Rotating Pineapple

The Halloween dance was better than the welcome to school dance. I remember that about Grade 7. At the welcome to school dance, all the kids laughed at me and told me I couldn't dance. At the Halloween dance, nobody cared. I was wearing a ghost costume. Like I was expected to be Barishnikov in that. My friend, Helen, told me she was going to the dance dressed as a punk rocker. I pictured her in safety pins, a black torn dress and a green mohawk. Instead, she came as Charlie Chaplin. We danced. - The next year, it was $2 to get into the Halloween dance. $1 if you wore a costume. I went to the dance with a cheap masquerade mask over my eyes. I got in for a dollar. This offended a handful of kids and they spent the rest of the dance lobbying the management to charge me an extra dollar. - In Grade 4, my friend, Matt, and I thought it would be great to go out for Halloween dressed as Pac-Man. "We could chase ghosts," I said. "They'll be scared." ...

I sort of met Jian Ghomeshi in 1993 when he and Moxy Fruvous did a concert at Mount Royal College, where I was a theatre student. One of my colleagues later got to interview the band for a school project, but I digress. For my non-Canadian readers, Jian Ghomeshi is a former Canadian pop musician who later became a CBC radio personality. He was fired recently after details of his sex life were exposed. He wrote a long defense of himself on Facebook. He certainly didn't claim to be a perfect angel. He admitted that his sexual proclivities are a tad unusual but also suggested that the reason he'd come under fire was he'd sparked the ire of a jilted lover who was out for revenge. You know, at first I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I've never been a serial dater. I count the number of serious relationships I've had on one hand. Like all breakups, mine came with hurt feelings on both sides. Most of the women I was involved with have mo...

I had a dream the other day that I was taking a shower with Malcolm X. That's really freakin funny I don't remember where the shower was located or why we were showering together (I'd like to think we were just strangers who were getting ready for a dip at the swimming pool.) In my dream, Malcolm X was washing his hair while chastising me for being a white devil. He spoke with the fury of a revival preacher - telling me that Allah would hold me responsible for the atrocities my ancestors committed upon his people. I didn't argue with Malcom X, and for two reasons. The first was that I knew he'd probably whup my ass in a debate. The second was that it was obvious I was dreaming. After I left the shower, I walked into a kitchen and opened a fridge. Malcolm X's disembodied head was in there. It was yelling at me and eyeballing the bacon. "Don't you be serving that to my brothers," it said. "The swine is a filthy beast and so ...

December 1, at the very earliest. I don't want to see any Christmas decorations anywhere throughout the month of November. I never get my wish. It's not even Halloween and the stores in my neck of the woods are already hauling out the Christmas cards and the plastic Santas. I was at Costco the other day and they had artificial Christmas trees for sale. Good grief. Sometimes I wish I was American. If I was American, Thanksgiving would be in November and that could act as a bullwark against incessant Christmas marketing. Up here, Halloween is the last commercial holiday before Christmas so the stores get all red and green as soon as November hits. Sometimes, I almost expect them to make a commercial event out of Remembrance Day. Maybe I shouldn't be so hard on Christmas. Without it, plenty of our merchants might not even be in business. I understand that it's a "Christianized holiday" but it's more of a shopping event than it is a religio...

I think I would be totally cool with going the rest of my life without alcohol. Look, I won't pretend to be teetotaler. I have imbibed in the past and, on a few occasions, I've been rip-roaring drunk. The most famous example was my 18th birthday, when Mr. Alcohol told me it would be a good idea to break into a real estate office, call my friend's girlfriend so I could insult her, and then throw up in another friend's sink. Gene Simmons, the bass player for KISS, says he has never been drunk or high in his life. "I've never heard anyone say something cool while they were drunk or stoned," he said, and I guess I want to be the sort of person that Gene Simmons thinks is cool. Exhibit A: Someone who thinks I'm cool Okay, so my booze-free life style isn't influenced what Mr. Simmons may or may not think of me. I guess I don't drink because I honestly don't see why I should. I understand that alcohol has served as a social lubricant ...

For years, whenever I asked a seasoned reporter to name his favourite movie about journalism, I could pretty much bet the farm he would answer with "All the President's Men." I could hardly blame them for it. After all, Woodward and Bernstein's reporting brought down a president. Next to starting World War III, that's probably the biggest thing a journalist can do. When journalists watch All the President's Men, they are dreaming. They are saying: "Man, wouldn't it be great if I could write a story like that too?" There are many reasons why All the President's Men succeeds. For one, it is based on a true story – a drama about the collapse of an American presidency. But for reporters - be they seasoned or novices - the movie also functions as wish fulfillment; All the President's Men could be viewed as a fairy tale. It contains several wonderful performances by Jason Robards (he won an Oscar for it) and, of course, Robert Re...