9 Represent

You occasionally hear places described by their area codes. For instance, Toronto's satellite communities are often collectively called, "the 905." Toronto's original area code was 416, and it has since added a second one that I can't remember, but it apparently has a six in it, so Drake had decreed that henceforth, Toronto shall be known as, "The 6."

But outside of Toronto's cultural currents, the numbers don't come up much. For instance, I've lived my whole life in the 519 area, yet those digits just sit in my phone's contact list doing nothing.

Until now, that is. I've heard the evening news refer to the 519 region a few times as shorthand for Southwestern Ontario. I suspect it's just because in our world of consolidated local news, it's a convenient way of using the same report on CTV's London and Kitchener stations without anyone noticing.

But it actually makes some sense. After all, the 905 and 416 may be at each other's throats in elections, but they really have a lot in common. The 519 is really more distinct culturally and economically. Yes, I hate allying with our rivals in London (the Knights are going down in the playoffs!) But there I go: we both care about junior hockey, while the GTA shows little interest. That settles it: Shad, as the foremost hip-hop artist in the 519 region, it falls to you to popularize the region as, "The 9."

From The Past Until Completion

You may have seen this video of a group called "Orkestra Obsolete" using old instruments to play New Order's 1983 synthpop classic, "Blue Monday":

(And here's the original for comparison.)

It's all using instruments from the 1930's.  It may seem like cheating to use actual electronics, but that granddaddy of electronic instruments, the Theremin, dates back all the way to 1920.  I can't seem to find much information on this "Orkestra Obsolete," so I don't know if they're going to do more of these anachronistic covers.  I hope so; I want them to try Steampunk where they actually use steam to perform punk.

So if you could have made a pretty good approximation of 1980's electronic pop fifty years earlier, I wonder what the people of the 1930's would have thought of it. Because it sounds so unlike any music of the time, I'm guessing they wouldn't have liked it. And that brings up a point I've heard people make before: like it or not, technology shapes our musical styles.  For instance, bass sounds have become more popular along with the abilities of our speakers.

So that makes me wonder: it was possible for people in the past to create modern music with what they had available, it just wasn't easy.  So just how many different styles of music might be possible, but difficult, today?

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #30

You'll see an TV entertainment show do a report on the Canadian Prime Minister visiting Washington.  But wait, the weird part is that the Prime Minister will be Justin Trudeau, and the entertainment show will be hosted by Ben Mulroney.

We Live In Cities You'll Never See On Screen

Recently, the Guelph Mercury, one of Canada's oldest newspapers, went out of print. It's still online, but losing there paper was a blow to the community, not to mention the loss of a bunch of jobs. Shortly thereafter, Postmedia, Canada's largest newspaper owner announced massive cutbacks. Publications were shut down, newsrooms were merged. Now, the London Free Press seems to be morphing into the National Post with a few pages of local news.

It can be hard to care about newspapers in our world that seems to be too connected. And after reading Christie Blanchford's coverage of the Jian Gomeshi trial, I'm really looking forward Postmedia's eventual collapse.   But even if you don't like particular papers, you have to admit that they fill a very important niche: local news.  The only other source is local TV newcasts, if your city is big enough to have one.

It's one of the weird aspects of our information society: the lack of local information. On the one hand, it's easier than ever to stay informed about what's happening world-wide. On the other, communicating and staying on touch with individuals is easy. But in between, there's an unserviced aspect of communication, one for informing yourself about your community.

Yes, there are possibilities: many neighbourhood associations have their own web pages. And a lot of communities have a social media presence. The problem is, you're reliant on other members of your community taking the initiative; we haven't reached the point where this kind of thing is expected, so it often doesn't happen, or people don't know where to find it.

Wearing The Pants In The Family

Well, I've just got to put the finishing touches on this post about the decline of Canadian print media and... wait, what's that? The Kamloops Blazers are wearing Cooperalls? Stop the presses!

If you're not familiar with the concept: in the early eighties, the Cooper sports equipment company experimented with long pants for hockey players, rather than the shorts-and-socks of tradition. They were briefly used by a few NHL teams, as well as in many minor leagues, but they fell out of favour and disappeared. (And to be clear, I now find that "Cooperall" was just one brand, and it was Kleenexed into being the name for all of the pants. It turns out the pants used in the NHL were not actually Cooperalls™.)

Cooperalls had become something of a punchline in recent years, so it was quite a shock when I was chanel-surfing and came across the Sportsnet Junior Hockey game of the week, with one of the teams in pants. I assumed that they just had weird socks that look like part of the shorts, but no, they were pants. Needing to convince myself I wasn't going crazy, I searched Twitter for "Kamloops Blazers" and found that nearly all the current tweets were commenting on the pants, with no mention of the game itself.

It turns out that this was a promotion, an eighties throwback night. You have to have respect for that kind of throwback. No cheap third jerseys or asking the audience to turn up in pastels, they went for truely retro uniforms. But what was really surprising is that people seemed supportive of it. Most of the aforementioned tweets were positive, appreciating the quirkiness and irony of it.

I found that surprising because hockey tends to be a sport that really takes itself seriously, and I would argue too serious. A sport that has some - let's face it - strange aspects could really benefit from learning to laugh at itself. It was refreshing to see people applaud instead of shouting-down a deviation from the traditional orthodoxy.

Maybe it was because this was Junior hockey. Maybe it was because it's the first time, and there'll be a different reaction if lots of teams break out the pants every season. Or it could be that Cooperalls have just receeded far enough into the rear-view mirror that they can be regarded as part of hockey tradition. Either way, I'm not expecting fans to welcome back the Fox Trax puck any time soon.

Speaking Words Of Wisdom

So I recently stumbled across the fact that both Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles covered both "Let It Be" and "Eleanor Rigby." If you'd like to hear them, um, consult this handy chart:

	Let It Be	Eleanor Rigby
Ray Charles	here	here
Aretha Franklin	here	here

I don't know, I just feel like someone should have mentioned this.  Yes, I know, you Baby Boomers were busy telling us we were lazy and should stop doing drugs and playing video games.  But if you were sitting on some intriguing musical nugget like that, you could have slipped it in there.  Say, tell us that we should get a job and be a productive member of society, like when Franklin collaborated with Duane Allman to cover The Band's "The Weight."

I guess the entire cultural heritage produced by a generation is a lot to pass on the younger folks.  Despite all of our society's celebration of the Beatles, there were still many people who didn't put two and two together and realize that Paul McCartney used to play bass for the Beatles before his solo career.  It's like, whoops, did we forget to mention that?

So now I'm wondering what we in Generation X may have forgotten to mention.  It's not just weird covers necessarily, though if that's what you're looking for:

• Tori Amos covering Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
• Alanis Morissette covering Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees"
• R.E.M. covering U2's "One"
• AlexisOnFire covering Midnight Oil's "The Dead Heart"

Hmm, what else.  Well, the guy from Foo Fighters was the drummer from Nirvana.  Don't fall for the conspiracy theories passed around social media - they're just trying to make fun of you.  And if you haven't heard, you should really know about Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke's fathers, just so you get the full ironic appreciation of their careers that we've been treated to.  Oh, and we're really sorry that we almost erased "Under Pressure" and "Superfreak" from the musical cannon by making half-assed samples into hits.  Check out the originals if you haven't already.

A Rare Right Turn

I'm honestly trying not to write too much about Donald Trump. I don't want to turn off readers, and I want to maintain my own sanity. But it's hard; he's such a perfect demonstration of all that's wrong with humanity. I mean, people were comparing his presidential run to that of David Duke in the eighties to demonstrate the shift in America's acceptance of extreme ideas. And the next thing you know, David Duke actually endorses Trump, and he waffles over it, and there are no consequences. It's like political gods (or devils) are toying with us.

(And I'm glad to say that Android is still interpreting my swipe of "presidential run" as "presidential ruin.")

But sometimes something comes up that I just can't ignore, like when NASCAR endorses Trump for president. That had sports journalists wondering, has a major sports organization ever endorsed a presidential contender before? It's hard to imagine, say, the NFL endorsing a candidate, if only because they rely on fans from all parts of the political spectrum. But to be clear, NASCAR itself didn't endorse Trump; the CEO of NASCAR, Brian France, merely endorsed Trump, at a rally, accompanied by several current and former drivers. It was enough that many people thought it was an official endorsement from the racing series itself. Trump himself wrongly said that the endorsement came from NASCAR itself, but on the list of Trump exaggerations, that doesn't even crack the top thousand.

At this point, I must ask you to stop and get all the "France endorses Trump" jokes out of your system.

This whole incident says a lot about the Trump phenomena and the cultural split in America. France felt comfortable endorsing him, presumably because NASCAR fandom is uniformly behind Trump, or close enough that an endorsement will do more good than harm. As I've mentioned before, NASCAR may like to portray itself as part of the sporting mainstream, but they are also willing to play right into their own stereotypes. Indeed, the organization has put considerable work into expanding outside its traditional white audience, which makes this whole thing perplexing. But that just demonstrates how Trump's support is so divorced from his actions. The campaign is entirely about attitude, so Trump's enemies seem to be the only ones concerned about his actual words.