Aug 2007
The King is Dead
16/08/07 03:19 PM
Long live the King!!!!
So, THEY say that Elvis Presley went to that big concert in the sky 30 years ago today. I am not sure I believe it yet but will go along with the joke for the sake of getting along.
Unlike the Kennedy assasination or the still fresh events of 911, I don't remember precisely where I was when I heard this news, but I do remember the day. As I sit here listening to Blue Suede Shoes I can still see the television stations trying hard to react to this news. A good friend of ours, Ed Wideman, had backed up Elvis as part of the Toronto based Laurie Bower Singers at the famous Aloha from Hawaii concert in 1973. This concert was the very first ever broadcast around the world via satellite, another first for the King. So when I turned on the TV to catch the news here was Ed Wideman, along with Toronto's most famous adopted Arkansan, Rompin' Ronnie Hawkins being challenged to come up with fresh stories every 60 seconds to feed the voracious appetite of Live TV.
Ed didn't look too comfortable but Ronnie is old soft shoes enough for ten people so the words and one liners flowed like mustard down your fave tie just before your sales meeting. They managed to do a good job while the news sunk in that the guy who really started it all may actually have assumed room temperature sitting (fittingly) on the throne in Graceland. Elvis wasn't just a great singer and a great performer. Long before Paris Hilton stained a diaper or a reputation the King invented star power and celebrity. I know he wasn't first with just about anything and a tip of the hat to Bill Haley ( of The Comets) and all of those black singers whose style Elvis covered but he put it all together in one package, stardom, movie star, rock and roll god, trophy wife, he practically invented bling, and along with all of this came the inevitable entourage and it's attendant sychophants bearing booze, broads and edge enhancing pharmecuticals.
It ended badly for the King but turned out pretty good for his heirs and anyone else who circled planet Elvis during the good times. Priscilla made out OK, I still don't want to talk about the whole grandaughter Micael Jackson thing and I think his dad made a pretty good living out of the estate. The King is always right up there in record sales every year. It is hard not to weep however when you listen to yet another radio interview with some schmuck who "sang with Elvis" and was his "close personal friend", and is appearing at the local Jack in The Box every Thursday evening. These things can make you hit the old RCA Victor a smack at times.
Good old Ed Wideman didn't last much longer then Elvis himself, not surviving a late night car crash that would have made Cronenberg spit up his milk. I like to think that Ed wouldn't have sullied his or Elvis's legacy with any tell all stories but we will never know. Ronnie generally has too much of the gentleman in him to be so foolish and is currently in yet another come back as spokesman for some flooring outfit opening a plant in Bolton this year, so I guess he will be too busy and in the chips enough to take part in the annual rite of remorse that takes place every year on this anniversary.
The Collingwood people have it right, Elvis lives there every summer and a lot of tinkers, tailors, bankers, bikers and soccer moms let it all hang out to Lawdy Miss Clawdy with abandon.
This is a good thing.
Wherever he is, I hope he is looking down at all of this while munching on a peanut butter and banana sandwich and giggling.
The King is Dead, and I miss him.
So, THEY say that Elvis Presley went to that big concert in the sky 30 years ago today. I am not sure I believe it yet but will go along with the joke for the sake of getting along.
Unlike the Kennedy assasination or the still fresh events of 911, I don't remember precisely where I was when I heard this news, but I do remember the day. As I sit here listening to Blue Suede Shoes I can still see the television stations trying hard to react to this news. A good friend of ours, Ed Wideman, had backed up Elvis as part of the Toronto based Laurie Bower Singers at the famous Aloha from Hawaii concert in 1973. This concert was the very first ever broadcast around the world via satellite, another first for the King. So when I turned on the TV to catch the news here was Ed Wideman, along with Toronto's most famous adopted Arkansan, Rompin' Ronnie Hawkins being challenged to come up with fresh stories every 60 seconds to feed the voracious appetite of Live TV.
Ed didn't look too comfortable but Ronnie is old soft shoes enough for ten people so the words and one liners flowed like mustard down your fave tie just before your sales meeting. They managed to do a good job while the news sunk in that the guy who really started it all may actually have assumed room temperature sitting (fittingly) on the throne in Graceland. Elvis wasn't just a great singer and a great performer. Long before Paris Hilton stained a diaper or a reputation the King invented star power and celebrity. I know he wasn't first with just about anything and a tip of the hat to Bill Haley ( of The Comets) and all of those black singers whose style Elvis covered but he put it all together in one package, stardom, movie star, rock and roll god, trophy wife, he practically invented bling, and along with all of this came the inevitable entourage and it's attendant sychophants bearing booze, broads and edge enhancing pharmecuticals.
It ended badly for the King but turned out pretty good for his heirs and anyone else who circled planet Elvis during the good times. Priscilla made out OK, I still don't want to talk about the whole grandaughter Micael Jackson thing and I think his dad made a pretty good living out of the estate. The King is always right up there in record sales every year. It is hard not to weep however when you listen to yet another radio interview with some schmuck who "sang with Elvis" and was his "close personal friend", and is appearing at the local Jack in The Box every Thursday evening. These things can make you hit the old RCA Victor a smack at times.
Good old Ed Wideman didn't last much longer then Elvis himself, not surviving a late night car crash that would have made Cronenberg spit up his milk. I like to think that Ed wouldn't have sullied his or Elvis's legacy with any tell all stories but we will never know. Ronnie generally has too much of the gentleman in him to be so foolish and is currently in yet another come back as spokesman for some flooring outfit opening a plant in Bolton this year, so I guess he will be too busy and in the chips enough to take part in the annual rite of remorse that takes place every year on this anniversary.
The Collingwood people have it right, Elvis lives there every summer and a lot of tinkers, tailors, bankers, bikers and soccer moms let it all hang out to Lawdy Miss Clawdy with abandon.
This is a good thing.
Wherever he is, I hope he is looking down at all of this while munching on a peanut butter and banana sandwich and giggling.
The King is Dead, and I miss him.
|
The "Ides" of August
14/08/07 01:43 PM
I don't know if August has "Ides" like March has but
it should. Here we are hard on the centre of the
Eighth month and I am pretty sure we have not had a
spoonful of rain in 9 weeks. Least not while I was
awake and paying attention. It has been a remarkable
summer here in Sweetwater, reminds me a lot of the
summer of 1957 when it was also dry and hot. The date
stands out because it was the summer after the
Uprising in Hungary against the Soviet occupation and
we had a lot of Hungarian refugees show up in Canada
that following year. Some new faces at my school
questioning in broken English just what they had let
themselves in for. Escaping the cauldron of war for
the frying pan of a + 100 degree F summer in
supposedly cold Canada.
In those days, it was pretty rare for anyone to water their lawns. That is what rain was for after all and if it didn't rain the grass could just go dormant, the way it was designed to. A lot of brown lawns around here this summer and the lady who cuts our lawn, (OK, her lawn) is bemoaning the fact that she has not had to cut the grass since June. Got so bad the other week she stomped all over the acreage with a battery operated weed whacker looking for any blade or leaf bold enough to poke it's head up above it's peers or looking a little bit green. Thankfully, she is a farm girl and understands the cycles of nature and knows that Feast follows Famine just as Night follows Day. A remarkably practical attitude that is all too rare these days. We could do with a lot more farmer's daughters in the world and in Ottawa.
Big news this week that the squints at NASA have been miscalculating, and mis-reporting their warmest ever years top ten list since 2000. Caught out by a Toronto blogger they (to their credit) quickly revised their list to reflect the fact that the dust bowl year of 1934 not 1998 was the warmest year on record, as a matter of fact, the revised data shows that 5 of the top 10 were in the Dirty Thirties. Remarkable too when you realise that this occurred when the Industrial output of North American Industry, oft blamed for the current so called Global Warming Crisis, was in a slump having suffered a 30% decline as a result of the Great Depression as we have posted before on this blog.
Another blogger has caught out a Chinese American researcher from a New York College who is a contributor to the ICCP report on Climate Change, in "fabricating" data to support his pre-conceived conclusions. He quoted data which he said was from 30 years of detailed record keeping weather stations in China when there did not appear to be the number nor the locations of stations listed in his report.
Earlier this week I heard another "expert" come down on the side of Global Warming as a catastrophic event. This guy, a "communicator" for the Toronto Chapter of the SPCA, a hotbed of whackos and animal "activists" at the best of times, was on the local CBC expounding on his theory that Global Warming has modified Nature by influencing CATS of all things into having an extra litter of kittens each year. This genius has elevated the work of Charles Darwin to new heights with this claim.
No big surprise that he was given air on the CBC to distribute this drivel.
I think I am going back into my burrow until it cools off, talk to you in September.
30
In those days, it was pretty rare for anyone to water their lawns. That is what rain was for after all and if it didn't rain the grass could just go dormant, the way it was designed to. A lot of brown lawns around here this summer and the lady who cuts our lawn, (OK, her lawn) is bemoaning the fact that she has not had to cut the grass since June. Got so bad the other week she stomped all over the acreage with a battery operated weed whacker looking for any blade or leaf bold enough to poke it's head up above it's peers or looking a little bit green. Thankfully, she is a farm girl and understands the cycles of nature and knows that Feast follows Famine just as Night follows Day. A remarkably practical attitude that is all too rare these days. We could do with a lot more farmer's daughters in the world and in Ottawa.
Big news this week that the squints at NASA have been miscalculating, and mis-reporting their warmest ever years top ten list since 2000. Caught out by a Toronto blogger they (to their credit) quickly revised their list to reflect the fact that the dust bowl year of 1934 not 1998 was the warmest year on record, as a matter of fact, the revised data shows that 5 of the top 10 were in the Dirty Thirties. Remarkable too when you realise that this occurred when the Industrial output of North American Industry, oft blamed for the current so called Global Warming Crisis, was in a slump having suffered a 30% decline as a result of the Great Depression as we have posted before on this blog.
Another blogger has caught out a Chinese American researcher from a New York College who is a contributor to the ICCP report on Climate Change, in "fabricating" data to support his pre-conceived conclusions. He quoted data which he said was from 30 years of detailed record keeping weather stations in China when there did not appear to be the number nor the locations of stations listed in his report.
Earlier this week I heard another "expert" come down on the side of Global Warming as a catastrophic event. This guy, a "communicator" for the Toronto Chapter of the SPCA, a hotbed of whackos and animal "activists" at the best of times, was on the local CBC expounding on his theory that Global Warming has modified Nature by influencing CATS of all things into having an extra litter of kittens each year. This genius has elevated the work of Charles Darwin to new heights with this claim.
No big surprise that he was given air on the CBC to distribute this drivel.
I think I am going back into my burrow until it cools off, talk to you in September.
30