Art and hockey are truly universal...

    The first time I went to Paris, my French was exceptional and it allowed me to enjoy the little things that get missed by so many tourists that trek there every year. Things like newspapers, signs posted in shop windows saying "Use other door", missing pet posters and the occasional flyer that offered 2 for 1 window cleaning. But the one sight I truly loved taking in and relishing above all the other things that Paris had to offer was its graffiti. 

My unquenchable thirst for truly innovative, profound, original, thoroughly repulsive, brilliant, clever, insulting and just downright nasty graffiti had developed from when I was a child and read the words "Here I sit, with my fingers in my shit and the rats are playing ping-pong with my balls. If you want to hear me fart, just pull my legs apart and I'll blow you through the knotholes in the walls" on the stall door inside a washroom at a gas station my family had stopped at while vacationing one summer in the Yukon. 

I recall looking around the stall for rodents wielding ping-pong paddles or some other type of racquet, after all maybe they only played ping-pong on the weekends but during the week it was squash doubles or racquetball. I also remember thinking that I must change my opinion of the Great White North's inhabitants, for not only were they prospectors panning for gold, they were poets as well. Needless to say, I was impressed by the creative wordplay of the ptarmigan hunter that had once used the very same toilet I was now using. And thus began my love affair with grafitti. 

I was strolling down the Champs-Elysses because when you are in Paris, you don't walk, nor meander, nor shuffle, nor boldly stride; you stroll. I had gone to use the public washroom in a mall, and as I went about relinquishing my bladder's cache to a porcelain tomb, my eyes casually began roaming about the wall in front of me. They stopped their jaunt on the words that had been scribbled in blue and red ink. The two blue words, bold, capitalized and scribed in a Helvetica font, offered salvation for the souls of those that had been seeking salvation from their bladders by majestically proclaiming "JESUS ECONOMISE!" (Jesus Saves!). 

Upon reading those two words, I was immediately smacked upside the head with the realization that this was no ordinary pee break, this simple act of natural function had been transformed into a life altering moment, an epiphany. I thought it was simply the best pee shiver ever, but no. This was not only me feeling like Heaven, I had downed a few espressos, and a LARGE bottle of San Pellegrino with lunch after all, this was me knowing I was to be on my way there also. Looking back on it now, I am amused with the translation of those two words. Jesus economise now makes me think that the Son of God is a pretty savvy shopper or a rather frugal one. He must have Divine coupons. I'll bet that the Heavenly VISA card offers one hell of an AirMiles program.

Reassured that not only was my bladder safe, my soul was now too, I allowed my eyes to drop down to the words that were smugly and casually scrawled underneath the Holy reminder. At first I thought that I was mistaken or I was putting a familiar word into the translation for easier comprehension but no, I had read it right, "Points de Gretzky sur le rebond!" (Gretzky scores on rebound!) 

Jesus Saves! Gretzky scores on rebound! 

Well, I couldn't begin to argue with that, now could I? Sure, we're talking about the Son of God, the King of Kings, He Who Was Resurrected, the Big J.C. but come on now! HELLO! We're also talking about the ALL-TIME SCORING LEADER, the Great One, the Divine One on a pair of Bauer Custom Supreme 2000's, mind you, that was in the 80's, so they were probably CCM skates. But to shake my head in disagreement would contradict my belief system, it would have forced me to take what I had witnessed as I was growing up and dismiss it as being false or insubstantial. I was not some blind follower for I had watched the Canada Cup! I had witnessed the Oilers during the playoffs. I had SEEN the Great One hoist the Ark of the Covenant of sports, the Jericho's trumpet of winter athletics, the one true Holy Grail which beer and champagne is drank from and you can have your picture taken with for 10 bucks when it's on tour across the country. I have HELD the Stanley Cup as our Lord of the Ice had done on several occasions before me! 

I WOULD be faithful! I WOULD be proud. I WOULD be...

Canadian.

As I walked out of the bathroom, I was laughing hysterically at what I had just read and as I laughed, I was tickled to know that a fellow countryman of mine had put an agnostically patriotic stamp on a nondescript wall in a typical washroom in a foreign county. The bathroom may have been in Paris but that one tile had Canada written all over it.

As the saying goes...

     They say that in order to know someone, you must walk a mile in their shoes. Yeah well,  I got a problem with that. First of all, what if their shoes don't fit? I'm a size 12 and it's hard enough finding shoes in the shops, so to expect the average person I might be intrigued by is wearing the same size shoe as me is foolish. After all, Dr. Scholl is a 9 and Dr. Marten is a 10 1/2 and they're the experts in comfortable feet. 

Secondly, what if it's a woman and she is wearing heels? I couldn't be happier that they're the latest Manolo Blahniks and I agree that they are SO cute and go great with my new jeans but nonetheless, I'll still be stumbling around in agony while people passing by will be wondering if I lost a bet or am in training for the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

 And lastly, we live in Canada. We swear by the Metric system around here. So, in reality I am walking a shorter distance than a mile, so does that mean I am not going to learn as much about the person that is currently filling out a statement to police regarding the weird man that came up and stole their shoes from them while reassuring them that it will all make sense in time?

Shoes that are killing my feet are enough to make me become rather grumpy but one thing that is GUARANTEED to make me snap is someone aiding me in whatever crisis I am dealing with by reciting an old saying that makes no sense whatsoever and expecting me to stop dead in my tracks in awe at their wisdom, having been humbled to a state of enlightenment. Case in point, I used to work in a restaurant and our G.M. was so fond of soothing frustrated servers that were dealing with customers from Hell by reminding them that "you get more bees with honey than you do vinegar." 

It was a particulary bad night when it was my turn to receive the Scripture, having just proved to a table that my parents did in fact, know each other and were, in fact, married and no, I wasn't regularly dropped as a baby as well as defending myself from one disillusioned woman who clearly was the stunt double for the Michelin Man, that I wasn't looking at her breasts so much as I was looking FOR them as I cleared her table.

Slowly simmering to a molten stage, I grumbled and murmured to myself as I finished my cash out and was desperately downing the first of many glasses of red wine when I was approached by our fine dining Yoda, who took a moment to gently remind me of her favourite little gem of knowledge.

kaboom.

It wasn't so much a reaction as much as it was a complete and utterly devastating and thoroughly catastrophic thermonuclear meltdown of unheard of and never before seen porportions, whereby taking her cue and following her example, proceeded to enlighten her, along with the entire restaurant for that matter, by reminding her via screaming at the top of my lungs "You DON'T get bees with honey! The little bastards don't find honey, they MAKE the shit! You get more bees with POLLEN, you FUCKING DOLT! And who in their right mind, walks around with a fucking jug of vinegar calling out "heeeeeeere beeesies beeesies beesies, I've got some nice VINEGAR for you, fuzzy-wuzzy bumbley wumbley! Shut your pie-hole, put your helmet back on and go find yourself a nice colouring book, you mook!"

 I was told the next afternoon by one of the bartenders as we sat on a patio sipping margaritas, that it was the dishwasher who found her three hours later in the basement linen closet, sitting on a milk crate hugging her knees and rocking back and forth, pale white and trembling, while chain-smoking her first pack of cigarettes since she had quit the habit 14 years prior to that evening.

And the moral of the story? Always buy shoes in the afternoon to ensure a proper fit. And you shouldn't smoke. Smoking is bad for your health.

 

The circus never had freaks of nature like this...

     The first time I remember seeing my mother in the hospital was around the age of 4 and she was admitted after yet another particularly brutal round of her husband admitting that he was not in fact in love with her, or us kids for that matter, and had gone about showing her in a way that was quite, in fact, obvious.

     Our family was quite well-known at the hospital, due mainly to the fact that if I was not the first child to have to live in a plastic bubble in Canada then I most certainly was the first in the town where we grew up along with my mother's brief breaks from our turbulent and violent domestic situation. 

     Not only were we familiar faces, we were also highly regarded by all medical staff for our incredibly high pain tolerance levels, demonstrated by the variety of maladies and injuries that kept us coming back for some professional TLC, as well as geniunely regarded with awe by the same medical staff for the severity of the most truly original and inventive injuries that they had ever seen. Many highly respected anesthesiologists and brilliantly skilled surgeons owe their careers to our family. We have always been big believers in scientific advancement... 

    Of course, those of you that know me know that this rare form of brilliance is still to be found occurring today, although not quite as regularly as it did in my younger years.

   But yes, the ever-growing collection of scars, wounds, various nagging ailments, what have you, didn't so much begin as much as it was genetically inherited...a sort of generational passing down...a medical legacy, if you will.

    God only knows how many times we heard doctors and surgeons tell us "Well, I'm afraid you're going to lose it." or "We tried everything we can think of, we have to remove it." or "You're not going to walk again." or "You're going to have to get used to the fact that you can no longer use that organ." or "We can't set it, we can't re-break it and we can't fuse it..."

     And with no embellishment whatsoever, I cannot begin to recount how many times interns, having had one of us dumped onto them for experience gain, looked up at or over us (depending on the injury that week...) with utter bewilderment and total bafflement and asked "I have never seen this, read about this, or dreamt of this. I heard about this in med school but we all thought it was an urban legend professors told their students to freak them out for a bit of fun...you say this happened before? What did the doctor then do?" And we would calmly proceed to talk the aspiring rookies through the correct procedure.

     It has gotten to the point where we all have had to remind or completely correct doctors with their medical treatments..."Uhh excuse me doc, but you're sewing me up with 0 and 2-0 gauge sutures. Well, you can use the loop to strand knot with that thickness of suture AS LONG as you tie it with a FLAT square knot. The suture will fail if you tie it with an unidentical sliding knot. What do you mean how do I know that?" or my personal favourite of all time, when my mother had had enough of ineptness, "You cannot adminster that dosage over such a short period of time unless of course, in your professional medical opinion, you feel it is best to discontinue treatment and move on to KILLING ME, YOU DOLT! DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT? Listen up toots, they've had to INVENT drugs for me okay? That drug encyclopedia you carry around with you? I AM THAT BOOK. In fact, I remember being consulted by its authors when they wrote it because they had forgotten a bunch of drugs...they called me while I was having coffee and asked what they had missed, so don't tell me I got my dosages wrong. I've got more drugs in me than all of LED ZEPPELIN'S and MOTLEY CRUE'S world tours combined! Oh never mind, stop your crying and give me the syringe, I've got it from here...." 

    My mother then proceeded to console the student and in a soft comforting tone, reassured the student that she would be fine and would become a great doctor, and that she only needed to review and take some time for things to digest and that we all make mistakes and forget things and...all the while she was hooking up her own I.V. and administering heavy narcotics to herself.

     Having just visited her in the hospital after massive lung failure and a stroke made her decide to skip shopping for the afternoon, I noticed that she was all too willing to lie in her bed and say nothing and question  nothing. And for the first time in my life, I had to struggle with the insane idea that my mother is in way over her head this time and the immortality gene our family possesses along with our data base of medicine that Google wants to purchase just might not be enough to save her.

     The only question I have is whether the next fight that is looming before us all is hers or ours. We are a strange bunch since we find no discomfort in being in a hospital, in fact where some families go to church to strengthen their faith and behold a healing power, we congregate in a hospital room to display and revel in the power we possess as well as make fun of whoever's turn it is to have their day wrecked..."You call THAT a fracture? Scar schmar. It's only 40 STITCHES! My first one when I was 6 was better than that. Oh boo hoo hoo, they have to amputate, you're LYING DOWN in a COMFY bed, I was still standing and the ferris wheel was still moving when mine got cut off...suck it up buttercup. What do you mean you want a couple of Tylenol 3's? You're SUCH a baby sometimes...sighhhhh." 

     I guess it comes down to whether medical science can come up with a way to surgically reattach one's strength to continue to fight on or invent a antibiotic that kills off acceptance.

    In the meantime, I'm going to take a couple of beers...call me in the morning.

When they're running you out of town, run to the front of the mob and act like a parade marshall...

Having been busy as of late, the daily sermon has been missing...

sorry.

I was thinking about farting, the act itself not actually doing it as I type, and it dawned on me that children do it the best. Sure it's gross and can be offensive, depending on what they ate, but we have a smile on our faces as we scold them and ask the question "What do you say?" while we shake our heads in disapproval.

And that got me thinking...

We toddle about naively and immaturely, giggling about noises our bodies produce and then as we mature, we gravitate towards shame, guilt, embarassment and apology.

Why?

Look, we all fart...I do it, you do it, Oprah does it, Julia Roberts does it, nuns do it, priests do it, even the frigging Queen of England does it.

So in that respect, society as a whole is equal.

But we forgot in our growth to embrace our embarrassing moments and laugh at ourselves, as children do and as we all once used to. It's a shame that we develop the need to cease that. We learn that mature adults don't behave that way, yet the most heinous behaviour is always found in adults. 

We say that children don't know any better, they have to learn how to conduct themselves accordingly and yadda yadda yadda...I think as children we got it right. Naturally, I'm not suggesting that we should act like morons and laugh uproariously if we let loose a ripper but I do think we should relax a little bit... say "excuse me" and just shake our heads with a chuckle and move on.

Unless of course, it really stinks, then we should move on a bit further. I recently watched a wee one send forth a sonic boom that rattled the windows and most certainly caused some internal organ damage and I have to admit...I was impressed. Concerned as well for the little bugger's colon but impressed nonetheless, not so much by the raptuous thunderclap but moreso by the youngun's handling of the situation.

His eyes were wide open with awe and his jaw dropped a good foot or so as he said "HOLY COW! Umm...excuse me." And then got back to his business of torturing the cat and wrecking his siblings' day. Sensible, honest and thoroughly admirable behaviour, I should say.

No shame or embarassment whatsoever. Just genuine enthusiasm for being human.

I guess that's what it boils down to...I would like to see more people afflicted with the condition of having genuine enthusiasm for being human regardless of whether they're cutting the cheese, tripping, walking into poles, burping, having a booger hanging from their nostril or what have you and the rest of us being human when witnessing these events.

It may not be pleasant viewing but it still puts a warm feeling in my heart even if it's my turn to be pointed out and laughed at. Especially since I'm laughing just as hard if not harder.

Broadway? Isn't there a Houston Pizza on Broadway?

     It wasn't that long ago that we went out on a Friday for some Karaoke, or as my friend calls it, Scary-oke. A couple of drinks, a couple of tunes, some mild scattered applause...no big deal, little bit of fun, c'est bon. So, when the following Friday was approaching and I was asked what time I would be interested in meeting for some more scary-oke, I began to think. Hmmmm, I thought, in case you were wondering what I was thinking.

     So, again we went for another round of Northern Regina Idol. Only this time the selections were a bit more serious than whimsical and the ensuing performances were that much more determined and meant...free shows by pseudo pros. Yeah sure...that's the ticket... About the time the third (or was it fifth?) round of drinks arrived, I had been asked if I was interested in a part for an upcoming show and had not only expressed interest but had fully committed myself to the role and the show.

      What do you mean we got a show to put on? WHAT THE #%$^!!!!!!! I'm in a @#$#%ing musical revue? Since WHEN? How the #$@! did that happen? Are you @#$!ing out of your #$@#ing and @#$@#ing not to forget @#$@!ing MIND!!! HOLY HOLE IN A DOUGHNUT BATMAN!!!!

     The interesting thing about rehearsing choreography and music from various Broadway musicals with seasoned pros who have been dancing and singing professionally since they were conceived is you don't have an awful lot of common things to talk about...

"Les Miserables? Ummm nope, never saw it. Read the book though. Ahhh that would be a big no sireee, don't know the music either...not my style." What do you mean it's my style NOW exactly? I do? What part? I AM?! Ohhhhhhh....great?!"

So having been schooled (in more ways than one...show offs...) and then rehearsing my ass off, I am now able to stand amidst the ranks of seasoned professional performers and...well, let's just say if you were to look at a group of seasoned professional performers, you'll know which one I am...'nuff said, I should think.

With just over a month of rehearsals left, I think there is plenty of time for a horrendous career ending tragedy to occur, you know the kind of tragedy that you hear people refer to by saying "just before their big break" or "that kid was on their way to the top" or my favourite "what a shame, what a waste. The world never got to know how truly talented that guy was..."

very nice...  

I think that would be the best way to break into the performing arts world...by leaving a rather dramatic legacy...

oh yeah, and a well-written obituary too.

It's not about where you're sailing to...it's where you've sailed from.

Friendships. Kinships. Relationships. Hardships. Shipwrecks...

A lot of ships can come our way as we set sail and navigate through uncharted waters

to discover adventure, treasure, new worlds...a future.

It's interesting how an all but forgotten mode of transportation can be and is used to describe the manner in which we embark on our personal journeys. I have never given the matter much thought to be honest, but it dawned upon me that the most valuable developments or at least the ones that we impose the most value upon all end up ending in "ship".

Some of us construct our vessels with flimsy materials and bond them together with hopeful wishes and naive thoughts. Others stumble upon previously owned boats, trusting the reassurances that they are, in fact, sea-worthy and going against gut instinct, we boldly set sail.

No matter what the case, venturing off into the oceans of opportunity and the seas of fate is a task that should not be taken lightly. It would be wise, one would conclude, to seek knowledge from seafaring, hardened individuals that would pass on their knowledge in an attempt to prevent a sinking.

But as novices, we willfully throw caution to the wind, ignoring the fact that the legs we walk on are barely strong enough to support us on land, and the sea legs we inevitably need to survive, haven't a chance in Hell to be developed before our Maiden Voyage.

Yet we cast off nonetheless and set sail regardless...

Ultimately, the only outcome is a shipwreck. We fail to notice the incoming storms, we neglect to heed the ominous signs in the sky that the wise skipper pays attention to and the capable seaman is superstitious of, we ignore the brewing froth before us...

and we sail directly into that which will capsize and wreck us.

The green seafarers will have a change of heart and will opt to remain on land for the rest of their adventuring careers.

The nautically aware will bear with chins held high, being stranded isn't entirely hopeless as long as someone happens to pass by...they hold high spirits and pray, knowing that eventually they will be rescued. And they know that they will have to hold onto the hope until they are found, for to give up will only result in despair.

The wisened sailors will take comfort in knowing that things could have been much worse...

they could be lost at sea, never to be found.