Bram's Briefs

True hero Rabbi Yisroel Bernath deserves your vote

2010-10-05T08:11:00.004-04:00

I am doing something I rarely if ever do and submitting something for your consideration that I edited and augmented, but that did not originally come from me. This is my contribution to Rabbi Bernath’s campaign, which is rapidly winding down, and I hope it attracts your deserving attention!

If you are a student, you may have noticed Rabbi Bernath and his team of students roaming the halls of Concordia's West End campus or taking over the pages of Facebook. They are trying to get your votes to put Rabbi Bernath into the top 20 of the Jewish Community Heroes Competition. Voting ends on October 8, 2010, and the Rabbi’s chances are viable, remarkable considering that someone from Montreal, one of the smallest North American metropolises involved, is still in the running.

The exuberant Rabbi Yisroel Bernath, 28, runs a spiritual centre in the heart of the Monkland Village. Hundreds of students and young adults flock to his centre for guidance, education, spirituality and simply to have a good ol' time. "It's an incredible place," Christina Stanbridge said, as she passed around some goodies at a recent cocktail. "The energy, the people, a sincere love to be here... I truly enjoy volunteering here. It's more than home." Thirteen now-married or engaged young couples have met through the centre and there is an activity going on almost every day of the week.

Back in January, Rabbi Bernath started a campaign to encourage students and community members to log onto their Facebook pages and vote for the Michigan-based Friendship Circle's place in the Chase Community Challenge. Friendship Circle, which has a Montreal branch, is an organization servicing special needs children. The group was responsible for over 3000 of the approximately 50,000 votes received. "We really wanted to help them win," Jonathon Waysman, 25, said. "But there is a huge difference between getting someone to log onto Facebook and winning this competition. This contest works by IP address. The university has only one IP address, so we needed to convince everyone to vote at home. It has been a really difficult challenge!"

The winner of the Jewish Community Heroes competition gets a grant for their organization, according to the Jewish Federation of North America's website. “It's much more than that, though" explained Stanbridge, "It’s the recognition that a young rabbi from a smaller community can compete against the big cities and take home the gold. I am very optimistic. I really think we can do it!"

The group is asking you to log onto http://www.jewishcommunityheroes.org/nominees/profile/yisroel-bernath/ and vote for Rabbi Bernath. It's a vote for our community. Who knows? With faith as a motivator, anything is possible.

Back to school a joy when you're an adult

2010-08-31T06:04:00.005-04:00

So, some 30 years after I last did this (to this extent... I took and passed a Canadian Red Cross Emergency Medical Responder course that involved some 130 hours of classes, spread over three months, a few years back), I am back to school with all the rest of the kids.

In my case, I started chef school last evening. The course, given by the St. Pius X Culinary Institute, will keep me busy five evenings a week until the fall of 2011, a total of 1,400 hours of study. It’s funny to me that I am back in school again... so funny I half expect late comic Rodney Dangerfield to appear and start taking jabs at me. When I was last a legitimate student, back in university, I wasn’t a particularly good one. I skipped classes, studied for exams and wrote papers the day before... in short, I was more of a failure at it than a success. My one joy was writing for Concordia University’s since-defunct Loyola News, which helped propel me into a long-lived career as an oft- published freelance writer, so I guess that was something.

But school? Never grabbed me.

So here I am, the ultimate poster boy for adult ed... and living proof that education is wasted on the young. As my brain ages, it yearns to suck up information like a sponge. Now THAT part I understand. I was always eager to learn in my youth, it was the constant battle to prove oneself via exams that I detested. I suppose the pressure was too overbearing for me, but leave me to my own devices and allow me to simply learn and I was great at that.

I discovered last evening that our leader, Chef Richard, would be testing us from time to time and that we had, horrors of horrors.... an oral presentation next week. We have to interview a local chef of our choosing and then report out findings back to the class. Oral presentations were once anathema to me. I would actually drop classes if I found out that there was one hidden away in the class curriculum, like a panther waiting to pounce. But as I get older, that doesn’t scare me anymore.

There are far worse things in life than oral presentations... like oral cancer! I jest here, but when you think about it, it’s true. When you are a teen, everything on the horizon looms so large and you take everything so seriously. After marriages, a plethora of bad bosses, daily life struggles... hey, an oral exam is a downright pleasure.

And you know what? So is school. Now, I take courses that will benefit me and that I WANT to take. Gone with the wind are peer and parental pressure, battling my fellow students for grades and all the various stresses that come with being young and uncertain. Now, I am subjecting myself to this heavy schedule of work during the day and classes till 10 every night, five days a week, quite willingly. It’s a chance for me to assume a new career once I graduate, a second chance, really.

There’s only one thing that could possibly happen that will take everything I wrote
above and toss it out a window. Chef Gordon Ramsay.

If HE shows up at some point as a chef/teacher-in-residence, all bets are off.

When the going gets tough...

2010-08-19T14:38:00.002-04:00

This has been a very humbling period for me. Without going into the sordid details, it is likely the most challenging period of my life. Having led a more charmed life once upon a time – and having experienced moments where my youthful ego took the wheel of the sports car – I can honestly admit that I have come crashing down to earth.

Some people may have given up by now, thrown in the towel, slumped over in a vegetative state. I’ve had 53 pretty good years, right? Why fight it? We all need to go sometime.

I think it’s times like these that really teach you what you are made of. I’ve faced moments of hardship before, but there was always a safety net, someone to bail me out of my impulsive actions. There is no one of that calibre now. Yes, I have friends, loved ones, but no one who is going to write me a blank cheque and offer to bail me out. The onus to fish or cut bait is solely on me.

The biggest change is that I am learning to adapt, to do with less, to alter my wasteful ways. The problem with luxury – and that can be as small a diversion as a mobile phone plan that’s chock full of goodies – is that it’s toxic. It corrupts you, makes you lazy and spoiled. That’s where young people are NOT to be envied. They didn’t grow up during an era before home computers, Wii, or cell phones, for God’s sake.

I bought my parents our first colour TV in 1973, when I was a teen working at Eaton’s (yes, the apostrophe was not yet an official eyesore the separatists could squabble about). Till then we had an old black and white box, with vertical and horizontal controls and that Indian picture that faded to a small dot and then blinked out when you turned off the set. Remote control? I got my first remote, attached with a cord to a Phillips box that sat atop the TV, in 1978 or so. I figure people were not quite as fat yet, because they had to get up off the Chesterfield (a brand of couch for newbies) 20 times per night to change the channel.

So, we all went without a lot of what we take for granted today. I called Rogers this morning and told them I was going to stop paying my contract AND cease to be a Rogers client unless they broke my $100 per month Blackberry plan that went
till 2012.

The secret here, I learned, is using the code words “will stop being a Rogers client.” That gets you into the VIP customer service suite. I am now paying $40 per month for a modest plan that includes basic phone service – bye bye voice mail and Caller ID - email access and 500 texts per month... for $40 tax in. If you call and I don’t answer, try me at home, because I am likely busy. OR I am at chef school.

Chef school has been the one thing that has kept me going through trying times all summer long. In just 10 days, it is finally happening. I have my chef uniform and my tool kit, which I need to get engraved. I am ready. I watched Master Chef last night and had tears in my eyes when the wannabe winners were praised by Gordon Ramsay and the other judges, no easy task. I want to be that good. I guarantee that I WILL be that good by the time I am done in 14 months.

See, I may have challenges before me, but none of them are deadly and I can unlearn some of the spoiled patterns I have acquired. Not having caller ID will not end my life. Moving to a smaller apartment will still leave me with a bed to sleep in, a roof over my head and a bathroom with a modern toilet. I mean, they had outhouses once and, yeah, they survived.

Getting myself a $500 jalopy, which I plan to do soon... hey, as long as it gets me where I am going, am I worse off then you are in your gas-guzzling monster truck SUV, which seems to be as necessary as breathing to most of the people in my neighbourhood? You may THINK you’re better than me and if you do, I’m really sorry for you. It’s all inside that matters and, other than heartburn now and then, in THERE I am doing mighty fine.

See, we can all also use the spiritual connection and that’s a mantra that is also worth repeating when you find your life slipping in the other direction. It’s all in the attitude. Stay positive and good things will eventually happen, I promise.
Vaya con Dios, y’all.

Canadian taxpayers victims of another fighter aircraft misadventure

2010-07-30T10:31:00.010-04:00

Imagine being the absolute best at something: sports, cooking, gambling, whatever. Then, on the verge of taking your superiority to the level where you achieve fabulous wealth and worldwide fame, you are forced by some ignorant functionary to scrap your plans and actually destroy all the evidence so that you could never reach that level again.

Well, in the 1950s, here in Canada, that’s exactly what happened with the Avro Arrow CF-105 fighter aircraft program. From the day the plans for the supersonic interceptor were submitted to the then-Liberal government of Louis St. Laurent in May 1953, till its abrupt cancellation on the verge of major production, on February 20, 1959 by the Conservative government of John Diefenbaker, the Arrow was the finest fighter aircraft in the world.

If you are an aircraft buff, as I am, this is an incredibly painful part of aviation history to think about. The Arrow had no peers, set international flight records, and would still be competitive today. A delta-winged interceptor conceived to prevent advanced Russian high-speed, high-altitude atomic bombers from flying into Canada over the North Pole, where there was no radar at that time, the Malton, Ontario-built Arrow was quickly the darling of the media and the envy of governments worldwide. The Arrow project also required the development of powerful new engines to give the plane the thrust required to reach its unheard-of Mach 2.5 speeds and 50,000 feet altitudes, so the Iroquois engine was designed and manufactured. France had an order in for 200 of these engines, an order that was cancelled when the news of the Arrow’s cancellation was leaked.

By the 1959 cancellation date, since known as Black Friday, several Arrows, including a “Mark 2” version using the Iroquois engine, had been flight tested – the first one by the late test pilot Janusz (Jan) Zurakowski on March 25, 1958, with performances that were both successful and astounding. Five Mark 1 aircraft were manufactured in all, numbered as RL 201 – RL 205, with RL 206, the solitary Mark 2, the final Arrow to come off the line. Then, it was all gone. The Conservatives ordered the destruction of everything, including all the aircraft, smaller models, blueprints... though there are rumours that one complete aircraft had been hidden away and is still around somewhere. Surviving blueprints have permitted the creation of a full-sized, static model of the Arrow that was rolled out in 2008 at the former CFB Downsview military base in Toronto, Ontario. Ottawa’s Canadian Aviation and Space Museum also has a surviving nose section and the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa has an original Arrow nose cone and ejector seat.

The Conservative government has never come forward with the real reason for the cancellation, but conspiracy theories abound. They used cost as a reason and, indeed, it was prohibitive, with a projected $1.1 billion earmarked for Arrow had it gone through as planned. But that was hardly unreasonable for a plane that would have created an entire new industry for Canada, one which likely would have positioned us as a world aviation power today. As it was, $33 million had to be paid out in cancellation fees. And the ensuing CIM-10 BOMARC missile program, which the Americans had convinced the Canadians to join (justified by claims that missiles were replacing fighter aircraft as nuclear deterrents) on behalf of NATO, ultimately cost Canadians hundreds of millions of dollars by the time it was phased out by the Liberal government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau in 1971.

So, considering its role in the destruction of the successful development of the stellar Arrow fighter, it is most disconcerting that it is a Conservative government that is today embarking on yet another fighter jet misadventure. Unless you have been in a coma, you have likely heard that Canada has placed an order worth $9 BILLION for a fleet of 65 advanced, single-engine F-35 jet fighters. Canada has already advanced $160 million in the development of the F-35 and $350 million worth of contracts have gone out to Canadian suppliers for the various parts.

Yet, there is much anger afoot. The contracts were not put out to tender, a cardinal contravention of rules in free, Western societies, and there seems to be the same “sucking-up-to-the-Americans” methodology involved here as was the case with the Arrow and other military projects (“Star Wars” missile defence shield, anyone?).

What concerns me most is that bureaucrats are involved, in this case Canadian defence minister Peter McKay. A lawyer of criminal and family law by trade, I’d like to know what McKay’s credentials are that gives him the knowledge to plan the defence of our entire population.

Yes, I have no doubt that Mr. McKay is a very bright man and he is certainly proving that by giving us terrific retorts while he is being resoundly criticized for the manner in which his government is handling this controversy. I’d be a lot happier if a military man, someone of unquestioned brilliance and battlefield ethics, like a Romeo Dallaire, was Minister of National Defence. But inexperienced bureaucrats heading up major portfolios make me extremely nervous.

Case in point: While touring the Northwest Territories with the Giant Colon last year (you can Google it and read the rave reviews), I was in Yellowknife exhibiting on March 21, 2009 and we held a press conference attended by the Honourable Sandy Lee, NWT’s health minister. She spoke and then I said a few words to the media and answered a few questions. I mentioned that what was learned via the Giant Colon’s visits country-wide would hopefully help prevent deaths from colorectal cancer by finding potential cancers before they metastasized. You know that word, right? Everyone does... it means before cancerous cells spread to other parts of the body. It is a VERY basic term.

Later, while talking to Ms. Lee and the media while walking through the Giant Colon, the minister took me aside and said, and I quote, “While you were speaking, there was a word you used that I did not understand.” I asked her which one and she tried to repeat it... “metas.... mat....,” to which I asked, “Metastasized?” With a perfectly straight face (and really, a serious rubberized Jim Carry imitation was what my face wanted to do), I explained what it meant to the HEALTH minister of the NWT, which has some of the highest cancer rates in the country.

Very scary. And here we are, entrusting the defence of our country to another bureaucrat and another Conservative government with a sorry and intentionally clandestine record on the subject to begin with. This aircraft situation appears to be Arrow all over again and we have a right to ask questions and demand answers before it is too late.

Visiting your old high school haunt has you coming of age all over again

2010-06-03T21:34:00.004-04:00

Yesterday I did something seemingly benign, yet something that dredged up a lot more emotion than I thought I had lying dormant inside me. I walked through my old high school and took pictures. Now, this institution was not just any high school. Wagar High, which opened in the Montreal suburb/municipality of Cote Saint-Luc in 1963 or so, owns a bit of a legendary spot in the annals of secondary education in this city.

From its opening until its closure about four years ago, Wagar was, in its heyday, one of the hotbeds of intellectual activity in Montreal. Until its final years, Wagar’s students perennially placed at or near the top rungs of the academic ladder among English-speaking institutions in the province of Quebec. And while not known for its sporting skills, Wagar teams always competed ably in sports such as basketball and, for a time until the early 1970s, high school football.

While a secular school, Wagar was comprised primarily of Jewish teens from the surrounding cities of Cote Saint-Luc, Hampstead and Montreal West, as well as from the Montreal suburb of Notre Dame de Grace (NDG), where I lived. During the years I attended, 1970 – 1974, enrolment was not open to students outside these geographic parts of town. Yet, my graduating Grade 11 (Secondary V) class of 1974 had something like 300 students, the school thriving, vibrant and packed with students spanning grades 8 – 11. In our time, junior high – Grade 7 - did not yet exist at the secondary level.

I was admittedly not a huge fan of Wagar while a student. Then again, I wasn’t much of a student period. I enjoyed the learning component of school, but not the rules and regulations that went along with the process. Today there are schools for people like me, for kids who don’t fit into traditional academia but, when left to their own (supervised) devices, are able to be successful, creative and move on to meaningful careers. I also didn’t really “fit in” back then, hailing from an outside area, NDG, when most of my peers knew one another from their elementary school years in Cote Saint-Luc. I was an outsider, a state-of-mind that was further complicated by my extreme shyness. It was hard for me to make friends back then, even harder to realize the normal rites of passage, like dating girls. But I succeeded on both counts.

So, here I was, back to scene of the crime. And as I walked through the school, my footsteps echoing through the now empty halls, I had an emotional reaction. My eyes filled with tears, the result of mourning for my lost youth, I presume. In the auditorium, I remembered sitting proudly, watching my Grade 10 girlfriend Marla Tobin dancing as a chorus member of the musical South Pacific. I still have the programme. I recalled hanging in the halls and the cafeteria with my buddies Joel, Joey, Richard and Stanley, a group of guys with whom I am only friends with Joel to this day. I couldn’t remember where my locker was, but I think it was on the third floor, where the old banks of grey lockers still stand like silent sentinels, tired-looking but somehow still relevant. Funny how a mere school locker – which in effect is your own private office - can be meaningful so many years later.

Then there is the gymnasium, which surprised me because it is so much larger than I remembered it. I bumped into the school janitor yesterday, a man who started working there in 1981, seven years after I departed. He told me that the gym floors had been damaged, so they had set down new ones. Still, the sounds of the floor hockey “doughnuts” hitting my extended appendages as I tended goal came back to me, as did massive, former semi-pro football player and gym teacher Judd Porter’s menacing Texan drawl.

Of all the interesting sensations, however, those that I felt walking into the modest library were the strongest. The principal for the school’s main current tenant, Marymount Adult Centre (the other tenant is John Grant High School, for special needs students, that offers them an incredible, cutting-edge job program), had informed me that Wagar had simply left their original library books behind when the school was closed. And to me that meant only one thing: the library cards inside had been signed out by the people I went to school with. I spent one solid hour rifling through one book after another, looking for names I knew. And I found quite a few, including one for a book on rookie NHL goalie Gerry Desjardins taken out on May 11, 1973 by my old friend Lenny Litwin. Lenny lived on Prince of Wales, a few houses down the street from me, and was like my younger brother. We both loved hockey goalies growing up and seeing his name on the card sent a thrill through me. We lost touch over 30 years ago, so, for me, this was totally a sentimental “lost youth” moment.

I took some more pictures and placed the whole slew of them on Facebook for many of the old Wagar alum to peruse, knowing that these images would rekindle some feelings in them, as well. For those of you who didn’t attend Wagar, it’s no loss... if you want to remember, sometimes achingly so, take a walk through your old high school if it’s still around, but wait at least three decades. If you left five years ago or less, you probably think it’s the last place you’d ever want to see again, just like I did.

At my age, however, I challenge you to experience this and not be extremely moved. As we turn the corner onto the final stretch of our mortal lives, the years that most helped define us become more precious all the time. As I endure some of the fiercest struggles of my life today, my years at Wagar were likely among the finest I have ever lived.

If only I knew so back then. Man, ain’t that the truth.

New life: Boon or disaster?

2010-05-22T02:24:00.003-04:00

Of all the bad award shows I have ever seen, the most moronic and irrelevant one is playing behind me as I write this: The AVN Awards, organized by Adult Video News. It’s the ultimate homage to the adult film industry, the denizens of which may be artificially beautiful to look at but are brain-dead, for the most part. Case in point – up now is the Male Performer of the Year Award, which is basically a reward for being endowed with, or subsequently bestowed, supersized genitalia. Manuel Ferreira was the winner from a list of about 20 freaks with enhanced organs and thankfully I can change the channel now that the suspense has dissipated.

Bare with me before you close this window, because this is not a dissertation on porn... I am simply using it as background because it turned up on my TMN channel as I was surfing the Web. I just changed the channel for what may as well be an Oscar-winning film, in comparison: Halloween IV.

But seriously, this adult film awards sham is the ideal tool for illustrating how far we have fallen as a race - when this is what has an audience giving an individual a standing ovation, it’s time to smite Sodom and Gomorrah once again. So, all of this hoopla, for essentially nothing of any consequence, got me pondering even more deeply the hottest news in history, pretty much... the first act of Creation since God did it, what, 20 billion years ago? Now it’s a group of American laboratory gods who are responsible, although I suppose God had a hand in a ‘various degrees of separation” sort of way.

If you haven’t heard yet, a team of scientists in Maryland, led by veteran geneticist Craig Venter, has managed to create artificial cells in their lab and then splice human DNA into them. In the words of Venter, who has purportedly been trying to create synthetic life for 15 years now, “we ended up with the world’s first synthetic cell powered and controlled totally by a synthetic chromosome made from four bottles of chemicals.” It’s amazing... and also somewhat ominous.

They have actually CREATED life, the way Dr. Frankenstein did on screen in the 1931 movie that features the good doctor, played by British actor Colin Clive, shouting “It’s alive” over and over again. I don’t know about you, but this is such staggering news that I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around it. This is NOT science-fiction, or a cloned sheep that didn’t live up to expectations, at least I don’t think so. It’s not the absurdist Raelians proclaiming that they have created a baby from alien DNA, or some Scientology ridiculousness dreamt up by late sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard, in my opinion THE biggest religious scam in history. And there have been a lot of them.

This is human life, artificial though it may be, with the potential to be used in untold ways, some useful and benevolent and others horrifically nightmarish. The scenarios are endless. Mind you, if what makes us human involves the belief that an omnipotent Creator wielded the paint-brush of universal life, this is nothing but science. If life on Earth is, however, the result of alien spores being tossed earthbound from a nearby planet like Mars, however, this is simply life being created in a lab rather than originating from Martian soil.

Still, it’s life and with life comes potential, for both good and evil. I suppose it all depends on who takes those cells and manipulates them... the medical field, or the industrial-military complex, perhaps? We can all hope that this becomes a boon for humankind and doesn’t ultimately wind up destroying us all. Personally, however, when I look around at what this world has turned into during MY brief lifetime, any new life can’t be a bad thing.

Congratulations to the New Creators. Please don’t let us down.

Two birthdays - Enough to make even Sherlock crazy

2010-05-12T16:17:00.002-04:00

I recently celebrated my 53rd birthday, on April 26. I was born in 1957. As many people reading this may know, I am adopted. The way my parents told me about my beginnings, I was two days old when I was brought to them, my biological parents having been killed in a car accident while my mother was pregnant, after I was saved from her dying womb. Very romantic, I agree, and a story oft-related to adoptees of that era. Lie number one was augmented by the fable that I was born at the Jewish General Hospital here in Montreal, whereas I discovered much later on that it had been the Royal Victoria Hospital.

I have spent my adult years dealing with my adoption, often having a difficult time with it. Don’t get me wrong: I loved my parents and they loved me, to the point of ridiculousness. I was their world. So, I have no doubt that any fibs they told me were intended to keep me “safe” from some horrid fate. Don’t ask me what that could have been. If my mother had been a 16-year old whore, so be it. If she was a demon, okay, when do I start collecting souls? Whatever the reason, however, they took this secret with them to their respective graves in 1981 and 1984, as did my mother’s sister, my aunt, in 2007.

I have gotten to the point in MY life where I can accept the fact I will never know who gave birth to me. I don’t like it, but what’s the point of sabotaging my life over it? I have caused myself and others who loved me extreme pain due to the way these feelings made me act. As has been suggested to me by people who care, I should get over it, already, and I am trying my best.

But there are certain things that have come to light in recent years that are hard to wrap my head around. The first was the fact that, while I was raised a Jew, by a Holocaust survivor mother, no less, I was likely not born to a Jewish mother. It is the circumstances surrounding those early days that has caused me to write this blog entry. Like most Jewish males, I was circumcised. The ritual is supposed to take place eight days after birth. My late mother kept a diary about “The bundle of joy,” which is what she entitled it. And in that diary she wrote details about my “Brit Milah”... on MAY 24!

Now, I have always assumed that my bris was almost a month late because of some tie-up, perhaps related to health reasons. I mean, maybe there was simply TOO MUCH to cut off? But I digress...

For you Holmes-loving (Sherlock, not John...) amateur sleuths, I will add another important detail. When I was a child, my parents always threw a birthday party for me on May 18. I never really questioned that date, but I was told by my mother that I was always sick in the springtime, so May 18’s warmer weather made a party more logical at that time. Two birthdays... Can you confuse a kid more than that?

I will do the math for you. Born May 18, my bris would have been held on May 26, if the eight day rule is followed. But the diary page for my bris held six days later, on May 24, contained the names of three holy men: the mohel, or circumciser, a major religious figure of the day named Cantor Nathan Mendelson, the main circumciser of male Jewish babies of that era in Montreal; our family rabbi, A. Bernard Leffell, and; Gedalia Schacter, a good friend of my parents who was religious. These three men were there in order to form a Beit Din, or Rabbinical Court, for the purpose of ritual conversion. At my bris, I was ritually converted to Judaism, because I was either not born to a Jewish mother, in fact, or they were not certain who the mother was.

The latter is highly unlikely, as I discovered the record of a cheque written out to Royal Victoria Anaesthesiologists on April 25, 1957, the day before the birthday that is listed on my birth certificate. I have always assumed this was proof that I was born on April 26th, the cheque written by my father to cover the cost of the anaesthesiologist who participated in my birth. Now, all I think it proves is that I was born at the Vic. The cheque could have been written in advance of the birthing procedure 23 days later.

I suppose that, since this Rabbinical Court had certain members who were not Orthodox Jews, it was not a purely legally-binding entity according to Jewish law, or Halacha, so what difference did it make if the bris was held two days early? The first cut was the deepest and that was the main point, I guess, damn the legalities.

It is really easy to tell me to ignore this, to move on, to get over it. Most of you, however, know the bare-bone facts about your conception and much more. You certainly know your correct birthday, what religion you are and whether your adoptive father was your biological father, after all. See, that’s another suspicion I have. As I age, my father and I look a LOT alike. My theory is that, because my mother came out of the Holocaust damaged and likely could not have children, she allowed by father to have sex with and impregnate a young woman so that they could have a child. Remember that in 1957, “in vitro” was a Latin term and nothing more. No test tube babies or cloned sheep in those days, people. So, the fun, fabulous and carnal act of fornication was a necessary thing. Go figure.

I am very limited as to what I can do to uncover the truth about my birth. Since the Quebec government absolutely drags its heels on opening biological files in this province – and on this matter it doesn’t matter who is in power, the radical, independence-mongering Parti Quebecois or the current governing, federalist-leaning Parti Liberal du Quebec – I cannot get to the paperwork that might at least give me my actual date of birth. .. and perhaps answer some other questions, as well.

So, next week, on May 18, I intend to go out for dinner once more, to celebrate my birth with some close friends. It may not actually BE my birthday, but until I have some actual proof on the matter, the facts speak for themselves. All I can say is “No shit, Sherlock” this is one hell of a mystery.

It all results in my having a really bad day now and then. Can you blame me?

Forty years after becoming a man, why volunteering makes so much sense

2010-05-09T17:08:00.002-04:00

It’s May 9 today, the anniversary of my Bar Mitzvah back in 1970, the Hebrew ritual where a boy assumes the responsibilities of a “man” at age 13. Translated, it means Son of the Commandment. It’s a pretty old ritual, older than most of the ones we follow today on this good Earth. And I felt it was an appropriate time to discuss something that has become dearer to my heart as I get older, in light of a question a friend asked me recently.

“Why are you doing this again?” he queried. I had just told him that I was training to become a VCOP – Volunteer Citizens on Patrol – in my Quebec community of Cote Saint-Luc. VCOPs are fairly common in communities elsewhere in Canada and across the U.S., but not so much in my home province. It’s a fairly important task, as our force aids other important services, such as paramedics, public security, fire-fighters and the police, by adding extra trained eyes and ears to city streets day and night. We patrol in official equipped vehicles, on foot patrol, and more recently, on mopeds, in teams of two, for a minimum of six hours per month.

After I passed the Red Cross’s Emergency Medical Responder course and did volunteer ambulance shifts as a stagiaire with EMS Cote Saint-Luc last year, I truly realized how essential volunteers are to their communities and to the population-at-large. I had to leave EMS after getting the job that had me taking The Giant Colon Tour across Canada, but because I enjoyed volunteering so much, the VCOP corps seemed to be the next best thing. I am about to complete my training and will soon be clad in VCOP yellow and orange and fulfilling my monthly requirements. I’m quite looking forward to it.

So, when my good friend asked me the aforementioned question, it gave me pause to consider how many more people just don’t “get” it. Here we are, at a time when young students MUST complete a certain number of hours volunteering for various causes in order to graduate from secondary school and there are actually parents of these kids questioning “why are you doing this again?” I was, and still am, stunned by the ignorance of this simple question.

So, on this anniversary of the day I became a man, sort of, 40 years ago, it occurred to me that to become a man must include assuming some of the key responsibilities of manhood. And giving to society instead of just taking, which far too many people are still wont to do during these very selfish times, seems to be at the very foundation of what keeps us surviving. Otherwise, imagine a world without volunteers, where no one would lift a hand to help their fellows unless there was a fiscal or other benefit involved. Without volunteers, society would pretty much grind to a halt, as hospital resources were taxed to bursting, as non-profit organizations closed their doors, as many communities lost the very life blood that kept them afloat.

We ALL should be forced to volunteer somewhere at some point in our lives. Believe me, every one of us has things to do, or we are too tired, or depressed, or just plain sick of everything going on around us, to want to jump up and rush off giving of our time, for free to top it off. Life isn’t getting easier, that’s for sure. But deep inside, there is this need to help people, somewhere past the wall of selfishness that screams “but what about me?” If you are already volunteering, you know how good it feels. It transcends the desire for self-fulfillment on one hand, but actually creates a new sense of self-fulfillment on the other. Volunteering makes me feel that my Bar Mitzvah wasn’t a big waste of time, after all. There have been many times since when I really questioned what it was all about. At least my circumcision had some health benefits to back it up.

So, my friend, in answer to your question, that’s just about the best reason for “doing this” that I can think of. Come join me in the van. I’ll do shifts with you anytime and I think you’d look fabulous in yellow and orange.

Meditations on the threshold of 53

2010-04-24T11:49:00.003-04:00

So, here I am, on the cusp of 53. Fifty was kinda weird, like entering some alien territory: it had me dunking my big toe into the tepid waters first. This current state-of-affairs is one part “same old, same old,” the other slightly terrifying. Let’s just say I have had better times.

I have the luxury of looking back on my life: I say “luxury” because I can still do it. Lots of people I know (or know of) have died by now, which is mind-boggling at a time when the medical field seems to be regressing while proclaiming how many advances are being made. Yeah, they cracked the genome, so what? How many people do YOU know who have died of cancer already? I know several, many of whom died way, waaay too young.

My dear mother, may she rest in peace, died in 1984 (at a young 68) from CNS Vasculitis, brought on by an allergic reaction to Septra-class antibiotics. The reaction caused the blood vessels in her brain to atrophy and become all squiggly instead of straight, resulting in a lack of proper blood flow to her brain. This presented as sudden senility and in just five weeks she progressed from someone suffering slight dementia, to blind and not knowing who I was, to comatose.
Let’s just say that, for me, I could not write as nightmarish a horror story with all my creative senses on full steam. It was really awful. Even that is not as awful, however, as losing a friend in the prime of their young life, like Laine Coxford. Or Ellen Cohen. Or any of the individuals I know in name only who die tragically, far before their time.

If you get to this age, there is a lot of obscenity to consider when you ponder life. It’s cruel. The happy moments narrow proportionately to age, as everything becomes more challenging with every passing year and the sheer stupidity of those we rely on to lessen our loads – read government bureaucrats here – increases. Yet I would not trade a moment of life, not yet, anyways, for the alternative. Death MAY mean eternal bliss, who knows? I’m not so sure about the 78 virgins in heaven part, mind you... but then again, which guy in his right mind would WANT 78 virgins, anyhow, even with an eternity before him during which to keep them happy? Talk about daunting!

I remember hearing a doctor in a hospital telling the family of a sick, elderly individual that they would do everything possible to keep this person happy. And one family member commented: “Happiness is overrated, anyhow. What’s happy?” It made me think then... and I am thinking about this again: happiness is within you and that’s about it. No ONE can make you happy, because it is far too transient an emotion. It is an oasis in your pool of neurons... it does not last.

You get a gift, it makes you smile momentarily and now and then it might make you smile again. But no amount of gifts, money, food, success, power – none of these things – can make you truly HAPPY, or shield you from all the sorrow, pain, doubt or mishaps that are part of the human condition. People will betray you. Your body will weaken and get sick. All those moments of which we are proud or gleeful will fade with time.

If you allow that knowledge to prepare you for whatever is coming, good or bad, and you live life with no expectations at all, just doing your best to get by, you will survive as well as you possibly can. Be GOOD to people. Pet a dog. Smell a flower. Meditate and remember to breathe properly: I think Buddhism has it down right.

So, on the lip of 53, I can admit that I am surviving and I have made it here, through good times and bad. I have been lucky, very lucky, to have struggled this far despite some challenges, although the road ahead seems steep to me at times. Yet I have known great love, the pleasure and luxury of having some very good and loyal friends, some careers, experiences and voyages that I will never forget. In truth, I think I am more fortunate than many people I know. If it were to end tomorrow, I would smile in the knowledge of all those things.

Thinking about all of that, I actually feel happy... and that’s a pretty grand thing.

Like career change, never too late for a good confession

2010-04-04T18:16:00.004-04:00

This blog entry has been awaiting birth for about 43 years now. Let’s call it a revelation, or, possibly, a confession I make to the world and seek absolution for. If I had a priest, I think you will agree he’d be mighty proud of me.

The story begins about 48 years ago, when my cousin and I, both under five at the time and six months apart in age, he being the elder, started hanging out. He – let’s call him Sam (a pseudonym) – lived in Chomedy, just off the island of Montreal in the municipality of Laval and I adored him.

Chomedy wasn’t as developed then as it is today. The fields near Sam’s house were devoid of human life and there were actually cattle skulls and skeletons there, which makes me wonder today what actually went on there. Was it land upon which the beasts were slaughtered, their remains later disposed of there as well? But I digress.

Because Sam’s place wasn’t so close (Montreal’s below-ground expressway hadn’t been built yet, so getting there took longer), seeing Sam was a big deal for me. The drive, right past the historic, now-defunct Parc Belmont amusement park in my father’s powder blue 1961 Comet, was a seemingly-endless adventure for me. And spending time with Sam, which I liked to do weekends when the opportunity arose, was like magic. He was the brother I never had and I loved him like one.

During the summer, Sam’s mom (my mother’s sister and a second mother to me until several years ago, when she died at 94), Sam, my mom and I were driven by my dad to Old Orchard Beach, Maine, some six hours away and a favourite destination of Quebecers since the 1800s, when direct train service linked Montreal and Maine. He dropped us off and we spent a month there, while he returned several times on weekends, when he did not work. Sam and I had the time of our young lives, our days spent on the pristine seven-mile long beach and our nights in the town’s most famous attraction, Palace Playland, an amusement park featuring a massive pinball arcade – it was the era before video games, after all – where you could pose as a pinball wizard and tilt the night away, or Ski-Ball dozens of times in order to win tickets you could later exchange for the tackiest prizes. The park still exists to this very day, as does a section of the famous Pier that dates back to the 1800s.

Old Orchard wasn’t the only spot we vacationed every summer.... and herein lies the crux of my tale. The Laurentian mountain cottage community of Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts is just 45 minutes away from Montreal by car and we would spend a week or two there, as well. We would stay at Lodge Lac des Sables, built right on the lake and owned by the Weinrich family. And here, our days were spent fishing off the small pier owned by the Lodge, shooting targets with our BB rifles next door at the municipal beach and walking the short distance to town to buy treats at Dairy Queen, take a ride on the Alouette site-seeing boat or see movies in the Alahambra and Roxy theatres, musky, cool, cob-webbed places that offered perfect refuge on a hot summer’s day.

We would also visit the small Canadian Tire store in town and here is where my confession comes in. Despite the fact I grew up to become anything BUT a criminal, please remember that Sam could do no wrong in my eyes. So, when he suggested we steal Rappala Minnow lures, too pricy for 10-12 year old boys to afford, I jumped at the chance. This was my chance to prove to Sam that I was as cool as he was... and I didn’t let him down. There were no closed circuit cameras then and, really, your chances of getting caught were quite low, unless you were a bumbling thief. I’m not sure how many lures we stole that one summer in particular, but it was quite a few and all I recall is that they worked like a charm on the doomed bass, sunfish and trout of Lac des Sables.

I haven’t been in touch with Sam for about 25 years. He ditched my aunt (the woman who raised this asthmatic boy from the day she married my uncle, when his son Sam was three) and when my motel owner uncle died, leaving what I heard was more than a million dollars to Sam and his now ex-wife, they moved to the Bahamas. I am not sure if he has any regrets today about stealing those fishing lures and for all I know he did far worse than that during his lifetime. I am not even sure whether Sam is still alive. But I certainly am and, on behalf of both of us, I offer apologies to Canadian Tire. I see you have done well as a corporation despite the loss of that particular revenue, but it was wrong of us in any event. Children, do NOT try this at home...

So, padre, how was my first-ever confession? Thank you for listening.

Julia, Tony and Me

2010-03-27T11:54:00.003-04:00

Since making my seminal decision to enrol in a culinary academy and become a chef, I have really become transfixed with the entire concept of cooking in a manner I have never before experienced. More of an indulgence than an experience.

Two weeks ago, I paid my $420 deposit at the St. Pius X Culinary Academy and a seat will be held for me once classes begin on August 26, 2010. And I can't contain the sensation of excitement that has empowered me, it seems, to learn as much as I can about cooking throughout the coming summer.

A bit about me until now, weeks away from turning 53. I never saw myself as a chef, but I have enjoyed cooking during my lifetime. When I was quite young, I would curl up with my mother and watch The Galloping Gourmet, Graham Kerr, whip up all manner of gastronomic delights. My mouth would water as he prepared meals and then offered samples to audience members whose months had also been watering once he took the first bite and expelled his trademark carnal-like grunts of absolute pleasure.

When I was a teen and my parents would go away on their annual one or two week-long summer vacations, I would rush to the grocery store and purchase various foods that I could whip up into culinary feasts of my own. What I remember most was the sausages pan-fried with Martini & Rossi Vermouth and onions, served with an omelette on the side, a most delightful dish that I recall fondly. Or I would take chicken pies, heat them up, then slice them open and layer tomato slices, mushrooms and several spoons of Cheese Whiz over the tops and oven bake them until I had a delicious dish I also think of with my mouth watering... and my heart thankful I stopped.

As an adult, I have enjoyed many food shows on TV, though I have been without the Food Channel for a while now and really must add it to my account. I have also learned that I am great at following recipes and have made Tarragon Chicken Flambé, various soups including lip-smacking corn chowder, and other dishes.

So, when everyone asks me that first question "Oh... were you always passionate about cooking?," I can't say yes with complete honesty, but, yeah, I have enjoyed it a lot. I really do believe I will become passionate about it the more I learn how to do it really, really well. Give me a large kitchen with plenty of counter space, all the necessary pots, pans and utensils and turn me loose on an unsuspecting planet, please!

The past two weeks, I have actually started discovering that I really LOVE to cook, as I prepare more and more meals for myself with my stove rather than the microwave I have relied upon the past five years. And I bought two things that have augmented my perspective on the subject: the DVD Julie & Julia, which I am currently watching and enjoying tremendously scene-by-scene, and the book Kitchen Confidential, by master chef and bad boy Anthony Bourdain.

I am still laughing at my initial belief that he was trained to cook at the Central Intelligence Agency, when in fact it was the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, the letters CIA being so imprinted on a brain riddled with stories of international intrigue.

So, I think my need to write regularly will result in more of these cuisine-addled blog entries once I begin the 1,400 hours of training that will culminate in the fall of 2011. But till then, I request your indulgence and also your assistance... as well as your patience... as I learn about this new chosen field. I am sure many of you are foodies and I would like to learn from you. What I promise is that if I ever write a book on my experiences, I will include your names on the list of acknowledgments... as well as the ensuing feature film credits...

My first request is quite simple: if you know of any great books on the craft of cooking that you can recommend, I'd really appreciate your passing on this information. Books... the best shows.... films (the 1996 film Big Night, starring the incomparable Stanley Tucci, is one I really recommend to you), please, let me know. I will think of you with every slice and dice of my finely-honed kitchen knives.

Also, if you know of any restaurants looking to hire an apprentice, so that I can get experience, I am eager and willing. I am taking this very seriously, as you can see. Though it won't be easy, I know it will be the thrill of my lifetime.

Bon Appetit!

Never too late to change your career

2010-03-12T20:18:00.003-05:00

Losing my job at 52 has really been an eye-opener in so many ways. You hear so many people tell you that after 50, the job market is pretty much downhill and, as long as you are on the “cooler” side of 50, it doesn’t pertain to you and you simply think it’s nonsense.

Try turning 50 – and then lose your job - and see what happens. It’s not fun, I tell you, because it’s hard to find a job. I know. I have a lifetime of experience and experiences to bank on. I have people skills, talent, smarts and that” je ne sais quoi” that you simply can’t possess at a young age. I don’t know if such commitment is born of fear, or simply commitment by rote, but older workers take their jobs much more seriously and unless you work for a totally anal, micromanaging creep who is adversely affecting your health, you hold onto your job no matter what. Chances are, by 50, there is no place to go but down if you fail. You will let your family down if you are married and have kiddies to feed... or if you are on your own, as I am, the next place to go is straight into the welfare line.

It was while imagining my possible life as a welfare recipient (and I’d really prefer to die first) that I decided I needed a career change. Actually, the thought germinated following a conversation I had with a former boss, who commented that “your line of work is the first job to be cut during hard times.” It didn’t hit me till later that she was right. I am a writer, one with PR experience, but a writer pure and simple. If you look back through history, the pathways of cemeteries take you past the graves of untold numbers of writers who were tremendous craftsmen... and who died either relatively unknown or paupers, likely both.

They “made” it after death. Irishman Bram Stoker was huge after he died, but during his lifetime the author of Dracula, Lair of the White Worm and other tales made his money first as a clerk and later as the manager of Europe’s greatest thespian, Henry Irving. Providence, Rhode Island’s H.P. Lovecraft, arguably the author of the most frightening and disturbing literature ever, died almost totally unknown, his stories published post-death by friends who made them extremely popular from the 1940s onward.

I am a very good writer and have had a modicum of success at it throughout my life to date. And if I keep going in this direction much longer, I’ll die a pauper, too. Not what I want for myself and, so, I realized it was time for a change. A good friend works at the English Montreal School Board and he apprised me of courses offered by the EMSB that assist people in changing careers. You can be an auto mechanic, he told me, as my eyes glazed over instantly... or a chef. Chef? I have no idea why I reacted so strongly on the spot - maybe I’d been watching George Costanza’s attempts to realize his architectural ambitions for far too long, or maybe my inner Chef Ramsay was outed - but when I heard I could study to become a professional chef, basically at no charge, I decided there and then that was what I wanted.

I enrolled at the Pie X Culinary Institute yesterday and people have told me they haven’t seen me this excited about anything in a long, long time. I feel excited, on top of the world, in fact. And even though I know this is going to be a veritable “battle royale” (classes from 5-10 p.m. Mondays – Fridays for 14 months, 1,400 hours worth, starting in late August), I know I have it in me to bare down, grind it out and come through with flying colours. Many people are thrilled for me and quite encouraging, while other comments range from “HUH?” to “Are you crazy?” I spoke with an acquaintance today, a restaurant owner here whom I respect and who has always seemed to truly care about my welfare and I discussed this career choice with him. He told me that the only thing that mattered is how much I enjoy my training and the subsequent work I do. “In the end, you may find you hate working in commercial restaurant kitchens, but the good thing about being a chef is that there are 50 ways you can go... as long as you enjoy it, you will be okay.”

And, you know, he is so right, and I thank you, Peter, for your insight. I can work in a mainstream restaurant or a hotel kitchen. I can find a backer and start my own establishment, which is where a mature age comes in quite handy. I can cater. I can give cooking classes. I can become a professional critic who really knows his stuff. I can write my own cookbooks. And I can certainly cook really, really well for myself, booting my trusty microwave into oblivion. I know I won’t be unemployed, because I can cook anywhere in the world, a logging camp if need be.

The fact is, I will have a career that I can bank on. I will always be a writer, till I die if I keep my brain sharp enough. But chances are better that you won’t meet me on the street one day, begging for loose change, while I am wearing my chef’s hat. No, it really never IS too late, and I am going to prove it to you. Beef bourguignon, anyone?

High-tech: Destroyer or saviour?

2010-02-27T01:14:00.003-05:00

I just caught the opening night presentation of the film The Crazies, a remake of the early seventies film by zombie veteran George Romero. It’s the very unsettling story of a U.S. military plane crashing and unleashing a virus among a small town population, a virus which turns ordinary people into rabid killers. The story’s been done a hundred times, usually by depicting the killers in zombie guise, but this version of The Crazies is particularly well done and unsettling.

It really made me think, not that unusual a phenomenon, because I think far too often sometimes, generally about how the world is going to hell in a hand basket. When the first Crazies was released, I was in my early teens and life was far more simple than it is today. We had no computers or cell phones, my family had not yet even acquired a colour TV and as for video games... let’s just say that the high-tech miracle of the day was Pong, where you stared at a white line on a black screen that knocked a white blip to your buddy’s white line until you were dizzy with a mix of boredom and, yeah, fascination.

My world then changed, about 1975 or so, when my buddy Cherif and I were at a local bar that had just picked up this stunning new game called Pac Man. We were amazed... or rather “a-mazed,” spending about 50 quarters and two hours watching Inky, Blinky and friends scurry around trying to avoid being eaten by Pac Man. We had no idea at the time, but Pac Woman and even more astounding games weren’t so far behind. I think the burgeoning video game craze caused me to read less, down to one book a week from two.

Truly, we had no idea about anything back then, none of us. The genome? Black holes? Global warming? The ECOLOGY? What the heck were those things? We still had cords attached to our rotary telephones and also to our TV remote controls in the late seventies, for heaven’s sake! Digital? That meant our fingers.

Then, suddenly, the early eighties appeared and with it the production of home computers far more complex than the Commodore 64 you may have been using as a fancy adding machine till then. And since those days of amber monitors and horrendously slow activity (remember what it was like to download a picture using a 286 and dial up? ARGGHHHH!), can you possibly get your head around all the technological advances that have multiplied at an exponential rate? I mean, really, can a kid possibly exist without the latest mobile phone, or Wii game, or laptop, or fancy coffee shop to WiFi it into? Invite most teens or young adults to watch a black-and-white classic movie with you and they look at you as if you are daft. They can’t even get through a song without fidgeting madly, as if on speed.

And we adults are no better. The Internet, with its buckets of email, plethora of opportunities to watch porn, multitudinous pathways toward engaging in extramarital relations with others who are SO lonely because their husbands, or wives, and children are all so thoroughly bored with life that the family unit is a prehistoric concept... well, if the Internet isn’t the face of evil, I don’t know what is. Don’t get me wrong, I am not preaching and I am not innocent. I, too, have been warped by the Scientific-Technological Complex and I am scared to death of what happens if it all comes crashing down around us. Because there is NOTHING else anymore and The Crazies made me realize that we have all been made a lot crazy by technology.

Here is one really unsettling thought. The world, as it stands, is so precariously close to annihilation and it will not take a massive nuclear exchange to end it all. You have all likely heard of EMP, or Electro Magnetic Pulse, no doubt. That is the signal given off by the detonation of a nuclear weapon, which causes electronics to stop functioning. Cars, for instance would stop in their tracks if a nuke was dropped on a city quite far off.

Well, a few recently published books have postulated that the explosion of a low-yield nuclear weapon above a city would not kill that many people through radiation, blast effects, etc., but would fry all electronics below that are not properly shielded. Set off a few of these nukes in the skies above a country and you will fry most of the electronics of that nation.

Think about this. Everything today uses electronic components, because everything is digital. Computers – and computers run everything, from the fire department and EMS services, to the water filtration plants, nuclear reactors, hospital equipment and such – will not function. Neither will trains, planes or automobiles, because all their electronics will be fried. We rely on transportation to deliver food, medical supplies... everything. We rely on electronics to stay warm in the winter, or if we use oil, oil trucks to deliver it to us. We rely on transportation to deliver new electronic components from elsewhere in the world, to replace the fried ones, because everything we have as replacements will also be fried. And we certainly rely on transportation and electronics to run the military machine that would protect us if, following an EMP strike, the villainous nation that attacked us decided to move in for the kill.

High-tech’s a great thing? I challenge you to tell me how we are better off today than we were in the 1970s. We have a lot more to worry about today than what happens when television networks all switch to High-Definition, or whether Blue Ray forces their competition out of business, but even then, we have been duped into laziness and complacency while the Scientific-Technological Complex has waived the bait under our very noses... and we took it, hook, line and sinker. It’s almost like the computer-run devils in the Terminator films have engineered the world we now live in... and are tightening the noose on humankind with every passing technological advance.

But then again, The Terminator and The Crazies are just movies, aren’t they? In reality, it’s not 2012 and its bad acting that has me worried. Actually, a three-mile high tsunami or an earthquake off the scale would be a blessing, compared to some of the other possible scenarios that we are directing ourselves.

Pong, where are you when we need ya?

My roots: A diary is all I have

2010-02-18T23:37:00.004-05:00

I've got this little diary perched upon my computer desk as I write this. A Five Year Diary, dating back to 1957, bound in satin with a blue and aqua floral motif and with a little lock on it. It's cute. My mother wrote the words "A bundle of joy" on the first page. It's also all I have to go on when trying to uncover the biggest mystery ever... where I come from. The still-legible, beautifully-written words of my adopted mother, Mina Eisenthal, jump out at me from a bygone era. The day of my birth, April 26. My various booster shots. The assortment of doctors she used to treat my many ear infections. The time I cut my hand and had to be rushed to the hospital. All my weight and height measurements.

And reading through this precious little tome about 10 years ago is when I realized something didn't add up. A Jewish baby's bris, his circumcision, is Halachically (according to Talmudic law) supposed to take place upon the eighth day following his birth... so why was mine on May 24, 1957, 28 days later? Doing some digging, and using the diary's entry on May 24 (which in the diary, contained the guest list), I learned from our since-deceased family rabbi, A. Bernard Leffell that a "beit din," or Rabbinical Court, had been established at my bris for the purpose of ritual conversion. So, I was not born Jewish. The mystery deepened.

My late mother and father, Mike (Mendel) Eisenthal, had always told me I was born at the Jewish General Hospital here in Montreal. But when I happened upon his cheque registry for 1957, I found a listing for a cheque made out to the Royal Victoria Anasthesiologists, dated April 25, 1957 in the amount of $25. So, somebody needed anasthesia the day before my birth... my birth mother, perhaps?

Then again, the late date of the circumcision is troubling, because it could also mean that they managed to fudge the date of my birth in the official records, a procedure done all the time in the black and gray market baby adoptions of that period... and I could have been born eight days before May 24, or May 17. Wanna hear a funny coincidence? Growing up, my parents celebrated my birthday on two dates, making me sound like a lunatic in elementary school when you had to stand up and tell the class about yourself at the start of each new year. I had TWO birthdays, lucky me... April 26 and May 18!!!! My parents' explanation for this seemed logical at the time: I always seemed to have a cold around my birthday in April, so they held my party on May 18, 18 being a lucky number in Judaism, representing life.

I have researched the circumstances behind my adoption as best I can throughout my adult years and I always hit a brick wall. Since birth files are still sealed in Quebec, there is no way to get into them and I have exhausted virtually every other means of finding out what my roots are. Many of you won't get why this is important, but for many adoptees, this uncertainty is agony. Just imagine, for instance, every time you have been asked by a doctor whether you have a family history of something...and then ponder each and every time you have known absolutely nothing about your background.

I hold onto this little diary as if my life depends on it. I guess it does.

Zen and the art of muffler maintenance

2010-02-09T13:10:00.004-05:00

I don't know about you, but I have never been a creature of habit with many things. I guess because I was born with an impulsive nature, I tend to like change, yearn for it in some instances. Take work, for example. When I was younger, give me a year in one place and I went stir-crazy. There was always a better opportunity to make more money, to improve my position. I got tired of people commenting on the swiss cheese appearance of my CV. So, as I got older, I stuck with jobs even though they were never perfect. Then again, what is? Who among you can rave about your perfect marriage? Are you rushing off to get divorced? Okay, maybe that's a bad example... but you get the point.

MY point is that, no matter what, it is always good to look around. Stuck in a rut at work? Keep your eyes open and apply for jobs you might like better. It's a crap shoot, because, as I learned not so long ago, something that looks like Little Red Riding Hood's grandma might turn out to be a wolf in sheep's clothing. The move might bite you on the ass.

The ideal lesson for me culminated with today's amazing news that I would only have to pay $50 for a pipe to replace my car muffler's cracked resonator. When I went to Mr. Muffler in September (the one on Saint-Jacques in NDG for those of you living in Montreal), they quoted me NINE NUNDRED AND FIFTY dollars to replace the resonator and two attached tailpipes on my Grand Prix. I mean, WTF? When I went to a great little indy garage called Otto Pucher (12 Place Legault, right off De La Savanne, corner Jean Talon), they referred me to the Mr. Muffler next door, which quoted me $550 for a patch job they would gladly do for me. Crying the financial blues worked for me, because I was quite sincere about it. I have been financially blue of late.

Now, in the past, I likely would have grabbed the chance to save $400, bitten the bullet and had the work done. My muffler was almost done-for, I was breathing carbon monoxide fumes every time I was stopped in traffic and the cops would be nailing me anytime at all for a noisy muffler.

But I dallied. I procrastinated. I remembered my buddy Ami telling me about a year ago of a place in the north end of the city, near Saint-Leonard, called Kiko, that had the best deals in town for muffler repairs. Then, I went to another small independent garage I was referred to recently (SpeedZone in the Cote des Neiges district), where owner Mike also referred me to Kiko. So, I finally drove to Kiko this morning and met with the Spanish-speaking owner, Frankiko, telling him I needed the best deal he could give me. He checked the muffler for two minutes and reported that he could replace the part with a pipe, for just $50. I almost broke down and cried... or almost hugged the man, I was so overjoyed. And I had the job done.

I must stress that the part replaced with a pipe was NOT the catalytic converter, a replacement that would have been illegal. And not very eco-friendly!

I asked him, in French (if you speak neither language, you will need to bring a translator with you, as he speaks almost no English... or Yiddish, for that matter), how he could afford to do work for so little, when Mr. Muffler was raping clients at almost 20 times that amount. Very outgoing and charming (this cool 55-year old dude also hosts a Latino music radio show on AM radio 1610 in Montreal, Mondays to Fridays from 12:30 - 2:30 p.m.) , he explained to me that God inspires him to be good to people, to help them when they are in need. Had it come from someone else, I might have snickered inside. I mean, how many people evoke the name of God on their way to screwing someone? It was believable coming from him, however, as I looked around his busy garage and realized that he could easily have charged me hundreds of dollars more. Hardly an Einstein when dealing with cars, I never would have known the difference.

He didn't... and I am passing on this information in return. You may as well all benefit if you are in need and about to drive to Mr. Muffler to get massively ripped off. Hey, I looked around and was rewarded bigtime. It never hurts to try.

And if you do go to Kiko, even if you are just visiting Montreal, wish him a heartfelt Vaya Con Dios from Bram. He richly deserves the divine intervention.

Frankiko, at Mufflers Kiko, is found at 8657 8th Avenue, off the St. Michel exit, tel: 514-722-6603.

Mike at SpeedZone can be found at 7138 Cote des Neiges, tel: 514-504-4683. He does all manner of quality repairs and is quite affordable.

Ron Scolack of Otto Pucher is closeby, at 12 Place Legault in TMR, tel: 514-341-6493.He also does general repairs and has also been highly recommended.

I do not recommend Mr. Muffler for anything, unless you are in the mood to get massively ripped off. If you have no choice, at least the Jean Talon location attempted to save me some money. Boo to St. Jacques.

Time to get together and protest irresponsible government

2010-02-08T08:12:00.006-05:00

When I first saw the movie V for Vendetta several years ago, I was so inspired that I saw it again... and again. Based on a graphic novel, it's a futuristic tale set in a London, England where government resembles a Nazi rogue's gallery... and masked hero V (portrayed by Hugo Weaving, just post his Lord of the Rings role as Elf King Elrond), a formerly incarcerated medical guinea pig, makes it his task to bring that government down with the help of a character played by Nathalie Portman. The poster's slug line is People Should Not Be Afraid of Its Government, Government Should Be Afraid of Its People, and as I watched, I found myself getting angrier and angrier. As the British citizens were inspired by V to rise up in full-scale PEACEFUL revolt, I felt the urge to do the same.

Once upon a time, despite the rogues in government who were dishonest and self-serving, I think government respected its people a lot more. If they did take advantage of them, they weren't as blatant about their actions.

I don't know if it's just me, but nowadays it seems our governments don't really give a damn what we think once they are elected. Like the British government in V for Vendetta, they act any way they desire, pass laws that are totally self-serving and rather than come up with bold, creative initiatives to battle rising deficits, all they do is raise taxes, to the point where we have less for ourselves and our families to show for all our hard work.

Here in Quebec, it's a losing battle every election. Regardless of which party is in power, we keep paying the highest taxes in Canada without a peep. The Liberals aren't any better than their predecessors the Parti Quebecois in that area, but what choice do we have? Voting for the PQ is giving them a mandate to follow a separatist agenda and there are NO better alternatives. The Quebec Solidaire party, which is more leftist than the PQ, would strive to rip us out of Canada in an even more extreme fashion. We HAD a potentially good leader in Mario Dumont, late of the ADQ party he founded and ultimately didn't know what to do with. And there is no up-and-coming leader in the wings worth mentioning, unless someone inspirational like the NDP's Thomas Mulcair gets agressive someday and founds a new party in his home province.

At the municipal level, it's a total disaster. Montreal's mayor, Gerald Tremblay, was just re-elected for a third time, despite one of the most horrendous records in the history of that office. Why? Because his opposition was weak and, in one instance, a virtually unilingual separtist and former PQ minister. Meanwhile, Tremblay only does one thing well, two if you count cutting ribbons at opening ceremonies: inflicting new taxes on us. He is destroying downtown businesses by raising parking meter fares to impossible levels, and is about to force indoor and outdoor lots to pay taxes they will have to pass on to the consumer. And, admittedly, we in Montreal pay more for gas than people in the regions around us, due to higher taxes on the stuff. You would think that our government would try to help us during a tough economic downturn, but we have already proven that we will take all the tax hikes they dish out, so why would they? We grumble, we complain, but in the end, we do nothing. We are angry, but impotent.

I am just curious how much more punishment we will take at the hands of our elected officials before we crack. There ARE methods of combating government abuse, you know. There is civil disobedience and, certainly, there are other options available to us if we all got together and acted within the boundaries of the law.

I remember visiting Jamaica in the early 1980s during one of their periods of extreme gas price hikes and everywhere my tour bus took us, there were burning tires blocking the way. As our visit to Ocho Rios was delayed and we were inconvenienced, I remember thinking that the Jamaicans responsible were uncivilized, that this would never happen in Canada. But these were a people fighting for their livelihood and, in reality, what is wrong with that? Is there a difference between burning tires and blocking roads with large trucks during protests, which our trucker's union is wont to do... other than damage to the local ecology? Do we have any less of a right to insist that our govenments heed the fact we are suffering and use their offices to develop plans that do NOT involve taxing us to death?

In my Briefly Bram column in Montreal's West End weekly, The Monitor, about two years ago, I tackled the subject of the large gas companies and their penchant to raise gas prices, fiddling with them every few days and raising them high, even when the world's per-barrel prices were declining. I told readers which companies were not engaged in this obvious price fixing and suggested we patronize one business in our area and hurt the others by sticking to our guns and not shopping there. I was not the only one advocating this notion, but was merely passing it on using my local column to point the way. And like sheep, most people kept going to their neighborhood favourites, despite the fact the competitor three blocks away was charging a few cents less per liter.

If you are going to shut up and put up, then you have no right to complain. If your government abuses you financially and you do nothing, you merely empower them to act more outrageously the next time. V for Vendetta may just be a movie, but it's got a powerful message. I suggest you rent it on DVD sometime. Maybe your subsequent anger will spur you on some action. As long as we live in a free society, we have options. Not exercising them... well, like any appendage, don't use it and you lose it. Keep that in mind as you drown in complacency.

Montreal Jewish community unique

2010-02-07T10:08:00.013-05:00

It was when I was interviewing Max Cantor, who was the head honcho behind Montreal's Cantor Bakery chain, following in his late father's footsteps as a food entrepreneur, that I realized how lucky I have been to experience something as unique as Montreal's Jewish community. Now, I am far from religious. I'm more of a traditional Jew, when it suits me, and am more spiritual than not. I believe in God, but the concept that he is a "Jewish" God is in my opinion a suitable fabrication... just as an Allah for Muslims is quite convenient and anointing Hebrew-born-and-raised Joshua/Jesus as a Christian leader -better yet the Son of God - has certainly proven convenient for Christians since the early first millennium. God as Creator is a concept that includes every living being on Earth... and you either believe or you don't.

But I have to tell you, growing up in Jewish Montreal has been unique. There truly IS no other community quite like it. The community as it stands today is in a state of decline, down from its high of 126,000 right before the separatist Parti Quebecois first came into power in 1975, thus beginning a mass exodus throughout Canada and the U.S. that continues to this day. At this time, the community hovers in the low 80,000s and a full quarter of the community is over the age of 65. About one third - and rapidly growing - are French-speaking Sephardim, while the balance are Ashkenazim, hailing from Europe originally. So, this community, one of the smallest cultural groups in the city at this point, is in dire need of a population infusion, which is difficult with so many of its members aging and the younger ones in the Ashkenazi community having very few children.

Our Jewish community's history is, however, so storied, its impact on the general populace (particularly in business) so vast, it is easy to become awe-struck when you think about it. The interview with Max Cantor reminded me of this history. Until the past decade, it was hard to throw a rock without hitting a Cantor Bakery. There were about 60 of them (including some in Ottawa) and, oy, you would dream of biting into their kreplach, danish, cheese bagelach, hamentashen, meats, cheeses and delectable pastries. I worked at a Cantor on De Salaberry Street, around the corner from Belmont Park - Montreal's best amusement grounds ever until its closure in 1982... for my then- girlfriend's dad, Philip Migicovsky. For two years part-time in the late 1970s, I served a mix of French-Canadian and English-speaking Jewish clients and one of the perks was wolfing down several of those dreamy desserts every shift. The mocha squares, eclairs, milles feuilles and other pastries still resonate on my taste buds. In fact, my buds are vibrating as I write! Only one other Jewish-owned business, a restaurant called Pumpernik’s, and the non-Jewish F.W. Woolworth, both defunct businesses, ever created cakes I still salivate for more than these.

One of THE most memorable visuals you still associate with Cantor is its famous poster, seen in every store window for decades, featuring an actual Eskimo, a toothless older aboriginal man from Frobisher Bay, grasping a Cantor bagel and the words You Don't Have to Be Jewish to Love Cantor's Bagels. It's a classic and I am actually in possession of an original. May make a good movie prop in a period film sometime.

Over the years, with the advent of specialty bakeries like Premiere Moisson and cafes that sell all manner of baked goods, Cantor became a bit obsolete, to the point where there are only a few left. Mr. Cantor, who maintains a part-time link to his old head office, also admitted that individual owners have become too independent. So Cantor is slowly turning into dust, I am sad to say.

At least it has outlived our city's finest grocery store chain, though. The name Steinberg's is well known to anyone 30 and up and we will never see its like again. The organization, started by Sam Steinberg and eventually involving his entire family, with his wife as matriarch, was massive and generations of Quebecers appreciated the professionalism that ruled the company. I have heard that, as shrewd and consumer-savvy as Steinberg was, he suffered fools lightly and could be brutal to his upper management if he was disappointed. But to this day, his employees remember him fondly, virtually all of them thanking him for expertly educating them in the entrepreneurial arts. After Sam's death, under heavy mismanagement by the family members who took over, the chain went bankrupt, its place assumed by companies like Provigo, Metro, IGA and Loblaws, which expanded into Quebec from Ontario.

That's not to say that Montreal's Jews are still not a force to be reckoned with in business and entrepreneurs, as well as Jewish professionals like doctors, lawyers and writers (LOL... my little homage to my craft... AS IF!) are still extremely active in the fabric of this city.

On the communal side, Jews here have really scripted a success story. Our small community, small compared to some others, raises more philanthropic funds per capita than almost any other Jewish community in the world... despite the fact that almost a third, seniors over 65, have a frightening percentage of impoverished shut-ins. The money raised through the Combined Jewish Appeal and other groups - as well as a terrific Meals on Wheels program via several organizations and synagogues - goes a long way in assisting these people. Several years ago, approximately $40 million was raised from this base of 85,000, many of whom are far from rich, as Jews are too often stereotyped. We do not all have big noses, either, but that's another story. If you believe either of these two supposed facts, quit reading this blog immediately and go and get your signed copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

We have the third largest community of Holocaust survivors outside Israel and New York City, which is probably why we have been so dedicated to combating anti-Semitism (just visit our impressive, world-class Holocaust Museum). And by that I refer to hate against Jews, not hatred of Arabs. People from Arab lands may be a Semitic people, but when the term anti-Semitism was spawned via the actions of racists in the late 1800s, it was Jews they were targeting. We also support Israel in massive numbers, with eight of 10 community members of all ages visiting the Jewish state at least once. I am proud to say I have been there eight times, supporting Israelis as much as I can. In the U.S., the number is more like three out of 10.

Montreal is also home to both the oldest synagogue in British North America, the Spanish & Portuguese, opened in the late 1700s, and Canada's second eldest, Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, whose membership split off from the Spanish in 1846 and formed its own synagogue, the German, Polish and English Congregation. It later became the Shaar. Both are still extremely active and are maintained in lovely historic buildings worth visiting.

I could go on and on about this community, because I am so impressed by how people of my generation and beyond have laboured to make Jewish life viable here. I guess what worries me regards what's to come. The community is shrinking and many young people don't seem to give a hoot about communal philanthropy. They are also leaving Quebec in droves as they complete their degrees and desire a life far away from constant separatist rhetoric from xenophobic governments-in-waiting like the Parti Quebecois... and worse.

Yet I suppose that we are okay as long as we have our world-famous bagels, knighted by none other than the Washington Post as the finest anywhere. For me, as long as I can still patronize Moishe's Steak House (opened in the 1930s as Moishe's Roumanian Paradise by the late Moishe Lighter), life as a Jewish Montrealer will always be good.

If, that is, I keep my teeth.

(Bram has written extensively on the Montreal Jewish community for various media and was the Montreal correspondent for the New York-based Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) for almost 20 years. )

Loto-Quebec's poor man's tax taken to the limit

2010-02-04T00:01:00.006-05:00

Let's say you have a friend who likely isn't doing nearly as well as you are financially. He's got a wife and kids and he's bleeding money. While pretending to be an even better friend, you send this person to a bookie to borrow money, knowing full well that your friend will end up getting even more screwed financially and likely lose his life because he will never be able to pay the thief back.

Let's now say that you, the friend of the people, are the Quebec government, whose crony Loto Quebec is screwing the citizens of this province on a daily basis with its many games of chance, where the odds of winning anything over a few dollars or a free ticket are virtually astronomical... and it can't open enough casinos to deprive already poor people from their food and rent money.

I am no virgin, you may be surprised to learn. And that extends to my predisposition to play Loto 6-49 once or twice a week and occasionally go to the casino. I have gone to the one in Montreal far too often, though not as much of late, and have been to the one in Charlevoix, Quebec, where a meteor once ploughed into the ground and carved out one of the largest impact craters on Earth and where, more recently, I won a $1,500 slot jackpot. I also won two similar jackpots at the Montreal casino, which occasioned me to visit again often enough that I have likely now lost as much as I have won there.

I have also been to Las Vegas nine times, once as part of an extended California honeymoon and several times as a journalist attending the opening of new properties. While the sites are indeed fascinating and entertaining and the buffets are cheap and extremely gluttonous affairs, you generally go to Las Vegas to gamble, though you can deny this till the cows come home. At first, I always won in Las Vegas, coming out $500 - $1,000 ahead every time out, but that too, ceased and the losses have been piling up to the point that I am not as anxious to go there anymore.

You see, gambling is addictive and in essence for losers. Yeah, I know that once in a while people win extraordinary amounts of cash, money that is non-taxable in Canada. But the casino people would be out of business in the blink of an eye if they were handing out more money than they take in. And they take in many millions more than they hand out, believe me.

So, Loto Quebec, in an infinite showcase of care and empathy for all the Quebec people who are unemployed, or elderly and living on fixed incomes, or mentally unstable, or just plain jackasses, has decided to go one step further in its role of psychotic state Robin Hood, taking from the poor to give to the rich. Mainly because its casinos in Montreal, Ottawa-Hull, Charlevoix and its latest cash cow in Mont-Tremblant aren't raking in enough millions every day to satisfy the cackling bureaucrats in charge, it has decided to take its obscene fishing derby onto the Internet.

Its rationale is quite simple: since so many Quebecers are pursuing on-line gambling run by other jurisdictions, that is unacceptable. If Loto Quebec can't have its share of those hard-earned, or too-easily-dispensed (think "welfare," ladies and gentlemen), funds, that simply isn't acceptable. So, Loto Quebec intends to start its own on-line gambling scam. Yeah, scam. Some people will become very wealthy as a result. Most, however, will not put as much food on the table for their children. Or won't have enough money for much-needed medicine.

Sol Boxenbaum, who hosts a radio show on CJAD radio, 800 AM here in Montreal, weeknights from 3 - 6 a.m., is a gambling addiction counsellor. I imagine Sol will be working his butt off to try to prevent this insidious plan from ever taking shape. If he fails, I ask Loto Quebec to at least give gamblers and potential gamblers another option. Hand them guns and let them shoot themselves first... it's far quicker than letting them slowly starve to death and eventually commit suicide anyways, when they have nothing left and are faced with living on the street.

And this is a cultured, forward-thinking society we live in? Give me a break.

No soap, radio

2010-01-30T08:11:00.004-05:00

There is an old joke you told one another when you were in summer camp back in 1969, when you were 12: Two elephants were taking a bath and one turned to the other and said, "Can you pass the soap, please?" To which the other elephant responded "No soap, radio." It was hysterical, because it made no sense... even funnier later on if you smoked weed. And it still makes no sense, which makes it comparable to Montreal's current radio scene.

Not sure what it's like in other markets, especially American ones where you locate a different and generally good radio station every 10-15 miles you drive when you are on an American vacation. I do know they have JACK-FM in some markets, a musical radio format far superior to anything we have here. But Montreal radio has sucked badly for at least the past decade. FM is bad enough. AM? It's virtually deceased.

When I was a teen, around 13 or so, the biggest impact on me was AM radio. With my little transistor radio having just an AM dial, I would lie in my backyard, with a sun reflector under my chin, trying to rid myself of my vampire-like pallor, and listen to Ralph Lockwood, DJ over at CKGM or Charles P. Rodney (Chucky) Chandler at CFOX. These two guys were radio gods to an English kid in Quebec and they played the coolest music, even though I heard Montreal band Mashmakhan's As the Years Go By a few too many times the summer it was number one with a bullet for 13 straight weeks. I also remember becoming a Bee Gees fan the moment I heard I Started a Joke and Words on that very same little radio.

Radio was huge here and there were many really good stations. On AM, you also had CJAD, which featured professional veteran broadcasters and newsmen and a talk format, and CFCF radio, which debuted as Canada's first station in 1919 under the Marconi label. CFCF carried Expos and Canadiens games at the time and when I later worked for the renamed AM-60 selling commercial time, I was in heaven because I was out there hawking airtime for businesses that supported my two favourite sports teams in the world.

I started worked for CKGM in 1988, just as the fondly-remembered Lockwood was departing (my first day on the job, I attended his retirement party that evening), and its sister station CHOM-FM, one of THE best rock stations anywhere.

Well, sad to say that CHOM is still one of the better rock stations, in Montreal, at least, but as for the others, you can cry all you want but that won't fix what has happened since. CFCF is dead, 940-AM, which inherited CFCF's license, had its plug pulled yesterday (two attempts to revive it failed, first as an All News, All Talk station and then as a Greatest Hits vehicle that also carried America's Art Bell-created Coast-to-Coast, one of my personal faves) and CJAD is just a shell of its former self.

This past year has been a horrendous period for Montreal English radio. After 940 became the one station I listened to day in and out - thanks mainly to the musical knowledge and charm of its veteran morning man, the legendary Marc "Mais Oui" Denis, Denis was unceremoniously dumped by the GM at Montreal's two Corus Radio stations, 940 and Q-92 FM... a guy I worked with in sales at CHOM, Mark Dickie. Then, CJAD had a massive housecleaning, ridding itself of some eight regulars overnight, including its hardest-working employee, late-night host Peter Anthony Holder, who had been on air there for some 20 years. Next, Dickie fired two members of Q-92’s likeable and experienced morning crew, Paul "Tasso" Zakaib and Suzanne Desautels, leaving a stunned Aaron Rand to fend for himself. And most recently, Ted Bird, long-time CHOM morning man, resigned after what I hear was a serious effort to force him to do so.

Then came yesterday's murder of 940-AM by Corus, which clearly has no idea what it's doing and is allowing the lunatics to run the asylum. I am almost certain that Q-92 will be the next to go because, frankly, I don't think Rand can carry the station by himself.

For those of us old enough to care (and I am sure young adults are far too busy downloading music illegally to give a damn what they're playing on radio, which may be the gist of the problem), this is just a continuation of the terminal illness of the media that began with the ongoing demise of print journalism. The computer age has forced traditional media into a coffin, a coffin that will eventually be filled with printed books, as well. Just watch. As Kindle and similar electronic reading media becomes more affordable, fewer people will buy books in their traditional formats and more and more publishers will shut their doors.

No soap, radio?

Not so funny to me anymore.

Good idea to keep your chin up

2010-01-25T14:01:00.006-05:00

It is sooooo easy to get down on yourself and, no, you don't have to be clinically manic-depressive or ADD to feel like things are getting away from you. Life is hard, man. Much harder today than it ever was, because the world is moving so fast and technology is forcing us into obsolescence. If you don't upgrade to a new computer every two years, change cell phones annually, frequently buy a new car (because repairing your old one has become SO expensive and because the government is forcing you to do so with talk that older cars will be, by law, mandated off the road), or buy the latest video recording equipment or an HD TV unit, if you haven't yet done so, you're made to feel like you are so screwed.

I mean, how do people survive with kids? I don't have any and even when I was bringing in a decent salary, it was hard to live on... and, trust me, my lifestyle isn't so extreme.

So, for those of us who wake up in the morning - that is, IF we even managed to beat insomnia and get any sleep at all the night before - feeling a little damaged or down, heck, it's a pretty big club we're part of. Surviving day-to-day until it's time to die can be pretty daunting.

In any case, all I can say is hang in there. For me, things are starting to look up a bit, as I get nibbles for freelance work, as I get publishers responding favourably about my horror fiction, as I have a few fewer headaches weekly than I have experienced this past year... likely a record for me in the head pain department. Things are getting better in general.

I have to admit that I am not at all the sort of person to consider suicide on a serious level. Even at my most down, when it seems nothing is going right and it never will, I enjoy life far too much to consider the many means available to me to end my life. Taking an EMS course and volunteering in the field for a while teaches you, simply by the nature of the work, how easily and quickly you could end your life if you were so inclined. Dr. Kavorkian has little to teach me. But why? Life is so amazing hour by hour, day by day, and I cannot imagine any one of you not experiencing some pleasure out of your days, whether it's as mundane as watching a favourite show, reading a book, getting a massage, taking a hot shower, caressing someone you love, lying back, closing your eyes and listening to Miles Davis's Kinda Blue as you realize, hey, I could be in Haiti right now... I am the luckiest person in the world!

There is a lot to live for... for most of us. Some people die way before their time, like my late friend Ellen... who would have given anything to live a little longer, I am sure... and some of us live like we are already dead. Didn't Bob Dylan write something like "Those who have stopped living have started dying"?

As long as I am healthy, or maybe not so healthy someday as I age, but not in terrible pain, I will find reasons to celebrate life. For instance, I really want to learn more about Buddhism this year, to become far more spiritual than I am today. Somehow, putting on "tefillin" as I meditate (look the word up if you don't know) every few weeks or so isn't enough. So, if anyone has advice for me with regard to Buddhism, feel free to share. Maybe we can greet Leonard Cohen at the top of a mountain together someday.

Whatever you do, however... keep your chin up. I don't know what's on the Other Side, but I certainly have time to get there and the spirits who are waiting to welcome me, including my parents, my aunt, my late friends Laine Coxford and Ellen Joy Cohen... well, they can wait a little while longer. I am not in a rush. I hope our Creator is reading, I really do.

Maybe he or she will turn up as a follower someday... ya think?

Gros Bil a gentleman's gentleman

2010-01-22T06:46:00.003-05:00

Wasn't so long ago that I was a kid, growing up and watching the world zip by around me. My late father was a good example of a man's man. A clothing presser, he spent 40years working unflinchingly in a sweat shop to eke out a meagre living for himself... and his many brothers and sisters, whom he sent money to overseas on a regular basis. I remember my dad was always dressed in a suit, or at least a dressy shirt and pants if he was going for one of his daily six-mile walks. It was only late at night, at home, that I ever saw him in pyjamas. I sometimes swore he slept in his suit.

But beyond that, my dad loved people and he would often walk a hundred blocks out of his way to take a stranger he had just met where he or she needed to go. This was not a wealthy man in fact, but in spirit he had untold riches at hand.

Fast forward to the new millennium. My dad is long gone and, really, how many "men's men" are there left? The world is a casual, uncaring place. People are slobs - even the five star restaurants let you in dressed like a pauper - and we don't even make eye contact with strangers anymore, let alone show them around.

There are still some of these souls walking the Earth. Jean Beliveau is one of this rare breed. A hockey player during his youth, a member of the famed Montreal Canadiens dynasty of the 1950s who would be elected to the Hall of Fame not long after he hung 'em up, he is 78 years old today and likely the greatest goodwill ambassador of any sport in history. He has been retired since the 1971 season, but even today, at age 78, he attends every Habs home game, sitting in his seats three rows behind the team bench and signing autographs for any fan who asks for one. He signs so many that the worth of these precious scribblings has been vastly reduced... the supply and demand rule kicking in.

I have been fortunate enough to become acquainted with Mr. Beliveau, known as Le Gros Bil to the multitudes here in Quebec, on a professional basis. In the early 1990s, I interviewed him for a story in MTL magazine, an interview we conducted at his office at the legendary, since-defunct Montreal Forum. Several years ago, I had the chance to interview him yet again, regarding his acclamation as the head of Canada's contingent to Israel for the Maccabiah Games. Then, during the NHL strike not too long ago, I asked if Mr. Beliveau could meet me, my close friend Morley Lonn and his two sons, my godson Kyle and his brother Shayne, at the Bell Centre. I needed a picture of him for another article. He not only agreed to meet, he invited us to spend an hour with him in a Habs lounge, where we talked, posed for pictures and received plenty of autographs. My signed Jean Beliveau Canadiens jersey is one of my prized possessions.

Jean Beliveau is one of the classiest men I know. At a time when athletes care not one iota for fans, other than to appreciate the support they give a team so these same players can be paid millions of dollars (an interview I did with slugger Larry Walker, then of the Montreal Expos, in 1993 at the Olympic Stadium was hardly with a classy sports figure), he stands alone. His generosity and kindness have become unique. Unfortunately, Mr. Beliveau suffered a stroke this past Wednesday and reports say he has lost his ability to speak, although he is not in mortal danger. Afflicted with cancer in early the 2000s, his voice had already suffered following radiation therapy, to the point where his deep, soothing voice was unable to be utilized for long stretches at a time.

Thankfully, however, he is still with us... and, really, we need him to stay with us a while longer. It is the Jean Beliveaus of this world who remind us that there is still some good, that we can still trust one another sometimes and that making eye contact with another human being in the street is not necessarily going to get us raped or killed. Men like my late dad and Gentleman Jean are rare, but not yet extinct. Thank God for that.

Ode to an amazing young woman

2010-01-19T07:14:00.003-05:00

Every morning when I awaken, usually by 5:30 or so, one of the first things I do is read my morning paper... in this case The Gazette. It's a small thing, usually ridiculously so, and therefore it doesn't take long to get to the final part I read, the obits. In my lifetime of reading the daily obits - and I guess I do so because I lost my parents at such a young age - I have only been shocked into numbness a few times. Once was when I was in my early twenties and I read that my next door neighbour, a senior Mr. Cassidy whom I had just been gabbing with two days earlier, died following cararact surgery.

But nothing compares to the sadness that is washing over me now as I relate how much of an impact Ellen Joy Cohen made on so many lives. I just read her obit about 30 minutes ago and I am still reeling. In her mid-forties or so, Ellen succumbed to something (I have no idea what) that followed her surgery and treatment for breast cancer about 16 months ago. She was always so upbeat and in our last communication late last year, she sounded amazing. I had no idea she was sick again, which makes this even more of a shock.

Ellen entered my sphere of influence when I learned she was making wigs for , and doing the hair of, people who were terminally ill. I interviewed her for my column, we had lunch that day in Westmount and I remember she brought a few of her wigs and a dummy head along, which I used in the photo I took of her. She would often, she told me, crawl into bed with her clients to do their hair, if the afflicted party was too sick to move. She believed in letting sick people live out whatever time they had left with dignity and with women especially, having dirty hair, or worse, no hair, deprived them of that.

I was very moved by our meeting and by this incredible young woman, who had a busy life but nontheless made her two young sons her biggest project always. She was divorced from a guy who sounds like a real gem of a man (facitiously stated), but rather than allowing bitterness to swallow her up, she found the light and moved on. Ellen always found the light. I have rarely if ever met anyone so positive, so caring about other people.

Our meeting was in May, 2008. In late June or early July, she confided in me that a lump in her breast was cancerous. She had surgery, took her treatments and optimistically reported that she had beaten it a year later... or so it appeared. She asked me if I could do another column on her, as a pick-me-up for others going through the same thing (Ellen always thought of others first) and I told her it would be better to find a columnist with much wider reach. I recommended Mike Boone at The Gazette and two weeks later, the always eminently engaging Boone published a column on Ellen that was quite terrific.

Ellen and I last emailed one another sometime in December and she sounded good. Till I opened my morning paper today, I thought she was. Now, as I plan to attend her funeral tomorrow, I am flabbergasted and sad. I cannot believe this world has lost such a fine woman... and that her sons, both under 10, I believe, have lost their mom. Boys, you will grow to learn how very special she was and I am so sorry for your loss, a sentiment I offer her parents as well. What a daughter she must have been.

Rest in peace, Ellen, and I will miss you. Wherever you are, I have no doubt that the light is shining on you.

O'Keeffe revelation makes Globes an informative experience

2010-01-17T21:31:00.005-05:00

Well, as I watch this year's Golden Globe awards and almost just threw up when egotistical, rude and obnoxious Alec Baldwin (I worked with him and the rest of the Baldwin brothers... I know) won yet another one, I was stunned to learn that a movie on the life of late American superstar artist Georgia O'Keeffe... WE INTERRUPT THIS ENTRY TO REPORT THAT SOPHIA LOREN JUST MADE AN APPEARANCE ON STAGE AND SHE IS ABSOLUTELY STUNNING (but I digress)... BACK TO OUR ENTRY... ran on the Lifetime channel in September.

Gosh, I am so in awe of that woman, who died at age 98 in the late 1980s. Anyone else know her art? If not, ya gotta look into it. Her colours, her subject matter, her talent and her eccentricity, make her one of the most fabled female artists in history. Did you know she dressed mainly in black and white when photographed because she believed the art and not the artist should be the focal point? She was not, however, photographed often, at least not after the passing of her late lover-then-husband Alfred Stieglitz, the father of modern photography. It was the affair between Stieglitz and O'Keeffe, which began in the 1920s after he started exhibiting the young artist's work at his fabled New York studio, that really drew me into their life stories two years ago. Artistic geniuses both, they were destined to be together, despite the vast age gap, Stieglitz being decades older and married when they met.

Stieglitz was an atheist born into a German Jewish family, she was quite Christian, and the two spent summers at the family's Lake George, New York house, working and playing. There and New York, actually, a city O'Keeffe grew to hate. When her husband died pretty much of old age, she went back to her favourite spot on Earth, Ghost Ranch, in New Mexico, and stayed there till her death, a virtual recluse. She later purchased an old adobe church in the wee town of Abiquiú, New Mexico, and made this her home. It had this incredible wooden door she was enamoured of.

I won't go on, though I can with total fascination, but I am still thrilled that a dramatic film on her life, starring Joan Allen as O'Keeffe and Jeremy Irons as Stieglitz, has been made. I haven't read great reviews on it yet, but it's still worth seeing, if only to gain a visual glimpse into the woman, as we have already been left with the untold riches of her art.

I just hope the then-young opportunist who inserted himself quite outrageously into her life during her waning years, Juan (real name, John) Hamilton, doesn't find a way to make a buck out of this project, as well. He's made millions off O'Keeffe's talent and trust already.

Bloodsuckers one and all

2010-01-16T17:06:00.003-05:00

After all the hoopla surrounding the HBO series True Blood, I decided to finally see what the fuss was about and buy Season One on DVD. Vampires have always fascinated me, though I am partial to zombies and serial killers in my own short stories, and at this point it takes a lot to engage me. I am not a fan of Twilight and there's a cable TV show on now that didn't do anything for me when I tuned into its debut.

But True Blood? All I've heard are ecstatic rumblings and I decided to join the Sookie Special. What's the verdict with one of the discs left to go? Oh man. Somebody get me a drop of "V" and fast!

It's no surprise, really, that I am hooked on this show. I think no one does television as well as HBO. The Sopranos. Rome. Entourage. Curb Your Enthusiasm. Four of my favourite shows of all time. In fact, other than movies and HBO, I don't watch much TV anymore. It sucks. Well, actually, True Blood sucks... but in a good way. Wanna experience true love and passion? Study Sookie and Bill. Want pathos? Exhibit A: Poor Grandma Stackhouse. Comedy? Tara is just hysterical. As for vampire lore, go no further than the vampire nests of Louisiana and learn what they're really all about, their unique brand of justice included, no sugar coating necessary.

There's blood, nudity, sex, great cuisine, lush natural surroundings... I have been to Louisiana, roared across the bayou in a motorboat, traversed the French Quarter at midnight, devoured crawfish and sweat hot sauce out of my pores. Watching this show makes me ache to head there again. Yes, in New Orleans you also see appropriately-attired vampires lurking on the shadowy streets. Are they real? Now I'm not so sure they're not.

I gotta tell you one thing, though. As I age, I realize that vampires are more civilized than we humans. They aren't nearly as cruel to one another as we are. I actually envy them.

Vampire movies I recommend: The new theatrical release Daybreakers is chill. 30 Days of Night is one of the most frightening vamp films I have seen, a real treat. Nosferatu, both the original and the remake starring the late Klaus Kinski. Vampyr is a 1932 German black-and-white masterpiece that will leave you chilled to the bone. And the first Underworld film pleased me a lot, because it was something new. I also enjoyed Wesley Snipes's performances as vampire-hunter Blade, even more in the second film than the first. You must see the original Dracula, because Bela Lugosi does a great, albeit campy job and it's still a classic although it doesn't make people faint like it was once purported to do. The late 1970s version with then-sexy Frank Langella (Nixon in Frost/ Nixon) was good, but the later Francis Ford Coppola version was even better. Gary Oldman, who's a year younger than me, I just learned, was a phenomenal Dracula and any movie with Anthony Hopkins in it is a cause for celebration. I can't wait for the new Wolf Man film.

But True Blood? My blood is pumping faster in wild anticipation of Season 2!

A spirited little chat

2010-01-09T17:27:00.006-05:00

When you are looking for work and have all the time in the world - well, at least more than you are used to - you look for ways to fill your time. Money is a tad scarce these days and so I have been spending loads of time at the gym... virtually daily, which I don't think I did even when I was 12 years younger and into weights big-time. I feel great, I am eating better and suffering from fewer headaches. For me, that last part is motivation enough, because I have had almost daily headaches since I was five years old. Do the math and consider how many meds, per pill, you think I may have taken since then. It's a wonder I still have a liver, never mind that it's still functioning.

I have also been reading more. Always a voracious reader, work left me with less time and my reading has been limited to the late night variety, after 10 minutes of which I always fall asleep. Bathroom reading is somewhat better... but, LOL, I think I'd be in there a lot longer if they made super comfy toilet seats. In my case, when my ass gets numb, it's time to leave! Yeah, I know... TMI!

After horror fiction, I'm a big fan of biographies, as well as books on anything metaphysical... and this is the gist of this entry. I have always had a major fascination with UFOs, Bigfoot, Nessie, ghosts... pretty much anything spectral or spooky. I guess it has a lot to do with my love for horror, or certainly ties into my being adopted and, errr, just weird.

When I was quite young, I started reading books on odd, inexplicable occurrences, by authors like Brad Steiger, Ivan T. Sanderson and my favourite in this genre, Frank Edwards, whose book Flying Saucers: Serious Business is one of THE definitive books on unexplained aerial phenomena, written by a rather brilliant, highly respected radio man. Of these three, only Steiger is still alive, but if you are into this genre, read any or all and I guarantee you a riveting time of it. British researcher Colin Wilson is one of the better writers today and if you want to read a really oldie but goodie, look for anything by Rupert Furneaux, who penned several books featuring oddities throughout time.

Growing up fascinated by macabre subjects, an only child, and adopted to boot, I would fantasize, inserting myself into the worlds of the weird I would read about. I would also question where my place was in this bizarre universe, whether I had a spirit, what the meaning of this life was... perhaps more than the average person did. By the time I was in my early twenties, I was totally fixated on the occult. Reading Shirley MacLaine's Out on a Limb and Michael Crichton's Travels got me even further hooked and when I then read Journeys Out of the Body, by Robert Monroe - the latter dealing with astral projection - the die was set. I simply HAD to know whether we had souls, spirits we could release from their earthly vessels, to fly around the universe at will whilst we meditated or slept. I bought more books on the subject, started meditating daily... I even purchased my first Herkimer Diamond, a semi-precious stone mined in Herkimer, New York, said to help facilitate an OBE... out of body experience.

I tried to leave my body several times weekly for two years... and failed. So, assuming I was just trying too hard, I quit, setting this little project aside for a while. That period is now officially over and I am trying again after 25 years or so. The past few days I have dug up my old books on OBEs and meditation and I have been reading. Now that I am older and have slowed down a bit, or become wiser regarding how enthusiastic I will allow myself to become, perhaps it will work this time and I'll push through the envelope into some new realm.

Yeah, I know some of you think I am a nut-job... and that's okay. We can't ALL be strange and eccentric, because that would be too boring to contemplate. Interesting characters make for an increasingly interesting plot, don't they? Aren't these writings more meaty for some of you than the multitudes by parents ranting about how their kids are little geniuses... or are devoted to the family dog? I dunno, perhaps not. My reason for writing this blog is to mix it up, to bring you along on my journey as I see what's on the other side for me and to allow you to share in the ups and downs. I'm happy with it so far, though I have no pre-ordained plan as to how I am going to continue this yet. Excuse me if it seems a bit haphazard... and if it's not as visually exciting as many of the others out there. I promise to try to import some photos I have taken, to change the style... in short to give you reason to come back and to tell your friends why they should as well.

In the meantime, however, I have some meditating to do. See you on the astral plane!

Tough to be a boss

2010-01-07T01:49:00.003-05:00

While reflecting on some of the awful bosses I have had in my lifetime - and few have been any good - I remind myself of my own experience supervising the work of people and how hard that was. Besides working as an editor and having people under my purview, I was Director of Sales and Marketing at Semtronix in Ottawa for three years and after one of the partners was shown the door, I was called upon to look after the work of several employees. This included the office administrative assistant/receptionist and the main electronic technician.

Not long after I assumed these duties, it occurred to me that this was challenging work... responsibilities that were not for just anyone. True, there ARE in fact people who are born to be leaders of men (and women)... I'm sure Genghis Khan didn't need to take any courses to lead one of the most massive and successful hordes in history. Harry S. Truman inherited an atomic bomb program that certainly placed him in charge of men who were able to end the Second World War in a rather vivid manner. Martin Luther King Jr. put a new face on civil rights... although his tenure as a boss did not end so well for him...

But you get the drift. Being a boss is about much more than inhabiting a snazzy office, barking orders at people and letting them take the fall for your inadequacies and failures. And for the most part, the only good thing most of my bosses have been good at has been, well, bossing. Not leading by example. Not showing generosity and tact. Not knowing the sometimes very subtle difference between pressuring and motivating employees.

Sometimes the bosses I have had have been downright immoral. As a young man, I had a boss who would come onto my then wife sexually whenever I was not at my desk and he intercepted her phone call. He actually told her how he wanted to tie her up and described vividly what he would do to her. I was young, newly married and terrified of losing my job. And truly it is experiences like these that have given me the cojones to not put up with anything abusive against me today, from anyone... certainly not from a boss. Really, I wish I could time travel back to that decade some 30 years ago, take this guy aside and instruct him how to address a lady, whether she be a wife of mine or anyone else's.

What I also learned is that being a good boss is about constant work... and education. There are courses in motivating employees, psychological tricks you can utilize to get them to devote some passion to their work because they want to, not because they fear you.

Anyone wanting to read about a guy you'd really want to work for should pick up the recent book Warren Buffett's Management Secrets, regarding how the richest man in the world views his most important asset, his employees. I'd work for this man in a second. I should be so lucky.

Just know, however, that your likely unhappiness with your boss is a shared state of mind. I am sure that there are few good ones out there today, mainly because bosses are so fearful for their own jobs in a depressed market with shrinking budgets that they simply forget to be good managers. Self preservation is part of the human condition and when you've got a family to feed and work is about "you" versus "them"... well, how many of us would put the "you" first, or would instead handle a situation so deftly that both "you" AND "them" come out unscathed?

Would I be a boss again, if given the chance? The answer is yes and I think I'd be a darned good one, due to the experiences I have had with the bad ones. Then again, you get to an age where employers don't seem to value you so quickly anymore and, surprise, surprise, your life experience enables you to do things you could not properly do when you were young, vain and thought you had all the answers.

Not that there aren't some younger leaders of men (and women) who do a terrific job. They are, however, few and far between, too glutinous with self-approbation to realize that their staff is the key to their success to begin with.

So if you are heading off to work today and are in a position of managing a group of people, just remember a guy named Julius Caesar. There's always a Brutus waiting in the wings, with a long knife hidden beneath his robes.

Whether he uses it or not is totally up to you.

Tweedle-dumb on Twain's torch

2010-01-05T08:18:00.004-05:00

I had to laugh when reading the media's "headline" news that country superstar Shania Twain has donated the Olympic torch she ran with in her hometown of Timmins, Ontario to the museum there bearing her name.

First off, who gives a darn? True, if I had been a torchbearer, I'd likely have spent the $350 required to keep my flame holder as a souvenir, mainly because I have this collecting madness (although I have been assured that it's nowhere as bad as anything you see on the strange TV show Hoarders). But if this museum is so hard up for stuff that this torch now becomes an icon... well, pretty sad, I think.

Second, there is the museum itself. Last March 20, I kicked off my official work as The Colon Guy with the first stop on the Giant Colon Tour, a five-day stint in Timmins. When the Mayor stopped by to see the Giant Colon, he asked me if I had been to the museum yet. When I said negative, he told me... "if you have some time this weekend, drop in... I will call ahead. Just tell them the mayor sent you."

Now, let me tell you that there is NOTHING to do in downtown Timmins. Aside from a very good cafe there, that's about it. Locals told me the museum was a sorry institution and that Twain had been there but once in years, to show it to her young son while it was closed to the public. In any case, I was in fact off work that Sunday and I called to find out what time the museum was open... only to hear on a recording that it was closed weekends during the winter months!

Ahhh, Mr. Mayor? You'd think you'd be aware of that. At least you've got that cafe to be proud of....

Kindle pretty kool

2010-01-04T21:14:00.004-05:00

So the publisher of my very adult horror chapbook Hard Night emailed me today asking my permission to include the story in a Kindle package, which is a very cool prospect. Kindle, of course, is an Amazon tool whereby you download all manner of reading material, including books and newspapers, for a pittance and then view them using a device that you buy from Amazon for about $250 or so. Sounds expensive, I know, but compared to what you might spend on your reading material over 1-3 years, you'd save a lot in the long run.

In the case of Hard Night, the 2005 chap was published in a very limited edition of 150 signed, numbered copies at a cost of $9 US per and sold out pretty fast. For about $3 per download, you would get all their chapbooks. Even the most frugal of you would be able to enjoy this racy zombie story set in Quebec's Laurentian mountains, circa 1973. It's my homage to George Romero... with a lascivious little twist.

I'm just thinking that $250 may not be so much, after all, when you consider how many people - at a time of economic downturn at that - are still buying gas-guzzling SUVs and how many expensive restaurants are bursting at the seams, populated not only by successful entrepreneurs, but by students, as well.

I know I certainly can't afford an SUV and that I currently dine at places like Scores, with their cheapie soup and salad-bar special. It's not only my healthier way of eating and sweating-at-the-gym habit, either... I simply don't have the cash these days. I listed seven items for sale on ebay today, because divesting myself of collectibles when I am alive and can use the money seems much more logical than having my executor sell them at a series of garage sales for a buck when I am dead.

So, yeah, buddy, if you can spare a dime: scribe15 is my ebay moniker. And Hard Night is just waiting for your hungry zombie brains to devour it as soon as possible. Some day, I hope, this computer of mine may just prove useful for more things than checking Wickipedia, looking myself up on IMDB... and writing this blog.

Not that there's anything wrong with that...

May you experience great literature this New Year

2009-12-31T14:42:00.005-05:00

In retropect this final day of the first decade of the "new" millennium, this has been a holiday season filled with discoveries, mainly about myself, tribulations and hope, which I guess really can spring eternal if you keep an open mind. Though I greet the new year with much concern about what's next for me, I am also excited about discovering what's ahead.

Creatively, I seem to be peaking, just when I thought my best days were behind me. I keep repeating the mantra "James Michener" over and over again, reminding myself that this late writer accomplished it all into his forties and beyond, having his final of some 40 novels published before he died in his late seventies, I believe. If you have not read Michener yet, treat yourself to at least one of his stories in 2010 as your literary resolution. While he's a lot more like Steinbeck than King, you will find anything he's written hard to put down. If you are young, start with The Drifters, which most of us read as teens as we dreamt of travelling the world in search of love and adventure, and then try The Source, Hawaii... and perhaps the one I am reading now, Caribbean. There are so many it will take you decades to read them all, but it is well worth your time. May Mr. Michener's spirit smile on you.

Then again, reading appears to be a pasttime reserved for older folk. I hope that is wrong of me to say. I have derived such pleasure lost in books that I cannot imagine life without them. I started devouring H.P. Lovecraft after Bram Stoker
stok(er)ed my fires with his seminal Dracula and I was hooked on horror for life, but I also enjoy biographies - the interesting lives of Rod Serling, Alfred Hitchcock, Houdini, Bram Stoker, Nicolas Tesla, Klaus Kinski and the late, self-proclaimed Satanist Anton Lavey spring immediately to mind - and science fiction has always been a favourite genre, as well. Try anything by Robert Sheckley and Damon Knight, as much as Harlan Ellison, Larry Niven, Isaac Asimov and Philip K.Dick, all of whom I recommend for a good thrill on paper.

One of my favourite writers, Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park and, of course, the TV series ER, which he created) died last year, but a complete ms was found in his desk drawer and published, his swan song. Pirate Latitudes is said to be sub-par for a Crichton novel, which is probably why it sat dusty and lonely in his desk drawer, but hey, what a gift to his legions of fans.

And I still love reading the tiny tomes, and admiring the art, of another of my all-time faves, the late Edward Gorey. If you do not know about Gorey, take a look. You are in for a real treat.

Finally, there's Bram D. Eisenthal. You likely haven't heard of his work yet, but if things go well and he lives long enough, maybe he will improve on the two short stories he's had published so far, Migraine and Hard Night. Maybe... all he's gotta do is invoke the spirt of James Michener and, of course, spend a lot more time utilizing his God-given talent.

A Happy and Healthy New Year to you and yours. I hope it's a great 2010 for us all.

Ghoulash like you've never had before

2009-12-29T21:39:00.004-05:00

Well, I am quite jazzed for tomorrow, because I may be doing two cool things: interviewing film programming guru Philip Spurrell for an article and checking out a graveyard in Chambly that may be suitable as a shooting venue for my horror short Graveyard Ghoulash. I wrote the story last year and it's a wee one, just 500 words. But I think it has tremendous potential as a 10-15 minute short film, my first ever. I'd like to shoot a day or two this winter and another day when the weather is greener. I figure the film likely won't make any money, but it would be a good festival filler and who knows? Since I can't get any work in Montreal as a film publicist - mainly because there ARE no English films shooting at present - I may as well try to join the ranks of the film production community. Maybe James Cameron will ask me to co-write or produce Avatar2: Return of the Insanely Tall Attractive Alien Blue People. I really liked your first installment, Jim. Why not?

So, check out Graveyard Ghoulash, possible coming soon, to a festival near you...

Basterds bring out the badgers in us all

2009-12-28T07:19:00.004-05:00

Just reflecting on the film Inglourious Basterds, which I bought on DVD last week and just viewed for the first time since I saw it in theatres. I am a little disgusted with myself, mainly because I cheered the murder of Nazi basterds a bit too voraciously. I am the son of a Roumanian Holocaust survivor, so I suppose a bit of glee is to be expected. My late mother Mina Eisenthal (maiden name, as well) suffered a lot at the hands of the Nazi-supported thugs of the Antonescu regime and, yeah, I really hate the people who made her endure that hell on Earth.

But to be watching a movie and truly HATING characters portrayed by actors on a screen... to the point where the anger flowing through my veins was so palpable I wished I had a group of Nazis at my disposal so that I could bash their heads in? Not something I was proud to be experiencing at that moment. Yes, we are human and these emotions are very human, otherwise we'd not be given the capacity to feel them. Still, what does this say for our moral characters, for our sense of Godliness, or for our capacity to realize peace on Earth... when a mere movie can trigger such anger?

I wonder if Quentin Tarantino had any life experiences that caused HIM to feel such emotions as he shot the film. I am actually in contact with his mom vis email, but I doubt she would know... she and he are not on very close terms and she hadn't even seen the film yet when last we wrote one another three weeks ago.

In any event, food for serious thought. And a warning to neo-Nazis and general Jew haters: we, too, are capable of animalistic actions, as are you. Even the more moral or peace-seeking of us can go off like lethal missiles when our animal side kicks in, when we feel we are being assaulted or are cornered like the badger I cornered in my rural Ottawa office many years ago. Long story... but the badger fought like hell and got past the much bigger me, because his will to survive made him a vicious beast. And he had not even seen Inglourious Basterds yet.

God help us all, filmmakers and normal folk alike.

Secret agent man?

2009-12-25T12:25:00.003-05:00

Christmas day and what's a Jew to do? Quiet for me this year and I have lots of time to reflect on what I am doing right... and wrong, to further my career. I'm not getting any younger and I am too ambitious to simply fade away without a good fight. So, how best to do that... anyone?

I have thought about this often and I have been stymied by ignorance, but I think I need a literary agent. I've tried, once when I had an idea for what I thought was a good concept, reprinting many of my travel pieces on the unusual and the macabre, and I sent the kit to a New York agent. She read it, considered it, and finally passed. I am assuming this is normal for many writers and that you often have to plug, plug, plug away till you hit pay-dirt. The problem is, I am far from connected in this area.

I'm not sure if these professionals even exist, but someone once told me that there are agents who can help me recycle many of the features I have had published... and there have been a lot of these since my first, published in 1993. Sounds like a great idea on paper. But in fact? Not sure... anyone know about this?

Some of my published articles have been placed on my first website, at www.scribeworld.net and are pretty good. I always thought my feature A Son's Manifesto, a intimate look at how an adoptee feels deep in his guts, is worth another publishing cycle. It appeared in The Gazette, our Montreal daily, on Mother's Day 1998, and many people think it is one of the best things I have written to date. If you are adopted or have given a child up for adoption... or know any of these individuals... take a peek. I had to really expose a raw nerve to write this and it was well worth the effort in terms of emotion and information. It was also very cathartic for me, because I am troubled by the lack of information I possess on my roots. Angry.

Another issue I am having is whether anyone is even reading this blog. I don't get any notifications, I have three public followers INCLUDING myself, and I don't know whether I am supposed to discover whether I am being read. Or not. Anyone reading? Please let me know. Even if you hate it, it's better for me to know I suck rather than writing in a vacuum.

Merry Christmas to the Christian community and goodwill and health to all!

About time we had a vagina

2009-12-23T02:06:00.003-05:00

Okay, so a reader told me about the latest organ to achieve supersized status...

http://www.killahbeez.com/2008/06/21/the-2nd-gtfoh-award-vulva-taxi/

And all I can say is, it's about time! There is NO reason a giant colon should get all the attention, as far as I'm concerned, and a vulva is such a natural candidate for the category of Gigantor. I can't tell you how many times, during my tenure as Colon Guy, someone quipped to me "why don't you guys create a whole series of human organs to take on tour?" And I always pointed out that it's gotta be a natural tunnel, or orifice, to create a natural environment for the public to walk through. The anus, the esophagus, the ear canal and, hell yeah, the vagina, all fit into that category. And what would you rather walk through, besides a giant colon... the human ear canal, or a giant vagina??? Come on, this is such a no-brainer.

So kudos to the Vagina People. I salute you! With all the seriousness I can muster!

Pumping my way to a sharper mind and body

2009-12-20T09:12:00.004-05:00

You know, I firmly believe that as a writer ages, he needs to take additional measures to keep his mind sharp, otherwise it turns to mush. And a mushy mind doesn't really yield the same results as a finely-honed one. So after a year and a half of pretty much remaining sedentary, I am heading back to the gym today. When I was younger, till age 45 or so, I was into weights bigtime. At one point, taking the natural supplement Creatine, I was a monster compared to today. Then I tore my bicep - an injury that doesn't heal unless you have surgery to reattach the affected tendon... I didn't - and my serious weight-lifting days were over. Because I had focused so much on growing my muscle mass and not working the muscle that needed it most (the cardiac one!), I ignored the cardio aspect of the ritual.

Now, when I walk into that hallowed temple, Pump Fitness in Cote Saint-Luc, I do about 40 minutes on the eliptical and then about 15-20 minutes of lighter weights or weight machines. My heart is so important to me as I age, because that's going to keep me alive, not a bigger bicep or rock-hard abs. I never had a six-pack, anyways, not even when I was 19, had 18-inch arms and weighed 140 pounds. There's a little quip I like to relate: When they walk past my coffin and it's open (which it won't be, most likely), when they comment "Man, he looks fantastic," it will be small comfort. It's what's inside that really counts. Then again, that sort of logic is lost on the young. I get it now.

Wish me luck. I am going to power up with an egg-white omelette, three small low-fat turkey sausage links and a slice of whole wheat bread and then it's off to nirvana. Hope your weekend is going swimmingly!

A lifetime of moneymaking pursuits

2009-12-18T15:40:00.004-05:00

Another half-day, another blog... I was just sitting around thinking of ways to make a buck. I have a virtual lifetime... well, not virtual, actual... of work experience that must be worth SOMETHING today.

A few of the more memorable jobs I have undertaken since I was 14:

Busboy at the defunct Castle des Monts in Ste. Agathe-des-Monts, Quebec... the same place that Duddy Kravitz (played so brilliantly by a very young Richard Dreyfuss)worked in the film The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. I actually slept in the same place (but never used my left hand... see the film) and worked the same dining room he did. The renonwned place, a real hotspot in the 1940s and 1950s akin to the resorts in the Catskills, burned down a few years later.

Dairyman at Steinberg's, Montreal's historic grocery chain that went under in 1992 after some 80 years. I worked at the Cote St. Luc Shopping Centre even though I was underage. My dad knew the store manager, the now-deceased Moe Caplan, and got me in. I first worked as a wrapper at the cash and was SO good at it that I was promoted to dairyman. It went great for a few days, till my massive pallet of milk cartons caught on the industrial fridge door handle and about 250 quarts fell off the pallet, half of them bursting open and flooding the store floor with milk. I was fired that day.

Audio Tester at Cinram, a then Montreal producer of Long Play (LP) records. I checked the presses on the nightshift to ensure that the records were coming off them in good condition, so I had to visually inspect them for warping and a condition called "unfill," where the grooves are not cut properly. Outlandos D'Amour by The Police was the big title that summer (1974 or so) and I must have listened to it on turntable-with-headphones 500 times ensuring the quality was primo. I still shudder when Roxanne is on the radio.

Cleaner at two hospitals over three consecutive summers: Probably the best paying job I ever had as a teen, I cleaned floors just like the big boys, removing stains caused by every conceivable body fluid. I think I was earning $200 a week when the most anyone my age got was $90. And it was cool working in a medical environment, likely one of the reasons I passed the 130-hour Canadian Red Cross EMR course two years ago and volunteered as a stagiere EMS First Responder in my community till last year. Most unusual work done as a teen... grabbing a corpse by his ice-cold feet and lifting him onto a gurney, as requested by an orderly. My exploits certainly inspired Michael Crichton to write ER.

Director of Sales and Marketing at Semtronix, a small electro-mechanical design and prototype shop in Ottawa, mid-1980s, during the towns halcyon days as Silicon valley North. Exciting times helping this upstart business get their first contracts, at a location in Greely, in the middle of farmland. The business eventually went under due to infighting between the partners. Memorable moment: Going to work on a Saturday, leaving the front door open on a hot summer's day... and getting trapped inside with a really pissed off badger it took me two hours to shoosh out the door. The things we do for our career.

Film unit publicist: As I mentioned in my first blog message, the best job I ever had, creatively, interest-wise and every other way. The person who handles all publicity and media requests during the shooting of a film, I worked with the likes of David Bowie, Marlon Brando, Ashley Judd, all the freres Baldwin, John Lithgow, Ben Kingsley, Jack Palance, Katie Holmes, Roy Dupuis, Tia Carrere, Hulk Hogan (Terry Bolea), Donald Sutherland, Brigitte Nielsen... and hundreds of others. It was not always fun or easy, with so many egos to satisfy and wide-ranging attitudes, but I feel blessed to have done it. As a film buff, there is no better place to hang out than on a movie set.

And last/most recent but certainly not least... The Colon Guy. Need I say more?

A toute a l'heure!

Fridays are only the beginning

2009-12-18T09:11:00.003-05:00

Most of you are thrilled today, right? It's Friday, the week is over, we are seven days closer to Christmas and the holidays are so near we can taste them as easily as sipping spiked egg nog. Well, for me,for many freelancers, this is the end of another week with very little income and a weekend with no prospects for finding work. At least there's Craig's List and a dozen other sites where I can apply for jobs. But when you are working at home, as I am at present, weekends are not necessary... they are redundant. It's not like I can go away for the weekend, because every dollar I spend is one dollar closer to that comfortable outdoor box I last referred to.

But because the working world pretty much goes to sleep, weekends also provide ample time to evaluate where you are going and to plan the week ahead. I am going to do that this weekend... I'll check the online job sites, apply to a few and maybe, just maybe, work on some horror fiction late at night. I have a short story I want to turn into a short film, so I have a script to finish. I'll keep you posted on that... it's a good concept and requires a cemetery willing to host me. Orherwise, like Burke and Hare, I may just have to creep in, stealthily, in the middle of the night under a full moon, to do dastardly deeds... creatively speaking, of course.

By the way, I reviewed the latest Stephen King novel, Under the Dome, a month ago and I am surprised it hasn't cracked the best seller lists yet. Mind you, it IS almost 1,100 pages long and weighs about five lbs, so maybe no one can lift it... let me know if you have read it yet and what you think. I liked it, but it IS really too long in my opinion.

Have a great weekend and I will try to post at some point. I'm new to this, so I am still testing out my diarybility.

Vaya con dios, muchachos!

A writer is a writer by any other name

2009-12-17T08:31:00.000-05:00

So, it has come to this.

Having spent 10 months working for a cancer non-profit and touring Canada with a giant colon... yep, you read me right... here I am again, unemployed. It happens to the best of us, but at 52, I was hoping for better things. I thought I'd be living the American/Canadian dream: the big house, wife and three kids, nice salary, two vacations per year, summer house in the Hamptons/Laurentians... you know that one. We all have it and I know plenty of people here in Montreal who are living it. Not so many these days, but certainly some. I've been a writer my entire life, save for eight useless years in sales when I was young, naive and thought that a paycheck was all that mattered... and a decade in film as a unit publicist, likely the best job I ever had. The English film industry died a slow death here in Quebec starting in the early part of this millennium and I have been floundering career-wise ever since.

I thought I had it made with my recent job at the Colorectal Cancer Association of Canada, as National Director of Exhibits, touring the country with a 40-foot long, eight-foot high, pink, inflatable colon. The goal was to show people (using all the gruesome pathologies than can afflict this organ many of us are so embarassed about that we ignore it) why early screening for colorectal cancer is SO essential, at least from the age of 50 and above.

So, I took The Giant Colon to 11 cities, as far north as the Northwest Territories, from March till October, only to discover that this amazing work I was doing - truly lifesaving in nature - was merely a cover for a sales job. It requires a used-car salesman to do properly, not a writer/publicist. I was certainly pressured to book it like a salesman, at a cost of $12,500 for the first day, in any case. And I really learned a lot about myself in the process. I am a writer, plain and simple, as good as any writer on the planet. Okay, I also take pretty decent pics, but writing... ahhh, that is what most defines me, what I'd like etched on my gravestone. WRITER. Perhaps in Gothic script, satisfying the spirit of the horror buff in me.

I thought I'd give you a glimpse into the life of a career writer in trouble. It's tough out there today and, yeah, I'm scared shitless, not knowing whether I'll be able to find well-paying, meaningful work again, or whether I'll wind up living in a box on Ste. Catherine Street, ogling the strippers as they walk to-and-fro, from one downtown strip joint to the next. Stripping is one job where I'd make a great living... but, nah, it's a young person's pursuit and I don't have the body anymore. Mind you, I DID rejoin my old gym yesterday, so you never know.

I'll keep you posted.