Lazy Sunday #407: Vinyl

I'm a sucker for movies about music. For all their flaws, or maybe because of them, I'll stop to watch "Jersey Boys" or "The Buddy Holly Story" every time they come around. 

"The Doors", "Almost Famous", "The Harder They Come", "A Hard Day's Night". Saw them all multiple times in theatres and pretty much in every format since. 

These were my heroes growing up, the musicians who not only created the soundtrack of my life but informed it in so many ways.

Among these favorites are also films about how the music got on the radio in the first place. Films viewed in almost empty theatres that most people still haven't seen. "American Hot Wax", "The Idolmaker" and "Stardust" (the David Essex version of that title).

Thus, I've been immediately hooked by HBO's "Vinyl", a brilliant recreation of the New York music scene of the 1970's created by some of the people who lived through it. 

Executive producer Mick Jagger's anecdotes of the time alone would've been worth the price of admission. But they are appended by those of Martin Scorsese, an inveterate New Yorker who, despite his film cred, was immersed in that city's music scene from the moment he edited hundreds of hours of concert footage into "Woodstock".

Added to these creative elements are Terrence Winter, writer of "The Wolf of Wall Street", "Boardwalk Empire" and the 50 Cent bio "Get Rich or Die Tryin'"; not to mention such always reliable directors as Allen Coulter.

"Vinyl" is about the eternal clash between Art and Commerce, told in this case from the point of view of a bunch of sleazy record executives. And it is riveting.

While society and the media focus on those who rise to the top, the successful artists and the celebrities, the story of what goes on in the trenches, where and how the music is made, is much more complex and revealing.

The mob run record companies, payola, artists pistol-whipped or drugged into destitution for trying to collect their royalties. Songs stolen from gullible writers. Hits created by studio accidents. Iconic bands whose diverse sounds were really the work of small packs of studio musicians with names nobody has ever heard.

This week I heard another of these lost stories from a guy who was also part of the New York scene -- Tommy James of "Tommy James and the Shondells". 

Following a string of gold and platinum records, James and his co-writer Richard Cordell went into the studio to record what would become another hit for the group entitled "I Think We're Alone Now". 

Pleased with what they'd accomplished, they sat down to play the master tape for a fellow record producer, who put the reel-to-reel tape on his tape deck backwards and pressed play.

Of course they immediately knew there was a problem. But Cordell, ever alert to a catchy Rock riff, insisted the tape keep playing so he could copy down the inverted chord progression. 

He added lyrics and The Shondells had their next hit, "Mirage". 

As an acknowledgement of where the record came from, the embedded heartbeats inserted in "I Think We're Alone Now" were added to the final track of "Mirage" -- but reversed.

If you haven't yet done so, please watch "Vinyl". Yes, it's flawed. But its imperfections are also part of its beauty. Interwoven in the myriad plots are revelations on where inspiration is found and how creativity blossoms. 

Creativity like that found in two hits by "Tommy James and The Shondells".

Enjoy your Sunday.

Don

Back in 1964, Don Owen did something nobody thought was actually possible. He made a Canadian feature film. Perhaps the first of what could be considered the country's modern era.

Don had been an anthropology student at the University of Toronto and worked part-time as a stagehand at the CBC. At some point, he talked himself into a job at the National Film Board of Canada and was assigned to their documentary unit.

Somebody there decided the NFB should do a short documentary about a juvenile delinquent and a parole officer. Maybe something that could be shown in schools to show that youth being rebellious wasn't really all that cool.

Don took the assignment. But instead of finding real people, he hired a handful of actors, took to the streets of Toronto and shot a raw and largely improvised feature called "Nobody Waved Good-bye".

It included scenes where lead actor, Peter Kastner interacted with real Torontonians, who had no idea they were in a movie. Including one sequence in which he almost got punched out for short-changing customers in a parking lot.

The NFB didn't know what to do with Owen's combination of improv and cinema verite, so they sent it off to the New York Film Festival where it garnered rave reviews, a US distributor and the first of many festival prizes. 

One New York film-maker by the name of Francis Ford Coppola was so inspired by the film, he snagged Kastner to play the lead in his own breakthrough feature, "You're a Big Boy Now".

Suddenly, Don was the hottest thing in Canadian film-making.

But sometimes being the hot new thing is both a blessing and a curse. Yes, he had a hit movie. But no one around him quite knew how to support the new guy or what should come next. 

So, while developing a more structured and traditional feature, he shot some documentaries with such varied subjects as Mohawk steel workers in Manhattan ("High Steel") and new Montreal Poets ("Ladies and Gentlemen -- Mr. Leonard Cohen") while continuing to win awards at film festivals around the world.

In 1966, he released his 2nd feature, the flawed "Notes on a Film About Donna and Gail". And followed it up a year later with another, "The Ernie Game". 

"The Ernie Game" had been developed as one of three features the CBC intended to run as part of their Canadian Centennial celebrations. But it was determined to be "too extreme for broadcast". Instead it won "Best Feature" at that year's Canadian Film Awards and went on to further recognition at Festivals in Berlin and Chicago.

I first met Don in the mid-70's when he was prepping another feature, "Partners". He was an eccentric, energetic, thousand ideas a minute kind of guy, who could appear unfocused and erratic, but still had the power to zero in on plots and characters that were utterly unique.

By this time, the Canadian film industry had caught up to and begun to surpass him -- only going in a direction that ultimately wasn't great for either one of them.

Referred to now as "the good old, bad old tax shelter years", it was a time when dozens, maybe hundreds of films got made using money from dentists and real estate agents. Movies which starred B-Movie or TV series Americans and copied whatever genre trend or high concept that was the flavor of the month.

Movies that tried to be about something important they were not. And woe to the writer/director who didn't want to work that part of the turnip patch -- namely Don Owen.

Don went into a period where he wrote or developed a lot of projects that didn't really go anywhere. In 1984, his sequel to "Nobody Waved Good-bye" -- "Unfinished Business" would win Genie nominations for writing and directing, but not success at the box office.

He would make one final feature, "Turnabout" in 1988.

Don Owen died last Sunday, a decade after the Toronto International Film Festival had hosted a retrospective of his work. The city he had first brought to the screen now home to dozens of crews shooting dozens of films every day.

One wonders what might have happened had he followed orders and just shot a little documentary about a parole officer and a juvenile delinquent.

But he didn't. 

For a taste of what the world was like back then, you can see "Nobody Waved Good-Bye" here.

Bring On The Schutzenmeister!!!!

If you understand the above title, you're clearly as twisted as me and every other dedicated fan of the funniest series on television, FX Network's "Archer".

For the uninitiated, "Archer" is a raunchy animated spoof of an intelligence agency sadly lacking in intelligence that recently had to get rid of its initial moniker -- ISIS. 

Season Seven of "Archer" arrives on March 31, its ad campaign kicked off by inserting "The Girls of Archer" into this year's Sports Illustrated Swim Suit Edition.

It may seem odd advertising an animated series about spies in a magazine dedicated to pretending an interest in swimwear while mostly parading cleavage. But within the alternate reality of "Archer" it makes perfect sense.

Past marketing efforts have featured hacked nude photographs from Pam Poovey's cell phone and having the cast members join Reddit's r/GoneWild forum.

My own reason for this early warning is to give you enough time to binge watch seasons one thru six on Netflix. Or in my case re-watch the particularly bizarre Season Five, better known as "Archer:Vice"; wherein the agency goes rogue by selling off its cocaine stash and getting into direct competition with the Colombian cartels.

This year, creator/writer/producer Adam Reed takes the team to Los Angeles, promising to make Archer "the biggest Dick in Hollywood". You can savor a teaser of some of the action here.

Or just check out this inspired title sequence.

Schutzenmeister!!! Let's do shots!

Nobody Wants To Read Your Stupid Script

I made my first visit to Hollywood a few weeks before production began on the first feature film I'd written. And one of the first people I met there was a high-powered agent.

He was the acquaintance of a mutual friend who, on hearing I was also starring in the movie but not understanding that the business in Canada wasn't the same as it was in LA, figured he'd better meet this unknown hyphenate -- at a time when that word was also pretty much unknown.

I dropped into his office on a Friday afternoon, immediately struck by two floor to ceiling walls of shelved screenplays, each with the title scraped on its spine in a thick Sharpie font.

I didn't recognize any of the titles, nor did I gain some early insight into the lopsided ratio between written and eventually produced screenplays.

I just marveled at the sight. It was more scripts than I'd ever seen in one place. The work of hundreds, maybe thousands of screenwriters. Proof that such a profession actually existed outside my homeland.

I asked the pert receptionist if she read them. She shuddered slightly and said, "Not since I got promoted to answering the phone".

That struck me as odd. Why would anyone not want to be among the first to experience a story that might one day thrill and inspire millions, maybe even generations of millions?

The agent was welcoming and enthusiastic, wanting to know all about me, a no-nonsense ex-pat from New York who'd been to Canada "For EXPO" and wondered why more of those "hot French-Canadian ladies" weren't movie stars.

During our chat, he sorted through a pile of scripts, selecting about a dozen that he stuffed into one of those briefcases airline pilots used to carry. His reading for the weekend. 

I asked if any of them looked promising. He allowed that he'd much rather spend the next two days in Santa Barbara. 

It confused me that such a supposed show-biz go-getter was less than thrilled at prospecting for what could be another gold mine.

It was my first insight into the reality that nobody either likes or wants to read a script.

No matter that no movie or TV show gets made without them. Despite all that rides on finding the next big thing, a fresh voice or a unique take on an old genre, the higher people rise in the business, the less time they spend searching for any of that. And what searching is done is treated as an agonizing chore.

The pain is somewhat relieved by resorting to "coverage", a three page, double-spaced precis of a script's plot, usually written by an eager and mostly untrained intern working at minimum wage -- with one of those pages dedicated to casting possibilities and/or market potential. 

Sometimes, they'll pop an audio version onto an iPod to be consumed during a commute or at the gym. Anything to avoid full attention and concentrated appraisal. 

Because...?

Because maybe reading a script is hard work and they never really learned the discipline. Perhaps because that ratio of scripts put into play versus those green-lit is daunting. Per chance because writers have become just as jaded and don't try as hard to set their work apart.

Whatever the reasons, we may finally be at the point of peak-read. 

From here on nobody ever needs to crack the cover of a script again. For veteran agent Scott Foster and software guru Brian Austin have teamed to create Scripthop.

Currently free, but soon to be provided to corporate subscribers for less than $30/month to manage their libraries, the software will read a script and do a complete character breakdown in under four seconds. 

That's less time than it takes most of us to type FADE IN:

Scripthop also spits out a detailed character breakdown along with mapping each character's "cathartic journey" as well as their screen time and shoot days.

Never again wonder if Leonardo thinks your script is Oscar bait or can fit between the climate conferences and super model yacht vacations on his schedule.

You can test drive Scripthop here. 

And the next time you submit something, you can let them know you've already done their reading for them.

You have no idea how much that will be appreciated.

Lazy Sunday #406: The Toast Master

There's a lot of talk about robots and artificial intelligence these days. And many of us are starting to wonder not just what people will do for a career in the future, but how they'll spend the extra time they have once smart devices take over their everyday chores and errands.

There have always been people who paid their way by finding a little niche that fit perfectly with their talents, abilities or personality. 

But there have been just as many who squandered their resources by buying into that old showbiz creative conference adage -- "Find Your Passion". 

In my experience, that used to be actors from successful TV series who suddenly decided their artistic sensibilities were better reflected by sculpting or painting and whose output now fills their garage and basement while they snag the occasional dinner theatre gig.

But now there seem to be more of us with the same desperate need to reflect our individual creativity and unique personality. 

When I first moved to the West coast I met a woman who claimed she legitimately paid the rent as a "Barista Inspector" -- meaning she went around to coffee places making sure the people running the Latte maker correctly crafted that little leaf at the top of your pour.

I also ran across a guy who billed himself as captain of the city's ONLY "zero carbon footprint whale watching vessel" which looked a lot like a big rowboat.

My favorite was the aging hippie at a farmer's market selling moldy bark at $60 a pop that he claimed had been infused with mushroom spores on his strictly organic non-GMO farm. Apparently I just had to set it outside and harvest a pound of mushrooms every few months. 

I didn't bother calculating how long the return on that investment on his ingenuity might be.

I think most of those people had been influenced by the ethos of the "Maker" culture. One that insists we all have a special marketable skill nobody else has and our inherent resourcefulness can match whatever corporate industry does to earn its billions.

This weekend I visited a tech show where one group of confidently independent Makers was using a prohibitively expensive 3D printer to craft flip-flops. One at a time, two hours to a pair. 

I realized this has now gone far too far.

A realization also reached by a couple of advertising guys named Andy Corbett and Patrick Kehoe.

Yes, making a living in the future may be a problem. But I'm not so sure your inner child or some personal passion has the solution.

Enjoy Your Sunday.

Lazy Sunday #405: The Dogist

Yesterday was my dog's birthday. And of course we took the requisite Birthday picture. Not an easy task given a dog who spots a camera, iPhone, iPad or any other recording device and immediately turns away.

The above is the best I got after half an hour of cookies and cajoling and finally hog-tying her back legs so she was kinda stuck.

Most dogs don't like having their pictures taken and there are many theories on why that is.

Some say they see a camera as an object that isn't edible or shaped like a ball so they have no interest in what you might be doing with it.

Some believe the lens reminds them of an eye and dogs don't make eye contact with somebody they don't know.

I think I'm in the group who believes they know you haven't made a deal with their agent.

But some people have mastered the art of the dog photo. William Wegman became a master of it and others like Seth Casteel continue to raise the bar with series like his underwater dogs...

In my world either me or the dog would drown before we got within a mile of a picture like that.

A while ago, New York Photographer Elias Weiss Friedman embarked on a project to capture the nature of dogs on the streets of New York. And over time he discovered a lot of tricks to make dogs pose for him.

This earned him the nickname "The Dogist", a lucrative book deal and the interest of filmmaker E.J. McLeavey-Fisher.

If you've got a dog, Friedman's work will inspire you. And if you don't have a pooch in your life, it might make you want to get one.

Enjoy Your Sunday.

The Dogist from E.J. McLeavey-Fisher on Vimeo.

Lazy Sunday #404: When It Comes To The Crunch

It's Super Bowl Sunday. And along with the excitement about the big game we're being bombarded with warnings about concussions on the field as well as the damage we'll do to our livers and cholesterol levels while watching said violence.

But maybe there's something else we need to discuss of equal importance...

I once got hurt on a football field.

But it wasn't playing football. I was starring in a movie as a character who at one point gets into a fight with a football player during a game.

It was a low budget affair so we couldn't buy the co-operation of any professional gridiron outfits. So we did the next best thing and promised a semi-pro team they'd get famous if they helped us out.

We spent the afternoon approximating a real game by shooting an inter-squad practice with some spectacular plays. Then we did the fight scene which included a shot of me getting leveled by some behemoth Guard or Tackle.

First take, the player, who wasn't a trained stunt guy because we couldn't afford those either, made sure he didn't hurt me and the hit looked totally fake.

Now, I'd had stunt training in theatre school and mostly did my own fights and tumbles. A lot of the time, it probably got me jobs since Producers were looking for ways to cut costs and I was too dumb to charge them extra for such additional services.

So, I told the player it was okay to hit me the same way he'd hit anybody else, because I knew how to lessen the impact and break my fall so I wouldn't get hurt.

And he did exactly what he was asked to do.

And I broke two ribs. On the first day of a grueling four week shoot.

Dumb move? Yes.

Reckless? You could say that.

Worth it? Absolutely. Even considering how much some of those decades old stunts gimp me out on cold mornings these days.

Why? Because the shot looked great. The pain looked real. And the audience was pulled a little more into the story.

We all do things common sense and people who take the long and cautious view tell us that we shouldn't.

But think of all the "bad" decisions you've made that either turned out great or resulted in an story that you can still dine out on. Life just isn't about following the instructions in the manual.

Where's the fun in living longer as opposed to well? How much has your world been expanded by talking to people your mom, your teachers, the cops or your Ex suggested you avoid? What part of the experience of living would you have lost by considering all the negative consequences that might arise?

And while it's alright for others to remind us there are consequences for our actions and we're doing something potentially harmful, when did we become a society insisting we know better than someone else how their life should be lived?

Those guys playing in the Super Bowl today made their own decision to be there. The guy adding another bottle of hot sauce to his chili recipe and going with the LARGE margaritas did too.

Time to back off the finger wagging and...

Enjoy Your Sunday.

Lazy Sunday #413: The Interview You Won't See on CBC

We're in an age of media decline. Earlier this week, I posted my thoughts about what's gone wrong with Canadian newspapers. But local TV in Canada is also losing viewers at an alarming rate.

This week the CRTC was told that fully half of our local stations could be gone within the next four years.

Local stations have seen their revenues decline by 25% since 2010 or around the last time the major nets were able to wring some local subsidies out of the cable providers and the public purse.

Since then, cord-cutting has become even more prevalent and a substantial portion of Millennials have never bothered to tether themselves to a cable at all.

More and more of us are getting our news online as well. 

But news and information is not the only reason people tune in to a local TV station. They're looking for a reflection of the community in which they live, maybe even a take on National and International affairs that comes from a perspective that reflects who they are themselves.

And you don't see much of that anymore.

As a kid, I remember our local weatherman, who also hosted a morning kids show doing the weather in a madras shirt and shorts during the summer months and standing outside in a parka in the winter.

News desks were trucked to the rotunda of the Legislature or chute side of the rodeo where the entire newscast would go out with gawkers standing around watching.

These days it's all green screen sets and silk suits. Everybody's got the latest effects packages and slickly edited video. It's your local news but it looks the same no matter where you live.

Yeah, there might be some forced jocularity among the hosts and regular commentators. But little if any of that reflects the interactions you have on a daily basis with your friends and neighbors. And overall the mood is stiff and formal. We're on TV. We have to behave.

And mostly we have to behave in the way the people on the big city newscasts behave.

Nobody's going to get offended or challenged or be at risk of seeing anything spontaneously "local".

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could begin to see ourselves as we are? Isn't there a chance doing that might make more of us tune in to see what was going on?

I spent a year on Australia's Gold Coast. Basically it's vacation central for the country. A place where you'll encounter real Australians relaxed and just being who they are.

And every now and then, those people end up on the local news. On both sides of the news desk.

Now, you'll need a bit of a language lesson to follow what follows, so here are the basics...

A stubbies and singlets party is basically drinking with scantily clad women.

A Servo is a place where you get gas or maybe a bowl of noodles after hours.

Pluggers are a pair of thongs.

A bit suss translates as "a little suspicious".

And Mootdanger means, er... okay it's a combination of Crazy and another "C" word although I'm not sure which one comes first in this instance. 

All I'm saying is -- if Canadian newscasters allowed a few more of their interviews to be as open and honest and unabashedly reflective of the local character as this, they might have a bigger audience.

Enjoy Your Sunday.

JFK, Fish & The Wrap They Came In

Perhaps enough time has passed to admit that I once dabbled in journalism. Yes, that was me writing bad jokes and a fake advice column for the Campbell High School "Tattler" under a long forgotten pseudonym.

But even by then I'd been in the newspaper business for some time, having delivered the Regina Leader Post since somewhere around the age of 12.

Back in the day, we Whitmore Park newsies would gather on a snowy corner by the Safeway to await the big metal truck that would dump hot off the press bundles we'd transfer into our own canvas bags for delivery while the pimply-faced and barely older than us circulation overlord who drove the truck barked about complaints we'd gotten or a new circulation drive.

We also got books of Rider tickets to sell door to door that would earn us an end zone ticket for each one we completed. 

Or there'd be admissions to the fairground for Summer's "Buffalo Days" where we could snag a free ducket to the Grandstand show featuring "The Gaylords" or "The Harmonicats" as well as the famous "Dancing Waters" -- direct from Las Vegas.

Newspapers were pretty much a staple back then. You got radio news for five minutes on the hour or 15 minutes on TV at six and eleven, which didn't allow for a lot of depth. So pretty much every house in the neighborhood got the paper every night. Making the regular circulation drives a bit of a joke.

And delivering newspapers taught me a lot. 

I learned that despite all the information, classifieds, movie times and grocery special flyers we tucked inside the front door or mailbox, nobody really wanted to pay for it. I had to come around at least twice for the dollar a week people shelled out for all that plus the big Saturday edition with a full section of color funnies.

And people who worked for the government were even worse. They never felt the need to pay until they got paid at the end of the month.

But I also discovered while collecting one Friday night that the hottest cheerleader we had was sitting at home because all the guys at school were too intimidated to ask her out. Luckily, I had taken in enough cash for bus tickets, popcorn and a movie, so we bailed for a fun night on the paper's dime. 

It felt a little bit like eloping and taught me that nothing is ever truly out of reach.

I had to borrow money from my dad the next morning to pay my bill at the paper. But I became an appreciated "chip off the old block" when he learned the reason why.

The biggest lesson I learned as a paperboy, however, came the day President Kennedy was assassinated. We were in the same time zone as Dallas, so by the time events had sorted themselves out, the truck was late getting to the Safeway.

It was dark by the time I set out on my route. But I didn't drop a single paper where the subscribers usually wanted them. Someone was waiting on the front step or in the driveway of every single house to get a hard copy of the news.

That night I learned how similar we all are and that when something matters deeply to one of us, it probably matters to a whole lot of other people as well.

Newspapers were still important when I moved to Toronto in the 1970's. The town had three dailies then, all publishing multiple editions six days a week. 

My first local job was in a 24 hour porn store disguised as a bookshop on Yonge Street and around Midnight we'd get the early edition of the Globe and Mail, most of which were snapped up in bulk by street guys who'd hawk them outside bars when they closed.

It might be hard to believe that drunks would stumble out of "The Gasworks" after a couple of hours listening to "Trooper" or "Max Webster" suddenly in need of a newspaper. But they did.

Somewhere in my archives is a copy of the first Toronto Sun, a tabloid created by the suddenly unemployed staff of the suddenly defunct Telegram. Imagine any redundant journalists taking such a chance today.

Of course, it's a different time. There are at least a half dozen 24 hour news channels on my cable feed. Most on a 20 minute repetitive loop, but still. Spin any radio dial and you'll find almost as much information programming as any genre of music.

But it's online that truly cratered traditional journalism. Even paywalls don't keep people from what they want or need to know. Blocked by a provider, people just google the topic -- or in Canada, go to the CBC, already mandated to deliver it free of charge.

A couple of days ago it was announced that two of our oldest papers, The Guelph Mercury and the Nanaimo Daily News were silencing their presses after 147 and 141 years respectively. Corus radio's Mike Stafford particularly mourned the passing of the Nanaimo paper, noting that it was always delivered between "two delicious wafers of chocolate".

But a few thousand people in both communities will now have to do something else while they wake up with their morning coffee.

The same day those newspaper closings were announced actor Abe Vigoda, best known as Detective Fish on "Barney Miller", died at the age of 94. And there was a bittersweet angle to his passing. 

For Vigoda had become a well-worn Internet meme, reported dead at least once or twice annually for the last decade, often in Twitter or Facebook posts picked up and reported by traditional media.

Each time, Vigoda had to make a hang-dog appearance to say, "No, I'm still here." and everybody had a laugh.

But whatever the mainstream reaction this time, I can guarantee nobody was waiting on their front step to find out what really happened.

Every morning while I walk the dog, I see the local delivery guy making his rounds in a beat up Toyota. But he doesn't stop at every house. He'll pull in at one place, drive a block to his next drop, then zoom over the hill, almost out of sight before the brake lights come on again. 

He got me wondering about the last time I actually paid for a newspaper. My local comes free with a coffee at Tim Horton's. And that got me wondering what not only the guy in the beat up Toyota, but all the people who work for all daily newspapers are going to do with their lives.

Because theirs is an era clearly coming to an end. Even behemoths like the NY Times and Washington Post have seen their subscription numbers drop by 40% over the last couple of years alone.

And while there are all kinds of economic, cultural and technological reasons contributing to that, if I was to point a finger at just one thing that has killed the newspaper, I'd say it was a shift from journalism to advocacy.

Oh, to be sure, newspapers have always endorsed causes or candidates. But now there's a air of insistence about it. Used to be you were presented with the facts or some columnist's opinion and left to make up your own mind. Now it's hard to escape the feeling of being belittled for not sharing their position or agreeing with the spin a particular outlet puts on any story.

And whether that spin is coming from the Left or the Right, I think people sense the denigration and naturally shy away from being made to feel uncomfortable or just plain stupid for whatever values and opinions they may hold.

As someone not as enamored of our current Prime Minister as the many journalists who fawned over him during the election campaign, I can't help but wonder how the few hundred recently laid off from Bell, Rogers, Corus and the Post chain will feel when he doesn't come as quickly to their aid. 15,000 workers a month losing their jobs in Alberta might just have to take precedence.

There was a time in Toronto when the joke went -- "The Globe is read by those in power. The Star is read by those who want to be in power. And the Sun is read by people who don't care who's in power as long as she looks good in a bikini".

But now that breezy sentiment has gone the way of the crusading journalists epitomized by pulp writers, Film Noir, "All The President's Men" and "Spotlight" who never gave up the struggle to reveal the truth.

And as the truth has taken a backseat to advocacy, a lot of avid news junkies have moved from multiple sources to a couple to one to -- not really bothering anymore.

We still need to be know what's going on in the world. What we don't need is a lecture on how we ought to feel about it.

Lazy Sunday # 412: Ol' 55

I'll admit to feeling a chill when I heard that Glen Frey had passed. For reasons subjective to all of us, we append a soundtrack to our lives. Sometimes it's just background, putting a pin in a special Summer or memorable love affair. But sometimes it's something more.

I don't remember the first time I heard an Eagles tune nor whether or not it was one of their hits. But something in the tone and the writing spoke to me and I sought them out.

It was a time when I still wore my hair long and was given to boots, jeans and leather. It took me back to my country roots but included a sophistication I still longed to acquire. And though it could rock, there was also an attractive, illusive gentleness.

Songs like "Lyin' Eyes", "James Dean" and "New Kid in Town" seemed directed at me personally. And one day "Hotel California" just put everything in perspective.

During various sojourns in Hollywood and one particular summer in Laurel Canyon, they were pervasive. And not just musically. They seemed to capture the essence of the days and the soft desert nights. Everything in their lyrics and the instrumentals resonated with the world that surrounded me. 

I think that's what people really mean when they use the word "culture".

With Glen Frey's passage, it became clear that all of that was gone. Oh, it's been gone for a long time. But listening to an Eagle song, even one from the last few years, made it feel like that world was still accessible and capable of returning.

But it's not. 

And maybe that's why the loss of a rock icon we never actually knew hits as hard as it does. It's a reminder that we've moved on. Perhaps from a life and way of living we never thought we'd leave. And more than likely leaving us bereft of a current soundtrack that reflects who or where we are now.

The other night, I went to a hockey game and noticed that all the music pumping the crowd was 30-40 years old. I could remember when that music was new and just as powerful as it is today. But since I'm far from the major hockey crowd demographic, it got me wondering where the music was that spoke just as dynamically to them.

Did the record companies who once so perfectly guided our tastes decide to rest on their laurels and just keep releasing the old library in new formats? 

Did the rise of boy bands and baby doll harlots block the road to artists who really had something to say to us?

Or did we ourselves stop demanding a new voice and new horizons, preferring we be surrounded with those who reflected us in a former incarnation?

When I was 18 or 25, I didn't listen to music from the flapper era. Why do so many younger people look so far in the past today?

Maybe losing a Bowie or a Frey cuts deeply because none of us have replaced their voices. And maybe replace is the wrong word. Maybe it's really about accepting the voices that speak more to who and where we are now. 

Whatever it is, I'll still miss you Glen. You and the guys were a bigger part of me than I'm sure you ever realized. 

And I'll never forget you. But you were of one moment of my life and forgive me, but I'm not letting my soundtrack keep repeating the tracks we've already heard.

And somehow I think you'll understand that. For it's almost as if one of your first songs foretold your own transition to wherever you are now.

Adios, Desperado. Keep moving.

And Enjoy Your Sunday.

Lazy Sunday #411: Offline Dating

Every now and then, I use the Lazy Sunday post to link to a video from one of my favorite short film sites, Short of the Week. This is despite the fact that I'm not a huge fan of short films.

I think that's because I come from an era where those with a passion for film went out and made an actual full length film. Full length films had the potential to both reach and find an audience and that was the whole point of the medium, to tell a story to an audience.

Not that there weren't/aren't great short or even really short stories. And not that there aren't/weren't niche audiences for all kinds of films.

But when I was starting out, short films were primarily for animation, experimentation and people who dabbled in the form rather than intended to make it their future career.

Not so today.

With the silo-ing of distribution and exhibition as well as the tightening of who gets to meet with studio and network gate-keepers, it's tougher than ever for somebody intent on a film-making future to get their ideas produced and showcase their talents.

Often, even government funding agencies want some idea that you know what you're doing before they'll consider funding -- a short film.

So today's budding film-maker has to find a way to finance their own sample of what they can do. And that almost always means something affordable and therefore -- short.

But there's an audience component to this change too.

Art houses showing independent and foreign films are becoming almost as rare as the drive-ins that used to show the action shlock and quickie horror films that kicked off many a famous writer, producer or director's career.

Given the increased availability of films online and the opportunity to find pretty much what you want where and when you want, a film-maker now needs to make an immediate impression to get noticed at all.

Apparently, nobody's got time to search for talent anymore.

Understanding these realities, Short of the Week has recently revamped its site to offer even more collections of titles or channels that fit search modes. 

They've always had spots for documentaries, sci-fi or comedy. But now films can be found based on country of origin, the festivals at which they debuted and even the type of film stock used.

Among these are their staff picks of the best films from 2015, from which I picked a film about the "lack of time" or "need for immediate gratification" syndromes that seem to afflict all levels of social interaction these days. How hard it is, for example, to get a date if you don't search for a partner online.

Along with making a first feature, the art of offline dating might also be disappearing. I'm not sure which might be the greatest loss

Enjoy Your Sunday...

OFFLINE DATING from Samuel Abrahams on Vimeo.

Lazy Sunday # 410: The Chilliwack Channel

Like most people, Canadians included, my first exposure to Chilliwack, BC was the 70's band of the same name who apparently didn't even live there.

A city of around 80,000 nestled in a picturesque spot in the Fraser Valley, it's primarily known for farming and bad city planning. "A mere 2 hours from civilization" as it's described by the hip-wah-zee of cosmopolitan Vancouver.

But this week, with Canadian media beginning the process of educating us on what we can expect when cable "unbundles" our channel packages, a video appeared suggesting Chilliwack might be the bellwether of what we find interesting enough to watch in the year to come.

Local homeowner Rob Iezzi, for reasons that become apparent on viewing, has his home surrounded with surveillance cameras.

He uploaded a synopsis of what those cameras recorded during 2015 and it's far more interesting than anything you're going to find on A&E, History, Biography or a whole host of other channels you finally have a chance to boot from your cable package 10 weeks from now.

By merely capturing what's going on outside his front and back doors, Iezzi has not only matched or beaten the viewer numbers most Canadian dramas get in an average week, he's revealed a vast untapped audience for the ultimate reality show -- "Shit That Just Happens Everywhere Everyday".

Trust me, this is a future a lot of people are going to embrace.

Enjoy Your Sunday.

Lazy Sunday # 409: The Last Saskatchewan Pirate

Aaaarrrggghhhh! Things are getting tough out there.

The Loonie's sinking faster than the bird it's named after diving for a Pickerel.

Alberta's losing 12,000 jobs a month while the family farm becomes the next candidate for a wing of Drumheller's Tyrrell Museum.

Even the mighty Wall that Saskatchewan built is starting to crumble.

How much longer until the fabled Prairie Schooners slip from their barns and once again sail beneath the living skies?

Captain Tractor, we await our orders...

Enjoy Your Sunday

The Only Resolution You Need

…For this or any year.

Make 2016 all it can be by promising yourself to become one thing and one thing only.


A Riser…