Rotating Pineapple

Some editors hate exclamation points. They don't think they're necessary. But I like 'em. Exclamation points make comic books possible. - Even so, I rarely use exclamation points. I don't think I've ever used them in note-a-day. Maybe I should start. !!!!!!!!! How's that? - In researching this note, I came across a LinkedIn article written by a guy named Jason Piasecki, who is the CEO of Revel. Jason has a bone to pick with marketers who rely on exclamation points. He points out that exclamation points are supposed to be used to convey strong emotion like anger or joy. Then he complains that the things copywriters put on billboards are not deserving of exclamation points. Seriously, does anyone get super excited about Mattress World having the largest mattress collection in the tristate area? Or that Berk's Fried Chicken has a three-piece meal on sale for $7.99 until the end of October? He has a point. My heart doesn't skip a beat when I find out I can g

 So here we are at a place called Pine Ridge Park, about half an hour away from where Kel lives in Pembroke. Somehow, we managed to snag reservations for something called the Laurentian cabin, which is a four-bedroom cottage on the shore of the Ottawa River. We got an off-season rate and, since there are six grownups here, we all chipped in and rented the place for a song. I'm here, Ash is here, Kel is here, Tara is here, as is her son, Nick, and Kel's boyfriend, Curtis. And the B-Man is here and Curtis' two kids are here. It's a merry stay. The temperature hovers around 20, but it gets colder at night. Curtis and Nick made a fire outside. I sat by it and ate one marshmallow. When I was called inside, I was grateful. We went swimming in the river. It was cold at first, as it always is, but got warmer. There were a whole lot of rocks on the way in and no one cared for that very much. I was the first one in - I went into the water in my blue bathing suit that I bought at

 I will start this note by making a list of all the concerts I have attended: - Amanda Marshall (x3) - Weird Al Yankovic (x3) - Alice Cooper - Aerosmith - Prince (x2) - Don Henley/Susanna Hoffs - Van Halen (with DLR) - Roxette - John Mellencamp - Huey Lewis and the News - Trisha Yearwood - Sass Jordan - Lee Aaron - Kim Mitchell/Allannah Myles - Raffi - Of them all, Raffi was the worst. He came onstage about two hours late, was obviously high on opium and Cheez Whiz, and then yelled at a bunch of kids in the front row for wearing Sharon Lois and Bram shirts. Raffi refused to play any music, set fire to the stage, and then wiped his nose on his tuba player's eyebrows.* - Seriously, I hate to say it but Sass Jordan and John Mellencamp were both pretty bad, but I don't fault either of them for it. I had gone in with high expectations, hoping to see a show as hopping as they were in their respective heydays, which were the 80s and 90s.  I saw Mr. Mellencamp's concert in Ottawa w

 The title comes from someone at the table where I am sitting as I cover an awards ceremony. I don’t think I have been on a horse in more than 25 years. I have never been on a wild horse. I have some people attempt it. Rodeo. In Stettler, a cowboy got his hand caught in the harness. The horse wound up dragging him all over the ring, the cowboy screaming the whole time. I got a picture. When he got free, the cowboy lay in the dirt face down, clutching his injured hand. The photographers went crazy. One of the other cowboys told them to cool it. I can’t find that picture online. The cowboy is probably grateful. - I don’t care what PETA says, rodeos are fun to photograph. Even if you’re a beginner photog, you can get a shot. That’s all folks. Duty calls 

There is the story of the young piano student who goes to the concert hall to see a world famous maestro perform. For an hour, this master musician tickles the ivory, navigating his way through a virtuoso selection of Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach. When the concert is over, he has the following brief exchange with the young student: Student: Maestro, I would give my very life to play the way you do. Maestro: I already have. - I am a magician but by no means am I a master magician. I won't use that adjective to modify my (sometimes) occupation. To do so would be an insult to the true masters. I am friends with dozens of magicians on Facebook, some of whom I would consider to be masters of their craft. One of them is one of the best card mechanics in the world. Seriously, this dude can do anything with a deck of cards. I have seen him take a shuffled deck, spread it out on the table, spin a poker chip and make it land on the Ace of Spades. He can bottom deal and centre deal flawlessly,

Today, I brought $100 to my son's school. This money was for the chocolate bars that we sold on behalf of the school. I imagine the money will go to field trips or presentations or end-of-year celebrations. The chocolate bars were three for $5. They were made by World's Finest Chocolate. They were all purchased by friends of the family. I did not buy any. I don't like World's Finest Chocolate. I don't think the name is accurate. Maybe if they called themselves World's Twentieth Best Chocolate, I would agree with them. - I am a little ashamed to admit that I am a chocolate bar junkie. In case anyone is interested, here are my favourite chocolate bars, ranked in order of preference: 1. Snickers 2. Big Turk 3. Eat More (technically not a chocolate bar, but who cares?) 4. Reese Peanut Butter Cups (but I liked them better when they had the crunchy peanut butter or the honey peanut butter) 5. Wunderbar. Obviously, I am not allergic to peanuts. - Did you know that the

In David Fincher's 1997 movie, The Game, billionaire Nicholas Van Orton sees his life unravel shortly after his 48th birthday. This is entirely because his estranged brother, Conrad, persuades him to visit a corporation that specializes in creating life-changing experiences, or games, for their clients. Van Orton visits the office, goes through a number of tests, fills out a lengthy questionnaire, and is then informed that he has been rejected, But he hasn't been rejected. He finds a clown doll with a key in its mouth. The anchor on the evening news begins talking to him via the television set. He gets trapped in an elevator, thrown into the ocean in the back of a taxicab, has his mansion vandalized, and is left for dead in Mexico. Watching the film, the intelligent viewer has to ask a number of questions. How does Mr. Van Orton (played my Michael Douglas) know that the key he found in the clown's mouth will get the elevator to work again? How does he know that the crank he

I spend about one week every year visiting campgrounds. For about a decade now, I have supplemented my income doing magic shows at various campgrounds or resorts. I always do my shows over the Labour Day and Victoria Day weekends. I try to get three shows for the Saturday and three for the Sunday. I was able to fill all the slots when I started doing this but it's becoming increasingly harder to fill my roster. Maybe I'm getting too old. Maybe the campground ownerfs are just getting tired of me. Maybe it's the recession. Who knows? - Usually, when a campground books me, they tell me that the show will take place in the recreation hall. Before my first campground show, I had a mental image of what the rec hall would look like. I pictured it to be a small theatre with proscenium stage and tiered seating, maybe a tech booth in the back where someone would run lights and sound. Not a chance. Some of the rec halls were just tents, open on all four sides but with canvas on top to

 Yesterday, I took my kid for a swimming trip in Ottawa. While on the road, I thought I'd check my Sirius radio to see if the subscription was still valid. It was. Usually, I keep Sirius on the 80s station but for some reason, I decided to listen to Fox news.  I had never heard anything like it before. Whoever it was on there spent a lot of time defending Mark Robinson, the North Carolina ultraconservative Republican nominee who had allegedly made some disgusting comments on a porn site somewhere. The Fox people were saying that Robinson had been set up. Then someone else came on and talked about how the last Trump assassination attempt was not arranged by the Trump team. Then someone else talked about how terrible it was to live in Montana and this was because a lawmaker there was just "a rubber stamper for the Biden-Harris administration." Then there was a commercial for something called the Trump Kids Guide. The announcer warned parents that their kids might have been

 The last book I read was I WEAR THE BLACK HAT by Chuck Klosterman.  Chuck Klosterman is from North Dakota. He is a couple years older than I am. He used to work at Spin Magazine. I have read a few of his books but I WEAR THE BLACK HAT is my favourite. My least favourite of his is KILLING YOURSELF TO LIVE, which is about a road trip Chuck Klosterman made where he visited places where rock stars died. It starts at the Chelsea Hotel, where Nancy Spungen died in October of 1978. It ends at the site of the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly. I don't like the book because it's more Chuck Klosterman's personal life than it is a road trip*. Also, Chuck Klosterman talks about snorting cocaine in this book. You lose points with me if you romanticize hard drug use. I WEAR THE BLACK HAT is a book about villains. In it, Chuck Klosterman talks about fictional villains (Morris Day in Purple Rain, Walter White in Breaking Bad), real life villains (OJ Simpson, Perez Hilton, Jerry Sandusky

  Yeah, so my kid has an obsession with chocolate chip muffins. Everytime we go to the grocery store, he insists on buying a package of them. They come in packs of six. What he does is he eats the chocolate chips off the top, takes off the muffin top, and then eats the bottom half, often with the paper. Driving back from swimming in Cornwall last night and kiddo is screaming for a muffin. I'm trying to get home as quickly as possible because I want to send out some emails. But my kid wants his stupid muffin so I go to the Tim Hortons drive-thru in Cornwall and ask for one. "Sorry, sir, but we're all out." So now I'm trapped behind some dude in an old burgundy VW who – I had overheard – had just placed a $30 order. Yeah, so he's going to be there for a good 5 minutes waiting for all his bagels and donuts and coffee. I'm not taking that so I back out of the drive-thru and hightail it out of there. First time I ever did something like that. Felt

 In one of my old magic books, there was a sort of party game/social experiment/seance that you could do called "Light as a feather." The idea was to get one person to sit in a chair while four other people positioned themselves around them. The four standing people were then to clasp their hands together but keep their index fingers erect and touching each other. They were to place those fingers under the seated person's armpits or knees and try to lift them into the air. Usually, it was difficult to pull this off. Following that failure, the four were to place their hands on the seated person's head and say "This person is as light as a feather" five times. Then they would repeat the experiment and this time, the person could be lifted easily. It sounded like nonsense but it also intrigued the hell out of me. I wanted to see if it worked but I didn't have four friends I could invite over at that particular time. For now, it would have to be relegated t

Every year when fair October comes I find myself here donning red and black. I will take up the banner and the drums and bid my Calgree Flames to skate! Attack! But still, I know that I'll be filled with fear when I sit down to watch them play the Jets. I know that 25 is not their year.  Their year, I wonder if I'll see, but yet. I know Craig Conroy knows his hockey game for he once played here for the Flaming Cs. And he'd agree that this year's squad's quite lame And Mr. Stanley won't go YYC. I take great heart in knowing that the puck will not be kind to Vancouver Canucks. - When I was but a boy of only 10 a magic set was gifted unto me I learned all of those simple tricks and then I started doing shows and charged a fee. And as the years went by I like to think that I got better at that silly craft I do a bunch of card tricks and I wink and tell lame jokes that make you groan and laugh. I never climbed that high in magic lore a middle market piker's all I

Old man down the street can't mow his lawn no more. Arthritis, he say. Back gone to hell. Injured it in Viet nam but old age make things worse. City man come by say that lawn got to be mowed. He cite something called Property Standards Bylaw. "Can't do nothin' about it," say the old man. "Ain't got no lawnmower and couldn't work one anyway." City man shake his head. You cut or city cut, he say. And if city cut, you gonna pay for work that's done. - Old man down the street smoking cigarette on his porch. "Hey," he call to me. "You want job?" "Sure," I say. Old man reach into his pocket and pull out a twenty. He wearing long pants and long sleeves. Hot day. Don't see why. I'm in shorts and T-shirt, but I say nothing. Twenty bucks is twenty bucks. "You got lawn mower?" old man ask. "At school they do." "Can you get?" "Mebbe." "You get and you mow, you get money.&q

In 1979, the publisher of Mad Magazine, the late William M. Gaines, authorized a board game that would be inspired by his famous magazine. Game play was loosely inspired by Monopoly, only the goal was to lose all your money. The Mad game didn't have Chance of Community Chest cards, but it did have cards that you had to take if you landed on a certain square. One of the cards said this: THIS CARD CAN ONLY BE PLAYED ON FRIDAYS. No other instructions were given. It was a useless card. What would you do if it was Friday? The same thing you'd do if it was any other day. Here is a commercial for the Mad Magazine game: That is one goofy looking dad. I wonder if the director told the actor to grow that silly mustache. Seriously, he looks like a prototype for Ned Flanders. Then again, this is pretty common for commercials, where actors are told to behave like the world is a magical place simply because of the existence of the product they are shilling: I mean, does anyone really have th

 I guess this is a universal thing. No matter how hard we try, we just can't keep our socks together. Probably the only way to stop this is to be extremely anal about it. To wit: 1. Have a dedicated sock drawer where all socks are kept together and paired off. 2. In your laundry room, have a mesh bag that is dedicated only to socks. 3. Whenever you take off a pair of socks, put them in the mesh bag. 4. When the mesh bag is full, put the mesh bag (full of socks) in washing machine. 5. Wash socks. 6. Remove wet sock bag from washing machine. 7. Put bag in dryer. 8. Dry socks. Voila!!! - I used to be a member of Food Cardigan, which is a company that sends you a different pair of funky socks every month. I am wearing a pair of those socks right now. They are purple socks and they have a bubble motif. The socks are about seven years old. The fabric where my toes go has worn thin. I will likely throw the socks away soon.  Foot Cardigan has sent me socks with the following motifs: - Acco

 Dear Mr. Man You know, I don't hate you. If I saw you on the street, I wouldn't yell at you or cuss you out, but I don't think I'd shake your hand. But I do pity you, man. You don't know what you gave up. She's going to be a funeral director, did you know that? Yeah, she's going to be a mover and shaker, hitting the big time. She'll have a good job and she'll never be out of work because she's in an industry that will never die (you should pardon the pun.)  Sure, she had her challenges growing up, but what girl doesn't. Things made her cry. Sometimes, I'm sad to say, I was one of those things. But all I can say is the good times outweigh the bad. I hope she agrees with that. You see, Mr. Man, I have a whole lot of great memories with her. This one time, I tried to take her down to Cleveland so we could see a Major League Baseball game live. But we couldn't get into the States so instead, we went to Niagara Falls and we had a grand ol

My son has picked up the awful habit of banishing his mother from his bedroom when it's time to go to sleep. He will allow us both in to change him into his pajamas and the nightly prayers, but after that he wants some alone time with me. His mom says it doesn't hurt her feelings, but I kind of think it does. - She should not be offended. My son merely picked up my genes. When I was a kid, I didn't want both my parents in my bedroom at the same time. They had to say goodnight to be individually. I guess kiddo and I both have a little OCD. - As luck would have it, Ash and I just finished watching a movie called TRAP. The premise of it is that a serial killer and his daughter are attending a pop concert. The police know he's there so they set up a trap, ensuring that every male adult is interviewed by police before they're dismissed. In the end, we discover that the man's wife suspected him and so she tipped the police about it.  Mom of the year, I tell you. "

Serendipity is described as " an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident ." I prefer to describe it as "stumbling into happiness." - This makes me think of fudge. Apparently, fudge was created by accident. According to legend, an American confectioner accidentally dropped some chocolate into a pot where he was making French caramels on Valentine's Day of 1886. The result: fudge. - I like fudge. My waistline does not.  - We spent much of today in Cornwall. Kiddo has therapy there on Wednesdays but today was also his first swimming lesson at the Cornwall pool. I was nervous at first, afraid kiddo wouldn't be able to follow along, but he did and even learned to float on his back. I'm not sure if that qualifies as serendipity. - Here is something that qualifies as serendipity. I have told this story before. I will tell it again. In 1993 or 1994, I was looking for a job, so I went to the local Hire a Student office to see what they had. There wa

 The address of Sara's Pyrohy Hut will forever be etched in my mind. It was located at 1216 Centre Street Northeast, Calgary, and was one of my family's favourite restaurants. I always ordered the same thing - a plate of beef perogies with a side of dill pickles. The Pyrohy Hut is no longer with us, its former proprietor, Fred, lost in the sands of the past. I know that the restaurant was named for a dog, Sara, but I don't know who Sara belonged to. Sara is dead now. So it goes. - I've never had perogies as good as the ones at Sara's. I know I never will. The emotional part of my mind won't allow that. My heart will always insist that the best Ukranian restaurant exists only in the 1980s and 1990s. Readers of this blog should not be surprised by that. If the Rotating Pineapple has a constant theme, it is that I messed things up in the past and would love to go back and rectify my mistakes. - Google tells me that a TD Canada Trust branch now exists at 1216 Centre

 In retrospect, it probably wasn't a smart idea to buy a straight razor at a second hand store. I had wanted one for several years but when I priced them out at barber shops, they wound up being more than I could rightly afford. So when an old one appeared in the second hand store window, I bought it quickly for $25. But I never used it. The blade was too dull and I never figured out how to sharpen it. "Use a leather belt," the barber told me, but I never did it. Too long. I didn't have the patience. I wanted a machine. I wanted to press a button, see a bunch of sparks fly, and then take my sharpened straight razor home. At least the straight razor had some use. It was adopted as a prop for a play sometime in the late 90s, after which is relegated to a plastic bucket in my room and (I think) ultimately discarded. - There is nothing wrong with buying clothes from Value Village. As I type this, I am wearing a sweater that I bought there. While wearing it, no one has eve

The woman's hair was the most impossible shade of red. I kept looking at it as she talked to me at the New Year's Eve Party, which was taking place in the living room of a magician friend of mine in northwest Calgary. The woman was telling me how adorable I was, how she was positive the girls in my Grade 10 class found me irresistible. She was wrong. The girls in my Grade 10 class thought I was a loser. "Well, what do they know at that age?" she asked, dismissing the thought with a wave of her hand. She leaned in and planted a heavy kiss on my cheek. Her breath smelled of too much red wine. "You'll be fine," she promised. Later, her son, only a year or so younger than I, apologized, saying his mom got a little over affectionate when she drank. "That's okay," I said. I was ashamed to admit that I was flattered by the attention. I could still feel the kiss on my cheek and later that evening, when I was putting on my coat, I felt the woman beh

  Unlike most people, the 90s sitcom, Friends, is not the first thing that springs to my mind when I think about Courtney Cox. Nor do I think of Family Ties, Ace Ventura, Scream, or Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark music video, where he pulls her from the audience to dance with him onstage. The first thing I think about is an early 80s sitcom called Misfits of Science, where she played a telekinetic teenager. I remember very little about that show. I couldn’t tell you the plot of any episode; I am left with only dream images. There was a character who could shrink himself. There was another character who could fire lightning bolts out of his fists. And there was Courtney who could move things with her mind, though I think doing so left her mentally exhausted. The show was relatively short-lived; it certainly did not have the decade-long run that was enjoyed by Friends. This tells me that sitting around a coffee shop is more interesting than shooting lightning out of vari