I like it

The Conservative government is showering Canadian workers and consumers, and small and large businesses, with $60 billion in broad-based income and sales tax relief over this and the next five years in what is a budget in everything but name.

“As a result of the steps I am announcing, the purchasing power of Canadians will go up; take-home pay for all Canadians will go up; and Canadian businesses, from neighbourhood coffee shops to large corporations, will have more freedom to create jobs and make further investments in their businesses,” Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Tuesday.

I might even change my mind and vote Conservative again.

Let’s be friends

“The evidence shows that our nation’s show-business capital is a town of virtually boundless goodwill and camaraderie, where the backstabbing, ego-rivalry, and grudge-holding common to the rest of society do not exist,” said UCLA sociology professor Gina Carlisle, lead author of the five-year, 700-page study. “The entire region is a veritable utopia of deep, abiding interpersonal affection and mutual respect.”

Additionally, the report found that 98 percent of Hollywood residents “love [their friends'] work.”

The findings, published this month in the journal American Psychologist, were based on information culled from DVD commentary tracks, promotional junket footage, talk show appearances, more than 1,500 behind-the-scenes magazine profiles, and hundreds of poolside cocktail party conversations.

I freaking love The Onion.

A Viennese Trip

If you had taken LSD and suddenly realized your trip was heading seriously south, what music would you put on the stereo to restore your emotional equilibrium and silence your demons?

Erik Tarloff answers, in this highly interesting discussion on the similarities and differences between Hadyn and Mozart.

Incidently, the Better Third and I scored a pair of tix for the Calgary Philharmonic’s presentation of “The Brilliance of Mozart and Hadyn” this Thursday evening. Having never experienced a live orchestra before, I’m at once excited and apprehensive: Excited because I do have a slight appreciation for classical music and would like develop it further; apprehensive because I am afraid I’ll fall asleep.

Red Bull will be consumed, be sure about that.

Big T Seven

Meet Brent Tyler – the basketball coach / one-man musical act who dominates pub stages all across Calgary:

In his days as a basketball player at the U of C, he was known as Big Poppa. Coaching basketball in Vancouver he was known as Seven, an obvious nod to his well above average stature of seven-feet tall.

Now, as a musician, he has carved his own niche in Calgary and Vancouver. He is now well-known in both local music scenes and is referred to these days as Big T.

But Brent Tyler is also the men’s basketball coach at SAIT where he and longtime friend and head coach Mike Stevens are trying to ‘bring on the noise’ in the SAIT Campus Center gymnasium.

“I have this dualistic personality. On one side I am artistic and I am really passionate about it and on the other I am an athlete. Those two sides of me don’t usually mix very well,” says Tyler.

I met BT about 5 or 6 years ago when I was just starting to play the guitar. He was one of the hosts of Wednesday Open Mic Night at the famed Karma Local Arts House, and he played Dave Matthews like Dave Matthews was supposed to be played. He also covered Martin Sexton, Ben Harper, Barenaked Ladies, Prince and fascinated us by ripping out “Stairway to Heaven” with while holding the guitar behind his head.

As I lived at the time in a nearby condo in Mardo Loop, just minutes southwest of downtown, I would jump off the bus after work and grab the middle stool at the bar for the big show. I drank $3 Kokanees, sat quietly, and listened with appreciation to the beautiful sounds eminating from the stage. BT seemed to respond to this because I was one of the few people who did not feel the need to act in an obnoxious fashion to impress the girls. I just payed attention.

Soon enough, he started asking me for requests. I had a good handle on his repetoir and tried to catch him with anything he hadn’t played in a long while. My favorite was “Sally’s Song”, taken from the greatest movie ever made. We’ve been friends ever since.

He even played my wedding last St Patrick’s Day.

Getting back to the article, the last few paragraphs sum up the essence of the man:

Watching one of his heroes, Martin Sexton, play in Vancouver on a recent Friday night Tyler said something Sexton said stuck with him.

“He said ‘It doesn’t feel like it’s a Friday night, maybe I should get a job so I would know what Friday night feels like,’” recalled Tyler.

“It just hit home for me because as a musician the day of the week doesn’t matter. You’re just playing music and ultimately standing on stage and making a connection with people. Which I think is the key, just trying to find something you do that doesn’t feel like a real job.”

In a just world, BT will already be living this dream. I hope someday that his dream will come true.

Movie Review: 30 Days of Night

Note: This is a review of a movie I have not actually seen nor know anything about. In fact, I have no interest in seeing this movie whatsoever. Caveat emptor.

A delightful tale of love, pagentry and class warfare in late eighteenth-century Austria, 30 Days of Night follows the lives of three brothers of a prosperous mercantile family who secretly yearn for a life of aristocracy and the romantic dalliances which they assume would eventually emerge. Ironies abound as the Knobloch brothers infiltrate the Viennese cultural scene during October, 1793, a time of massive social upheaval throughout Europe as the French revolution is in full swing and royals throughout the continent are fearful of their necks.

The story begins in Salzburg, where the Knobloch family had made its fortune through selling fine cheeses, farm implement products, and linen weaves. While the three children — Eduard, Willem and Peter — had no need to worry about material things, their ambition to expand beyond their provincial roots cannot be satiated with luxury and comfort, and the three decide to hit the road to bustling Vienna, home of Mozart and the seat of the Habsburg empire.

Peter (ably played by Seth Green) is the romantic of the bunch. Immediately after entering the city gates, he spots Emilie (Natalie Portman), the middle daughter of the Prince Charles Emmanuel of Sardinia, who has come to Vienna to celebrate her 18th birthday and to do her father’s bidding by investigating potential suitors with whom to form an alliance in marriage. At once, Peter falls in love with the fetching Emilie and vows to grab hold of her heart. With the help of a disgraced former courtier Cyrano d’Argentin (Billy Crystal), Peter develops a new identity as a son of a Polish duke and, along with his brothers, gains entry to the October ball at the Viennese court and meet his dream girl.

The irony is that Emilie herself has adopted a secret identity as a Prussian countess in the hopes that her own investigation for a suitable mate will not be hindered by the knowledge of her own heritage.

Meanwhile, Eduard (Adam Goldberg), the eldest of the three, is an aspiring painter, with a keen head of understanding form and structure, but fails in the art of wooing aristocrat women. He is a cur, throwing his father’s money at whores and wine and threatens to expose the brothers through his vulgar tastes. Peter and Willem (Balthazar Getty) do what they can to curb Eduard’s appetite, but eventually discover that the nobility to which they aspire turn out to be much more base and vulgar than they ever imagined.

The story takes a turn a few weeks after the grand ball when Marie Antoinette, queen of France and the aunt of Holy Roman Emperor Franz II, was guillotined in Paris. A deluge of aristocratic French emigres soon arrive in Vienna and startle the court with tales of the barbarity of republicans and bourgeousie rebels. Being themselves members of the bourgeois class, the Knobloch brothers are apprehensive at this development and are taken aback at the prospect of a similar uprising in the Austria-Hungarian empire. Without going into details, a surprising twist occurs which shatters both their dreams as well as the hopes of poor Emilie to fulfill her father’s wishes, yet ends on a particularly satisfiying note.

30 Days of Night was a fun experiement, with a refreshingly conservative take on the historical instances. Director John Waters does not try to instill post-modern values on the characters and stays true to the time and setting of 18th century Vienna. This is greatly apparent with the treatment of the Emilie character, who is not a feminist in today’s sense of the word, but can be considered one for her era by being head-strong, creative and individualistic while remaining devoted to her father and his wishes. In that sense, the film is honest and true to its subject, and to do this takes courage.

If nothing else, however, this film has got to be appreciated for the sheer size and detail of the sets, as well as for the extrodinary costume design. Even more than this was the beautiful baroque musical score, inspired by both Mozart and Joseph Haydn. (The latter, it should be noted, is introduced to the brothers during the grand ball scene and is played by Tony Bennett in a delightful cameo.)

This movie isn’t for everybody, but if you enjoy period pieces and, especially, historical fiction, 30 Days of Night is right up your alley.

Bumf recommends.

The Hugoman Cometh

Colby Cosh allows the market to speak for reaction to Premier Ed “Don’t Call Me Hugo!” Stelmach’s royalty review:

The skeptic might consider looking at energy companies with a major Alberta presence to see whether the shareholders are really all that troubled by Hunter’s rhetoric. Since Sept. 17, the last day on which the information in the report was not public, we can see the effect it has had on the prospects for future profit in the sector. The share price for the Canadian Oil Sands Trust, for one, has plunged from $33.30 to $34.95. A battered Suncor, which stood at $98.71, has slumped to $100.84 per share. Husky Energy Inc. has plunged from $41.22 to $43.28. Clearly Stelmach must take a stand and call a halt to this financial bloodbath!

Which about says it all.

As I am allegedly in the energy business myself, I have been asked about my own opinion on the royalty review.

Considering energy companies always fall back on the free market argument when asked to explain the price of oil, I say, fair enough: If it won’t encourage massive disinvestment to any considerable degree, let’s up the royalty rates.

If the price is right, we will always have willing buyers for our oil.

A 20% increase is far too high, though.

Off the trail

I’m still in recovery mode at the moment, but I am back from a month-and-a-half of hard campaigning in the Calgary municipal election. I have started a journal to create a record of what I learned, what mistakes were made, and about how completely meaningless the term “journalism” is in this city, and I’ll do my best to share that with you once I get it down pat.

But, if I may, I would like to share one frustration I had with the aforementioned media. Ours being an extremely small campaign based on a few solid ideas and questioning the current leadership in the city, we were expecting at least some effort on the part of the media to help get our message out. One would think that the journalists in this city would be interested in creating some controversy in order to spur interest in the election. One would be mistaken.

Case in point: I sent out a press release toward the end of the campaign which calls to account the dubious marketing activities of Enmax Energy, the city-owned electricity trading company. Enmax has forfeited hundreds of millions of dollars of lost profit since 2001 in order to “increase market share” while in competition with the private sector. As Mayor Bronconnier was initially elected on his promise to never sell Enmax due to its potential to earn high dividends which could be used for infrastructure, operations, or what have you, this had the potential of being a good story.

Instead of treating this story like news, however, the Calgary Sun, bastion of free enterprise thinkers for Calgarians everywhere, countered with an article on a new contest in which Enmax Energy will pay someone’s bills for an entire year. Meanwhile, the Calgary Herald, the city’s newspaper of record, does their part in promoting Mayor Bronconnier’s vision of Enmax Legacy Parks, with funding provided from the publically conscious electrical trader.

Not only did we receive zero coverage about this potentially damaging report on the wasted millions endorsed by the mayor, we didn’t receive a single follow-up phone call to explain why our story was not newsworthy. Forget the fact that I was a campaign manager for a rival candidate; as a citizen and taxpayer of the city, not to mention a regular reader of both dailies, I would be deeply concerned had I not already been aware of this scandal.

What’s more was the fact that both newspapers continually ran stories about how there was no interest in this campaign whatsoever for months, and based their coverage solely between the two million-dollar candidates, Mayor Bronconnier and Alnoor Kassam. After the election, which saw a 50% increase in the number of voters with respect to 2004, brave journalists mocked the hapless Kassam about how one cannot simply buy a seat in the mayor’s office. Yet, they completely ignored the fact that they themselves proved that one can buy as much coverage as the media is willing to sell.

That is why I have to laugh when I read something from a member of the Ottawa press gallery which claims that “We are journalists. We are not typists,” and that “We work on behalf of the people, not government – not this government, nor the next one, or any government in waiting.” If said member wants to practise some real journalism rather than simply type out press releases prepared by the government, then she is more than welcome to come to Calgary to ply her trade.

It’s not like she would have any competition here.

On the trail

I’m still working on the Sandy Jenkins mayoral campaign, which is why blogging as been sporadic at best. I did find the time to share beers with a good friend yesterday, however, and it was nice to hear some stories that have nothing to do with municipal politics for once.

Still, I am enjoying my new role within the campaign and I have been learning plenty about the issues and people within the Calgary political scene.

I also have been gaining plenty of amusement with Mayor Dave Bronconnier and his new-found concern for the downtrodden in the city:

Good times, good times.

If you’d like to help out our campaign, we need all the support we can get. Lawn signs, door-knocking, and just general good vibes are essential and will be welcomed. Just give me an email, or go to www.electsandyjenkins.com for more info.