Canada goose 1 : American Eagle 0

I should know better than to respond to Trump's nocturnal ramblings on social media. But worth mentioning that I already dealt with this one long before it even happened.

In this episode... Trump has cherry-picked part of a photo sequence by a Canadian photographer of an encounter in Burlington, Ontario between a bald eagle (symbol of America) and a Canada goose (kind of a symbol of Canada, for our sins).

The photo seems to show the eagle dominating and savaging the goose. The rest of the photo sequence, though, shows very different outcome: after a protracted scuffle, the goose survives, rallies and threatens back against the shocked eagle. As I posted many months earlier, a different cherry-picked photo from the same sequence shows the goose rampant and a rather sorry-looking eagle.

Be careful with your source material Mr. Trump (or Ms. Harp, or whoever comes up with this guff).

Japanese PM gushes over Deep Purple

This is great. It turns out that Japan's first ever female Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, is a hard rock devotee and a super-fan of British band Deep Purple.

Takaichi is herself a keen (and apparently frenetic) rock drummer, and used to play in a Deep Purple tribute band back in the day. So, when she met up with DP drummer Ian Paice, over 50 years after DP's seminal 1972 album Made In Japan, Ms. Takaichi's reaction was precious: "You are my god", she gushed, not words you often hear from a Prime Minister. She added, "These days, when I fight with my husband, I drum to Burn and cast a curse on him". Er, OK, perhaps a little too much information.

In the midst of trade wrangling with America, increasing tensions with China, and complaints about inflation and a sluggish economy, though, what a breath of fresh air.

Meet the Canadian N.I.C.E. Agent

A short sketch on the Canadian improv comedy show This Hour Has 22 Minutes has gone viral - in Canada and America and even further afield.

Trent McClellan is the N.I.C.E. Agent, targeting American tourists, checking their phones (for baby photos), taking selfies, handing out candies, and scoring hugs.

It's two minutes of wwholesome Canadian fun, and it obviously appeals to many.

Art and cobblers

I've been quite enjoying the page 2 item in the print version of the Globe and Mail newspaper in recent months, where they feature painting and other artwork form various Canadian art galleries.

Today's showcases a painting by Ukrainian-Canadian William Kurelek called Lumberjack's Breakfast. 

What do you see as the dominant colours in this picture? Brown? Green, maybe?

The blurb that goes with the picture in the Globe says, "His use of blue and yellow, echoing the Ukrainian flag, subtly affirms the artist's cultural identity". 

Yes, there's a little bit of blue, but almost no yellow. Which subtly affirms my own observation that there's an awful lot of cobblers talked about art.

Do the Brits really want to see the Bayeux Tapestry?

French President Emmanuel Macron has promised to loan the UK the famous thousand-year old Bayeux Tapestry as a gesture of goodwill.

Politicians and local authorities are lauding the decision. Conservators and museum people, on the other hand, are warning that the tapestry is way too fragile to transport (and is, of course, irreplaceable).

My first thought was: why would Britain want to admire a tapestry celebrating nearly two hundred years of conquest and oppression by a foreign force? Maybe the Brits are more broad-minded and urbane than I think, but my guess is that M. Macron is being overly optimistic 

Love what you've done to the place, Donnie!

Here's an illuminating image of what Donald Trump has done to the White House Oval Office (physically, I mean, rather than figuratively).

Each President leaves their own mark on the Oval Office, as their style and preferences dictate. This juxtaposed comparison of Joe Biden's and Donald Trump's styles speaks volumes. Out with the peaceful blues and understated ornamentation of the Biden era, and in with the golden bling and curlicues of Trump's imperial pretensions. Out with restraint, and in with clutter and excess.

Could two personalities (not to mention their political views and policies!) be any more dissimilar?

Trump discovers cultural revisionism

Donald Trump has clearly been poring over Great Dictators of History, and has realized that what he needs to do now is to clamp down on free expression in art. That's what all good dictators worth their salt do, isn't it?

With that in mind, he has called for a "comprehensive internal review" of eight Smithsonian museums. The official letter sent to the museums says it is to "ensure alignment with the President's directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions". The letter says that the White House will not "interfere with the day-to-day operations of curators or staff", although clearly that is exactly what the White House proposes to do.

A White House statement confirms, "President Trump will explore all options and avenues to get the Woke out of the Smithsonian and hold them accountable. He will start with the Smithsonian and then go from there." It calls out some of the institution's artwork, exhibitions, programs, even its online articles, for their focus on race, slavery, immigration and sexuality.

Trump's own social media posts lay it out with a bit more clarity: "The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of WOKE", adding that they are "OUT OF CONTROL". He followed up with possibly the most stereotypically Trump post ever: "This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE is BROKE. We have the "HOTTEST" Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums."

His interest in Washington's museums, which I am sure he has never actually visited, appears to have been piqued by an article in The Federalist (an alt-right website peddling all manner of conspiracy theories and extreme viewpoints) which concluded that the museums are filled with "wall-to-wall anti-American propaganda". For example, one work singled out for detailed attention is Rigoberto A. Gonzales' 2020 painting entitled "Refugees Crossing the Border Wall into South Texas", for obvious reasons. 

It's unfortunate, but one can't help but be put in mind of the Nazi war on modern or "degenerate" art in the 1930s. Trump, like any good dictator, is seeking to bend the art world to his own ideas of what American culture should be and show. It is cultural revisionism at its best (worst).

MAGA feeling threatened by the new Superman movie

The MAGA-verse is up in arms about the new Superman movie. I kid you not.

Many right-wing commentators - Kellyanne Conway, Jesse Watters, Ben Shapiro, Tim Pool, End Wokeness and others - have taken issue with director/writer James Gunn's characterization of the Superman story as an immigrant narrative.

Clearly, it IS.(and always has been) an immigrant narrative - Kal-El came from the planet Krypton, and landed in rural Kansas as an illegal immigrant. Superman's original creators, Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster, were the childen of Jewish immigrants from Europe in the early 20th century. 

MAGA, of course, clearly feels threatened by the portrayal of America's greatest ever hero as an immigrant, legal or otherwise. I guess they have never thought about it before. Gunn, let it be said, is unarguably a political animal, and probably deliberately stressed the immigrant/outsider aspect of his movie. But MAGA is going off half-cocked, and not responding very coolly (or rationally).

Hell, Trump himself is the son of a Scottish immigrant mother and a son-of-a-German immigrant father. Like Canada, hardly anybody in America is that far removed from immigrant forebears. Why is immigration such a big deal for Republicans. Oh, wait, some of them are not even white, right?

Drake-Lamar beef is bewildering

Full disclosure, I'm not a huge fan of either Drake or Kendrick Lamar (or of rap in general, tbh). But I'm still a bit bemused by all the fuss over this ongoing "beef" between them, which became even more public after Lamar's star billing at this year's Super Bowl and his performance of the song Not Like Us.

Probably the two biggest rap stars in the world right now, they have been "dissing" each other for years now, but it came to a head with Lamar's allegations (originally veiled, later fully-realized) that Drake has had sexual relations with underage fans, and maybe even has a young girlfriend hidden away somewhere. 

"Say, Drake, I hear you like 'em young ... Tryna strike a chord and I hear it's A Minor ... Certified Lover Boy? Certified pedophile". It doesn't get much more in-your-face than that!

Drake has responded with his own diss tracks against Lamar, and most recently by suing Lamar's record label for releasing Not Like Us, which of course has only met with ridicule from the macho hip-hop crowd.

But hold on, what evidence has Lamar for his allegations, in verse and otherwise? Drake has challenged him to reveal his proof, to no avail. I've read several articles on the subject, and nowhere have I seen any kind of proof being offered. Maybe it has to go to court before such minor details need to be addressed?

It's not clear to me exactly what you can say in a song, and avoid being accused of slander and libel. But surely you can't go around accusing people of being pedophiles and expect to get away with it? Can you?

It seems to me that this whole diss thing is just a way of selling more music and making more money (not that either of them need it!) Not Like Us saw a 430% increase in streams after the Super Bowl half-time show, reaching a billion streams on Spotify alone.

There are also allegations (also as yet unproven) that Lamar's song streams, particularly of Not Like Us, have been artificially inflated by the likes of Spotify and Universal Music Group. The whole thing looks very sordid.  Maybe they just have nothing better to do than exercise their inflated egos.

Republicans keep using songs by Democrats

Pretty much every week now, almost every DAY, it seems, I read a new report of a musician (or band, or even the ESTATE of a dead musician) sueing, issuing cease-and-desist notices, or just publishing public statements, against American political parties - one in particular - for their unauthorized use of songs at events and campaign rallies.

Beyoncé, Celine Dion, Isaac Hayes' family, Sinéad O'Connor's family, Johnny Marr (The Smiths), Village People, Journey, Neil Young, The Rolling Stones, John Fogerty, Tom Petty's family, Phil Collins, Steve Tyler (Aerosmith), Rihanna, and REM have all objected to Donald Trump and the Republican Party using their music at campaign rallies over the years (the first few specifically during this year).

Why do they keep serially offending? Well, partly because the push-back is usually limited and the legal consequences minor. But why keep using the music of musicians that don't agree with them, often strongly so? Well, I guess, because otherwise Trump would be stuck playing less-than-memorable tunes by long-time Trump groupies Kid Rock and Ted Nugent.

Like it or not, contemporary musical artists are important influencers in this day and age. Just look at the frenzied speculation about whether Beyoncé or Taylor Swift (or BOTH!) would make an appearance at the Democratic National Convention (in the end, NEITHER of them did), and Trump's spurious AI-created deep fakes of endorsements by Taylor Swift and her Swifties. 

These people are desperate for the public approbation of rock stars and cultural icons. They don't seem to mind doing it illegally.

Taylor Swift and the cult of personality

I've tried my best to see the whole Taylor Swift phenomenon as a positive thing. I mean she's pretty wholesome and sensible, isn't she? A pretty good role model for the hordes of pre-teen, teen and even adult Swifties who follow her every move and word? A bit vapid and Barbie-like perhaps, but even Barbie has her redeeming facets.

But I don't know. Seeing the gathered masses as they attend or travel to her Eras Tour performances, it's a little bit scary. That kind of obsessive single-minded group activity reminds me of the Muslim hajj, or maybe a mass personalty cult (and we know how those usually turn out).

The other thing, of course, is the fact that ISIS and other groups have established her and her followers as a terrorist target. Ms. Swift has not made any anti-Muslim statements that I am aware of, nor even any pro-Christian ones for that matter. So, why would they see her as a legitimate target, unless they see her as the head and deity of a new upstart religion, or maybe just the glaring apotheosis of Western decadence and hedonism.

Sometimes it does seem that way. Seeing the reverence on the faces of these (mainly) young girls, and the way in which people are willing to travel huge distances and pay huge sums of money to see her, it does have some religious overtones, with friendship bracelets and sequins replacing crucifixes and hair shirts (a slight improvement, I guess).

Maybe it's no different from Beatlesmania (and maybe Presleymania, Michael-Jackson-mania, BTS-mania) at its height. Pictures of screaming, swooning fans of that era are also pretty disturbing to watch. I guess any phenomenon that is quite so successful (commercially, emotionally, whateverly) is never quite comfortable to watch. One always thinks of other charismatic, but much less wholesome, historical figures - think Hitler, Stalin, Manson, Trump - even if the circumstances are quite different.

Maybe I'm just reading too much into this, but I'm far from the only one who sees cult-like qualities in Taylor Swift's fandom. Her passionate, uncompromising and uncritical supporters have generated many online analyses like The Cult of Taylor Swift (and why we keep worshiping at her altar), The Terrifying Cult of Fandom - a case study in Swifties, The Modern-Day Cult of Taylor Swift's Fandom, Are Swifties In A Cult?, etc. and many fans and ex-fans talk about how they extricated themselves from the toxicity of the Swiftie cult (often suffering a backlash from the faithful). 

As a billionaire faux-feminist with a ruinous carbon footprint and a rather half-hearted political conscience, there is a lot to criticize in Ms. Swift. But if you try doing that in a public forum, you will be pounced upon by legions of oblivious fans and stans who believe she can do no wrong. If that's not a cult, I don't know what is.

What's with Snoop Dogg at the Olympics?

As the Olympics Games wraps up, I am still a little puzzled as to why Snoop Dogg has played quite such a prominent role. What was that all about?

As a second-tier one-time rap star, he is one of those personalities more famous for being famous than for anything else, kind of the Paris Hilton of Rap if you will, a professional and very successful self-publicist. But he still managed to wheedle his way into the opening ceremony - hell, he even carried he Olympic Flame for a while - and he kept popping up at random times throughout the Games, not for any good reason that I could see. The BBC calls him "America's cheerleader".

Apparently, he was involved with some of the TV presentations by NBC, the American host network ("special correspondent", or "ambassador of happiness", according to NBC), as indeed he was at Tokyo in 2021. So, I guess he was at least there in some kind of official capacity. Some believe he was instrumental in NBC's increased ratings with this Olympics. Well, maybe. Still a bit weird, though, if you ask me.

I hate to think how involved and ubiquitous he is going to be at Los Angeles 2028.

Are great artists magical beings or vessels of God, or is all art really theft?

Canadian author Michael Harris has written a brave and compelling article for the Globe and Mail. Brave because he calls out and all-but-destroys some longstanding shibboleths about art and artists.

He approaches the subject by questioning whether the process followed by artists (of all kinds) is really any different from the process employed by artificial intelligence (AI). This is, of course, dangerous ground. Haven't Hollywood screenwriters and animators just spent weeks striking about incursions by AI into their own artistic fiefdom? Haven't some famous authors sued OpenAI over its false literary pretentions?

The argument is that all a computer does, and all they can do, is aggregate examples of previous art to produce faux "new" art, whether that be poetry, music, pictures, or stories. Surely, this is different from human art, which requires novelty and individuality to make creative work meaningful. Human art is an expression of the soul that machines can never achieve.

But in reality, even the most radical art merely builds on what has gone before. Art is not spontaneously conceived (whatever artists might tell you). The solitude chosen by the proverbial artist in a garret is merely a romantic notion, and at best is a means of managing the constant flood of inputs from our big crowded world. So, are great artists unique and magical in some way, or just particularly clever utilizers of freely available ideas, merely individual steps in an ongoing evolution of artistic endeavour.

As Mr. Harris puts it, "The truth is: no art emerges without enormous quantities of material borrowed or stolen from others ... That material is absorbed, re-assembled,  and finally presented as 'new' ideas that we happily receive."

This is never more apparent than when artists are taken to task over plagiarism claims. Was the music "sampled" or stolen? Is the movie a "homage" or a rip-off? Did the author "reference" a prior work or plagiarize it. Often, the distinctions are fuzzy and indistinct, but individuals may get socially cancelled and even lose their livelihoods over such fine distinctions.

It may be that generative AI may just have exposed a fundamental truth about the creative act, and Mr. Harris is just the one brave enough to call it for what it is. In his words, again: "By consuming, digesting and repurposing stacks of content, AI does exactly what humans have always done ... they are learning to do our jobs in far less time and at far less cost". And who's to say they can't do it just as well? Or better?

Maybe, in time, human artists will learn to use AI as a tool, much like the 19th century impressionists used the then emerging technology of photography as a tool. A final word from Michael Harris? "All generation is regeneration. All art is theft." Ouch!

Chechnya bans fast music (and slow music)

Gotta love this. Muslim-majority Russian republic Chechnya has announced a ban on music that is either too fast or too slow. 

More specifically, the Chechen Minister of Culture Musa Dadeyev announced that, henceforth, Chechen musical, vocal and choreographic compositions can only have tempos between 80 and 116 beats per minute, a tempo which is considered to align with "Chechen mentality and musical rhythm", and with "the cultural heritage of the Chechen people". Notably, this would exclude most rock, pop and techno songs.

This was not an April Fools gag, and the culture minister delivered it with a straight face. But you have to think that the average Chechen yokel is going to be a bit peeved, and a bit embarrassed, at the announcement. Or maybe not. Maybe Chechens are just really into that traditional folk groove?

Who the hell is Morgan Wallen?

I was reading an article about pop concert promotions, and came across a little graph showing the top ten grossing worldwide tours last year.

So, there were Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay (really?), Harry Styles, Morgan Wallen, Ed Sheeran (yawn), Pink (is she still around?), The Weeknd and Drake.

Wait, hold on. Morgan Wallen? Grossing above Ed Sheeran and The Weeknd? Who the hell is Morgan Wallen?

Turns out, Morgan Wallen is a country musician singer from Tennessee, who came up through the music reality show The Voice (he didn't even win it!) He's broken all sorts of Billboard 200 records, so he's a popular guy. He seems to be able to command higher ticket prices than most of the other Top 10 too.

Now, I know next to nothing about country music, as I find it deadly boring (with very, very few exceptions, maybe the occasional song by Tenille Townes and Neko Case). But you'd think I might still have heard of a guy that famous, no?

The longest piece of music, ever

You may have heard of avant-garde American composer John Cage's famous piece 4'33", which calls for an orchestra to perform four minutes and thirty-three seconds of complete silence. It's an interesting conceit. Or, depending on your outlook, you might see it as just plain daft. Certainly, it's one of those things about which people will say, "But is it art?", which other people would argue just proves that it is indeed art.

Anyway, what I didn't know is that Cage also wrote another piece, for piano or organ, called Organ²/ASLSP (As Slow As Possible). It is a very simple piece, the score covering just eight pages, with no exact tempo specified, although the title makes the composer's wishes pretty clear.

The work's first performance, in 1987, lasted just under 30 minutes. But then performers started taking the instruction in the title more seriously, and a 2009 performance lasted 14 hours and 56 minutes. 

But another performance, using a specially-constructed organ in Burchardi Church in the German town of Halberstadt, began in 2001 and it may never be outdone. The mechanical organ uses an electronic wind machine to push air into the pipes, while sandbags keep the keys pressed down.

The performance is planned to take 639 years, finishing in the year 2640. There have been 16 chord changes so far, with today's marking the 17th. Volunteers have added a new pipe to the organ to create the new sound. The last chord change occurred 2 years ago, and the next one is planned for 5 August 2026.

And these chord changes have become quite the tourist attraction, with large crowds in attendance, and tickets reportedly booked years in advance. But is it art? God, who cares? - this is a very cool thing.

Snow penises springing up in Ykaterinburg

Couldn't resist reporting on this. A whole load of snow penises have sprung up on the streets of Ykaterinburg, Russia's fourth largest city, and local authorities are apoplectic over them.

Calling them an "outrage" and a "provocation" - well, yes! - the local council is promising that law enforcement could get involved if they persist, and "if they offend anyone". Municipal workers have been assiduously removing them, but they keep springing up again, presumably the work of students from Urals State University. 

A petition against them on Change.org had attracted all of 17 signatures as of Friday afternoon, which I thought was hilarious.

Buffy Sainte-Marie the latest Indigenous hero to be torn down

Yet another prominent Canadian First Nations personality is under suspicion of being less Indigenous than they say, a Pretendian not an Indian. This time, it's the turn of national icon, Buffy Sainte-Marie.

This particular hatchet job, so to speak, does not come at the hands of some uppity Indigenous researcher or activist intent on racial purity or identity politics; this is a result of a CBC investigative journalist piece on The Fifth Estate.

I'm not going to go into the details, other than to say that the Piapot First Nation in Saskatchewan is resolute in standing by her - and that should be the end of the story, shouldn't it? "She spent time in her community", says the band's acting chief. But others do not want to let it go, incensed that she should claim to have been a victim of the Sixties Scoop when she might not have been.

Why are these people intent on tearing down every successful First Nations personality they can? Shouldn't they be doing everything they can to protect them, to build them up, to celebrate them? Why did CBC ever think it was a good avenue to explore? Is it about ratings, profile? Who really cares if she was born in Massachussetts? That her name is actually Beverly Santamaria? She has been a staunch defender and advocate for Canadian Indigenous people for many decades, and that must count for something.

Indigenous people don't have that many icons or successful role models they can look up. Can we not leave them the ones they do have. Grey Owl, Joseph Boyden, Michelle Latimer, Vianne Timmons, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, and now Buffy Sainte-Marie? It's one thing saying things like, "The truth will set you free", but sometimes an inconvenient truth may be better uncovered, or at least ignored, in the interests of the common good.

Burning Man has outlived its usefulness and coolth

Burning Man has never been particularly useful. It's never really been that cool, and it certainly isn't now.

Since its early days in the 1980s, when a human effigy was burned on a beach in San Francisco (oooh!), the Burning Man Festival relocated to the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada, about 140 miles (225 km) from the casinos of Reno, and started marketing itself as "the world's largest counter-cultural event". Upwards of 70,000 attend each year now.

The event now has a CEO and charges $575 for an entrance ticket, which doesn't sound particularly counter-cultural. Estimates of the overall cost of attending are in the $1,500 range, so attendees tend to be self-described influencers, drug-dealers, Silicon Valley tech bros (Elon Musk has been a regular attendee for years - go figure!), and second-rank Hollywood/music industry types (Diplo and Chris Rick spring to mind). I guess a few bona fide artists also attend, hoping to leverage the captive well-to-do audience, but presumably these are not starving garrett-dwellers.

The organization claims it wants the event to be carbon-neutral by 2030, but it has not given any indication of how it intends to achieve that. In practice, tens of thousands of gas-guzzling vehicles trail out, Mad Max-style, hundreds of kilometres into the Nevada desert each year (expect six to nine hours, the website says!), where the passengers whoop and make merry and be all counter-cultural for a week or so, and where lots of things get burned. There's even a small temporary airport for the private planes of VIPs. All the facilities and amenities are also trucked in each year, and there are many propane cooking setups and diesel generators at work. Garbage blows around the desert for weeks afterwards, despite a "leave-no-trace" policy. Hardly an environmentally-conscious affair. Climate and anti-capitalist activists have even started blocking the roads out to the festival in protest in recent years, where they are often met with violence.

And now, in addition to the usual extreme 40°C+ heat, dust storms, and the cringe-worthy sunburns, climate change is throwing in floods and mud-slides to the mix. Are we having fun yet? The festival got completely closed down this year due to freak floods, and many thousands were stranded for several days, until the desert dried out a bit and travel was possible again.

Nevada's national guard was put on emergency alert. Food and water were brought in, wifi and charging stations set up, and evacuation shuttles organized (the desert roads were impassable for regular vehicles for several days). So much for the festival's much-vaunted "radical self-reliance". The festival's CEO quipped, "We're very pleased and surprised that there has been such a fuss over us". Also: " We are all well-prepared for a weather event like this". Hmm. Only one person died at the festival this year, and reportedly not due to the weather event, but it could have been so much worse had the rain not eventually let up.

Burning Man in the 2020s has been described as "the wealthy cosplaying Survivor in an inhospitable environment", "a see-and-be-seen desert drug party", and "the worst of libertarian tech-bro culture". It has become a caricature and a travesty of whatever it might once have been. Time to call it a day?

Taylor Swift's crazy, crazy tour.

Taylor Swift's Eras tour is expected to gross over $1 billion (yes, that's billion with a B), $1.4 billion by some estimates. Granted, that is generated from a huge 106 dates, but it's still a ridiculous sum of money. 

It would blow away all previous tours by the world's biggest stars. The highest-grossing tours to date include: Elton John's Farewell tour, which spans several years, and has grossed $853 million; Ed Sheeran's Divide tour of 2017-9, which grossed $776 million; and U2's 360° tour, back in 2009-11, which grossed 736 million.

On the first day of ticket sales, over 2.4 million were sold (a single-day record, of course). Tickets are priced between $50 and $899, although they are selling on the secondary market at over $1,000. (Tickets for her six Canadian dates, all in Toronto, are being offered at anywhere from C$2,000 to a mind-boggling C$13,200, and those tickets, for concerts over a year in the future, are not even publicly available yet!) People are spending over $1,000 on new clothing to attend the concerts, not to mention airfares, hotels, etc.

It's all crazy, crazy stuff. Swift-mania is out in a class of it's own, reminiscent of The Beatles and Elvis. Even Beyoncé is second-league in comparison.