The Oppenheimer Report - 10/28/13

R.I.P.

The Friday before last I attended this month’s Burk’s Falls Coffee House series. Having missed the last three sessions I wanted to see what was brewing on the local talent scene. Turns out, quite a lot. The musical talent was pretty good this month, and as a special treat, the last show featured the youngest performer I have yet to see on that stage. Singing I believe a Shania Twain song, the little girl was about 4 years old. She nailed it. One guy did a karaoke set, which I’ve also never seen at one of these open stages, and all his music and lyrics were in a karaoke program on his laptop. He had a pretty good voice, but while he was singing one of my (only) favorite Elvis tunes, Suspicious Minds, there was a technical glitch – something to do with a connection on his computer – and it caused his musical accompaniment to go haywire. The poor guy was up on the stage twisting in the wind. At one point he was trying to sing almost a cappella and it wasn’t pretty, especially considering he was supposed to be singing a rather complicated harmony to his own muffled voice. The sound man eventually fixed the problem, but the guy was so flustered by that point that he never really regained his groove. It was a shame, I thought he was pretty entertaining. Having experienced technical problems on stage myself, I know how humiliating and off-putting sound problems can be.

One of the performers that night was a professional musician named Sean Cotton, who lives in Burk’s Falls and who hosts an open mic in nearby Huntsville every Wednesday night. He bills his open mic as an “acoustic karaoke,” which means he will accompany singers on the guitar, but he does not provide the lyrics with the bouncing ball (or whatever those karaoke machines do). He also welcomes anyone who wishes to perform solo, or with his accompaniment. He had a long list of songs he can play and it amazes me what some of these open mic hosts will do to entertain. Oftentimes, bar audiences are unreceptive and to get their attention takes a bit of doing. Hosts must be diplomatic, and delicately negotiate the inebriated egos of their would-be performers. It is not a gig most professional musicians would choose to do and I’ve experienced some abysmal hosts. Sean was pretty good, and he can play anything from Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On to Blow at High Dough by The Tragically Hip. His rhythm section sounded like a drum machine but in fact was simply his boot tapping his guitar case, to which he had taped a tambourine. It was low tech for sure, but it sounded pretty good. Long ago, before I wallpapered my house with rejection notices, I had it in my mind that I would make my living “doing what I love,” playing music for the masses. That was also before I realized that the seventeen year old parking lot attendant in our office building had more talent in his pinky finger than I would ever have. I am constantly amazed by the number of talented musicians and songwriters out there who have hit the wall, pounding the pavement to make a living in music.

 If the past week is any indication, this might be a harsh winter. It has snowed up here for the past three nights, and while none of it stuck, it may be portents of bad weather to come. Seems to me the weather used to be nicer in October. Up here it’s hit or miss, because on our little lake, we often miss the lake effect streamers that blow off Georgian Bay. Every so often those squalls shift a little to the north and then we’re in trouble. My dock is still down and I’m waiting for the dock guy to come and fix a worm gear before I hoist it up. One year, shortly after we had the retractable dock put in, we were held up in Toronto because my father-in-law had contracted c-difficile and ended up in the hospital for a month. That year the weather turned bitter cold practically overnight, and before we could get home to lift up the dock, the lake froze solid. We had to have one of the guys building our house chain saw it free so we could lift it out. Nature can be a mother. 

We had another flying squirrel in the house the other day, and we found this out because the alarm company called us 4:30 AM to tell us the little bastard had tripped one of our motion sensors. Jasper and I finally got him (or her), but it wasn’t easy. A moment of silence for Lou Reed, legendary singer songwriter and founding member of the seminal rock band Velvet Underground, who passed away this weekend at 71. A lot of people probably remember Reed for his song Walk on the Wild Side, but when I think of him I am reminded of my six month university stay in Ireland back in ‘77. One particularly debauched evening, while we were drinking and smoking up a storm, and playing music at the Irish home in which I was living, I remember listening to a live Lou Reed album. That was the first time I ever got his music, and I remember how cool it was hearing him break into a live version of “Sweet Jane.” That moment, and the events which ensued, were my inspiration to write one of my all-time favorite songs. So thanks Lou, count me among the countless songwriters who have been influenced by your music.

 

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 10/21/13

It’s almost World Series time again and, as always, I don’t care. As any of you who know me can attest, I do not enjoy the game of baseball. An avid Blue Jays fan, my mother-in-law assures me this means I am un-American. I realize that my aversion to baseball places me in a very small minority of sports fans, and I wear my shame proudly. I simply have never been able to embrace the game of baseball, or football for that matter, and I find them excruciatingly boring to watch. The aversion to football may be more a result of following the Buffalo Bills for about thirty five years. I admit any live sports event is more exciting to watch in person, but give me hockey any day. I heard a statistic on the news the other night which made me chuckle, and the general fact applies to both baseball and football. Basically it stated that in the average 3 hour baseball game there are less than 15 minutes of actual playing, and the rest of the game is close-ups of guys in the dugout, spitting out tobacco, or managers looking worried, or discussions on the mound about whether to yank the pitcher, or some other non-action nonsense. Shauna assures me that I don’t like baseball because I don’t understand the intricacies of the game. That’s probably true, and perhaps if I was more in tune with why this or that pitch should have been a curveball, I’d be more into the game. Nevertheless, I go back to that troubling statistic: fifteen minutes. That’s a lot of waiting around for something exciting to happen. Give me hockey any day. Even if it’s a lousy game, there is a lot of action, the players move around for at least 60 minutes per game, and there is likely to be at least some blood. I’ll likely watch the last game of the World Series, but will probably only pay attention to the last few innings.

The one time I actually got somewhat excited about a baseball game was during a World Series, back in 1993. I was in a sports bar watching the game with my future wife and avid Jays fan Shauna, and I saw Joe Carter knock in the legendary winning home run to win the Blue Jays the World Series. That was fun to see. The city of Toronto exploded in fandamonium for the next 24 hours and it was something I had never before experienced. I was in downtown Toronto on Yonge Street that night along with one hundred thousand Blue Jays fans and it was quite a celebration. At one point I actually feared for my life, not because anyone was violent, but because I found myself in a crowd surge and was pushed up against a car with nowhere to go. Toronto fans are very enthusiastic. I also attended one of those Yonge Street fan parties when the Leafs uncharacteristically made it to (I believe) the semi-finals, over a decade ago. I cannot imagine what the city would do if they became Stanley Cup contenders. They may be knocking on the door soon, because they looked strangely competitive at the end on last year’s abbreviated season. That is something Leafs fans have not seen in a long time.

Big earthquake in the Philippines. Typhoon Wipha hits Japan, the worst one in ten years. They recovered that Chelyabinsk meteorite from a lake in Russia - the one that landed recently and from which the shock wave injured about 1600 people. All those injuries were caused by a chunk of rock that is about the size of a coffee table. This leads me to wonder, what happens if a really big one hits? While the odds are low, it often strikes me as amusing and ironic that human beings assume it will be a manmade disaster that takes out planet earth, when in fact it might be something uncontrollable, like a seismic catastrophe, or a big meteorite, or a cyclical shift in our climate. Certainly, we can and probably should rethink poisoning our water supply by fracking, or invent some more earth friendly solutions to ozone-depleting energy production, but come on, we are one cosmic burp away from annihilation. Won’t all those pandas, and rhinos, and snow leopards, and Appalacian snail darters be laughing in heaven when the big one sucker punches mankind. It’s the cosmic Darwin Award waiting to be presented. And speaking of the laws of natural selection …

Stateside, financial crisis has been averted, that is until February. Everyone in Washington has agreed not to agree and they have kicked the can down the street a few blocks, raising the debt ceiling to some newly ridiculous level. We live to procrastinate another day. Did any of you catch the 60 Minutes segment last night, dealing with the onerous issue of campaign finance reform in the U.S. government. I leave you with my righteous indignation – in what universe is it ok for elected officials to abide by a set of rules that would be considered criminal behavior in the civilian sector? I guess none of this will matter when the cosmic hammer comes down. I hope it happens during a baseball game.

Go Leafs.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 10/14/13

It’s that time of year again, when the boats go in for storage, the docks come out, and the fallen leaves make our front lawn look like a Van Gogh painting. It is also the time that I desperately scramble to get in as much warm weather toy time as possible. Before we know it winter will descend upon us in a tsunami of snow, and all toy usage will require a parka and snowmobile pants. Friday, about an hour before dusk, I got a call from my friend the plumber, who wanted to return a CD I’d lent him. I told him I’d run over to his place to pick it up because it was a nice, warm evening, and I thought I’d get some use out of the ATV. We live on a system of three lakes, and he lives on the southern end of the furthest lake south, about a fifteen minute ride from here. I figured I’d be down and back before sun down. The ride down was great, zooming down the twisting back roads a little too fast, with the spectacular pink dusk sky to light my way.

When I got to his place, he started talking about an old tractor he’d just fixed and used to start clearing a road on his land. People up here get very excited about their farm equipment. Would I like to see what he cleared? Sure I said, if it won’t take too long. I waited five minutes while he finished stacking his wood, then he hopped on his ATV and said “follow me.” This guy has 140 acres of land, and where he took me was to the opposite end of his property. We looked at the land he’d cleared, and I was duly impressed, but noticed it was starting to get dark. I said I’d like to see more, but perhaps in the light of day, so we walked back to our bikes to head back. Then, he couldn’t get his ATV started, and it took a few minutes for him to determine that he was out of gas. I drove him the mile or so back to his home on my ATV and he said he’d take care of his ATV later. Ever my mentor in bluegrass music (we was a good banjo picker himself before he had a stroke) he wanted to loan me a CD to take home with me. By the time I left his place, it was now dark, and cold. Remember, this is rural Ontario, and there aren’t a lot of streetlights where he lives. The ride home was a little uncomfortable, because all of those dirt roads I’d travelled on the way down were not so much fun to travel in the dark. I barely missed two deer crossing the road, and the lights on my ATV only lit up about twenty feet in front of me. Although my night vision is still pretty good, for the same reason I never liked riding my motorcycle at night, I didn’t enjoy driving the ATV in the dark. Something about open air riding in the dark makes me feel more vulnerable. Besides, if anything goes wrong, there I am out in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, with dodgy cell service. Let’s just say the ride home took a little longer than the ride out. 

 Back when I was in my late twenties, I bought a 1967 Triumph Spitfire off a frat brother in college. This was hardly a classic – I think I paid $400 for it- and when the frat brother bought it, it was painted red. Turned out that red was watercolor paint, and when he took it through a car wash, it came out green. I really enjoyed that little bucket of bolts, and spent the next two years fixing it up, mostly on my own. This is something I heartily recommend doing, once. I had just rebuilt the motor and the car was running great. The next item on my repair list was the suspension, but one fateful night, before I had a chance to fix the suspension, I flipped the car on a country road. Operator error. I was tooling down a particularly twisty road near our summer place in Ft Erie, and I took a turn too quickly. I lost control, went up an embankment, and the car flipped over on me. People seemed impressed (by my lack of driving skills) when I tell them I flipped my Spitfire, probably assuming that this was a high speed crash. In fact, I was probably going 35 MPH when the crash occurred, and had it been properly suspended, the car might have been more forgiving of my incompetence. Luckily the windshield acted as a roll bar and I was able to kick out the broken windshield and escape. I could have been trapped very uncomfortably until someone happened by. This all occurred around 2AM and this was not a well-travelled road. I can still remember hearing the sound of car giving one last sigh as it expired, and I remember the sound of one hub cab rolling down that deserted country road. Maybe this is why I don’t like open air rides at night.

Well it’s been more than a week now and the government shutdown over Obamacare is still going strong. Did anyone see The Daily Show early last week? Clearly, Jon Stewart is no friend of the Republican Party, and he made an amusing point. He basically said to the elephants, look, if you think this health care plan is a big enough threat to the country that it is worth shutting down the government, then own up to that conviction. “Don’t fart and point at the dog.” I love that. Once again partisan politics paralyzes the U.S. government, and whether you are a donkey or an elephant, you are probably in agreement that this is shameful behavior on the part of the jokers we elected to lead us. Who is really failing to negotiate? We all think we know, but are not both sides guilty of playing the spin/blame game?  Regardless, today is a good day, and I am truly thankful for my freedom, for my health, for my beautiful wife, and for all the good fortune I have known these many years. Happy Canadian Thanksgiving !   -Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 10/7/13

Shauna and I drove down to Toronto last Wednesday for a concert at Massey Hall, and also to look in on her mom. As much as her mom was probably relieved to see us leave her house after we’d been there for two and one half months, I imagine it was also difficult for her to be there, absent the man with whom she had spent the past 68 years. With some protest, she accepted our strong advice that she should retain the 24-7 caregivers we had hired for Syd. Clearly she should not be alone, and we convinced her, at least for the time being, that even if she did not need them right away, she might need them soon. They have been trusted and loyal employees, and those are not so easy to find these days. As I have learned from experience, it is better to be proactive about such things. Whether or not Mom Taylor decides to stay in that house will of course be her decision. By my logic, everything has been repaired or replaced in the past ten years, including the electrical, the major appliances, the plumbing, and the roof. The basement is again dry, which took some doing.  Why not remain in the familiar surroundings of one’s own home? That was what my parents wanted, and what I think I will want as well, but perhaps the memories will be overwhelming for her.  

As Shauna and I drove back up north after the concert, we stopped for gas somewhere around Orillia, and Shauna pointed out an unusual vending machine at the gas station. There right outside the door to the convenience store was a live bait vending machine. While I see live bait advertised all over the Great White North, I was not aware that one can buy it 24-7 from a vending machine. I was so amused I took a picture of it.

Tomorrow, with any luck, I will turn 58, and as the Grateful Dead put it so eloquently, what a long, strange trip it’s been (so far). I remember at the time thinking to myself that 40 was not such a traumatic event, though everyone told me it would be. I saw a photo recently taken of me on my 40^th birthday. In it I was grinning like a fool and making a 4-0 gesture with my hands as Shauna and I cruised down the Magnetawan River in her father’s boat. I remember the chocolate birthday cake Shauna presented to me that night, with a colorful racing motorboat design on top. Then Poof! The candles go out, eighteen years blow by, and I find myself wondering in clichés … where did the time go, it seems like only yesterday; how did I get this old? A little creakier, perhaps a bit wiser (but probably not), I have in the past few years become a little more conscious of my mortality. When I get on a tall ladder to wash the windows, or I carry a heavy load of wood from the woodpile, or I pull up the dock for the winter, I wonder to myself, how much longer will I be able to do these things without help? If the codgers up here are any indication, I’ve got another eighteen years at least. Harvey, the guy who plows our driveway in the winter, and whose grandson now works for us, is still going strong, and he’s almost 80. Every winter, in the worst kind of weather, we count on Harvey to come rumbling down our driveway, usually at night, with his big plow rig, accompanied in his heated cab by his hound. Guys like Harvey put “cidiots” like me to shame. I love that derogatory expression, used by the locals to describe a particularly onerous breed of big city jerks who come up on to cottage country on the weekends and spread their unique brand of anxiety and stress.

Final notes. A substantial amount of snow fell on South Dakota last weekend (really, already?), a big typhoon is pummeling southeast China, and it rains cats and dogs up here in the Great White North. Video of the week award goes to the footage of that Indy crash in Houston yesterday which sent racer Dario Franchitti to the hospital. I can’t believe Franchitti survived relatively unscathed. I’d like to see that new movie Rush about Formula 1 racer Niki Lauda. I count myself among the posers who have at one point in their lives been intoxicated by the thrill of speed, but these days, maybe because I am now so freakin’ old, I don’t go quite as fast as I once did. I watched a motorcycle race the other day, and for me that is one crazy sport. UN weapons inspectors have begun to destroy Syria’s cache of chemical weapons. Violence has once again erupted in Cairo, just as two Canadians, detained without charge, were about to be released.

For my birthday this year I think I’d like some Ibuprofin and perhaps a case of Pepto Bismol.

 

“Lately I’ve been thinking that my time’s passing faster, and I feel some sense of dire urgency/ In a month or so I’ll usher in my fifty-first year and I’m nowhere near where I thought I should be/ Over halfway through my life with nothing much to show, and outside, the wind begins to blow …”

 

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED