Video Of The Week: Jay-Z And Kanye West (Watch The Throne)

For the third week in a row, I'm caught leaving Jon Spencer on the backburner for something that's more ''in the moment''...

In this case, the lead-off single from Watch The Throne, the Jay-Z and Kanye West monster that I still can't listen to in one sitting but does manage to have stand-out tracks you can listen to on the shuffle mode of your favourite music player.

This video for No Church In The Wild was directed by French film director Romain Gavras and depicts riot scenes (pitting protestors against police officers) which have been a mainstay of the past 3+ months in my city, Montréal - which had its 40th consecutive all-night protest last night, its 111th consecutive ''daytime'' protests of an ongoing student strike and general discontent for our provincial government - as well as countless others around the world.

I don 't know if things will change; oftentimes, when a glimmer of hope makes it through the cloud of bullshit that has plagued human history so far, the Powers That Be have either struck down harder or gotten to make The Oppressed believe they are the inevitable link to their security (see: France, May 1968). Rarely have The People bettered their situation for a ''long run'' (say close to a century).

Sometimes The Bullies are replaced by similar assholes (see: Egypt, right now), a weaker link/puppet (Afghanistan 2003-present), visionaries with their hands tied (Barack Obama).

But more than ever, with 6.8 billion people on the planet and the ''1%'' owning all of it being closer to ''0.0001%'', the words Jim Morrison used in Five To One are starting to sound realistic:

  They got the guns, but we got the numbers.
  Gonna win yeah, we're taking over.

 But I digress. I find the following video much better than the song it's supposed to support, nowhere near as catchy as Niggas In Paris, and the lyrical content nowhere near as direct or thought-out as, say, those of Ice-T/Bodycount (Cop Killer), N.W.A. (Fuck The Police), or Public Enemy (9-1-1 Is A Joke, Fight The Power).

It is, however, a good step in a good direction, and if it gets its listeners to think about the world they're living in for even a minute, it will have served Humanity some.

Ridiculous!

Wolf Blitzer puts his pants on and calls Donald Trump on his bullshit. Trump has trouble making sense of reality, since he can't get Blitzer fired from his own show.

Kinda Live Blogging The News

Things are surely happening in My City these days, what with daily (and nightly!) student protests, three full levels of corrupt government (municipal, provincial and federal), the Canadiens not making the playoffs and going through a major overhaul, the soccer team (Impact) selling out the Olympic Stadium (60,000 fans - twice!), the F1 Grand Prix, the festival season nearly upon us, and most infrastructures crumbling of getting destroyed...

And things are also chaotic in my life, as I left my former apartment (of 3+ years), a two-floor dwelling that was getting too expensive on my own after a collection of unreliable roommates, a bunch of people kicked out of my life (and a few who almost went that way as well), underpaid-and-underworked job, music contracts drying up, practically dry sex life, a pending bankruptcy...

Now, with the flash storms (and flash floods that come with them...) happened to hit my new place, that I moved into a month ago...

Here's a look from the window:




Here's a look at just how much water made it in each time a car passed on the street:




And how high the water level was compared to the door (at this point, the foyer and basement were already flooded, so it couldn't get worse):



How was your night?

How To Kill The Soul Of A City

I totally forgot about the Funeral Procession in honour of what used to be La Main - Montréal's Red Light district, the heart and soul of North America for the first half of the 20th century, where Americans would stock up on alcohol during prohibition, where jazz greats (Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Muddy Watters, Charles Mingus and countless others) came to play and escape racism, where they made the best hot dogs (Montréal Pool Room, established in 1912), near the best smoked meat (Schwartz') in the world, and, of course, Café Cleopatra, one of the continent's first very openly drag-queen friendly venues (which also holds a regular female-dancer strip club on the first floor).

All housed in centuries-old buildings, set to be destroyed within the next few months after years of heritage groups, citizens, artists and tourism experts trying to get the madness stopped. And they still don't know what they'll erect in its place, all suitable tenants having elected to conduct their business elsewhere!

Luckily, photographer S. E. Amesse was there to take these pictures:

Costumes, a live orchestra - when artists grieve, they do it i style!

Look at how desolate the corner that made Montréal's reputation now looks:

Not only are our governments corrupt and crumbling, but our infrastructure, our buildings, nearly 400 years of history is going to the wayside for Disney-themed ''art'' neighbourhoods (Quartier Des Spectacles) and fucking condos. In the heart of fucking downtown. And our mayor is proud of himself.

It's as out of its place as pork sold in a mosque a fucking disgrace.

Are Zombies Here Yet?

The news gets weirder and weirder every day. A man in Florida was shot dead while eating another man's face...

Key quote:

Now it's one thing to eat another person, and it's quite another to eat another person and then continue eating after you've been shot. Witnesses claim the officer fired half a dozen shots before the attacker finally stopped.

The cops think the assailant might have been high on cocaine; I say crystal meth might be another thought to consider.
 Or, you know... ZOMBIES.

Daniel Weinstock's Open Letter (To English-Canadians)

I don't know this Daniel Weinstock character, but his Open Letter To English-Canadians on Facebook is pretty much right on the money, for the most part:

An open letter to my English-Canadian friends. Please circulate in your networks as you see fit.
You may have heard that there has been some turmoil in Quebec in recent weeks. There have been demonstrations in the streets of Montreal every night for almost a month now, and a massive demonstration will be happening tomorrow, which I will be attending, along with my wife, Elizabeth Elbourne, and my eldest daughter Emma.

Reading the Anglo-Canadian press, it strikes me that you have been getting a very fragmented and biased picture of what is going on. Given the gulf that has already emerged between Quebec and the rest of Canada in the wake of the 2011 election, it is important that the issues under discussion here at least be represented clearly. You may decide at the end of the day that we are crazy, but at least you should reach that decision on the basis of the facts, rather than of the distortions that have been served up by the G&M and other outlets.

First, the matter of the tuition hikes, which touched off this mess. The rest of the country seems to have reached the conclusion that the students are spoiled, selfish brats, who would still be paying the lowest tuition fees even if the whole of the proposed increase went through.

The first thing to say is that this is an odd conception of selfishness. Students have been sticking with the strikes even knowing that they may suffer deleterious consequences, both financial and academic. They have been marching every night despite the threat of beatings, tear-gas, rubber bullets, and arrests. It is, of course, easier for the right-wing media to dismiss them if they can be portrayed as selfish kids to whom no -one has ever said "no". But there is clearly an issue of principle here.

OK, then. But maybe the principle is the wrong one. Free tuition may just be a pie-in-the sky idea that mature people give up on when they put away childish things. And besides, why should other people pay for the students' "free" tuition? There is no such thing as "free" education. Someone, somewhere, has to pay. And the students, the criticism continues, are simply refusing to pay their "fair share".

Why is that criticism simplistic? Because the students' claim has never been that they should not pay for education. The question is whether they should do so up front, before they have income, or later, as taxpayers in a progressive taxation scheme. Another question has to do with the degree to which Universities should be funded by everyone, or primarily by those who attend them. So the issue of how to fund Universities justly is complicated. We have to figure out at what point in people's lives they should be paying for their education, and we also have to figure out how much of the bill should be footed by those who do not attend, but who benefit from a University-educated work force of doctors, lawyers, etc. The students' answer to this question may not be the best, but then it does not strike me that the government's is all that thought out either.

And at least the students have been trying to make ARGUMENTS and to engage the government and the rest of society in debate, whereas the government's attitude, other than to invoke the in-this-context-meaningless "everyone pays their faire share" argument like a mantra, has been to say "Shut up, and obey".

What strikes the balance in the students' favour in the Quebec context is that the ideal of no up-front financial hurdles to University access is enshrined in some of the most foundational documents of Quebec's Quiet Revolution, in particular the Parent Commission Report, which wrested control of schools from the Church and created the modern Quebec education system, a cornerstone of the kind of society that many Quebeckers see themselves as aspiring to. Now, it could be that that ideal is no longer viable, or that we may no longer want to subscribe to it. But moving away from it, as Charest's measures have done, at least requires a debate, analogous to the debate that would have to be had if the Feds proposed to scrap the Canada Health Act. It is clearly not just an administrative measure. It is political through and through. Indeed it strikes at fundamental questions about the kind of society we want to live in. If this isn't the sort of thing that requires democratic debate, I don't know what is.

The government has met the very reasonable request that this issue, and broader issues of University governance, be at least addressed in some suitably open and democratic manner with silence, then derision, then injunctions, and now, with the most odious "law" that I have seen voted by the Quebec National Assembly in my adult memory. It places the right of all Quebec citizens to assemble, but also to talk and discuss about these issues, under severe limitations. It includes that most odious of categories: crimes of omission, as in, you can get fined for omitting to attempt to prevent someone from taking part in an act judged illegal by the law. In principle, the simple wearing of the by-now iconic red square can be subject to a fine. The government has also made the student leaders absurdly and ruinously responsible for any action that is ostensibly carried out under the banners of their organizations. The students groups can be fined $125000 whenever someone claiming to be "part" of the movement throws a rock through a window. And so on. It is truly a thing to behold.

The government is clearly aware that this "law" would not withstand a millisecond of Charter scrutiny. It actually expires in July 2013, well before challenges could actually wind their way through the Courts. The intention is thus clearly just to bring down the hammer on this particular movement by using methods that the government knows to be contrary to basic liberal-democratic rule-of-law principles. The cynicism is jaw-dropping. It is beneath contempt for the government to play fast and loose with our civil rights and liberties in order to deal with the results of its own abject failure to govern.

So that is why tomorrow I will be taking a walk in downtown Montreal with (hopefully!) hundreds of thousands of my fellow citizens. Again, you are all free to disagree, but at least don't let it be because of the completely distorted picture of what is going on here that you have been getting from media outlets, including some from which we might have expected more.

Daniel

It would be nice if he'd added the list of scandals Jean Charest and his Liberal Party has been associated with, but a good start deserves to be noticed.

Video Of The Week: Northen Lights

After Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas and USA For Africa's We Are The World, Canadian artists of the 1980s also needed t voice their own worries about the situation of starving children, and Bryan Adams and a few associates (Bob Rock, David Foster, Jim Vallance, his wife Rachel Paiement of CANO fame, and Paul Hyde) penned this cheesy track and had Bruce Allen convince a veritable ''who's who'' of Canadian singers from all across the spectrum take part - from respected, political singer-songwriters such as Neil Young,  Gordon Lightfoot and Bruce Cockburn, to the universally-acclaimed likes of Burton Cummings (The Guess Who), Geddy Lee (Rush), Anne Murray, and Joni Mitchell, pop artists like Corey Hart and Loverboy's Mike Reno, as well as the obligatory Québec French-language artists (Véronique Béliveau, Robert Charlebois and Claude Dubois).

All that talent, backed by Paul Shaffer, comedian John  Candy, Tom Cochran, Ronnie Hawkins, Kim Mitchell, Aldo Nova, actress Catherine O'Hara, Jane Siberry and countless others...

And yet...





This song came to mind as I witnessed the 27th, 28th and 29th straight late-night demonstrations (the last one which was violence-free) against the provincial government, where I heard my share of overhead helicopters on top of my house, police sirens, tear gas, concussion grenades, and saw an abundance of useless pepper-spraying and clubbing...

And the words came to me:

''If we could live together...''
''Don't you know that tears are not enough?''

John Tortorella Remixed

The only problem with this song is that it lasts a whole minute - twice as long as his press conferences!



I love this coach, wanted him to coach the Habs as soon as Guy Carbonneau was fired!

Video Of The Week: Bananarama

I had a whole different thing planned this week, but since my provincial government went anti-democratic, totalitarian and against our charter of rights last night, I went with Cruel Summer instead.

I know - you'd think I'd choose a more political act than Bananarama, but sometimes, extreme situations call for extreme measures... and these 3 girls just might be it.

To this day, they are still the most-charter all-female musical act (take that, Spice Girls!), but would you believe thy started out with a foot planted firmly in punk rock? Indeed, they started out doing backing vocals for acts such as Iggy Pop, The Jam, The Monochrome Set and The Nipple Erectors and, before their debut launched, were even approached by Sex Pistols impresario Malcolm McLaren, who wanted to be their manager! That's what I call street cred!

They still exist today, as a duo, and I might check it out soon enough.

Offended

You know what offends me? People who get offended by measly, useless fucking little things, for one.
''Oh, they're calling this politician ugly, it's sexism because she's a woman''. Except the same is often said about male politicians, and everybody laughs. Why the double-standard?

And why are people getting offended about the little stuff but find it totally fucking normal when politicians steal tax money, banks bankrupt people on false pretenses or companies lay off workers even though they're raking in millions in profits?

I have understood the precariousness of the human race for a long time and am willing to accept we wipe ourselves from existence by being greedy, selfish creatures hell-bent on milking everything we can get our hands on - including people - for all their/they're worth. Really. So much so that at some point, I'll just stop complaining and enjoy the show, beer in one hand, pizza in the other, watching all you fuckers kill each other.

And when you come for me, I may put up a fight, or I might not. Depends what mood I'm in, if I want to take you with me. 'Cause if I do, I'll fight tooth and nails and you'd best have a vehicle to hide behind, 'cause I'll come out swinging. If not, you'll have a real nice morning.

In the meantime, though, I'm hopeful of humanity, because in a week or so, Greece, France and now Germany have voted against stupid austerity measures; North America will probably follow. Cuba holds it own, as does Bolivia and Venezuela. The Occupiers will take back the parks, the People will be heard.

Maybe.