Remembering Martin Streek

Please visit here to read my thoughts and memories about the passing of legendary Toronto radio personality Martin Streek.

Below is an excerpt from the first draft of a post about Martin that I just couldn't finish. I thought I'd share it here instead of deleting it.

********************

All I needed was $2.50.

It doesn't sound like much, but back in 1995 being broke, in high school and trying to convince your peers to shell out so that you could put together a whole $2.50 before the end of last period seemed near impossible.

I didn't even bother asking any of the guys. It would've been a complete waste of my time. By all logical accounts $2.50 was half of the 5 dollars required to buy in on an afterschool spliff. They may have been failing math but they could still put those numbers together.

That left the girls. They were great because they had such a low threshold for bullshit. If you know how to pester a girl properly she'll typically give you anything you want if you just promise to leave her alone

Hey Deborah you gotta spot me fifty cents

Why do you need fifty cents?

I'm saving up for a penal enhancement.

Well you're gonna need a lot more than fifty cents

Yeah well you gotta start somewhere right.

Fool, I'm not giving you fifty cents. Leave me alone, class is over and I want to go home

But Debbie seriously I really need this. Do you know how small my dick is? Here lemme show you...

Then as I'd start to unclasp my belt she'd throw the change at me telling me to keep my pants on and fuck off. After doing this to five different girls I had my $2.50 and I was ready to hit the convenience store.

The convenience store was located up the street from my house. It carried all the usual stuff you'd expect to find – Snickers bars, gum, porno mags in the back row of the magazine rack that we'd browse through but never buy, slim jims, cigarettes, mountain dew... I wasn't interested in any of that shit though. I was interested in buying a blank cassette tape.

If you're under the age of 23 and reading this then you probably don't remember cassette tapes. Don't worry though, I'm sure Urban Outfitters will soon be selling ironic old school boomboxes that are 'cassette only' so that you can relive all the lo-fi glory of static hiss. Anyway...

Anyone born in the early 80's or before knows how vital the cassette tape was. It was the blank canvas that would later become 'the mixtape', a unique type of social currency that could gain you friends or build you a rep. My journey for a new mixtape always began at the back wall of that convenience store on a Friday night.

There were three different kinds of blank cassette for sale: 30 minute, 60 minute and 120 minute. I was always in search of the 120 minute type – its two massive spools of magnetic tape looking like Dolly Parton's tits compared to the b-cup 60 minute reels. I knew I would need all two hours recording time – after all it was Friday night and Martin Streek was going live to air from 11 to 2.
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Walk In Silence

R.I.P Martin. I still can't believe this.

from various websites:

“Martin Streek and Chris Shepherd taught me to appreciate music. The lessons I have learned from them have stayed with me through to adulthood. I will remember Martin as a passionate music lover who did all he could to use music to bring people together. His sultry voice at the night clubs was often enough to get me out. RIP Martin and may your legacy live on through those to whom you offered so much of your soul.”

“I have been listening to CFNY since the mid 80's. I have been through all of the different format changes over the years, and all the different names that were brought with them. To me, when I think of CFNY I only think of 2 names, Alan Cross and Martin Streek. To me, these 2 defined what CFNY was. You will be missed my old friend...”

“I listened to CFNY since it started in the mid 70's. I remember when I would request Genesis Supper's Ready.....and they would play the whole song!!!!! But the station has been so watered down and diluted, that I cannot tolerate the useless juvenile nattering of the morning show. Martin was the last good thing left on that station....and now he is gone. What a shame.”

“What a tragedy. This is the face of corporate radio, my friends. A DJ who had won Toronto's favourite DJ three times running gets axed in the name of the bottom line. Martin was loyal to the station until the end and dedicated his whole life to music and radio. Unfortunately there is no loyalty to the employees in this business anymore. Many other extremely smart and dedicated individuals were lost in that same round of layoffs. A truly talented and knowledgeable individual who was made to feel expendable. What a waste.”

“At one time an amazing radio station, I've listened to CFNY since the early 80's. They would play anything. Now they're corporate rock bullshit just like all the other stations. They lost their balls. I'm going back to when Martin started at CFNY to play some Joy Division/New Order. RIP Martin.”

“RIP Martin, you will be missed. Thanks for narrating my teenage musical years”

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* There'll be a follow up post to this once I catch my breath. This is just so hard to accept right now. Read more

Deconstruction : Reconstruction

Click on image.
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Useless

a soft soft
face
under hard
hard
skin

but what a grand
body

and your red hair
so long
but when I
TOUCHED
it

it was
blacker than black
black as a screaming
crow

but what a
marvel-
ous
body

part of the problem
was that
I thought you might be
able to
change into
something
else.

another part
is
that you're hardly
worth
writing about
anymore

and being free of
that

I have a new
more reasonable
agony.
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Long Odds

If you're looking for a surefire way to offend a bunch of hippies during the course of a casual conversation I suggest you do the following: wait for the proper context to present itself and then tell them that “people don't change”.

Confused?
Allow me to illustrate....

I was having dinner with a group of friends the other night when one of them plucked this piece of news out of the dailies to stir up some discussion. Here's how the rest of the people at the table reacted to the story:

girl who spent most of the night talking about astrology: Oh my god! That is SO great!

guy who helps to run a charity for the liberation of Palestine: Fantastic. If there was more of that in the world we'd all be better off.

dude who has no job and plays hackey sack competitively: Awesome man. What a righteous thing for such a big name celebrity to do. That guy's really making a difference.

slutty girl who's fucked all my friends: I hear his dick is beautiful...and big!

Me: What a fucking waste.

The entire table shot me a look of disbelief that was so perfectly simultaneous you'd have sworn it was rehearsed. That's when I dropped the bomb

Yeah listen, it's a fucking waste. You could buy ‘Stress’ a Gucci wardrobe and put him up for a year in the Park Hyatt and it would make fuck all of a difference cause at the end of the day people don't change.

Immediately you could see how offended they were by my very dour yet realistic take on things.
A couple of them even called me an asshole.

It’s easy to understand why they would react that way. Most of us have flaws and we all know others who are flawed in equal or greater measure. We all struggle through this life together and the light at the end of the tunnel is the belief that we can will ourselves to be better; that we can overcome and improve on our failures. It’s the triumph of the human spirit.

If those of us who have fallen through the cracks are perceived as being victims of circumstance – the product of an unloving home, neglect, abuse et al – then it’s important for all of us to believe that these circumstances can eventually be overcome; that the wrongs of the world can be righted. That’s why these stories make us all warm inside when we hear about them. It’s all about hope (NoObama). But guess what? People don't change.

I’m not saying that people can’t change. I’m saying that, for the most part, the kind of person who has disappointed themselves time and time again in life to the point where they end up homeless is gonna need more than new threads and a pep talk from Napoleon Hill to turn their life around. You can buy someone like Stress an opportunity for change but their lack of self-awareness, will power and inability to make good choices will probably shine through in the end bringing them right back to where they started.

There are many layers to any individual. Peel away at them and you’ll see that change is possible up to a certain point. Then you get to the core and it’s not so easy to peel away anymore. People can go from Coke to Pepsi, they can give up eating meat in their diet or maybe even swap their political leanings. At the core however, the more foundational aspects of our personality are very hard to change. In some cases I would say impossible. Here’s a short list of personality traits that I think almost never change in people:

Self-Centeredness
Pridefulness
Slutiness
Inability to empathize
Being uncharitable
Inability to forgive
Dishonesty

Before anyone decides to break out the anecdotal evidence on me, please remember that I’m saying ‘people don’t change’ is the rule and I’m willing to admit that there are exceptions.

Let me also get my bias out of the way: I've known many shitty people throughout the course of my life. I think I’ve been let down too many times by them to take the fool's bet at this stage of the game. Sure I'd like to believe that the self-centered prick I have for a friend will one day care about someone other than himself and maybe even show a capacity for empathy but it’s not a very realistic thing to hope for. And that's all I'm saying.

When dinner ended I went outside to have a closeout discussion with the astrology lover. She was really upset and needed some closure so she cornered me to continue the conversation

Why is it so hard for you to believe that people can change? I mean, even if only some people change for the better why is it so hard for you to want to believe in them? It doesn’t cost you anything to believe in someone.

Sure it does. It costs you the disappointment of them not changing. I’m not saying this because it’s what I want to believe. I just think that I’d be lying to myself if I ignored the reality of how these things tend to go.

Well then you’re a coward. You’re just protecting yourself. Don’t you think that even if only some of the people out there who need to change their life can really end up doing so, that we owe it to them to believe in them so that they have the support they need? Isn’t it up to us to enable that change as much as we can, even if it doesn’t end up happening?

You know what you’re probably right in theory, but in reality how many times do you need to be let down before you give up? It a shitty thing to have to say but people need to ultimately be responsible for themselves (pause) Why does this matter to you so much anyway? It seems really personal with you

She paused for a long time. So long I thought the conversation was over, but then she started again

I don’t talk about this with anyone, so if you say anything I’ll fucking kill you…but my mom…she’s got a problem with drinking. It’s been going on for a while now. She’ll have good stretches and then bad stretches, but I keep on supporting her cause I really believe she can change. She can get her life back.

It was like a punch in the gut. This was no longer a theoretical discussion about some relapsing vagrant and his celebrity benefactor. I had to collect my nerve a bit to continue.

I’m sorry. I didn’t know. (long pause) But don’t you think that in a way you’re just protecting yourself too? That you need to believe that she can change so you don’t have to deal with having to accept that maybe she won’t?

And then we both sat there in silence.

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GAYelp

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I totally woke up feeling horrible and I called up my friend Pete and we both agreed that feeling horrible totally sucks. LOL! Pete's really funny, sometimes we sit up at night with all the farts that we've saved up from the day and we just let 'em rip after the girls have gone to bed. I have a funny name that we made up for them, I call them "gas giants." Hahaha, they are all sound and fury, signifying nothing. Pete will often rub his balls through his pants and make wisecracks at the television while we're watching and I'll try to discreetly take photos of him with my iPhone to send out to my friends.

He's really a riot.

When I'm not taking pictures of Pete with my iPhone 3G, I'm often out skating around the Mish on my new Kelch skateboard. Well, the other day I was out skating around when I ran into my friend Arie, who I haven't seen in FOREVER. Arie had just gotten back from Thailand so I decided to go out with coffee with her and talk about what she was up to now that she's back. She told me that she is helping install solar panels for needy children, so they can bake organic pies, which she's going to help them sell for a profit! OMG, that's sooooo cool.

But I digress. When I got back from coffee with Arie, I decided to log into yelp.com and check out some reviews. I totally didn't have a thing to write about today, so I thought it might be fun to zip through some of their reviews and see who could really lay down the line, while adding some tang to their write-up.

Overall I found the reviews helpful. More than anything, the site was well laid out, easy to search through, and more importantly, it had the addresses and business hours, along with phone numbers for establishments that were listed.

The pictures helped me decide whether the place was a dive, or someplace I might want to throw on a pair of pants for (currently wearing scrubs!). What really cracked me up were some of the reviews I found for local businesses!

Check out some of these killer reviews!! [click to enlarge, doy]


Or this one!

Years ago, before my good friend Blognigger was even known by that nickname, we had an idea for reviewing blogs and other websites called BlogCritic. It never happened, but I guess it's finally kinda happened. We're so crazy!

If you really want to read how reviews should be written, check out Mr. Quickly, the greatest Amazon.com Reviewer ever.

Fuckin' Yelpers.
Send me your hatred on twitter.

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GUEST POST:Dinner at the Shipbreakers By Bentan Lichtersnatch

SCENE: Inside the home of Bangladeshi shipbreaker Pravi Hippinpatalikapom, a small shack constructed of cardboard and corrugated sheets of metal, bound together with twine and tie wire. The focal point of the room is a giant, tipped over wooden spool, which serves as the family dinner table and central meeting place, filling, as it does, pretty much the whole shack. Spartan though the dwelling may be, the place has a certain hominess, with its religious icons decorating the walls and the odd nautical knick-knack pilfered from salvaged ships perched on overturned plastic buckets.

Gathered around the spool-table are Pravi's shrouded wife and his 17 children. They are about to have dinner and are eagerly awaiting the man of the house.

Enter Pravi, weary from his day's work, wiping grime from his face with one long-sleeved arm as he swings open the "door" -- an old metal Pepsi sign -- with the other.

Pravi, heavily and with no enthusiasm: Hi honey, I'm home.

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: Finally! Where the hell have you been? It's almost midnight!

Pravi: I told you yesterday, we are switching to 18 hour shifts now with the boom in business.

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: But I thought with your seniority you didn't have to go along with that?

Pravi: No, I need ten more years and then they will cut me back to 16 hours a day. I told you, it's only the guys who can operate specialized equipment, like oxen, who can draw the line on their hours.

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: And when are you going to get your Oxen certification?

Pravi: Can I just sit down for crying out loud?

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: I'm sorry, honey. It’s late and I was just worried. How was your day?

Pravi, pulling up a bucket and taking a seat : Same old shit. Me, Achmed and Prinnipatti were working on this fucking huge propeller with sledgehammers all day.

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: Still?

Pravi: Yeah. I figure we've got another week or so at least, before we finally get one of the blades off. I swear to God, if Achmed keeps telling me I am not beating in the proper cadence, I am going to take that sledgehammer and knock the turban off his head.

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom gets up and starts pouring water in the unmatched cups, cans and other containers fashioned into drinking vessels for the family.

Pravi: What's new here?

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: Well, your fourth daughter, Prashnek, sewed her fingers together again at the Banana Republic shirt factory.

Pravi, glaring at one of the 17 children: Again??

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: She's trying to turn out more pieces because she's saving for an iPod Shuffle for her 26th birthday.

Pravi: Well, good luck with that. She's already, what, 12?

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: Honey, don't discourage her. It's important for the children to have goals. Oh, and little Mishtu had a banner day begging today!

Pravi: Yeah, what did he bring in?

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: Two more buttons, a Bazooka Joe comic and... [Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom pauses for dramatic effect and reaches into her folds of clothing and grandly pulls out a small can.] ... THIS!

Pravi, mouth agape: A whole tin of anchovies???

Mrs. Hippinpatalikapom: That's right dear, we’re not going to be sharing a dry saltine tonight!

Pravi, laughing, revived: And here I was just going to smash his other foot if he didn’t start bringing home something good!

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