I worked at MuchMusic for almost a decade, and unquestionably my biggest contribution to music that whole time was being producer/cameraman/bodyguard to Nardwuar the Human Serviette.  I love Nardwuar like an annoying brother – which is to say I appreciate his merits while admitting that few people on earth can frustrate me as much.  Anyone who has watched (or been a subject of) his interviews probably knows what I’m getting at.

In Nardwuar’s defense, the man has no guile. He’s not Sasha Baren-Cohen, playing a polarizing character for laughs.  He’s not malicious, or calculating, or daring.  Nardwuar is just…Nardwuar.  He can’t help the way he is.

When asked what Nardwuar was like, I would tell people he was a litmus test for the entire human race.  You could really discover a lot about a person based on their reaction to Nardwuar. The ones who were insecure or took themselves too seriously tended to react negatively.  The ones who were most comfortable with themselves were the ones who dug him the most. Essentially, they were like Nardwuar in that they too had no pretense – they were just simply themselves.

In this way I can tell you that Beck is a big fucking baby, Dave Rowntree of Blur is a self-absorbed dick who could use either a hug or anger management therapy, and Peter Murphy of the band Bauhaus knows his contribution to pop culture is marginal at best, and is rather dismayed about it.   On the other hand, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single fake bone in the bodies of Snoop Dogg, Josh Homme, or the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne.  Oh yeah – and Jack Layton too.

Jack was on the campaign trail in 2004 when Nardwuar and I bumped into him.   Nardwuar was in the habit of making politicians….well, maybe just watch the clip:

Personally, a lot of what you need to know about Jack is right there: he was gracious enough to talk with the autistic-savant of celebrity interviewers, he possessed life experience broad enough to impress even Nardwuar, and he had the good sense not to answer the doobie question.  I particularly like that he respected Nardwuar enough to actually prep for the interview – the harmonica and chanting “Doot doola doot doo” in unison are giveaways.  Most importantly, though, the man was genuine  – he did the Hip Flip, then made a mildly blue joke about one day playing it home with his wife. I certainly hope that moment wasn’t the start of his hip trouble.

So there you go – gracious, knowledgable, too smart to pander, blessed with a self-deprecating humour, treating everyone the way he’d want to be treated – even someone dressed head-to-toe in plaid who speaks in a mild screech that agitates forest creatures.   Combine that with his sense of principle, his willingness to tussle with the Harper cyborg (whilst being flexible enough to work with the guy if he thought things may improve as a result), plus the élan with which he handled his various illnesses, and I think it’s pretty apparent –  Jack Layton was a Better Man in Full.  I may have described him in a previous post as having the countenance of an insurance salesman, but I confess that was mostly envy over his marriage to one of the least self-serving politicians I’ve ever met.  That a woman with as much clarity as Olivia Chow would stay married to him is a testament to the man’s character.

Everybody knows there are lots of phonies, blowhards and sycophants in politics. Jack Layton was none of those things – the Nardwuar Hip Flip Poll proves it. You may not have agreed with him, but theres no reason you couldn’t aspire to be like him.

 

About a week ago, I was writing a post called “D-Day plus 10”. Essentially, it was a self-congratulatory note on how prepared I was for the imminent arrival of my first child, and how 10 days after the original due date, the waiting had grown tiresome.  It was perhaps one of my best – witty, poignant, self-effacing, with a life lesson for any Man on the road to Betterment.  I can tell you all of this, of course, because I’ll never publish it.  To do so would be moot, since halfway through writing I was interrupted by the arrival of this lady:

This is Ava, and she took her sweet ass time getting here – 12 days late. We’re in the middle of heat wave, so I can only imagine Baby Mama’s coochie has air conditioning or something.  The labour lived up to its name – 30 hours, ending with a suction on Ava’s head as an obstetrician tried pulling her out like she was a cork in a wine bottle.  I’m sure I’m embellishing, but I can’t shake the image in my head of Ava flying through the air like a human cannonball – arms flailing as she’s released from the confines of her “studio apartment”, landing on her face and sliding a few inches, like a runner stealing home base.

Despite her initial stage fright, Ava has turned out perfectly – she’s healthy, gorgeous, even-tempered, and lets her parents sleep through the night with minimal interruption (for now).   She is prone to what I call “splatterpoops” – from time to time, she’ll have a meaty fart, after which little brown angel’s wings will suddenly appear over her shoulders.  I can only assume that once she learns to stand it will look like a Jackson Pollock.

I’m assured this is quite normal, so about the only problem with Ava is she’s given her daddy writer’s block – not from a lack of things to write, mind you, but too many.  My head’s like a clogged drain, which is why I’m going to take a few days to figure out what it is I want to say.    However, I can share two thoughts right now, the first being I wish my dad was here. His death felt a little like someone leaving halfway through a film without finding out how it ends.  If he’d stayed around long enough, he’d know the third act starts off with a lot of promise.

The other thought, I must confess, isn’t really mine, but the Coen Brothers.  Just tonight I was watching No Country for Old Men – a movie I had trouble suspending my disbelief over, since I doubt Texans could be that thoughtful or contemplative.  One of the minor characters has a great bit of dialogue late in the movie: “All the time ya spend trying to get back what’s been took from ya, more is going out the door. After a while you just have to try to get a tourniquet on it.”

So many times, our attention is on the wrong thing.   For the first time, though, I feel I know where I should be looking.  I’ve got my daughter to thank for that.