The Not-So Secret Elephant Burial Grounds

Well, it's official - London, Ont. has been named one of the best places in which to retire. Apparently we tied with Denver, Colorado for second place. Victoria, B.C. as everyone knows is the old-people capital of the world. All them old English ladies flock there just to drink tea in the Empire Hotel every afternoon.

The fact that London ranked so high on the list shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has ever noticed our driving habits or listened to our local radio stations. This invasion has been going on for years. If not in the actual amount of grey-hairs who flock here but also in the mindset of people already here who are 30-going-on-80. They just love the place. And suck almost all the vitality right out it. You want to live in a place where people talk incessantly about their kids, their mortgages or their feet - then this is your town.

But what brings them here? Victoria has its tea rooms and book-stores where you can pick up five used Barbara Cartland romances for under two bucks. And Denver has its skiing. The perfect sport for people who can't slip coming out of the bath-tub without requiring major hip-replacement surgery. And the number four spot, Portland, Oregon has the water. It's on the Pacific Ocean, right? San Antonio, in at #5, has the Alamo. Shit, I'd retire there just for that alone. I've always wanted to see the basement of the Alamo.

So what does London have to offer?

It could be our summer festivals that clog the parking in our downtown streets almost every weekend in the summer. It sure ain't the music at these events because you can barely hear it above the roar from all the generators powering the fast-food trailers and arts&crafts stands. It can't be the variety of music at such events. Let's see, we have a folk festival, more classic rock weekends of reunited bands old enough to retire here - and then we have the Latin-themed Sun Fest and it's kid sister, the imaginatively named Fiesta del Sol a few weeks later brought to us by the same promoter. So that might have something to do with the appeal of coming to London. You know how old people are, they just love those Arts&Craft stands. Because they don't have enough useless crappy knick-knacks filling up their apartments.

So I figure it has to be our malls. There are enough malls in this town that if you were an old guy, you could go to a different mall every day of the week for those vigorous group walk-abouts before the stores open in the morning. There's even one mall, Cherry Hill - which is devoted entirely to senior citizens. Hundreds of seniors just hanging around in the food court or milling about, taking up space on the benches - with all the sense of purpose as a buncha young louts on a street corner downtown.

But the most likely appeal of our malls is that they all have the same stores. The same big name department stores. The same franchise food outlets. The same chain stores. You could be in AnyMall, in Anytown, Anywhere. You could even imagine you were in your old mall back home in Peoria or Mississauga. You get to a certain age and take comfort in the familiarity of your surroundings.

Good ol' London - the place where people come to die.

And only in this hick town would such a reputation be considered something to be proud of.

Mark my words. This is not a good thing. This means there's going to be even more commercials for hearing aid stores flocking to town. Prune juice bars will replace our hip downtown watering holes. And our talk radio shows will be filled with old ladies calling in, "Hello, Mr. Brady? My name is Gladys. And I'm worried about my cat."

And can you just imagine how pissed off all these dying old farts are going to be when they get to town and realize they can't even find a family doctor. Because none of them want to practice here. I've already experienced the vile tongue of such cranks when I was stuck behind an old coot in the line-up at the beer-store the other day and he insisted on getting his 'seniors' discount' and refused to budge or pay until he spoke to the manager.

Of course there could be an upshot to this great pilgrimage of the near-dead. I've always wanted to open up my own crematorium. This might be just the right time.

Another Crappy Day at Work

Memo - It has come to the attention of store management that an excessive amount of toilet paper has been used as of late in the staff washroom. Please limit the amount of toilet paper you consume as we are going through it more quickly than should be neccesary. The complimentary free toilet paper policy should not be abused. Remember, toilet paper in the workplace is not a right, nor a priviledge. It is something we in management do for our Team.

So that's the first thing I see on the memo board in the break room at the shitty grocery store where I stock shelves for a living. Good ol' Too-Save Grocery - where management has all the sensitivity of a toilet seat.

About an hour later, I'm working in the canned vegetable aisle and Dave the manager comes over and sidles up to me with that big shit-eating grin of his. He likes me and thinks we're friends because we both root for the Maple Leafs.

"So, Hank - what do you think of the toilet-paper situation?" he asks. Of course, I had no idea there was a "situation," I just assumed that Dave was being his usual overly-eager memo-writing asshole self.

Nope. No such thing. Turns out that Dave thinks that someone has been stealing extra rolls from the staff washroom. But before he gets to the point, he's like all-buddy-buddy with me, obviously trying to see what I know by leading me on with questions like, "So Hank - how many sheets of toilet paper do you yourself generally use when you take a shit? I'm a five-square man myself. For a maximum of five wipes. Anything more is waste as far as I'm concerned. You with me, amigo?"

Well, how do you answer a question like that? And then he asks me if I've ever heard anyone blowing their nose excessively in the staff washroom. "You know, we keep a box of complimentary Kleenex in the break room for a reason. But I'll be damned if people ever use it to blow their nose. No, they use it to wipe lipstick off their face. They use it to clean their glasses. They even use it to clean up coffee spills - even though there's a complimentary roll of paper towels right over there by the sink. And then , they go into the bathroom, grab about two feet of toilet paper and use that to blow their friggin' nose!"

"You know Hank, I think it's all a matter of what's wrong with kids today. It's not responsible adults like you and me that are doing this - it's those students. Just here for the summer or a weekend job. Making the scene, misusing toilet paper or using eight or nine squares when five squares would have been sufficient.

"And I'll tell you another thing. I think I know who's behind all this toilet paper disappearing so fast. And I'll let you in on a little secret - I also think he's been stealing whole rolls as well. I've done a little inventory on my own and I've counted the number of rolls under the sink and then the number of empty cardboard rolls in the garbage can at the end of each shift. And Hank, the numbers don't match up! I'm pretty sure I know who the culprit is, and when I catch the bum coming out of the washroom with a fresh roll in his bag, that guy's ass is mine! And I'm gonna shit-can his ass out of here! Because a person like that obviously isn't Too-Save Grocery material. And I'll tell him too!"

And then he stomped off towards the front probably so he could pump the check-out girls for any leads.

And I'm left standing there, a can of Libby's beans in one hand, a can of Green Giant miniature cob corn in the other, and I'm thinking - What the hell was that all about? TOILET PAPER? ...MISSING TOILET PAPER?... Possibly stolen toilet paper?

For a moment, I thought of running after Dave. "Hey, man - it's only toilet paper! Who gives a shit! We got packages of it two aisles over in the paper-goods department next to the napkins. Bundles of the stuff - twenty rolls in a jumbo package; twelve rolls in a mid-size; a minimum of four in the small size. And in the back, we have frickin' skids of it piled to the ceilings. It's not like there's any shortage in the store of this stuff. It's not like there's an expiry or best-before date on toilet paper. It's not like there's a lumber shortage in the world. Relax, man!

And that's just what I did. And Dave looked at me with a disappointed look on his face. "Hank, you just don't get it do you? It's not like this stuff grows on trees or something." And walks away.

That's when I started thinking, "Shit man, maybe Dave's right. What if someone is stealing toilet paper? They wouldn't be just stealing from the store. Or our employer. They would also be stealing from the rest of us. From their co-workers who rely on a guaranteed supply of toilet paper in the staff washroom. There are no customer washrooms in grocery stores so I wasn't concerned about them. Quite frankly, in this quadrant of the retail universe, we don't really give a shit about customers. People will always need groceries. So they'll always be there. Coming in to take advantange of their coupons and sales. Trying to save a quarter.

And then it started to really bother me. I mean, who the hell would steal toilet paper? Maybe it was slack-assed Henderson in produce. Or that oaf Jones in the deli section. No, couldn't be Jones. That guy don't even run his hands under the taps before he comes outta the can.

And then it occured to me - why am I even thinking about this? In fact, whatthafuk am I still even doing at this same crappy job that I got after my unemployment benefits ran out after I quit college two years ago? Is this what my life has come to - worrying about this kinda shit?

Coupla hours later, I'm on my break and having a well-deserved crap in the staff washroom. And notice that there's no toilet paper. Three feet away from me, taped to the wall at eye-level when you are in a sitting position is a a mimeographed piece of paper. Memo - It has come to the attention of store management that an excessive amount of toilet paper has been .....

Shit.

Like Alice Cooper on Acid

NOTE - this blog entry is not meant as an endorsement of Lysergic Acid 25. Sonny Drysdale Presents does not condone the use of any mind-altering substances.

So Alice Cooper is coming to town this Saturday. Which brings to mind my favorite Alice Cooper story. Which just happens to also be my favorite LSD story.

And it didn't happen to me. The story was told to me by the person it originally happened to but for reasons of privacy I will not use his real name. He is now a senior government official in the civil service or London City Council, I forget which one. Besides, if his mom happened to be reading this blog and found out, she'd be really pissed at him.

And for the sake of story-telling, I am going to take on the role of the protagonist and tell these true real-life events as a first-person narrative.

So here goes:

So it was like 1974 or so and Alice Cooper was playing at the old London Arena on Ridout Street and Horton. It was winter-time and me and my bud, "Howie" had just dropped some acid we had copped when we went downtown a few days before to cop our tickets. We headed down to the arena about 6:00 to stand in line for the no-reserved seating show. We wanted to get a good spot up front. The closer the better. Between us, we had all of Alice's records to that date. From Love it to Death to Killer to Schools Out and Billion Dollar Babies. But this would be the first time we had seen him in the flesh.

About 7:00, the line-up was getting longer and louder and more excited. And the acid started to kick in. We were partying with everyone in the line-up. Bottles were passed. Joints were passed. And despite the cold, we weren't feeling any pain and having such a good time that we were in no real hurry to get inside.

In fact, we were having such a good time that as the acid and everything else settled into our blood-streams and brain cells, we pretty well forgot why we were even there. I asked Howie - and he didn't know. But all around us, people were talking about 'Alice Cooper' and to be honest, at that point, we didn't even know who Alice Cooper was. We didn't even recognize the name. Just that it was vaguely familiar.

And all around us, people were talking about this weird Alice Cooper guy. How he stabbed babies with a knife. How he faked hanging himself. How he played with giant snakes. How he had a guillotine. And how he did all this depraved deranged awful stuff in front of large groups of people! And twice on Sunday!

Well, I don't have to tell you, that me and 'Howie' were getting pretty creeped out. The line started moving and as it slowly inched towards the front door, we realized that we didn't even know where we were headed. And then like a mesage from God, one of us had the common sense to ask the person in front of us where were we going - because we were so f**ked up that we'd forgotten what the point to even being there was.

"Why, we're all going to see Alice Cooper, of course!" was the reply. And then both 'Howie' and I both looked down for the first time in about an hour at the single piece of paper we had grasped in our hands. And realized that it was a ticket. And on that ticket was the name of the most notorious evil man we had ever heard of - ALICE COOPER.

Oh, shit!

And we totally panicked and freaked out and ran away. And ran and ran. Until we came down about an hour later and slowly realized that we had gotten so messed up on acid that we had just missed the concert of the year. Oh, shit.

These days, whenever I listen to the Love it to Death album, I have to lift the needle because the song Sunrise, and its chorus of "I got to get out of here/I've got to get OUT of HERE/I gotta get outta here, I gotta get outta here ..." just brings back too many bad memories.

"There is No Spoon ..."

I didn't feel like doing my independent Bible study last night so I watched The Matrix. Again. It was on TBS about three times last night. And I've only seen it about a dozen times before so what the heck.

Kinda the same thing as doing my Bible study anyways. All that stuff about "The One," and "The Prophecy" and what with that Neil guy being like a Savior just like Jesus who's come back to kick ass to all that Evil shit goin' down in the world and all that New Testament jazz.

Plus there's cooler fight scenes in the movie. And people look better. Let's be honest, even the Lord would benefit from having a pair of those cool-looking Matrix sunglasses. You know what I'm sayin'?

But there's another movie out right now with aspirations in the comparisons-to-Christ department. That's right. Superman Returns. Not just Superman: The New Franchise, Installment One, mind you, but Superman Returns. Geez, why didn't they just call it
Superman: The Second Coming, for that matter?

And what's with hiring an unknown again? Keanu Reeves is still young enough to play the part. Instead they hire some kid who's not even an actor. I doubt that Brandon Routh is even old enough to get a job on Smallville.

Anyways, when the movie was over, I still didn't feel like cracking open my Bible so I started thinking about how Neil and Jesus have a lot of similarities - both are rebels fighting the Establishment. Whereas, Superman is working for The Man. He's like a lackey for the Establishment.

But of course the big question is: Who is more cool - Superman, or Neil from The Matrix?

The following are a few observations:

Superman lives in Metropolis, a big city that looks like Manhattan in the 1950s. Neil has Zion, a place that looks like an underground version of Sudbury.

When Superman wants to be alone or take chicks to a "special" intimate spot, he has his Fortress of Solitude at the North Pole. Neil has a bunk over the radiator pipes.

Superman has dorky but normally harmless Jimmy Olson for a best friend. Neil has some little kid who hero-worships him and is always putting pressure on him to be 'The One' - "Or our asses are gonna be shredded by those electric squid thingies."

There is no Bizarro world Neil - unless you considerKeanu's character in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures.

As a baby, Superman arrived on Earth in a space-ship wrapped in indestructible swaddling clothes. Until he was rescued, Neil was a copper-top baby dreaming his life away in an isolation flotation tank.

Both can fly and have super-powered lungs, hearing and vision and even X-ray vision. But only Superman has the power of Super-ventriloquism.

Superman was adopted by kindly Ma and Pa Kent who loved him as their own son. Neil - or 'Mr. Anderson' if you will, to all appearances was raised by Mr. Television and babysat by Mr. Video Game.

In his off-work hours, Superman gets to hang out with Batman and the other superhero guys at the Justice League of America. Neil is stuck with the same buncha mopes he works with all day on a submarine. And even if they put on nicer clothes to go hang out in the Holodeck world, it's still the same group of stiffs - only with better haircuts and cooler threads.

............... so, on the face of things, it might seem that Superman has it a lot better than Neil. but also think of these ....

Neil's boss Morpheus worships the ground he walks on and has faith in him - and yet is like a cool father figure. But Perry White is always yelling things like "Don't blow it this time, Kent!"

Costume-wise - in the red and blue Spandex, Superman undeniably has a SuperDork thing going on. Neil, on the other hand, proves that you can never go wrong by emulating Johnny Cash's Man in Black look.

The raves in Zion are better than the ones they have in Metropolis.

Superman has that insufferable pesky Lois Lane for a girlfriend. Neil has Trinity, a hot babe who likes to dress in black leather, have hot steamy sex - and doesn't talk too much.

And the most important difference of all - Superman's secret identity is Clark Kent. Neil's secret identity is Superman.

Everybody Dance Now!

Welcome to my first video blog.

Got my new web-cam set up in this spiritual retreat known as 'My bedroom' and from here I'm gonna share with you my day, a laugh, maybe a tear. And I'm going to lip-synch like they do on 'American Idol' - and we're gonna dance.

Is this thing on? The camera is supposed to have a green light, right? Well, it must be on then. Cuul. Let's rock!

So like yesterday, I'm at the mall with my best friend Jenntizzle and we're sitting in the food court and this real cute guy walks by and Jenn yells out, "Hey, nice hair - who do you think you are, like Rex Morgan or something?" So's I say to her, "Hey, that guy's cool. He looked like he was about to come over, what did you do that for?" And Jenn's like all like "Oh no! I wanted him to come over. I loooovvve Rex Morgan. I just meant I thought he was cute."

So I sez to her, "Well, you know what? Most people don't share your enthusiasm for a 50-year-old comic strip. Most people don't like 'Rex Morgan.' Most people don't even read 'Rex Morgan!" And Jenn says, "So do you think he didn't know what I was talking about and I scared him off?" Well, geez - ya think?

But enough about that for right now. I feel like dancing. Let's kick it with some old school. I just love the Smashing Pumpkins, don't you? Sometimes when I'm talking real fast I just call them 'the Pumpkins' and everyone still knows who I'm talking about.

... That was fun. So anyways, get this, this morning my old man comes into the kitchen and he's all like tres pissed off and swearing that he's going to quit his subscription to the London Free Press because they're dropping almost all of his favorite comic strips - and get this - "Just when that new story-line in 'Rex Morgan' was beginning to yield gold!" I ask you, is that toooo freaky, or what?

Okay. Now I'm gonna make some funny faces into the camera. This is my little sister on Christmas morning when I told her that the puppy that Santa brought won't wake up. ... This is that time on April Fools when I asked my Mom if she knew where I left my birth control pills. .... And this is my Dad this morning when I picked up the paper after he'd thrown it on the floor, read the rest of the article and got to tell him that not only was 'Rex Morgan' being dropped from the daily comics (and replaced by 'Funky Winterbean' in a pathetic attempt to attract younger readers - ya cuz that's gonna do it) - but they're also dropping 'Blondie' and 'Marmaduke' and 'Peanuts' from the weekend funnies. I thought the old guy was gonna pop a blood vessel. He almost shit himself until I calmed him down with the news that they were keeping 'Family Circus.' Ya, that's really gonna want to make us kids pick up the stupid paper.

I'll miss 'Marmaduke.' I always liked the 'Dog-gone Funny' part of that strip. Dogs are like the Steve Urkels of the animal kingdom, you know what I mean? But I'll be damned if I can figure out why they left in that supposedly educational and totally incomprehensible half-page waste of space called 'Fizzik Rules.'

But you know what, I don't care if Rex's wife June is hot, as far as I'm concerned, 'Rex Morgan' sucks! So deal with it! And I point this out to my dad at exactly the wrong moment and now I'm grounded for being disrespectful. For being disrespectful to a frickin' comic strip! A strip so lame that the only people that like it are my weirdo best friend and my stupid, stupid parents. God, I can hardly wait till I'm old enough to move out of this Gwengontonamo prison.

Well, whatever. Cuz ya know what? It's all good.

Okay, I'm going to sing into the camera again. And I want everyone out there - I don't care if you are watching this in your dad's den or in your bedroom or at the library - to get up and shake it! How about some old-school dance? Everybody likes Madonna, right?