Geeves, take me to the theatre

Friday night, I attended In the Chamber, a theatre production at the Rachel Browne Theatre. The event was put on by Theatre Projects Manitoba.

The show essentially consisted of two monologues that were roughly an hour each. The two monologues complimented each other well; it's annoying when the opening act is better than the headliner, or vice versa. The underlying theme for the evening (if there was one), was that both characters had “gone off the deep end” because of their careers.

Both plays had a very political undertone. The first play dealt with issues related to the hog industry in Manitoba, and the second one was related to the inquiry into twelve deaths at the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre in 1994, (and the report written by Associate Chief Judge Murray Sinclair regarding the deaths of 12 babies). Although the arguments presented in both plays were not tied together, in both cases, the arguments were presented from the perspectives of individuals that were extremely involved in their respective industries, and both characters were involved in some very traumatic events.

In the first play, an account manager for a firm that provides consulting services to the hog industry completely snaps. He becomes horrified by the cruel farming practices being used in the Manitoba (Canadian) hog farming industry, and bears witness to the aftermath of a hog farm fire in Alberta that killed thousands of hogs.

There were some pretty funny parts throughout the play, which essentially consisted of a video taped rant intended for Warren Buffett. My favorite part was when he snacked on some “small town Chinese food” during his rant; which typically has a lot of “shifty pork” in it. Some subtle irony never hurts.

The main argument was made pretty bluntly; hog farming practices in Manitoba are unethical and hogs suffer their entire lives. A few moths ago I watched a documentary “expose” (I don't know how to do the accent on the “e”), where a journalist went undercover to expose the farming practices at a specific hog farm in South Carolina. I couldn't actually get through the entire documentary, it was a little too disturbing.

After seeing the documentary, I took a break from eating pork for a while, but eventually my love of bacon got the better of me. I do, however, try to eat cruelty free ham whenever possible. Cruelty free basically means that hog farms must provide above-par living conditions for the hogs, specifically, “they must have farrowing systems, which are areas which have bedding and are big enough to allow sows to turn around, with large space allowances.” The meat is more expensive, but it's not watered down like ham at most popular supermarkets (but that likely has more to do with the vendor than the product). It tastes the same as non-cruelty free ham though. (Is it just me, or is the term cruelty free, when related to farming, a bit of an oxymoron? I mean, the pigs die right...)

This is a really sensitive subject, and I don't want to sound like I'm preaching. I'm the last person that should be judging people about their eating habits. I eat cruelty free meat wherever possible because it tastes good, and I guess, in a way, it's helping me dilute the guilt. A lot of people seem to be “going organic”, and choosing alternative eating practices. I've heard good arguments that support eating organic, and good arguments that oppose eating organic. I think I'll likely address those arguments in a blog, at some point....

Anyway, back to the first play... I'm going to say the play is good, because it's provocative. The politics of farming affects everyone, because everyone has to eat.

The character in the second play worked for the Health Sciences Centre, in the pediatric surgery unit, during the events of 1994 (I'm not 100% sure on the details about what his specific job was). He goes off the deep end because of the events that took place, and he can not come to terms with the recommendations put forth by Judge Sinclair, or the suffering that one mother (whose baby died) had to endure.

A few times throughout the play, the character would recount very specific and complicated details (hospital policies, surgical procedures etc...), making it difficult to follow. I can understand why someone, who didn't go into the play ready to use all of their brain's echtoplasm, might get bored with it. Fortunately, I was a little familiar with the main issue, and because I know a number of people who work in the health care industry, I was able to enjoy the subject matter. I'll admit that I didn't follow every point the character tried to make, but maybe that wasn't the point. Maybe the point of including all of those esoteric details was simply to show, metaphorically, that the procedures that took place were too complicated for an proper inquest to have taken place.

As I mentioned, the character in the play opposes the conclusions that were made by Justice Sinclair, and is deeply troubled by the experiences the mother had to endure. He completely loses faith in the health care system, so much so, that he quits his job and vows never to set foot in a hospital again. He is so bound by his hatred for the system, that he opts not to have a suspicious growth on his neck checked out.

His break down leads to the downfall of his relationship with his wife, and he comes to terms with the fact that he'll never go back to a hospital again, and will probably die from the cancer he is convinced he has.

I'm glad I saw this play. It presented an argument about a subject that I knew a little about, but was able to explore much deeper, and hear an argument from a unique perspective. And the character in the play had gone just crazy enough to make it comical.

Similar to the first play, the subject matter was heavy. Like farming, health care is something that affects everyone. And everyone knows somebody who has been affected by it.

If you happen to know some people that work in the system, you've probably heard your fair share of horror stories. It's really too bad that we don't hear enough about the success stories though. The public is exposed far more to the shitty things that happen in hospitals, which causes them to focus on those events, taking their focus away from the amazing work that health care practitioners do.

I'm not sure that I'd recommend the show, because it's art, and is sooooo subjective. But I'm very glad I went.

My experience with climbing

When I was around 8 years old, I had a climbing accident. I was playing around with my brother and some kids from the block and decided to climb a tree that was near the back lane of our place. I don't remember specific details about why I was climbing the tree (maybe I've blocked it out because of the trauma), but I do remember some very specific events that took place that day.

Most vividly, I remember falling out of the tree and landing on a board with a nail in it, butt first. I remember crying like a little pansy, and admit that, to this day, I would probably react in the same way. I remember that when I stood up and began whaling, the board was essentially an extension of my butt.

My brother freaked out and took me inside to see my mom. She did what anybody would do, she ripped the board out of my butt. After I cried some more (and likely tried explaining to mom how the board got in my butt), she took me to get a tetanus shot.

My butt eventually healed, but I'm not sure my ego has.

The reason I decided to rehash this memory on my blog is because I'm a sucker for long winded, silly introductions, and random segues.

Speaking of climbing, I was reading a little today about the publicity stunt that Greenpeace pulled off last month in Ottawa. Twenty protesters scaled the Parliament building in Ottawa in order to persuade the federal government to take greater action in combating climate change.

The whole thing was essentially a publicity stunt, and succeeded in getting a ton of press attention. It's tough to say whether or not the stunt was effective, in so far as getting the government of Canada to take greater action against climate change. My opinion is that it likely raised some awareness about Greepeace's agenda, and even more awareness about how easy it is to mess around with the most important building in Canadian politics.

At the end of the day, Canada still ranks as one of the worst developed countries when it comes to environmental policy. This protest is one of many that will likely occur in Canada, that is, until the government starts taking some real initiative into reforming environmental policy in Canada.

I'm sold on Blogging!

I'm sold on blogging.

What I didn't realize about blogging until I did it, is that it's a very self-indulgent experience. And who doesn't like some self indulgence from time to time?

Until recently, the publishing of “works” was typically reserved for people with credibility, but now everybody can do it, including me.

It's not necessary, but it's still pretty special when someone you know has read your work, and it's really cool when it can become a conversation piece.

It's not easy to write all the time, and really hard to be consistently interesting. So blogging has helped put that into perspective as well.

The MP3 file is your parent's digital audio format

The MP3 file is as old as the Bangles, the soap opera Dallas, and the first Friday the 13th movie.

I just did a bunch of research for a pretend essay that would compare and contrast the MP3 file to the CD. I've never been a fan of the MP3 and this research gave me even more reasons to believe that there are much better alternatives to what is now deemed "the worldwide standard" for music consumption (ISO 1991).

When people think about CD's they often associate them with the 80's. Well I got news for you, the audio compression technology that was first developed, and essentially resulted in the creation of the MP3 file, started in the 80's. You can now start associating the MP3 file with the already lengthy list of 80's memories, that includes hair metal, guitars that shoot lighting bolts out of the end, and cheesy mustaches, just to name a few. The point is that the MP3 is just as out of date as CD's are.

Let me be clear... I am all for the creation of the digital audio file. I do, however, take exception to the fact that the MP3 is the most popular type.

Technology has evolved to the point where it's not a burden for people to use uncompressed wave files (PCM), even for P2P sharing. If downloading wave files is inconvenient because it takes too much time, FLAC (stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an excellent alternative.

FLAC encoding technology compresses audio files using a “lossless” method that renders the file smaller, but without audio degradation. I believe it compresses the files at a 6:1 ratio, whereas an MP3 is compressed at a 10:1 ratio (and is not truly stereo separated). FLAC just sounds way better than MP3, and it's almost half the size of an uncompressed Wave file. To put that into perspective: a 4 minute song in MP3 format compressed at a sample and bit rate of 44.1-128 is approximately 5 megabytes (MB) in size. Which means that the Wave file is around 50 MB and the FLAC file would be around 8 MB.

Glaven!

I know most people can't tell the difference between MP3 files, CD's, or Wave files, but most people can't tell the difference between the "handling" of a BMW and a Buick, but that doesn't mean there isn't one, and that we shouldn't all want to drive BMW's if we could... Okay, so that's a terrible analogy. I don't even want a BMW.

The point is that, so long as you agree that the available technology makes downloading FLAC files just as convenient as MP3 files, than it serves to reason that the worldwide standard should be the newer, better technology.

In case you're not convinced about the FLAC file yet, this might help. FLAC is an open source file format, which means that you don't have to pay licensing fees to use it. So if you wrote a piece of software that has an audio component to it, you could use the FLAC source code and codecs without having to pay for it, and it's totally legit. OGG VORBIS is another example of an open source file format, and it too sounds better than MP3.

The MP3 was developed by a company called Fraunhofer (in conjunction with AT&T), and any company that has MP3 encoding technology built into the core of the product has to pay licensing to Fraunhofer (EG: Microsoft Windows, Apple operating systems, Pro Tools, Adobe Audition, essentially any application that can trans-code to and from the MP3 format etc...).

So even at a developmental level the FLAC file makes more sense. I hope that consumers smarten up and demand a higher standard of audio enjoyment. In this case, we can have both the convenience of digital audio (compact, portable, liquid), without sacrificing sonic quality.

I'm sure most people still don't care, cause they are listening to The Pussycat Dolls, and who the hell wants to listen to that in high fidelity?

Matthew Good Show Review

Matthew Good

Saturday November 21, 2009

Burton Cummings Theatre

Matthew Good keeps banter and frills to a minimum and lets tunes from his new album do the talking.

Good rolled into town to perform at the Burton Cummings Theatre on November 21^st with his band, comprised of guitarist Stuart Cameron, drummer Blake Manning and bass player Milos Angelov, in support of his latest CD, Vancouver.

The band took the stage at 8:30 PM sharp, and without so much as a greeting to the sold out crowd at the Burt, Good grabbed an acoustic guitar and began strumming the opening riff to the title track from his 2003 release, Avalanche.

The band performed a seamless transition from the melodic Avalanche to On Nights Like Tonight, an equally down-tempo and melodic track from his latest album. Blake Manning's backup vocals provided an added layer to the choruses of the tracks, helping to fill the void left by the missing keyboards that accompanied Good during his last performance at the Burt in June 2008.

Picking the level of energy up just slightly, Good switched to electric guitar and rocked through two more songs from his latest CD; Great Whales of the Sea and A Boy Who Could Explode. A third of the way into the set, he finally addresses the crowd with a humble, “How's everybody doing?”

The band kicked in to the uptempo radio hit, Born Losers, from the 2008 album Hospital Music, but continued with songs from their latest album; prompting some fans to holler requests for older songs, some dating back as far as 1995. Although be didn't oblige immediately, fans seemed happy to hear new tracks like Fought to Fight, and Silent Army in the Trees, which are reminiscent of Good's more anthem like tracks that helped propel his career.

After performing an extended version of the sombre track, Black Helicopter, the band switched gears to round out the set with a good mix of upbeat tracks both new and old, like Last Parade, Apparitions, Weapon and Volcanoes. The band returned to the stage for an encore, and performed the songs Giant, Us Remains Impossible and Empty's Theme Park.

Good's voice was powerful and captivating and showed no sign of strain, despite years of smoking and frequent throat issues; one of which involved a surgical procedure to remove a node from his throat. The band sounded tight, adding extended intros and outros to a few songs throughout the set.

Good's introverted on stage demeanor reflects the struggles he has had in recent years in his personal life, including a breakdown that landed him in a psychiatric institution and a split from his wife. Any other behavior from the self-described pessimist might seem contrived to his devout fans.

The biggest reaction Good received from the crowd of 1642 was at the end of the encore when he faced the crowd and applauded. The sincere gesture inspired the crowd into one last cheer before he disappeared behind a black curtain at the side of the stage.

Vancouver band, Mother Mother, opened up the night with their brand of dance-pop. The band performed a high energy set that included their latest single O My heart, the title track from their 2009 release.

Twitter: Not in my top 6, yet...

I'm still trying to decide if Twitter actually offers an alternative way for people to get information about people or things they are interested in. For years, people and companies that are worth "following" have had websites. There is also usually a ton of information about important people and topics published online by unofficial websites. So what's Twitter's USP?

As far as I can tell, it's the immediacy of receiving information. It's much easier to send a tweet than to update a website or wiki-page. Immediacy of transmitting information is something that until recently, radio was best known for.

Of course, the big problem with Twitter, unlike radio, is accountability. Where is the information coming from? There have been a few instances where imposters have used Twitter to slander or tarnish the reputation of important people; Chef Michael Smith for instance. Radio, however, uses typical journalistic practices to report on information, so people can generally trust it more.

I imagine that as Twitter progresses, administrators will improve the process by which they screen users, and in turn that might improve the quality and reliability of information that "followers" receive.

I have noticed that my group of friends have not embraced Twitter to the degree that they have embraced Facebook. But I think the services are quite different, so I'm not even sure it's relevant to compare the two.

When I boot up a web browser, like most people, I have a hit list of at least a half a dozen websites that I check routinely. I won't really give Twitter props until it can crack my top 6.

How my rock band changed Canadian law... sort of.

I was standing at my bus stop in front of the MTS center today and I saw a nice young lad putting up a poster on a pole. His technique was ok: he was using allot of tape and he was sure to cover the tops and bottoms of the posters (preventing edges from being exposed; edges that make ripping down posters quite easy). I remember when I was a poster rookie, and I used tape to fasten posters to poles. That was until I learned a more effective and somewhat more asinine method.

When my former rock band, the Velvet Pill, did a tour of southern Ontario, we brought along hundreds of posters. The posters were generic enough that they included a picture of the band and our website, but left a portion at the bottom completely blank so we had space to fill in specific concert information for each city/town.

We made our way east, through Dryden, Thunder Bay, North Bay, Ottawa and eventually ended up in Toronto. As soon as we got to town, we hit up Queen Street to start promoting our shows. A couple band members were in charge of bringing flyers to the two venues we were playing at later in the week, and the rest of us set off to put up posters.

We put up nearly 100 posters in the first day we there; which is an impressive feat even for experienced posterers (it’s my word, back off!).

The next day we went downtown to get a coffee and noticed that all of our posters had been taken down already. Even though we likely used a half a dozen rolls of tape, the posters were gone!

Later that day, while reapplying posters to essentially the same places we targeted the previous evening, we ran into a fellow who gave us a sound piece of advice: “You should use wallpaper compound, those damn things will never come down,” he suggested.

Still feeling pretty pissed off about having all of our posters ripped down, we drove to Mississauga immediately to find a hardware store that sold this mystifying compound. Sure enough, we found the stuff; it was a powder compound that simply needed to be mixed with water. Now we were rally excited to get postering. At this point, we didn’t even care about promoting our show; we just wanted to redeem ourselves.

So we spent the rest of that evening postering (and pub hopping, along Queen and Jarvis… cuz that’s what you do when you’re a naïve rock-star-wannabee and you’re in the T-Dot for good times). The technique worked great. Not only was it easier to apply posters to pretty much everything, but the posters were practically plastered to the poles… you’d need a steamer to get them down. We certainly felt a sense of redemption; and we had a shit load of that compound left over too.

The rest of our tour took us to London, Hamilton, Sudbury, back to Toronto (for reasons I won’t explain here) and then eventually back to Thunder Bay.

Our second stay in Thunder Bay on this tour was an extended one. You see, in order for us to be able to tour accross the country as an original rock band, we had to play covers in certain towns (usually for 3 or 4 day stints), in order to be able to eat, buy gas and shelter. On this particular tour, we were scheduled to play the Inn Towner as Pelvic Thrill (the cover band) from Thursday to Sunday (that’s not a typo, it’s a four day gig and Sunday is the big night at the Inn Towner). Our Velvet Pill show was scheduled for Tuesday night at the Apollo (God bless your hearts, the Apollo).

That meant that, aside from sitting in on classes for free at Lakehead University (which Jer and I did), or checking out Centerfolds (which Guy, Jon and Doug did), we had ample time to put up posters.

For those of you who are not familiar with Thunder Bay, Ontario, it’s not a big town. One might even say that it’s a small town.

We began postering the first day we got into town. This was the last show on the tour, so we figured that we would use up the rest of our posters. We figured that because Thunder Bay was so small, if we put up a ton of posters our band’s name would become a household one, and that eventually we would conquer T-Bay and then the world.

About a month after we returned home from said tour, we got an email from a town resident. It was an email informing us that as a result of our insane postering, a law had been passed that prohibited bands from putting up posters in public places, other than the pre-designated spots.

I’m sure they wanted to sue our asses, or at least put us in jail, but without a law in place, they had no book to throw at us (other than the T-Bay constitution; which I think only has one rule, and that is “you can’t kiss your sister on Sundays”… which they all break religiously).

As stupid and naïve as this sounds to me now, I was actually pretty proud. It was somehow an accomplishment that we had littered the town with hideous posters, creating such an eye soar for the people who actually had to live there.

The next time we played Thunder Bay, we played the Apollo and there was roughly 5 people there, including the bartender. Our super-awesome-shitty marketing campaign was clearly a flop… but I sure have a cool story to tell!!!