Nick's Café Canadien

The LEGO brick turned fifty today, which makes it fairly young if you think about it. Personally, I find it quite jarring to reflect on LEGO from a historical perspective at all. As one of the… four activities I have any recollection of doing before the age of seven (the other three: reading Schulz, creating HyperCard stacks on my Macintosh SE, and knowing everything there was to know about dinosaurs), clicking those bricks into place and struggling to pry them apart with my little fingers was something that was always there, and always needed to be done.

It’s not something I ever outgrew, strictly speaking; my interests merely gravitated elsewhere to things no less appealing to the obsessive-compulsive. I have the utmost respect for the people who steadfastly refused to stop playing with LEGO bricks, and it grows every time I see an accomplishment like Andrew Lipson’s sculptures of Escher paintings in impossible spaces, or tributes like “The Knights of the Round Table”. The further apart you are from your childhood, it seems, the higher the tide of nostalgia.

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Oscar nominations are up—and while I’m not as equipped to comment as I usually am, given that I haven’t caught up on all the films I missed on account of being out of the country, but I’ll dispense some initial impressions nonetheless. At this point I’m not going to pay too much attention to whether the ceremony will have any of its usual glitz if the presenters and nominees continue to show solidarity with the WGA; for me, it’s about recognizing the films, and the ceremony itself is mostly window dressing. So here we go.

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Just shy of three weeks ago, I stayed at the decidedly unhygienic Ambassador City Jomtien, which was by all appearances Thailand’s number one tourist destination for indulgent Russian oligarchs. It was timely, then, that when I endeavoured to head to the beach for a spot of reading under the palms, the next book in my endless queue was none other than The Brothers Karamazov.

This was my first time through Dostoevsky’s magisterial opus, and at more than one juncture I observed that with its high moral intrigue, impassioned cast of players and unreserved Biblical ambition—not to mention the best courtroom speeches in prose fiction (themselves capable satires of psychoanalytic narrative analysis decades before the study formally existed)—surely somebody has had the bravado to attempt a film.

As it turns out, Richard Brooks wrote and directed an English-language film adaptation back in 1958 (read the contemporaneous New York Times review) starring—get this—Yul Brynner and William Shatner. For those of you with access to Turner Classic Movies, it plays 7 February.

Hasbro and Mattel (who own the rights to Scrabble in North America and Everywhere Else, respectively) have jointly requested that Facebook remove the popular Scrabulous application; here’s a more thorough and disgruntled look. As someone who’s done his homework on the occasional legal absurdities surrounding his favourite sport, I am—how did Palahniuk so crudely put it?—Jack’s complete lack of surprise.

I’ll say a few things regardless, since this will be the first direct encounter with said absurdities for most people who play Scrabulous. Remember, kids, it’s not Scrabble—it’s the SCRABBLE® Brand Crossword Game.

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Saturday’s Oscar Peterson tribute concert is now available online. You can listen to it in segments, but I obviously recommend sitting through the whole thing; if you do have to pick and choose, though, make it Herbie Hancock’s speech and performance. (More on him later.) Having just returned to school after three weeks out of the country, I wasn’t able to make the pilgrimage to Hogtown, but after listening to some of the heartfelt eulogies I’m beginning to think I should have stood out in the cold for ten hours on the steps of Roy Thomson Hall with the rest of the throng of ladies, gentlemen and music-lovers all who, like me, would not have the sense of personal identity they possess today were it not for the inspiration of the greatest jazz pianist there ever was or ever will be—and my favourite musician of any stripe, period.

The myriad tributes in O.P.’s honour, both in print since his passing and in the concert, offer a personal underscore to something I always knew about, but only on paper—that he was not only an exemplary musician, but an extraordinary role model in every respect: someone who demonstrated that you can have your cake and eat it too—that great jazz doesn’t have to come at the price of drug addiction or poisoned race relations. The real condition of its production is the will to be the calibre of artist you want. And the kind of man who realizes that is the kind of man who will play his way through a debilitating stroke and live to the ripe old age of 82.

I’m not a sucker for biography. I like to imagine that you can appreciate art apart from its creator, and that in the majority of cases, you should. But sometimes, I have to wonder how much of that is a matter of burying my head in the sand—not wanting to acknowledge that Bill Evans’ sentimental figurations were paying the tab for the heroin coursing through his left arm—and it’s a relief to look up to someone like Oscar Peterson and not have to make a single excuse.

That’s when you know you’ve picked a hero. For Nicholas Tam, that moment came at the age of fifteen.

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I can’t seem to mention my favourite developing country without saying a few words about the musical compositions of its presiding Philosopher King, so perhaps I’ll take a moment to devote an entire post to the subject. For those of you who are new to the show: do familiarize yourself with the Rama IX Art Museum Foundation’s comprehensive online exhibit, which I’ve only just had the pleasure to discover myself. It comprises a biographical overview of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s musical background, audio samples of forty of his songs, historical notes on specific compositions, and even lead sheets of the melodies and chords.

And if you want to hear something exceptionally cool: there’s always a lot of talk about how the King once played alongside America’s own King of Swing, Benny Goodman (indeed, that’s the subject of the photograph atop the musical archive’s introductory page), but now I’ve found some aural proof—samples from Benny Goodman’s 1955 concert in Bangkok, in which he plays several of the King’s signature compositions, including the Thai Royal Anthem. I’ve linked to my personal favourite, “Sai Fon” (“Falling Rain”); the song is written as a waltz, but the band plays it in 4/4.

My own interest in King Bhumibol’s music originates from my first visit to his realm in December 2003, when I first heard that he was a noted saxophonist and big band composer in addition to everything else he did (painting, translating Economist articles, ending military coups with a single command, and so on). It wasn’t until after the adventure that I actually listened to some of his music and fell in love with a number of the tunes. But this time around, I went to Thailand prepared—and after traipsing around the country for nearly three weeks, I can absolutely confirm that the King’s music is as ubiquitous as the documents about it claim.

I also returned with a handful of compact discs, all of which I will discuss below.

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Before I speak of items that are of a more general appeal (Thailand, its wise and noble King, the late Oscar Peterson, the even later Air Canada), a few words about the World Universities Debating Championship: the knockout results and motions from Assumption Worlds are up, but more interestingly, so is the complete tab of the preliminary rounds, for the express perusal of those who like detailed statistical quantifications of their favourite sporting events.

As you’ll immediately observe, the online component of the Tabbie software is really something. It tells me that Wallis and I finished in the top quarter of the 396-team tournament with 16 points, a tremendous improvement for us both (at Vancouver Worlds, her team and mine finished on 11 and 13 points, respectively), and goes on to offer a round-by-round breakdown of our performance that illustrates our place in the standings before and after every debate, identifies our opposition and adjudicators, and retells the story of our tournament by the numbers—from our Round 1 skirmish with the eventual semifinalists from Yale A, to the inexcusable and outrageous decision that knocked us off the warpath in Round 6, to our mathematical elimination in Round 7 when we unsuccessfully advocated for the assassination of Vladimir Putin, to the Alberta-versus-Alberta front-half faceoff in Round 9.

With a combined 62 points spread over four teams (not to mention Sharon’s second place in the Public Speaking competition, which she achieved in spite of being cut off a minute early), the Alberta contingent as a whole submitted its best performance since Toronto Worlds in 2002, when Stephanie Wanke and Alex Ragan finished in 12th place with 19 points and advanced to the quarterfinals.

Since I’m putting off posting my 900-some holiday photographs on Facebook, I thought I’d compile a summary of Alberta’s track record at Worlds. This will probably be of strictly local significance, but you could always skip it and scroll down for some general remarks on the statistical analysis of debates.

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