Regis, the Queen, and Ric Flair!

Why I MAY not have grandkids ...

2008-05-04T18:06:00.000-07:00

It's a good thing he didn't order the lamb!

2008-05-02T23:27:00.000-07:00

I'm really not familiar with Mexican food. All we had in Regina was Taco Time.

North Carolina had some great Mexican restaurants, but I never had the brass to go much past the Carne Asada and refried beans.

So tonight, I let Bradien order for me, and I was away from the table when he did it.

Turns out he ordered the "Mojarra".

Mexican fried fish.

The entire fish, Mexican fried.

It was delicious, but I didn't dare show Adam.

It would have terrified him.

As it likely terrified the people sitting next to us.

Miss B at the Districts

2008-05-02T23:10:00.000-07:00

Here is Brenna figuratively raising the bar ... by literally jumping over it!! (Minutes later, two guys literally raised the bar.)

She finished a fabulous seventh place in the multi-school district competition!

April 8th, 2008 ...

2008-05-02T22:58:00.000-07:00

This is the first season that BMK has ever played baseball.

Here's his second at bat ... ever!

(Listen for a proud mother's squeal near the end.)

My next new favorite band has actually been around longer than me ...

2008-04-26T14:45:00.000-07:00

Every couple of years, I manage to stumble across a some type of hidden musical treasure: the musical equivalent of finding a ten spot on the street! They're usually hiding like the Velveteen Rabbit in garage sales and thrift stories.

This time, it's the gold mine of brothers Ron and Russell Mael, better known as Sparks. They've been going strong for almost 40 years, recording pretty consistently too.

Describe Sparks? What about a mixture of Cole Porter, Queen, Supertramp, and the Pet Shop Boys? Maybe it's more like Elvis Costello at a Euro disco? Or Spinal Tap with pianos? Or an all-male, all-Dutch version of the Go-Go's?

What makes Sparks so amazing is that they seem to predate everything. New wave? They beat the skinny tie crowd to the bank by almost half a decade. Same with power pop, dance music, electronica, and big band.

Best known for their 1974 U.K. hit, "This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us", Sparks looks, sounds, and sings like they're British. They're not. Instead, they're two brothers from California.

Older brother Ron, complete with thin a mustache that makes him look an unfortunate cross between Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hilter, writes a lot of the material.

Younger brother Russell - a dead ringer for Jeremy Irons in his younger days - is the singer and often sings in a faux European accent. His constant use of falsetto makes him sound like a young Brian Wilson singing Monty Python songs.

Along with their witty lyrics and their great melodies, the brothers' secret is that they do everything absolutely straight faced.

Most veteran bands tend to slow down in their waning years. Not Sparks, they have a new album coming out soon.

You can find them just about anywhere on Youtube - as long as you're willing to weed through the six thousand postings of Jordan Sparks' "Tatoo"!

Tips for Teens

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MqISz5bH7o

I Predict

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95jDdBmzyiE

This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both of Us

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax8JYmoRhy4

Get In The Swing (And yes .. that's one of the Bay City Rollers introducing the band.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avypBDJ68AQ&feature=related

Perfume

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFrFhwMQMXg

Behind the scenes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdcx6eZjPEI&feature=PlayList&p=719CAB6469696B9A&index=29

Beat the Clock

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBOtpwOZSFk&feature=related

Big Surprise

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0GYIRE1FzA&feature=related

Wonder Girl & Do Ri Me (Yes, that Do Ri Me.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPsxGLYIavM

A Day at the park: Regina 2005

2008-04-26T06:16:00.000-07:00

The Regina Years Part One - "The Studio Camera Doesn't Lie" or "A slap's as good as a wink to a Best Man."

2008-04-18T21:01:00.000-07:00

It's been two-plus months since I've dusted off the computer and conducted some business, so it's time to get yakking once again.

Spring is a time for new growth, and 'round here is no exception.

Adam spent a day "job shadowing" in the Kindergarten classroom for his Fall debut; Brenna had her 1st multi-district track meet, and finished a fabulous 7th in high jump; and baseball has been very, very good to Mr. Braiden! (Last Friday night, he went 1 for 1 with 2 walks, 2 RBIs, and 3 runs scored - this is first season that he's ever played the sport!!!)

Kristin and her best friend/step-sister will be off on a free Mediterranean cruise, while my Mom and I are taking a bus trip to Seattle to catch a 3 game series with the Jays at the end of June!

Things have been going excellent. (In the words of Borat - very niiiice!!!)

I got a fevered and passionate request to detail my time in television news -during what can only be described as "The Regina Years". (Okay, so it wasn't really all that passionate of a request, and "The Regina Years" was more like "The Regina 16 and-a-half-months"; but what's a little hyperbole?)

We moved back to Regina in 2004 to be closer to family.

Leaving North Carolina was tough. It's a great place and things were rocking personally and professionally. Good friends, good job ... and especially good eats! If you ever get a chance to binge on Lexington Barbecue and hush puppies, it's well worth the bloat! Once, while on the South Beach diet, I ate an entire pound of the BBQ'd pork!)

Professionally speaking, moving back to Regina was also tough. I had to start all over again. My first job back was at CTV. I knew I was in for an ego-blasting when the HR lady interviewing me was worried that I didn't have any studio camera experience!

Despite her concerns, I still managed to get the job ... as a part time studio camera operator. Here I was, with a college degree, 5 years big market experience, and a couple of awards under my belt, and I was setting up the weather camera at 11:15 at night.

On paper, I was probably the most over-qualified part time studio camera operator in the history of part time studio camera operators. Here's the irony: I absolutely sucked at studio camera! (Ask Kevin McKay about the time I set up the sports studio cameras backwards ... and had to change them around live on the air!) I felt like Donald Trump, suddenly being stuck doing his own taxes, and not knowing what the hell a 1040 was! (Imagine the Donald saying, "Am I 'Married 1' or what?".)

However, I grinned and bared it. I was lucky to also get on at Global Regina part-time also. This was a little more news and a lot less studio camera. "Thank God!!", said fans of quality studio camera work.

Eventually, a full time news photographer job came open at Global and I quit CTV. The folks at CTV were really nice and I really appreciated that humbling experience because I was ready to start kickin' @ss again! Come on, I've met Regis for fricksakes!!! Chew on that, Ikegami studio camera!

For those who've never shot a professional TV camera, it's a lot like operating a car. At first glance, all cars seem the same. A steering wheel is a steering wheel, whether it's in a Porsche or a Dodge Dart, right? But when used at high speeds or under dangerous conditions, that's when you find out the difference, and sometimes --- you also find the ditch.

Well, video cameras are the same. Every one has a lens and a record button. But every individual camera acts differently. The ergonomics, the color balance, the sound, the iris and the focus ring are never the quite the same.

So when you transition to a camera you've never used before, you suck initially. (This experience is similar to getting into the Wood family car after Kristin's driven: the seat's pulled so far up I nearly impale myself with the steering wheel. One these times the seat back is going to break and I'm going need the Jaws of Life.)

The cameras at Global Regina were DVCPro: the Laser Disc of professional digital video cameras.

(For those who don't remember Laser Discs, they were basically DVDs that were the same size as record albums. You could only watch half of the movie before you had to switch it over to continue on the 2nd side. My brother convinced my Dad to buy a Laser Disc player. It still sits in my Mom's basement today, along with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Maverick, and Diggstown.)

With the DVC Pro cameras, you ended up with all sorts of interesting colors. If you ever wondered what a person would look like through poop-colored glasses, these cameras made your dreams come true.

The problem is, video cameras are expensive. And to get good ones costs upwards of 50 grand. And good ones break just as easily. 50 large is a lot to pay to drop one in the Gulf of Mexico. (Ask the guy from WFTX in Florida how it felt to drop two in one shoot. One was Fox's; the other was borrowed from CNN.)

Thankfully, the people at Global Regina were much better than the cameras: although they each had their own entertaining quirks.

The first person I met at Global was the assignment editor, Doug Tabak. Technically speaking, Doug was the first person I heard. I had called originally from North Carolina, and I immediately recognized Doug's voice from years in Regina radio.

Doug has that low key Ben Stein droll comedy thing. To call Doug laid back would be an understatement. Doug reading aloud the Canada Post and Doug on fire would likely sound the same.

Doug was also consistent in how he delivered his assignments. The less glamorous VOs and VOsots were given to you with the accompanying phrase, "go ahead and swing on by ...". I can't help but wondering if Doug's wedding vows included "go ahead and swing on by ...". Even typing this makes me smile.

The next person I remember was the news director, Les Staff. While the joke's been done to death, I still find it entertaining that a manager's name would be Les Staff. Sounds like bad comedy from an HR convention.

When you think of news directors, usually Ed Asner comes to mind: wrinked, frumpy, old, crusty dudes with rolled up sleeves and gruff exteriors that mask hearts of gold. (Insert CTV joke here.)

Not Les. He's the best dressed TV person I've ever met. He had an amazing collection of suits and shirts. Honestly, I was jealous. News photographers tend to dress in shorts and T-shirts, and look like roadies for rock bands. (Like one cameraman who met the Queen of England dressed like this. "Greetings, your Majesty. (Pause.) Yeah, I'm with band. You want a toot?" More on Liz and Philip later.)

Les was great to work with; he was always up for new ideas. He was a cool dude, too. And with the exception of one time, I never got into trouble with him.

The Canada Games Feel Good Incident. (No one else remembers it by this name, but it's my blog.

In TV news, your story is expected to make it into the newscast in a specific order. If it doesn't get there when it's supposed to be, it screws everything up. Some of your less humorous and more embarrassing TV mistakes come when the story's not ready, and they have to tap dance until you get it there. I've never been on a news desk, but I can't imagine the angst of being left to twist in the wind because fat boy news photographer didn't get his work done in time.

The phrase for it is called "floating". I think it's called "floating" because it's the TV equivalent of passing gas during church.

This was during the 2005 Canada Summer Games in Regina. I was working with reporter Ross Neitz, and we pieced together a really great story about some of the feel good aspects of the Games. I spent a lot of time on the sound and unfortunately, the story didn't get done on time.

The problem was, there were other stories running in the cast that night that weren't as "feel good" about the Canada Games as our piece. So, they had to run the more negative stories first and then push our piece to an entirely different segment. Basically, it made the newscast look like the "Canada Games sucks" newscast. Not good.

So that was bad enough. Next day, I made it worse.

I was late.

Everybody was in the morning meeting when I arrived. When I came in, Les yells, "You're late!" This was not good. Turns out he had read everyone the riot act already. Somebody else who was less later than me had already suffered the initial public rebuking! So I'm late, and I floated yesterday, so imagine how much deeper I'm going to be in the crap hole!

Naturally, Les proceeds to give me the verbal business in front of everybody! I'm mortified. What could I say?

(It reminded me of my friend Chris's wedding. He was married in the Catholic church. I was the best man. I really only had one responsibility: provide the rings. That's it.

Now I was raised Catholic too. But the thing is, I never once paid attention to the ring transfer-portion of a Catholic wedding. It's not like passing the baton in the 4X100 metre relay.

It comes time for my ring passing and the priest lifts the plate of rings towards me. And I try to grab them off the plate.

Wrong!

As I put my fingers on the rings, the priest slaps my hand! During the ceremony! In front of everybody!!!

He says, "pass them the plate!".

I hear laughter coming form Chris's entire family.

After the ceremony, the priest is talking like this is the funniest thing he's ever done. Eleven years later, I'm starting to wonder if he set me up. Like this was some priest comedy thing. I'm imaging him, pre-show, telling the alter boys, "Okay boys, today we're going for the old grabby-grabby naughty fingers routine ... ten bucks says Mr. Glad Hands there goes for the rings barehanded.".

I'm thinking, "Why did we not go over this sooner?!!!" This was definitely dress rehearsal material! This should have come up.

I guess I should have asked. "Is there any reason, in advance, that you can think of, where you might have to strike me, in any way, during tomorrow's ceremony? I'd really like to steer clear of being slapped, if at all possible.". I guess I never thought I'd have to worry about being slapped on my hand during the happiest day of my best friend's life.)

Needless to say, Les's heck-giving wasn't as timeless as that.

Overall, Les was a great guy, and would play a major role later on. More on that later.

Join me next time when I tell you more about the parade of characters from Global Regina. Some of them were right out of a sitcom, I swear.

To all the stations I've loved before ...

2008-02-02T19:28:00.001-08:00

The television stations where I worked - part one.

KXMC TV - Minot, North Dakota
I worked for a while on the weekends to help my wife. (She was what they call a one man band - shooting and reporting and editing.) This is where I fell in love with the business.

WBBH/WZVN - Fort Myers, Florida
Kristin got a job at the nearby Fox affilliate and we moved down to FLA in 1999. I ended up getting a job at the competiting station - technically, the competiting stations. Waterman Broadcasting had what's known as an LMA - a local management agreement. The two stations shared resources: equipment, staff, management, They did have seperate newscasts and seperate on-air personalities. As a photog, you had make sure that you had both station shirts with you, as you could never predict with whom you'd be shooting.

WFTX - Cape Coral, Florida
With Kristin already working there, it was only a matter of time before I jumped over. I wanted to be with my wife. Eventually, a position opened up and it also got me off weekends.

When I gave my two week notice at Waterman Broadcasting, they asked me to leave the building that day. I guess they were worried I'd give secrets to the enemy. It kind of made me feel like a criminal. What really sucked is that I ended up leaving behind my raw tape of an interview with Regis Philbin. (It took me a while to get past that.)

Fox 4 was where I learned to shoot and edit. There were lots of talented folks who gave me tips and hints, but who also let me run wild. Of particular influence was the great Mark Current, a great editor and a fellow lover of 70's music. Mark was the first guy who made me feel like I could actually do this business. It's been ages since I've heard from Mark - I'd love to track him down.

I've written before about the great times I had in SW Florida. It was one of those times when the stars align and everything works out perfect.

KXJB - Fargo, North Dakota
However, we missed family. Kristin wanted to get closer to home. We discovered a posting on-line and I sent a tape to Fargo, North Dakota. Both Kristin and I got jobs.

In 2001 we moved to Fargo's sister city of Moorhead, Minnesota. I got a job as the chief of photography at CBS 4.

It was like entering a time wrap. The facilities were old, the gear suspect, and the stories slow and featurey - dull compared the fast paced doom and disaster of SWFL. It took a while to get used to. I wasn't experienced enough to know what to do with the limited equipmemt. There was no frame-field setting that made my feature stories look like film. There was no digital format to smoothly slow mo. No mixing board to screw with the sound.

It was like learning all over again.

But I learned to work with what I had. And, after a while, I fell in love with the people the same way I had in Florida.

There were so many different cats in Fargo.

Bruce Asbury - the veteran, hippy dippy noon weather guy with the outrageous sense of humor. Bruce would often whip off his toupee like Rip Taylor. He even did it from time to time in his stories. His regular feature - a travelogue piece called "Trip on A Tankful", was about different people and places in The Red River Valley area.

During the long car rides covering these stories, Bruce and I yakked for hours about baseball and historical events. Bruce was older than I was - I often joked that he was so old he remembered walking out of the Primordial Mist - so he had a larger specturm of reference. I loved hearing about Frank Sinatra and Hank Greenberg and where he was Kennedy was shot. (Or was that when Lincoln was shot?)

Bruce reminded me of a less effeminate Paul Lynnde. He had catch-phrases like "Oh Man" and "Unbelievable".

Norm Bell - former football player and fellow photographer. A very nice man and the only African-American man I know who likes Steely Dan and Jellyfish. (This is because I don't know many African Americans.) He was very kind to my kids and he had a great sense of humor. He was often threatened with being on the receiving end of my hugs!

Wade Iverson - Wade is one of those guys that you swear you've met hundreds of time before. A sweet fellow who was always there was a cigarrette and a joke. Wade and I would get going doing different voices: most popular was one based a street-light repair man we saw often working in the nearby Target parking lot. We never named the Latin-voiced character who constantly bitched at his co-worker "Carlos".

Seth Oeltjebruns - Seth was a good kid with a great sense of humor. He really got into shooting and did a nice job. He too was great with my kids and a good friend.

There were so many good people in Fargo TV. But unfortunately, the marketplace doesn't always dicate things are going to stay good. In 2003, KXJB was taken into an LMA with the local NBC station. When the stations merged, I was going to lose my Chief's title to guy with a wealth of talent and a twenty years experience. (However, I likely wouldn't have lost my job as we were so woefully underpaid at KXJB that I probably was looking at a raise to be just a staff photog at the new company.)

However, Adam had been just born, and Kristin wasn't working. Soon enough, we'd be paying a fortunate in day care if Kristin ever wanted to work. So I decided to feel out the job market around the country. (Besides my teenage ego was rubbed the wrong way with the prospect of being demoted.)

I managed to stumble upon a job oppurtunity in Greensboro, North Carolina where I could basically double my income while working Monday to Friday 9-6! The cost of lving was cheap, the equipment was great, I'd have my own vehicle - albeit a Ford conversion Live truck with a micrwave dish on top - and I got to work with my single favorite human being in the news business ever.

But that's part two!

Ten albums I admit I bought ...

2008-02-02T13:20:00.000-08:00

... and my rational attempts to explain why!!

Many times, I have reached into the barrell that is rock'n'roll, and pulled out a royal turd. These are ten of the most turdish.
-----------------------------------------------------------
10. Let's Get It Started - MC Hammer

Everybody bought Hammer Don't Hurt 'em: the summer of 1990, you couldn't go ten minutes worth out hearing "U Can't Touch This.".

It took a true dork to go searching for Hammer's back catalog. Yes, this is MC Hammer's debut album, purchased mid-stream in my rap phase that began with the Beastise Boys Paul's Boutique album and ended some time after finally wearing out House of Pain's "Jump Around".

I remember nothing about Let's Get It Started - only that I sold it to a used record shop in 1993.

I'm not sure how it lasted 3 years.

-----------------------------------------------------------
9. Gonna Make You Sweat - C & C Music Factory

I signed up for the Columbia Tape & Record club in 1991. Admid Bat out of Hell and No More Tears, I ordered this dance floor favorite, purchased so that I could match Jason Baker move for move on "Things that Make You Go Hmmm ..."

Yes, I rap danced. (Basically the "Running Man".) For those who went to Watts On Main in Moose Jaw in 1991, I could be seen on the dance floor with Baker and Toby Torkelson (his real name) competitively "danicng". (Along with whatever girl I could desperately enough convience to witness said debacle.)

I think this is why I didn't date much for two years.

In order to keep up on my "moves", I practised while working weekends at the YWCA. Hiding down in the basement, underneath the swimming pool, I developed my foot work to C.C. Peniston's "Finally".

-----------------------------------------------------------
8. Don't Be Cruel - Bobby Brown

This was no accident. Grade 11, I purchased this tape a second time weeks after breaking the first one in my questionable ghettoblaster.

Ironically, the first tape lasted about as long the girlfriend it was bought to impress.

After Dana Roney broke up with me, I got drunk for the first time. (Two hours later, I got sick from being drunk for the first time.)

Bobby Brown's ranting rap during the title track somewhat encapsulated my female frustrations: Hey yo' Kimmy - what's up with this attitude? I thought I was bein' real good to you. I treat you sweet, take you out at night- but you never say thanks girl, that ain't right! I bought you diamonds, even gave you pearls. I took you for a cruise all around the world. I treat you high post, but you play me close. If I want to drink up, you won't even toast!!

I guess I wanted to drink up ... and Dana Roney wouldn't even toast! (After "drinking up", "cleaning up" the reminents of the microwave pizza I had eaten was a whole 'nother story.)

-----------------------------------------------------------
7. The Dune Soundtrack - Toto

Sometimes ... you're still a kid. This was one of my first tapes, bought around the time I had Girls With Guns by Tommy Shaw and the full Duran Duran discography.

I thought Dune would be the next Star Wars. I remember acting out the Sting/Kyle MacLachlan knife-fight scene in my bedroom. "I will bend like a reed in the wind.".

Looking back now, I'm shocked at just frickin' creepy the movie was.

Particularily the fat, gay, boil-ridden Baron Harkonnen. The soundtrack's only highlight included the Baron's freaky dialogue: "The Duke ... will die before these eyes. And they'll know ... they'll know ..that it is I, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, who encompasses his doom! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!".

-----------------------------------------------------------
6. *Music for the People - Marky Mark & the Funky Bunch

"Vibrations good like Sunkist ... made wanna know who done this?!"

Nuff said.

-----------------------------------------------------------
5. Ceral Killer - Green Jelly

I had no excuse. I was an adult.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNYi6W3v0io

-----------------------------------------------------------
4. Pickin' on Nashville - The Kentucky Headhunters

Country? I have no bloody clue why I chose this particular album. The forsenic musicologist in me theorizes I must have thought they sounded like .38 Special. Or maybe it had something to do with a purchase at the time of the Allman Brothers greatest hits.

Oh yeah, and because I had recently bought my own pair of cowboy boots! I think a picked a pair that made me look like a hooker.

-----------------------------------------------------------
3. Anti-Christ Superstar - Marilyn Mason

"The Beautiful People" was catchy. Not catchy in a "Jessie's Girl" kind of way. More like a heavy metal Gary Glitter playing with the Vienna Boys Choir at the Nuremberg Rally. (Gary Glitter, the phrase "playing with", and the Vienna Boys Choir all together in one sentence?)

Over ten years later, I swear I hear the melody of George Thoroghgood's "One Burboun, One Scotch and One Beer" buried somewhere in the mix!

-----------------------------------------------------------
2. No More Games (The Remix Album) - New Kids on the Block

There's a phrase - I don't think it's biblical - that basically says Be careful of laying down with swine, because you don't know you'll pick up.

Not that I'm suggesting that she was pig-like in any way, but when I methaphorically (not sexually) laid down with Robin Kirkness, my Grade 12 & post-high school girlfriend - I picked up something far nastier than anything you could imagine: I started to tolerate the New Kids on the Block.

Secretly, I purchased the controversial No More Games after watching a concert film Robyn had. I kept it hidden in my tape collection like it was a stack of expesnive and shameful German pornography.

The remix versions of their hits added something I've never heard before, and their step-by-step program to love and courtship was particularily inspiring.
Step one: We can have lots of fun.
Step two: There so much we can do.
Step three: It's just you and me
Step four: I can give you more.
Step five: Don't you know the time has arrived.

-----------------------------------------------------------
1. C.M.B - Color Me Badd

"All 4 Love" was gay but catchy. "I Wanna Sex You Up" was just plain gay. So how was I got dead with this tape? Was I gay*?

(*Asterisk alert - my defintion of the word "gay" has nothing to do with sexual orientation. "Gay" to be means "lame". If you are homosexual, I will refer to you as a homosexual. However, if you are lame - you are gay!)

No, I bought this "gay" music to fit in with the guys. Not that they were homosexual guys. At least, I don't think they were homosexual. Not that I would have cared.

These guys were in my Business Admin classes. Jockular guys who considered music like Color Me Badd as "chick-getting-music". Kevin Calladine, Jason Watson, Jason Schiedner and a fellow who I can only know remember as "Goots" - were my friends for the first year and a half of business adminstration classes at SIAST Palliser campus in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.

"Chick-getting" music was important - you went to the bars and you tried to get the girls to dance with you on the fast songs .

My skinny ass failed miserably.

I remember reaching my limit about the time that Nirvana started to hit its' peak. The rest of the guys thought Nirvana was "gay": literally homosexual music made by homosexual men made for other homsexual men. They wondered how you could get chicks with all that howling and ugly guitars. You couldn't dance to this, could you? That's what music was for!

I took a look at the cassettes on Kevin's wall - filled with artists like Dino, Expose, Alanis (three years before Jagged Little Pill), Snap, Paula Abdul and Technotronic - and decided we had different opnions on the sexual orientation of our music collections.

It was then that I decided I was only going to be happy if I was myself. No more rap dancing. No more Color Me Badd or Mr. Lee's "Get Busy". No more trying to be the failed ladies man that I was. Back came the Cheap Trick and the Kiss and the Alice Cooper and the comedy.

And soon enough, no more business administration.

I always look back on this time period as my mid-life mid-life crisis. The music I chose was just like the fifty year old man getting a hair piece and a fancy sports car. I was no dancer and certainly no stud.

I laugh when I hear these songs again. (I love YouTube!) They remind me of me back then - plastic, fake, and ridiculous - and funny as hell!

My Favorite Music

2008-01-30T18:39:00.000-08:00

Favorite Songs

1. Surf's Up - The Beach Boys
2. Oh Candy - Cheap Trick
3. More Than A Feeling - Boston
4. Escape - Alice Cooper
5. I Was Made for Lovin' You - Kiss
6. Say It Isn't So - The Outfield
7. Just What I Needed - The Cars
8. (Just Like) Livin' In Paradise - David Lee Roth
9. Stacey's Mom - Fountains of Wayne
10. Another Nail for My Heart - Squeeze
11. Everyday I Write the Book - Elvis Costello
12. Hopes Go Astray - The Northern Pikes
13. The Ballad of El Goodo - Big Star
14. Reactionary Girl - Robin Zander
15. Heart & Soul - Huey Lewis and the News
16. Life On Mars? - David Bowie
17. Baba O'Reilly - The Who
18. New York Groove - Ace Frehley
19. Saturday Gigs - Mott the Hoople
20. Dear Prudence - The Beatles
21. Bat Out of Hell - Meat Loaf
22. On the Border - Eagles
23. Do Ya - The Move
24. So Lonely - The Police
25. Cruel To Be Kind - Nick Lowe
26. Hurricane - Bob Dylan
27. Come Sail Away - Styx
28. Brick - Ben Folds Five
29. Maggie May - Rod Stewart
30. Remember - Nilsson
31. The Soft Parade - The Doors
32. Armageddon - Prism
33. Pinch Me - Barenaked Ladies
34. 2-4-6-8 Motorway - Tom Robinson Band
35. Saturday Night - Bay City Rollers
36. Overnight Sensation - The Rasperberries
37. Love is Like Oxygen - Sweet
38. Your Imagination - Brian Wilson
39. Babe - Jack Green
40. Joining a Fan Club - Jellyfish
41. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) - Bruce Springsteen
42. American Girl - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
43. Beach Baby - First Class
44. Girlfriend - Matthew Sweet
45. Don't Bring Me Down - E.L.O.
46. Hidin' From Love - Bryan Adams
47. Airport - The Motors
48. Peaches - The Presidents of the United States of America
49. Scenes from An Italian Restauraunt - Billy Joel
50. Live and Let Die - Paul McCartney & Wings
51. Pen Pals - Sloan
52. Carry on Wayward Son - Kanas
53. Levon - Elton John
54. Everytime I Think of You - The Babys
55. Hetrosexual Man - The Odds
56. New Mistake - Jellyfish
57. Heat of the Moment - Asia
58. Fell in Love - Moxy Fruvous
59. So You Are A Star - The Hudson Brothers
60. Bang A Gong - Power Station
61. I Believe in a Thing Called Love - The Darkness
62. Rusty Cage - Johnny Cash
63. Sail Away - Randy Newman
64. The Cowboy Song - Thin Lizzy
65. Don't Play Your Rock'n'Roll to Me - Smokie
66. Shootout on the Plantation - Leon Russell
67. Girls Talk - Dave Edmunds
68. Looking out for Number One - Bachman Turner Overdrive
69. We Gotta Get You a Woman - Todd Rundgren
70. My Sharona - The Knack
71. American Pie - Don McClean
72. Hold Back the Rain - Duran Duran
73. Xanadu - Jeff Lynne
74. Follow Me - Jason Falkner
75. Brain Damage/Eclipse - Pink Floyd
76. Shannon - Henry Gross
77. At The Hundredth Merdian - The Tragically Hip
78. She May Call You Up Tonight - The Left Banke
79. Rock Me Gently - Andy Kim
80. Johnny B. Rotten - The Monks
81. Underground - Men At Work
82. Sky High - Jigsaw
83. Is She Really Going Out With Him? - Joe Jackson
84. Tusk - Fleetwood Mac
85. It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock'n'Roll) - AC/DC
86. Helpless - Sugar
87. Na Na Na - Cozy Powell
88. Alone Again, Naturally - Gilbert O' Sullivan
89. If You Could Read My Mind - Gordon Lightfoot
90. Have Another Drink - The Kinks
91. Taxi - Harry Chapin
92. If You Leave Me Now - Chicago
93. Girls with Guns - Tommy Shaw
94. This Beat Goes On/Switchin' to Glide - The Kings
95. The Girl Most Likely - Greg Kihn
96. Raise A Little Hell - Trooper
97. Dance - Queen City Kids
98. Somewhere Only We Know - Keane
99. Hang On to Your Ego - Frank Black
100. Epic - Faith No More

Favorite Albums

1. Destroyer - Kiss
2. Heaven Tonight - Cheap Trick
3. Boston - Boston
4. From The Inside - Alice Cooper
5. Rockin' the Suburbs - Ben Folds
6. Author Unknown - Jason Falkner
7. #1 Record/Radio City - Big Star
8. Spilt Milk - Jellyfish
9. Gordon - Barenaked Ladies
10. Skyscraper - David Lee Roth
11. Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys
12. Bargainville - Moxy Fruvous
13. Nilsson Schmilsson - Nilsson
14. Snow in June - The Northern Pikes
15. Jailbreak - Thin Lizzy
16. The Wall - Pink Floyd
17. Volume 1 - The Traveling Wilburies
18. This Year's Model - Elvis Costello
19. Traffic and Weather- Fountains of Wayne
20. Into the Great Wide Open - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

Favourite Box Sets

1. Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of the Beach Boys - The Beach Boys
2. Sex, America and Cheap Trick - Cheap Trick
3. Playback - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
4. Message In a Box Set - The Police
5. The Kiss Box Set - Kiss
6. The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper - Alice Cooper
7. Thirty Years of Maximum R&B - The Who
8. Shine On - Pink Floyd
9. Flashback - The Electric Light Orchestra
10. The Byrds Box Set - The Byrds

Favorite Greatest Hits Collections

1. The Best of Sweet - Sweet
2. 1962-1966/1967-1970 - The Beatles
3. Greatest Hits - Mott the Hoople
4. Basher: The Best of Nick Lowe - Nick Lowe
5. Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits - Alice Cooper
6. Greatest Hits Volume I and II - Billy Joel
7. Greatest Hits - The Cars
8. Changesonebowie - David Bowie
9. Greatest Hits - Queen
10. Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy - The Who

The Superstar

2008-01-06T19:12:00.000-08:00

Confession time: when I was 14, I used to take the cushions off our couch, and I would "professionally wrestle" them.

I did this while wearing a set of navy blue sweats with a pair of pink swimming trunks over top. (The pink trunks were originally white, but had been washed in the wrong temperature with colors.)

I was attempting to look like this guy:

I think I ended up looking more like this guy:

Albeit, my bulge was more pronounced. ;)

-------------------------------------

So why did I do this?

Was I acting out my inner rage?

I was never a tough guy. Outside of the occasional fights with my brother & and the controversial Chris Eisler/"I'm going to cut your hair in the parking lot of the Circle K" showdown of late '87 (Don't ask!) ... I never fought.

I'm sure being 130 pounds had something to do with it.

Not that I didn't have my share of run-ins.

I drew the ire of Shane Lorencz in gym class one day for some rough fouls during in a basketball game.

(I hated getting pushed around in gym class. Once pushed around, I immediately resorted to poor sportsmanship. Even as an adult. Ask the guy from Business "D" who suffered the wrath of my obviously wide slide during a SIAST softball tournament. I went by him with slide that half resembled a chorus girl performing for Bob Fosse. )

I remember another guy in my 9th grade class who wanted to fight me. I don't remember his name off the top of my head, or why he wanted to fight ... but I do remember that I waited for him outside after class, and he walked right by me like he forgot about it.

I think he realized it was a lose-lose situation: if he won, nobody would care; if he lost, he'd have the infamy of losing to Mr. 130 Pounds on his head. I also remember that he was a huge Huey Lewis fan - and a "Hip to Be Square/Doing It All For My Baby"-era Huey Lewis fan at that; so his toughness may have been in question as well.

I did have the occasional bouts with bullies. In Grade 9, my brother's friend Kim Fransen, a senior, once whipped me with a Twizzler so hard, that it left licorice shaped welts on my arm for days.

Another Grade 9 incident involved a guy by the name of Ed Begonia. Ed used to arm punch me, or push my stuff on the floor. One day I got pissed and shoved back. Ed stopped after that, I think in part, because he wasn't so much of bully as he just seemed like a guy who wanted friends, and just had a weird way of showing it. (Makes me sad thinking about it. Or maybe he was just an *sshole.)

Honestly, I believe that I dressed in stylish ring attire and performed such diverse moves as the "Dive Bomber" and "The Slap Jack" because I identified with wrestling.

Not the fighting and the violence.

No, I identified with the performing.

It was never "real" to me. It was an art form.

Laugh if you want, but pro-wrestling is ballet and physical comedy on the fly. It's co-ordinated but rarely choreographed. Wrestlers plan "high spots" like the finish and big moments in advance, but they also ebb and flow as the match occurs. (Imagine Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers making up a dance as it went along.)

I never doubted it that it was entertainment, but I also never doubted that it was athletic and took a certain skill level that no other "legitimate sport" has.

Wrestling goes in trends. It's hot topic one minute, and the next, it's blamed for all of society's ills.

I grew up watching Chris Benoit. He wrestled on the first live card I ever saw in Regina, at the Exhibition Auditorium. I remember after the show getting Owen Hart's autograph. He and Chris Benoit seemed not much taller than I did, and they both looked worlds away from the WWF.

When all the stuff about Benoit started last year, it did make me take a moment to review whether this was something I should be supporting. (I did the same thing when Owen Hart died.) The drugs, the constant physical damage and the real life violence seems too much to take at times. It can be vulgar, silly and offensively xenophobic. (Hilariously, at one point, Canadians were the bad guys.)

However, here's my theory. Sports, entertainment, literature and arts in general are one of the only areas in life where you can really express yourself. Not all of us can play a violin or paint the Sistine Chapel, so for some their theories on life are better expressed in somebody else's 3 minute pop song or in the joy of watching athletic ambition fulfilled.

I know that a lot of this sounded hooey-phooey psycho-babble from a douche-bag who dressed up in swim trunks and tight sweats as a teenager and delivered "The Hot Shot" to a sofa cushion, but I learned a lot from the behind the scenes and inner workings of the professional wrestling business.

I learned about the value of finding your own niche. Not everybody is 6 foot 4 and 250 pounds. Not everybody has an IQ of 180. Not everybody has a full head of hair. But to find out who you are and what your passions are and how you can make something of yourself is a prototype I've seen in hundreds of people who are living their dreams.

I learned about the value of putting everything you have into your art. I heard the stories of wrestler Dynamite Kid, who performed the same way at a community center in Red Deer, Alberta in 1978 that he did in front of a world wide pay-per-view audience almost ten years later. I spent seven years shooting and editing and treating everyday like a performance whether it was in Minot or for the national news.

I learned that nobody else is going to do it for you.

I learned that the gift of entertainment is a fabulous thing.

I learned that there's comedy in everything.

I learned hink that failure happens to everybody, and that you have to make your own second chances. I've read biographies of wrestlers who reached the top of the mountain, only to get pushed off. They started all over again, and climbed to even higher heights than they ever dreamed. Been there ... going to do that in the future.

I also learned that life is a career, and it's something that you have to work on.

Well, I gotta go. I think I'm going to take on my wife for the Heavyweight title.

The Bro

2008-01-06T11:15:00.000-08:00

1990. Skinny leather tie with zipper. Stylishly fluffy hair. Waif-ish good looks. Youth truly is wasted on the young.

The folks in this picture ... from left to right ... are Chris O'Donnell (not the actor), Fabian Cascante, Pat Amon and me.

Almost 18 years later, Chris and I still are best of friends. He lives in Alberta, and daily deserves strong emotional punishment for his poor choice. ;)

It's hard to condense 20 years of friendship into a handful of paragraphs. In someways, we were polar opposites: Chris - a trumpet playing basket-baller, with an undying love for cars, Iron Maiden, fishing and the code of friendship; me- a skinny, nonathletic, KISS-loving ladies man, with an intricate knowledge of baseball, pro-wrestling, 70's television shows, and glam rock. (I kid on the ladies man thing.)

We had differing philosophies on many things - Chris believed in quality over quantity, the necessity to stay out as late as you wanted, and he pioneered the concept of "Bro's before ho's" long before "Bro's before ho's" had it's name. (I don't know how to write this phrase without apostrophes. Otherwise it looks like this - Bros before Hos. Which makes it read like Bross before Hoss. Which brings to mind ...

However, I bet that these guys firmly believed in Bro's before Ho's as well.)

Me, I loved a good value - especially when it applied to used records and books. I had to be home at 1:00, or my mother paced the floors and called people's parents. And while I believed in Bro's, I also liked the Ho's.

Not that we didn't have bonding topics - politics, the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Canadian entertainers, the work of the Traveling Wilburies.

We also shared a love of 70's culture and 80's heavy metal. Chris was the type of guy who understood where "Dyno-mite!" came from. (Remember that this was Canada and "Good Times" wasn't necessarily a big show.) We spent hours reviewing his record and tape collection, which contained the first time I'd ever seen the booklet that came with the Kiss Originals album. (A big frickin' deal for 16 year Kiss fan in 1988.)

Along with Fabian, we engaged the perpetual three way battle of who rocked harder - Kiss or Iron Maiden or AC/DC? (I attempted to enter Cheap Trick into this epic contest, but the combination of "The Flame" and later, a cancelled 1990 Regina concert because of poor sales, left them too open to ridicule.)

We also debated lots, pushing each other buttons on sensitive issues. I kept failing my driver's license road test. He rarely had a girlfriend. I could not bench press anything more than the bar. He had to shower before going out anywhere. I knew nothing about cars - he rarely had a girlfriend!

We each went thru phases and trends: I grew my hair out and became Mr. Alternative; he got a truck and started wearing cowboy boots. I went to Moose Jaw and took public administration while he moved to Lethbridge, Alberta and took criminal justice.

But we've always remained close, and it's because of the following: Chris is definition of loyalty and class. I've had my struggles and problems, and I can always count on Chris to be there. Chris is the kind of person who puts the proverbial bro before anything else. (And on at least occasion, he literally chose a Bro (me) before this bro's ex-Ho.(Janelle Audette - who probably wasn't a Ho - but that's beside the point. All this Ho stuff is going to get me in so much trouble with Mr. Wood.)

When I got married, Chris was there, tuxedo and all. (Despite his theory that buying a suit was so much better than just renting a tuxedo.) When my Dad died, Chris dropped everything and drove 9 hours to be there for me.

Opinionated, honest, funny, loyal ... necessary qualities for friendship and for being a good human being, in my opinion.

Twenty years later and still my friend.

P.S. - Kiss still rocks the hardest.

2007-12-31T15:20:00.000-08:00

We all make mistakes. Even Mean Gene. On a live pay per view.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDJz1yYMEgM

2007-12-31T10:30:00.000-08:00

More Most Irritating Songs

1. T.Rex - "Ride A White Swan"
It's like Marc Bolan got away before the mortician was finished ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9rFoPyqFoA&feature=related

2. Mika - "Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)"
Campy and fun!!! Must be listened to very loudly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcRiXOONqf0

3. Idle Eyes - "Toyoko Rose"
Just for the chorus alone ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJR8lkE5fQo

4. Gowan - "Strange Animal"
This guy took over for Dennis DeYoung in Styx. It must have been his kicking ability that sealed the deal. (Keep your eyes open for the semi-naked Indian cartoon guy who later showed up in the Doors movie.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAxlmdTJ7S8

5. Talk Talk - "It's My Life"
The morbidly depressed usually go to the zoo to watch the elephants.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvAVJTQeFiQ

6. Raffi - "Banana Phone"
Using Garry's Mod, here is a delightful and vulgar turn on the lovable children's song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neKXc7pw4go

7. Paul McCartney - "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey"
Now I know what the drummer from Boston is doing. I love how he decides he needs some type of microphone :51 in. Then the cellphone. Then the beer. (He doesn't seem confident on the lyrics.) Sorry ladies, he's married.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJw3Wm7y_GY

2007-12-30T16:42:00.000-08:00

The funniest "Most Irritating Songs to Try and Get all the Way Through":

(It's tempting to include the usual offenders - "My Humps" or "Milkshake" or anything by Nickelback ... but what fun would that be?)

1. Sparks - "This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us"
Adam Wood's new favorite song ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax8JYmoRhy4

2. Charlene - "I've Never Been to Me"
This couplet says it all - "I spent my life exploring, the subtle whoring ...".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-vx4GcjASE

3. Coven - "One Tin Solider"
And the cartoon film that comes with it ... complete with sound effects!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa2vowp4Qdw&feature=PlayList&p=DAADE5F955B76663&index=51

4. Peter, Bjorn & John - "Young Folks"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51V1VMkuyx0

5. Donna Summer - "MaCarthur Park"
The Karoke version so we can finally figure out who f*cking left the cake out in the rain!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaZim6ybvdA&feature=related

6. Boney M - "Rasputin"
"But to Moscow chicks ... he was such a lovely dear!" Nobody remebers Boney M.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvDMlk3kSYg

7. Minnie Riperton - "Lovin' You"
There are notes sung in this song so high that only dogs can hear. I love the Cat Stevens/Dan Hill looking dude playing guitar in the backgroud ... next to the f*cking birdcage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uU6aYNXnUk

Best CDs of 2007

2007-12-28T18:46:00.000-08:00

2006 was a great year for new music. Cheap Trick, Ben Folds, The Darkness, had new albums, while Ben Folds and the Barenaked Ladies had 2 each! I also discovered some lost treasures with CDs by The Left Banke, Diamond Head, Starz, Babe Ruth and some very early Hall & Oates material.

2007 wasn't quite as good for the new stuff, as I seemed to gather mostly used greatest hits collections of artists previously resigned to my record collection - Randy Newman, Led Zeppelin, Rod Stewart, Leon Russell, Led Zeppelin, The Monkees & the Eagles.

With it being said, there were some unexpected treats and some rare finds!

Here are my ten favorite CDs of this year:

10.The Best of The First 10 Years Elvis Costello

Three years ago, I would not have bought this disc. Before the last couple of years, I rarely bought greatest hits collections on CD.

Believe it or not, greatest hits seemed like a waste of money. If I liked an artist, I was destined to get as many of their studio albums as I possibly could rendering the token greatest hits album as useless. (Besides, most groups are so much better than their 'hits' & their best songs are rarely the one played on the radio ... Cheap Trick & Alice Cooper being the best examples!)

However, three years ago, in the process of moving, I gave away all my Elvis Costello CDs! I gave them as a going away present to a very generous & dear friend who loved EC ... but who rarely indulged herself in anything.

I miss the CDs ... but I miss my friend much more.

Ironically, the majority of my LP collection still sits in the attic of this dear friend's house ... which is one of the reasons I've started buying more greatest hits collections.

So when I saw this disc in Best Buy, the songs started ringing in my head again.

Describing Elvis Costello songs is like describing classic literature or expensive wines: some of them are really frickin' good, but there's no to describe them without sounding pretentious or dull.

While Elvis is best known for his first three albums, I highly recommend his 80's stuff the most. Keyboard player Steve Nieve started using piano primarily instead of the shrill organ sound the Elvis's more recognized work has.

This songs on the disc bring back great memories: Baby Adam dancing up a storm in his car seat to 'Everyday I Write The Book' ... buying This Year's Model on cassette in November 1990 at Zellers in the Normanview Mall ... swapping a Bad Religion CD to get '94's Brutal Youth, which my friend Jay Demers described as the ultimate trade of the "proven veteran versus the up-in-coming rookie prospect".

Start to finish, this CD reminds of what made Elvis Costello so great: Strong melodies, sharp lyrics, dynamic bridges, and catchy chorus. I hope that Leah Cook still agrees. (If she doesn't, maybe I can get my CDs back!)

9. Afterwords Collective Soul

I first heard Collective Soul in college. The afore-mentioned Jay Demers was Music Director of the college radio station. (A position I later inherited from him.) Atlantic records flooded the college radio market with dozens of copies of their first album Hints, Allegations, and Things Left Unsaid, and Mr. Demers was nice enough to provide me with a cassette version. (This mass marketing of new music happened a lot with college radio. I remember Interscope sending thirty copies of No Doubt's Tragic Kingdom and at first, we couldn't even give them away ... but I digress.)

I bought their second cassette in 1995. (Along with 4 David Bowie tapes, Collective Soul is the only music I've ever bought in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.)

Purchased in Seattle, Washington ... this is only CD that Kristin Wood has bought this year. Not too shabby of a success rate!

Collective Soul has this great guitar sound.(Having three guitar players will do that.) They also know how to build a song. My favorite is "What I can Give You" ... a song similar in style to the '95's "December".

I haven't listened this as much as I should. But I enjoy it when it's on. Maybe Collective Soul's new label will track me down, and send me multiple copies so I can share them with you!

8. Boston (Re-Issue) Boston

Once of my earliest musical memories involves the iconic album cover to your left.

It had to have been '78 or '79, and I was in the electronics section of the Brandon Wolco with my older cousin Alan. (The musical dork in me knows that it had to be almost 3 years since this album debuted, and I still find it amazing that the record racks were still full with copies of this album.)

As most kids hooked on Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, the flying rocket guitar-space ship and the exploding planet below were absolutely hypnotic.

I first bought this tape in 1985. An entry in a book about hard bock included that same logo'd space ship guitar fleeing an imploding earth ... and I was again hooked enough to find it the local Audio Warehouse.

There are few pop culture moments more ingrained in my head than hearing the chorus to "More Than a Feeling" for the first time. Forget "Stairway to Heaven" or "Hey Jude" or whatever ... this is the single greatest song of all time. It contains contains rock's greatest chord progression: G - C - Em - D.

(Useless trivial information alert --- the lyrics to the chorus include a reference to "When I hear that old song they used to play ...". I just read in a Rolling Stone article in which Tom Scholz says "that old song" was in reference to "Walk Away Rene" by the Left Banke ... an "old song" I discovered on a Left Banke greatest hits album last year. )

I guess it comes full circle - a 13 year old kid listening to an old 70's song - which is actually about an old 60's song that he would finally hear twenty one years later. (Okay, that was convoluted.)

This album was re-mastered for the album's 30th anniversary last year. It's great to have an up-to-date version to hear it all - the layers and layers of guitars, the layers and layers of singer Brad Delp, the hand claps and the organs.

The rise of classic rock radio has kind of hurt this album. Parts of it seem to be playing somewhere constantly. It makes me laugh because when I first started listening to it, nobody played classic rock where I lived. It was all Billy Ocean and Mr. Mister and Starship.

7. Long Road Out of Eden Eagles

On September 15th, 2007, it looked like the Colorado Rockies season was finished. They were 4 1/2 games back in the Wild Card race.

They proceeded to win 13 of 14 to force a one-game playoff which they won in the bottom of the 13th, after being down by 2 runs. Then they swept Philadelphia and Arizona to get to their first World Series.

There, they were anti-climatically swept in four games by the Red Sox.

This 2-CD release is the equivalent to both that amazing run and the Rockies' eventual sweep. It's exciting and disappointing ... both at the same time.

After 27 years, it's awesome that the Eagles got back together for an all new record & and the concept of 20 brand new Eagles' songs is fantastic. The performances are strong, the songs enjoyable ... but Long Road Out of Eden is not as good as the rest of Eagles high regarded back catalog, and that's ends up distracting me from really enjoying it.

How do you compete with Hotel California or On the Border?

The Eagles have such a diverse fan base with so many expectations. Lots of these new songs seemed like they're aimed at the various segments the Eagles need to satisfy: the die hard fans, the folks that love the classic rock sound of Hotel California or The Long Run, people who love the laid-back older stuff, those who are probably familiar most with Don Henley's solo work, and lastly ... the country radio that's most likely to play them.

All these areas are touched upon and mixed together. "How Long" is "Already Gone" for contemporary country radio. Ditto for the mash-up of "New Kid in Town" & the 1980's for "What Do I Do With My Heart?".

Note the End of the Innocence styled fun of "Busy Being Fabulous" while "Fast Company" is vintage The Long Run Don Henley, and the title track is subconsciously reminiscent of a slower paced "Hotel California". Timothy B. Schmit & Joe Walsh return to familiar ground with their turns at bat.

And just like the Rockies streak, there are many great moments here. Listening to that old familiar harmony is just like forcing a wild card game on the last day of the season ... while the bridge of "Waiting In the Weeds" is the musical equivalent to Matt Holliday sliding in safe to win the game in the bottom of 13th.

However, the second disc fails to hold up the momentum. The activist Don Henley returns with"Long Road out of Eden". ("How long's your pony tail, now, Don?".) By the time Joe Walsh shows up with "Last Good Time in Town", things have taken a maudlin turn. Not even this goofy Ordinary Average Guy sound-alike can lift the mood. As you can get to last song, "It's Your World Now", you realize that this is it.

It's not that this album isn't good ... it's just that it has a lot to live up to and anything less can feel like a sweep at the hands of Manny Ramirez and company.

6. The Soft Parade (Re-Issue) The Doors

Re-issues are great. Things sound brighter, crisper. You swear you hear stuff you never heard before.

Then there's the line of this year's Doors re-releases ... where you literally hear stuff you never heard before. Alternate vocals, guitars, keyboards and drums were discovered from the original multi-track recordings, and together with an amazing sound clarity, you get to enjoy these six albums almost like it's the first time.

I've got this album and L.A. Woman in re-issue, at first bought to round out my Doors CD collection. I wasn't expecting to be as blown away as I was. Listening to it on headphones makes me feel like I'm there in the studio with the band. (Which is kind of disturbing thought if you remember the scene from the movie where they record this album. Picturing Meg Ryan and Val Kilmer "otherwise engaged" in the vocal booth during "The Soft Parade" is a little much, I must admit.)

This album is rarely mentioned in the same breath as their debut or Strange Days. It was knocked a fair amount during the time for its' horns and strings. Rolling Stone called it sad. That makes me enjoy a lot more.

Thanks to Oliver Stone, people forget that the Doors had a sense of humor. (Listen to the double live Doors record if you doubt it: "You can pick your teeth with a New York joint!")

This album is full of entertaining bits & jaunty melodies, particularly the title track. This is my favorite Doors song, a pretty strong statement considering the number of iconic tunes the Doors had.

Almost ten minutes long, what makes the song so fun is that it's veritable quote fest. "When I was back there in seminary school ... someone put forth to the proposition that you can petition the Lord with prayer. You can not petition the Lord with Prayer!" and "Carrying babies to the river!" and "When all else fails, we can whip the horse's eyes, and make them sleep ... and cry!"

The naughty sounding lines of "... love your neighbour ... 'til his wife gets home!" and "The monk bought lunch. He bought a 'little'! Yes, he did !" were quoted by Irishman Laurence Naylor and myself ad nausem in the fall of 1995.

Another high point is "Runnin' Blue", a Dylanesque-Basement Tapes sounding jig which is actually about Otis Redding's passing at the time. We also get bonus tracks like the goofy "Push Push" which sounds like jazz bar band five minutes before closing time!

I'd love to see other bands get the same treatment as this re-issue series. My next choice ... Kenny Rogers and the First Edition! I'm sure there's parts of "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town" or "Just Dropped In (To See what Condition My Condition Was In)" that need to be unearthed! ;)

5. Duit on Mon Dei & Sandman (Re-Issue) Harry Nilsson

Cost efficiency is often a requirement for purchasing the CD version of albums I already own.

This "two-fer" features two Nilsson albums from the mid-seventies, reasonably priced for my enjoyment!

For the uninitiated, Harry Nilsson is known for some combination of following five things:

a) his Grammy winning cover of Badfinger's "Without You"

b) his Grammy winning cover of Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talking" for The Midnight Cowboy film.

c) his song "Coconut" used in Reservior Dogs.

d) being a member of the short lived "Holloywood Vampires" drinking club that included John Lennon, Mickey Dolenz, Alice Cooper and Ringo Starr.

e) getting kicked out of the Troubadour night club in Hollywood with a very drunk John Lennon for heckling the Smother Brothers ... while wearing tampons on their heads.

What Nilsson is less remembered for is his diverse catalog, his dynamic songwriting, his four octave voice, and his sense of humor.

His 1975 album Duit it on Mon Dei is the perfect example of Nilsson's style: raunchy, goofy, dramatic, and entertaining. From the goofy opener "Jesus Christ You're Tall" to the regal "Salmon Falls" and the boogie shuffle of "It's a Jungle Out There" and "Kojak Columbo" ... Nilsson manages to go from comedian to crooner and back again.

Despite recently recovering from a ruptured vocal cord, Nilsson managed to record the vocals live with his all star studio band. (Which included Ringo Starr, Klaus Voorman, Jim Keltner, Van Dyke Parks, and Dr. John.) There's a feeling like a giant party is going on. (That's because there constantly was some type of drinking and partying going on!)

Also included on this disc is 1976's Sandman. One of Harry's best ... this work marks the return of Harry's multi-layered voice. (Like Brad Delp of Boston, Nilsson did all of his own background and harmony vocals.)

The songs are some of Harry's best. In a time of David Soul and Pablo Cruise, I can't figure out how the grooving, string-heavy ballad "Something True" wasn't a top ten smash. The laid-back "Here's Why I Did Not Go to Work" sounds like it was recorded in a smokey jazz club, while the sarcastic "How to Write a Song" wouldn't be out of place on an episode of the Muppet Show. (Minus the line "Let's assume you're just an @sshole, and there's nothing in your brain ..." of course.)

There's no shortage of Nilsson's usual comedy: "The Ivy Covered Walls" features Harry "accompanied" by a college glee club. "The Flying Saucer Song" is a goofy skit involving two drunks at a bar, with both parts voiced by Nilsson.

These albums aren't for everybody. A parental advisory should be included: "This album includes liberal usage of Steel Drums". As well, Nilsson isn't immune to scatting. Some of the melodies can be a little off-putting, and Nilsson's recovering voice hits some ugly notes here and there.

Mrs Wood, for instance, is not a big Nilsson fan.

She fails to see the cost efficiency of purchasing any Nilsson's work. And considering her 2007 success rate on buying CDs, it's hard to argue with her!

4. Magic Bruce Springsteen

I first heard this CD in the office of co-worker (and noted Springsteen aficiando) Kathy Cook. Months later, I heard it while in browsing in Budget Music and Video in Minot.

So when my mother-in-law kindly gave me a Christmas gift card for Best Buy, this was the first CD I bought.

The reviews have played up Springsteen's return to his 70's sound. I also notice that many of the songs remind me of other artists as well ... without being derirative or committing the Ray Parker Jr. sin of directly ripping somebody off. ("I ain't 'fraid of no ghosts" ... but litigation scares the sh*t out of me.)

Take the first song "Radio Nowhere" . (It sounds kind of like Tommy Tutone changing the lyrics to "867-5309/Jenny" and trying sing it how like Bruce Springsteen would.)

Another great tune is "Living in The Future" ... which sounds like a mixture of "Hungry Heart" & "Glory Days". (My great friend and noted Springsteen aficinado Chris O'Donnell - not the actor - once claimed that when his wife asked how his day went ... he managed to quote the entire first verse and the complete chorus to "Glory Days" as if it were conversation.)

"Your Own Worst Enemy" is Elvis Costello circa 1989. 90's Tom Petty is channelled in "I'll Work for Your Love". The title track and "Devils's Arcade" are what the Boss would sound like with either Rick Rubin or Bob Ezrin behind the board.

I just bought this three days ago, and yet it feels like I've been listening to it for ages. Maybe it's all that time in Kathy Cook's office!

3. Cold Spring Harbor (Re-Issue) Billy Joel

Billy Joel's early career is the very definition of persistance.

Billy's first band, The Hassles, made a couple of late sixties releases.

After a cover of Sam & Dave's "You Got me Hummin' " failed to crack the top 100, the band broke up and Billy and the drummer, Jon Small formed what only can be described as a "power duo" ... Small on drums and Billy on vocals and organ. Imagine Cream or Hendrix ... just with an organ instead of guitars.

In 1970, they released what is often referred to as one of worst albums of all time.

The cover itself is worth the price of admission. Small & Joel, dressed in medival armour, standing amid a meat locker of raw beef.

The music sounds like Deep Purple ... if their guitar amps weren't working.

Joel's voice is the same one that helped sell millions of albums ten years later.

However, his Long Island slur is an odd mix with the Spinal Tap-like melodies.

The album was such a failure, that the duo was cut from their record deal, and Billy ended up briefly in a mental institution.

So far, oh for two.

After getting out, Billy ran off to California with Small's wife to start a solo career. He managed to get a deal with Artie Ripp's Family Productions, and together they recorded Cold Spring Harbor in 1971.

One slight problem ... when the record was originaly pressed, it was recorded at at a semi-tone higher, leaving Joel to sound like a girl.

Strike three, right?

Even though his promising debut was rendered a hard sell with Joel's altered voice, Columbia Records heard a live broadcast of Billy, and immediately recognized the potential of his material.

While Columbia was in negotiations with Family Productions to buy out Billy's contract, Joel played the California piano bar circuit under the name "Bill Martin". It was here that he got the basis from his most famous song and the hit that would start his career.

Talk about your perserverence.

And the rest, they say is history ...

Until 1983, when Artie Ripp decided he wanted to make a little money. He went to Columbia, and together they remixed Cold Spring Harbor, and released it in his proper form. (Albeit with some new instrumentation and some alterations in song length.)

In 1998, Columbia re-issued all of Billy back catalog, including the first CD version of this album. I remember seeing in the racks of the record store in Minot, but I wasn't a major Billy Joel fan at the time. I did, however, enjoy the cover for Joel's moustache and mullet!

After marrying Kristin, she managed to get me into Billy Joel, and I began my shameless zeal to collect the Piano Man's entire discography. First by record, then by cassette ... then by CD.

However, outside of The Stranger, a hand full of live albums, and some Greatest Hit compliations ... it has become somewhat difficult to find any of Joel's studio albums.

Kristin did purchase She's Got a Way: A Collection of Rare Recordings for Christmas in 2004. This value priced CD featured much of the material from his first album. However, it appeared to be dubbed off the original recording and then slowed down. It makes Joel sound like Will Ferrel when he gets shot in the neck with a tranquillizer in Old School. (Watch it again if you forget.)

However, I too persisted, and 9 years after it's re-issue on CD, I finally found Cold Spring Harbor in the record store in the Mall of America.

It's worth the wait. This album is Billy Joel finally figuring out his musical style. (It's the musical equivilent to Richard Dreyfuss fnally determing that the mountain he's been inexplicably modelling is actually the Devils' Tower in Wyoming.)

Highlights include "You Can Make Me Free" , "Everybody Loves You Now" and "Got To Begin Again". If you remotely like Billy Joel, you'll love this album as it's more of what made him a household word.

It seems like it's always been hip to bash Billy Joel. I've never figured out why.

What's not to love?

I highly recommend this album.

Besides, look at all the effort Billy went thru to make it for me!

2. Walk Hard:The Dewey Cox Story Original Soundtrack

Good comedy always comes from precise duplication and reproduction.

Nothing sums it up so much as Andy Kaufman's old 'Foreign man' character and his impersonation of Elvis.

In his orginal night club act, Kaufman would perform as the Foreign Man. He would eventually do a variety of poor celebrity impressions ... Ed Sullivan, John Wayne, etc ... in that exact same Foreign Man voice. As the audiance would politely groan thru his act, Kaufman would next announce that, "he would like to do 'the Elvis Presley'."

The lights would go dark, the music for 2001: A Space Odyessy would come on, and Kaufman would begin combing his hair back, and he would transform in

Elvis, shaking lip and all.

Then he would sing. Just like Elvis.

This would blow the audience out of the water.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story does the same thing. John C. Reily manages to do dead-on versions of Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Elvis, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and Brian Wilson.

You'll swear that you've heard these songs before.

"Guilty as Charged" is perfect Johnny Cash, with its' "Ring of Fire" Mexican horns. "Royal Jelly" is Blonde on Blonde nonsense, the best Dylan I've ever heard, complete with the chorus of "I wanna touch you ... where the Royal Jelly gets made.".

"Dear Mr. President" sounds like little known protest singer Phil Ochs.

Particualrily mind-blowing is "Black Sheep", with it's drugged-up Beach Boys Smile-era sound. lt manages to duplicate Brian Wilson's masterpiece while being funny as hell.

1. Traffic and Weather Fountains of Wayne

In this world of rap and Emo and High School Musical, this year's best album went ignored, and that's fine with me.

Fountains of Wayne are best known for "Stacey's Mom" ... Adam Wood's favorite song.

As well, guitarist Adam Scheslinger is a songwriter for hire, writing such movie rock as "That Thing You Do" and all the songs for "Music and Lyrics" (The Hugh Grant-Drew Barrymore romantic comedy about a wahsed up 80's singer.)

At the risk of sounding really pretentious, they are power pop's mad scientists, carefully mixing skinny tie-New Wave with 80's mainstream and 90's alternative. (Basically, they have decided to directly market to their fan base: Jason & Adam Wood.)

Imagine taking the Cars, Elvis Costello, ELO, Cheap Trick, .38 Special, the Outfield, Bryan Adams, Jellyfish, Sugar, the Smashing Pumpkins, and mixing up them all up in a stew.

They remind me of a lot of the Canadian bands I loved in the 90's ... Sloan, The Odds, B'n'L, Moist, Pure.

The entire disc is a highlight.

I strongly advise you to dig thru the bargain bin of 2007 and find this disc.

I've been tagged! (I think you need pencillin for that!)

2007-12-17T21:38:00.000-08:00

I got an e-mail from a friend saying that I had been "tagged" and that I had to write a blog about 8 random things and then tag 8 other folks with blogs who also have to write about 8 random things.

Truth be told ... I know hardly anybody with a blog. Which probably explains why I took me until this September to try and start one. Therefore, I think that I won't be able to pass it on like some of the other taggees.

I'm also assuming that the controversial "Can't -Tag-the-Butcher" rule that caused so much bitterness between me and the Heise kids in Melfort, Saskatchewan in late 1979 applies in this situation. ("Tagging the Butcher" means tagging the person who tagged you. Most games of tag we played had strict rules against tagging the butcher as it could create a fight when two players exchanged too many return tags ... which could often resemble a slap fight. F#ck you, Brett Heise!)

The 8 random things however .. easy!

1) I always remember that Keith Hernandez hit .299 as a member of the 1982 St. Louis Cardinals.

2) My youngest son's middle name is Arthur ... which is my middle name, my father's middle name, and my grandfather's first name. However, Adam does not have the ability to have an acronym, like me and my Dad did ... JAW & RAW.

3) Post-purchase cognitive dissonance is the feeling of disappointment, guilt or frustration after making a major purchase. As in "I'm having major post-purchase cognitive dissonance after we got the 800 Canon Digital Rebel XT camera, as it made all the pictures I took at my kids' Christmas program look like a version of Satan's Home for the Holidays!". I swear, there were less red eyes the day after the Coors company Christmas party, than there was on those pictures!

4) Barry Manilow's hit "I Write the Songs" was not written by Barry Manilow. It was written by Bruce Johnston, formerly of the Beach Boys ... who only wrote a handful of songs while he was in the band. Somehow, "I Occasionally Write the Songs" doesn't have the same ring.

5) I firmly believe that everything in life is analogous to the behind- the-scenes workings of professional wrestling.

6) Every girl that I have ever dated has had glasses.

7) I really don't care for pasta salad or crab. My wife told my mother-in-law this the day after she kindly made pasta salad with crab for us for an anniversary lunch. (P.S. - Kristin had to go out of town that day and couldn't come, so instead, my sister-in-law came with me for the lunch. No joke.)

8) I feel that Tony Bennett has a great voice ... but a questionable toupee.

Fin.

Painstaking re-construction ...

2007-11-23T07:50:00.000-08:00

I've been busy re-adjusting to both my new hair and my sexy bad-guy moustache!

Very-sensitive-beard Man! I wish I could do this in real life.

Mini-Knutson

2007-11-06T20:54:00.000-08:00

This is Miss Brenna. She is in Grade 7, and she's 12.

She's just like her mother.

She has always been a character. Early videos of her showcase a talent for making folks laugh.

She wants to be an actress. She has already been in community theatre and she was the Global Microphone in the 2005 Buffalo Days parade. Both performances were met with rave reviews!

She wants to live in New York.

She is also an athlete and a painter. She's played basketball and volleyball, and has done bitchin' at both - despite a lack of experience. Her art is all over the house, and has won her awards at school!

She is a great sister. She plays with her little brother a lot - they can be heard giggling and carrying on all over the house!

She is very sweet and very kind to animals and friends.

She has lots of pairs of shoes.

She picked out the rockin' lime green color for her bedroom, and she won Best Costume at a recent Halloween Dance!

She is a great babysitter, and she is great with all types of kids.

She has started wearing a tiny bit of make-up. I have jokingly told her my rules for life --- NO BOYS. (I'm only half joking.)

When she was younger, she complained of getting a bead stuck in her ear. She said that our cat had did it. Later, at the hospital, she admitted doing it herself. When the doctor removed the bead for her ear, he was shocked to find another bead behind it! (This one apparently came from a friend at daycare.)

Her and her brother have grown up so much. They have lived in many different places and seen many different things. They've been to DisneyWorld and the Smokey Mountains and the Gulf of Mexico and the Red River and Costcos in 2 different countries, and they've taken it all in stride.

She is a great daughter and I love her very much.

BMK

2007-11-06T20:10:00.000-08:00

This is the man! He is in Grade 8, and will be 14 in December.

He is a great kid. Very earnest, very conscientious, and very kind.

The ladies have been noticing him since 2005, as he is a veteran of the dating scene. However, his sister may have inadvertently blocked his first kiss!

He is a hero to his little brother! Known as "Bro", Braiden shares his time and energy with his brother, sharing a love of video games and trips to the park. They can be spotted joyously riding around town on a bike ... and for a 13 year old, that's pretty frickin' cool.

He is awesome around the house. With Kristin out of town, he cleaned up everything - dishes, carpet, garbage - all without being asked. The joy of seeing his eyes light up when I gave him 20 bucks made my day as much as it did his!

He has always been a great brother. When the kids were younger, Brenna was stung by a bee. Braiden came and got his mother, and stood around nervously saying, "Oh, my Brenna ... my precious Brenna!".

He is a lover of grandmas, and player of Monopoly.

He is looking forward to getting his licence. He has had a chance to drive once, and he really enjoyed it.

His congruent childhood dreams of becoming an architect, a rock star, and the owner of a fitness center - all at the same time - has not been put on the back burner yet. He recently wanted to buy a very large boxing bag and hang it from his ceiling.

He dislikes the new carpet for his room, but he never complained.

His favorite book is a survival guide from the US military. He knows what plants are safe to eat, and the best way to clean an infection should one not be able to move.

He intends on going to Minot State University ... for financial reasons.

He is a great son, and I love him dearly.

The reason for vacations & cameras

2007-11-04T15:30:00.000-08:00

This is the love of my life. The picture was taken at a restaurant in Willimgton, North Carolina in 2005. It was the first real vacation that we'd taken together since 1999.

She's beautiful. She always has been.

I first met her in 1993. We were in a theatre class. She was pregnant with Braiden at the time. My brother and I were in the class, and eventually we both dropped out.

I didn't see her again until 2 years later when we both auditioned for a play in college. During the audition, we were paired up to act out a scene together. She says she noticed me right away! ;) We both got into the play, and we were paired up as husband and wife!

Later in the year, we were in another play together, and I really got to know her then. She was really frickin' good in that play, and we still have the best actress plaque she got for her work!!

We spent a lot of time together, and I really loved being around her. Late in the '95-'96 school year, she got a really short haircut, which made her look even more beautiful. I used to see her in the hallways and razz her about looking like Pat Benetar. (Which was right down her alley!)

As I got to know her, I really started to like her. We shared the same interests and sense of humor.

Our first date involved a trip to Bismarck, North Dakota. We went to a bar that had an Ozzy Osbourne cover band. The singer could sing like Ozzy, but in between songs, he couldn't keep up the English accent! We laughed the whole time, and I enjoyed every second we spent!

It wasn't long before I was in love with her. It's amazing when you find that perfect person that fills in all the empty spaces in your life.

I've always been a complicated (read-difficult) person, and Kristin always knew how to deal with me and my moods. When we got together, she helped build me up after a really difficult time in my life. She is loyal and honest and opinionated and funny.

She also was willing to do anything. We'd stage little wrestling matches in WalMart. I'd pretend to whip her into the ropes or fake hit her with a child's mattress. She always went along with whatever goofy thing I'd try.

The night we got married, we used the whirlpool tub in our honeymoon suite. I turned it on and shot myself right in the rear-end with the jets of water!

She was just as talented at broadcasting as she was at acting. At both places we worked, all the photographers begged to work with her, because they knew that not only would they have a great story, but that Kristin could write it in no time flat.

One time, she couldn't find our car keys. She looked around the entire apartment. Turns out, the key chain was hanging from her mouth! The kicker to this story ... earlier on, she had had come to me, with the keys in her mouth, asking me for help finding them. I guess I looked at her and asked, "Well, where did you look last?".

I love every thing about my wife. I love that she sings the harmony parts of songs. (It's the reason I keep showering her with cassettes and CDs of her favorite groups. I never would have bought a large percentage of Hall & Oates's back catalogue on my own! Some goes for Air Supply, REO Speedwagon, and The Monkees.)

I love the pouty pose that she makes anytime she takes a picture with her sisters.

I love the fact that she's convinced that I have somehow programmed the DVD/VCR remote not to work for her.

I love how she hates the usage of the word "amazing".

I love childhood pictures of her. Especially any ones wear she's wearing glasses.

I love that she edits my e-mails and cleans up my spelling mistakes.

I love the fact she's always willing to try new things. She had the guts to move us to Fort Myers, FL for her first job. I never would have Thunder Beef and Pad Thai and Cincinnati style Chili without her.

I love watching her with our children. She has always been a great mom, and she's the reason all three of our kids have turned out so well.

I love her conscience. She has a beautiful sense of right and wrong, and she's taught the kids well.

I love how I have someone who was there with me thru it all. Someone who remembers the time I threw my back out jumping up in the air when she and the kids came to pick me up outside Peder Rice's.

Someone who was there the time Brenna got stuck in the toilet. Or when Braiden had his first date.

Someone who remembers ending up in the ditch coming back from Winnipeg ... the time I irrationally told everyone in the car, "I love you all, we're all going to die!" as we went into the ditch.

Someone who took me to hospital when I had strep throat, and who took me to the mall when the Alice Cooper box set came out.

Together we've seen the World Trade Center, the Gulf of Mexico, the beach at Lake Winnipeg, the old streets of Asheville, North Carolina, and the ghetto of Garry, Indiana. We've been in awe of the Tennessee mountains and in fear of the Pennsylvania turnpike.

This woman has both figuratively and literally saved my life on more than one occasion.

Things haven't always been perfect, but they have been exciting. I've been spoiled rotten by the best woman in the world.

Hurry back, gorgeous.

More Kissology ...

2007-11-04T12:14:00.000-08:00

Here you go, Kari! I was searching your blog for a picture and came across this one of you and Derek Smith. I just want you to know that this gets addicting. A sure sign that you've gone too far is when you start putting make up on family members pictures or you use Eric Carr's or Vinnie Vincent's make-up!

Derek Smith was a real character and a very nice kid. I hadn't seen him since college, and I talked to him briefly a couple of weeks ago under some sad circumstances. I have some real nice memories of Derek in college.

He appeared on a live TV show that I got to have in college. My brother, who also went to college with us, was the director. The night Derek was the guest, Dave got mad at something, threw a fit, and walked off swearing.

While you can't hear really hear the profanity specifically, you can tell something's going on. Derek's reaction is priceless when Dave up and leaves! I can't remember how we got out of it, and to a break, because Dave was the director and he ran the board.

Derek married one of the girls from the Minot State University theatre department - Aili Davidson. I was in a play with them both called the Musical Radio Comedy Murders of 1940. I was the goody guy comedian, and Ali was the evil German maid.

The climatic scene of this play involved me hitting her over the head with a bottle and saving the day. Every time that I had to do this, I think I borrowed a move from the great Dynamite Kid and stomped my feet as I pretended to to bonk Aili with the bottle.

This bottle was so thick, I swear, it was like something Orson Welles would have drank out of. ("Ahhhhhhhh, the French ... Youtube Orson Welles if you're curious. It's the first thing that comes up.)

At the last performance, I go to hit Aili with the bottle, and THUD! I had actually hit her on the head. I remember not being able to say some of my last lines because I kept looking back to make that I hadn't knocked Aili out.

Afterwards, she said she was fine, and hopefully, she didn't have any permanent damage. I feel like a jerk thinking about it now.

Another time, for reasons that I can't remember, somehow Derek and I ended up getting hired by SRT - the local telephone company - to appear at their annual dinner.

The theme was connected to 'Back to the Future' ... therefore, we were hired to be characters from the movie. Derek was Michael J. Fox and I was Christopher Lloyd.

I remember that I had a horrible fever, and I was really sick, but the entertainment value alone of doing this was worth it.

The special guest speaker at the dinner was former Minnesota Vikings halfback Chuck Foreman. After Derek and I finished our 'Back to the Future' bit, Chuck got up and started his speech by saying, "Those were the two craziest white guys I ever saw.".

I guess Chuck Foreman's never met Phil Spector.

Took me a while ...

2007-11-04T09:39:00.000-08:00

Don't know who the dude is, but consider yourself Gene-ized!

This is my best friend.

2007-11-03T11:55:00.000-07:00

His favorite song is "Stacey's Mom". He also loves "Everyday I Write the Book" by Elvis Costello, "Another Postcard" by the Barenaked Ladies, and "The Hypnotist" by Adam Sandler.

There are many things he loves and many things he hates.

He has lived in 6 different places in his life, and he has left behind a girlfriend in just about every town.

When he gets too much sugar or not enough sleep, he gets like a 3 foot version of a drugged up Goodbye Yellow Brick Road-era Elton John.

He makes me laugh every day. He calls me many names and knows how to tell a joke.

He loves going to the park with his sister.

He looks like his mother. (Thank God.)

Before we knew, I was sure he was going to be a girl. His name would have been Addison.

He dances with his fingers, and he hates sleeping alone.

His big brother is his hero ... he calls him "Bro".

He learned to talk very early. His first name for his mother was "Umi".

The day he was born was my favorite moment on the planet.

I first saw him walk at the Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro, NC. (He had learned how to walk while I was gone to Norman, OK, and he was standing there waiting for me when I got back. As I came up, he was crying, and then he took two steps towards me.)

He calls me his best friend. He always has.

He is 1/5 of the best family ever.

By special request ...

2007-11-03T11:37:00.000-07:00

Dang ... tight spot!
Jason Wood - applying Kiss make up to celebrities' pictures for well over two decades!

Looking at a map, Florida kinda looks dirty.

2007-10-31T16:59:00.000-07:00

I worked as a television cameraman for 7 and a half years. It was a profession I never would have imagined myself doing. News photographers are the meat & potatoes of the TV business, and for anyone who has ever known me - "meat" is not anywhere in my definition at all. There are eunuchs who out "meat" me!

While I went to school for broadcasting, I stumbled into this crazy business because of my wife. She had a job as a reporter at the time. On weekends, there was no photographer, so she would have shoot and report at the same time.

One weekend she got this assignment on a dude who held cross country skiing poetry readings. He'd take a group out, ski for a while, and then stop recite original poetry.

It's difficult to shoot a video camera and cross country ski at the same time, so Kristin asked me to come and shoot video while she and a group full of avid cross country skiers/poetry lovers.

I was the only person without skis! Unfortunately, it meant I had to run thru snow drifts to keep up these people.

When they would stop, I would have to catch up and film everybody while they listened intently. I was a pack and a half smoker at the time, and already out of shape. You could hear me huffing and puffing all over the natural sound on the camera.

From there, I was hooked. When Kristin got a job in southwest Florida in 1999, I took a job at a competing station as a photographer.

We spent two entertaining years there, and I have a ton of wild and bizarre stories for the crazy and bizarre folks from all over the world who made their way to the land of sunshine.

Like the time I got accosted inside in a Fort Myers trailer park by an angry old couple who wanted to know why I was there shooting. After I explained to them that we were here to do a story about saving their trailer park, they proceeded to curse and scream at me and the reporter.

The husband wanted to fight me, and at one point, took a step towards me with his fist out. He pointed to a sign that said, "No Soliciting". He said, "See that sign, it says no soliciting ... that means no bullsh*tting around.". (Next time you see a No Soliciting sign, remember that it means "no bullsh*tting around.")

The comedic thing was that we had permission to be there, and we had already finished the story. So, I calmly walked to the news truck, and put my camera away. The entire time, the wife is yelling at me, calling me a "real business man." (I swear to God, it was like David Mamet was writing their material. I half expected the wife to offer to buy me a pack a gum and offer to teach me how to chew it!)

I have this on tape. As a photographer in the middle of an incident, you record everything. Just in case. You never know what's going to happen.

Another time, I was sent to get some "video" of a "house" and "some dogs". These words were important because along with the address, they were the only information I had for the story.

When I showed up to shoot the "house" and "some dogs" - I found myself in the middle of the slum section of Fort Myers, FL. Say what you want about parts of LA or Chicago or Detroit, but from what I've been told, the hood in Fort Myers is just as dangerous and graphic as I've seen on any newscast or any movie.

At night, you don't go there. The NAACP called it the most economically segregated city in the south, and that's frightening when you consider that includes the entire states of Alabama, Louisiana, and Georgia.

Thankfully, this was day time though.

As I got out and set up in front of the house, three very large Doberman pinchers came out into the gated front yard and proceeded to bark incessantly at me. I got my usual shots, and was pretty much finished, when an SUV rolled hard up on the sidewalk.

3 very large men got and started to yell at me, telling me to get the fuck away from their house. One guy grabbed a large cinder block from a nearby yard, and says, "If you don't get the f*ck out of here now, I'm gonna hit you with this.".

At this point, I am getting the f*ck out of here now. As I'm quickly packing up, I say the only thing I can think of, "Hey, I'm on your guys' side, we just wanted to get your side of the story.". (In times of crisis, I'm either stupidly cocky or ridiculously chicken sh*t. That day, chicken sh*t was on the order.)

One of the guys says, "That's fine, come back tomorrow in the afternoon after our court date. Maybe we'll talk to ya' then.".

I head back to the station, and relayed the entire story to the newsroom. Somebody calls the news director, and I got this stern message passed on to me, that "We are never on somebody's side. We are the media.". Funny, I could have sworn something Frank McCahill taught at Minot State University about the role of a journalist, being impartial and on the side of the people. I think later in that chapter he did say, "Unless you may be hit by a concrete cinder block. Then ... the sh*t's off.".

Turns out that the "house" I had shot was a local den of drug dealing and dog fighting. What made this "house" newsworthy was that undercover police chased a suspect into this yard, the suspects friends decided unleash five large German Doberman pincher's onto the pursuing cops. One dog was shot and killed, and another was seriously injured and later put down. This would have been nice to have known before I got into a discussion with the accused unleashers. (Obviously, Mr. Chicken Sh*t made the right choice.)

The follow up to the story is that I got sent back to the area the next day. This time, I went with a reporter, James Irby.

I miss James. Whenever we were short on time, he'd volunteer to drive. Imagine going down the road at 85 MPH, trying to edit in backseat of a Ford conversion van/TV Live Truck while James blasted DMX's Up in Here. I swear we took one bump once on Del Prado Blvd and the truck was airborne. (It was like that scene in Ferris Bueller's Day off where the valet parkers take off with Cameron's dad's car.)

Anyway, James and I went to the "house" and sure enough, the same group of guys were hanging around outside. They came over to the news truck, and started to talking with James. When they recognized me, one of guys said , "It's motherf*ckin' Stone Cold Steve Austin!" --- I guess in reference to my shaved head and goatee. Or my fat gut. Or both.

Lots of time in news, it's waiting. Waiting for somebody to decide if they are willing to do an interview. Sometimes, you and the reporter sit in the truck and wait.

One night, we were waiting outside a Fort Myers house to see if we could get an interview an this 18 year old kid named Michael, who was accused of sending threatening e-mails to a survivor of the Columbine school shooting.

I was working for WBBH/WZVN at the time, and I was with this reporter named Erik Levine. I feel bad saying this because I am nothing to look at, but Erik looked like Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer. (I liked Erik, but he is forever in my bad books because he didn't stand by the camera like I asked him, while I tuned in a live shot one night. The camera fell and busted in half. I lost a good camera and got a day's suspension.)

Erik could always get the interview. And sure enough, Michael was willing to talk. He met us at the door, and everything was all dramatic and dark in the house. He said that he was misunderstood, and that he was merely acting out a character. We set up and started rolling on the interview when the door burst open.

It was Michael's mother.

In a voice that sounded like George's mother on Seinfeld, she created a catchphrase that stuck with me for years, when she said to her son, "Michael, in my own home!".

Michael's mother had given him explicit instructions not to talk to anybody. Especially not Erik Levine from WBBH.

The next two minutes turned into sitcom, as Michael's mom read him and Erik the riot act. "I told you, Michael," she said, "that I was going to Steak and Shake with Linda, and that you were to not to talk to the TV people!".

Erik's sitting there, apologizing, she starts in on him. "Erik," she said, "I told you. Michael can't talk. He's going to be in court next week. I told you. And you did this ... in my own home!".

Me? I just kept recording.

Some times, it's not so funny the stuff you see. Crashed cars, sick children, bodies with white sheets across them. I look forward to living the next 3/4 of my life never having to watch EMT remove someone from a crushed tractor trailer.

But what's more scary is the stuff underneath. The stuff that eventually surfaces thru either somebody's courage or bullsh*t luck.

The main anchor of WFTX Fox 4 had an assignment for sweeps. Beth Shelburne was her name and she was a lot of fun, and a really good reporter too. We went downtown in Fort Myers one night to do interviews about sex and monogamy in relationships. (Your usual ratings fare.) We interviewed this one couple and asked them all types of questions about their relationship. It was cheesy and fun. (Your usual ratings fare.)

A short while later, a baby's body gets found in the woods outside of town. They eventually traced it back to the couple we interviewed in downtown Fort Myers. It was one of the production assistants, Heather, who discovered it. She had come along on the interviews for experience, and it her who remembers interviewing them.

Both the husband and wife were now suspects, and on the run. Eventually, they tracked the couple down - separately. It was freaky to watch the interview again, under the context of what happened. Last time I remember, they were trying to determine if the husband was competent to stand trial.

Another time, a reporter and I went to cover a fishing tournament for kids with handicaps. It was a weekend story - the type you try to have as much with as possible. The kids were fabulous ... they always are!

But the dude that ran it ind of gave me the creeps. He was an older man, who looked a lot like C. Everett Coop. He was in a wheelchair, but he said he didn't necessarily need it.

Anyway, I put together the story and stayed thru the newscast to run one of the sports cameras. About two minutes after the story aired, the phone rang. I answered it. The person on the other line said, "I just watched that story about the fishing tournament, and the guy who runs it should not be allowed around kids. When I was a child, that son of bitch sexually assaulted me when my mother was with him.".

Holy sh*t.

This opened up a complex, high detailed story that involved the fishing tournament guy and a history of sexual assault with children. How this guy got anywhere near kids is amazing.

By now this had turned into a huge story, and a different reporter got assigned to it. I remember that Mr. Fishing Man met with the reporter and myself in a public place. He brought along his wife and met us at Perkins.

He begged us not to release the story as it would kill his credibility and work in the community. Up until that point in my life, it was twenty of the most intense minutes I've ever spent. All I can say is that I think I have met the devil, or a close proximity.

Me and the reporter left the restaurant and aired the story. I had tons of video of this guy kissing and hugging kids at the fishing tournament and him meeting us at Perkins. I have no clue where he is now. Hopefully in jail.

It wasn't all dark and creepy in SW Florida. I also got to meet Regis Philbin.

It was around the time Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was taking off. Apparently, every market that Regis went, he was indebted to meet with the local ABC affiliate and do a story.

He and Don Rickles came thru on a tour. And we got a chance to watch him rehearse. Afterwards, we did the interview.

The entire time I was dying inside thinking , "I'd love to do Dana Carvey impersonation of him. Cody ... what kind of name is Cody to name a boy!!!"

Thank God I didn't.

At the end of it, he looks at him and says, in that voice, "Jason, how did it look?". I said that he looked great! Regis looks at me and says, "The lighting was terrible, we're gonna have to do it again!!".

It makes me wonder how many times he did that joke to local ABC cameraman all over America.

Kristin and I spent two years there. There were so many great memories. We stood on the beach at ocean on Christmas Day. We saw DisneyWorld and Universal Studios and Seaworld. The kids had a great time, and there were so many wild and crazy people in at that little Fox station in Cape Coral.

Some time I'll tell you about Tim Kinney and the cleanest joke I ever heard. And don't let me forget to mention Mark Current and Jeff Yarlett. If you're lucky, you'll hear about MDA kids hitting on television anchors or going to a nudist colony with Chip McAfee ... and his wife.

Now go to bed.

Getting the chance to say what I think ...

2007-10-25T23:14:00.000-07:00

I attended the funeral of a college friend last weekend. While I wasn't privileged enough to have been one of Bram Davidson best friends, he always treated me like one. He treated everyone like one. I sit here devastated for his family and his friends who knew and loved him the most.

What I heard the loss and sadness in everyone's words, it got me thinking about the special and important people in my own life, and how absolutely spoiled rotten I've been in my life to have so many beautiful friends and family around.

So rather than wait until I'm sitting devastated in church somewhere, wishing I had one more day to say the things I feel, I want to tell about some of the special people in my life.

This is my wonderful friend Corey Horob:

If ever a grin was to be loosely defined as 'sh*t eating', it would be Corey's. (I'm hoping not literally 'sh*t eating'. While I can see a few circumstances where Corey would end up in a position of sh*t eating, I highly doubt he'd be grinning while doing it.)

I can't see the other person in this photo, but I am inclined to believe he or she is helping him out of a jail or an institution.

Corey is one of those people who looks as good now, as he did the day I first met him. How is this possible? In the time that Corey and I have known each other, I have nearly doubled in size, lost at least 3/4 of my hair, and discovered the delicate indignity of man boobs, and generally overall --- gone to sh*t.

Meanwhile, Mr. English T-shirt here has developed strong deltoids, biceps, triceps, and a pair of amazing Extesnor Digitoriums! (I love being able to look up stuff on the Internet.)

I do question the inappropriate way he may have developed his right addular pollicis, but what man does in the privacy of his own home - while watching scrambled pornography - is his own business. (My wife is going to hate that line.)

To sum up Corey in a short paragraph would do both short paragraphs & Corey grave injustices. Corey has been a consistent and wonderful presence in my life, despite the fact I've lived in eight different towns in the last fifteen years.

Corey and I met in college. After the first five months of our friendship - we've never lived in the same town. Hell, we haven't even been in the same state since 1997.

I think not being around each other is the reason our friendship survives. Absence not only makes the heart grow fonder, it pretty much guarantees that you never get irritated by the way somebody chews their food. It also means it's harder for them to picture your ugly ass while talking over the phone, as well.

For lack of a less gay phrasing, Corey is like my partner - the Hope to my Crosby, the Lewis to my Martin ... the Crosby/Stills to my Nash & Young. (I'm running out of partnerships.)

Corey and I lived in a world of improv and ad-libbing and planned silliness. I remember one time, we went to breakfast at Perkins. I can't remember if it had been a late night or what, but we were quiet as we ordered and ate breakfast. In the middle, I got up and went to the bathroom.

When I came back, Corey whispers to me, "Whatever happens, your name is Jebediah --- so look sad, and just go with it.". Sure enough, about a minute later, three of the most maudlin looking waitresses I've ever seen, come over carrying a muffin with a candle in it.

They proceeded to sing 'Happy Birthday' to me in almost dirge-like fashion. I'm remembering the instructions of "looking sad" so I just sit there doing the best I can. I look across at Corey and he's got the most earnest look on his face, like he trying to say to everyone, "This is my friend who I love, and this is his birthday muffin.".

Turns out while I was gone, Corey had requested for our waitress that someone bring out a muffin with a candle in it, and sing his dear friend Jebediah 'Happy Birthday' because Jebediah had travelled a long way to see both of his parents -who were in an car accident - and it was poor lonely Jebediah's birthday!

God forgive him for that one! (I think if I'd had more time to think, I might told the waitresses that the "accident" was just a fender/bender, and that those insurance agency bastards were, "really giving it to my parents over the f*cking deductable.". Somehow, I think doing that would have made the story less funny though.)

We did stuff like that all the time. I would go around promising him that the next book store I was in, I was going to trip and take out a display of books.

Sure enough, we did it in the Columbia Mall in Grand Forks. I had made sure that my shoelace was loose in advance - which if you know me, isn't too hard, as my shoelaces always seem to be loose. After looking around the store, and giving Corey no advance warning, I fake-tripped and took out a large display of bargain books. I even took more down with me trying to get back up.

Corey's reaction was perfect. There he was, earnestly trying to help me up, giving everyone in store that look, like he was saying, "This is my friend, and even though he has taken out a row of discounted but valuable books on old cars and biblical quotations, he shall always remain my friend.".

I just pretended to look mortified and red-faced, which isn't really hard to do when a store full of book shoppers are staring out you.

We did help clean it most of it up, which seemed like the proper thing to do.

After working for many excellent years in morning radio, Corey has made his way to New York City, and now lives in a section of Harlem. (No joke.) If there ever was anybody who pull off being the only white guy around, it would be Corey. Anyone I've ever known who has met Corey, knows that he is literally a man of the people. He's the only person I know who can offer dissertations on farming equipment, computer technology, and liberal politics. He can talk to anyone on any subject for any length of time, unless of course, he has to go somewhere.

And we developed a non-subtle signal for when we wanted to leave somewhere. The undecipherable "Joe Jackson has no pants.". To hear it spoken, means it's time to go.

You can't stay long in any one place with Corey because it's always time to go on to the next place. Part of it is his metabolism. The late shift at the McDonald's in downtown Baghdad, doesn't turnover half as much as Corey can process food into energy. For as long as I've known him, he has been literally 'wafer thin'. (See Monty Python's The Meaning of Life for that one.)

I've seen him demolish breakfasts portioned for the morbidly obese. He has to be the skinniest human being ever to own a George Foreman grill. Even Ethiopians from the 1980's were calling him concerned about his inability to put on any weight.

The other part that makes Corey go so fast is the fact that he is so full of life. He truly has that "I'll sleep at the end" mentality. There's always one more laugh out there.

With Corey, you get a million of them. Corey can impersonate an arsenal of celebrities and politicians. My brother and I would make Corey run the gambit from Johnny Carson to Bill Clinton to Ed Sullivan. He is like the ultimate party favor.

His Harry Caray impression alone is so dead-on, especially when used in conjunction with Corey's story of an on-air call Corey had with the real Harry Caray - which ended with Caray saying, "Hey, I'm not feeling too good right now.". (This was only one or two days before Caray's untimely passing in 1998.) The sad way Corey says "Hey, I'm not feeling too good right now.", always breaks my heart.

One year Corey sent me a Christmas card with a picture of him and Bill Crosby on it. It said, "Hey, hey, hey ... have a Merry Christmas.".

Someday, I'll relay his version of how he asked George Carlin to speak at his chigh school graduation, and the beautiful friendship that developed between a boy and his idol.

He is also the kindest, most earnest and caring person I've ever know, and I'm glad he's here on the planet. Thanks for being my friend.

(No doubt, if Corey responds with a comment it will be one sentence long, and it involve the phrases "Hehehe" and "mofo". It will be poorly punctuated and it will be funny as hell.)

High Fever reminds son of his Dad and rock'n'roll

2007-10-24T20:25:00.000-07:00

Holy crap - I am sick! I've been off work for 4 days with strep throat and a fever. I've been sweating constantly.

I can't help thinking that this would feel really good right now! (What a feeling!) Speaking of Flashdance, it always pissed me off that she let dancing hold back a promising career in welding! Did you know that there's a serious shortage of welders up the coast of Mississippi - apparently entry level wages are between $8-$10! Who's the "Maniac" now, smart guy?!

Flashdance had incredible reach. No B.S. - my Dad had the soundtrack! (This probably explains a lot about me.) His collection also included more "manly" fare like the soundtracks to The Jazz Singer and Woman In Red. If it was recorded for a movie - my Dad bought it. Not that my dad was all movie soundtracks. Between 1976 and 1982, we rocked out to such diverse artists as Roger Whittaker, Gordon Lightfoot, and Burton Cummings. (Basically, if you were a white guy with a moustache - you rocked old Ron Wood's world!)

Truth be told, I miss that music. Not 'cause I liked it - but 'cause Dad liked it. I don't think anybody else was listening to the Kingston Trio in 1978, but there we'd be, cruising down Highway 6 to Naicam with "Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley" playing.

If it were winter, and if he was playing the soundtrack to Live and Let Die, he would drive my brother and I down Caskey Drive in Melfort, and he would pull a hard left into our driveway, taking out a row of plastic garbage cans.

We lost my Dad in 2002 to esophageal cancer. It's been five years, and I still grieve. My Dad was the best. He was a man with great moral character, he was always kind and welcoming to everyone, and he had a great sense of humor.

What he lacked in the rock'n'roll department, he more than made up in great musical memories.

Like the time that he and I drove to Brandon, Manitoba to meet up with my Mom. I was in college at the time. Dad was driving his beautiful new Toyota Celica - the house had been paid off and he was indulging in finding his youth again. It was early, and I was still kind of asleep.

As we pulled onto Ring Road in Regina, I heard that melody that used to be at the beginning of cassette tapes. Suddenly, it got really loud. This was interesting.

Then the opening chords of "My Woman From Tokyo" by Deep Purple came blasting out. This was loud. Like Brian Johnson from AC/DC loud. I lifted my head up and there was my 50 year old dad with one hand on the steering wheel, nodding his hand in time with the music, a hilarious semi-snarl across his face. F*ck you, Roger Whittaker!

My Dad was an early 60's guy at heart. He loved "Yakkety-Sax" and the American Graffiti soundtrack. He also loved guitar instrumental stuff - the Ventures and Duane Eddy.

I think this is what made music so great for me. Maybe it was all those soundtracks, but I learned quickly that life needed background music.

I've tried make the music special for my kids. They've been raised on everything from The Beach Boys to Kiss and everywhere in between. The two older kids especially enjoyed side two of Alice Cooper "Special Forces" album - "Skeletons in the Closet" and "You're a Movie" were their favorite. Even at a year old, Adam used to squeal out "Broken Dreeeeeammms" anytime the shimmering guitar intro for Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" would come on the radio.

Thanks, Dad. You did a nice job. I'm pretty sure they have Deep Purple in heaven. (I'm pretty sure that they have them in hell, too. Only, it's the version with David Coverdale!)

Well, I'll be darned!

2007-10-21T20:22:00.000-07:00

I think I'm gonna give this a shot! I'm not technologist. Hell, last year I just updated my Billy Joel catalog to cassette tape! Two months ago, we finally got a car with a CD player in it. (Tiny steps.)

I figure that I see all the young kids doing it ... and dag-nab it if I'm gonna get left behind anymore. Maybe someday I'll be downloading songs and using Blue Tooth and watching things in high definition. But for now ... this is as close to it as I get.

Why?

Because I'm stuck in the 1970's.

I have a working knowledge of Paul Williams and Patty Hearst and Three Mile Island. I have a large majority of the back catalog of Harry Nilsson .... and I almost always dress in earth tones. I can talk about the '72 Munich Olympics and Charlie Finley and episodes of "Soap" and primal scream therapy.

My idea of fine art probably involves velvet paintings. I'm as likely to want carpeting on the walls as I would the floors. And if given a choice - polyester bests cotton every time.

I guess the only thing slightly off about my love of the Me Decade ... was the fact that I was born in it. While the rest of my peer group gets nostalgic for MTV and women's clothes with thick shoulder pads and Claire Peller saying, "Where's the Beef?" --- I'm happy with the arcane knowledge of Paul Lynde and Squeaky Fromme and those pill-box baseball hats the Pittsburgh Pirates had.

Why the 70's? I think it's because it's before everything started. Computers, VCRs, video games, corporate America, the Christian Coalition, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz, hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law, Rock 'n' Rolla cola wars ... actually, I didn't mind the Rock'n' Rolla Cola Wars. (My cousin fought in that. Two tours of duty. One in the mountains of RC Cola --- the other, an internment with Mr. Pibb.)

The 80's just turned ugly. Now hold on, you say? Anybody who remembers the other two Gibb brothers can't say that the 70's didn't have it's share of ugliness. Cocaine and David Berkowitz to name a couple. Right up there with Anita Bryant and anything starring Robby Benson.

But the 80's was like ten years of plastic and hair spray and Madonna. Fake, mean, hostile shit. Top Gun and Jerry Fallwell and TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes. When I think of the 80's, I think of Len Bias and Pelle Lindburgh and Grenada and Keith Hernandez's moustache. I think of Sammy Hagar screwing up Van Halen and Brian Mulroney screwing up Canada. I think of the PMRC and wanting to punch Mary Lou Retton in the face. I think of being terrified after watching "The Day After" and sickened after reading about that town in Indiana with the kid with AIDS.

I think I stick with the 70's because that's where my favorite memories come from. Watching Star Wars in an empty theatre in Melfort, Saskatchewan. My Uncle Ivan teaching me to ride bike. The way my Dad breathed when he tied my shoes. Polaroid pictures and eight tracks and AM radio and the red haired girl in Kindergarten. It's my childhood friends and Tiger the dog and afternoon naps with my Mom.

My youngest son was born in 2003. Thirty years from now how is he going to remember this time? Is he gonna tell jokes about Mark Foley and OutKast? Will he remember that "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams" and "Stacey's Mom" were his favorite songs? Will he still own CDs and books and use dollar bills? Will they still sell cigarettes and food with trans-fat in it?

Who knows?