YouTube music videos

You know what I've been digging: 

I also think Devin Townsend Project's The Mighty Masterbator is pretty spiffy, too (link). 

The late Ron Dini commented on this video when I posted it on Facebook: 

Blue Heron Books, Uxbrige, Ontario

Another shout-out to Blue Heron Books in Uxbridge, Ontario (McNally Robinson Books in Winnipeg, Manitoba is also mentioned).  I love Blue Heron too, but Uxbridge is a 30 minute drive from C'ton. She saved my very life — I can not, in good conscience, ask my wife to drive down every time a good book is released. ("Well, you can ask...") 

It is actually less expensive to have everything physical mailed to our box at the local Post Office. 

Besides, an independent bookstore treated my dear friend so badly that I now do everything online. One person suffers we all suffer, baby!

But I'm still a sucker for Gaspereau Press and handwritten reviews parked under books. 

Hey, can you dust my shelves too? 

My [pre-stroke] routine

I was trying to read through the NRSV Bible using The Navigators' reading plan (it's free!). I might also read The New Testament as translated by David Bentley Hart, with the into to each book by Marcus Borg from The Evolution of the Word.  I might read from A Guide To Prayer For Ministers & Other Servants by Upper Room Publishing (Mmm — pleather! Apparently I have Reuban P. Job and Norman Shawchuck to thank for the decades of use I've gotten from this book). Or I might pray from one of Phyllis Tickle's books (Job & Shawchuck recommended: "Pray — For the Church. For Others. For Yourself"). Either way I'd do the difficult work first and pray for my enemies. After that, making requests was easy-peasy, man! I would follow that up with two essays by G.K. Chesterton from The Art Of Lying In Bed (I figured I couldn't go wrong with an anthology edited by Alberto Manguel). 

My current routine is nothing like that. I do listen to CBC Radio, however, and besides praying for my enemies I have learned to ask,"Please help me to be the person You created me to be." I don't recommend it. "No man builds a tower," etc. But if, like me, you find yourself "religious but not spiritual" (a term I first heard Nathan P. Gilmour use (and while you're there check out Victoria Reynolds Farmer interviewing Kristin Kobes Du Mez)) this "routine" should be just the thing. And, wow, do I miss it!

"The Hardy Boys'...should be about the right speed."

These days I read GKC on my Kindle program, but my reading is much slower — my right eye is especially jumpy. I guess things have changed. 

Links: This reminiscence, really, occurred to me while hearing Mary Hines interview Casey Tygrett for Tapestry on CBC Radio. The Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle on Amazon; the official site for A Guide To Prayer For Ministers & Other Servants; the wp elegy for Marcus Borg; Flame Wars! David Bentley Hart and N.T.  Wright engage in a donnybrook while wp sits and watches; John Longhurst's elegy for Phyllis Tickle;  a wp classic "Praying vs. Preying."

Streaming STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES

Star Trek: The Original Series (STTOS) is a kind of comfort food and where I default to, when it comes to streaming. 

Now Universal has buffed-up the SFX shots, but not too ostentatiously. "Is it for me?" Only you can answer that question. Start with "The Immunity Syndrome" and tell me. Hey, growing up in the 'Bach I used to watch STTOS on a b+w set in the basement so all this gim-crackery is pure gravy. 

Also, I streamed Star Trek: Enterprise and the series was much better than I remember (aside from the phony Rod Stewart in every single opening credits scene — it's almost enough to get a viewer cheering for the Evil Galaxy). Link to what I said earlier about Star Trek: Enterprise on Whisky 'n' Recovery. 

"Well, we know where we're goin'...

...but we can't say where we've been!"

My current blogging policy

I publish everything here. It's easier to find, for one thing. It's also considerably prettier than what is behind the blue-and-white velvet rope, and these days that means something. I usually "share" this, but not always. Blogspot is the better bet, I'd say. 

"I've got a point to make!"

ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING

Viewers of a certain age will remember the movies of Steve Martin and when the interviews Martin Short gave were often funnier than his sit-com. As for Selena Gomez, well...

"Wait: we're out-of-order!"

The only issue I have with Only Murders In The Building is it is not an actual whodunit, although that is the way it dresses. But Martin Short is allowed to be funny in this. Next up, hopefully, is Glass Onion on Netflix. 

My wife and I streamed Only Murders In The Building on Disney+.  

Genius at work!

The post title is from a Wile E. Coyote sign. Lulu.com is easy, but it ain't that easy. I am currently formatting movie reviews from 2004.

Sidenote: I tried explaining to Mary Scriver (who knew from lulu) that Wile E. Coyote is a big loser, but she wasn't having any of it. 

The best movies on YouTube.

I subscribe to digg. They make YouTube look pretty good. 

This is what I normally watch on YouTube: 

My son just introduced me to the videos of Jack Edwards: 

WHO'S NEXT in cassette tape

I associate Who's Next with springtime at Ontario Bible College (OBC).

I can't remember who I borrowed Who's Next from but it was definitely somebody at OBC, and I figured enough was enough — it was time for me to go to downtown Toronto and purchase my first and only commercially recorded cassette (besides Moxy Früvous, whose first commercial release was cassette only (and bad!)). For the most part I preferred Maxell and TDK recordings of the LP record (only Chromium cassettes need apply). I hate to say it, but today's sound files are a huge improvement over the cassette recording. 

Now that I think of it I also borrowed Pink Floyd's The Wall on home cassette at OBC. I would open the windows of our dormitory room and blast the music. A Residence Counselor came flying in. "Turn that down! Someone might hear it!" (Um, kinda the point? (Yeah, don't do the world any favors, young Prajer)).

Another WP link: I came to Toronto for the music. 

The Albert Britnell Bookshop, Yonge & Bloor, Toronto, summer '95(?)

I worked the floor of The Albert Britnell Bookshop on Saturdays. On Mondays and Fridays I worked phones (I still can't stand to hear a telephone ring), and on Tuesdays and Thursdays I would head into the basement to work Receiving with my buddy Kristjan. He loved those Saturdays when the Hare Krishnas would parade down Yonge Street with their elephant.

He would stop outside, smoke a cigarette and look at all the beautiful East Indian women. He wasn't too hard on the eyes either, frankly. I would join him for a few minutes, then scurry back inside and help customers.

I spent Wednesdays with my new daughter. When my young bride and I first married I had been at the store long enough to get weekends off. Then she gave birth to our daughter and I went back to the bookstore on Saturdays. My wife worried about me doing a job on Saturdays. "You don't need to," I said. "Scott Dagostino makes every Saturday an event I don't want to miss."

This was true. Friends of Scott's and writers for Fab magazine etc. and even owners and workers at other bookstores would show up on Saturdays and hold court. Scott always made sure that others, including myself, were part of the action. 

Inside Britnell's. From 

the National Post.

Otherwise I tidied the "Fiction" shelves at the east, back end of the store. Or I might disappear fetching a Special Order. Those Special Orders were often the bane of our existence. 

I will never forget the smell of Special Order paper from the dot-matrix printer of the store computer upstairs. 

The upstairs was typically reserved for bookstore staff members. Accounting was at the very front/west bank of windows where the large (by any standard) computer was. There was a Customer Service desk at the back far-east wall where I made all my catalog orders. This was beside a small kitchen and smoking room (hugging the windowless north wall ("I want us to be 'Smoke-free in '93,'" said the older owner. ("Well it's, 'Fuck you' in '92," said Kristjan over a cigarette)). The kitchen was followed by a washroom with toilet and sink. A photocopier and receptionist's desk faced the top of the north-west stairs.

Three white-and-green computer monitors were on desks that faced the southern wall. Each desk had a black, plastic telephone with four lines. I used one of these telephones to contact customers (or, better yet, their answering machines) with the unhappy news Britnell's was unable to obtain this "new" JD Salinger book.*

I've no idea what it currently looks like. 

I was puttering with fiction when Tamara, a young staffer came back and said, "Could you do me a favour? Climb into one of the windows and get the last copy of this book?" I nodded Sure, and off we went to the front of store at the west. "Thanks," she said. "I'd do the job myself, but—" She gestured at the miniskirt she was wearing.

I halted. "Actually," I said, "could you do me a favour...?" 

Swat!

Other Britnell's memories are here, here and here. Wild About Ari is a Peter Demas film (Peter was also a Britnell's co-worker! The short takes me back to those days in downtown Toronto, boy oh boy. Now I'm the village resident, both kids are in Toronto, and I couldn't be happier and prouder. Hey, there's Edith, another Britnell's co-worker! And Kristjan!). Wild About Ari was at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1994. Peter Demas has done a great deal more. 

Which was titled, Hapworth 16, 1924. "A rose by any other name," really... 

What I learned from my hemorrhagic stroke, part 5

Sweet diddly.  People are in a coma for weeks and they speak with great assurance one way or the other. Hey, I was in a coma for months and dreamed like a wizard — this proved nothing, except I had a vigorous dreamlife. 

I slowly woke up and wished I had been kinder to others, especially people I didn't know. One such blog-entry is this one.  

Links: part 1, etc. 

"She could write like Stephen King..."

When I was a guttersipe studying Canadian Literature at the University of Winnipeg I had a prof who was fond of saying,

"She could write like Stephen King but she doesn't. Why not?"

Maybe because nobody writes like Stephen King. 

Paradoxically this made me want to read Stephen King — whom I had never knowingly read. 

Recommendation: Stephen King is fine, especially old Stephen King, when he still had to answer to an editor and not the other way around. (These are my current thoughts on the writing of Stephen King.) But if you want to go Canadian you can't do much better than Guy Vanderhaeghe. Full disclosure: I've not yet read August Into Winter but if it's at all like his previous novels and short story collections (heh — good luck with that project!) I'm fer it!

Her ticket outta here: Toronto, mid-winter 1989(?)

The snow was piled high and it was night. I was walking back from the public library on Gerrard Street East. 

A payphone rang in front of a darkened house. I was the only one around. 

I answered the ringing phone. "Hello?"

"Could you go up the walkway and tap at the window? She'll know what's going on."

I looked up and glanced at the lightless house. "Um, what would you like me to do?"

"Tap at the window. Or door. Just don't let the Old Lady hear you."

"Um — " Somebody touched my shoulder. I whirled around. 

It was a teenage girl wearing plaid flannel PJs and a fella's parka. "It's okay." She gestured. "You can give me the phone now."

I did so and excused myself. I beat it for my basement home, figuring things out, or trying to. Near as I could tell she thought this guy was her ticket outta here. And who was I to argue? I had not seen the Old Lady.  

National Cameras And Photograhic Equipment, late Fall 1986

Kaz was another buddy from the 'Bach and got me an interview at Astral Photo in Eaton Place, where he once worked. Kaz was now at National Cameras And Photographic Equipment just up Donald Street, where he later got me another interview. Unlike me Kaz actually knew photographic equipment and I would often shoo the customer his way, especially once we started working together at National Cameras. 

National Cameras rented a storefront from The Capitol Theatres and was blessed with a toilet in the basement. Wow, was it hot down there! Reps from camera companies would use our toilet then stagger upstairs and complain about the heat they had just left. 

Across the street from National Cameras was a "Family Fun Centre" which a person technically had to be at least 16 years old to enter. I spent a lot of quarters there. Downtown Portage Avenue was lousy with these places (The Pirates' Den, Circus-Circus, Mother Truckers — who am I missing?) and head shops. 

I remember plenty of movies in the much smaller Capital 2, which, my father pointed out, had once been a balcony (Bear Island, Clint Eastwood's Bird, First Blood, Stand & Deliver, that Billy Graham movie starring Billy Graham and Judd Hirsch, Police Academy 5) even though I must have seen a few movies on the larger screen on ground floor. 

Just not Licence to Kill, which I kinda remember

seeing with Kaz somewhere else. 

Multiple TOY STORYs

I streamed all the Toy Story movies so you don't have to. 

If I had to rank them I'd say Toy Story 2 stands way above the others , followed by the original  (because nobody had seen that before —  Gene Siskel used to say about the first Shrek movie that viewers can only see it for the first time once, and that's kinda how I feel about the first Toy Story movie), with Toy Story 4 and Toy Story 3 lapping up the very end. Honestly, Toy Story 3 did not need to get made (neither did Toy Story 4 — it's a mess — but unlike Toy Story 3 I had fun watching it). 

"I will drop you and then I will be the 

most popular guy in the Nudist Colony!"

Other WP: I was singing a different tune in the summer of '10, but only just. 

"Industrial Disease," Dire Straits, 1986

I've been watching this video because 1) it's a catchy song, and 2) wow, does Mark Knopfler have "British" teeth! Eating an apple or corn-on-the-cob was out of the question. "'British' teeth" — not sure what I'm talking about? Watch this video. 

Drowning a Pentax PC35AF-M in the shallow waters of the Assinniboine River, summer 1986

Me and BD propped the family aluminum canoe on our shoulders and portaged (I here pronounce the term in the French-English way) the many miles from my parents' place in Westwood to the Assinniboine River. I borrowed a Pentax PC35AF-M from work at Astral Photo to chronologue the canoe-trip (and also photographed, with her permission, the girl who was selling hotdogs in front of Eaton's — but never mind). 

The camera, not the girl.

We disembarked with the aluminum canoe. Because the water was so shallow in that part of the Assinniboine River it flowed really fast. We huffed and puffed upstream for several minutes. Finally, we turned around. 

Now we were sailing! We were also in the middle of the river — we were going to whip right past our point of disembarkation. "Row faster!" I shouted. We cut across the river and collided with the riverbank. The flow of the river caught the canoe and tipped the boat over. 

And  that is how I drowned a Pentax PC-35AF — which I now had to buy from the Pentax dealer for much more than kids today pay for a smartphone. 

Links: Here and here are a couple of BD memories. I rode motorcycle with him across Canada to Expo '86 in Vancouver, BC and down to Anaheim, CA — BD kept me on the road. Here is just one memory. Here is another. This is another BD memory (actually, the movie was The Road Warrior, this was The Colony Theatre across Portage Avenue from the downtown Winnipeg's Hudson Bay store, the girl we bumped into was named "Carole" and was probably a grade or two ahead of us. I stood around with my hands in my jeans pockets and wanted to talk with her some more, but she just wanted us to disappear. Who can blame her, really?). This is my reminiscence of Winnipeg's downtown The Bay store. BD was my prayer-partner in those days. He is currently in Uganda developing a walking tractor. 

Astral Photo, Eaton Place, summer 1986

I'd work at Astral Photo then quickly run to the Eaton Parkade where motorcycles parked for free across from the ticket booth. Assuming I didn't get into any accidents (a big ask, for me) I pyekked down Portage Avenue into Westwood in plenty of time to watch Miami Vice in the cool, carpeted comfort of my parents' basement.

It was faster and cheaper than riding bus. 

Working with Mennonites (among others) in the mid-80s

 At Winnipeg's Astral Photo, right behind Eaton's (called, quite naturally, The Eaton Place Mall) it was not uncommon for me to work alongside or even beneath Paraguayan Mennonites. I lost the attitude pretty quickly. 

My original manager was moving ahead to manage the city's first Toys 'R' Us store. She was going to be replaced by a beautiful Paraguayan Mennonite who had quite the reputation for being a taskmaster. I confessed these fears to my current manager. "Oh, she'll love you," I was told, but I wasn't so sure. 

My new manager was indeed attractive, but she was also entirely taken, and good luck getting past that guy. No, there was nothing for it but to roll up my polyester sleeves and get to work. Besides drowning a Pentax PC35AF-M in the Assiniboine River (another story) I got along with her. 

I caught Montezuma's Revenge from the Shoal Lake water one weekend. "Nah yo," said my new manager, "did you scheeß dir dann Kopf aus, or can you still work for me?"

Like any manager she hired what she knew, and she knew Paraguayan Mennonites. My coworker was a Mennonite from Paraguay, a young mother. "My son is just about your age — he really likes Honeymoon Suite. Such a sick name for a band!" And Canadian! 

I also worked with a couple of sisters whose father was a Cardiologist who smoked like a chimney. One of these young women would time her break to the second. She went to the Italian cafe in the basement, where she ordered and sipped on a capuccino while smoking a cigarette and sitting at their patio table in the hallway by their arched windowway. 

We had a customer who would photograph her and members of Cheap Trick and other rock groups getting stoned. She invited a taller guy I worked with to a wedding. He asked if I wasn't coming along, but I had to work. "You're lucky," he said later. "You've at least got that excuse." I asked if he was going. "Are you kidding? Haven't you seen her?"

Actually, she looked like a lot of fun, which these rockers could smell a mile away. That, and the really good weed.  

For my former coworker, a Mennonite from Paraguay, this is the official video of "New Girl Now" by Honeymoon Suite: 

And because I live in Hamilton these days this is Teenage Head: 

In Hamilton there is a statue of Frankie Venom. I gather there was a kerfuffle about this because apparently Frankie was not a nice guy. Yeah, but he was a rock star in the early '80s(!) in Hamilton, Ontario who answered to (when he could be bothered) "Frankie Venom"(!!) for a band that called itself "Teenage Head."(!!!) He was also a raging alcoholic. Those looking for a paragon of virtue did better to look elsewhere. The statue went up. 

The Dirty Nil is also from "The Hammer": 

The "Menno Pause" fall 1986(?) -

This was Terry's initiative. At the University of Winnipeg, at one of the cafeterias we would sit down in chairs at a table, sip rancid coffee and discuss the issues of the day.

Or not.  

It's worth the trip!

"That girl over there has the most amazing eyes..." Etc.  

Hey, it's April 1 today! Happy April Fool's Day!