Speaking of Blogs...

So, I wrote this big, long piece that I've been pining to do about the Montréal riots last week, which, by the way, got a plug on the season finale of Saturday Night Live.  And it's pretty quiet tonight, so I thought I'd throw together a hodgepodge of neat things.  Not necessarily funny or straightforward things, but just neat things.  Different things.  Abnormal things.  So without further ado, here is Thing #1.

SF 10-33

KJPL, this is car 11-King.  Standing by for musical accompaniment.  Over.

Speaking of riots and law enforcement, Somafm, one of my favourite internet radio sites, just put up a neat new radio station: SF 10-33.  SF stands for San Fransisco, and 10-33 I believe stands for the radio frequency, though I could be wrong.  Now this is just one more example of something really cool from San Fransisco.  I mean, they already have...

...these guys..,

...and...

...this guy..,

...and...

...this thing, which just turned 75, by the way.

Well, now we can chalk something else up on the list of things that makes San Fransisco a little bit different.  SF 10-33 is a "music" station that takes sound clips from the local police radio station and sets it to ambient music.  The result is, uh, something really different.  I'm tempted one day to turn it on, turn it up, close my eyes, lay down on the couch, and see just where it takes me.  From what I've heard so far, it's mostly stuff like "Looking for a male 18-25 in a red jacket" or "Local animal control has been notified.  Will update with ETA" or "Checked with the landlord.  There are apartments upstairs and downstairs.  Both are being renovated.  No one should be inside at this time."  Yeah...  It's an interesting thing.  Brings to mind the question: "But is it art?"


CHET BAKER

Speaking of San Fransisco, here's an artist that was known to haunt the clubs of the City by the Bay.

Now that's a jaw!

Chesney "Chet" Henry Baker, Jr. is, I would say, one of America's great artists.  An extraordinary songwriter, virtuoso trumpet (and flugelhorn!) player, and an absolutely, positively unique voice, Baker dazzled audiences through his lifelong decdication to his craft.  His career began in the 1950's with such brilliant artists as Stan Getz (and I love Stan Getz) and Charlie Parker (yes, the Charlie Parker).  They pegged him as being...

...Jimmy Dean,

...Blue Eyes,

...and Bix.

Pretty darn loftly praise off the hop!  Well, the downside was that not only did he gain fame in the 50's, but he also gained a lifelong heroin addiction.  His drug addiction got so bad he had to pawn his insturments for cash, spent over a year in prison in Italy (Mamma Mia!), and got kicked out of both England and West Germany before getting deported back to the good old USA.  Things got worse, though, in 1966 when after performing a gig in good old San Fransisco, he was jumped outside the venue and savagely beaten.  As a result...  Well, I played trumpet for seven years and I can safely say that getting your front teeth kicked out would not be helpful for your trumpeting career.  He played mostly flugelhorn after that.

Clearly, the years were not kind to him.

Fortunately, thankfully, gratefully in the late 70's and 80's his career saw a revival, but at the end of the day, the story of Chet Baker is not a happy one.  It is indeed a tragedy.  On May 13, 1988 he was found dead outside his second storey hotel room.  He had suffered a serious blow to the head and was carrying, both inside and out, cocaine and heroin.  You know, this is just another great, great artist and mind that you look at and say, "Wow...  My goodness.  What they would have achieved had they not ran afoul of substance abuse would have been nothing short of spectacular."  Ah, but we can only imagine now and get lost in the things that might have been.


HOWARD HUGHES

Speaking of drug related deaths, here's an interesting one, and I didn't know this, but it's true.  Post-mortem x-rays found not one, not two, but five broken off hypodermic needles broken off in his flesh.  One thing is certain, he did like this codeine and it's very likely that his painkiller addiction led to the kidney failure which resulted in his death.

It was Howard Hughes, though.  Just saying the name inspires so much stuff.  You know, Howard Hughes is just one of those names that I just have to put in bold, because it's not simply Howard Hughes, it's Howard Hughes.  Yes, that's more like it.  I mean, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, just look at it all.  It's staggering.

Here's the lanky, 6'4" Texan in 1947.

One larger-than-life figure portraying another.

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission.

Foiled?  By a Frenchman yet?  Combien tragique, M. H. R. Karst.

Wealthy industrialist, playboy, and skilled aviator Howard... Stark?

Bioshock's Andrew Ryan: the only Hughes rip-off to have the guts to bear a greater-than-monosyllabic name.

So if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Hughes should feel well flattered - not that his ego needed much help to begin with.  At any rate, I was just thinking the other day, the quality of billionaire playboy adventurers has gone way, way down lately.  I can't think of too many modern day iterations.  There's...

The Amazing Sir Richard.  No pipe cleaner mustaches, hair grease, or condescending glares here.

...and then there's...

.........................  Uhm...

Gee, I can't think of any other modern day ones.  I'm sure they're out there somewhere.  James Cameron maybe?   This guy?

The police often question him, just because they find him interesting.

I think he's a little too fictional to count, though.  Oh well.


JONATHAN SWIFT

Oh, and speaking of Jonathans, here's a good one:

A couple of weeks ago I mused that the best satire is thee one that seems to be the most real.  As much as I don't like this guy here...

Gee, you can hardly recognize him without a cartoonish disguise.

...he is pretty damn good at it, so hat's off.  But as good as he is, Jonathan Swift was the king.  Think about "A Modest Proposal" for a moment.  It was a simple essay and when people read it, they were just on that knife edge of "Geez, is he being serious or not?"  That is the hallmark of great satire right there.  At first you're reading something that starts out as real as real can be, but then it slowly turns and you wonder whether it's real or not.  The best satirists are the ones that can plant that seed of truth the deepest, so the deeper the roots, the mightier the tree of satire that grows from it.

Likewise, "Gulliver's Travels".  At the time it was written there was a whole lot of the earth that hadn't been discovered yet and therefore a lot of mystery as to what's really, actually out there.  There were tall people, short people, advanced people, primitive people; a myriad of different races and cultures as well.  Gulliver seemed like a real guy.  Ship's surgeon, honourable profession and whatnot.  Lilliput and Blefuscu seemed like a real place.  After all, they were just off the coast of Indinesia.  See?

Look!  It's a map!  Yup, there's Sumatra.  Plain as day.  Can't argue with that.

So this was novel for a novel.  Having the "map", the fictional places interwoven with real places, and the slow, gradual descent into absurdity had more than just a few people convinced that what they were reading was a real account of a great adventure - in exactly the same way that those listening at home were taken in hook, line, and sinker by...

Orson We-  Wait a minute..  You again?!

COYOTE HUNTING

Speaking of broadcasts that get people into trouble, after the game on Tuesday night that saw the Phoenix Coyotes eliminated by the Los Angeles Kings on their skae to the Staley Cup Final, several Coyotes players had some choice words about the officiating during the game.

“All season long it seems like [the referees] did everything they could to not get us to this position.  Raffi Torres gets 25 games for a hit during the play, then this guy should be done forever.” - Goaltender Mike Smith

"I bit my tongue the whole playoffs. I bit my tongue the whole time this series. I look back in the last two games and I still haven’t found where I got my three penalties. I have absolutely no idea where they came from or what they were calling.
"It’s hard because you don’t want to take anything away from LA. They played unbelievable and give them all the credit. Uncle. Are you freaking kidding me? Uncle. I can’t understand how you miss that.
"Rosie’s knee is blown out. How do you miss that? How do you miss that when it’s after the whistle and it’s a knee? How do you possibly miss that? You know what? As player I get in trouble when I make a mistake. I get in big trouble. I get called out by you guys. I get called out by everybody. I get called out by my coaches. I have to be accountable to my teammates. I don’t know how you miss it. I don’t know how you miss it.
"I’m sure they’ll have a great explanation for it. I know that they try to do their best, I know they always try to do their best. They’re going to make mistakes. It’s just tough when you’re on the short end of it I don’t know how many times." - Forward Shane Doan

Yikes.  There's always griping about the officiating in every sport, especially come playoff time, but this is beyond the norm I find.  I find that in any sport when you have the players speaking out, and speaking out to this degree?  Fellas...  You got a problem.  The thing I really take exception with in this mess is that the Coyotes are being investegated rather than the officials.  The players are the subject of the investegation?  And not the league?

This is what I don't get about this sport.  It's like this.  I don't understand it.  I don't get a sport where people are injuring others purposefully when the goal is supposed to be to score points.  That's like...

PAWN?  More like P0WN!

or...

Hole in one?  Internal organ, maybe.

But, you know, that aside, I respect that there is a culture in the game, and it is a culture of hard-hitting, rough and tough action.  And that's fine.  My gripe is that when you have a sport where the risk of serious physical injury is relatively high and the average age of a professional player is relatively low (26, as opposed to 27 for the NBA and NFL, and 28 for MLB), the onus ought to be uopn the league to ensure that the rules are followed and respected in all instances.  Without consistent officiating you get...

"I have absolutely no idea where they came from or what they were calling."

In other sports, the officiating may not always be fair...

Right, Brett?

...but it's comprehensible.  When the rules are this murky and this shoddily enforced, what do you expect?  What do you expect to find from an investigation?  When strange things happen and people aren't given completely adequate explanations, even more strange conclusions result.

That's guts.  That's moxy.  Investigating the Coyotes when the officiating is that inconsistent?  That's balls.  Bravo, NHL.  All hat, no cattle, once again.  Lights on, nobody home.


DETROIT

Speaking of lights on, nobody home, let's look at a very interesting statistic.

Detroit's Population

1900 - 285,704
1910 - 465,766
1920 - 993,768
1930 - 1,568,662
1950 - 1,849,568
1960 - 1,670,144
1970 - 1,511,482
1980 - 1,203,339
1990 - 1,027,974
2000 - 951,270
2010 - 713,777

Yeeeeeeesh!  You know, if I was playing...

SimCity.  Or, well, SimManhattan in this case.

...and my population tanked like that, the net result would look something like this:

SimCopter One reporting reporting heavy traffic!

But unfortunately that's not an option because it's not SimDetriot, it's... Detroit.  Just Detroit.  And it's in rough shape right now.  You wanna talk Ghost Town?  Here's Ghost Town:

Yeesh...

Wow...

Geez...

Detroit Rock City has apparently become Detroit Wrecked City as the population of the once mighty American industrial town is now reportedly at the same population level as it was a century ago.  With the slow and steady fall of its industrial capacity over the past fifty years, the city has lost well over half its population.  Scenes of the city's decline are becoming familiar.  This decline has been a long time coming and it makes me think back seemingly forever ago when I first saw...

Who's got two thumbs and a camera?  This guy.

...chronicling the death spiral around his beloved Michigan.  As an observer from afar, it seemed bad, but not that bad.  Sure, every town has its ups and downs given the fullness of time, but this is grim.  Not only have whole hunks of the city been abandoned by residents and businesses alike, but even the city itself is officially abandoning them now.  Up until now a lot of it was not official, but rather one of those "Sorry, we don't have it in the budget to fix the potholes or replace the streetlights this year" - something that I'm used to hearing regularly in the property management biz.  Now, it's official.  Lights will be turned off.  Streets and sidewalks will be left to nature.  40% of Detroits street lights are broken, many of them tore down and stripped for parts and wiring.  It is boggling for me to even conceive of this.  At its peak: near two million.  Now: seven hundred thousand and dropping.  It conjures imagines of what things might be like if there was a zombie apocalypse or a nuclear war or some disease that kills off most of the population.  Scary stuff.

All is not lost, however.  The Detroit Tiger's attendance has not only remained steady, but is still ahead of the league average, and they could afford a max dollar contract for Prince Fielder over the off-season.  Though they are hurting, they are not yet at the end.


And speaking of the end, that's it for tonight.  Thank you very much for reading and have a great weekend!