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Friday, June 13, 2014

Recipe Post and Run

The first thing that I wish to do is apologize in advance to all of you for this "post and run" entry.  I won't be talking about anything too substantial in this entry.  In fact, this entry will probably be one of the shortest ones that I've ever done.

Why?

Well, as you read this, I will be doing some last minute preparations for this year's "Relay for Life" event.  It is an all-day and all-night affair lasting from seven in the evening to seven in the morning.  So, basically, my time is very limited in what I can actually put into this piece.

Secondly, I'm going to apologize to all of you in advance for the Saturday, June 14 entry.  Because I'll be staying up all night long on the thirteenth, I will likely be sleeping away most of the fourteenth.  So, the June 14 entry will be posted very late afternoon.  But, hey...good things always come to those who wait right?  I promise you that I'll make it up to you all in later days.  That I swear.

But for now, since today is
FOODIE FRIDAY, I decided that for this entry, I would just post a recent recipe that appeared in the January 2014 issue of Canadian Living Magazine.  Hey, for those of you living in America or abroad, it might be a really great recipe to try.  The recipe comes courtesy of Amanda Barnier, food specialist.

Unfortunately, I can't say the same.  I'm not a fan of pecans.  But for those of you who are, this is your lucky day!  Enjoy! 



THE ULTIMATE PECAN PIE

Hands-on time:  20 minutes
Total time:  4 1/2 hours
Makes:  12 servings

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup liquid honey
1 tbsp. cider vinegar
2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. salt
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 cups pecan halves

FOR PIE PASTRY:

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tbsp. granulated sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup cold unsalted butter, cubed
1/4 cup cold water

HOW TO MAKE IT

PASTRY:  In large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, and salt.  Using pastry blender or two knives, cut in butter until in coarse crumbs with a few larger pieces.  Drizzle cold water over flour mixture, tossing with fork to form ragged dough and adding up to 1 tsp. more cold water if necessary.  Shape into disc; wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled, about 1 hour.  (make ahead; refrigerate for up to 3 days or freeze in airtight container for up to one month.)

Let pastry stand at room temperature until slightly softened, about 5 minutes.  On lightly floured surface, roll out pastry into 12-inch (30 cm) circle; fit into 9-inch (23 cm) pie plate.  Trim to leave 1-inch (2.5 cm) overhang; fold overhang under and flute edge.  Refrigerate until firm, about 30 minutes.

In small saucepan, melt butter over medium heat; whisk in brown sugar until smooth.  Remove from heat; whisk in honey, vinegar, vanilla, and salt.  Whisk in eggs.

Sprinkle pecans in pie shell; pour egg mixture over top.  Bake on baking sheet on bottom rack in 350 F (180 C) oven, until filling is set (approximately 50 minutes to one hour).  Let cool completely in pan on rack.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Teen Scenes from the Small Screen

I have a question for you all.  Think back to when you were in high school.  For some of us, it was the best time of our whole lives.  For others, it was four years of torture.

But one thing that could have made the high school experience a lot better were the teen hangouts.  The meeting places where kids would gather during their lunch hours or after school to talk about the latest gossip, make plans for Saturday night, or even actually do homework!

I'll admit that my school was located in a place where there was a whole lot of nothing available.  On one side of the school was the city hospital (I can't see too many high school students choosing to hang out there, although I did used to go to the hospital gift shop to buy candy and magazines).  Across the street was a playground that used to be a cemetery (true story), and down the street at the time we had a health food store, and an abandoned Buns Master Bakery.  Hardly the places that would be considered attractive to the teen scene.

Still, I remember one place during my high school years in which I would sometimes frequent.  It was a little nook that was attached to a hair salon (that used to be a convenience store years ago) that had a really tiny kitchen and only enough room for two people to stand there comfortably (literally, the place was the size of a front porch).  But this place made some of the greatest poutines in the whole world.  It was a place called "Pizza Pro", and although it didn't really help my waistline any, it kept me supplied in poutine rich goodness right through my graduation from high school in 2000.  Add to the fact that it was at the time the only food place outside of campus and it proved to be a semi-popular spot.  Other restaurants have come and gone since then, but I will always have a soft spot for "Pizza Pro".

So, okay...it's not quite the place where all the teens hung out.  Still, it was my own personal nook, and it was a nook that you could find me at least once every other week.

Still...I can't help but think of all the teenage hangouts that I remember seeing in my television viewing days, and I can't help but think of how much cooler school would have been if we had at least some of these hangouts in my town.

So, come sit down with me, grab a menu, and have a fond time looking back on the teen hangouts of yore.

Ready?  Let's go!



ARNOLD'S DRIVE-IN from HAPPY DAYS

Now, people from my generation probably recognize this place from the 1994 music video for Weezer's "Buddy Holly".  Here...I'll post it below.



Of course, we all know that Arnold's was first seen in the television sitcom "Happy Days", which ran for ten seasons between 1974 and 1984.  Interestingly enough, we never did get to meet the real Arnold.  The first owner of the diner that we ever saw was the Japanese man named Mitsumo Takahashi (Pat Morita).  Of course, Takahashi simply called himself Arnold because it would have cost too much to have the diner sign renamed to Takahashi's.  Over the course of the show, the diner would transfer ownership to Al Delvecchio (Al Molinaro) for six seasons before Arnold returned following Al's departure from the show in 1982.

Anyway, if you wanted to have a full appreciation of what diners looked like back in the 1950s (remember, "Happy Days" was set at least two decades in the past when it started airing in 1974), Arnold's was a pretty good representation.  Nothing fancy or unique.  Just a place with booths, a jukebox, and some great food.  And it was also the main haunt of Richie, Potsie, Ralph Malph, Joanie, and The Fonz.  What could be better than that?

From there, we now take a look at another diner that was heavily influenced by the 1950s.



THE PEACH PIT from BEVERLY HILLS 90210

We were first introduced to this Beverly Hills lunch counter after Brandon Walsh (Jason Priestly) quit a busboy job from hell.  His friend Dylan McKay (Luke Perry) knew a place where they made some great peach pie, and it is here that Brandon first meets Nat (Joe E. Tata), the owner of The Peach Pit, a diner that plays music from the '50s and '60s, and is famous for its Megaburger.  Brandon ended up working for Nat for three years, and the rest of the 90210 gang shared laughs, tears, romances, and hard times in the booths and stools of the restaurant.  Even Brenda (Shannen Doherty) took a turn as a waitress in the diner.  Have a look below!



In 1994, Steve Sanders (Ian Ziering) and Dylan opened up a nightclub right beside The Peach Pit, called "The Peach Pit After Dark", which arrived just in time for the 90210 gang's college and adult years. 

To be honest with you, I would have totally dug having a Peach Pit in town.  Or, at the very least, having an owner like Nat at the helm.  He wasn't just some fry cook in the back of the kitchen.  When you entered his establishment, he treated you like family.  A true representation of customer service.

And it's nice to know that Nat's business continued to survive.  When 90210 was revived in 2008, the Peach Pit was still in business...with Nat still treating his customers like family.



RACHEL'S PLACE from FAMILY MATTERS

Okay, so a little bit of history needs to be talked about when talking about Rachel's Place.  When Family Matters first debuted in 1989, the teen hangout at the time was called "Leroy's", and it wasn't anything too spectacular.  It was just one of those greasy spoon type places with a couple of video games and some tables.  Leroy's was the site of Laura Winslow's (Kellie Shanygne Williams) and Steve Urkel's (Jaleel White) first jobs.  Unfortunately neither one was employed there for long after Steve accidentally burned the whole place down!

Fortunately, this was where Laura's Aunt Rachel (Telma Hopkins) had a brilliant idea.  She was looking at starting up her own business and in 1990, she bought the land where Leroy's once stood and opened up her own diner called Rachel's Place.  It certainly was a brilliant looking place.  I'd definitely eat there if it existed.  But I get the feeling that Rachel wasn't a very good businesswoman.  Both she and the diner were gone by the mid-1990s.



THE MAX from SAVED BY THE BELL

Okay.  On the inside, it looked like a geometry textbook had exploded all over the walls.  But it was one of the coolest places near Bayside High.  Originally run by amateur magician Max (Ed Alonzo), The Max was the place where Zack and Kelly fell in love.  The place where Lisa and Screech won a dance contest with "The Sprain".  The place where the gang threw Slater a party with Screech at the Pineapple Princess. 

The original Max continued on in the New Class adaptation for four of its seven seasons, but New Class student Ryan Parker left some Christmas tree lights on overnight which burned the diner to the ground.  It was rebuilt in Season 5 with an even more tripped out design than the last one.  I tried to find a picture, but none really exist.  You'll just have to take my word for it.



SHARKEY'S from CALIFORNIA DREAMS

It was exactly like The Max, only with less geometry and more surfboards.  Oh, and a band called the California Dreams would play gigs there every weekend.  If you loved live music, Sharkey's was the place to be.

CONFESSION:  At the time, I really dug the California Dreams songs...and appreciated the fact that in the first couple of years, the actual cast really did do the singing!  Even some twenty years later, some of the songs are still quite catchy.



PUNKY'S PLACE from PUNKY BREWSTER

Okay, this hangout just has a bizarre story, so I'll just come out with it.  When Punky Brewster first aired, Punky's guardian Henry (George Gaynes) was a photographer who owned his own photography studio.  But at the end of the show's third year, Henry was bought out by a photo store chain and given $100,000 out of the deal, which Punky (Soleil Moon Frye) begged him to use to open up a restaurant.  Somehow, Henry agreed, and Punky's Place was born.

Problem was that Punky's Place wasn't exactly used a whole lot in the show's final season.  In fact, the only episode I remember that took place at Punky's Place was the one in which Punky and Cherie (Cherie Johnson) believed that a customer had died in one of the booths there and that Punky and Cherie had actually killed him!  Turns out he just had narcolepsy!  Silly kids!

Okay, so those are just a few of the teen hangouts I remember.  What other ones can you add to the list?

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

A Banner Day


In this edition of WHO AM I WEDNESDAY, I'll be opening up with a short video entry.  And, here it is!  Enjoy!



All right, so based on the video, you probably know what I'm going to be doing for this entry.  It's something that I talked about a little bit in Monday's entry...about how I was working on a special project for the upcoming RELAY FOR LIFE entry that I will be participating in.  



Well, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what I have planned for the event, which takes place on June 13-14, 2014.  As I talked about in the video above, I plan on welcoming all of you to the Relay for Life event here in my hometown by doing a series of videos from the actual event periodically so that you can have a better idea of what happens during the Relay.

Mind you, they won't be posted live from the event...I highly doubt that the track in which we'll be walking on has convenient Wi-Fi access.  But sometime next week, I'll be making it happen.  Who knew my iPod doubled as a video camera?

Of course, I'll be uploading pictures from the event as well...just to give all of you the feeling like you were there with me, cheering our team on!  Trust me, it'll be great.

Until then, I'll tease you with the first part of my Relay for Life 2014 coverage, which is that special project that I was working on.  You see, prior to 2014, we had a lady who worked in the produce department who designed all of our banners for the event.  Have a look at the banner she did for us a couple of years ago that we used for the 2012 and 2013 events.



Not bad, huh?

Well, this year, she officially left the company for good, and the team needed someone to design the banner for the 2014 event.  And, well...I decided to step in and take the initiative.

There was just one problem.  I have never done a banner in my life.  In fact, when it comes to arts and crafts, I very rarely used paint at all.  I was always more of a coloured pencil kind of guy.

So, this was definitely a challenge.  But what do I always say?  I love a challenge!

Okay, so the supplies I had to work with were...

1 gigantic piece of white fabric
4 large tubes of waterproof fabric paint (red, blue, yellow, white)
6 pie plates
9 paintbrushes
10 fabric markers in various colours
7 small spray bottles of neon coloured paint (
red, pink, orange, purple, green, blue, yellow)
2 small bottles of fabric paint (red, blue)
1 pair of old shoes
1 No. 2 pencil
1 box of paper towels
1 bottle of multi-purpose surface cleaner

(The last two items will make sense later.)



By the way, here was my original blueprint for the banner.  Those blue splotches are from my paint-splattered hands.

So, to begin, I had to take the basic colours that I had and mix them together to make some pastel colours.  You know, green is made from blue and yellow, and so on. 



Some colours turned out great, like the orange, light blue, and light green.  But for some reason, my purple ended up becoming a cement colour.  If I do another banner, I'll just buy purple paint instead.

And, then I took the shoes, painted the soles of them with the coloured paint, and stamped them all around the border like this.



The reason for the shoes?  We're the Cancer Kickers, and unless you like doing things in the non-conformist way, most people kick with their feet!

Now, some people told me after the fact that they would have done it with bare feet around the border, and I agree that it would have been awesome if we could have done it this way.  But since the only day off before the relay was on Monday and my living space isn't big enough to work on a banner, I just did it in my workplace's training room (with permission from the management team, of course).  It would have been too messy doing it that way.

(Besides, when I was working on the banner, the paint soaked right through the fabric onto the tables that I was working on!!!  Now you understand why I needed the cleaning solution!)

Anyway, once the border was completed, it was time to work on the font.  And some people wondered where I got the font idea from.  I knew that I wanted to choose a font that was unique and stood out.  So, I looked all over the Internet for a font just like that.



Would you believe that a Kylie Minogue album inspired the choice of font?  It's true!  Have a look at the U.S. album cover for her 1989 album, "Enjoy Yourself".  Particularly take a look at the title.



PLEA TO THE AUDIENCE:  I have absolutely no idea what this font is called, but if anyone knows out there, please let me know so I can download it onto my own computer.  I absolutely love it!



Of course, it would be silly to blindly paint letters onto the canvas, so I sketched them out in pencil before hand.  As you can tell, I sort of screwed up the second "C", but nobody's perfect.  From a distance, you'll never be able to tell anyway.  Once the font was completed, I grabbed the small bottles of red and blue fabric paint (and whatever leftover yellow that I had), and did up the Cancer Kickers logo.  It was difficult to try and stay within the lines, but somehow, it turned out great.

I even used fabric markers to go around the red part of the logo.  The blue I left alone as I thought it looked better without the outlining.  Now, you will see some white spots around the border...that's because the paint didn't quite dry when I did the border.  I ended up getting some red dots on the sheet.  But that was fine because the neon paint was used to camouflage the mistakes that I made. 

And, here's the finished product!





Not bad for my very first banner, huh?

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

June 10, 1922

I hope you're all ready for another edition of the Tuesday Timeline!  Today is the tenth of June, and it happens to be a day in which a lot went on.  Lots of celebrity birthdays and lots of events took place today, and I really had a hard time selecting a topic.

In the end, I decided to go with a classic.  A rare talent...whose light dimmed way too soon.  But we'll get to that a little bit later in this entry.

So, what sorts of interesting things happened on June 10?  Have a look!

1692 - Bridget Bishop is hanged at Gallows Hill outside of Salem, Massachusetts after being charged with performing witchcraft and sorcery during the Salem Witch Trials

1854 - The date of the first graduating class of the United States Naval Academy

1861 - The Battle of Big Bethel takes place during the American Civil War

1886 - The eruption of New Zealand's Mount Tarawera kills 153 and destroys the country's Pink and White Terraces

1928 - American author Maurice Sendak (d. 2012), is born in Brooklyn, New York

1935 - The organization "Alcoholics Anonymous" is founded by Dr. Robert Smith and Bill Weston in Akron, Ohio

1940 - Italy declares war on France and the United Kingdom on the same day that Norway surrenders to Germany during World War II

1944 - Joe Nuxhall, aged 15, becomes the youngest person ever to play in a Major League Baseball game, playing for the Cincinnati Reds

1947 - Saab produces its first automobile

1963 - John F. Kennedy signs the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which abolished the practice of wage disparity based on gender

1967 - Actor Spencer Tracy dies of a heart attack at age 67, just seventeen days after filming his last film, "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner"

1977 - The Apple II personal computer is sold in stores for the first time

1990 - British Airways Flight 5390 has a miraculous landing after a blowout in the cockpit of the plane nearly sucks the captain out of the aircraft - the flight touched down safely with zero casualties

1999 - NATO suspends air strikes after Slobodan Milosevic agrees to withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo during the Kosovo War

2002 - American mobster John Gotti dies of throat cancer at age 61

2003 - The Spirit Rover is launched, which kicks off NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission

2004 - Singer-songwriter Ray Charles passes away at the age of 73

And, I want to wish the following famous faces a very happy birthday;  F. Lee Bailey, Alexandra Stewart, Mickey Jones, Shirley Owens, Ken Singleton, Kevin Corcoran, Rich Hall, Timothy Van Patten, Maxi Priest, Gina Gershon, Carolyn Hennesy, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Jimmy Chamberlin, Ben Daniels, Kate Flannery, Elizabeth Hurley, Bill Burr, Joel "JoJo" Hailey, Faith Evans, Pokey Reese, DJ Qualls, Tara Lipinski, Elyse Sewell, Leelee Sobieski, Kate Upton, and Sasha Obama.

So, what year will we be steering our time machine to this week?



How about June 10, 1922?  Yes, that sounds like a great date to look back on!

Today's date marks the beginning of the life of one of Hollywood's most successful actresses during what one might call the golden age of motion pictures.  Certainly during her career, she starred in several productions - many of which are beloved classics today.  But while her professional life was one in which most actresses and singers dream of having, her personal life was filled with pain, low self-esteem, and financial hardships.  



This is the story of Judy Garland, born ninety-two years ago today.  I know, it seems so hard to believe that had Judy Garland lived, she'd be 92 years old. 

Of course, she didn't start life off as Judy Garland, silver screen icon.  No, when she was born on June 10, 1922 in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, she was given the name Frances Ethel Gumm.  Certainly not a name that screams superstar, is it?  But there was a reason behind Judy's original name.  She was named after her parents - dad Francis and mom Ethel.  She was their youngest child.  Because her parents were vaudevillians, I suppose it was destined for the future Judy Garland to pursue a career in entertainment.  And sure enough, little Frances Gumm began performing for people at the tender age of two and a half along with her older sisters, Mary Jane and Dorothy.  They sang "Jingle Bells" on the stage of their father's movie house, and that performance would be the first of many by the Gumm Sisters.

But in 1934, the Gumm Sisters were advised to change their name by George Jessel, and it was rumoured that they opted to make the change after a marquee at a Chicago theatre erroneously referred to them as the "Glum Sisters"!  Whether that story is true or not, who can say?  Most people who were around at that time are now deceased and can't really confirm it.  But of any of you are old enough, please let me know if this was true!  It'd be an interesting story.



The name the trio settled on was the Garland Sisters, and while there are many different theories over how they ended up choosing that name, the reason why Frances changed her name to Judy was reportedly due to inspiration from a Hoagy Carmichael song.  So, I guess you could say that Judy Garland was really born in 1934 if you wanted to. 

At any rate, the Garland Sisters became a short-lived act.  After Mary Jane got married in Reno, the group parted in 1935, and Judy was left to follow her own path to stardom, eventually getting a movie contract with MGM in 1935.  However, Judy's contract was signed during a rather awkward time in her life.  She had just turned thirteen when she started working at MGM.  She was sort of like the title of a Britney Spears song.  She wasn't a girl, but not yet a woman.  And, to add to that, she was just under five feet tall.  She was too old to be cast as a child star like Shirley Temple, but too young to film more adult roles.  She was often compared to the more glamourous actresses who were signed onto MGM at the time - actresses such as Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor, and Lana Turner.  I guess looking back on it, the constant comparisons would be enough to make anyone doubt their self-worth, and for Judy Garland, this would become a struggle that would last well over thirty years.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

MGM purposely wanted to present Judy Garland as having a girl-next-door image, and that required Garland to wear plain, juvenile looking dresses, and even was forced to wear teeth caps and rubberized disks to reshape her nose!  Yeesh, to know that this stuff was going on all the way back in the 1930s is very depressing to me.  But regardless, Judy followed along, thinking that it would help get her career started.  And certainly during the latter half of the 1930s, Judy starred in a few films (three of which were with her most frequent co-star, Mickey Rooney who passed away in April 2014), and had a couple of musical moments, including this classic from 1935 - performed after the sudden death of her father that same year.



And then in 1938, Garland won the role that made her a household name.



That role, of course, was of the teenaged farm girl from Kansas, Dorothy Gale in the 1939 classic "The Wizard of Oz".  I really don't need to go into the plot of the movie as I'm guessing that most of you born before 2012 have seen it at least once.  It was reported that Garland had beaten out Deanna Durbin and Shirley Temple for the role, and her role in this film and in the movie "Babes in Arms" earned her a Juvenile Academy Award the following year.  And, her work in "The Wizard of Oz" brought us this instant classic.



And, I could talk about how many people have covered "Over The Rainbow" since Judy Garland first sang it, but I would have to devote an entire blog entry to it.

Of course, that's not to say that "The Wizard of Oz" was Judy's only success in life.  She filmed "Little Nellie Kelly" in a dual role, and had her first on-screen kiss and only death scene in that movie.  She turned heads in 1943's "Presenting Lily Mars".  And, her part in 1944's "Meet Me In St. Louis" is probably best known for this song.



But while Judy Garland was enjoying a successful career in both music and film, her private life was falling apart.  It was reported that Garland, Mickey Rooney, and other young stars signed under MGM were given amphetamines and barbiturates every night so that the actors could keep up with demanding film schedules.  I don't know how that actually would work, but again it was the 1930s, and it was a different time.  Who am I to understand how Hollywood works.  The point is that if Judy Garland's substance abuse had to have a start date, I suppose that it was when she began working for MGM, where she had to face constant scrutiny from everyone around her.  Add drugs to the equation and you have a recipe for disaster.

It wasn't until 1947 that people would begin to understand just how serious things had gotten for Garland.  She suffered a nervous breakdown while filming a movie, and she attempted to kill herself by slitting her wrists with broken glass.  She was institutionalized and given treatment for two weeks.  At the same time, she was wrapping up her fifteen years at MGM by finishing her last three films for the company - "Easter Parade", "In The Summertime", and "Summer Stock".  Her drug use continued throughout 1948, and she was released from her contracts for several film projects because of the fact that her drug use caused her to miss several days of work and when she did work, she was clearly not giving her best performance.



By the 1950s, it seemed as though Judy had made a comeback on the stages of Broadway, earning a Special Tony Award for her efforts in bringing back vaudeville to Broadway.  And in 1954, she appeared in the musical remake of "A Star Is Born", which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.  Which she lost to Grace Kelly.  Which caused outrage because many had expected Judy to win the award, with camera crews even perched inside her hospital room as she had just given birth to a child days earlier! 

And in the 1960s, Judy Garland was given her own variety show, "The Judy Garland Show", which earned four Emmy nominations.  However, the show only lasted one season due to it being broadcast at the same time as the wildly popular television series, "Bonanza", and the cancellation caused personal and financial hardships for Garland, who was spiraling out of control.

She had already been married and divorced four times by the time she was 46 years of age (her fifth and final husband she married in early 1969).  She had terrible experiences when she did concert tours around the world (citing Melbourne, Australia as being a particularly bad concert as she was booed off the stage after only 45 minutes of performing).  And because of Judy's drug use, she continued to get let go from any future film projects.

And on June 22, 1969 - just days after her 47th birthday, Judy Garland's life was cut short.  Her body was found by her fifth husband inside their rented home in Chelsea, London.  The cause of death was originally linked to an overdose of barbiturates, and many believed at the time that it was an intentional suicide attempt that went bad.  However, the autopsy ruled the death an accidental one.  Whatever the case, Judy's pain was finally over, and after a career filled with as much heartbreak as there was success, perhaps it was inevitable that Judy's life ended in that manner.

Though Judy Garland has been deceased for forty-five years, her legacy continues to live on.  She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  She was posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997 for her work on Broadway and the musicals she filmed with MGM.  And, of course, her three children (Liza Minnelli, Lorna Luft, and Joseph Luft) have developed the performing gene from their mother.  Liza especially did very well for a time after being cast in 1972's "Cabaret".  Though, one could argue that Liza's path eerily followed the path of her late mother as Liza developed an addiction to drugs and alcohol and also had multiple marriages that ended in divorce.  The only difference is that Judy's life ended at 47, while Liza celebrated birthday number 68 in March 2014.



At any rate, Judy Garland was a talent taken from us way too soon.  And, to close off this look back on Garland's life, one of her most...melancholic performances.


Monday, June 09, 2014

Lazy Monday Edition

Everybody has heard of the term "Lazy Sundays", right?  The term coining from the fact that Sundays used to be a day in which there was hardly anything on television, stores used to be closed, and the day used to be known as a real family day where everyone gathered together for a delicious family dinner and shared some quality time together.

Boy how the world has changed since then, huh?  And, as far as I'm concerned, it's not for the better.  But, that's another rant for another day.

Well, I've decided that I'm going to make today my "LAZY MONDAY".  Which is going to be a bit hard given that today is supposed to be MOTIVATION MONDAY - the day in which I post the weekly MOTIVE4CHANGE episode that I do with my three friends every week. 



And, well, today I will be posting a MOTIVE4CHANGE video...it'll just seem like a bit of a summer rerun of sorts.  I'll explain why that very shortly.  But for now, I'll just post the video right here.  This is one-fourth of our MOTIVE4CHANGE team, JOSHUA, reading a five minute piece on what his message to the world would be after his demise.  A rather morbid subject, I must admit.  But here it is in all of its glory.

EPISODE 9A - JOSHUA'S MESSAGE TO THE WORLD - 6/8/2014



So, for those of you who have been following along with MOTIVE4CHANGE over the last few weeks, you may notice that Joshua's video portion sounds strangely familiar.  That's because we originally aired Josh's message on our seventh episode of MOTIVE4CHANGE, which aired originally on May 18, 2014.  So, I suppose you're probably wondering why we reposted something that occurred three weeks ago.

Well, to be honest with you, it all had to do with a little bit of technical difficulties.  When we filmed the episode posted on May 18, 2014, we had everything down to a science.  We had all four of us (myself,
JOSHUA, JONATHON, and CARINE) reading off letters that we all wrote about the message we wanted to leave behind for future generations, and we had thought that they turned out fantastic.  And they did...

...until technology decided to turn against us and corrupt a good chunk of our recording.

Now, Joshua was able to recover some of the recordings...enough to edit together a show that made sense.  But there were some casualties.  Carine's quote of the day was forever silenced, we lost about a third of my letter, and a few bits and pieces from Jonathon's letter were unavoidably left on the cutting room floor.  We still had enough to work with, but the loss of footage certainly took away from the impact of the statements that we wanted.

So, the decision was made to re-record our letters into four different parts, just to ensure that our real thoughts came across.  So, that's the story behind the "summer reruns" of
MOTIVE4CHANGE, so to speak.

I do promise that we're going to be back with a brand new episode of MOTIVE4CHANGE next week.  That will be on June 15 - which will be the day after I indulge in a 12-hour-long walkathon for our community "RELAY FOR LIFE" event.  I could very well be still suffering from sleep deprivation that day.  We'll see.  But whatever the case, we will have something ready.  And for those of you with short attention spans, the episode will be a much shorter length!  How's that for exciting?



So, getting back to the beginning...why am I calling today the LAZY MONDAY edition?  Well, it's simple.  I've decided that today is going to be the day that I don't talk about anything substantial in this blog.  We all deserve a break today, and I'm making today that day.

(In all seriousness, I'll be busy most of tomorrow anyway working on a project for the
RELAY FOR LIFE event.  And if you're interested, I may offer up a sneak preview of that project on the WHO AM I WEDNESDAY blog this week.

But for today's motivation topic...I motivate all of you to kick back and take a break...even if it's only a half hour out of your day.  After all, those Kit Kat commercials almost demand that you take a break, right?

Hmmm...let's close out with a Kit Kat commercial, shall we?  I'll see you tomorrow with another
TUESDAY TIMELINE entry...and tomorrow, I promise to keep the yellow tinted font to a minimum. 



Sunday, June 08, 2014

Everybody Wants to Rule the World



I hope that all of you are in an eighties kind of mood this weekend, because today's Sunday Jukebox entry will feature a song that hit number one on the charts exactly twenty-nine years ago this week!

So, doing some quick mathematics here...that means we're going back to the year with Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, way before Nirvana, there was U2 and Blondie, and music still on MTV!  I wasn't in grade school, but who cares, that's still real cool, because this blog's preoccupied with 19, 19, 1985!

(NOTE:  Stop listening to Bowling for Soup while trying to write this Sunday Jukebox which unfortunately doesn't have anything to do with Bowling for Soup.)

Though, the song that I have to present that hit #1 in June 1985 could be a song that best describes the general attitude that a lot of people seemed to possess during that time period.

Mind you, I wasn't old enough to understand what that was.  After all, in June 1985, I had just turned four years old, and my only concern was having enough blue crayons to finish colouring the sky in my colouring books.



But if you were an adult - particularly in the world of business or commerce, then the 1980s were considered a time period of huge excess.  The bigger the house, the better.  The bigger the car, the better.  The nicer the clothes, the better.  It was the decade in which people lived a life of luxury whether they could afford to or not, and it was the decade in which we measured people by how much money they made.  To me, that part was the one ugly blemish on an otherwise zit-free decade.  By 1987, when the stock market had a substantial crash, the greed is good mantra that Gordon Gekko chanted in "Wall Street" began to fade slightly, but on the pop charts, there were lots of references to the general mood of money being the most important thing in the world.

I mean, in the 1980s and early 1990s alone, we had the following songs released...

Material Girl/MADONNA
I Wanna Be Rich/CALLOWAY
Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)/PET SHOP BOYS
(How To Be A) Millionaire/ABC
Money Changes Everything/CYNDI LAUPER
Big Time/PETER GABRIEL
Dirty Cash (Money Talks)/THE ADVENTURES OF STEVIE V

But, all those things were all about money.  What about the other coveted thing that people wanted during the 1980s?  What about power?

I mean, certainly the 1980s introduced us to powerful business moguls such as Donald Trump, and Leona Helmsley.  We also saw the rise and fall of some political figures who lived lives of excess only to have their empire come crashing down.

(Just Google the words Imelda Marcos and shoes.  You'll get the picture.)

And, twenty-nine years ago this week, a group from Britain summed up the decade known as the 1980s all too well with this single.



ARTIST:  Tears for Fears
SONG:  Everybody Wants to Rule the World
ALBUM:  Songs from the Big Chair
DATE RELEASED:  March 22, 1985
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS:  #1 for 2 weeks

Ah, Tears for Fears!  A group that I've never done a spotlight for in the three years I've done this blog!  Oh, well.  Better late than never, right?

So, should I do a discussion on the band first, or the song?  Ah, let's start off with the band.



The band was founded by childhood friends Curt Smith and Roland Jaime Orzabal de la Quintana (though to save some space, let's just call him Roland Orzabal).  The two boys met each other when they were thirteen, and by the time they were in their late teens, they had already begun playing as session musicians for the band Neon.  It was here that the two men met drummer Manny Elias, who would become the drummer for the future Tears for Fears from 1981-1986.  Also a part of Neon were Rob Fisher and Pete Byrne, who would form their own New Wave band, Naked Eyes.

It wasn't until the year 1980 that Orzabal and Smith would start getting recognition, though it wasn't for their work with Tears for Fears - that group wouldn't get started until 1981.  It was for their contributions to a group known as "Graduate".  It's okay if you haven't heard of them.  They were only really big in Switzerland and Spain.  But still, it got their names out in the British music scene, and set the stage for the duo to break free from Graduate to start something new.

After all, the year was 1981.  New Wave was becoming the biggest thing on the music scene, and artists like Duran Duran, Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads, and Depeche Mode were already starting to dominate the British charts.  It was decided by Orzabal and Smith that they would attempt to do the same.

Now, here's a piece of
TRIVIA for you all.  Do you know how the band got its name?  Well, believe it or not, it was based from terminology found in primal therapy.  Primal therapy was developed by American psychologist Arthur Janov, and the treatment received a lot of publicity after it was reported that John Lennon had become a patient of Janov's in the early 1970s.  Janov argued that the reason why people had neuroses was because they had repressed pain caused by childhood trauma.  I suppose that taking that into consideration, someone looking into their deepest fears could bring someone to tears.  So, Tears for Fears.

(Though the band's original name - History of Headaches - would have also sounded cool!)

The original line-up of the band consisted of Orzabal, Smith, Elias, and Ian Stanley.



So, I don't really need to go into all of the success that the band had over the next thirty-three years and counting.  The band broke out onto the music scene in the early 1980s with their debut "The Hurting", which was a moderate success, but by 1984 with their album "Songs from the Big Chair", they became an international success story.  Some of the group's biggest hits include "Mad World", " Mothers Talk", "Shout", "Head Over Heels", "Sowing the Seeds of Love", and "Woman in Chains".

By the time the 1990s came around, the band was in a crisis.  Stanley and Elias had departed the band shortly before the band began working on their 1989 album "The Seeds of Love", and after that album was released, several issues caused a strain between the partnership and friendship between Roland and Curt.

For one, Roland's intricate, but frustrating approach to album production clashed directly with Curt's more laid-back manner.  Another reason was that Curt was stressed out with the collapse of his marriage in 1988 and wasn't in the right mood to continue performing.  And, I suppose it didn't help matters much that Tears for Fears manager Paul King was arrested for fraud following his declaration of bankruptcy in 1990.

Curt Smith would relocate to the United States in 1993 to start up a solo career while Roland Orzabal would continue using the Tears for Fears name to record music of his own (one hit being 1993's "Bring It Down Again", which was a minor hit in the United States).

It would take nine years apart before the Roland and Curt reunited with each other again.  In 2000, Orzabal had signed a business document on Curt's behalf, which lead to a dinner date between the two, which lead to discussions about recording a new album together. 

(That album, "Everybody Loves a Happy Ending" would be released in 2004.)



As of 2014, Tears for Fears is still touring around the globe and still making music together, proving that you can go back home again after years apart.

So, now that you know more about Tears for Fears, let's talk about today's selected song, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World".  And how if it was up to Roland Orzabal, the song may not have even been included in the album at all!  According to Orzabal, he didn't even want to record the song as he felt that it was too lightweight to earn a spot on the album which also contained the global smash "Shout" from late 1984.  But producer Chris Hughes had convinced Orzebal to give the song a go, if for no other reason than to continue the band's success of breaking into the tough American music market.



With Curt Smith on vocals, the song "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" featured a whimsical music video featuring a road trip through Southern California, a pair of men doing dance moves in front of gasoline pumps, and shots of the band performing the song on a London soundstage.  The video was directed by legendary music video director Nigel Dick, and instantly became a classic on MTV during the late 1980s.

As for the concept of the song?  Well, it ties right into the discussion we had on the excess and wealth that the 1980s seemed to epitomize.  Curt Smith said it best.

"The concept is quite serious - It's about everybody wanting power, about warfare and the misery it causes." 

I guess this is a good time to mention that the song was released at the tail end of the Cold War, in which people were very concerned about the threat of nuclear warfare, and how the nations that declared themselves the most powerful could more often than not be considered the nations that were the most feared.  Certainly this was the case back in 1985, and some people are concerned that the recent happenings in Russia and Crimea are going to reawaken tensions between nations.  Here's hoping that it doesn't come down to that, but as I type this out, the world continues to watch.

But as a single, it performed extremely well.  Not only did it hit #1 in Canada and the United States, but in the UK, it was the highest charting single for the band, peaking at #2.  And it was enough of a success for the band to win a Brit Award in 1986 for "Best British Single".

And, just think...that was the moment in which they ruled the music scene.  Go figure.