rants and observations

If you close to my age you’ll remember those great Simpsons-Sears catalogues, full of all that great stuff we loved so much as kids but could never talk our parents into buying for us. Bicycles, transistor radios, record players, board games; all of it was contained within the numerous pages along with those spicy pictures of bras and girdles.

My neighbours, who have sold their house and are clearing out the junk before the big move, offered me a few circa 1947 Vancouver Sun newspapers and a variety of pre 1964 magazines. I grabbed a few newspapers and a single Simpsons-Sears catalogue from December 1963. Here’s a few pages from the catalogue (click the thumbnails to view a larger image. click the large image to close):

1963 technology included the Tower 8 mm. push-button movie camera with Power Zoom (isn’t that Abraham Zapruder holding the camera?). A paltry $119.95 or yours for just $8.00 per month, about half your earnings. You could also buy the Speedwriter full size portable typewriter with 84-character keyboard for $49.97 or the Argus 35 mm. slide projector complete with four 60-slide ‘long-play’ trays for $67.88. Nerds suffered from a lack of cool technology in the early 60′s.

I’m a guitar player and am amazed at the high price of this Special single pick-up electric guitar with Silvertone amplifier. This things looks like a serious piece of crap and was priced at a staggering $72.95 which is significant when converted to 1963 dollars (roughly $192,763.12). There’s also the swing-down record player for $71.95 (what’s with the weird prices?) or portable radios from $27.88 to $58.88. This stuff was so very cool in those days but now it’s the garbage we can’t give away.

Have a look at the toys offered for sale and compare it to what kids have in the twenty-first century. Lie Detector or High Gear board games, a Dick Tracy rifle for $6.49, talking puppets for $5.79 or Chinese checkers (are they allowed to call them that any more?) for $2.88. The folding ranch style doll bungalow with patented hinges and locks will keep your annoying sister quiet for only $9.99. Most of these games and toys required a brain, not necessarily required in the 21st century.

Remember those nasty toilet, sink and bathtub colours in the 1960′s. No wonder they almost dropped nuclear bombs on each other after doing the business while looking at this stuff. Migraine medication must have been quite popular in the sixties.

How about trusting your family’s life to these Quality Allstate Retread Snow Tires. These puppies were guaranteed for 15 months (keeping in mind we only have winter snow for about 3 days here in Vancouver) and would put you back the princely sum of $9.95 each or $10.95 if you wanted the Storm King. Who the hell wouldn’t want Storm Kings when your family’s safety is at stake? But then again, they’re a dollar more per tire.

Here’s stuff for the early 1960′s media room. A 23″ Silvertone Hand-crafted (?!) chassis and Silverphonic sound cost a whopping $268.88. Remember we’re talking about 3 channels on this black-and-white piece of crap and the price doesn’t include rabbit-ears with tinfoil balls. There’s also the De-Luxe AM-FM Stereo Radio Phonograph for your swinging bachelor parties. or a 19″ Silvertone black-and-white portable TV with free stand (worth $9.95!) for $179.99. Try and compare this stuff with what’s presently in your living or media room. Do you love your flat-screen, HD PVR and surround audio system a bit more now?

I have to admit that the fashions back then were pretty cool (watch Mad Men for proof of that) and the prices were quite reasonable. The black dress on the right is actually pretty hot but I’m not quite sure if a Jersey Shift is a dress or exactly what the hell it is. This stuff is making a comeback due to retro tv shows and movies. Women looked great back then and very few sported nasty tatoos on their backs, legs or breasts, to say nothing of piercings. Ah…the good old days when women were women and sailors had all the tatoos and piercings.

Here’s where all that nasty furniture in the FREE section of craigslist came from. Check out the recliner in the middle for proof of how bad furniture colours could be back then. The swivel rocker on the top right looks like the same chair where the police found your uncle’s body in his mobile home with a TV dinner on his lap after nobody had heard from him for over 2 weeks. And doesn’t the washable vinyl ensemble at the bottom look like any of the St. Joseph’s Hospital waiting rooms?

Here’s the page that most of us young guys would spend an inordinate amount of time perusing, usually locked behind a bathroom door. This was the pornography of my youth and I probably lost my virginity to a nameless lingerie model in the Simpsons-Sears catalogue. Thank you nameless lingerie model, whoever you were. I owe you dinner and some flowers.

Pop music officially entered the ‘complete shit‘ phase of it’s existence with the recent appearance of The Black Eyed Peas on the American Idol Gives Back broadcast. Don’t believe me? Take a gander at the video below but be sure to have a small bucket handy while you watch this piece of visual and aural excrement.

The Black Eyed Peas also appear on the cover of the April 29 edition of Rolling Stone magazine with the tagline Black Eyed Peas – The Science Of Global Pop Domination. THIS is what it takes to dominate pop music in the 21st century? Bad costumes à la Earth Wind & Fire during their metallic spandex period and off-key, teeth-gritting vocals? Ridiculous and utterly goofy. But at least Earth Wind & Fire could write a decent tune and sing it to boot! Collectively, the Black Eyed Peas are sub-par performers, their music is shit and none of them, including their front woman and sexpot Fergie, can hold a tune if their lives depended on it. And speaking of Fergie…lady, you’re too damn old to be wearing your mother’s old tiger-print swimsuit and those hose-bag, thigh length boots. A profile camera shot of your fashion nonsense lead to the regurgitation and expulsion of my chicken dinner.

So this is what our children and their children will retain in their collective memories as the musical background to their young lives? They’ll be 50+ years old and stuck listening to Jay-Z, Lady GaGa and the other nausea inducing and talentless music acts, force-fed and promoted by MuchMusic, MTV and the remaining terrestrial radio stations. I pity them as they’re all missing out on a better soundtrack for their childhood memories.

I watched Lady GaGa on Saturday Night Live last year and thought her musical performance was being played for laughs. I was wrong. She tapped out a lame tune on the piano and sang while wearing what can only be described as her tribute to the molecule. Large, rotating rings surrounded her as she attempted to first sit at a piano then play a sub-standard rendition of her studio-enhanced ‘hit’. Even though her song was deadly serious and performed in earnest I laughed out loud as she tried to reach her microphone and the piano keys through the goofy metal rings that surrounded her. Don’t these clowns bother to test drive this crap before a performance?

Then there’s rap music. I don’t really have to explain why rap music is shit, do I? Good. Thanks for that.

So how does this garbage get to the top of radio and video airplay when there’s much better music available? God knows but I can only advise those looking for something better to try artists like Paolo Nutini, OSI, Aqualung, Kate Nash, Broken Bells, Andrew Bird or the amazing Fiona Apple.

And for some classic tunes I suggest Queen‘s first three albums, Jellyfish, Tears For Fears, Pink Floyd or even The Doobie Brothers. I can guarantee any of this music will satisfy your need for quality aural satisfaction and purge all the top 40 muck that’s collected in your brain stem over the past ten years. Especially The Black Eyed Peas and Jay-Z. That stuff just sucks. Really. It sucks. Just ask your parents.

Listen to the vocals in the Black Eyed Peas video below and revel in it’s utter insalubrity

Most, if not all residents of British Columbia are aware how BC Bud has prospered in this province from it’s early beginnings in the Gulf Island hippie communities to the present multi-billion dollar underground industry. Our bud is know the world over for it’s quality and potency. But what about the United States? Ah…yes, our friends to the north. Well fear not as they have a thriving industry of their own whether the FDA, FBI and local law officials like it or not.

First…a bit of history: Up until 1883, cannabis hemp was the largest agricultural crop in the world, grown for it’s various byproducts such as paper, oil and rope. In the late 1930′s Canadian and worldwide hemp producers were competing directly with that greedy jackass William Randolph Hurst and his Hearst Paper Manufacturing Division of Kimberly Clark. Hemp was cutting into his paper production profits and Dupont’s new patent to produce plastics from coal and oil would also suffer due to superior hemp products. Hemp makes more than just a good party…it’s relatively cheap and produces durable and long lasting products.

Hurst conspired with the Hoover administration (not the vacuum cleaner company…the U.S. Government ya doofus!) to have Hemp and it’s potent cousin vilified and banned from the United States. That ensured the billions of dollars in paper sales and his vast acreage of timberland would continue to reap the profits without competition from the better products available from Hemp. Dupont would also continue to control the production of plastics without competition from Hemp producers. Hurst was an asshole. And even though it was legalized temporarily during the war allowing manufacturers to produce the items needed for world war II, it was again deemed too dangerous for the common good shortly after the war ended. Can you say hypocrites?

The author of the Rolling Stone article, Mark Binelli, visited agricultural entrepreneurs and reports how the green revolution is sweeping across the nation. He wrangled access to the grow operations in California’s Emerald Triangle which comprises the adjoining counties of Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity. Business is good and some of the small towns are thriving as they ride the marijuana money wave. In the supercharged economy of Humboldt County, hundred dollar bills are referred to by locals as Humboldt twenties and the money is flowing from the growers down to local businesses and markets. Everybody’s happy. Except the law.

According to Binelli’s article in the April 1, 2010 edition of Rolling Stone Magazine, the U.S. marijuana industry is alive and well and thriving under the watchful eye of government law enforcement agencies. A Harvard University economist has estimated that legalizing pot could save the U.S. government $13 billion annually in prohibition costs (including cops and prisons) and raise $7 billion in annual revenues if marijuana is taxed. But that’s a given. California’s Governor Schwarzenegger has admitted to smoking pot with Tommy Chong (when asked about the allegation he responded “We always had a good time!“). California activists have gathered 700,000 signatures for a November ballot initiative that would fully legalize pot as taxpayers buckle under the weight of the state’s tanking economy. In the words of the guy that introduced the Beatles to marijuana…The times they are a-changin’.

Legalization and taxation will be roundly applauded and embraced by any American (and Canadian) with half a brain but the present growers are afraid that they will lose their businesses if pot is legalized. One was quoted in the article saying “We’re the people who were out there taking all the risks, and now we’re going to be squeezed out!” That may be true but it appears that California may be leading the charge for legalization and capitalization of it’s $14 billion marijuana business. Compare that to California’s citrus industry, which produces annual revenues of only $1.2 billion.

So where does that leave Canada? We produce some of the best bud in the world but we may be rooked by the U.S. if they legalize it before we do. Our possession laws are relatively lax but the prisons are still full of growers and sellers and more are on the way as law enforcement increases it’s reach into remote areas of the province. Though I’m not a marijuana consumer myself, I view this as a disgusting waste of our police resources and think, like lots of other people, that there are far worse things to worry about than weed. Why lock someone up for smoking or growing pot and at the same time, let some asshole scumbag lowlife out of prison for killing an innocent man. It’s madness.

Pot reminds me of gambling. Our old Liberal government railed about the evils and destructive nature of organized (and disorganized) gambling and assured residents that we would all go straight to hell if even one casino opened on our hallowed and sacred ground. Our new Liberal government is strung out on gambling revenues like a 20 dollar crack whore. They announce a new lottery ticket or casino every 12 minutes and tell us how great it all is. How times change and I’m sure the same will happen to marijuana. Once the crusty, narrow-minded old farts die off and the past and present pot smoking generation control our government, marijuana will be legalized and administered much like those other tax cash cow mainstays…liquor and cigarettes. But how long will it take? I’m sure it will happen in my lifetime but not until our big brother to the south says it’s OK of course. And that may not be too far off.

It appears that the editorial page of The Province is no longer sporting the cartoons of either Bob Krieger or Dan Murphy. I won’t miss Krieger’s lame attempts at humour but most of Murphy’s cartoons and writings made me laugh out loud.

It’s unfortunate that The Province Editors have decided that both must go but I suppose it’s a sign of the times as newspapers continue to position themselves with the online news world. Most of Kreiger’s simplistic cartoons were biased and pathetic attempts at social and political satire which, in my opinion, rarely worked. I did, however look forward to and read Dan Murphy’s cartoons and outrageous musings with plenty of guffaws and head nodding. His material was usually spot-on and lambasted politicians, do-gooders and local celebrity wannabe’s without being overtly mean or cutting. I’ve never met the man but he would be high on my list of people with whom I’d like to have a coffee and chat.

Murphy is a gifted satirist and I’ll miss his viewpoint if he is indeed no longer contributing to The Province. There were a number of reports at the end of 2007 regarding the future of both cartoonists but they continued to appear in the newspaper until a short time ago. Krieger is rumoured to be working in The Province sports department but I’ve heard nothing about Murphy’s whereabouts. I’m not sure if this is a permanent decision but I’m hoping that Murphy appears online or otherwise. Krieger I can do without.

UPDATE: Murphy’s cartoon appeared on the editorial page of the April 28 edition of The Province. I’m glad to see he’s still cranking out the funny stuff and hope the paper’s editor realize what a positive contribution he makes to the publication.