For oxymoron67:

1976 performance (Michael Martin Murphey: the Hippie Years)


Performing it on Letterman thirty years later:


The second incarnation of MMM is the one who recorded The Horse Legends. Yes, of course I own it.

Ooh... and speaking of sad seventies songs about animals:

Henry Gross, "Shannon"



I have no plans to download this one.

I have no Headstones albums in my collection, so I just got one from iTunes.

And, um, a greatest hits package by the Bay City Rollers.

What can you tell about someone by looking at their iPod??

So apparently, New Kids On the Block are talking smack about Backstreet Boys who apparently talked smack about them.

I have no real opinion here--I was much too old for both these groups in their first incarnation, although I admit I have a soft spot for Backstreet because the little girls in my Grade 3-4 class had crushes on them. New Kids just made me want to stab someone. However, I have this mental image of a dance-off in an alley somewhere.

I expect former members of N'Sync to weigh in at any moment.

So later this morning I have a library orientation with one of the health professions schools I deal with. (I am their contact librarian.) This is to quickly introduce the new class to the library. Later we're supposed to set up more in-depth sessions, but that's between me and the students, with the first-year rep acting as coordinator.

Which the school decided to do because last year all the sessions organized by instructors and me conflicted with other commitments, so the students just got hold of me and set up their own.

This year, the students will already know what I look like, because the second-year class filmed an orientation video that, judging by the costumes, seemed to be based on Wayne's World. I know what the costumes look like because a group of the students arrived at my office to ask me to appear in one scene, where I was introduced as "Your new best friend."

Could anything warm the cockles of my librarian heart more than that? I think not.

I hope they keep thinking that because the faculty has arranged approximately eleventy-million library sessions for both classes this term. Which I have no complaints about, but I hope the students find them all useful!

After work today I'll be joining a bunch of people to take in another Halifax Fringe Festival play. This one is called Gay White Trash was apparently the hit of the festival last year or so.

( Read more... )

In addition, live accompaniment will be provided by Skank Williams. The plot synopsis sounds absolutely nothing like Sordid Lives, but I'm hoping the vibe is similar. I have seldom laughed so hard at a movie that made me kind of sad in my life.

And speaking of Sordid Lives, I placed it on hold at the public library and it's arrived. Yay! So this weekend I'll have to see who I can rope into watching it with me. It's the kind of movie you should definitely see in company. Singing along to the great theme song (as sung by Olivia Newton-John) is optional.

A day or so ago I linked to an interview with Hugh Dillon on The Hour.

I forgot to mention my favourite pullout quote. Hugh is talking about Callum Keith Rennie, who costarred with him in Hard Core Logo. Apparently Hugh was on the receiving end of a generous gesture from Rennie a few years back, which ended up helping Hugh out professionally.

The comment I loved was to the effect that some actors--"not all actors, or I guess even most of them, but... okay, there are actors out there who, if they see you have success... it's like a little piece of them dies."

I am not an actor, but I am an aspiring novelist with access to the Internet, and... it's not just actors, okay? In fact, it is so often the way aspiring writers behave on the Internet that I had to stifle giggles as I watched the interview in my office. I usually express it as "they type of people who feels any success someone else has is stolen from them," but it's the same thing. God knows I try not to be like that myself, but do keep an eye on me.

I should probably be sad at this evidence that all people suck some of the time, but instead I think I find it reassuring.

I mentioned a while back that if I ever get around to writing another Kowalski story, it may well feature a punk band they're friends with, and that I was a little torn on the subject of their name.

It's okay, I've decided the punk band can be the Cadaver Dogs. I've thought of another band (who can be suspects) to use the name Wevenge For Wanda.

I know you're all as thrilled as I am.

No, really. Apparently some guy got arrested for streaming tracks from the upcoming Guns 'N' Roses album Chinese Democracy.

At this point I must confess my first thought was, "There are tracks?"

They actually exist?

Honestly, I thought they'd spent the last ten years fucking around and erasing the tapes regularly. Maybe this thing will be released one day after all.

I hope not. That would spoil the fun.

Now that I think of it, CTV's Thursday lineup (CSI, CSI, and Flashpoint) is ever-so-slightly ironic. What with the fact the CSI gang is all about investigating scenes of crimes, and Flashpoint focuses on avoiding them entirely.

CSI character #1: "This is a very clean crime scene."
CSI character #2: "That's because there wasn't any crime."
CSI character #1: "I thought some armed maniac was holding a bunch of people hostage and the police had called in the SWAT team."
CSI character #2: "They did. Well, sort of a SWAT team. And one of them talked to the armed maniac until he calmed down and surrendered, and then the hostages all went home."
CSI character #1: "Oh. In that case let's go have a beer."

Or something like that...

Okay, so last night I was watching... something, I forget what... on CTV, and there was an ad for their current Thursday night lineup. Said lineup consists of: a rerun of CSI: Classic, a rerun of CSI: Miami, and Flashpoint (which for this week and next will also be reruns, so our American friends can do their political thing and not miss anything new.)

The point is, the ad naturally consisted of little snippets of each show run in succession. It ended with two quick scenes: one of David Caruso as Horatio Caine, taking off his sunglasses, immediately followed by David Paetkau as Sam Braddock, looking down his rifle scope and announcing into his radio mic, "I have the solution."

And my first thought was, "Take the shot, Sam! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, take the shot!"

Hmm. Apparently I find David Caruso more annoying than I thought!

I was roaming the local Chapters over the weekend and thought I would check to see whether anyone has brought Ngaio Marsh back into print. No luck, but--I found the new Vicky Bliss novel!

Naturally, I chose not to wait patiently for the paperback. I've got library books to finish and then I'm all hers. Yay!

No, no, I'm not going to suggest that we eat anybody. But over the past couple of weeks, while looking up articles about the Olympic equestrian events, I have seen the same argument over and over that equestrian sports are not true sports and do not belong in the Olympics because "the horse does all the work." (I will leave alone the truly weird suggestion that since equestrian sports are "expensive" they are inappropriate Olympic sports. Apparently the people posting that on the CBC Web page have never paid for top-level coaching in any sport whatsoever.)

And I choose not to go on a big rant about it, because it's not the sort of argument anyone can ever win. I did point out on the CBC Web site that even if riders are not as fit as decathletes, there are a lot of sports that are more about skill than raw physical prowess. One could argue that baseball is one of them, considering the shape some first-basemen I've seen are in. And I am a baseball fan.

The other day I posted a link to video of some radio guy taking a riding lesson to show him it's not as simple as he thought. Nice start, but it's occurred to me that someone should really research what Ian Millar does every day for a week and put the loudmouth through that. "What do you mean, you're sore? You haven't ridden your sixth horse yet today! And remember, you're just riding a school horse, not schooling. Me? Oh, I am not riding any six horses every day. I am not the one suggesting this isn't a sport, sport." Fitness activities and all. "Now you go jogging! I'll follow you in this golf cart--I am not the one who thinks riding isn't a sport, sport."

Or whatever. It'd be fabulous. How does a sixty-one-year-old man stay at the top of his sport? I would suspect it is by working really fucking hard.

I would take the whole riding-is-easy thing a lot more seriously if virtually every other Olympic sport didn't have at least a few detractors urging its removal on some silly grounds or another. My favourite, and one that made its own kind of sense, was one I ran into this morning (possibly on my friends-list, in fact) where someone suggested (jokingly, I assume) that all Olympic sports should be useful for escaping from either wolves or Nazis. Yes, I know, a "sport" by its very nature doesn't need to be "useful," but it was a funny suggestion.

Which also caused me to think that if Steve McQueen had been riding Hickstead instead of a motorcycle, that movie might have ended very differently, but that's neither here nor there.

No, not me. Adam van Koeverden, who won all his K-1000 heats but finished eighth in the final.

And here I was just thinking, because I am shallow, that one thing I'll miss when the Olympic coverage ends is his torso on my television.

( Observe: )

Damn.

A Canadian woman who just missed a medal was asked how she felt about competing against Chinese athletes.

"Well," she replied, "I've been told there are about thirty million female weightlifters in China. That's a big pool of athletes! So I feel pretty good about how I did."

And well she should. But that figure she gave? About thirty million?

Guess how many people live in Canada?

About thirty million!

So this morning at coffee we decided that someone should sponsor all those Chinese weightlifting women to come to Canada and each lift one Canadian over her head. Obviously the first weightlifters to sign up would get the best pick of Canadians.

We thought, at coffee break, that we were geniuses.

Mind you, we had not at that point drunk the coffee...

You know the type, the ones who bitch and moan if their country's athletes don't win all the medals in a given sport--as if there aren't a lot of athletes from other countries who are also very good. I hate idiots like that.

However.

I hope we do well in the canoeing.

I just feel like it would be embarrassing, if Canada didn't do well in the canoeing...

As I was cruising the Web yesterday looking for stories about the showjumping, I also ran into a couple of stories where the writers commented that, since Phelps is all through in the pool, there was really nothing worthwhile going on and everyone might as well just go home.

It was a writer from a small paper, so I will excuse him his ridiculously small outlook. However, I weep for anyone who can spend any time watching the Olympics and not find himself falling madly in love with some athlete he's never heard of before from a country not his own in a sport he's never paid any attention to.

I invite anyone out there to tell me about your unexpected Olympic crush. I'll go first.

Imagine my amazement, when I paused on the women's weightlifting a few days ago, to find myself utterly charmed by Chinese gold medalist Cao Lei. I hope she wouldn't be too offended if she knew I imagine her living in the castle next door to The Friendly Giant's and dropping over to visit.

Cao Lei in action:





Cao Lei and her flag



Anybody else care to share? Remember, the only requirement is, the athlete has to be either from some sport you've never noticed before, or a country whose athletes you don't follow (or, preferably, both!)

I haven't been watching a lot of the Olympic swimming coverage (although I was all over the diving last weekend) but naturally I am aware of Michael Phelps and his many medals.

I wouldn't have known him if I met him in the street, but last night CBC did a little segment on him and showed footage of what had to be practice swims. I say this because since the 70s you don't normally see competitive swimmers with facial hair, and yet Phelps raised his head in one clip and there he was with a full-on pornstache. I can't find a picture of it but I assure you, it was awesome.

Naturally, I am now rooting for him to win as many medals as possible.

A couple of days ago I posted about an Australian radio guy who thought dressage was dead simple.

Well, he's had his riding lesson. It doesn't seem like he rode anywhere near as long as originally stated, and he didn't actually try a test, but it looks like he's still changed his perspective a little.

He'd have changed it a lot more if his horse, Bruno, had not been an apparent candidate for sainthood. There are photos and a video on the page linked above--just look at the face on that old darling!

The video is worth watching just for the helmet-cam footage of the trot.

And no, I would not normally ask a complete beginner to trot in his first lesson. But since riding is ridiculously easy and the horse does all the work... the coach probably should have asked him to canter, too.

Bruno fan club!

I was upstairs talking to a coworker about something else, and we got talking about my leg progress, and I remarked my physiotherapist had agreed that yoga would be a good followup activity once my symptoms resolve.

And from her cubicle across the way came the voice of our office admin queen: "No! Tai chi!"

Seems she was in the midst of registering for a course with the local recreation council. And although I asked about yoga, my physiotherapist suggested pilates or tai chi as equally good alternatives for the core muscles.

The upshot is that I think all three of us (my two coworkers and I) have signed up for a beginner tai chi class this fall. (The others have taken classes before, but not for a while so we are all starting from the basics.) Anyway, two of us have for sure. Whether I'll be symptom-free by then is unlikely, but I think I'll go and do what I can.

And I signed up for guitar lessons on Saturdays at the same time. I've been saying for years that maybe someday I would try to learn some real basic guitar. Well, Someday has apparently arrived.

And I've paid for both classes up front, so it's too late to back out now!

Someone over on equestrian just posted about an Australian media figure who said, once too often, that dressage was boring and "the horse does all the work."

All together now: "Yada yada yada."

However, this broadcaster is apparently willing to put his money where his mouth is and attempt to ride a low-level dressage test on a trained horse. I don't hope he gets hurt, but it would be very funny if he fell off. And I hope his legs hurt like a bitch for at least three days.

With that said, as I remarked over on the community, I have developed a response for people who tell me that riding involves no effort and "the horse does all the work." (No, it is not "how original! Did you think that crack up all by yourself, in your own little head?") I try not to be condescending in my daily life, but when I hear that one I just smirk and reply as patronizingly as possible, "I see you don't ride." And then I change the subject.

With that said, I no longer get all worked up on behalf of Ian Millar or Cindy Ishoy or whatever. People often do not know things, and assume they do. I'm not one of those librarians who gets all upset about the fact very few people outside the profession have any idea what we do. I mean, sure people make stupid cracks about librarians. At least we're not lawyers--now there is a profession with something to complain about, jokes-wise!

It's not that I don't freak out over things I cannot control, but I'm getting a little better about not letting total strangers push my buttons.

With that said... I do hope that Aussie guy experiences considerable muscle stiffness. And admits it.