Rotating Pineapple

Kathy and I were in Winnipeg in 1997 to act in a play at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival. We passed a thrift store and Kathy saw a Virgin Mary statue inside. She had to go in and look at it. I don't think she was a devout Catholic but she'd grown up in the church and had developed a love for its imagery. - At the festival, I was billeted with three vegetarians - one of them was a tall skinny dude with dozens of body piercings. The other two were lesbians. One day they were eating vegetable casserole sandwiches around the kitchen table. The casserole had been uncovered in the fridge for a week, so it was all crusty. It looked slimy, filled with chunks of rotting things.  The tall skinny dude asked me if I wanted one and I said no. Maybe this is my Alberta showing, but I think sandwiches should have meat in them. Vegetables should be served raw and always on the side. - I was hungry but I didn't want a vegetable casserole sandwich, so I walked back to ...

...you wouldn't be reading this

Monday is like a sick baby - keeps me busy all day long. I'm up first thing in the morning and I barely have time for lunch and dinner breaks. Monday is go go go until very late at night - sometimes into the wee hours of Tuesday morning. Tuesday is an old lady. She needs lots of help in the early part of the day but she gets her confidence back in the early afternoon and tells me I can relax. Wednesday is a laid back friend who wants to go cruising. He knows I've been spending a lot of time with a sick baby and old lady. He wants to get me out of the house so we can see the world. Thursday and Friday are identical twins who like to have their backs scratched all day long. Saturday is a lazy man and Sunday is a teenager who works all week long at a gas station.

Probably Da Vinci's Last Supper Yeah yeah, I know it's hardly historically accurate. Jesus and the apostles probably weren't white guys and they probably didn't insist on sitting on one side of the table either. There may not have even been a table. They could have been sitting on the floor. They may not have even had plates. I don't care. I'd walk into it because it's the most famous representation of Christ's life that the world of art has ever produced. I doubt I'd get an accurate portrayal of first century Palestine. I'd probably see the world the way a 16th century Italian would have envisioned it. I hope I'd get to talk to Christ though it would surely be a sad time for him. I certainly wouldn't want to bother Him with my philosophical queries shortly after He announced that Judas was going to betray him. If it wasn't the Last Supper, I might step into this painting here... That is Eight Red Rectangles by Kazimir Ma...

The best hamburgers ever came from a chip stand kind of place in Bragg Creek, Alberta. It was called the Steer-Inn and the people who made the burgers branded the buns with tiny esses. We used to buy them with a small order of gravy and we would dip the burgers in the gravy and, my friends, it sho tasted fine. The Steer-Inn is no longer in Bragg Creek. Since then, every hamburger I've had has been marginal. When I was a teenager, there was a restaurant called Fuddruckers near our house and those hamburgers were pretty good too. You could specify how you wanted it cooked (rare, well done, and everything between.) I don't like ordering hamburgers from fast food restaurants. I've actually never had a Big Mac and I can't remember the last time I've had a Whopper. Sometimes I'll get a hamburger at Harvey's and this is only because the wait staff will dress your burger while you wait. My hamburgers are always very simple. Nothing but mustard (a...

A magician stole my watch once. I was in a nightclub when my watch was stolen. The magician was doing a routine onstage and he pulled me up to help him. The routine was done with four sponge balls, which the magician made jump from one hand to the other. At one point, he grabbed my wrists so he could show me where he wanted me to put my hands. I felt him take my watch. I only felt it because I'm familiar with the routine and I knew what to look for. Had I been a magical novice, I would not have noticed. His technique was impeccable. I had a choice to make. I could call the magician on the watch steal and avoid being embarrassed later, or I could pretend I didn't notice so my colleague in magic could reap his applause. I chose the latter. I blushed a little as I returned to my seat, watch safely back in my possession. I do not know who the magician is. All I remember is it was a good show. - Young magicians are usually taught that being a good magician is ...

Here. Let me transcribe a paragraph for you. "The little guy's face was a bloody mess. Between the puffballs of blue-black flesh that used to be eyelids, the dull gleam of shock-deadened pupils watched Dilwick uncomprehendingly. His lips were swollen things of lacerated skin, with slow trickles of blood making crooked paths from the corners of his mouth through the stubble of a beard to his chin, dripping onto a stained shirt." That's the opener for Mickey Spillane's book, The Twisted Thing, featuring the best hardboiled private eye of all time, Mike Hammer. Hammer is better than Sam Spade. He's better than Philip Marlowe. Mike Hammer is the quintessential tough guy. When I, The Jury was first published in 1947, it caused a sensation. The climax had Mike Hammer intentionally shoot the woman he loved. Why? Because she killed his best friend. For Mike Hammer, loyalty trumps everything. I was introduced to Mike Hammer not through the books b...

Palindromes is the best movie about abortion ever made. In fact, no one needs to make a movie about abortion ever again. Anything you could ever want to say about abortion is said in Palindromes. Palindromes is neither pro-life or pro-choice; it does the neat trick of embracing both positions while simultaneously pissing them both off. The narrative follows a young teenager named Aviva, who is determined to get pregnant. After she succeeds, her mother forces her to have an abortion. During the abortion, the doctor messes up her body so she can never have kids. Aviva is so hurt that she runs away and is taken in by a Christian family who have adopted a whole bunch of children who might have otherwise been aborted (one has no limbs, another is blind, one has Down syndrome.) Aviva later learns that the family intends to shoot an abortionist - the same one that performed the abortion on Aviva. What makes the movie so great is that Aviva is played by 13 different actors...

1. Publish my novel. That's it.

The first time I actually won something was at a debate tournament when I was in Grade 8. I won third place for public speaking in the junior-senior category at a debate contest about capital punishment. My partner, Grant, and I won two out of three debates even though I kept invoking the Bible and told my opponents that people in prison spent all day eating white mush. Grant stopped being my debate partner shortly afterward and this was probably a wise move on his behalf. So I made some crazy statements but I guess I was eloquent when I said them which is why I won the award. It was a bronze medal and it said AE Cross on it. AE Cross was the name of the school where the debate took place. For lunch we had hamburgers. Before the debate, Grant and I did some research at the south branch library, which was shaped like a giant pyramid. I met Grant's dad, who told me he really liked Bruce Springsteen. Grant and I had to decide on how we would kill people if capital pu...

A lady from church gave me crap once for a newspaper column I'd written praising the Friday the 13th movies. "How could you?" she asked. "Those movies are violent and they're filled with satanic imagery." It's a Baptist church, by the way, and this should tell you that the people who go there believe that the Bible is more than a collection of nice stories. I thought of quoting my favourite living Christian apologist, Greg Koukl, who often points out that the Bible is rated R. You want to talk violence? There's one scene in there where the prophet Samuel chops an evil king up into little pieces - mostly because Saul wasn't badass enough to do it himself. Yeah yeah - I know that Samuel was an emissary for the Lord whereas Jason Voorhees, the villain of the Friday the 13th movies (exception: the first one where Jason's mother, Pamela, did the killings) is not. Actually, that may not be precisely true. You could build the argu...

This one time when I was 25, my girlfriend called me and told me to come right over because I was taking her to IKEA. And that is what I did. The girlfriend hopped into my car car and we drove to the big blue and yellow store and we looked around for a couple hours and my girlfriend decided that all she wanted was curtains. Then we went back to her apartment and she made me put up the curtains. I stood on a chair and I hammered the curtains in place while she barked orders at me from the floor. After the curtains were placed, she was so pleased with me that she bought chicken wings for supper.

DES MOINES (AP) - Des Moines elevator repairman Edward Frick annoyed several guests - including his own mother - when he refused to laugh, or even crack a smile, at the majority of the humourous greeting cards that were presented to him at his 31st birthday last Friday evening. Mr. Frick, who attended the party at Big Al's Pizza Shack in the city's downtown core, seemed to be enjoying the cards at first - even laughing out loud at one card presented to him by his girlfriend, 27-year-old graphic designer, Mary Beth O'Connor. However, his responses to the cards cooled quite rapidly - moving from forced laughter to a tight smile and then to virtually no reaction at all. This was particularly galling to Mr. Frick's mother, Louise Frick, 56, who says it took her seven minutes to pick out the perfect card during her weekly shopping trip to Wal-Mart. "I finally settled on a card that showed a cute little kitty cat riding in a spaceship that was orbitin...

What did the skeleton say to the Ex-Lax? You won't get anything out of me. That's one of the few skeleton jokes I know. The other skeleton joke I know was told to Johnny Depp by Al Pacino while the two were making the movie, Donnie Brasco. The joke goes like this: A skeleton walks into a bar and orders a beer and a mop. - Hahahahaha! - I never wanted to be a skeleton for Halloween. I'd seen the skeleton costumes and they were nothing but black clothes with bones painted on them. I didn't think they'd fool anyone. Of course, I thought everyone was fooled by my ghost costume, which was just an old sheet with eyehole cutouts. I guess if I was a necrophiliac, I'd have all sorts of fun with skeletons. But since I'm not, all i can say skeletons are good for are silly jokes, performing autopsies and hanging out in science classrooms.

For my 11th birthday, my grandma gave me a book called Johnny's in the basement. It was about an 11-year-old boy who had the world's largest bottle cap collection. It was so big that it took over his entire basement. In the first chapter, Johnny received a letter from the President of the United States, who had written to congratulate him on his collection. The president had also enclosed a bottlecap. Johnny kept the bottlecap and threw the letter away. I thought Johnny was a moron. If you get a personal letter from the prez, isn't it supposed to be a keepsake? I didn't think the book was very well written but I read it anyway. The plot was about Johnny refusing to grow up. There was a sequence where he sits on a fire hydrant outside his house and talks to the moon. He had a bike named Zordtch that had full rubber tires and no brakes (Johnny's parents were idiots.) Johnny had a sister named Christine, who played the trumpet. For one of his 11th birthday...

Like everyone, I've hit some home runs in the gift-giving department. One Christmas, I gave my sister's kids a replica of the exact same Fisher-Price garage and village set that she and I played with when we were youngsters. Later that day, my dad asked me how long I'd been planning to do that. "Since I was 10," I said. I've also given some awful gifts. I never got punched for giving a bad present, but I have gotten some strange looks. Okay, so maybe my mom and dad didn't need a big bulky adding machine from the garage sale down the street. But it was the thought that counts. As for me, I've received tonnes of awful gifts over the year. I've done some thinking and I was able to narrow them down to the top ten. Here they are. 10. Item : Deck of Braille playing cards. Occasion : Christmas, 1987. Who gave it : My brother. I feel bad about picking on my bro here because he actually gives awesome presents. For Christmas, he m...

She wants to dance with me. End of note. Geri Haliwell plus one tonne of testosterone equals... - Okay... just kidding. That should be the end of the note because I really don't want to talk about Rick Astley, who I would like to forget. But then I asked myself, why is it so important that you forget Rick Astley? Has Rick Astley ever kicked you in the balls? Has he ever poured a chocolate milkshake on your head? Has he ever farted while you and him were riding in an elevator? Rick Astley has done none of these things. In fact, I have never met him. As far as I know, Rick Astley and I have never been on the same continent at the same time. Rick Astley and Io (one of the moons of Jupiter) both have something in common - they have never done anything to me at all. My problem with Rick Astley is that he was really big when I was in Grade 10. Back then, I was a pimply-faced nerd and I got really nervous whenever girls expressed admiration for guys who weren...

Fredericton is the capital city of New Brunswick. It also used to be the city no one could remember when they were doing geography tests in Grade 6. We all knew that Toronto is the capital of Ontario, that Winnipeg is the capital of Manitoba, and that St. John's is the capital of Newfoundland. (We also knew that Charlottetown is the capital of Prince Edward Island. Of course, Charlottetown is the only town on Prince Edward Island.) But poor Fredericton - no one ever remembered it. Until 1999, which is when Canada created Nunavut by cutting the Northwest Territories in half. The capital city of Nunavut is Iqaluit . The premier of Nunavut is Peter Taptuna, which is something you do to a fish to see if it's alive. - Fredericton is probably a great city. Unlike Canada's three westernmost provinces, New Brunswick's capital is probably in the right city. BC's capital should be Vancouver because it's bigger than Victoria and it's not on an is...

There was this guy named Jeff and he used to sell hot dogs on Electric Avenue, which was a one block strip of heavily concentrated nightclubs in downtown Calgary. I used to do magic on the street and solicit tips. Jeff's hot dog booth was next to mine. We didn't become friends but we were casual acquaintances. I used to buy hot dogs from him every night after I finished my set. I was in love with a girl named Kim, who was a 20-year-old blonde-haired doe-eyed girl who used to sell roses in the bars. Once she bought a hot dog - actually a sausage dog. She loaded it up with sauerkraut and onions and ketchup and wolfed it down in front of me. She didn't smile. Kim found me annoying. I still love her. - My friend, Meagan, recently went to New York along with her fiancee, Caleb, who set met in Montreal. The happy couple now lives in Australia. Meagan has perfect teeth and she used to want to be an actress but I don't think she wants to be one anymore, whic...

I would stand around and say "moo" all day. I would especially say moo if I was a dairy cow who spent all my life in a dairy barn. But if I was a free range cow (a cow that is brown) then I wouldn't say moo a lot. I would probably spend all day eating grass. I would stop eating grass when a motorist on the road got out of his car to take my picture. Here is what I would do in a situation like that: Look at the motorist. That's it. I'd just look at him. If the motorist got within 60 feet of me, I would run away. Then one day, someone would take me to a slaughterhouse and I would die. Then they would rip out my flesh and give it to McDonalds, who would turn it into hamburgers. Then people would buy the hamburgers and eat them and excrete the byproduct into toilet bowls and then, through a long and complicated process, I would become nutrients in the ground, which would make grass grow, which other cows would then eat. - Is there such a thing...

Science fiction double feature is the first song on the Rocky Horror Show soundtrack. As a standalone, it plays like a tribute to the B-movies of science fiction's golden age. The very first line references Michael Rennie and his movie, the Day the Earth Stood Still, which is about an alien invasion of Earth. And no, the aliens are not hostile. They are benevolent in the same way that a doctor administering a lethal injection to a rabid dog is benevolent. The aliens noticed Earthlings experimenting with nuclear bombs and they are here to tell us to cut it out and live peacefully or they will put an end to it. If there was oil, or gold, on other planets and we had the ability to go there, you can't tell me that we wouldn't. * Listen: Most science fiction is actually fantasy. Let Ray Bradbury explain why. "The difference between science fiction and fantasy is that fantasy can't happen. Science fiction can." - Ray Bradbury. Time travel i...

Like most kids in the early 80s, I was obsessed with all things Star Wars. I had the Death Star and my best friend, Jason, had the Millennium Falcon. Between us, we had plenty of other toys and action figures (the marketing person who decided to refer to them as action figures instead of dolls - which they were - was a genius.) Jason and I would spend hours playing Star Wars and I was always happy as long as I got to be R2D2. We had a friend named Matt and we didn't like playing with him because he insisted that our Star Wars games take place in an alternate universe. Matt wanted to be Han Solo. But in the Matt Galaxy Far Far Away, Han Solo had the force and Luke did not. No one could begrudge Matt for liking Han Solo better than Luke Skywalker. Han Solo was cool. He was skeptical, he was a smartass, when a princess declared her love for him, he responded arrogantly with "I know." Han was cool and Luke was an innocent dork and this can be proven by the...

When I was 15 or so, my brother and I were riding in the backseat of someone's convertible. It was a very hot day and I was not wearing a shirt. As such, I put my hands behind my head and lay back to relax. I had neglected to put on deodorant that day. It was an uncomfortable ride for my brother. - They say that deodorant is okay but anti-persperant is bad. Anti-persperant is designed to clog up the sweat pores, thus trapping harmful bacteria inside the body. Wearing anti-persperant is a bit like sewing your bumhole shut. - Actually, there isn't a whole lot of science to back up the above paragraph. I just wanted to get a laugh with the bumhole line. - True or not, I don't buy antipersperant because if my body wants to get rid of something, it should be allowed to. This is why I like deodorant. I might sweat, but at least my sweat will smell like a waterfall in Ireland. - Perfume is bad. Science has not been able to come up with anything tha...