"Wake up, it's time to die."

Rutger Hauer, "Blade Runner."

I seem to be gradually turning into a cross between the Kevin Spacey character in 'American Beauty' and the Anthony Hopkins character in 'The Remains of the Day.'

I felt 'American Beauty' was an over-rated film. 'The Remains of the Day' I liked much better, but the film is not as good as the book (a cliche, but true in this case). The novel by Kazuo Ishiguro is laced with dry humour that the movie doesn't covey as well.

I've also noticed that I've become attracted to Condoleezza Rice. I like the gap in her teeth. Did you know she's a musician?

I saw a couple of movies recently on video. One was called ‘Shackleton,’ and starred Kenneth Branagh. It a was about the British explorer Sir Earnest Shackleton, and his disastrous expedition to the Antarctic in 1914. Shackleton and his crew of 28 had set out to cross Antarctica (the big prize of being the first to reach the South Pole was taken by Norwegian Roald Amundsen in December of 1911). As they were heading south in their ship, the ice closed in, and they got stuck.

The ship was broken up, and the the crew were stranded in Antarctica at a time when no communication with the outside was possible. Antarctica is a big place, maybe the size of the continental U.S. When you include all the ice that surrounds it, it’s actually much bigger. Through incredible perseverence and deft leadership, Shackleton got the whole gang out alive, and notched one of the greatest survival stories in history.

A couple of things struck me. First of all, after spending from December 1914 to August 1916 stranded in an icy netherworld, many members of his crew then promptly enlisted in the army and served in the trenches in the First World War. I mean, holy glutton for punishment, Batman. Truly a different generation.

Secondly, what is the fucking point of crossing the South Pole? Shackleton had a notable history of Antarctic exploration, and was part of Robert Scott’s first assault on the pole in 1907. Nonetheless, it’s still kind of a manufactured exploration. But it came at the tail end of an era when exploration was an exalted profession, and explorers were rock-star-like celebrities. People like Shackleton would wander off somewhere, plant a Union Jack on some ice flow or on some mountain, then come home. At that point, they would begin a lecture tour, maybe write a book. Sell the story to the newspapers. They were celebrities, and would make their living this way.

Men like James Frazer, David Livingston and Henry Stanley spent the 1800’s romping through Africa, perhaps the last unknown (at least to Europeans and Americans) part of the world. By the turn of the 20th Century, explorers were running out of unknown places, and they turned to Antarctica. Their expeditions were in many cases privately financed. Your average industrialist, getting rich off of weapons manufacturing during the arms race that lead to World War One, would get some sweet talk from a guy like Shackleton.

“You know, Sir So-and-So, if I happen to come across some island in the Antarctic circle that no one has found yet, I can always name it after you.”

And exploration really captures the imagination. Whenever I’m over at Gabriola Island, and I climb through some expanse of bush to reach some neat little beach I didn’t know existed, or row the boat to some inaccessible piece of shoreline, I am filled with a sense of satisfaction.

I’m pleased to be one of only a few who would have made the effort to get that far. To be the only one would be an even greater feeling. It’s a neat concept to be the only one on Earth to have taken a particular path.

Now, take geography, and replace it with your own life. You are the only person who has taken the route you’re on. Feel good about it?

As often as not, we don’t, because it is drummed into our heads from all sides that there is a basic plan that we should follow. And yet many great people in history, many artists and leaders, have followed oddball paths, and it is exactly this that has put them in the position to create something unique when they needed to.

The best thing about Shackleton's fame is that it partly rests on how he made something out of a total screw-up. If things had gone perfectly--if he had simply hiked across Antarctica as he planned--he would likely have been a lesser historical figure.

Luckily for him, things got all fucked up.

I recently saw Super Robertson perform a short accoustic set. It was well done; he’s got a handful of tunes that are both catchy and suitable for an accoustic guitar. They’re varied enough to keep the set interesting, but are all still unmistakably Robertsonian.

The problem is, he can’t seem to figure out how to end the songs. He gets into them, goes for a couple of verses/choruses, then abruptly drives them off the road. He reminds me of that episode of the Beachcombers where some gung-ho kid takes off in a float plane, only to find that he doesn’t know how to land it.

He seems to do this stuff under the stage name of ‘Folk Robertson.’ I think so, anyway. He’s got more personas than Peter Sellers in ‘Dr. Strangelove.’ For a guy who calls himself ‘Folk,’ though, he seems to mumble a bit too much.

Of course, unintelligible lyrics are all part of rock and roll. But I always see folk musicians as different. The lyrics are a key part of what they’re all about. Can you imagine Paul Robeson railing against descrimination in garbled phrases that no one could understand?

I’m not much better at anunciation, and I’ve often thought that it would be helpful to have Stoke lyrics in CDs, but Smash, the bass player for Stoke, steadfastly opposes the printing of lyrics. He says that people should discover the lyrics bit by bit, that this is part of the magic of getting to know a song.

There is some merit in this argument. I remember as a kid being into a heavy metal band from France called Trust. Unlike other European metal bands (and perhaps typical of Frenchmen), they initially refused to sing in English. By the time their second album, ‘Repression,’ came out, however, they started releasing records in both French and English. The singer, Bernie Bonvisan, would re-do the entire vocal track for each record in a painstakingly constructed English translation.

When I first listened to the ‘Repression’ album I came across a song called ‘Sects.’ It had a line that went like this:

‘Dean Jones where did you come from?
Dean Jones was it for fun?
Dean Jones, is that your name?
Dean Jones, you die for fame.’

Later in the song they alter the last line:

‘Dean Jones, is that your name?
Dean Jones, A SIGN OF DEATH!’

I figured they were talking about American actor Dean Jones, star of Disney’s ‘The Love Bug.’

‘Fuck,’ I thought to myself. ‘The French must be really pissed off about EuroDisney.’

It was only after a few months that I realized it wasn’t ‘Dean Jones,’ that Bernie Bonvisan was singing about, but ‘Jim Jones.’ When he screamed it out with his French accent it sounded like:

‘Djeeeeeeeeem Jones, eeees zat your name?
Djeeeeeeeeem Jones, A SIGN OF DEATH!’

(Jim Jones, for those who don’t know, was a cult leader in Guyana who killed his followers with poison Koolaid.)

I remember another time when a guy was going on to me about a Slow song called ‘I Have Nothing to Say.’

“That is a great line,” he told me one day. “That’s the ultimate punk statement.”

And indeed it might have been, in a Seattle grunge kind of way, except that the song was actually called “I Have Not Been the Same.” Just another (admittedly rocking) tune about losing at love. When I informed him of this he was utterly deflated.

Getting back to Mr. Robertson, one of the highlights of watching his band Roadbed perform is a rendition they do of the Jackass Has Haybreath song ‘Bengal Tiger.’ I’m intimately familiar with the lyrics to ‘Bengal Tiger,’ as I’m the one who ‘wrote’ them. And Super is singing the wrong words.

In a way, though, I like his version better, so I’ve decided to keep quiet.