music here: a fresh rant

I wish people would stop asking me what I think of the band:

Sweaty, with crazed glee in their eyes, they'll say, "So, what do you think of the band, pretty awesome, eh?"

I'm a lot more tame now. Whipped into standard issue Canadian politeness I will say, "Well, they're not really my thing..."
To which they'll reply, over the blare of Hotel California, "Huh?" they're heads bobbing up and down to the sweet awesomeness of the song.
I'll repeat, "They're NOT REALLY MY THING."

So the conversation ends.

I used to say, "Fucking hell, this is absolutely the worst crap I've heard since the last time I was out in Ottawa listening to music. How is this possible? Are ALL the bands in this town competing to be the most unoriginal emitters of saccharine shit around? How is it possible that there is not an iota of creativity amongst musicians here? And what is wrong with you people actually encouraging this utter garbage?"

This also ends the conversation with added bonus of glares. It is also a lot closer to the truth in terms of my feelings about local music.

Last Saturday I met a friend at a bar in the trendy part of Ottawa, the so-called 'Glebe', which sounds suspiciously like something you might find under a toilet rim. She was there because her friend played in 'The Band'. I was there to see her and was willing to put up with inevitable gunk coming out of the amplifiers. They were a young bunch of guys: two guitarists, a bassist, a drummer, and a keyboardist. Sadly the venue was so small the bassist was almost sitting on the drummers lap, and the guitarists were forced to do the 'The Two Guitarists Rubbing Their Back's Together Thing" out of necessity rather than the sheer coolitude of the act.

They played all the standards that Canadians are obsessed with involving three chord progressions, four/four timing, and the kind of whine usually associated with the highest calibre of pussy. This kind of thing is on par with the faux-british accents of punk rockers, and the soulful throaty bellowing of jack-asses and their ballads.

What finally did it for me was when they burst --to the obvious happiness of the crowd-- into country music. I did a double-take; yes they were a band of twenty-somethings in the ubiquitous plaid shirts and jeans playing country.

Country music offends me. It's a little like mullets in that it's common knowledge that they are totally uncool, and that none of your friends has one, and none of their friends has one, yet you know they're out there lurking in some inbred throwback possum-eating town waiting to cause you paroxysms of horror and/or giggles.

In the blessed quiet after the band's set I found myself in conversation with a woman in her fourties. She asked, "So, what did you think of the band?"
"Erm..."
"They're pretty great aren't they?"
"Ah?"
"I think these guys are going to go far" she gives me a sly, modest, smirk, "I'm actually kind of promoting them."
I can't resist, "Go where? They didn't play anything original. Then again it may be just what Ottawa needs; another cover band to replay the same music written by people decades ago because nobody has the creative muscle to come up with something different today. I'm not positive, but I think I can safely say that if my asshole was an amplifier that's what it would sound like."
"So, I guess they're not really your thing, eh?"
"Yeah, pretty much. Good luck with that promoting thing though."

Since I've returned to Ottawa I haven't heard a single band that has caught my fancy, and yet everyone is a self-described musician. . .Shit, I'm a self-described musician (among other things), but you can forget me assaulting other's with my sound in anything other than a campfire situation unless it was new, unique, imaginative, and good.

There's a new song on the radio. It has the exact same melody/progression as the song Werewolves of London ("A-woooooo, werewolves of London"). Because these assholes couldn't come up with a chorus for their rip-off they used Sweet Home Alabama, verbatim .

Essentially what has happened here is the blatant combination of two of the most overplayed songs on contemporary Canadian radio. If you were to line up the the fans that embrace this whole-hearted chicanery, the pig-fucking sales people that promoted it, or the creativity by-pass motherfuckers that perform it and gave me a flame-thrower, I would not know who to torch first.

This, to me, is the sign of a coming localized musical apocalypse --'apocalypso' you might say. Music in Canada --what is popular-- is imploding into a black hole which will suck the last squeaks of Canadian creativity into it.

I suppose I can't blame the musicians though. The close-mindedness of the audience perpetuates the brutal cycle of unoriginality that saturates this country.

But I tell you this:

If I hear one more jerk with a guitar telling me how confused he is, or another glasses-wearing pixie girl describing how battered and bruised on the floor she is, or another fuckwit clever-hairstyle sporting band revelling in the hot girl across the room, or any songs about heroes, dancing, what they're striving for, what they're running from, retards that succeed, or successes that retard, I'm going to start getting violent.

riding the retarded mule

Oooo two blog days in a row...

Must be a lack of life:

Anyway, once a week the lads and I go and see a film. Those without babies that are able to tear themselves away from their wives/girlfriends, that is. You see, my friend's in Ottawa have the worst case of pussy-whipping I have ever seen...and that's saying a lot, because I've seen a lot. I can't comment on my female friend's because I seem to not have them anymore. At least not in Ottawa...Sad actually, I suppose the female/male imperative is too high here --the expectation to fuck to serious in this eviscerated town...

And blah, blah, blah...

So we saw Tropic Thunder and I loved it. Why? Because it tore Hollywood a new asshole. It brought to light all the stupid clichés that the American blockbuster bashes stupid people with. My thinking is this: whether you get it or not doesn't really matter. However, if you don't get it you're an idiot.

Something else unique I did was actually take a bus. A miracle, really, considering everyone drives in order to tackle the huge distances from suburb to suburb through suburb. Actually, that's what Ottawa is; a massive sprawling suburb, jammed with split-level wall-to-wall carpeting houses with tiny little lawns and garage doors. Sure we have the odd building here and there but they're bunched up like elephants in a defensive clusterfuck around the Parliament Buildings; the seat of Canada's government.

It's no wonder that no matter how green Ottawa claims to be the majority of people are driving cars the size of Gulfstreams to get around. The public transportation in The Nation's Crapital is the worst I've ever seen...And that too is saying a lot, because I've seen a lot.

First of all it's expensive; three bucks a ride. The routes are erratic and silly, having very little to do with anyone's actual destination no matter where they're trying to go. The stops themselves are usually hidden behind trees and other tall shrubbery so nobody can find them, including the bus driver. Although Ottawa is very up to date with the computerization of the routes, including having schedules posted on a website, there is very little correlation between what you read and when the bus actually shows up.

That last is a crime worthy of a flogging. I mean, what is the point of even posting a schedule even nobody follows it?

Last night I looked online (wistfully at this point) to figure out when the last bus was leaving downtown because I was watching the late show (ah yes, the last bus runs at midnight, the bars close at two. You do the math.) The website told me the last bus goes at 00.23. Fine, the film should be over by 23.50. Except when I got to the station after the movie the schedule there said the last was at 23.59. Methinks the OCTranspo Website People need to communicate with the OCTranspo Bustop People by using some other means than farts in a room.

Luckily I was in time for the last bus. It was late naturally. Buses are always late in Ottawa. Except when they're not. When they're not they're early. This has happened to me a number of times; the bus cruising by ten or fifteen minutes early (or was the one before it late?).

I can barely describe the mute, hopeless, and rending frustration when this happens. The incredible self-control it takes to not jam a pen into the driver of the following bus; arriving 45 minutes later.

It's that limbo when you're not sure if the bus is late or whether it went by pre-maturely and you missed it. The utter helplessness that you have to rely on the schedule of a half-baked bureaucracy which is run by a bunch of crack smoking chimps. This can really fuck up your day.

Anyway, last night, the 23.59 arrived at 00.15... and promptly went in the wrong direction. There was a few moments of reserved contained Ottawa-style panic --like the hissing of cats in a box-- and then an announcement by the driver over intercom, "Sorry folks, my mind wandered a bit there."

Astounding.

drinking the single whine

There is a severe disruption going on in the universe. A shakiness in the veneer of reality, a troubling state of affairs from which there appears to be no light.

The trouble has to do with my penis.

It's not getting laid.

A while back I railed against this in the form of a long missive in which I blamed this agonizingly contrived North American society with it's "get 'er done" mentality. Far better to rapidly follow the scheme of things and get the 2.3 children after you achieve a cubicle job and wife you only like some of the time.

I blamed the venues for meeting people as being crap. I blamed my age group for an incredible lack of imagination and adventurous spirit. Dating, for people my age, has been relegated to the same kind of monotony as people's day jobs. You meet people on-line via any number of the dating websites, you cycle through a bunch of people, till --hopefully-- you have an equivalent, or mutually satisfactory income, and then off you go.

Essentially dating, like everything else here, has become a corporate-controlled mechanism. The list is endless of sites and organizations providing dating services for "people on the go". It's unclear where these people are going, but I suspect it's the next channel on the television set.

I absolutely refuse to engage in this type of thing for three reasons: 1) It's fucking lame, 2) A picture and a few written words is no way to meet someone, therefore 3) It never works. It's one of these things --like the slow death of long-distance relationships-- that people are really slow to pick up on.

And Canada has it bad. Statistically per-capita we are the highest users of online dating sites in the world. I suppose you could blame the cold, but that wouldn't work in Sweden. Of course, people in Sweden are per-capita better looking than Canadians, but whatever.

Canada is also number one in the world of online sex...Someimes I look around and can understand this. Other times it makes me want to cry for this nation. Regardless, when in Canada, think twice before you use someone's keyboard.

So where does that leave me?

Trying to quell the bile in my throat when I see another couple. They are everywhere; on television, in movies, on the radio, canoodling on the beach, fondling in restaurants, touching on the sidewalk, fucking in the bushes... The whole experience is tweaked by my self-consciousness at walking down the street by myself.

ALL my friends are in relationships --for better, or for worse-- and it boggles the mind. How did they get there? They certainly didn't meet on eHarmony. Ah...yes...they've been together for a while, they met like most normal people do, via friendships, or a bar.

I guess I'm feeling excluded but it's not as if i haven't tried. It's just that every encounter I've had with a girl has gone utterly pear-shaped; from the return and subsequent shafting of who I thought was the love of my life, to the utter and idiotic maneuverings of well-meaning friends to try to "set me up"... When people start with, "You know, I know this girls who would just love..." I say, "No."

Sigh. Maybe it's just me.

My teeth aren't straight. I'm bald. Too tall, too skinny, too dark. Just plain unattractive. I can't speak. Disdain the getting-to-know-you bullshit. No major income for a 33-year-old. Live with my parents...Shit...when you look at it that way...

I am a pariah with the freedom to do only one thing in my freakish singlehood: make lewd and inappropriate comments to my friend's girlfriends. I'm too pathetic for them to even get angry at me.

I've told everyone that asks why I'm single (with the same tone of voice they would use to ask why I have a turd stuck to my forehead) I say, "I'm not going to find what I'm looking for here."

Which is true.

I suppose my attitude doesn't help either.







...Fuck you...

ya, babies.

So i'm sitting here fighting off a head cold. It sucks because i've got to shake the fucker by midday tomorrow when i'm doing a reading of George Elliot to a wedding party. By the same token, however, it justifies me locking myself in my tiny room to avoid the screaming chaos right outside my door.

The kid is here.

My stepbother's one-and-a-half-year old, Luke, here to spend time with his grandmother...My stepmom.

I hear a loud whining scream, and then I hear the parents, "Did you just bite your finger? Did you just bite your finger? Aw, poor Luke, he bit his finger while eating food. Did you bite your finger Luke?"

Creeping Jesus, how stupid can you get?

Maybe i've reached a threshold with babies, having just spent an entire week in Sandbanks (Eastern Ontario's vacation paradise, if by "paradise" you mean endless kilometers of sandy beach coated with young families) with my stepmom and her two kids --who both have babies-- their spouses, and my dad.

Around the dinner table at the cottage they ask me why i'm so quiet.

"Look around the table" I say, "besides my noticeably dark complexion what makes me different from you?"

They can't figure it out.

"I'm the only one here who hasn't had a kid. What can I contribute to the conversation when its all anybody talks about?"

In fact, I could contribute to the conversation with things like: Your children should be institutionalized, they exhibit all the signs; they're megalomaniacs, kleptomaniacs, retarded, sociopaths, egomaniacs, suffer from narcolepsy and attention deficit disorder, they're gluttons, they have zero bowel control, they're narcissistic, they have both avoidance and dependence personality disorders, and they have two volume settings, "Loud" and "Off".

I could say these things but then I would be faced with that infuriating sanctimonious smirk that new parents put on right before they say, "When you have a child, you'll understand."

That may be so, but I plan on having a mute.

Okay, they're cute. But could you imagine if they weren't? The human race would come to a dead stop. Even then some babies look like Mick Jagger. But not to the parents, never to the parents. To the parents they have given birth the most breathtakingly beautiful creature in the world.

And not just beautiful, smart too. Smart enough that parents have to repeat everything they say to their baby two or three times, while it's rummaging around in it's diaper for hidden doodles.

The voice goes up three octaves to a high-pitched whine, "Do we like corn? Do we like corn? Do we like it? Huh, Do we, do we?"
"BGAAAKLL"
"Oh! He said we do. Did we just say we do like corn? We said we do like corn didn't we? Didn't we?"

No wonder the kid is so fucked up, he thinks he's you.

And there it is. Maybe it's not the babies that are the problem, because the only thing that trumps their annoyance value is their parents.