Seriously: right now.

Okay… you’ve been warned…!

See, there’s this problem over in Nanaimo, where a Grade 8 kid (around 13 or so) was given a copy of a book. A flip-book; you know, the kind where you let the pages flip quickly past your thumb and the series of images on the page seem to move, like a movie. Yeah, that sort of thing.

The flip book was given to him as a part of an in-school programme with excellent goals.

As part of a new district policy to make better use of time during exam week, the school offered students personal health classes in personal health and planning this year.

AIDS Vancouver Island has provided some course materials for a number of years for the programme

Splendid! This is good, and something that needs to be taught to the kids somehow, sometime, by someone. Typically parents who say ” this sort of thing needs to be taught in the home” are also frequently the parents least likely to actually do the educating about sex at all. However, that’s beside the point here. 

In addition to other materials from other similar organizations, AIDS Vancouver Island has been involved with providing course materials for a number of years as part of the programme, so the credentials of the content is both sound and respectable.

For more of the ins-and-outs of the matter itself, you can read THIS STORY on the CBC News site, as well as THIS STORY as well as A LATER ONE on the site for The Vancouver Sun.

What got me thinking about this at all was this tweet:

Sex ed story from Nanaimo cbc.ca/news/canada/br… reminded me to reread @nadinethornhill’s writing re: sex ed exhibit. adorkableundies.com/2012/05/17/in-…

— Stephanie C. (@stepc) March 1, 2013

Learning about the delightful and intelligent Nadine Thornhill of Ottawa (but soon to be San Francisco-based), I then gave some thought to the question of this particular educational material and its possible inappropriate use with 13-year olds.

Here’s an animated *.GIF of the book, showing what you would would see if a copy of it was in your hand.

WARNING

This following graphic will show you images of two-dimensional characters engaging in
the consensual act of coitus–apparently in a pleasurable fashion–and there is no
specification that they are actually married or even in a committed relationship.
You will also see a man’s willy, which has a condom placed upon it.

Proceed with caution if you feel this might cause you discomfort.

I’ve put this together from the original PDF (you can find that PDF here: CLICKY!) which was published by the Chee Mamuk Aboriginal Program, BC Centre for Disease Control in 2010 as part of their client resources. They describe it as “Flipping fun–a pocket-sized flip book that models condom use.” The point of it is to promote “Safer sex and sexual health > Safer sex”  and within the specific population it targets being “youth.” Presumably the very specific sub-set of that is First Nations youth, as there have been concerns expressed about STI and HIV become more wide-spread in recent years, and the promotion of safer sex and contraction of diseases in that community.

Put on Something Sexy (medium)

CLICK HERE to see the above animated version of Put on Something Sexy in a larger image size

Sticking with Twitter as a sort-of litmus test of the acceptability of the material, here’s some reaction to the issue.

@ianamartin @stepc @nadinethornhill Seems like a pretty simple explanation on how to use a condom.

— Matthew Lazin-Ryder (@Lazin_Ryder) March 1, 2013

There’s the confirmation that the intention of the material has been met: education on how to use a prophylactic device. All good there. Huzzah! Knowledge is power, the use of a condom isn’t as difficult as you might have though, easy to do by anyone, and there’s at least one less mystery which might provide resistance to the use of them therefore.

@lazin_ryder @ianamartin @stepc I wonder if the mom in the CBC piece was able to talk to her son about why he found it so upsetting.

— Nadine Thornhill (@NadineThornhill) March 1, 2013

@nadinethornhill You mean a rational conversation that would fulfill the child’s curiosity, and perhaps supplement his learning?

— Matthew Lazin-Ryder (@Lazin_Ryder) March 1, 2013

@nadinethornhill Allowing him to grow into a person with a safe and healthy knowledge of universal biological processes?

— Matthew Lazin-Ryder (@Lazin_Ryder) March 1, 2013

@lazin_ryder Yes. Also affirming sex as a potentially positive thing.

— Nadine Thornhill (@NadineThornhill) March 1, 2013

@lazin_ryder Although I do understand that it’s a tough conversation to have with a kid and it may not have been her first instinct.

— Nadine Thornhill (@NadineThornhill) March 1, 2013

How could someone object to this, one wonders. It’s possible that a thirteen-year-old male might feel uncomfortable discussing the matter with their parent, but it doesn’t seem to me possible that this same male could be un-aware of the existence of condoms, nor that he might not be considering his options regarding sexual activity in the near future. Perhaps I’m presuming too much, but one might suggest that the innocence of the average 13-year-old male is hardly un-touched long before he sees this fairly benign and un-erotic booklet? There is the omnipresence of the interweb and its propensity to serve up anything you can state in a few words and which are shoved into Google.

There are a few things one can object to in the book, however.

@ianamartin The worst thing about the manual is the male participant’s clichéd Haida eagle tattoo, IMO. @nadinethornhill

— Stephanie C. (@stepc) March 1, 2013

@stepc @nadinethornhill @lazin_ryder @ianamartin well, I object to cartoon drawn sex ed. I’d object because it’s poorly drawn.

— Aurelia Cotta (@AureliaCotta) March 1, 2013

Both of these quite good points.

The male’s tattoo, and the female’s feather accessory do both smack more than a little of tokenism to make the characters more readily identifiable as First Nations community members. Taken to a ridiculous extreme, this would also manifest itself as two people wearing wooden shoes to make them ‘more Dutch,’ or perhaps both of them smoking and frying some horse meat to make them ‘more French,’ or both of them firing off handguns to make them ‘more American.’ Still, the need to have two people who weren’t clearly white does require something more than a slight tinting to their flesh. 

Additionally, the reality of sex–it’s a bit messy, and it’s certainly ain’t elegant as viewing material–is hardly on display here. The idealized images above don’t really grab the eye of the kids, and basically continue that style of textbook illustration that reduce to the barest essentials something far more complex and thus make it… well… a bit boring, really.

To return to the title of this post, however, and the real question this whole thing raises in my mind:

If the kid doesn’t get the information at school, and in the grade where they enter the level of education they start really concerning themselves with careers and other ‘adult-oriented’ questions of how to live their lives, then where do they do it? Seriously: when?

Okay, sure, the chances are good that only a minority of the students in Grade 8 now will have experienced a sexual act that would necessitate the use of a condom (based on my experience in high school, anyway… not that I’m bitter or anything… no no), some of them actually will have done so by the time they get into the senior grades. Do we wait until they’re about to have sex, then rush up to the parked cars and set-up the flip-charts with diagrammes of reproduction systems, shove a handful of condoms through the window, and then hope for the best? Clearly that’s not going to work as they’re not going to be paying attention to anything other than how annoying the adults are being, and it’s already too damned late for them to remember anything.

No, telling them about stuff they need to know before they actually need to know it is the best, to my mind.

After all, we teach our youth about all of the traffic signs and potential behaviour that causes automobile accidents before they get behind the wheel of a car; why not teach them about STI / HIV / AIDS and how to use condoms and dental dams before they start navigating a bed?

NOTE ADDED LATER: It is only now that I’ve read Nadine Thornhill’s article about “Sex: A Tell-All Exhibition” (although I may have read it months ago when she posted it originally). It’s only now that I realize the above final paragraph mirrors her closing argument about the teaching of material prior to its actual use. What can I say; great minds think a link… and fools seldom differ, yes, I know.

Last evening I went to “Hot Pink: an art event with works by Alex Stewart and Bret Taylor” which had the following as its ‘enticement text’:

This cake was made by Candice Roach of bakedinvancouver.com. HOORAY!

As your eyes wander up, a stiletto becomes a stocking becomes a hemline. It’s the tease that tempts you.

Artists Alex Stewart and Bret Taylor present Hot Pink: a night of temptation featuring the very definition of tease: the Pin-Up Girl.

The two artists’ works were quite different, yet both strongly sensual / evocative in their own way.

Alex Stewart’s pieces tended to a more mysterious feeling of sexuality, taking the approach that that which is not seen is more enticing to the imagination. Several people mentioned a feeling of art nouveau to the works, with their use of repeated, intricate designs overlapped on each other with contrasting–and sometimes clashing–colours creating an almost Turkish or East Indian effect, blocking out full view of the female figures which peeked through the gap in the screen-like barrier between them and the viewer. There’s even a feeling of affinity with some of Klimt’s approach showing the face in a realistic fashion but the rest of the scene being merely coloured patterns (such as “Mäda Eugenia Primavesi”, “Water Snakes”, or most famously “The Kiss”). On the whole they’re enticing and draw the viewer in to explore rather than creating an impenetrable wall.

HotPink Artist [right] with HotPink Agent [left]

The works by Bret Taylor [image, left], are nothing if not bold, honest, and open to the viewer. Evoking the raw sensuality of the 1950s and early-‘60s pin-up girls, simple lines with technical precision create more for the imagination to fill-in than expected. His technical skill is exemplary, in the same way that it takes an artist like Davis or Ellington to play a 12-bar solo consiting of a single note to know the precise note that needs to be used. I liked these a great deal due to their accessibility, even if the word “subtlety” might not ever be used about them.

The two artists’ works shared more than one might expect from the above, as they both presented the “Female as Icon”, along with a feeling that the viewer may want to interact with or reach-out to them, but they are un-obtainable in some way. Taylor’s figures tease, entice, and arouse but are too iconic to be real enough for us to encounter in reality. Stewart’s images are photographic in character, but we are not only separated from them by the screen/pattern, but we also are limited to only seeing their face and sometimes not even more than an eye and a cheekbone, so we do not know if they exist beyond that.

Had I money to spend on the purchasing of art, there was at least one piece from each of the walls I would have purchased.

HotPink Hair at HotPink

The evening itself was enjoyable, even if there was a difficulty conducting a conversation some of the time due to the volume level. No doubt earlier in the day would have been better for that, but I was there from about 7:45 onward for the “Adults Only” part of the evening, thus the music was a bit more in the “PAR-TAY TIME!!” levels. Nothing wrong with that, either.

Above all else, it was great to see @stepc, @CathyBrowne, @gusgreeper, @abc4, @DanielOong, @danudey, @BretInVancouver, @Kimli, and @cwcheeks at the event. It’s always great to see them, and combining that with art is better.

Art: HOORAY!

HotPink Shoes at HotPink

Maybe…

For the moment, here’s some food for thought. 

Ever since the spring of 2001, I’ve been on varying amounts of Effexor, to help me manage my chronic, clinical-level of depression. The very first version of it were called that, then shortly they had to re-jig the way it was made so it was more ‘time-released’, as well as fixing a few things in the way they marketed it. Initially they claimed that the dosages could go up, go down, start, and stop all at a moment’s notice without any problems.

Oh my, no that wasn’t the case.

Once they got word of an on-going number of suicides (completed and not), the common denominator being the reduction or complete stopping of intake of the anti-depressant, they realized the claim above wasn’t as reliable as the testing documentation was purported to be. 

Well, dang, it’s a good thing that they got all that squared away and it’s all fine now, I hear you say on behalf of me and anyone else who are prescribed the Venlafaxine.

Sadly, no, it’s not.

Corinna is someone I’ve met and got to know a bit, as we’re both artsy, cat-mad, and living with mental health issues. Recently she and her doctor decided to shift her–very slowly–from Effexor over to another medication. They were just about at the last stage of things when… 

But then, my doctor and I both mistook symptoms of Effexor withdrawal – heightened agitation, irritability, larger than life mood swings, plus the onset of some random crying, to name just a few, for a depressive episode that made sense based on the fact that there have been a lot of changes in my life recently and I was also processing an upcoming 10 year anniversary of a friend lost to suicide.

You can read the rest of this RIGHT HERE, and it’s recommended that you do.

I had harboured the hope that, someday, I could stop taking this stuff. Having watched Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive (I’m not manic, but about half of the show was spot-on to my experience) and being met with the news that medication once begun can never be eliminated, I got a bit scared. Then, upon thinking more about the fact that things have changed since that Emmy Award winning “Best Documentary” was released in 2006 or so, hoped that medication had changed enough that this was no longer the case. Besides, mine is less complicated by ‘manic states’ and so on.

Then I read about this experience of Corinna’s, and started wondering. This section particularly grabbed my attention:

I actually don’t feel that bad if I keep my head still but haven’t been able to keep other symptoms such as bursting into tears or feeling so dysphoric that suicidal thoughts have become overwhelming and I’ve simply slouched over on the couch like a rag doll or meandered back to my bed.

How I remember what that’s like. So clearly, for that matter, that I wish not to return to that ever.

There’s a few quite substantial changes coming in the next 12 months for me (which are for a future post), but part of the fact that I’ve been able to survive this long is that I’ve qualified for the Provincial Government covering my shed-load dimension of daily dose, and this might get pretty expensive for me in short order if I get a decent job to help me support myself in the way I’ll have to… which then means I’ll be back to having no money once I pay for the expensive and massive daily medication.

The end result of all this for me is an on-going serious concern for my continuing mental health.

The end result of all this for you is that you ought to read Corinna’s post, in order to better understand how come [INSERT NAME HERE] went all crazy the other day on Facebook / their blog / on Twitter / at the party in reply to me? Because there’s a good number of people who quietly deal with things their own way, without wearing their heart on their sleeve like I do. There’s loads of people dealing with the same shit that I do about which I am ignorant. Everyone deals with it in their own way; mine is to ‘let it all hang out there’ and hope that people take the bits from my output that they find entertaining and / or useful. 

Meanwhile, if things do have to be changed dramatically, I know that I’m not alone for others have gone before me and will be able to point the way.

@ianamartin if i can do it you can do it and if you do it, i’ll be here for you. you can put a cold million on that.

— Corinna Carlson (@gusgreeper) February 15, 2013

So… there’s that, at least…

Cover of published script. [Design: Emily Cooper]

For some time, the writing of Lucia Frangione has had a profound effect on me. Her ability to intelligently discuss the spiritual without the too-common ‘preachiness’ of some religious-themed plays is all to rare. Surely the consideration of philosophical and moral codes of living one’s life in a thoughtful and considerate fashion is something that we all do, at least to some extent. “You can’t say that!” “How could anyone decide that was acceptable?” “Who raised her as a child so that she would think that as an adult?” “If a son of mine was like that, I’d dis-own them!” These are things commonly said by anyone, no matter the religious upbringing or lack thereof.

Over the last several decades of current events, the two recurring themes are war, and those in authority of Organized Religions’ ability to critique behavior of others with a willful disregard of their own. This has led to a dismissal of religion in any form by the common man, as they eschew it in favor of humanitarianism. All people have the right to do so, and I am not decrying their decisions (in fact, I consider myself among their group). The discussion of what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ within a religious setting (a Catholic-run high school) makes the series of events of this play sing with moral judgements. The Church is at war with the church in the heart of a 15-year-old girl (played by Karyn Guenther; who is incredible): she sees the Holy Spirit, and the reality of what she’s been is dismissed by the same teacher who gave her the information of its very possibility (Marie Russell in a very earnest and caring performance). The priest (Tom McBeath; who is consistently able to make acting disappear into pure reality) and her mother (Lucia Frangione in one of her best performances ever) both believe her, at least to the extent that the incredible can be fully accepted by anyone. The local Russian emigré Leap (Craig Erickson; in a wildly successful balance of “butch tough-guy” and “caring”) thinks that the girl just needs a Father, or at the very least an older brother of sort to stable her daily influence.

Over the course of a what seems to be week or slightly more, the entire question of spiritual awakening, bulling, sexuality, imposed religious dogma at the cost of actual Christ-like care and consideration, the focus of self-interest over actual attention to others, and life’s ability to cause things to occur while one is making other plans entirely, all come to a head for this little group of five and the community in which they revolve. As it is with any great theatre, they will never be the same after, and neither will the audience.

Much of the plot revolves around people’s need to pigeon-hole people into labelled categories: gay, straight, weird, normal, sinner, popular, husband, widow, priest, lay-person. Yet, no one is any one of these with the exclusivity which would make life easy. The priest certainly has a sexuality (he’s quite happy, thanks, just not gay) but he subsumes it owing to his calling. The tough-guy ex-Soviet hates his dead wife for never letting him understand the intelligent and intimate side of her soul. The single mother and teacher both love their charges for the potential they have yet do not wish for time to actually progress, and are thus disappointed to some extent when it does.

Cast of “Leave of Absence” [l to r]: Karyn Guenther, Craig Erickson, Tom McBeath, Lucia Frangione [photo credit: Emily Cooper]

Somehow the girl “Blake” (named for the poet) has to come to terms with her own sensualist religious beliefs as manifested within a Catholic upbringing. She’s surrounded by people who are both complex and internally contradicted, yet she is the one labelled an “out-lier” in the way that a set of probability data includes instances of high improbability; extremes influence the ‘average’, but are still extremes. Being entirely un-equipped to deal with this duality of teaching and reality surrounding her, she’s in over her head, and so are the other students in the school, to the tragedy of all.

The central question is not one of “what did someone do for this child?” but a more important one of “what did we, as intelligent and caring human beings not do which contributed to the situation in which we now find ourselves?” The act of murder, bigotry, the rejection of personal ability to make a difference (positive or negative) are, sadly eternal matters in the history of human events. For all we dress up each day’s “hot topic” with words about “the right wing”, or someone’s “agenda”, the evils of “organized religion”, or “kids today”, it comes down to what did each of us do to prevent this and it always has.

I’ve not been to the theatre in quite some time, for a number of personal reasons. The end of the piece left me in tears, and restored my faith in the ability of playwrights to tackle complicated subjects in ways that mean something to an audience without either imposing their final message or preaching, respecting the audience sufficiently to come to their own conclusions about the matters.

This will be produced everywhere, and for the excellent reason of its crafting. The performances of this initial production respect that, as well as setting the bar at a height in keeping with the quality of its words.

If you’re not able to see a production — or even if you are — the script is already published by Talon Books.

Leave of Absence, written by Lucia Frangione, produced by Pacific Theatre, 1440 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver, Box Office: 604.731.5518

Director: Morris Ertman*; Cast: Tom McBeath*, Lucia Frangione*, Craig Erickson* Marie Russell*, Karyn Guenther; Dramaturg: DD Kugler; Composer: Jim Hodgkinson; Set: Drew Facey; Costume; Sydney Cavanagh; Lighting: Laughlin Johnston; Sound: Jeff Tymoschuk; Stage Manager: Jethlo E. Cabilete*; Ass’t Stage Mgr: Michelle Harrison; Ass’t Costume: Catrina Jackson; Properties: Linsy Rotar; Technical Dir: Jess Howell; Head Elec.: Kougar Basi; Venue Tech: Denis Pimm

[*appears with permission of the Canadian Actors Equity Association]

Wednesday-Saturday at 8pm, Saturday matinees 2pm; Post-Show Artist Talkback: Friday, February 1; Panel Discussion: Saturday, February 9 (approx. 4:30pm), featuring QMUNITY, Dignity Canada, and Ms Frangione

Late last year I threw up my hands and started looking for a “day job” in order to support my publishing foolishness. Gosh, that went so well, too! After a year of looking and applying for billions of jobs all the way down to barista–including at least four positions whose descriptions read like they were seeking me specifically, and not just someone very much like me–and not even being interviewed for a single one of them, all I have to show for the effort is one part-time position which didn’t live past the probationary period (originally scheduled for six months but I requested three). The thought of having a regular pay-cheque was welcome indeed! The necessity of getting-up and being downtown Monday-through-Friday by 8:30 was awesome, and the commuting was helping me to lose some weight! Hooray!

And then it was “this isn’t working out” and I was back to looking for more jobs; but really, I’m unemployable after being an entrepreneur out of necessity for nearly two uninterrupted decades. I know too much, and am entirely too much my own man, for anyone to be able to either boss me around or instill me with a feeling of terror for their Authority. That certainly shows up with the résumé’s items being headed with “owner” and “proprietor” instead of “Doo-Hickey Manager (Level II)” or the like. So that, and the on-going depression, results in me basically being unemployable.

Diskpocalypse 2012 begins

Most of the money earned went to fund the replacement of three hard-drives which chose to fail at nearly the same time, including sending one of them to Ontario to go through an expensive recovery process. The first warning sign was the need to run CHKDSK, something I probably hadn’t done since Windows 98. Once that bit of joy was done [image, right] and it seemed to be a mild hiccup, things started to go very wrong very quickly. The biggest and most horrifying thing discovered was that all of the data files were on a different virtual disc than Windows 7 was, but not on a different physical drive, thus as the OS disc began having mechanical failures the data disc was as well. 

Of course, you have everything backed-up… right…? Well, I certainly do now, yes, thanks to the Backblaze back-up service and iOmega’s “QuikProtect” [sic] running, I’ve got the original copies of each file, then everything’s copied over to an external iOmega hard-drive, then everything gets duplicated up to the Backblaze cloud server. At any given time, if the computer fails, the external drive will provide a copy of nearly everything, and if the house burns down, taking the entire computer and external drive in the process, then there’s a third copy on-line that has nearly everything on that. Done!

So, after over three weeks’ pay going to the job of recovering the first failed drive, I got back my old one plus a new little drive in a case with all my files from the old Drive C:\\ and Drive D:\\ on it, and the proper setting-up of fail-safe systems was on. Part of that was replacing the other two drives in the tower as they were starting to show funny error codes as well, just as the Mother Disc had… ARGH!!

Jennifer’s New Computer

So, about a month ago now, when Jennifer’s hard drive began doing the same odd thing when booting–straight to CHKDSK before entering Windows–the answer was either “replace the drive” or “replace the whole computer”. Given the age of the unit (lack of modern connections for several things, several others being long-dead or over-worked such as graphic and main processor–we opted for an entire new computer [image, left]. Changing her to a Mac also ensured that, going forward, she’d be happier and have less of Redmond’s idiotic approach to future operating systems: Windows 8 is so awful in its philosophy and approach to things that I’ve sworn to change the entire house over to Apple as fast as money permits.

She’s not too keen on learning how to use the new computer, but is willing to believe me when told it’ll be easier for her to use in the long run than any Windows system was. There’s a large amount of basic tasks and functions she’s never quite grasped properly, and much of that is probably the odd ways that Windows approached them, and the number of changes they made to some of the more simple things.  Anyhow, she’s got a new keyboard and computer, with her old mouse and monitor, and is learning to love OS X “Mountain Lion”. Possibly.

What with it having been a Presidential Election year in the USA, sales of books published by Atomic Fez were down (any US Election year is a bad one for business, as people are both distracted by the campaigning as well as as being uncertain about the future), which added to the already disastrous state of the economy putting a massive dent in things financial. All together a not very good year there, save for the publishing of two wonderful books: John Llewellyn Probert’s The House that Death Built, and John Travis’s second “Benji Spriteman Mystery” titled The Designated Coconut. Both are already in the hands of reviewers now, so hopefully the new year and some reviews will change the sales figures for the better of both publisher and the authors.

The state of Canadian politics in both federal and provincial areas makes me increasingly cynical and embittered to much of the system, bringing on such a case of ennui that the notion of “why bother voting when the same horse-shit gets trotted out all the time anyway?” actually makes sense to this life-long political junkie and enthusiastic vote casting participant. Someone suggested I should run for office, but there’s no way I could toe anyone’s party line, and there’s no way an independent could get elected when these days require oodles of money for even a bare-bones campaign. Besides, what sort of fool would vote for a guy who’s got “ex-” ahead of the names of several disparate careers he’s attempted?

And here’s the crux of where I’m at right now, with the world’s society hell-bent on making the rich richer, the children more in danger from gun crime, and those in power increasingly contemptuous of the public: having arrived at 46 years of age this year, financially destitute, without employment, without means to solve many of the basics which are broken, and I’ve no one to blame but myself for thinking I could make success based on old-fashioned gumption and hard work, like back in the ‘50s. But as it’s too late to fix that now, I guess the end-result is to keep beavering away towards no definite goal, until whenever the grave happens to arrive. 

Yup: it’s come to that.

With thanks to a post on Facebook [click image to visit]

This is John Cleese’s favourite film of his own¹, and one can see why: it’s a simple, yet very funny, story of a theft in the same tradition of The League of Gentlemen, The Lavender Hill Mob, or that other heist film from Ealing Studios I don’t recall the name of right now. Drat.

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

Anyway, this similarity isn’t too surprising, given that the film is mostly directed by Charles Crichton, the man responsible for directing The Lavender Hill Mob. I have described Mr. Crichton as having “mostly” directed the film because the studio was worried he wouldn’t be able to handle a comedy assignment, and asked Mr. Cleese to ‘keep an eye on things’²; demonstrating that studio people in positions of influence are frequently idiots and haven’t a clue about anything other than what they have watched in the last minute or three, most likely due to most of their brains have been burned away by cocaine.

But, I digress.

Cleese’s character, the barrister “Archie Leach” (the birth name of Cary Grant³), is possibly the simultaneously stupidest and highly educated individual you’ve ever encountered. Sadly, he’s possibly also the most realistic character you’ve ever seen in a film. That’s what makes not only his character, but all of them in the film work so very well. As absurd as they are, they’re all well within the bounds of reality. We see the events of the tale and the way the characters deal with those challenges causes us to think there, but for the Grace of God, go I. This doesn’t exactly prevent one from considering a life in crime, but it certainly makes for a damned funny movie.

The key to this–or any–type of comedy is best summed-up in a post by Christopher Fowler (which you can read RIGHT HERE), in which he details a conversation he recently had with the writers of the Tony Hancock’s material, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. Hancock’s character (he only had the one, really) could never be mistaken for either a ‘success’ or a ‘bright spark’, and therein the comedy bursts forth, according to the writers. In describing the un-produced Hancock film The Day Off, Mr. Fowler says this:

It’s virtually plotless, sad and very funny indeed. In it, Hancock meets up with another bus driver, and argues about the pointlessness of saving and withdrawing the same amount each week with his bank. He tries to bully a man on a park bench into admitting he feels insignificant, and fails. He loses an argument about wasps and bees. He meets Charlotte, a girl who works in a dress shop, and pretends he’s an architect building a cathedral, while she pretends she’s a model. He forces her to have a dessert she doesn’t want because she needs to stay model-thin. Hancock gets found out just before a touching goodnight kiss, and the romance turns sour. The film ends as it begins, with Hancock going home alone as the weather-girl announces tomorrow will be a sunny day–for those with a day off.

… [Ray Galton and Alan Simpson] agree that the script’s downbeat ending is funnier because ‘failures are funny, successful people are not’.

Thus we can see this film, full of the incredible failures nearly from start to finish, as a classic English comedy in the same tradition as Hancock, Ealing, and so very many others… most of which I can’t remember the names of… Drat.

There’s a further connection to this film for Mr. Fowler: in addition to his award-winning novels, he’s also responsible for co-writing a piece of comedy on the DVD of A Fish Called Wanda with Mr. Cleese. Unfortunately I returned this to the library before I remembered that, and thus I cannot tell you either which bit of “extra material” it is, or how funny I thought it was. Drat.

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Prominent Features
Star Partners Limited Partnership 

Directed by Charles Crichton
and un-credited John Cleese

Writing credits
written by John Cleese
from a story by John Cleese and Charles Crichton

CITATIONS

1.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095159/trivia?tab=tr&item=tr1054980 [ JUMP BACK ]
2.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095159/trivia?tab=tr&item=tr0792640 [ JUMP BACK ]
3.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095159/trivia?tab=tr&item=tr0792726, and yes I’m stopping this now [ JUMP BACK ]

Cover of “Aja”, by The Darcys (Jan 24 2012, Arts & Crafts Productions A&C066)

This, clearly, makes me a prime candidate for the music of Steely Dan, seen by many to be the gear-heads’ musical favourite; mostly due to their multiple studio accomplishments (although I only know of them being really fanatical to high fidelity recording processes and insanely complicated guitar lines). When I want to hear a little something intelligent, jazzy, and exceedingly tasty in its musical accomplishment, I turn to ‘The Dan’ (or Brian Eno or Jeff Beck). Thus, when hearing that the Toronto independent rock group The Darcys were covering the entire Steely Dan album Aja, I was fascinated to hear what they had accomplished.

The problem that any musician doing a ‘cover’ of another group’s work faces is that it’s a song they love, and probably love everything about the original version. However, the reason they do their own version is to bring something new to it, or at least it ought to be the reason. If all they do is duplicate the original’s arrangement, then there’s no inducement to listen to the new recording instead of the original. While this hasn’t stopped classical musicians doing the 378th recording of Mozart’s 12th symphony, or countless other works, there’s a difference there as we haven’t a clue what the original performance sounded like, so there is no ‘definitive interpretation’ which is tied to the composer in the same way that Dark Side of the Moon or Abbey Road have one specific version in the collective awareness of the listening public.

The original version of Aja (pronounced like ‘Asia’, by the way) is considered by some to be the “best recorded pop album in the 1970s”, which is either rejected as being of “too much intelligent content to be considered ‘pop’ music” or else “given much of the material recorded in the 1970s sounds like it was taped in a public swimming pool using a tin can, it’s hardly a tough thing to be at the top of a chart for technical achievement, is it?” Whichever, it’s often used for testing samples and recording reproduction fidelity to demonstrate the tonal range of vinyl vs. CD vs. digital file formats of various codecs; mostly due to the fact that the various editions have stayed fairly true to the original masters and haven’t been screwed around with, unlike most of the other recordings of the period. Having it get the Grammy Award for “Best Engineered Non-Classical Recording (1978)” probably helps too.

Due to the above–plus the fact this is the group’s best-selling album, having reached #3  on the U.S. charts and #5 in the United Kingdom–everyone knows the material backwards. So why even take-on the task then? Well, according to an interview with one of the band members in conjunction with THIS BLOG POST for the CBC Radio3 show Appetite for Distraction, the idea was given voice because one of the band members was both drunk and tired of answering questions posed by someone in a bar that evening, so he said the band was about to record this in order to make the guy shut up and go away. Sadly, the pestering individual was a member of the Toronto music media, and the statement was published shortly thereafter. The band member claims he is no longer permitted to drink, for fear of him doing something equally insane to the rest of the group.

Cover of “Aja”, by Steely Dan (Sept 23 1977, ABC Records)

It’s not fair to do a track-for-track comparison of the original album to the new version, as the purposes for the creation of the two are so wildly different from each other. The original was made to give voice to the muse of Walter Becker and Donald Fagan, while the new one was made to pass the original album’s contents through the collective muse of The Darcys to see what would happen. Thus, the preference of one over another isn’t either just or even relevant. No doubt the eye-balls of the members of the Toronto group are filled with a non-stop stream of words by people who are quite happy to make it painfully clear that “the original is perfect”, “why would anyone commit such sacrilege”, or the always popular “this cover album sucks goats!”

I was originally made aware of this about 2/3 of the way through the tune “Peg” which was pre-released as part of the album’s promotion. In the middle of typing something frantically on the keyboard whilst listening to Radio3, the chorus rammed itself into my awareness, my head shot-up, and I thought is that song what I think it is? The answer, obviously, was yes. In a series of events–that culminated with [ahem] ‘a well connected radio personality’ sending me an Advance Copy CD–I’ve now had a chance to listen to the entire effort. Five times. In a row. Without listening to the original version once. Yet.

 However, it’s nigh-on impossible to hear any of the tracks on this without hearing the original in one’s head. 

Which brings us back to the original question, why would you attempt this in the first place? Again, I submit the purpose is to bring something new to the musical work, due to it being interpreted by a different person in a different age. I’m a big fan of re-interpretations of The Beatles, The Who, and for some reason I also have about 87,000 different recordings of the Cole Porter composition “Love for Sale”.

Ultimately, the new version of the album isn’t all that successful as something which stands on its own. I wouldn’t expect it to replace the original in my mind, as that’s something a cover version has only done for me with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s version of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” (the cover is far more in keeping with the event it records in its lyrics, for one thing). To create a version of any album which is superior to the original one is arguably impossible, but it ought to stand on its own in some fashion. This one doesn’t, no matter how hard I try to really, really like it.

A few tracks do make the cut, as they work but not entirely through their lengths. The title track handles the material fairly well, with echoes of the original here and there, but an entirely new feel to the whole of the song. Likewise, “Josie” works fairly well through most of its length for the same reason. “Deacon Blues” and “Home at Last”, however, just don’t work at all, sometimes to the point of being down-right ‘broken’. Not all songs are structured in a clear enough way to make it possible for re-interpretation, and especially not easily an entire album being re-interpreted by the same group in essentially the same style (although one exception to this is Luther Wright and the Wrongs’ version of The Wall as semi-blue-grass styled music, which is brilliant).

Cover of “The Royal Scam”, by Steely Dan (May 1976, ABC Records)

The cover image chosen by The Darcys [see image, way above, right]  is odd, as it harkens far more to the cover of The Royal Scam [see image, right], which Steely Dan declared in the re-mastered edition of which as “the most hideous album cover of the seventies, bar none (excepting perhaps Can’t Buy a Thrill)”. As tough as it is to make an album your own, it’s probably tougher to make the cover art yours as well.

Now, props to the group for taking this task on in the first place! To learn to play any of these songs is incredibly tough, and to do this with all seven is fantastic. To add to that the challenge to, essentially, ‘un-learn them’ and then re-learn them afresh is a hell of a steep climb for anyone, never mind an independent band attempting to fulfill a drunken promise made by one of the members in a fit of frustration. What a staggering achievement this is!

But it needs to have more than that, frankly. The sparseness of the original in large areas are too often honoured seemingly for the reason that “that’s what Steely Dan did”, instead of honouring a new approach. There are little musical frills from the original throughout that ought to have avoided entirely in favour of the songs’ cores. As well as that, there are some vocal moments which are delivered by the lead singer which were originally echoes by the back-up vocalists and ought to have been avoided for the same reason or delivered in some new way by another singer during the new recording sessions.

Basically, it’s a great idea. If they had attempted to show off their instrument chops by duplicating it perfectly, that would have gotten a pretty good reaction for the work (although not on an artistic level). Instead, they went for the far tougher assignment of re-working the music with their own style, and that’s awesome. However, the end result isn’t something which seems to have gone far enough to create a new work per se. Thus, my ultimate reaction is “meh…”

If you want to listen to ‘old music’, then you risk not evolving into a better person; or at least ‘fresher’ one. Thus, if you want to play the old music, you must do so in an entirely new way, bringing the best of the old into direct contact with the new work

If you want to check out the music for yourself, then HEAD HERE to download it for free. However, if you prefer a ‘hard copy’, I have the ‘Advance Copy’ CD in front of me, and will happily send it to someone who requests it (hit the “contact” link up there).

The Three Musketeers (1973)

Well, that’s a lot of information to explain why there are two films, isn’t it? Do you need a lie down now? I might, actually. What about a glass of something, or some tea? Can I get you a sandwich perhaps? No? ‘Head straight to the films, please’, you say? Right then!

While I’ve read all of The Count of Monte Cristo, I admit that I’ve not read the source material of The Three Musketeers, or Twenty Years After, or even The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later (which I suspect wasn’t included in the plot of either of these films, although its details seem so similar to some of the first two stories’ it’s tough to tell, really). 

These are daft, sillly, and damned fun. Everything you could want from a film about these characters is here: bawdy humour, oodles of swordplay, lovably ill-behaved heroes, and enthusiasm about everything good in life: rescuing people, serving your sworn ruler, romance, food, wine, love, and waving a rapier around as often as possible. If, during the films, you feel like shouting Huzzah! or similar terms, I think that’s just fine as well, if not outright recommended.

The title sequence for the first film is incredible, showing us a swordsman’s moves in a pseudo-stop-motion effect and electric blue colour, predating both The Matrix or Tron. While stylish and magnificent, the tone is far more apt to a film of an art-house than what we get. Both approaches are appropriate to the material, and both are very well done, it’s just a bit of a confusion to the viewer who is now expecting a “Great Work of Serious Art” rather than what they get: a “Great Work of Dedicated Romp”. Again, let me say that both the title sequence and the film are exceedingly good, it’s just they don’t quite match each other.

The Four Musketeers (1974)

The bodies of the two films–or, more appropriately, the “bawdies” of them–are filled to the rim with slapstick fun, much of which involves that wonderful symbolic use of “extra-long loaves of bread and bombs” as representing “phallus and testes” way they do so well. Swashbuckling fun for all! *

The cast is made-up of a “who’s who in early-’70s cinema’, with the evil Rochefort played to ever-so-oily perfection by Christopher Lee; M. Bonacieux, d’Artagnan’s landlord, is performed with energetic glee by Spike Milligan (and we see nothing of him in the second film, which is a damned shame), and his wife Constance de Bonancieux, the Queen’s Seamstress (but who also seems to be her confidant and adviser at times) by Raquel Welch; and the scheming Milady de Winter by an incredibly stunning Faye Dunaway. Rounding out the cast of other characters are a host of others literally too numerous to mention.

One who deserves special note by myself is Charlton Heston as incredibly refined and restrained Cardinal Richelieu, thus proving my point about his work being uncontrollable being ill-considered. Considering the complete lack of restraint by most of the cast when going over-the-top with slapstick a-plenty, it would have been easy for him to fall in line with the others (although I’m not sure how it would have been appropriate to his character, frankly). Thus, my earlier comment about his work being uniformly of the “lookit me! LOOKITME!” sort was obviously too hasty. While I doubt I’ll see much more of his oeuvre, I’ll not be approaching it with the same expectation or resistance I might have before finally seeing these films.

There’s some frankly bad sound dubbing in these due to the “shoot pictures first, record audio later” approach to things, but it being the style of the time it’s not too bad in the circumstances. The first film doesn’t allow too much in the way of character development, but there’s an awful lot of characters to simply get introduced here, so there’s little time left to develop any of them as a result; this is left to the intricacies of the second film, which was known as “The Four Musketeers: Milady’s Revenge” in the USA, and variants of it in France, West Germany, Brazil, Italy, Greece, and in Hungary’s ‘long title’. It would seem that the Lady de Winter has a secret and is happy to take revenge upon a few others while she’s keeping the status of that secret. INTRIGUE!

The camera-work for this is uniformly good, if a tad uniformly wide but, given the amount of the sword-waving and running-about going-on inside the frame, it’s certainly justified. The stock used seems a tad grainy but, again, the requirements of detail in night and shadowed scenes, couple with the amount of running around needing some extra depth of field means little else is possible for use.

The story, had it been shoved into one film of about 2/3 the length of the two of these combined, would be too much detail to handle. director Richard Lester was wise to split them into two film, thus allowing the narrative to have sufficient elbow-room for the silliness and action that makes both of the films work so very well. He was, on the other hand, damned stupid on a contractual basis to have done it. Re-negotiating with the cast afterwards would have been not only have been intelligent a choice on a legal standpoint, it would have simply been the right thing to have done.

If you see these available for your viewing pleasure, rest assured it will be one.

The Three Musketeers (1973) & The Four Musketeers (1974)
an Alexander, Michael and Ilya Salkind Production for
Este Films and Film Trust S.A. 

Directed by Richard Lester

Written from the novel by Alexandre Dumas père
with a screenplay by George MacDonald Fraser

Trailer for The Three Musketeers (1973)

Trailer for The Four Musketeers (1974)

* NOTE: the author of this post is well aware of what a buckler actually is, and will not be making any jokes based on “buckling a swash”, as this would be wrong. More apt would be to “swash a buckler” which is, in fact, where “swash buckling” comes from. So belt-up. [ RETURN ]