Slept all day, so I’ve got nothing. Yammered with Tony late last night about his disappointing experience at the Playboy Mansion on Halloween – they just don’t look the same up close. They never do. Interviewing them was apparently also a challenge.

I’ve had it with inaccurate historical dramas. I totally get that they gave the role of Henry to someone like Jonathan Rhys Meyers to attract female viewers, but his performance is simply unbelievable. I mean, Henry VIII was fat and had gout – he wasn’t ripped with chiseled facial features. He was also 42 years old when he married Anne Boleyn. Of course, you can’t shoot hot sex scenes between a fat 40 something and a hot girl in her 20’s - that just wouldn’t fly with television audiences. Or would it, you naughty monkey’s?

That’s why I like CSI. They make no attempt to hide the fact that everything they do on that show is basically impossible in the real world. DNA results in five minutes? No problem! Trace analysis that’s faster than getting a burger at a drive-thu? No problem! Toxicology results in nanoseconds? No problem! And all those wonderful computer programs that they have that can do just about anything but make a physical arrest – astounding!

At least CSI provides a public service. I mean, how intelligent is your average criminal? After all, they watch television too. And if they believe that all of that technology actually exists, well, they might just think twice before committing their next crime. Either that or they’ll become forensic enthusiasts, which would, of course, lead to them to discover that the show is totally full of shit, not to mention providing a crash course on how best not to get caught.

Don’t even get me started on ‘Elizabeth The Golden Age’ or I might put my fist through my monitor.

This is a fantastic piece that I highly recommend watching…

I woke up this morning feeling like I’d run a marathon after which I was hit by a bus, dragged four blocks, and then set upon by wolves. Rehearsals are one thing; the real deal is something altogether different. Being that I haven’t played with a band for more than two years, and put out that sort of energy during a performance, it’s safe to say that I am completely and utterly out of shape. Something else I’d forgotten is how much more difficult it is to sing with a full band with regards to vocal longevity. We played for just under two hours last night and my voice is rather angry with me this morning. That too is something that I’m going to have to get used to again. Nonetheless, it was fun, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow night.

I’ve been pretty lax with regards to documenting things photographically. I’ll do my best to correct that over the next few days and post a few photos to the flickr set for the tour.

Looking For Some Information

Information found. Thanks for the help everyone.

How do people do it – watch television? After exhausting every film on the Video On Demand feature in my room this week, I have been forced to turn to regular television over the last few days, and let me tell you, I have no idea how people watch television in this day and age. The sheer number of commercials utterly stupefies me.

The other night I was watching a film on a local channel, The A Channel, and I swear that every 10 to 15 minutes there was a commercial break that was just as long as the section of the film that I had just viewed. I see now why TVO is so popular.

This is the primary reason that I no longer own a television, despite the fact that it would be nice to get HBO, The Comedy Network, and a few others. I have flirted with the idea of getting Apple TV, which Dale swears by, but will wait until after I replace this laptop and get an iPhone, which I should have done a while ago for numerous reasons. Being that I am a film collector, and own over 500 films, a part of me doesn’t want to lose the weekly ritual of researching what films are being released and adding them to my collection. It’s my biggest hobby.

I have today off; though have a multitude of things to do before leaving tonight. I am very much looking forward to starting the tour tomorrow, not to mention frequenting a certain old school diner near the theatre.

Anyway, I should get on with it.

Jeff Cohen’s piece published on The Huffington Post yesterday is of import…

“In the fall of 2002, week after week, I argued vigorously against invading Iraq in debates televised on MSNBC. I used every possible argument that might sway mainstream viewers — no real threat, cost, instability. But as the war neared, my debates were terminated.

In my 2006 book Cable News Confidential, I explained why I lost my airtime:

“There was no room for me after MSNBC launched Countdown: Iraq — a daily one-hour show that seemed more keen on glamorizing a potential war than scrutinizing or debating it. Countdown: Iraq featured retired colonels and generals, sometimes resembling boys with war toys as they used props, maps and glitzy graphics to spin invasion scenarios. They reminded me of pumped-up ex-football players doing pre-game analysis and diagramming plays. It was excruciating to be sidelined at MSNBC, watching so many non-debates in which myth and misinformation were served up unchallenged.”

It was bad enough to be silenced. Much worse to see that these ex-generals — many working for military corporations — were never in debates, nor asked a tough question by an anchor. (I wasn’t allowed on MSNBC unless balanced by at least one truculent right-winger.)

Except for the brazenness and scope of the Pentagon spin program, I wasn’t shocked by the recent New York Times report exposing how the Pentagon junketed and coached the retired military brass into being “message-force multipliers” and “surrogates” for Donald Rumsfeld’s lethal propaganda.

The biggest villain here is not Rumsfeld or the Pentagon. It’s the TV networks. In the land of the First Amendment, it was their choice to shut down debate and journalism.

No government agency forced MSNBC to repeatedly feature the hawkish generals unopposed. Or fire Phil Donahue. Or smear weapons expert Scott Ritter. Or blacklist former attorney general Ramsey Clark. It was top NBC/MSNBC execs, not the Feds, who imposed a quota system on the Donahue staff requiring two pro-war guests if we booked one anti-war advocate — affirmative action for hawks.

I’m all for a Congressional investigation into the Pentagon’s Iraq propaganda operation — which included an active-duty general exhorting ex-military-turned-paid-pundits that “the strategic target remains our population.”

But I’m also for keeping the focus and onus on CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS, even NPR - who were partners in the Pentagon’s mission of “information dominance.” And for us to see that American TV news remains so corrupt today that it has hardly mentioned the Times story on the Pentagon’s pundits, which was based on 8,000 pages of internal Pentagon documents acquired by a successful Times lawsuit.”

Watching Hockey Night In Canada during the playoffs means viewing the same commercials over and over again. While those by advertisers are obviously annoying, I have noticed something very disturbing about the images used in adverts promoting CBC news.

If you’ve been watching, and have seen the ads, you’ll notice that the majority of the images used center on a singular theme – the War On Terror. Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, scenes of individuals of Middle Eastern ethnicity being detained, images of a child being consoled by a Canadian soldier at a military funeral, and so forth.

Subliminally, the use of such images by the CBC is rather disturbing. As most of you are aware, the CBC is Canada’s national public radio and television broadcaster, the oldest of its kind in the country, and a Crown Corporation – which means that it is a state controlled entity. Its board of directors is directly accountable to Parliament via the Department of Canadian Heritage, and the Prime Minister appoints its President. Financially, taxpayers, ad revenues, subscription fees, and real estate revenues support the CBC.

That said; one has to seriously look at the images that are employed during CBC News adverts, why they are specifically chosen, and who plays a role in their choice.

There is no denying the fact that the subliminal impact of images is significant in media, even if just flashes in promotions for news broadcasts. It is something that, I believe, Canadians should be aware of, especially given the fact that the understanding of our involvement in Afghanistan is very limited among many Canadians. In casual conversation about our role in that country, its historical complexities, never mind its cultural complexities, are commonly little discussed. For many, we are simply in Afghanistan fighting an immense evil and must therefore remain and persevere for the sake of those that would be endangered were we not present. Unfortunately, lost in the haze of that simplistic vision are a multitude of factors that are of dire importance and consequence which I have addressed at length in previous entries on this website (please use the Archives or search engine to locate them, as they are numerous).

With regards to the images employed during CBC News adverts, we must remain vigilant concerning the subliminal and its impact on us, even if it’s just a single image thrust onto a screen for no more than a second.

Recently it was discovered that the Pentagon worked to place various retired military commanders at the disposal of various news networks as ‘analysts’. Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to such individuals as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates”, their role being to reinforce administration policy. It should also noted that the majority of them represent in excess of 150 military contractors as either lobbyists, consultants, board members, or senior executives.

In a free society, the willful usurpation of the integrity of the fourth estate by the military establishment is – what? What term would you use to describe the premeditated infiltration of the fourth estate by the military establishment for the purpose of promoting a military agenda? And, given that reality, how must we then seriously examine the redefinition of freedom itself?

The truth is that such practices are authoritarian. Ironically, while the spirit of the First Amendment is being tarnished, the practice can’t be condoned as illegal being that the media allows such individuals to appear, aiding in what David Barstow of the New York Times recently referred to as - “a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks”. In layman’s terms, it’s reverse embedding.

The issue is not whether it constitutes a crime, rather that the practice constitutes a concerted effort on the part of the current administration and the military establishment to control how information is presented. There is no questioning the fact that, since 9/11, the American media has largely entered into a very dangerous game in which it has been willing to sell itself out for access to whatever table scraps the administration is willing to offer them. Cast in an economic light, journalistic impartiality and objectivity has become a secondary notion compared to revenues, which makes it all the easier of a format to exploit. Thus, it becomes less about the quality of information and more about quantity. To achieve the latter, access is required to those in a position to provide information, no matter its basis. Add to that advertisers that are looking to be associated with media outlets that do not take chances, that sidestep the complexities of issues, and ensure that they are able to appeal to a wide demographic to ensure their survival, and you have the production of a pseudo-informational stream that is easily infiltrated and corrupted.

That, like it or not, is how the roots of authoritarianism can take hold in a society that believes its liberties sacrosanct.

The recent Democratic debate hosted by ABC spoke volumes. It took an entire hour before a relevant question was asked either candidate – and that was about the economy, which one of the debate’s hosts had the audacity to claim one of the country’s most pressing issues, which it is, but only after an hour had passed.

Commercials, perhaps, got in the way.

Since, Senator Clinton has, for the first time, featured Osama Bin Laden in a campaign commercial, and both candidates have been guilty of placating the US-Israeli lobby, which is not surprising given former President Carter’s recent visit with leaders of Hamas.

Barack Obama, speaking to American-Jewish leaders in Philadelphia recently condemned Carter’s decision claiming…

“Hamas is not a state, Hamas is a terrorist organization. They obviously have developed great influence within the Palestinian territories, but they do not control the apparatus of power.”

Meanwhile, Senator Clinton has gone directly off the deep end, and her comments should be viewed in the speculative context in which they were made.

In a recent interview she claimed that were Iran to strike Israel with nuclear weapons, which they don’t currently possess, the United States, under her command, would be able to “totally obliterate them”. Her rationale, of course, is that by making such a bold statement the Iranians might think twice – as if they were idiotic school children that would actually be stupid enough to attack Israel with nuclear weapons without realizing what the repercussions would be. That is, if they actually possessed nuclear weapons, which, it should be said, Israel does.

It must be fantastic to be the 51st State. You not only have one of the most powerful lobby’s in the United States, but are the recipient of enormous military aid and have the luxury of even your most suspect actions being defended by the world’s foremost power. You also retain the right to possess a nuclear arsenal that you claim doesn’t exist, one which, of course, has never been internationally inspected or monitored.

Oh - and while freedom reigns, the one man that had the guts to come forward and expose the existence of that nuclear program, well, he got thrown in jail for almost two decades and remains, to this very day, under heavy surveillance. Ironically, if an Iranian were to do the same thing, they would be hailed in the West as a hero.

I think I did something wrong there and lost a post while trying to edit it. We’ve been having a lot of weird things happening lately, which has been driving The Hobbit up the wall. So sorry about that. The link to the story that I mentioned is here if you want to read or bookmark it.

There seems to be a lot of ghosts in the machine lately. For one thing, my iChat on my new iMac is completely screwed and I have absolutely no idea why. I have tried everything that I, and a host of others (including friends at Apple), could think of with zero results. Basically, the chat function works fine, but once I try and video chat with someone the application crashes. Another bizarre thing is that every time I open it up, an empty chat window appears that is linked to the last person that I was talking to, even though I closed the application and the window. I have to admit, for all its advances, Leopard is becoming a bit of a pain in the ass.

Plus, my fucking caps lock key is still screwed.

Music Crap

I have been doing a lot of demoing recently and have completed half of my next release. I most likely won’t step into a studio until the fall, at the earliest, so you just know that I’m going to forget 90% of the guitar parts and have to spend two weeks figuring them all out again.

Damn it!

My DVD War With John Amato

John Amato, owner/operator of Crooks & Liars, and I have been engaged in an all out contest to see who can watch an entire television series on DVD in the shortest amount of time. And while that might make us sound like slackers, the reality is that John has been rather ill, and therefore bedridden, and I just haven’t been able to sleep for two weeks.

So far, John is ahead, though I did recently watch all of Ken Burn’s ‘The Civil War’ (for the 400th time) in one sitting, so I might have stolen the crown. I’ll have to wait and see what he comes up with next. Of course, he has the ever-evolving Presidential race to cover, among other things, so his time is going to be limited.

An Observation Regarding One Of My Favourite Blogs

It’s no secret that one of my favourite daily reads is Hot Chicks With Douchebags. Why, you ask, given the altogether serious nature of my own website? Well, probably because of the altogether seriousness of my own website.

That said; if you spend some time looking at the photographs on the site you’ll begin to see an eerie pattern emerge. 98% of the girls in those pictures look identical. The same blonde hair, the same wavy extensions, the same facial expressions, the same clothes. Is there a handbook out there that details this stuff? Come to think of it, given my past, I suppose I should be able to answer that question, now shouldn’t I.

Shit, my coffee’s cold.

I have a brilliant idea. Scott Baio is 45 and single – let’s make a reality television program about it. What would it be about? Well…

“Let’s face it, Scott Baio is a ladies man. Heather Locklear, Dennis Richards, and Pamela Anderson are just a few names on his laundry list of old flames. Finally at the end of his philandering rope, the TV star and one-time recording artist enlists a life-coach to get to the bottom of his bad-boy ways. Over eight weeks, Baio is forced to confront his semi-sordid past in order to prepare for a meaningful and long-lasting relationship.”

Finally!

Let’s all face it, we were all getting a little worried about Scott and this looks positive. Be sure to tune into one of the numerous Much “Music” stations so that you can catch it rather than actually seeing anything that remotely resembles music.

While you’re there, you might also indulge in Hogan Knows Best. I know, when I first saw the title I got excited as well. I too thought it was about the cast of Hogan’s Heroes. Turns out it’s about Hulk Hogan and the many trials and tribulations that he and his family must face while living the sort of lifestyle that 99% of the planet doesn’t.

You know what would actually make an excellent reality television? I have three ideas that, I can only hope, will one day get pitched to a network and make me ridiculously wealthy.

Be it in Iraq, Afghanistan, or some other location - follow the lives of a family living in the midst of war. Watch as they cope after their neighbours are killed by errant bombs, pick through the rubble of flattened buildings with the family kids where they come across limbs, parts of flattened skulls, and other body parts. Watch as the kids are driven to school by a different route every day in hopes of avoiding violence before Dad takes the car to the gas station and waits for 12 hours to fill the tank.

Will their eldest son, driven by anger over the death of his girlfriend and her entire family, join the insurgency? Will the family sever ties with their Uncle, a known member of an insurgent group? Will they attempt to flee the country altogether in hopes of finding a new life?

Tune in to find out.

Follow along as a single mother and her three children cope with life in a refugee camp in Darfur. Revel in the children’s delightful shenanigans, such as not speaking for hours at a time having been traumatized by their rape at the hands of the Janjiweed. Watch as their mother waits in line for aid packages, which she then craftily waters down to make last for an entire week.

Make sure to get plenty of snacks, turn off your cell, and get comfortable, because Genocide is sure to be jam packed full of intrigue, excitement, malnutrition, fear, and, of course, the deaths of countless ‘walk-on’s’.

Will the first season be the only season? Tune in to find out.

Join us as we follow the lives of three teenaged Haitian girls forced into prostitution and their secret plans to illegally sneak into the United States and find their dream jobs – working at McDonalds, Disney World, and a book store.

All they need is a boat, fair winds, and some luck. Tune in to see if they make it.