Mick Jagger, My Father (Part Three)

I have seen photos of my family from the early seventies. One in particular I found odd: my brother is standing next to my father, who is holding me facing away from the camera. My mother is standing beside him and seems a little nervous. Why? I could never find anything in that photo to get a reasonable answer. I had to dig a little deeper and look at some of the later pictures. I am in the Caribbean with my mother and brother at the airport. I am sitting on my grandmother’s couch in her home. I am on the beach, running with my mother and trying to avoid the surf. This last photo was a vital clue to my links with the prince of rock and roll’s dark side.


I moved like Jagger. I had the lips and eyes of a satyr and a love of music that my parents would begin to question and fret over. I also noted how bad the Stones became after 1972. Could it be that the trauma of discovering that he was now the father of a soon-to-be big-headed first-generation born West Indian in the Golden Horseshoe led to a dropping off in the ability of Mr Jagger to compose with Keef? Was it something that he could only deal with unconsciously? This makes the most sense to me, because it does not seem logical that any group of musicians from England would show any interest in soup made from the head of a goat. There must have been some unconscious reason to explain this sudden interest in a West Indian staple (far better curried than in a soup, by the way).

Mick Jagger, My Father (Part Two)

Most fans of the group feel that the band peaked between the years 1965 and 1972, a run that included “Aftermath”, “Let It Bleed”, “Get Yer Ya-Yas Out!” and “Sticky Fingers”. After this string of raw genius, the band became more corporate, more protected after the disaster of Altamont, the drug busts and the loss of Brian Jones. These incidents could only force the band to back track and see if they could still come out swinging.


Lester Bangs wrote a great review of “Goat’s Head Soup” entitled “1973 Nervous Breakdown” (a reference to an earlier hit by the band and their general state of mind after the aftershock of the sixties). It stood out to me, reading it many years later, noting that it referenced the year I was born (no commentary on my mental state at the time is available). I arrived after the sixties; after Altamont, the Beatles, the rise and fall of the counterculture, Trudeaumania and the dashed hopes of a generation. I did inherit disco, Watergate, OPEC, pet rocks and the years that fashion forgot. I also had Mick in my blood.

Mick Jagger, My Father (Part One)

This all began with very intense research. When I was fourteen, I earned enough money to go out and buy a copy of “Exile on Main Street” by the Rolling Stones. I knew what I was looking for and why that particular album had to be in my collection. According to Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the top 100 albums of the last twenty years, this was the best album ever released by the band. It was described as sludgy, grimy and a true representation of their love of blues and country music.


Importantly, I listened to it on vinyl. Do you remember vinyl? Those black discs covered in grooves hypnotised me and made me feel that music truly was mysterious (gleaning sound from them seemed like the ultimate form of magic meeting technology). It was true that the album’s sound was not great (most basement recordings are like this; Dylan had the same problem) but it worked on me. It was first introduction to an entire Stones album and I feel fortunate that I was wise enough to start with a masterpiece.

Years later, I found “Goat’s Head Soup”, their next release after “Exile” and experienced the strangest sort of disappointment. It was not the individual songs that bothered me or the album cover (if Mick wanted to cover his face in a veil, it must have been a fashion statement in line with the times). Not even the sound production that was so clean it sucked out the energy from the songs aggravated me. What bothered me was coincidence.

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• All roads lead to Rolling Stones' 'Main Street' - Chicago Sun-Times (news.google.com)

In The Belly (Part Six)

So, we fear food and do not consider it a serious problem. It seems to be a contradiction, perfectly suited for our relationship with food. We cannot give up what we love, even though it is killing us. We laugh at one fat man, yet refuse to mock the person in the mirror that we cannot stand.


How we will get through this is a mystery that I cannot solve.

In The Belly (Part Five)

Do we believe that the overweight body reflects an inner failing? Again, this may be another belief that we do not want to confront. We are forced to deal with a million surface impressions every day. Food is a part of this. No one gets a Big Mac that looks like the one on a poster or in a TV commercial, but there is always the promise that maybe, just one day, you will get that perfect sandwich. This is like a child who expects a perfect gift on their birthday even though she has received nothing but hairbrushes and stationery. How can the psychological effect of all of this longing not have an effect on the body? Eating will not fulfill this particular visual desire, even if we are told the following:


“You deserve a break today.”

There is an unpleasant truth behind this. We do feel that we deserve a break. And if we do not get it now, it may not come later. Again, longing and a sense of fulfillment that is hard to satisfy. It has to be damaging.

In The Belly (Part Four)

Let’s go back to the idea of food as an issue not taken seriously. When my brother made his comment about why he ate so much, we laughed. It was the family and we were in the kitchen while my mother was preparing dinner. The comment was sharp, to the point, and too honest not to make us laugh.

I also heard this comment:

“You’re watching the Food Network: Porn for Fat People”

This was an announcement made before a sketch on the comedy program Mad TV. They were satirizing a television marathon devoted to egg recipes (quite nauseating and funny), and I wondered about that introduction. It seemed inaccurate. Porn is porn for fat people. I doubt that there are higher numbers of people with weight problems who watch that network than pornography (I would wager that there were heavier viewers for Fox or TNN), but I understood the joke.

Fatness has always been a staple of comedy. I believe that jokes are a way of telling a truth that we may not want to accept, even if we know it in our hearts. A fat man chases a thin man and falls down, trips on something, or is blocked in some sort of passageway by their own girth. How many films from the birth of Hollywood (from the early silent movies to today’s blockbusters) have used fatness as its own punch line? Laurel meets Hardy; Abbott had Costello; John Candy, John Belushi, and Artie Lange all played the part (the latter’s memoir is even called “Too Fat to Fish”).

Life in a Day

Just thought I would mention this project.  Check it out!

In The Belly (Part Three)

I closed the first part of this essay by stating that we are afraid of food. I still believe this, even with my recent suggestion that we enjoy getting our fix. An addict is often fully aware of the damage they are doing to the body and mind while enjoying a particular high. In the film, “Supersize Me,” Morgan Spurlock decides to go thirty days eating three meals per day only at McDonald’s. He does become sick, gain weight, and threaten his long-term health with his experiment. But he also confesses that he feels better while eating the meals he buys (an interesting counterbalance to the depression he feels after these same meals are done). An addict needs that high to last if they are not to feel the crash. But how can it last without more and more of the same junk to fill that hole? Again, it is a cycle with its needs and rules.

I note that it is not just the food itself that gets us. The packaging of convenient food that may not be very good for us has only existed for the last two hundred years (the time canned food was introduced to the public). With the rise in advertising and a more literate and demanding public, companies began to be known worldwide for the same exact product. When I had French fries in a McDonald’s in Tokyo, it tasted exactly like the ones I had in Canada. Consistency is the key. People have to be drawn back again and again to the same goods. In Spurlock’s film, the various budgets of brand-name food companies are compared to the much more natural food sold by other distributors. There is no contest here. The sexier and brighter the product, the more it is pushed and bought by consumers. And doesn’t giving a sexy look to a product we know we should not be enjoying also motivate millions of men to enjoy pornography (as addictive as potato chips if we are being honest)? It is another bad gift in an attractive package and we cannot give it up.

We sell food the way we sell cars, new technology, celebrities, and, it must be said, the West. America is not just the best advertiser of goods in the world; it also knows how to read its populace. Bigger and brighter sells, and the noise people get on TV and other media will always be there. Food is just another item on a long menu.

In The Belly (Part Two)

In her biography of Oprah Winfrey (unauthorized, of course), Kitty Kelley mentions an incident in the media star’s life when she ordered two pecan pies from room service in a hotel and ate both of them alone. This story has gained more coverage in reviews of the book that any of the new information about her difficult childhood or possible affairs with other television celebrities. What seems to bother people is the fact that she did it in stealth when so many other facts about her life are public knowledge, including her gains and losses of body mass.

I feel for Miss Winfrey. I have had my own problems with weight and can say that I do not know how I would handle being judged by such a large and vocal public. She is probably the most powerful and well-liked figure in the media right now, which may take care of this one problem. But we still see her on television. The body has to tell truths that the brain cannot always handle. So what can be done about this? You can say that we are all human and are prone to many weaknesses. Also, society has learned to accept such faults (if we even do see them as faults). There are societies and at least one magazine devoted to the obese lifestyle; seats are now larger on airplanes and in certain makes of cars; governments discuss the problem at the highest levels; and no adult who wants to retain a high standing in society describes a person as “fat”. That person is now “heavy” or “overweight;” even “big-boned.” Yes, political correctness has brought us these terms. But like most politically-correct terms, ugly truths are masked out of politeness, never a good thing when a problem is so much a part of how we live and behave.

We have more information about healthy eating, just in time for a rise in the number of obese people. We are told that we have to more active, yet we have more distractions in the home and in our lives to keep us sedentary. We have government agencies encouraging us to feed ourselves and our children the right types of food, and we are still not able to shake the bad eating habits that we have developed. And, despite all of this, it is not an issue that is taken seriously.

I once watched a program on the Discovery channel that profiled people who were severely overweight and attempting to do something to change their lives. A woman who could not leave her room under her own power said something that stayed in my mind:

“Food was my best friend.”

Let’s consider that for a moment. This woman, when much thinner, was attractive, lively, had a devoted circle of friends. She found that this was not enough and turned to something that is not illegal to own, readily available, and convenient. A drug addict needs only one contact in order to get their fix; all you need is your local convenience store to get deeper into the cycle of fat and unhealthy eating. And I am also thinking of a response made by my brother when asked why he ate so much:

“Because it’s there.”

In The Belly (Part One)

I put off writing this essay about food for a very long time. There seemed to be too much competition out there with other news that made the topic seem irrelevant. When I began making notes for this piece, there was a report in a national newspaper on how one out of thirty-one patrons of restaurants in Toronto had become sickened by the food they were served. And now, there is a report that the U.S. military wants to do more to improve the quality of its recruits. The ones they were receiving were too overweight when they tried to sign up for the armed forces. Seems like the issue has returned.

As a child, I remember seeing a poster from the Canadian Heart Association with a photo of a smiling man’s face torn in half.  Across this image was the following: “You Have a Fifty Percent Chance of Dying of Heart Disease.” And recently, the latest data indicates that one out of four Canadians now has diabetes, now the number one killer in North America.



Yes, we have heard all of the bad news. We have all of the information that we may not want to know. Our food is labeled for content, including the number of servings that will provide us with a given number of vitamins and a certain amount of fat; “fiber” and “multigrain” are now a part of our language; healthy foods and drinks are lined up on our shelves in major supermarkets and convenience stores. And we have not learned a thing.

I put off this topic because of all of the competing information on the topic. There are crises with our weight, our children’s weight, the price of food and with health services. Diseases that should not be affecting young people have found a foothold because of bad choices of diet and, by implication, bad parents who have spoiled their children. And we receive too much conflicting advice. Milk prevents osteoporosis and is good for bones; it is also taken from cows pumped up with growth hormones for higher yields. Fish has Omega-3 fats…and iodine, mercury, and is threatened with extinction. Bread and sugar, staples of diets since the dawn of agriculture, are considered the main cause of a heavier generation. We cannot even talk about meat anymore. We have politicized this staple of the North American diet and any sort of discourse is impossible without being shouted down by an opposing camp.


But why has this happened? Is it just because of our need to eat and not consider the consequences? Do we really care about expanding waist lines and expensive medical bills? I do not think any of this is true. There is something deeper and unspoken in the runaround we get when we try to understand what food means to us. We have now reached the point where we are afraid of what we eat.

It's Over...

Spain, after a very tough match with extra time, beat the Netherlands 1-0.  Again, I was in a café when they finished the regular timed game, but I decided to head to a computer to see what would come up on the FIFA web site.  The problem was I was watching the game with a crowd that was predominantly for the Spaniards (it was the Latin Quarter) and I was worried about possible shots to the face if I cheered a possible Dutch win.  Well, no problem there...

In a way, I am glad that I don't have to follow the beautiful game for another four years.  And it was a great tournament.  The one thing about the World Cup is that it really does bring people together.  I looked around that café and noted that the people cheering for Spain could not all have been Spanish.  I live in a French province with large groups of Arabic, Spanish, Hindi, English and the like in this city.  So, there was a space for all of us.

Until 2014...

What?

Okay, okay, I did not really see this coming:  Spain beat Germany and are heading for the finals against the Netherlands.  I was in a café watching the game just now and was surprised by the number of people who were supporting the old Deutschland.  After what Germany did to the Aussie and the Argentines, I thought that this would really be a cakewalk for them.  But Spain, I salute you.  You anticipated the passes and moves; you showed how weak a supposed unbeatable defense actually is; and you now face a team that I predicted to make it to the final...and win!

Any thoughts on the final winner?  I still pick the Orangemen...

Broken Hearts and Disciplined Souls

Okay, a long gap between things...

Ghana, you broke my heart.  You had a penalty kick in the last moments of that match with Uruguay and the crossbar got in the way.  I have calmed down a bit about this, but I don't see why Brazil should be out and this also-ran team should be in.  But, of course, nothing about this World Cup has made any sense.

Except the following: Germany destroyed Argentina.  I know that there are quite a few broken hearts in this town over this, but I cannot share that misery.  I saw the game and one of the most disciplined teams in the tournament showed how the game should be played.  The other team relied on one player who has not scored when his teammates need a lift (earning that pay cheque, are you) and a coach who really, really wanted to run on the pitch and show them how its done (think that suit got to him - a circa 1986 power suit that did him no favours).  So sweet...

I am still going for the Orangemen in this one.  It will probably be them and the Germans in the final.