i had a dream last night in which i was back at my grandmother's apartment shortly after she died. as members of our family gathered all her things to be redistributed amongst kin, i went into the room that was once my grandfather's study. sitting there on the couch was her violin, her beautful 200 year old gem that she had played since she was a child, that she somehow managed to retrieve after she returned from the camps in '45. before i could touch it, it started playing on its own, although not visibly. the strings weren't vibrating and the bow was still in the case, but through the f-holes a bright, sunny piece played, no doubt by the ghost of my grandmother who gave me one last song.
i was so displeased that i had to wake up from such a beautiful dream. but my dad has kept the violin for me to learn one day, so in the end, i have the satisfaction of knowing this.
also in that room was my grandfather's med school diploma. when he returned home after the war, he went to his home only to find it in ruins. he went through the rubble and one of the few things he could retrieve was this diploma, which had only a small rip in it and was slightly browned over in one spot. he was so happy to find his diploma because it was one of his first victories as a young hungarian jew in a class of rumanians who resented his not only his superior intelligence and humble grace, but who he was. it was also the first step in a decade's worth of oppression that he had to endure.
the things they left behind in their apartment were plenty, and as a result i was able to put most of my room together when i moved from my temporary home on the upper floor to my new place on the lower floor of the madison house, just one week after my grandmother died. my father saw that i had taken a candlestick vase, an earthy green on that took the shape of an old lady's bust portrait. one of the few times in my life i saw my father cry when he said to me "please take good care of this because i remember this from my old house back home. i used to play with it when i was a kid."
here we are in the 21st century and our long and complex family history is contained within these few artifacts.
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
BOYCOTT UPS, SHIT ON THE GOV'T
apparently, this isn't exactly today's papers - it's been going on since 2002 - but UPS is suing the canadian gov't under NAFTA's chapter 11 provisions. they feel that because canada post uses the same facilities for both its letter and parcel courier services, this creates an unfair subsidy for canada post and thus hurts the business of UPS.
linda mcquaig echoes my sentiments on this matter beautifully.it's a goddamn cash grab and it's going to cost you and me some tax money. now, i don't think the gov't should get off so easy. it was mulroney who approved this provision, but the neither the chretien nor martin gov'ts have repealed this ridiculous act of compliance with free trade lobbyists.
vote green and none of this shit would happen.
linda mcquaig echoes my sentiments on this matter beautifully.it's a goddamn cash grab and it's going to cost you and me some tax money. now, i don't think the gov't should get off so easy. it was mulroney who approved this provision, but the neither the chretien nor martin gov'ts have repealed this ridiculous act of compliance with free trade lobbyists.
vote green and none of this shit would happen.
Saturday, January 22, 2005
A NEWSPAPER STORY PART 3
PART 1
PART 2
In mid December, Adam and Warren circulated an e-mail around the office that nobody would be getting any Christmas bonuses this year due to disappointing sales. That meant that I wouldn’t be receiving a $20 note that apparently I was entitled too. For other people who had been there far longer they felt hurt because when Adam takes his vacation during Feb. to warmer climes they know it will be courtesy of their bonus money. However, the Christmas party went on as scheduled and let me tell you that it was one that could only happen at the Save an Ad.
The Christmas party was to start at noon on a Friday. We would come in to work as scheduled and the office would still be open because some people would be conducting business, such as the car magazines. It was also payday for us so that was another added bonus as well. When the clock struck noon, all of us stopped working and went to unload cases of beer from Seamus’ car. There was also a buffet that included veal, eggplant, and salad. I’m sure Jenna enjoyed the fact that the veal was gone in no time.
Buckley asked Adam if it was ok for us to smoke weed in the promotions room during the party and he told him that we could go outside since it wasn’t that cold. A little bit later, Brian, who worked in displays and was Buckley’s smoking buddy, came in to the promotion room and started rolling a spliff. He was going to take it outside but Buckley insisted we smoke it in the promotions office. Brian said that he did not think that Adam and Warren would appreciate it. Buckley replied that he asked Adam earlier if we could smoke inside the promotions room and since he’d said we should go outside, that meant it was ok to smoke inside. Buckley, who had successfully conned Adam and Warren into controlling the promotions room, was too lazy at this point to even lie. Maybe that’s a sign that you should be smoking less weed. Buckley also made an announcement that “Brian has 15 half quarters for sale”, as if the art of subtlety did not exist.
Brian relented and pretty soon the room smelled like someone had burned a pound of reefer. There was an eight year old girl at the party, one of the employees daughter’s, and we were all worried that she was going to come in. Sure enough, she opened the door while we were smoking one of about 85 joints and I was just like, get away! The door kept on opening and eventually no one even cared. Seamus did walk in and this one guy name Dan from classifieds, who apparently was the original Dan at the Save an Ad, passed it to someone else and was like “I don’t even know what is going on.” I asked Buckley if Seamus cared and he told me that a bit of weed that someone had bought from him earlier was really from Seamus. This reminds me of a little vignette that Alicia had told us before. Apparently, a memo was sent around the office asking people to check if they smoked weed or sold it. A few people actually checked off that they smoked weed. Alicia thinks that the memo was sent out not to punish anyone but for Adam to get more hookups. Apparently, I know why this memo was not sent around when I was working at the Save an Ad because Adam could do worse than to ask his trusty manager Seamus.
At around two, some Russian lady came in and appeared to be distressed. Brian saw her and he was like, do you want to place an ad? Apparently, Buckley forgot to give the cheques for Adam to sign and the Russian lady, who worked at a nearby cheque cashing place called Money Hut, did not notice that the cheque wasn’t signed when Kavitha cashed hers in. She was promptly ordered to go to the Save an Ad to see what the problem was. When the Russian lady smelled the weed and saw everyone drinking she must have had visions that she had been had by Kavitha and that her immediate future would involve an unemployment cheque. Eventually, everything was sorted out and things resumed back to normal.
There was a little bluegrass hoedown going on in the promotions room involving a banjo played by Winnie, as well as various utensils. People commented that it felt like we were involved in a sequel of Where Brother Art Thou. Someone suggested that we should do a documentary on the Save an Ad and I told them that it was a bad idea because people would accuse us of staging it. Everyone promptly nodded their heads in agreement and that was the end of that.
Believe it or not, the Christmas party was the first time that I had been high at the Save an Ad. I refused to get high at work because I was not going to play their game. There’s a consequence for everything, and one reason I think so many people stay on at the Save an Ad is because their constant smoking renders them unmotivated to move up in life. A week prior to the party, I had a conversation with a few people who said that people either quit the Save an Ad right away or stay forever. As I was sitting on the couch a thought cracked through my haze that I had crossed the invisible line from a potential quitter to a lifer and that I was at the point of no return. Was I going to be stuck in the Save an Ad reality forever or would someone merciful send me to the next phase in order to save me from such an existence? Eventually, the crowd dwindled until just myself, Buckley, and Brian were present, or more accurately, Brian passed out on the couch. Somehow I managed to find my way to the subway and go home.
Like the Indianapolis Colts making it to the Super Bowl, some just things weren’t meant to be. In my case, I had missed the deadline to extend my work permit in Canada so I just decided to move back to the US. I made one last visit to the Buy & Sell to say my last goodbye to everyone and see what its like to be Buckley for a day. Instead of bumming cigarettes, I was giving them away since I bought some from the US for everyone to have. As they say, the more things change the more they remain the same and the Save an Ad was no exception.
If I ever forgot how ridiculous the Save an Ad is I sure remembered during my last day there. Apparently, Buckley thought he had been checking his e-mail address Buckley@promotethis.com even though Seamus had it on record that he hadn’t checked it since Dec. 24 (it was Jan. 6). Apparently, Buckley was unaware that his e-mail account had been set to Buckleyandpromotions@xxxxxxxx.com. Now I know why Buckley never received my e-mail saying that I was going to quit. When Seamus asked Buckley if he had remembered the password for Buckleyandpromotions.com he was like, “Um, I can’t remember.” Dan gave Buckley the advice that “maybe you should smoke more weed.”
I was talking to Dan of classifieds for a while and only then did I really begin to feel the pathos of the Save an Ad experience. People had been continuously calling him for free ads but no one would was willing to purchase a bold one. Eventually, Dan pleaded for someone to take him out of this “free ad reality” but he knew that was not going to happen. Before I left we smoked a joint and he told me that if you ever come back to Toronto you know where to find me.
So how do I sum up my experience at the Save an Ad? A cynic would say it was nothing more than a temporary job that I took up to pay the bills while I was wrapping up school. However, it obviously meant something because I did not write these words because I got bored watching the grass grow in winter. No other experience in Toronto, or in my life for that matter, gave me the inspiration to write a multi-page diatribe such as this one. Quite sadly, or not, it’s a high possibility that when I’m an old man, unless I leave a beautiful corpse behind, the Save an Ad will be my most prominent memory of Toronto even though I completed a Master ‘s degree in Geography at the University of Toronto.
As I reflect on my experience at the Save an Ad it brings up more questions than answers. What is the purpose of the Save an Ad? Is it a tax shelter, a secret government program to employ the unemployable, just another badly run business, or had I been tripping for two months? Thank god I’ll never know because I’m never going to work there again.
To end this story I’m going to bring up an interesting vignette. As I said in the beginning, I asked Dan if he was sure that the Save an Ad would overlook my legal status and he said he was certain it turns out he wasn’t allowed to be working either. He told me that he is on disability. Whether it was for his schizophrenia or drug addiction I will never know because I don’t ask questions that I don’t want answered. Ignorance is bliss.
THE END
- d.f.
PART 2
In mid December, Adam and Warren circulated an e-mail around the office that nobody would be getting any Christmas bonuses this year due to disappointing sales. That meant that I wouldn’t be receiving a $20 note that apparently I was entitled too. For other people who had been there far longer they felt hurt because when Adam takes his vacation during Feb. to warmer climes they know it will be courtesy of their bonus money. However, the Christmas party went on as scheduled and let me tell you that it was one that could only happen at the Save an Ad.
The Christmas party was to start at noon on a Friday. We would come in to work as scheduled and the office would still be open because some people would be conducting business, such as the car magazines. It was also payday for us so that was another added bonus as well. When the clock struck noon, all of us stopped working and went to unload cases of beer from Seamus’ car. There was also a buffet that included veal, eggplant, and salad. I’m sure Jenna enjoyed the fact that the veal was gone in no time.
Buckley asked Adam if it was ok for us to smoke weed in the promotions room during the party and he told him that we could go outside since it wasn’t that cold. A little bit later, Brian, who worked in displays and was Buckley’s smoking buddy, came in to the promotion room and started rolling a spliff. He was going to take it outside but Buckley insisted we smoke it in the promotions office. Brian said that he did not think that Adam and Warren would appreciate it. Buckley replied that he asked Adam earlier if we could smoke inside the promotions room and since he’d said we should go outside, that meant it was ok to smoke inside. Buckley, who had successfully conned Adam and Warren into controlling the promotions room, was too lazy at this point to even lie. Maybe that’s a sign that you should be smoking less weed. Buckley also made an announcement that “Brian has 15 half quarters for sale”, as if the art of subtlety did not exist.
Brian relented and pretty soon the room smelled like someone had burned a pound of reefer. There was an eight year old girl at the party, one of the employees daughter’s, and we were all worried that she was going to come in. Sure enough, she opened the door while we were smoking one of about 85 joints and I was just like, get away! The door kept on opening and eventually no one even cared. Seamus did walk in and this one guy name Dan from classifieds, who apparently was the original Dan at the Save an Ad, passed it to someone else and was like “I don’t even know what is going on.” I asked Buckley if Seamus cared and he told me that a bit of weed that someone had bought from him earlier was really from Seamus. This reminds me of a little vignette that Alicia had told us before. Apparently, a memo was sent around the office asking people to check if they smoked weed or sold it. A few people actually checked off that they smoked weed. Alicia thinks that the memo was sent out not to punish anyone but for Adam to get more hookups. Apparently, I know why this memo was not sent around when I was working at the Save an Ad because Adam could do worse than to ask his trusty manager Seamus.
At around two, some Russian lady came in and appeared to be distressed. Brian saw her and he was like, do you want to place an ad? Apparently, Buckley forgot to give the cheques for Adam to sign and the Russian lady, who worked at a nearby cheque cashing place called Money Hut, did not notice that the cheque wasn’t signed when Kavitha cashed hers in. She was promptly ordered to go to the Save an Ad to see what the problem was. When the Russian lady smelled the weed and saw everyone drinking she must have had visions that she had been had by Kavitha and that her immediate future would involve an unemployment cheque. Eventually, everything was sorted out and things resumed back to normal.
There was a little bluegrass hoedown going on in the promotions room involving a banjo played by Winnie, as well as various utensils. People commented that it felt like we were involved in a sequel of Where Brother Art Thou. Someone suggested that we should do a documentary on the Save an Ad and I told them that it was a bad idea because people would accuse us of staging it. Everyone promptly nodded their heads in agreement and that was the end of that.
Believe it or not, the Christmas party was the first time that I had been high at the Save an Ad. I refused to get high at work because I was not going to play their game. There’s a consequence for everything, and one reason I think so many people stay on at the Save an Ad is because their constant smoking renders them unmotivated to move up in life. A week prior to the party, I had a conversation with a few people who said that people either quit the Save an Ad right away or stay forever. As I was sitting on the couch a thought cracked through my haze that I had crossed the invisible line from a potential quitter to a lifer and that I was at the point of no return. Was I going to be stuck in the Save an Ad reality forever or would someone merciful send me to the next phase in order to save me from such an existence? Eventually, the crowd dwindled until just myself, Buckley, and Brian were present, or more accurately, Brian passed out on the couch. Somehow I managed to find my way to the subway and go home.
Like the Indianapolis Colts making it to the Super Bowl, some just things weren’t meant to be. In my case, I had missed the deadline to extend my work permit in Canada so I just decided to move back to the US. I made one last visit to the Buy & Sell to say my last goodbye to everyone and see what its like to be Buckley for a day. Instead of bumming cigarettes, I was giving them away since I bought some from the US for everyone to have. As they say, the more things change the more they remain the same and the Save an Ad was no exception.
If I ever forgot how ridiculous the Save an Ad is I sure remembered during my last day there. Apparently, Buckley thought he had been checking his e-mail address Buckley@promotethis.com even though Seamus had it on record that he hadn’t checked it since Dec. 24 (it was Jan. 6). Apparently, Buckley was unaware that his e-mail account had been set to Buckleyandpromotions@xxxxxxxx.com. Now I know why Buckley never received my e-mail saying that I was going to quit. When Seamus asked Buckley if he had remembered the password for Buckleyandpromotions.com he was like, “Um, I can’t remember.” Dan gave Buckley the advice that “maybe you should smoke more weed.”
I was talking to Dan of classifieds for a while and only then did I really begin to feel the pathos of the Save an Ad experience. People had been continuously calling him for free ads but no one would was willing to purchase a bold one. Eventually, Dan pleaded for someone to take him out of this “free ad reality” but he knew that was not going to happen. Before I left we smoked a joint and he told me that if you ever come back to Toronto you know where to find me.
So how do I sum up my experience at the Save an Ad? A cynic would say it was nothing more than a temporary job that I took up to pay the bills while I was wrapping up school. However, it obviously meant something because I did not write these words because I got bored watching the grass grow in winter. No other experience in Toronto, or in my life for that matter, gave me the inspiration to write a multi-page diatribe such as this one. Quite sadly, or not, it’s a high possibility that when I’m an old man, unless I leave a beautiful corpse behind, the Save an Ad will be my most prominent memory of Toronto even though I completed a Master ‘s degree in Geography at the University of Toronto.
As I reflect on my experience at the Save an Ad it brings up more questions than answers. What is the purpose of the Save an Ad? Is it a tax shelter, a secret government program to employ the unemployable, just another badly run business, or had I been tripping for two months? Thank god I’ll never know because I’m never going to work there again.
To end this story I’m going to bring up an interesting vignette. As I said in the beginning, I asked Dan if he was sure that the Save an Ad would overlook my legal status and he said he was certain it turns out he wasn’t allowed to be working either. He told me that he is on disability. Whether it was for his schizophrenia or drug addiction I will never know because I don’t ask questions that I don’t want answered. Ignorance is bliss.
THE END
- d.f.
Friday, January 21, 2005
A NEWSPAPER STORY PART 2 OF 3
PART 1
It turns out that there were also some crazy people in display. One of them was named Winnie who was in her fifties but looked older and didn’t say much. She had absolutely no tact and the only time she said anything to me was when she asked me if I had a cigarette in her low growling voice. Apparently, her boyfriend was a crackhead who always fell off the wagon when he got it together. Winnie got evicted from her apartment and was staying in a motel that did not allow people to have pets. She kept her cat in the Save an Ad office temporarily. Once, the cat ran away from her and she was frantically looking everywhere for it around the office. Seamus, being the veritable smartass that he is, made an announcement on the intercom that “Winnie has lost her pussy.” Before I could finish laughing he made the announcement again just in case no one heard the announcement the first time. Its funny, but before this incident I had never really paid any attention to Seamus. He was the only person, besides Warren and Adam, that made decent money from in the Save an Ad, owing to his position as general manager. Although he is 34, he resembles a frat boy who recently completed university and who thinks that he is a bit cooler than he is. The cat stayed in the Save an Ad for a week and it designated the rug around the copy machine as its litter box.
Adam and Warren took a special interest in Winnie that went beyond the call of duty. Even though they were universally derided by everyone around the office as being tight with their money, I think that Adam and Warren helped pay for her temporary accommodations. According to someone, Winnie was Adam and Warren’s get out of hell card. On Winnie’s desk was a picture of her holding an “employee of the month” award next to Warren and Adam. I asked a few other people if they had known about any such award and they had not.
The writings on the wall suggested that Radk’s 2 year reign as boss in the promotions had run its course. This had nothing to do with his behavior but rather the fact that only myself and Graham showed up with any regularity, which meant that the room was not making the money it should. Eventually, Graham was told by Seamus that he was being moved to classifieds. However, Seamus insisted that Graham get a new outfit since his current one, which consisted exclusively of a green Gap sweatshirt and a pair of jeans with big holes below his ass, wouldn’t pass muster outside of the promotions room. Seamus asked me if I wanted to be moved to display and I said sure because it would free me from working inside an ashtray.
Graham actually purchased a new outfit of khaki pants and a buttoned down jean t-shirt but apparently Seamus was jerking him around and he was never even moved to classifieds. I was moved to display but only after prodding Seamus. The promotions room was still open for business.
My new desk contained a computer that had been completely taken over by viruses. When I innocently tried to check my e-mail it would always re-direct me to pornographic search engines. I figured that I would get some training but that was not to be. I observed someone for 30 minutes on a Friday and that was the extent of it. I was given absolutely no direction and was told to look up numbers in the yellow pages and just randomly phone up businesses. As I’d find out, business owners treated phone solicitation as a crime surpassed only by shoplifting and embezzlement.
There was a person in display that provided leads, consisting of ads found on the internet, named Buckley. I had noticed previously as the shady guy that always bummed cigarettes from Alicia. Buckley had two monitors hooked up to his computer. Supposedly, Adam and Warren could access anyone’s monitor through the computer network in order to see what they were doing Buckley’s solution to this intrusion on his time was to link another monitor to his computer that could not be accessed by Adam or Warren.
After a futile effort thumbing through the yellow pages, I asked Buckley for some leads. He provided me several pages, most of them consisting of massage parlors located in Barrie, north of Toronto. Invariably, the vast majority of the workers that I talked to were either Russian or Chinese and they were paranoid. Whenever I asked for the person that handles “advertising” i.e. their pimp, they were always miraculously on vacation. And they say pimping aint easy! They always thought I was an FBI agent or something whose goal was to shut down their place of employment and deport them.
One of my funniest phone calls was to a “French” lady that provided personal massages. She answered the phone in the loveliest French accent that would put Amelie to shame, but when I asked her if I could speak to the person that handles advertising she instantaneously switched to a decidedly unsexy husky Canadian accent and said “this is not a business”. When I told her that I was from the Save an Ad she did not become combative, probably because she felt sorry for me, but instead calmly stated that she was not interested. She never did revert back to her French accent. That’s her loss because I just might have signed up for a session with her otherwise.
I have to give Seamus the genius award for moving me to display in November even though most businesses set their advertising budgets after the New Year. I was beginning to mislead businesses unintentionally as my desperation increased. I started calling travel agents and telling them that we had a very extensive travel section. When one expressed surprise, I decided to check out our travel section and it consisted of three little ads that even Sherlock Holmes would have trouble finding.
At the end of my first week in display, Radk was informed that he would be demoted to classifieds. After about 18 months, Adam and Warren finally got a clue that just maybe Radk wasn’t a good fit for the job. During his last day as boss, Radk celebrated by smoking crack and he openly downed a Vex (alcoholic beverage) in front of everyone. Even though I sound very negative about Radk I feel sorry for him. If I had tears to spare I could cry for him as sadly he resembles a dead man walking. It is highly probable that he will meet his maker by way of a drug related death and if he wants to reach fifty he better start praying hard.
So what was the fate of the promotions room? Well Buckley actually persuaded Adam and Warren that he should become the new boss of promotions. Buckley was in his early thirties and married with one kid. He looked a bit younger than his years and must have been the shady kid with the backwards baseball cap that sold pot in the middle school bathroom. In the early 90s, Buckley was part of a band called XXXX that signed a major record deal with Sire Records and produced one album called XXXX . One of their music videos even got played on MTV once. He said that the “Madchester” scene from Manchester, England had a large influence on their sound and, judging by the name of the band and album, LSD apparently did as well.
Buckley totally revamped the room and put up a multitude of posters that were not necessarily the most appropriate decorations, given the fact that the occasional odd client came in to place an ad. They included a poster of Kurt Cobain, aliens, and various movies. Right in front of one of the desks was a poster of the LSD guru Timothy Leary, superimposed on a purple psychedelic background, exhorting us to “turn on, tune in, drop out.” Buckley did ban smoking in the room because otherwise he would be smoking “a million cigarettes” or more accurately bumming them.
Buckley was going to provide leads and he devised a new pitch that reflected his loose interpretation of ethics. As Alicia said numerous times, Buckley is a con artist and he admitted so as much with a shrug. For $55, we told the customers that we would run their ads for eight weeks and it would continue on until their car/item was sold. Unless they elaborated, we tried to finesse the fact that after 8 weeks their paid ad would in fact morph into a free classified ad that was not categorized in any particular order, rendering it difficult for consumers to find it. Also, if consumers were reticent about giving their credit card numbers over the phone he told us to tell them that they would not have to pay G.S.T. while in fact no one has to pay G.S.T. for advertising.
Warren and Adam gave Buckley full autonomy in terms of recruiting new workers, which he found off a music discussion board called 20Hz. His hook about the Save an Ad was that “it’s a cross between (the movies) Glengarry Glen Ross, Office Space, and Gummo.” Many people replied back to him, including one person who was concerned that he wouldn’t be hired because he lacked sales experience but had worked at hotels and had done “like 3,000 hours of volunteering.” Buckley was able to attract three people named Dan, who became Stu, Ben, and some disaffected Joy Division like kid. Timothy Leary’s words apparently had an impact on the Joy Division kid because all he did was stare out into the blank space. To no one’s surprise, he quit within a week.
If there was one thing that Buckley did with consistency it was smoking pot. Everyone in the office knew, except Buckley because he probably forgot, and he rolled joints at his computer as if he was in Bob Marley’s house. He did have the courtesy to smoke his joints outside. On Buckley’s first day as boss, Adam asked him why his eyes were shut and Buckley replied that he was tired. Adam told him to use Visine the next time he got tired and said that he reeked of weed.
It was comedic that out of all the people in the office, and in Toronto for that matter, Adam and Warren picked Buckley to run his own office and granted him full control. If the Save an Ad was located in by some alleyway in the suburbs that would be one thing but they let Buckley control his own office in the middle of downtown Toronto which is supposedly Canada’s economic engine.
The next round of hires from 20Hz were a couple of friends that had recently moved to Toronto from Abbotsford, BC named Jason and Jenna. They were in their early twenties and were more on the alternative side. Jason looked like a slacker who managed to keep up appearances while Jenna was one of those annoying vegan types who wants everyone to be one too. I was tempted to buy her a mink coat.
Apparently, typing ads became too much work for Buckley because it interfered with his duties of surfing the internet and getting high. He, without consulting Adam, designated Jason as his “secretary” and as Dan said, Jason morphed into Buckley II. Between typing up the occasional ad, Jason would explore the wonders of MSN. It was a treat watching Buckley slumped in his chair behind his two monitors while listening to Happy Mondays tunes, predating their seminal album Pills, Thrills, and Bellyaches, that I thought only I had listened too. Oh, Sean Ryder would be so proud! Like clockwork, Alicia would tell Buckley to turn the music down and he always came up with the same comeback which was “turn down your hearing aid.” I’d always envision Buckley going back to his high school and telling his teachers, who probably told him that he’d be a burnout with no money, that he does absolutely nothing at work but get stoned and surf the net and yet still gets paid.
Kavitha, who is a 19 year old girl attending Centenniel College, came in to work at the Save an Ad. She apparently had worked there previously and was known as a star seller. I asked her how she got introduced to the Save an Ad and she told me her story. She used to work at a telemarketing place downstairs, which was replaced by the worst Middle Eastern restaurant you’ll ever find. She got fired from that job after she was overheard by her boss on the phone telling an old lady that it was not necessary for her to get her credit card since she said she would have to turn on her heart monitor in order to walk across the room to get it. Kavitha is very nice and she had this personable quality on the phone that seemingly made callers forget everything and give her their credit card number.
If someone wants to place an ad with us they have the option of sending us a photo of their car which we will place on our website. I got a call from a client that complained he had repeatedly checked our website and could not locate a picture of his car. I told Buckley, and he told me that putting pictures up on the website is too hard because, apparently, that meant he’d actually have to do something. I noticed that the guy listed a website in his ad called www.skylinegtrs.com which featured various cars for sale such as Nissan Skyline GTRS, of course, and Mercedes. I went to take a look at it and it was the most amazing thing I ever saw. Each little tab made a different car sound effect when you moved the cursor over it and it was filled with flash animation. I was like, how do I explain to this guy that we can’t put a fuckin picture on the website because its too “hard”? Besides, our website, looked like one that was put together by a bunch of grandmas to promote a high school bake sale for the school library so he probably regretted in the first place that he placed an ad with us. In order to deflect himself from having to handle complaints, Buckley designated Jenna as the customer service lady even though at times she appeared as diplomatic as Saddam Hussein.
- d.f.
PART 3
It turns out that there were also some crazy people in display. One of them was named Winnie who was in her fifties but looked older and didn’t say much. She had absolutely no tact and the only time she said anything to me was when she asked me if I had a cigarette in her low growling voice. Apparently, her boyfriend was a crackhead who always fell off the wagon when he got it together. Winnie got evicted from her apartment and was staying in a motel that did not allow people to have pets. She kept her cat in the Save an Ad office temporarily. Once, the cat ran away from her and she was frantically looking everywhere for it around the office. Seamus, being the veritable smartass that he is, made an announcement on the intercom that “Winnie has lost her pussy.” Before I could finish laughing he made the announcement again just in case no one heard the announcement the first time. Its funny, but before this incident I had never really paid any attention to Seamus. He was the only person, besides Warren and Adam, that made decent money from in the Save an Ad, owing to his position as general manager. Although he is 34, he resembles a frat boy who recently completed university and who thinks that he is a bit cooler than he is. The cat stayed in the Save an Ad for a week and it designated the rug around the copy machine as its litter box.
Adam and Warren took a special interest in Winnie that went beyond the call of duty. Even though they were universally derided by everyone around the office as being tight with their money, I think that Adam and Warren helped pay for her temporary accommodations. According to someone, Winnie was Adam and Warren’s get out of hell card. On Winnie’s desk was a picture of her holding an “employee of the month” award next to Warren and Adam. I asked a few other people if they had known about any such award and they had not.
The writings on the wall suggested that Radk’s 2 year reign as boss in the promotions had run its course. This had nothing to do with his behavior but rather the fact that only myself and Graham showed up with any regularity, which meant that the room was not making the money it should. Eventually, Graham was told by Seamus that he was being moved to classifieds. However, Seamus insisted that Graham get a new outfit since his current one, which consisted exclusively of a green Gap sweatshirt and a pair of jeans with big holes below his ass, wouldn’t pass muster outside of the promotions room. Seamus asked me if I wanted to be moved to display and I said sure because it would free me from working inside an ashtray.
Graham actually purchased a new outfit of khaki pants and a buttoned down jean t-shirt but apparently Seamus was jerking him around and he was never even moved to classifieds. I was moved to display but only after prodding Seamus. The promotions room was still open for business.
My new desk contained a computer that had been completely taken over by viruses. When I innocently tried to check my e-mail it would always re-direct me to pornographic search engines. I figured that I would get some training but that was not to be. I observed someone for 30 minutes on a Friday and that was the extent of it. I was given absolutely no direction and was told to look up numbers in the yellow pages and just randomly phone up businesses. As I’d find out, business owners treated phone solicitation as a crime surpassed only by shoplifting and embezzlement.
There was a person in display that provided leads, consisting of ads found on the internet, named Buckley. I had noticed previously as the shady guy that always bummed cigarettes from Alicia. Buckley had two monitors hooked up to his computer. Supposedly, Adam and Warren could access anyone’s monitor through the computer network in order to see what they were doing Buckley’s solution to this intrusion on his time was to link another monitor to his computer that could not be accessed by Adam or Warren.
After a futile effort thumbing through the yellow pages, I asked Buckley for some leads. He provided me several pages, most of them consisting of massage parlors located in Barrie, north of Toronto. Invariably, the vast majority of the workers that I talked to were either Russian or Chinese and they were paranoid. Whenever I asked for the person that handles “advertising” i.e. their pimp, they were always miraculously on vacation. And they say pimping aint easy! They always thought I was an FBI agent or something whose goal was to shut down their place of employment and deport them.
One of my funniest phone calls was to a “French” lady that provided personal massages. She answered the phone in the loveliest French accent that would put Amelie to shame, but when I asked her if I could speak to the person that handles advertising she instantaneously switched to a decidedly unsexy husky Canadian accent and said “this is not a business”. When I told her that I was from the Save an Ad she did not become combative, probably because she felt sorry for me, but instead calmly stated that she was not interested. She never did revert back to her French accent. That’s her loss because I just might have signed up for a session with her otherwise.
I have to give Seamus the genius award for moving me to display in November even though most businesses set their advertising budgets after the New Year. I was beginning to mislead businesses unintentionally as my desperation increased. I started calling travel agents and telling them that we had a very extensive travel section. When one expressed surprise, I decided to check out our travel section and it consisted of three little ads that even Sherlock Holmes would have trouble finding.
At the end of my first week in display, Radk was informed that he would be demoted to classifieds. After about 18 months, Adam and Warren finally got a clue that just maybe Radk wasn’t a good fit for the job. During his last day as boss, Radk celebrated by smoking crack and he openly downed a Vex (alcoholic beverage) in front of everyone. Even though I sound very negative about Radk I feel sorry for him. If I had tears to spare I could cry for him as sadly he resembles a dead man walking. It is highly probable that he will meet his maker by way of a drug related death and if he wants to reach fifty he better start praying hard.
So what was the fate of the promotions room? Well Buckley actually persuaded Adam and Warren that he should become the new boss of promotions. Buckley was in his early thirties and married with one kid. He looked a bit younger than his years and must have been the shady kid with the backwards baseball cap that sold pot in the middle school bathroom. In the early 90s, Buckley was part of a band called XXXX that signed a major record deal with Sire Records and produced one album called XXXX . One of their music videos even got played on MTV once. He said that the “Madchester” scene from Manchester, England had a large influence on their sound and, judging by the name of the band and album, LSD apparently did as well.
Buckley totally revamped the room and put up a multitude of posters that were not necessarily the most appropriate decorations, given the fact that the occasional odd client came in to place an ad. They included a poster of Kurt Cobain, aliens, and various movies. Right in front of one of the desks was a poster of the LSD guru Timothy Leary, superimposed on a purple psychedelic background, exhorting us to “turn on, tune in, drop out.” Buckley did ban smoking in the room because otherwise he would be smoking “a million cigarettes” or more accurately bumming them.
Buckley was going to provide leads and he devised a new pitch that reflected his loose interpretation of ethics. As Alicia said numerous times, Buckley is a con artist and he admitted so as much with a shrug. For $55, we told the customers that we would run their ads for eight weeks and it would continue on until their car/item was sold. Unless they elaborated, we tried to finesse the fact that after 8 weeks their paid ad would in fact morph into a free classified ad that was not categorized in any particular order, rendering it difficult for consumers to find it. Also, if consumers were reticent about giving their credit card numbers over the phone he told us to tell them that they would not have to pay G.S.T. while in fact no one has to pay G.S.T. for advertising.
Warren and Adam gave Buckley full autonomy in terms of recruiting new workers, which he found off a music discussion board called 20Hz. His hook about the Save an Ad was that “it’s a cross between (the movies) Glengarry Glen Ross, Office Space, and Gummo.” Many people replied back to him, including one person who was concerned that he wouldn’t be hired because he lacked sales experience but had worked at hotels and had done “like 3,000 hours of volunteering.” Buckley was able to attract three people named Dan, who became Stu, Ben, and some disaffected Joy Division like kid. Timothy Leary’s words apparently had an impact on the Joy Division kid because all he did was stare out into the blank space. To no one’s surprise, he quit within a week.
If there was one thing that Buckley did with consistency it was smoking pot. Everyone in the office knew, except Buckley because he probably forgot, and he rolled joints at his computer as if he was in Bob Marley’s house. He did have the courtesy to smoke his joints outside. On Buckley’s first day as boss, Adam asked him why his eyes were shut and Buckley replied that he was tired. Adam told him to use Visine the next time he got tired and said that he reeked of weed.
It was comedic that out of all the people in the office, and in Toronto for that matter, Adam and Warren picked Buckley to run his own office and granted him full control. If the Save an Ad was located in by some alleyway in the suburbs that would be one thing but they let Buckley control his own office in the middle of downtown Toronto which is supposedly Canada’s economic engine.
The next round of hires from 20Hz were a couple of friends that had recently moved to Toronto from Abbotsford, BC named Jason and Jenna. They were in their early twenties and were more on the alternative side. Jason looked like a slacker who managed to keep up appearances while Jenna was one of those annoying vegan types who wants everyone to be one too. I was tempted to buy her a mink coat.
Apparently, typing ads became too much work for Buckley because it interfered with his duties of surfing the internet and getting high. He, without consulting Adam, designated Jason as his “secretary” and as Dan said, Jason morphed into Buckley II. Between typing up the occasional ad, Jason would explore the wonders of MSN. It was a treat watching Buckley slumped in his chair behind his two monitors while listening to Happy Mondays tunes, predating their seminal album Pills, Thrills, and Bellyaches, that I thought only I had listened too. Oh, Sean Ryder would be so proud! Like clockwork, Alicia would tell Buckley to turn the music down and he always came up with the same comeback which was “turn down your hearing aid.” I’d always envision Buckley going back to his high school and telling his teachers, who probably told him that he’d be a burnout with no money, that he does absolutely nothing at work but get stoned and surf the net and yet still gets paid.
Kavitha, who is a 19 year old girl attending Centenniel College, came in to work at the Save an Ad. She apparently had worked there previously and was known as a star seller. I asked her how she got introduced to the Save an Ad and she told me her story. She used to work at a telemarketing place downstairs, which was replaced by the worst Middle Eastern restaurant you’ll ever find. She got fired from that job after she was overheard by her boss on the phone telling an old lady that it was not necessary for her to get her credit card since she said she would have to turn on her heart monitor in order to walk across the room to get it. Kavitha is very nice and she had this personable quality on the phone that seemingly made callers forget everything and give her their credit card number.
If someone wants to place an ad with us they have the option of sending us a photo of their car which we will place on our website. I got a call from a client that complained he had repeatedly checked our website and could not locate a picture of his car. I told Buckley, and he told me that putting pictures up on the website is too hard because, apparently, that meant he’d actually have to do something. I noticed that the guy listed a website in his ad called www.skylinegtrs.com which featured various cars for sale such as Nissan Skyline GTRS, of course, and Mercedes. I went to take a look at it and it was the most amazing thing I ever saw. Each little tab made a different car sound effect when you moved the cursor over it and it was filled with flash animation. I was like, how do I explain to this guy that we can’t put a fuckin picture on the website because its too “hard”? Besides, our website, looked like one that was put together by a bunch of grandmas to promote a high school bake sale for the school library so he probably regretted in the first place that he placed an ad with us. In order to deflect himself from having to handle complaints, Buckley designated Jenna as the customer service lady even though at times she appeared as diplomatic as Saddam Hussein.
- d.f.
PART 3
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
CADILLAC FOR EACH FOOT
"we drink too much, we sleep to little, we're out of touch with nature,
would you catch me sideways? i don't know."
- flatt street,supafly baggypants
what a mantra for 2005. it's a new year. we start tonight's episode with a new series by contributor d.f., an old roommate from the annex palace over the past summer who had some experiences with not-quite-so-sane people in an under the table workplace while awaiting a work permit. he's gone back to indiana to lay low for a while, but he's left us with "a newspaper story", so keep tuning in every day for a new episode over the next three days.
it should be noted than names and places have been changed from the original in order to save my ass from these times of constant threat from lawsuits. i've also edited slight grammatical errors, as it was sent as a draft.
***************************
“It’s a cross between (the movies) Glengarry Glen Ross, Office Space, and Gummo”
- job classified on the music discussion board 20HZ for the Save an Ad
Introduction
A new sub-leasee took over my place in the summer of 2004 which meant that I would have to find a new place in Sept., since it was apparent I was not going to complete my MA before the summer’s end. Luckily for me, I found a place just up the street and the price was right. Two of my new roommates were Michelle and Dan who were a couple but lived in separate rooms. To no one’s surprise, they officially broke up within a few days of moving in.
My first impression of Michelle and Dan was that they were free spirits who cared about others. When Dan told me that he had taken a break from school for a few years, I pictured him traveling the world trying to help the less fortunate among us. Dan and I lived in the basement, while Michelle’s room was upstairs.
My funds were running low and I calculated that I would probably have to secure some sort of employment by mid-October in order to insure my solvency. The only caveat was that I would have to work under the table since my student permit prohibited me from pursuing employment off-campus. My original plan was to ask my half great uncle Ernest, (my grandfather’s half brother) for a job. He owns a Thai restaurant near Eaton Center called the Salad King and he had a roster of 60 employees. He certainly could have taken on another worker since his restaurant was perpetually busy during the lunch hour, necessitating the need for his waiters/waitresses to take orders on a PDA system, and he had recently completed $1 million in renovations. My mom was not too hot on my idea since he was not exactly her favorite relative. My great grandfather had four wives and my grandfather was his first-born son, while Ernest was the baby of the family and was procreated by his mother when she was in her twenties and my great grand father was in his sixties. To put their age gap in perspective, Ernest was born around the same time as my mom. Apparently, the young pearl, or gold digger as some might say, received a higher share of the inheritance than she “deserved,” and she passed it along to Ernest with, according to my mom, a side helping of arrogance.
I asked Dan if he knew of places that would hire me under the table and he told me he knew of two places. He said that he worked as a telemarketer for this newspaper called the Save an Ad Classifieds who hired people as long as they had a pulse. I questioned him point blank if they would overlook my “illegal” status and he said there would be absolutely no worries on that front. I then asked what sort of workplace the Save an Ad was and he chuckled. Apparently, it was in its own unique category as far as jobs went and was the biggest joke there is. I tried to get him to elaborate on details but he did not divulge much, not out of secrecy, as I would later find out myself, but for self-respect. After all, did he want me to think of him as a liar right off the bat?
Later that day, Dan’s friend “Crazy” Morris and his girlfriend stopped by to hang out. As it turns out, Morris is the one who introduced Dan to the Save an Ad a few years back. Dan and Morris were talking about their boss Radk (pronounced Radek) who liked to shove various odd substances into his veins. Dan then showed us some pictures from the Christmas Party at the Save an Ad and they were having some sort of caricature of a bluegrass hoe down. I saw Radk and he showed nothing in the picture that would betray any accusations that he had a habit. Dan also pointed out a guy named Lorne in the picture who shared similar hobbies with Radk and was supposedly going to inherit millions of dollars from his sugar mommy who is sadly dying of cancer, and was only a few years older than him.
I envisioned Radk as some sort of illegal immigrant from Eastern Europe who was a reject of the Communist system. In fact, Radk was a pseudonym, along with his last name Radchenko. To this day, I never did find out Radk’s real name and I never will.
In the evening, all of us picked up some drinks from the LCBO (government liquor store) conveniently located across the street. When we got back, Dan started talking about the pills he had to take. Unbeknownst to me, he had a chemical imbalance known as schizophrenia. If the saying caveat emptor (buyer beware), concerning random roommates, did not have any meaning before it sure did at that moment. Morris was partial to mind altering substances from A to Z and he said that Dan could handle the crazy amount of pills he was prescribed because he was a former heroin addict. Morris quickly interjected that “you knew that, right?” and I was like well I know now and I’ll never forget.
September turned in October and eventually my funds were falling precipitously low. I told Dan that I was interested in working since my MA research paper was coming towards completion, which meant I had time to fill in. He told me to come in sometime to talk to Radk.
Save an Ad
When I entered the promotions office of the Save an Ad I nearly passed out from all the smoke in the room. Everyone in the room except Dan, who chewed Nicorette like there was no tomorrow, smoked like it was 1929. Its not like they couldn’t get up and smoke in the hallway where smoking was allowed as well. I chatted with Radk for a bit and he explained to me what the job involved. We would go through older private listings in a car classified magazine called Car Swap and ask them if they want to get a “better” deal in the Save an Ad newspaper. The ads in our paper would run for 6 weeks for $30 and the hook was that if their car sold before 6 weeks they could use the remaining time to sell another item in our paper for up to three years. Radk told me to come in the following week. When I stepped outside of the Save an Ad I saw what we were up against when I stared at a nearby flashing billboard that said "carswap.ca".
The Save an Ad office is located off Yonge St. in the heart of downtown Toronto. Its located in a lowrise building around many businesses that cater more to the desperate than the rich such as Money Hut and Supadeal Pizza. The building contained offices for the Save an Ad and a couple of other publications such as Performance Racing News and Performance Auto. There was some kind of hierarchy to the place that tangentially resembled the high school pecking order. At the top were two owners of Jewish origin named Warren and Adam. The manager of the place was a guy named Seamus who I’d later discover definitely knew about Sportsline. The people at Performance Auto are mostly younger Asian guys who believe that Hondas with ridiculous modifications are the greatest thing since sliced bread. They dressed well, or at least tried to, and they put on a show of bravado like they actually had pride in what they were doing. Performance Auto contained jokers who were all white. The Save an Ad was the child that got whacked hard with the ugly stick and even within it there were distinctions between departments.
In the main office of the Save an Ad were people that sold display ads to businesses. At a glance, they seemed like relatively normal people who you wouldn’t notice on a subway. Also in the main office, and below them, were people who worked in classifieds. They took calls from people who wanted to place free classified ads and they would try to persuade them to purchase bold ads that cost money and were larger. People in classifieds represented an eclectic cross section of people who were the loonier types in school such as those that liked to play dungeons and dragons, confuse the wrestlers Stone Cold and the Rock with god, and do strange things while under the influence.
And then there was the promotions room where I would be working which was tucked away in its own netherworld. There were 3 types of people that worked there: those with criminal records or on parole who could not get hired anywhere else; people collecting welfare payments who could not legally work at all and students who needed a bit of extra cash. I was in my own unique category since I was a student and a goddamn illegal immigrant or something of that nature.
On the day before I was to start, Dan informed me that Radk had given him a call suggesting that the promotions room was going to be shut down. Even I had never managed to be fired from a job before I started but it appeared that things might change. Dan told me to come in anyway and act like nothing happened. When I came in I was told by Radk that the room was under threat because of lack of sales and that he’d only take me on if I did not clock in until I made a sale. After 2-3 hours I did make one but I never received payment for my few hours of free service.
Despite my lack of telemarketing experience, I was given no training, which appears to be the modus operandi of the Save an Ad. Radk gave me a pitch sheet which even I was astute enough to know was complete rubbish and I chucked it into some forgotten corner. At the time, there were four other people besides Dan and I working in promotions. There was Jerry who was in his upper twenties and was actually quite level headed in spite of his dress style that consisted of black boots and some weird amalgamation of anime and goth that I couldn’t quite figure out. There was Melika who was a thicker black girl that attended York University and who I found out one day was quite pious. I asked her if she did anything fun for Halloween and she said that she doesn’t celebrate it because it’s against her religion. She is part of a Church called the 7th Day Adventist that is against all fun from what I gathered. Melika was a sweetheart and if her goal in life is to save people from eternal damnation she would have no shortage of candidates at the Save an Ad to choose from. Her only sin was that she annoyed me every time she referred to the Save an Ad in her pitch as the “Save an Ad Newspaper Company.”
Graham was in his late thirties and he looked like a typical street guy waiting to get a room at the Scott Mission. Apparently, he was a former alcoholic and every time the smoked wafted from his No. 7 cigarette I wished he’d become an ex-smoker as well or switch to a less disgusting cigarette. And then there was Lorne who cannot be placed in any category and who defies all meaning of logic. He was also in his late 30s, and shared a place with Graham as well as his girlfriend and he sold unregulated painkillers otherwise known as heroin. I also think he was on parole or probation because he kept on asking Radk to give him a letter. He was a husky guy with his hair in a ponytail and wore ugly designer label shirts with big lettering. He had one Parasuco shirt that was especially hideous with its combination of puke orange and yellow. Whenever I talked to Lorne, he’d have this wicked smile and look in his eyes, akin to Don King, like he was trying to charm my soul away from me or something. If Lorne ever had a conscience he left it at the side of the road many moons ago. Dan (my roommate) was known as Gary, or alternatively as Flong which is a derivation of his surname. It is company policy to give you a new name if someone else at the Save an Ad has the same one.
There was actually another person working in the room named Alicia but she sold display ads. She is of Jewish origin and in her early 50s. Apparently, she did not get along with the people in the main office, including the owners, so she had her own makeshift partition at the corner of the promotions room. From what my ears told me she used the tough love approach to selling ads. She’d spout out expletives like they were going out of style and yet she had a whole stable of clients ready to renew their ad space. She also had the propensity to complain about how smoky the room was without irony as her ashtray filled up. She was really nice, in a motherly way, and won me over forever when she said that she did not want the new microwave to be placed next to her cubicle because her health would be harmed by the radiation. She was the Jewish mother I never had!
Later on my first day, Jerry told me I had some messages on my phone. I checked them and it turned out they had actually been sent to Radk by Lorne’s sugar mommy who proceeded to forward the message to everyone in the whole office. In the message, she said that Lorne had conned her because she provided him with a $170,000 down payment on a house even though he was still living with his girlfriend. She confirmed that she did in fact have cancer and did not have much time to live. She also stated that she gave Lorne a $5,000 ring and that today was supposed to be their wedding day. The kicker was when she said that her Lorne stole her son’s bike and I noticed that bike right next to his desk. She talked for ten minutes, until the message was cut off, and then she proceeded to leave another one. This time, she was saying how Lorne was living in a “lap of luxury” thanks to her and that she was in Penthouse, which I choose to believe is a figment of her imagination. She even managed to take a potshot at me when she said that Lorne is a loser for working at the Save an Ad when even her 16 year old son earns $800 a week. That message also went on until she was cut off. Lorne claimed that within a month of meeting her she tattooed his name in big letters on her lower back, which meant to him apparently that he had free reign to take full advantage of her. It seems that she did not give Lorne enough cigarettes because according to Alicia he would scoop up her butts from her ashtray. This allegation was confirmed after work when Lorne picked up a used cig outside the front door.
Radk was the boss of the room which meant that he typed out the ads, did our payroll, and other important things like download music and games and look at bizarre pussy pictures. He was working illegally because he was on welfare. Once when Alicia was on the phone with an important client he played these animal noises from a website called Zooish.com at full blast. Radk is around 40 and grew up in various Ontario locales like North Bay and Sudbury. Despite his gaunt looks, he had good bone structure and it appears if he took a different path in life he could have kept up a handsome appearance. At 22, he enrolled in an alternative high school in Toronto, which is for at risk teenagers, and the principal tried to kick him out because he messed around too much. According to Dan, Radk was a talented drummer during the 80s but his life went down the tubes due to a combination of excessive drug use and bad luck.
Apparently he suffered a bit of brain damage when he fell down a fire escape while he was on ecstasy. Dan told me that Radk, along with Lorne, smoked crack and/or did heroin in the bathroom regularly. When I asked Dan why they’d be stupid enough to smoke crack in the bathroom he asked me if I knew what it smelled like and I said no and that was the end of that.
- d.f.
PART 2
would you catch me sideways? i don't know."
- flatt street,
what a mantra for 2005. it's a new year. we start tonight's episode with a new series by contributor d.f., an old roommate from the annex palace over the past summer who had some experiences with not-quite-so-sane people in an under the table workplace while awaiting a work permit. he's gone back to indiana to lay low for a while, but he's left us with "a newspaper story", so keep tuning in every day for a new episode over the next three days.
it should be noted than names and places have been changed from the original in order to save my ass from these times of constant threat from lawsuits. i've also edited slight grammatical errors, as it was sent as a draft.
***************************
“It’s a cross between (the movies) Glengarry Glen Ross, Office Space, and Gummo”
- job classified on the music discussion board 20HZ for the Save an Ad
Introduction
A new sub-leasee took over my place in the summer of 2004 which meant that I would have to find a new place in Sept., since it was apparent I was not going to complete my MA before the summer’s end. Luckily for me, I found a place just up the street and the price was right. Two of my new roommates were Michelle and Dan who were a couple but lived in separate rooms. To no one’s surprise, they officially broke up within a few days of moving in.
My first impression of Michelle and Dan was that they were free spirits who cared about others. When Dan told me that he had taken a break from school for a few years, I pictured him traveling the world trying to help the less fortunate among us. Dan and I lived in the basement, while Michelle’s room was upstairs.
My funds were running low and I calculated that I would probably have to secure some sort of employment by mid-October in order to insure my solvency. The only caveat was that I would have to work under the table since my student permit prohibited me from pursuing employment off-campus. My original plan was to ask my half great uncle Ernest, (my grandfather’s half brother) for a job. He owns a Thai restaurant near Eaton Center called the Salad King and he had a roster of 60 employees. He certainly could have taken on another worker since his restaurant was perpetually busy during the lunch hour, necessitating the need for his waiters/waitresses to take orders on a PDA system, and he had recently completed $1 million in renovations. My mom was not too hot on my idea since he was not exactly her favorite relative. My great grandfather had four wives and my grandfather was his first-born son, while Ernest was the baby of the family and was procreated by his mother when she was in her twenties and my great grand father was in his sixties. To put their age gap in perspective, Ernest was born around the same time as my mom. Apparently, the young pearl, or gold digger as some might say, received a higher share of the inheritance than she “deserved,” and she passed it along to Ernest with, according to my mom, a side helping of arrogance.
I asked Dan if he knew of places that would hire me under the table and he told me he knew of two places. He said that he worked as a telemarketer for this newspaper called the Save an Ad Classifieds who hired people as long as they had a pulse. I questioned him point blank if they would overlook my “illegal” status and he said there would be absolutely no worries on that front. I then asked what sort of workplace the Save an Ad was and he chuckled. Apparently, it was in its own unique category as far as jobs went and was the biggest joke there is. I tried to get him to elaborate on details but he did not divulge much, not out of secrecy, as I would later find out myself, but for self-respect. After all, did he want me to think of him as a liar right off the bat?
Later that day, Dan’s friend “Crazy” Morris and his girlfriend stopped by to hang out. As it turns out, Morris is the one who introduced Dan to the Save an Ad a few years back. Dan and Morris were talking about their boss Radk (pronounced Radek) who liked to shove various odd substances into his veins. Dan then showed us some pictures from the Christmas Party at the Save an Ad and they were having some sort of caricature of a bluegrass hoe down. I saw Radk and he showed nothing in the picture that would betray any accusations that he had a habit. Dan also pointed out a guy named Lorne in the picture who shared similar hobbies with Radk and was supposedly going to inherit millions of dollars from his sugar mommy who is sadly dying of cancer, and was only a few years older than him.
I envisioned Radk as some sort of illegal immigrant from Eastern Europe who was a reject of the Communist system. In fact, Radk was a pseudonym, along with his last name Radchenko. To this day, I never did find out Radk’s real name and I never will.
In the evening, all of us picked up some drinks from the LCBO (government liquor store) conveniently located across the street. When we got back, Dan started talking about the pills he had to take. Unbeknownst to me, he had a chemical imbalance known as schizophrenia. If the saying caveat emptor (buyer beware), concerning random roommates, did not have any meaning before it sure did at that moment. Morris was partial to mind altering substances from A to Z and he said that Dan could handle the crazy amount of pills he was prescribed because he was a former heroin addict. Morris quickly interjected that “you knew that, right?” and I was like well I know now and I’ll never forget.
September turned in October and eventually my funds were falling precipitously low. I told Dan that I was interested in working since my MA research paper was coming towards completion, which meant I had time to fill in. He told me to come in sometime to talk to Radk.
Save an Ad
When I entered the promotions office of the Save an Ad I nearly passed out from all the smoke in the room. Everyone in the room except Dan, who chewed Nicorette like there was no tomorrow, smoked like it was 1929. Its not like they couldn’t get up and smoke in the hallway where smoking was allowed as well. I chatted with Radk for a bit and he explained to me what the job involved. We would go through older private listings in a car classified magazine called Car Swap and ask them if they want to get a “better” deal in the Save an Ad newspaper. The ads in our paper would run for 6 weeks for $30 and the hook was that if their car sold before 6 weeks they could use the remaining time to sell another item in our paper for up to three years. Radk told me to come in the following week. When I stepped outside of the Save an Ad I saw what we were up against when I stared at a nearby flashing billboard that said "carswap.ca".
The Save an Ad office is located off Yonge St. in the heart of downtown Toronto. Its located in a lowrise building around many businesses that cater more to the desperate than the rich such as Money Hut and Supadeal Pizza. The building contained offices for the Save an Ad and a couple of other publications such as Performance Racing News and Performance Auto. There was some kind of hierarchy to the place that tangentially resembled the high school pecking order. At the top were two owners of Jewish origin named Warren and Adam. The manager of the place was a guy named Seamus who I’d later discover definitely knew about Sportsline. The people at Performance Auto are mostly younger Asian guys who believe that Hondas with ridiculous modifications are the greatest thing since sliced bread. They dressed well, or at least tried to, and they put on a show of bravado like they actually had pride in what they were doing. Performance Auto contained jokers who were all white. The Save an Ad was the child that got whacked hard with the ugly stick and even within it there were distinctions between departments.
In the main office of the Save an Ad were people that sold display ads to businesses. At a glance, they seemed like relatively normal people who you wouldn’t notice on a subway. Also in the main office, and below them, were people who worked in classifieds. They took calls from people who wanted to place free classified ads and they would try to persuade them to purchase bold ads that cost money and were larger. People in classifieds represented an eclectic cross section of people who were the loonier types in school such as those that liked to play dungeons and dragons, confuse the wrestlers Stone Cold and the Rock with god, and do strange things while under the influence.
And then there was the promotions room where I would be working which was tucked away in its own netherworld. There were 3 types of people that worked there: those with criminal records or on parole who could not get hired anywhere else; people collecting welfare payments who could not legally work at all and students who needed a bit of extra cash. I was in my own unique category since I was a student and a goddamn illegal immigrant or something of that nature.
On the day before I was to start, Dan informed me that Radk had given him a call suggesting that the promotions room was going to be shut down. Even I had never managed to be fired from a job before I started but it appeared that things might change. Dan told me to come in anyway and act like nothing happened. When I came in I was told by Radk that the room was under threat because of lack of sales and that he’d only take me on if I did not clock in until I made a sale. After 2-3 hours I did make one but I never received payment for my few hours of free service.
Despite my lack of telemarketing experience, I was given no training, which appears to be the modus operandi of the Save an Ad. Radk gave me a pitch sheet which even I was astute enough to know was complete rubbish and I chucked it into some forgotten corner. At the time, there were four other people besides Dan and I working in promotions. There was Jerry who was in his upper twenties and was actually quite level headed in spite of his dress style that consisted of black boots and some weird amalgamation of anime and goth that I couldn’t quite figure out. There was Melika who was a thicker black girl that attended York University and who I found out one day was quite pious. I asked her if she did anything fun for Halloween and she said that she doesn’t celebrate it because it’s against her religion. She is part of a Church called the 7th Day Adventist that is against all fun from what I gathered. Melika was a sweetheart and if her goal in life is to save people from eternal damnation she would have no shortage of candidates at the Save an Ad to choose from. Her only sin was that she annoyed me every time she referred to the Save an Ad in her pitch as the “Save an Ad Newspaper Company.”
Graham was in his late thirties and he looked like a typical street guy waiting to get a room at the Scott Mission. Apparently, he was a former alcoholic and every time the smoked wafted from his No. 7 cigarette I wished he’d become an ex-smoker as well or switch to a less disgusting cigarette. And then there was Lorne who cannot be placed in any category and who defies all meaning of logic. He was also in his late 30s, and shared a place with Graham as well as his girlfriend and he sold unregulated painkillers otherwise known as heroin. I also think he was on parole or probation because he kept on asking Radk to give him a letter. He was a husky guy with his hair in a ponytail and wore ugly designer label shirts with big lettering. He had one Parasuco shirt that was especially hideous with its combination of puke orange and yellow. Whenever I talked to Lorne, he’d have this wicked smile and look in his eyes, akin to Don King, like he was trying to charm my soul away from me or something. If Lorne ever had a conscience he left it at the side of the road many moons ago. Dan (my roommate) was known as Gary, or alternatively as Flong which is a derivation of his surname. It is company policy to give you a new name if someone else at the Save an Ad has the same one.
There was actually another person working in the room named Alicia but she sold display ads. She is of Jewish origin and in her early 50s. Apparently, she did not get along with the people in the main office, including the owners, so she had her own makeshift partition at the corner of the promotions room. From what my ears told me she used the tough love approach to selling ads. She’d spout out expletives like they were going out of style and yet she had a whole stable of clients ready to renew their ad space. She also had the propensity to complain about how smoky the room was without irony as her ashtray filled up. She was really nice, in a motherly way, and won me over forever when she said that she did not want the new microwave to be placed next to her cubicle because her health would be harmed by the radiation. She was the Jewish mother I never had!
Later on my first day, Jerry told me I had some messages on my phone. I checked them and it turned out they had actually been sent to Radk by Lorne’s sugar mommy who proceeded to forward the message to everyone in the whole office. In the message, she said that Lorne had conned her because she provided him with a $170,000 down payment on a house even though he was still living with his girlfriend. She confirmed that she did in fact have cancer and did not have much time to live. She also stated that she gave Lorne a $5,000 ring and that today was supposed to be their wedding day. The kicker was when she said that her Lorne stole her son’s bike and I noticed that bike right next to his desk. She talked for ten minutes, until the message was cut off, and then she proceeded to leave another one. This time, she was saying how Lorne was living in a “lap of luxury” thanks to her and that she was in Penthouse, which I choose to believe is a figment of her imagination. She even managed to take a potshot at me when she said that Lorne is a loser for working at the Save an Ad when even her 16 year old son earns $800 a week. That message also went on until she was cut off. Lorne claimed that within a month of meeting her she tattooed his name in big letters on her lower back, which meant to him apparently that he had free reign to take full advantage of her. It seems that she did not give Lorne enough cigarettes because according to Alicia he would scoop up her butts from her ashtray. This allegation was confirmed after work when Lorne picked up a used cig outside the front door.
Radk was the boss of the room which meant that he typed out the ads, did our payroll, and other important things like download music and games and look at bizarre pussy pictures. He was working illegally because he was on welfare. Once when Alicia was on the phone with an important client he played these animal noises from a website called Zooish.com at full blast. Radk is around 40 and grew up in various Ontario locales like North Bay and Sudbury. Despite his gaunt looks, he had good bone structure and it appears if he took a different path in life he could have kept up a handsome appearance. At 22, he enrolled in an alternative high school in Toronto, which is for at risk teenagers, and the principal tried to kick him out because he messed around too much. According to Dan, Radk was a talented drummer during the 80s but his life went down the tubes due to a combination of excessive drug use and bad luck.
Apparently he suffered a bit of brain damage when he fell down a fire escape while he was on ecstasy. Dan told me that Radk, along with Lorne, smoked crack and/or did heroin in the bathroom regularly. When I asked Dan why they’d be stupid enough to smoke crack in the bathroom he asked me if I knew what it smelled like and I said no and that was the end of that.
- d.f.
PART 2
Thursday, December 30, 2004
SANS BLOG'S MOST FASCINATING PEOPLE OF THE YEAR
"FUCK BARBARA WALTERS! FUCK BARBARA WALTERS!"
while she goes on about her paris hiltons and michael moores, i direct my attention towards the people of the ukraine who rose up against corruption and electoral fraud, something a few of us could take examples from. yushchenko, though poisoned and humiliated, rose up without hesitation and asked a nation to rally behind him as he brought them their will.
i'm tellin ya, if all works out with yushchenko and the orange revoltuion, ukraine is going to be the next big spot to party in europe.
i can't help but think this picture could end up in the vice do's. long live the orange revolution! let's hope it exports to places like turkmenistan where the united states gives aid to their saddam-like ruler, turkmenbashy, who's practically renamed the whole country after himself and instituted some very insane and bizarre laws. did i mention he had a statue built of his likeness, in pure gold, that rotates with the sun, so that all the residents in a city named after him can worship his persona. talk about ego.
Monday, December 27, 2004
PEOPLE DO ROCKSTEADY
i feel so overwhelmed by reggae. spending half my days with rastas from the islands and their middle class north american acolytes, the sounds of reggae, dub and ska have invaded my brain like it did the air of london neighbourhoods in the 60s and 70s. no wonder the clash and the whole damn punk movement were into it. it allowed them to enjoy music that was thoroughly unaggressive yet equally as poweful socially as punk was with all of its anger and outsider mentality. sometimes punks need to chill, so thanks to groups like the clash and the specials for turning kids onto reggae and all that goes along with it.
god love jamaicans and islanders for their contributions to music despite their often times extereme poverty amidst political instability and daily violence on the street. all the while, under duress, they've been able to remain calm and give us music which never strays form the heartbeat and continually chants down babylon. sure, it may sound cheesy nowadays with all its synthetic production and mindless garbage offshoots and bastard children like dancehall, but to many, it's one of the last bastions of music that embraces the human race with warmth and compassion and ultimate salvation.
the music matured from its early sound system origins (prince buster - al capone) and its soon thereafter instrumental stage (the upsetters - return of the django) to a socially relevant and mature artform and way of life that is simultaneously expressively political (steel pulse - babylon makes the rules), inherently populist (junior murvin - police and thieves), tragic-comic (desmond dekker - israelites), outrageously fun (toots & the maytals - funky kingston), racially contentious (steel pulse - babylon makes the rules), hearteningly spiritual (rastaman chant - bob marley) and globally aware (bob marley - war). but most of all, the people love it like they love freedom and sex and sunshine and family. i wish we had the same passion for music here in north america that they have in jamaica and the whole carribbean for that matter. we're nowhere near that level of respect for our music. we shit all over our music all the time, and what for?
Sunday, December 19, 2004
HOLIDAY FUNTIME
i had this really outrageous dream last night in which i was part of a terrorist cell whose aim was to blow up the CN tower. somehow, i was selected by this group of islamic militants to be the one who set the charges. the plan was to wire up the bathroom of the CN tower with explosives. they knew this guy was going to come and stop me from doing it, so the plan called for me to kill him by tricking him into drinking tide. he certainly came, and i disposed of him quickly by offering him the tide, clearly in an unadulterated tide bottle that was clearly labelled "tide", but he drank it anyway and died by puking up a light blue yogurt-like substance. i could see on my portable video screen that militant friends were cheering me on, saying "you mut do it now, the final step!" as i set the charges on the toilet, i thought to myself, "is this right? aren't a lot of people going to die?" and then i justified it by reasoning that the general consensus was that the CN tower was a big eye sore and no one in the city liked it, and people across canada would say en masse "see? toronto isn't the centre of the universe" so i'm pretty sure that by the time the dream was over, the charges had been detonated and the tower was in rubble.
*********
the radio show now has its own blog. i'm looking to update this as often as possible and i'd like some people to contribute reviews and musical suggestions and industry news, etc. please let me know if you're serious about this.
Thursday, December 16, 2004
NIGHT OF THE LIVING HOTELS
the radio report on the protests in Ottawa was finally broadcast yesterday morning, a very rewarding experience for guy stevos industries which will hopefully turn out to be awarding if I can get my act together and shop it around. we can’t get enough of it over here, we’re throwing files into the air in anticipation of the next scoop.
we headed down the hudson’s bay trail of coolness that is the queen w. strip, a relatively new environment for the stevos crew. it appears that hipness is traveling even further westward these days. I’d heard about it for so long, and finally, i got to see what all this fuss was about surrounding these new hotel-cum-full-club-experience dotting the edge of the strip.
the drake looked too glitzy for my taste, but they didn’t bat half an eyelash at me when I snuck into a private party for some well needed free dinner in the lounge, although I didn’t dare venture upstairs (you must have THIS much money to enter). i retreated to the drake underground (where they let the children make noise) where stephen marshall of the guerilla news network screened a number of clips and shorts from his work as creative director and chief video artist/activist at GNN. we got us a good one hour report in the works, yes sir. he showed some clips from battleground, his on-the-scene documentary from the frontlines of iraq, as of yet unreleased in theatres but selling well on dvd and looking to hit the festival circuit hard real soon, and this revolution, the film that got him and rosario dawson arrested in new york this summer during the republican national convention.
i ran into the infamous and dark peter m, who after letting marshall know how offended he was by his work, dragged me to the gladstone just down the street, which was a rather happenin’ place filled with the 20-40 crowd, but of course, the select few of them who are so bored with their own neighbourhoods that they have to come all the way to queen and landsdowne to grind with each other on a hump night in what was once the lobby of one of toronto’s more hard-up hotels. oh, but of course, they’ll never cross the tracks past gladstone ave, so the frontier has been drawn. finally, an end to dutch elm disease that is queen st.’s western expansion.
oh well, I pity those poor folks at blow up’s new location, where someone just got stabbed on the weekend and now ceases to be alive.
toronto gets really violent over the holiday season. no one really knows why it happens now instead of other times of they year. we’ve seen two family suicides and three stabbing deaths over the past two weeks. I know, it happens all the time around the world everyday, but having all this shit happen too often in your own city around xmastime just makes it so shitty in a more personal way than anyplace else.
we headed down the hudson’s bay trail of coolness that is the queen w. strip, a relatively new environment for the stevos crew. it appears that hipness is traveling even further westward these days. I’d heard about it for so long, and finally, i got to see what all this fuss was about surrounding these new hotel-cum-full-club-experience dotting the edge of the strip.
the drake looked too glitzy for my taste, but they didn’t bat half an eyelash at me when I snuck into a private party for some well needed free dinner in the lounge, although I didn’t dare venture upstairs (you must have THIS much money to enter). i retreated to the drake underground (where they let the children make noise) where stephen marshall of the guerilla news network screened a number of clips and shorts from his work as creative director and chief video artist/activist at GNN. we got us a good one hour report in the works, yes sir. he showed some clips from battleground, his on-the-scene documentary from the frontlines of iraq, as of yet unreleased in theatres but selling well on dvd and looking to hit the festival circuit hard real soon, and this revolution, the film that got him and rosario dawson arrested in new york this summer during the republican national convention.
i ran into the infamous and dark peter m, who after letting marshall know how offended he was by his work, dragged me to the gladstone just down the street, which was a rather happenin’ place filled with the 20-40 crowd, but of course, the select few of them who are so bored with their own neighbourhoods that they have to come all the way to queen and landsdowne to grind with each other on a hump night in what was once the lobby of one of toronto’s more hard-up hotels. oh, but of course, they’ll never cross the tracks past gladstone ave, so the frontier has been drawn. finally, an end to dutch elm disease that is queen st.’s western expansion.
oh well, I pity those poor folks at blow up’s new location, where someone just got stabbed on the weekend and now ceases to be alive.
toronto gets really violent over the holiday season. no one really knows why it happens now instead of other times of they year. we’ve seen two family suicides and three stabbing deaths over the past two weeks. I know, it happens all the time around the world everyday, but having all this shit happen too often in your own city around xmastime just makes it so shitty in a more personal way than anyplace else.
Monday, December 13, 2004
PROTEGERAS NOS FOYERS ET NO DROITS
not everday can be a victory day. sometimes, the fact that you're alive and doing your own thing is a victory in itself. when yu know you've done your best at one thing, everything else sits at a notch below, even if it turns out differently than you'd imagined it. nothing is ever a loss if it means that you learned from it.
yes, it's warm outsid in december in toronto. the weather is better now than it's been since october. this is not the toronto i spent my childhood in. and it's fucked up, but some days, you just have to relish the the shining sun.
i'm finall looking forward to a proper good night sleep when this day is over in a few hours.
*****
saw the most BEAUTIFUL girl/woman on the streetcar platform the other day. she was holding a fresh copy of 1984 and reading the early chapters. damn the gurv for having my copy of orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London - read it online if that's your thing here.
i envisioned a situation...
"i see you're reading 1984. if you like orwell, you should read this," i'd say and hand herdown and out , "it's our of print."
i'd get up and leave, and when she'd open the front cover and see a note.
yeah, right...
i dug her physique and presence so much in those fifteen minutes that to keep myself from beating off publicly, i had to turn around every so often and look at the guy a wasy behind me who kinda looked like the rev.
someone send me an angel to love me good and lie in bed with me in a time of need.
yes, it's warm outsid in december in toronto. the weather is better now than it's been since october. this is not the toronto i spent my childhood in. and it's fucked up, but some days, you just have to relish the the shining sun.
i'm finall looking forward to a proper good night sleep when this day is over in a few hours.
*****
saw the most BEAUTIFUL girl/woman on the streetcar platform the other day. she was holding a fresh copy of 1984 and reading the early chapters. damn the gurv for having my copy of orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London - read it online if that's your thing here.
i envisioned a situation...
"i see you're reading 1984. if you like orwell, you should read this," i'd say and hand her
i'd get up and leave, and when she'd open the front cover and see a note.
yeah, right...
i dug her physique and presence so much in those fifteen minutes that to keep myself from beating off publicly, i had to turn around every so often and look at the guy a wasy behind me who kinda looked like the rev.
someone send me an angel to love me good and lie in bed with me in a time of need.
I GET THE HEAT
The WHO's "Tommy" is one of the great musical works of the 20th century, no question about it. since the age of twelve, i have been criminally in tune with this great collaboration with greatness, which i greatly swear in all sincerity. just play the opening to "acid queen" and i'm yours. i watched a deafening pete townshend on the dvd tube tonight as he explained his logic behind tommy and playin with the who. to roughly and unjustly paraphrase him: "i was unhappy with playing in the band, but what sustained me was something that began with 'can't explain'. with that record, we had a success that reached a lot of people, and i was at a point where i was being paid to do that again, so i felt i had a commission, and therefore a responsibility to do something about this powerful position. with 'tommy', i wanted people to get in touch with their spirit of ritual, their embrace of the abstract. you see roger up there singing 'see me feel me' looking like god with those lights behind him, and we can see for the first time since our club days every face in the crowd, as they've been flooded with this really bright light. so when we start singing 'listening to you' we've got the crowd all there for one purpose,. you hear the words come about, 'listening to YOU right behind YOU i get the HEAT' do they mean anything? no, nothing, they're purposefully abstract. so this idea of sprinkling something spiritual on the audience with something also vaguely religious can be very powerful, and we'd end on a crescendo so we coud feel that the audience had breached a wall and reached another level."
so all of a sudden, the WHO go from being a macho fuel band to a group interested in at the very least, uniting people in purpose for some common goal. i wonder if the same degree of theatrics and spiritualism have been heavily apparent in the rhetoric and propaganda of revolutionary movements, for better or for worse.
let's remember that in the same year tommy came out, a group out of the anti-war movement in the states called the weathermen would begin to form what was later known as the notorious WEATHER UNDERGROUND.
they were a force to fuck with, that's for sure. they played it nice until the FBI assassinated their good friend FRED HAMPTON, a young activist and speaker with the black panthers who was killed by the pigs in a staged gunfight that should have inflammed americans, but didn't. so they launched a bombing campaign on the crookkked system reponsible for the atrocity of vietnam in the global climate, and the repression of racial equality and the limitations over freedom of political action at home.
my question is: what is going to be the spark that blows everything up in our faces in this climate of bush? it isn't the fraud election of 2000, which could have been averted if americans were more like ukranians. american voters could really take a lesson from yushchenko, a prime minister who took on the president in ukraine's complex and corrupt government. he was poisoned for it, and his face left disfigured. yet he continued to fight for presidency, not because of his ego, but because the people came out and stated quite clearly that they wanted change, and they wanted yushchenko to be fairly appointed the opportunity to be the new face of democracy in the ukraine. but not americans. they rally around a sod like kerry, who, despite his good intentions, can't convince enough people that he's worthy of turning the country around. they abandoned kucinic and nader and the only real politicians in high places for kerry, who despite a hard fight in 1970 against the bullshit in vietnam (he should know, he fought), could not come out against the bullshit in iraq and the myriad of issues that surround its originators in the bush team.
it's tough to blame those poor folks for putting their hard earned energy into kerry. the system is so removed from the american people that they had little say in the matter. it was easy to adopt the anyone or anything but bush rationale with such little power. but it's time america stops waiting for the next michael moore movie or episode of crossfire to tell them what to do. thanks mike, we love ya, but you're never gonna stop this bush guy alone.
will there be an event that carries the magnitude of kent state in its shocking brutality? what will happen here in fortress north america when the resistance really gets pissed off? will the war come home like it did for the weathermen?
wake up america. how many times do you have to hear it? your country is at war and it's under national attention. your president is your problem for the next four years. we arond the world can kick and scream all we want, but it's up to you ultimately to "free the ballot", as jean st.vil told us at the bush protest two weeks ago in ottawa. "to free the ballot," he said, "we must stop the bully and his bullets." it's up to you to jam the machines that make those bullets, just as it is ours in canada to end our complicity in this movement of death that grows more and more accomodating to bush now that chretien is sitting in his ottawa condo retiring to the great political desk in the sky. and it can't just be students anymore leading the charge.
there are many things we in canad can do to "put our bodies on the line as bodies are being eliminated across iraq," to steal a phrase from andrea schmidt of the iraq solidarity project. i would suggest the follwing:
- put pressure on paul martin to take the same stance as jean chretien on the bush issue: strictly business but no buddy-buddy friendship. such a position onyl puts martin, and canada, at risk of being continually coopted by the republican weldpolitik. this means giving him some flack when he comes to visit instead of feeding him our best foods.
- help was resisters like david sanders, brandon hughey and jeremy heinzman. there's going to be a draft, and we need to help lawyers like jeffrey house put pressure on the gov't to treat war resisters like any other refugee in the legal process, but in the meantime, the only system dealing with the coming influx of resisters is the provisionary one we can come up with until the gov't improves its position.
- end security certificates and other spillovers of US homeland security in our country. stop throwing muslims in jail without charges and extraditing them to the states so they can be further deported to places that will torture or murder them.
Sunday, December 05, 2004
15 FAVOURITE ALBUMS OF THE YEAR IN FIVE SENTENCES OR LESS
Tortoise – All Around You
It’s a soundtrack for your dreams of prehistoric travel. Lush to the extreme without falling into new-age wankery. Calculated micro-metrically to cause visions of diplodocuses bathing in waterfalls.
Devendra Banhart – Nino Rojo + Rejoicing in the Hands
Two albums that can be viewed as one, in which case it makes for two hours of sitting crossed legged on your rug imagining that you’re either the guy or girl in “Norwegian Wood”. Play this album for your children in ten years and they’ll have no major problems growing up. It’ll be like when our parents introduced us to Cat Stevens. Or better yet, what we could have enjoyed if our parents had let us listen to acid-era Brian Wilson. “Be Kind” should win a Grammy for “Best Song In A Genre Not Found at the Grammy’s”.
!!! – Louden Up Now
Every song on the album is a hard-arsed banger, except for a brief interlude, which is really a banger of an interlude. Nick Offer reminds us what it’s like to really love to swear when you’re eight years old and pissed at the world. Every time you put on this album or any !!! album for that matter, you have your own private party in your head, and all your friends show up to tell you psyched they are to see these guys live. They wanna thank you for it, big time, with lots of free beer.
Animal Collective – Sung Tongs
We’ve entered a new era of home recording. I’m hoping that the kids out there will try at least once to put down their electric guitars, turntables or whatever the new penis of music is, get five of their friends into one room and record songs that are 90% vocally driven. This album proves that you don’t need lyrics to write singing parts, so long as you can remain innovative with gibberish sounds, nonsensical statements and loud exhalations.
Arcade Fire – Funeral
Here we were, thinking that hype was a problem, when all of a sudden, a band that’s worth it plays some big gigs, rocks the house, and releases a concept album about death and power outages. There may never be an album so appropriately released for the fall season again. Produced in the most professional living room in the country.
Hidden Cameras – Mississauga Goddamn
Do you believe in the good of life? Well, you should. If you don’t, give this album a go and it’ll warm your cold, cynical heart and remind you of how lucky you are to be alive and not losing limbs in foreign countries.
Mahogany Frog – Vs. Mabus
Why be afraid of progressive rock? The 70’s are nothing to be ashamed of. Tortoise can be compared to Weather Report without bricks being thrown, so let’s put our differences aside and embrace instrumental jazz-rock fusion, and at the coming-out party we can freak out to Mahogany Frog.
Air – Talkie Walkie
I once listened to my step-sister’s boyfriend, a slick Southern charmer from Virginia now living in LA, tell me that the best way to get a girl into the sack is by putting a Zero 7 album on the stereo system. When I told him Air was better, he said, “You mean those two French fags? Yeah, they’re alright.” He’s obviously never gotten a blowjob while listening to “Surfing on a Rocket.” I’m going to chalk up that argument in the win column.
Warsaw Village Band – People’s Spring
Young people need to look back on traditions, and while they’re at it, they can redefine them when necessary. On People’s Spring, the Warsaw Village Band turn wedding songs and Chassidic dances into feminist anthems and freedom jams. The dulcimer/string section/body drum combo might just be the new de rigeur of the 21st century.
Sadies – Favourite Colours
There’s no shame in loving Johnny Cash and The Byrds at the same time. The Sadies have marked new territory in their quest for gold. We should revive AM Radio and give it to the Sadies for all the lonely people in the woods.
Coco Rosie – La Maison de Mon Reve
What a way to go broke? These two sisters do it in style by flying to Paris and cooping themselves up in a tiny apartment with nothing but a piano and a guitar and some children’s toys.
The Ex – Turn
We need poets we need painters we need poets we need painters we need poetry and paintings.
The Go Team – Thunder, Lightning, Strike
Nothing is more fun than double dutch on the funky schoolyard train, dig? These here cats gon be round long time, sho nuff!
Medeski Martin & Wood – End of the World Party (Just in Case)
This band is ridiculous. They just do whatever the fuck they want. They don’t even really need to keep time with one another anymore. So they make two albums that shake the foundations of jazz and then release a basic, laid-back groove album that even frat boys can love.
Brian Wilson - Smile
The maniac has finally put it together after 35 years in a skullduggery. Smile has been revived and sounds better with actual lyrics to go along with the “ooga chucka” ones. Wilson hasn’t lost much of his youth, thankfully, and as a result, his vision is just as clear as it was before the drug cocktails entered the picture.
BEST FILMS IN TWO SENTENCES OR LESS
Control Room
Cured my Farenheit 9/11 hangover. Finally, a documentary about Iraq that brings the heartache to us without prying open our mouths and stuffing it down our esophaguses.
Discordia
Remember those guys who smashed the windows? And the guys who hated them for it? They’re back! And guess what? They’re all assholes!
Team America: World Police
We must never use puppets for amusement again. The artform has been sufficiently perfected.
The Triplets of Belleville
We must never use CGI animation for amusement again, as the hand drawn realm still reigns king.
Mean Girls
High school movies can really suck. Two things that can improve them: a) an intelligent script that examines the animal nature of human psychology, and b) Lindsay Lohan’s sweet bajungas.
Motorcycle Diaries
Why not make a film about everyone’s favourite badass that portrays him as a slick, mischievous womanizer who loves lepers?
BEST SHOWS / PARTIES
Brave New Waves Anniversay w/ !!! / Barcelona Pavillion @ Sala Rossa, Montreal, March 27
Dance to the Underground w/ Grand Theft Bus @ Scherzo Pub, Kingston, April 15
I Love Neon w/ A Touch of Class @ SAT, Montreal, February 14
Mayor McCa w/ BA Johnston @ Grad Club, February
Beats Breaks and Culture w/ Manitoba, Jaga Jazzist, Harbourfront, July
The Blow w/ Barcelona Pavillion, Yacht @ Cinecycle, November
Medeski Martin & Wood @ Koolhaus, December 4
Tortoise – All Around You
It’s a soundtrack for your dreams of prehistoric travel. Lush to the extreme without falling into new-age wankery. Calculated micro-metrically to cause visions of diplodocuses bathing in waterfalls.
Devendra Banhart – Nino Rojo + Rejoicing in the Hands
Two albums that can be viewed as one, in which case it makes for two hours of sitting crossed legged on your rug imagining that you’re either the guy or girl in “Norwegian Wood”. Play this album for your children in ten years and they’ll have no major problems growing up. It’ll be like when our parents introduced us to Cat Stevens. Or better yet, what we could have enjoyed if our parents had let us listen to acid-era Brian Wilson. “Be Kind” should win a Grammy for “Best Song In A Genre Not Found at the Grammy’s”.
!!! – Louden Up Now
Every song on the album is a hard-arsed banger, except for a brief interlude, which is really a banger of an interlude. Nick Offer reminds us what it’s like to really love to swear when you’re eight years old and pissed at the world. Every time you put on this album or any !!! album for that matter, you have your own private party in your head, and all your friends show up to tell you psyched they are to see these guys live. They wanna thank you for it, big time, with lots of free beer.
Animal Collective – Sung Tongs
We’ve entered a new era of home recording. I’m hoping that the kids out there will try at least once to put down their electric guitars, turntables or whatever the new penis of music is, get five of their friends into one room and record songs that are 90% vocally driven. This album proves that you don’t need lyrics to write singing parts, so long as you can remain innovative with gibberish sounds, nonsensical statements and loud exhalations.
Arcade Fire – Funeral
Here we were, thinking that hype was a problem, when all of a sudden, a band that’s worth it plays some big gigs, rocks the house, and releases a concept album about death and power outages. There may never be an album so appropriately released for the fall season again. Produced in the most professional living room in the country.
Hidden Cameras – Mississauga Goddamn
Do you believe in the good of life? Well, you should. If you don’t, give this album a go and it’ll warm your cold, cynical heart and remind you of how lucky you are to be alive and not losing limbs in foreign countries.
Mahogany Frog – Vs. Mabus
Why be afraid of progressive rock? The 70’s are nothing to be ashamed of. Tortoise can be compared to Weather Report without bricks being thrown, so let’s put our differences aside and embrace instrumental jazz-rock fusion, and at the coming-out party we can freak out to Mahogany Frog.
Air – Talkie Walkie
I once listened to my step-sister’s boyfriend, a slick Southern charmer from Virginia now living in LA, tell me that the best way to get a girl into the sack is by putting a Zero 7 album on the stereo system. When I told him Air was better, he said, “You mean those two French fags? Yeah, they’re alright.” He’s obviously never gotten a blowjob while listening to “Surfing on a Rocket.” I’m going to chalk up that argument in the win column.
Warsaw Village Band – People’s Spring
Young people need to look back on traditions, and while they’re at it, they can redefine them when necessary. On People’s Spring, the Warsaw Village Band turn wedding songs and Chassidic dances into feminist anthems and freedom jams. The dulcimer/string section/body drum combo might just be the new de rigeur of the 21st century.
Sadies – Favourite Colours
There’s no shame in loving Johnny Cash and The Byrds at the same time. The Sadies have marked new territory in their quest for gold. We should revive AM Radio and give it to the Sadies for all the lonely people in the woods.
Coco Rosie – La Maison de Mon Reve
What a way to go broke? These two sisters do it in style by flying to Paris and cooping themselves up in a tiny apartment with nothing but a piano and a guitar and some children’s toys.
The Ex – Turn
We need poets we need painters we need poets we need painters we need poetry and paintings.
The Go Team – Thunder, Lightning, Strike
Nothing is more fun than double dutch on the funky schoolyard train, dig? These here cats gon be round long time, sho nuff!
Medeski Martin & Wood – End of the World Party (Just in Case)
This band is ridiculous. They just do whatever the fuck they want. They don’t even really need to keep time with one another anymore. So they make two albums that shake the foundations of jazz and then release a basic, laid-back groove album that even frat boys can love.
Brian Wilson - Smile
The maniac has finally put it together after 35 years in a skullduggery. Smile has been revived and sounds better with actual lyrics to go along with the “ooga chucka” ones. Wilson hasn’t lost much of his youth, thankfully, and as a result, his vision is just as clear as it was before the drug cocktails entered the picture.
BEST FILMS IN TWO SENTENCES OR LESS
Control Room
Cured my Farenheit 9/11 hangover. Finally, a documentary about Iraq that brings the heartache to us without prying open our mouths and stuffing it down our esophaguses.
Discordia
Remember those guys who smashed the windows? And the guys who hated them for it? They’re back! And guess what? They’re all assholes!
Team America: World Police
We must never use puppets for amusement again. The artform has been sufficiently perfected.
The Triplets of Belleville
We must never use CGI animation for amusement again, as the hand drawn realm still reigns king.
Mean Girls
High school movies can really suck. Two things that can improve them: a) an intelligent script that examines the animal nature of human psychology, and b) Lindsay Lohan’s sweet bajungas.
Motorcycle Diaries
Why not make a film about everyone’s favourite badass that portrays him as a slick, mischievous womanizer who loves lepers?
BEST SHOWS / PARTIES
Brave New Waves Anniversay w/ !!! / Barcelona Pavillion @ Sala Rossa, Montreal, March 27
Dance to the Underground w/ Grand Theft Bus @ Scherzo Pub, Kingston, April 15
I Love Neon w/ A Touch of Class @ SAT, Montreal, February 14
Mayor McCa w/ BA Johnston @ Grad Club, February
Beats Breaks and Culture w/ Manitoba, Jaga Jazzist, Harbourfront, July
The Blow w/ Barcelona Pavillion, Yacht @ Cinecycle, November
Medeski Martin & Wood @ Koolhaus, December 4
Thursday, December 02, 2004
TOMMY DOUGLAS RIDES AGAIN
the prospect of school tomorrow just seems so banal after yesterday in ottawa. let me tell ya what happened last week at school: i aced a test and most everyone else failed, so the instructor dropped two assignments so that we could "understand the material" better. this was a basic music theory course. peops be gettin 100's on electronics tests and they still get bombed on this shit. so i just have to sit there all the time while this guy explains fucking major chords to people who just don't get it. these kids have a lot to learn. they're the children of urban market consumerism and coca cola.
i have a lot to learn too, but i'm getting closer to figuring it all out, after yesterday, in ottawa. the volume of daily sound is much quieter than it is on a usual day. my ears were overstretched from having been in headphones at high levels with loud sound all around you. the kind of stress that can put on your ears cannot go unchecked, but jesus, there are points at which your hearing shows its strengths. for instance, when you've got earpieces in and you're in a huge crowd, but you know quite accurately what you're getting onto disc.
having eaten nothing but a muffin at 9am, and having drank nothing but water and a glass of wine at 10, i'd trudged several k by the end of the march and daytime congregation. starting on the east end of the bridge at mackenzie/rideau in the morning, i saw a crowd of a 100 people gather as they waited for an early glimpse of bush's cavalcade as it sped towards a meeting with martin. from there, confederation park, where i ran into a lot of familiar faces (a number of them only from news clippings) and got some well known folks on the mic either through speeches or interviews. the march itself was the most orderly i'd ever seen, in no small part to the small group of organizers who managed to keep 10-15,000 people in a tight march for two hours. the main daytime march and hill gathering went on without a single arrest as far as i know.
i'd tell you what i got up to with the marijuana party on parliament hill, but it was too hazy to remember. all i can recall is a gathering after most of the crowd had recessed, a tight huddle of bodies about 80-100 thick with huge pot-leaf banners sticking high above them. i went over and saw an old serbian friend who may or may not have convinced me to do some legal or illegal things. soon, i could hear marc emery's voice through a small loudspeaker. some camera crew interviewed him and it was total amatuer night. you just can't allow your microphone to feedback into his. mabye you want people's ears to bleed, i dunno.
things go strange from there. i wander across the central spine of parliament hill (parliament hill with a spine? hahahahah, that'll be the day) as it readies itself for the vigil in three hours. i record the peace tower bells and drift around for a while. it starts to get cold and it's been over one hour since i've phoned my photographer, with whom i was supposed to be coordinating efforts. apparently, she went over to the conference centre where bush and harper met. i remember watching those people round the bend to cross a bridge and thinking it's not worth the price of someone else's equipment and my footage to go some place where there might be totally unnecessary trouble. kara, once at the barricades, tried to slip behind the riot police phalanx to find a vantage point. one cop came toward her, and she said "i have asthma, if you touch me you're fuckin liable". while one of his buddies continued to threaten her, the one coming towards her did something that probably would saved her ass if some shit went down. he shoved her into a doorway on another side of the building and told her to stay there. of course, she left and didn't get stuck behind police without media credentials.
some time was needed in the cock & lion ale pub, the best name for a bar that i've ever come across in my entire virile life. after some pints and a quick review of my first eighty minutes' worth of footage i headed back to the hill for the vigil, where more familiar media faces spoke (i've discluded the bloc from my documentary for obvious reasons.
called it an end to the recording day but continued to follow the show. i headed to catch the last movement of the piece, the final protest at the museum of civilization all the way over the bridge in hull, quebec. after a piss and a smoke (a right which i allowed myself despite my recently successful quitting) i ran into a kingston ex-pat who'd made it down for the one night only. a long march, and a small showdown, but no tear gass, no real violence to speak of, but plenty of civil disobedience.
by the time i'd made it back to the hotel, i'd had a meal in my stomach, and at least 10k on my body, not to mention several dB on my ears. my photographer had been stood up by her previously arranged internet date, so we went to look for this place a hippie told her about called "the elgin" that we determined never existed after another long bout of walking. we got back to the hotel and, of course, watched the news.
Sunday, November 28, 2004
we're at a point in the life of the music industry at which a continually flowing stream of musicians hit a nerve with many on a daily scale. they riptide through the masses and travel far places without even leaving their home countries in many cases. everywhere, someone's heard of them and waiting for them to come to their town. the go! team should not need introduction at this moment, but they have yet to rock north american and therefore must be explained. things are generally taken too seriously in music, but the go! team defy the standard attitudes: neither "we're too bore to care" nor "wow, we're artsy" nor "we sound like this band meets this band while weilding a knife in bowie's dead family's graveyard" need apply to the go! team they're into fun, and that's their thing, so good for them, let's keep it coming.
deep dark united hit the scene from another angle altogether, but occupy the same kind of space. quite a number of bands could take some lessons from them. for one, music can be strange and fun at the same time, nor does it have to be danceable. it simply requires listening ears and seeing eyes. as much as we love to see fashion and culture as a part of music, the end result is how the song makes us feel. without the piece, there's nothing but style.
the fever has caught on for a lot of crowds and all these little "scenes" are popping up in all kindsa places. this, however, can be a slightly dangerous time. this crazy "indie" music will soon see some kind of saturation in the near future that will gnaw at its core (if we haven't already). there's nothing wrong with any of this, as at them moment it's totally containable. the abundance of groups does make for an overall above average health level amongst groups in the world of performed music. influences keep growing. each day is a new achievement in the recognition of culture as a vital form of life. but i can see that sometime soon, this little "indie" thing that blw up so big might have to readjust its course before it falls into the ocean.
my hope is that people like kaki king spearhead the moments of change in the coming years. this woman is gonna put a lot of people in business. she's already appeared on NPR and the cover an acoustic guitar mag you could easily find at the airport or 7-11, so a lot of people have at least glanced a her name.
deep dark united hit the scene from another angle altogether, but occupy the same kind of space. quite a number of bands could take some lessons from them. for one, music can be strange and fun at the same time, nor does it have to be danceable. it simply requires listening ears and seeing eyes. as much as we love to see fashion and culture as a part of music, the end result is how the song makes us feel. without the piece, there's nothing but style.
the fever has caught on for a lot of crowds and all these little "scenes" are popping up in all kindsa places. this, however, can be a slightly dangerous time. this crazy "indie" music will soon see some kind of saturation in the near future that will gnaw at its core (if we haven't already). there's nothing wrong with any of this, as at them moment it's totally containable. the abundance of groups does make for an overall above average health level amongst groups in the world of performed music. influences keep growing. each day is a new achievement in the recognition of culture as a vital form of life. but i can see that sometime soon, this little "indie" thing that blw up so big might have to readjust its course before it falls into the ocean.
my hope is that people like kaki king spearhead the moments of change in the coming years. this woman is gonna put a lot of people in business. she's already appeared on NPR and the cover an acoustic guitar mag you could easily find at the airport or 7-11, so a lot of people have at least glanced a her name.
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
THE PERPETUAL DIASPORA
my dad and i, on the way back from the cottage, listened to an interview with livia jaroka, a 29 year old former radio host and anthropologist who was recently elected to the european parliament as its first gypsy member (and one of the first gypsy politicans in europe altogether). me and my dad had a discussion about gypsy culture (which is often called "roma" culture, even though their heritage has nothing to do with rome and everything to do with india).
he told me all kinds of things about gypsies and how they operate, what sort of lifestyle they live and how they're perceived in europe. my dad grew up in transylvania, where gypsies made up a significant portion of the population, and from our conversation i learned of the following:
gypsies are incredibly intelligent people despite huge disadvantages. they don't read or write for the most part, because of their traditionally nomadic lifestyle, but mainly due to the extreme discrimination they have to deal with if they ever do go to school. my dad remembers that in school, he had three or four gypsy students in his class, but they were never referred to by their first names when the student addressed them. they were simply called "cigajn" which means something like "swindler" or more closely, "haggler". that kind of systematic depersonalization really discouraged them from sending their kids to school, so as a result, they have their own kind of intelligence borne of a very raw and gritty existance.
for instacne, gypsies are incredible metal smiths. my dad used to go buy pots and pans that they would make from scrap on tiny little anvils with tiny little hammers, and they would do it with such skill that it eclipsed any government issue communist factory trash.
gypsies are amazing musicians. for the longest time, what people around the world once thought of as hungarian and rumanian folk music was actually of 100% gypsy origin. their music is immensely dark and complex. few people can master the technique. what makes it even more amazing is that gypsy music had never been notated or written down until the composer bela bartok and his colleague zoltan kodaly travelled the countryside of transylvania and rumania to study workable methods of defining gypsy music. i recommend you listen to bartok's six string quartets for a feel of what gypsy music is like. it will change your notions of how you listen to music. it is incredibly challenging stuff. much of my family's musical history can be traced back to gypsy influence, when my grandfather as a child and adolescent lived next to a family of gypsies who would play music well into the night and influence his violin playing...django reinhardt, one of the world's greatest guitarists of all time, was a gypsy, after all.
despite all of the beauty of gypsy culture, they're treated like dirt. there used to be an expression when my dad grew up that, according to livia jaroka, is still common in hungary: "if you don't behave, the gypsies will come and take you away!"
it's going to continue and possibly get worse unless someone does something about it. under communism, things were better for gypsies, as the laws put a stop to open racism. the gypsies still had it rought back then, but now that the wall has fallen, and open racism is once again de rigeur again throughout most of europe, gypsies are seeing a new age of disclusion. they are hated and reviled. i'll admit that one would expect such a thing. after all, gypsies live a totally different life from white europeans. but they are amazing people with an ongoing story, and something has to change in the near future.
"yes," says my dad, "they were smelly and dirty. yes, they were so good at negotiating that it was easy to think you got swindled if you did business with them. yes, they were nomadic and we were established. but they're incredible people who deserve to be treated like any other european group. we all started out like gypsies."
he told me all kinds of things about gypsies and how they operate, what sort of lifestyle they live and how they're perceived in europe. my dad grew up in transylvania, where gypsies made up a significant portion of the population, and from our conversation i learned of the following:
gypsies are incredibly intelligent people despite huge disadvantages. they don't read or write for the most part, because of their traditionally nomadic lifestyle, but mainly due to the extreme discrimination they have to deal with if they ever do go to school. my dad remembers that in school, he had three or four gypsy students in his class, but they were never referred to by their first names when the student addressed them. they were simply called "cigajn" which means something like "swindler" or more closely, "haggler". that kind of systematic depersonalization really discouraged them from sending their kids to school, so as a result, they have their own kind of intelligence borne of a very raw and gritty existance.
for instacne, gypsies are incredible metal smiths. my dad used to go buy pots and pans that they would make from scrap on tiny little anvils with tiny little hammers, and they would do it with such skill that it eclipsed any government issue communist factory trash.
gypsies are amazing musicians. for the longest time, what people around the world once thought of as hungarian and rumanian folk music was actually of 100% gypsy origin. their music is immensely dark and complex. few people can master the technique. what makes it even more amazing is that gypsy music had never been notated or written down until the composer bela bartok and his colleague zoltan kodaly travelled the countryside of transylvania and rumania to study workable methods of defining gypsy music. i recommend you listen to bartok's six string quartets for a feel of what gypsy music is like. it will change your notions of how you listen to music. it is incredibly challenging stuff. much of my family's musical history can be traced back to gypsy influence, when my grandfather as a child and adolescent lived next to a family of gypsies who would play music well into the night and influence his violin playing...django reinhardt, one of the world's greatest guitarists of all time, was a gypsy, after all.
despite all of the beauty of gypsy culture, they're treated like dirt. there used to be an expression when my dad grew up that, according to livia jaroka, is still common in hungary: "if you don't behave, the gypsies will come and take you away!"
it's going to continue and possibly get worse unless someone does something about it. under communism, things were better for gypsies, as the laws put a stop to open racism. the gypsies still had it rought back then, but now that the wall has fallen, and open racism is once again de rigeur again throughout most of europe, gypsies are seeing a new age of disclusion. they are hated and reviled. i'll admit that one would expect such a thing. after all, gypsies live a totally different life from white europeans. but they are amazing people with an ongoing story, and something has to change in the near future.
"yes," says my dad, "they were smelly and dirty. yes, they were so good at negotiating that it was easy to think you got swindled if you did business with them. yes, they were nomadic and we were established. but they're incredible people who deserve to be treated like any other european group. we all started out like gypsies."
Monday, November 22, 2004
IT'S LIKE THAT ZAPPA SONG...
"why do we do it?" asked one of our instructors once asked us on the first few days of classes. "we do it for the money. we're only in it for the money," he answered himself.
at that moment i couldn't totally understand what he meant. in fact, i was slighlty put off by it. i hadn't expected the school to be so...industry driven? however, a few months down the road, i can totally sympathize with this sentiment. this guy has been a sound editor for years, but he hasn't worked on anything you'd call a masterpiece. he had a really good gig on a popular canadian show in the 80's, but nothing too special. a string of unglorious but steady work was his lot. does he care? no, because, in the end, he lives like the king of his own world. he's been nominated for awards and he's a pretty happy guy who hasn't lost interest in the work itself, no matter how ridiculous.
it takes a fair bit of optminism and faith in the wayward youth of today to do his teaching job. kids walk in there everyday with no fuckin clue what it takes to break yourself into this kind of a world. some of these kids have never tasted an ounce of professionalism in their lives and they come into the school expecting service instead of education. the school is run like a business, and it's as cold as one. some people are definitely not cut out for it. and those who can't make it are the ones who expect, rather than attempt, the most.
i too, had a lot of expectations when i started there, and as much as i like to think i'm above all this bullshit, i have to remind myself, always, that i 've been granted all kinds of social and economical advantages from the get go. most of these kids didn't get that. i cannot hold them up to the same standards as i hold myself, and i must give them a chance before i consider them all a bunch of starchasers with their chichen-heads cut off.
* * *
there's a possibility i'm heading to ottawa to anounce my rejection of the bush agenda, although not specifically as a protestor. i'll be on assignment with the paper, assisting the photo editor with her work and maybe doing some second unit stuf (do they call it a second unit in photography? i know that's the film term). i certainly don't intend to do much more than the work i need to do, but there's no doubt i'll be acting in the spirit of protest. i won't be on the front of the lines with bullhorns like i was in 2003, but i'm sure i'll be going through some of the same emotions.
i must go to bed, as i have a sharp pain going up my shin bone, which i suspect is the result of the splinter i stepped on today that so sneakily jutted from my floor, waiting in cruel anticipation as my foot hovered over it. i had no tweezers so i had to remove it with a variety of techniques and tools, which might have been a mistake.
i should sand my floor. or maybe i just walk too much and need better shoes.
at that moment i couldn't totally understand what he meant. in fact, i was slighlty put off by it. i hadn't expected the school to be so...industry driven? however, a few months down the road, i can totally sympathize with this sentiment. this guy has been a sound editor for years, but he hasn't worked on anything you'd call a masterpiece. he had a really good gig on a popular canadian show in the 80's, but nothing too special. a string of unglorious but steady work was his lot. does he care? no, because, in the end, he lives like the king of his own world. he's been nominated for awards and he's a pretty happy guy who hasn't lost interest in the work itself, no matter how ridiculous.
it takes a fair bit of optminism and faith in the wayward youth of today to do his teaching job. kids walk in there everyday with no fuckin clue what it takes to break yourself into this kind of a world. some of these kids have never tasted an ounce of professionalism in their lives and they come into the school expecting service instead of education. the school is run like a business, and it's as cold as one. some people are definitely not cut out for it. and those who can't make it are the ones who expect, rather than attempt, the most.
i too, had a lot of expectations when i started there, and as much as i like to think i'm above all this bullshit, i have to remind myself, always, that i 've been granted all kinds of social and economical advantages from the get go. most of these kids didn't get that. i cannot hold them up to the same standards as i hold myself, and i must give them a chance before i consider them all a bunch of starchasers with their chichen-heads cut off.
* * *
there's a possibility i'm heading to ottawa to anounce my rejection of the bush agenda, although not specifically as a protestor. i'll be on assignment with the paper, assisting the photo editor with her work and maybe doing some second unit stuf (do they call it a second unit in photography? i know that's the film term). i certainly don't intend to do much more than the work i need to do, but there's no doubt i'll be acting in the spirit of protest. i won't be on the front of the lines with bullhorns like i was in 2003, but i'm sure i'll be going through some of the same emotions.
i must go to bed, as i have a sharp pain going up my shin bone, which i suspect is the result of the splinter i stepped on today that so sneakily jutted from my floor, waiting in cruel anticipation as my foot hovered over it. i had no tweezers so i had to remove it with a variety of techniques and tools, which might have been a mistake.
i should sand my floor. or maybe i just walk too much and need better shoes.
Saturday, November 20, 2004
ODE TO GURV
i received an email earlier this week that contained a picture of the man in question, found by an unsuspecting seez on the queen's 2004 yearbook website. i have to express what profound luck i have stumbled upon in having met the gurv. when he ties one on, he's fearless.
i was bored as hell at the varsity newspaper party the other night. i was talking the same old introductory bullshit with people i wasn't terribly interested in meeting and within minutes, the course of action shifted dramatically. some very crucial elements entered the equation, the first being the unending supply of booze brought in by the editors, and the second being the arrival of the gurv and magdalicious, who'd just been given some attitude by the hip hop bitches they photographed for the paper. we were all ready to party at this point and let off a bit of steam, so we struck the booze hard as the party got louder. we ran into a british animator who so kindly took us out to the second floor balcony for a spliff with his adorable girlfriend.
the varsity happens to occupy the same building as the campus police. so when a cop parked his cruiser under the balcony, we figured we'd refrain from attracting any attention.
"NOT I!" said the gurv, who, within a minute of the cop's entrance to the building, began pissing off the balcony in the officer's wake on the sidewalk below. we made it known to the gurv that perhaps he should wait for the cop to go back to his car and drive away, just in case he wasn't the piss fetish type.
"NOT I!" said the gurv, who then redirected his goldren stream to the hood of the cruiser.
after a hearty piss, he turned to me and said "man...i gotta take off. i'm tired." and leave we did, with smiles on our faces.
the gurv has no recollection of this event, but i'd like to thank him for providing me with this memory that makes me laugh out loud when i think about it.
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
THINGS THAT ARE NOT REAL ARE NOT REAL
we've been hearing this word "hipster" for quite some time now as a means to describe a certain type of person. fine, but moreover, we're seeing a glorified anti-hero being made out of this character. everywhere you go, it's "hipster this hipster that! he's a hipster she's a hipster! are you a hipster? where do the hipsters hang out in this town?" it's starting to get sickening, and i'll tell you why: never once have i heard someone describe themselves as a hipster, yet this word is everywhere in white youth culture. it's a word that seems to have been flailed upon people so we can have yet another way to categorize human beings into little clumps of subculture, as if we were forms of bacteria. i'm sure there are people who would wish to be called hipsters, but they're too cowardly to ever step out of their slimy hides and actually call themselves hipsters out loud. cause that would be be so unhip, wouldn't it?
the word hip comes from "hepi", a word in an african langauge, (i read this in an article once, i forget from where. russel smith in the globe, maybe. he's into that whole thing.) and was brought to america by slaves so they could have a word that described something that was theirs and not anyone else's. somehow, the white people got a hold of this word and it evolved from "hepi" to "hep" to "hip". who the fuck really knows what it means, but it's on the same wavelength as the word "cool". we don't know exactly what it is, and we don't know how to describe it and its definition changes day to day. so in such an instance, we take all kinds of liberties with this concept, and next thing we know, beat poets and journalists write their definitions of the hipster identity in the 1950s like it was some crisis of identity that needed to be solved at once. let's see what they have to say:
"a hipster is anyone who can stand on any street corner in the world and successfully find some reefer by simply asking strangers." jack kerouac (paraphrased from a book i once read)
"like children, hipsters are fighting for the sweet, and their language is a set of subtle indications of their success or failure in the competition for pleasure. unstated but obvious is the social sense that there is not nearly enough sweet for everyone. and so the sweet goes only to the victor, the best, the most, the man who knows the most about how to find his energy and how not to lose it." norman mailer, "the white negro: superficial reflections on hipsters", 1957
i'll agree that there are people who exhibit these qualities, and good for them, but i wish i could find one. i personally have never seen a torontonian male with emo glasses and pinstriped pants score dope in nepal, nor have i ever seen a girl with a cabby hat and a 1950's professor jacket do the same. but i do agree that there are certain people who we assume have these qualities and abilities because of their ironic clothing, outrageous hair and oh-so-up-to-the-minute knowledge of the latest trends in fashion and music. i do agree that these people "fight for the sweet" but as a result, they have no more of an idea as to who they are than anyone else in this world. in my opinion, they're most likely lost in this sham of an identity and suffer from serious delusions about who they are and how they and others of similar ilk are supposed to act. if you ask me, they're stuck living in a territory of stereotypes, albeit a strange one with all kinds of complexities and ironies in it, but one that has very little to offer but pleasure and leisure to the bored young urban socialite. as a result, they forget what they set out to do in the first place - find the right energy to express themselves as individuals with original tastes and concerns - and tie themselves into the knot of delusion that goes along with self-aggrandizing faux hipsterdom.
with regards to what kerouac says, nothing could be further from the truth. a hipster is not someone who can score dope anywhere anytime. a hipster isn't even a person. a hipster doesn't exist, beacuse a hipster and hipness altogether are constructs of our social intermingling which only exposes our inability to see cultural movements as they are: amorphous and ever evolving, yet inextricably linked to history and politics.
the word hip comes from "hepi", a word in an african langauge, (i read this in an article once, i forget from where. russel smith in the globe, maybe. he's into that whole thing.) and was brought to america by slaves so they could have a word that described something that was theirs and not anyone else's. somehow, the white people got a hold of this word and it evolved from "hepi" to "hep" to "hip". who the fuck really knows what it means, but it's on the same wavelength as the word "cool". we don't know exactly what it is, and we don't know how to describe it and its definition changes day to day. so in such an instance, we take all kinds of liberties with this concept, and next thing we know, beat poets and journalists write their definitions of the hipster identity in the 1950s like it was some crisis of identity that needed to be solved at once. let's see what they have to say:
"a hipster is anyone who can stand on any street corner in the world and successfully find some reefer by simply asking strangers." jack kerouac (paraphrased from a book i once read)
"like children, hipsters are fighting for the sweet, and their language is a set of subtle indications of their success or failure in the competition for pleasure. unstated but obvious is the social sense that there is not nearly enough sweet for everyone. and so the sweet goes only to the victor, the best, the most, the man who knows the most about how to find his energy and how not to lose it." norman mailer, "the white negro: superficial reflections on hipsters", 1957
i'll agree that there are people who exhibit these qualities, and good for them, but i wish i could find one. i personally have never seen a torontonian male with emo glasses and pinstriped pants score dope in nepal, nor have i ever seen a girl with a cabby hat and a 1950's professor jacket do the same. but i do agree that there are certain people who we assume have these qualities and abilities because of their ironic clothing, outrageous hair and oh-so-up-to-the-minute knowledge of the latest trends in fashion and music. i do agree that these people "fight for the sweet" but as a result, they have no more of an idea as to who they are than anyone else in this world. in my opinion, they're most likely lost in this sham of an identity and suffer from serious delusions about who they are and how they and others of similar ilk are supposed to act. if you ask me, they're stuck living in a territory of stereotypes, albeit a strange one with all kinds of complexities and ironies in it, but one that has very little to offer but pleasure and leisure to the bored young urban socialite. as a result, they forget what they set out to do in the first place - find the right energy to express themselves as individuals with original tastes and concerns - and tie themselves into the knot of delusion that goes along with self-aggrandizing faux hipsterdom.
with regards to what kerouac says, nothing could be further from the truth. a hipster is not someone who can score dope anywhere anytime. a hipster isn't even a person. a hipster doesn't exist, beacuse a hipster and hipness altogether are constructs of our social intermingling which only exposes our inability to see cultural movements as they are: amorphous and ever evolving, yet inextricably linked to history and politics.
Saturday, November 13, 2004
WHISKEY IN THE JAR
my knowledge of the world comes extensively from a very limited framework. most of what i know in the world is contained within four places:
toronto, ontario
winnipeg, manitoba
kingston, ontario
montreal, quebec
yet i often speak for those who have lived in far off places and different planes of history. i think of life at other time periods, such as the second world war, for instance, or during the belle epoque. i like to think about where we are now as a species, as a civilization, and i wonder: is it better now? was it better then? or is it always just the same?
some things are better, for some people, but we have yet to come to the point in human history where we can say that 50% of our population was living happily. we're nowhere near it, and i wonder if in my lifetime i'll be able to look at statistics with optimism.
toronto, ontario
winnipeg, manitoba
kingston, ontario
montreal, quebec
yet i often speak for those who have lived in far off places and different planes of history. i think of life at other time periods, such as the second world war, for instance, or during the belle epoque. i like to think about where we are now as a species, as a civilization, and i wonder: is it better now? was it better then? or is it always just the same?
some things are better, for some people, but we have yet to come to the point in human history where we can say that 50% of our population was living happily. we're nowhere near it, and i wonder if in my lifetime i'll be able to look at statistics with optimism.
Monday, November 08, 2004
@ CINECYCLE, LAST SATURDAY
WE DON'T NEED NO INSTRUMENTATION
by guy stevos
photos by peter mohideen
did the kids come all the way to cinecycle in the cold to sit? look at those shameless, motionless chair dwellers. i bet they really just needed a good bangin' from the penis that is live music.
YACHT told them not to sit anymore. he lead by example, putting on a show rife with handkerchiefs and spastic freakouts.
not everyone joined him in the dance, but they all "got it" and dug the kid's message of hope. it was THE BARCELONA PAVILLION, however, that cranked things up to 12. a particularly jovial steve kado and his band of merry misfits walked the plank for twenty harrowing minutes of coldwater-flat-rock mayhem.
"how are you people gonna have fun when none of you people ever participate?"
who ever thought a little garage-like warehouse in the middle of an alley could get so hot! kids was sweatin, ya heaaaard me? they was up and at 'em by the time THE BLOW came on. she asked for the "steppers" to come forward, and forward they did march to the beat of familiar drum...from yacht's laptop!
"i'd like to make you nervous
i'd love to make you sweat
i'd love to cook you breakfast
the morning after"
- jet ski accidents
so many boys must have fallen in love with the heavenly khaela that night. "i-guess-i'm-just-one-a-those-girls-that-loves-the-shit-out-of-you-boyyyyyyy-whoooaaaaa" might be the height of indie girl r&b. i know i have a girl to think about in my lonely cold bed onthose low key saturday nights. khaela, canada loves you too!
what a show! what an environment! no stage! no live drums! why don't people do this more often?
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