Chris Selley's Full Pundit: "Why did the Canadian cross the road?"
Continental drift
It
appears that Canadians are becoming more conservative … and at
least one of us doesn't have much of a problem with outright
authoritarianism, either.
To
those of you decrying the push for random roadside breathalyzer tests
in the name of “freedom” and “rights” and such, the Calgary
Herald's Naomi
Lakritz says
the following: “Be thankful you have a life into which the state
can stick its nose into.” We would take strenuous issue with this
statement — and may yet — but it's going to take most of the day
for us to calm down from reading it, so y'all will have to wait.
Sorry about that.
“Why
did the Canadian cross the road?” asks
Preston Manning in
The Globe
and Mail. “To get to the
middle.” Yeah … that doesn't actually make any sense. But,
soldiering on, Manning's point is that the Canadian political centre
is moving to the right. He's got some Manning Centre for
Democracy-commissioned survey numbers to back him up, and it says
here he may well be right. But along the way he tries to sell the
statement that “nothing is more important than family” — with
which 89% of Canadians unsurprisingly agree — as an inherently
conservative position, as opposed to an inherently human one. And
then he tries to sell the popularity of pulling out of Afghanistan in
2011 as a natural result of Canadians' increasingly conservative
nature, which is just weird. The whole thing comes off as a bit of a
stretch.
The Toronto
Star's editorialists
express
grave doubt that former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci will be
able to come to a decision on the Afghan detainee documents he's
tasked with examining, under the “imposing terms of reference”
handed down by the Justice Minister, quickly enough to avoid “the
opposition parties [writing] off this process, hold[ing] the
government in contempt, and press[ing] for the full public inquiry
that Harper wants to avoid.” We agree, although if the Liberals
conclude at some point that the issue isn't giving them any traction,
it seems to us they might well just lose interest and let Mr.
Iacobucci do his work.
The
Post's
John Ivison
believes
Jim Flaherty is or will soon be considering swinging his giant
money-axe at Canada's regional development agencies — which
promises, as Ivison says, an entertaining slap-fight between Mr.
Flaherty and Peter MacKay.
Provincial
affairs
The
Star's Rosie
DiManno lets
it all hang out, as she sometimes does, in a sort of
stream-of-consciousness/standup comedy routine on the subject of
Ontario MPP Bill Murdoch's proposal to kick Toronto out of Ontario —
and, as usually happens when she lets it all hang out, it all goes
pear-shaped rather quickly. To wit, this sentence, in which she tries
to affect both a sophisticated urban stereotype and an intolerant
backwoods hick stereotype: “Murdoch, who represents
Bruce-Grey-Owen-Sound, which I think is somewhere due north, made his
comments this week at a meeting of the Bruce Country Federation of
Agriculture, which sounds vaguely gay-Commie to me.” Yuck.
The
Vancouver Sun's Ian
Mulgrew seems
pleased that charges have finally been laid related to the
sinking of B.C. Ferries' Queen of the North, but as it sank four
freaking years ago, he's not inclined to hand out any medals to the
Attorney-General's office just yet. And there's certainly no
guarantee justice will eventually be done. “In the last decade,”
he notes, “the province's top prosecutors have botched the Air
India terrorism case, participated mutely in an obviously bent
process for investigating police-involved incidents, whitewashed the
manifestly flawed RCMP investigation of Robert Dziekanski's death and
couldn't get a guy caught bloody-handed in an abattoir of body parts
convicted of first-degree murder.” Ouch.
Duly
noted
The
Ottawa Citizen's Dan
Gardner explains
why the media, and the general public in turn, are so much more
fascinated with Colleen LaRose — aka “Jihad Jane,” the woman,
“invariably described as a 'green-eyed blonde,'” who plotted to
murder a Swedish cartoonist — than they are with Andrew Joseph
Stack, the Texas loon who flew his plane into an IRS building in
Austin, successfully murdering someone. Basically, it's because one
fits the Islamic terrorism narrative whilst adding “a delightful
sprinkle of novelty,” while the other fits an older narrative —
that of homegrown, anti-government terrorism — that no one's been
interested in since Sept. 10, 2001.
National
Post
cselley@nationalpost.com
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Musician/Studio Tech John Williams Lends Talents to Hat City Kitchen
Hat City Kitchen's event coordinator is a musical wizard and technical guru to South Orange and Maplewood's music scene.
By Lois Cantwell
March 12, 2010
If you are at all into the local music scene, you might know John Williams as the event coordinator for the new local hotspot Hat City Kitchen in Orange. However, with that role at HCK, Williams is deep into his second or third life re-invention.
Born in Michigan, Williams's family moved around as his father's career at AT&T demanded, finally settling in Chester, N.J., which he calls his hometown (he attended Delbarton). After graduating, Williams migrated to Los Angeles, where he enrolled in the Guitar Institute of Technology (now the Musician's Institute), a place designed to teach working skills to musicians. He told Patch, "There was some culture shock going from Chester to Hollywood. It was a forward thinking place. There had never been a guitar school like that before. It was very creative, like an incubator for formal technique." He studied with Howard Roberts, a well-known Hollywood session player as well as other guitar luminaries such as Tommy Tedesco, Pat Metheney, Joe D'Orio and Pat Martino.
"I came home thinking I could be a musician and I did have interviews but they were for cruise ships and Captain & Tennille tribute bands," Williams said. Instead, he went his own way and joined the punk band Ice Nine, eventually opening for Boy George and Culture Club at Madison Square Garden in the 1980s. "That was very exciting," he said. "The week before, we had played at a local club for 25 people and then on Thanksgiving night at the Garden we played for 18,000."
Williams played many legendary New York City venues in the 1980s and '90s, including CBGBs, Danceteria, The Ritz and the Peppermint Lounge, as well as New Jersey joints like The Dirt Club in Bloomfield. Eventually he joined Hoboken-based The Cucumbers, led by local musicians Deena Shoshkes and Jon Fried (who are now involved with the Songs of the Spectrum project).
"I played with them for five or six years," he told us. "We recorded albums in London and New York. At the time, Deena worked at Skyline Studio on 37th Street in the city. I had a background in electronics, I was always the guy who could fix the copier, and I translated that talent for business electronics into being a studio tech."
Williams would repair equipment for the band: "When the console caught on fire, they would call me. I came in on the artist's side and went over to the studio side. First, I was the night guy, then the day guy and then I became management." At Skyline, Williams found himself rubbing shoulders with name acts such as Nile Rodgers, the B52s, David Bowie, Thompson Twins, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Diana Ross.
In the early '90s, Williams snagged a studio dream job and left the two-room Skyline to go to the giant Sony Music Studios, which had 50 rooms and television shooting stages.
"Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Eric Clapton, Jay-Z, Beyonce all recorded there," Williams told Patch. "Because Sony was so big, on any given day, we could have, say, Paul Simon, Nancy Sinatra and Aerosmith recording. I ran a staff at that point with 20 technicians working for me."
Williams moved out here in 1993 and has lived in both Maplewood and South Orange. Today he teaches music, guitar and bass to local students and, of course, is the event coordinator at Hat City Kitchen.
He became involved with HCK and the Valley Arts District through his acquaintance with Patrick Morrissy, HANDS Executive Director. "We got to talking about the Valley Arts District," Williams said, "and Pat asked for my help putting together the music venue that evolved into Hat City Kitchen. That's all my equipment in the building. I'm the guy that does the music, the events coordinator." Because he's so plugged into the music community, he was able to reach out to local bands who readily agreed to play the untried venue.
Williams promotes Hat City Kitchen through the HCK Facebook page. He also started a thread on Maplewood Online and has used the e-mail contacts that he collected over the years. Behind the scenes there has been a huge community outreach effort, which has been successful by any measure—with the brand new place scoring five filled-to-capacity weekends since opening during a brutal recession.
Williams is also one of the founders of Maplewoodstock. He told us the story of how the popular concert came to be. "About eight or nine years ago" he said, "I was talking to Jim Buchanan, Maplewood's Cultural Affairs supervisor, about the number of kids hanging out on Maplewood Avenue on Friday nights. We had the idea to start a concert and our first impulse was to hold it in the train station parking lot. Gary Shippy and Jamie Ross from Maplewood Online got involved, we became the seed of the project. The name Maplewoodstock just came from brainstorming." They later decided to move the concert to Memorial Park.
"We wanted it to be a free concert and we invited three or four bands. I was able to borrow P.A. equipment from Sony Music—we brought it out on Friday and brought it back on Monday. Jim had a friend with a bulldozer trailer and that was the stage," said Williams.
"We just had music at first and then later added vendors. This year Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk is the headliner. Competition for the 25 or 30 slots for local bands is fierce—there's a lot of talent." Anyone who's thinking about playing should act quickly since the application process is closing soon.
Williams currently plays guitar with The Caterpillar Book and bass with New Day Dawn. His daughter Caitlin is at UNC and his son Caleb (a drummer) and daughter Ellie are both students at Columbia High School, where they play Ultimate Frisbee.
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Corey Haim, Dead at 38
Corey Haim was 38. He was the Toronto actor who starred in such films as "Lucas", "The Lost Boys" and "License to Drive". Locals will remember him as Larry on "The Edison Twins" before he shot to fame in the mid-to-late 80s.
Growing up in this city, it seemed like everyone had a Corey Haim connection. Every one of us was two degrees of separation from him or closer, and we all heard the stories. Here's a little something I wrote about Corey Haim back in 2006.
To Corey's friends and family in this city, I'm deeply sorry for your loss. I always liked the guy and rooted for him to slay his demons.
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What episode of Family Guy do you think has a good criticism to society?
I need to investigate the Family Guy part for my Social Sciences category as well as we do not even similar to which show. So can we discuss it me of an part which has lots of critique towards society? Thanks.
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