In the darkness of four o’clock in the morning, he pulled on the handle of the door of the three story walk-up where he lived to see if the lock held. The door swung open like an offer. When he left for work the previous day, he had pressed with tape to the thick glass door a note telling the occupants of the building that the lock on the door was faulty and that they should make sure the door was properly closed before enetering or leaving. The note still held to the cool glass, written large in line after ragged line of thin black ink, a quick urgent note written in the haze of another morning arriving too soon. Either no one had paid attention or the lock was damaged. And in this neighbourhood, he thought shaking his head. Listening for the click of the lock and making sure the bolt held fast against the frame of the door, he turned to the stairs and climbed the two short flights up to his appartment. 203. If you added the two and the three it made a five. Was that a lucky number, he wondered. So far any luck coming from numbers were confined to the promises from weekend papers and shitty magazines. In the six months he’d been living on this street he discovered that he shared the same block with a crackhouse. No luck there, he thought. The occupants and frequenters of which would, several times a week, and around four in the morning, wake up the neighborhood with their moans at the eventual rising sun and the knowledge that soon they would be coming down and fall to an earth that didn’t want them.

He sauntered up the the two short flights to his door, casually brushing his shoulders and his cheek against the marked-up walls searching for some respite from the heat, and smiling like a wasted fool — which is what he was. The door to his apartment could easily be kicked down. A strip of the thin layer of wood covering the face of the door had been pealed off long ago, presenting anyone showing up at his door with a look of run downness and despair. He often wondered about this and how it might affect his chances at romance.

He turned the key in the lock and walked into his apartment. When he first found this place it was an ovrercast day in early January — the end of two solid months of apartment hunting in the grey pissing down rain. Hunting that took him from the westside to downtown with landlords and landladies screwing up their eyes as soon as he revealed that, no, he wasn’t married or engaged, or had a girlfriend, that in fact, he was only looking for a place for himself. Why didn’t he just lie, he thought later. It would have made things so much easier. He could have just said, in response to looks of expectancy, uh yeah, I’m looking for me and my wife, or girlfriend or fiance.

Yeah, right.

Whether you love them or hate them, you’ve really got to hand it to those venerable hosers from the Great White North: while lesser bands from their nascent era (that’s the early 70’s) have either gone tits-up or are touring the casino circuit in an attempt to cash in on the nostalgia of aging fans, Rush are still making interesting and vital music.

For those of you not familiar, Rush is essentially a hard rock-based power trio made up of Geddy Lee (bass, keyboards and high-pitched vocals), Alex Lifeson (guitars) and Neil Peart (drums). With a predilection over the years towards pop experimentation (with mixed results), Rush has managed to maintain an intensely loyal fan-base if not the respect of critics.

Having said that, “We Hold On” – taken from 2007’s modern rock wall-of-sound thrill-ride Snakes and Arrows – can be taken as testament to Rush’s staying power. But in the end, and listened to in the context of the entire album, the song is about the tenacity necessary for one to endure the slings and arrows of our deeply troubled world. Placed as the final song on the hour-long CD, “We Hold On” is the glimmer of hope at the end of a series of songs penned by primary wordsmith Peart that do not hold out much optimism for humanity. And like a Shakespeare comedy, there is always trouble creeping in at the edges: Peart writes in a self explanitory style, “How many times do we weather out the stormy evenings/ long to slam the front door / and drive away into the setting sun.” The only hope offered here is given with the words, “We could be down and gone/ but we hold on.” Pretty slim pickings at the end of an album whose primary themes are war and religious intolerance.

But in typical over-the-top Rush fashion, “We Hold On” is driven by a high energy, indeed optimistic and oddly groovy propulsive force. This is a song you can get your freak on to. “We Hold On” bounces along primarily due to the lethal rhythm section provided by Lee and Peart. Lifeson’s guitar, accompanied by Lee’s whiny and by now characteristic and appropriate vocals, is brooding and direct, but for the song’s chorus descends into a messy wash of chords and single strings reminiscent of Soundgarden.

Trying to get most people to appreciate the music of Messrs Lee, Lifeson and Peart is a bit of a chore at the best of times, but with “We Hold On” Rush just might have made a song everyone can enjoy. Well, maybe not your girlfriend, but definitely your mom.

The Culture of Flushing: A social and Legal History of Sewage
By Jamie Benidickson
UBC Press, 2007; 404 pp.; $29.95

The Culture of Flushing: A Social and Legal History of Sewage, by University of Ottawa law professor Jamie Benidickson is primarily an exhaustive, and at times dense, account of western civilization’s environmentally unsound relationship (can there be any other?) with sewage. Focusing mainly on the industrial history of Great Britain, the U.S. and Canada, Benidickson delves into the cultural and legal assumptions that have led to the on-going blasé attitude most people, communities and businesses take in regard to water’s ability to remove waste.

Certainly waste removal and sewage are the central areas of analysis here, but overtly The Culture of Flushing seems to be not so much about sewage but rather about humanity’s blithe relationship with water itself and by extension the natural world. Not surprisingly, and at almost every page, Benidickson shows that relationship to be based on convenient but ultimately inadequate assumptions about the ability of natural systems to withstand the pollution created by human habitation and industry. Moreover, and to devastating effect, Benidickson shows that these assumptions – based in part on a lack of scientific understanding, and, more often than not, willful ignorance on behalf of individuals, municipalities and business interests – helped endorse the primacy of human needs and desires over the maintenance of the ecological integrity of natural systems, with bodies of water being the prime example. Generally speaking, The Culture of Flushing can be read as a modern history of humanity’s disregard for the planet.

Although his book is essentially a detailed scholarly work – Benidickson cites liberally, and at length, from legal sources (sometimes dating back as far as the 17th century) among others – The Culture of Flushing is highly accessible to general readers. And despite the ostensibly dreary nature of the subject matter – after all, who wants to read about, excuse me, shit – it manages to be mostly fascinating, literary and, at times, even entertaining. Benidickson, with bookish aplomb, describes a repulsive scene where literary greats Aldous Huxley and Thomas Mann walking along a beach near Los Angeles were “struck by the sight of myriad small whitish objects reminiscent of dead caterpillars. On closer inspection the caterpillars revealed themselves to be condoms.” Quoting Huxley, Benidickson continues by writing: “ ‘ten million emblems and mementos of Modern Love,’ an ‘orgiastic profusion’ that had poured out of Los Angeles’ nearby raw sewage outfall.”

All details aside, legal, literary or otherwise, there is a pro-environmental message to Benidickson’s book. By way of a brief history of sewage, he seems to present the reader with the dire ramifications of humanity’s casual tendency to flush away our wastes when he states in the introduction:

Water became a ‘sink’ by design. Indeed, observers have been known to remark that “water is one of the most valuable media for the disposal of municipal, industrial and agricultural residuals.” All too frequently, it has been assumed that this is a primary purpose of water and waterways. It has even been argued on occasion that such usage enjoys the exalted legal status of a right, a central element of our perilous fantasy that the planet was created for human convenience.

However, for the majority of the book, the author is content to play the observer, letting the lurid details of the development of sewage systems, or their lack, and all attendant damages speak for themselves.

It is impossible not to be dumbfounded by the almost endless examples of environmental folly and negligence to be found in this volume. The reader is presented with the all too depressing accounts of business interests consistently, and unsurprisingly, trumping the needs of other riparians (water users), or municipalities balking at the cost of sewage treatment facilities. Perhaps the book’s main weakness is that it does not seem to offer any solutions to the continuing problem, indeed crisis, of human caused pollution. The Culture of Flushing seems rather to content itself with a historical analysis in the hope that such an examination will somehow contribute to more adequate environmental policy in the future.

Let’s hope it does.

Is it possible to refer to Modest Mouse as a pop band? In the sense that they seem to have emerged from the wreckage of grunge and carry with them a definite predisposition towards all things loud and guitar oriented, the answer for a lot of people might be no. (The fact is, just raising this question raises a whole range of other questions relating to the nature of pop music itself – what is it? is it a specific genre or does it cross boundaries eating up influences like Elvis ate strange sandwiches – but that’s a topic for a book.)

There is a sinister quality to Modest Mouse’s music that might make them not qualify for pop band status per se: the combination of Isaac Brock’s off-key and dog-like vocal delivery, liberal use of loud guitars all supported by big drums and bass, seem to place Modest Mouse closer to the hard rock end of the musical spectrum. But consider the immediately catchy “Float On” from 2004’s Good News for People Who Love Bad News. Despite Brock’s inharmonious voice, “Float On”, with layers of plucky guitars accompanied by a marching rhythm section, ends up being an upbeat, indeed almost light, song – one you could play for your grandmother and not get scolded. Okay maybe not your grandmother, but definitely your mother.

The lyrics, self explanatory and offering images from the everyday course of life, give the listener a sunny, indeed optimistic account of the world: “I backed my car into a cop car the other day/Well he just drove off sometimes life’s ok.” Not to be burdened with life’s little troubles, the chorus consoles us with the promise that “we’ll all float on okay,” as though trouble is far away and not expected to return any time soon. Moreover, when trouble does appear in the song, it turns out to be, Buddhist-like, an opportunity to learn something: “Well, a fake Jamaican took every last dime with a scam/It was worth it just to learn some sleight-of-hand.”

With its optimistic implication that everything will be okay connected to the light quality of the music, perhaps “Float On” does count as a pop song. But more importantly than categorization is the fact that this is a great song with a great attitude. Put it on and smile.

The Counterfeiters uncovers a little-known piece of Nazi concentration camp history and turns it into a riveting drama of survival.

A motley group of Jewish men – some from legitimate and others from not so legitimate backgrounds and led by master counterfeiter Salomon (Sally) Sorowitsch – are taken out of the concentration camp death-stream and set to work counterfeiting foreign currency for the Third Reich. For the Nazis, the plan was, somehow, to flood the U.S. and British markets with their own currency and by doing so undermine their economies. In essence, the men get to stay alive not only by helping the enemy, but by perhaps extending the war and necessarily adding to a greater death toll as well. Of course it is a deal with the devil and the irony is not lost on the men, but in the end the need to survive overrules, sometimes brutally, any lingering doubts the counterfeiters may have regarding the nature of their work.

If The Counterfeiters can be reduced to a single theme it is that of survival. Throughout the film, Sally, although no example of upright citizenship and played like such a one accustomed to life on the dark side by Karl Markowics, knows what side of the moral dilemma he is on. In a conversation with Adolf Burger (August Diehl), his young idealistic foil, Sally says, “I’d rather be gassed tomorrow than shot today. A Day is a day.” And this seems to be the reigning sentiment among the rest of the men.

When we are given glimpses into Sally’s life outside of forced labour and concentration camps, we see an apparently selfish man given to the satisfaction of desires. Placed against the moral absolutist Burger, Sally seems a downright scoundrel. Consequently, the differences in their characters lead to some of the film’s most tension filled moments: Burger is willing to sabotage the work of counterfeiting and risk death in order to resist a ruthless enemy, while Sally must perform a high wire act to simultaneously appease his Nazi captors and not lose Burger’s indespensible skills as a typographer – thus allowing the men to live for another day. In this way, the line between self-preservation and selfless concern for the welfare of others is brilliantly obscured.

Adding to the film’s sense of moral inconclusiveness is the relationship between SS Chief Inspector Friedrich Herzog (performed by a boyish Devid Striesow) – the man in charge of overseeing the counterfeiting operation – and Sally. In a very real way the two men are exact reflections of the other: they are both working to save their own skins. With the war coming to a close, Herzog is forced into playing the survival game as well. Towards the end of the film when he says to Sally, “One has to look after oneself,” he is essentially repeating the same selfish attitude of the master counterfeiter. But Herzog’s basic treatment of Sally and his men, his affording them a measure of comfort and care while surrounded by deprivation, makes his character hard to equate with cinematized versions of the evil Nazi.

Filmed on grainy stock and seemingly through a grey filter, The Counterfeiters retains a sense of unreality, of existing in a world where meaning and truth are inherently unstable. But this shouldn’t be a surprise given a situation where basic human survival outweighs any competing interest, moral or otherwise.

Even though I was never a big fan, I was saddened to hear of the death of extraordinary musician and person Jeff Healy. I do not want to sound dismissive of musical ability, but flashy blues oriented guitar playing has never been my cup of tea – and this is what seems to have initially made Healy famous. However, it wasn’t until I listened to his CBC radio show, My Kind of Jazz, that I first got an understanding of Jeff Healy that went beyond his blues/rock persona. With something like 30,000 vinyl records in his collection, Healy had a knowledge of early and traditional jazz that spoke to both his ability as a musician and appreciator of music. His wish to share the music he loved with a wider audience suggests a generosity of spirit in keeping with his musical talents. So it is with equal parts sadness and admiration that I dedicate this week’s installment to Jeff Healy.

Although not recorded in the early part of the 20th century, “Floater (Too Much to Ask)” by Bob Dylan and found on 2001’s “Love and Theft,” very well could have been. Seemingly recalling New Orleans and Dixieland jazz and blues from the 1930’s – prominent in Healy’s radio show – “Floater” is mostly a mid-tempo stroll over lightly played and mostly acoustic backing instruments – including an indolent sounding violin.

With the lazy quality of the music ambling along like a happy drunk and furnished with Dylan’s typical mixture of evocative imagery and astute commentary, “Floater” seems to place the listener in some idealistic reckoning of the southern United States. When Dylan sings, “I keep listening for footsteps/but I ain’t never hearing any/from the boat, I fish for bullheads/I catch a lot, sometimes too many,” it’s as if the listener can expect to arrive, Huckleberry Finn-like, on the banks of the Mississippi River at a garden party complete with white-suited plantation owners sipping mint juleps and smoking cigars.

“Floater” does not explicitly mention a specific geography or time, but the music does seem to place it in a romanticized past and place. But more than using music to create an atmosphere, indeed to recall a vanished time, Bob Dylan – as well as Jeff Healy when he was alive – is bringing back into the world forms of music that might otherwise go unnoticed and unappreciated by a larger audience.

Coming on the heels of the federal budget, the writing of this week’s installment might sound like it’s inspired by that hallowed day when, in carefully chosen rhetoric, the government in power – this time the minority Conservatives – will lay out how they plan to spend, or not spend, Canadian taxpayers’ money. Although budget day does seem to be a guaranteed attention grabber, it is my own financial concerns, more like woes, that have compelled me to choose that staple of classic rock radio, Pink Floyd’s “Money.”

Trying to describe “Money” might be superfluous to most people: it is after all probably played at least once a day if not more on any number of radio stations throughout the world specializing in guitar oriented rock from mostly the 60s and 70s.

Found on the seemingly immortal Dark Side of the Moon, “Money” begins with Roger Waters’ famous bass line accompanied by now iconic sound effects – the repeated opening and closing of cash registers, the throwing of change and the staccato of adding machines. From this, the bass is given a sort of whimsically mechanical rhythm over which it lays down its groove.

Perhaps best described as “blues rock,” the song does seem to play out in a certain heaviness that echoes back to blues dominated bands such as Cream. However, different from Cream’s propensity for guitar-solo dominated jamming, “Money” is far more rhythmic, and in a way, thanks to Waters’ bass playing, kind of swings. Except for David Gilmour’s screaming solo towards the end, guitars seem to linger behind the rhythm section and keyboards. As if adding texture, the guitars in the song are alternately played through heavy reverb then through a wa-wa pedal, giving “Money” a definite raunchines, I would even venture, sleeziness – a sonic connection to the song’s subject matter.

The song appears to be written from the point of view of someone who regularly worships at the unaltruistic altar of greed: “Money, it’s a hit/don’t give me that do-goody-good bullshit/I’m in the hi-fidelity first class traveling set/And I think I need a Lear jet.” Although written apparently tongue-in-cheek, “Money” seems to offer a first glimpse into Roger Waters’ now famous disdain for society’s shallow obsession with wealth and fame – themes he would pursue to greater depth on Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall.

Michael Clayton begins with a series of night shots passing over and through the office towers of Manhattan. As the camera presumably presents the audience with the faceless centers of commerce and law, a voiceover spoken through a phone with the clarity of a manic-depressive on a high accompanies the passing corporate vista. The voice belongs to Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson) and here’s part of what he has to say: “I realized, Michael, at that moment, that I had emerged — as I have done nearly every day for the past 28 years of my life — not through the portals of our huge and powerful law firm, but rather from . . . an organism whose sole function is to excrete the poison — the ammo — the defoliant — necessary for even larger and more dangerous organisms to destroy the miracle of humanity.”

Eden’s convoluted yet intensely clear monologue sets both the high pace and tension of the film right from the start – and it doesn’t let up. But it is Michael Clayton’s central theme, power and the lengths people will go to maintain it, that makes the film an anxiety-ridden meditation on corporate life and the price it exacts from its participants.

As lead defense counsel for agribusiness giant UNorth fending off a massive class action lawsuit, Edens discovers he has been on the wrong end of a fight after 16 years of litigation. Foregoing his medication (Edens suffers from bi-polar disorder), he has a manic episode during an on-camera discovery meeting. Naturally, the corporate brass at UNorth are freaked out. Fearing the loss of a client with very deep pockets, Edens’ firm sends out “fixer” Michael Clayton (George Clooney) to the hinterlands of America to bring their top defense attorney to heel. But in the end it is not Edens’ erratic behaviour that frightens UNorth, it is the fact that Edens is in possession of documents that prove his client to be an unethical, indeed downright evil organization.

Michael Clayton could easily have been played as a good versus bad morality tale along the lines of a David Grisham legal thriller, but the conflicted natures of the central characters consigns the film’s moral center (if it even has one) to a permanent grey zone.

None of the main characters are presented as a foil for the others because all of them have been slogging it out in the same moral vacuum, it seems, for decades. Clayton himself, the film’s under-hero and played with a broken dishevelment by Clooney, has spent a career fixing the “mistakes” of a certain class of people with the money to pay for his services; while head counsel for UNorth, the seemingly cold and calculating Karen Crowder, performed as though she were on nothing but a diet of ice cubes and speed by Tilda Swinton, seems to act out of desperation at the behest of her corporate overlords rather than from any psychopathic intent.

Despite one plot oversimplification and an ending bordering on the melodramatic, Michael Clayton, saved by its exploration of moral ambiguity, remains a superb film about the damage caused by the pursuit of wealth and power. But given that Edens — who himself is inextricably linked to the same regime of greed that his clients are committed to — is able to acknowledge that he has been serving an “even larger and more dangerous organism,” suggests a moral victory no matter how difficult Michael Clayton makes it to find.

After the light-hearted yet dark – and comparatively short – Punch Drunk Love, Paul Thomas Anderson returns to epic movie making in his latest film There Will Be Blood. But whereas the sprawling Boogie Nights and Magnolia seem to have been concerned with the profane details of their all-too-human characters, There Will Be Blood takes on themes as grand and as stark as the southern California desert where it takes place.

As if echoing popular conceptions of the holy land at the time of Christ, the story unfolds in a dry barren landscape populated with poor farmers and their families who can barely scratch out an existence from its unproductive ground. With the discovery of oil underneath their land by the likes of prospector and subsequent “Oil Man” Daniel Plainview – played with both control and an intensity bordering on the diabolical by Daniel Day-Lewis – the temptation to sell overrides all other concerns, particularly that of the social bonds of family, and specifically those between fathers and sons and brothers. It is through these relationships, however tentative and contingent, that the film’s epic narrative is propelled.

Although they aren’t blood relatives, the most significant relationship in the movie (it seemed to me) was the recurring association between Plainview and Eli Sunday. A civilization of sorts springs up around one of Plainview’s most productive oil wells – complete with tent city and a church. Boyish preacher Eli Sunday, played with schizophrenic aplomb by Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine, Fast-food Nation), leads the congregation of the Church of the Third Revelation. Both Eli and Plainview, with varying degrees of enthusiasm take on the role of father figure. But whereas the role of father is incidental to Plainview’s more earthbound role as leader of men and captain of industry, Eli takes his own leadership as something god-given and holy, and therefore above the rabble of men who chase after wealth and power. But at the same time, no matter how much Eli plays at moral and religious superiority, deep down he longs for power. In doing so, he becomes a reflection of Plainview. In essence, Plainview and Eli are spiritual father and son in their shared desire for the things to be gotten in this world. For Plainview however, power is a means to an end: namely in his wish to “get away from people.” Alternatively, power for Eli, in his willingness to lord it over others for his own edification like a domineering father, is entirely attached to his ego and is an end in itself.

Although both characters are ultimately despicable, in his honest misanthropy, in his ability to see people like Eli Sunday for the dishonest beings they really are, Plainview comes across as the moral center, if there can be one, of the film. When he says to “half brother” Henry, “I see the worst in people,” it isn’t just a flippant remark: Plainview means it, and carries out his mean perceptions of the world to the bloody end — and seemigly on people who deserve to have there skulls bashed in with a bowlling pin. In this way, Plainview, rather than being presented as simpy evil, is given a depth and complexity that perhaps only an actor as talented and obsessed as Daniel Day-Lewis could pull off.

There Will Be Blood is brilliant filmmaking. Check it out.