If Woodstock was the zenith of the hippie-era aspiration for free love, then Altamont was its nadir
National Post, Monday, September 14, 2009
If nothing else, the news that British police are reviewing the July 1969 drowning death of founding Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones demonstrates that, even after almost half a century at centre stage, the Stones -- even the dead ones on whom moss has most certainly grown -- continue to possess an uncanny ability to command the public spotlight unlike few other entertainment acts. Or, for that matter, unlike few other people on Earth.
This ability to mesmerize the media and the masses also was evident at a more mundane level when newspapers and websites around the world published an entertainment-industry trifle disclosing that Sir Mick Jagger and his grizzled group of geriatric rockers are now, at $9-million a show, the world's most expensive wedding band.
It seems that whatever the story --dead Stones, money-grubbing Stones or simply ever-rolling Stones -- it matters little. They captivate us still.
It must be noted, however, that there was one rather significant show-biz and pop-culture story from the summer with which the Rolling Stones were not associated: the celebration in mid-August of the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, the renowned gig at which the famous band did not play, but which nevertheless quickly became known as an epoch-defining event.
Having missed the magic bus ride to the Age of Aquarius that supposedly sprung fully formed from the mud of Max Yasgur's field in upstate New York, the Rolling Stones decided to stage a festival of their own later in the year at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. But poor planning forced the Stones to move the event at the last moment to a venue 30 minutes down the road.
And so, despite only two days' notice and with virtually no advertising, some 300,000 fans flocked to Altamont Speedway on Dec. 6, 1969, to gambol in what they expected to be some sort of post-Woodstockian stardust being sprinkled on an event billed as "three days of peace and music." That was the plan, anyway.
Instead, it is generally agreed that Altamont, with its four fatalities (one fan stabbed by a boozy Hells Angels bouncer; one drowned in an irrigation ditch; two run over by a hit-and-run driver while they slept) brought a crashing end to the euphoria created by the Woodstock festival just four months before. If Woodstock was the zenith of the hippie-era aspiration for free love, free weed and an eternal playlist of rock and psychedelic music, then Altamont was its nadir.
After all these years, however, it seems to me that Woodstock, which a contemporary observer enthused was "the greatest weekend since creation," was actually much less than what it appeared at the time, and Altamont was actually much more. Indeed, if it is true that Woodstock embodied generational aspirations -- that is, a drug-fuelled, euphoric utopianism where music, peace and love frolic like lambs in a field of clover -- then common sense should tell us that whatever success the festival enjoyed was, to put it bluntly, a fluke.
It was all a fantasy. The Age of Aquarius was actually the Age of Illusion. Or Self-Delusion. Anyone with half a brain knows, or should know, that half a million people cannot subsist on pot smoke and good intentions, no matter how much Jimi Hendrix they listen to. Yes, it was a good party, but it was not and could not be reality.
As surely as Kipling's Gods of the Copybook Headings inevitably return with "terror and slaughter" to claim hapless people who fall for the latest "ism," certain truths about our mortal existence here on Earth asserted themselves with devastating consequence at Altamont. Chief among them was the fact that half-baked notions of universal love will do little to protect human wellbeing when common sense is jettisoned.
Jagger may have thought that giving thugs unlimited beer, in exchange for their agreeing to protect his pitiful four-foot-high stage, would provide sufficient security, and he also may have presumed that an overriding Aquarian spirit would pacify the throng, but he was dead wrong on both counts.
If naivete was allowed to strut about unchecked at Woodstock, it received a needed slap in the face at Altamont. The idealism of the hippie era didn't tragically die at Altamont; it committed unavoidable suicide.
I can't help but recall the interview Jagger gave to a distinguished panel of academics and religious leaders during a British public-affairs TV show, World in Action, filmed shortly after he had escaped drug charges in the summer of 1967.
Asked how he wanted to be understood by the world, especially by young people, Jagger answered, "Just in the very way that I started myself, when I was quite young, which is just to have as good a time as possible, which most young people do try and do without any regard to responsibilities of any sort... The main thing to start off is to have as good a time as possible."
Two years later at Altamont, it became quite apparent that simply having "as good a time as possible" was as pathetic an excuse for a personal philosophy as could be imagined. It remains a tragedy that so many people of the Sixties and beyond still fail to recognize this. - Terry O'Neill is a Vancouver writer and editor who is also co-host of RoadkillRadio.com.
Indulge my fantasy for a second—I'm talking about a system with DC-to-light bandwidth, zero noise and distortion, and unlimited dynamic range and resolution. It's an audiophile conundrum: When output precisely matches input, have we attained nirvana?
Maybe not. Most CDs and LPs aren't all that transparent, so I'm wondering if our obsession with transparency is misplaced. Soundstaging? Not if you listen to rock or jazz—the music's spatial depth, low-level ambience, dimensionality, and reverberation are all fabricated in the mix. Dynamics? Sorry, pal—compression, and lots of it, is an integral part of the recording, mixing, and mastering of most of the music you buy.
I blame my Magnepan 3.6R loudspeakers for this latest round of audiophile soul-searching. The Maggies tell me more about the music embedded in bits, pits, or grooves than any other speaker I've had in my home system. The panels' 55"-tall ribbon tweeters resolve differences between recordings with uncanny precision.
That said, a perfect speaker, amplifier, turntable, or CD player wouldn't automatically make every recording sound lifelike. At that point, the gear wouldn't have a "sound" per se; rather, the gear would lay bare the sound of each recording. I'm guessing that such a system would reveal the best recordings' innate musicality and that the middle-range recordings would still sound revelatory, but also that a significant percentage of your music would sound pretty ratty. Contrasting a pure audiophile recording like Ry Cooder and V.M. Bhatt's A Meeting by the River (CD, Water Lily Acoustics WLA-CS-29-CD) with Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run (CD, Columbia CK 33795) would be a mind-warping experience.
The Boss's album instantly transforms my MG 3.6Rs into a pair of 6'-tall AM radios. Yuck. Born to Run sounds all kinds of awful—grainy, harsh, spatially flat, dynamically crushed, with truly nasty-sounding reverberation—and I still love the music. This record suffers from what I call the Humpty Dumpty Effect: once the sound is broken, a system comprising gear rated Class A in Stereophile's "Recommended Components" won't undo such sonic mutilations, only reveal them with greater clarity. But I can turn off the analytical, audio-critic side of my brain and just let it be. No matter what, Springsteen rocks.
A Meeting by the River is breathtakingly gorgeous—it sounds you-are-there spectacular. Cooder's bottleneck guitar all but materializes between the MG 3.6Rs—I hear it and Cooder's band filling the acoustic space of Christ the King Chapel. That's no accident; the album was produced and recorded by a master engineer, Kavi Alexander, whose recording chain—microphones, mike preamps, analog tape deck, and analog-to-digital converter—were all designed and built by Tim de Paravicini. When you're listening to this album, you're hearing it through the audiophile-grade gear with which it was produced.
I think/hope that most of us put together hi-fi systems that reflect our sonic preferences. We like what we like: tubes, solid-state, analog, digital, electrostatics, horns, whatever. Considered purely objectively, tube electronics are less "accurate" than solid-state; the same can be said of CD vs vinyl. But if vinyl, or tubes, or both are what raise the hairs on the back of your neck, so be it. At the end of the day, what we crave is good old musicality. Music moves us more than sound. A lot more.
I think the age-old analog/digital divide is the least of it. The musicians do their thing, and the microphones, their positions relative to the instruments, and the skill and imagination brought to bear by the engineer, producer, and masterer in their use of equalization, compression, processing, etc., create the sound we hear. Analog tape, if used at all, is a mere flavor; today, virtually no one mixes or edits in analog; tape just about always gets bumped to digital before the recording date is complete. Pop or rock music is rarely played and sung live in the studio by the entire band. Out-of-tune singers and players are pitch-corrected, and drummers' off-kilter rhythms are tweaked. There's not a lot of there there.
Audiophile recordings, however, are almost always recorded "live," with the entire group playing in real time, and with minimal EQ, compression, and processing. But even these efforts never truly sound like the real thing. The very best high-end speakers and electronics are still a long way from perfect sound reproduction. Here, I define perfect as "indistinguishable from the sound of live music"; whether it's symphony orchestras, jazz combos, or rock'n'roll bands, we're still not even close. Some solo instruments fare better; guitars, flutes, voices—you can almost get a glimpse of their actual sounds. But a drum kit? An acoustic piano? No way.
One of the reasons we're not yet even in the ballpark is that we're still stuck in two-channel mode. Don't get me wrong—I love stereo—but if I could get the whole enchilada of a 360° virtual-reality experience, I'd plunk down serious cash. However, I've yet to hear a multichannel mix, whether on SACD, DVD-Audio, or Blu-ray, that's appreciably better than two-channel sound. We still await a holographically convincing recording technique to get us there.
The fantasy of perfect-fi is further complicated by the acoustics of the listening room. If you placed a perfect speaker system in an average room, you still wouldn't have perfect sound. The very best room-correction systems are a beginning, but they can't make your room disappear. We won't see that for a long, long time.
Which brings me to my final point: Does any of this matter? Most of my music collection hews closer to Springsteen's sound than to Cooder's. We've grown so accustomed to hearing heavily processed music that we now accept it as at least plausibly realistic.
The music is what we're here for. If it were perfectly reproduced, would we enjoy it any more? Or would we be happier if our speakers and/or electronics smoothed over the sound's rougher edges? Mark Levinson observed years ago that one of the worst symptoms of the audiophile "disease" is playing only music that sounds good through your system, to the exclusion of the music you love because the latter sounds less good through your system. I've been there; I know firsthand how absurd that is. Listen to music, not your hi-fi.—Steve Guttenberg
Imagine a siren that gives you 30 seconds to find shelter before a Kassam rocket falls from the sky and explodes, spraying its lethal shrapnel in all directions. Now imagine this happens day after day, month after month, year after year.
If you can imagine that, you can begin to understand the terror to which hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been subjected. Three years ago Israel withdrew from every square inch of Gaza. And since that withdrawal, our civilians have been targeted by more than 6,000 rockets and mortars fired from Gaza. In the face of this relentless bombardment, Israel has acted with a restraint that other countries, faced with a similar threat, would find hard to fathom. Israel's government has finally decided to respond.
For this action to succeed, we must first have moral clarity. There is no moral equivalence between Israel, a democracy which seeks peace and targets the terrorists, and Hamas, an Iranian-backed terror organization that seeks Israel's destruction and targets the innocent.
In launching precision strikes against Hamas rocket launchers, headquarters, weapons depots, smuggling tunnels and training camps, Israel is trying to minimize civilian casualties. But Hamas deliberately attacks Israeli civilians and deliberately hides behind Palestinian civilians — a double war crime. Responsible governments do their utmost to minimize civilian casualties, but they do not grant immunity to terrorists who use civilians as human shields.
The international community may occasionally condemn Hamas for putting Palestinian civilians in harm's way, but if it ultimately holds Israel responsible for the casualties that ensue, then Hamas and other terror organizations will employ this abominable tactic again and again.
The charge that Israel is using disproportionate force is equally baseless. Does proportionality demand that Israel fire 6,000 rockets indiscriminately back at Gaza? Does it demand an equal number of casualties on both sides? Using that logic, one would conclude that the United States employed disproportionate force against the Germans because 20 times as many Germans as Americans died in World War II.
In that same war, Britain responded to the firing of thousands of rockets on its population with the wholesale bombing of German cities. Israel's measured response to rocket fire on its cities has come in the form of surgical strikes. To further root out Hamas terrorists in a way that minimizes Palestinian civilian casualties, Israel's army is now engaged in a ground operation that places its soldiers in great peril. Carpet-bombing of Palestinian cities is not an option that any Israeli leader will entertain.
The goal of this mission should be clear: To end the current round of missile attacks and to remove the threat of such attacks in the future. The only cease-fire or diplomatic initiative that should be accepted is one that achieves this dual objective.
If our enemies assumed that the Israeli public would be divided on the eve of an election, they were wrong. When it comes to exercising our most basic right of self-defense, there is no opposition and no coalition. We stand united against Hamas because we know that only by defeating Hamas can we provide security for our people and hope for a future peace.
We fight to defend ourselves, but in so doing we are also fighting a fanatical ideology that seeks to reverse the course of history and throw the civilized world back into a new dark age. The struggle between militant Islam and modernity — whether fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, India or Gaza — will decide our common future. It is a battle we cannot afford to lose.
Mr. Netanyahu, Israel's ninth prime minister, is the chairman of the Likud Party and its candidate for prime minister.
Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
IN the recently concluded presidential race, I was unwillingly thrust upon the stage and asked to play a role in a profoundly dishonest drama. I refused, and here’s why.
Unable to challenge the content of Barack Obama’s campaign, his opponents invented a narrative about a young politician who emerged from nowhere, a man of charm, intelligence and skill, but with an exotic background and a strange name. The refrain was a question: “What do we really know about this man?”
Secondary characters in the narrative included an African-American preacher with a fiery style, a Palestinian scholar and an “unrepentant domestic terrorist.” Linking the candidate with these supposedly shadowy characters, and ferreting out every imagined secret tie and dark affiliation, became big news.
I was cast in the “unrepentant terrorist” role; I felt at times like the enemy projected onto a large screen in the “Two Minutes Hate” scene from George Orwell’s “1984,” when the faithful gathered in a frenzy of fear and loathing.
With the mainstream news media and the blogosphere caught in the pre-election excitement, I saw no viable path to a rational discussion. Rather than step clumsily into the sound-bite culture, I turned away whenever the microphones were thrust into my face. I sat it out.
Now that the election is over, I want to say as plainly as I can that the character invented to serve this drama wasn’t me, not even close. Here are the facts:
I never killed or injured anyone. I did join the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s, and later resisted the draft and was arrested in nonviolent demonstrations. I became a full-time antiwar organizer for Students for a Democratic Society. In 1970, I co-founded the Weather Underground, an organization that was created after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village. The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices — the ones at the Pentagon and the United States Capitol were the most notorious — as an illegal and unpopular war consumed the nation.
The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be — and still is being — debated. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war.
Peaceful protests had failed to stop the war. So we issued a screaming response. But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends.
I cannot imagine engaging in actions of that kind today. And for the past 40 years, I’ve been teaching and writing about the unique value and potential of every human life, and the need to realize that potential through education.
I have regrets, of course — including mistakes of excess and failures of imagination, posturing and posing, inflated and heated rhetoric, blind sectarianism and a lot else. No one can reach my age with their eyes even partly open and not have hundreds of regrets. The responsibility for the risks we posed to others in some of our most extreme actions in those underground years never leaves my thoughts for long.
The antiwar movement in all its commitment, all its sacrifice and determination, could not stop the violence unleashed against Vietnam. And therein lies cause for real regret.
We — the broad “we” — wrote letters, marched, talked to young men at induction centers, surrounded the Pentagon and lay down in front of troop trains. Yet we were inadequate to end the killing of three million Vietnamese and almost 60,000 Americans during a 10-year war.
The dishonesty of the narrative about Mr. Obama during the campaign went a step further with its assumption that if you can place two people in the same room at the same time, or if you can show that they held a conversation, shared a cup of coffee, took the bus downtown together or had any of a thousand other associations, then you have demonstrated that they share ideas, policies, outlook, influences and, especially, responsibility for each other’s behavior. There is a long and sad history of guilt by association in our political culture, and at crucial times we’ve been unable to rise above it.
President-elect Obama and I sat on a board together; we lived in the same diverse and yet close-knit community; we sometimes passed in the bookstore. We didn’t pal around, and I had nothing to do with his positions. I knew him as well as thousands of others did, and like millions of others, I wish I knew him better.
Demonization, guilt by association, and the politics of fear did not triumph, not this time. Let’s hope they never will again. And let’s hope we might now assert that in our wildly diverse society, talking and listening to the widest range of people is not a sin, but a virtue.
William Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is the author of “Fugitive Days” and a co-author of the forthcoming “Race Course.”
so as you may know we have completed a video for the song- it has been in the land of google, and now also if you want to download a higher quality version without the internet streaming pixellation squash and enjoy it on whatever screen appliance, click here to download.
it was a strange experience, sitting in front of a lazer in the dark, then emailing back an forth with James the director as he sat in front of computers for a whole month with the amazing technicians who processed the data etc.. but it says something about the song and came out better than i had dared hope.
Radiohead just released a new video for its song "House of Cards" from the album "In Rainbows".
No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.
Watch the making-of video to learn about how the video was made and the various technologies that were used to capture and render 3D data.
Data Visualization
Explore data visualization through a 3D viewer and use your mouse to further manipulate the data and create your own visualizations.
Download the data and instructions on how to create your own visualizations.
If you manage to create a data visualization that you'd wish to share, the band would love to see it. You can share your videos on the House of Cards YouTube group.
Lettre à ceux que ça dérange: Paul McCartney a le droit de venir fêter Québec!
Stéphane Laporte
Cyberpresse Le mercredi 16 juillet 2008
Chers opposants,
C’est quoi le problème? Paul McCartney, l’un des plus grands chanteurs pops de l’histoire, vient donner un spectacle dimanche, dans le cadre du 400ième de Québec. Yeah ! Ceux qui l’aiment vont le voir. Ceux qui l’aiment pas, n’y vont pas. C’est tout ! Laissez vivre. Let it be.
McCartney ne prend pas la place de personne. Tous les artistes québécois participent aux fêtes du 400ième : Vigneault, Charlebois, Dubois, Deschamps, Ferland, Dion. Nommez-les. Ils sont tous là. Ceux qui n’y sont pas, c’est parce que ça leur tentait pas.
Est-ce qu’on peut fêter avec le monde entier ou faut juste fêter en petite gang ? Juste les Québécois de souche. Ouvrez-vous les esprits. Si le chœur de l’Armée Rouge veut venir fêter Québec, qu’il vienne. Si les chanteuses esquimaudes veulent venir, qu’elles viennent. Les danseurs grecs, les joueurs de banjo tchèques, les cracheurs de feu de la Papouasie sont tous les bienvenus.
Déchirez vos pétitions contre le show de McCartney. Réveillez-vous ! C’est une fête ! Je suis nationaliste jusqu’au fond de l’âme, mais faut pas virer fou. Il ne faut pas accueillir avec une brique et un fanal, les étrangers qui veulent célébrer avec nous.
Ben oui, Paul McCartney chante en anglais, c’est sa langue. Pis ? Vaut mieux dire All you need is love en anglais que Crisse ton camp d’icitte en français ! C’est un messager de paix. Son dernier spectacle était pour célébrer la révolution en Ukraine. Les gens de Kiev étaient contents de le recevoir. Ils ne se sont pas dits, nous, ça prend Patof ou rien. Ils étaient heureux que le monde célèbre avec eux leur autonomie.
L’indépendance n’est pas synonyme de fermeture. Au contraire. Être indépendant, c’est aller vers les autres. Sans avoir peur d’eux.
Y’a pas de débat politique à faire avec ça. Mais si vous voulez en faire un, dites-vous que les 400 ans d’histoire de Québec, c’est pas seulement l’histoire des francophones, c’est l’histoire de tous les gens de Québec. Anglais, aussi. Ben oui, c’est du monde. C’est sûr qu’ils nous ont battu sur les Plaines d’Abraham. Mais aujourd’hui, c’est nous qui gagnons, à les inviter à venir voir cette super ville francophone. Voyons donc ! Donnez pas raison à Bouchard-Taylor.
McCartney, ce n’est pas la canadianisation des fêtes du 400ième. McCartney c’est l’universalisation des fêtes du 400ième. Et ça va durer 2 heures d'une célébration qui dure un an. C’est plein de bon sens.
Une programmation qui regroupe des centaines d’artistes francophones et quelques artistes qui s’expriment dans une autre langue, c’est logique.
C’est sûr que McCartney sur les Plaines va attirer plus que ben d'autres shows. Justement. C’est parce que les Québécois l’aiment. Vous voulez empêcher les Québécois d’aimer ? Vous voulez empêcher les Québécois d’aller voir ce qu’ils ont envie de voir, de faire ce qu’ils ont envie de faire. C’est pas du nationalisme, empêcher le peuple de tripper sur ce qu’il veut bien tripper.
Si le spectacle de McCartney attire encore plus de touristes à Québec qui vont découvrir ce beau coin de pays, tant mieux !
S’il-vous-plaît, montrez qu’au Québec, on sait accueillir les grands d’où qu’ils proviennent. Pas besoin de se mettre à 4 pattes devant lui. On n’est pas des colonisés, on est juste des citoyens fiers d’accueillir ceux qui ont envie de fêter avec nous. Arrêtez de faire la baboune. Et chantez : Hey Jude, don’t make it bad…
Geez, these days I don’t seem able to step out of the house without committing a hate crime
The charge levelled against Maclean’s by the Canadian Islamic Congress is that, in publishing an excerpt from my book, this magazine exposed Muslims to “hatred and contempt.” Alas, at the first day of the Great Maclean’s Show Trial at the British Columbia “Human Rights” Tribunal, the well of my book excerpt’s “hatred and contempt” pretty well ran dry in the first hour. So Faisal Joseph, counsel for the plaintiff Mohamed Elmasry, was forced to bus in a huge pile of miscellaneous generic “hatred and contempt” from all kinds of other sources. And even then much of it seemed less like “hatred and contempt” than “mild offhandedness and the occasional droll titter.” A lot of it was from me, of course. Mr. Joseph started with my article, but quickly moved on to my book, my columns, my sitcom review, my lame jokes, and no doubt (by the time you read this) my casual asides while muttering to myself on top of Mount Logan during a windstorm. At the end of the first day, m’learned friend was complaining that I had been rude to the three Osgoode Hall law students who’ve been fronting for the strangely shy and retiring Dr. Elmasry these last six months. Not rude to them in the article in this space that triggered the complaint. No, apparently I was rude to them at TVOntario last month. Not rude to them on-air (although it was a somewhat raucous show), but rude to them off-camera. Geez, these days I don’t seem to be able to step out of the house without committing a hate crime.
Just for the record (and before it becomes chiselled in the granite of British Columbia “human rights” jurisprudence), I wasn’t aware I was being rude to my accusers after the TVOntario show. The very last words on air were me saying, “You wanna go to dinner?”, and Khurrum Awan yelling back “No!” But, as the host Steve Paikin and his producers reported at some length on their website, Khurrum and I and the two gals stuck around for an hour of relatively civil conversation. In fact, I got the impression one of the ladies was growing rather fond of me, which, to be honest, was the main reason I hung about. But, now I come to think of it, that was the way it went at high school. You figure you’re doing great and then next morning you overhear her telling her best friend by the lockers that she thought you were a dweeby limpet with halitosis. Unfortunately, in today’s fractious legal environment, if Khurrum Awan thinks you’re a dweeby limpet with halitosis who can’t dance and has dried sweat rings under his cheesecloth shirt, he can add it to the long list of actionable “human rights” grievances to be laid before multiple tribunals and commissions.
Even so, after six months of assurances from Canadian “human rights” commissars that if we don’t police hate-mongers like Steyn a new Holocaust will be upon us, I think witnesses were expecting a bit more red meat than the assertion that I can be a bit boorish over the green-room Perrier. As legal scholars who’d attended the “trial” under the misapprehension that it bore some dim resemblance to conventional legal proceedings observed, it was hard to see what the post-show chit-chat after a television broadcast in 2008 had to do with a 2006 Maclean’s cover story, which is, after all, supposed to be the hate crime under investigation. But it’s even harder to see what any of this has to do with British Columbia or the “British Columbia Muslim community,” on whose behalf this “human rights” suit is being brought. TVOntario is, despite its deceptive name, a TV network in Ontario. It is not broadcast in British Columbia. Khurrum Awan, the Osgoode Hall law student on the witness stand, is an alumnus of the Osgoode Hall in Toronto, not some entirely different Osgoode Hall at Fort Nelson. He lives in Mississauga, which is a suburb of Buckinghorse River. Whoops, my mistake. I mean Toronto. He works in Ontario, as an employee of the very barrister examining him in that Vancouver courtroom, fellow Ontario resident Faisal Joseph. Indeed, it is unclear whether Mr. Awan had ever set foot in British Columbia until he and Mr. Joseph and the rest of their vast Ontario delegation flew out to the coast to testify to the pain and suffering of the British Columbia Muslim community they claim to represent. When the Ontarian Mr. Awan and his fellow Ontarians agreed to appear on an Ontario TV show, there were no members of the British Columbia Muslim community present, either in the studio, the makeup room or the men’s toilet (I cannot vouch for the ladies’). As they’d say in Hollywood, no members of the British Columbia Muslim community were harmed in the making of this program.
Yet, with the cheerful insouciance one has come to cherish from Canada’s “human rights” regime, the troika of B.C. “jurists” had no difficulty permitting all this extraterritorial evidence from extraterritorial witnesses employed by the extraterritorial lawyer and the extraterritorial plaintiff to be entered in a case allegedly about “human rights” in British Columbia. The “chair” of the troika, Commissar Heather MacNaughton, sits under the coat of arms bearing the ancient motto of the Crown, symbolizing the robust threads of precedent and continuity that tie the Robson Square courthouse to 800 years of legal inheritance: “Dieu et mon droit.” “Dieu” doesn’t seem to get much respect in the system these days, though Allah can still expect a modicum of deference. As to mon own particular droit — to due process, to the presumption of innocence, and to confront my accusers in a fair trial — that seems to have gone by the board.
So, as Faisal Joseph dredged up TV broadcasts from Ontario (which is not within British Columbia’s jurisdiction), obscure blog posts from the Internet (which is not within this tribunal’s jurisdiction), plus reports of his own press conference in Toronto (a well-known city in British Columbia, apparently) and snippets from the Brussels Journal (based in the capital city of the European Union, which British Columbia has presumably joined), Maclean’s counsel Julian Porter, Q.C., pointed out that, whatever the debate in these various fora, they had nothing to do with my article but rather were responses to the various “human rights” suits launched by the Canadian Islamic Congress. At the opening of Tuesday’s proceedings, Faisal Joseph announced that he wanted to devote that day not to me or Maclean’s or the substance of my article but to the media and blogospheric reaction to the complaints. In other words, he was explicitly confirming Porter’s point — insofar as anything has exposed Khurrum Awan to “hatred and contempt,” it’s not the Maclean’s cover story but his own lawsuit. Whether or not it is appropriate (or even legal) for Canadians to be “contemptuous” of the Canadian Islamic Congress’s thuggish assault on ancient liberties, the fact is Mr. Awan’s lawsuit has earned him far more “contempt” than anything in my article. He should be suing himself. Which would be less wacky than most of the admissibility rulings by the B.C. troika.
Obviously I deeply regret that I offended my accusers in the TVOntario off-air banter, even though I thought we were getting along swimmingly. It just goes to show, even when you have no idea you’re committing a hate crime, chances are you still are. On the other hand, it also suggests limited potential for conflict resolution with the plaintiffs. For six months, Mr. Awan and the gals had been telling readers of the Globe And Mail, the National Post, the Toronto Star, the Ottawa Citizen, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald and many other media outlets as far afield as the BBC, that all they wanted was an opportunity to “start a debate” with the Islamophobe Steyn. So we had a debate on TVOntario and now that turns out to be just the latest charge on the indictment. One can’t help feeling that, if Maclean’s had acceded to their demand for their own five-page cover story in the magazine, some perceived slight from the receptionist (“Sorry, we only have two per cent milk”) when Mr. Awan turned up to issue his instructions to the printers could easily have triggered a fresh round of litigation.
Robert Frost once said that writing “free verse” was like playing poetry with the net down. The relationship of “human rights” tribunals to real courts seems to be like that: Julian Porter can whack some legalistic ace down the middle, but Faisal Joseph hurls back a box of golf balls he’s flown in from Nunavut, and the umpires award him the point. By the way, I see I’ve been nominated for a National Magazine Award, to be handed out later this month. By then, Mr. Joseph will have succeeded in getting the B.C. troika effectively to ban me from Maclean’s and from all Canadian journalism. An impressive achievement. My book was a No. 1 bestseller in Canada, and the new paperback edition was at No. 4 the other day, and President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Governor Mitt Romney, Senator Joe Lieberman, Senator Jon Kyl and (at last count) six European prime ministers have either recommended the book or called me in to discuss its themes. But in Canada it’s a hate crime.
One thing I’ve learned these last few months is that it’s always worse than you expect. The willingness of the B.C. troika’s social engineers to trample over every basic rule of English law has embedded at the heart of Canadian justice a soft beguiling totalitarianism. I’ll be the first No. 1 bestselling author and National Magazine Award-nominated columnist to be deemed unpublishable in Canada.
Gather around, high school and college graduates, and listen good -- real good. What I am about to tell you will help you immensely throughout the rest of your lives if you commit to practicing Uncle Ted's proven modus operandi for a quality of life.
Work
Nobody owes you a thing. Everything you will get out of life will be based solely on what you put into it.
As humorist Mark Twain said, "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
The only free lunches are at the homeless shelter. If you want to dance, you have to pay the band. And you will get what you pay for.
Get a job. If you work hard, real hard, at your favorite craft, you will ultimately succeed. If you are lazy, you will not succeed. Expect to be fired over and over again and aimlessly drift from job to job, your soul as empty as your bank account.
Find your passion in life, your calling, something you crave, that special thing that makes you giddy. Set a goal and never, ever quit. When you get close to the brass ring, move it farther away from your grasp.
Do not complain. Any spineless whiner can do that. Instead, look for solutions to tough problems. This will earn you respect from your boss and get you promoted.
Never do anything for money. Do what you do exceedingly well and thoroughly enjoy, and money will come looking for you.
Be frugal. Live responsibly within your means. Bling-bling is not making ends meet.
Values
Never be afraid to let yourself go and exhibit unbridled raw emotion and enthusiasm. Emotions need exercise. March to the beat of making your own loud and obnoxious guitar breeding noises no matter how many times they tell you to turn down and stop the feedback. Following trends and peer pressure is for mindless sheep that are never happy.
Avoid negative people and slobbering hippies like the plague. They never accomplish anything. Surround yourself with positive people who are better than yourself and will mentor, help and guide you honestly.
If you want to know how others perceive you, look around at whom you associate with. In the end, all you have is your character and integrity. Do not ever compromise or sell them.
Take care of your precious, sacred temple. Eat smart and stay clean. Do not smoke, use drugs, eat or drink too much or chew on glass sandwiches. Partaking in these mindless misadventures will shorten your life.
Find a relaxing hobby to recharge your batteries that has nothing to do with your profession. I have found that peaceful time with family, friends, loved ones and my dogs, fishing, hunting, shooting, setting rocks on fire, giving birth to brass rainbows by shooting machine guns till barrels burn up, and killing sacred protein with sharp sticks recharges my batteries beyond redline. I cleanse my soul as I cleanse the good mother earth by eating her surplus.
Take the time each day to show love and affection for your family and loved ones. The smallest gesture goes straight to the heart.
Never miss an opportunity to say thank you to the men and women in our military and law enforcement. They are the defenders of freedom putting their lives on the line for you so you can reach your American Dream.
Politics
Be intelligently and effectively defiant. Defiance is the very spirit that gave birth to this country when our forefathers fought against overwhelming odds, signed the Declaration of Independence and fired the "shot heard 'round the world." Lock and load. Really.
Remember Rosa Parks. Be prepared to defy stupid laws and regulations wherever you find them. Raise hell. Vote smart.
If you have not made a few well-deserving idiots boil over in anger by the time you are 25, get busy. We live in a target-rich environment of liberal denial.
Famous philosopher and legendary San Francisco police detective, my hero Dirty Harry, once said, "A man has got to know his limitations." This is good advice.
Stand up for what you believe. Remain polite and courteous, but never back down. You have an obligation to leave America in better shape than when you arrived. Work to ensure that future generations of America have a better shot at the American Dream as well as more freedom, more liberty and more pursuits of happiness than you did.
Trust your gut feelings. Only trust people who have earned your trust. Trust but verify. Never trust the French.
Have fun. Life is not a dress rehearsal. Live smart, live good. Rock hard.
The Nuge is a lengendary rock guitarist, who also runs a safari and hunting operation and is a board member of the National Rifle Association.
“In the history of rock 'n' roll, Rock Band may just turn out to be up there with the rise of FM radio, CDs or MTV.”
Alex Rigopulos & Eran Egozy The rock god’s latest prophets
Steven Van Zandt TIME.com Tuesday, Apr. 29, 2008
The record business is over! there's no new rock 'n' roll on the radio! Kids couldn't care less about music! Quick, somebody call Alex and Eran. Yes, I mean Alex Rigopulos, 38, and Eran Egozy, 36, the Batman and Robin of Harmonix, who, with the video games Guitar Hero and now Rock Band, may have saved classic rock for generations to come. And before you make a snide comment, remember, some of my best friends are Classic Rockers.
Face it, folks, Rock Band is one of the ways kids will find music in the future, and the future is now. And I love that Rock Band allows people to act like real-life dysfunctional rock groups—you play either together or against one another. The game breaks down walls, allowing friends and family to rock out to punk, alternative, hard rock or whatever in a living room, or four strangers to connect from four different countries. In the history of rock 'n' roll, Rock Band may just turn out to be up there with the rise of FM radio, CDs or MTV. Taking a break from the wall-to-wall violence of most video games can't hurt either.
Best of all, while becoming an expert at matching the rhythm of a guitar or bass line won't make you able to really play (although you'll appreciate the role of the bass guitar for the first time), the game will actually create new drummers. Let this be the deathblow to those evil drum machines hanging around from that bloated era of musical horror we refer to as the '80s. Just when it looked as if a generation of teenagers might grow up without falling in love with Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Who or the Rolling Stones, Rock Band has pulled them back into the musical gumbo that ate their parents (and perhaps their grandparents). Vive la Rock Band!
Steve Van Zandt: guitarist with Bruce Sprinsteen & the E-Street Band, radio-host of “Little Steven’s Underground Garage”, and cast-member of The Sopranos
Audio, no matter what components you choose to purchase, no matter at what price point, and no matter if you choose your speakers to be driven by vacuum tubes or solid state components, should be fun. Fun means that when you sit down after a long day at work (consider if you are a psychotherapist, a school crossing guard, or even a chef) and when you finally put away the work of the day, you want to listen to music that captivates you, music that gives you pleasure, music that is realistic and involving.
Helmut Brinkmann has been designing and making audio components for 19 years and in those 19 years has developed circuit topologies and has designed equipment that allows you to discover what good audio production is. His designs cross that ill-defined bridge of accuracy and musicality and provide satisfaction whether you listen to CD, SACD or vinyl sources.
Music. Sound. It is not only with our ears we hear. We hear with a mind that organizes the information received by our ears. Mind structures reality. Data has no life separate from the software that organizes it. There are no observers, only participators. Music is heard through a set of filters which are your personal mental images and concepts that shape your hearing. These focus on rhythm, focus on harmony, focus on melody. If you set these filters too narrow, you won't hear music. Let the music rain on your brain and fall through the cracks. Let it take you. Non-verbal communication. Sub-consciousness to sub-consciousness. Achieve resonance. This resonance is an awesome power and it can happen live, at a classical music concert, and it can happen in your home listening room.
Music is the most mystical experience many people will have in their lives. People can experience something other through music. Music is that touch of other world-ness, universal-ness. Call it divine if you would like. Music is life. Give in to it. Let it take you on a trip. Loud or soft. Let it seduce you. Play it over and over again. Turn it on and come tune in. Rinse. Repeat.
Audition Brinkmann Audio designs for yourself and if you listen to a recording you know well, a recording of music that when you are daydreaming you find yourself humming, and through that audition you find yourself with goose bumps... your search is over.
by Steve Guttenberg (The Audiophiliac) April 15, 2008 6:54 AM PDT
Does anybody buying an iPod in 2008 expect to get more than a few years of use out of the thing? My five year old iPod still plays, but I can't get it to work in newer iPod docks or iPod speakers. My iPod is too old.
A good friend of mine plays his 30-year-old Linn LP-12 turntable almost every day. It was an expensive turntable in 1978 when it sold for around $1,200. But he's gotten 30 years of use out of the thing, and even now listens to a lot more vinyl than CD. So his $1,200 investment works out to around $40 a year to own the thing. Can you imagine anybody buying an iPod today still using it in 2038? 2028? OK, how about 2018? Hmm, I don't think so.
Linn still makes the LP-12 turntable, the model has been in continuous production since 1972, and most parts are readily available. How's that for customer service? My Linn LP-12 is almost brand new, it's just 13 years old.
OK, iPods aren't high-end devices, they're disposable technology. Fair enough, how much do you imagine you'll spend on iPods or their equivalents over the next 30 years? There was one guy who responded to my "How many iPods have you owned?" poll who has already bought 26. So he's already made Steve Jobs richer by many thousands of dollars. Over the next three decades he'll spend a lot more, and still wind up with a closet full of useless junk.
I get it. Convenience trumps quality in most things. Fast food vs. slow food; fresh ingredients vs processed, which is pretty much the same deal with music. CDs, once the height of convenience and advanced tech are now viewed as archaic. CDs are too big, too easily damaged, and cost too much—so lower-fi MP3s and iTunes have put the CD on the road to oblivion. But to vinyl loving audiophiles LPs still sound better than any digital format. Everyone else couldn't care less about the sound quality their music, it's just not all that important to them.
Or is it that people are so busy now they simply don't have time for quality. Strange, our affluence makes us go for the quickest, lower quality option every time. Back in the day writers would use the same typewriter for decades, but now we have to toss out our computers every three or four years. We're living in a disposable culture, so we need to keep buying new, ever cheaper stuff, but if you have to keep rebuying it, is it really cheaper? High-end audio can be expensive to buy, but not to own.
…
– Steve Guttenberg has worked as a producer and writer for Chesky Records, and as a writer for Chesky subsidiary HD Tracks. He is a frequent contributor to a number of magazines and websites including Home Theater, Stereophile, Robb Report Home Entertainment, and he does audio reviews for CNET.com.
The passion for philosophy, like that for religion, seems liable to this inconvenience, that, though it aims at the correction of our manners, and extirpation of our vices, it may only serve by imprudent management, to foster a predominant inclination, and push the mind, with much, by the bias and propensity of the natural temper. It is certain, that, while we aspire to the magnanimous firmness of the philosophic sage, and endeavour to confine our pleasures altogether within our own minds, we may, as last, render our philosophy like that of Epictetus, and other Stoics, only a more refined system of selfishness, and reason ourselves out of all virtue, as well as social enjoyment (David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1777).
“I was brought up on Friends Meeting Houses and British China Friendship Association and all that stuff... The people’s struggle is also about being in London at that time – there were already people living on the street. Are they on the streets because they’re worthless, shifty, no good, useless, anti-social ingrates? No, they’re on the street because they can’t cope. They’re displaced and need looking after.” –Roger Waters
(the people’s struggle)
Us and Them
Roger Waters, Richard Wright (punctuation mine)
Us and them, and after all we're only ordinary men.
Me, and you. God only knows it's not what we would choose to do.
“Forward!” he cried from the rear and the front rank died. And the general sat and the lines on the map moved from side to side.
Black and blue; and who knows which is which and who is who?
Up and down (and in the end it's only round and round and round).
“Haven't you heard it's a battle of words?” the poster bearer cried. “Listen son,” said the man with the gun, “There's room for you inside.”
Down and out, it can't be helped but there's a lot of it about.
With, without— And who'll deny it's what the fighting's all about?
“Out of the way! It's a busy day. I've got things on my mind.” For the want of the price of tea and a slice, The old man died.
With ten minutes to show time, the rain ceased and the umbrellas collapsed revealing, to my suprise, a clear sightline to the microphone in the centre of the stage. Aside from the eight guitars and cramped percussion section, it looked like a fairly run-of-the-mill set-up for a qualified technician familiar with that location and much more elaborate arrangements. I was close enough to read the facial expressions of the crew on stage and far enough to catch the speakers’ sweet spot. I was quite enthusiastic about where I was situated.
After a unilingual and unceremonious introduction by the festival organisers, an audio recording of LeonardCohen recited the lyrics of “The Sound of Silence,” emphasising a monotone yet accenting the vast barrenness of its theme. Daniel Lanois would later reprise the song, highlighting its harmonic structure with improvisational flourishes through the chord progression and a driving rhythm foreign to the original recording though fitting, since the rhythm track was not conceived of by Simon, but added later (without his consent) by the record label before releasing the single. Cohen’s bassy omnipresence was quickly drowned out by a thin sounding drum line that most Montrealers might associate with Sundays in the park.
The event switched gears as the band raised the energy level from dissolute-Cohen to passionate-Colin. ColinJames joined the scene, slide guitar in hand, without playing a note. He sang over the dozen drummers, the twenty-strong choir, the horns and winds, the guitarists, the percussionists, and the keyboardist. He sounded great! The rest of them… well… it was the first performance of the show. Any technician, no matter how competent, would need a period of adjustment to work out the sound. And to be fair, with the persistent rain this afternoon, it was probably difficult to conduct sound checks. By James’ second song, I could at least hear all the instruments and most of the singers. They still didn’t sound very good, but it didn’t seem to matter as ColinJames is a veteran performer who ignited what was promising to be a very entertaining show.
The intensity spiked with James’ remarkably reserved and relatively unornamented “Cecilia,” before he was replaced on stage by HollyCole, a real treat for jazz fans. She refused to let the audience settle, filling a few dozen bars of music with scat while the audio technician tweaked her vocal mic. For her part, Cole provided a range of tones worthy of any stage at the festival. After four live performances however, the atmosphere soured. ElvisCostello, in an attempt to impose his intimate sound on the hundred thousand attendees, failed to communicate the beauty of Simon’s composition, due in large part to the increasingly frustrating performance of the sound crew. He was nearly saved by his collaboration with AllenToussaint. Still, with only sparks of artistry and pizzazz from ArianeMoffatt, SamRoberts, MichelRivard, and JimCuddy, good songs were not enough to carry the concert through to its end without dragging the weight of poor sound and unimaginative performances.
The disappointingly unprofessional event was exposed when the highly anticipated and uncompromising DanielLanois substituted his own trio for the house band. His unique sound was refreshing and simple. One guitar, two vocals, and one jazz drum kit. Even though up until that point two of the choir’s soloists had sung without working mics, the pedal steel had never been played without feedback, the keyboards and rhythm guitars had barely (if even, at times) been audible, the electric guitars had been too loud, the drum kit had sounded a mile away, and half the vocal mics had sounded hollow and lacking all sibilants, the technician should have been able to handle the scaled-down trio. To add to the amateurish embarrassment, throughout the concert, images were projected onto the back wall of the stage by a projector from too far away so that the low-resolution images looked like they were constructed from Lite-Brite.
Hey, I know I’m picky, but I don’t believe in this case that I’m being overly critical. I realise that a free event has its limitations and that outdoor venues are impossible to get right, however on a regular basis, the level of technical competency at the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal (especially around the main stage) is second to none. Tonight’s disappointment was only because I’ve come to expect such high quality and the sub-standard result was a letdown. I’m sure for many, tonight’s performances of “America” and “Hazy Shade of Winter” were spectacular. I don’t wish to denounce the artists. Their covers were appropriate and well-executed. But the operation detracted from their acts and embittered me to the festival’s large-scale events. As it is, I have been noticing the larger, diluted talent pool that has been supplying the festival lately and I am ashamed at how far the bar has been lowered. Notwithstanding, it’s one thing to concede that there are less acts worthy of appearing on these coveted stages and another to treat established performers with the attention due a high school play.
Paul Simon, aside from writing some of pop music’s most memorable and catchy songs is responsible for creating what is now labelled world beat by bringing African and jazz influences to Western pop music. His understanding of harmony and rhythm are identifiable and unique, making him truly a talent without which the music world would be impoverished.
The first Olympic Games were held even before Homer wrote his epics. They were originally athletic competitions and religious sacrifices in honour of the Olympic gods, primarily Zeus. The athletes competed for themselves, not their national pride, and their achievements were demonstrations of their individual superiority as human specimens. Keep in mind, a wrestler, for example, was not a trained and devoted wrestler. But like the rest of the competitors, he was someone who learned to wrestle as a boy (because only males were permitted) and works the better part of the year in some other domain, such as farming, warring, or shepherding. The modern Olympic Games are very different. Athletes participate to measure themselves against the world's top competitors in particular sporting events. Their ambitions are individual and athletic, but their pride belongs to the nation they represent.
We have developed a new social class over the past few centuries: the athlete. A contributor to Wikipedia suggests that "the Industrial Revolution and mass production brought increased leisure which allowed increases in spectator sports, less elitism in sports, and greater accessibility. With the advent of mass media and global communication, professionalism became prevalent in sports." The participants of sport are no longer princes, lawyers, and merchants playing a game of polo on a Sunday afternoon. They are members of society who have made sport their occupation. They perfect their skills much the same way a shoemaker perfects hers. They become professional athletes.
Oxford defines a professional as "one who follows, by way of profession or business, an occupation generally engaged in as a pastime; hence used in contrast with amateur," that is, someone getting paid to do something someone else might do for free. Until 1988, the Olympic Games were restricted to athletes who, at the point in their lives when participating, were non-professional or amateur. I distinguish between those amateurs who practice for the intrinsic rewards of the sport (10-year-olds playing organised soccer on the weekend) and those who are preparing to become professional after honing their talents and skills (Concordia University Stingers). When the policy was changed to allow professional athletes to compete in the Olympics, team organising committees changed their strategies and philosophies appropriately. Since the events are now open to everyone, the potential to form the best team bar-none has become a possibility. A new type of pressure on the athletes has also develped. Failure is an embarrassment.
Until 1988, the athletes were supported, but their faults excused. What better excuse is there to excuse poor results than that the best competitors have surpassed amateur competition and moved on to more important things? But when that excuse is no longer valid and a delegation of participants unites under a national flag, they come to represent the best that flag’s nation has to offer. The hopes and aspirations of the many patriots identifying with that nation are therefore born by these few representatives at the games. The athletes may not feel that increased pressure directly, but the national governing organisations do. So they invest as much funding, research/development, and support staff as can be afforded. Their goal is not to support the ambitions of their athletes, but to produce results that will satisfy the many patriots.
For a long time, hockey has been popular in Canada, not only as a profession, but as a pastime. The belief that we produce the best players in the world is an upshot of the large pool from which our players are selected. This is still the case for the women, since only in Canada and the United States of America do enough girls play hockey to develop a world-class team, but not for the men. The Soviet development program has generally produced more skill, strength, and mental-toughness. The Scandinavians have often displayed craftiness, speed, and agility. The Canadian advantage has traditionally been the passion and education of all those involved, from the spectators to the officials to the coaches, players, trainers, physicians, psychologists, managers, and everyone else involved in the game.
It is not fair to the participants to expect their performance to be superior to that of the other participants who have had the same degree of preparation simply because they represent one nation or another. Many criticisms may be levelled at organisers like Wayne Gretsky who are responsible for selecting the members of the Canadian men’s hockey team. Perhaps he did not select the right players. Perhaps Pat Quinn, their coach, did not use them as effectively as he could have. Perhaps the players did not play up to their potential. Or maybe, just maybe, they were not the best team in the tournament, this time around. Still, it seems illogical to feel let down or embarrassed on their behalf. Yet this has been the reaction of the nation.
Hockey Canada reports on their website that “Canada is unable to defend its Olympic gold medal in Turin, and will return home empty-handed.” Canada did not compete in the Olympics! Some hockey players, several of which were members of the gold-medal-winning team in the last Olympic Games, played on behalf of the nation and are not commended on their efforts, but censured for their inadequacy. The national governing body was delicate on the self-esteem of its team members compared with some of the journalists’ comments who use words like incapable, disappointment, and even failure. I say, “I wish I were as fit and suited to represent my country in competitive international competition playing a game that I love. I admire our athletes for their work and their achievement.”
With a cigarette hanging from his bottom lip, half ash and probably extinguished, Uncle Sam, hunched forward in his middle-age, grasps a hollow ice-cream container weighted with the sound of a pre-virtual currency like an eagle grips a perch, while he eagerly stares Satan in the bright-red suit-lapels and imagines himself clad as ornately. He is entranced by the glamour laid out before him, the spectacle of exuberance an attainable dream. His makeup has long been neglected for higher priorities. His jeans are worn and creased halfway down each pant-leg, yet walking is now proving to be as challenging as identifying the colour of their faded composition. There is no mistaking their odour, though. The accumulation of three hundred cigarettes clenching the cloud of cigar-smoke like a fist. A personality addicted to vice doesn’t usually resign to only one.
It’s easy to forget, when faced with the sate-of-the-art decadence of this city, that like most of the world’s coastal towns, Atlantic City (as implied by its appellation) developed due to its proximity to the saltwater. The boardwalk extends over an unwalkable distance along the rapidly disappearing beach. Where once were stationed cabanas and umbrellas, is now home to a dozen flocks of seagulls and miles of broken seashells and beer bottles. However, from the boardwalk facing that unfortunate sight, the majestic glamour of a quarter-century-old Las Vegas proudly stretches the coast between the boardwalk and Pacific Avenue.
What is the spirit of the holiday? Is it peace, love, sharing? Is it religious? It obviously can't be religious, given the nature of the holiday traditions we follow. So it must be some kind of adherance to a genericly festive mood. This mood might not even exist were it not for the intervention of the retail industry. Ah, the retail industry. The masterminds behind it don't care if you're Christian, Jewish, atheist, or God herself. They've found a way to incorporate the desire to give into an already selfless atmosphere. Then could the spirit of the holiday season be something to do with giving? Nobody likes to give but receive nothing. That's a loss. The equation must balance. Could this spirit really be so overwhelming and mystical that it defies even human nature?
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If nothing else, the news that British police are reviewing the July 1969 drowning death of founding Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones demonstrates that, even after almost half a century at centre stage, the Stones -- even the dead ones on whom moss has most certainly grown -- continue to possess an uncanny ability to command the public spotlight unlike few other entertainment acts. Or, for that matter, unlike few other people on Earth.
