like old times

I remember when i use to write blogs about nothing... what was i going to say... i don't know, i guess i would figure it out after a few pecks.   Pecks of course was a shot at my typing ability.  I had a band and a website that i thought needed content for some reason... it's one of the few things i had right in the music business... keep something going to bring people back to the website so you can sell sell sell.  Of course we couldn't sell things on the site back then, you couldn't even put music on the site or video back then.  You could put a link to your MP3.com site of your CBC ZED site and hope for the best.  I also wanted to learn how to write, and the way i learn things is by doing them.  No doubt i was literacy impaired at the time, significantly more than i am at this point in my life, and i took some heat but it didn't really matter to me, because i knew i had to get better.  As much as i was doing right by adding content i was doing wrong by exposing weakness, but i have never been one for business models.

I hate business models because they focus on monetary profit often at the cost of the long term health of the system.  And since the system is me and i value my health over my fame or my bottom line financially it was an easy choice.  Music and art is a therapy and hobby and a chance to connect with other "like" or not "like" minded people.  I got a steady day job before ever venturing into the "game" and saved my money so i didn't have to be molded into something i was not in order to survive.  Perhaps that was a mistake and maybe the idea was to go "all in" and figure out a way to win at "the game".  I was just never much of a gambler, and i liked eating and sleeping in warm clean beds, and i could even argue that i was in a position to "gamble" more on stage because i could afford to lose... if you know what i mean. 

There is a guy who has sold a lot of records who came to some of my shows and enjoyed them immensely telling me "i love watching you because you can do what i can't".  I can live with that.  In some ways i kind of feel sorry for people trapped by their success... the mind can be a big place if the imagination is free, but if the imagination has an accountant putting up walls finding "sweet spots" i can see how that might be frustrating.

Competition is a weird thing in the "music community", and yes i scoff at that statement... every music scene is like a replay of Lord of the Flies.  The margin for success is so thin that you need every advantage, people do it without even knowing they are doing it.

I have been on serious music scene hiatus for a couple and a half years... now just an observer of things, releasing songs quietly from time to time, but more interested in watching things from afar.  I lack nothing in life essentials and really on a financial scale i am rather well off, but i do long to make a difference in the world through art.  Am i foolish enough to think that might happen?  Of course I am.  As unrealistic of a goal that is i will continue... now i won't sacrifice my well being or the well being of my family to make a  "serious run at it"... but then again what is a "serious run at it"?  There is art and there is the marketing of art... these are two different things.  What if i told you i wrote and recorded a ball stomping anti war anthem, but it stopped no wars and made no profit... is it still a ball stomping anti war anthem?

So it stopped no wars and made no money and made no difference and wasn't heard... does that mean you should stop doing it?  The business model would say yes but the fire that drives the artist would say no.  What one do you listen to?  I guess it depends on what raft you jumped on at the head of the river.   My path is sealed... i choose to enjoy my music experience and not die under the weight of it's economic failure.  It is the making of the music i enjoy, dialing the words just right... feeling the groove and running with it without the fear of failure.

Let's be honest, i have failed on some small levels, i have released thing that shouldn't have been released, but i needed to do that to truly understand why.  Sometimes in life you are in situations that are the sum of a great many equations and the math just doesn't add up and you can choose to fold of put the cards on the table and take the heat.  I come from a family of perfectionists and i grew up seeing the error of the perfectionist way... i probably went too far the other way with a mind to keep the ball rolling.  Everybody has their way, and I'm stuck in mine so this is the way it will go.  I like the analogy of the inventor who fails a thousand times before he is successful over the person who completes little for fear that it is not perfect. 

When i look back on all of the songs and the records i think of the song "with a broken hand" which was a 4-track song that had me on piano (that i can't really play) with my hand in a cast (due to hockey injury).  The song was recorded on the fly in an hour lyrics were written while bass was laid down... a nice little number where perfection was not the goal but rather getting it done was the answer.  Sometimes i listen to that song and think with the wrong mindset that song could have been deleted from existence.  I like the tune, and for me when i hear it i remember the moment in time and the feeling of what we thought we were doing... it's not a thing that commercial success or lack thereof can take from me because i am invested in the moment and not the critical or popular view of the product. 

One thing now i practice now is compassion for famous people... it is so easy to hate and judge them and to ridicule the things that they do.  The things they do are conditioned responses to market forces or insane outbursts caused mostly by the cages they are locked into.  Of course i am a famous person myself... just on a smaller scale.   Try being the only beard man at the baby group filled with grandmothers and nannies... maybe not fame but just that guy.

Ben Johnson, disgraced Canadian sprinter, to be part of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s re-election campaign. Like an Arrested Development episode

I mean I liked Ben Johnson, in a way that you like a guy in that you feel sorry for him because everybody cheated but he was the only one that got caught and paid dearly.  He was disgraced while others were heroes, but he was the one that ran 100 meters in 9.79 seconds.  They were on drugs too, but they couldn't beat that time, but hey when you are a Canadian you get to the back of the line.

So Ben Johnson cheated (like most others in the field), got caught, lied, continued to lie and became "disgraced".  He could run like the wind, but intelligence perhaps wasn't his strongest suit. 

He has now joined Rob Ford's re-election campaign.

That half sentence has to be a paragraph of it's own given the pure insanity of it's merit. I was in a grade one class making up a song about a fat cat siting on things and smashing them down while a tone deaf kid added a whistling solo through the whole song, and that paragraph is the most bat shit crazy thing i have heard in a long time.

So a mayor who gets caught using illegal drugs and repeatedly lies about it, and then comes clean when the evidence is too overwhelming, has taken on to his campaign team one of the most famous drug cheats (who repeatedly lied about it until coming clean far too late for respectability).  It's so crazy it just might work?   The old 180 degree logic...  and hey people like Ben Johnson, and many feel he was unfairly treated.


Check this:

In 2008- Disgraced Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson planed to sue his former lawyer's estate for $37 million, alleging that Edward Futerman took advantage of his "diminished mental capacities"
The lawsuit contends attorney Ed Futterman took advantage of Johnson. The suit also contends Johnson was incapable of understanding complex legal documents. Johnson’s own lawsuit contends, psychiatric experts concluded in 1989 that “there is overwhelming evidence that Mr. Johnson is intellectually retarded.”

Believe it or not the case was thrown out of court. 

Clearly always good to fill the campaign team with people previously declared as "intellectually retarded".  It's not like politics is a blood sport that relies on deft cunning, attacking perceived weaknesses, even creating them if need be, right.  That's where the person with diminished mental capabilities comes in to "right" the campaign team.  People will be looking at their T.V's thinking Rob Ford looked really intelligent next to that famous drug cheat... i think I'll vote for him.

I feel bad, I don't want to stomp on Ben Johnson, i guess  he needs money, and Rob Ford has money, so you get hired on to do an event and use your celebrity to get some attention.  That has to be it right?  I guess you can do the Rob Ford gig and if somebody gives you a hassle you can play the "diminished mental capacity" card.

But does intelligence matter in politics anymore?  There is no point answering that question... because the answer is depressing and enraging at the same time. It's the human condition where people can be highly intelligent and capable of amazing thing but together we are dumb as a post.

If you were writing a comedy sketch and you were doing the Rob Ford re election campaign, Ben Johnson would be the person you would put on his campaign team.  The person who is most famous for the traits you have that you are trying to dismiss as something that happened in the past and is over.  I could be wrong.. i see irony, a thick slab of it, but perhaps others will see an "average" and "likeable" guy who made an honest mistake and carried on to do good.  Which is absolute gibberish of course, but who gives a shit... if you can get elected. 

76 Game Leaf report... For JK

Egad, wold be a fine one word report, perhaps with the d backwards and the fresh ink smudged across the paper.  But that would be high art, and we are in the business of sports reporting... maybe not even in the business at all, perhaps change the word "maybe" and replace it with a word more absolute  towards the idea of NOT.

Obviously i am hesitant to dagger my team... there are many that could be easily buried with words that aren't kind.  But i digress, there is pain enough in this latest "epic collapse" that there are plenty of daggers already stabbed into this lifeless corpse, and few more from me aren't going to help.  Not only that.. it's important to stick with your team... bandwagons are for charlatans.

How do you turn it around Leafs?... it might be too late, but like the heroes in movies they always look done before they pull one out of the coals at the last second.

I suggest this.  Make the safe plays and get on the body.  The fancy stuff aint working so say to yourself "i will put the puck here and then remove the puck from my man".  Focus on that and not goal scoring or losing.  Wingers; every shift say to yourself "my point man does not get a chance to shoot the puck because he will not get the puck because i will and i will get it out and focus on that and only that.  Rather than thinking of winning or losing the game attack every battle... "my man will not get position".  Win a few battles and then get a streak going.  A shot on net is better than a risky pass so say to yourself "i will get this shot through" and your line mate will say "I will recover the rebound".   I will get the puck by sheer will and i will put it in a good spot and if i have to take it back i will.

Seems simple right.. that's why you play the games.  Don't be afraid to lose because you are playing a game of battles with a new chance to win every play.  Use your speed skate the puck but when closed in on make sure the puck gets somewhere safe and you know your team mates are ready to compete to get to that safe puck.

You might not win, but you might not be defeated.

SR

the way i see it today...

I played music in a bar the other night, something that on some levels i am against, and most of those levels have to do with respecting your music.  It's a long knotty one that can be dealt with in another blog, or perhaps has been dealt with in another blog over a long period.  To each their own, but the big problem comes with ridiculous views on what various people look to get out of it.  I am at peace with my participation in the game, and truth be told i had a good time, played pretty well and enjoyed all that was played by all involved, but i got more out of it than that.

You see i got into a good alpha predator discussion with the good doctor down the street and we talked about how goats have large tufts of fur on their neck and the evolutionary idea behind this is that a wolf, or wolf like predator might just come up with a mouth full of fur instead of a bite to the neck.  I found this  a spectacular and relevant insight to my current internal debate over whether or not to shave off my king hell sideburns for an upcoming tropical vacation that will have me snorkeling in shark infested reefs.  Clearly beyond any reasonable doubt a body in the ocean with massive pro sideburns has a clear survival advantage in the event of a shark attack using the goat model.  Not only will i be looking good but i will be applying evolutionary tested defense mechanisms... can you hashtag #doublewinning yes, i think you can.

And the day before i had another great side burn victory... you see i was @ the local Trader Joe's with two of my daughters who have the unfortunate attitude that big sideburns look really bad.  As i got to the checkout i was greeted by a young and eager beardman, who immediately complimented my sideburns and inquired about their evolution.  He then turned to my daughters and pointed out how pro i was looking... they kind of recoiled but hung in there looking for treats.  Now i had bought some beer and wine and the man asked to see some ID, as i believe they are cracking down... clearly i am old enough, but you know they probably had a store meeting telling them to ID everybody... i understand, and told the young beard man it's kind of flattering, to which he replied the sideburns are kind of a give away, to which i replied the 1969 should do it as well and handed him my ID.  Now my drivers license has me in a massive handlebar moustache, which floored the young man and he said "well you are just total pro all the way", and then for sport i started flinging him all my other ID's that happen to catch me sporting all forms of aggressive facial hair growth... he was blown away and started bowing to me which caused all kinds of confusion for my daughters who later described him as a not smart guy with one of them bushy beards that was combed parted in the moustache region and you couldn't see his lips only him gums.  It didn't matter we got ice cream and i scored  a fairly large victory.

This morning i went into a grade one class and engaged the kids musically for a half an hour... it went really well, but it will go better next time.  We wrote a song about their teacher and what they like to do in class, and we did some call and response songs, some action songs and we did some mouth trumpet solos.  My big mistake was asking kids to shout out ideas for song parts... i mean it's a good idea, but when you ask 34 kids to call out ideas you get more ideas that you can deal with and they don't stop coming.  For example, if you are doing a song and you need the name of an animal to cue the direction of then next verse the smart play is to pick somebody who's hand is in the air and let that kid and that kid only give the answer, rather than the way i set it up which was a ill timed free for all.  It's OK, you have to like the enthusiasm, as the leader you need to keep your hand on the valve that controls the flow of ideas.  I think we made great progress and i look forward to going back in two weeks to further work on our song titled "Mr. O", and play some other interactive numbers.

Another thing that came out of the bar gig was that i played the song "Cesar Chavez" a song i wrote about the man who has the street named after him and a teacher was in the audience who worked with Mexican children and she was wondering if i would like to come into the class and play that song.  Of course i would be glad to and suggested perhaps we could work to translate the song into Spanish as a language exercise for all.  That idea seemed to go over pretty good and entered into the concept of right brained learning, which a certain school is looking at furthering.  This is all good stuff, as a maker of music, who tries to make music that is important, there is no better feeling than having the music hit home and make a difference to somebody, but of course following the music industry model the game is about gaining and maintaining popularity with things that really make no sense when you look at them with an unbiased eye. In the future i shall try to engage children through music for the purpose of fun, confidence building and learning without concern for financial gain for myself.  Now truth be told the last time i came out of retirement i did it with the idea that i would not try to make money with music as i felt that cheapened the experience for myself.  I never minded working hard so i always went to work, took care of my kids myself, had good wife to share fair duties and did music because i know it is important for my sanity and a chance to express my views.

I feel i have written many relevant and good songs about political injustice, protest apathy, environmental destruction, hockey, self awareness... yada yada, and on the grand scale i really don't think that any of the songs have had their voice heard to the point where they ever came close to having an impact on the society i care about creating due to the fact that i wasn't a good promoter to get the songs into the ears of those whom they could positively influence, as songs can do.

I'll give you an example... I wrote the song When the money's gone last year a song i have been thinking about writing for many years:

Beside a tailing pond, a businessman sings the same old song
We got to destroy this place and move forward to win the race

Oh when the money's gone, can you catch fish in a poison pond?
Oh when the money's gone, do we look like the moon?

The words of a well written lie, the future Prime Minister did deny
Things that we put in the air, could ever harm anyone anywhere

Oh when the money's gone, can you grow food by a poison pond?
Oh when the money's gone, do we look like the moon?

A mighty enterprise fails, all you citizens get out your bails
We got to stick together, they'll flog the mules and then sell the leather

Oh when the money's gone, can you drink from a poison pond?
Oh when the money's gone, do we look like the moon?
Oh when the money's gone, do we breath the stench that lingers on?
Oh when the money's gone, do we look like the moon?

It is an important song, i think and i put it out there in hopes to bring discussion out of the obvious folly of the Tar Sands development.  Now it's not like i am the only person in the world who didn't see this glaring error, but my hope was to get a point across... the point is i don't have the star power to make points like these and have an affect.  That's why we have Neil Young, bless his wonderful soul, and all the power too him, he is using his star to make that exact point and a few others right now. Even he admitted he was late to the dance on Q the other week, and he is... we all are... too much damage has been done already for the sake of international corporate profit. But then again "nothing is heard".

I love Neil Young and i wish i was there with him singing my song, because i think it fits, not because i want fame, but that ain't gonna happen and that's OK.  He is doing the work, and taking the attacks on his character by the government and the industry lobby, but he can take it, cause he has the truth on his side, and he doesn't care what people think of him.  I get that, I'm just a jackass in a bar with a guitar playing songs nobody wants to hear.  Now i say this with all seriousness looking for no sympathy at all... yes i wish my music could make a difference, but really I'm not in that position, and in truth the position i am in in life is a pretty good one, and perhaps i can make a difference after all.  I have the power to go into a school and share the gift of music with a group of youngsters who may need somebody to do that for them.  I can live with that, and in the meantime i can keep cataloguing the protest songs just in case.

I had a great idea for an Internet meme the other day, and i think i might just do it, because i think it is really funny, we will have to see if i can get some co-operators to do it.  I think Kevin Smith will be highly amused if i can pull it off, but i won't tell you what it is as to spoil the comedy, and that's all it is, it's just funny.  Which means many will be offended if i can pull it off... it is that weird thing for it to work you need it to become viral which relies on more factors than the idea itself, but i have always believed that just because an idea isn't popular it doesn't mean it is not worth doing.  There is a real double edged sword there for one to fall on... doing things you think people might like rather than doing the things you feel are right, and having fun with it of course.  

Leaf 49 game report... for JK

Better to get another report in while the getting is good, our hero is better on the heels of a 3 game win streak than in the gutter after a 4 game losing streak.

Notice the crafty little play that has been happening from time to time... on an icing they send a winger in to take the face off and that winger gets in too fast for a couple of attempts and then gets thrown out so that the center man, who they want to take the draw comes in.  The whole process eats up some time allowing the team some rest, because of course you cannot change on an icing.  A neat little way to exploit the rules and take advantage of overzealous linesmen who are more than happy to take forever to drop the puck and niggle over the process.   I probably shouldn't have pointed that out, but i'm sure most teams do it and will continue to do it until the league comes up with a new rule to stop teams from taking advantage of another rule.

Now with all of the armchair GM's out there calling for trades, i have to say the Leafs would have to be crazy to trade either Morgan Reilly or Jake Gardiner, the two young speedster d-men who have elements to their game that very few that come along do.  Sure they still need some development on the defensive end of their game, but as they say, you can't teach speed.   Just keep playing them.

Now Tyler Bozak is proving all of the naysayers wrong... he has this silent ability to do so many things right making those around him better and constantly winning key possession battles.  He is not a big man, as they say you need to be, but if you measured his heart he would stand about 10 feet tall.

Joffrey Lupul seems to be in a bit of a fog lately with respect to his defensive coverage, which in turn affects his offensive contributions, but is deadly in the shootouts helping the team get points. A  big help has been the  play of the Holland, Clarkson, Keulimun line that spends a lot of time in the oppositions end of the ice grinding things out down low.  New defense man Tim Gleason is quietly taking care of business in his own end of the ice and both goalies have recent wins under their belts.  These are all good signs... did i mention Dave Bolland was skating this week, but truth be told he didn't look that strong...  This is to be expected.  Remember that after you sever a tendon you can't even move for a month so the conditioning you lose in that time must be incredible, not to mention finding out how important certain tendons are in controlling  slight and deft foot motions.  From everything i have heard the recovery from injuries of that sort require incredible physiotherapy work... good news is that Bolland is a natural workaholic on that level... truth be told it will probably be a long time before he is back to 100%, but lets face it,  Dave Bolland at 80% is better than some other options.

Keep it going boys
The dog days of the season
Robertson goes ape

The Doing

When i was an assistant hockey coach on my daughters team our head coach had motto, if you are going to do something then it's better to do it out here with the kids than standing in the cold seats drinking coffee and trying to stay warm.

Wise words,  but then you make it and get through it which is always easier than the  thoughts of getting through it.  It's always amazing what a human can survive, but yet we bitch about the simplest and most beautiful opportunities in life.

I found myself in this dilemma the other day... you see i have been teaching kids cooking class once a week since the fall.  Well it's after the season and we are into a new era, or term so to say, and i kinda wasn't feeling it... i actually went for a huge walk up Mt. Tabor in the pouring rain to sort it out.

lets go into an aside...

When i was a kid i got hired as a tutor to a younger kid across the street, now i didn't understand a lot, and i came from a very critical culture, and in the end i didn't think i was getting through to the kid and so i felt bad in charging this money... i was making good money btw.  In the end i quit on that kid, without really realizing that's what i was doing.  In the end i sent the message "you are hopeless" that came from a voice in my soul that said "you can't do this right".  Now that i am older and have seen things, i know that just sticking with the kid would have meant more than if he learned what i though  people might think he should.   It's a sad story but the moral is don't quit on things, even if you don't see development it doesn't mean it is not happening, you might just be looking in the wrong places.

But the reality is that after school is a weird time, mostly to do with an effort to try to talk to my mother who is suffering from a good dose of dementia but refuses to understand that which lands the kids in the house to scatter on me and set up various decoys to a structured outdoor activity... but then i thought... that's what we will do! We will all walk to the grocery store down the street and get the ingredients for the dinner, because a shopping trip is actually part of good cooking (clearly a trip to the garden is much better)... it got my head turned around from the fear of being trapped in a house full of kids for too long, and i felt better and began to get excited again.  Of course on the day of our cooking class it was raining cat's and dog's so we bypassed on the trip to the store, and made a fine dinner none the less.  Something my brain might not have been capable of had it not had the freedom of an idea that never happened.  That is a key... everything is mental, if you believe you can you can, and if you believe you can't then don't bother fake trying.

You gotta be bad to be good said some jackass somewhere in some song.  When you get involved in things there is always comedy.. sometimes it's not good to laugh at it when it happens, but in time you get a feel for these things... not being involved is not good, never comment on things you are not involved with, it's petty.  As if to say... "If i wasn't layzing on my ass here i would have done things differently".  Nope... you missed it, it just was what it was and those that were involved were involved and those that weren't have their opinions.  I guess I'm lucky, i have no fear of interaction, to me it serves a purpose to engage ideas... clearly using this method sometimes you have to slam it in reverse, but that's part of the deal, just don't be afraid to.

We all want to be important, and often times we can be important without actually feeling that way.  The fact that you are there doing it is often more important than any micro goal you see yourself failing in... it's not the failing it's the doing that is important in these times.

Leafs 44 game report...

It seems like the intervals on these reports has a logarithm pattern to it, but here we are anyway.  Clearly this would have been a much more positive effort had it been a Leafs 42 game report.  You know... fresh off a Winter Classic victory and a mild 3 game win streak there was a sense of greatness, like dane fortune finally came to the dance.  Goalie stands on his head and they win the game... that was the formula, and when the formula fails there is a goal tending controversy.

That said i really don't know why Reimer didn't start in the Islanders game, i honestly thought that before the game... Now i didn't think Bernier would play badly, I just thought in terms of the idea of earning your spot in the line up, like they have been preaching all season, would have been a good opportunity to reinforce that value to the team.  Who knows what happened, perhaps an injury, perhaps they might have been working on a trade and didn't play him on account of injury risk.  I'm not saying that has any basis to it besides the fact it would explain a situation where an idea that looked like a gut decision might actually have been a decision that was made by another factor.

Alas, a few stories in the CBC understandably one was about a "goalie situation uncertain".

 Soundbites, news creating news, trying to create interest... It's got to be weird... Hockey use to be real great when it was one team just hating the other. 

There is a classic story of Montreal Canadian's great Rocket Richard who was on the train after a game vs. a loathed rival.  Now apparently there was a screw up and both teams had to take the same train, and apparently the opponents were in between the Montreal Canadians car and the dining car.  The Rocket would not eat because he hated the team so much and couldn't stand to even see them.   Where was I... just Googled a fact and ended up watching this .  Which is kind of odd linking a video of a hero of the loathed  rivals in a blog apparently titled "Leafs 44 Game report..."

As my mother said many a time... "if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all".   Mine is more of a bastard version where the "don't say anything at all" gets mutated into go on a bizarre tangent. 

I think the Lupul - Kadri - Raymond line has potential and started, near the end if the Islanders game, to create things more regularly.   It's true Kadri has been in a fog for a while, and not the game changer we have seen glimpses of in the past. Poor kid trying to live up to the Toronto Media first line center trap.   Truth be told Kadri and Lupul were great last year... kind of like a second first line.  If they can keep playing together it could give the leafs a real nice one- two punch that is always good for winning games.  Injuries, suspensions have forced situations where Kadri and Lupul haven't spent a lot of time playing together... i think there could be a loss there that might be worth investigating. 

I play center and if i could mold a perfect winger it would be very much in Joffrey Lupul likeness.  Big guy who can snipe, pass, dangle and play it rough in the hard areas... I think the leafs almost need Lupul mentoring Kadri and helping him bring out the inner Kadri.

I thought Phil Kessel was pretty hilarious in the 24/7 Road to the Winter Classic series. His keen understanding of what a moron he could look like depending on how they edit the footage and his plea to the camera crew to not make them look like fucking idiots was pretty good in my books.

Bottom line... the need Dave Bolland back... off all of the people to miss time he is the most versatile... he can play anywhere so when you have a hole in the team you plug it with Dave Bolland. 

It all started out fairly innocently... I went to the pool to run some shark attack drills to prepare for my upcoming trip to tropical shark infested waters.  Unfortunately there was a geezer aqua-fit class sharing the pool who claimed to be distracted by the honest and hardworking shark drills being run by our hero.   Simple drills... holding breath, circling underwater remaining calm striking precise strategic blows to an imaginary four foot sensitive snout.  Then there was the escape from the area as quickly as possible as quietly as possible... no need to give the sign of a struggle.

Apparently you are not allowed to film in a public pool, which of course puts a real thorn in the concept of studying your stealth escape technique.  Once again some of my great "outside the box" thinking was being stomped on by loose rules and senior unrest over the idea of a shark in the pool.

If you can't beat them join then right?  Now don't get me wrong, i feel old, there is no doubt my decline is well underway... but in the senior aqua-fit class i was a superstar... hell i could lift my arms out of the water.  And they actually really liked me... i was providing energy to the group and there were smiles all around... i was deeking around the class bouncing in the water flapping my arms like a chicken... everybody was having a ball, smiles all around.

Of course in my mind there was a shark stalking me and i was using the senior citizens as plump decoys in my evasive escape.  Maintaining control and momentum in the water is a hard game and it can only get harder when one factors in the rip tides and fire coral.  But hey dancing around the blue hairs in a pool is good for the confidence.

My real problem was later in the hot tub when we were all just palling around and they started attacking Obamacare.... the problem is they don't know what the fuck they are talking about.   You see Obamacare doesn't affect me because i have good health care... really for the U.S.A. i have good health care.  It kind of happens that way when your wife works for one of the leading health science centers in the country.   Now, i don't know everything, and i know that Obamacare could be much better, but these people, they don't know anything.  They are trying to organize a protest in the hot tub but they haven't heard anything.  For example old man is on Kaiser plan and on Medicade... now I'm pretty sure he is not affected and so is he as he has not heard anything but he was at home depot and there were cop cars everywhere and of course he had to ask why and apparently it was because they had to lay off 10 full time employees because of Obamacare.  So i took that bait arguing on the fact of "how much money Home Depot makes", and they really can't afford health care, or is it the shareholders that need profit, more of it.  It was a silly uninformed debate that ended with them telling me i was lucky to have Canada, but then i reminded them that you pay more taxes in Canada, and remember paying more taxes is worse than anything no matter what the outcome... i think they missed that point, but i had to leave anyway.

So it was cloudy the next day so obviously i went out to the airport for some eye training... i figured spotting a plane trough a cloud would be analogous to spotting a shark far off in the shadowy ocean.   The only problem is they want you to pay for parking in the discount lot, and truth be told you can hear the damn planes before you can see them which helps the eye cheat.

 Moving on to other things what do we have?  Oh yes in the news some Tory MP made a direct link between climate change and extreme weather events.  This is kind of incredible given that the Canadian Conservative Party has been a staunch denier  of clear scientific thought for such a long time and has spent much of it time in power dismantling and decimating scientific information.

Now you have to wonder what the play here is?   Might be a safe bet that a winnable majority of the voting public might forget the past and think that if the Conservative government were to be elected again they could fight climate change by putting more middle class workers out of work and funneling more money into oil exploration, TV adds and security scares.

It's hard to know, it makes doing shark attack drills in a public pool during a senior citizen aqua-fit class look sane.

So what else...  Watched the last 3 Vancouver Canucks games and it is incredible how that team can blow a game.  I mean at least the Leafs get their balls stomped in games they have no business winning, but the Canucks, they deserve to win the game and then they goat it away with some weak play at the very end.

For me, been keeping off the Facebook... now i log out and i find myself so often at the log in page... i don't even know how i got there.  It's a hard nut to crack...  but when i get to the log in page i just don't log in... part of me wants to complain about how little good comes from it, but there is some good and i feel like i need to take responsibility for my Facebook. My Facebook friends are a collection that is unique to me, right?  So it's kind of something that represents me... taking careful strides here... I don't know if it's a cultural thing, or a human thing or a we have been on the Internet for a while thing, but i have to say, i see little comedy and little of interest bloated around rare instances of things i care about.  And that's the thing, i think napalming the facebook account is a bad knee-jerk reaction to an unsatisfied experience.  Why not just control yourself from not wasting your time there, because it is you that is there looking for something that does not exist... I'm talking to myself here of course.


Sure it's nice to see things, but it's the same argument as having cable TV and a big screen TV or a smart phone.  And my point is that is you at home watching TV , or you in the park checking your phone, or you in your house checking your Facebook to see if anything interesting is happening.  You see the thing is my kids are getting older and are starting to call me out for spending time on the computer.  Hell they are right! Obviously if i had the skills to operate a smart phone in discretion i would be OK but i missed the boat. As a parent it is unacceptable for me to be looking online at something that doesn't really matter when we could be doing something different.

That's why I'm throwing down with twitter... i hated the name originally and wanted to blood any bastard that felt the need to tweet,  it sounded weak given my Scarborough upbringing.  We are all just stardust in this other universe, and i think the trick is to not lose your life in the pastimes in which you spend them.  Of course i am talking about myself an myself only here... i spent too much time on facebook last year and while it was nice to see some things and have some interactions, on the whole my participation was a net negative as far as i can see.  Clearly i need to control myself, so that's what i will do.  As for now i can tweet without much repercussion, it's faster and i like the character limit, makes one think.  Not sure i care if people follow me, to be in a game is all i really ask.

Clearly i prefer blogging, but people don't have time for that... apparently. That's fine, i never really wanted to change the world, i just wanted to change myself.  When you post something on the Internet it becomes part of you, or at least your image, and i prefer the idea of an explanation of why you feel the way you feel over a status update any day.  Not to say that it's not fun to pass notes in the class of life, but i think i need some time in the principals office, just like the old days.

Leaf 28 game report (for JK)

Do the Leafs miss Dave Bolland?
Does the town drunk know where the village pub is?

Silly questions of course, and hard ones to look at in a patented Leaf free-fall that happens a couple good times per season as far as i can remember.  That said, they showed a bit of jam today against the mighty Sharks, who did dominate them for long stretches.  For a team where your 3 top centers (for tonight's game) weren't even full time NHL'ers at the start of the season they were a shot away from getting at least a point playing a very good team.  But close ain't good enough in sport, that's why they keep score.

The goaltending tandem of Reimer and Burnier is cooling off to the point where they are not winning games that perhaps they didn't deserve to win.  Now i wouldn't say there are a whole lot of bad goals, it just kind of happens when you spend great periods of the game running around in your own end and the opposing team goes for some shooting practice in close with traffic and often. 

This is where the composure, work ethic and hockey smarts of a player like Dave Bolland is really missed.  The kind of guy who might be able to will the team on with workhorse example,  but he has a severed tendon and will be gone for some time, so as they say in sports, it's a time for somebody else to step up. 

You know it's not good when you are wondering who will step up... then again 5 game losing streaks and a couple of regulation wins since the last update is never good for the soul.  That said the team is down a number of their top forwards (and a D man) and besides one ugly loss they have been hanging around a lot of games, so this could be a good thing.  A bounce here or there can change a lot in a game like hockey.  Obviously looking for positives in losses is not the kind of thing one would rather be doing but alas here we are. When they went down 2-0 to the Sharks i figured it was over, but then it was 2-2... the old Leaf team would have folded like a deck of cards, so give them credit for that. If a Pittsburgh forward wasn't allowed to score a grossly illegal goal last Wednesday the might have beaten a top team... but if's and almost don't count, and truth be told they create the holes they fall into.

Is it a fragile team?  Well not nearly as fragile as a few years ago, but they do need to start generating more offense from old fashioned hockey.  You know, man in front of the net, get the point shot through and slam away at the rebound.  Easier to say than do of course in this new "shot blocking" NHL... but sometimes you need to take the lesser shot, and not wait for the perfect shot.  That said i noticed how well the San Jose Sharks got to the loose pucks in front of their net and moved out of the zone compared to how the Leafs scrambled.  Make no mistake even though they have been giving up a fair amount of goals, the goaltending  has not been the problem.  As a Leaf fan it's hard to put out of memory Vesa Toskala being interviewed after a game describing a "few soft goals" but the other five he didn't feel bad about.  Slipping into darkness...

The fact that the team is hanging around most games with a checking line center, and a few kids and some call ups holding down the fort isn't terrible, losing 5 in a row is of course and time will tell if they can right the ship before falling out of a playoff spot, which they are still in (worth noting).   As many wise observers have noted "you have to be bad to be good", we can only hope this bad stretch  will be a lesson on how to be better in the future, perhaps one day if they could ice their full lineup. 


That said they are about to play some pretty good teams coming up, and they are going to need to find a way to get some points.  Can they do it... that's why you play the games.

I can't even think of a title

When I think about the concept and i try to find a title i draw blank... a blank that is like a pit that reads like a history of defeat.

You see i applied for a few Music opportunities because fate sent them my way, and in the end one slips back into the role of trying to sound polished and together and on the way up...  The usual bull shit PR machine that i have always taken a natural loathing to.

In the last 2 years i have made no effort to promote or play my music to anybody, and it has been a great run, i still make music but i don't really hang out with people who do anymore, which means i have been totally free of spirit crushing world that is "getting ahead in the business".  None the less, this year i thew my hat in a couple of rings

The first one was a festival in Chile that missed the plate.  I applied with a woman who has sang with me several times and is originally from the town  in which the festival is located.  She was eager and who am i to stomp on kindled excitement...  I said "lets do it", found positives and started saying things like "if you don't apply then you for sure won't get in... you need to ask for things in life".  I got positive and set to work on getting it done, as did she of course.   In the end the day passed and we heard nothing, it is what it is.  She remarked that they could have sent an email out thanking those who had applied... She is a wonderful woman, but that was funny for me.  In the music business nobody stops by the losers club to have a drink and thank people for trying.  Not in this world old sport, they cling to the tail of the winners.

The second one is a different animal all together... a high fastball over my plate, a competition that asks for the exact song i have already written.  The song even came to me in a dream years ago in a deep afternoon nap after work and before music time.  I haven't had many songs come out of dreams, and never one that was so clear.  It was in a classroom and the teacher was strumming an auto harp, and my view was panning back into the distance and the whole class of kids were singing the song... or at lest repeating the chorus.  I woke up in a weird sweat and jotted the number down, and just put it in the bank to take stabs at in time.   The song later became a classic number to do at the Super Robertson Supper Show for years being requested often, and an inside joke (between audience and band) of trying to get as many bass solos in as possible.   I must have had a hundred people tell me that that song should be on Hockey Night in Canada, and why haven't i sent it to them, funny stuff.

So here we go, the  CBC songquest for the fall 2013 is to search for the ultimate Canadian Hockey Song, and it's free to apply, but there is a cost... promotion on social media.  Once again i say to myself "if you don't try you will never succeed, i need a hat in that ring". 

I don't play lotteries... firstly i am against voluntary taxes, but really the real danger is sitting around imagining if you won.  This is a serious disease in humankind, i use to buy a lottery ticket and my brain would always spend time thinking about what might happen.  Your mind focused on something that is not going to happen, and not working on what you are really doing.  Clearly the lottery is an extreme example, but it illustrates the point... you buy the lottery ticket because you want financial freedom and then you spend your time dreaming about financial freedom and doing nothing to really achieve the goal, which you might be able to do through lifestyle discipline.

What i love about music is playing, listening and creating it.  What i hate about music is trying to promote it to a grossly over-stocked marketplace where connections will get you the easy traction.

I will resist hating other entries, and i say that with an honest heart... as a natural fierce competitor the natural place is to think you have the best entry and everybody else is a fraud.  I'm telling you, i have been around this game a long time and that's what happens. Comment threads are great for that... people losing their minds and straight up calling their song the best.  I think about the science of that... As a songwriter you are putting your ego in net (hockey analogy sounds good right) and letting it get shelled with pucks from all manor of social media sharing adventures.  There is a counter right there, it says how many people have listened to your song, you know you have to get more listens to "get noticed".  The big thing of course is that nobody really cares about your little song, and that's cool, people like famous songs, from famous people, and you end up in a box.  You are forced to try to promote it and if you fail to do so to the level that will "get you noticed", then you have failed.

Don't worry about me and failure,  I have a decent relationship with it, penning a few numbers on the issue.  In fact, in the song "Failure" i kind of celebrate it... some have found it negative but i don't see it that way.  Take the classic inventor who fails a thousand times before he gets it right and the point is that he or she stayed on task.  But this is the weird one when you talk about artistic failure... artistic successes are often judged by commerce or fame, which is the thing you spend time chasing after the art is completed.  Hence, when the art is done then you do the work that relies on your ability to have a different set of skills altogether.  These skills i have not,  in fact i believe history has shown that my efforts often have an opposite effect on the desired goal.  I believe i am misunderstood, but that's life, in fact many people who have known me for over a decade don't even know what my given name is, my bad, I'm responsible... who can take a person seriously who doesn't take himself seriously, as the image portrayed suggests.  Now without getting into too large of a self dissecting psychoanalysis on the Internet in a blog that started out with the idea of trying to drum up support for a cause that would make me happy as a pig in shit to be part of, lets move on.

Like deleting the last paragraph would be a good start of course, but then it would be like saying that doesn't exist, and would miss the point altogether, that's why i couldn't think of a title.

That said, i wrote the song "Bold Point Road" because the CBC songquest  series that year was "Songs about Canadian Roads", again i fell on deaf ears with respect to the songs collected, but i got one of by better numbers written as a result, and I'll take that trade off any day.

For the record, the hockey song is here.

Leafs 12 game report (for JK)

Clearly a 12 game report is better than the 10 game report that was vaguely promised... 12 is more than ten and more is better right... that's what the sales person at Jack in the Box told me anyway.

Pretty safe to call the Leafs season a success so far, sure they won some games that they probably didn't deserve to, but that's why we have Reimer and Bernier.  When you have goaltending a lot of little mistakes get covered... when these mistakes are not covered the team mentality can become fragile (see Raycroft and Toskala years). 

Clearly all aspects of the Leafs game is superior in this resurgent period, with the key aspect being the penalty killing.  Now for a good PK team, i would say the Leafs have been playing a little soft this year compared to last year, but keep in mind that some of the key hitters have been absent in this early stretch.  Nikolai Kulemin (ankle), David Clarkson (suspension), Frazer McLaren (finger) and Mark Fraser (lower body) all missed a lit of time in these first 12 games, and all of these men don't take a pass on hitting a body when they get a chance.  I would hope to see a more infectious hitting streak as these guys make it back in the lineup which should help with increased offensive zone time.

If the PK can stay sharp we can hope to see some more physical intimidation out of the Leafs, as they should be able to afford to take a few penalties here and there.  As the announcer said in the game the other night when Dave Bolland took a cross checking penalty... "Well Bolland got his pound of flesh on that one".  It's the old school mentality of hockey... why take a silly little interference penalty when you can flatten a guy.   Now I'm not condoning going out and taking cheap shots on peoples heads but you can make it difficult and "hard" as they say, to play against.   That said, i like the fact that the defensive play has been getting better in a number of areas on the result of smarter hockey and not necessarily rougher hockey.  That way you can layer the rougher play on top of the smarter play and you should be going somewhere.  I would expect this type of evolution in the next period of  games.

Not bad, leafs are tied for the lead in the Eastern Confrence with 16 points (8-4-0), and are showing once again that they can score with the best.  The big difference is that they seem to be able to keep the puck out of their net at a pretty good rate as well. They are tied for 2nd in goals scored, and tied  for 8th in goals against... these are good numbers.

Another key stat is the number of call ups from the farm team that have come in and played reasonably in various roles.  This is good for a number of reasons... team depth,  gaining experience and it alludes to competent team systems.  Clearly the team , so far, has been able to insert players into the lineup, give those players roles that they can handle and be successful.  This was a mere pipe dream a few years ago under the run and gun offense coupled with the rodeo circus of a defensive system that was inbred into the team.

Team captain Dion Phaneuf, it has been noted, has been playing very well lately.  I believe this is much in part to do with the team systems tightening up, so that his game becomes easier to play.  I mean not to discredit the player for his hard work but rather point out that when your team is playing together you have to do less and get to do more.   For example, in the past there were times when the Leafs looked totally lost in their own end and then a defense man is out of position and a goal goes in and he takes the blame... but why was he out of position?  Did numerous people lose their assignments?  It could also be that often times now when a shot comes in on goal the goalie grabs it and the play is dead, rather than a rebound producing a scramble leading to a circus rodeo and then more chances for players to look bad.

Now let's call a spade a spade... the season is still early and there is plenty of time for catastrophe... we lifetime Leaf fans in our 40's know the drill.  But hey, things really do seem to be different this year... I'm not predicting a parade but if we can stay healthy with respect to some key role players I can see this team finding even better form.  For a team that is 8-4 and getting out shot most nights... almost all nights for that matter, I'll take it.

Mary Catherine Irmina West

I got the sad news on the passing of Mrs. West over the last weekend.  She was the mother of one of my best friends growing up and a veritable force in the community.  In many ways a typical mother of our era... a natural chauffeur, short order cook, bake sale operator, a woman with an ear to the ground and her finger on the pulse of the neighbourhood.

Her second home was the schoolyard at Highland Creek Public School where she was a tireless volunteer, back in the times when schools were funded and not desperately begging for bodies to fill holes left in budgets. You kind of feel she did it because she could, and it was the right thing to do.  Of course the grade 8 graduation party was at the West house hosted happily by her... in fact the house was always open for various games, T.V watching and cookie snacking.

I remember that time the city tried to put a dump at the top of our street.  Lets just say that the city councilors in charge of that project felt the full brunt of the West opposition to something that would be bad for the neighbourhood.  There was no quiet in that little disagreement as troops were rallied and forms were signed, and the dump never happened...  and they never tried again.

In high school we put a play on that happened to be a wrestling match between Santa and Scrooge.  I was Scrooge and Rob, her son was in my corner as "the Grinch"... Rob showed up with proper sewn Grinch shoes,  Grinch hat and to the letter Grinch shirt and pants... "yea my mom really got into it" he said at dress rehearsal.  And that's what she did, she got into things, made them better, to make them better for the kids.

Thank you Mrs. West, rest in peace.

 

Dashboard Blogger

 Dashboard Blogger-  I like that term... Dashboard, historical a board of wood or leather in front of a carriage, to keep out mud.

 If one was a mind wandering fool one might come up with a scenario where dashboard blogger is some code word, for a spy plan, or something like that... actually i am loosing my inspiration for this line of thought real quickly.  Why go on then?  It comes down to the base exercise my man... if you are on the computer there is a very good chance you are accomplishing nothing of any real importance... you might even think that you are "working'.  That what adults tell kids right... i have to do some work on the computer... but young dashboard blogger knows differently... perhaps it is a team of two, Randy Dash and Carl Board Blogger.  Randy Dash known to some as "Dandy Randy Dash" for his stealth puck moving skills in the offensive zone.  But how did Carl Board Blogger get such an unfortunate name?   Well his last name was actually Blouger, but his drunk half wit uncle sent the forms into the countries birth registration center, the only problem being that he was over at Stan's Bar and Grill all afternoon watching a football game and his "u" was pretty sloppy, with the top kind of closed off and the line extending down below and curving .   And of course the city clerk was overworked and typed in the name as Blogger, thought nothing of it.  Of course once you are in the records, on the books these things tend to stick.  But how do you get a middle name that is "Board"... well "Moonbeam" was taken, so lets not worry about it.

  Things don't always have to make sense on the internet, and that won't stop some moron from posting it on social media and then arguing with other hammerheads over it's validity.   Perhaps dashboard blogger is just a screen name for some knucklehead bot, or web robot as Wikipedia might describe it.  Ah the problem with comments... i suggest a new law.  Every computer device should be hooked up to an electronic shock devise that by law should be attached to the users sensitive genital parts, and then every time the user makes a stupid comment Blammo... they get a shock.  I guess the real problem with that is that 5 seconds after the law is enacted the world would suffer a massive power outage to the likes that have never been seen before.   Remember stupid is the new smart, this happened years ago and is marked in popular culture in a great number of ways.  The glorification of the idiot in some ways could have been a Punk-esque  form of rebellion against the idea of forced proper-ness and the utter failure of smart talking suits tanking mankind in an utter shameless fashion.

  It's hard to say, every one is a lair and the rest are consumers... except for dashboard blogger, the only hope left for Mankind.  Able to leave smart and relevant comments that reek of compassion and understanding and can magically inspire all commenters to see the greater good and come together to form a more balanced and caring society.  Dashboard Blogger weaving threads into strong ropes to rescue the lost and confused souls on the wonderful Internet.  

  In his spare time he is a potato farmer who makes a mean potato chip in the oven but threw his shoulder out waving a damn towel at the hypersensitive smoke alarm one night.    After a couple of T3's he had an idea... a raw potato restaurant!  It was a smash it... Selling plates of pickled salted potato slivers and a tall glass of alkaline water, dashboard blogger was killing it.  Powered mostly with his ability to write scientific sounding articles on the health virtues of raw potatoes and alkaline water, coupled with his ability to influence comment threads with his super power the franchise takes off.

Apparently you can eat raw potatoes, but one of the things is that the uncooked starch in the potato is not as easily digested in your digestive tract.  What happens next is that that starch gets fermented in your large intestine... this can be uncomfortable however there is a positive side in that the fermentation of resistant starches increases the production of butyrate, a fatty acid that is associated with favorable effects on diseases in the colon.

The things you come across when you try to keep some totally bizarre line of thought accurate.  Perhaps there is a song in there.

Leaf's report, for J.K.

Hot damn, another season on us like the word hope defined.  Being a Leaf fan has been a hard dollar for a long time, but there is never a year in which that little childish feeling doesn't somehow flicker in your soul in which you imagine an elaborate dream sequence of chance and fate teaming up together to achieve the unthinkable.

A side note for those who say "the NHL is a savage money hungry beast, and should be ignored", I get your point.  I also drive a car, and for some insane reason i am responsible still for adding plastics to our landfills... far greater sins.  The real trick with the NHL is to make sure they don't get my money.  I mean i would punch myself in the balls before i would pay the ticket price an entertainment company charges, all while asking you, the patron to act as an extra in their made for tv experience.  You know the drill, TV time out, flow of game broken, rock music, advertising... you forgot what was happening.. and then on the big screen MAKE SOME NOISE! MAKE SOME NOISE! LOUDER! LOUDER! And then they race over and drop the puck like it's an emergency.  You see of course what the T.V viewer  sees is a loud boisterous crowd and then action, and the paying fan gets no oscar nomination.

Who cares, i love watching Leaf games, and hockey season in general.  For example, i made one of the best dinners the other night.  Leaf game is on.  Games usually start 4:00 PM my time, given i have lived on the West coast for a couple of decades.  Think about it... I need to have dinner ready by 6... gives me a period to think, plan, light prep (thanks to the commercial breaks)... hey if you can't beat them join them right.  And then an intermission where i blast into the kitchen and put the damn thing together.   And then another period.  Sometimes you get a good cleaning out of it.  Say you wiped the floor, and while you were wiping the floor your team's captain Dion Phaneuf walks in over the blueline takes a nifty Nazem Kardi pass and goes top shelf where momma keeps the cookies.  Well, you might see that as a good OMEN, perhaps it was the fact that you were wiping the floor that tipped the balance in the universe spurring the goal to happen.  In the end you get a nice clean floor...  when hockey is your religion, you need to practice your prayers.

So what about this Toronto Maple Leaf team for the 13/14 season?

If everybody on the team has a "career" year, i like our chances.  Hey go with the obvious first right?

The culture is changing, there is no doubt about that.  There is youth and some pretty damn good players.  And the pretty damn good players are pretty young, which marks a significant change from the Leafs of yesterday, where the team would pay a premium for older, past their prime name stars.

I like the goal tending, I knew Reimer would get the start in game one, it had to happen.  They owed him that honor for sure, had they not played Reimer in game one it would have been a bad omen of things to come.  And Reimer played great in the opening game, which he won.  Now Bernier get's the start tonight and that's all good, he looks like the real deal (although i thought Cornell alumni Ben Scrivens looked real good last year).  The smart money is that Bernier is better (than Scrivens who he was traded for), and under ideal situations both goalies play great, and you have a winning team and an extra asset in goal.  Having 2 good goalies is always a good problem to have, some teams manage that well, and others not so well.

On the defense i thought Paul Ranger had a great game the other day... a veritable steal for the blue shirts. A great big defender who left the game 4 years ago and is now back with a renewed passion for the game.  Anytime you can get a top 4 d-man for nothing but a friendly cap hit is good.  This along with the Kessel extension and the general feeling one get's that Toronto is a place good young players want to play now.  I'm not sure this was always the case, and hey if you are calling the shots on where you want to play why not choose to play on a team you think can compete to win.

It is not unthinkable that the Toronto Maple leafs might have a few players in the top 10 scoring this year.  Not saying it will happen, but it wouldn't be unthinkable to see Phil Kessel, James Van Riemsdyk, Joffrey Lupul or Nazem Kadri in that category.  There are a bunch of potential 20 goal scorers on the team as well... Mason Raymond, David Clarkson, Tyler Bozak and Dave Bolland... Nikolai Kulemin scored 30 a few years ago.

The teams specialty teams have become much improved under coach Randy Carlyle, and the addition of some key penalty killers, Jay McClement leading the pact haven't hurt.

With the defense slowly coming around and a bunch of young defenders in the pipe the identity of the classic Toronto Maple Leafs play poor defense and let the goalie stand on his head routine, is being replaced by some systems and the idea that if you don't play the system, somebody else behind you might be willing to.

 I never play in hockey pools, too much work keeping on top of things, and being a hockey pool guy who goes with his heart, i have a long history of being tarred and feathered.  But this year might actually be different, the team seems to identify with being a team.  I get the feeling that they (the players), in their heart think that they can do something if they work together.  Sometimes you get teams filled with high paid individuals and egos get stomped on and feelings get hurt.  The team's willingness to fight for one another is impressive.  Years ago the New Jersey Devils pushed the leafs around in the playoffs, and i believe they got 6 shots on net in the final eliminating game... they were in the game until the end due to a brilliant performance by Curtis Joseph their stalwart goalie at the time, but you can't win a game getting 6 shots on Martin Brodeur.  The team back then won a lot of games with stellar goal tending and a third period push by Mats Sundin, and Alexander Mogilny.

The forwards who won't score a lot, can skate, have speed, will hit and can play a role. Remember Jonas Hoglund and the Robert Reichel /Mikael Renberg years.  They put some points up, but what happened when the games moved up a notch in tempo?

Kudos to the GM's and Coaches who have instilled this more competitive identity and made some good hard decisions to bring the team to the dawn of this new era. 

As usual i am optimistic for a season of omen watching, heckles and hockey in general. If i was a betting man, which i am not, i say the Leafs contend for a while starting now.

Idea for the City of Portland, permits department.

Dear Permit Department Superintendent,

  I was thinking that if you have somebody scheduled for a mechanical inspection, under your terms, which happen to be: You stay home always that day from 8AM to 5PM, then when calling the people to reschedule, perhaps the opening line of the conversation should not be: "hi we have had to re-schedule you inspection until tomorrow".

Perhaps an opening line along the idea of "sorry due to (insert natural disaster here), we will be unable to meet the commitment we made to you, that caused you to  alter your day so completely... is there a convenient time in the future for you that we could do this?"

I suggest a meeting in the office, perhaps you could bring coffee and doughnuts, and have the staff do some role playing.  It could be a real good bonding experience.

I think it might do wonders for the relationship between the permit department and the general public.

You see somebody might have children, who need to be escorted to and from school, which means coverage at the house for these moments.  Perhaps they work and are losing the chance to make money while they wait for the permit department?  Is there any idea of when or if tomorrow's new scheduled appointment will happen?

If you need me to run the meeting, we can talk, my rates are very affordable and i will show up as scheduled down to the minute.

I do realize that any kind of strange thing can happen while an inspection is underway, and so hence it can be hard to predict exact times in this line of work. 

That said, i believe you should make every effort to try to appear some time in the 8 hour window, and rescheduling appointments with zero input from the other party breezes an air of arrogance that is hard to inhale.

Mark Robertson


**** UPDATE***

Within seconds of posting this venting little blog, there was a knock at the door... it was the inspector, his boss said this was a "Must do!" job today.  I take it the boss got my phone messages.
Clearly i am overjoyed right now, but i almost went to Yoga and missed the whole thing, i was actually about to leave.

It was my understanding that i was rescheduled until tomorrow,  so as another side note it's good to communicate.  If you re arrange your schedule to meet the needs of a citizen in distress, don't be afraid to call and communicate.

Anyhoo, City of Portland, you are still a star in my books.  I believe you care... we can work on the communication part in my seminar :).

Man do guinea pig's stink...

To my right is one stinky ass guinea pig alone in a cage... hardly a model pet by any stretch of the imagination.  Of course the way i see it is that the only model pet is no pet at all, but that is just me... i might like dogs if they didn't scratch and damage things, and of course shit... lets call a spade a spade... the fecal matter is really the arrow through the dream of having a pet.  But taking care of one for a week for a kid's friend is actually a good idea.  A good idea in that it proves that it is actually a bad idea, and knowing what a bad idea is makes for a good life.  It is actually one of the real keys to a good life, really knowing what a bad idea is.  Many people spent their lives making the same mistakes over and over again, and it is because they fail to truly see the bad in the idea... or perhaps they are olfactory impaired.

By the way if you are a pro pet kind of person and might be offended by a man ripping the idea of a guinea pig, then there is a button on the top of this blog... it says "next blog"... you might want to hit it because with every breath i take i hate this fucking thing more.  Don't get me wrong i think the idea of a guinea pig in your house is a great idea, I'm pro that... actually I'm neutral to be truly honest, but i am very much against the idea of a guinea pig fouling up my air quality.

Simple question- why don't i clean the cage?  1) I did 3 sets of diapers, I'm done with the fecal clean ups. 2) even my kids think it stinks real bad... this is a good thing, and nobody is jumping in to clean it so i would be the fool of fools to set that kind of precedent.

I have had cat's before, and it was always in a communal living situation, and every time the people pushing to get the cat swore that they would clean the litter box, but yet many times it was me dry heaving dealing with a very very bad situation.  I actually lived with a girl who one time told me that she "loved cleaning litter boxes"...  now saying that it was a dead give away that it was bullshit, and i saw that at the time but i wasn't strong enough at the time to really lay down the law... it was back in that weird phase i had where i trusted and tried to believe in people.  Sure somebody just loved cat's enough to think that they actually loved cleaning a litter box... for a human it's not that uncommon, hey we shit in drinking water and then post things on social media about how much we care about the state of our environment.

This particular guinea pig doesn't like to come out of it's cage and play with the girls... it's more of a decorative shaking stink machine... yep just in the corner of the cage fowling up the air space.  I asked my daughters how they liked the smell and the answer was "not too good"... this is a good development.  The last thing we need around here is an experience where the kids have a blast with some stink machine and then want one for themselves.  Apparently people say guinea pig's are good pets because they don't live too long... is that a nice way of saying the burden of having a useless odour creating rodent in your home that you are paying to feed will not carry on for many years?

I wonder how that thing would like the front porch?  I could put it out there and close up the windows, but what if something ate it in the night?  It could scar the child who owns it and they would never let us pet sit again... hmm.  I won't do that... I'm just going to breath in as much of this stench as possible and use it to further solidify my resolve against pet ownership.  My wife is on board, but then remember our wedding vows a short ten years ago last week... do you promise to never lose your fucking mind and try to think that having a pet would be a good idea... i do.

My wife is very solid on this issue... there are people out there that have partners and one day they came home and "surprise" we have a new pet... look how much the child loves it... isn't this great.   I have no fear that this would ever happen with our bond.

Hey the guinea pig is moving... i think it might be chewing on something... if i get closer to it i might vomit on it so we will just say that it is alive and thriving in it's cage... it's little cage that it will spend it's short life in so that it can make a kid feel happy that they have something.  OK that was kind of negative... hot damn it just ran across the cage... a veritable 3 foot sprint... i think it just kicked up more stench.  I guess one good thing about having a guinea pig as a pet is that you are not going to spend a lot of money on vet bills... a sick cat could cost a small fortune and some of that fortune could go into medication that gives the damn thing diarrhea and then the next thing you know you are dry heaving and you throw your back out.  I have actually injured my back cleaning a litter box and then i was ridiculed by the fool that brought the damn cat into the house for having a low mammalian shit tolerance. 

If i was a farmer on a farm and i had a barn, which i would like to be one day, i wouldn't mind this odour, and maybe there would be a dog beside me running off into the field to drop a load nobody will really care about and have to deal with... of course it would be better if there was a wooded area beside the farm where the dog could go drop a bomb... the dog would serve as a fine companion and a general lookout for chicken predators... of course there would be stinky chickens on the farm but they would be in an area that would not be my living room.

i guess the guinea pig is sort of kind of "cute" if you have a distorted sense of reality... i find it kind of depressing seeing an animal in a cage, and you have to leave it tin the cage because if you let it out it is too stupid and it might run some where where you can't get it and then it might die and you will have to live with a decaying corpse in your living space.  I would call that a bad development.  When i was a kid we had some gerbils and one got loose in the house and disappeared... from my foggy memory the gerbil experiment didn't last long, although i do remember them running in that wheel and i thought that was kind of fun.  I think my parents did the gerbil thing to avoid getting a cat at the time... probably not a bad idea on some levels.

random notes while on vacation

So i walk into a bar in St. Catherines Ontario and ask the bartender "what do you have on tap that has a lot of hops in it", and she looks at me and say's "what's that?"... so i dumb it down a bit and ask for an IPA and she say's "never heard of it, I have coors light, Molson Canadian, Rickards red, Rickards blond and Budweiser".

Holy ^&$^$*!

You see this is why i go on "vacation", it is just an actual exercise in reminding myself how good i have it.  Did i mention 3 Rickards Blond, because they were actually out of the red, cost $23, and came with a chance to witness an incredibly painful bar staff banter.  Mind you when you are staying in a shithole Motel your local options are perhaps not the best...  My wife and i take shifts running to the watering hole while the kids toss and turn to avoid the bed bugs (joking i hope).

I got wise today,  Ice bucket full of candy assed expensive beers, and I'll hold the fort down while my partner sucks back a few Ceasers in the clown show lounge next door.  I have a hard time looking at a bartender who doesn't know what an IPA is...

It's the problem with moving away from home and having parents and children... the good thing to do is to spent your time bringing your kids back to see the family, and all in all we have it pretty good... not too many totally insane family members with weird ideas about what we should be doing... perhaps we are getting wise... we are in a motel which gives us some control over our situation and when we wake up.

We are a sleep in family... we sleep in until we are no longer tired.  Most say we are lucky and can't believe our fortune... i believe we just trained people properly.  In fact many have commented on how good our kids are, one even mentioned "where do you buy kids like that"...  Obviously you can't buy that, you have to raise it, and i could tell you how but you would hear things you wouldn't like and make an excuse for why you can't do that and we would be back to your problems...

Perhaps i should write a book on child rearing, but i might run into the same problems i had when i tried to teach people how to teach themselves how to play guitar.  You end up talking to people who don't speak the same language as yourself and so your methods don't apply to their situation.  Me, I'm not big on sales or trying to change people and those are the two things i would have to focus on for this venture to work.  Sales pitches irritate the shit out of me... a custom designed set of words placed to start a conversation that will separate a sucker from his money.   And changing people... do people actually really want to change? or do they just say they do to get attention?  I believe more the latter, and that is a horrible belief for sure, but i have it.

Good news is kids are getting to see some cousins, and they are getting along quite well.... two sets of girl twins all cute as hell, just don't try to photograph them all together or your brain might collapse... you might have better luck filming 4 peaceful cats in a bathtub full of water.

Sometimes kids just don't give a shit about being photographed... and who can blame them?  All of these fucking idiot adults with their rules and their cameras trying to micromanage the next game you are in the middle of playing.  At some point you have to stop and say in your head screw this.... i have already stopped and smiled for thousands of pictures in the last few days... enough is enough we are going to play our game and if you can't be a good enough photographer to slip into the reeds ad get your shot then screw it.  Hell I'm with the kids on that one... isn't that why God invented Photoshop?

It must be a real disadvantage to childhood to live in the digital era... back when we were kids every picture cost money to have it developed and buy the film... nobody cared about the environmental cost of film development chemicals.... but that's another one.   But as a result there would be one moment for big staged photographs and often the person with the best camera and a little ability might take the photo and then get prints for the family.

Now everybody has a digital camera and 1 photo costs the same as 1000 unless you are a damn fool and try to print them all out. But as a result, kids are constantly being called over for staged photos... it has to be annoying as hell.

I'll tell you a story about my dad... he took great group photos, and his secret was thinking he knew hot to operate the camera  and then explaining to the posed crowd how the sequence was going to go down only to have it go wrong on him.  Usually by about the 6th time he was able to set the timer and run into the crowd and smile by the time the picture was to be taken.  Of course, by then, everybody was in hysterics over the previous failed attempts and dad's reaction of shock to what went wrong after explaining to everybody how he solved the problem.  Classic dad shot... family laughing bug smiles dad in frame smiling sweating slightly.

Good times, good times

Some of the things that happened today...

You see i received this painting, with a squirrel with it's tail on fire in the mail today addressed to "the institute for sciuridae research combustion division", and the weird mailman delivered it.  As a note I'm all for weird mailmen so long as they get the address right.  So clearly you are doing things right when people send you paintings of squirrels or "sciuridae" in Latin, that are on fire.  I am told it was a paint by number effort and the story can be found here, apparently.

Clearly it looks like the flaming squirrel is running by a mailman in official uniform, but why the mailman is not trying to stomp that fire out nobody knows.  That little vermin could run into any number of holes and set the damn house on fire, but perhaps the mailman is swinging a mallet down on the fire that we just can't see, however if that is so the mailman's feet should be in a different direction as he could hurt his back swinging down aggressively from a twisted angle.

We also went to the pool where an aggressively hyper classmate of the twins came over to play with us in the water totally unsupervised... he was having a blast you could tell and good for him, i could have done without another child screaming about me being a zombie monster who has to chase all of the children, but we weathered the storm.  Like my father before me, I'm not a huge fan of children screaming all of the time, as dad said "it violates that part of the brain that just shouldn't be violated".  As a parent you need a strict year round constant reminder system in place to let children know that screaming all the time is not acceptable.  I like to say "have fun, but don't ruin other peoples fun by subjecting them to those noises".    Of course then people will tell you that you are "lucky" that your children are well behaved and not annoying, and you may be lucky enough then to supervise their child in a pool as he screams at top volume in your face in the pool.  Nice kid however, i could see that he was just really excited and having a real good time... i was happy for him and when my clan decided to opt out of the "dunking game" i think perhaps we were too boring for him and he moved on.

I have been painting my neighbours house so i was working pretty hard and long the last week, but i have powered through most of it.  I worked a bit this morning and later at night, but i took the heat of the day off to hang with the kids, we swam and practiced our reading and i did a big kitchen clean and got on making dinner.

There was a bunch of cabbage in the fridge so i chopped it up finely to make a  coleslaw and for a moment i was stumped, i think it was about 4:15pm, and i aim for dinner to be ready around 6:00pm.   Now being a stay home parent, and taking after my mother, the dinner served on time is one of the key flows in family life.  Never did my mother not have dinner ready for her family come dinner time, so i make that priority number one.  Whatever you do don't do something that will take you off track so that you will find yourself saying "well we didn't have time to make dinner so lets do this..."  But today i felt discombobulated for a while... how am I going to do this?

Well first things first, start blasting some music... i went with Peter Tosh today, live concert i found on youtube, where music is free (more on that in another blog).    I started getting into the process and made the dinner, which really wasn't that great to be honest, but we were fed and i got into the idea that i really do love this one job i have in life.  I love being a stay home parent, and i am actually really good at it, sure there are things where i fail in on this gig, and i am aware of, but not particularly ashamed of.   But it is a great job... in this job you are rewarded by your good work, and you are punished by your deficiencies.  And i think that is the key... often in life you work a job and are not rewarded for your good work, and your are punished by others deficiencies.  It's odd how you can have spiritual moments of this sort on a day where you probably performed at about 30% of your standard.

It is what it is... doing other jobs perhaps brings you back to thinking about the process the the jobs you have, and what it is you like about them.

I remember reading something about Hunter S. Thompson saying that he felt sorry for people he knew in life were were "set" because they would never have to rely on their skills and their ability to use them to get by.  I guess i had that sort of feeling today... we need this done, i can do it, and i had fun doing it.  For the record the coleslaw was great... i think one of the early killers was that one of the recipes  i looked up on the "net" called for celery seed, and i had none, because i had pulled my celery that was going to seed from the garden a few weeks ago.  This is a hard pill for a man gardener to swallow when he could have had something he needed when he needed it but he did something to foil those plans weeks ago.  The celery was large and shading some other plants at the time but the crushing failure of what happened today was not lost on me.   The thing is i recovered with the help of some blasting reggae music and a victors attitude, and a king hell load of salted sunflower seeds.  Sure the broccoli soup had some fibrous parts in it due to my error of throwing in some broccoli that had gone to flower, lets just say we won't do that again... lesson learned.

The twins were fighting today so i separated them, and took the time to do some reading with them individually... a super rewarding experience.  I chose the book "10 Apples up on top" by Dr. Seuss and they were doing great. I need to separate them more and work on reading more... one of my earlier failures.  I need to get them reading better and biking better and we will be set. 

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" said a president of the United States of America... it could only be one, but the question if phrased properly has merit... are the children learning that a parent is there to do the things that need to be done?

It's a good gig, there are many stay home fathers in the "hood", and although my father wouldn't have done it in a month of Sundays being an "old fashioned" male i would take it any day.

I just had to play the tooth fairy... always a comedy of errors trying trying to find things in the dark in a messy room while a kid mumbles and tosses and turns in the night.  Part of your gig is lying on the floor motionless  waiting for a period of restfulness  to mount your attack.   A man with a plan and his setbacks lying motionless by the bed in fear of being caught for some lie that somebody before him made up, but he has to stick to cause it is the way it is.  Like a good old fashioned fireworks bombing in the middle of the night by a friends window, who's father owns a gun and is ill humoured about these kind of operations.  Or a late night run at camp into the girls section on a wing and a prayer that you might find a girl to kiss you... the thing is you can't get caught, and that is the real rush.  You get to the girls cabin and you are hiding underneath it and somebody put their hand in a shit that somebody took under the cabin because they were afraid to go to the outhouse and then Pete runs off a cliff into the water trying to remain avoided and after the splash you run like hell back to your cabin to get back in your sleeping bag like you were there all night... it's called living.   All of the skills you develop as a kid come in handy as an adult.

And there we are.

The day closes.