January 13, 2019
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Purge

Tuffy P has been watching a program on Netflix about reducing clutter. It features ordinary slobs who come to recognize they need to clean up their crap. So they invite the star of the show, a Japanese woman, who shows up at their home in her minivan, complete with translator, because she doesn’t speak much English. Everybody smiles and laughs about the state of the mess and then the star of the show guides the family on their clean-up journey. I’m not even kidding. There is really a netflix program about this. As soon as I saw it I knew I was in trouble – it could only mean work I didn’t really want to do.

Tuffy did her clothes the other night and strongly suggested it was of course time for me to do mine. The idea is you dump every bit of clothing you own in a heap on the bed and then ruthlessly cull out everything that fails to spark joy. I don’t know about you but I don’t have a lot of clothes that spark joy exactly. However, I got the idea. Finally, once you purge all your crap, you neatly fold up everything that’s left.

I knew perfectly well I had many years worth of clothing that I’ve failed to organize in any way. No doubt about it. I was OK to continue with this strategy until I totally ran out of room, but I was doomed to participate in the tidying up madness. This morning, I made my heap and set to work.

In the process, I created one bag of rags for the studio and several bags of clothing suitable for donation. I radically reduced my drawer and cupboard space too. OK, it was a good idea, and I’m glad it’s done. We didn’t even need a visit from the odd Japanese lady, her minivan and her translator. However, the program suggests once you’ve cleaned up, you’re going to feel some kind of overwhelming joy. I’m still waiting on the joy front.

Here’s Lucinda Williams performing Joy.

January 12, 2019
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It’s all over now, baby blue

I regularly play Go on Friday nights with an old friend. We’ve been battling one another over the Go board since the mid-80s. Usually when I play Go, Tuffy P goes out to the movies. Well, last night Go was canceled, and Tuffy was at the Cineplex with a friend, and I was kicking around the house.

It was cold up in the big room above the garage we call The Tree House, so I got a fire going in the woodstove and settled in to do a little reading. The fire roasted me into a deep sleep, a wonderful hour long nap with one cat purring on my chest and another purring above me on the back of the sofa.

When I awoke, somewhat groggy, I turned on the television. It was on a station which carried a program called Hell’s Kitchen, a cooking game show featuring that abusive British dude with the pomped up hair. I hadn’t watched one of these things in some time so I decided to leave it on and see what was happening.

The show reminded me that I’m totally over celebrity chefs. As Old Weird Bob said, It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. Hell’s Kitchen is a show in which an unhinged, nasty, potty-mouthed, abusive jerk shouts at and humiliates the contestants. Even stranger is that they take it. “Yes Chef”, they chant as he calls them names and publicly demeans them. They’ll take anything, as long as they have a chance to win the prize. The prize is an opportunity to become an abusive asshole chef just like the host, at one of his restaurants no less.

Running a restaurant must be a terrible job, given that so many people who do it scramble to become television game show hosts instead. History tells us that only a small percentage of restaurants make a go of it for a very long time. The hours are crappy. I suppose creating menus can be a creative and fulfilling experience but actually cooking in a restaurant must be terrible. Not only is it a pressure cooker of a job, you have to make the same thing the same way each time. How boring is that?

I enjoyed watching cooking shows on television growing up. There was Julia Child, totally charming in her awkwardness, infused with her passion for French Cooking. There was Graham Kerr, The Galloping Gourmet, who drank a lot of wine and cooked up some interesting dishes. And there was James Barber, from out west, who with his shows The Fry Pan Man and the Urban Peasant, showed people how to make yummy dinners in big cast iron pans. All fun entertainment with an underlying love for preparing food.

It all started going downhill when somebody decided the world needed entire networks full of food-themed shows. Overdose-overload. The need for unending amounts of content drove network execs to go crazy on game shows. These people managed to strip out all the love and humanity from cooking. It isn’t a competition, folks.

To what degree is the abusive celebrity food game show host a reality in the restaurant business? I’ve never worked in the food industry so I welcome comments from those who have. I have heard about some very well-known chefs in Toronto who are reportedly horrible assholes to work for. Are those stories true? I’ve also read in the newspaper about some famous American restaurateurs who were outed for skimming percentages from their employees’ tips. That’s pretty low, isn’t it? Then there is Mario Batali, who stepped away from his food empire in 2017, after multiple accusations of sexual misconduct, going back decades.

I’m sure there are some chefs out there who are fine people, and good people to work for as well. Still, I’m done with the arrogance and puffery and abusiveness of today’s television chefs and I’m done with a television network that sucks all the love out of cooking. I like food, and I like cooking. Time to take back the kitchen. It’s all over now, baby blue.


January 10, 2019
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Fungal Empire

My brother the trout, Salvelinas Fontinalis, sent me an interesting article about a 2500 year old fungus. That’s right, 2500 years old. That is staggering. It’s an Armillaria, what mushroom lovers would call a honey mushroom, and the organism, located in Michigan, takes up 180 acres. That’s difficult to even imagine. To begin with, understand that when we see a mushroom, what we’re seeing is the fruit of a larger organism that lives underground.

You don’t want honey mushrooms growing in your backyard or on your woodlot. That’s because they’re tree eaters. If you have Armillaria attacking your tree, your local arborist would say you have shoestring root rot, or Armillaria root disease. The organism grows under the bark and more or less sucks the life out of your tree, then moves on to chow down on other trees for dessert.

The article focuses on the low amount of genetic mutation experienced by this 2500 year old organism. Excellent read for the nature lover.

January 6, 2019
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First book of the year – Understanding Comics – The Invisible Art

I enjoyed comic books as a kid but I was never all geeky about it. I didn’t have a collection. I didn’t keep them in mint condition. The only time I went to a Comic-Con was for work, and it was overwhelming. Comics were disposable entertainments for me. OK, I might have sent away for sea monkeys from the ad on the back page of an Archie comic, but I didn’t have the bug deep in my soul the way some people do.

As an adult, I mostly left comics (or graphic novels if you want to get all highfalutin about it) behind with a couple exceptions. I read a book of Harriman’s Krazy Kat comics a couple times through, and also a huge anthology of Dick Tracy which I was convinced I didn’t like but couldn’t put down. I was aware that there were many adults around who really dug these things and that there were graphic novels aimed at an adult market. I just didn’t go there.

I have a friend who knows all about comics and graphic novels. He’s been working on some projects and I really like what he’s doing. He suggested we work on a graphic novel treatment of my little book, Squeeze Box Man: The Lazy Allen Stories (if you haven’t read Squeeze Box Man, please check it out on Amazon and consider reading it). I love the idea, both because it is something I never would have thought of on my own, and because I can imagine my characters coming to life in line. As a painter, I long ago learned the importance of keeping an open mind to the unexpected and the same applies here too. I think we can do this thing. Who knows where it will lead.

Now I have to get up to speed on the medium, and I’ve been loaded down with homework: Understanding Comics by Scott McCoud, The World of Edena by Moebius, Sweet Tooth by Jeff Lemire, and Saga of the Swamp Thing by Alan Moore. I finished reading Understanding Comics this evening.

Understanding Comics is a comic book about comics. Very clever. It deals with history of the comic; comic vocabulary; the role of “the gutter”, the space between the panels; treatment of time and motion; and even a chapter on colour. This is a very thorough book created by someone who cares passionately for his form. In a way it’s a crash course. I feel like I’ve learned a lot, even though I’ve yet to try to apply any of that knowledge. Now I’m charged up and ready to read some graphic novels.

January 6, 2019
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Late afternoon in the park

It was such a beautiful afternoon, we decided to take The Partners for a good walk in the park. Earlier in the day when I was there, there was a snowy owl sitting on a plastic storage box on one of the yacht club docks. There was no sign of it on the docks when we came by with the dogs, though. We decided to take a walk up the spit of land which creates the yacht club harbour.

A few moments later, we saw the owl as it took to the air and flew around the yacht basin. It landed for a few seconds on top of a tree then took flight again. It was almost twilight and the owl appeared as a dark silhouette soaring around the basin before again landing at the tip top of a tree.

This all happened very quickly. After another minute or two the snowy took to the air again and soared over to the docks, landing on a white storage bin. Today marked the first time we’ve seen the owl in flight.

One long-lens birder we spoke to told us he believed there were 3 different snowys frequenting the park, two females and a male I think he said. I don’t know if this is true or now, as I’ve only seen one owl at a time in the park. I think the owls I’ve seen this season, which have had strong salt and pepper markings, are females.

January 4, 2019
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What are your fave videos on YouTube?

I have 2. First, Chicken Train:

The second features Cathy Barton backstage at the Opry with Bashful Brother Oswald:

Curiously, both tunes can be considered kid’s songs. I’m not ready to grow up anytime soon.

January 3, 2019
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365 for fiddle lovers

Canadian fiddle great Patti Kusturok has embarked on another 365 days of fiddle tunes on YouTube! She did this previously in 2015. I’m really looking forward to a daily dose of Patti and her friends playing so many different tunes. Here are the first two. If you like these, I suggest subscribing to her YouTube channel and following throughout the year.