the way i see it today...

I played music in a bar the other night, something that on some levels i am against, and most of those levels have to do with respecting your music.  It's a long knotty one that can be dealt with in another blog, or perhaps has been dealt with in another blog over a long period.  To each their own, but the big problem comes with ridiculous views on what various people look to get out of it.  I am at peace with my participation in the game, and truth be told i had a good time, played pretty well and enjoyed all that was played by all involved, but i got more out of it than that.

You see i got into a good alpha predator discussion with the good doctor down the street and we talked about how goats have large tufts of fur on their neck and the evolutionary idea behind this is that a wolf, or wolf like predator might just come up with a mouth full of fur instead of a bite to the neck.  I found this  a spectacular and relevant insight to my current internal debate over whether or not to shave off my king hell sideburns for an upcoming tropical vacation that will have me snorkeling in shark infested reefs.  Clearly beyond any reasonable doubt a body in the ocean with massive pro sideburns has a clear survival advantage in the event of a shark attack using the goat model.  Not only will i be looking good but i will be applying evolutionary tested defense mechanisms... can you hashtag #doublewinning yes, i think you can.

And the day before i had another great side burn victory... you see i was @ the local Trader Joe's with two of my daughters who have the unfortunate attitude that big sideburns look really bad.  As i got to the checkout i was greeted by a young and eager beardman, who immediately complimented my sideburns and inquired about their evolution.  He then turned to my daughters and pointed out how pro i was looking... they kind of recoiled but hung in there looking for treats.  Now i had bought some beer and wine and the man asked to see some ID, as i believe they are cracking down... clearly i am old enough, but you know they probably had a store meeting telling them to ID everybody... i understand, and told the young beard man it's kind of flattering, to which he replied the sideburns are kind of a give away, to which i replied the 1969 should do it as well and handed him my ID.  Now my drivers license has me in a massive handlebar moustache, which floored the young man and he said "well you are just total pro all the way", and then for sport i started flinging him all my other ID's that happen to catch me sporting all forms of aggressive facial hair growth... he was blown away and started bowing to me which caused all kinds of confusion for my daughters who later described him as a not smart guy with one of them bushy beards that was combed parted in the moustache region and you couldn't see his lips only him gums.  It didn't matter we got ice cream and i scored  a fairly large victory.

This morning i went into a grade one class and engaged the kids musically for a half an hour... it went really well, but it will go better next time.  We wrote a song about their teacher and what they like to do in class, and we did some call and response songs, some action songs and we did some mouth trumpet solos.  My big mistake was asking kids to shout out ideas for song parts... i mean it's a good idea, but when you ask 34 kids to call out ideas you get more ideas that you can deal with and they don't stop coming.  For example, if you are doing a song and you need the name of an animal to cue the direction of then next verse the smart play is to pick somebody who's hand is in the air and let that kid and that kid only give the answer, rather than the way i set it up which was a ill timed free for all.  It's OK, you have to like the enthusiasm, as the leader you need to keep your hand on the valve that controls the flow of ideas.  I think we made great progress and i look forward to going back in two weeks to further work on our song titled "Mr. O", and play some other interactive numbers.

Another thing that came out of the bar gig was that i played the song "Cesar Chavez" a song i wrote about the man who has the street named after him and a teacher was in the audience who worked with Mexican children and she was wondering if i would like to come into the class and play that song.  Of course i would be glad to and suggested perhaps we could work to translate the song into Spanish as a language exercise for all.  That idea seemed to go over pretty good and entered into the concept of right brained learning, which a certain school is looking at furthering.  This is all good stuff, as a maker of music, who tries to make music that is important, there is no better feeling than having the music hit home and make a difference to somebody, but of course following the music industry model the game is about gaining and maintaining popularity with things that really make no sense when you look at them with an unbiased eye. In the future i shall try to engage children through music for the purpose of fun, confidence building and learning without concern for financial gain for myself.  Now truth be told the last time i came out of retirement i did it with the idea that i would not try to make money with music as i felt that cheapened the experience for myself.  I never minded working hard so i always went to work, took care of my kids myself, had good wife to share fair duties and did music because i know it is important for my sanity and a chance to express my views.

I feel i have written many relevant and good songs about political injustice, protest apathy, environmental destruction, hockey, self awareness... yada yada, and on the grand scale i really don't think that any of the songs have had their voice heard to the point where they ever came close to having an impact on the society i care about creating due to the fact that i wasn't a good promoter to get the songs into the ears of those whom they could positively influence, as songs can do.

I'll give you an example... I wrote the song When the money's gone last year a song i have been thinking about writing for many years:

Beside a tailing pond, a businessman sings the same old song
We got to destroy this place and move forward to win the race

Oh when the money's gone, can you catch fish in a poison pond?
Oh when the money's gone, do we look like the moon?

The words of a well written lie, the future Prime Minister did deny
Things that we put in the air, could ever harm anyone anywhere

Oh when the money's gone, can you grow food by a poison pond?
Oh when the money's gone, do we look like the moon?

A mighty enterprise fails, all you citizens get out your bails
We got to stick together, they'll flog the mules and then sell the leather

Oh when the money's gone, can you drink from a poison pond?
Oh when the money's gone, do we look like the moon?
Oh when the money's gone, do we breath the stench that lingers on?
Oh when the money's gone, do we look like the moon?

It is an important song, i think and i put it out there in hopes to bring discussion out of the obvious folly of the Tar Sands development.  Now it's not like i am the only person in the world who didn't see this glaring error, but my hope was to get a point across... the point is i don't have the star power to make points like these and have an affect.  That's why we have Neil Young, bless his wonderful soul, and all the power too him, he is using his star to make that exact point and a few others right now. Even he admitted he was late to the dance on Q the other week, and he is... we all are... too much damage has been done already for the sake of international corporate profit. But then again "nothing is heard".

I love Neil Young and i wish i was there with him singing my song, because i think it fits, not because i want fame, but that ain't gonna happen and that's OK.  He is doing the work, and taking the attacks on his character by the government and the industry lobby, but he can take it, cause he has the truth on his side, and he doesn't care what people think of him.  I get that, I'm just a jackass in a bar with a guitar playing songs nobody wants to hear.  Now i say this with all seriousness looking for no sympathy at all... yes i wish my music could make a difference, but really I'm not in that position, and in truth the position i am in in life is a pretty good one, and perhaps i can make a difference after all.  I have the power to go into a school and share the gift of music with a group of youngsters who may need somebody to do that for them.  I can live with that, and in the meantime i can keep cataloguing the protest songs just in case.

I had a great idea for an Internet meme the other day, and i think i might just do it, because i think it is really funny, we will have to see if i can get some co-operators to do it.  I think Kevin Smith will be highly amused if i can pull it off, but i won't tell you what it is as to spoil the comedy, and that's all it is, it's just funny.  Which means many will be offended if i can pull it off... it is that weird thing for it to work you need it to become viral which relies on more factors than the idea itself, but i have always believed that just because an idea isn't popular it doesn't mean it is not worth doing.  There is a real double edged sword there for one to fall on... doing things you think people might like rather than doing the things you feel are right, and having fun with it of course.  

Leaf 49 game report... for JK

Better to get another report in while the getting is good, our hero is better on the heels of a 3 game win streak than in the gutter after a 4 game losing streak.

Notice the crafty little play that has been happening from time to time... on an icing they send a winger in to take the face off and that winger gets in too fast for a couple of attempts and then gets thrown out so that the center man, who they want to take the draw comes in.  The whole process eats up some time allowing the team some rest, because of course you cannot change on an icing.  A neat little way to exploit the rules and take advantage of overzealous linesmen who are more than happy to take forever to drop the puck and niggle over the process.   I probably shouldn't have pointed that out, but i'm sure most teams do it and will continue to do it until the league comes up with a new rule to stop teams from taking advantage of another rule.

Now with all of the armchair GM's out there calling for trades, i have to say the Leafs would have to be crazy to trade either Morgan Reilly or Jake Gardiner, the two young speedster d-men who have elements to their game that very few that come along do.  Sure they still need some development on the defensive end of their game, but as they say, you can't teach speed.   Just keep playing them.

Now Tyler Bozak is proving all of the naysayers wrong... he has this silent ability to do so many things right making those around him better and constantly winning key possession battles.  He is not a big man, as they say you need to be, but if you measured his heart he would stand about 10 feet tall.

Joffrey Lupul seems to be in a bit of a fog lately with respect to his defensive coverage, which in turn affects his offensive contributions, but is deadly in the shootouts helping the team get points. A  big help has been the  play of the Holland, Clarkson, Keulimun line that spends a lot of time in the oppositions end of the ice grinding things out down low.  New defense man Tim Gleason is quietly taking care of business in his own end of the ice and both goalies have recent wins under their belts.  These are all good signs... did i mention Dave Bolland was skating this week, but truth be told he didn't look that strong...  This is to be expected.  Remember that after you sever a tendon you can't even move for a month so the conditioning you lose in that time must be incredible, not to mention finding out how important certain tendons are in controlling  slight and deft foot motions.  From everything i have heard the recovery from injuries of that sort require incredible physiotherapy work... good news is that Bolland is a natural workaholic on that level... truth be told it will probably be a long time before he is back to 100%, but lets face it,  Dave Bolland at 80% is better than some other options.

Keep it going boys
The dog days of the season
Robertson goes ape

The Doing

When i was an assistant hockey coach on my daughters team our head coach had motto, if you are going to do something then it's better to do it out here with the kids than standing in the cold seats drinking coffee and trying to stay warm.

Wise words,  but then you make it and get through it which is always easier than the  thoughts of getting through it.  It's always amazing what a human can survive, but yet we bitch about the simplest and most beautiful opportunities in life.

I found myself in this dilemma the other day... you see i have been teaching kids cooking class once a week since the fall.  Well it's after the season and we are into a new era, or term so to say, and i kinda wasn't feeling it... i actually went for a huge walk up Mt. Tabor in the pouring rain to sort it out.

lets go into an aside...

When i was a kid i got hired as a tutor to a younger kid across the street, now i didn't understand a lot, and i came from a very critical culture, and in the end i didn't think i was getting through to the kid and so i felt bad in charging this money... i was making good money btw.  In the end i quit on that kid, without really realizing that's what i was doing.  In the end i sent the message "you are hopeless" that came from a voice in my soul that said "you can't do this right".  Now that i am older and have seen things, i know that just sticking with the kid would have meant more than if he learned what i though  people might think he should.   It's a sad story but the moral is don't quit on things, even if you don't see development it doesn't mean it is not happening, you might just be looking in the wrong places.

But the reality is that after school is a weird time, mostly to do with an effort to try to talk to my mother who is suffering from a good dose of dementia but refuses to understand that which lands the kids in the house to scatter on me and set up various decoys to a structured outdoor activity... but then i thought... that's what we will do! We will all walk to the grocery store down the street and get the ingredients for the dinner, because a shopping trip is actually part of good cooking (clearly a trip to the garden is much better)... it got my head turned around from the fear of being trapped in a house full of kids for too long, and i felt better and began to get excited again.  Of course on the day of our cooking class it was raining cat's and dog's so we bypassed on the trip to the store, and made a fine dinner none the less.  Something my brain might not have been capable of had it not had the freedom of an idea that never happened.  That is a key... everything is mental, if you believe you can you can, and if you believe you can't then don't bother fake trying.

You gotta be bad to be good said some jackass somewhere in some song.  When you get involved in things there is always comedy.. sometimes it's not good to laugh at it when it happens, but in time you get a feel for these things... not being involved is not good, never comment on things you are not involved with, it's petty.  As if to say... "If i wasn't layzing on my ass here i would have done things differently".  Nope... you missed it, it just was what it was and those that were involved were involved and those that weren't have their opinions.  I guess I'm lucky, i have no fear of interaction, to me it serves a purpose to engage ideas... clearly using this method sometimes you have to slam it in reverse, but that's part of the deal, just don't be afraid to.

We all want to be important, and often times we can be important without actually feeling that way.  The fact that you are there doing it is often more important than any micro goal you see yourself failing in... it's not the failing it's the doing that is important in these times.

Leafs 44 game report...

It seems like the intervals on these reports has a logarithm pattern to it, but here we are anyway.  Clearly this would have been a much more positive effort had it been a Leafs 42 game report.  You know... fresh off a Winter Classic victory and a mild 3 game win streak there was a sense of greatness, like dane fortune finally came to the dance.  Goalie stands on his head and they win the game... that was the formula, and when the formula fails there is a goal tending controversy.

That said i really don't know why Reimer didn't start in the Islanders game, i honestly thought that before the game... Now i didn't think Bernier would play badly, I just thought in terms of the idea of earning your spot in the line up, like they have been preaching all season, would have been a good opportunity to reinforce that value to the team.  Who knows what happened, perhaps an injury, perhaps they might have been working on a trade and didn't play him on account of injury risk.  I'm not saying that has any basis to it besides the fact it would explain a situation where an idea that looked like a gut decision might actually have been a decision that was made by another factor.

Alas, a few stories in the CBC understandably one was about a "goalie situation uncertain".

 Soundbites, news creating news, trying to create interest... It's got to be weird... Hockey use to be real great when it was one team just hating the other. 

There is a classic story of Montreal Canadian's great Rocket Richard who was on the train after a game vs. a loathed rival.  Now apparently there was a screw up and both teams had to take the same train, and apparently the opponents were in between the Montreal Canadians car and the dining car.  The Rocket would not eat because he hated the team so much and couldn't stand to even see them.   Where was I... just Googled a fact and ended up watching this .  Which is kind of odd linking a video of a hero of the loathed  rivals in a blog apparently titled "Leafs 44 Game report..."

As my mother said many a time... "if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all".   Mine is more of a bastard version where the "don't say anything at all" gets mutated into go on a bizarre tangent. 

I think the Lupul - Kadri - Raymond line has potential and started, near the end if the Islanders game, to create things more regularly.   It's true Kadri has been in a fog for a while, and not the game changer we have seen glimpses of in the past. Poor kid trying to live up to the Toronto Media first line center trap.   Truth be told Kadri and Lupul were great last year... kind of like a second first line.  If they can keep playing together it could give the leafs a real nice one- two punch that is always good for winning games.  Injuries, suspensions have forced situations where Kadri and Lupul haven't spent a lot of time playing together... i think there could be a loss there that might be worth investigating. 

I play center and if i could mold a perfect winger it would be very much in Joffrey Lupul likeness.  Big guy who can snipe, pass, dangle and play it rough in the hard areas... I think the leafs almost need Lupul mentoring Kadri and helping him bring out the inner Kadri.

I thought Phil Kessel was pretty hilarious in the 24/7 Road to the Winter Classic series. His keen understanding of what a moron he could look like depending on how they edit the footage and his plea to the camera crew to not make them look like fucking idiots was pretty good in my books.

Bottom line... the need Dave Bolland back... off all of the people to miss time he is the most versatile... he can play anywhere so when you have a hole in the team you plug it with Dave Bolland. 

It all started out fairly innocently... I went to the pool to run some shark attack drills to prepare for my upcoming trip to tropical shark infested waters.  Unfortunately there was a geezer aqua-fit class sharing the pool who claimed to be distracted by the honest and hardworking shark drills being run by our hero.   Simple drills... holding breath, circling underwater remaining calm striking precise strategic blows to an imaginary four foot sensitive snout.  Then there was the escape from the area as quickly as possible as quietly as possible... no need to give the sign of a struggle.

Apparently you are not allowed to film in a public pool, which of course puts a real thorn in the concept of studying your stealth escape technique.  Once again some of my great "outside the box" thinking was being stomped on by loose rules and senior unrest over the idea of a shark in the pool.

If you can't beat them join then right?  Now don't get me wrong, i feel old, there is no doubt my decline is well underway... but in the senior aqua-fit class i was a superstar... hell i could lift my arms out of the water.  And they actually really liked me... i was providing energy to the group and there were smiles all around... i was deeking around the class bouncing in the water flapping my arms like a chicken... everybody was having a ball, smiles all around.

Of course in my mind there was a shark stalking me and i was using the senior citizens as plump decoys in my evasive escape.  Maintaining control and momentum in the water is a hard game and it can only get harder when one factors in the rip tides and fire coral.  But hey dancing around the blue hairs in a pool is good for the confidence.

My real problem was later in the hot tub when we were all just palling around and they started attacking Obamacare.... the problem is they don't know what the fuck they are talking about.   You see Obamacare doesn't affect me because i have good health care... really for the U.S.A. i have good health care.  It kind of happens that way when your wife works for one of the leading health science centers in the country.   Now, i don't know everything, and i know that Obamacare could be much better, but these people, they don't know anything.  They are trying to organize a protest in the hot tub but they haven't heard anything.  For example old man is on Kaiser plan and on Medicade... now I'm pretty sure he is not affected and so is he as he has not heard anything but he was at home depot and there were cop cars everywhere and of course he had to ask why and apparently it was because they had to lay off 10 full time employees because of Obamacare.  So i took that bait arguing on the fact of "how much money Home Depot makes", and they really can't afford health care, or is it the shareholders that need profit, more of it.  It was a silly uninformed debate that ended with them telling me i was lucky to have Canada, but then i reminded them that you pay more taxes in Canada, and remember paying more taxes is worse than anything no matter what the outcome... i think they missed that point, but i had to leave anyway.

So it was cloudy the next day so obviously i went out to the airport for some eye training... i figured spotting a plane trough a cloud would be analogous to spotting a shark far off in the shadowy ocean.   The only problem is they want you to pay for parking in the discount lot, and truth be told you can hear the damn planes before you can see them which helps the eye cheat.

 Moving on to other things what do we have?  Oh yes in the news some Tory MP made a direct link between climate change and extreme weather events.  This is kind of incredible given that the Canadian Conservative Party has been a staunch denier  of clear scientific thought for such a long time and has spent much of it time in power dismantling and decimating scientific information.

Now you have to wonder what the play here is?   Might be a safe bet that a winnable majority of the voting public might forget the past and think that if the Conservative government were to be elected again they could fight climate change by putting more middle class workers out of work and funneling more money into oil exploration, TV adds and security scares.

It's hard to know, it makes doing shark attack drills in a public pool during a senior citizen aqua-fit class look sane.

So what else...  Watched the last 3 Vancouver Canucks games and it is incredible how that team can blow a game.  I mean at least the Leafs get their balls stomped in games they have no business winning, but the Canucks, they deserve to win the game and then they goat it away with some weak play at the very end.

For me, been keeping off the Facebook... now i log out and i find myself so often at the log in page... i don't even know how i got there.  It's a hard nut to crack...  but when i get to the log in page i just don't log in... part of me wants to complain about how little good comes from it, but there is some good and i feel like i need to take responsibility for my Facebook. My Facebook friends are a collection that is unique to me, right?  So it's kind of something that represents me... taking careful strides here... I don't know if it's a cultural thing, or a human thing or a we have been on the Internet for a while thing, but i have to say, i see little comedy and little of interest bloated around rare instances of things i care about.  And that's the thing, i think napalming the facebook account is a bad knee-jerk reaction to an unsatisfied experience.  Why not just control yourself from not wasting your time there, because it is you that is there looking for something that does not exist... I'm talking to myself here of course.


Sure it's nice to see things, but it's the same argument as having cable TV and a big screen TV or a smart phone.  And my point is that is you at home watching TV , or you in the park checking your phone, or you in your house checking your Facebook to see if anything interesting is happening.  You see the thing is my kids are getting older and are starting to call me out for spending time on the computer.  Hell they are right! Obviously if i had the skills to operate a smart phone in discretion i would be OK but i missed the boat. As a parent it is unacceptable for me to be looking online at something that doesn't really matter when we could be doing something different.

That's why I'm throwing down with twitter... i hated the name originally and wanted to blood any bastard that felt the need to tweet,  it sounded weak given my Scarborough upbringing.  We are all just stardust in this other universe, and i think the trick is to not lose your life in the pastimes in which you spend them.  Of course i am talking about myself an myself only here... i spent too much time on facebook last year and while it was nice to see some things and have some interactions, on the whole my participation was a net negative as far as i can see.  Clearly i need to control myself, so that's what i will do.  As for now i can tweet without much repercussion, it's faster and i like the character limit, makes one think.  Not sure i care if people follow me, to be in a game is all i really ask.

Clearly i prefer blogging, but people don't have time for that... apparently. That's fine, i never really wanted to change the world, i just wanted to change myself.  When you post something on the Internet it becomes part of you, or at least your image, and i prefer the idea of an explanation of why you feel the way you feel over a status update any day.  Not to say that it's not fun to pass notes in the class of life, but i think i need some time in the principals office, just like the old days.