... riffin' on the RFF ...

... before I saw even a single film, a lone documentary or attended any opening festivity for the fourth, almost-annual Reggae Film Festival I found myself reflecting on poignant personal ironies ...

... a virtual lifetime ago my parents bought their first home together, at the corner of Hamilton and Courtney Drives in Trafalgar Park, Kingston, then a prototype mid-town housing community for upwardly mobile professionals and their young families in post-independence Jamaica ... the street-plan of the enclave provided a convenient corridor between the bustle of New Kingston's Trafalgar Road and the upper-St. Andrew trunk of Hope Road, site of Jamaica House, the Prime Minister's residence and my Prep-School-of-record at Mona ... Hope Road later came to acquire widespread notoriety as the address of Bob Marley's above the line hang-out/residence/studio/museum ...

... twisting fates and tortuous routes can make a mockery of time elapsed, and, the destiny that led me to attend this year's Jamaica Reggae Film Festival served up a no-lose situation which I was not about to ignore, come whatever may ...

... originally advertised for urban Montego Bay in the rural parish of St. James, de riguer chops and changes saw the emergent event flexing a big-city move by taking over Studio 38 on Trafalgar Road ... so, for the second time in recent years I found myself in Kingston to celebrate cinema mere measurements from the stomping grounds of my happy early childhood ...

... festivals of film are artist showcases driven by sponsorships and creative juices, a mercurial admixture at the best of times, and despite the efforts of Barbara Blake-Hannah, the venerable figurehead pulling the strings, scheduling proved vulnerable to the gremlins who govern Murphy's law ... indeed, BBH and the RFF fell short of that magic formula necessary to create the sort of vibe such events rely on when inevitable glitches occur ... until the eleventh-hour(and for some tentative minutes beyond) this festival was set to premiere The Skin, a supernatural thriller set in Antigua, amid a selection of shorts and documentaries with Reggae/Caribbean sensibilities ... to the chagrin of many, this did not manifest ...

... fortunately, involvement in this little-film-that-could was only one of my motivations to grace the music-soaked, cosy-corner of Kingsley Cooper's fashionable venue ... Jamaican actor-icon Carl Bradshaw (also in The Skin) was in attendance of course, and a pleasant meeting with breakout actress Nicole Grey from Storm Saulter's buzzy Jamaican film "Betta Must Come" and Pulse model Jackie (Jaki?) made for keepsake photo-ops ...

... among other attendees I noted were Reggae-ologist Dr. Carolyn Cooper, "Native" Wayne Jobson keeping the pressure on the Peter Tosh pedal, singer/actress Cherine Anderson, the authoritative Mutabaruka, veteran musician Bongo Herman, stalwart JA skipper and Windies cricketer Maurice Foster, Emmy-winning director Mustapha Khan (in Jamaica screening "Rocksteady") and his lead actor Cedric Sanders ...

... the broad appeal of the subject matter (plus pervasive goodwill for this festival's mandate and its erstwhile organizers) means it would be a pity to allow avoidable happenstance to undermine its credibility in the face of a world with so many other attractions on offer and such stiff competition for funding pursestrings ...

... onward and upward ... Selah ...

... motherhood springs eternal ...

... when it comes to mothers there's always room for a big-up, but umbilical instinct and nascent feelings spring forth more spontaneously at certain times ... Mother's Day is one of those times ... it's no coincidence that date falls in the Spring, when flowers bloom and nature's fecundity rules ...

... I smile at the synchronicity when I consider that both Miss Ivy's children were born one standard gestational period after springtime ... immodestly speaking, those must've been good astrological years, and, appreciation for firm grounding and what continues to be a blessing, is a true constant in my life ...

... gwaaan Mama! ... massive love ...

... buh-bye bin, bada bing ...

... a tip o' the tam to Tim for reminding me of the a propos quote, "I've never wished a man dead but I've read some obituaries with great pleasure” ... whether or not those words are wholely attributable to Mark Twain, they inspired me to vent on a vanquished villain, that surly Saudi ingrate, phantom renegade and bad egg by any measure ...

... Osama bin Laden was a larger-than-life, xtreme hide and seek player ... after being emboldened by Western support against the Soviets in Afghanistan he came to embody such a perfect foil for American psychologies of propriety that it's difficult not to feel elements of good riddance ... and this is before we even mention his most nefarious misdeeds ...

... enter the frontier sheriff on his sturdy steed, twirling ivory-handled Colts at the hip, down mainstreet Abbottabad ... Barack Obama, faced with mid-term poll recalibrations, second-term boo-birds, and long-term legacy considerations, pulls a six foot-five inch rabbit from his hat and trumps (literally - hah!) the relatively prosaic Saddam-in-a-hole routine of his predecessor ...

... the daring in this act of leadership is magnified by the timing ... fresh from being carded (which is effectively what happened when this President was compelled into taking special initiative to produce an obsolete form of bureaucratic paperwork testifying to his very legitimacy as citizen-of-the-land), Obama stewards a checkmate for the ages ... going from (not-quite) zero to sixty, in the political equivalent of a nanosecond ...

... the only foreshadowing precedent I can recall is the classic 1974 Mel Brooks spoof film "Blazing Saddles", and, based on the way things developed for the new-man-in-charge in that blueprint, I predict more quasi-comic moments and coolly managed scenarios, with only the occasional glitch, before this dude proudly hangs up his badge after about eight years leading the posse ... and rides off into the (Hawaiian?) sunset ...

... taking the high road ...

... going on tour can be a romantic ideal ... when I hear of a band going on a "road trip" f'rinstance, I visualize Greyhound busses, twanging gee-tars, and Allman Brothers look-alike roadies hauling drum kits from venue to venue ... variants on this theme display some consistencies whether the band is country-rock, roots-rock-reggae, Def Jam or post-Mickey Mouse Club ... today however, a "road trip" rarely resembles that cliche, and the term is just as likely to conjure an image of Thelma and Louise encountering Brad on a middle-of-nowhere stretch of interstate, or the "Hangover" cast setting out for hi-jinks in Las Vegas ...

... nor, in actuality, is this imagery confined to the music world or the silver screen ... "road trip" has come to signify a journey away from home-base for any length of time, be it hours, days, weeks or more, regardless of mode of transportion ... as recovering Arizona congresswoman Gabby Gifford's husband, Mark Kelly, prepares for his historic penultimate Space Shuttle mission I'm not certain if astronauts qualify as yet, but the term is inclusive of cross-country walkers, distance cyclists and frequent flyers ...



... sometimes a "road trip" can take you to the next town over but when planes are involved that could just as easily be the next country or hemisphere ...the latest Ackeelover Chronicles excursion spanned the longitude between antipodean Australia and the capital of Canada with touchdowns en-route, tailor made for eventual blog fodder if the internal clock ever readjusts ...

... exciting? ... yes, but air travel sure ain't what it used to be ... pat-downs, x-ray technologies, sniffer dogs, laptop swabs, fingerprints and infra-red "eye-D" retinal scans all contribute to travel safety but have the cumulative effect of dragging out a "road trip" ... promisingly, new TSA regulations propose reform for passengers, who, having paid to check-in a single suitcase, find no recompense even when that very valise vanishes after weather SNAFU's a connection at Chi-Town's mazy O'Hare ... 

... during these travels I came upon a little bit o'trivia claiming that the average number of people airborne over the U.S. in any given hour numbers 61,000 ... same time I saw headlines regarding an air-traffic control gaffe causing the diversion of a plane carrying Michelle Obama and Jill Biden ... it seems the FLOTUS flight was too close for comfort to a military cargo plane approaching Andrews airforce base ... after a contemplative pause to take in the potential horror of that averted disaster I weighed it all against my own aborted landing experience ... juuust before the too-late point ... when the pilot saw another plane still occupying our San Juan runway ...

... on the return itinerary, the second pass by this almost-a-state (can you imagine if Barack Obama was born here?) was more direct ... flying over Puerto Rico (or in fairness, anywhere) is quicker, slicker and safer than stopping there ...

... not all road trips conclude safely at the original point of departure, ask Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, Lynyrd Skynrd or Aaliyah ... with nineteen take-offs and nineteen landings crammed into a five-week period, it's impossible not to feel sometimes like you're playing the odds when you take the "high road", but, make it back in one piece with experience enhanced and memories intact, you can feel like a sweepstake winner ...

... the King wears Bermuda shorts ...

... a casual linear approach to directions can locate everywhere east of west, and north of what's to the south, on this spherical planet ... 'til you actually come full circle ... therefore, all points on the globe, save both absolute poles, are co-ordinates of those four cardinal points, North, South, East and West ...

... I've just returned from the only place I can think of right now which to tends to defy this imperative, as it has popularly come to be regarded in terms of only three ... sitting in mid-Atlantic isolation is the anomalous island of Bermuda, the apex of a fabled triangulation of marine mystery ... culturally, this land is a tryptych of sorts, drawing with almost equal weight from cultures to its east, west and south, a trident of British, American and Caribbean sensibilities blending into a unique identity ...

... like other island societies, survival in the swim of world dynamics hinges on external lifelines, and more than most, Bermudian experience reflects a binding assuredness instead of centrifugal fractiousness ... to my eye, the monarchic allegiances of Bermuda's colonial heritage and the New England habitude of North American privilege sits in relatively comfortable co-existence with the influence of Afro-indenture that gives these parts so much of its color ... the sum of such parts is invariably greater than the whole and modern Bermuda stands on this platform, a remnant outpost of empire owning its strands of history and despite size, unapologetically claiming nationhood ...

... every year for the past fourteen, Bermuda has hosted BIFF, an International Film Festival welcoming cinematic expression from every worldwide source, in programmes reflective of a diversity beyond the primary trifecta of their own cultural wellspring ...

... it doesn't feel as long, but it's been three years since the 11th annual BIFF when Frances-Anne Solomon screened her film A Winter Tale to a rapt full house at Speciality Cinema in Hamilton, and now I find myself invited to serve as a juror ... BIFF 2011's cadre of short films, numbering thirty-two in all, was the largest selected for competition at this small yet important contributing festival for the gran'daddy Academy Award in this eclectic category ...

... our panel of jurors represented various perspectives and areas of expertise ... working with them was a pleasure, effectively lowering my degrees of separation vis-a-vis prominent names like Scorsese and Tarantino and projects like "48 Hours", "The King's Speech" and "Inglourious Basterds"... we divided handily into groups focussed on documentaries, features and short films, the latter category becoming the purview of publicist, producer and performer, an eager troika charged with watching all competition shorts to choose one for the jury prize ...
 

... as to be expected, or hoped for, the creativity in competition was broad in scope, artistic in presentation, tantalising to the imagination and culturally inclusive, with a dizzying array of footage all seeking to be memorable in abbreviated time ... extensive deliberation and democratic decision-making awarded the prize to super-concise storytelling in the form of a clever four minute Spanish film by Albertto Dorado called "Lost" featuring a Somalian plotline, an eight year old boy and music-over-the-credits from hot Somali-Canadian rapper K'naan ...

... there could only be one winner but in a dream world I would be King and decree all who deserve a prize to receive one ... Carlos Castineira, also of Spain, should hold on to hope for his powerful film "Easy Money" in case I ascend to the throne, as should Italy's Massimo Cappelli for his classy "41" ... two efforts out of the U.K., Peter Cattaneo's charming "Capturing Santa" and a sexy fifteen minute romp entitled "An Act of Love" by Edward Dick, would be rewarded for levity amid the de rigeur darker themed offerings of necrophilia and pedophilia ... and, were it not for a brief moment of confusion near the end, which I'm willing to consider was my own dim-switch kicking in, I might have pushed harder for Pierre Ferriere's watchable leading actress in "The Story of My Life", a riveting six minute French film ...

... this jewel of a Film Festival keeps a down-to-earth profile, not to suggest a paucity of boozy parties and hors d'ouvres between programming ... you may assume that ... but I saw cool features and documentaries, met some fascinating folks-in-flicks and had a heartfelt reunion with an old high-school friend who will henceforth lead the campaign for my coronation and act as aide de camp cum Lionel Logue ... for return payment in kind ...

... along the way I learned that the critical measure regarding Bermuda shorts is that they fall two inches above the knee ... someone should make a film about that ... I'd vote for it ...

... meltdown mash-up ...

... "Bless my eyes this morning, Jah sun is on the rise once again, the way earthly things are going, anything can happen" ...
- ("So Much Trouble In The World" - Marley)

... by now readers of this blog will be familiar with my conviction that there's never a bad time to reach for a Marley lyric to support a thought ... Bob Marley tailored his songs around specific concerns but also for universal applicability and while he never actually used the word "meltdown" in song or, to my knowledge, interview, recent events may very well have given him opportunity to do so ... for sure there's plenty occasion these days to employ the term ...

... the earthquake/tsunami double-whammy in Japan, as if it isn't catastrophic enough in terms of loss of life and damage, is precipitating crises at several nuclear facilities, feeding fears of Chernobyl-style reactor meltdowns of massive consequence ...

... "in this age of technological inhumanity, scientific atrocity, atomic mis-philosophy, nuclear mis-energy, it's a world that forces lifelong insecurity" - ("Survival" - Marley) ...

... the growing challenge to the autocratic status-quo in the Arab world is widely characterised in Western media as systemic meltdown but is probably more akin to a populist derma-peel than a grasp at Washington or Westminster-style democracy ...

... "every man got a right to decide his own destiny ... so arm in arm, with arms, we'll fight this little struggle ... soon we'll find out who is the real revolutionary" - ("Zimbabwe" - Marley) ...

... collective unrest or act of God doesn't hold a monopoly on the phenomenon of meltdown, in fact it is just as likely, perhaps moreso, for any given individual to manifest this state through uncontrolable anger, psycho-chemical breakdown or both, as in the case of one sick cyber-stalker who I've had to report to police ... then there's the force majeure called Teflon Charlie ...

... with Charlie Sheen's dramatic severance from the Two and a Half Men TV sit-com keeping news cycles distracted, all the apocalyptic internet chatter around the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 and the looming fly-by of the asteroid Apophis, you'd think we have enough cataclysm to contemplate ... not so ...

... you may have heard of Betelgeuse, one of the brightest stars in the night sky, it's said to be close to burnout, soon to collapse on itself in a showy, stellar meltdown known as a supernova ... the dying star is considered old for its type and could stage this spectacular exit tomorrow, or in a gazillion tomorrows, but in the context of our universe, that means soon ...

... Marley, in the astral gleam of stage lights, represents a supernova in the musical firmament ... acceptance of the supreme authority of nature is central to Rasta spirituality and is perhaps the best prescription for dealing with meltdowns ...

... "have no fear for atomic energy, 'cause none a dem can stop the time" - ("Redemption Song" - Marley)

... interestingly enough, I journey to Australia in a matter of weeks at the kind invitation of the Supanova Pop Culture Expo ... I'll see Brisbane where cyclone Yasi wreaked havoc only a month ago ... a Jamaican Down Under, like Bob in '79 ...

... "Jah love, Jah love protect us" - ("Positive Vibration" - Marley)

... my kingdom for a newspaper ...

... aah, the curse of the conflicted ... it's a strange feeling to be pining for Canada in February, and doubly incongruent to do it from sunny Caribbean shores, but it's been a long time since a full edition of the Globe And Mail broadsheet landed on my seaside lap ... so try to look past the gentle surf and beckoning turquoise with me, to see this single-day time capsule from my removed island vantage ...

... there I read, warm in my geographic region-of-origin, wistful over that frozen-but-thawing adopted homeland and generally rapt at current events through yankee-eye-view media out of the influential U.S. confederation 'twixt right-here and up-there ... synchronicity with Canada is elusive despite television, fibre-optic cables and wireless internet signals delivering the world to me, but it's pleasantly surprising to approach it via the tactile immediacy of a traditional print format ...

... yeah, I know it's just a newspaper but it's as if the Globe editors did my web-surfing for me ... page one News spoke to a stereotype, or reflected a truth, depending on your interpretation, by reporting on the concussive prerogative that is hockey at home ... inside, the Editorial opined on the persistent immigration discourse, unsurprisingly perhaps, since this is a nation where a full third of the population was born elsewhere ... Op-Ed gave equal ink to domestic and foreign, reflecting a Maple Leaf penchant for collective equanimity ...

... advertising provides a familiar constant, with full-margin plugs for Dodge Caravans or a new Toyota Corolla, and the "field tested" alternate Canadian national emblem, "Rootsy LaBeaver" (my coinage - bilingual pronunciations encouraged), anchors the full-color back page ...

... de rigeur anticipation of a newlywed Royal Couple offsets palpably mid-Atlantic coverage of Arab popular uprisings and gives way to Books, Berlin Filmfest and Bieber in the Arts section ... before the extra-crisp white stock of the Life pullout offers up opulence and a snowy snapshot that teases the winter polarity dormant in my sense memory ...

... from here, Canada sits like a reassuring beret on the head of a rakish sentry ... swag and intemperance can manifest above the US/Canada border too, but y'know 'ow it go, perception precedes truth in most cases ... just like the Caribbean is supposedly about sand, coconuts and snorkeling instructors who also DJ, so too is The Great White North pegged as a land of glaciers, polite mounties and the migratory Canada Goose ...

... this newspaper confirms some truth about Canada but other realities spilleth over ... continuing, Toronto sports reporters tell of mega-gates for Mixed Martial Arts events, a b-ball boo-bird return for ex-Raptor Chris Bosh and a detailed half-page report on Europe's Arsenal vs Barcelona soccer fixture to feed my footie fetish ... the closing of Spadina's Magder fur outlet, champion of Ontario Sunday shopping, was a local footnote signalling a passage of time rather than doomsday, if the tone of "structural realignment" in the Business section is anything to go by ...

... I'm going to presume there wasn't much news fit to print west of the Alberta oil sands and leave that void for another day, or whenever a Vancouver Sun falls on my head ... meanwhile, in this part of the world scarce newspapers serve on as incubatory wrapping for ripening mangoes and papayas ... the subtext is implicit, Canada can be cold and icy but also nurturing at heart ...

... the "A" in Antigua ...

... fortunately for humans, our properly functioning brains being of infinite potential, tend to operate in a mode of information-acquisition from birth to death, created as we are with pristine and curious tabula rasa in our crania ... individual and collective intelligence over lifetimes and generations offset knowledge-deficit through accumulated experience ... the learning is perpetual, sometimes frustrating, testing of faith and concepts of infinity, and still the (human) race doesn't ever quite get to the place I'll just call "there" ... even with the drugs ...

... on the brighter, lighter side, the yet to be informed portion of the brain will consciously or subconsciously head for the higher state we've come to identify as "imagination" ...

... my imaginations were aroused last week with the juxtaposition of Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko's avant garde yacht, designed by Philippe Starck, with the scrubby hillside backdrop and colonial stone ruins of Rat Island in Antigua ...

















... as I understand it, this is the site of one of Antigua's oldest colonial defenses in what became a strategic outpost for the proprietary British Royal Navy in service of the New World (order) colonial aspirations of the times ... the hillock in the inner harbor at capital town St. John's, which featured four cannon and barracks for a regiment in the early seventeenth century, isn't an island in the strictest sense, being connected to the main island by a narrow causeway resembling perhaps ... a rat tail ...

... Dr. Evil meets MI5 in appearance, this unique gigayacht might have changed the course of history had it stopped in for refueling three hundred and fifty years ago ... I suspect it would fare worse against cannonfire amidship, in multiples of four no less, than against a modern satellite grid guiding cruise-missiles ... any shout of "avast ye landlubbers" has no frequency-band or equivalent and may confound operators of the onboard navigational systems ... even the name of the interloper, the single letter "A" displayed only on the stern, would arouse sentries on the lookout for marauding fleur-de-lys ... (though personally Phil, I'd have gone sans-serif, but wha' do I know?) ...

... Antigua's geo-trigonometry, like that of Bermuda where "A" is registered, is currency on maritime maps and seafarers of all sorts pass though here ... Rat Island, which now hosts the commercial wharves where "A" tied up, must have seen 'em all come and go over the years ... I can't tell you the going exchange rate between rubles and doubloons but, if it costs a million and a half US dollars to fill the fuel tank (at pre crisis-in-Libya oil prices), that cargo-weight in gold bars, jewels and thick, heavy old-time coins would sink anything that floats, I imagine ...