Paradise Domed

If Winnipeg is mini-Detroit, can Regina be mini-Winnipeg? At least until R-Town gets the domed stadium that promises to be the (sadly) hottest issue of its fall municipal election. Then maybe Regina can be mini-Vancouver. It's already rocking the urban poverty thing like no one else can (though not as sensationally as Wpg), so why not let well-fed white guys* watch football indoors? What's the worst that could happen? Municipal and provincial taxpayers blow an obscene amount of money that might be better spent on social services, infrastructure, health care & education? So Regina closes a few libraries, a few highways fall into disrepair and the inner city rots further into third world levels of poverty, disease and despair. Think of the KISS concerts, won't anybody think of the KISS concerts?
So Dome-Lovers like Pat Fiacco, Brad Wall, John Gormley and Kevin Blevins might be guilty of narrow-minded, irresponsible arrogance. Big deal. This is Melville-level sleazebaggery, Moosejavian at best. If these fellows really want Regina to be a world class city on par with, say, Vancouver, they're gonna have to try a little harder.
Here in the Lower Mainland, we've made something of an art of scuttling sensible priorities in favour of corporate-interested extravaganzas. Gordon Campbell's Liberal government has lately made sweeping cuts to education--including pulling funds already promised and budgeted for by school boards, sports teams and parent groups--and health care. All standard issue deficit-battling that should be familiar to all who remember the early years of the Romanow gov't in Saskatchewan, with the big difference being that amid all these "tough love" cuts Campbell has boosted Olympic spending by 27.5 per cent. These aren't cuts to high-falutin' sculptors who make statues of dead Paraguayan tone poets out of cat feces (though, yes, there are some killer cuts to the arts) or cancellations of programs that protect the rights and safety of drug addicts (likewise, nasty cuts), these are cuts to high school sports, which purportedly are the foundation of the ideals the Olympics are supposed to be promoting the first place.
Y'know, at least Fiacco is being upfront about his vainglorious, wasteful, potentially harmful plans before the election. On a sliding scale of scumbaggery, that puts him in misguided oaf/lackey of industry territory well below Gordon Campbell's Lex Luthor-level of treachery and deception.


mp3: "Pennies, Fountains And Stars" by Mack Mackenzie
mp3: "Used Car Salesman" by Ira Lee

*some of my best friends are well-fed white guys

Where the teeth are paved with gold: 2008 in review

With the U.S.A. mere days away from having a more progressive head of state than Canada for the first time since, um, Diefenbaker:Kennedy, are we going to start seeing Canadians start threatening to move south the way Americans threatened to move north in 2004?


Probably not. Especially since the Canadian economy is still just swirling in the bowl and not right down the crapper.



Besides, does anyone really think the Harper government will make it until the end of the year? Other than Harper, that is. He's gonna have to be one hell of a budget.

Since it's already the 15th of January, I might as well knock it off with my half-assed attempt at looking back on 2008. There's one last album I wanna call your attention to before we start talking about other things. Dallas/Fort Worth area group the Theater Fire released a frighteningly amazing album, Matter and Light, in the closing days of 2008.

It's a haunting and rollicking Tex-Mex jumble of jugband hollers and Calexico-ish ambience that's totally captivating. It's everything I love about Americana music and none of what drives me crazy. The front page of their website streams a generous sampling of songs from all three of their albums. You kinda owe it to yourself to check them out if you're into that kind of thing.

mp3: "Coyote" by the Theater Fire

"I'm surprised that you're surprised..."

Hilarious/terrifying FOX news video.

Ebert explains Palin

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but Roger Ebert is one of my all-time favourite writers. I wrote him a fan letter once, but thanks to a typo--I left out one lousy four-letter word--it came out all wrong. Instead of being an amusing anecdote with what I felt was a clever twist, it ended up being a semi-coherent awshucks-fest. That's what one word can do.

What led me to write was two things. One, Ebert's review of Gus Van Sant's Gerry. The movie that hadn't even been on my radar, but by 2003 I had figured out how read Ebert's copy on the L-P sked in advance of publication and did so often. Two, a friend of my brother told me that his mom was a fan of my writing. They had recently seen me walking down 13th and Jesse's pal pointed me out to his mom. She was surprised at my appearance, she told her son. From the way I wrote, she always thought I would look like Roger Ebert. "I took this," I closed my letter to Ebert with, "as a compliment."

I wouldn't have even known there was anything wrong with my letter if Ebert wasn't a classy enough guy to write back. "From the sounds of it, you do," was his entire missive. What the hell was that supposed to mean? Then I read back over my original. Instead writing that my brother's friend's mom thought I would look like Ebert, I left out look, which made me look like a dumb jerk.

I remember considering writing Ebert again to explain my typo, but finally decided that the best thing to do was not draw more attention to my dumb ass.

Moral: proofread, proofread, proofread

The point of posting this now: Ebert sums up GOP vice-prez wannabe Sarah Palin. While I admire his movie writing to no end, and they more often than not offer up meditations on meatbag existence in general, I sure the hell enjoy it when he steps outside the theatre.