One of the Funniest/Most Disturbing Interviews I Have Ever Seen

What's the deal with this guy?

The Devil's Punchbowl (The Tacoma Gravy Incident)

There is a certain mystery to boredom. Everyone reacts to it a different way. Some will just crawl into bed and wait for the phone to ring, others will seek out the solution, face the boredom like a matador and guide it to the side like a rampaging bull.

In that lies the spontaneity. Spontaneity is a curious thing, because whether the results are positive or not, it is very much like holding a match to the gasoline. Spontaneity, for the lack of a better description is the immediate release of reason and sense. It represents the desperation of a gambler taking his last five dollars to the Blackjack table looking to extend his final breath. His Magnum P.I. voice in his head is telling him "no, walk away." But he can't, he surrendered reason to that hard twenty he had 4 hands ago, the dealer's always going to flip a Blackjack on a hard twenty.

Back in the summer of '96 we were sitting around one Friday night. Everyone had an one of those weeks they just want to put behind them. The conversation was stale, if not muted. I found myself being entranced by the smoke dancing off the end of my cigarette to the music, I was thinking so intensely, the subject itself became distorted. Even the dogs that would normally be playing with one another just laid on their backs in the last light of the sun as it crept down behind Hollyburn Ridge.

My buddy Jeff came by with one of those sly goofy grins that meant he had "a plan." I had already talked to him on the phone earlier so he was well aware of my state of mind. Jeff was always the schemer, you know the type, always something up his sleeve but rarely wearing a shirt.

"I've got the deal for you Johnny!! Know what we're gonna do?"

Groan, "surprise me."

"We are loading up the surfboards and going to Oregon!!"

I had windsurfed for years, but I had only surfed once at a place called Grand Bend in the Great Lakes. As most know I have a very deep set fear of the ocean and have gone through life with the rule of thumb that I don't go in the water where the fish are bigger than me. But this is spontaneity, surrendering your fears, your reason, and your sense. Jeff was once again talking advantage of my boredom.

Our girlfriends let out a grunt of disapproval at first, but at the same time were drawn to the adventure of it. My Bronco was in being fixed at the time so we loaded up Jeff's Jeep with what we could. Quite the picture, a Jeep YJ with four adults and two full sized dogs. The roof couldn't be put on because it was the only way we attached the surfboards. It was a warm clear summer night anyhow, deceptively full of promise.

We made our run for the border. I already had about 8 beers in me, so I was just sitting in the passenger seat on cruise control. The girls were in the back with a few blankets wrapped around them and the dogs sitting across their laps. The border cross was easy, it was about 10 at night so no traffic.

We got about 10 minutes south of the border when the sky's opened up. We hadn't even noticed the clouds rolling in. We are talking torrential downpour. Without the roof the surfboards were offering us our only protection. Problem was the rain would just collect on their concave surface and roll like a waterfall over the sides. We knew there wasn't any sense turning back, we were already soaked to the bone in a matter of minutes, besides, the girls had already resorted to name calling. There was no turning back now. We drove on through the night. I actually found the rain quite cleansing as I always do, but I knew if I brought that up it would be met with some very sour comments so I kept it to myself.


None of us had eaten, and I was getting quite hungry, we still had a long road ahead of us. It was about midnight now and we found ourselves making great time despite the weather as we hydroplaned toward the city of Tacoma. I should have known something was wrong when spied a signpost up ahead (very Rod Serling like) for a Denny's. I told Jeff to pull off that way much to the chagrin of the girls. I spent a few minutes explaining the culinary dynamics of Tacoma at midnight. Once faced with the choice of a AM/PM hotdog, or Moons Over My Hammy, they quickly sided with me.

To be continued......

I Don't Know What it is...I Just Don't Have That New Car Feeling

So my business partner and I have this little thing where we like playing pranks on one another. Typically harmless, you know cancel someones hotel reservation, walk out on a bar tab, stuff like that. Childish, but ever so amusing...until now.

Let's go back in time a ways (feel free to wave your arms in front of your screen for effect). About 5 months ago I ordered a new vehicle for winter, a big SUV jobby to get me through any unforeseen winter madness. At the time who knew we would get one of the worst snowfalls on record.

I loaded it up with everything. Running boards, GPS, fog lights, and leather bum warmers of course. About a month later I got a call from my good buddy and business partner Laurence. He had a car he was having problems with, and was asking for a little help. There had been a shunting accident on one of the rail cars hauling our vehicles out from Illinois. One of the cars was damaged back enough that the depreciation allowance we provide our dealerships wouldn't cover the actual repairs.

The conversation basically went like this. "Buddy, it's like this car was made for you. Full load Eclipse, lowered, Sirius Satellite, ground effects, you name it."

"What kind of damage was it Laurence?"

"Johnny...it's like a few scuffs on the bumper, maybe a couple grand worth. Minor."

"You know Laurence, I already have a new truck arriving in a couple of weeks."

"Oh, I know, to make things easier, I'm just going to take that one off of your hands. That truck is more my style, not yours. This car has your name all over it."

I agreed, and have been mired in regret ever since.

When I was in meetings in Toronto in December one of my other partners asked me with a snicker if I had received my new ride yet. I asked him why it was so funny, only to find him break out in laughter and run out of the room. Once he returned, with watery eyes no less, he coughed up the truth. The car had gone clear off the top deck of a rail car and landed in a ditch on the prairies. The current estimate was $15,000 in damages.

That was 3 months ago. The car was sitting on a body shop for 3 months!! I finally had enough a couple of weeks ago and placed an irate call to Saskatoon. The manager stated the car was ready, but they just needed a part for the window. I told him to just send it, we would fix it on the coast.

The car arrived a week and a half ago. The owner of the dealership that received it called me and said there was no way the car could ever be sold. He sent me a list of deficiency's.

• The bumper is mounted crooked and painted the wrong colour
• The headlights are on crooked
• The passenger window is missing
• The entire front bulkhead is painted the wrong colour
• The top cover is missing off of the engine
• All splash shields are missing
• The speakers are sitting on the floor and one of the door panels is missing
• The door handles are missing
• All the clips are missing for the rear bumper
• There are scratches all over the instrument panel, console, and the one existing door panel

And the list goes on and on. 3 months this thing was in the shop!!! Then last night I found out that the new local body shop I have sent it to found that the entire front sub-frame is bent. You can literally put your fingers in the gaps between the fenders and the doors. The total repairs are now over $20,000 and heading higher.

You know for someone who goes through cars like toilet paper (I've had more than 40), I shouldn't really be one to complain. But at the same time, does anybody want to be the passenger in this car when I make one of my famous 2 and half hour drives to Kelowna??

I didn't think so.

From A to Zihuatanejo (How to Start a New Chapter)

The time quickly approaches. My 40th birthday is only one month plus two days away. I have always promised myself that I would go away when the day came, I just never really knew where.

I had a place in mind, but for the time being, that didn't work out. It let me focus my attention on another place that I have wanted to visit for a long time. Zihuatanejo. That normally draws the line Morgan Freeman's character always used in The Shawshank Redeption, "Zi-what?" Zihuatanejo is the Mexican fishing village where the Tim Robbins character always wanted to open a small hotel. It is also the former haunt of two very famous globetrotters, Ernest Hemingway, and Zane Grey.

They had been drawn by stories of the one that got away no doubt told by other of their kind as they sat around a fire drinking their bourbon. Zihua/Ixtapa is a mecca of Marlin and Sailfish angling, and yes, I do plan to take part.

It has been a long time since I have taken a trip where I didn't really have to do anything. Beach, beer, boat, that's about it. The packing will be far easier than New York. Shorts, a couple of shirts, flip flops, an Eric Clapton autobiography I have been saving, and my ipod. Pretty simple. Long lazy days in the hammock are cleansing for the soul.

I have been thinking a lot about my 40th. Even having dreams tied directly into incidents of my youth. I really don't like the number, and I definitely don't like the fact, but it is something I'm going to have to learn to live with.

Those who read this blog know the fond memories I have of my adventures as a boy. But the later years were also filled with a lot of dark moments, and I plan to say goodbye to them as if they were the sun sinking into the sea. A new chapter has already begun, and everyday words are spilling out on the page, and like a book I can't put down I look forward to what tomorrow will bring.



I'm glad the plans are done. Now my only fear is that I will come back looking like Hemingway himself. Fortunately, I'm keeping my grays in check, one pull at a time.

I Said 121 Dammit!!

I'm off in Victoria again. The business is done and I'm patiently waiting for the pleasure to begin. AKA happy hour at The Sticky Wicket.

I've checked into my hotel, the understated Queen Victoria. I have this thing that I always have to have the same room. 121. I love the hotel, and I love to have a consistent place to stay when I am on the road. The only thing is that as I've gotten older, I have come to despise heights. I don't know what the genesis is, hell, I used to jump off cliffs with my bike. I even used to jump from our roof to the neighbours when I was a pup.

The balconies at the QV just don't feel right, they are angled down toward the ground, and have open wrought iron railings. It is making my palms sweat just thinking about it as I gaze out the window. That is why I always get 121. I could literally slap somebody on the sidewalk on the back of the head (not that I do that often). I was informed that someone had rented my room (they actually call it my room, apparently I'm the only one that ever uses it) for the next two months and they would have to give me room 221. Egads!! The only advantage of this room is that I can drop water balloons on the jerk that took my room.

I really wish I could get over the height thing. On my 38th birthday I went gliding in a sailplane down in Hemet in an attempt to conquer my fear. I had no fear being in a plane though, whether it had an engine or not. (This does not include hot air balloons, don't get me started on hot air balloons).

The only fear I still have to conquer is the ocean, and to a larger extent sharks. My 45th birthday plans (yes, I'm stretching it out, do you think I'm stupid), is to jump in a Great White cage down off the Farallon Islands 20 miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge. Great White Capital U.S.A.. But it just makes me wonder, what happens if I conquer that fear. Will I then be afraid of bathtubs?

For Steve Jones

By special request.

Don't Make Me Go Glengarry On You

These economic times have not been kind to my industry. It is almost like a battle front that you would have in a war and the first line has already fallen. Nearly half of my stores have cycled through employees in the last two months.

When I first started looking after these stores I promised a gentle guiding hand, but when times are tough, it is time to dust off the riot act. I find it amazing that with all the media circus surrounding the current crisis, people just don't know what is going on. You find people goofing off, or just putting in a lacklustre performance. I've had many walks in the backlots of these stores lately with these individuals, pointing out "this is it man, this is your job, this is your income, this is your livelyhood. There isn't anything else, there are no other jobs in the business. If you are out of here, you are gone. All that you currently know is gone." But for the most part, they just don't get it.

So I've been thinking of dragging out the Alec Baldwin speech. Although I've been under so much stress lately, I don't know if I can hold his composure.

If you have never seen David Mamet's masterpiece that is Glengarry Glenross, do yourself a favour and go rent it this weekend. It is an acting and storytelling tour de force. I would say easily in the top 20 movies of the last 20 years. Lemmon, Pacino, Baldwin, Spacey, Pryce, Harris, Arkin, what more can you say?

In the meantime, put in your best effort. It's scary out there.

Could You Slow the Ride Down? I Would Like to Get Off

This song is basically a direct channel into my mind right now. Adagio for Strings is one of the finest pieces ever written, and contains within each note more raw emotion than a room full of Hallmark writers.

I am obviously a sucker for strings, and even though I don't know the forensic linguistics of the term heartstrings, there is no doubt in my mind that it was born of the violin.

I attended the social event of the season last night at the Hyatt Regency. A virtual who's who in the city of Vancouver were in attendance. A dream of an evening really, but layered in cloud, I could not see it for what it was. I will get into that later. For now...my mind is racing and it's time to slow down.

We are talking straight up crappy mood people.

Listen to the song. Everyone finds their own message or memory in it. It's like looking into the dead eye of a witch and seeing ultimately how you meet your demise. It stirs honest memories, whether they be cold and hard, or warm as a morning sun.

Later.

Could I Have Some Cream?

Not really in a writing mood today, so I will give you this gem. This is a classic from the National Film Board of Canada animation series. I've actually been looking for it for years.

The snake and the cat are classic!!

Being Lost Is Worth the Coming Home

I seem to have been going on about this funk of mine for weeks now. The longer it seems to go, the more I realize it happens around the same time every year. It just seems to get a little more drawn out.

Whether it be the road calling my name, or the dreams of a caress from a warm summer breeze, or just what seems to be an infinite loneliness, it all adds up to one thing. I'm bored, and at some point I lost my way.

I have been dreading the weekends. They used to be full of so much promise and expectation, now they just serve to remind me of the island I have become. And in that lies the problem. But I will get to that.

The other day while waiting for a lunch companion that was running late, I popped into Whole Foods (Whole Paycheque) to kill some time and maybe pick up something for dinner. $40 later, I walked out of the store dinner in hand, I had that vision of myself like the old cartoons where I went from looking like me to looking like a lollipop, you know, sucker. But I was looking forward to dinner.

Later that night I was, how would you put it....somewhat delayed, and such a dinner loses it merit and expectations sometime around 9. I decided to leave it in the darkness of my fridge contemplating its future as I wallowed in some guilt trip I implied on myself for neglecting such a feast.

I was determined last night, no matter who called, no matter who walked in, I was having that dinner. And more importantly, I followed through. And in doing so I learned a lesson about funks and states of mind. Sometimes what we want is just right there. It's just on the shelf in your closet that you have to stand on your tippy toes to reach. It's like spending 15 minutes to find your sunglasses and then realizing they have been on your head the entire time. We have all done it.

That is what I learned. I had lost myself. I love my time at home, and I love a good dinner, and I love a good movie, and last night they all came together like the acrylics of a painters palette. A one of a kind blend that would be hard to duplicate. A dinner in front of the fire and a movie in bed where I could once again rule from my terry cloth and fleece kingdom. It was all I needed the entire time, and somewhere deep down inside, I knew it.

Give a man a fish and he can eat for a day. Give a man a fish encrusted with Parmesan, a Greek orzo salad, a stuffed Romano potato, and a movie he has been wanting to see for a couple of years, and he can make a weekend out of it.

The Day the Music Died

It was fifty years ago today that 3 stars fell from the sky. After performing a show in Clear Lake Iowa, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and J.P. The Big Bopper Richardson boarded a Beechcraft Bonanza aircraft bound for their next show in Fargo, North Dakota.

Buddy had chartered the plane to transport him and his two new bandmates to the show. Richie Valens begged to be let on the plane. He flipped a coin with one of Holly's bandmates (Tommy Allsup) and won. The Big Bopper asked to be let on due to his battle with the flu. Holly's other bandmate gave up his seat. His name was Waylon Jennings.

The wreakage of the plane was found a few hours after the takeoff, just a few miles from the airport. Appropriately, it laid silent in a farmers field, the snow gently covering the remains like a blanket.

This was 10 years before my time of course. I really didn't even know of their existance until I was about five. My mother and I were having one of our summer picnic drives in her '67 Galaxie convertible. I used to feel like a bird in that car. I would stick my arm out like a wing and let it float through the air as we cruised the back country roads with the warm wind gently tossling my hair.

We would always sing along to the radio, mom would always play the slower poppy stuff. On this particular day a song came on I hadn't heard before. It was Don McLean's American Pie. A song that chronicaled the loss of the three young entertainers. It was really my first exposure to what I would say was a rock genre. I loved the song, and my mom took the time to explain to me its meaning as we had our picnic lunch on a sunny berm above the river.

She told me my father was quite a fan when he was younger and still had most of their albums. My father by this point in his life had taken up an alcohol fueled ritual of getting gassed, smoking his pipe and listening to James Last albums. Another pointer of the damage alcohol can do. I didn't know he had ever listened to anything else.

I asked him when he got home that night if he still had the albums. He was always really protective of his stuff, as if I being the worldly 5 year old, I was going to take everything that he had and pawn it to add to my yield of baseball cards. He blew me off.

My mother dug them out for me the next day. They were 78's. I had never seen 78's before, but my mother showed me how to set up the stereo to play them and constantly reminded me of how fragile they were. (If you have ever held a 78, you would know she was right.)

We had a good two hour dance fest before putting the records away before my father got home. Ironically, he would sell them, the whole kit and kaboodle, at a garage sale some 15 years later for $5. More than 200 albums, first editions too. What an ass.

Two weeks ago I was watching a local ham (sorry I meant broadcaster) named Red Robinson interview one of The Crickets, Holly's original back up band. He was telling the story of how when they toured England, their manager had asked a favour for a friend of his. He wanted buddy and the band to meet these "two kids" that had been working on writing music. Buddy agreed, and introduced himself and the band to the young lads. They were quite impressed by what they had done, even though the lot of it was modeled after Buddy's own songs. One of the boys was quite outgoing and exciting while the other one said next to nothing and seemed to just stare at Buddy. The outgoing one asked Buddy for another favour as he was leaving. He told Buddy he really liked the name The Crickets, and he was thinking of using something similar to it as a tribute to Buddy. Buddy said "Sure, what are you going to call yourselves?"
"I think we will call ourselves the The Beatles" Paul McCartney said as he and John Lennon left the room.

While J.P. Richardson was more than likely a flash in the pan. I think both Richie and Buddy had brilliant careers ahead of them. And I'm sure the invention of contact lenses would have only helped.

John Lennon would one day become my "Buddy Holly" or "JFK", and I learned what an immense impact it can be when such a brilliant talent is cut down in his prime. The songs are just as beautiful today as they were then.

(There is a song on the video, it just takes a few seconds to kick in. Enjoy.)