Reality TV on HBO

Bill Maher is doing some of the best stuff on TV right now with his show Real Time. He is the first to awaken to the reality that Bush wasn’t the problem....it's all politicians.

This is a bold embrace for left leaning talking heads. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are still finding solace in “Democrats are better than Republicans”. However, watch closely (and I do). The conviction is failing.

Maher is alert to the necessity of change for the greater good and is frustrated that “hope” is fading.

These blogs are waning in interaction...understandably my words have lost some lustre. Perhaps Mr. Maher’s words will stir something J

Please enjoy the link.....

Skip to the 2:18 mark. Copy and Paste

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc3MqM5R550

If you like what you see, the whole episode is there in parts 1-5. Or Rogers On Demand (Episode 169)

Good stuff people!

-Life is complicated and far from perfect but it is still great

Time Well Spent

Something light and airy for this week...Entertainment it is then.

Next time you find yourself in Blockbuster and feeling ashamed for walking out with “17 Again” only because it’s a “New Release”, write these down and bask in brilliance.

5 Best Movies of All Time

5. The Godfather Part II. I feel silly saying anything about a movie so widely accepted and critically adored. Suffice it to say....everything you’ve heard/read/seen is true. This is a masterpiece.

Lasting Impression: Justification is dangerous. It creates the illusion that reason has been applied and unreasonable acts can be undertaken, reasonably.

4 Tie. About Last Night. Rob Lowe and Demi Moore fall in love for the first time. How this real love reveals itself to them is more powerful than expected and they react to it in very different ways. Yes it is a relationship movie but it is so much more than that. It is soaring, moving, tragic, frustrating and funny. David Mamet wrote this for the stage but here it is staged beautifully.

Lasting Impression: Love is intoxicating for the fearless young, however it will scar the naive just as quickly

4 Tie. Scarface. Forget that it’s in every Hip Hop library, this was the Godfather for the next generation for a reason. Tony Montana wasn’t a Cuban as much as he was the embodiment of what America had become...brash, fearless, obnoxious and ignorant. Tony was America on cocaine. Driven by greed and consumption, he crashes headlong into honour and integrity. This is all that is good and bad in everyone. The spectacle is at times intoxicating and repulsive but always irresistible.

Lasting Impression: To have it all you have to risk it all. A grotesque illustration of a man will little morality losing all morality.

3. Beautiful Girls. Parts are uneven and there is flat out misses in this movie, however, when it is right...it is so right. It captures better than any other movie the innate problem with the “relationship male”. Men aspire for the impossible, a mate that is a perfect 10. As long as this is considered “possible” then the “hope” of it in any form keeps the dog futilely chasing cars. “Nothing changes in the Ridge but the season” and men unsettlingly prove it.

Lasting Impression: That the hope in us all is a double edged sword. While looking for something better we may miss what is best.

2. Good Will Hunting. There is a critic in all of us and this was one of those movies that left me saying “I wish I wrote that”. Matt and Ben deserved that Oscar because this script was gorgeous, flawless...perfect. They invite us to gauge the import of potential versus happiness. ”In 1905 there were hundreds of professors renowned for their study of the universe, but it was a ... it was a 26 year old Swiss patent clerk, doing physics in his spare time who changed the world.” If only that were true today, but the boys got it right and made it about the journey…made it about a girl.

Lasting Impression: You may conquer the world, cure cancer, be a captain of industry however none of that speaks to your individual happiness when your head hits your pillow at night.

1. The Shawshank Redemption. You simply don’t get better than this. A great movie is infinitely watchable. I have seen this movie 30 times and it still reveals a new gem worthy of savouring every time. Freeman’s laconic voice-over lines like “Get busy living or get busy dying. You’re damn right!” are pitch perfect and sustenance for your soul.

Lasting Impression: We humans can exist close to Hell as beauty can be found in the darkest of places. Hope finds us all.

3 Best TV Shows of All Time

3. Big Love. It sounds like a chauvinistic paradise to have three wives, each younger and more beautiful than the next. It is not. Take any relationship drama and compound it thrice and you will understand the fraying nature of this beast. Set to the backdrop of fundamentalist Mormon beliefs, you have a thought provoking indictment of all things society tells us to hold dear.

Lasting Impression: Being guided by beliefs can me blinding, difficult, confusing and rewarding...all at the same time.

2. Six Feet Under. Rent/buy these DVD’s people, you will thank me. This HBO series based in a Funeral Home is as dark and as unsettling as you would expect. Unexpected is how you are seated at the table of some of the most indelible characters ever developed on the screen. They still live with me to this day. The most powerful scenes come later when you come to know these people so well that a single glance conveys more than any diatribe could.

Lasting Impression: Our mortal coil is a frail thing. In nature we are insignificant, however to ourselves...we are everything.

1. Seinfeld. The show about nothing, taught us about everything. Life is what happens between all the big events of our lives. The day to day minutiae is humanity. That is where we live and breathe and that is where this 30 minute show takes us. It points a finger and says “stop taking yourself so seriously, it’s just life, have fun!” No show has ever done it better or funnier.

Lasting Impression: You’re not the only one living in your own strange neurotic world.

-Life is complicated and far from perfect but it is still great.

Signs Signs Everywhere Signs

These Blogs are sometimes an interesting endeavour. I’ve been told that past ruminations have actually offended some people. Was I really too hard on MJ?

I get lots of suggestions for topics, however I grow a little gun shy of sharing my thoughts on a great many for just that reason. This is a blog attached to a business, a business that hopefully appeals to everyone.

My intent is not to offend people with my thoughts and opinions. I simply wish to entertain and perhaps evoke a response...ideally both.

Astrology is a touchy area for example.

Human Nature 101 is to “believe what you want to believe”. With such an edict intact it is very difficult to change people’s opinions and some people get offended if you tread to closely to those beliefs.

Here is my humble and hopefully thoughtful attempt at exploring the Zodiac.

Years ago I saw a retired Magician on TV, pretending to be a Professor of sorts, walk into a College lecture and inform the class they had fortuitously been chosen for a unique study. All would participate in an elaborate astrological reading done by the very best astrologers in the country.

They took home their forms and filled them out as the information needed was very specific. Required was the time and location of their births to the minute, as well as their parents.

The “Professor” returned 3 weeks later with 3 pages of detailed analysis on each individual. The students sat at their desks and read the fruits of the labour.

The class was a lecture hall and my memory serves that there were approximately 100 students.

After reading their analysis, the students were given 5 categories in which they would grade the accuracy by the show of hands.

VERY POOR. No hands went up.

POOR. No hands went up.

AVERAGE. No hands went up.

GOOD. About 1/3 of the hands went up.

VERY GOOD. About 2/3 of the hands went up.

Pretty conclusive that the job done was spot on based on this result.

The students were then asked to pass their analysis to the person behind them. A few moments later they realized that everyone was given the exact same analysis.

These were not individual works done by renowned astrologists. It was a lone document created by a retired Magician.

This left an impression on me. A very strong impression about the way we humans are. Even more indelible was that some of the students argued afterwards. A few refused to discredit horoscopes at all based on such a display as they recounted instances when they have been correct in the past.

To hear these people talk you would believe they have been objectively scrutinizing the results over the years and concluded the “hits” vastly outweighed the “misses”.

However could it be akin to our propensity to remembering the bad things people say about us, over the good....in reverse?

I simply proffer the question of what is more likely. That every twelfth person on the planet is fantastically bonded in a fatalist journey?

Or that each sign of the zodiac has characteristics...human characteristics that we all have...that we have talked into greater existence?

For example every child is told their Sign. The next progression is to ask what their sign means. If they are a Scorpio they are told they are passionate. If they are Virgo they are told they are analytical. If they are Taurus they are told they are loyal.

Now all humans have the capacity to be passionate, analytical and loyal.

Is it not possible that we are simply positively reinforcing some traits over others?

I tried to locate the video of this TV show to no avail. I did however find a similar one in a smaller class with the same man at the helm. It lacked the set up and punch of the one I am drawing from but it does convey a similar affect.

Copy and Paste

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFwOeXi3Yz8

And why the picture of Carment Electra? Well she shares the same April 20th birthday as a man responsible for the deaths of 50 million people.

-Life is complicated and far from perfect but it is still great.

Hi Ho Hi Ho

September is an interesting little bugger of a month. It marks the sad end to our already truncated summers here in The Great White North. Having said this, as I write I am enjoying a reprieve poolside with a wee cocktail.

School is back in session for those who still hold hopes for a brighter future. That is if the rest of us stop screwing things up for them. Young girls and boys will again begin the time honoured dance of establishing themselves within their peer groups in much the same way a wolf pack organizes.

There will be posturing by politicians. After all they had the entire summer off and they are fearful we may actually realize how useless and unnecessary they have become. So they’ll puff out their chests, pound the table and display their feathers in an inane attempt to remind us why we need this inept ruling class.

The leaves will slowly turn at the same rate Christmas decorations start to infiltrate the stores.

It also marks the start of arguably the best professional sport, the NFL and judging by the sweatpants and potato chips on any given Sunday...I am not alone.

There will be those who will cling to shorts a little longer in an admirable attempt of denial as to the bane of living above the 44^th latitude.

Bumble Bee school buses will appear and multiply as if they have been secretly gestating underground for months...and I will be reminded of my good friend and miss him.

September 11^th will once again ubiquitously rear it's ugly head as we now have a moment akin to our parent's and grandparent's recollection of JFK's death. We too remember where we were on that day that looked liked everything may not be alright. And it scared us in a very odd and elemental way.

TV shows begin their new seasons as the drooping sun sends us inside a little earlier each day to rekindle our love affair with our televisions. This is LOST’s last season and unfortunately I have to wait till January for my last ravenous fix.

The “Song of the Summer” is gently placed in the annals for posterity. BTW my vote is for the anthem "I Got a Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas.

September is also the movie studios dumping ground for their refuse that wasn’t entertaining enough for summer fare nor elitist enough for Oscar contention. Usually a Rob Schneider movie would be slotted in this month. It is, however, a good reprieve from the sticky guilt of wasting 3 hours and $9.50 to see Transformers II.

Personally this is the time of year when I reflect on change as a natural segue. I start to plan again and cast my gaze on things to come. The summer is a bawdy time of devil-may-care indulgence, while September reminds us all that there is always work to be done.

We at The Bank couldn’t let the spectre of work crush our collective and kindred spirits.

So we’ve launched a new night at The Bank.

VAULT Thursdays.

We’ve hired the best DJ’s from Toronto and by all accounts these young men are excellent at doing what we still all need....a small deserved respite from all the hard work going into our plans for the future.

For all work and no play...would be missing the entire point.

Let’s make it a great September everybody!

-Life is complicated and far from perfect but it is still great.

Perspective is the Rub

I recently had a birthday. Not a huge fan of being reminded that behind the minutiae and distractions of day to day life lies the fact that life has an end and we are all moving inexorably towards it.

That sounds a wee bit dour but it is a nice reminder to carpe diem (seize the day) for there will come a time that the end of days will seize us.

I was struggling with just such a concept on my 27^th birthday a few years back. I was with my friends Druxy and AdRock and after many celebratory libations for yours truly, we went out in Druxy’s boat late that night to float on the placid waters of Kempenfelt Bay.

It was a beautiful warm and breathless August night, the kind of night that is so very rare in this neck of the woods. The moon was nigh, casting a glimmering streak on the expanse of water leading to our craft akin to an illuminated runway back to shore.

And there we floated.

We floated and talked about the future that lay before us and how we could best navigated our paths to capitalize on all that is best in this ephemeral life.

We came to the conclusion that happiness was the ultimate goal.

I know, not exactly a shocking revelation. However, so often in life we get the goal but miss the point as we did that night. We took happiness as the imperative to be treated as a quest against a callous external world.

I think this is the nexus to “mid-life crisis”. Generally speaking we educate ourselves to enter the work force and accumulate wealth. We meet a girl/boy, settle down, buy a house, have 2.1 children, a dog, 2 cars and vacation in the temperate south.

On the way along that journey we still have hope of attaining each covetous goal and this sustains us. Perhaps the problem is we get to the end and have accomplished the goals set before us by society and we still don’t feel happiness. We wonder if we missed something. Did we not do as expected and should we not be content...happy?

I think middle aged angst that manifests itself in the indulgence of youthful whims is simply confusion run amok.

In the movie “Dead Poets Society”, Ethan Hawke’s character recites his poem feverishly as his teacher clasps his hand over his eyes. Here is that poem.

"I close my eyes and this image floats beside me
The sweaty-toothed madman with a stare that pounds my brains
His hands reach out and choke me
And all the time he's mumbling
Truth, like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold.
You push it, stretch it, it will never be enough
Kick it beat it, it will never cover any of us.
From the moment we enter crying, to the moment we leave dying,
it will just cover your face
as you wail and cry and scream."

It’s the blanket metaphor that defines life for me. It is never going to fit just right. If our right shoulder gets cold we pull the undersized blanket over it, only to expose our left foot. It works temporarily but it is not enduring and the discomfort has merely spread to another location.

This brings us back to happiness. We spent hours trying to define it in that night of floating.

We knew we aspired to it and wanted our lives to embody meaningful clichés such as “love what you do”, however how many people do you know that have a job they love going too? Or a perfect relationship? No money woes? Content with their appearance?

The answer to attaining happiness is not definable and not universal. It may be quite different to each of us on that boat, as it may be with you who are reading this. The outside world pushes back on each of us in different ways, at different times and will continue to do so. I wish I had a dénouement to this blog...an answer with a nice bow or a promise of a bigger blanket. I do not. I therefore leave you with hope.

“The basic thing is that everyone wants happiness, no one wants suffering. And happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors. If your own mental attitude is correct, even if you remain in a hostile atmosphere, you feel happy.”

-DL

Perception is reality once again.

-Life is complicated and far from perfect but it is still great.