The On-going Arguement-Burton vs. Axl

At this point I'd like to share an on-going arguement I have been having with someone at work. It's about the relative merits and drawbacks of two recording artists; Burton Cummings and Axl Rose. Now these two performed different types of rock music at different times, and appeal to much different audiences, so the arguement hasn't been as much about their individual musical styles as much as the advisability of being a fan of each of them. Musical tastes aside, my co-worker (who shall remain nameless, though if she reads this blog she'll know who I'm talking about....I'll refer to her as "SUE", for the sake of continuity) continually expresses a revulsion for all things Burton, late of the Guess who and his own solo career, while simultaneously demonstrating never-ending loyalty to Axl Rose, late of Guns n-apostrophe Roses. Apparently this un-named co-worker despises Burton for his frequent demonstrations of immense ego and self-adoration, while finding these same traits "cute" in one Axl Rose. I'd just like to take a few minutes to demonstrate why I feel I'm right and "SUE" is tragically suffering some form of self-delusion, probably caused by over-exposure to the derivative rusted-brake-drum squeals of Mr. Rose. So here is my "Top Ten" list of reasons why Burton is better than Axl:

1) Burton reminds us to "Stand Tall". If you asked him if you could fall, he would strenuously insist that you do NOT fall, and for God's sake, don't go do something foolish.

2) Burton has been featured prominently in a series of guerilla-artist posters (pictured above) again reminding us to "Stand Tall", giving him immense "street cred".

3) Burton has played with Ringo Starr's All-Starrs. I believe he performed "Stand Tall" for his solo performance.

4) Burton is part-owner of a burger joint called Salisbury House. He even has appeared in commercials, reminding us that his burgers use "fresh baked buns".

5) Burton has the coolest "rock out" face ever. He looks like he's trying to dis-gorge a half-eaten baked potato, but he's really just into the music.

6) Burtons' classic "American Woman" can be played as a rock anthem or as a bluesey acoustic piece. No matter how you play it, it's a great tune

7) Burton looks amazingly like my buddy Steve, who cannot sing, but certainly can "Stand Tall".

8) Burton knew enough to give up acting after filming Melanie, which, as far as I know, has NEVER been released onto DVD, VHS or even Beta format.

9) Burton likes wearing Felix the Cat T-shirts, who, as we must remember, was a "wonderful wonderful cat".

10) Burton has "his own way to rock"!

Letters to Celebrities

One thing I have never done is write a letter to a celebrity. Part of that has to do with the fact that there are few, if any, living celebrities I actually want to communicate with. I don't really know what's going on in celebrity's lives, and they more than likely have little idea of mine. So what do fans actually write to their favorite celebrities? Requests for autographs, certainly, maybe a picture or two, and sometimes requests for items to be donated to a celebrity auction. All fine requests, but none of them really, oh, vital information or questions that the celebrity truly needs to know.

Personally, if I were to write to a celebrity, I would probably end up writing something that I thought was terribly important they know. Possibly something they have been kept in the dark over for a number of years, and would be grateful to receive my illumination. Most of all, something written to a celebrity who, in my mind, probably owes me a reply for the service I'm about to provide to them! Here's an example of something I might write to that rock-and-roll vagabond, Elton John:

Dear Mr. John,

I'd just like to say how much I've enjoyed your clever song "Saturday Night (is appropriate for fisticuffs)". It's quite up-tempo, and never fails to entertain, especially the way you correctly spell the word "Saturday". Or is that the Bay City Rollers? Anyway, I thought you'd like to know of a rather shocking trend that I have observed lately. While your song clearly refers to a specific day of the week, it is often played on radio stations on other days!! Yes, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I have had the misfortune of listening to my car radio on a Wednesday, and heard your "Saturday" song played quite clearly in defiance of the calendar. Perhaps you need to call these stations and correct them? One was in Minot, North Dakota. I can't remember which, but I'm sure you can look them up in a phone book, available at your local library.

Anyway, I'm sure you'll respond to this letter, as it's coming from Canada, and since your partner is Canadian, I'm sure you'll express your gratitude with a personal reply. Please continue to write those clever tunes!! I'm sure you'll become a great success!! Yours Truly....etc. etc.

As you can see the information I would give is clearly vital to the celebrity in question. I think I'll have to go to my local library and look up his home address.

In conclusion: Your local library. A vital resource worthy of your support!!

Awesomeness in Cheap Packages

Here's a topic I hope people will contribute to on this blog. To me, there's something extra awesome about the cheap, temporary or unpretentious. Places or things that bring you endless joy, despite the fact that it was never intended to be much more than a quick diversion. For example, people "like" going to fancy restaurants, but they treasure their favorite "dive". I think most of us would rather drink coffee from one of those old white half-inch thick cafeteria cups than out of fine china, and eat foods named after people ("try the Big Ned burger!!!") than dine on haute cuisine.

Really, which gives you greater joy....a high tech gadget costing hundreds of dollars, or the toy you found inside your "Kinder egg"?

It's this kind of joy that always brings me back to those heroically cheesey "horror" movies of the past. Pictured is an example: "Monster on the Campus". I missed the age when you could go to a theater or Drive-in and actually watch these treasures in first-run, but I can still get a kick out of the seedy audacity of their claims. "Co-ed beauty captive of man-monster"! Why just the sheer density of hyphenated characters virtually guarantees a great time! Of course, the real movie was no-where near as lurid or exciting as the poster, but that was part of the fun too.

There's one movie experience I DO miss though. Back in the 50's, a movie producer and director named William Castle raised this brand of cheesey showmanship to it's zenith. His movies almost always included the promise of some kind of new "special screen sensation", guaranteed to shock and amaze the theater-goer. Among these was "Emerge-O" where the "monster" comes RIGHT OUT OF THE SCREEN AT YOU!!!! AAAAAAHHHH!!!

O.K., so it was really just an inflated skeleton on a wire. The point is, Castle made you curious enough to want to go see it!! I personally think his best gimmick was for a movie called "The Tingler", wherein Castle had selected seats in each movie theater wired to deliver a shock at a pivotal moment in the movie! (It was actually a scene where the hero , Vincent Price of course, God bless him!!!, runs into a movie theater on-screen and shouts "the Tingler is loose in this theater...scream....SCREAM FOR YOUR LIVES!!!" At that point the lights would go off in the REAL theater, and selected patrons got juiced (and goosed!)!! Wonderful!!

Oh sure, modern movies have better special effects. They have bigger budgets. But there's NOTHING, in my mind, that would have matched the entertainment factor of that movie theater. A "cheap package"? Definitely. Complete Awesomeness? Absolutely!!

Enter....The Flying Guy!!

I've just seen the coolest guy in the world. Last night, when my girlfriend and I were driving out of her apartment block parking lot, we were witness to the coolest guy EVER! As we paused to check for traffic, a middle-aged white male, wearing a long-sleeved pullover shirt, arced gracefully in front of our car. Arms boldly swept backwards in the hyper-efficient delta-wing formation, the man trotted gracefully down the street. Weaving from one side of the street to the other, this latter-day Icarus banked left, then right, then left again. His legs pumping, the Flying Guy maintained the serious demeanor of a 747 pilot landing his jumbo jet on a slippery runway in the middle of a thunderstorm. He glanced only briefly at us, before he whisked himelf away down the street.

Flying guy didn't say anything. His performance would only have been cheapened by uttering "vroom vroom" sounds. Instead, with total seriousness, Flying Guy briefly touched our lives and our hearts, before banking left down the dusty, sun-dappled street.

To say he brought a smile to our faces would be an understatement. Neither of us wanted to laugh at Flying Guy. Instead, we both felt a surge of child-like joy, and not a small degree of envy, for the brave street-pilot who careened in and out of our lives that lovely spring evening!

We aren't sad, though, as Flying Guy is now a part of our lives!! Walking down the street this afternoon, I took the opportunity (and the dare!) to replicate some of Flying Guy's manouvers. I may not have been as graceful, and I certainly wasn't as serious as our featherless flyer, but I surely compensated with enthusiasm!!

So, if the world is getting you down, your boss dumped on you, you hate your job, your left-over spagetti sauce grew mold in the back of your fridge...whatever! Just lean your arms back in that delta-wing shape and go for a quick flight. Trust me, it's the cheapest form of therapy you'll evern have.

Thank you , Flying Guy!!!

Better Than Awesome website-old Canadian TV shows

Continuing what seems to be a theme of recalling old Canadian TV shows, recently the love of my life and I found the following link to a GREAT website:

www.tvarchive.ca/

It's not an exhaustive source, but it features some references to TV shows I had forgotten I had even seen. Shows like "Harrigan" (B & W photo), a kid's show featuring a somewhat demented-looking leprechaun who liked to sing-spell his name at the opening credits ("H-A-double-R-I....G-A-N spells Harrigan!!"). It was remarkable for it's cheesiness: Harrigan would prance about in front of a chromakey screen, squatting on poorly-rendered "toadstools", playing his clarinet and sharing stories and songs designed to force the young viewer to finally turn off the TV and switch to their homework for a welcome respite. Harrigan, like most "whimsical" children's entertainers, always kind of frightened me with the intensity of his desire to magically charm the viewer. It was kind of like watching "Lucky" from the Lucky Charms box trying to shake off a sugar high from too many yellow stars and purple horseshoes.

The site also includes references to that after-school classic "The Edison Twins". This eighties foray into "edu-tainment" features a pair of plucky twins and their unfortunate-looking younger brother. They would solve neighborhood mysteries like "who polluted the pond?" and "where did all the ferrets go?" through carefully considered applications of scientific principles (hence, the "Edison" part). I don't really remember too many of these episodes, except for one where dog whistles were used to solve the mystery-du-jour. Actually, I think dog-whistles featured in most of the episodes for some reason. The highlight of the show (and this web site) was the catchy neon-themed opening credits, featuring the eighties-appropriate twins dancing and rolling to one of the catchiest themes ever. To give you an idea of the impact the show had on young minds, I was recently told that some graffitti was spotted in the basement of a local old heritage building, the graffitti being the neon outlines of the Edison Twins as they were caught in mid-frolic.

Of course, the site wouldn't be complete without a couple of references to Canada's version of Lassie and Rin-Tin-Tin put together, "The Littlest Hobo". Hobo was a German Shepard who travelled the highways and biways of Canada, stopping in his travels only to help a stranded orphan or some other deserving soul defeat a nefarious evil-doer (though never with a dog-whistle...can't blame him for that). I always thought the show was a little cruel, myself. At the end of each episode, Hobo would have been put through the ringer, usually having needed to jump into a waterfall or bite the tires off a moving Semi to foil the villians' plans. The show would usually wrap with a soulful-looking character asking a fellow survivor "Hobo looks lost....can we keep him?" As Hobo would look back expectantly hoping for a bed, a meal or even a stray milk-bone, the fellow survivor would usually say "no....his place in on the road!!" Thanks bozo! "The Littlest Hobo" had an even catchier theme than the Edison Twins did, which of course you can view in this site. Keep an eye out for the opening-credit scene where Hobo is carrying a high-powered hunting rifle!!! Apparently there was an episode where there Hobo came across ingrate too many!! A milk bone?? Can you spare it, sport?? Well, here's Hobo's response!! **kapow**

Better Than Awesome Valentine's day present

Hey folks,

Pictured is one of the best Val's Day presents I'm able to post on a website-The NEW Celebrity Cooks Cookbook, featuring Beachcombing uberstar from the CBC in the 70's and early 80's, Bruno Gerussi!! Many Canadian visitors will fondly remember the long-running CBC TV show "The Beachcombers", featuring the aforementioned Mr. Gerussi as Nick Adonidas, gold-chain adorned "beachcomber" off the west coast, scrounging for the perfect log to drag back to the lumbermill for that juicy finders fee (which was never really stated in the show...was he paid cash? gold chains? tank tops? Nick always had plenty of the latter two, so I'd guess either or both are safe bets). Nick was always in competition with his rascally old beachcombing rival "relic", played by veteran Canadian actor Robert Clothier. Relic was always a bit of a mess, and no matter how hard he tried to swoop down and make off with Nick's...er....log...he was always confounded, and often left drifting off to apparent doom with his boat out of gas and possibly a rabid sea lion chomping at his rudder. The show was on for about 75 years, and it gained a pretty good following, due to it's jaunty theme and the fact that, for a CBC show, it wasn't that bad.

Fewer may remember that Bruno Gerussi had a spin-off series that made up for the overall quality of The Beachcombers. "Celebrity Cooks" was a half-hour show that featured Bruno hosting a variety of 70's-era "celebrities", who always tended to be either Pete Barbuti, Orson Bean or Nanette Fabray. Of course, this was a Canadian show, so it also featured the likes of John Allen Cameron, Toller Cranston and Ed Broadbent (only in Canada is the leader of the "third" poltical party considered a celebrity. Come to think of it, compared to a lot of our new politicians, ol' Ed was pretty much on the ball). Bruno was the proud overseer of a magnificently almond-themed studio "kitchen", where he would entertain his guests by imbibing large quantities of wine and looking verile. This book (published in 1979!) is one of the progeny of that show, and I have to admit, aside from the nostalgia aspect of reading Marty Allen's Moussaka recipe, some of the items in there look pretty good. Here's a sample:

Wilf Carter's Crisp Corn Flap Jacks

1 1/3 cups white corn meal
1 1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup sifted all-purpose flour
1/4 cup butter
2 cups buttermilk
1-2 eggs

In a bowl, mix corn meal, salt, baking soda and flour. Cut into this, with a pastry blender (?!?), the butter and beat in buttermilk and eggs. Stir this occasionally, but don't overbeat. Cook on a very hot griddle (a drop of water should bounce and splutter). Spoon the batter on to the griddle and cook for 2-3 minutes. Turn only once. Serve hot with maple syrup.

Now if Wilf Carter's Flap Jacks don't sound down-home good enough, the fact the word "splutter" is part of the recipe has to make this one of the best Flap Jack recipes ever! Just saying the name "Flap Jack" fills me with a wholesome warmness that's practically immoral in it's deliciousness. I don't remember ever having seen this particular episode, but I'm sure Wilf (with his Col. Saunders down-south long-ended bow tie and big white hat) and Bruno Gerussi (with his glass of wine and abundant chest hairs) must have been a magnificant culinary combination.

If you try this recipe, please reply to this blog! I'm sure Wilf won't let you down.

Story time part deux

If anyone read and enjoyed the first "co-op" story that I posted here, get ready because here's another one! And if you didn't like it, well, go away for a while because here's another one....but come on back!! Again, it's the game where one persons starts writing a story, and the next has only the last sentence to build on.

Bob and the Purple Lady (again, bolded segments are my amazing beautiful girlfriend's contributions, the other junk is mine!!)

Bob the astronaut was proud of his profession. Proud that he was part of a very small group of scientists and technicians to have left the earth's atmosphere. Proud in his role in the building of the international space station now orbiting the planet. But most of all, Bob was proud of his space suit. Bob wore it everywhere....to the base, to the grocery store, to the bowling alley. many people thought Bob was obsessed with his spacesuit. And they were probably right. Bob probably would have continued tobe obsessed with the shiney whiteness of his space suit for years.

Until he saw....her!!

Then, all else ceased to matter to him. her purple, sparkley gown, her white and purple hair, her revolving scalp, her vacant smile. he stood, mesmerized as she approached him.

"Excuse me, but could you please tell me how to get to the laundromat?" She asked.

"Uum" he said

Then silence

He woke up several hours later. Looking around, he discovered that he was lying naked in a field, among a herd of dairy cows. "Holsteins" he said to himself, ironically. Weaving a pair of maekshift shorts from an assortment of grasses, he made his way towards the mooing herd towards a farm house. "I may look suspicious" he thought to himself. "I'd better divert the home owners with a clever ruse"> Locating a tire swing, he grabbed the end of a rope and climbed to a high branch in the tree. With a yell of "Aaaaeeeeyyaaaaahh" he beat his chest and swung towards a window.

In a flurry of glass and smashed window pane, he hurtled into the house.

The purple goddess followed, carefully avoiding the pointy shards. They dashed into the bedroom and began to rip off their clothes, and stuff them into a laundry bag.

They stood, coolly, regarding each others nakedness

"We really are naked" he said. The moment lasted approximately seven minutes before he reached for the kilt that lay on the floor beside him. Strappingon the kilt and adjusting the sporrin in the front, he yelled "Och" and raced out the door.

Bystanders stood shocked as the kilted figure loped down the street. racing for a phone booth, he frantically called the operator, and asked to be connected to The Embassy. Upon hearing The Embassy staffer say "Hello?", he recited the code that all operatives were required to learn. "Oooh Eee Ooh Ah Ah" he chimed. "Ting Tang Walla Walla Bing bang" the voice responded, just before the line went dead. In less than ten minutes a black limosine with tinted windows drew alongside the phone booth.

Getting into the car, he was shocked to find himself seated next to...

strong>>... an invisible snowman! All that he could see was a carrot bobbing around in the space in front of the headrest, as the snowman prattled on excitedly about the very lucky day he had been having. "First I found a dollar on the ground, and then TWO dollars, then a sandwich which tasted AWESOME. And THEN..."

The car abruptly pulled away from the curb

"Well, I didn;t expect that"> He remarked. Luckily the car deposited him in front of a convenience store. "Finally", he thought, "I can get a bag of Ketchup-flavoured potato chips, and maybe a can of Tahiti Treat." Striding manfully through the store, he quickly located the chips, drink, and one of those little car deodorizers shaped like a pine tree. Clutching his bounty to his chest, he slipped out into the cool night air.

Looking up at the stars, he asked himself "could this be the end of my adventure?"

He was once again surrounded by broken glass, having been smashed throught the windshield of the car upon impacting the mailbox. He had forgotten all about the purple goddess, although the snowman was bleeding invisibly all over the road, soaking everything in sight. As he began spiralling upward toward the brillian stars, he changed his mind. His adventure was just beginning.<strong>