HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2012-06-28, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JUNE 28, 2012. PAGE 5.
When I was a boy, the Dead Sea was only sick.
– George Burns
Do you remember the scene? It occurs
about half way through Tom Jones, a
movie which chronicled the
adventures and misadventures of a loveable
young rascal as he danced and romanced
his way across 18th-Century England. There
were a lot of memorable moments in the
movie but the best one has to be what has
come to be known as ‘the eating scene’. In it,
Tom Jones, portrayed by Albert Finney, sits
down to a luncheon with a more-than-
accommodating and receptive Mrs. Waters.
Tom is, as Tom so frequently was, randy as a
rooster. So, it appears, is Mrs. Waters.
She proceeds to demonstrate that fact
as the two work their way through a mess
of, shall we say, libido-enhancing foodstuffs,
all the time eyeing each other lustily
across the table amid gobbets, dribbles and
juicy, luscious rivulets of oyster, lobster and
pear.
Never have a bivalve, a crustacean and an
orchard fruit been deconstructed so
lasciviously. The New York Times film critic
described it as “one of the funniest, most
sensual scenes ever put on film without
removing a stitch of clothing”.
Amen to that, but here’s the thing: Joyce
Redman, the lovely and vivacious actress who
played Mrs. Waters in that scene died of
pneumonia last month at her home in Kent,
England.
She was, my newspaper informs me, 93
years old.
Ninety-three??? How can that possibly be?
Didn’t the movie Tom Jones come out just a
few – well, quite a few, really, I suppose –
years ago?
Quite a few indeed. Forty-nine, to be exact.
Tom Jones first hit the movie screens back in
1963.
I find that life is bushwhacking me like that
quite a lot, of late. I catch myself humming
“Girl From Ipanema”, then realize the song
hasn’t been on the hit parade since Lester
Pearson was PM. I fall to musing about the
‘Big M’s’ of professional hockey –
Mahovlich, Messier and Mikita – and it dawns
on me that one of them has become a well-
upholstered Senator in Ottawa and none of
them have seriously suited up for a shinny
match in nearly 20 years.
Sarah Polley, the sweet little thing who
played in the Road to Avonlea? She’s middle-
aged, a wife, a mother and a filmmaker in her
own right.
The last Blue Jays World Series win? 1993,
chum. Almost two decades ago.
Trudeau’s famous “Just watch me” speech?
More than middle-aged. It’s getting on for 40
years old.
Time is a slippery and elusive critter – “Too
slow for those who wait, too swift for those
who fear, too long for those who grieve and
too short for those who rejoice”, as some wag
once said. Charlie Chaplin, who lived to the
ripe old age of 88, declared in his dotage that,
“in the end, everything is a gag”.
I hope he’s right. In the event that he is, I
offer the last words in this column to one of
my favourite surrealist gagsters, New Yorker
Stephen Wright, who once observed: “When I
was two, I was really anxious, because I’d
doubled my age in a year. I thought: ‘If this
keeps up, by the time I’m six, I’ll be 90’”.
Wright, like Einstein, knows that time is
relative. “I went into a restaurant that serves
‘breakfast at any time,’” says Wright. “I
ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.”
Arthur
Black
Other Views Time can get away from us all
Just a few weeks ago I was in Toronto with
Jess getting ready to attend a concert. We
were getting dressed to head to
Downsview Park to see Radiohead when I
turned on the news to see that the stage had
collapsed just hours before the band was set to
perform.
It was shocking to say the least. Of course it
was unfortunate that the band’s 33-year-old
drum technician Scott Johnson had perished,
but there was also the thought that a potential
disaster was averted. Had the stage held up for
just a few more hours (the stage collapsed
around 4:30 p.m., just minutes away from the
doors to the park opening) the band and
countless members of the crew could have
been on the stage when it collapsed, not to
mention thousands of fans being within several
hundred feet of the stage.
Jess and I watched the news coverage for at
least an hour, learning new information about
those who had been injured and what concert-
goers should do next (the concert was
obviously cancelled).
In the city with nothing to do, I had people
calling me asking if I was alright. I was
surprised to find that people on the street and
on social media sites were troubled, angry and
upset over the cancellation of the concert.
People weren’t bothered because of
Johnson’s death, but because they really
wanted to see Radiohead perform. People took
to the internet to complain about the luck they
must have for the show to be cancelled. For
me, I felt something (someone) was being
forgotten and I think it’s pretty obvious who
that was.
There were concerns in the city that Yonge-
Dundas Square (which was hosting a free
concert by The Flaming Lips as part of the
annual North by Northeast festival) would be
overrun with “angry” Radiohead fans left with
nothing to do on a Saturday night in Toronto.
A rumour was floating around the city after
The Flaming Lips invited Radiohead to
perform alongside them at Yonge-Dundas
Square (again, via social media) and that there
would be a mega-epic joint performance by the
two bands, and outside, for free no less.
The joint concert didn’t happen, of course, as
the boys in Radiohead were emotionally
distraught after losing one of their closest
friends as a result of the stage collapse. Shortly
after the incident, the band released a statement
saying members were “shattered” as a result of
the incident.
In 2000, eight fans were crushed and over 25
others were injured in a trampling incident at a
Pearl Jam concert in Denmark. While the band
didn’t do anything to directly cause the
incident and there were no construction flaws
the band could have corrected to prevent the
incident, the band took a long hiatus after the
Denmark show, unsure if they would ever
return to touring.
So being honest, the potential patrons of the
concert were not at the top of my list when
rhyming off those deserving sympathy after the
incident, and I was among them.
And while I had a mental struggle of my own
that day, wondering what would have
happened if the stage collapse had held off for
a few hours and what role I would have had if
I had been at Downsview Park, it is really Scott
Johnson and his family who deserve the
sympathy of fans everywhere.
As a result of the stage collapse, Radiohead
had to cancel several European tour dates,
where there was, again, much disappointment
from fans who really should have been
mourning a man who died doing his job.
Shattered dreams
Boy do I absolutely love books. They are
the most incredible thing on the face of
this earth.
Forgetting the whole “The medium is the
message” part of books and what they
themselves represent, books provide the purest
means of escape in the world. You can literally
see anything, be anywhere or be any-when-
(and yes, I just made the weakest time travel
joke ever penned).
That’s really the only word to describe
books: escapism.
Sure, movies and television shows
nowadays are amazing as far as special effects
and video games provide you with the
opportunity to try on the clothes of another
person and be a hero, but books are really the
only way to leave your own head.
Every other thing has you seeing the world
through someone else’s eyes, but, no matter
how immersive, you still feel you’re an
observer.
Books (good books, anyways) put you on
the rails of a protagonist’s life and, if they
succeed, draw you in and show you what they
see in a way that makes it feel like you’re
experiencing it yourself.
So I guess I should not have been so
surprised that some of the most infamous
prisoners in Brazil could use books to
figuratively escape their prison lifestyle while
literally getting out of prison.
A new system has been implemented in
Brazil where, for reading a book and writing
an articulate response to the book, a prisoner
can knock as many as 48 days off
their sentence each year. That’s a little bit
more than 13 per cent of their total prison
sentence.
While a panel will exist to determine which
inmates are eligible to participate in
“Redemption through Reading”, I still find the
idea of letting prisoners read their way to
freedom a bit troublesome.
Sure, letting children “read away their fines”
at public libraries, or even pay off their fines
with donations to local charities or food banks,
is reasonable in my mind. Allowing someone
who has been found guilty by a judge or a jury
of their peers out early because they put pen to
paper in the ample free time they have and
produced a Grade 5 book report seems a bit
backwards to me.
It already troubles me enough that people
who go to prison can turn around and get
university degrees while living on taxpayers
dimes, but this seems to take it a step further.
A lawyer from Sao Paulo, Andre Kehdi,
says that through the system, a prisoner can
better himself.
“A person can leave prison more enlightened
and with an enlarged vision of the world,” he
said. “Without doubt they will leave a better
person.”
I won’t disagree with him on the premise of
the fact that reading helps to engage your mind
and makes you more open to learning and
better able to process information through
sheer practice of cognitive abilities, but I do
have to wonder about how effective this can
be.
If someone in prison has already proven
themselves to be a better person or
rehabilitated, then there are checks for that in
the system that enable them to leave prison
early through things like probation and
halfway houses. I don’t think we need to bribe
people into reading books and I especially
don’t think, regardless of prison populations,
we need to use books as a means of punching
that exit card a little early.
If I ever commit a crime that carries jail time
with it (and that isn’t to say I plan on it) I will
dutifully serve my time and try to “keep my
nose clean” as it were.
However, that jail time is a punishment for
activities I participated in.
I remember seeing a documentary about
prison lifestyles when I was a student in
university (living off a diet that more-often-
than-not consisted of more Mr. Noodles than it
did bread) and I remember distinctly thinking
that they eat better than me, keep better hours
than me and look about as comfortable as I
was in my one-bedroom turned two-bedroom
apartment.
Inmates do all this while living off the tax
dollars collected from students like me who
worked at Tim Hortons just to occasionally be
able to afford a pack of bologna.
Suffice it to say I was pretty angry that day
and I’m still not happy about the system, but
giving prisoners time off because they literally
have all the time in the world to read a book
(an indulgence I rarely get to enjoy anymore
due to my schedule) seems akin to rewarding a
child in detention for sitting quietly. It isn’t
like they have a lot else to do.
I guess the problem I have is that books
shouldn’t be a means to an end. They
shouldn’t be an incentive to get out of jail early
or to ace a test in university.
Reading is a privilege bestowed upon us by
the geniuses of the past who created movable
print.
I guess that’s why I’m so protective of the
tomes I own; as a student of communications
and history I don’t just see a book when I look
at a group of bound pages.
When I look at my bookshelf I see the hopes
and dreams of each author up there. I see the
need to express yourself and the need to be
understood. I see the history of the printing
press, of Guttenberg and of the scriptoriums.
I see people hunched over a book
transcribing the words of another, I see an
author hunched over a laptop trying to express
themselves.
I don’t think we should take the work of
authors, be they the immortal words of the
bard, Homer’s epics the Iliad and the Odyssey
or the pulp of today’s Stephenie Meyers and
Tom Clancys, and turn them into some
monetary item to be traded for time off.
Books are meant to be, and should be loved
for, what they can do on their own. Their
intrinsic value is what people should seek, not
some aftermarket value appended to them.
I see books as one of the greatest joys and
privileges in my life. Being in prison is all
about having your privileges revoked due to
disregard for others.
I find it more than a little troubling that one
of my passions, one of the greatest rights that
I have, is not only extended to those who have
broken the law and infringed upon others
rights but is done so in a way that allows them
to circumvent their jail time. For shame.
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Tunneling? Nah, read your way out