The Oppenheimer Report 11/24/14

I am a radar junkie when I know bad weather is blowing in. Early last week, I had the Weather Network bookmarked and consulted it constantly on my laptop.  I was watching for those lake effect streamers blowing in off Lake Erie and Lake Huron. Up here in Katrine we got a pretty good dumping, but the real story was Western New York, where some communities east and south of Buffalo got up to six feet of snow in a very short period of time. That is a lot of snow. The photographs were remarkable. Now, as temperatures warm up, the big concern is that all that snow will cause roofs to collapse and flood the areas hardest hit. This is nuts, I’m already on my second tank of gas for the snow blower in a week! I must mention that the news coverage about this Western New York storm was misleading. When the storm first hit, CNN reported that Buffalo had received the huge amounts of snow, when in fact the city center and points north received comparatively little snow. It was points east and south that got hit the hardest. In this respect lake effect snowstorms are a little like tornadoes in that they can be remarkably narrow in the path they take. A friend from Buffalo remarked that, instead of sending national reporters to the hardest hit areas, a better and more informative news story would have been to place two reporters a mile or so apart in Western New York , one in a hard hit area, and one just outside that area, to show the profound difference in snowfall amounts. My sympathies go out to all the people in my hometown community who continue to struggle with the aftermath of this storm, especially today, when the warmer weather and rain melt those massive amounts of snow.
 
Watching the Toronto news the other night I saw a story about the City of Toronto ordering the Uber car service to cease and desist. While I’ve never used Uber, which is essentially an unregulated car service, relying on the internet and GPS to communicate with its customers, it sounds like a great idea. In a city like Toronto, where cabs can sometimes be difficult to hail, why not offer another viable alternative to private transportation? Perhaps this is unfair competition for the cab companies, forced to abide by municipal laws, but I had to laugh at a city representative who used the excuse that the Uber vehicles were uninspected and unregulated, suggesting that they were potentially a danger to the public. Having ridden in my share of Toronto cabs, I  wondered how much more dangerous those “unregulated” cars could be? The last Toronto cab I took had no shocks and  I felt like I was on a carnival ride. And don’t get me started about the cab drivers. I suspect that this issue has more to do with threats to municipal licensing revenues than protection of the general public.

I don’t know why I do it to myself, but last night, I once again watched the American Music Awards. After it was over, I felt as if I’d just wolfed down two Big Macs. I was ill. I am interested in what passes for pop music in the current market, and I like some of what I hear every year. Lorde and Iggy Azalea … not so much. I think Pit Bull, the host of this year's AMAs, might be the luckiest entertainer in history. Glad to see my man Garth Brooks nominated as a country artist, although he did not win. Garth is a great songwriter and performer, and the song he sang was another winner.

Final note, when I think of fashion photography, which is something I rarely do, a few iconographic fashion photographs come to mind. I think of the famous Richard Avedon photo of Nastassja Kinski draped in a live boa constrictor, or Marilyn Monroe standing over a subway grate holding her dress down, or that woman striking a dramatic pose wearing a Dior evening dress, flanked by two elephants. Recently, and in keeping with our ever-accelerating swirl down the cultural crapper, I saw a recent photograph of Kim Kardashian, looking back over her gargantuan derriere. This photo left me dumbfounded. She could serve full course dinner off that ass! Admittedly the Kardashian circus is not something that I regularly follow, although I am incredulous that this freak show has generated so many celebrities. Hey, I like a good celebrity train wreck as much as the next moron, but this is getting out of control. I saw on the news the other day that there is the recent surge in butt enhancement cosmetic surgery. Huh? I thought women getting their lips fattened was nuts, but now women are having their butts enlarged, so they can look more like Kim Kardashian?!That isn’t just crazy, that’s bat shit crazy.

To all my friends in the U.S., have a Happy Thanksgiving, and I hope you have a wonderful celebration with family and friends. Can’t wait for the Macy’s Day Parade! R.I.P. to former Leafs coach Pat Quinn who died today.

 

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED