"Today's noise is tomorrow's hootenanny" - or children's album

The above quote is from DEVO (the truncated form of "de-evolution") circa 1978, when their musical output was considerably noisier than the brightly syncopated mutations that eventually caught public attention. It lodged in my pubescent brain and eminated radio-waves of profound significance, the way such archly "wise" ruminations tend to in young lads of a certain age. I was 13 at the time. Some guys were drawn into the kabuki theatre of KISS; I was drawn to the art-haus theatre (kabuki with irony) of DEVO, precisely because of their penchant for sci-fi pontificating.

The fact that their signature song, at that time, had a time signature of 7/8 only added to my feelings of superiority. It was only a matter of time before they took a knee to 4/4, of course, and my first High Fidelity moment ("They were so much cooler when I was the only one listening to them!") occurred in the winter of 82, when a 16-year-old could get in the family car, turn on the AM radio at any given time and inevitably hear one of three DEVO singles from the New Traditionalists album.

It's been a long, long time since I've given their gleeful perversity a spin on my turntable. The fact that DEVO frontman Mark Mothersbaugh was a hands-on participant in the DEVO/Swiffer ad didn't help (that ad was wrong on so many levels - originally a sneering paean to S&M extremes set to a jaunty minimalist 4-note riff, only to rocket to Billboard Top Ten notoriety, only to become an ad extolling the joys of "Swiffering" in other people's houses(?!) - it almost started to look right after a while). But then, I suppose that's devolution for you.

Now there's news of a DEVO children's album - DEVO 2.0. That almost sounds promising. No, check that: at this point in my life, a DEVO children's album actually sounds like a positive improvement - an evolutionary step forward, as it were. Which leads to the obvious question:

Could this be the end of DEVO?

The official DEVO site is here. And I've got to admit: my first visit to the on-line store nearly had me reaching for my credit card.

Irving Layton, 1912-2006

Two of his poems:

Keine Lazarovitch 1870-1959

When I saw my mother's head on the cold pillow,
Her white waterfalling hair in the cheeks' hollows,
I thought, quietly circling my grief, of how
She had loved God but cursed extravagantly his creatures.

For her final mouth was not water but a curse,
A small black hole, a black rent in the universe,
Which damned the green earth, stars and trees in its stillness
And the inescapable lousiness of growing old.

And I record she was comfortless, vituperative,
Ignorant, glad, and much else besides; I believe
She endlessly praised her black eyebrows, their thick weave,
Till plagiarizing Death leaned down and took them for his mould.

And spoiled a dignity I shall not again find,
And the fury of her stubborn limited mind;
Now none will shake her amber beads and call God blind,
Or wear them upon a breast so radiantly.

O fierce she was, mean and unaccommodating;
But I think now of the toss of her gold earrings,
Their proud carnal assertion, and her youngest sings
While all the rivers of her red veins move into the sea.


And finally, that Ariel Sharon is in critical condition within 24 hours of Irving Layton's death seems to me a coincidence fraught with symobolic significance. To wit:


Israelis

It is themselves they trust and no one else;
Their fighter planes that screech across the sky,
Real, visible as the glorious sun;
Riflesmoke, gunshine, and rumble of tanks.

Man is a fanged wolf, without compassion
Or ruth: Assyrians, Medes, Greeks, Romans,
And devout pagans in Spain and Russia
--Allah's children, most merciful of all.

Where is the Almighty if murder thrives?
He's dead as mutton and they buried him
Decades ago, covered him with their own
Limp bodies in Belsen and Babi Yar.

Let the strong compose hymns and canticles,
Live with the Lord's radiance in their hard skulls
Or make known his great benevolences;
Stare at the heavens and feel glorified

Or humbled and awestruck buckle their knees:
They are done with him now and forever.
Without a whimper from him they returned,
A sign like an open hand in the sky.

The pillar of fire: Their flesh made it;
It burned briefly and died--you all know where.
Now in their own blood they temper the steel,
God being dead and their enemies not.

Irving Layton, 1912-2006

Tags: Irving Layton

Saved By Technology

With apologies to the fine and knowingly-named Toronto store, from whom this title was cadged.

In the summer of '01, we attended an enormous family gathering in a rustic cottage on the banks of the Rideau. I was diligently applying myself to a manuscript at the time and had made it a habit to wake early in order to do the work -- seven days a week, no ifs, ands or buts. I followed through on this habit, even at the cottage.

My first morning there, I thought it would be swell to try this on the dock. It looks like an ideal environment for the task, after all -- doesn't it? My watch chimed at 5:30. I pulled myself out of bed, retrieved my laptop, and stole down to the dock.

Half-an-hour into my work, a canoe appeared on the river -- some guy out with his Labrador Retriever. They came closer, and it became apparent he was aiming to use the dock. I smiled and said hello. He scowled at my laptop, glanced away and muttered "Yup". As he drew alongside the dock, his Lab jumped out of the boat and into the water. It suddenly occurred to me this mutt was fixing to greet me. I frantically mashed buttons to save-and-quit. The dog clambered to shore and shook himself off. I had a choice to make. I slapped the computer shut and quickly stowed it before the slobbering, dripping cur came and thrust its snout in my lap.

The dog's owner made an unconvincing attempt to restrain her. The damage done (lost data, safe technology), I resigned myself to putting on a good face: this glum canoeist, I reasoned, might be the cottage owner, and our use of the facilities was given to us at quite a bargain.

I admired his canoe -- a strip-wood beauty of some vintage. "Looks like the sort of craft Bill Mason would have used," I said. The guy brightened. Mason was in fact a friend of the family, and spent time caring for their canoes. He took a deep breath, then said, "Those were very different days."

He talked of how the cottage -- or rather, "The Cottage" -- was a place their family went to in order to escape the tyranny of modern life. Electricity came late to The Cottage; radio came some time later, and an old black-and-white TV set was introduced in the 80s. When you weren't swimming, hiking or canoeing, The Cottage was a place where you read, or played cards and board games -- a retreat that served to reinvigorate you for your vocational life.

"Technology has a way of taking that away from you, and levelling everything out," he said. "Just canoeing this morning, I counted seven new cottages, all larger than ours. All but one of them has a satellite dish on the roof."

"If it makes you feel any better," I said, "I was writing fiction." This appeared to have no effect on him whatsoever, so I thanked him for the cottage, and complimented his selection of books (Gibbon's Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire was there in its entirety). We shook hands, then he and his dog left.

Now, my brother and all my code-writing friends will attest to the fact that I'm all but a confirmed Luddite, but I do think we can be good stewards of new technologies. Later that same day I mentioned the incident to my brother-in-law. "Would he have felt any better if I'd been out there with a pad of paper and a ballpoint pen?" I asked.

He thought it over. "Parchment and quill might have been the safest option," he said.

So what gets me casting back to this strange encounter? This weird picture, on the Sympatico.msn.ca homesite:



The picture links to this story. Now, here's my question: given the aforementioned encounter and my endorsement of a book like Full Catastrophe Living, am I entirely out-of-order when I think this picture and story are altogether daft?

Sleeping Queens: a winner of a game

I mentioned this in my other blog, but I want to cover all the bases. We received the Sleeping Queens card game, and our girls (ages 7 and 9) have been having terrific fun with it. It even has some nutritional value (you'll get ahead a little faster if you can do basic arithmetic). If you have any connection to a family in its formative stages, do take the time to check out the Gamewright website: they've clearly got a good thing going.

How about that weather?

It seems that proper blog etiquette requires some sort of summary from the entries of the past year. I took a quick tour down archive lane, and found myself strangely encouraged to see what tickled my muse in the last year: basically, little stuff that caught me by surprise. Hey, that bodes well for the future!

The one thing I didn't comment on was the weather. Strange, really, because it seemed to be freaky no matter where you lived. I saw the worst of it in Winnipeg this summer. Winnipeg's spring was one unrelieved torrential rain storm. When I arrived there in early July, I was astonished to see the Winnipeg floodway filled to capacity. You'll see that in spring -- but July?! One week later, the city was hit with a wind and rain storm that ripped up trees and tore off a few roofs. I was awake for the worst of it, staring out the window at the maelstrom while my wife and daughters slept. I sat and wondered what it would look like if the weather changed from "storm" to "tornado" -- and what would I do? I guess I still don't know the answer to either question.

Up For It - Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette

Just before the Christmas flurry gathered to a full roar, my friend handed me a pastel-blue CD. "It's the Keith Jarrett trio. You familiar with them?"

I shook my head. "Not really."

"Well," said my friend, "they're all getting on in years, but they've been doing their thing for nearly three decades. This CD is a concert they gave in Juan-les-Pins, France, after they'd all had a very bad year -- cancer, debilitating arthritis, Chronic Fatigue ... the sort of stuff you get in your middle years.

"The concert itself was literally a wash. Endless rain, on a stage that had very little by way of cover for the performers. And I guess Jarrett sat down with the other two, and asked what they thought. And not one of them wanted to go on out there and play, which was unprecedented for this group.

"Anyhow, Jarrett was quite rattled by all this, so he picked up his cup of coffee, and stepped outside to look at the weather. It was still raining, but just on the horizon there was enough of a break in the clouds, he could see just a peek of the sun. He came back inside and told the others, 'I think we should play.' So they got to their feet, went out on stage in the pouring rain and played this ... amazing ... concert."

I took the CD home with me, and that's what I've been listening to pretty much non-stop for the last week. Inspired, inspirational, transcendant ... are there any superlatives I'm missing?

Available here.

A Good Crokinole Board Is Hard To Find

Last summer when I was out in Manitoba, my friend brought out a crokinole board that got me salivating. It was a hefty piece of work, octagonal (the old style I grew up with), all wood, professionally lacquered. It played like a dream.

I asked where they got it. "Oh, that's my mom," said my friend's lovely wife. "She supports a local group of mentally challenged adults. They make these boards for fifty bucks."

My mouth went dry. I stood up on shaky legs, then gathered my strength and began a long and fruitless effort to track down these mentally challenged adults. The generous mother-in-law was out of town, so we scoured the phone book and the internet. Nothing. We drove the neighborhood. Nothing. We phoned and left messages with the mother-in-law. Nothing.

I returned to Ontario, defeated and depressed. This winter we scoured shops in Toronto for a good crokinole board. It's the perfect game for our family. It accomodates four players, relies on an easily learned skill, and has physically dramatic results. As for finding a good board in Southern Ontario, you might as well start looking for the Holy Grail.

We finally settled on a decent-looking board from a reputable store that sells "educational" toys. I gathered from the picture on the box that the board was made of wood, but probably pine and not a hardwood. The box was promisingly heavy, though, so I felt pretty good about the purchase. I asked to have it wrapped, then we carted it home and put it under the tree.

When I opened the box on Christmas, I was appalled. Other than the discs themselves, the only wood on the board was the pine caroms. Everything else was pressed paper that looked like it was ready to expand and warp on the first humid day of summer. There was a large smudge of glue across the face of the board, which I actually registered with relief (not sure what the store's return policy is, but they'll definitely have to take this back). The board looked like it wasn't too far removed from regulation size, and the posts were properly aligned, but in every other respect the board was a bust.

And the final sour note to it all is the price: $65 before tax. Which leads me to think either these fabled adults who built my friend's crokinole board are more mentally challenged than I first thought, or we're a little off on the price tag. I'm guessing the latter, because most wooden boards start at about $150. The beauty pictured below sells for $170, and is made by a fella with good Mennonite credentials (his first name's "Willard", for starters). I'm guessing his outfit is somewhere near Kitchener-Waterloo, and that's who I'll be contacting as soon as I return my current "board" and get my money back.