zzsimonb's rantings

Uncle Eric And The Long Arm Of The Law - Part One

2011-08-03T13:03:00.000-07:00

Based on Uncle Eric's many shady dealings it is surprising that there were not more close encounters with the boys in blue. In fact there were only two (notable any way). The first of these was the infamous obstructing of justice story ($75 fine), and the second was the 'great dart match' ($0 fine but several really grumpy people).

'Landlord found guilty of obstructing justice' , the local newspaper proclaimed. Yes, you guessed it, some one had pissed off Uncle Eric, and so in true Eric style, revenge had been extracted, unfortunately for Uncle Eric the chosen victims had been members of the 'Thames Valley Constabulary', and so had the ability to fight back. This was a situation where Uncle Eric acted without fully considering the problem.

The Horse and Harrow as mentioned in a previous post, is (or rather was, because they have since moved the road) was situated on the main road towards Wallingford. It's exact location is at the bottom of a long curving hill. The posted speed limit is 45 MPH, and no one ever took a blind bit of notice of this. For this reason the boys in blue decided that the parking lot of the Harrow would make a perfect spot to sit in their Panda cars (police cars for us on this side of the pond) and nab errant motorists.

This is back in the days when the police were really cracking down on the 'drinking and driving' crowd. Well it does not require Mensa membership to work out that if there is a cop car in your parking lot, would be customers (victims) do not stop. They go to a hostelry that does not have cars with blue lights mounted on the roof, and a really fetching color scheme, parked in the parking lot.

Uncle Eric was furious, but somehow managed to fight off the urge to get his shotgun, instead taking a deep breath decided that diplomacy might be the best method of resolving the problem. Outside he goes, knocks on the drivers side window, policeman winds the window down, and Uncle Eric starts to bargain (at 150 decibels). "Will you get this fucking pig wagon off my property". I am sure that in retrospect this was not the best approach to take, but, oh well.

The upholder of law and order, politely tells Uncle Eric to 'go fuck himself'. A short discussion ensues concerning the question of the policemans parentage, and the uncomfort level that could be expected from having the radar equipment rectally mounted. Uncle Eric turns around and storms back into the pub.

Fifteen minutes later Uncle Eric is seen driving of up the hill in his Ford Cortina estate (station wagon), and returns about 20 minutes later, making sure that he is not breaking the 45 MPH limit, for even he has worked out that the guy sat in the parking lot would love nothing better than handing out another ticket, specifiably to him.

Policeman Plod had had a very productive hour pulling in motorists every 10 mins. Suddenly all of the drivers appeared to be conforming to the 45MPH limit. In fact PC Plod sat there for another 2 hours and did not stop another car. Uncle Eric seemed in better humor, everyone assumed that having verbally abused the policeman justice had been served. Things were about to change.

Uncle Eric was sat in the bar watching the police car with interest, and giggling like an orgasming banshee. Suddenly he spots another police car coming down the hill, it puts on its blinker, slows down and enters the parking lot. The two policeman have a quick discussion and then enter the pub. They invite Uncle Eric to join them in the Panda car, Aunt Flo is looking on questioningly, wondering what the hell he's done now. Seeing as Uncle Eric only weighs about 140lbs dripping wet, it surely would not take two of them to arrest him
for the minor verbal skirmish that happened a couple of hours ago.

All was revealed, Uncle Eric had taken a chalkboard with him on his excursion, he errected it about 1/4 of a mile up the hill, and written a warning to motorists that 'The damn pigs have a radar trap round the corner'. The police had no doubt who was responsible, particularly
because in his haste to perform this community service he had used a chalkboard emblazoned with 'The Horse and Harrow', instead of one of the generic boards. So a 50 pound fine, and bound over to keep the peace. Police 1 Uncle Eric 0.

This proves to only be a short setback, Uncle Eric will be back.

Uncle Eric And The "Sweet" Beer.

2011-07-27T14:23:00.000-07:00

Let me begin by giving a little background. Uncle Eric had more than a passing resemblance to the elder Steptoe, of Steptoe and son. For you folks residing in the yewess and other exotic parts of the world this translates as follows. Approximately 5'4" tall, 140 pounds, 50 million years old, 49 million of which were spent in a fish smoker. Face all wrinkled and rather than an impish grin, an evil leer. Exactly the sort of person that you have told your young children to avoid.

Wilfred Bramble - Steptoe

Uncle Eric was the owner of the "Horse and Harrow" a fine drinking establishment in darkest Oxfordshire. The pub being located on the main road between Didcot and Wallingford assured a steady supply of unsuspecting victims. After a close encounter of the Uncle Eric kind few would venture back. The local's on the other hand flocked to watch the antics. For the most part the regulars were spared special treatment.

One fine Saturday lunchtime Uncle Eric is tending bar and holding court on the subject of 'them bloody commies' , 'or 'hem bloody tories' , or whichever group was currently annoying him. This could be homosexuals, the local Didicoy population, (yes I know, whats a didicoy?, its an old Berkshire slang term for a gypsy) who he was formally convinced were stealing his livestock, or some other minority that had caught his fancy.

Anyway a car pulls into the parking lot, and out emerges a sour looking gentleman. This dour creature shuffles into the bar scowling at all and sundry (there were about 7 or 8 other patrons). He takes a stool at the bar and demands a pint of bitter (type of beer for you
merkins). Uncle Eric has taken an instant dislike to this guy. The tension begins to mount, the locals can smell blood. It has taken no more than a minute for this interloper to annoy Uncle Eric.The guy takes a couple of slugs from the glass, puts the glass down,slowly scans the bar, stands up and then declares, "I'm going to the toilet, no one drink my beer because I've spat in it". And off he goes to relieve himself.

He comes back after a couple of minutes, sits back down and resumes scowling at the audience. Long minutes pass,he picks up his glass and takes a long pull of finest Morlands bitter. Puts the glass down, and declares to Uncle Eric that the beer has a sweet after taste to it. The fun begins. Uncle Eric explains patiently that while the guy was out taking a leak everyone in the bar had also spat in his beer. The scowl changed to worry, to a look of shock and horror. The victim races to the door, barely making it out into the parking lot before throwing up. That needless to say was the last time that victim was seen in the "Horse and Harrow".

Ahh, how I miss him, a star indeed.

An Introduction To Uncle Eric

2011-07-26T13:51:00.000-07:00

It is not unusual for a family to have a 'black sheep'. For the Barrett's it was without doubt my glorious Uncle Eric. Oh he never robbed banks or committed acts of violence, he just skirted the law a little bit, maybe played in the dark side on occasion, he was what most would call a lovable rogue. His base of operations was a county pub The Horse And Harrow. It was from here that he launched his master plans.

Oh don't get me wrong, he was not aiming for world domination, he merely was eking out an existence. A visit to Uncle Eric's was always an adventure. One day I dropped by and he said Simon I have something to show you, hop in the car. The journey was short and very off the beaten track. My good uncle showed me his new project. Pheasant farming was not something that I knew a lot about, and discretion told me not to inquire. “these are real pheasants” he explained, “they taste like wild ones”. There is little doubt in my mind that Uncle Eric and some of the local poachers had been hard at work to collect this wonderful selection.

On another occasion, a Sunday in the early 70's my father discovered that a neon strip light in the bar was not working. Back in those days there were no Home Depot's or WalMarts, in fact the only places open on a Sunday were pubs and churches. My father asked me if I would take a spin over to Uncle Eric and see if he had a 4 foot fluorescent we could borrow. Uncle Eric listened to my request, grabbed his set of keys and took me to the rear part of his property. He did not have one or two sheds, but rather something akin to a small industrial park. “it's in here” he pronounced, and with that a nameless and featureless shed was unlocked.

Inside were hundreds of florescent strip lights, complete with fixtures and fittings. Youth got the better of me and I asked where he had got them from. Not missing a beat he explained that they had been salvaged from an office tower undergoing renovations. Even by Uncle Eric standards this story seemed a little unlikely. The units must have been taken down with great care, cleaned meticulously and the original installer had had the foresight to keep all of the original packaging material. Also in what can only be viewed as amazing this installer had used the same tape as the manufacturing company to reseal the boxes! Of course I put the entire episode down to pure coincidence.

Uncle Eric was small in stature, in fact in the family some called him Jockey Barrett, although I doubt that the reference had much do do with horsemanship.

One thing that I am sure about is that he was not much of a womanizer. A story brought out at drunken Barrett family get together's involved Uncle Eric's wedding day to Florence, or Aunty Flo as we called her. Dressed in his Sunday best, Uncle Eric survived the actual wedding ceremony, but the reception got the better of him. Two days later he was found still wearing his suit and sleeping peacefully on the top of a hay stack. Now thats what I call a hangover!
My suspicion is that it was the glass of champaign after the toast that caused it.

Uncle Eric finally gave up The Horse And Harrow at West Hagbourne. Age and failing health caught up with him. What shocked me most was the rapid decline following his retirement. I know that this is unscientific, but it was as if he had lost the will to live. All he needed was just one more con, one more opportunity to stick it to the man and I know that he would be with us today. Sure he would be in his 90's, but he would still be terrorizing the local police and unwitting travelers!

No one could doubt his great business acumen. I think I was around ten or eleven years old, my father was talking to Uncle Eric about the pub business. Mini skirts were all the rage, Uncle Eric had found the perfect way to capitalize on the trend. It was only at the weekend that he could justify having a barmaid, but to maximize profits he put the most expensive beers on the bottom shelf!

I will say this, of all of my uncles and aunts, cousins, and other family members Uncle Eric was always my favorite. It is with reverence and true love that I offer these quick glimpses into the world of Uncle Eric.

I heft my glass to a great man!

A New Venture

2009-12-06T06:03:00.000-08:00

As is life was not busy enough Jan and I have decided to head out on a new project. We came to the conclusion that there are not enough web pages around, the internet needs more :)

We are starting up yet another News and Reviews site. It is still in the very early stages of development but we have high hopes for www.narwo.com. Why the funky name narwo? well it stands for News And Reviews With Opinions! And we have lots of opinions. We will be actively seeking out writers for this project, so if you are interested in being in on the ground floor of the next CNN :) let me know.

An Update From The Trenches

2009-07-11T10:32:00.000-07:00

I have decided to take a few hours off from the giant hamster tread mill that I seem to be on. Time to sit back and smell the roses. It has been quite the week, though in reality it was just another week.

Lets see what I did. Well we had our regular Sunday radio show, and true to form a caller dropped another atom bomb that flew around the internet faster than Obama printing bailout money. So, a good deal of Monday was spent in dealing with the fallout. This is becoming a regular Monday mission.

Somehow, and I am not quite how I managed to read a couple of books this week.

What were they thinking? - this is a look into the world of sports, and the mistakes people make.

Google Speaks - An unofficial look under the skirts of the Google company.

What You Are Turning Me Into - A depressing look at the world of street drugs.

Reinvent Your Enterprise - A look at big business.

Take The E Out Of Ego - A rather curious self help book.

Rumor & Qix - A science fantasy adventure.

Wow, even by my standards six books in a week is a lot! Actually it will be seven, I am most of the way through Cocaine Memoire.

As for music and movies, that is all a blur. I know there were a couple of reviews, and a couple of interviews, but I'm damned if I can even remember who with :)

The one thing that I do know is that everywhere I look I see 'stuff' still in the shrink wrap. The piles are reaching demonic proportions. Even worse, most of it was unsolicited, it just arrives!

The other problem are the cases that Jan and I are following, they seem to eat up great swathes of our time on the phone. Anyone that thinks the world of Journalism is fun needs a psychological evaluation! It is time consuming and frustrating. You find yourself awash in material that for one reason or another you cannot print. Confidentiality and legal aspects all weigh in, it becomes a quagmire in no time at all.

Oh crap tomorrow is Sunday, the cycle repeats........

WTF

2009-05-12T15:45:00.000-07:00

Sorry that I have been so delinquent in writing on here, the days just seem to fly by. My wife Jan and I do actually have a life outside of playing. That life somehow has got us involved in three serious court cases. They have consumed our waking moments for several weeks. In fact it got so bad that Jan pointed out that is I didn't get my head out of them we would not be able to pay the bills.

Jan and I live day to day, I'd love to say paycheck to paycheck, but it is not true. We carve out an existence with $50 here and there. Plowing two people into a 16 hour a day investigation for a week has cased a huge problem. We have had to back off a little, just to pay the bills!

So folks, it is not that I have deserted the blog, I have just been more concerned with actual events rather than my idiocy.

Todays Kids.....

2009-04-13T10:43:00.000-07:00

It is Easter break, and we are hunkered down. For the most part Jan and I lead a pretty quite life. Yes I review Punk and Heavy Metal, but the volume is always kept down.

We live in a rather spacious duplex, and for most of the time it is peace and tranquility, our neighbors are hard working folks, and whole days go by without even seeing them, they both leave early for work and get home late. They do have a couple of kids, but they never seem to be around. My guess is that the kids spend the weekdays somewhere else.

Well, here we are on the Monday after Easter, we are swarmed with kids in the 3 to 8 range and there is absolutely no adult looking after them.I counted 8 of them. Just running wild, where are the brains of the parents?

The famous joke about telling a kid 'to go play in the traffic' takes on new meaning. Some idiot left them a gas powered childs 4 wheeler. I saw at least 3 close encounters with real vehicles.

This is beyond my comprehension of stupidity!

Simon Hits Brit TV Paydirt

2009-03-03T07:56:00.000-08:00

There is not much I I miss about the UK, and I certainly have no intentions of returning any time soon. However I did enjoy some of the TV programs, there are some excellent series that have cropped up over the years. I recently discovered a company here in the US that specializes in packaging these classic and contemporary programs on DVD. The name is Acorn Media.

Some of the recent items I have vied include the classic John LeCarre screen adaptions if Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy, and Smileys People starring Sir Alec Guinness. The rambunctious Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Night Mares, The Cadfael Collection, and Agatha Christie's Poirot. All great viewing. I liked them so much I have put a banner up for Acorn, check em out, they have lots of great stuff. Just click on the ad.

Oh, and I am too lazy to add links to the reviews, but if you plug 'title' Bloggernews into google you will find them.

My New Best Friend!

2009-02-16T13:40:00.000-08:00

I swear that some people have no common sense. We live in a duplex and a family with a couple of young children live next door. They are very nice people, very polite, and about the only bad thing I have to say is that on occasions they play the music a little loud for my taste, but that tends to happen when the parents are MIA. They have a new house guest, I believe it is the ladies younger brother.

About a week ago I spotted something odd early one morning. There was a puppy at the back of the house, it looked well fed, but appeared to be only a couple of months old. It was incredibly shy, and ran away when I tried to get near to it. I guessed that it belonged to someone in the neighborhood and it had somehow got out. The following day I saw the same thing. Now this was really odd!

On day three I noticed a food and water bowl outside my neighbors back door. Later that day I saw the brother with the dog, ah problem solved.

OK, now the damn puppy has adopted me, I can't step outside without getting attacked by this little fur ball. I happen to like dogs so it is not a problem, except getting your toes bitten at 6:30 AM.

Here is the issue though. The property has no fence around it, and these people just leave the critter outside, they are gone everyday from very early, till quite late in the evening. If this puppy is 3 months old I will be amazed, it has no collar, in fact I am quite surprised it has not taken off and got itself run over.

Oh, and our lease specifically states 'no pets'.

All in all I class this whole thing as the very apex of irresponsibility.

These is no doubt that I have spent more time with the darn thing than the owners, after all, I spent several hours outside reading every day.

I don't even know its name, yet I am its best buddy.

I hate to say this, but it is only a matter of time before something bad happens to this cute little puppy. You should only have animals if you are prepared to look after them.

Plane Crash On The Hudson River

2009-02-05T10:05:00.000-08:00

I am not usually a fan of those chain mail jokes that do the rounds on the Internet, I generally do not even open the email, I just put it straight in the garbage can. For some reason I did open this one. No words are required!

Simon In Print!

2009-01-22T07:04:00.000-08:00

Not in a million years did I expect this....

About a year ago on a slow news day I wrote an op-ed piece about a new Temple that had opened in Canada. It cost $40 million to build, and my contention was that it was a waste of money. $40 could finance a good deal of low cost housing, which would be a lot more useful than an ivory tower of worship. Needless to say this article resulted in an amount of hate mail. This of course was the whole point of the exercise, to create dissension.

Yesterday I received an email from a publisher seeking my permission to use the piece in a soon to be released school text book. Get this, it is for a course on religion!

So as of May/1st a bunch of British school kids will be reading my Perls of wisdom hahahahaha

(Mis)Adventures In Reviewing

2009-01-17T09:16:00.000-08:00

Occasionally I venture into product reviews, I don't do it often, and it tends to only be techy type gadgets that have something unique about them. I recently saw a press release for an ultra small external hard drive, the thing was barely bigger than a pack of cigarettes yet could hold 320 gig of data. Better still it appeared to be very flexible, it can be connected via USB, Sata, or Firewire.

I decided that I wanted to play with one, so sent off for a review unit. The PR people were very helpful and told me a unit had been ordered for me and it would be shipping shortly. Fed Ex delivered it on Thursday, and two minutes later I had it in my hot little hands.

The bigest challenge was determining which computer to try it on first. I run a Linux box, and I have had a few hiccups in the past with USB so my first attempt was on an old IBM Thinkpad. I pugged the unit it and absolutely nothing happened! I was not totally surprised, I am pretty certain the Thinkpad is USB 1 and the drive specifically stated USB 2, plus it runs Win 2k, and that may be an issue.

OK, on to the next computer, I decided to hook it up to my linux system and cross my fingers. I plugged it in, and..... absolutely nothing happened. Well once again I was not hugely surprised, I have a IOGEAR media player/hard drive that also does not seem to like Linux.

Oh, don't worry there were still plenty of other computers laying around!

The third attempt would be the proverbial charm, my wife runs a Win XP system with USB 2, this time the unit should bolt right up! So I persuaded Jan to give up her computer for a couple of mins so I could hook up the drive.

I plugged it an and..... nothing happened! Well now I am confused. The company making this gizmo make much of the fact that the unit is easy to open and you can stick in whatever sata drive you want. In fact the box even contains a small screwdriver to get at the ridiculously small screws.

The tech inside me needed to get a peek inside, maybe I could spot the problem of why it wasn't working.

It took no time at all to figure out the problem. There was no damn hard drive in the unit!

I fired off a quick email explaining that it was kind of difficult to review this item, and the following morning a very apologetic company rep called me and told me that a new unit was being sent out asap.

Whats New In Barrett Land?

2008-12-28T09:54:00.000-08:00

Actually it has been surprisingly quiet by my estimation, although I am sure that to regular folks what we class as normal would be classed as anything but by regular folks!

As I survey what most people were call their Living Room, you know TV, stereo, couches, etc, I see all of those, plus a large table that is covered on computers, two desktops and a laptop, two portable DVD players, and the worlds most expensive alarm clock! On the floor I see two more computers and monitors, and box after box of stuff in my to do pile.

When we left Canada, I also left hundreds of CD's and DVD's with my daughter, it appears that it is taking me no time at all to amass a new collection. The mail man doesn't even bother with the mail box most days, he just pulls up in front of the house and honks his horn, a sure sign that more stuff has arrived. UPS know me so well that a package was addressed incorrectly, the guy knocked on the door and said, "address is wrong" but I realized it was for you!"

None of this is new, you move 2000 miles and it is all shades of deja vu.

What is interesting though is I have connected with a PR guy who reps a lot of prog bands from the 70's. Prog rock is one of my favorite genres, and I have had some great access to some great bands. In fact in early 2009 I am hoping to get to talk to Ken Hensley (Uriah Heep).

If you want to check out some of the interviews take a look at my profile on BTR.

Got This In The Mail...

2008-12-16T13:32:00.000-08:00

The email simply read 'Can You Spot The 44th President'?

Too Funny!

AT & Bloody T

2008-12-06T09:12:00.000-08:00

Why can't life every be simple? I suppose it could be argued that that would take the fun out of the whole thing. My latest challenge is our great tecom provider AT&T. I used the phone yesterday morning and everything was fine. I had an interview arrainged with Christian Torres of Los Difuntos scheduled for 1 5pm live radio broadcast, so as usual 15 minutes before we go on the air I dial into New York to get the show staged up, with Christian dialing in 5 minutes later so we can go over the format of the show before we hit prime time.

To my absolute horror I discover a terrible buzzing sound on my damn phone line. In a race to fix the problem I change phone cords, hand sets, and DSL filters. No damn go! Maybe its the DSL modem? So I reboot my computers, the modem, and the router. Still no go. It is now two minutes to air time, poor Christian is sat listening to dead air! I dial back in, and with 90 seconds to spare get the show set up.

Damn humming persists throughout the entire broadcast but luckily it is fairly indistinct on the recorded version.

So I get on the phone with AT&T and after playing twenty questions with the voice activated annoyance system that AT&T employ to dissuade customers from being able to report problems, I finally get a human. This numskull asks the same twenty questions and finally asks me what the problem is. "Can't you hear the damn problem" I ask him. "Oh, all that noise on the line, yeah that would get old" is the helpful reply.

So the unhelpful tech writes up a trouble ticket and drops the bombshell that they likely won't get to it till Monday.

This is just great! We have a one hour talk show scheduled on Sunday!

Airwaves Part Two

2008-11-25T17:59:00.000-08:00

I have to admit that doing radio interviews is a whole lot easier than doing the ole phone deal and then having to try and read my scribbled notes to try and piece an article together. Of course there is a downside, you never know if you are going to have a short or long answer guest, so planning is a key. To run out of questions before the 30 minute segment is in the can would be a huge disaster.

Radio really is a fun experience in time management. Trying to get your questions in and keep the interview flowing can be quite a challenge. The major issue is the ending, I get a 90 second, and a 60 second warning, hell that last minute is tough. No time to ask another question, but to much time to wind the show down.

I love a challenge, and I think I have found a good one. Even Jan has risen to the occasion and is helping me as a co-host on a weekly News Roundup.

Simon Does The Airwaves

2008-11-22T05:37:00.000-08:00

This not working for a living has some real drawbacks. I have way too much time on my hands and that means time to find trouble to get into. And as you all know, I am really good at that. My latest adventure has been into the world of internet radio.

I love the internet, it makes it possible to do the impossible. I know if I trotted down to my local radio station and said "Hi my name is Simon, and I'd like to host a few shows" they would call security and escort me off the premises. The internet though is different, if you want to do it, you can. Best of all it does not cost a dime. All you need is a telephone and a computer and away you go.

You can check out some of my efforts here.

A Music Industry First And A Good One

2008-10-31T09:35:00.000-07:00

I am sure that as most of you that know me, also know that I have some pretty strong views about the music industry, come to think it I have pretty strong views about almost everything except politics.

I do not advocate the piracy of music or video's, to me that is robbing the artist of the few cents on the dollar that he is due for his hard work. Although The RIAA claim the cost per year is in the $billions, I suspect that they are aiming a little high, but certainly there is a $ cost. And certainly the artist, and creator is the one who hurts most. He may only be getting a few cents per CD, but those few cents are what he lives on.

For the longest time I have felt that the Artist is the one getting the short end of the stick.

My opinion about the music world changed yesterday. A couple of days ago I received a copy of Al Stewart's new album Sparks Of Ancient Light. I am a huge Al Stewart fan and couldn't wait to rip the plastic off it and get it on the player.

I had my review written in no time flat. While reading it prior to publishing I realized that it would be so much better if I could embed a track sample, you know, a 30 or 45 second sound byte. So it was off to the world of the internet to see if such a beast existed on Al's web site or the labels web site, alas none was available.

Well I don't give up easy, I am a known entity to Al, his PR folks, and the label, having reviewed most of his now 19 albums at one time or another. So I fired off an email to the record company asking if they has a streaming audio that I could access.

Within minutes, I had my answer, 'no streams available'. But all was not lost. Appleseed went on to say that they had included an MP3 of an entire track, and as long as I promised not to make it available for download I was free to use it in the review. In other words stream it.

In this day and age of RIAA breathing fire over piracy and shared music, I find Appleseed's approach to be a real breath of fresh air.

Oh, and you can read my review here.

Oak Trees + Squirrels + Tin Roofs =Trouble

2008-10-22T11:30:00.000-07:00

Usually I enjoy nature, it is fun to look at it, and marvel at the diversity that exists. Sometimes though, nature and man do not exist together in harmony. The part of Mississippi that we are now living in has an over abundance of squirrel's and Oak trees. This in itself is not an issue. The squirrels perform an admiral job of eating the acorns, and occasionally burying one that the forget about, and a new tree starts to grow.

Unfortunately man has encroached on this squirrel nirvana by putting up houses. The standard house in this neck of the woods has a porch at the front, and a car port at the side.

So whats the problem? I hear you ask.

Well, it is really quiet here, particularly in the middle of the night. Seeing as the weather has cooled off we are not even running the air conditioners 24/7 (a huge sigh of relief comes from my bank account)!

I woke up at 4am, and decided to smoke a cigarette, it is so nice not having to put on the arctic clothing to participate in this filthy habit. So with my robe on, I headed out the back door. Everything was so quiet that you could hear the moon orbit.

Then a sound from near by that sounded like small arms fire, maybe a .22? Well we don't live in the best area in town, but it is hardly a ghetto, so I decided that it likely was not a gun. But what the hell could it be?

Bloody squirrels messing around in an oak tree, dislodging acorns, which when dropped from 30 feet onto a corrugated tin roof makes a noise that could wake up the dead!

Ah, the joys of the deep south!

The Deep South

2008-10-12T15:54:00.000-07:00

Well it certainly is different! We are living in a small Mississippi town, a pin prick on the map! Picayune, it certainly is a lot different to living in a city of over a million. There are most certainly pros and cons.

On the downside Picayune is in a dry county, yup, zero bars! I viewed this as a very bad situation, and I have to admit that I suspected Jan did this on purpose! But those of you that know me, also know that where there is a will there is a way!

It did not take much exploring to discover that the local gas station, and the local supermarket sell beer, oh and its one hell of a lot cheaper than Canada. I also discovered that the local coffee shop three blocks away has a beer license, woo hoo.

The Cafe Amore, is quite the small town gathering point, and although I am an international interloper I have been excepted into the fold. The hot time to visit is between 2 and 3 in the afternoon. It is at this time that an eclectic group of generally dissatisfied people gather around one of the outside tables to bitch and complain about life in general and Picayune in particular.

Non of this group is actually from Picayune, but for one reason or another call this little piece of purgatory home. Cafe owner Angel heralds originally from the Philippines, and moved from New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, his right hand man Trunks is from New York, the ever grumpy and amusing retired restaurateur Chris is Austrian. Others come and go, but this is the core group.

The daily meeting of The Knights Of The Round Table is always a fun event and if you happen to be passing through Picayune well worth stopping in to say hi.

So, as you can see, I am still alive and kicking.I do hope to get back to writing more on here, but this not working for a living has me so damn busy I never seem to have time.

I have to admit though, there is something really nice about telling Jan that I am going off to work, grabbing a chair and sitting on the porch to read for a couple of hours in the mornings.

Whats Not To Love About Moving?

2008-09-18T14:08:00.000-07:00

I have always been firm beleiver that moving sux. And this latest one is no exception. We found a place to rent yesterday, and we move in tomorrow. We had to pass several Acts of Congress but suposedly we have the electric turned on, phone and internet should be working tomorrow, CNN alas won't be running until Thursday of next week, but I will survive.

God only knows what we are going to do for furniture and other luxuries like pots pans plates etc. Oh well, I have always enjoyed a good adventure.

Travels With Loreena McKennitt - by Niema Ash

2008-09-03T09:05:00.000-07:00

The story behind this book is a good one. Niema Ash was Loreena McKennits assistant and confidant for many years. This book however broke up the friendship, and landed up in court, if fact it made it all the way to the House Of Lords (the brit version of the US Supreme Court). In the end the book was pulled from publication, and all copies destroyed. Well not quite all copies, there is one in the British Library, and they refuse to relinquish it.

And there is one sitting on my kitchen table! Mine is even signed by the author!

So what was the furor about? Loreena felt that her privacy had been violated, particularly the sections describing the death of her fiance.

The book also goes into some detail about Loreena McKennitt's management style, which is at odds with the Celtic Goddess image that she likes to portray in public.

Personally I did not find the revelations particularly shocking, but I did find the court case to be of great significance. Most people agree that McKennitt would not have prevailed had the case been heard in the US, but the UK system works a little different.

The shocking part of this case was that the facts stated in the book were not called into question. Everything Niema Ash claimed, stands as true. McKennitt merely objected to the publication!

This creates a very murky precedent, that should have every news organization very worried.

Want a copy? Well I found one for sale.

A Big Day!

2008-08-18T19:31:00.000-07:00

Today was a pretty big day, I realized that I had written over a thousand articles over at Blogger News, actually its sitting at 1011. Holy crap, thats a lot of words! In the past two years of being the Editor over there I have got to talk with some amazing folks, some everyday names, some unknown, but all have been interesting.

while this is not as much fun as interviewing the famous, and maybe rich, I did do something today that was life changing. I resigned! Jan has some family stuff that can not be put on hold. So we are packing up and heading south. Of course this will not be an easy deal, my idea of moving is two suitcases and a computer or five. Jan on the other hand thinks that everything, including the kitchen sink should become part of the adventure!

I can see this becoming a stressful adventure!

Just another boring day in paradise :)

Giggle Of The Day

2008-08-13T17:13:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago during a fit of absolute madness I read a press release about Motley Crue, and their upcoming Crue Fest tour. I apparently contacted the PR folks and said I'd be interested in covering the Calgary concert for Blogger News Network.

I had completely forgotten the entire adventure, apparently the folks at RED (I think they are part of Sony) had not forgotten. There are two press passes and a Photog credential waiting for me to pick up for tomorrow nights adventure into Metal!

God, what was I thinking? Needless to say, my Country music loving wife is overjoyed at the prospect of 6 hours of aural assault by Motley Crue and the various other bands.

I suspect that Jan won't be speaking to me for days after this adventure.

Further Adventures In Reviewing

2008-08-03T11:12:00.000-07:00

As most people who know me will attest, I do have some interesting habits when it comes to reviewing. My mother used to say "You can't judge a book by its cover". well mother that is a load of crap! You can indeed learn a great deal from the cover, and that is not limited to books, CD's and DVD's are equally good candidates for the cover test.

Yesterday I was looking for something to review, I have no shortage of stuff, just a shortage of stuff that passes my cover test.

Pretty much experience has told me that if the cover art contains Skulls, Dead People, Blood, or depictions of Hell the music genre is likely to be Death Metal. Equally telling is if the Bands name or the CD title contains words like Atrocity or Malevolent. Any CD or DVD that hits this early quality control test immediately go to the bottom of the pile. Actually to be accurate, they go in the bottom box of the pile of boxes!

So there I was diligently going through recent arrivals when I stumbled upon Passing Train by Joel Harrison. It looked harmless, so I took it out for a whirl. I really liked it, great little CD. So I stuck up a quick review.

The problem though, was where the hell did it come from? I know the 'calling cards' of most of the publicists I work with, but this CD was different. The press release was not one that I recognized, there was no contact info! Now I was really confused. It had to have come from somewhere, and my shipping address while not a state secret, is not something I have posted anywhere.

I searched the cavern that is my email repository and could find no reference to either the singer or the album. Well someone wants to know that the review is up, but who the hell is it?

Well I decided that if nothing else, I could at least tell the srtist Joel Harrison that it was live. It was pretty easy to track down an email addy, so I sent him an email explaining that I had no idea where it came from, but I liked it, and the review was running.

A couple of hours later Joel got back to me:

ummm, that was me, I sent it. A publicist I know gave me a few addresses, so I sent the copy.

Problem solved! Oh and I do like the CD, so I hope lots of people rush out and order it. Give Joel a chance, oh and tell him I sent you! I have not heard back from him yet, but I am hoping to do an interview with him.

SimonB The New King Of Spam..

2008-08-03T10:57:00.000-07:00

Well, thats not true, but Google decided that I was. Yes folkes I was one of the thousands of Blogger users that our friends at Google decided to play a late April Fools Day joke on. I received an email from them informing me that I had a Spammy blog and they were locking it out so I could no longer post articles. If I wanted to grovel with them about it I needed to click on a link and they would manually review it.

To say I was pissed is putting it lightly, and so I launched a couple of tirades on Blogger News. Being the Editor of a Google News accredited site does have its perks! About 6 hours later with no apology or explanation the lockout was removed.

'Do No Evil', great company philosophy!

You Know Things Are Going Bad.....

2008-07-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

...when you write a harmless story and you get an email from CBS and they want to interview you.

Of course when I dialed the number all I got was his voice mail, but the day is young.

You just never know what is going to happen next in the silly world of news and reviews. I received an email from Oliver Wakeman today, asking me to change a link that I had used in my interview with him. Oliver, for those of you that live under rocks, is Rick Wakeman's son. And if you don't recognize that name (keyboard player on Yes), you must be living under a very large rock.

Wow, I must be famous!

The Week In Review(s)

2008-06-28T17:16:00.000-07:00

It has been an interesting week to say the least. I did two interviews on Friday, one was with Oliver Wakeman, thats Rick Wakeman's son. Rick is, or was. the maestro of the keyboards for the band Yes. I have watching both Rick and Oliver for forever.

I interviewed Rick last year, so it was with great pleasure that I interviewed the next generation of Wakeman musical geniuses. I really like Oliver, he has no pretensions, what you see is what you get.

Somehow I got caught into reviewing an alarm clock. Well it is not your regular deal, this thing does everything but make the coffee, oh and it has the best speaker system I have ever heard. It is outrageously expensive at $350, but it sounds so good you will want one.

I also got a couple of galleys this week. They are hitting the bookstores in September. They are both great books, and they both deserve to be on the NYT best seller list. Actualy I am willing to bet that one of them will make that coveted slot. Homeland Insecurity is the most damning work I have ever read about the US government. Author Terry Turchie takes no prisoners, from Nixon to the Bush administration, they all get a good beating.

I really have not read enough of the other galley to make any judgments. But it certainly looks like a great read.

There were two or three other books that passed over my eyes. Two were great, one was not quite up to par. First time authors come in all shapes and forms. Some though skip the vital step of having an editor carve and hack. Now I am the first to admit that I hate my stuff being dissected by anyone. But the past two years of being a reviewer have changed my mind.

Without a good editor, you are screwed.

Have a great day!

Adventures In The Asanine

2008-06-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

One of the huge mistakes we have made in 'moving forward' is the almost inevitable consequence of 'moving backward'.

Jan and I had been discussing opening a joint savings account with the assholes that I bank with. Oh, and I'll name them CIBC. Anyway, I went to their website, and it was pretty easy opening an account, just for grins I even put some money in it. I opened the account at the same branch that I have been banking with for 6 years.

My next plan was to add Jan to the account. The bank beat me to the punchline. A couple of days after opening it, they called me. Not to thank me for opening the account, but telling me I had to get to the branch PDQ to sign a signature card. Huh? I already have an account, they already have a damn signature card.

The (not from around here) guy on the other end of the line was relieved when I explained that I was planning on visiting the branch the following day, and that I wanted to add my wife to the account. "what do we need?" I asked, "She needs two pieces of ID and it will be no problem".

So, we enter the bank at 10am, right on time, Mr. Not-From-Around-Here invites us to sit down.

Out of left field he askes me for two pieces of ID. Well this is my damn account, I opened it, and I had already spoken to Osama Bin Teller on the phone. I hand him two pieces of ID plus my bank card, and cannot resist a minor dig about how much easier banking is now the internet is here.

'None of that tedious dealing with people', the humor missed Osama Bin Teller by several hundred miles.

"So you want to open an account" he asks, "no, I already have, all I want to do is add my wife to it".

It went downhill from that point. Osama Bin Teller could not grasp the idea that when Jan was born her name was Jan x, and that is the name on her birth certificate (one of the pieces of ID that Osama had told me was OK to use). Next Jan became Jan Y, she got married, and then divorced, her current passport is in the name of Jan Y (Oh, Osama told me passports were OK).
Then Jan and I got married, so now she is Jan Z.

I had smelled a rat early on so I told Jan to bring out marriage certificate as well. We have the original, but we also have a copy, so I told her to just bring the copy.

Yes, you guessed it, Osama and his boss (some other banking terrorist) refused to put Jan on the account. Needless to say I gave Osama Bin Teller a good earful, but I suspect he didn't understand it all because English was obviously not his primary language.

The way I look at it is, if I want to give someone the run of my house, I go to the local Wally World and get a key cut, and I give them the key. It is that simple.

Banks though are a whole different universe. It's OK though, I have a plan 'B', I am going to open an account with a different bank, and CIBC can weep. I'll take my $5 and put it somewhere where they like me.

The Week In Review(s)

2008-06-13T04:15:00.000-07:00

Well it has been a pretty interesting week. Lots of strange things happened. Maybe the strangest thing was the arrival of the Sonoro Cubo. What is it? I hear you ask. Well believe it or not I was asked to review an alarm clock radio. But it's not your regular WalMart $20 deal. This is a designer deal out of Germany that is being sold exclusively through Saks 5th Avenue at the low low price of $350!

I haven't written the review yet, but this is a pretty awesome object d'art. It not only is a Clock Radio but also a CD player, or you can dock other devices to it. The quality of the audio is amazing. It is reminiscent of the Bose Wave Radio. In fact right now I am using it as my primary speaker system, it is way better than the speakers I was using!

Everyone should have one of these!

In the book world it was a slow week, I actually ran out of books! This is something that happens about once a year. But I did get to read James Heaphey's new book. Jim is a great guy, and a superb storyteller. This book How To Survive In An Organization is a business book, not a genre I usually dabble in. But Jim puts his own unique spin on it. I can honestly say that I enjoyed reading it.

My vacation from books ended yesterday with the arrival of four of them in the mail. I also have two galleys heading my way. These books are slated for a fall release, and I am really looking forward to getting a sneak peek. I can not tell you anything about them, I am sworn to secrecy. But one of them is almost certainly bound for the best seller list. Oh the joys of having friends in the publishing world!

The music world was a blur this week. But what was notable was a new DVD by Rick Wakeman. I am a big fan of Rick's, Grumpy Old Picture Show is essentially a one man gig, but very cleverly done. I also got an early look at his son Oliver's new DVD which is being released in July. Oliver is following in his fathers footsteps, prog rock! I hope to be interviewing Oliver next week.

I am so far behind with music reviews that I have enlisted Jans help. She has done a stellar job. But she doesn't have the staying power of a seasoned pro hahahaha As you can see with this story.

Life In The Trenches

2008-06-07T18:26:00.000-07:00

It has been hell on Earth at the Barrett ranch for the past couple of weeks.

One of the problems with being a reviewer is having to deal with the Canadian version of Homeland Security, and even worse the damn idiots that run the customs and excise department. Here is the deal, I am asked if I would do a review of an alarm clock radio. It sounded good to me, plus my lovely wife Jan has trashed the existing one. Of course there was a hitch, it isn't your regular $20 Wal Mart one, it is a $350 designer one from Germany. The bozos that supposedly are protecting our borders (tho I can not for the life of me figure out from who) decided that they needed to tax me. So if I want this 'free' clock radio I have to pay them $90!

Needless to say, no one is happy. I was so pissed off about it, I just ignored it. The latest development is that the PR company is picking up the tab and I should see it Monday.

The other classic screw up that occurred was a TV preview. TV is pretty easy, you get a DVD and you post the review two days before it airs. It could not be easier. OK here is the deal, I get a preview DVD from HBO, and I am absolutely convinced that it airs on June/2, so I bust my butt to get the review running. HBO tells me "wow that was quick". It was days later that I discover the show didn't air till June/9. Oh well, thats life in the trenches.

The other low spot of the week involves an interview with a leading Cancer researcher. I asked the simple question "Can you tell us a little about yourself (short bio)', his response was to send me a 35 page CV! (CV is resume for the ludites that might be reading this) About the only piece of information that is not in this guys CV is the name of his pet Goldfish.

I was supposed to be quoted on the back of a book. You know the deal, a one liner, almost every book has them. I got the book, and I am not mentioned! I was pissed. But I have the last laugh. The type setters have screwed up, and the book has to be reprinted.

There were some good bits to the week, but I am too lazy to write about them.

Oh, well except that Jan and I met 5 years ago. Happy anniversary honey.

The Interview That Never Happened

2008-05-23T06:05:00.000-07:00

I do a lot of interviews, it is an aspect that I really enjoy. In the last week I talked with Larry Cohen, he was the guy that created the cult TV series 'The Invaders' and the movie franchise 'It's Alive', great stuff! I also talked with Dan Cattulo, he is a film maker specializing in music video. He was the producer/director of the new Steve Miller Band DVD. Yesterday I chatted with Elvis, hell I get around!

People seem to like my interviews, and I think I do a pretty good job with them. But you can't please everyone.

I also managed to get rebuffed a couple of times last week. I have been writing articles about the Payday Loan industry, and specifically what the law makers are doing. The esteemed South Carolina senator Joel Lourie is avoiding me like I have rabies. I am guessing that I am off his Christmas card list.

But the ultimate interview rejection came from Canada's most prominent and media friendly scientist. I have been covering a series for a US based cable station, this weekly show features sound bites from this Canadian scientist. So I decided to go for an interview. The interview was declined because 'it would be more appropriate if the interviewer was in the US'. hahaha What a giggle, Blogger News is US based, I just happen to live in Canada!

Reviewing In Hell

2008-05-12T16:43:00.000-07:00

I swear I am drowning in damn review material right now. There just are not enough hours in the day!

Anyway, I am currently covering the Sundance Channels Big Idea For A Small Planet series. It is a pretty entertaining show that looks at companies and organizations that are eco friendly. The nice folks at sundance sent me a gift pack to get rid of. So if you have time check out my article about it. And leave a comment on the article, the swag could be yours!

Where Have I Been?

2008-04-23T18:02:00.000-07:00

Cos I obviously have not been writing on here.....

The simple answer is that I have been pretty busy in the review world. And recently it has been in the world of TV. The strange thing is that all of the work has been for US cable stations, and although the stations air in Canada, they tend to have a Canada schedule which tends to be weeks or months behind the US.

I played with HBO on their great series John Adams. And I know that HBO must be pretty pleased with the series, because I could not believe the hits my reviews got. So when you extrapolate out, they had a lot of viewers for their 7 part series.

Right now I am playing with Discovery with their hot series 'Deadliest Catch', this is a fabulous series that follows the fortunes of crab fishing in the Bering Sea. I am having a few issues with the 'go betweens' but I am sure they will work themselves out.

Next week sees the premier of a great show on Animal Planet 'Raw Nature', I can't tell you to much about it, I have been asked to hold the review till next Tuesday. But I can tell you, this is a show worth checking out. If I was asked to sum it up in one sentence, I would say "This is Mike Rowe meets Godzilla". If you are looking for something to watch next Tuesday evening try Animal Planet at 9pm.

I have a couple more series hopefully blasting off soon as well. I'll keep you posted.

On the gizmo front I got to review a Portable Media Player for IOGEAR. It blew my mind, a little box the size of a cigarette pack that could store 50 hours of DVD quality video. Load the little gizmo up with your favorite DVD's, then plug it into a regular TV and you can watch them! Or if you prefer music you can slap 30,000 MP3's on it! Just amazing. In fact I get to interview one of the big wigs at IOGEAR on Friday.

So, I am still around, I have just been busy with stuff.

How To Create An Olympic Logo

2008-04-12T08:40:00.000-07:00

I can not claim ownership of these pix. I got them from a PR company I work with, but they certainly hit the spot!

What Friends I Have!

2008-04-03T19:38:00.000-07:00

One of the perks of being a reviewer is that every so often you make new friends. Sometimes something just clicks, and a new friend is born. Even stranger, several of the authors, and musicians that I have reviewed, are now writers for the very place I write for!

One of the best guys that I have come across is author James (Jim) Heaphey. Jim authored a wonderful book Legerdemain, which I really enjoyed. One thing led to another, and now we are friends. When he told me that he and his wife were heading off for three months in Cyprus (to promote the book) I was envious, and I asked him if Jan and I could come along as paid bloggers.

This was the result!

Thanks Jim!

An Adventure In Retro Computing

2008-03-28T21:36:00.000-07:00

I am a big fan of 'Iron Chef', this is a great series, two chefs battle for 60 minutes to produce a 5 course meal using a 'secret ingredient'. I love the idea of a wild adventure.

The computer world is sometimes like 'Iron Chef', you have no idea what you are going to be asked to do. This weeks challenge sounded simple, move 5 meg of data from one laptop to another. Walk in the park was my first thought. How difficult can it be to transfer 5 meg?

Well, it was a little trickier than I had imagined. The laptop was ancient, it was running Win 95! I should have said "NO", but of course I said "sure I can do this". And then the problems started!

A quick look at this aging laptop revealed that it had limited capabilities. No USB, no Ethernet, oh, and no floppy drive. This makes it more exciting.

Right about now I am considering the idea of getting Jan to just re-type the damn documents and we can get this monkey off our backs.

It did have a modem though. This could be a breakthrough. Alas it was not, the Win 95 installation was a little 'banged up' and while the modem 'modemed', it refused to connect to the ISP that I use. The problem was in the TCP/IP stacks. I am a bit of a pack rat, but search as I did, I could not find a Win 95 CD.

My next plan was to upgrade the pc to Win 98, but the only CD's I had were 'For A New Computer Only' versions. And the last thing I wanted to do was reformat the drive.

Plan 'C' was to install Win 2k, this worked well for about 2 minutes, then I got the 'you don't have enough RAM message.

Hmmm, I thought, actually I was swearing up a storm by this time.

It was time to think outside the box.....

"Go back young man" was the thought that went through my mind.

So it was 'back to the future', way back when, I used to use something called Laplink. Laplink allowed you to copy files between computers using a funky cable connected to the printer port. Being a retro kind of a guy I just happened to have one of those funky cables, and 2 minutes of Googling found some shareware that would do the job.

It didn't exactly work like a charm, there was much wailing and complaining from both laptops, I guess the clocking on the parallel ports was not quite in sync, but it worked!

Sometimes you just have to go backwards to go forward!

The Week In Review(s)

2008-03-22T03:19:00.000-07:00

Well it has been a pretty busy week in the land of reviews and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. When I first got into this business the problem I had was one of restraint. A movie would arrive but it was not due to 'street' for 3 weeks, so you had to 'sit' on it for a while. Now I have the opposite problem, I have so many of the damn things it is a juggling act to get them out before the street date.

TV was the big problem over the past week, TV has its own unique challenge you need to get the review up between 48 and 72 hours before the program airs. Anyway, I am covering the HBO miniseries John Adams. This is a 7 part deal, and part 1 and part 2 aired last Sunday. Of course someone at HBO managed to screw up, and forgot to get the screeners out to the reviewers, and HBO ended up having to Fed-Ex everything last Thursday. This didn't leave a lot of time for the reviews. What did impress me though was the 'press kit', it was the size of a book! Part 3 airs tomorrow at 9pm.

HBO is also premiering a documentary Autism - The Musical.

On the 25th Stephen King's The Mist hits the stores. This is a two DVD collectors version. I am not really into the horror genre, so I had to get Jan to help get that one out in time.

There was a whole pile of other stuff, books, a couple of interviews, a couple of indie movies, and some music. Too much to detail. But if yyou want to read em they are here.

500 Reasons To Not Become A Reviewer

2008-03-12T10:29:00.000-07:00

I was caught in a no win situation last week. Jan has been whining for the longest time about the lack of shelves in our apartment. Unfortunately she mentioned this to my daughter Laura. Laura is a pack-rat, she has never thrown anything out in her whole life. "Oh dad" she says "remember the IKEA shelves that were in the playroom". .... It went downhill from there. I remembered the shelves very well, and if shelves could qualify for 'frequent flier miles' these would qualify for a couple of first class tickets around the world. To the best of my knowledge that have had a couple of trips to England, at least two to Canada, and a 10 year vacation in the US.

I love my daughter dearly, but I could wring her neck, she brought the damn shelving over the next day. I tried the 'But honey, I don't have any tools' approach, and this just resulted in a glare that would freeze molten lava.

I borrowed a thing from work, its a #11 (whatever the hell that might be), and assembled the darn things. I did have the last laugh, once I got it made I told Jan that I planned on putting all of the stuff I reviewed last year on it. The blood drained from her face. She was in shock.

So I did!

That is one years of Books, CD's, and DVD's! Well, almost, it doesn't have the 80 to a 100 items that we gave away.

Most regular folks read maybe 10 books a year, they buy 20 CD's and about 10 DVD's.

Where did I go wrong?

Oh How Times Change!

2008-03-08T04:37:00.000-08:00

The internet is a remarkable place, you just never know what is going to happen next. Yesterday in my email I received a letter from a guy who i have not seen nor spoken to in over 30 years, Gary Rixon. At age 9 my parents moved to a small village in not far from Oxford in England. West Hendred boasted a population of about 300, and consisted of a pup 'The Hare' (my parents ran it), a shop and post office, a Church with a Vicar, and a primary school.

About 15 years ago I visited England for a week, and I have to say I was not impressed by what I found. I even made a pilgrimage to West Hendred. The church no longer has a vicar, the village school had long since closed, the Shop and Post Office gone, It was as if the very heart of the village had been removed.

The village schools headmaster Mr. Prossir had long since retired and I went to visit him. It was delightful to spend some time talking about the long and distant past.

My other destination was 'The Hare', boy the place had changed. Odd to walk into your 'home' and not recognize it. I had aranged to meet a very old friend Jim Spey. Jim was one of my heros growing up, a proud Scotsman, resplendent in Kilt and Dirk, with a Rosewood pipe in his mouth. Ex BBC reporter, ex code breaker, and connoisseur of Single Malt Whiskey. Jim had aged, but was still sprightly and engaging. It was two hours that I will always have fond memories of. It was this visit that provoked me to write a short story 'Death of a Country' which I will have to dig out and re-post.

Anyway, Gary apparently had run across this blog and wrote to ask if I was the same Simon Barrett. Better still he included a photo. A photo of the entire village school attendees taken in about 1965. In this day and age of classes overflowing with 35+ kids, and schools boasting pupils by the thousands it is sometimes nice to look back at the way it was.........

Yes folks that was the whole school, and the two teachers! For those of you interested, pictured in the photo are:

Back row left to right: Tina Hazel / Christopher Bullard? / Lucille Harris / Peter Robey / Anne Kearvill or Louise Harris / Michael Hislop / Mr. Prosser / Simon Barrett.

Middle row left to right: Gary Rixon / Aden Atkins / Robert Atkins / Mrs. Phillips / Charles Brewer / Brother of Gail North? / Gail North.

Front row left to right: Belinda Rogan / ? / Miriam or Susan Rogan / Jane Rogan / Barry Dwight.

Anyone know where these people are?

The Week In Review(s)

2008-03-07T05:10:00.000-08:00

Well it has been an interesting week. A while back I was contacted by an author, he claimed that my theories about O.J. Simpson's guilt were completely wrong, what I needed to do was read his book, and the truth would be revealed. Oh, who can turn down an offer like that?

So this week I read the book, absolute pile of crap! It is so bad that I have decided to go ahead and write a review. Normally with crap books I just stick them in a dark corner and pretend they don't exist, but this guy deserves all he gets.

In fact he has ticked me off so much that I am in the process of getting quotes from Daniel Petrocelli who was the lead attorney in the civil trial, and Fred Goldman. This idiot book trashes both of them as being gold diggers. The author is going to wish he had never emailed me hahaha

On the music front, well that damn 'to do' pile is getting really big, I have lost count on how many cd's are waiting. It is just a daunting thought. About the only good thing was that my daughter came to visit, and I managed to persuade her to take some away with her. It wasn't nearly enough though. She only took about 10, 50 would have been better.

The high spot of the week in music was the new Clive Nolan double CD. Recorded under the name Caamora, She is a classic rock opera. I love prog rock and this is prog rock at it's very best.

I have been trying to get an interview with Clive for months, to no avail. But of course with this new CD coming out suddenly he wants to talk to the press! The problem that I faced though was Caamora is not being released in the US till May. So my distributor here is not going to have it till April. No prob, I went straight to the record label who are in Poland, they were delighted to send me a copy and arrange the interview with Clive (who is in England). Of course the blasted CD's didn't get here in a timely manner, and I ended up having to FTP a digital version from Poland.

The label was happy to do the FTP, but boy they were paranoid, I guess their FTP server is not as secure as it might be, and having the CD images on there was not their favorite. They had them deleted within a couple of minutes of me getting them.

With the panic over I was able to conduct the interview. You can find the review on http://www.bloggernews.net or do a google news search on Caamora.

Pile Meltdown!

2008-02-25T10:31:00.000-08:00

I was enjoying a relaxing Sunday afternoon, I had a couple of non critical articles to finish up, and a couple of movies that needed reviewing, but they could wait a week or so.

Life was fine until Jan and I heard a thump from outside. I peeked out the window and to my horror saw a Canada Post truck parked outside the house. My worst fears were realized when I opened the door, a dreaded Clint box! But this was a Clint box on steroids!

I openned it up and I am now the proud owner of 37 more DVD's and CD's that need to be reviewed!

Exploding Piles

2008-02-23T03:04:00.000-08:00

I may have made a bit of a mistake by getting involved with a Sony/BMG label. They contacted me about 10 days ago and asked if I would be interested in reviewing a new artist, an Irish singer/songwriter by the name of Paddy Casey. Well it seemed harmless enough, it wasn't 'Death Metal', 'Remix', or 'Rap', so I said sure, send it on over.

Sony working on the principle of 'it's cheaper by the box' decided that they would add a few extra items. So instead of one CD there were about 10 of them. Mercifully most of them were harmless.

My favorite was a promo for the new Black Crowes album Warpaint that is being released soon, favorite because it only contained one track hahahaha. The bad news is I did an article about it, and now they want to send me the whole album. And I'll bet a dollar that when it arrives it won't be traveling alone!

The piles will be further exploding in the near future thanks to Robert Redford's Sundance cable channel. I have just agreed to two weekly series for them. The Green, is a great show, and I did season one for them last year, so I am quite looking forward to that. It is a series about people and companies using eco friendly approaches to life and business.

They want to use the same format as we did last year, each week I do the review a couple of days before the show airs, and include a short interview with one of that weeks guests. I like that, interviews are fun, and I sure interacted with some curious people last time.

Sundance are also premiering another series that promises to be fairly interesting. Take four young men of Arab origin and relatively new in America, stick em in an RV for 10 weeks and let them explore the country. I think this should be quite interesting.

The net result of this is going to be another 18 DVD's to add to the damn piles! I guess I am going to have to do something with them soon.

One of the genres of music that I enjoy because I am an aging hippie is Prog Rock. And beleive it or not the center on the Prog Rock universe is Katowicz Poland, and specifically the company Metal Mind Productions. One of the artists that they represent is Clive Nolan, Clive is a fascinating musician, he looks, sounds, composes, and acts just like Rick Wakeman in the 1970's.

I have been trying to get an interview with him for over 6 months, which is how long it took me to get an interview with Rick Wakeman (they even treat the press the same way hahaha).

Well last week I saw a press release about Clive, he has a new double CD being released, and there are interview opportunities. The problem though is the CD is not being released in the US until after the interview opportunity. I know that the US distributor will send it to me, but that will be too late. So I got hold of my Metal Mind connection, they are shipping the CD direct from Poland, and I have my interview op with Clive in England. You have to love the global environment that we live in!

Thou Shalt Not Fileshare My Movie!

2008-02-23T02:43:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week I received a preview copy of an upcoming movie release. This in itself is not unusual, I get lots of them. But what was unusual about this one was the letter that came with it. Sometimes distributors include a tear sheet with details about the plot synopsis, and actor bios. Not so this studio, the one page closely typed letter is all about not duplicating or file sharing the movie.

It mentions at least three times the fact that this DVD has an individual digital watermark in it, and if it appears on Bit-torrent they will know who did it!

In fact the DVD is not even mine! It is just on loan to me, but they don't want it back! I am not allowed to lend it out, or show it to unauthorized people. I guess Jan won't get to watch it hahaha

All in all I view this as slight overkill. Being long in the tooth in this reviewing game there is no way I bit-torrent a preview disc, of course it is going to be watermarked. If I was going to get involved in piracy I would use a store bought copy. Not that I have any interest in pirating anything. Why the hell would I want to pirate anything?

Oh, and this movie was not from some no-name indie organization, it was from one of the big studios (name withheld to protect the stupid).

The Tools Of The Trade

2008-02-16T15:37:00.000-08:00

Yup, the reviewing game needs some tools. And they might surprise you. Books are pretty easy, you just need light and eyes. CD's and DVD's though are a different beast. For a while I used computers to play them. But I was never happy with the quality, particularly with DVD's. It was a constant fight with Codecs, and region codes.

I'll bet you have never even heard of Region Codes. Well they are yet another insidious way that the music and movie industry control what you can and cannot do with the product you have purchased. In a nutshell it works like this:

REGION 1 -- USA, Canada
REGION 2 -- Japan, Europe, South Africa, Middle East, Greenland
REGION 3 -- S.Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Parts of South East Asia
REGION 4 -- Australia, New Zealand, Latin America (including Mexico)
REGION 5 -- Eastern Europe, Russia, India, Africa
REGION 6 -- China
REGION 7 -- Reserved for Unspecified Special Use
REGION 8 -- Reserved for Cruise Ships, Airlines, etc...
REGION 0 or REGION ALL -- Discs are uncoded and can be played Worldwide, however, PAL discs must be played in a PAL-compatible unit and NTSC discs must be played in an NTSC-compatible unit.

In a nutshell, if you buy a DVD in Europe it will not play on a US DVD player. Great system eh?

What a f'ing scam I say.

Oops I have digressed. I was talking about the weapons of the trade. Well I use a couple of portable DVD players and an old LCD Projector.

Now I know that most households have absolutely none of these devices. But they work great for watching DVD's. The one on the left has a 10 inch, and the one on the right a 9 inch screen. That might sound small, but they work great.

Pile Technology

2008-02-16T14:55:00.000-08:00

I have talked about my use of piles before. Basically my theory is based around a three pile methodology, the To D0 Pile, The Done Pile, And The Keep Pile. Of course this three pile system has a few problems and exceptions to it. It has been necessary to create a few sub piles, we have the time critical pile, this is generally reserved for previews of TV shows, and tends to be fairly small, right now there are only two HBO documentaries on it. We also have the duplicate pile, yes believe it or not I get duplicates of stuff, and it happens a lot!

The biggest issue is the 'Done Pile', this is without doubt the hardest pile to manage, and requires constant attention. Essentially everything ends up on the 'Done Pile', and when it starts to eat us out of house and home we go through it and decide which items we want to keep, the rest gets put in boxes that we hide around the apartment. Right now the 'Done Pile' is getting out of hand!

Ah, the joys of being a reviewer!

Jan Saves The Day!

2008-02-14T19:27:00.000-08:00

The amount of DVD's for review that I was receiving was reaching a critical mass. My original plan was to use the aging, but still working projector. We could watch the big screen, AKA the wall. But it worked fine, the problem that was nagging at me was the projector, or more exactly the bulb that it uses. An internet search revealed that a new bulb was going to be at least $400, that was approximately $399 more than I was prepared to spend.

My solution was to go out and but a portable DVD player with a 7 inch screen. That might sound small, but we are in a small apartment, and it works great, or at least worked great. For the past couple of weeks though it has been hit or miss. No doubt it was not designed with me in mind. We sling two or three DVD's or CD's on it a day. We watch, we review, we stick it in a box. Unfortunately for the past couple of weeks we have had about a 40% failure rate on playing stuff. But it all plays fine on the computers.

I was ready to just go out and buy a new one, but Jan has a better idea! Jan is a pack rat! She found the receipt, and the original box. It turns out that it came with a 90 day 'in store' warranty,
and right now we are on something like day 82. So it is off to Wal-Mart in the morning. I doubt I will tell them how many discs have been through the unit, that would likely void some other warranty!

Ticked Off Film Maker

2008-02-09T06:42:00.000-08:00

Being a reviewer is not always an easy job. You certainly cannot please everyone. In many ways it is a tightrope act. On the one hand you want to be fair to the artist, but on the other hand writing a rave review for a mediocre product does no one any good. People will go out and buy stuff only to discover that it is not nearly as good as the review would have you believe.

I tend to work on the assumption that the 'thing' being reviewed, and it could be a book, music, or a movie, is the very best that the artist can do, he or she has put their heart and soul into it. On the odd occasion that I come across something that I genuinely do not like, I still try and find some redeeming feature in it.

For the most part this formula works quite well.

But what happens when you write a good review and the artist hates it? Well this was a first for me. I reviewed an indie movie, documentary in fact, by a fairly 'off the wall' film maker, I gave it a pretty positive review, tho I did remark that the film maker seemed a little eccentric. Well the guy went up one side of me and down the other! So F him, and the horse he rode in on!

He will get no further coverage from me. In fact he is such an ass, I won't even share his name.

Bloody Weather

2008-02-08T09:33:00.000-08:00

Who in their right mind would live in Calgary? Jan is firmly convinced that Calgary weather is an invention of the devil!

We, well I, got up a few minutes before 6am. At six we turned the TV on to the watch the local morning news program. The little information bar at the bottom of the screen revealed that it was a balmy -5c outside. -5c is not bad, you need a jacket, but it is pretty livable. Of course Calgary weather is about as stable as Britanny Spears, and by 6:30am it had changed to -18c, and a wind chill of -30c. The TV weather guy then went on to explain that we are due for 40mph winds, ans snow! By tomorrow morning the temperature with wind chill will be at least -40c. Oh and for you folks that don't do Celsius, -40 is where Celsius and Fahrenheit come together. -40 is really stinking cold!

The good news is, I have a plan. I am going to call a cab and go get a good stock of beer so that I can sit this one out!

It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time

2008-02-07T20:41:00.000-08:00

That is pretty much my mantra for life. Now sometimes it can come back to haunt you. A good example was this week. A while back I reviewed a fairly eclectic documentary by a New York Film Maker. I liked it, it was different. Well we started swapping emails, and before I knew it I had another 6 of his movies. Now, he wasn't expecting me to do anything with them, except watch them at some point.

I of course decided that he needed some exposure, so I launched into the Richard Sandler film fest. A review a day, for a week. I am on day four, I love the movies, but boy am I burnned out. A movie a day is just a little much. Meanwhile, the damn books are piling up, I just did a quick look around and it seems to me there are 11 in the queue. There is also a fairly impressive pile of DVD's, god only knows what they are.

I was also contacted a few days ago by one of Sony/BMG's labels, they seem to think that I would have the perfect home for the 75 new releases that they have planned for the first 6 months of this year!

Tangines, Whats The Big Deal?

2008-02-03T12:49:00.000-08:00

Whats a bloody Tangine? Well its a traditional cooking vessel from Morocco. Basically it is a clay pot, that looks like something you would bake an apple pie in, circular, and with a diameter of somewhere between 12 and 15 inches. The neat bit is the lid, a conical chimney, which is open at the top.

Morocco is a pretty poor country apart from the drug trade, and I'm sure you can buy a truck load of Tangines for $20.

I love to cook, and I love to explore new things, Jan hates it, but generally goes along. I am pretty certain that she thinks living with me is like being permanently on 'Fear Factor'.

For weeks now I keep seeing Tangines on the damn TV. This afternoon I was happily writing a review of 'Swamp Thing', yes the cheesy TV series from the 1990's, when another damn Tangine appeared on TV. That was it, Swampie was out Tangines were in. "I want one of those" I told Jan.

Some quick research revealed that there are two basic varieties, the glazed and decorated type, these are designed for presentation more than cooking. Well thats not what I want, I want to cook. The second sort is for the most part unglazed, and you have to soak them in water before using. Thats what I want!

Then I hit the sticker shock! Only a few places sell Tangines, and they want $100 for one! What a bloody rip off! At the very most they should be $20. So Tangines have gone on the back burner for now!

Why I Like Indie Movies

2008-02-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

I probably belong to the minority in this one. I have no interest in standing in line for hours in the freezing cold to go and watch the the latest $200 million flop from the big studios. In fact in my opinion the whole movie industry is just a complete farce. The majors seem to have created a 'cookie cutter' approach. Take a famous brand name Director, or failing that, anyone whose name includes the word 'Speilberg'.

Next, select the leading man and leading lady, this is where it gets a little harder, your best bet are those 'house hold' names that have most recently been released from Detox. You want to get em nice and clean and sober. Of course this will not last long, so you want to make sure the shooting schedule is pretty aggressive. Certainly no longer than 3 months. Else they will be wanting to 'go dry out' again.

Early in the shooting cycle you want to make sure that you get your leading lady and leading guy on as many late night talk shows as possible. This will vastly increase the 'hype' factor behind the enormous scam being played on the unsuspecting theatre goer.

Even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with the storyline, if the leading lady has any sex appeal at all, you will want to get some footage of her naked. This can be spliced in afterwards as a filler for spots when the dialog gets truly awful.

What about the plot and storyline? Oh, that's cake, put up a Craiglist Ad, asking for a 500 word synopsis of a movie. You will get hundreds of dumb ideas, you might even get some intelligent ones. If that happens, throw them away. Select the absolute dumbest from remaining ones. For a couple of grand any old hack screenwriter can eek 500 words into a 100 minute yawner.

If this sounds like too much effort, and for the past several years this has indeed been the case. Either do a remake of a movie that made it big 20 years ago, or do a sequel to something more modern. If you are super creative you might also try a 'prequel', For example, instead of 'Grumpy Old Men', do Nasty Kindegarteners! And if all else fails, take a cheesy 80's TV series and appall the audience with the silver screen version.

I'll just stick to my Indie Movies, not everyone is great, but almost every single one is better by far than the noxious crap served up at the MegaPlex!

Wow! I Am Honored!

2008-01-26T03:01:00.000-08:00

I can't believe this one. I have been asked to do a 'blurb' for a book. I here you ask 'whats a blurb'?

Well pick up the average book, like 80% of them, and look at the back cover, they have those one sentence reviews written by famous people. Well I have been asked if I would do one for a book coming out on June! This is the next best thing to actually being an author.

Now if that isn't bragging rights I don't know what is.

I also received an really interesting manuscript this week. Alas it looks like its publication is going to be delayed for a while. It concerns the assassination of Martin Luther King, unfortunately the author and publisher are concerned about some potential litigation from the 'very far right' white supremacy sector, and have decided to spend more time backing up their assertions. Now personally I would be more concerned about my personal safety rather than the potential for a law suit. These are some not very nice people to have on their 'bad side'.

Ah, the joys of being a reviewer, I get to review things that don't actually exist yet! hahahaha

Book Reviewing Makes You Smarter!

2008-01-18T06:13:00.000-08:00

One of the genres that I really detest is business oriented books. Walk into any book store and there is a whole section dedicated to the subject of getting ahead in business. You Too Can Be A CEO, How To Make Your First Million, etc, etc.

Generally speaking all of these books contain exactly the same 'common sense' ideas, but authors keep churning them out. About the only thing that changes is the order of the chapters. If these authors are so damn good at making money why are they writing books? Hell I'd be on a sail boat somewhere warm, screw writing books! Who needs the headache of publishing?

The other peeve I have is the style of writing that associates itself with this type of book. Lots of font changes, lots of italics, bold, caps, and bloody ordered lists. This is the book version of a scam get rich quick web site! They use exactly the same techniques.

THE 57 THINGS YOU SHOULD DO BEFORE TAKING A CRAP

1) Make sure that your Backberry has new batteries in it
2) You have your Day Planner
3) Your pen works!!!!!!!!!!
.
.
.
57) There is toilet paper!

It was my misfortune to have to deal with two of these stupid books this week. I hated every moment, and can honestly say that I learned absolutely nothing, other than the fact that you would need your head examining to go out and actually spend your hard earned money buying them. The best way to get rich is to not waste your money, and this is a complete waste of money.

Jan's Willy Wonka!

2008-01-12T10:31:00.000-08:00

Nope this has nothing to do with Chocolate Factories! Jan decided that our bathroom needed a little makeover, and installed a really nice rug thing in front of the wash basin, also one of those funky things that go around the base of the toilet. It's very good, it keeps your feet warm while doing the biz.

Not content with these major lifestyle enhancements, she also added one of those pointless Toilet seat cover warmers! Why does a toilet seat cover need a warmer anyway? In my opinion toilet seat covers are right up there with Chia Pets!

The net result is that Jan has created a monster! The toilet cover warmer has changed the entire dynamics of the plastic bits. To take a leak, you now run the gauntlet of the Willy Wonka. Just as you are enjoying getting rid of that 6 pack, 'KERASH', and the Willy Wonka has nailed you!

I am thinking about renting a Porta-Potty, the bathroom is just out and out to dangerous for male use!

Woo Hoo, I'm Probably Going To Live!

2008-01-09T13:41:00.000-08:00

The past three months have been hell. And I blame it all on the computer! I was using the damn thing when my arm went numb. The Hospital gleefully informed me it was likely a stroke! It turned out that it wasn't, but they got their digs in with CT scan that showed I had at some point actually had a stroke, the technical term being 'Silent Stroke', there are no symptoms, it just happens.

This started a nasty sequence of hospital related activities that I did not enjoy at all! I hate hospitals to begin with, I don't even like visiting people in the place, never mind being the 'victim'. I swear they stick needles in just because they have a sadistic streak.

Today I got the results of all of the poking, prodding, pricking, MRI'ing, Ultrasounding, heart monitoring, CT scanning, and all the rest of it! Other than having ridiculously high Blood Pressure, they have declared me likely to live! When they took my BP I clocked in at 212/110 which had them reaching for their Tums!

So they have upped the drug level to a dosage that is in the range that likely contravenes the SALT treaty, and I am now the proud owner of a swishy at home Blood Pressure monitor! I wonder how much I can get for it on eBay?

Oh, and for the foreseeable future I get to meet with the delightful Stroke people every two weeks. About the onlt amusing part of this whole adventure is that they want to include Jan in these sessions, so she likely will get as much abuse as I do! hahahaha

Clint Boxes

2008-01-04T05:26:00.000-08:00

I live in dread of Clint Boxes. OK, let me explain what a Clint Box is. As you all know I do reviews, pretty much I will review anything, you send it, I'll review it. Well what happened years ago, well it seems like years ago, although it was likely only a few months ago, I started requesting DVD's on a pretty regular basis from one particular US distributor. They liked my reviews so much that they decided that I didn't need to ask anymore, the Director of Publicity selected me for special treatment. They just ship me everything they have! Clint is his name, and boxes is his game!

Now that might seem like a great idea. But, it really has its downside. These guys are so big that they release at least one item each day. This has resulted in a constant stream of innocuous looking brown cardboard boxes arriving. Even the delivery guy knows them because he is here so often. On the rare occasion that I actually see him, he hops out of his truck, comes bounding up the pathway, and with a smile says "Looks like a Clint box".

Clint Boxes are taking over the apartment! They are everywhere! Jan lives in fear and dread of them. Well most of them anyway! A couple of days ago I was heading out the door to go to work, and what did I find? A very frosty Clint Box, it had been there all night, the temperature as something like 10f. Unfortunately the contents survived the arctic conditions!

Later that morning another Clint Box arrived, but Jan didn't mind getting that one, it contained some very yummy Belgium chocolates! Clint is now Jans hero!

New Years Resolutions....

2008-01-01T08:53:00.000-08:00

This has to be the silliest idea known to man. I'm sure that Hallmark has a whole series of cards dedicated to the subject.

In a wild move, I have decided to make two New Years resolutions. I'd love to share them with you, but they both involve Jan in a French Maids outfit!

Simon On The Silver Screen?

2007-12-30T14:30:00.000-08:00

Well its by no sure a done deal, but there is a possibility. I reviewed a couple of books by an Irish author earlier this year, actually he is a London Times bestseller list author, he just hasn't broken into the North American market yet.

One of the books was optioned for a movie a while ago. And it looks like it is going to move into production pretty soon.

The author contacted me, and has offered me a 'walk on' on the movie! Now the chances of this happening are about zero, but I am flattered. Jan is already out shopping for her Oscar dress!

Brussel Sprout Update

2007-12-28T02:49:00.000-08:00

The good news is that Christmas Day came and went. We had our 'way too big' turkey, hell there are only two of us, and by my calculation this monster meant that Jan and I had about 10lbs of turkey each!

My treat though was Brussel Sprouts. On Christmas eve I got off work early and headed straight to Safeway (my local Megamart) in search of these little delicacies. On a previous foray I had noted there exact location in the freezer department. You can imagine my shock and horror when I discovered that someone had bought every last package or them! My first thought was that Jan was responsible, she had snuck in and bought them all!

To say I was disappointed does not cover it, I was devastated. I had set my heart on Brussel Sprouts!

All was not lost though. I checked out the fresh produce, and whoopie, they has the wonderful little critters! And lets face it, fresh is better than frozen everytime.

They were delicious!

The Man From Earth

2007-12-26T04:53:00.000-08:00

I couldn't resist getting a review copy of this movie. I don't generally go for sci-fi but the story behind this indy movie was too good not to get involved. Man From Earth went straight to DVD, as indeed a lot of indy movies do. What sets this one apart from the rest is what happened a week before release. Some enterprising pirate got hold of a prerelease copy and stuck it on bittorrent.

Overnight it became the #6 sci-fi hit on iMDB. Not bad when you conside it was something like #2500 a couple of days earlier. The film maker then did something that no major studio would do, he didn't sue the pirates, or even ask them to take the movie down. Instead he posted a 'thank you' on his web site. His rational was that if people were watching the rather poor quality bootleg, they may be driven to buy the real thing!

In my opinion this was a great choice, and one that more film makers should consider.

As it happens, Man From Earth is a dynamite movie, so I suspect that this story is going to have a very happy ending.

Reviewing - You Never Know What Will Happen Next

2007-12-26T04:13:00.000-08:00

One of the great things about reviewing is the unpredictability, you just never know what is going to happen next! A good example was yesterday. I recently reviewed an interesting and very funny indy documentary The Gods Of Times Square. Film maker Richard Sandler took a fairly irreverent look at the street preachers and kooks that use New Yorks Times Square as their pulpit to preach whatever nonsense they are into.

Yesterday I received an email from Richard Sandler, he had found my review on google and dropped me a line to say thank you. So of course this has led to an interview with him. Never a dull moment!

Multi Million Dollar Court Case Avoided

2007-12-22T16:15:00.000-08:00

Dateline Calgary - In a last minute move the Brussel sprout controversy has been resolved. Moments before the court appearance to get a restraining order against Simon Barrett preventing him from polluting the atmosphere with the smell of brussel sprouts, a compromise was worked out. Simon has agreed to eating Corn Bread Dressing, and in return Jan says it is ok for him to have brussel sprouts!

Another Merry Christmas!

Changing Routers, 9 Gazzilion Reasons Not To

2007-12-22T09:19:00.000-08:00

As I wrote earlier, my damn router finaly gave up the battle and decided to go into meltdown mode. My daughter came to the rescue with a $5 one she found at a yard sale.

My elation over getting our primary computers back online unfortunately was short lived. The BeerBox was screwed. And that meant no Web Server. Changing the bloody router had resulted in a new local area network IP addressing scheme. And of course my ISP decided to assign a new IP at the same time.

This was a double whammy! The hurdles in fixing this problem were huge. I had to use trial and error to even log on to the damn Linux box, then an hour wandering aimlessly around the cavernous file system to even find the Web Server.

The good news it that after much fiddling and use of the 'F' word it is mostly back in action. The infamous Bartender bot though is still AWOL. I'll tackle him later!

The Great (Fire) Wall Of China

2007-12-21T12:51:00.000-08:00

Being in the media biz I shouldn't be surprised. Every large media outlet has run a story or twenty five about China employing a huge firewall on Internet traffic to prevent the Chinese people from access to controversial political sites. Bloggers have been thrown in jail for criticism of the ruling regime, and in what seems to be a day to day situation sites like CNN are blocked.

Well, it turns out that BNN is amongst the sites that the Chinese government has taken umbrage at. Now exactly what we have done to the Chinese I am not sure, but apparently we are banned!

Well screw em I say, I am going to boycott Chinese stuff as a result. No more take-aways, no fortune cookies, in fact I am not even going to use my Wok! I'll teach the little bastards!

If a recipe calls for Soy sauce, I'll use BBQ sauce instead!

This is war!

Router Hell

2007-12-21T06:13:00.000-08:00

The Barrett data center took another hit yesterday. I knew it had to be something serious when Jan called me at work, as soon as I heard her voice on the phone a million things flashed through my mind. Had someone died, was the house on fire? Jan never calls! No-one had died, but, something equally catastrophic had happened, she could not get on the internet! This is trouble indeed.

Some quick technical support later, it seemed like the router had finally given up the ghost, no lights on it! No problem, and after much cable reagangement we had Jan's puter hooked directly to the modem. Alas it was still a no go. A quick call to the ISP had the problem resolved, damn mac addy!

So, I got home last night, and no sooner had I walked through the door than my daughter came to visit. I explained the network meltdown and she said 'well if you need a router I have a spare'. I said, nah, I have a spare. Well of course my spare, was a router that I have never tested, and guess what, it was dead on arrival!

So a quick call to Laura and she was over again with her spare router. Of course there was a catch, she hands it to me and says "Oh, I have no clue if it works, I bought it at a garage sale for $5". Eek me thinks.

Anyway, it did power up! That was a good start. A little (actually a lot) of fiddling with Mac addresses, DNS's, gateways, and IP's later it is 10:30pm and the data center is restored to its pristine glory!

Ya just got to love computers! Jan of course has a theory about the router going bad, we had worn it out! All those articles on BNN had finally taken their toll!

The Battle Of The Brussel Sprout - 2007

2007-12-14T13:39:00.000-08:00

Apart from Politics, Economics, Religion, Gun Laws, Abortion, and Velveeta Cheese, Jan and I pretty much agree on everything.

Well everything except the lowly brussel sprout. Jan has some pretty fixed ideas when it comes to vegetables, and when I stray from the Straight and Narrow vegetable road she lets me know.

I am a big fan of brussel sprouts, teeny weeny little cabbage like critters. Boiled, drained, then served with lashings of 'real' butter (no stinking margarine for this kid), this is one of natures gifts at Christmas time. I have resisted the urge to have these fabulous vegetable nuggets for almost 2 years. The last time, I bought a small bag of frozen ones. My theory was that while Jan might not like them, I could on occasion dip into this secret stash. It was a small bag, and it took up almost no room in the freezer!

I got to sample them exactly once, Christmas 2005, it was a banner day, Turkey, roast potatoes, sage and onion stuffing, gravy, and those oh so good brussel sprouts! I guess it was my lucky day, Jan allowed me to use one of her pots, and even the stove in the kitchen! I had been half expecting that she would make me go out and buy a pan just for the event, oh and a butane camping stove so that it could all be done outside in the snow!

I had not heard the end of the brussel sprout saga. I still had a few left, they were minding their own business in a dark corner of the freezer, but not hidden from Jan's gaze. Every time we returned from a grocery shopping trip she would groan about having no space in the freezer, and point an accusing finger at my harmless brussel sprouts! This went on for over a year, twice a month I would have to deal with the Brussel Sprout problem.

Eventually I caved in, I let her throw them out, it was a sad day indeed!

Anyway, Christmas is two weeks away, and I think its time! So I am going to sneak a small bag of them into the frezzer for Christmas day!

A Post For Outer Mongolian Mark!

2007-12-10T17:04:00.000-08:00

Well today I got something wonderful in the mail. A review copy of a new book. Now that in itself is hardly a surprising occurrence. Jan who fields most of the deliveries is on first name terms with all of the drivers from Fed-Ex, UPS, Purolater, Canada Post, etc.

But today we scored a great find, when I first read the press release I knew I had to have it, if only to make Outer Mongolian Mark green with envy, 'The Book Of Spam'! Yes folks some one has written a book all about that delectable canned meat product. Better yet, no expense has been spared in this books production, on heavy weigh glossy paper, each page (200) contains pictures and interesting facts about Spam.

Needless to say, all other reviews are on hold while I 'devour' this one. With a bit of luck the review will be up tomorrow.

The Week In Review(s)

2007-12-08T08:05:00.000-08:00

Well, it has been a pretty interesting week. There is a very curious movie hitting theaters on December 14, Look is well worth a look! It tells 5 separate but intersecting stories, all seen through the eyes of surveillance cameras. It is very unique indeed. I had the opportunity to talk to filmmaker Adam Rifkin about Look, it is an interesting interview.

I recently reviewed a book by Alan Rolnick 'Landmark Status', very funny stuff indeed, and I had the opportunity to chat with him. It turned out that he is multifaceted, and is also a movie producer. He was kind enough to send me a very early copy of 'Canvas' which will be hitting the stores in late January. I can't tell you much about the movie till closer to the release date, but I will say this, look out for it in Blockbuster, it is must see!

On the book front I am putting an interview together with the Goldman family about the OJ Simpson book 'If I Did It'. I have Fred Goldman's input, and I think it would be fair to say that he hates OJ! Venomous is the word that springs to mind!

Stolen Boy by Michael Mehas also passed by my eyeballs this week. Based on the true and disturbing Jessie James Hollywood story, it explores the underbelly of the LA drug world. I'm too damn lazy to find the link, but if you go to Google News and do a search on Michael Mehas, my review should be #1

In the music world I scored a copy of the CD/DVD combo Memory Almost Full by Paul McCartney. This is a must have addition to any-ones collection. Of course I couldn't resist the dig that Paul McCartney was the only member of the Fab Four that had any talent, and true to form I received a couple of acerbic comments about my abilities to review music. Good Times!

On the software front I received a press release from the folks at linspire. That is the version of Linux that I run. About 6 weeks ago I threw stinking Windows out the door, and took the plunge with Linspire. I can honestly say that I have been pretty happy with the whole adventure. and I guess Linspire liked my reviews because they are featured on their site www.linspire.com

Their latest adventure is something called CNR, one of the big holes in the Linux world is the whole business of installing new software, you need a PHD in astrophysics to install even the simplest program. CNR fixes that, one click installs, I am so impressed.

Who The Hell Can Sleep With This?

2007-12-06T00:36:00.000-08:00

It is 1:30am, even by my standards it is pretty damn early to be up and around. The problem is, how the hell are you supposed to sleep with this I-pod strapped to you?

Another Health Care Adventure!

2007-12-05T10:52:00.000-08:00

The fun just goes on and on. This morning I had to turn up at the hospital for some mysterious heart monitoring. Of course no-one ever tells you what they are actually going to do beforehand. The best example of that was the Disney World MRI wild ride from a couple of weeks ago.

I had no clue what to expect this morning, but I was pretty certain that I wouldn't like it. it seems to me that every time I go near the damn hospital they end up sticking me with damn needles and I hate needles.

Well I was quite surprised today, no needles, and I was only in there for 10 mins. They wired me up with what I can only describe as an I-pod for my heart! It is about the size of an I-Pod and there the electrodes glued to my chest, but it didn't hurt, and all I have to do now is take the unit back tomorrow.

They did point out tho that this is the worlds most expensive MP3 player, and if I lose it I am on the nut for a $3,200 bill! Ouch, and it doesn't even play videos! Oh, and I can't go swimming while I have it on!

I wonder how much I can get for it on EBay?

Simon Buys Stuff!

2007-12-02T04:00:00.000-08:00

Oh, say its not so! Yup, I finally broke down and went to WalMart. I am not one that needs the latest and greatest, so most of the electronics (and I have bunches) are pretty old. We have more stinking computers than the average sane person needs, they are everywhere in this house. I haven't checked the bathroom, but I'll bet there is one in there somewhere!

Anyway, my problem was the Home Theater, I have an aging digital projector that cost me exactly nothing, but the bulbs don't last forever, and I know that to replace it is going to be a $400 adventure. With the amount of DVD's that I review it is only a matter of time before the projector goes dark. The only TV we have is in the bedroom, and watching DVD's in there is out of the question, one of two things happen, I fall asleep cos i'm in bed, or Jan has her French Maid outfit on, and reviews go out the window!

For $149, I got a great little player with a whopping 9 inch screen. I was actually surprised at how good the unit works, there is just Jan and me, and the 9 inch screen worked fine for us.

This certainly is way more convenient than the projector. Of course, right on queue another Clint box arrived today! Oh good, more DVD's hahahahaha.

Even Jan Says It's Better With A Moog!

2007-11-30T05:17:00.000-08:00

A while back I was on a Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson kick. It seemed as if almost everyday there was some new, or not so new (Re-released) material by these guys. Being a fan of both of these great musicians I was in hog heaven.

I was so excited, I knew I just had to interview them! Even Jan got into the act, and managed to be rude to Keith Emerson on the phone, but thats another story.

After the reviews and interviews were done, I still had the urge for more, so I wrote a contemplative piece about how It's Better With A Moog. Nothing beats a Moog in my mind!

Jan of course had no idea what a Moog was, they don't use a lot of them at the Grand Ole Opry!

This morning as I was writing up a review about a new Johnny Cash DVD Jan was listening to her music, headphones on, but set loud enough to wake the dead, and I heard 'Lucky Man' start up. I waited till half way through the song and then tapped her on the shoulder. Before I could say anything she said "It's better with a Moog"! We got another convert!

The Week In Review(s)

2007-11-24T03:05:00.000-08:00

What an interesting week it has been. Yesterday Jan and I actually ventured out to a theatre to preview a movie. Well the price was right $zero. Free is always a good price. Redacted, opens wide next Friday, and is a very disturbing movie on many levels. Although a work of fiction it centers around some factual events in the current Iraq war. It is made in the style of a home made camcorder documentary, rather rough around the edges, nauseatingly fast pans, ad hoc dialog, and stark footage. I recommend that you watch this one only if you have a strong stomach. It contains some very disturbing themes. You would not want to take your kids to see this one. But from a critical point of view it is excellent. It will be interesting to see how this one fares at the box office.

Unfortunately you will have to wait till next Friday to read the review, damn movie people always want everything held till the day it releases!

Week 5 of Mars Rising premieres on the Science Channel next Tuesday, this episode has the title 'Six minutes of terror', and deals with the most perilous part of sending a manned craft to Mars, getting the thing down on the planet surface and not killing the crew in the process. This series from the Discovery people is well worth a look. You can find my review here.

In the music world I found an absolute gem. There is a new 3 DVD set out The McCartney Years, over six hours of music videos and live concerts by Paul McCartney. I was never a Beatles fan, in fact I can honestly say that I have never owned a Beatles album. I have and had, no use for them whatsoever, George Harrison and John Lennon were just pretentious little pricks, and Ringo was a ho hum drummer. Paul McCartney though was, and is a great performer. You can check out more info and even sample the trailers here.

Do you remember Donovan? Mellow Yellow, The Universal Soldier, and a string of other big hits from the 60's. Well he has a new DVD coming out in January. This is a great DVD, yes he is a little older, and his voice has lost a little of its range, but he is still a spectacular performer. This is a 'must have' DVD. Unfortunately I have to sit on it till mid December. But trust me, it is really damn fine! The PR company claims they have no access to Donovan for an interview, but that doesn't bother me. I'll find a way!

Books are fun right now. I have two hot ones, and promises of interviews. Target by Kathleen Willey deals with her time at the hands of the Clintons. Yes, she was one of the people involved with the impeachment, she was also a victim of Bill's 'wandering hand syndrome'. She has nothing good to say about Bill, but what she says about our potential next woman president Hillary is even worse! I think this will make for an interesting interview.

The other hot book is the OJ book, 'If I Did It'. This one the book that Fred and Kim Goldman went to court over and won the publishing rights. According to OJ Simpson this is a book of pure fiction, a fantasy about how he would have committed the murders, the Goldman family view it as something else, a vicarious admission of guilt, a confession if you will. By sheer luck it turns out that the owner of the small PR company that asked me to review the book knows the Goldmans, and I have been invited to do an interview with them. With OJ being in the spotlight again, over an armed robbery in Las Vegas, I can't wait to do this one.

I also have a pre-release copy of Legerdemain, alas this book does not hit the streets until mid January, so I have to sit on it. But it is a wonderful read, all about the Cold War, Atom Bombs, and Morocco, better still the author was actually there! You can find my teaser here. This book is being published by a small, but influential house History Publishing Company, I had a chance to talk to Don Bracken who is the owner of HPC, the interview was quite interesting.

I have no idea how many things I have reviewed this year, but I do know the book count alone is over 80, so when you figure in the music and video side, it has to be several hundred. Most people are pretty happy with what I have to say, in fact last week the author of Landmark Status Alan Rolnick sent me a signed copy of his book in appreciation of my review.

I knew it was only a matter of time though before someone took umbrage at a review, and that happened this week. I watched a particularly insipid piece of pro Muslim and anti Christian junk 'Farewell Israel', this was garbage of the first order, and said that in my review.

The US based publicity company didn't like my review, and so sent a nasty e-mail to the editor of Blogger News Network requesting the Mr Barrett's review be taken down. Oops, I am the editor! Needless to say my response was to tell em to go pound sand! If you can't stand the heat, don't go in the kitchen!

Other than the bad Disneyland ride in the MRI, it has been a great week!

Medical Device Review: MRI

2007-11-21T13:41:00.000-08:00

Normally I publish my reviews on www.bloggernews.net but when I checked the categories I did not find one for MRI's. And I was too lazy to go set one up. I had the chance to review one of these $1,000,000 machines today. I had to pull in a lot of favors to do this. The current waiting list for a trip in this Disney inspired ride is 18 months here in Alberta!

The nice folks at Foothills Hospital were sympathetic when I explained that I was a reviewer and managed to squeeze me in within a couple of weeks. Of course I had to fool the medical system to achieve this, I feigned having a numb arm, and through amazing Uri Geller techniques managed to fool several blood pressure monitors so that it appeared the I was 240/129, the hardest part tho was the CAT scan, I had to appear as if I had had a stroke!

Well I managed all of these things without a problem, well other than the fact that my right hand is still messed up! But this is a cheap price to pay for a review of a million dollar machine.

My lovely wife Jan decided to accompany me on the adventure, as a result we actually made it there first, my preference was to go to the bar first and have a couple beers. I filled in a questionnaire explaining that I was neither pregnant nor breast feeding.

Then the fun began, the told me to change, but, all they wanted me to do was take off my pants! I suspect that the entire operation is run by some very odd people. Shoes and Socks were ok, golf shirt was fine, but the pants had to go! Of course I was about to explain that it was the 'other head' that they were supposed to be looking at, but, who can argue with a Doctor?

Next step was to lay on this rather narrow and not terribly comfy bed with my head in a funky cradle thing. Then they sprung the needle surprise! The bastards always to that! Apparently red wasn't a good color for my blood, and they needed to add a dye! Or some other equally bull shit reason, I think they just like sticking people!

"Oh, and stick these ear plugs in. it gets pretty noisy in there", was the sage advice. OK, so stuck like a pig, ear plugs in it was off to the world of wild adventure. As the machine inserted me into what seemed like a rather large Cuban cigar tube my first thought was that if these machines cost a million dollars each they could do something with the interior design. A white tube with a gray stripe is pretty damn boring! I right about then also thought the ear plugs were overkill, the cigar tube was making a rather peaceful 'woop woop' sound. Not quite Moog synthesizer, and a little repetitive for my taste, but quite harmless.

Then the world changed, the gentle 'woop woop' was replaced by what I can only describe as really bad 'heavy metal' interspersed with Keith Emerson playing a mean Moog. The climax tho had to be the 3 minutes relived from the movie 'Earthquake'. If you saw 'Earthquake' you probaby remember the rather strange bass speakers that the theatres used. So low that your clothes rattled. Well an MRI can do that, it was like being on the Disney ride from hell! Your whole head is vibrating and planning on exploding anytime soon!

When they removed me from the cigar tube, I was out of that hospital like greased lightning! I needed a beer!

Privacy and the Internet

2007-11-18T11:35:00.000-08:00

These are two concepts that really do not compliment each other. As an experiment I spent a few minutes Googling myself. I am not hard to find! There are traces of me on many sites, in fact there are thousands of mentions, from Nola.com, to Boston.com, there are links, either directly or indirectly to me. Now as it happens I don't mind. I am a reviewer and publicity is good for business.

Not all online publicity is good though, and a fine example is the coverage that Megan Meier's suicide has created. She is the teen that hung herself following some uncalled for comments left on her Myspace page. It transpires that the comments were made by the mother of a girl who had recently fallen out with Megan. A deplorable act, by someone old enough to know much better.

Over on Bloggernews we have a number of articles running about the sad story, and they have received great readership. The problem that Jan and I were faced with was the comments that were being left by some readers. I don't like to act as censor, but sometimes you just to. For example any comment that uses profanity is going to end up in the 'bit bucket', not because I am a prude, but because not all of our readers want to read bad language.

The comments left on the Megan Meier's stories though had a different kind of problem, and one I find very disturbing. The mainstream media has gone out of their way to not reveal the name of the woman responsible for the death. Likewise, we decided to tag along. There are many facets to the story that have not been revealed, and to subject someone to even more misery seems reasonable. We had people not only naming the lady, but her street address, home and cell phone number, the company that she runs, who her clients are, etc, etc,

There is no way I am going to publish this information. But i'll bet some sleazy websites will. Although I am deplored by this woman's actions, to be tried and sentenced in the court of public opinion with no chance to respond seems unfair.

Did OJ Do It?

2007-11-12T12:31:00.000-08:00

Pretty much if you have an IQ larger than your hat size you would say yes. Now I have never met OJ but I was stuck in LA traffic when his white Ford Bronco decided to go on the worlds slowest car chase. In fact I was on the damn 405, which at the best of times is miserable, but that white Bronco stopped the 405 in it's tracks. Even first gear was too fast!

We all know the outcome, Johnny Cochran explained 'If the glove doesn't fit you must acquit', and indeed walk he did. One of the people that has relentlessly persued OJ is Fred Goldman, losing justice in the criminal court, the Goldmans won in the Civil Court. OJ was ordered to give the Goldmans more money than I can even conceive of. Here we are, more than 10 years later, and the amount of cash OJ has shelled out is exactly $zero.

OJ has been hunted down by the Goldman family, while OJ has played almost every Golf Course in North America, no doubt looking for that illusive one armed golf caddy that actually did it, the Goldmans have been equally active preventing OJ from profiting from his endeavors. The OJ sponsors dropped him quicker than Dog Chapman got dumped from A&E.

His attempt at publishing a book, "If I did it", was quickly closed down by the Goldman family, preferring to take the product and publish it themselves.

In a million to one chance, the publicists that I work with know the Goldman's, I get the book, and an interview with Fred Goldman.

Laura Saves The Day

2007-11-10T04:00:00.000-08:00

Well the hunt for a VHS tape player was mercifully short. Jan tracked one down at the local thrift store for $20, however on a long shot I called my daughter Laura. She has never thrown anything out in her entire life, and sure enough she had a VCR that I could use. Better still she even delivered it.

Life is good, I can now do the reviews.

The VHS Is Dead, Long Live The VHS

2007-11-08T15:16:00.000-08:00

It has been a number of years since I owned a VHS tape player. In fact I know I have not had one since I moved back to Canada, and that was 2002. VHS has gone the way of the Dodo, and the 8-track, right?

Well that is not quite so! I am doing some work for the Discovery channel, and was getting worried that some screeners had not arrived. Generally TV wants their stuff reviewed a couple of days before it airs. So I fired off an email explaining that I really needed these screeners becuse the show airs next Tuesday, and next Monday is a holiday in Canada, so no deliveries.

Within minutes I got the response 'The will be there today'! Sure enough UPS delivered the items this afternoon, four VHS tapes! hahahahaha

Now the monkey is on my back! I have to find a VCR in the next 48 hours! The good news is... I have several plans.....

The Week In Review(s)

2007-11-08T07:08:00.000-08:00

It has been a pretty interesting week. And I had a truly unique thing happen with an interview. Allthough I have not heard any recent material from the prog rock group Hawkwind I thought it might be fun to interview the one remaining original member Dave Brock. This band has been around for almost forty years, playing their very spacey synthesizer oriented style of music. I got hold of the bands manager and she readily agreed to get Dave to participate in a quick email interview. his is a really simple format, I send a list of questions and he sends back his answers, it could not be easier.

So, a couple of weeks ago I shipped off my list of 10 questions and sat back and waited. Yesterday I received the reply from the manager, 'I have attached Daves answers'. I have to admit that I was surprised to see that the attachment was a PDF. I hate PDF's because you can not copy/paste the damn text. Oh well, guess I'll have to do some typing was what I was thinking. I opened up the file, and what I found had me rolling on the floor laughing!

They had obviously printed my email, Dave then hand wrote his answers, they then scanned the document and emailed it back! Now that's a creative use of technology! You can read the interview here.

Do you remember the 60's TV show The Man From UNCLE? Well Time Life are releasing the entire 4 season set on DVD. 41 DVD's containing all 104 episodes, plus the pilot that was never aired! It comes in a snazzy aluminum case! This is a must have for any Man From UNCLE fan. You can find my review here.

I don't have it in my hot little hands yet, but I am on the list for a review Chumby! What the hell is a Chumby I here you ask. Well it looks more fun than a barrel of monkeys. It is the size of a small clock/radio and it connects to the internet, you can play music, watch video clips, access web sites, etc. At just under $200 this is the gizmo for the geek, check it out.

Happy Birthday To Me!

2007-11-04T14:20:00.000-08:00

Well folks, I am officially now as old as Jan! Combined we have 104 years of experience. Of course Jan does not brag about her age, but a simple calculation can figure it out! 104/2 or 52 to help the math challenged!

The good news is that I will only be as old as Jan for 6 months, then I can go back to referring to her as 'The older woman'!

Thanks Duane

2007-11-03T00:46:00.000-07:00

Duane "Dog" Chapman is probably feeling pretty bad right about now, lets face it, it is not everyday that the National Enquirer 'outs' you for using the infamous N-word. But it sure does wonders for the ratings! over on blogger news we had at least 4 articles about Dog, and they all scored big in the ratings. Nothing makes news like bad news! Way to go Dog!

There is also a hot rumor that Duane has taken to misspelling son Tucker's name, inadvertently replacing the letter T with an F.

Charlie Daniels

2007-10-31T19:07:00.000-07:00

You remember this guy, he is the fiddle player that released that great song 'The Devil Came Down To Georgia', well he is back! I got my hands on his latest CD Deuces yesterday. Now strictly speaking he should have gone to the bottom of the review pile, which at this point would have been something like position 51! The scary part is that I am not really behind, it's just the amount that keep arriving! Anyway, Janny is a big country music fan, and loves Charlie Daniels, so it had to go to the top of the pile.

In fact not only did it go to the top of the pile, it got put in the player.

Well this is some great album, Charlie decided to make it from duets, now his idea of a duet does not quite meet the dictionary definition, his idea is to play with some solo artists, but also some complete bands. The end result is outstanding!

I try and write my reviews as I listen, that way everything is fresh in my mind. So I rattled of a review, and stuck it on the web, you can read it here.

Well, today I heard from the promoters, they are happier than Cowboys with the new truck that has a custom gun rack. They are so happy they are setting me up with an interview with Charlie Daniels.

This should be fun.

Good Times hahaha

2007-10-29T11:13:00.000-07:00

Occasionaly it gets quiet over at Blogger News, and one of my favorite things to do is write some controversial article that will upset some whacked out sector of society. I am not a political animal, I basically hold the opinion that all politics smells worse than an abattoir, and politicians as a whole are a species lower than a maggot.

So when I stumbled accross a story concerning right wing extremist CNN presenter Lou Dobbs and his public oopsy of calling New York Governer Spitzer "An Idiot" during an interview I could not resist a little fun and games.

The result has been outstanding! I have every right wing extremist whacko on my case. One particularly amusing commenter wants me "Fired from the internet".

I love it when a plan comes together! Good times!

Musical News

2007-10-29T10:12:00.001-07:00

A while back I interviewed the wild man of the Moog Synth, Keith Emerson, of Emerson Lake And Palmer fame. I was amazed when he told me he is still using his 1970 vintage, full size modular Moog. Mind you, with an original price tag of $50,000 I'd want to get my monies worth out of it as well.

I noticed today that his official homepage is linking to the interview! I know the web guy that runs the site and dropped him a line to say thanks, his reply was 'Keith must have liked it, he is the one that selects whats goes on the page'.

I also discovered that late next month Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman are going to do a concert together. Now that should be some show, the two undisputed kings of the Moog playing together. I do hope there will be a DVD coming out of the event.

Several months ago I was poking around online and discovered that the 70's prog rock group Hawkwind are still going strong. As an adolescent hippie these guys were my favorite band. Spacey prog rock combined with what was at the time the best light show in the business these guys were awesome! Recently I decided it might be fun to play again in the Hawkwind world, and I im in the midst of doing an interview with the only remaining original band member Dave Brock. In what is becoming an increasingly small musical world another Hawkwind connection has popped out of the blue.

MVD sent me a box of CD's to review, one of the bands was Bedouin, while the name did not mean much, when I discovered the band members I was truly surprised. Alan Davey is the head of this band, and was Hawkwinds drummer during the 80's and for several years recently. Alan has agreed to an interview, which should be fun!

Spam In Literature

2007-10-24T19:42:00.000-07:00

My good friend Outer Mongolian Mark has peaked my interest in Spam. For example, has it ever been mentioned in a book, well other than a book by the Monty Python folks.

I was reflecting on this question this morning as I bussed it to work. Actually the daily bus ride is where I do a good deal of my reading. And there it was.... A spam quote...

She pulled down a couple of cans of beef stew, a package of cornbread mix, and a tin of Spam

Now, I am sure that there are many other literary mentions of this delightful product, and I plan on tracking them down!

Oh, I am sure you Spam fans want to know the name of the book I am reading. Well as soon as the review goes up I'll make sure I add a link.

Spam Update From Mongolia

2007-10-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

The worlds most travelled can of Spam seems to be having a great time in Outer Mongolia. I received a quick update from Mark, who seems determined to show it a good time before actually consuming it!

Spam Watching The Red Sox During Game 7

Spam on a London Taxi Cab Somewhere In Mongolia

More Reviewing Nonsense

2007-10-14T06:06:00.000-07:00

It has been a pretty interesting week. I finished Terry Turchie's excellent book Hunting The American Terrorist which explores the 'lone wolf' phenomenon. Terry was in charge of the Unabomber investigation, and also ran the hunt for Eric Rudolf (Olympic games bomber). The publisher has been hounding me to do an interview, and I think it will be quite interesting.

The Discovery Channel has an excellent new series 'Mars Rising' which looks at the problems we face trying to complete a manned mission to the Red Planet. This is definitely my kind of program so I got hold of Discovery andtold em that if they can get me screeners , I'll be happy to put up reviews a couple of days before air date. This pretty much is the industry standard. Super they said, and the very next day there was a Fed-Ex package. Then I noticed the problem, they had sent me the shows that had already aired! This is no good, it's too late! Of course I can't get hold of anyone at Discovery and episode 3 airs today! Oh well thats life.

I did an interesting interview last Thursday, it was with filmmaker Aaron Wolf whose latest movie premiered in New York last Friday. King Corn is a unique look at the growing, use, and abuse of this highly government subsidized crop. Well worth a look if you have the chance.

Pure Insanity!

2007-10-13T06:14:00.000-07:00

I have spent most of the week in Microsoft hell. I managed to attract some nasty little virus whose mission in life seemed to be to disable most of my control panel. For the longest time I have been mumbling that if I had to reload this computer one more time I would stick bloody Linux on it.

Well, thursday I was reading some press releases, and came across one from a company called Linspire. These guys hit the news two years ago when the released Lindows, a linux based knockoff of Windows. There were a lot of harsh words traded between Redmond and San Diego.

Anyway Lindows has become Linspire, and in it's own way is also creating some waves. It is a commecial offering ($49.99), and what is annoying Linux purists is the fact that they have liscensed some technology from Microsoft. Linspire can play Windows Media files.

Fifty bucks sounded like a bargain, if it lived up to its claims, but it was approximately $49.99 more than I was willing to spend! So putting on my best reviewer hat I fired off an email to Linspire. Within minutes (10) I had press credentials and access to their download site, I was pretty damn impressed.

I downloaded the ISO yesterday morning, and burned an install CD.

Now this is where it gets really interesting. Including a hard drive format the total elapsed time for the install was under 15 minutes! I was amazed. Oh and that included Open Office, and a full compliment of internet tools. During the install it asked me one question, and that was what my name was! Outstanding is what I call this. Microsoft could learn a thing or five from this small company. If you want the whole story you can read it here.

The other excitement yesterday was an interview I did with an AMD exec. Charlie Boswell is an energetic guy, I missed his exact job title, but its something like Vice President of being enthusiastic! 45 minutes on the phone with Charlie and I was ready for a nap!

What I did find curious about the whole thing was that while Charlie may be AMD's chief Evangelist, he is not allowed out without a handler! And the handler was there to make sure Charlie did not stray into areas not approved of. Very entertaining stuff.

I also noticed that the interview took less than a couple of hours to land on one of the AMD sponsored web sites, so I guess the big cheeses liked it. You can read it here.

Five down, forty to go!

2007-10-06T11:02:00.000-07:00

I decided to have a real go at cleaning up the CD's that needed reviews. Alas the title of this post sums it up quite well. I found a couple that I liked, but they were in the minority!

What the hell has happened to the music world? Where did we go wrong?

The Week(s) In Review(s)

2007-10-04T21:21:00.000-07:00

I have not done one of these in a while. Life has been scooting by in lightning flash!

I have no doubt that you have all probably come to the conclusion that I had got out of the reviewing business, not so! I am busier now than I have ever been. The damn stuff seems to come out of the woodwork.

On the movie front I tackled the mainstream Steven King 1408 DVD, actually it wasn't as bad as I had anticipated, and Jan offered to hold my hand if it got too scarey (and it did). I did like the DVD packaging, you get two movies for the price of one. The directors cut version has a very different ending to the theatrical one.

I also tried out a couple of Indy efforts, King Corn, which is a very disturbing look at the state of of our food chain, and I have been playing phone and email tag with the director for the past week. But I will get my interview!

The Calgary Film Festival was the backdrop to Downtown Dawgs, I had interest in this movie because I know some of the people involved. Unfortunately I missed the the actual premiere, I was having too much fun having a stroke, but I did get to interview the director.

Music wise, well where the hell do I start? For those of you that are old, in celebration of the 40th anniversary Pink Floyd's Piper At The Gates Of Dawn has been re released. The movie Saturday Night Fever is 30 years old this year, and to celebrate, a two CD special Bee Gees Greatest has been released, great fun!

Refugee may not be a name that many remember, but it was the band that came into being when The Nice collapsed. Patrick Moraz while not the frontman, was most certainly the glue, he was also one of the very few people in the world that could run a Moog Synth. When Rick Wakeman decided to leave Yes it was only a matter of time before he joined Yes.

Jon Anderson was the guy with the strange vocal talent behind Yes, Searching For The Songs is a delightful collection of demo tracks from 1986, Yes influenced, but unique to Jon.

Remember Iggy Pop? Maybe one of the most reviled names in music! Many people consider Iggy to be the father of Punk in North America. Did Iggy have style, or was he a fraud? Everyone has their own opinion.

Every once in a while you come across some real gems, and Willie Nile is one of them, I was most impressed (not that I count).

Oh crap, this is way too long... more later... I haven't even got onto books...

Technology Sometimes Sucks

2007-10-01T17:02:00.000-07:00

Now I am sure some of you think that I am the king of tech, I have the Beerbox, and the Pizza Box tablet PC, but the truth is, I run away from the 'bleeding edge'. It it always overpriced and for me, over equipped.

I am proud to say that I am the proud owner of only one cell phone, and I have never switched it on, I have never tried to connect it to a cell network, and to be honest with you I have no clue where it lives inside the apartment. I was given the phone, and it looked like a fun project to convert it to something useful, like a coffee cup warmer (those Ni-Cad batteries run hot!). Plan B was to duct tape it to a Toilet Bowl Brush and create a vibrating sonic toilet cleaner. Neither plan has come to fruition!

Just because I don't use tech, does not mean that I do not follow it in the press. The tech story of the past week has to be the iPhone. This nerdy and incredibly overpriced device has been selling better than Viagra! When you combine the hugely inflated sale price, with the even more inflated AT&T contract, you end up with a device that is going to cost you over $1000 a year!

Some enterprising nerds decided to tinker, and found a way to unlock the phone from it's reliance on the AT&T network, in other words, you could brag to your nerdy friends that now your $600 phone was only costing you $800 a year! Harvard MBA's take note, that means in only 3 years you have paid for the stupid thing.

Apple didn't like this, it is rumoured that AT&T are giving Apple a monthly 'kick back' for every 2 year contract, so if all these nerds moved their service to Joes Cellular' the payola would be over. Usually this kind of monopolistic action is frowned upon, but Apple seems to have friends in high places, they have effectively played the same trick with iTunes.

In a move that only Apple could get away with, they have released a 'downgrade' to the iPhone, and if you are one of those nerds that played in the innards, you are in for a depressing discovery, your $600 nerd-mobile is now an ineffectual door stop! My recommendation is to duct tape it to a brick, that will improve the 'door stop' abilities.

The Perils Of Reviewing

2007-09-26T10:07:00.000-07:00

For the most part I really enjoy the reviewing game, whats not to love about free stuff, and getting to talk with the occasional famous person? In fact even if they are not famous it is usually fun. I can only think of one interview that went 'south' and that believe it or not was with a Professor of Communications from the University of Calgary, the guy could barely manage to mumble monosyllabic answers!

OK, now onto the downside. I do a lot of reviews, and seeing as to how I don't get paid for most of them I like to pick and choose what I tackle. Unfortunately once your name gets known, stuff just arrives. Often with absolutly no information about who sent it. The indy movie world are the worst offenders, with indy music being a close second.

Oh well, I guess it's just the way it works!

Dropping Stuff!

2007-09-25T18:30:00.000-07:00

I have discovered the one really fun aspect of 'Not having a stroke'. You get to drop stuff, usually when you least expect it. Today I have managed to drop at least 3 beers, and god knows how many other items! I am so glad I bought cheap beers!

I suspect that Jan has hidden all the good breakable glass ware, and other stuff!

Four Days Not Having A Stroke!

2007-09-24T18:57:00.000-07:00

You might have noticed that I have been a bit lacking in the post area for a few days. It was all due to NOT having a stroke! In what has to be the worlds oddest medical adventure, I spent an exciting day at the Foothills Hospital in Calgary.

Now I am not a medical expert, but I have heard tell that numbness in the hand and arm is not a good sign, it smacks of a stroke. So when I found myself with these symptoms, I was to say the least a little concerned. The lack of fine motor skills in the right hand has made for a bloody nightmare when trying to type or use the damn mouse.

After four days of this hell, I decided to try doctor hell! So we got to spend 8 hours at my local hospital. I have heard many bad things about Canadian health care, and the log waits for even the simplest of procedures. I found it quite the opposite, I walked up to the window, explained my plight, and within a few seconds the machine went into action! Blood pressure monitors, (I clocked in at a Guinness Book of Records 240/139, this elicited a comment of "WOW, those are some really big numbers" from the ER nurse), EKG, CT Scan, X-Rays, IV's, these guys n gals pulled out all the stops!

Then the Neuro guys turned up! A whole gaggle of them, and they looked disappointed! Oh Oh I thought, here comes some bad news! Apparently the neuro guys only get their jollies from new strokes, and the scan shows that I had not had one, but it showed that at some time in the past I have! Now I have no recollection of such an event.

So with the Neuro guys disappointed. it was at the whim of the ER doctors. Well, ER is only fun if you are dealing with near death, and they had fixed that earlier in the day. So, after giving me a Stern talking to about my lifestyle they let me escape!

The Smoke Detector From Hell!

2007-09-17T17:14:00.000-07:00

This story started a few months ago. Jan and I were minding our own business when we noticed a bloody great fire truck stop right outside the house. This is not something that happens on a day to day basis, a quick check revealed that the house was not burning down, I could not imagine what these guys were up to.

My curiosity peaked when the door bell rang, well at least they didn't attack it with their axes, so that was a good thing. It turned out they were going door to door to ensure that everyone had a working smoke detector. Well I had to admit that we did not, the battery was dead (because the stinking thing kept going off!).

Two burly firemen came inside to 'fix the issue' whipping out a brand new 9 volt battery they had it fixed in seconds, and off they went to annoy the neighbors. It soon became apparent that the new battery and the old detector were getting along like Goths and Skinheads! About every 30 seconds we would be entertained by a short, but very loud squawk!

Luckily the fire truck had only moved a couple of houses up the street, so it was pretty easy to track em down. Back they came, they whipped out a cordless drill and before you could say 911 we had a brand new smoke detector! The $0 price tag was most acceptable.

Of course all is not well with this new one, you can't boil a pan of water without it going off! The good news tho is it has a quick release mechanism, a quick twist and you can take it off and bury it underneath a couple of cushions. This is way easier than the old one where you had to extract the battery!

A Strange Request

2007-09-16T07:53:00.000-07:00

You just never know what bizzare thing is going to happen next. A while back I did a series of reviews about a weekly show on the Sundance Channel. Well TV show rewiews are not usually terribly exciting events, so I decided that one way to spice things up would be by including some short interviews with the people featured on the show.

It turned out to be a very successful format, and everyone involved seemed to be pretty happy. On Friday I got an email from the PR company, they are 'repping' a movie that is coming out shortly. I know nothing about it, I have not seen it, I have not even read the synopsis, but they want me to interview one of the stars!

This should be interesting!

Movies Close To Home

2007-09-14T04:15:00.000-07:00

One of the amazing things about the reviewing world is that you never know what is going to happen next. As some of you know, in the real world I work with the homeless. Last week I received an Email about the upcoming Calgary Film Festival, and in particular one movie that is premiering at the festival 'Downtown Dawgs'.

Believe it or not there is a World Cup of soccer for homeless people, and in 2006 it was held in South Africa. This movie follows the fortunes and misfortunes of Team Canada, some members of which came from Calgary. I noticed that a couple of names on the 'coaching' side were people that I knew. I could not resist jumping in on this one.

So today I am going to be interviewing a couple of people, including the movie director. Alas I have not been able to view a screener yet, the movie is still in post production, and they need to hustle on that, it premiers in 8 days!

I have to admit that I like dealing with the Indy arts world, everyone is so much more approachable, they are always delighted to have a reviewer interested in their work. The MSM (MainStream Media) on the other hand could care less about any movie that didn't cost the national debt of a small third world country to make.

Oh, and before anyone gets their knickers in a knot, no tax payers money was involved in this project! There are lots of misnomers in the what people think of the homeless. They are not all panhandling, dirty bums who hang out on street corners, most are people that you would not glance at twice, they are just like you and me.

Music Madness!

2007-09-11T17:44:00.000-07:00

So what would you do with a dozen not just Metal, not even Heavy Metal, but Death Metal CD's?
I tried a couple. But this is not my style of music. I hate it! It is a wall of damn noise. It is aural warfare. It contravenes the SALT agreements!

I am pretty sure I could end the problems in Iraq by shipping this lot to Bin Laden, he would be begging for mercy after the first couple of tracks.

Under Seige!

2007-09-07T03:43:00.000-07:00

I am scared, and I don't scare easy. Today is Friday, and Fridays are always an exciting day for deliveries of boxes of stuff.

I was just looking at the list of stuff en-route, and it looks pretty daunting. As best I can tell there are going to be at least two boxes of video stuff. And I am sure each box will have 20 DVD's in them. There are also at least 5 books somewhere in the system.

It is always good to have a plan, and my plan is to close the curtains, turn the lights off, and not answer the door! I still have at least 20 CD's and DVD's to deal with!