…but, in my experience, he’s a good guy. And he’d make a fine MP.

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Per the post below about Colter Wall, some of you have messaged me to enquire about the Dils/Rank and File.  Here’s one of the best tunes by the latter, to which I consumed a few road pops back in Cowtown.  (And yes, I wore a pair of these in my punk days. Didn’t pay this much, however.)

Anyone recognize the host of this here TV show?

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Unbeknownst to many of you, I am a closeted fan of alt-country and related sounds. When in the woods, for instance, all I play is reggae, dub – or, I confess, acts like Son Volt, Gram Parsons, Rank and File, Dils, Long Ryders, Old 97s, and so on.

As such, Canada’s own Colter Wall was brought to my attention some time ago, and he’s terrific. His newest offering is just out, and it’s well worth picking up. Linkage here. Go. I haven’t steered you guys wrong yet.

 

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Campaigns matter, of course, per the cliché. Bien sur. But the picture that is emerging from the last few weeks of polling is distorted. Am I wrong? Am I right? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

#LPC numbers artificially inflated by Atlantic. #NDP numbers artificially inflated by Quebec. #CPC? Pretty competitive everywhere. #cdnpoIi

— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) June 2, 2015

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…on money or the ethnic vote.

But, God knows, you can’t stop people who should know better from peddling dangerous fantasies. 

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…would have been happy about this day. When he was dying, in fact. He told us to “sue those tobacco companies.”

And someone did. 

In a ruling described as “historic” by one lawyer, a Quebec judge has ordered three major cigarette companies to pay $15 billion to smokers in what is believed to be the biggest class-action lawsuit ever seen in Canada. “These three companies lied to their customers for 50 years and hurt their right to life,” Andre Lesperance, one of the lawyers involved in the case, said Monday. “It’s a great victory for victims as well as for society in general.”

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The Post:

Such teenagerish behaviour is not particularly unusual for the veteran watchdog. Indeed, Marin has gotten in a number of public spats on Twitter, which occasionally end with him “blocking” his critics. He once wrongly identified a police officer he believed to be the source of of antagonistic social media comments towards him; more recently, he took to Twitter to criticize Justin Trudeau’s decision to back the Liberal candidacy of former Toronto police chief Bill Blair. Needless to say, this is not the behaviour we expect from the office of Ontario’s ombudsman.

The Globe:

Using his public office as he did was wrong for an officer of parliament. He showed extremely poor judgment when he endorsed snarky comments that compared the Wynne government to a “banana republic” and asked “Who’s more corrupt and needs oversight #FIFA or @Kathleen_Wynne?”…That’s not the kind of sober oversight an ombudsman is supposed to provide. That he is willing to portray himself as “a shining light in a sea of corruption” – another Twitter comment he endorsed – raises valid questions about his impartiality. The job has gone to his head…

Again, if any beleaguered OOO staff want to talk to a reporter they can trust, email ombudsman7777@gmail.com. No names. 

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The Palma Violets gig is done, and so is “Ritalin Boy.” He’s out. Long time coming, etc. Ten reasons for it.

1. The sexism. Misogyny – endless misogyny. In the songs he wrote denigrating women, in the things he said, even when we (and the women in our lives) asked him to stop . He wouldn’t.
2. The substances. He was wasted all the time.  He played lousy when he was wasted, and he wasn’t pleasant to be around.
3. The dishonesty. He said he was the founder of Facebook in Canada. He wasn’t. It was a lie. It became national news and a national embarrassment. He actually claimed a song he wrote about Jesus getting aroused was a “Christian anthem.” The media laughed at him for that.
4. The erratic behaviour. He smashed a glass door at the home of his ex, and she (rightly) called the cops. To him, she was the one to blame. She wasn’t. He was. There was a lot of that kind of stuff.
5. The serial disasters. If we had a buck for every time he’d been fired from a job, we’d be rich. He was getting flushed all the time. It was always someone else’s fault, however. He’d treat band practices like they were his personal therapy sessions. We got tired of it.
6. The unreliability. He said he was going home for a vacation, then sent us a message saying he was running for office. We wished him luck, found another (great) guitarist and kept going. When he lost, we took him back. He was resentful about the new guy, however.
7. The jerkiness. He was a jerk. He is a jerk. He treated the new guy like dirt. And when the new guy didn’t give him a job (after he’d again been fired somewhere, see point 5), he went nuts on the guy.
8. The snobbery. He was in his forties, but a trust fund loser. His mother bailed him out all the time. Despite that, he’d never pay for a damn beer or a damn pizza. Nada. He was the moochiest mooch you’ve never met. And he would make nasty remarks, too, about the musical ability of the rest of us. He was better than us, no doubt, and he made certain we all knew it. He looked down on us.
9. The centre of the universe. It was him, to him. He didn’t give a shit about anyone else’s stuff. All he cared about was his own problems – and he had plenty. When we met with him to try and work it out – and when we told everyone else has challenges, too – this was his response: “I don’t care.”
10. The crazy. All of us knew he had issues. All of us knew there were some deep-seeded problems. We kept quiet because the band was supposed to be about fun. He – because of the sexism, the lies, the endless-crises, the snobbery, the self-centredness – made it not fun. At all.

He’s out. We’re going to keep going and have fun.

Best of luck, Ritalin Boy. You’re going to need it.

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He’s a nice guy, but I don’t think his departure matters too much.  Things hadn’t been going particularly well for some time – see here and here and here and here.

There’s plenty more, but I think everyone gets the point: this guy was never going to have the political skills of Stephen Harper. And MacKay, perhaps, knew it before the rest of us did.

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Aren’t we handsome?

Left to right:
Steve Deceive, Winkie Nuclear Age Smith, Bjorn von Flapjack III.
Missing: Davey Snot.

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