Of Religion

Well, I've been holding off blogging about controversial topics like politics, the designated hitter and run-on sentences, but I think I'm going to break that rule and subject you to my take on religion.

I am a firm believer in the Church of the Drunken Trickster Gods. Basically, the DTGs are a bunch of lads (and one hot chick, whom they all think of as one of the Gods but secretly fancy, in great part because she can out-drink them and watches sports) who get together, drink a bunch of pints and cause mischief. The particular DTGs I believe in cause mischief by drunkenly out-doing each other in coming up with the most randomly outrageous schemes (which usually involve a cute woman) to get me to believe that everything will work out smashingly ... only to pull the rug from under my feet at the very moment my hope and trust in humanity is restored and I actually start actually believing things will work out. At that point the winner gets a free round or two. Possibly shooters. And they all point and laugh mockingly, knowing that they've bested me yet again and that balance has been restored to the multiverse.

There are a number of appealing elements to this religion. First, clearly, the DTGs made me in their image. Second, once you eventually figure out the central tenets of the religion, the DTGs's handywork can  be detected with some patience and cunning (hint: it usually starts with 'Hey, look, there's a cute woman smiling at me...') although they do tend do get deviouser and deviouser... Third, well, it can actually explain a heck of a lot throughout history, starting with Helen of Troy and ranging from Wallis Simpson to Janet Jones to 'Sundown' by Gordon Lightfoot to Gaius Baltar to Margaret Sinclair to Lady MacBeth to Andrea (oh... Andrea... ) Fourth, the DTGs can get away with lost week-ends, especially in late winter/early spring...

It's starting to make sense, right?

So, CRA, about that tax-free status...


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Where Was I: The Elmdale Tavern

Earlier tonight, I attended the Colleen Brown show at the venerable Elmdale Tavern.  I have a major complaint:  why the heck have I never been there before?

Situated on Wellington Street in Mechanicsville, the Elmdale, a 70-or-so-year-old tavern (no, really, it is a tavern, complete with the ‘Ladies and Escorts’ entrance, which is now the main entrance, and pickled eggs.  And pickled sausages.  And some sort of pickled cheese.  Anyway, it’s a real tavern, I tells ya…), has featured an eclectic musical line-up for at least the past year or so.  From the posters of past acts on the walls, they evidently feature both local and touring acts, folk, rock and perhaps punkish.  They have a fine selection of bottled and draft beers; in particular they had three flavours from Kichesippi brewery, including their newest offering, the Wuchak Black.  I had read twitter traffic about the Wuchak lately, and was hoping to run into it, so this was a pleasant random bonus.  What a beer!  Dark, hoppy, with a pleasurable lingering taste, it is a bit stronger than regular draft beers (6.4%).

So great music, great décor, great beer… What else?  Oh yeah, a great barmaid, who engaged me in conversation on beer, made sure we were not lacking for said beer, and put my good friend MtlBoy back in his place (as she served him beer), which is no small feat.

So did I like the Elmdale?

Well, it’s the type of joint where at 11 PM on a Wednesday night, surrounded by 25 other patrons, listening to a chanteuse from Alberta completely enveloping you in her melodious voice and observing the low-key-cool décor which utterly respects the tavern milieu, you realize that maybe, just maybe, you haven’t completely fucked everything up.

I wish Ottawa had more of those places...

What Am I Reading : Black Mass

The third and last book I picked up at the Harvard Co-op in early October, Black Mass was published in 2000 by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neil, two reporters from The Boston Globe.  It bills itself as ‘The true story of an unholy alliance between the FBI and the Irish Mob.’  ‘Unholy alliance’ does not come close to begin to describe the situation this non-fiction book addresses.

Black Mass sets out to document the relationship between James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, the head of the Winter Hill Gang (i.e., the Irish Mob) in Boston from the mid-1970’s to the mid-1990’s, as well as his top lieutenant, Stevie Flemmi, and the Boston office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, principally, but not limited to, Special Agent John Connolly.  Upon his assignment to the FBI Boston office in the early 1970’s, Connolly, a son of South Boston, an insular Irish working class Boston neighbourhood, had reached out to Whitey Bulger, already a legend in South Boston, whose influence was rising in the Boston Irish mob.  The deal was simple:  become an informant for the FBI and help us bring down the Boston Mafia, and we will look at you in a favourable light.

The book details the20-year history of gory interactions between Connolly, his superiors and Whitey Bulger.  As the FBI was attempting to draw information out of Bulger and Flemmi, Bulger was essentially manipulating Connolly into providing him a means to bring down his enemies in the Boston underworld, de facto immunity from FBI investigations and insider information about the operations of other state and federal law enforcement agencies.

Oh yeah, throughout most of this time, Whitey’s brother Billy was President of the Massachusetts State Senate.

Did I mention that this was a non-fiction work?

While the story it tells is captivating, the book is a bit of a difficult read, as it has definitely been written by two journalists.  While it includes extensive end-notes (38 pages), documenting in detail all references and quotes, the book could have been better edited.  I found myself getting lost in some of the descriptions both of police stake-outs and of mob activities, where the authors regularly jumped from one event to another and back.  Simply adding dates and more time references would have made the narrative easier to follow.  Another example of the book’s uneven editing:  Stevie Flemmi’s son ends up playing a significant role in Flemmi’s eventual arrest; there was no previous mention of the son.

Other than these editorial weaknesses, the events are fascinating on so many levels:

• How FBI agents allowed and deluded themselves to be manipulated by, essentially, a master criminal for his own purposes.
• How low the price was to lead one of the senior FBI officials in the Boston office (John Morris) down the path of corruption: e.g., a few fine dinners, a couple of bottles of wine, a plane ticket for his girlfriend).
• The utter frustration that must have been felt by rival law enforcement officers (and, for that matter, rival criminal organizations) as they were stymied in their activities as a result of the Bulger-FBI dynamic.
• The organizational dynamic that led the FBI to systematically ignore for 15 years the undue influence exercised by Bulger on their Boston office, either through wilful blindness, lack of checks of balances, misplaced organizational priorities, personal agendas taking priority over the public good, etc.  As the authors put it:

Bulger had become a dirty little secret that evolved into a tacit policy administered by new players who many not have fully understood the history but held fast out of institutional loyalty.  They viewed any attempt to change the system as a challenge by upstarts who had the bad taste to urinate inside the tent. … The fierce personal friendship of John Connolly was replaced by the knee-jerk protectionism of one special agent in charge after another.  The credo became:  Bulger may be a skunk, but he’s our skunk. (page 272)

This was a timely book to read, as Whitey Bulger was arrested early last summer, after being on the run for 15 years.  He faced charges stemming from his activities with the Winter Hill gang from the 60s to the mid-90s, which had placed him on the FBI’s ten-most wanted list.  No doubt that there are a number of treatments floating around Hollywood right now; Bulger’s story (which frankly just tells itself) is bound to come to the silver screen in the near future.  Hopefully, they will do it justice.

The NFL is a Complete Joke.

Well, another reason to not give a crap about the NFL.

How do you allow a team to get away with cheating on the penultimate play of your championship game?

You can put out an illegal formation and profit from it in the dying seconds of a game? Don Cherry must be pissed off. Ken Miller must be pissed off. Tom Coughlin (who misspells his family name) will probably be honoured as a master strategist.

So, NFL, please crawl back under the tainted rock where you belong.


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Envoyé sans fil par mon terminal mobile BlackBerry sur le réseau de Bell.