gor[b] Paul Gorbould: Words and Pictures

Dad

Blogging workshop

Yesterday, at the invitation of a colleague, I gave two lectures on blogging to journalism students at Guelph-Humber. They were smart kids, and a few of them could no doubt have given the lecture themselves. But it was interesting to present blogging from the perspective of a working journalist and potential employer, and hear their questions.

Here's a list of links to sites I discussed. What would you add?

http://del.icio.us/
Social bookmarking site - bookmark pages and access them anywhere

http://www.cbc.ca/archives
Where I work

http://www.insidethecbc.com
The official CBC blog

http://www.gorbould.com/blog
My blog

http://www.boingboing.net/
Links blogging: A directory of wonderful things

http://twitter.com/
Micro-blogging: What are you up to right now?

http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/
Photo-blogging: Sam Javanrouh's beautiful Daily Dose of Imagery photo blog

http://www.torontoist.com/
Collaborative blogging: All about Toronto

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/fifawomens/blog-paul/
CBC journalism blog: Erin Paul blogs for CBC Sports from China

http://www.gorbould.com/blog/index.php/2006/07/citizen-kane-journalism/
Your subjects are watching: I blog and link to Jay Rosen; he gives me a piece of his mind

http://www.technorati.com
Getting noticed: The definitive blogging index/search engine/ranking tool

http://www.technorati.com/pop/blogs/
World's top 100 blogs

http://blogsearch.google.com
Google's beta search for blogs

http://www.blogmad.net
A blog traffic exchange tool

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Armstrong
Wikipedia on "getting Dooced" (fired over something you write on the internet)

http://www.dooce.com/
Heather Armstrong's new site

http://www.blogger.com/
Blogger - one of the easiest ways to start blogging, free

http://wordpress.org/
A free and very customizable blogging program/site. This is what I use

http://www.movabletype.org/
Another popular blogging platform - what CBC uses

http://www.problogger.net/
All about making money from blogs

http://payperpost.com/
A typical site that pays bloggers for "sponsored posts"

http://searchengineland.com/070109-141617.php
http://www.toprankblog.com/2006/03/blog-optimization/
More on blog optimization

http://www.archive.org/index.php
Archive.org: archiving the internet (check out the WayBack Machine)

Musical Age of Majority

There's a cute little meme floating around the internet right now, which I picked up via MC at Culture Kills. The gist of it: wax nostaligic about the songs you heard at your coming of age.

Here are the rules:

1. Go to http://www.popculturemadness.com/
2. Pick the year you turned 18
3. Get yourself nostalgic over the songs of the year
4. Write something about how the song affected you
5. Pass it on to 5 more friends

MC quite wisely decided to skip #5, the chain letter part of the meme. I will too. I've also followed his lead by linking to the YouTube videos - you can watch them right in the SnapShots preview that pops up, or click on them for full size. Prepare for a time warp! The game doesn't specifically say to pick five tunes, but that trend seems to have emerged, and it works for me. Here we go...

1987

Livin' On a Prayer - Bon Jovi

OK, I never liked Bon Jovi, but there was something interesting going on around this time in the merger of metal and pop bands. Before the mid-80s, metal was the realm of those hair guys that wore all denim, smoked and took shop. But it started seeping into radio play, and turned into something different. For me, this started with Def Leppard, went through Bon Jovi and ended with Guns 'n Roses (in 1988 my friend George predicted that Sweet Child of Mine would be the Nelson Mandela of music, forging a new peace between the bangers and the preppies. Nice try.) My only memory of Livin' on a Prayer revolves around a French exchange with students from the Lac-Saint-Jean area of Quebec; the only English they really wanted to learn from us was Bon Jovi lyric translations.

With Or Without You - U2

Now here's a song I can still defend. Sure, it's overly emotional and overplayed, but there's something about the way it builds from almost nothing to a cathartic crescendo that really works. I was a pretty big U2 fan in high school, and my graduating class arranged a road trip to see their Joshua Tree tour date at Toronto's Exhibition Stadium. Afterward, the band I played in spontaneously attempted a cover of this song, which began with me playing that simple bass line on the guitar and went from there. Nobody was around to witness it - probably just as well - but it was a little moment of high school magic. But man, did I want an EBow.

Mony Mony "Live" - Billy Idol

This song defines the high school dance for me, which isn't such a terrible thing now that the scars have had 20 years to heal. When you look at the other stars of 1987 - The Bangles, Huey Lewis, Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam, Tiffany - Billy Idol was by far the coolest of the lot. Mony Mony isn't his best (remember Rebel Yell, or that post-apocalyptic Dancing With Myself video?) and of course it's a cover of the 1968 tune by Tommy James & The Shondells; heck, even Billy had a studio version pre-1987 (the video linked in the title is a crappy 1981 TV lip synch). But MTV picked this version up and ran with it. And so did our high school. When the song came on at dances, everyone would chant something very obscene in between lines - did anyone else do this? My friend Chris pointed out, with some merit, that this simply covered up the lamest keyboard bit in history. Mr. Carruthers, our principal, pointed out that he didn't have to put up with obscenities and would shut us down if we played the tune. As our school's social convenor, I was supposed to enforce this ban. Instead, I had the piece of note paper with his edict printed in the yearbook: "The song Mona Mona is not to be played." And we never played Mona Mona.

Heaven Is a Place On Earth - Belinda Carlisle

I have a terrible secret to admit. I have always been in love with Belinda Carlisle. Yes, she of the Go-Gos, and the happy lame-o song listed above. This is something of which I have never spoken before, especially back in 1987, when I was listening to The Police and The Clash and Dead Kennedys. But there was something about the Go-Gos; We Got The Beat had a sort of punky girl power to it that was way ahead of its time. And before them, Carlise was in fact the drummer for a punk band. (My crush began with Our Lips are Sealed, a tune recently remade by the Duff sisters.) Still, I doubt Belinda's punk credentials would have convinced my high school friends. What put it over the top is that she was - and still is - fantastically, classically gorgeous. At least I think so. In fact, more than one person has commented that I married a woman who looks just a little like Ms. Carlisle. Coincidence?

Bad - Michael Jackson

Wow, there really was a time when MJ was the King of Pop, not the Wacko Jacko of the tabloids. Though I was blown away by the video for Thriller, I was always loudly snooty about disliking Michael Jackson. My sister had the LP, and I teased her about it - that white suit and fuzzy glow on the album cover was just too... well, as I would have said in high school, gay. I think it's probably OK to drop that stance now, and put the best selling album of all time back in the "very influential" pile without worrying whether people will think I'm gay (I did marry Belinda Carlisle, after all...) I'm sure I scoffed at the Jackson Five too, but you can't keep them out of the canon either. As for Bad, well, who doesn't like a good gang dance fight? Then again, knowing what we now know, you have to raise an eyebrow at the first line, "Your butt is mine...."

Other top hits of 1987:
Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now - Starship
Died In Your Arms - Cutting Crew
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me) - Whitney Houston
La Bamba - Los Lobos
I Think We're Alone Now - Tiffany
The Time Of My Life - Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes
Faith - George Michael

So, what songs defined high school for you?

The Secret Room

For the first time in… well, ever, I got my Christmas shopping done at least a week before the holidays.

How did I do it? Well, I highly recommend marrying someone full of good gift-giving ideas. If you can't swing that, online shopping helps; so does taking a day off of work and away from small children.

Anyhow, I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself, sipping eggnog and watching those local TV reports of last minute shoppers impaling each other with stilettos and slashing wildly through the mob brandishing an Extreme Elmo.

But there's someone on my list who deserves something that can't be bought at the Eaton's Centre. At that's what this post is about.

This post is about my father, Barry Arthur Gorbould, someone I’ll be fortunate enough to see on Boxing Day this year. And I can count on the fact that seeing my wife and me, along with his two darling granddaughters, is all Dad wants for Christmas.

See, Dad lives in a nursing home. There's not much he really needs for Christmas, at least in terms of stuff. But it occurs to me there’s one thing he doesn’t have which I seem to have a lot of, and that’s a place on the internet.

Now, Dad never had much interest in the Internet, but I think he should be at least a tiny part of it. He’s from another era, but I live in a world where the ‘net sort of confirms your existence. But when I search for his name, it comes up empty, aside from the birth announcement for my youngest daughter (not a bad place to start, really.)

In hindsight, it’s remarkable that I’ve neglected to mention him in this blog until now. I want to fix that, in some small way, tonight. For better or for worse, much of what I am, much of what you read on this blog, trickled down from Barry Arthur Gorbould. I think he should be on the record.

There are many kind words people have used to describe Dad; in alphabetical order, some of them are: adventurous, handsome, impish, intelligent, kind, outdoorsy, patient, witty. On the negative side, his English schoolmaster once summed up his character by announcing to the world, “Gorbould, you are a lout.”

I’m not going to try to tell you Dad’s life story in one blog post. That can’t be done for anyone. So instead, I want to tell you about one single characteristic that has left a strong impression on me.

Problem is, I don’t have a word for it. So I’ll tell you a story instead, and see if I can spell it out.

When I was around 10 years old, I got the screwball notion that it’d be really cool to have a secret hiding place in our newly-constructed home. Now, I had no concept of architecture. I was 10. I figured maybe we could just build a trap door under my second-floor bedroom, and have a little fort under it. I was delightfully oblivious to the fact that the kitchen ceiling was a foot below.

“Dad,” I said, “Can we build a Secret Room in my room?”

And you know what he did? He got out the plans for the house – which he helped design – and took a look.

As it turned out, behind my bedroom closet was an empty, sloped overhang above the garage doors. Over the next few weeks, Dad cut a hole in the closet, built a plywood floor under the overhang, installed a light, drywalled the roof and added a piece of carpet and a cupboard door to cover the entrance. And I had myself a Secret Room.

For the next few years, the Secret Room was a great place to play with friends, escape when I was feeling angry, and hide stuff I wasn’t supposed to have. It was my very own place, where I was safe and in control of the world. It got pretty cold in the winter, and years later it caused mildew in the garage ceiling and had to be torn down. But it was there when I needed it.

Dad was always game like that. Whenever my sister or I suggested some crazy kid idea, he’d take it seriously and see if he couldn’t make it happen. I don’t know if it was devotion to his kids, or that sense of adventure, or his own barely-concealed childishness, or that stubborn, puzzle-solving part of the brain, but Dad was almost fearless in his commitment to giving anything a try.

Three more examples, revolving (like my adolescent years) around cars:

- On a family trip to Germany, I said it’d be cool to have a Porsche key-chain. Dad doesn't speak German, but drives the whole family to the Porsche factory and buys half a dozen key-chains for me to bring home to my friends.

- When I suggested that our creaky old Volvo sedan needed to look cooler, we went down to Canadian tire and bought some ridiculous flame decals to add to the hood. (How mom survived, or spared his life, I’ll never know.)

- High school: Sitting at McDonalds, I pointed out a guy I knew who was always bragging about his souped-up Thunderbird. Dad left me there, walked straight out to the parking lot (wearing his tie and blazer) and in his best English accent, asked the bewildered Dave to pop the hood and show him the new headers he’d heard so much about.

These are all small things, to be sure. But I was a small kid. And a shy one: as my Mom likes to remind me, my McDonalds breakthrough was summoning up the nerve (age six) to go to the counter and ask for an extra packet of vinegar. To have a role model who was unafraid meant a whole lot.

So, what’s the word for it? Dad is brave, but not “throw yourself on a grenade” sort of brave. He’s adventurous and curious and devoted, but none of those quite sum it up either. So I’ll just call it a mental “Secret Roominess.”

Thirty years later, Dad's lost a lot, and I’m still shy. But I try to keep that Secret Roominess in mind, and give it a try, whatever it is.

“Dad,” said my daughter last weekend, “I want to make a snowman. But it’ll be made of wood circles, and it’ll be as big as me and have a top hat and pointy arms.”

Ten minutes later, I was outside showing her how a jig saw works.

Thanks, Dad. Merry Christmas.

 

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While I’m at it, this seems like a great place to give a shout out to another brave man at Dad’s nursing home. Shawn Gaudier is a 33 years old and severely disabled, but he’s reaching out to the world through music on his two websites, ShawnRocks.com and Andrellica.com. He recorded the latest installment of his Webcam Tour on Christmas Eve. Rock on, Shawn!