Whisky Prajer

Katherine Penfold's Journals came recommended to me by her guitarist, a guy I've known for almost 30 years. I don't often hear from him, but when I do I make a point of listening. His ear is attuned not just to the “wow” factor, but to depth as well. And Katherine Penfold has both, in spades.

Penfold's métier is pop, as the CD cover for “Journals” evinces: she's pictured leafing through milk-crates of vinyl, while the sleeves of unnamed crooners lie on the floor beside her. She smiles, and seems ready to stand up and move. This is her aural moment, and she grasps it with confidence and aplomb.

Journals pointedly hearkens back to modes that are familiar and easy on the ear, and although its production isn't credited* I was wowed not just by its surface sheen but by the manifold layers beneath it. But it is Penfold's voice that takes command: she shifts easily from the misted-asphalt stylings of Avril Lavigne to the deep R&B of Lisa Stansfield, using emotional heft, vulnerability and a sense of play to hook and hold the listener from beginning to end. This album doesn't just go down easily, it stirs corners of the heart I thought were the exclusive province of a younger man.

The curious are encouraged to start with “Ain't No Good” and “What A Heart” (married tracks on the disc), then follow that up with the sassy “Please Forgive Me.” But really, if you're already at iTunes it's worth your nickel to hit “Download Album,” just to give the girl some incentive to get her next collection together. If Journals is any indication, Penfold's considerable range as a singer has only begun to be explored. Available at Katherine's website, and iTunes.

*Juno Award winner Jordan Jackiew engineered, produced, mixed and mastered — and played the keys for — Journals, I am told.

And since I'm already dishing on pop confections: be sure to check out Jesse Palter & The Alter Ego's “Limited Edition EP” (at their website or iTunes). Palter is a remarked-upon performer in the Detroit/NYC/Chicago jazz scene, shifting gears (for the moment?) to ride Sam Barsh's sensibility of what pop ought to sound like. Jim DeRogatis says, “Lady Gaga, watch out!” but I'm reminded of a younger Mary Margaret O'Hare — which (if you don't know it) is very high praise.

Labels: Music

As my wife and I pointedly reminisce about the events of 20 years ago, our children look at us with expressions of dim comprehension. My 12-year-old can no more envision a modern city divided by a wall than I, as a 12-year-old, could envision that wall ever coming down. The temptation is to impart all sorts of "lessons" during this moment, but where does one even begin?

So far the only summary we can muster is, the world is in a constant state of flux, often moving in ways we can't even begin to predict. So many changes are violent and lamentable, but there are also momentous changes that are welcome, and to be celebrated. Here's hoping our children live to see -- and generate -- more of the latter.

Labels: rattling in my brain pan

For Gretzky's Tears: Hockey, Canada, and the Day Everything Changed (A) Stephen Brunt takes a wide brush and paints the personalities that cooked up the NHL's most momentous (and expensive) trade deal. Subtlety isn't necessary: most of these guys were loud-mouthed fat-heads who kept an eye out for the biggest cash cow on the horizon, with a complete disregard for the health of the corporation, never mind the sport. The only quiet ones who kept their cards close to their chests were Wayne and Walter Gretzky, who, in Brunt's account, come to embody the best and the worst of Canadian enterprise. Brunt doesn't just argue that Gretzky's trade to Los Angeles paved the way for Gary Bettman's disastrous expansion of the league, he suggests that Wayne Gretzky's best interests (and no-one guards those interests like father and son) have lead to inevitable catastrophe for the league.

Although I've followed Brunt as a columnist, I hadn't yet read any of his books. As a columnist his prose is measured and to the point; as a book writer, he likes to turn up the heat, and not always to good effect. Also, the concluding chapter outlining the forehead-smacking deal Phoenix made to hire "The Great One" as coach is clearly rushed. The recent Bettman vs. Balsillie dust-up is only touched upon (in interviews Brunt admits he could have devoted an entire book to this), but we don't need a book to tell us who the obvious losers are: the Phoenix tax-payers, the National Hockey League, and the fans. As for Bettman, he may regard the Balsillie shut-out as a personal victory, but with the southern franchises hemorrhaging money faster than the Fed, Bettman's day of reckoning is most certainly coming down the pike.

So, are there any winners? Only one: Wayne Gretzky, by an enormous bank account.

Labels: books, hockey

The familiar whack and clatter of kids on skateboards is a racket I make every effort to ignore. I figure he (not too many girls on boards) is out-of-doors, engaging in physical activity, possibly testing a few personal limits. If it's a choice between slouching in front of the family television immersed in the latest military industrial virtual reality or spending an hour skateboarding, well . . . let 'im skate.

My patience, however, is severely tested whenever I rouse myself to actually witness the proceedings. So much work, so much clattering failure (“WHACK!! Bah-TACK-a-tah!”), all in pursuit of such a paltry and banal skill-set. And when the hell did boards get so damn noisy?! When I was a kid skateboards were quiet. Everything was made of polyurethane. The wheels were fat — I'm talking three, four inches wide — and absorbed road hum into near silence. If you wiped out, the only sound you heard was the cracking of your clavicle, followed by snippets of your mother's tirade as she drove you to emergency.

Whatever happened to fat wheels and poly-boards? I remember them as being perilously fast. Is “fast” no longer a desirable quality in skateboards? Perhaps wooden boards with tiny wheels are faster, but I couldn't say. I've done a little internet searching and have yet to turn up a satisfactory answer to any of my questions.

I have, however, watched Dogtown & Z-Boys (A) the skateboarding documentary by Stacy Peralta. It's an engaging look backward at the scene that generated the current scene: a surprisingly decrepit portion of California coastline that stretched from Venice Beach to the Santa Monica Pier. As dangerous as the wreckage-strewn shoreline was, the punks who surfed there were still game to beat up any noob foolish enough to venture into the water. When the water calmed down for the afternoon, the punks moved inland and applied surfing skills to their skateboards.



The movie was a full-immersion flashback for me. The mid-70s water drought that emptied pools in California extended to Colorado as well. In '77 there was a small fountain gone dry behind the Iliff School of Theology. A group of skateboarders laid claim to it. These guys could spend the day rolling up and down its walls, adroitly flipping their boards at the rim. It never occurred to me, even after I'd witnessed surfing first-hand, that these moves were imported directly from a point break west of the Santa Monica Pier.

The Denver skaters were ten-cent imitators of the Z-Boys, whose style really is breathtaking to behold. Peralta charts the development of this style, the athleticism and the adolescent transgressive urge integral to its thrill. When the Z-Boys finally emerged from the ruined swimming pools of Del Mar to compete in public events, their élan (as photographed by Craig Stecyk) took hold of the public imagination. Suddenly the fringe skateboarding scene exploded, then morphed into the “sk8ter culture” which surrounds us today.

There was one aspect of the Z-Boys that the Denver skaters had down: they were narcissistic jerks. They craved an audience, if only to enlarge their enfilade of contempt. My purple dress socks and discount sneakers were ripe for their derision, but they saved their choicest torments for the Texan kid who lived down the hall from us. The poor guy was too young to shake the accent or control his temper; the bruises and bloody noses were inevitable. No doubt these middle-class pugilists, with their uniformly innocuous accent, pricey decks, Vans and knee-high tube socks, felt, as did the Z-Boys, like “outsiders” but there were beat-up kids on the periphery of their spectacular clique who would have begged to differ.

The footage of this 90-minute movie is worth about 60 minutes, but is sensational enough to entertain and provoke further thought. I was reminded of another California fringe that erupted into a near-global scene that finally bore only traces of its origins: the Beats. Then it occurred to me that this cycle of self-aware-poverty-turned-style-turned-global-commercial-product is a uniquely American trajectory. You can lament it, or you can celebrate it — anyone over 17 certainly ought to deconstruct it.

Or, if you're like me, you can also take a deep breath and simply make a mental note of it, while the kid beneath your office window dogs on with his artless racket.

Post-script: D&ZB has a terrific soundtrack. You won't find it for sale, but any white North American male in his mid-40s already has most of the music in his library. If you want a dandy two-hour playlist for your next trip into the city, go here. Hook up your portable player and arrange these songs in any order you choose, or just hit “random.” Then sit back, and enjoy the ride.

Labels: kids these days, Movies

Noah Richler, via The Walrus, does a tidy job of measuring the sea change occurring among publishers, book stores and readers.

Labels: books, reading

If you live in this neck of the woods you owe it to yourself to check out A Midsummer Night's Dream, as presented by the Borelians at Port Perry's Town Hall Theatre. I've attended twice, with children, and we all burst out in belly laughs in the course of the play.

The play has been tautly edited and the cast directed to deliver a punchy two hours' worth of entertainment. Watching this cast at work I was reminded of just what a revelation Kenneth Branagh's Henry V, and later Hamlet, had been. Making plain sense of Shakespeare's language and resurrecting it for a modern audience is a gift that keeps on giving, soul food that sticks to the ribs -- and the Borelians deliver the whole delicious dish with lusty panache. This is ribald entertainment first and foremost, formed by a penetrating intelligence that one can savor on the ride home.

A Midsummer Night's Dream will be performed for the next three nights, as well as a matinee on Saturday afternoon. Go. And don't be shy about whistling when Titania (my lovely wife) takes a bow. Links: Borelians Community Theatre.

Labels: theatre

If you like The Flaming Lips you already own Embryonic. And if you luuuuuuuuuv The Flaming Lips, then you already own the Deluxe Limited Edition, a reprise of an older Lips' stunt that requires the listener to coordinate and play multiple discs simultaneously on two different systems, to dig the full trippiness of the music. If you don't like the Lips, nothing on this new album is going to change your mind.

I, for one, like the Lips, and am baffled by the kvetchers in this group. Some are noting a return to "experimentation," which brings to mind John Gardner's quip that a work is only called "experimental" when it fails. I don't see that here -- or rather, "I don't hear that, see." Very early Lips is experimental, while Embryonic falls solidly into their later "The Punks Have Taken Over The Decrepit Planetarium" phase. If you must call Embryonic "experimental" I must protest that it's been tightly controlled to produce a desired effect: an aural consideration of how we collectively attempt to get a grip on how/why our species can be so incredibly evil.

Finally, if somehow you are new to The Flaming Lips, Embryonic is as good a place to start as Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. And if, like me, you are late and catching up to their crazy scene, you should check out this back issue of Stop Smiling for Jim DeRogatis' entertaining history of The Flaming Lips.

Post-Script: Oy, my aging brain. I couldn't recall why DeRogatis' name seemed so familiar, until I checked his website. Of course! DeRogatis wrote the definitive biography of Lester Bangs. Not only is it a very good book about Bangs, it is also an exceptional account of the 60s and 70s rock 'n' roll scene. Growing up in the 70s and 80s I was frequently bummed that the generation before mine got to have the most fun the first. Let It Blurt was the first book to leave me with the distinct impression that I was lucky I showed up later.

Labels: Music

We conclude our ringette practices with a fifteen minute scrimmage, usually with me — the hapless assistant coach — standing in net and blocking shots with my unprotected body. I don't have a goalie stick, so I'm often trying to spear the ring and fire it out of my crease. The other night a girl smacked my right hand with her stick, smartly hitting the top knuckle of my thumb. I howled.

She stopped and looked up at me. "It's your fault, you know."

I stared at her, blearily focusing through her helmet cage on a pair of blue eyes and an unmistakable smirk. She spun away and returned to the game. As I tried to massage life back into my wounded hand, I thought, I do believe I see a future paved with the broken hearts of idiot boys.

Labels: ringette

Something I gleaned early from this experience is that Hollywood publicists are so used to journalists kowtowing to their every request that they no longer understand what journalism actually is. We’re talking about cartoon characters here, not Watergate -- John Ortved on the challenges of compiling an unauthorized history of The Simpsons: here, via bookforum.

Labels: diversions

Somehow, the geniuses responsible for Toronto's Don Valley Parkway engineered it with an appreciation for night drivers and their car stereos. In the 80s my Bible School buddies would wax rhapsodic, recounting late night drives beneath the yellow bar-lights of the DVP while listening to Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon. Fifteen years later when I finally had a car of my own, I had to agree: no matter what was in the tape-deck, a midnight cruise on the DVP made it, in every sense of the word, a transporting experience.

It seems particularly well suited for prog rock, or anything with a spacey album concept. I haven't yet taken the new Flaming Lips album for a DVP spin, but I can certainly vouch for Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. I listened to the new Sunset Rubdown on an afternoon drive up the DVP, and liked it well enough, but I might have been completely blown away if I'd only waited a few more hours. In contrast The Resistance by Muse (A) has sunk pleasantly into my DNA thanks to the hypnotic effect of passing beneath those lights in a state of mild sleep deprivation at 120 kph.

Even without the ride, The Resistance is a great concept album. Proggy, but not esoteric, Muse muses in a Queen-Meets-Depeche-Mode manner, wholly adopting the “We Take Our Fun Seriously” approach that worked so well for their heroes. After a summer of scratching my head over the critical lauds for Sunn O))) and Dirty Projectors, I couldn't help but be blown away by the common appeal to Muse's infectious tunesmithing.

Of course, my own resistance was somewhat vulnerable after my daughters discovered Styx. When the younger asked me to add Styx to her DSi, I had to stifle a snicker. Then I remembered how Styx became, in fact, “the greatest band ever” after I heard “Renegade.” I had just turned 13.

Styx retained much of their appeal through most of my teens, but by the time they released Kilroy Was Here (A) even I was wincing. At some point in my adulthood Styx's greatest hits must have presented itself at a price I couldn't refuse, because the girls found Come Sail Away (A) in my CD stacks.

As I pored through the tracks with my daughter, I realized my ears were no longer quite so Styx-averse. I thought the early material had ambition and drive, even as it often lacked focus. In fact the titular song seemed to embody both the best and the worst of Styx: “Come Sail Away” is passionate, lush and earnest nonsense.

The tracks my daughter wanted, however, were from the Paradise Theater segment. Paradise was an album I initially admired for its grandiose packaging. Portrayed on the front of the jacket is Chicago's Paradise Theater in its original glory; its later crumbling facade is on the rear. The songs were purportedly written with a unifying theme of glorious promise and inevitable decay. The vinyl itself was laser-etched with the Paradise marquee, which could only be seen when you held the record to the light. Throw in some nefarious backmasking and this was clearly the pop music equivalent of an anarchist's bomb.

Or not. My daughter requested “Rockin' the Paradise,” but even she is prone to mocking its flourishes (the over-heated piano glissando, the “whatcha doin', whatcha doin'?” chorus). Many of the songs seem forced into the thematic mold, and none moreso than the album's conclusion: “The Best Of Times” (“are when I'm alone with you”). On the other hand, I've yet to hear an ode to cocaine that doesn't induce a “There but for the Grace of God” shiver, which “Snowblind” certainly delivers. And “Too Much Time On My Hands” is just plain solid: the ticking clock motif, the feverish delusions of grandeur, the self-laceration and impotence. Throw in a meaty guitar solo and I have to admit: this song just plain rocks.

Not that I've got Paradise Theater, or any other Styx, cued up for my next late-night ride out to Toronto — that slot is reserved for Embryonic (A). But now I'm wondering: are there routes through other cities with a similarly narcotic effect on the driver? And is there any way a band could reserve this route for their harsher critics?

Labels: Music

“Generation A mirrors 1991's Generation X.” It says so, right there on the back jacket. I read that and figured if Douglas Coupland was returning, in some measure, to the book that inflated him into what he is now, I was keen to read the by-product (A).

I don't usually mark up my books, but three pages into Generation A I felt compelled to take the lid off my Roller-Ball and write, neatly, in the margin: “How can a guy who is almost 50 years old write a book populated by characters so fastidiously stuck in their single 20s?”

I was off to a bad start, but for the first time in years I forced myself to keep going with a book I wasn't enjoying. Unfortunately my mood only got worse.

The proper thing to do is review the book that was written, and not the book I wish was written. But man-oh-man: do I ever wish this was a different book. I picked up Gen A wondering what had happened to those characters I related so strongly to in 1992. Did they finally plug in? Were any of them in a family way? Were they maybe not quite so nervous, smart and medicated? How had they (or characters similar to them) navigated the last 18 years? Now that they, in all likelihood, had the mortgages (etc.) that eluded them in '91, what did they think of their prospects? Let's call this fictional exercise "Coupland channels Updike" — wouldn't that be cool?

That's not the book I've got. And I'm realizing, as I finally put this novel to rest, that I'm at a point where I very much prefer Coupland's interviews and non-fiction to his fiction. He's a clever guy, frequently witty and prescient. But his fiction just ain't working for me anymore.

Labels: books

It has been years since I last re-read Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita in its entirety. It became a task, and a difficult one, after my first daughter was born. But sometimes there are good reasons to undertake difficult reading, and here D.G. Meyers presents the most compelling argument on behalf of Nabokov and Lolita I've encountered to date.

I came to it via OGIC, who links to DGM's "Meet Humbert Polanski".

Labels: book review link, books

McNally-Robinson in Winnipeg was selling the complete Monty Python's Flying Circus box o' DVDs for a criminally low price, so I went ahead and passed them the plastic (here's the Amazon listing, for a great deal more than I paid). Once we arrived home we unpacked the box and started watching.

I've had some second thoughts about the purchase. First of all, it's not as funny as I remembered. It's not like I'm stone-faced while watching: I'm usually smiling, and every once in a while something catches me off-guard and gets me giggling. But there are plenty of sketches which, frankly, are complete duds. I'd forgotten those, and for good reason.

Then there are all those sketches I hadn't forgotten, because for the past three decades I couldn't join a movie queue that didn't contain at least one person who felt obliged to mount a solo Spamalot performance. Words cannot describe my relief when The Kids In The Hall finally gained the higher hipster cred ("Lopez!").

Finally, there's the issue of the effect these jokers have on my daughters -- specifically, on their accents. Even a doting daddy-o gets weary when his girls insist on calling, "Faaw-thaah?" Of course, it could be so much worse: it could be, like, those two hosers with the toques, eh?

Labels: television

Where, in the instructions, does it say parenting is actually gets busier as the children get older and increasingly self-directed? That seems to be the chapter I glossed over.

I believe it was Sloan Wilson who talked about "the tired 30s," but it's Whisky Prajer who's talking about the verge-of-exhaustion 40s. There are shifts in perspective that occur during this particular decade, and I have every good intention of exploring a few of them. Just one example: guess who agreed to being assistant coach of his daughter's ringette team? That's right: this guy.

I just need a few minutes of alone-time with my keyboard. Until that happens, things could remain a little "lite" around here.

Labels: family, ringette

I am currently reading Douglas Coupland's latest novel: Generation A. For the last 10 years or so I've made it a policy to hold off on buying Coupland's novels until they hit the remainder bin. Unfortunately, the effect of reading a Coupland novel two years after it's been published is somewhat akin to feasting on a Jif & Welch's sandwich made from week-old Wonder Bread: it's just a little off. Last week I was perusing the stacks at Book City. Since I was in a beloved independent, and since Coupland's title was fresh off the press, I figured the right thing to do was drop the money and take home the book. But now The Guardian Book Club has me wondering if I shouldn't be (re)reading his first novel. Ah, the irony!

*****

I could be wrong, but it sounds to me like P.J. O'Rourke is still bitter he missed out on all that muddy fun.

*****

Oooooh, brother: not this -- again.

*****

This, on the other hand, merits further discussion. My parents, who now rank among David's most devoted fans, seem to have completely forgotten their originally peeved reaction to his acerbic comedic stylings back in 1987. Ah, the irony.

*****

Late addition: "Non-traumatizing Canadian fiction does exist. No, really, it does. And we want to prove it to you" -- Introducing The Workhorsery.

Labels: books, diversions