The Oppenheimer Report 1/30/17

I wonder how the Jews in pre-WW11 Germany felt as they watched Hitler emerge and pour his acid-filled rhetoric on the fabric of civilized society. Maybe they felt a little like American Muslims do today. I have never been more apprehensive about the future of mankind than I am at present. The newly elected leader of the free world is playing fast and loose with the rules, and I think a lot of other people also fear the chaos and anarchy which could ensue from his ill-considered recklessness. One of my fellow songwriters wrote a long and eloquent message on Facebook venting about Rump, and in it she predicts he will not be around for long, because he is an ignorant, hateful, childish, bigoted egotist who will inevitably self-destruct, be run out of office for incompetence, or be assassinated. I’m not sure any of those things will happen, but more and more I am beginning to believe the sky is falling. As an ex-patriot, living as a landed “ignorant” in Canada for the past twenty-three years, I am astounded by how quickly things can change. Over the past week, I have read more than a few well-written articles on the subject. Whenever I see a bad or undisciplined child, I look at the parents. Who is to blame for this? Ask Pogo. The possum knows.  

Every time I turn on the news, Canadian or American, I hear fear, anger, and indignation. I was a middle-of-the-road Republican who lost faith in my party around the time George W. Bush was elected. For me, that’s when the party really began to fall off the rails, and the religious right began to poison American politics. While I lost my faith in a political system paralysed by partisan politics, I always voted. As a voter in New York State, my vote didn’t really count, because the New York State always went to the donkeys in the electoral college, but I kept thinking that, over time, somehow the ship of state would right itself. It would drift too far to the right then too far to the left, but eventually it would come to center. Denial, it’s not just a river in Egypt. Every time I think this guy is just posturing, he does or says yet another preposterous, hateful thing, and I am baffled that he is anybody’s leader, much less the leader of one of the most powerful countries in the world. He has turned the executive branch of the United States Federal Government into a championship wrestling franchise. Let me just vent ... I’m almost done, and I will try not to bring it up again.

In my anxiousness I was surfing around on Facebook, sailing through the sea of toxic tweets and postings complaining about Emperor Rump, and I came upon an article entitled Dalai Lama: Five Things To Keep In Mind For The Next Four Years. Not surprisingly, the message was common sense and quite simple. Lose the anger, help others (because that in turn creates inner peace), be more childlike (not childish, there’s a difference), and remember that no one person runs a democracy (it's actually 5 really rich white guys). I wonder how many conversations this week in Washington D.C. began: “How can we make it look like a massive heart attack.” It’s a sad fact when so many of my countrymen are discussing a violent solution to this mistake. Just remember, the second-in-command believes that homosexuals can be converted. WTF! I never thought I’d see the day when I hoped that the political paralysis, the affliction of our democracy today, would thwart this sociopath. I leave you with a quote from the Jon Stewart of the early 20^th Century:

“When the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre -- the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

                                                                                             
   - H.L. Mencken

Wow.

     -  Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2017 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 1/23/17

"Puddle Jumping" 

A week ago last Saturday, I crossed another small adventure off my bucket list and visited Arrowhead Provincial Park near Huntsville. There is an ice skating trail there which is the longest around here (+- one kilometre), and I’ve been wanting to try it out for the past five winters. Somehow, I never had the gumption to follow through, especially since I usually skate alone these days. I enjoy ice skating, especially outdoors. I didn’t skate more than two or three times in 2016, and when I put on my skates this year at the park, they felt just a little different to me. I didn’t pay much attention when I was lacing them up, because I was so excited about skating on this outdoor rink. I took a lap of the one+ kilometer course, and then re-adjusted my skates. They still didn’t feel right. It never occurred to me that they were the wrong skates, until I looked at them carefully the following Sunday, at an indoor rink. It simply amazed me that I could skate on the wrong skates and not notice that they were not mine! My immediate reaction was that someone had swapped out my skates for this inferior pair, but that didn’t make sense. When I go skating, my skates are never out of my sight. Then I thought perhaps someone had swapped them out at my house, but that also did not make sense. When I returned to the house I found that in fact, my good skates were still there, but they were hidden in the back of the closet. Somehow, I have acquired another, rather new and somewhat larger pair of skates. It’s a mystery.

Every year, our neighbor two doors down floods a small rink on the frozen lake in front of their house. While I have never skated on their rink, over the past fifty years I have skated on a few frozen lakes and ponds. The irregular surface of a naturally frozen body of water can be somewhat challenging, but there is nothing like skating on a frozen lake or pond on a brisk winter day. This winter, it has become almost impossible to skate on our lake, because the weather has been so changeable. The ice should be at least 4-5 inches thick before it will support a snowmobile ( 8”-12” for a car, and 12” to 15” for a pickup truck), but last Saturday I saw some brave (reckless) souls zapping around on our puddle-covered lake. Some of these guys like to “puddle jump”, which I think is insane. They get up a head of steam and hydroplane across open water on their machines. I heard that somebody had travelled 12 kilometres or more skimming across open water. It would suck if the engine quit. I wonder how many snowmobiles are fished out of deep water up here every winter. When I know the lake is sufficiently frozen, and when I see a lot of activity out on the lake, I will cautiously venture out onto the ice with my ATV. I’ve become a bit of an old lady when it comes to risk assessment. I think my biggest fear is the humiliation, when I have to explain to the guy whose job it is to fish my ATV off the bottom of the lake.

Occasionally, the ice in front of our old beach house in Ft. Erie was flat enough to skate on in the winter, and I remember skating on it as a young boy. We also walked out on the frozen lake a lot. When I was an infant, my older sister Jill fell through that ice. She and my now deceased sister Joanne were playing out on the frozen lake and Jill hit a spot of thin ice. My parents looked out on the lake from shore and saw just her head sticking out of the ice. There is an Oppenheimer home movie somewhere of my sister all wrapped up in blankets, warming up in the car after that little adventure.

Speaking of disasters on ice, I am now listening to “The First Machine Across The Lake” by local songwriter Matt Allen. It’s a song about two kids who fall off a snowmobile on a frozen lake then watch it drive off without them. Perhaps that is an appropriate metaphor for the world today. Heaven help us all. Keep your sticks on the ice!  

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2017 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 1/16/17

With all the nonsense about the American President-elect, who shall remain nameless, and who recently fired off a completely un-diplomatic and retaliatory tweet, lashing out at actress Merle Streep for her criticism of his juvenile behavior, then threw a public hissy fit during his first press conference, declaring one of the world’s leading news sources is “fake news”; I thought it might better to recount a humorous fuzzy memory from decades past. Now halfway through January, I meant to reprise this story right after the New Year, but somehow, I got distracted.

Years ago, we had an unusual custom: on New Years Day we shot a TV. It all began back in 1977. Home for the holidays from college, I was at a party in Buffalo one night, and a group of my friends and I were griping about all the Bicentennial nonsense which we had been force fed over the past year. It seemed as if the commemoration of America’s 200^th birthday had become a year-long binge of cheap marketing opportunities and hype. There were bicentennial gas grill giveaway sales at Recreational Warehouse, red, white, and blue milkshakes at McDonalds, bicentennial placemats, cupcakes, hats, scarves, snow globes, toilet paper, pencil cases, sunglasses, you name it – it was everything one might find at a souvenir shop in Niagara Falls, only on a more ridiculous scale. It had all gotten to be a bit much, and perhaps for the first time, I and my friends saw America the way the rest of the world did: spoiled, rich, and stupid. Our fearless leader-elect seems to be the personification of those onerous stereotypes. Anyhow, I and my drunken compatriots decided that we were fed up with all this materialistic jingoism, and we came up with a ceremony to usher in 1977. After much discussion, we decided to decry the excesses of 1976 by raffling off a chance to shoot a television set. The television was, after all, the vehicle through which all this nonsense was broadcast. We would hold the raffle on New Year’s Day, and the winner would get the first shot, with a twelve-gauge shotgun. The rules were simple: the TV had to be working and on when shot, and it had to get at least 3 channels, so the shooter had a choice. There would also be consolation shots.

My friend Bob and I were entrusted with the duty of procuring the victim, which was no mean feat. We were on a very limited budget, and if you think about it; how does one explain to a seller that “it just has to work for about 20 minutes.” We looked at a few potential victims, and we finally settled on a black and white Zenith from Boosing Electric. I felt bad for the owner. He was so proud to have repaired this crappy television set that we were reluctant to explain our intentions. Nevertheless, we needed him to understand our thriftiness. As we walked out the store, I kept singing over and over “I shot the Zenith, but I did not shoot no R-C-A.” Bob slapped me across the head to make me shut up.  

New Years Day 1977 came, and, armed with a movie camera to record the event, a group of very hungover celebrants headed over to a friend’s cottage in Lorraine, Ontario for the first annual New Years Day television shoot. It was an appropriately cold and miserable winter day. The ceremony seemed like a much better idea when it was conceived of, indoors.

Our raffle tickets were homemade, and the winning ticket had a picture of a TV smoking a cigarette with a blindfold on. There were maybe ten or fifteen of us in attendance, and yours truly won the raffle. Over the next ten or more years, we continued the tradition, and by the time we held the last event, the shooting had evolved into a firing squad. The firepower at the final television shoot was ridiculous. I think somebody even brought an elephant gun. Somewhere buried in one of my many junk boxes is an 8MM movie of the very first shoot, There were several other videos made as well. I cannot express in words the catharsis I felt shooting that television with a shotgun. As the world grows crazier by the day, it seems like an ever more meaningful practice. I think back to these happy memories with friends.

I can’t explain the madness of mankind. I think it’s always been this bad, but now we have a 24-7 reminder thanks to “fake news”. I believe we alienate ourselves. With impunity we disrespect each other in the impersonal forum of the internet. Our collective behavior is shameful. It’s them or us, Democrat or Republican, black or white; good or bad. If I’ve learned anything in my 60 years it is that nothing is that simple. I think to love is harder than to hate, and that we are wired to take the easy way out. “Reality” begets reality and as we soak up a sea of toxic misinformation, the only thing that grows is our fear and mistrust of each other. Yes, of course there is evil in the world, and there always has been. “Rump” is not the problem, we are. If we keep expecting others to fix this problem, we will continue to elect leaders like Rump to lead us over the edge of the cliff. I said it in the first report of the New Year, I’m not looking for anyone else to make the world better. Democracy is not a spectator sport. My resolution for 2017 is to do better than I have done so far.

Today is Martin Luther King Day, and I was just reminded of a quote attributed to King: “I’ve decided to stick with love, hate is too big a burden to bear.”

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2017 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TheOppenheimer Report 1/9/17

Last Friday night, my song “Dear Dirty Dublin”, produced by local musician Juan Barbosa, was chosen from a long list of 46 local contenders to be the #2 pick on the Hunters Bay Radio Top 20 songs of 2016. For me, this was like winning a Grammy. Flanking me at #1 was “Radio Man” co-written by dear colleagues Gina Horswood, Paul Lagendyk, and the great Andre Wahl, who produced the song as a tribute to our late friend James Carroll. At #3 was Bet Smith and the Currie Brothers with “Bake Sale Angel, Barbecue Queen”. These are both great songs, and in fact I cast my one vote for Bet Smith & The Currie Brothers. The field of talent in this competition was remarkable, and I am humbled and deeply honored to have been placed so highly on the list.

I know we sometimes sound like the mutual congratulation society up here in the Muskoka and Almaguin Highlands region, but I cannot stress enough how important it is to have a community supportive of the arts. This is what keeps art alive, and I would not be so supportive were I not convinced this is true and important. I have been doing this for a very long time. Music is not something one should take up with the expectations of fame or fortune. A long time ago, those were my unrealistic aspirations, but fame is no longer my goal. Music can and does enrich our lives.

When Shauna and I moved up here around 2007, I had all but given up on any kind of recognition for my song writing. After twenty or so years of open mics and rejection letters, I decided I would stop trying to interest others in my work. I could never stop writing; I believe in my ability to write songs. I will always strive to improve my skills, and thanks to the love and encouragement of my extremely talented and beautiful wife Shauna Leigh Taylor, I have never given up. Nevertheless, I have experienced enough rejection that I could have come to believe no one was listening, or worse yet, that I was simply not good enough. My late friend James Carroll, and fellow songwriter Doug Mclean, whose opinions I respect, encouraged me to present my work to the local community. In doing so, I became involved in a musical world I thought I’d never discover. This involvement has been transformative for me. In the three or four years since I became active in the local music community I have grown measurably and met some remarkable songwriters. I have seen artists emerge that are worthy of national and perhaps international recognition. This is my brass ring. To be a part of a vibrant musical community is all I ever really wanted.

Writing is a tricky thing. We writers need enough hubris to believe that we deserve to be heard, but enough humility to recognize our place in the pecking order. I thought I’d written a few strong songs, but when I discovered artists like Jon Brooks, Rob Lutes, Garnett Rogers, Jason Isbell, John Moreland, John Stewart, Chuck Brodsky, Rodney Crowell, Suzie Vinnick, Rick Fines, Scott Nolan, Lucinda Williams, Tom Wilson, Stephen Fearing, Deni Gauthier, Katherine Wheatley, Catherine MacLellan, just to lightly scratch the surface of the talent that is out there, I am rightfully humbled. The reason why I write songs is simply that I have no choice. They are the demons and the angels that need to be released from my soul in order for me to function in a crazy world. They are my meaning, my catharsis; they are my stepping stones over the turbulent waters of life, and they keep me sane. Goodness knows, it isn’t a big leap to the other side! That someone has heard and acknowledged my songs is a great honour for me.

Finally, and I have said this many times before, thank goodness for Hunters Bay Radio, and people like the late James Carroll, Jeff Carter, Grant Nickalls, and all the other great folks that keep the fire burning. Good music exists everywhere. It can be eclipsed by publicists, and Billboard ratings, and arena concerts, but it is on street corners (Joni Mitchell’s “For Free”), in small bars and bistros, on YouTube, SoundCloud, at open mics, kitchen parties, house parties, jamborees, festivals, and especially at community and college radio stations. Thank you to everyone who voted for me, I am truly humbled and delighted to have received this recognition. This is my brass ring. Most important, thank you Hunters Bay Radio, for all you do. You are the loudspeaker broadcasting the message that good music is alive and well. Talent is everywhere, but without a mouthpiece like HBR, it fades into thin air. For all you listeners out there, be vocal about the artists you like. I will be one of the guys holding the HBR banner on the front lines, and I will never take for granted the precious gift of exposure. Thanks again to all of you who voted for my song!

-       Jamie Oppenheimer

The Oppenheimer Report 1/2/17

Happy New Year loyal readers! I usher in the infant 2017 with high hopes. Then again, the new  year is only about two hours old as I start this report. I just watched the ball drop in Times Square, and now it’s time to sweep up the confetti. Honestly, I think that merely surviving 2016 is cause for celebration. Today marks the 25^thanniversary of the day I began to write this weekly report. At the time, in January of 1992, my New Year’s resolution was to write a weekly commentary on current events for one year, with the hopes that this discipline would improve my writing skills. It started out as a printed post card which I sent out to about fifteen friends and family. For that year, the weekly writing exercise was called The Hyman Report. After the first year, it evolved into the one-page Miscellaneous Grumblings, and finally became The Oppenheimer Report. I’m not sure whether or not my writing has improved much over the years, and I’m pretty sure my readership is about the same, but after 25 years, but it has been therapeutic to write one page a week about the world as I see it. In two and one half decades there has been a lot of water under the bridge, and while I don’t presume to suppose my little writing exercise has any mainstream appeal, I'd like to compile 150 of my favorite reports and publish them. In the last year, I managed to cross another item off my bucket list: I recorded an album of my original songs. It’s good to have goals.

I hope you all celebrated the New Year in whatever fashion suited you. There were plenty of musical performances going on in the local area, but we have for the past fifteen years generally elected to stay home on New Year’s Eve. Shauna and I had a pajama party, which is how we celebrated last year as well.  In our pajamas we prepared a hearty home-cooked meal and switched back and forth from radio and television for our entertainment. I don’t actually own a pair of jammies anymore, but I’ve become somewhat attached to Shauna’s pink Big Brother Canada onesey. I know, that’s  weird right? I think perhaps I am channeling with my inner 3 year-old.  No, I don’t love the color pink, but those onesys are sooo comfortable. What I did not expect on New Year’s Ever was that Harvey, our 70+ year-old snow plow guy, would be plowing our driveway. He did, and as I usually do, I paid him immediately.  Was I a little embarrassed to be wearing a hooded, pink onsesy as I handed this man his money? Perhaps a little, but I think it has long ago been established that I have no shame. It likely gave him a laugh, and the older I get, the less I care about the judgement of others. While Shauna and I disagree on this particular subject, to me form is far less important than function, and I have never been particularly concerned about the clothes I wear. I would not be at all surprised to hear oneseys are making a big comeback in the adult market. Regardless of the fact that I looked a bit like a Smurf, the onesy was very comfy.

While the political upheaval in America continues to hijack the headlines of 2016, last year marked what some pundits are calling “The Death Of The 80s”. I was astonished to read the long list of people in the entertainment industry who passed away in 2016. That list includes Glenn Frey from the Eagles, Prince, Leonard Cohn, David Bowie, Merle Haggard, songwriter Guy Clarke, Keith Emerson and Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, John Berry of The Beastie Boys, Maurice White of Earth Wind and Fire, Lemmy Kilmister from Motorhead, Paul Kantner, one of the founding members of The Jefferson Airplane, and singer George Michaels, on Christmas Day, at 53. In the last week alone, actress/author Carrie Fisher passed on, followed by her mom Debbie Reynolds a day later. In a news story reporting Reynolds’ death, I learned that she did not even know how to dance before starring in her big debut “Singing In The Rain”. She learned to dance in less than two months and somehow managed to keep up with the likes of veteran hoofers Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor. The rest is history, literally. It’s when these celebrities go that we learn how much they’d accomplished in their lives. Canadian actor Alan Thicke, who passed away suddenly a few weeks ago while playing hockey with his son, was multi-talented. I learned that, in addition to his television and movie career, he was a published song writer. His credo, and one that both Shauna and I found notable: “Live life so completely that when death comes to you, like a thief in the night, there will be nothing left to steal.”

While 2017 is just a little over one day old, I end this report without tongue in cheek. In the coming year I resolve to “do more good than harm”, as my self-help guru classmate Bob O’Connor put it. Maybe this will be the year when we all try to do the same. Happy New Year to one and all!

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2017 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED