A Prairie Home Disillusionment

Good afternoon.

We live in an iconoclastic age.  Not an age of anti-heroes, but an age that seems to ostensibly be out to dismantle the concept of heroics altogether.  While people who knew these new villains may have a better perspective upon their purported villainy, to those such as myself with a more distant vantage point, the list of erstwhile heroes being exposed and exploded appears random in nature.

Except that it's not random.  People, that is to say women, men, and so on, have been rising up against the cruel, cowardly shadow of sexual harassment and assault and casting a blazing, disinfecting light on this problem that so many have faced in dread silence for so long.  It is a good day.

At the same time, I cannot be happy.

Frank Underwood is done.

The Don Cherry of baseball is done.

Charlie Rose fired.

Pete Rose fired.

Conrad Black is... going to hang around forever, it seems.

One by one, the scythe of sexual aggression is tipping the marble busts of powerful men over to come crashing down off their pedestals.  Some are surprising.  Some are not.  But the reckoning is here, and your very own hero could be next.

Having been born and raised in...

...very rural Saskatchewan..,

...my heroes are these great..,

 ...larger than life people...

...who represented the Prairies...

...on a larger stage...

...both north...

...and south of the border.

People with grit...

...integrity...

...and humility.

And while they weren't all perfect...

...neither were we..,

...but we were all from...

...and of...

...the Prairies.

Which brings me to this beacon of Prairie wisdom and humour:

Garrison Keillor.

There are not many, if any, that have served as a more pure, clear broadcaster of the culture and experience of prairie life than this man has over the past forever.  Indeed, A Prairie Home Companion was a prairie home companion.  In a world of the New York Yankees, the Ottawa Bubble, and Hollywood, you have to be very, very good - better than great - to be noticed above the cultural din created by those places other than home.  And Mr. Keillor managed to do it.

On Canada Day, July 1, 2016, Keillor recorded his final episode of the show, having done it since 1974.  He left as a legend.  Earlier this week, on November 29th, it was announced that Keillor's contract with Minnesota Public Radio had been terminated.  Further, the Prairie Home Companion would be no more and would undergo a name change in an effort to break with the allegedly sordid past.  A lifetime of humour, wit and culture, our culture, blotted.

I've found this latest period in our collective histories disillusioning if nothing else with many questions and no answers.

What to make of this?  It's difficult.  Is he a bad guy?  A really bad guy?  Is the allegation accurate?  Do I have any right to question the allegation?  Does he deserve a fair shake?  Does she?  Can the legacy be separated from the alleged misconduct?  When I was a kid, I went to the Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church, or at least the Esterhazian version of it.  Am I the problem?  Is my culture the problem?  What is the problem?  Is there a problem at all?

Is there a hero left among us?

I've thought long and hard about that and I believe that I have come up with an answer.

Yes.

The man.

The legend.

The Zolf.

Larry Zolf was awarded the highest distinction that a westerner can be bestowed in this country.  In 1966, while working as a journalist for This Hour Has Seven Days, he was bludgeoned over the head with a cane by a Quebecois cabinet minister.  The Minister of Defense, ironically enough.  The incident was filmed, but never broadcast, and I would like to think that, if the film of this incident yet exists, it would make Canada a far richer place to be made public.  His jousts with politicians of all stripe, his literary pokes and prods of people in positions of power are magnificent, and just watch this interview filmed on December 6th, 1964 that featured intrepid young reporters Zolf and his scrappy little sidekick Pierre Trudeau against the arch-nemesis of Confederation, René Lévesque.  This is pure, essential Canadian history at work, folks.

Mr. Zolf passed away in 2011, which was a shame.  It wasn't announced at the time anywhere that I was looking, so I didn't actually hear of his passing for a good six or eight months after the fact.  When the news hit me, I was sad.  Not shaken or shocked or anything hyperbolic like that, but genuinely sad.  I took some time, a fair amount of time, actually, to read his CBC columns.  I read all I could find and was impressed both by his rambly style, his guts and the pictures he painted of Winnipeg.  Larry Zolf was not only a national treasure, but more importantly a Prairie treasure.  Fortunately, his daughter..,

...the lovely and talented Rachel Zolf..,

...if you haven't yet been initiated, is likewise a phenomenal poet, writer, scholar, educator and so on. Some mighty fine genetics in this family.  Please, look her up and have a good read.  While she may not actually be from the Prairies herself, hey, no one's perfect.  The Trudeau family?  Well...

...you win some, you lose some.

Mr. Zolf has left us now for six years.  I wish him, his legacy and his family well.  My point is this: should someone pop up out of the ether and claim some sort of impropriety by Zolf the Elder, whether it is made up, legitimate or devistating, how would I feel?  I know of his body of work and of his talents, but I cannot say that I knew the man at all.  Can I still appreciate the work while at the same time respecting the victim?

I suppose the answer to this would be to listen to the victim.  What do they say and what do they think?  I don't think that we do enough of that.  For all of these people who have been fired, I know their names, but I don't know the names or faces of their victims.  I would like to know.  If someone accused Zolf of impropriety, I would to hear the victim's story so that I may better judge for myself what the legacy should and ought to be.  I just hope that, for his sake, I never have to.  I like Zolf as a Prairie hero.  He wore the mantle well, and it would do us well to dust off the mantles of our heroes once in a while to ensure that they are remembered.  They've earned it.

But tomorrow is a new day and a new bust is wobbling on its pedestal waiting to fall and litter the ground with more formerly heroic rubble.

Already I can tell that the idea seems to be that the cure for the pain of seeing your heroes fall is to not have heroes at all.  Truth, counter-truth, anti-truth, fake truth.  Who needs heroes when no one is a hero?  Or rather, why have heroes when everyone can be convinced no one is a hero?

This is a bad idea, for the same reason that we say that it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.  I prefer my heroes to...

...not...

...be clad in black marching down the street in disguise.  This is not heroism.  Heroism does not hide.  Heroism gets bashed over the head with a cane.  Terry Fox did not hide his face.

No, there is yet room for heroes in this age.

There are many empty pedestals.

Thank you for reading.  Good night.

Strange Things

Good evening.  Now let's cut the jibba jabba and get right straight down to business.  The name of the game tonight is Strange Things.  Very strange things.  So, without any further ado, onward we go!


SUN RA

Is that chain mail on your head or are you just happy to see me?

And tonight's opening bid is one Sun Ra (born Herman Poole Blount).  This gentleman on top of being an acclaimed Avant-Garde jazz musician, was also a very strange man.

Far out, man.

How strange?  Well!  In 1937 he said:

"… my whole body changed into something else. I could see through myself. And I went up … I wasn't in human form … I landed on a planet that I identified as Saturn … they teleported me and I was down on [a] stage with them. They wanted to talk with me. They had one little antenna on each ear. A little antenna over each eye. They talked to me. They told me to stop [attending college] because there was going to be great trouble in schools … the world was going into complete chaos … I would speak [through music], and the world would listen. That's what they told me."

George Clinton ain't got shit on me!

Well, you know, Van Gogh actually had a similar sort of story where he grew up a missionary and took up painting relatively late in life as a way to connect with God.

Dude...  I wish.

On top of being a swinging cool jazz musician, he was also a philosopher of sorts, speaking and writing Kaballah to Koans, Free Masonry to the Black Power movement. 

Before there was Jak and Daxter...

And if you really wanna see something far out, check out the movie he did, "Space is the Place".  Man, is it a trip.


THE BLOBFISH

Yes, this is an actual thing, and this is actually what it looks like.

This is a Blobfish, a fish-like creature that lives off the coast of Australia.  It lives in deep-sea areas and gets around more by being slightly more buoyant than water, rather than by a more traditional muscular or ballast system.  For food, it swallows edible floating things that are directly in front of it.  Nice!  Not nice, though, is how this poor, lamentable creature is facing extinction due to deep-sea trawling in the creature's only natural habitat.  Aww...  The sea can be a cruel place, but then again, so can the internet.

Dr. Blob-il

Stupid Hat Blob



Well-to-do Blob



And the most tragic of all, Ringo Blob.

WHITE NINJA

White Ninja is a comic by Scott Bevan and Kent Earle, two fine gentlemen like myself from the great province of Saskatchewan.  And it's about a ninja dressed in white - hence, White Ninja.  So what is White Ninja?  I'll let them explain.

"White Ninja Comics are not for the weak of mind. They are a brilliant satirical commentary on controversial worldly issues.

They can be enjoyed on many levels. Scholars, Philosophers, and the like, who possess the intellect to analyze and break down the comics to their hidden, and often devious, roots, will enjoy White Ninja to its fullest degree. Others, like you and I, however, can still enjoy the comics for their light-hearted surface humour and funny drawings."

Sounds deep, huh?  Well, here are a few shining examples.  I'll let you be the judge.

PETE ROSE

It's a bird!  It's a plane!  It's..!  It's...!  It's a Rose!

I always say, you'd have to be a little strange to want to be the best.  Well, Pete Rose was the best.  A career batting average of .303 and #1 on the All-Time hits list with 4,256.  There are lots more records and statistics that he took a wrecking ball to, but we're here for weird, not great.  When walked at the plate, he sprinted to first base.  I mean, who does that?  That puts him on the weird list (and earned him the name "Charlie Hustle" from Whitey Ford) right then and there.

I love how the catcher's mask is just sort of hanging in the air to the left there.  What an action shot.

Oh yeah, and then there's this.  During the 1970 All-Star game, Rose kinda sorta ran over the opposing catcher Ray Fosse, kinda sorta separating his shoulder and Fosse's career was kinda sorta never the same again.  I mean, this is an All-Star game.  If you look at the Pro Bowl, that might as well be flag football, and there's hardly any hitting whatsoever in the NHL All-Star game.  It's not like the game really meant anything, at least back then.  But Pete Rose played for keeps, every time, all the time.  Even during exhibition games as demonstrated above.

It's like a cross between Alex Ovechkin and Johnny Wayne.  And the Froot of the Looms guys.

Oh yeah, and then there was this ad.  Nice.

The Hall of Fame contains murderers, thugs, and other generally nasty people.  No gamblers, though.  Professionals have standards.

Oh yeah, and he was tossed out of baseball because he was gambling on baseball games while managing.  That's a paddling.

No, no!  You got iy all wrong!  I didn't bet on the Undertaker!  Honest, Mr. Kane, sir!  Honest!

Oh yeah, and he had a stint in the WWE.  I don't think he reached 4,000 hits there, though.

Well, that sucks.

Oh yeah, and he was convicted of tax evasion in 1990.  Oops.

Moving on.

LANA DEL REY

I just don't get it.  So, like, you make yourself a fake name, Lana Del Rey.  That's fine.  Lotsa people have fake names.

If you look up "Nepotism" in the dictionary...

Fake name.  Fine.  Whatever.  But then your website boldly proclaims "Debut album Born To Die out January 30".  Well, you already had an album out in 2010, only it was under your real name.  I suppose that's sorta like saying that it's the debut album for...

There's a little emo in all of us.

.., but it's not like Lizzy Grant was a different persona from what you're exuding now.  And just what are you exuding now, anyway?

Uh huh.

Mmhmm.

Yup.

Alright, I've seen enough.

You know, patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, so they say.  I think that that point is being proven here in spades.  And stars.  And stripes.  I dunno, maybe it's just cause I'm Canadian and fond of red-heads that it kinda makes me wanna gag all this phoney b.s.  My God, it's like she's sold out before she's even been put on the shelf.

Now, she can sing.  Oh yes, she can sing, but the songs are all just about crap, too.  "I love my bad ass boyfriend, etc."  Come on....  That's such crap.  That's like she's a modern day Loretta Lynnn singing "Stand By Your Man".  Nonsense.  Crap.  Actually, I can do better.  Ahem.

CRAAAAAAP!

And on that note, that's all I can stomach for one post.  Thank you again for tuning in and have a good night.  Random Word Wednesday will be back with a vengeance, but until then the editorial board here at Raccoon Inc. advises you to take care, stay warm, and don't take any wooden nickles.