gotta use words

 

And just as “Award-Winning”, too!

Tell me, does this:

equal this: ???

Allow me to elaborate:

Every day I hear someone’s name prefixed by “iconic and award-winning”. It’s just gotten stupid.

When a radio host is introducing a guest to me they shouldn’t start off by making me angry. But they do, every day.

Unfortunately, I’m hearing it on my dear old CBC Radio.
I hear it daily on “Q”, although I generally like Jian Gomeshi. I hear it on “The Next Chapter”, although I generally like Shelagh Rogers’ show, too.
Heaven forbid, I’ve heard it on Current Affairs and News shows. They should know better.
(Let me say that I’ve never heard the deplorable word on “Writers and Company” with Eleanor Wachtel. )

Is it to impress the audience? Is it to puff up the guests on these shows? How great and special do they feel when everyone, and I mean everyone, gets the “I and A-W” treatment?

“Iconic” is a word that has gone recently from being inaccurate to being meaningless.

Do people even remember what the word “icon” means? Can you even call an icon “iconic”?

“Award-Winning” is the PhD of the media world. If “iconic” is a kind of description, then “A-W” is the credentials.

Billboard Magazine even has an Icon Award – in case there weren’t enough categories already.

But it gets mundane very quickly.

Gomeshi and others use the same stock phrases over and over again, day in day out.  “award-winning” “iconic” etc.
Why would he repeat himself so much? Is it part of his signature style or is it unconscious. Is it laziness?

It’s not just Jian.  Repetition is the sin that every media genre is committing.

Repetition is not reinforcement.

Repetition is marketing torture or laziness or unimaginative. Or something in the DSM-5.

Reinforcement (a strong skill in radio) is used properly to remind an audience (especially in the world of “live”, no-rewind, no skip-back radio) of something that is of key importance. Even then, reinforcement can be achieved without using the same word or phrase. How do you it? The answer is: care, attention, imagination and diligence.

It’s the difference between the journeyman skills of a writer/speaker  and an art.

If the idea is to sound “hip”, then they’ve failed. “Hip” becomes pedestrian when these expressions become automatic conventions. A droning effect.

When everything is “award winning” and “iconic”, nothing is.

Can’t things be made to sound interesting without using tropes?

No Surprises?

I had a classmate in grade 8 who was hopeless with English composition. He didn’t care, except that he wanted to pass.  To encourage him, our teacher assigned him a very short essay in which he’d have to use  a word he’d never used before. For some reason, Edward found and used the word “desolate”.
Come the day when he had to read his composition to the class, Edward used “desolate”about seven times in three pages of writing. His house was “desolate”, he felt “desolate”, the walk to school was “desolate”. I don’t know, maybe his hometown was called Desolate, too.

It was bizarre. Then it was annoying. Then it was rather pathetic.
That’s what I think of when I hear “iconic” and “award-winning” today.

My Challenge: to Broadcasters and Marketers and Copy Writers Everywhere

Do a whole radio show, or article, without mentioning “awards” or saying “award winning” once and without using the word “iconic”.

If that’s too hard, could we have a rating system? An announcement at the beginning of talk shows such as: The following program uses the word “iconic” x amount of times.
We could call it the “iRating” (!)

In George Orwell’s “1984”, the destruction of words is predicted:

“In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words — in reality, only one word. Don’t you see the beauty of that, Winston?”

I vote for “iconic”. If it’s award-winning.

Today’s Listening: (not Elvis):

1. Dreamsville  by Henry Mancini fr: Peter Gunn soundtrack
2. Something’s Wrong by The Walls fr: Hi-Lo
3. Mustt Mustt (Lost in his Work) by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brooks fr: “Mustt Mustt”

 

Jan 14, 1998 – June 24, 2013

Who was taking care of who?

 

Hope to see you next time around, my sweet friend.

Today’s, and Every day’s, Listening:

How I Remember You – Michael Franks

City Chickens	Country Chickens
City Chickens are wired – right to the ground	Country Chickens are wire-less, but well-grounded.
City Chickens live in Condos or Co-ops	Country Chickens live in coops (no hyphen)
Sideways City chickens have no room for a soul	Country chickens have souls and giblets

 

City chickens don’t taste very good

Today’s Listening:

1. When Sly Calls by Michael Franks fr: Passion Fruit
2. Until the Real Thing Comes Along by Fats Waller
3. Ooh Child by Valerie Carter fr: Just a Stone’s Throw Away
4. I Will by Alison Krauss and Tony Furtado

I know so many people having birthdays this month. I was just looking back in my journal (now digital) and seeing what my first April entry was. It was on this date! 39 years ago! 39 – the age Jack Benny said he always was.

The entry for April 17, 1974, was a scanned image. No text.

It’s a scan of an order slip. The kind waiters used to drop on your table in Chinese restaurants and on which you were expected to write down what you wanted for dinner.

This one brings back some great memories of food and friendship and makes me laugh.

My girlfriend, Helena, would take me into these “hole in the wall” restaurants and introduce me to stuff that you’d never find on the English menus. Still won’t.

The usually gruff waiter would slap down a piece of paper and a pencil and stalk off into the kitchen. Helena wouldn’t consult me, but often say “you probably won’t like this” and apparently write down an order for something mysterious. I don’t think I was ever disappointed.

We lived in different towns in 1974. I was in my first year of university and she was in her last year of high school. So what was I to do if I wanted this great Chinese food and she wasn’t around?

My solution was to carry around copies of these order slips in my wallet and produce them when served in a restaurant. It took more than one waiter aback that I nonchalantly handed him my order written out in Chinese characters. What I didn’t know at the time was that the writing had a distinctly feminine style to it. More baffledom for the waiter.

The old technology dictated that  I had to photocopy these slips. And in the early 70’s, even photocopiers were not that easy to find.

That order slip is from one of the last times I saw Helena, but not the restaurants and the staff working in them.

One thing I learned is that there is a great loyalty from customers to the cooks and even the waiters in the Chinese restaurants of those days. Chefs come and go – waiters, too.

After Helena:

Last night I was sitting in my favourite hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant eating a dish that is not on the English menu. Most of what I order is not on the English menu.

Not many Anglos come here. Not many Anglos know about it. Not that much has changed in 39 years.

The woman that runs this traditional BBQ restaurant always tries to talk me out of ordering what I want. “Canadians don’t like this!”.

The first time, I had a real fight on my hands. In other restaurants, I have been flatly refused or told they couldn’t make it. Now, 20 or so years after successfully ordering this dish in the Flourish Restaurant, the Flourish Lady (as I’ve always called her) still gives me the run around. She tries to talk me out of it, even after she has yelled my order to the back kitchen!

Every time, for decades. Our bit of fun.

Oh, and Helena? Another scanned image I put in my journal from those days is this one:

Today’s Listening:

1. Wouldn’t It Be Loverly by Diana  Panton
2. I Wish We Had Our Time Again by John Hartford
3. Made in Japan – Gojo Ohashi Bridge by Amos Garrett
4. Can I Make It Last (Or Will It Just Be Over?) by Boz Scaggs

 

At the end of winter, new, strange, glints of light are catching my eye.

It’s a twixt time. Transitioning between the grey, black atmosphere of true winter and the clear blue yellow light of spring.

When you know, but can’t see, the maple sap is rising. The squirrels and birds seem to know. They are digging and beginning to sing.

All I know is that the light is different. Will it take?

The tricks that all these transitional states play upon one’s mind – as in the place between dreaming and waking, falling asleep.

I see these glints in unusual places, like below in the corner of a kitchen window.

 

Not so much the usual sunsets and panoramas, but in the details of artificial objects like office building glass, hallways, a bit of flooring.

My working class reflections of consciousness.

 

   

 

Today’s Listening:

1. As If By Magic by Glenn Cardier fr: Stranger Than Fiction
2. Have You Met Miss Jones? by George Van Eps fr: Mellow Guitar
3. Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most by Betty Carter fr: The Audience
4. Bar Inglese by Marcos Valle fr: Jet-Samba

 

 

 

I just got back from the Indigo store at the Yorkdale Mall and I feel sick.

How is it possible to spend over an hour in a bookstore and not find one book to buy? Good Lord, there is no end of books. Why so few that I’m interested in?

Is it because they don’t stock any authors I like?

Usually they don’t. Or if they do, it had better be on a bestsellers list or won some award. Or fit nicely into some easily digested category such as “Lifestyle”.

Is it because it’s more of a fashion boutique than a bookstore?

A little bit, yes. Well, a lot, yes.

The merchandise seems to be as important as the books judging by the prominent places reserved for displaying soap, candles, bags, novelty items etc.

I’ll admit it bothered me no small amount that I had to line up behind someone screaming at the cashier about returning a pair of socks. In a bookstore?

Is it the calibre of writing these days?

Unfortunately, that’s the conclusion I’ve come to.

Walking down the maze of aisles and shelves, I began to get into a fugue state. It was a bit like when your mother took you to a department store as a small child and told you to wait in a chair while she checked out the ladies department.

I was briefly lifted out of this delirium by a bright little yellow paperback with the word “lemon” in it’s title. I thought it was absurd and forgot about it till I got home.

I had actually brought a list of new books and writers that I’d make note of from radio interviews and CBC podcasts, notably Writers and Company and The Next Chapter. Indigo stocked none of these.

In the end, I picked up a mystery novel by a writer I knew and trusted.

The cashier asked if I had “Plum Rewards Card”. More fruit.

But when I got home, the “lemon” thing came back to mind. For the heck of it, I searched Amazon for books with “lemon” in their titles.

The result was 496 book titles in fiction and literature alone.

Some of my favourite titles include:
1. Vampires in the Lemon Grove (by Karen Russell)

2. The Sour Lemon Score: A Parker Novel ( by Richard Stark)
This was published in 1969 and would now feature a cell phone as well as, or instead of, a handgun. As the gun was indispensible to American TV shows (still is), the cell phone is now de rigueur.

And I really like this one:

3. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel (by Aimee Bender)

– the blurb says: “On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake.”

Good grief!

4. Lemon Meringue Pie Murder (by Joanne Fluke)

– I can see a whole series happening here along the lines of the “Rabbi who..”and “the Cat who…”

Now, I wrote this before checking it out, thinking the fruit “series” idea was too nuts, but, lo and behold, Ms Fluke has already done it:

– Apple Turnover Murder,
– Red Velvet Cupcake Murder,
– Strawberry Shortcake Murder
– Peach Cobbler Murder
– Cream Puff Murder (where’s the fruit, Joanne?)
– Gingerbread Cookie Murder (ginger is a rhizome, not a fruit – Joanne is breaking her training now)
– Cherry Cheescake Murder
– Key Lime Pie Murder
– Plum Pudding Murder
– Carrot Cake Murder
There’s more, (14 of them, I think) and that’s more than enough. Interestingly, these mysteries are written by someone who also writes cook books and you’d think she would know better than to serve up endlessly repetitious themes to her customers.

Perhaps a palate freshener would be the curiously titled “Fruit: A novel about a boy and his nipples” by Brian Francis

.

Perhaps not.
(actually, I’m told this is really a pretty good book)

 

Let’s make one big book and get it done with.

Something with “vampire/coming- of-age/murderous childhood/set in Italy/fruit name/colour name/survivor…” kind of book.

Indeed, this sort of thing was done by Alan Coren in his 1976 collection of comic essays: Golfing for Cats.

A little something for everyone.
But not at the Indigo. I checked.

I would have been better off if I was in the market for socks. Or body lotion. I mean, a bookstore is where you go to buy that stuff, isn’t it?

Maybe  I need something like “Chicken Soup for the Jaded Reader” – like a hole in the head, I do.

Today’s Listening:

1. August Day Song – Bebel Gilberto
2. Girl Talk – Ben Sidran
3. The Nights are Cold – Richard Hawley
4. Treasure Island – Bob James

Name them.

 

This may be the last perfect day of summer. Of the warm season. I’m sure it will be.

This is not a hot summer day, it’s not a fall day. It’s a transition day.

And today is Monday, a beautiful day that doesn’t get me down. Not like it did for Paul Williams who wrote the  lyrics to the song or Karen Carpenter who sang it.

 

But if it’s rainy days we’re talking about, then it has to be Tuesdays.

Because every Tuesday this summer it’s rained.  Just about.

I checked: 15 out of the last 18 Tuesdays since May 22 it rained.

And every Tuesday, I go to a place in the country to write. Here it is:

(picture not taken on a Tuesday)

I’ve been going there for about 5 years.
It hasn’t always been Tuesdays, but it became Tuesdays on a regular basis when I started having a weekly appointment on Tuesday mornings.
I was living in the burbs and my appointments took place in the next abutting burb town. From there it was an easy scenic drive up to my friend’s country home, and 10 acres of fields and wild critters. And quiet.

Up until this summer, I would sit and fry in the sun, preferring to sit on the steps of his deck. I could just spread my notebooks, pens, stuff, out there better.

But this summer – rain.  Almost every Tuesday.
Often the only day of the week.

I’d look at the weather channel and see the next seven days all represented by little orange suns – except one. A little grey cloud with cute drops falling from it, and the word: Tuesday.

That’s ok. I can be happy inside with a moody view of the trees and fields in their grey tones.

It’s very cozy. Just like winter.  Not being able to sit outside and having no distractions, I am sitting Inside trying to get stuff Out.
I’ll make my own Outside.

It only gets a bit awkward when the cleaning lady comes. Then, I either have to move around with my materials – table to sofa to an outbuilding that is sheltered.
That still means a walk in the wet to reach it – and a walk back.
It’s not so bad as I write longhand and don’t need electricity.

My only activity outside is taking pictures of moss.

It’s become something of an obsession. The family pieces, bits, of moss on the rock fence in the back are like my pets. (Ghia pets?)
What do you call a grouping of moss? A clump, a cushion, a mat.

The upside of the rain is the almost instant explosion of moss,

emerald (in cloud, on Tuesdays):

and peridot (in sun):

I feel like I need to have a word with Nature.
Could we schedule the rain for a different day of the week?

I was checking my Daytimer, and it says it’s time to order a new refill.
Since when did Nature use a Daytimer?

Well.
I’m going out there tomorrow and it’s supposed to rain

Today’s Listening:

1. Rainy Days and Mondays  – performed by Pat Metheny from the CD: “What’s It All About”
2. Long Hot Summer – The Style Council
3. Before the Rain     –   Lee Oskar
4. Garden in the Rain – Dan Hicks from the CD: “It Happened One Bite”
5. Antonio’s Song (The Rainbow) – Michael Franks from the CD: “Sleeping Gypsy”
6. The Gentle Rain  – Astrid Gilberto from the CD “Verve Masters 9”

 

It happens every so often that I catch up with some old friends from the heyday of my CBC Radio Comedy days.

On Thursday, I got a message from comedy writer extraordinaire, Tim Burns, that he and Peter Wildman, of Frantics fame, were going to be at my favourite out-of-town club: The Moonshine Cafe in Oakville. The next day, Friday, tomorrow.

I get all emotional at these all-too-rare get-togethers. I don’t know about the other guys but it always seems we didn’t know what we had back in the days when we were too busy scrambling and learning and nervous to know this is what we’d always miss.

That’s enough nostalgia for me, but not, apparently, for the audience tonight.

Well before the fully-booked audience packs the room, long-time fans of Peter (and the Frantics) start to drift in. Some I know from the radio taping days, some have become fans since.  People who have come to the fold only in the last couple of years when Peter has been doing solo performances and a few Frantics reunions.

One fellow asked me if I knew Peter. “You might say that”, I replied. Being their radio producer since 1981 qualifies me. I hear kids discussing their all-time favourite Frantics sketches, debating when they were first recorded. I don’t go over and straighten them out.

Tonight, Peter’s show  is billed as his “Christmas Show” and over the years he has amassed a lot of Christmas songs and sketches. Much of tonight’s material is from Peter’s 30 year repertoire. Backing him up is Tim Burns on synth and electric guitar.

Tim is, in my opinion, an unheralded genius of comedy. Maybe one time in a career you get a chance like we had in 1989.  My boss had one day said to me: “Ok, make the show you always wanted to make”. And the first thing I did was to pick up the phone, called Tim and say: “Ok, write the show you always wanted to write.” Trust who you hire and get out of their way.

It was well placed trust. The resulting show Six Days That Shook The Walt, won the gold medal at the New York Festival of Radio.

So, somewhere along the line, Pete and Tim started working together. And decades later, here they were at the Moonshine.

Great place. Great show. Great guys.

Today’s Listening:

1.  Do It For The Money – Peter Wildman
2.  Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk – Rufus Wainwright
3. Stoned Soul Picnic – Laura Nyro
4. Invitation – Cal Tjader