Not All Hotels Are Rated On Trip Advisor

BetweenTheVirtualAndTheSpaceLies
DigressionVille


A funny thing happened over the expanse of the long weekend just past.

Everywhere I looked, or rather listened, there seemed to notions in the air of that crazy, mixed-up  high-ended (pretend)low-rent artist emporium in New York city called the Chelsea Hotel.

Or some variation on the theme.

First, it was E. figure out how to play the Leonard Cohen ode to both the Chelsea and Janis Joplin too.

Mr. Cohen's song is so simple and yet, as so much of his stuff is, so powerful. Not that it is all sweetness and light by any means.

And then there was the fact that there was a whole lot of Joni Mitchell going down early Sunday as E. and e. fiddled around in the kitchen making slightly artistic breakfasty stuff, which made me think, when I came up from the Subterranean Blues Room, that it really was a Chelsea morning.

All of which was accentuated, I think, by the fact that E. was also just finishing reading Patti Smith's memoir 'Just Kids'.

Of course, contemplating the artist's life and all it can be is a powerful and exciting thing, indeed.

And it's something I, as a parent, hope I can help my kids can aspire to for as long as they can, including forever, if that's the way things go.

But that does not mean that I don't simultaneously worry about the flipside and all that can go wrong for them if they really do decide to reach for that life.

On so many levels.

Because not everybody who rides the flipside can make it all the way through like, say, Charles Bukowski did.

Or at least seemed to to do.

And then, suddenly, up popped Mr. Bukowski on the BlogCrawl narrating a marvelous 1990 documentary about the real people (and it is they who truly make up the marvelous part) who once lived at the Madison Hotel which is located at the other end of the low rent/no Trip Advisor rating spectrum from the Chelsea on skid row in Los Angeles.

And that got me to thinking of a song by a member of the Dublin Diaspora named Sean Kangataran who now lives and makes music not far from the Madison in Echo Park.

More specifically, I thought about Sean's song called 'Write About' that includes more than a few lines about the flipside and how most of us who brush up against it usually pull back.

For all the right reasons, I think.

Anyway, given all that I decided to cover the tune as part of the next Sunday Setlist (which is coming).

So, by way of a preview, here it is, with rambling introduction that hopefully makes the gobbledygook above a little more clear....

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Noticed something that leaked through my temporary anti-politics Chinese Wall on the Twittmachine feed earlier today....Which is that the Dean, Vaughn Palmer, notes that E-BC is saying there will a big jump in  provincial voter turnout when the final votes are counted first thing next week...And given that most of those votes came early, before the apparent collapse...Well...Who knows?

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Updated: Music For Moving...

YouCanAlwaysCome
HomeAgainVille

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Week After All The After-After Parties Update... The preview track to the next Sunday Setlist is now up...Here.
Election After-After-After Party Update....Have a new Setlist all ready to go...And E. and I have done a little recording...Just have to put things together...Won't be one of those 'One long take thingies' though...Sorry for the delay...
In this Double-Secret Probation Update, have also tacked on our 'Here's To The State Of The Golden Era' tune onto this post as well...It is a re-worked version of an old Phil Ochs song about a political party that was once run by a leader whose iron fist was wrapped in think-tank rags...Of course, said party is now run by a very different leader, although the spinners and the cronies are all still there...We sing about that stuff too...

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Our oldest kid is coming home next week. is back in town, and she has re-activated her Busking Blog.

So.

This Sunday's Setlist is, I guess, about that.

Sort of...

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Footnotes:

First up is Neil Young's 'Long May You Run', which is self-explanatory...The little lyrical change at the top of the third verse had more to do with our kid coming to the age of realization of pop-culture in the mid-nineties...And while I was no Royal Tennenbaum about the thing, if I had to it all over again...Well...

Next up is Ben Gibbard and Jay Farrar's ode to a post-Road Jack Kerouac searching for solace in 'Big Sur'...Because, sometimes home and comfort and all that is a state of mind I guess...And sometimes it's not...It's probably worth mentioning here that Big Sur is the first place E. ever went camping...

Third is young Bruce Springsteen's 'Wild Billy's Circus Story'....Because E. is coming home to an electoral circus and all that entails...I mention the tuba on the pod...But I forgot Danny Federici on the accordian!...

Last is Robbie Robertson's (and Levon Helm's) 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down'...Because E. is actually American...And because Mr. Helm died a year ago this week...And, well, because it is my greatest desire, in my retirement, to set up rambles as often as possible so that my kids can come home and we can play with our musical friends and family all night long...

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Image at the top of the post?....Our youngest kid riding our oldest kid's old bike on the edge of a Lotuslandian microclimatological blossom-blizzard this past Saturday afternoon...
There is a super-secret bonus track for those that hang around to the end...Another lullaby...This one from 'The Frames' and all of Hansard's rambling friends and family too (watch the second half, it will do you heart good)...

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More On The New Rovians Of The Lotuslandian Sage.

ThePoliticsOfTotalDestruction
AttackEverythingVille


Well, well, whadd'ya know.

Christy's $10K per month plumber put together the final attack ad just before Crony Capitalist Tuesday.

NVG has the story.

Meanwhile, Alison is keeping score on the federal front.

Seriously....

How low to do you have to sink to win in this country these days?


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In the 'who really cares' Dept....MSmyth of The Province says he has seen the numbers/correspondence, properly date-stamped I'm sure, that says the New Rovians really did have numbers before CCTuesday...Apparently, according to Smyth (and a few 'Bams!' from Dmitri the Liberal), it came down to a rise for them among old folks and a total collapse of the gender split...So...Women broke for Christy....Really....The one thing I really find interesting about this is how the New Rovians all seem to point back to the debates as the big, big turning point...Clearly, the post-debate spincycle trumped and totally subverted reality...Guess that flash poll, which Paul Willcocks and I discussed here, really only did give a momentary 'skin deep' assessment of all that was later spinnable.
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A Confederacy Of Smugness.

There'sNoHistoryLike

ReSpinnissionistHistoryVille


I noticed it Tuesday afternoon over at Bob Mackin's place.

Essentially, Uncle Bob suggested that the BC Liberal braintrust, who ignored the election act earlier in the day when they instructed their horses to campaign pretty much all morning long on the Twittmachine, was worried that they and theirs were really and truly doomed four hours before the polls closed.

And, never one to leave things incomplete, Mr. Mackin followed this up on Thursday with the following:

Media and scholars will study for years to come (to see) how the BC Liberals defied the odds (and the polls) and won British Columbia's 40th provincial election on May 14.

Liberal sources told me they were truly surprised at what happened. They would've been overjoyed with a minority government for Christy Clark, but were already resigned to hearing the words "Premier-designate, Adrian Dix."...


But....

Then came the following, from an un-bylined story that was posted on the CBC website Thursday evening (although it was something you would have heard about if you were listening to Mr. Quinn's little radio show Thursday afternoon):

While the rest of British Columbia was shocked by the B.C. Liberal party's majority victory in Tuesday's election, the man in charge of the party's internal polling was not.

Dimitri Pantazopoulos, strategist and internal poll runner for the B.C. Liberals, said he predicted his party would win 48 seats, only two off the actual result. That, in spite of the fact, that nearly every other pollster was calling for an NDP landslide...

{snippety doo-dah}

...The B.C. Liberal pollster says the pre-election results were shared with about eight party insiders, but political candidates would not have been aware of them...


Now.

I have no idea if this is pure revisionist codswallop or if it's for real.

(Update Sunday May 19th...MSmyth of The Province says he has seen the numbers/correspondence, properly date-stamped I'm sure, that says they did have numbers, and it came down to a rise for them among old folks and a total collapse of the gender split...Women broke for Christy....Really?)

But you may wish to consider the source.

And you might also wish to consider the thin, but very opaque and stinky, cloak of obfuscatory fertilizer that is the claim that only 'about 8 (unidentified/unidentifiable) party insiders' were told the super-secret good news before the fact.

Regardless....

Perhaps you've forgotten that the good Ms. Pantazopoulos was not always an internal 'BC Liberal' pollster. In fact, awhile back he once worked for the Fed-Cons before he more recently worked it, hard, on the 'swing riding' strategy inside the 'all oral all the time' office of Premier Christy Clark.*

And when he is not generating super-secret poll results and/or trying to subvert democracy by helping to run schemes that funnel government-collected information on private citizens into the databases of whatever political party he is selling himself to on any given day of the week, Mr. Pantazopoulos is also the 'Director of the Municipal Governance Project' at the very finest of the fine 'Manning Center for Democracy'.

Anyway....

Once Mr. Pantazopoulos let the cat out of the proverbial bag on the people's broadcaster (that is still not quite being run by David Frum), well....

The real chortling of the smug, one of whom is also a big, big part of the Manning Center  (as is 'retired businessman' Gwynn Morgan), began in earnest:

****

So, recapping...

The folks that brought the Rovian Rules to federal politics in this country were, apparently, the real secret weapon of the Marissenites here in Lotusland.

Which is really, really bizarre if you think about it (especially if you recall what  The New Rovian Riders of The Purple Manning Swiftboat Sage did to a guy named Stephan Dion five years or so ago).

All of which is bad enough.

But at least with the New Rovians it's clear who and (if you've been paying attention) what it is you are up against.

But when it comes to which Wizards are actually standing behind the innermost gilt-edged political party curtains here in British Columbia?

Well, as she so often does, Alison has that story and much more:

On Ken Boessenkool's twitter account at Kool, Topp, & Guy Public Affairs - the political consultancy firm formed in February - Christy's former chief of staff Ken Boessenkool and Christy's election advisor Don Guy are busy congratulating Nick Kouvalis of Campaign Research on Christy Clark's federal ConservaLiberal campaign win. 

The third partner in the firm is BC NDP campaign director Brian Topp.

Now.

You may (or may not) remember that I noted, with interest, that the wild Progressive Boys backed two horses (i.e. both Christy Clark and George Abbott) in the last BC Liberal Party leadership race awhile back.

But that was different, I think, because it would appear that the strategy there was designed to ensure that the Progressive Boys would have a hand in running the BC Liberal Party's Griftopia Division no matter what.

But this new thing...

This thing where a single PR firm does a good chunk of the wurlitzer cranking for both sides during a general election campaign...

I mean, why would a tight little cluster of political operatives/spinners do something like that?

Well?

How do political operatives/spinners make sure that they can get their snouts as deeply into the big money PR trough as possible between elections no matter what?

Are you getting my drift now?

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* I've said it before, and I'm pretty sure I'll be saying it again....Regarding all the dirty trickery which was shown, in the public prints, to be going on inside the Premier's office....Woodward and Bernstein most definitely did not back off and stop digging entirely when they got inside the Nixon Whitehouse...If you get my drift.
And...They keep using that word 'Democracy'....I do not think it means what they say it means.


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What Eby Said.

ThereIsNoNeedToWallowInTheGutter
ToWinVille


Only now am I finally coming to the realization that maybe, just maybe, it was actually a good thing that David Eby did not make it onto the Vision Vancouver city council slate in 2008.

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The following was taken directly from Mr. Eby's Facebook page this morning.

Dear Friends:

Thank you so much for supporting me in our historic victory in Vancouver Point Grey.

I am told that this is only the third time in Canadian history that a successful provincial party leader has been unseated in his or her riding. Whether or not that statistic is correct, there is little doubt that we achieved something remarkable on Wednesday. You, our volunteers and supporters, along with the amazing citizens of Vancouver Point Grey, made it happen.

Thank you.

Like me, in our party's darkest moments on election night, you may have wondered whether the recipe for success in politics in British Columbia involves putting your opponent's head on a weather vane in a crude animation, hiring a phone bank, and calling it a day.

While one of the most vicious political efforts we have ever seen did succeed on Tuesday, we dealt the leader of that dishonest, misleading campaign a serious blow in Vancouver Point Grey. And next time, I know we will win across the province.

As our defeated premier calls around to her new MLAs to ask someone to resign for her, smile as you imagine the conversation, and gather your energy from it.

Because we do not have time to mourn.

The Liberals will try to choose the safest riding possible for Ms. Clark, but there is no safe seat for her. On Tuesday, a riding that has elected Liberals for more than a decade, the second wealthiest riding in BC, asked Ms. Clark and the Liberal party, politely, to leave. Others will as well.

Perhaps we will pick up another seat, or two, or more, as our unelected Premier tours the province. We will meet Ms. Clark wherever she shows up with an aggressive campaign that tells the truth. I can't wait to work a phone bank and knock on doors for that byelection. Sign me up.

We can also start the hard work at home to fight back with the truth.

In our riding, the truth telling will start with an effort to save the Therapeutics Initiative, the agency that provides BC's healthcare system with impartial, independent advice about drug safety and efficacy. At a cost of one million dollars a year, it saves the lives of children, seniors and the very ill from unanticipated medication side effects. It saves millions of our tax dollars every year.

The Liberals have cut off the TI's access to anonymized health care data and cut all of their funding. That decision is unacceptable. The truth must win in this fight.

I hope you, in your community, will find your local fight for truth. Because only the truth will defeat the kind of systematic dishonesty we saw during this campaign. And we can't afford to lose next time.

Thank you to everyone who worked on our campaign, and everyone who supported a BC NDP candidate. Thank you to Adrian Dix for his strong leadership in the face of withering personal attacks. Thank you to every candidate who stood for a different way of doing politics, and for the truth.

But most of all, thank you to the voters of Vancouver Point Grey for electing a BC NDP MLA for the first time in more than a decade. Many of you told me you were voting NDP for the first time ever. I will not let you down.

Yours truly,

David Eby
MLA for Vancouver Point Grey

****

Now.

Somebody asked me yesterday if I thought Mr. Eby was leadership material.

As in leadership of the BCNDP.

I said that I thought it would be tough, at least in the short term, given how much structure there is to the Dipper party compared, for example, to the BCL which is a party that will take any carpet-bagger they can find (and/or 'coax' out of a Talk-Show booth) if they think said carpet-bagger can win.

But now?

Well, after reading the statement above and having watched, up close, how Mr. Eby comported himself during the recent campaign, I am not so sure.

Because, despite all the talk over the last couple of days about how you can only beat the folks who have imported the Atwater/Ailes/Rove Rules into our fair Province by getting down into the gutter with them, I still want a Premier that can win with facts and decency and compassion and an honest, but not naive, desire to do the right thing.

And from a real politick point of view that is most definitely not craven, I also want a Premier that really and truly can mobilize both the passions and the votes of young people.

Personally, I'm starting to think that Mr. Eby can do all of those things.

OK?


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BC Election After-After Party...Is There Anything That The Pollsters Didn't Get Catastrophically Wrong?

Who'sLikelyNow
SampleSchmampleVille


Well.

Actually.

Maybe.

Especially if you just look at just Vancouver, proper:

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Thanks very much for the most non-complex/non-algorithmic/non-allegorical (ie. simple arithmetic) analysis, above, that was provided by a reader off-line...Pretty interesting, no?....Of course, if you take this and Van Isle too?....Well, it tells you that the Dippers really and truly did get stomped, and actually did way, way worse than even that overall awful 39% in the rest of the Province...Which is my point about potential pollster sample skewing in the sub-header...
In case you missed it, Eric Grenier is worth reading today....If only because he is honest enough to say that he doesn't know what the heckfire happened...Furthermore, at this point he really has no idea how to fix the problem...And I honestly wonder, as Bob Mackin kinda/sorta suggested late yesterday afternoon, if the campaigns themselves even knew what was coming as of 8:01pm last night...

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My Morning Ride.

Purposefully went by my favourite H(a)eymen Corner on the way in to work this morning...

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George Heyman's win last night was interesting, I think,  because it kind of went against the grain. After all, it occurred in an affluent riding where the BCL was supposed to be golden, and Mr. Heyman is both a former labour leader and a greeniacal grand poo-bah to boot. Additionally, Heyman was the guy the Globe took a run at in its bizarre editorial late last week.

And then there is the following to consider  (as one of our readers noted off-line last week after it was telegraphed, on camera, in that advance polling station conflaguration)....

Vancouver Fairview, where Mr. Heyman defeated Therapeutics Initiative killer Margaret MacDiarmid, may very well have been the bye-bye site of choice for the personally-defeated Christy Clark.

So.

Where will the defeated-one decide to run in a by-election now?

I mean, does she and hers have the juice to force Andrew Wilkinson to step down from the safest of safe seats in the province?

Or will it be Stillwell?

After all, it's not like the defeated-one could finally administer the coup-de-grace upon the scalp of  Smilin' Sammy, given his big win down by the water (not to mention the fact that it would be cruel and unusual punishment for the Spam-A-Lotteers who may finally be in line for gainful employment once again).

And as for Fraserview where a member of Ms. Clark's Parachute-Club, Suzanne Anton, just managed to squeak in?

Well, in a bye-bye there would be no grand bogey-man for them to play against.

Which means that if she did go head-to-head with Gabriel Yiu, it is actually possible that Ms. Clark could lose.

Then again...

I guess there is always Kelowna...


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Why is it my favourite corner of the Heyman variety?...Well, the sleeves off of those signs kept disappearing...And, within a day or so, they would be back...It was a real exercise in perseverance by the folks who live behind that hedge.
Apologies for the delay in the appearance of the next setlist...E. and I didn't get so far last night...And e. actually really got into chasing the numbers now that she understands who the thing really works (which may or may not be a good thing)...
Update: Gosh...Forgot about the Sultan-Of-Swing...Ya, Ralph'd probably do it...


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My Own Private 8:01 Club: It Would Appear That, Like Traffic Laws, The Current Premier Believes...

...That The Election Act Of British Columbia Does Not Apply To Her.

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Update 11:00pm Tuesday....Well, that was most interesting/disturbing...Guess it really is going to be my own Private Idaho for awhile...Going to be interesting to think this one through because I, for one, am not going anywhere...Really did think that the song below was going to be a farewell for a now bygone era though...Clearly, I was way wrong about that...Thing is, the other stuff, the stuff that actually matters (much of which is in the lyrics of said song)....Well, you and I both know that we are not wrong about any of that...OK?

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From Andrew MacLeod's Twittmachine feed on the afternoon of May 14th, 2013:

Now.

It is my opinion that the sending out such a press release to the proMedia essentially constituted an election advertisement from a specific candidate campaigning in a specific riding...

On election day.

Therefore....

****

And now....

You will have to excuse me for for the next little while.

Because I'm going to take my mind off the mayhem for the time being by making some music with my kid this evening.

And if you, dear reader, feel the need to take a break from it all over the next couple of hours yourself?

Well...

You can always listen to a tune E. and I recorded about this time last year... It's a re-worked version of an old Phil Ochs tune (thanks for the idea Beer!) that he, himself, re-worked some 40 years ago for all the right reasons...Anyway, I hope our version is truer than ever 'round about midnight in the here and now.

OK?

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And, speaking of numbers and aggregates and all that...The last Sunday Setlist has now been listened to more than six thousand times...You all do know that I can't even process that...Right?



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The First Order Of Business In My Own Private 8:01 Club Will Be Announced At...

...Well, you know.

(when, I mean).

Stay tuned.


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Meanwhile, Bob Mackin thinks he's hearing the sounds of desperation ringing out from the dinner table deep within the BCL bunker....

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Election Eve Update: The Last Word Goes To...

....Christy Clark.

"We all say things when we are trying to get elected." 

Christy Clark Excusing Her By-Election Candidate's Outrageous Statements

Sept 21, 1012

"You can't steal an election in a democracy"

Christy Clark's Post Civic Election 'Analysis' Of The James Not Jim Skullduggery

Nov 19, 2005, CKNW Radio

****

In other words...

Facts are for suckers...

And.

Common decency is for losers...

And.

Honesty doesn't matter as long as you win...

OK?



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And, in looking at the final breakdowns from Angus Reid, in which the Dippers are up by nine overall and are still winning, or in a dead-heat, in every single region of the province and in every single demo except one...Which means?....Well....If you are going to cajole folks to go to the polls tomorrow here's the ticket we're looking for...Essentially, women of any age who don't drive European SUV's...
Have fun out there tomorrow folks...And if you notice any funny business, from election act-defying photo-ops to overzealous scrutineering in an apparent attempt to clampdown on certain demos (I would think, based on what they've already done, that this might involve BCL attempts to turn away young folks, especially in, say, far west Lotusland)...Well...make note, and let us know down the road...



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