Fabulous New Band

This band is extremely hot at the moment. After being signed by two record companies they went to L.A. recorded a debut album then fought with the label over something which they are forbidden to discuss. The result of which is their album was never released. Undaunted they returned to Vaancouver changed their name recorded it an EP themselves and released it free on their website.

http://www.lionsinthestreet.com/index.cfm

Give it a listen. These guys are fabulous. If you like classic rock you can do no better. They sound like The Stones if they had been frozen in time right after they released Exile On Main Street, with a little bit of Lynyrd Skynyrd thrown in for good measure.

GREAT NEWS

The Verve are back together!

Who? You say.

The Verve were one of the best bands of the 1990's. Known mostly here in North America for their big hit Bittersweet Symphony The Verve actually produced three brilliant, critically acclaimed albums between 1992 and 1997 . If Radiohead were the thinking man's rock band then The Verve were the feeling man's band. Musically and lyrically complex their music was none the less embraced by a generation that felt lost and ignored:

''Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, this life /Try to make ends meet /Your a slave to money then you die'

Well the band is back together and touring. They just performed an awesome set headlining the closing night of the Glastonbury Festival their native England during which they sounded as good as they did in their heyday. More importantly they also played new music, from their upcoming enigmatically named album Forth.

A Heck of a Family

My youngest recently celebrated his High School Grad. We took the oportunity to get a family photo

Hating Toronto?

Hating Toronto

It seems to be the national pastime in this country to hate Toronto. Or at least resent it. There are plenty of reasons why, it seems to be the attitude of many Torontonians that the rest of the country is superfluous. That all decisions in this country come out of Bay Street.

The resentment seems even more severe in Western Canada, especially in Alberta, where it is particularly rabid. Albertans seemingly believe THEY should be the center of the universe.

I like most Canadians have spent time in Toronto, and of course have relatives there. Indeed I have been there numerous times; in fact I have been in Toronto twice in the last few months.

As you are probably aware if you visit this Blog, I am a professional fire fighter. I recently visited Toronto for the International Association of Fire Fighters convention. During this time I was able to get a good look at downtown Toronto and meet quite a few people

To be honest I was amazed at how well we were greeted by the City. The people were much friendlier then I expected, however I was aghast at the number of people living on the streets.

I presume, in the final analysis that Toronto, like all big cities is a contradiction in terms; a large friendly booming city, relatively crime free. Yet one that tolerates many, many unfortunates sleeping in the street.

Windows Defender

Microsoft does something right this software, which incorporates Microsoft (Giant) Antispyware in a suite of utilities that not only blocks spyware from getting on your computer in real-time, but can do scheduled scans AND remove any malware that is already on there.It is currently available in Beta from this website:www.microsoft.com/athome/...fault.mspx

Warning: for any software pirates you must install MS genuine advantage (that checks to see if you have a legitimate copy of windows) in order to download this program.

Windows Defender will apparently come standard with Windows Vista upon release    

The Best Movies

Here are my favourite films, in no particular order:
   

The Seven Samurai	1951	Akira Kurosawa
L.A. Confidential	1997	Curtis Hanson
The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers	2002	Peter Jackson
The Maltese Falcon	1941	John Huston
Blade Runner	1982	Ridley Scott
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back	1980	George Lucas
Chinatown	1974	Roman Polanski
Monty Python and the Holy Grail	1975	Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones
The Searchers	1956	John Ford
Saving Private Ryan	1998	Steven Spielberg
Some Like It Hot	1959	Billy Wilder
Aliens	1986	James Cameron
Cool Hand Luke	1967	Stuart Rosenberg
The Wild Bunch	1968	Sam Pechinpah
Arsenic and Old Lace	1944	Frank Capra
Snatch	2000	Guy Ritchie
Heat	1995	Michael Mann
Yojimbo	1961	Akira Kurosawa
Last Of The Mohicans	1992	Michael Mann
Training Day	2001	Antoine Fuqua
A Fish Called Wanda	1988	Charles Crichton
Reservoir Dogs	1992	Quentin Tarantino
Three Kings	1999	David O. Russell
Red River	1948	Howard Hawks
Hombre	1967	Martin Ritt
The Commitments	1991	Alan Parker
Terminator 2: Judgement Day	1991	James Cameron

 
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Lessons From Katrina

   As a member of the Emergency Services I was amazed by the response to Hurricane Katrina by all levels of government, but especially by the federal government.

  Now this is perhaps understandable in the case of state and local agencies as Louisiana in general and New Orleans in particular have legendary levels of corruption, and hence incompetence.

  However in the case of the US government it is rather more dismaying.
The US federal government spends massive amounts of money and much air-time convincing Americans that they are doing everything humanly possible to keep them safe. They created a whole new Dept after 9/11, The Dept of Homeland Security.

  FEMA the Federal Emergency Management Agency, formally an independent body was put under the auspices of this Dept. Mr Bush then appointed a man with no experience in Emergency Management to lead this group.

  The US Government's and FEMA's response to Katrina was woeful. Even once the full extent of the disaster was known it was painfully slow. Now Mr Brown has dutifully fallen on his sword and at least someone more qualified went into his position but it still leaves several major important questions to answer.

  Homeland Security's budget is almost immeasurable. New Orleans is a relatively small city. What would happen if a major catastrophe were to occur in New York, or Los Angeles, or Chicago? How could the government adequately respond to the having to deal with millions of homeless or injured?

  Rita has shown that agencies are learning from their mistakes, but the chilling question remains that we are ill prepared for a major catastrophe either natural or man made.