Contact Subscribe WhereTheHeck

Old Hat To Leonard Cohen Is New Look For DrHGuy

Filed under: HOAG Site | By DrHGuy | May 14, 2008 at 6:36 am

It’s A Heck of a Hat



DrHGuy’s Double Breasted Suit On Order
World Tour Scheduled In 15 Years

Possibly Related Posts:

Comments (0)

Corrections, Emendations, Additions, and Explanations

Filed under: HOAG Site | By DrHGuy | May 13, 2008 at 11:39 am

1. The Very Very Good Girl - SportsBizPro Nuptial Quiz

One of the choices for this multiple choice photo-based query was inadvertently omitted. Fans of Lily Tomlin and the University of Missouri will recognize the reference immediately but the image should be clear to most folks. The option has been added to the original post and is displayed in bold font below.



In this post-wedding photo of Very Very Good Girl, she is

A. Dancing with exuberance and abandon
B. Shimmying out of her gown with exuberance and abandon
C. Demonstrating the overhead, two-handed throw used to inbound the ball in soccer with exuberance but not so much abandon
D. Posing as the model for a hood ornament
E. Performing the Antler Dance, which she chose for the Bride and Groom First Dance
F. Completing the toss of the bridal bouquet, causing the assembled unmarried women, ostensibly gathered to catch the flowers, to scatter in terror as though the floral arrangement were a live hand grenade.


2. Happy Birthday, Judy Collins - and Thanks

Included in this post was Leonard Cohen’s story of being introduced to Judy Collins for the first time:

[Cohen:] A friend of mine introduced me to Judy Collins. I went to her house and sang her a couple of songs that didn’t interest her and she said to me “Come back if you have something I might like.” A few months later after having finished “Suzanne”, I called her from Montreal and sang it to her on the phone. She wanted to sing it right away. Mary Martin, who became my manager, called John Hammond, who knew Judy Collins’ record company. He took me to lunch near the Chelsea Hotel and asked me to sing a few tunes. He said “You got it!”, I could start to record a record. …

I received an email from an “anonymous fan of Judy Collins,” politely pointing out that Judy Collins tells the story differently. Her version, which she has consistently reported since the time of her songbook in 1969 (a memory confirmed by Jac Holzman in Follow the Music), is that Cohen sang a couple of songs and she (Collins) then recorded Suzanne and Dress Rehearsal Rag almost immediately rather than instructing Cohen to come back when he had something she might like.

In addition, this fan noted that Collins “also recorded dozens of Cohen’s songs and is his biggest, if that is possible, fan.”

While I initially felt the differences between the stories was of modest significance, I now think adding the Judy Collins version to the original post is worthwhile because the implications of the fact that the incident is remembered differently are themselves interesting, and it was, after all, a post celebrating Judy’s birthday.

On the other hand, I am at fault for not elaborating on the extensive support that Judy Collins provided for Cohen, especially when he was making the transition from poet to singer. My only defense - and it’s inadequate - is that most regular readers of my posts are Cohen fans who know about the role Judy played in his career. I do occasionally forget that not everyone who, for example, finds one of my entries via Google, is aware of such background. I should know better.


3. Why The 2008 Leonard Cohen World Tour Is Opening In Fredericton

An impassioned but anonymous comment and a couple of emails objected to my self-labeled “guess” that one reason Leonard Cohen’s Tour opened in a series of smaller venues was to work out any kinks in the new show before moving to stadiums and other stages with larger audience capacity.

The writers seemed to object primarily to my characterization of towns like Fredericton as “small venues” and to my likening them to “off-Broadway” in the theater world. I don’t think that either of those terms qualify as insults.

Defining “small venue’ seems an arithmetic function. The Fredericton Playhouse has a capacity of just over 700. Compared to a stadium holding thousands, that seems to me to be a small venue.

The nearest theater to my home with live performances turns out to be about the same size (800 seats) as the Playhouse.1 I would describe it as small venue as well, although I note that most theaters of this size preferentially use the euphemism “intimate” instead of “small” in their marketing.

If Leonard Cohen has opened his tour here, I am certain that, after I recovered from the shock, I would write an much more sardonic and much nastier post, if only because I know a lot more about the flaws of this area than I know about Eastern Canada.

And, contrary to some of my correspondents, I feel “Off-Broadway” connotes an avant-garde, cutting edge approach to theater as well as a certain sophistication. But what do I know? Let’s check the American Theater Guide’s take on “off-Broadway:

By the 1960s Off-Broadway theatres were often providing much of the most exciting theatre in New York. Among the notable producing groups were the Circle in the Square, La Mama, the Living Theatre Company, the Negro Ensemble Company, the Phoenix Theatre, and the New York Shakespeare Festival. Many playwrights, such as Beckett, Genet, and the Americans Sam Shepard and A. R. Gurney Jr., have been presented in New York almost solely in Off-Broadway houses, and several playwrights, such as Tennessee Williams, announced a preference for Off Broadway after their later plays were not well received uptown.

Well, how about the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:

The term was first used to refer to experimental plays produced on low budgets in small theatres, which provided an alternative to the commercially oriented Broadway theatres. Off-Broadway theatres grew in quality and importance after 1952, with the success of José Quintero’s productions. Plays by Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, and Lanford Wilson were first produced off Broadway, as were avant-garde works by Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, and Harold Pinter. Many new plays are now staged in well-equipped Off-Broadway houses, and Off-Broadway theatre has its own set of awards, the Obies. As production costs increased, smaller and more experimental theatres emerged; these were quickly labeled Off-Off-Broadway.

Yep, I can certainly see why that would rile some folks.

Perhaps the point is that - even if my speculation is accurate - opening a tour in showplaces that are smaller more intimate doesn’t negate the other attractions of those locations.

I once knew a woman who was attractive, witty, and smart, but her most powerful skill was the capacity to convince every male within within sight (and some who weren’t) that she was focused exclusively on him. This phenomenon was not dependent on explicit or implicit declarations from her and it took place even among those of us who observed it happening to others. If her attentions seemed to turn to one guy, the rest of us would immediately console ourselves with “That poor schmuck. He actually believes that she is interested in him.”

Well, Leonard Cohen is a bit like that. Those of us who are fans all want him to love us or our town or our interests the best. And sure enough, if one meets him, sees him at a concert, receives an email from him, or has any contact with him, it is overwhelmingly clear that Leonard Cohen thinks that person is someone special, that there is a resonance shared between them that is unique and wonderful.

I suspect that pointing out any possible motivation for Cohen being kind to a visitor, grateful to an audience, or gracious to a blogger other than a kinship of souls invites such protests. As far as I can determine, Cohen is genuinely fond of almost all his concert sites, especially the Canadian locations. He often, in fact, points out a special literary, political, or personal connection with the places he plays.

The problem is that Cohen being fond of a city may not be sufficient for some folks. Everyone wants to be #1 and every audience wants to be Leonard Cohen’s favorite.

It’s not just audiences. Watch or read a few Cohen interviews. Journalists fall over themselves to make it clear to readers and viewers that their relationship with him supersedes and transcends the connection between reporter and subject.

The same process, by the way, goes on in large venues. In Best Hook For Leonard Cohen 2008 Tour Schedule Announcement, I wrote about …2

The Jingoism Hook

On the other hand, the list of concert sites is a genuinely fresh addition to the available facts. Moreover, it is a data domain that enables the emergence of gloriously chauvinistic provincialism. The blurb from The Canadian Press is instructive:

Leonard Cohen announces world tour after hall of fame induction

Hot on the heels of his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Leonard Cohen has announced a world tour. It’s being hyped as the first time the Montreal-born performer takes to the live arena in 15 years. Cohen, who was inducted into the hall of fame Monday night in New York City, will kick off the tour June 6 and 7 at Toronto’s Sony Centre for the Performing Arts. He’ll give three shows at the Montreal International Jazz Festival on June 23, 24 and 25 at Place des arts. He’s expected to play Europe for the rest of the summer.

This piece has a couple of the essentials, the reference to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction and the 15 year gap since the last tour.3

The article goes on to list the dates and specific venues of the five Canadian performances, appending as an afterthought the wonderfully nonspecific and even a bit skeptical comment “He’s expected to play Europe for the rest of the summer.”4

I suspect only the civility and and tact seemingly inherent to Canadians prevented a final paragraph on the lines of “And he won’t be appearing anywhere in the United States. Suck on that, Yanks. Nanner, nanner, nanner.”

The first lines of the Globe and Mail article, Cohen tour his first in 15 years, are equally revealing:

He may be Montreal’s man, but Toronto might just be his mistress.

Iconic Canadian singer-songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen has revealed plans for his first proper tour in 15 years, and it kicks off in Toronto, at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, on June 6 and 7. And it’s not the first time the cloistered Cohen has picked Toronto for a comeback.

So, not only is the alliteratively cloistered Cohen an “iconic Canadian singer-songwriter,” he is an “iconic Canadian singer-songwriter” with a special connection to one particular Canadian city - Toronto - where the Globe and Mail is the hometown paper.

The nationalism angle is uniquely appealing in that, by its nature, reverting to pride of place renders the exposition automatically superior to analogous essays originating in other areas. And, this phenomenon is hardly an exclusively Canadian aspect. Heck, if Leonard’s tour had begun - as God surely intended - in Chicago, we would be reading headlines that start with USA! USA! USA! …

Heck, the real problem is how disappointed all these folks are gonna be when they finally realize that Leonard likes me best.



Footnotes


  1. I had originally thought the local theater to be smaller and responded to the comment in that belief. I found the correct capacity this morning. ~back~
  2. I am quite the equal opportunity insult-dispenser ~back~
  3. I’m unclear why the time since the last tour is characterized as being “hyped.” “Hyped” typically indicates an attempt to publicize an element of a story in an exaggerated or misleading manner; the 15 year gap seems to be nothing more or less than simple arithmetic ~back~
  4. This classic structure is forever exemplified in the perhaps apocryphal Sunday Post headline, “Titanic Sinks. Dundee Man Drowned!” ~back~

Possibly Related Posts:

Comments (0)

LiveWords Resurrected

Filed under: Cyber Tools, HOAG Site | By DrHGuy | April 8, 2008 at 11:19 pm

I have reactivated LiveWords, a semi-automatic word definer. For information, including instructions for use, see LiveWords Plug-in For Ben




Possibly Related Posts:

Comments Off

Out Of The Closet Into The Blog

Filed under: HOAG Site, Self-Referential | By DrHGuy | April 6, 2008 at 1:20 pm



Awakening The Monster

It started innocently.

At the time - a week or two ago - it seemed like a good idea.

I would rearrange1 the books, papers, files, folders, print-outs, food wrappers, ads, and other detritus which cluttered the area around my desk and an adjacent closet in hopes of diminishing the chaos into which my life had descended during my walker-bound summer of 2007, a period during which my philosophical bearings shifted from a classic Kierkegaardian dialectic filtered through my homespun variant of Descartes’ epistemology to a core belief that the essence of what makes one civilized, distinguishing and protecting us from the barbarians, infidels, and philistines always encamped around the perimeter of ones life, at the ready to storm any breach in the defenses, is the capacity to position every item that might be needed in the next 24 hours within an arm’s reach.

And, yes, I am aware that this sorting, assessment, and redistribution of matter could have been completed any time since I re-evolved the capacity for bipedal locomotion some four months ago. To apply the sports cliché of the moment, it is what it is.

Isn’t it?

It is.

What it is, that is.



An Aside Re The DrHGuy Twitter Risk2
I now find it incumbent to allay the fears of those currently wondering if the blogging of my concerns about cleaning my office are a signal that I have succumbed to twittering3 my life away in trivia-projectiles aimed at readers.

No, I describe the cleaning of Augean Closet4 because it has since expanded into …

An All-encompassing Obsession

I fear that - sigh - I feel compelled to put my life in order. You know, actually look at those legal papers and contracts I stuck in that drawer (I think) eight years ago, the ones that the feature articles in The Trib recommend one review yearly. Perhaps I’ll even plan something beyond avoiding problems. Heck, I might even figure out a way to make a buck. That sort of thing.

As one might guess, this will not be an afternoon’s work. And, until I reach homeostasis or come to my senses, whichever comes first, this spring cleaning-priority setting-life agenda writing-maintenance maintaining effort will displace much of the time I usually devote to creating Heck of a Guy posts.


In The Meantime, …

Legendarily abhorrent of a vacuum, however, nature has revealed a source of raw material for blog content via serendipity. Among the mass of material to be sorted, sieved, massaged, and rearranged are a batch of files originally gathered for their potential as shrapnel for the Heck of a Guy howitzers.

Consequently, lucky readers will now enjoy the bounty of content that was once considered to be, to maintain the metaphor, potentially deadly.

For example, the following will, for the immediately ensuing, indeterminate period, be considered an exemplary post:

The Esquire - Heck of a Guy Probably Headline Insertion Comparison

From Esquire, December 12, 2007, page 46:



From Heck Of A Guy, July 6, 2006:5


Today’s Parting Admonition

As per my Eighth Grade Class Motto,

Onward Ever, Backward Never



Footnotes


  1. Note the modesty of the task I set for myself at the time - I would “rearrange” things and, if that went well, perhaps then escalate my efforts to “straighten things out.” In any case, I eschewed more ambitious alternatives such as “organizing.” ~back~
  2. Does an aside about Twitter qualify as an atwitter ~back~
  3. For the six people in America who read blogs but don’t know about Twitter, “Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send ‘updates’ (or ‘tweets;’ text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific. Fans say they [Twitter and similar services] are a good way to keep in touch with busy friends. But some users are starting to feel ‘too’ connected, as they grapple with check-in messages at odd hours, higher cellphone bills and the need to tell acquaintances to stop announcing what they’re having for dinner.” The preceding description is excerpted from Wikipedia ~back~
  4. I have always found depictions of the cleaning of the Augean Stables spectacularly unimpressive. Wikipedia reports that The fifth of the Twelve Labours set to Herakles/Hercules was to clean the Augean stables in a single day. The reasoning behind this being set as a labour was twofold: firstly, all the previous labours exalted Heracles in the eyes of the people and this one would surely degrade him; secondly, as the livestock were a divine gift to Augeas they were immune from disease and thus the amount of dirt and filth amassed in the uncleaned stables made the task surely impossible. However, Heracles succeeded by rerouting the rivers Alpheus and Peneus to wash out the filth. These are the two most common classical art pieces associated with the Cleansing of the Augean Stables.


    As one who grew up on a small farm, I assure you that these images provide a totally inadequate sense of what it means to muck out a barn housing a few cows, let alone clean out the by-products of thousands of cattle and goats. ~back~

  5. See also

    ~back~

Possibly Related Posts:

Comments (2)

Don’t Give Up

Filed under: Bagatelles, HOAG Site, Leonard Cohen, Music | By DrHGuy | April 5, 2008 at 5:53 pm

From Leonard Cohen via Neo-Neocon to Billy Joel to Elton John resonating with Lady Lawanda to Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush

From left to right, Top: Leonard Cohen,1 Neo-Neocon,2 Billy Joel3
Bottom: Elton John,4 Lady Lawanda,5 Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush6


In The Beginning

Today’s music video selection evolved through a convoluted sequence of events this morning that began with …


Leonard Cohen
I routinely monitor blog references to Leonard Cohen.7 When an intriguing snippet showed up on one of the automated reports this morning, I followed it to …



Neo-Neocon
The April 4th post, What do Billy Joel and Leonard Cohen (and Billy Joel and Salman Rushdie) have in common? made the case that Cohen’s “Closing Time” is connected to Billy Joel’s “Piano Man:”

They’re both set in bars, of course. But the similarities don’t stop there. They’re both about the attempt to forget troubles in a throng of revelers, the pursuit of fun that can partake of desperation. And they’re both about the desire to forget loneliness, and the way it can sometimes pursue a person even in a crowd. Maybe especially in a crowd.
The difference is in the tone. Cohen emphasizes the dark within which a bit of light shines, while Joel sees light with overtones of dark. My guess is that Cohen was influenced in subtle ways by the earlier Joel piece when he made his own video. It’s almost a tribute to the first one, a deeply noir version of an already-slightly-noir vision. [Italics mine]

Given that, except for his first years as a professional when he worked and lived with the musicians at the core of folk singing, Leonard Cohen appears to have listened to only a small number of select contemporaneous singers8 and given the paucity of specific references to popular music in his work,9 the notion that “Closing Time,” a Leonard Cohen song that came out in 1992 was influenced by Billy Joel’s “Piano Man,” released 20 years earlier, seemed unlikely; that the video of “Piano Man” had a an impact on Cohen’s efforts seemed even more improbable.

On the other hand, I’ve too often been ambushed by my own logic, only to witness the presumably impossible occur, to cavalierly offer up absolute declarations without at least doing a cursory round of research about links between Leonard Cohen and …


Billy Joel

In the process of checking out Billy Joel, I came across a New York Times article, Elton John and Billy Joel, Talking About Songs by Anthony Decurtis (New York Times, Mar 10, 2002). The immediately relevant points were Billy Joel’s own characterization of “Piano Man,”

People who just know Billy Joel from top-40 hit singles may not like me, and I can’t say I necessarily blame them. I don’t think that really represents the sum and substance of my work. I think a lot of my hits were almost novelty songs. ”Uptown Girl” was a joke. So was ”Tell Her About It” — that was my take on the Supremes. Even ”Piano Man” was a wacko song. I mean, people thought it was Harry Chapin. But as long as it was a hit, that was all the record company cared about.

… and his response to the question, “Do you think you’ll write pop songs again?”

I don’t know what it will take. I always wanted to be a better lyric writer than I was. I wanted to write surrealistic lyrics like David Bowie or abstract lyrics like Dylan or philosophical lyrics like Leonard Cohen. Lyrics that weren’t so bloody literal. It’s interesting, because it will be going on 10 years since I’ve actually written a song.

While that was interesting and, in a generic way, supportive of my position, that same article also included this comment from …


Elton John

I mean, when I was a drug addict and at the depth of my despair, I used to listen to ”Don’t Give Up” by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush. That was my life in words and music. That’s what songs do to people. When I was at my worst, I still clung to music.

My focus then shifted to …



Lady Lawanda

Lady Lawanda, as some readers know, has been facing severe health problems that have been in exacerbation lately. And, while she belongs to the stiff upper lip, never say surrender school, “Don’t Give Up” certainly seemed a worthwhile theme for the weekend.

So, it was off to YouTube to find …



Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush

OK, “Don’t Give Up,” which came out in 1986, is hardly perfect. For one things, the lyrics describe the woes of a man who doesn’t fit the economic system as it existed in England during that period and the support offered by the woman in his life. It’s also a tad mawkish, it smacks a bit too much of a Stand By Your Man sentiment, and, as you’ll see, the video10 features one looooong and eventually awkward hug.

Still, Elton John saw something special in it - as do Lady Lawanda and I.

Maybe you will as well.

Don’t Give Up - Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush (Version 1)



Footnotes


  1. From Field Commander Cohen album ~back~
  2. From Neo-Neocon blog ~back~
  3. From Greatest Hits album ~back~
  4. From concert ~back~
  5. From Chocolodka post ~back~
  6. From Don’t Give Up video ~back~
  7. I also follow references to Anjani, Patient Compliance, and perhaps a half-dozen other topics ~back~
  8. See discussion at Leonard Cohen listens to? ~back~
  9. Among the few exceptions are, for example, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan ~back~
  10. There were originally two videos produced. The second featured the faces of Gabriel and Bush superimposed over the scenes of a town and its people struck by impoverishment ~back~

Possibly Related Posts:

Comments Off

Construction Delays

Filed under: HOAG Site | By DrHGuy | April 1, 2008 at 11:06 am



Heck Of A Guy Site In Final Stages Of Update

Today has been spent in applying a major upgrade to the WordPress software that operates the Heck of a Guy blog.1 It looks as though the problems in the changeover were limited to two or three files that were corrupted when they were copied into the system (probably the result of my anemic bandwidth), code differences that caused tools I had used for extended periods without problems to cease playing well together, and some processes undergoing such improvement that this blog’s antiquated layout, hobbled by the 30 or 40 temporary fixes I’ve installed in the two years since the blog began, just couldn’t handle them.

It looks as though, however, the significant glitches have been deglitched. There is a bit of cleanup and a few more items to check, but Heck of a Guy should be back in business tomorrow.



Footnotes


  1. The AlignMap, EnrichMap, and LeonardCohenSearch sites also underwent the same update; Heck of a Guy is, of course, the only one that suffered serious problems ~back~

Possibly Related Posts:

Comments (1)

Ponderously Postless

Filed under: HOAG Site | By DrHGuy | March 24, 2008 at 10:59 pm

DrHGuy spent the day pondering the imponderables.




Possibly Related Posts:

    No related posts
Comments Off

LiveWords Now Dead

Filed under: Cyber Tools, HOAG Site | By DrHGuy | March 5, 2008 at 5:27 am


EKG Flatline

Pronounced At 4:48 AM. Cause Of Demise: System Failure


Plug Pulled On Plug-in

As outlined in LiveWords Plug-in For Ben, I installed the LiveWords plug-in in hopes of providing blog viewers a means of conveniently finding definitions or explanations of words and terms.

I ended the post documenting the installation of LiveWords with “This should be considered LiveWords’ audition for the cast of Heck of a Guy.”

Well, not every American Idol contestant is a winner.

I awoke this morning to find this comment from Ben,

the free dictionary is the only one on the list that worked for me and after a time or two it began giving me advertisements instead of definitions

Bummer, eh?

To be fair the the LiveWords folks, I should note that the English language options (e.g., Wikipedia, Wictionary, Free Dictionary, etc.),1 on the LiveWords menu had worked and, as of this morning, had continued to work for me.

But, unless this sort of tool works for everyone, it’s counterproduct