible?  Did he (I assume it was a he) have any reasons for inventing how Indians might speak English besides quasi-racist ones of wanting to other them, or were there actually grounds for suggesting that this was how certain Indians might speak English (after all, second-language speakers of any sort normally have identifiable accents and habits based on the first languages they come from)?