Desolation Blvd.

Photos copyright Darrol Hofmeister, sharpshooter photography. Click on images for larger versions.

First, a disclaimer. prairie dog pays me money. They point me in a direction, say "photograph this, that and/or the other thing." and about a month (or so) later, I get a cheque. Easy peasy, fun money that pays for...well...part of my phone bill or something.

One thing they DON'T tell me is what to think. (Well, Whitworth tries.)

As a VERY small business owner, I try to distance myself, at least in my own mind, from the socialist frothings spewed forth from Whitworth, Dechene, LaRose, et al as much as is possible. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I don't.

But I gotta tell ya, they got this one nailed.

In Dechene's story about City Hall's approval of the apartment complex in the Far East end, he complains that the development is in an, shall we say, inappropriate area ("Now Leaving Regina", July 2-15 prairie dog). Well, Paul, I'm happy to report that there are indeed sidewalks out there...but very little else. I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to journalistic photos, so the photo that accompanies the story wasn't messed with. Mr. Whitworth was with me at the time and, contrary to his nature, he did not knock down the sign (EDIT: which was, ironically, a public notice of the zoning change) and cover it with garbage. All is recorded as it was. This is one empty-ass lot. With no visible bus stops and barely visible from the future 4th floor amenities (grocery stores, convienience stores, gas stations, etc.) this place is practically isolated from the rest of the city.

As a far-flung surburbanite who owns a glass house, I will only half-heartedly chuck stones... but we need this development in the middle of the city, not the fringes.

Hell, this place's future tenants would have to drive for 10 minutes just to get to Regina's fringes.

Your cable bill is about to go up $10 a month …

… thanks to the CRTC (Inside the CBC). With this, the federal government has successfully forced the Canadian public to subsidize the business stupidity of Canwest and Bell Globemedia.

Bill Brioux (TV Feeds My Family) provides Satan in the details.

"One shocking little detail buried in the fine print in today's CRTC funding announcement: after all that whining from broadcasters--yes, those same "Save Local TV" guys--about how all those local news costs are breaking their business models, the CRTC has lowered the minimum local programming levels to 14 hours a week in big cities and just seven hours a week in "non-metropolitan markets." That is an hour a day. So here is more money--go out and do less."

An hour less local TV. Hmm. Are some of these guys about to get layoff notices? (CTV Regina)

A Michael Jackson Video Of Note

Michael Jackson and Bubbles, Jeff Koons, 1988, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art permanent collection


The service for MJ is underway in L.A., and all's okay. Crowds are smaller than expected and celeberties are plentiful. But is all this fuss something Jackson would've wanted? Don't care actually but it's an excuse to post a link to the video for "Leave Me Alone" (Wikipedia), which one of my all-time favourites. (Actually the director of this video, Jim Blashfield, has at least three other videos that I love: Peter Gabriel's "Big Time" and "Sledgehammer", and the freaking awesome Talking Heads song "Road To Nowhere". [CORRECTION: This post has been edited to remove my ignorant lies. Those other videos were directed by Stephen R. Johnson. Ignore the text in grey. Lies!]

Anyway, I couldn't find a quality version with a swipable embed so you'll have to actually click through the link. Which is here.

Rosie LaRose's Tuesday Top Six

1. NOT ENOUGH FINGERS AND TOES You have problems when your minister of finance can't count. (Impolitical) And that's why Prime Minister Harper hates the parliamentary budget office (TorStar).

2. DON STANDS ALONE Note to Don Morgan: when you become the laughingstock of Murray Wood (CJME) Murray Mandryk (L-P) and the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix editorial board (S-P via The Jurist), you've endorsed a dumb idea.

3. ALWAYS BLAME THE PEON If this is true, well ... if that's the way the Conservative government treats its employees, it doesn't deserve to have any. (A BCer in Toronto)

4. LAYING MICHAEL TO REST Today's the day of Micheal Jackson's memorial. The LA Times has full-blown coverage here, here, here, here, here, here, maybe here too, and also here. And don't forget, here. One New York Times columnist probably won't be welcome. (NYT)

5. IT'S NOT JUST IRAN Ethnic violence in China is on the upswing. (Los Angeles Times)

6. BECAUSE I LIKE YOU AND WANT YOU TO SMILE Here's nice little treasure on line: three blogger's 25 favourite Calvin and Hobbes cartoons (Progressive Boink).

This Week at City Hall

Monday, July 6
Municipal Heritage Advisory Committee (12:15 pm): Considered a proposed expansion to St Paul's Anglican Cathedral which could have been a travesty (such as with every church in Canada that received a cankerous concrete outbuilding in the 50s and 60s) but judging by what's written in the report and by the artist renderings that go along with it, it looks like the new part will be executed in the Gothic Revival style of the rest of the building. Looks like an attractive and respectful renovation. Yay! The committee also received and filed a report with regards to the restoration of the Albert Street Bridge which is underway right now.

Wednesday, July 8
Regina Planning Commission (4 pm): Considering a proposal for a funeral home and chapel on the 500-block of Victoria Avenue and also going over a list of street and park names recommended by the Civic Naming Committee. Okay... now I swore to myself that seeing as there isn't anything really contentious on the agenda this week that I wouldn't be all snarky. I'm worried that I might be getting a reputation as a crank. But, come on... fifteen street names starting with the word "Green"?! Three more ending with the same word! Seriously? This all comes at the request of the developer behind the Greens on Gardiner (get it?) development slated for Regina's east end. Have these people never gone down to Wascana View where every street starts with the word Wascana and tried to find their way to a dinner party with nothing but an address? It's disorienting and silly. Call me crazy, but you don't build community cohesion by giving streets cutesy names that all fit a theme or sound alike. You get that by naming them after people and things that are important to a community. Speaking of which, as reported on the CBC and subsequently aggregated by Whitworth in his Six in the Morning, the Civic Naming Committee also recommended names of prominent members of Regina's creative community. It's a good list which I'll cut from the CBC site and paste below:

• Joe Fafard, visual artist
• Connie Kaldor, folk musician
• Doris Knight, opera company founder
• Howard Leyton-Brown, former conductor for the Regina Symphony Orchestra
• Alison Lohans, writer
• Tim Lilburn, poet
• Jeannie Mah, ceramic artist
• Wilf Perrault, visual artist
• Dave Margoshes, writer
• Ken Mitchell, writer

Now that's how you name streets.

Anyway... as always you can download full meeting agendas and reports on the city's website.

Monday Night Eco-Rage

Just read a great June 28 article by economist Paul Krugman in the (online) New York Times on a climate change bill the United States House Of representatives passed last week.

It's a furious piece full of the kind of outrage usually monopolized by the Limbaughs, Coulters and O'Reillys--but unlike those bullies' nasty little efforts it has the full intellectual and moral authority of a Nobel Prize winner behind it.

Krugman acuses the climate-change-denying politicians who voted against the bill of treason. His exact words: "And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet."

Oh, grrr! Grrr!

Read the whole thing here. You should check it out so the next time some outside-the-box thinker (or amateur oil-industry apologist) tells you they don't believe in global warming you can politely inform them that their views may amount to crimes against humanity. Which, though harsh, is probably a fair comment at this stage of the north-pole-melting game.

Plus it's a great line to use when a party's getting boring and you want to liven up the conversation. Bonus!

Six In The Morning

1 UNHAPPY ANNIVERSARY It's been five years since Tamera Keepness vanished on the night of July5, 2004. (Maclean's)

2 STAY OFFIN' THAR PROPERTY Regina police welcome the province's new trespassing law, which went into effect July 1. But this Regina indy magazine editor thinks the law--which seems basically good--would be better if it contained protectections for political protestors like similar legislation in Manitoba, like Greg reported last year. (Leader-Post, Planet S)

3 I GUESS IT'S A START The U.S. and Russia agree to cut their nuke arsenals down to 1675 apiece. Here's a better number to shoot for: zero. (Guardian)

4 TONIGHT SHOW: THE NEXT GENERATION Thanks to the wacky shenanigans of new host Conan O'Brien, it's out with the boomers, in with the X-ers. (New York Times)

5 EULOGY FOR BATTERS Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the late MP's life, death and struggle with depression. (Globe and Mail)

6 MARGOSHES AVE.? I love it. Love it! (CBC)

The power of the internet, Alaskan-style

Well, gee.

An Alaska blogger recently asked her friends to help pay to file a Freedom of Informaton Act on some of Governor Sarah Palin's acivities. The FOI is filed Thursday, July 3 (Celtic Diva). On the afternoon of July 4, Sarah Palin announces she's resigning as governor, and theatenes to sue the entire internet (Anchorage Daily News) for asking, WTF? (Wonkette).

More here at The Washington Monthly and Crooks and Liars

Hat tip to Unrepentant Old Hippie

Sunday Wrap-Up

A couple quick thoughts at the end of a quiet Sunday. First, Iran. Wow. This weekend the country had influential hardliners sowing the seeds for the arrest of allegedly defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossien Mousavi. The editor of a big-deal newspaper apparently called for him to be arrested and tried as a U.S. spy, which is nuts. Meanwhile, at the protest end of the spectrum , a group of Iranian clerics called Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election illegitinate. In Iran, the opinions of cleric--even fringy, reformist clerics--matters. (Guardian)

Second, Dave Batters. The former MP was laid to rest in Regina yesterday. Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in attendance. (StarPhoenix).

Copious words have been spoken about the tragedy of metal illness which is at it should be. It's awful that the clinically depressed Batters committed suicide, and horror, heartbreak and sympathy are the correct responses.

But...I feel like a hostage on this tragic story. Like it's rude or self serving to point out the obvious conflict between this poor man's free-wheeling economic politics and his own frailties.

I'm going to anyway.

Batters was one of the current breed of politician (found in large numbers in two federal parties) who relentlessly champion smaller government and paying less tax. He may well have been an incredibly likable and charismatic guy, but he belonged to a fraternity that almost seems to make cancelling public programs a point of pride.

I firmly believe we have a weaker, more vulnerable and more intolerant country as a result of these political attitudes being regarded as acceptable.

Just think about it--in the last 30 or so years we've seen the programs that used to give Canadians some security underfunded and stressed: healthcare, social services, affordable housing and inexpensive university, unemployment insurance. Batter's former party has even tried to shut down very successful programs like Vancouver's needle exchange clinic because they have simpleminded, one-note ideas about how human beings are. (Pretty damn nervy, given their comrade's unspecific history of substance addiction.)

Everything's "tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts" with Canada's politicians. Everything's enslaved to this simplistic idea that people need to "pull themselves up by the bootstraps" rather than rely on government.

And I have no doubt whatsoever that a lot of people have been hurt by that.

Dave Batters couldn't pull himself out of his depression. He couldn't pull himself to safety. Will substantial new funds be dedicated to treating mental illness in the wake of Batters' death?

I doubt it. The current bunch would call that "socialism".

Rest In Peace, Mr. Batters.

Pack Attack

Yesterday, as usual for a Friday, I was on CBC's afternoon edition with Michelle Hugli and my friend and Planet S counterpart Chris Kirkland, talking about supercool weekend events in Regina and Saskatoon.

My pick for Friday night was the band The Pack A.D., scheduled to rawk the hell out of O'Hanlon's.

A few things caught my attention about this band before I recommended them as the awesomest thing to do Friday night in Regina. First, they're signed to Mint Records, the never-miss Vancouver label who introduced me to fave bands the New Pornographers and Young and Sexy, and fave artists Neko Case and Carolyn Mark. (Plus, Mint has Nardwuar, and if you have Nardwuar you are made of win. This is a proven scientific fact).

Second, prairie dog's Vancouver bureau (in this case the esteemed Emmet Matheson) said we should do something on 'em because they're "really good".

Third, I listened to their stuff. Holy smokes, the Pack A.D. are really good.

So I checked out their set, which got underway at O'Hanlon's around 12:15-ish (kinda on the late side, tsk). The Pack A.D. are a Vancouver drum and guitar duo of Maya Miller and Becky Black who play a bluesy, rockey mix of "grrr" and "rowr". Their stuff would sound fake and forced from most bands but from Miller and Black's strings, skins and throats it rips with pure, blazing integrity.

They are the real thing, these two, and they are very likely only going to get better and better and better. I should add that Dechene and Steel were with me and they both agreed the band was great (and that makes it three against one, so you have to admit that we're right).

But you want a sample. Here's their video for "Making Gestures, off their 2008 album Funeral Mixtape, brought to you by the power of YooToob.



Let me tell you, it's even better live.

So I rave about this band today for two reasons. First, if you missed them last night--or even if you didn't--you've got another chance to see them here this summer. They'll be back in Regina July 30 at the Exchange (specifically, the Club). It's only eight bucks and will be a great show. Check it out. And yes, we'll have an article in the July 29 prairie dog. They'll play Amigo's in Saskatoon the next night, by the way.

Second, Miller asked the crowd to tell all their Winnipeg friends to catch tomorrow night's show at The Lo Pub, corner of Ellice and Kennedy. Since I have 'Peg friends who read this blog, well.. get there if you can people! I'm pretty sure you'll all like this band. (Peakay, drag Dano out if you can.)

For more on The Pack A.D. visit their website, here. Rowr!