National Gallery

Since I was in Ottawa for business, I decided to visit our National Art Gallery. I had been there before, but it was quite some time ago. Emily Carr was the featured show and having, on the west coast, seen more Emily Carr than I would like, I chose only to purchase my ticket for the permanent collection.
I do love art and our National Gallery does have quite a collection. Perhaps it pales in comparison to some of the more famous galleries in the world, but as far as galleries go, we deserve to be proud of our collection. We have, for example, a nice smattering of the more famous French Impressionists. Perhaps, just enough to wet the appetite for more. But were I the curator, I'm sure I'd be satisfied with the foreign content. There is just enough to provide a great opportunity to compare our own artists with those more globally noticed. For nothing in the gallery is as luminous and stunning as Tom Thompson's The Jack Pine. Such an ordinary Ontarian view. The sort that every cottager has seen time and again. And yet, on his canvas, through his visionary eyes, it is simply awesome. While working your way through the adjacent room, if you are fortunate enough to glance in the direction of this scene, it will arrest you in your tracks. It leaps from the wall. It is simple and gorgeous and no electronic image may do it justice. Next to it sits a second masterpiece: Tom Thompson's Northern River. More subtle and sedate, it draws you in with it's complexity. The intertwined branches parting slightly to reveal a bend in the river. I would be hard pressed to choose a favourite.
I was still bubbling with enthusiasm, still feeling great about art itself, when I stumbled into the more contemporary artists. While balancing a piece of steel on its end is impressive, I struggle to see the art in it. Nor can I justify an entire room for a video of a man pumping a pplastic bottle full of air until it shoots into the air. I want my art to be made by artisans. I want technical excellence. I want an image that captivates through beauty, or horror, or well something. Instead I found myself in front of the Voice of Fire. What a grotesque waste of money. I understand that the work has appreciated since we the taxpayer shelled out 1.8 million for it. But appreciated in whose eyes? Who are these lunatics who would pay more for three stripes? It hangs in a room littered with nonsensical pretentious crap. A big black painting with a yellow stripe down the side. A white canvas with a few stripes. But it dominates the room, not the way The Jack Pine dominates the room. Not by transporting you to a distant place. No, it dominates by sheer size alone. Eighteen feet of stripes. It is not a "modern masterpiece, a mythical work for a secular age" and having stood before it, I for one cannot attest to the notion that it "floods our consciousness with a sublime sense of awe and tranquility".
Just when I was feeling down about the direction of art. About the ever widening gap between people and so called artists creating art for a self declared elite as if the world didn't matter. I saw this face sitting amongst so many bits of the emperors new art. To give you a perspective, this baby and I, we stood eye to eye. The detail was consuming. The face massive. It forced you to stare. It forces us to say, "we can do better than a great big stripe."

Another annoying puzzle game

May Two Four

I have always loved how Queen Victoria's birthday gets bastardized into the most appropriate name possible - May Two Four. An inside joke for all Canadians. Or so I thought. For those born and raised on the west coast, the turn of phrase is lost. When the people of this strange land buy a "case" of beer, they expect to receive a mere twelve bottles.
Maybe, just like their love of specialty coffee, it comes from a love of specialty beer, but a case as I have always known it is never called a two four. While it is rarely referred to, when it is, it's a flat.
A flat sounds a lot bigger to me. Like it should be somewhere between a two four and keg. Like it should cover a picnic table. It should require tools to carry it, or perhaps beerbearers standing on either side holding on to sticks running the length of the flat like medics on the battlefield or hunters coming home with a kill.
Regardless, I'm off to buy a lot of beer and in the spirit of the holiday, whether I buy it in sixes or twelves or twenty fours, it will get there in a case called Coleman.

The List

We, my friends and I, talk about the list a lot, but nailing it down is tougher than I thought. But nail it down you should. It is an ever evolving thing I agree, but were it to hold water in a Kangaroo court of peers, it needs to be publicly declared.
Now, I too am tempted to cheat by naming groups or classes of people. But an open pass for all Pole Vaulters (ah, Pole Vaulters - such perfect bodies. Strength for the speed and the spring and lean enough to fly.) leads to an open pass to Heptathletes, then to track, then to athletes in general. No, this is list that is hard to create - as much a comment on yourself as on them, spoken in both who you've chosen and who you've been forced to ommit. (I'm sorry Milla, it just hasn't been the same since the Fifth Element.)
So, while I retain the right to amend the following, as it stands these are my five exemptions. Any indescretions with the following individuals can not be construed as having any reflection on my relationship with Donna.










Cate Blanchett - captivating, enigmatic, this woman steals the show time and time again.













Diane Lane - such an attractive woman, a beautiful balance of strength and vulnerability.













Jennifer Aniston - Brad you fool, you fool.










Kate Beckinsale - as Ava Gardner or a vampire clad in latex, she is a woman with timeless beauty.










Nicole Kidman - she can be so beautiful and so cold, she is magnetic.


PS For those who are curious, Donna's list includes Allen Iverson, Gael Garcia Bernal, George Clooney, Johnny Depp, and Matt Good. (With josh Hartnett making a strong run for the top.)

A Fine Sense of Balance

Stephen,
I think you may want to have your ears checked. You seemed to have a little trouble with your balance last night.
Paul

Julie Takes a Nap

In my experience, very few of us can shut down in the midst of drunken shenanigans only to rebound as if nothing had happened. It would seem that my friend Stephen knows these sorts of people. The first I saw of this miraculous recovery technique was at the Atlantic Trap and Gill. Laura, Stephen's special lady friend, was with us and we had had much more than our share of spirits, when I thought we'd lost her for the night. Sitting in a room full of long heavy tables surrounded by bench seating, each full of drunkards trying to shout above a live maritime band, her head went down like a ship slowly sinking till it lay on the table. I, for one, cannot recover from such a loss. If I am so intoxicated as to find comfort in shutting my eyes and drifting off to sleep in that environment, then I am likely in need of medical attention. But Laura rose from the depths after her short repose and jumped back in. Pints were downed and songs were sung and Laura was back in the thick of things.
Until now, I had left that experience thinking she had some sort of mutant super power. Sure, I'd known Stephen to be drunk to the point of vomiting only to sit back down at the table feeling refreshed and ready to drink again. But that's just gross. That is a disdain for your own bodies cry for help. No, this is different. She just shut down for a moment.
Then last night, J. O. added her name to this very short list of super power endowed drinkers. We were celebrating Easter, as heathens should, by sharing a few pints on a patio. Afternoon turned to evening which stretched into night and one patio led to another and there we were - drunk. While Stephen led the charge, as he is prone to doing, it was J. O. that impressed me. Too drunk and too tired to carry on she went down where she stood. Slowly sinking to the deck, she curled up to take a nap. Again, were you to find me in such a condition, medical attention ought to be a consideration. As it was, J. O. just needed some time. Up from the depths she rose to jump right back in. Here's to you J. O.

Not What It Sounds Like

I wish that Trading Spouses was on Showcase. Then it would be worth watching.

Daylight Savings, My Ass

Now is the time. It is beautiful outside. The sunsets are moving later into the evening. We can finish work and do things outside. Now is the time to get moving on fixing our winters. We need a time change.
When I lived on York University campus just outside of Toronto, I often thought that changing the campus' time zone to match Vancouver's would be best for all concerned. Any early call from the outside world (say parents) could be met with justified indignation.
"Mother, do you know what time it is?"
"It's 9 o'clock, you should be up."
"Not here it's not. It's six in the morning, mom. Can you call later, say, NOON your time?"
Morning classes would fit into your schedule. After last call downtown, you could take the subway back to campus and have a couple of hours before BC's last call.
While I never got anywhere with that gem, I think it is time for a change out west. I think we should spend the winters on Toronto's time.
Think about it.
Business calls would be easier for one - Montreal, Vancouver, and Toronto would all be on the same time. But who cares? We all know that we don't live out here for business reasons, but for personal ones. So why give all the sunlight to the work day? Wouldn't you like to come home from work with a few hours of sun left?
We live a lot further north than Toronto and I think we should reflect that in our time zone. We vary more with the seasons - maybe not in temperature - but in daylight. We go from 16 hours in the peak of summer to 8 hours in the dead of winter. Actually 8 hours and 11 minutes. Which means that on Dec 23 rd this year, you'll be shopping in the dark. The sun will be coming up as you drive to work and before you get out that day, it will have set. In fact it will set at roughly quarter after four.
Let's not stand for it anymore. I want to see us fall forward. Let's fall forward two hours. Let's move to Toronto time. Wait a minute let's get ahead of Toronto. Let's fall forward three hours. We'll go to work in the dark - leave a message for someone out east asking them to call when they finally get to work - and then when we leave work it will still be light out and we'll have a few hours to enjoy the outdoors. Imagine.
So I say let's get on that right after we De-Elect Emerson.

Season Tickets

This is my second year as the proud owner of seasons tickets. Yes me. The first year, I was so excited by the notion of being just that - a season ticket holder. I knew that the cost of seasons tickets to the Whitecaps wasn't overwhelming and I could have paid more for a single Canucks ticket, but the I loved the idea of saying, "I'm a season's ticket holder."
Not this year. The luster of 'seasons tickets' has worn off. In it's place is 'Southsider'. Not that I have tickets for the south side. No one does. No, I got my tickets in the mail today - this great folded stack of tickets. Eighteen games in all. And I have the same seat as last year. Now I say the same seat as last year, but as some of you may know, I'm not sure exactly where that is. I have a rough idea. It is on the east side of the pitch. In fact it is Section M row 5 seat 5. The thing is I've never sat there. If you happen to be at the game and you don't like your seat and you feel that section M row 5 seat 5 is a better seat than you have, well feel free to move on down.
You see, I'm a Southsider no matter what my ticket says. That means I'll be standing/drinking in the south end, just behind the goalie, taunting players as best I can. I'll do my best to get under the opposing keepers skin. I'll jeer anyone not in a Whitecaps jersey. I'll drink beer and throw the empty cup towards the pitch. I'm a Southsider so I'll find that inner hooligan and I'll call them fat bastards and tell them where they can stick their timbers and their relics and their skydomes and ....

Tick Tock Tick Tock

Guilty Pleasure

I have a guilty pleasure - free on line games. Whether it is puzzles like Sudoku or action games like Heli Attack 3, I love the little challenges they present. I can get sucked down into the world of pixels and become completely absorbed with matching groups of coloured squares or jumping over barrels and giant mushrooms. To that end, I have wasted a great deal of time on Blast Billiards (the original) - a mindnumbingly simple game of pool played with bombs.
So, to Stephen and all you other fools out there just like him, I say this, "1645." That's it. I quit. I can do no better.

Warning: Goodbye Commencing In 5 Minutes

Eavesdropping on Donna's phone call today, I realized that she says goodbye in the way an airline pilot announces a landing. From the first goodbye to the final end of the call, I have more than enough time to safely stow my luggage, make a quick pit stop in the washroom, fasten my seat, and return both myself and my tray to the upright position. In contrast, my goodbye should come with a parachute.

Screening Her Calls - Memento Style

I, for one, am a fan of whistle blower legislation. I know their pain. I have noticed a disturbing trend lately and I just don't know to whom I can turn.
Many, if not most, of my friends are well aware of my, shall we say, disability - my inability to retain even the simplest information over the short term. I have adapted. Conformed to my sentence. I have routines and tricks to which I do my best to adhere to.
For instance, I put my keys in the same place every time I come home. Not due to some anal insistence that things have their place. I would not be disturbed by seeing my keys out of place. I have only one reason for putting them down in the same place every time. That is where I look for them. If they aren't there, I have no inkling of where I put them and off I go on a long hunt through recent pants and jackets. A hunt, I should note, that would be shorter, if only I could remember which pants and which jackets I'd worn recently. But that's the problem - I don't.
Donna sometimes finds my keys where they shouldn't be. A place as crazy as say the dining room table or the coffee table or my desk (note none of these are pants or jackets) and knowing that I will have ransacked the laundry hamper before even considering these plain sight places, she will move them to the shelf where they ought to sit. No need to me. No need to say, "Dude, I moved your keys. They are on the shelf." No need, because I have no idea where they are, but I know where I'd look - the shelf, because that's where my keys go.
She too has come to terms with this handicap. Donna went out one day while baking banana bread. She asked me to take the banana bread out of the oven when it was done. And then she stopped. What were the chances? I was watching TV and that is plenty of distraction. A mere phone call is all that is needed. TV is more than enough to push aside a thought like check bread in twenty minutes. What to do?
My mother always said I had selective memory, but the truth is I like banana bread and I really would hate to see it burn. Donna's solution: She put oven mitts on my hands knowing that I would go to change the channel and think why do I have oven mitts on my hands? Whether you see that as sad or brilliant, doesn't matter. I ate some delicious banana bread that day.
Which brings me to the disturbing trend. Someone is taking advantage of me. Using my deficiency to their own end. I won't say who, because it hurts too much. But let me say this, "I told her you called."

In a Timely Manner

While the following image is of a fictional nature and any resemblance is coincidental, in accordance with the wishes of the offices of Johannes, Siegfried & Bahr the following image has been altered to protect the image of their client, who shall remain nameless.

Drunk Dialing

March 17th is a poor time to be on a business trip. But there I was, hunkered down in my hotel room after a fine Thai dinner, in Kelowna. I really don't know anyone in Kelowna other than clients and truth be told, I'm by nature more than a little anti-social. So the prospect of wandering out into that strip mall of town to search out the best facsimile of an Irish Pub just to stand in line for an hour for the chance to have a pint of Guinness with a clamour of green beer drinking strangers - well it just didn't seem worth it.
I was fading off to sleep when my phone rumbled to life startling both me and itself. I answered to hear my wife and friends shouting above the crowd. The highlight of which was Stephen yelling into the phone several times that he couldn't hear me. Funny only because he wouldn't wait for a response before yelling again that he couldn't hear me. Only to pass me back to Donna, who had no trouble hearing me.
The call made me think of university, when I switched answering machines. In second year I had the old tape style that Hollywood directors love where the message can be heard loud and clear in the room as it is being left. Third year I changed to the phone company style - where you call a number to hear the message. My best friends, Stephen and Claude, were living on the West Coast, while I was in school three time zones away. They would be out drinking and come home late and decide to call me. In second year I would wake up to them screaming into the phone, "Get up you fucker. I know your there. Come on. Get up..." In third year, I would wake up in the morning to find the same tirade waiting in a message that was usually 5 minutes long. Each time it would end with one of them turning to the other and saying, "... a fuck. He doesn't have that machine anymore."

LOL

What I hate more than punctuation bastardized into smiling and winking faces is the cryptic looking tag line 'LOL'. Like the rest of us, I have Google and so I know that it means 'Laughing Out Loud'. Oh and, I know that it is meant in the kindest of fashions. But like small children, I simply find it annoying - LOL

a Face in the Crowd

Oscar Winner

Donna, Claude, Al, and myself watched the Oscars together. With the short ballot we found in the Vancouver Sun, we each made our selections of which films we thought would win which Oscars. To minimize luck, we assigned 1-7 points for each award with more points given for the more marquee awards and less points for say, 'Best Makeup'.
Donna made a late charge and she would have won, had Paul Haggis won for Best Director. But she didn't. In fact she only beat Allan and he has A.D.D. No, Claude outlasted her despite missing the big seven points for best film. The funny thing is Claude had only seen a handful of the films nominated for awards, while Donna had only missed seeing a handful of them. And Allan, well, he'd seen a lot of the films, but let's be honest he does have A.D.D. and I think it was good that he was able to fill out the whole ballot.

Final Scores
Paul 19
Claude 15
Donna 12
Allan 7

Having Trouble?

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Just in case you were wondering - from time to time it seems that accessing my blog brings up an access error report - I haven't actually put limits on who can and cannot access my blog. It's a blogspot problem that has been happening to a few sites and nothing to do with either you or I.

Golf Umbrellas

I can't say whether March has come in like a lamb or a lion. It seems closer to a wet dog - stand back he'll shake off soon. And I don't think that either Punxsutawney Phil or Wiarton Willie's jurisdiction extends over the Rocky Mountains. So I don't know how much longer our winter will last. Actually, I don't know why we hold on to the notion that we even have four seasons. Really, for many of us, we have two. Whether it is Ski season and Golf season, or Soccer season and Baseball season, or just plain old wet season and dry season, we still only have two.
While I neither golf nor ski, I am very happy to see the tail end of the ski season approaching. 'Bring on golf', I say. Bring on that silly game that frustrates everyone who plays it. Head out to your courses with your irons, your woods, your tees, your stash of beer - but please don't forget to take those wretched umbrellas with you.
The thing I hate most about golf is the stupid oversized umbrellas. I don't mind them on the course. I don't golf on sunny days, let alone rainy ones. So do what you like on the fairway. It is after all twenty yards wide. But leave our sidewalks Golf Umbrella free.
I've thought we should ban them from our streets - these multicoloured eye gougers. Leave us with our drab little black eye pokers. But then I thought, what would be next? Would people start walking down sidewalks with their patio umbrellas? I mean, just in the wet season.