The Best Thing That Ever Happened

I could be discontent and chase the rainbows end

I might win much more but lose all that is mine

I could be a lot but I know I'm not

I'm content just with the riches that you bring

I might shoot to win and commit the sin

Of wanting more than I've already got

I could runaway but I'd rather stay

In the warmth of your smile lighting up my day

(the one that makes me say)

'Cause you're the best thing that ever happened to me or my world

You're the best thing that ever happened - so don't go away

I might be a king and steal my peoples things

But I don't go for that power crazy way

All that I could rule but I don't check for fools

All that I need is to be left to live my way

(listen what I say)

'Cause you're the best thing that ever happened to me or my world

You're the best thing that ever happened - so don't go away

I could chase around for nothing to be found

But why look for something that is never there

I may get it wrong sometimes but I'll come back in style

For I realise your love means more than anything

(the song you make me sing)

Happy Anniversary to my wife. I love you more today than ever before.

(Happy Canada Day to everyone else. I love you all about the same as before.)

As The Crow Fries

My wife is a sensitive soul. In all the right ways. While I do possess compassion, I keep it tamped down, swallowed deep into the pit of my stomach. It only sporadically shows itself, as a gag-reflex, like coughed up mucus and phlegm that I then spit on the ground when nobody's looking. My wife has no problem expressing her love of and concern for all things at any time in any circumstance.

Lately, our house has fallen prey to middle-of-the-night power outages. Mysterious events that cause digital clocks to blink 12:00, and us to wake in the morning in a panic, unsure of how late we are for work. After the latest time this happened, my wife called Maritime Electric and explained the shenanigans. The tech replied that there was no clear reason why it was happening, and assumed that the latest outage was the result of a crow getting fried by an electrical wire (how she knew this, I know not. I remain dubious, and puzzled since the outages haven't returned since the phone-call).

When my son was quite young, he noticed a crow that always seemed to be perched on the highest limb of the tallest tree around our home. While I assumed that it was different crows, he was quite emphatic that it was, in fact, one crow. He named the crow Doogle.

Lately, my wife has taken to tossing, onto the lawn, old bread and such, with the accompanying yell "Here Doogle!". I assume the neighbourhood thinks her crazy, probably thinking she's tossing food to some imaginary lost son. I merely swallow, silently, and recognize that Doogle (or the Doogles, as I still believe) has found a second friend.

So, when she heard that the outages might be caused by crisping crows, my wife, momentarily, became a bit despondent and sullen at the thought of this poor crow losing its life in such a shocking way. "I hope it wasn't Doogle", she said, quite seriously, to nobody in particular.

I, I'm ashamed to say, laughed at her. Fortunately for me, she also shows compassion to me.

Ads On "Shrooms

I think, perhaps, the greatest gig that a tv commercial copy writer could get would be to hook up with the production company that does the Five Alive ads.

They're the ads that look like they're on mushrooms. 3 or 4 mini-whacked-out clips, totally disassociated from each other and from reality, in 30 seconds.

For instance, here might be a typical 30 second tv ad for Five Alive (these don't exist, but if the prod. comp. wants them, hire me and you got 'em):

scene one (8 seconds): an animated beetle wearing an ascot, suspenders and a monocle, in a psychedelic garden, gets its groove on, on a petal of a flower. A Five Alive can falls down from the sky (a la the big foot at the beginning of the Monty Python tv series shows) and squashes the beetle. Beetle tickles the can which laughs and runs away. Music: frenetic German dance beat.

cut to:

scene two (12 seconds): in a room which somehow looks like the entire world, two pretty women, each with twelve arms, and an armadillo on each of their heads, take turns spitting words at each other. The words float out of the mouth of each woman, but float up into the sky, where a huge orange juicer awaits. The words gets juiced and the juice pours into a can of Five Alive. Music: Tuvian throat singing.

cut to:

scene three (10 seconds): in claymation, a box of pens turns into an airplane turns into a medic alert bracelet turns into a belly dancer turns into a lava lamp turns into a midget with a can of Five Alive as one of her legs. Music: the Russian national anthem, played backwards.

Seriously, those are some whigged out commercials.

Oz. Ewwww!!!!

The local Dairy Queen at lunch hour is a sesspool of skanky, awful junior high school types. Jam-packed with pimply, terribly dressed juveniles and their attendant hyperactive ignorance.

Today it was unuusally empty. Maybe a quarter of the usual raging hormones. Perhaps this being the end of school, schedules are off. Anyway, today I ordered my food, and while I was waiting, some kid sitting nearby, surrounded by his goofy group, says "Do you watch Oz?"

At first I thought I had overheard him talking to a friend, and I thought, "My god, you're too young to be watching Oz".

Then again "Do you watch Oz?" More pointed. He was talking to me.

"What?" I asked, naturally suspicious.

"Do you watch Oz?", then a dirty, yellow-teethed smile.

"I used to." I brace myself for the ridicule.

"Ewww. Oz is gay!" Laughter.

"You think so?" is all I could come up with. Conversation over.

I'm so disappointed in myself.

I, of course, should have invited him to join me in the Dairy Queen bathroom.

I'll Be Your Mirror

So, PEI has a 10 hour outdoor rock concert to talk about this summer. 3 heaadlining bands: Train, Five For Fighting and Fountains of Wayne.

I cannot begin to tell you (actually, by writing this, I guess I am beginning... how about you replace 'begin' with 'bother'...carry on...) how many people I overhear saying something like this: "I'm looking forward to Train and/or Five For Fighting, but I couldn't care less about Fountains of Wayne. I'm so sick of Stacy's Mom."

See, to me, it's exactly the opposite. The only band that really interests me, of the three, is Fountains of Wayne. I understand why people think of them as "that Stacy's Mom band", but they've got a whole parcel of great power-pop songs in their repetoire.

Like Ron Sexsmith (see post below), their one radio song doesn't really do them justice. I expect the people who go to the concert will leave thinking Fountains of Wayne stole the show.

Power Pop rocks, man.

Stupid Radio Getting Smarter?

Of course there are all kinds of reasons why so many good songs and performers get ignored by private radio. Just as there are all kinds of reasons why lame songs get played.

Whatever the reason, it's nice to hear Ron Sexsmith finally making it into a rotation on Magic 93 as of the past week or so. It is long overdue.

It's too bad that the song isn't, in my opinion, one of his better songs. Here's hoping that Ron Sexsmith catches on and more and more of his songs end up on the radio.

A Smoove Lunch

There are people who don't like/cannot eat lunch by themselves. I can dig that. However, I have no problem being by myself, and often look forward to the solo lunch. Of course, too, there's nothing better than feasting with friends.

Lately, I've been lunching sans ami more often so I can learn my lines for our upcoming sketch show. (preparing for 'the show', too, is one of the reasons for lack of posting from me lately). Today, at lunch, was one of those great days where it felt great to be outside in the city. Absolutely perfect weather, a bench, a gorgeous sun, lots of people buzzing about, an appetizing meal and some great tunes playing on my walkman. (who wants to give me an ipod?)

Does anyone know the artist Eamon? (sorry if you don't like his website) I came across him today on a miix cd I have of "artists that I don't know, but I have a song or two by them". The song of his that played today was 'Fuck It" (sorry mom and dad). What a great song. A smooth, kinda old-style R&B flow and groove that's populated with all sorts of pleasingly vulgar lines. While I don't seek out music with 'bad words', I do appreciate a song that makes good use of them. Aside from the great music of this song, I love his nonchalance when singing vulgarity.

Anyway, it was a chore-and-a-half to go back to work this afternoon.

GMail - You Interested?

I've been using Gmail (Google's 1gig web-mail alternative to Hotmail and Yahoo type mail servers) for a couple of months now, and I'm liking it more and more everyday. At first, I was unsure if I'd bother with the pain of yet another email address, but I find myself casually switching my email subscriptions, etc., over to my gmail address.

It's in Beta, still, but seems to work very well for my needs. They are now beginning to add the odd addition here and there to make it even better.

Anyway, they are once again looking for people to help test it, and have granted me a couple of chances to offer the service to my friends.

So, if you're interested in getting a gmail account (at this early stage, there's still a good chance you can get the email name you want), post a reply here stating as such.

I'll only contact the person(s) to whom I'll send an invitation, so if you don't hear back from me, don't take it as a sign that I don't like you.

Operation Overlord

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Sing As You Are, As You Were

Some of you who know me, may know about some of the little theatrical ideas that I sometimes express a desire to perform.

One of those ideas is to take a popular modern song and perform it as a choir, kind of in a Bobby McFerrin style. By that I mean there'd be no instruments, but each person in the choir would be responsible for verbally duplicating a tiny, particular aspect of the song. One person would handle the bass drum, another the high-hat 'tss tss tss' sounds, another the guitar strums, another the bass, etc... as many voices as needed to duplicate the song. The goal would be to try and reproduce all the sounds of the original, as closely as possible, but only using our voices.

I think this would sound neat. Well, now I don't need to do bother. This guy has basically done that, with Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit". He didn't use a choir of individuals, though. He does all the sounds himself, recorded individually and then put together.

It's an interesting version. You can click the link above, or over to the left if you'd like to download it and check it out.

America Is Under Attack

This is link to a page that has a link to watch or download a video of George W. Bush. It is supposedly (and I have no reason to believe otherwise) a video of him on the morning of Sept.11, 2001. He is in a classroom watching students learn.

At the beginning of the video, an aid comes up to him and apparently gives him a piece of paper. It is said that written on the paper is: America is under attack.

Watch what the PotUS does over the course of the next five minutes. It's bewilderingly fascinating.

I'm not sure what I would do, but I don't think it'd involve remaining sitting on my ass. I can only assume that he didn't know the immediacy, severity or seriousness of the attack, and probably felt it best to carry on as normal until he had an appropriate opportunity to excuse himself. Okay.

I'd so dearly love to know what goes on in his mind sometimes. This is one of those times.

The Sky Was The Limit

I was watching Seabiscuit last night, and one of the characters said "The sky's the limit!" in reference to his future. The movie primarily takes place in the 1930's, and I was struck by the thought that, in that era, the sky really was the limit. Yes, people could dream about being on the moon, and space flight obviously was as potential then as it is possible now... but in real terms, the sky was the limit, we couldn't go higher.

That got me wondering if people still say "The sky's the limit" when they are talking about things that have no boundaries or limits. I think they do. Heck, I may even say it myself. If so, we are limiting ourselves.

I say it's time do away with "The sky's the limit". It's time has passed. We should, however, replace it with something similar, just so people will still have a limit to strive towards.

How about: "The Galaxy m104's the limit!"