Category: Uncategorized

I’ve never seen Nacho Libre. I’ve told everyone I had seen it. I know all about the stretchy pants and hating orphans and eating salad and numerous other quotable scenes from the movie, but I’ve never seen it. Chances are if you’ve seen it and quoted it around me, I likely laughed exaggeratedly as if I’d seen the movie and made some sort of allusion to the movie that I actually don’t know about, or said that I simply could not remember my favourite part because I loved it all so much. I haven’t seen it, and I needed to admit it. It removes a world of weight from my mind to tell you this. I really did want to see it. I love Jack Black and when I saw previews for the movie I said to my friends, “We gotta see that!” in my semi-jock excited movie theatre preview voice. So yeah, I wanted to see it.

Everyone is worried that they are missing out. On a once in a lifetime opportunity, on a once in a lifetime event, on a once in a lifetime sale.

I have a problem with this. Movies, TV shows, commercials, YouTube videos. If it was hilarious and people are in a group chuckling about it, chances are that I pretended that I saw it and laughed a forced laugh along. I know it is awkward, everyone has done it to a certain extent, but I catch myself doing it often. The insecurity of not knowing what people are talking about tears me up like an inside joke.

I cannot miss out on events without feeling a monumental void. If memories are made and I’m not part of them, hearing about them leaves me dry and dismal. If good times are being shared based on previously seen media or previously shared memories, I would rather risk myself looking like an utter fool by acting as if I know what you are talking about and being humiliated, than missing out on a communal time of merriment. It must be the late bloomer in me. It is a somewhat childish thing to do, but since I catch myself doing it often I can more easily spot when others are lying to me in the same way, and in other ways. It goes together well. A useful skill.

If I ever missed an important concert or event, I slept one thousand pounds heavier knowing that one of my friends was absent as well. I don’t know. I should truly be happy for them for being able to partake in any kind of event big or small, but it puts me at slight ease to know that I was not the only one in the world that missed the tightest concert ever, the wildest party ever, the tastiest meal ever. I just can’t deal.

But I am training myself to be different. I try to be entirely honest when people ask me if I’ve seen the new YouTube video of Kimbo Slice knocking out some other giant man in some backyard with his bare hands (I haven’t). I am training myself to be honest, and I’m training myself to care less about this nonsensical seen-it-all status that once worried me so much. I am working on it, but at the same time, I have been missing out on less lately. I saw tennis, I have seen all the shows. I have been a part of most all summer hangouts, and I’ve seen all the blockbusters. I am part of the media talk, I’m part of the up to date crowd. I’ve watched my YouTube, I’m not behind in anything. But the feeling of missing out still remains. I’m missing out on something that everyone else has witnessed, and I’m just forcing laughs next to them. I am still oblivious to everyone’s common knowledge and see that either I need to keep an eye out for what others are seeing, or just pop out my eyes and worry about it no more.

Everyone is worried that they are missing out. But missing out on what occupies most people’s conversation is usually for the best. And missing out on those intangible things that are rarely talked about, is what you actually don’t want to miss.

I’ve never seen Gladiator either.

Today is for the living.
These songs that we’re singing are more than moving on,
They’re the only ways we’re making sense of a world that’s small enough to shake,
But it’s still strong enough to break us down, break us down.
-With Honor – 20 Strong

Will we fight to take the reigns of our lives and find our owns truths?
Will we die to darker days and break ties with the hells we’ve walked through?
It’s not too late.
-With Honor – In A Bottle

I have been a rover
I have walked alone
Hiked a hundred highways
Never found a home
Still in all I’m happy
The reason is, you see
Once in a while along the way
Love’s been good to me
-Johnny Cash – Love’s Been Good To Me

A city is only as great as its sleaziest men and only as healthy as its public transportation system. Knowing this you now know that Montreal is one of the greatest worldwide. Men like Westley and public transportation systems like the Montmorency/Côte Vertu Orange Line subway will teach you that if you live by this rule, you will never go wrong in choosing a city to love.

Side note: My small town mind is pleased easily by skyscrapers, subway systems, ethnically diverse restaurants, buildings that aren’t stucco and cheap beer.

Riding on Public transportation, reading transit publications. That is a dream in my mind. Kolkata, Seoul, Montreal subways. Delhi, Vancouver, Rangoon buses. Sitting next to souls I will never see again, as we all float off into the shady tunnels of the metropolis underground. It is the circulatory system of any city, the blood flowing between major arteries and organs. An unhealthy system is an unhealthy city. Montreal seems to have healthy blood flow. We were riding to the finals of the Rogers Cup. Place St-Henri to Snowdon, transfer at Snowdon to the Blue Line and ride to De Castelnau. But before we could transfer, as the doors opened to pick up more commuting souls at Villa Maria station, a lady’s scream was heard. The train powered down and everyone got out to see what was going on. A lady had fallen onto the tracks and couldn’t get up. Thankfully all the Orange Line trains stopped so no one was decapitated. We walked to Snowdon station to arrive at Uniprix Stadium seven games late.

A friend of mine works in a small pub called Primetime. She gets paid cash and serves Moosehead to old Francophones. We went in there a few nights to keep her company amidst the drunkards and the coke dealers. We met a man named Paul, a steel worker that enjoyed telling jokes and drinking at Primetime and he gave me the best advice I have ever heard. “Hit like a truck, come back with the puck.” As well as, “Open the window and fuck the world.” this was after he told us the real meaning of Juan Martin Del Potro’s last name. It had to do with sodomy.

I usually rate a new place on three things. Girls, food and the intangibles, but in finding a new home, or to fairly judge a city, I may have to include its dingiest men, its dirtiest station or a combination of both. Although it may not have seemed like a wholesome week, it was. Live tennis is one of the worlds greatest pleasures, along with other French delights such as mustaches and poutines.

Montreal
Girls- 4/5
Food- Awesome
Intangibles- French

I was an ignorant teenager once. I can remember this well, like it was only a few years ago or something. I used to dislike arts. I didn’t know much of them, so I just thought they were a sort of exhibitionism used to satiate the masses of eccentric young people that already dressed funny. I was a sports and science man. I figured that sports were like arts but exciting and science was like arts but logical. I didn’t feel like I needed to try to understand the inner workings of countless literary legendaries to know more about the world.

But as I exposed myself to new and different ideas and thought processes I slowly came to realize what the arts actually were. Not only amazing paintings and sculptures, poems or plays could be considered art. My favourite songwriters and bands are artists. The most mesmerizing and thought engaging movies are artistically founded. The photographs by my favourite photographers are part of the art scheme. The most intricate tattoo or piece of graffiti is raw and real art. Art is everything, not in a way like it is more important than everything else, but in that it can be found in anything at all. Art isn’t only for the eccentric and poorly dressed. It is for everyone that knows where to look and knows what is real.

I went to the 40th Annual Regina Folk Festival this past weekend. I saw Corb Lund, Matt Goud, Andy Shauf play a workshop together. I breathed in the talents of a handful of artists while swimming in the golden shine of the prairie sun and realized that I was experiencing the arts. Those eccentrics dancing around while I stood leaning against a Regina elm tree, arms crossed with indifference on my face, but loving it all.
The itch of creating art has been hitting me lately. Hitting me like how it hits my loins when one of those cute girl hippy singers dances,
bending her legs one at a time while flipping her hair and carressing souls with harmonies from heaven. It is similar to the “Teacher, can I go to the washroom?” dance of second grade. I’ve always wanted to play guitar but haven’t pursued it to the full. I always wished I was born into a guitar playing family. Or I wished I had the discipline and committment to finish something I started. I always wished I could explain myself or express myself in an epic acoustic ballad. But I have accepted that I may never do that. In my mind, writing literature is still art, but less revered and relevant than music. People take a struggling acoustic musician more seriously than a guy that writes repetitive blogs on his parents computer. Although I’m equally as artistically legit, right?

Night one in Montreal I experienced another important ‘art festival’, 10 bands for $10, and I watched a different kind of the eccentrics swing their arms around in fits of rage. With Poison the Well and Crime in Stereo on the bill, even the non-artsy bands are based on principles and formulas that are, in essence, art.
I may still be considered a sports man, going to experience my first professional tennis at Montreal’s Rogers Cup, but as two former number one ranked tennis players face off, I cannot say that art was not in the brilliance of the shots, or of the story the match was based on.

Now I know, from years of looking at the world through the eyes of a scientific pseudo jock, that art is what ties it all together. Art is in everything, like how atoms are the basis of all matter, or like how testosterone is the blood of all sports. Let’s do a chestpump to celebrate our revelation.

Eventually I will probably go blind. Each time I go to the Optometrist, or what I like to call the Eye Doctor, she tells me the same thing. My eyes are getting worse, and they are too far advanced in worseness that they haven’t developed proper contact lens technology to appropriately suit my eye, so i get a slightly wrong prescription, I guess, and she sends me on my way. She first ruined my life in Grade 1, when she gave me my first pair of glasses. She then re-ruined my life when she made me wear an eye patch to school. And now she just doesn’t have the balls to tell me I’m going to be blind in a matter of a few years. Yesterday it all began. It started at work, with a small sunspot in the middle of my sight. In ten minutes it was a huge sunspot, about a quarter of my entire vision, right in the middle. In another ten minutes it had shifted to the left side of my vision and blocked my entire left peripheral. I was probably 50% blind for an hour or so, when it finally subsided and gave me a monster headache. Apparently it was all a migraine caused by stress, says my friend who is not in anyway my Optometrist. Eventually I will go blind.

This month is a month of Events. Here’s a short list. Not to rub it in.
Aug 9 – Corb Lund at Regina Folk Festival
Aug 10 – Fly to Montreal
Aug 10 – 10 Bands for $10 featuring Poison the Well, Ensign, Crime in Stereo
Aug 11 – 1st and 2nd Rounds of the Rogers Cup in Montreal. In Montreal.
Aug 15 – Semi-Final Round of the Rogers Cup
Aug 16 – Finals of the Rogers Cup
Aug 17 – Have Heart show in Montreal
Aug 18 – Fly to Regina
Aug 18-25 – Friends are in Regina
Aug 22 – Have Heart show in Regina
Sept 28 – Final nose inspection
Sept 29 – The Gaslight Anthem in Regina

I hang all of my event tickets by the light switch of my room, so that every time I leave my room, I get to see the list of all the events of my next week and more.

Eventually this list may not impress me as much as it does now. However, I hope that eventually never happens. I hope I do not eventually go blind, physically or fun-ically.

I am a temporary paper boy. I am filling in for a friend. He goes to the Leader Post office daily at 5:30 and picks up the routes for those who are sick or on holidays. The fill-in-man must have a car, so he can drive anywhere in the city to cover routes, so this isn't any kids job. A valid drivers license is necessary. I'm only doing it for a week while he rides heavy steel horse down in Sturgis. I'm the fill-in for the fill-in.

A young man came into work the other day with a young girl, both hovering around twenty years of age. I greeted them and noticed he was kinda goofy and she was bigger in the stomach. He came to purchase something with his girlfriend and asked me, "Hey, did you go to Western?" Hesitating I said yes, and instantly realized who it was. It was Jimmy. He had lost a lot of weight, matured quite a bit and had a girlfriend. He asked me what I was up to, and I motioned to the till I was standing next to and told him that I sold panties and purses as I detagged his girlfriends orange and gold canvas purse and pushed the decaying buttons of the cash register. He laughed and said, "No way. I thought you would have been a CEO or something like that. Haha. You were the valedictorian."
"Nope." I said proudly. I haven't sold out yet. I then asked him what he was up to, and he motioned towards his girlfriends stomach. He's having a baby. Good to see you, Jimmy.

Although the valedictorian tag means very little to me, especially since the only reason I got it was because my best friend Seong Bin Lee got seriously ill two weeks before grad and his grades slumped slightly. I've got this a few times, the wasted potential speech, since my lifetime high of having better grades than ten students who lived in the dorms. I don't mind. It usually makes me feel better about my life after school this far. Or maybe it just makes me feel better about where I could go. Right now I'm a secondary panty salesman and fill-in for the fill-in at Leader Post.
And I'm happy, and I like that. Every day I become more impatient and antsy and cynical and confused, but at least I know I didn't really waste my youth like I did my potential. And I'm still only a few decades old. There is still years of potential to waste and a few more years of youth to invest.

Twenty year vision, a film about my life. Synopsis: a young stuggling writer makes his start as the fill-in's fill-in at a small city newspaper. Eventually the editor gives him his own editorial and a few years later is awarded a Nobel Prize as a freelance journalist for ripping the lid off of a serious Prime Ministerial scam where Harper secretly changes federal law and labels his government a dictatorship.
And I started as a fill-in's fill-in.

In case you were wondering, I am indeed still in the process of writing a book. I began this process like three years ago, and it is still weighing heavily on me. Not because people tell me that I should write a book, and not because I know that any old dink can write a book and have it be a New York Times Bestseller, but because I’ve started it and I feel like I have a duty to finish it. For myself.

I started getting comments on my writing when I was in India for the first time. So when I was there the second time, I put pressure on myself to write some magic and keep the masses content and entertained. The third time I went, I decided that I didn’t want that pressure, and titled myself as a photographer for the trip, and took, what I think, are the best photos I’ve ever taken. I wrote while I was there, the odd blog and a few songs, as I aspire to be a great musician (who can’t play music), but I didn’t pressure myself, which felt good.

Most of my writing has been for everyone else. I never ever thought that writing was even a decent way of expressing myself, or even had a bit of a clue that I may be semi-decent at it. So when I heard that people liked what I was doing I continued to write for other people, constantly trying to please and not upset people with it. It was a drag on my creativity and my overall writing morale.

So I took a break from my book. First I just thought I’d forget about it, like it was some stupid teenaged pipe dream (the term pipe dream comes refers to the dreams that are experienced while smoking opium from a pipe…). But recently I went back to what I’ve written. I read over everything, less than 100 pages. I deleted probably one third of it, and am still in that process. A major overhaul. I’m in a position where I feel somewhat confident and comfortable editing what I already have, but I am not in the position where I feel like I can write new material and feel good about it.

I am in an editing phase. Which is why you may see my blog layout change every week. I am editing everything I have got, until I find what feels good. What feels right.
A serious overhaul. I’m in the edit suite. Stay tuned..

I went for Thai food yesterday at Thai Garden in Regina. I ordered Pad Thai. It was good. They gave free orange slices at the end of the meal. It changed my life. They also gave fortune cookies. I always question the cultural authenticity of this kind of cookie, but I love them, and their advice is always perfect. I dont remember what mine said, something written perfectly so it would work for anyone that read it, but written in a way that tells me exactly what I need to hear. I read the back of the one that wasn’t mine. It had a bunch of numbers of them, just like every other time. But these numbers were oddly familiar. The TV show Lost, which I don’t love but coincidentally talk about a lot, has some episodes where it tells stories about a set of 6 numbers that are cursed and/or good luck. Hurley, an overweight Hispanic character used these numbers and won the lottery, a substantial amount. From memory I was sure that these numbers on the fortune
cookie slip were the same. It changed my life.. Then I later googled it to find that only one of the six numbers was different. Still, changed my life.

I have found myself saying that a lot. How something has the power to, or the lack of ability to change lives/my life. A person’s vocabulary changes based on who, where, what, and I don’t know where I picked this up. Cody P maybe. But I like the hyperbolic ability of the phrase. Like finding something life changing is in the bottom of a Pad Thai, the middle of a curved cookie, or a toonie movie at the Rainbow.

I may have seen a few things that have actually changed my life. Things that I usually don’t talk about or sometimes even think about, but placed my mind and body into where I am now. A mind is always in need of a Pad Thai to motivate and move it into a new mindset, where it is not just sitting and waiting. But acting.
I am assured that this blog is life changing for you.

“Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy
Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry
Sunshine on the water looks so lovely
Sunshine almost always makes me high.“
-John Denver

Summertime rules! Who needs the marijuana when the sunshine does the same thing?

Quote of the Month:
Harry: I expected the Rocky Mountains to be a little rockier than this.
Lloyd: I was thinking the same thing. That John Denver’s full of shit, man.
-Dumb and Dumber

It is 1:15am. I went to a show tonight. I didn’t know any of the bands playing. I didn’t know if anyone of my friends were going. I went anyways. It was alright. None of the bands were anything I loved. But I crave live music, crappy or not. Eight dollars, big friggin’ deal. One less burrito in my pants pocket.
There was a band that played from Massachusetts somewhere. Boston perhaps. They were alright. They were called ‘Glue‘. Nothing special, but not terrible. That doesn’t matter. The lead singer turned out to be a super nice fellow. We talked briefly, and I offered his band a place to stay. They had a few leads for homes to stay, but they fell through. This guy called me just before I headed to bed, before midnight, saying they were headed this way. They haven’t arrived. So I’ve spent the past hour and a half surfing the web harder than I ever have. Ever. And I’m none the smarter.

They maybe are planning on looting all the goods from my house, now that they have me on their GPS. But either way, I went to a show tonight. And it was at the Buffalo Lounge. This is another place that rules. Although the types of shows have changed over the past ten years, they are still positive attitude shows, run by decent people, with good ideas.
A supporter of music. A supporter of youth. A supporter of buffalo related murders.

Thanks Tim Furry, Kris, that guy with glasses, and Jimmy.
Unreal times.