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Lately, I have become enamoured with a baseball team called the Empire State Greys. They play in the Frontier League, a professional independent baseball league with teams in Eastern Canada and the northeastern part of the United States. As of this writing, the Greys have a record of five wins and 60 losses, giving them a winning percentage of .077. At this stage of the season, the Greys have about as much a chance of making the playoffs as I have of being hired as the Editor of Vogue. But it gets worse. The Empire State Greys are a road team, meaning they don't even have a home stadium. All of their games are on the road – they never change out of their grey uniforms, hence the name: Greys – and they don't ever get to bask in the applause of an appreciative crowd. If a Grey hits a grand slam, they are greeted with silence. Pull off a double play and they get angry jeers from the fans. Their victories are not saluted; their losses are mostly welcomed. They play from the beginni

Ouch, Candyval. You have given me a title that encourages me to be nasty. Whatever will gentle Shteevie do with a title like this? I guess I have to land on Planet Nasty. - Alright, there is a group of people I'd like to high five in the face. They are unoriginal magicians.  Here is David Copperfield performing an illusion called Cardiography. It is from his 1990 television special, The Niagara Falls Challenge. Great routine. A magician named Martin Lewis invented it. I have one. So do lots of magicians. And I have seen some of those magicians do that trick exactly the same way David Copperfield does. Everything. Same music. Same presentation. Same lines. Everything. They're not even trying to be original. They're trying to copy a master, note-for-note, and the end result is a young magician that comes across as a creepy little predator. It bugs me for a number of reasons. It bugs me because my magic mentors drilled into me the importance of originality. They told me that a

 The dentist told me I was brushing my teeth too hard. As a result, my gumline was receding. "You need a gum graft," he said. A gum graft is when they cut skin off the roof of your mouth and staple it to your gum. It hurts a lot for about a week afterwards. I consumed all kinds of T3s and ate nothing but tapioca pudding. I took a week off work and played video games nonstop. Ashley also visited me. She was good to me while I was recovering from the extremely painful gum graft, which is three times as painful as childbirth. Here is a picture of me eating tapioca pudding while recovering from the gum graft. Here is a picture of me playing a video game the day after the operation. Here is a picture of me watching a Flames game and Riders game simultaneously while recovering from the operation: This was way back in 2010. My lifestyle has not changed much since then. - All through elementary school, I never had a cavity. At the end of my checkup, the dentist's assistant would

In the Book of Genesis, we read the story of Abraham, his wife, Sarah, and Sarah's handmaiden, Hagar.  God had promised Abraham that he would have children, that his descendants would be like the stars in the sky. But Sarah, for so many years, was barren. They were getting old. Really old. Like in their 70s. Sarah didn't want to wait on God anymore so she told her handmaiden, Hagar, to sleep with her husband so she could have a child. Well that was thousands of years ago, but human nature doesn't change all that much. Hagar conceived. Had a son named Ishmael. Sarah hated it. She hated that her husband and Hagar now had an unbreakable bond. Oh yes, there was a whole lot of hostility in the camp. Probably not a happy place to be. God, that ageless worker of miracles, allowed Sarah to conceive when most women her age would be shopping for retirement homes or denture paste. Ishmael was about 14 when Sarah's son, Isaac, was born. Sarah didn't want her handmaiden in the c

 One of the best pieces of advice I've ever received came from the late American magician, Harry Anderson, who urged his fellow performers to "consider everything they do to be half done." Great advice. If you think that something is perfect, you won't work on it. If you don't think it's perfect, you will. - Another magician, Gene Anderson, tape records every show he does. He says that this is one of the big secrets of being a better magician. Record the show, listen to it later, and take note of the long pauses, the silences, the moments when your audience is disengaged. Try to eliminate them. - As a young acting student, I believed that the professional actors onstage were masters of their craft, that they were there only because they learned everything in the studio first. But that's not the case. School is never done. Everytime an actor steps onstage, it is another learning opportunity. - I didn't do any magic today, but I still had several opportu

 In one of the James Bond novels - I think it's You Only Live Twice - there is a brief monologue about the internal organs that human beings can live without. I knew about the appendix and the gall bladder and half our allotment of kidneys, but I didn't know we could also do without 40 per cent of our blood. And now I am reminded of a joke that was popular in East Central Alberta when I lived there in 2002. Here is the joke: An Albertan is bored with his life and decides he needs a change. He decides to become an Ontarian. "Well that's a simple procedure," says his doctor. "All we have to do is remove 25 per cent of your brain and then you will be an Ontarian." So the Albertan goes in for the procedure. But when he wakes up, the doctor is aghast. "I'm so sorry," says the doctor. "We made a terrible mistake. Instead of removing 25 per cent of your brain, we removed 75 per cent." The patient is furious. "Tu dis quoi?" he y

 Tell you what, friends and neighbours. It's a good thing I don't have a real bad tummy ache right now. If I did, I'd have no choice but to tough it out. I'd have to go home and down a package of Eno. If that didn't work, I'd have to jump in my car and hightail it up to Hawkesbury, which is the closest 24-hour ER to where I am. Now there is a hospital in the town where I live, but it has had to reduce the hours of its emergency room, at least on a temporary basis. If you've been following the news, you know the reason. Not enough nurses. They're burned out from working double and triple shifts in this whole bloody buggabugga pandemic.  I have to go to the hospital tomorrow for some bloodwork. I'm going back on Aug. 10 for a checkup. I think I'll bring a couple roses. I'll give them to whatever nurse I see, tell him or her that I appreciate them. I think everyone should do that, actually. Nurses are over-worked and they're subjected to a l

My Sunday morning vibe is this: I go to church. I take kiddo with me too. Even though he spends most of his time in the nursery (I pull him out for the sermon) that is fine with me. I want him to get used to making time for church on Sundays. Sadly, my church is in a period of flux right now. We have no permanent pastor. As such, we rely on an alternating roster of preachers. Some I like. some, not so much, but such is life. - Kiddo is getting immersed in Godtalk when he's in my car. The radio is tuned to the Mars Hill Network and this morning, I got a Holy Spirit slap in the face courtesy of Charles Stanley. "God hates a proud heart," Charles Stanley was saying. "He hates it when we take credit for the gifts He has given us. He wants us to be humble and to rely on Him." Yeah, that cut to the bone for me. I've been getting a LOT of magic work as of late. I've got three county fairs, a bunch of campground shows, and I'm pretty confident that I'll

 And now comes news reports that the world's infrastructure is warping because of extreme heat. Runways in England are cracking, bridges are melting, things are going haywire. We're told it's because engineers didn't anticipate temperatures this high when they were building all this stuff. I am writing this on a Saturday. Two hours ago, my kid was frolicking in the splash pad at the Paul Rozon Park in Williamstown. When we left the house earlier that day, the temperature was in the low 30s and the humidity was high as a kite. I thought that for sure, the splash pad would be teeming with little kids trying to keep cool. But I was wrong. The splash pad was empty. For the most part, my kid had it all to himself. - When summer first started, I fantasized about how productive it was going to be. Kiddo could splash around at the splash pad and I could write or practice my magic. Didn't work out that way. I am now at an age when my ass gets tired if I have to sit on a picn

 When the Sashmeister told me "cheese buns" would be the topic-de-jouir, I was woozy with deja-vu. That's because way back in March of 2014, an American friend assigned me to write about cheese balls. Buns are different than balls. That last sentence could sound suggestive in another context. I will come right out and say I am not a fan of cheese buns. In fact, I don't think I've ever eaten one in my life. I don't like cheese on much and I definitely don't like it melted. I'm famous for eating my pizza without cheese. I sure don't want it on buns.  Cheese belongs on very little. It doesn't belong on hamburgers and it definitely does not belong on apple pie. In fact, apples don't belong in pie. No fruit should be in pies. Fruit should only be eaten raw. The only pies that should exist are cream pies like chocolate cream pie or coconut cream pie or butterscotch cream pie. Banana cream pie is very bad. Once I saw someone eat an entire block of

Give compliments to people you care about. Praise in public; criticize in private. Give people roses sometimes. Don't give yellow roses when you should be giving red ones. This note is tough to write because I’m not very good at giving compliments or telling people that I care about them. For some stupid reason, the closer you are to me, the hardest it is for me to talk to you. Don’t know why this is and I guess it’s a little sad that I get so much validation from strangers - the people who tend to make up most of my magic show audiences. On my dad‘s 50th birthday, he sit up in front of all of us and he went around the room and said something nice about every single person in attendance. It was easy for him, it would’ve been the hardest thing in the world for me to do. I wish I wasn’t such a wimp. I’m gonna be celebrating my 50th in about six months and I will likely try to emulate my father and say something nice about all the people who care enough about me to come to my 50th bir

 yeah yeah yeah I think I did it again that pic of my cat I thought I hit send. Oh baby baby I texted I'd see you tonight I didn't press send please don't pick a fight Cause to not click on enter that is just so typically me oh baby baby Yikes, I thought I hit send that pic of my car with a smashed in rear end oh baby baby please tell me what to do that selfie of you I thought I "hearted" it  You see my problem is this my thumb's really sore I'm wishing that smartphone did not exist Sometimes I long for the days when we had to talk face to face But to not click on enter that is just so typically me

 My regular readers may have, by now, tired of my constant mentioning of my best friend, Jason, who died in the spring of 2009 after a short battle with bone cancer. I still miss him and I think about him everyday. He was only 36 when he passed, would never have to "officially welcome middle age" by turning 40. If he were still with us, I'm sure that we would have enjoyed so many conversations about the pitfalls of getting older.  Old men tell me that when they read the newspaper, the first thing they look at is the obituaries. They want to know which of their friends have died. - I was honoured that Jason's family asked me to speak at his funeral. I was to speak on behalf of his friends. I was preceded by his two sisters, both of whom read suitably melancholy pieces that the mourned the loss of their big brother. I took a different tack. I decided to be funny. I did not do this out of disrespect; anyone who knew Jason knows that he would have wanted us to have a good

Jason had a love/hate relationship with the summer. He loved it because of the hot weather and the fact that school was out and that he had two months of freedom to hang with friends and family, but he hated it because of the mosquitoes. He had a case too. In the summer, his legs would swell up like sausages. Two weeks in, they would be all bloody and crusty from his constant scratching. "Try insect repellent," I'd say. "Tried that," he'd say. "Doesn't do a bloody thing." - Thank God for the Charlie Brown 'Cyclopedias, which told eight-year-old me that the itch that follows a mosquito bite is an allergic reaction. Get this: there are some people out there who are not allergic to mosquitoes. They get bitten and it's about as painful as getting hit in the shoulder with a ping pong ball. I am not one of those people. - How many times have I written about Jackfish Lake, which was home to the family cottage for a little over three decades? G

 Plenty of stuff happened today. They include: - Got up and took kid to church. - Listened to a sermon based on 1 John 4 that sounded like it was being read off paper. - Took kiddo to breakfast as usual spot (All New Restaurant in Cornwall.) There was a lineup so we had to wait. - While waiting, talked to a passionate 12-year-old hockey fan and her family. She told me that her big dream is to be a sports photographer. I invited her to cover a game with me sometime in the winter and maybe she could get a photo credit too. She was thrilled. - Took kiddo to splash pad in Cornwall for one hour. - Took kiddo to a tribute concert to a local musical legend who passed away earlier this year. - Took kiddo to another splash pad in another town. - Went grocery shopping. - Tried to take kiddo home only to discover that kiddo's mom was busy installing a bookshelf and would rather kiddo be out of the house for a bit. - Took kiddo to yet another splash pad (I think we set a record for most splash

 So here I am sitting at AH* after a long day at the AV.** My kid spent hours bouncing on the IS*** and he ate THD.**** When we got home, Ash wanted me to make KDAPRABPFM&M*****, so that is what I did. * Ashley's house. ** Avonmore Fair. *** Inflatable structures.  **** Two hot dogs. ***** Kraft Dinner and Pizza Rolls and Baked Potatoes from M&M. - Yeah, so acronyms these days are hard. They are particularly hard during June, which is Pride Month. This is because every year, more letters get added to the acronym. I think now it's LGBTQ2S++BOOGABOOGA! I don't know. I miss the days when acronyms were simple. USA meant America, even though the U and the S are supposed to modify that America. U and S stands for United States. But between the United States part and the America part is this word: "of." This means that America is much bigger than the United States. The Americas reach as far north as the Nunavut in Canada and as far south as the tip of Argentina.

 By special arrangement with Bantam Skylark, note-a-day is pleased to announce that Encyclopedia Brown will be guest starring in today's session. THE ROSEMARY MURDERS Stay away from Idaville. That's what all the crooks told each other. That's because no one had gotten away with committing a crime in Idaville for 11 years. Children's author Donald J Sobol thought it was because of his 11-year-old creation, Leroy "Encyclopedia" Brown, who often helped his father, Idaville's chief of police, solve mysteries at the dinner table. The real reason was that everyone in Idaville, except for Encyclopedia Brown, was a moron. On the Saturday afternoon of the Victoria Day weekend, Encyclopedia Brown was sitting in his detective agency with his not-so-secret crush, Sally Kimball, who could beat up any boy in Idaville because Donald J Sobol was all rah rah feminism. Anyway, as Encyclopedia was reading a book about diamonds or lactating parade marshalls or something like

 Late on Christmas Day of 2017, I asked my dad if he had enjoyed his Christmas.  "It was one of the very best," he said. We had just finished Christmas dinner - turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, salad, and mom's homemade Christmas pudding. The tree stood in its usual corner, bathing the living room with soft light. Underneath, multi-coloured paper from so many presents. A fire burned in the fireplace. But none of that was why my dad thought that was the best Christmas ever. The real reason was that, for the first time, all of his most beloved people were together for Christmas for the first time. Usually, I celebrate Christmas out east but that year, Ash told me I could take my son out west to be with his grandparents. It was an unbelievably generous gift. From the very beginning, I told Ash that I would never take her son away from her on Christmas. This was a great sacrifice on her part and I still don't know if she realizes how happy it made my dad. - Here I am. A so

In the Bible, we read that there is only one entrance to heaven and that is through believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. You have to repent of your sins, believe that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, and was raised from the dead on the third day. I guess that's the gospel in a nutshell. Jesus said that He is the way, the truth, and the life and that nobody comes to the father except through Him. The world would have no problem with that gospel as long as we're willing to change "the" to "a." - You can't really do that though. Justification by faith is the very heart of the gospel; it's the great doctrine that separates the true believers from the heretics. Galatians chapter one has a dour warning:  But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him

Kelsey used to work at Subway. She told me that her least favourite sub to make was the meatball sub. Meatball subs are my favourite. I asked Kelsey why she hated making meatball subs so much. She told me it was because they were messy. The look Kelsey gives you when you order a meatball sub. - There is a Subway in the town where I live. Since it's a small town, there is a very limited number of restaurants where we can eat. Most of these restaurants are closed on Monday, which sucks because that is the one day of the week where the office pays for my supper. Subway is open on Monday. I tend to eat at Subway a lot. I prefer Mr. Submarine, which started in a Toronto suburb back in 1968. It has since faced stiff competition by Subway. I like the meatball sub at Mr. Submarine. - I just got back from Calgary. While there, I went out for chicken wings and a Weird Al Yankovic concert with my sister and brother. Whenever the three of us go out, my sister and brother talk while I listen. T

As luck would have it, I find myself magically transported to the biggest filing office in the universe. This office, which is 50 times the size of West Edmonton Mall, has more than a billion filing cabinets. Each cabinet is stuffed with files on every conceivable subject. What's more, the office is serviced by two dozen sentient robots who will zip off at light speed in order to collect any file you desire. I am typing this from desk 27 in the office's burgundy wing. There is a cup of herbal tea to my left and a stack of files to my right. I have asked only for files that interest me. Some of the titles include: - David Mamet's complete writings. - The origins of Wonder Woman. - Biography of St. Augustine. - Transcript of Columbo episode: Requiem for a Falling Star - Best Supporting Actress winners, 1977-1992 - List of Chinese restaurants where Carly Burgess ordered won ton soup - US Presidents who ate Count Chocula on Christmas Eve (Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, George Was

 See that book? I bought it at the Coles store in Cornwall about five years ago. It was in the bargain bin. I was wary about buying it because St. Paul warns believers to be careful that they don't ruin themselves through philosophy. But I was also encouraged by something the late Christian apologist Walter Martin once said, which is that philosophy isn't really anchored to anything and that philosophers will happily waste their lives swimming in an ocean of relativity. Anyway, true to the title of Ben Dupre's book, it really does have 50 philosophy ideas, though it's debatable that everyone really needs to know them. My nine-year-old son is happy watching Caillou right now. I think that for the time being, he's happier being ignorant of Socrates' cave allegory. The very first chapter in that big ole book is the "brain in a vat" theory. This idea suggests that the universe is an illusion, that you are just a brain in a vat somewhere, and everything you

When nothing goes right in the life that you live  you’d be best to remember your life is a sieve some things are filtered and some things are caught   but in all there’s a lesson that you can be taught. There’s mountains and valleys in each trip we take  you may find a volcano while you look for a lake And the heat there may burn you to no bitter end But you don’t have to worry if you have a friend

 I am so stoked to be writing about Banned Books Week. One day, I want to write a book that will be banned. The left and the right are both guilty of wanting to ban certain books. The left wanted to ban To Kill a Mockingbird and some of the Little House on the Prairie books because their author, Laura Ingalls Wilder, used racist language. Yanno, it's kind of hard to disagree with that sentiment. Get a load of this line from one of the Little House books: "there were no people. Only Indians lived there." I went to junior high school with a whole lot of Indigenous kids and, although I wasn't the most empathetic of teenagers, I could imagine them all having a collective shit if they were ever forced to read that dehumanizing piece of claptrap.  Now I am the furthest thing from a scholar of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I have never read any of her books, though I confess that I used to harbor a secret love of the television show, especially when Melissa Sue Anderson was onscreen