My week from ball hockey, honkytonks, 2 Germs

(photo: Mirva refs in downtown T-dot)

Odd title I’m sure but I gotta say the weekend was fun, and made me think more about what will be coming up as the weather gets nicer.

It rained and RAINED as of Saturday. While buying sealed Honky Tonk 8-tracks at Goodwill, Mirva calls me up to ask if I can meet with her for a bit, so we hit up Gino’s. She was already eating and I didn’t know what I wanted, so I had some nachos which were kind of blah. The next day I wake up and go down to my PO Box. It’s raining STILL. Regardless, I manage to go up to see Mirva ref a ball hockey tournament that I set up with her featuring ex-Toronto Maple Leafs Nick Kypreos and Doug Gilmour. It was out in Dundas Square, a small communal area right smack in Downtown Toronto. Some people hate the space, but I’m quite fond of it. Mirva is running around, the rain is coming down, and the people at Gilette seem sad they can’t hand out more cans of their shaving cream.

After grabbing a drink at the Hard Rock café which must have been loaded with some sort of dye (I got hives 5 minutes afterwards), I made my way up to the Noah’s Natural Foods where when I was reaching for piece of Vegan Carrot Cake from my favorite bakery, a “rodent, with a quite large tail” comes out. EWWWW. Scratch me going to Noah’s on Yonge Street anytime soon. The rest of the afternoon was filled with meetings.

Sunday after 4 hours of sleep (I got home at 6am), Dave F and Julie came to meet up with me at our favorite nabe-grill, J.Mercury’s, along with their baby girl, Emily. She has piercing blue eyes and looks around everywhere. We chatted and looked at the rain.

It’s Wednesday today, and I’m battling a cold for a second day. It sucks because I just wanted to Mihai’s to screen a lost film print, “Happenin’ In Hamelin”. But it’s time to recharge the batteries. It might be a weekend of finding 8-tracks of Honky Tonk Music, rats in health food stores, and rain. But they say it should be nice here this weekend.

Canada's MUCH VJ Search - Tim Deegan wins - Keep Searching!

I got sucked into the MUCH VJ search like the handfull of other Canadians watching it. I felt bad for Kardinal Official and Steve Anthony for getting sucked into it all, but prayed to the gods of "Canadian Reality Television" that they were fed good craft services.

Compared to other industry people, I was really nice regarding what was being said. One old time CITY personality I've known for years bitched about the production values to me, saying the whole thing was "unwatchable". A musician friend who watched it at my place commented on how the people seemed annoying. They both were right.

Here's how it went. Most of the cast bitched on one another, but the first to really get the brunt of it was Montreal's "Frank" who boozed it up at many opportunities. Well, geez, throw me in a penthouse with a bunch of whiny VJ hopefulls and I'd be doing that and hittin the roof looking for barrel swish! After he got the axe, contestants started aiming their pistols at the bland-West-Coaster, Erik. Everyone talked about how "phony" he was and his lack of knowledge of music. The final episodes had Erik, hopelessly dull Nicky (from the mid-west), a screechy voiced homosexual named Shawn, and "wild card" Tim Deegan who might not have been the smartest cookie from the jar, but he sure had white teeth and abs to wash Erik's boozed out barf clean up rags with!

Canada gets to vote which of the 4 finalists will make the next VJ. Ohhhhh boie. Considering Canada had problems electing a decent prime minister with the last election, asking the Canadian public to pick a DJ might not be such a swell idea. The winning vote gets scooped by Tim who claims he knows tons about music (but gets beat by Shawn in a trivia challenge the previous episode), as he shines his pearly whites and stammers on a speech that makes NO sense.

As you can tell, perhaps it wasn't the contestant that I wanted to win. But who would I choose if I was the one to pick one of the VJ finalists to be on air. The contestant that could garner interest in me watching videos on the station and who could actually ask more than cookie-cutter typical questions? Who would I choose, or as the theme song would blare each week, "What would you do?"

ANSWER: Scrap them all. Ask them "If you had any iota of interest in doing this, what have you done to get to where you're at now?" then ask them if they wouldn't feel ashamed of how people viewed them on the show (generally being caddy and whining about other contestants to the point they sounded like Nanny 911 should come in and take a car ariel and give them a good whippin). Could any Canadian artist look at what they did on the show and really take them, in any way shape or form, seriously? Plus, they all seeemed so hopelessly DULL. Like the kind of dead fishes that would be at your Cousin's Tupperware party. Pleasant enough to talk with while looking at lettuce crispers or digging into whole wheat biscuits and hummus while your cousin cusses' out one of her children, but that's it!

Perhaps it's just sad that dullness now is rewarded as either a "journalistic sense", "television entertainment" or "knowledge".

The interesting thing about Canadians when they vote on anything is that they seem to love bringing back down who or what they vote for, so Tim from my hometown of Oshawa, prove me wrong. It's sink or swim time and you have a whole generation of kids that now can program their own video shows via ipods and the internet. You got your work cut out for you...

..and flashing a smile and abs will only work for SO long.

The Great Easter Egg Ribs

It's interesting how the Holiday of Easter is perceived by North Americans. Honestly, I can saw with my family it was never having anything to do with any form of religion. Passover meant "pass over the platter of food" or "Could you stuff any more peanut butter into a chocolate shell of an egg" (Sorry folks for the bad "yoke";)

My childhood versions and visions of Easter are filled with odd vibes for sure. We would spend it with family friends of ours on a place called Crystal Lake (yes, just like the FRIDAY THE 13th movies). We would have Easter Egg hunts until I outgrew it. One year I remember my parents got me a Eurthmics album (Spelling). I loathe solid chocolate bunnies.

This year has been especially odd because of strange internal dealings. Plus, I guess I'm just exhausted and fed up in many ways. An army of my friends are in the same boat just dealing with people that are clueless that are preventing them to achieve their dreams. But I digress.

So anyhow, this was an Easter where I exploded over something stupid, which I hate. Now Easter has this really weirdo feel to it.

If this provides little insight and answers, well, that's the way it goes. But in the meantime after a bit of the rift was sorted out, my folks and I had an amazing dinner with some BBQ dinner. If you're wondering what happened to the Easter Bunny, (see photo attached).

But the nicer weather is coming and hopefully a trip on the horizon. Hey, I can't complain too much, I did get a copy of the film Madonna doesn't want anyone to see (A Certain Sacrifice) and made Hannele a copy of a Stranglers CD I got at the CNE, and drove along backroads in the Canadian shield listening to APULANTA's "Kylla" cd!