#athanksgiving

[ottawarealtor]

🦃🍁 Happy Thanksgiving Weekend, everyone! 🍂

From our big, loud, loving family to yours , wishing you a weekend full of love, laughter, and plates so full they defy physics 😅

Thankful for another year of life, good health, real love, family that keeps me grounded (and slightly crazy), strength in every way, and faith that keeps the fire lit. 🙏

Take a moment to breathe it all in , the food, the fun, and the blessings that sometimes hide in plain sight. 💛

Little Thanksgiving joke: Why did the turkey join a band? Because it already had the drumsticks! 🥁😄

Stay blessed, stay awesome, and don’t forget , leftovers taste even better when you’re thankful.

#ottawa #myottawa #thankful #ottawahomegroup #finditloveitownit #thanksgiving #love #gratitude #family #happy #longweekend #soldbysorin #bethankful #stayblessed

[theleftcoastmodern-blog]

A THANKSGIVING n˚20: HYMN TO FREEDOM - OSCAR PETERSON (from NIGHT TRAIN, 1962) LIVE in DENMARK 1964 {Ray Brown, bass/ Eddie Thigpen, drums}

Definitely one of my proudest people to name check as Canadian, though sometimes that seems beside the point when he is basically a World Heritage Site and in the conversation for GOAT (greatest of all time), in terms of jazz pianists.

Like a clarion beam of light, Hymn To Freedom is not false advertising. It's like a life manual. Be patient. Keep your head up. It's so moving it's like a whole sports movie in 7 minutes. The song moves like a frog in a pot. So smooth and irresistible at the beginning. But once you hit 4:50, tidal wave swell and before you know it, there's flames all around you and the water is boiling. I like to think just after 5:50, that's a guy just dropping a mic because he forgot to breathe. At least that's where I get to every time I hear this. 

Oscar is so delicate and ferocious at the same time. So often crystal clear virtuosity has come at the expense of the grime that made it great. Like seeing a posh London actor trying to convince you they're a cockney mill worker. But Oscar gets you from both sides, celestially eviscerating the keyboard. Wish I could have seen the man to tip my hat before he passed. 

[theleftcoastmodern-blog]

A THANKSGIVING n˚19 & MUSIQ n˚10: WHEN I WENT TO LELAND - "22" & GROUP WITH AXES

There's no hiding that this is a fraught issue. I love this song. It plays in my dreams and shows up in things I write and its rhythm is a companion. It was recorded on the Parchman Farm, the maximum security prison for men in Mississippi. I am a white person listening to a recording of incarcerated black men, who created it not necessarily as art (I mean, history doesn't even know their names, so who are we to guess at their intentions). And yet I am drawn to it. I am drawn to it as I am drawn to O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, with recognition of such a human document of pain, soul, transcendent beauty and yes, so artistically achieved.  

I put it here as a kind of statue of the unknown soldier, because I will never know who "22" is and who this group with axes are. And there are so many men and women, past, and undeniably in the present, who's work, story and song I will not know, as they will not be given a chance in the most incarcerated country in history, and all around the globe. 

[theleftcoastmodern-blog]

A THANKSGIVING n˚18: KENAN THOMPSON & WHAT'S UP WITH THAT?

So, to many of you n˚18 is going to wreck any credibility that I had built up. I have tried to further the ire of you (my eight readers, i know who you are) by choosing a clip that features a would-be no-brainer for the list Morgan Freeman. 

Yes, being a Kenan Thompson fan tends more to being an apologist than a partisan. Yes, there are cast members of his years that have scored more goals (Kristen Wiig), and more assists (Sudekis for sure, as evidenced in the clip above). But you know the last cast member that I noticed was as divisive as Kenan Thompson? Norm MacDonald. And look how vindicated us Norm apologists are now. Just saying. 

He is the longest serving African-American cast member, and the first cast member that was born after the first SNL premiered. And, as a surprising footnote (shocking, really), Thompson owns the SNL record for most celebrity impressions, having beaten Darrell Hammond by 1 (108). WHAT'S UP WITH THAT?

[theleftcoastmodern-blog]

A THANKSGIVING n˚17: JALEN ROSE and his PODCAST

A couple of years ago, I had decided that after a life long crush on basketball, I was going to ask it out on a date. I took to balancing my hockey watching with a little bball, I read the Bill Simmons tome and some others, and finally watched Hoop Dreams. I chose a team: Russell and KD won my heart in a big way. And perhaps the greatest return I've received on my fan investment is the discovery of Jalen Rose and his podcast. 

In a sportscaster, I really want two main things. Sure you want them to have command of the material, jurisdiction to pontificate about the game, but that should be a given. But the great ones frame their respective game in a way that makes the sport/life metaphor clear, vibrant and present. The parables from his show about service, dedication, paying dues, respect, relationships, are hardly basketball specific. It's a cliche, but when Jalen keeps it 100, there's more to it than the sport. And the second thing you need to be a great sportcaster is quotability; personality revealing insight revealing personality. And Jalen is close to the most quotable dude I know, in any realm. What's more, it's not even the empty catch phrases that are so often hallmarks in sports commentary, "Holy Jumpin'" or "He beats him like a rented mule". His glossary always reveals something personal or coins a term for a missing concept in his description of a situation. 

My love of basketball hovers just inside that of casual, my love of this podcast is devoted and unflagging. 

Here's a link to his Grantland work: http://grantland.com/contributors/jalen-rose/

[theleftcoastmodern-blog]

A THANKSGIVING n˚16: CHRIS ROCK hosts the ACADEMY AWARDS (2005)

Is it just me or did it seem that, apart from a very high percentage of moving (if basic) speeches last night, no one was feeling it at the oscars? Like no vibe in the room at all. Including the usually energy-giving Neil Patrick Harris? Perhaps it had something to do with the heavy stones of absolutely anodyne copy both host and presenters were saddled with. Chance taken: 0. 

Chris Rock starts being funny in his first line, while people are still applauding. He comes out hard. He uses the names of actual people and makes fun of them, he says the names of races and makes fun of them, he talks about the war in Iraq and never loses anybody. Because it's funny. 

Chris Rock was making this list anyhow, but after last night you have a direct proof of his fearlessness, energy and craft. Craft: that is what has always struck me about Chris Rock. He's a like a comedy lecturer. You are never lost as to the point, but he's never holding your hand. He's giving you the thesis all the time and itemizing his proof clearly. He's not hitting you on the head unless something that blunt would be funny. He deftly strides into things that our social brains are telling us might be provocational - material where you start looking around the room thinking "how is x going to take that". But then he uses our awareness of how we, as audience, are "receiving" the jokes as means for us to confront each other and our differences. 

[theleftcoastmodern-blog]

A THANKSGIVING n˚15: FUCK YOUR ETHNICITY - KENDRICK LAMAR (SECTION 80, 2011)

When I first moved to Los Angeles County, I did what I do in any city, I sought out the sources of music. Several trips to my locals to see bands people were talking about lead me to want to do graffiti and move back to Montréal. I was not inspired by what I saw. The question of the Last Great LA band was met a disturbing amount of times with the answer The Silversun Pickups. I was concerned. Though some of my great desert-island bands were LA bands (Beach Boys) and some had fecund periods here, I became obsessed with the idea that the landscape here was littered with burn-out Laurel Canyon vibes and TV show music. 

Then one night I looked up from my Jameson at the Gold Room and saw a sea of Dodger blue grooving to Earl Sweatshirt backed by Kendrick and Killer Mike and realized, I'm living in a city that's in a golden age. Kendrick's Section 80 and his C4 mixtape (as K.Dot), was the soundtrack to my move to LA and became kind of a stand-in civic anthem that framed the way I think about this vast treasureland. 

Here's G Code from C4:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlKHvIXm7c8

[theleftcoastmodern-blog]

A THANKSGIVING n˚14: THE ART OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT and DOWNTOWN 81 (USA, 1981)

Which of the following political symbols is omnipresent?

A) Television

B) The Church

C) MacDonald's

D) Samo

Some coolness is empirical. The film Basquiat is great, because anything with Jeffery Wright is greater than most stuff, but Samo is truly non-pareil, and you should go to the source. 

Check him out on Glenn O'Brien's amazing TV Party:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHrZbS1yjmc

Here is a link to the whole film:

http://www.videobash.com/video_show/downtown-1981-589323