The Blob Fights Back

I arrived home from Alberta early this morning, opened the daily paper and was greeted with the following article. Rather than copy it out in full I'll provide this link and a short synopsis. Basically the author, Prof. Michael Keren, contends that bloggers are lonely, deluded, losers. Go ahead...read the article...I'll wait http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070131.gtbloglonely0131/BNStory/Technology/home

OK then......I'll admit the man has credibility. After all, he's a college professor and published author. Indeed his book Blogosphere: The New Political Arena makes a convincing argument in favor of the above-mentioned assertions that we bloggers are a loathesome lot. Keren estimates that there are some 60 million of us who choose daily to lay bare our souls to the world via the internet. He then proceeds to interview 9 bloggers which is what's known in the world of human behavioral study as a "Representative sampling". (I figure that if you go outside and grab 9 people at random, 8 of them will be lonely, deluded, losers but that's another story)
I blog and I'm not ashamed to admit it but as part of my mission statement I've vowed to not turn The Blob into a diary where I pour my heart out to an uncaring public. I've spared you my misery.....the patch kit that was supposed to fix Angelina my inflatable mistress, the runny glue that found it's way into nooks and crannies, it's strange property of hardening on contact with human skin and our painful and embarrassing disengagement at the Jewish General's emergency department.
I've never burdened you with tales of loneliness, the hours of city bus rides to nowhere hoping against hope that someday someone will ask me for directions, for the time of day, or to simply be their friend. Each blog creates it's own little world of like minded people who, when push comes to shove, will be there to offer support and guidance. In my case I know in my heart that I can count on jd_5321 to provide "sexy girls for with me to party together any time" and this is all the consolation I need.
Michael Keren and academic naysayers of his ilk can write all the damning books they wish but until they get out here in the cyber trenches and experience, first hand, the magical brotherhood of a blog community their arguments will fall on deaf ears. Bloggers are like Noah and his family, escaping a disastrous world and sailing on towards a new reality. Woe be unto the scoffers who are left behind.

On Assignment in Alberta

Yep...that's right. I've hit the road again only a week after returning from Colombia and will attempt the odd post despite the challenges of writing under such harsh and primitive conditions....one sec...."Phyllis, I said pedal harder .... the screen keeps dimming when you slow down dammit!!" Sorry about that, anyways this whole globetrotting phase is about to come to a halt but for now I feel like a rambler, a gambler, a traveler, an unraveler (you try finding a rhyme for "traveler"....nope.... neither gaveler nor spaveler are words...I looked 'em up). Once I settle down again the Blob will regain it's comfortable cadence unless of course I get overwhelmed with work but what are the odds of that??? (LOL, Sometimes I crack myself up)

Trivia de Cartagena

Did you know that Cartagena was the setting for the 80's film hit Romancing the Stone? Well...it was. You'll recall that there was a sequel called Jewel of the Nile and then the franchise lay fallow for years as it's stars, the once hot Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, went on to age miserably. He, looking more and more like a Galapagos tortoise, lucked into a marriage with Catherine Zeta Jones and she gets the odd gig now and again but appears to have had a few too many whiskey milkshakes (if you know what I mean).

Anyways, there I was in Colombia when who should I run into on a trip out to one of the islands but a member of the crew that is back in Cartagena to film the 3rd installment. We had a couple of cervezas and it wasn't long before he was dishin' the dirt....Hollywood style! Apparently this will not be the swashbuckling, Indiana Jones type adventure that we're used to or that they'd hoped it to be. Mr. Douglas travels with his own gerontologist and the haggard Ms. Turner needed to have an extra large trailer flown in to suit her new found girth and her voracious appetites. Respective agents promised the film's producer that the actors would be in top shape, contracts were mailed back and forth and 4 rewrites later there appears to be a workable script, albeit one that takes into account the co-stars pasty bloatedness.

My buddy the key grip sent along this pre-release poster. Stay away from this movie....consider yourselves warned.

Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition

Still basking in the afterglow of Cartagena and waiting on some photos to be delivered before I post my travelogue I thought a brief history would be in order. As the principal port and hub of Spain's gold plundering and exporting business, Cartagena has all the grace and old world colonial charm that one would expect. It's also heavily fortified (the Pirates of the Carribean, even without Johnny Depp, were a continuing problem) and oppressively Catholic (not that there's anything wrong with that).

There are many beautiful cathedrals resplendent with sacred works of art and gold artifacts but one also gets a sense that the Inquistion didn't happen that long ago. Surprisingly, a sizeable and centuries old Jewish community is still going strong, having settled there (among other places) after getting booted out of Spain for not converting. In fact it was the ones who stayed behind and converted that were most often the victims of torture as their sincerity and devoutness were regularly called into question.

The people of Colombia are fit and attractive....in fact it's rare to see a local who is overweight. This was so different from what I'm used to seeing in North America that I started to wonder if there was some sort of strange connection between their particularly orthodox brand of Catholicism and their taut, well muscled bodies. While we, the increasingly secular gringos of "El Norte" try to find our way we still avoid returning en masse to our houses of worship and instead look for more palatable substitutes....places where we can socialize, find structure, and suffer through trials and tribulations in the name of the greater good. Look no further than your local gym or YMCA. It's no accident that the mantra of the fitness gurus seems ripped from the pages of Catholic dogma: "No pain, no gain" is merely our catchy version of the more austere; "Without pain there can be no gain" which 1st appeared in medieval transcripts and is used in it's original Latin in the ad below. They had one of these babies at the gym in my hotel (Cartagena Hilton if you must know) and after a couple of hours I was looking pretty "ripped"!

I can only conclude that there's something to all this religious fervor....Mel Gibson in his prime was pretty buff and that albino self-flagellator in The Da Vinci Code had quite the 6 pack. That the Vatican is finally seeing fit to share it's instruments of exercise with us is no small blessing. This is just the kind of motivation many of us need to keep those resolutions we made not too long ago.

This Old Dictator or Fidel Gastro

It looks like Fidel Castro may just pull through his latest health scare thanks to modern medicine and the artificial anus. (they're already roughing in the plumbing!) I heard about this the other night on The Daily Show and decided to delve a little more deeply into the story. I'm happy to say that after a thorough probe the story is indeed Blobworthy.

That a dictator needs a new anus is noteworthy enough but the fact that they are making fake ones is, to me at least, the real stunner. I searched through dozens of on-line medical journals until I hit paydirt; an ad for the artificial asshole with (appropriately) celebrity endorsee Joan Rivers. Rumor has it that she's already on her third after life threatening anal ruptures caused by the numerous back tucks and other such procedures.

A Little Something for the Ladies

In doing some research for my upcoming post about Cartagena I came across this photo and bio of an apparently quite well known and studly South American singer. I'll reprint verbatim (promise) because it's too good and in a sense pure to be sullied with my own brand of fabricated vulgarity.

Niallo Brazofuerte- and The Caballeros of Cartagena
[Versión española] [Biography] [Guestbook]
Niallo Brazofuerte is the definite Latino-crooner. Imagine Leonard Cohen with a feel for the sizzling rhythms of the Mediterranean, and the charm to go with it. Or an Enrique Iglesias with balls, who would not trade masculinity for passion. Niallo Brazofuerte can certainly set the night on fire, while maintaining the coolness that gives the ladies the shiver and makes men want to draw their knife in shear jealousy. Sit back and enjoy, as 'Naughty Niallo' is back with a brand new bag of songs.

Niallo was born in 1974 in the troubled Downtown area of Kingston, Jamaica. His father Ricardo was a rabbi at the local synagogue, his mother Hazelina a prominent member of the Rastafari movement. Growing up under these conflicting theological influences, Niallo at an early age learned to be sceptical of dogmatism in any form and, indeed, prominent musicologists attribute the stunning diversity in his musical outpouring to this fact.
The first signs of Niallos musical talent came at the age of six when, at a school recital of Oklahoma, he won massive critical acclaim with a bone chilling rendition of "I Cain't Say No" in the role of Ado Annie. Unfortunately, at the same recital, his father won far less acclaim when displaying his genitals from the front row whilst expounding the benefits of circumsision to a stunned audience. Ricardo is believed to have been intoxicated at the time, but this nonetheless prompted their move to Buenos Aires where Niallo for the first time was exposed to the musical influence that would have the most lasting effect on him - the tango.
A natural born dancer and ladies man, he found in the tango a passion and melancholia to match his own, and it was only natural that by the age of thirteen he was the lead singer in a tango outfit touring the major cities of Argentina. By the time Niallo finished school in 1989 he was already a well known and respected figure in the hardcore tango community, but it was only with the release of his landmark 1990 album "Cojones y Fuego" that he became a household name.
In the succeding years a string of commercial and artistic triumphs followed, but unfortunately, they were accompanied by his falling ever deeper into the throngs of drugs and alcohol addiction. He hit rock bottom in 1998 when he was admitted to the Betty Ford Clinic after an incident which many have interpreted as a Freudian cry for help to his by now estranged father. At the 1998 Latin Music Awards, when set to receive his third Male Artist of the Year award, Niallo removed all of his clothes and proceeded to dance on the table whilst screaming that he had lost all of his fandango. Then, famously, he tore off Gloria Estebans left shoe and managed to use it to down four shots of tequila before being taken care of by security.
An eight year period of obscurity followed before his by now much publicized comeback. His comeback single "Lost In The Tango" is laden with references to his troubled past, and it can only be hoped that the cathargic virtues of self examination will help this conflicted genius contain his demons. As the maestro himself puts it: "There's whiskey in the jar". For his sake and ours, let it stay there!

I SWEAR I didn't make any of that up. That's by far the best bio in history!!

La Vuelta de la Blob

I snuck back into town a couple of nights ago and have been basically sleeping off my 2 week working vacation. I'm ready to ease back into the business of blobbing but don't yet feel up to describing the Colombian experience. Perhaps another book review will help kick start The Blob once again and it's a kid's book at that. I've always been a big fan of children's literature and especially those books that help the young ones deal with some of life's messier dilemmas. If you're the parent of a shy child who wets his or her bed then this is the book for you. The tough-love, whole-family disapproval approach to the problem, while controversial, is now being accepted by child psychologists as a last gasp strategy before institutionalization (ed. note: you have just read the longest word ever published in The Blob) Buy this book and before long you'll be able to kiss those urine encrusted, plastic sheets goodbye!!

Cartegena, Colombia- My Daily Journal or Mia Diahria

I´m just dropping in a quick post to let the faithful blobophiles know that I´ll be back in Montreal on the 16th fresh from my fact-finding mission with a full report from Colombia. For now computer access can be difficult and in my current state (engorged with garlic encrusted shrimp, besotted by pina coladas, rendered listless by the tropical heat and calming sea breeze, and distracted by the crazy breast enhancement - thong wearing fad) I may not have much too say for a few days....later.

2007: Things Can Only Get Better

2006 will go down as a miserable year where lots of bad stuff happened, lots of good people died, and lots of bad people who should have died didn't. Here at the Blob we can only hope that in the year "ought ought seven" we will not be shaken by global events but rather stirred into action. Already, just a few days in to the new year, the world is a much better place in which to live. Take a look and you'll see people walking with a spring in their step and a smile on their faces. With the execution of Saddam Hussein a new sense of optimism has spread from the gallows of Iraq across the entire planet. The celebrations continue in the Middle East where revelers fire their mortar shells skyward and detonate the explosive vests they wear producing a riotous, multi-coloured expression of unbridled joy!

Here in the West citizens and pundits alike have been bending over backwards to apologize to President and Commander in Chief George Bush for ever having doubted his strategy and keen insight...."You were right Mr. President....Saddam's execution is a clear indication of just how much progress has been made in Iraq. We've been such fools!!"

On the home front and on a more personal level there are some surefire ways of making 2007 a better year. By setting lofty goals with our New Year's resolutions we are setting ourselves up for failure. It's nice to say you'll lose 50 pounds and quit the booze, drugs, cigarettes, gambling, and whores but we all know it's not gonna happen. The last few years I've set more modest goals and have been overjoyed with my success:

2003 - Only one piece of gum at a time.

2004 - No more horizontal lines on the letter "I" when I do crossword puzzles.

2005 - Cut lettuce with a knife...no more tearing.

2006 - Slice oranges into 8ths rather than quarters. (while this may seem like more work it actually makes eating them easier and ends up being more efficient)

2007 - Double the crisp to apple ratio in all future apple crisps.

Tomorrow I leave for Cartagena, Colombia for a week and a half of fun, sun, and concertizing. I'm not sure if I'll be able to do any posting but many of you who have been rather silent on this site will have the time and opportunity to come up with some comments or questions. If you need me I'll be at the Cartagena Hilton in a hammock under a coconut palm, sipping a pina colada while drying off from yet another dip in the azure waters of the Caribbean.

A Jensen Family Christmas

Recently back from Calgary I'm only now beginning to put into perspective the "Christmas that was" just a few short days ago. Like my favorite composer Gustav Mahler I felt thrice the outsider: An Easterner among Westerners, a Jew among Christians, and a...........(OK, twice the outsider).

To be fair I did my best to fit in and it was more than easy as everyone there was most accommodating and friendly. As always a suitcase full of Montreal bagels helped ease the path towards complete acceptance.

This Xmas was by all accounts a typical one; Turkey, mashed potatoes, Texas Hold 'em, a captured crow (pictured here on brother Carl's shoulder....it looks fake and/or dead but I swear it's real and is currently being nursed back to health by Phyllis after having some large feathers yanked out by the family hound) etc.

As always Christmas at the Jensen's is centered on the children and in particular Phyllis' twin daughters who despite their growing maturity and ample experience with the holiday still approach the traditions with wide-eyed, childlike wonder. University educated in Edmonton and France these well rounded girls (pictured below) still dig into the Christmas sweets with gusto and open their gifts with excitement and glee. This to me is the joyous innocence that is at the heart of the holiday and indeed harkens back to a babe (2 babes?) in a manger.

The warm atmosphere, the spectacular scenery......I think I'll be back next year.

As parents many of us have so much trouble discussing the birds and the bees with our young ones that we never get around to answering the important questions about homosexual love-making. Children are curious by nature and who among us can safely say that little Kyle or Jessica won't approach us with a query that we're completely unprepared to answer. Simply chasing a stray ball into the bushes at the park or opening the wrong stall in the mall washroom can quickly lead to an uncomfortable situation that author David Jerome has sought to address in his latest children's book: "Daddy had his Weiner in Another Man's Pooh-pooh".

Tastefully illustrated and filled with whimsy, this book talks to children in a language they can understand without ever being condescending. Topics such as going bareback, fisting, gerbilling, and tea bagging are dealt with sensitively and the narrative is both entertaining and thought provoking.

Follow the adventures of 10 year old Jason as he visits his dad in Bar Harbor, Maine one summer weekend. While waiting in the car for his dad to come out of the sauna Jason notices his wallet on the driver's seat and, disobeying strict orders, runs in to the bath house to give it to him. What he sees in the steamy shower room and how he, his father, and the multiple partners deal with it make up most of the rest of the book.

David Jerome has written a must read for today's parent blessed with inquistive children. The Blob strongly recommends that you start the new year off on the right foot with "Daddy had his Weiner in Another Man's Pooh-pooh" .