The Tale of a Boy and His Trumpet (Part II)

As we pick up the story from last week, I had just turned down an offer of $6800, sticking to my stubborn belief that I could easily get over $7000 once the buyers came out of hibernation following the impending winter.

Spring came, and so too did the low ball offers, each more insulting than the last.  "$5000?", "$4500?", "Straight across for my 1992 Toyota Soarer?", and so forth.  Then, my insurance came due, and I was forced to fork over another years worth of coverage, keeping my fingers crossed the whole time that a quick sale would yield almost the entire amount back in a refund.  Serious offers were few and far between and things were looking bleak, but I was still holding to my guns, nothing less than $7000.

Finally, around June, I made some head way.  A local lady rider was looking for a new mount, and her eye was squarely on my Daytona.  She came by, looked a couple times, and eventually we got down to brass tax.  Maybe it was the increasingly desperate feeling that was starting to ingrain itself in me as the months without a sale wore on, or perhaps it was (most likely) my easily-swayed-by-the-charms-of-a-lady negotiating skills, but for the first time ever I dropped below $7000 and accepted her offer of $6900.  She drafted up a bank order, put on her leathers, grabbed her helmet and came over to make the swap.

I was disappointed by my lack of resolve - having caved on my 'no-less-than-7000' stance - but I was $100 over what the guy from Calgary had offered in the fall, so I could still justify it to myself as having been worth the wait.  We filled out two official Bill of Sale forms from the DMV, one for her and one for me, she gave me the Money Order and I handed over the keys.  Done and done, right?

Not so much…

As is my way, I tried to go the extra mile.  I remembered that I had a litre of Synthetic Oil left over from my last change, as well as the remaining can of chain lube that I would no longer need, seeing as how the Griso ran on a shaft drive.  I offered to run up to my apartment and throw them in for free, as I no longer had a use for them.  She gladly accepted and off I went.  As if according to some twisted script, this gave her the seven minutes that she needed for the deal to fall through.  You see, despite having come to view the bike twice prior, I guess she hadn't noticed a couple of scrapes on the underside of the body, that were apparently a big enough deal (they looked like regular road wear to me…) that by the time I returned to hand over the oil and chain lube, she wanted to renegotiate the price to reflect this new discovery.

I hadn't been trying to hide anything, but I could also understand that when buying something that's new to you, you have an ideal worked out in your mind, and it can be disappointing when that ideal isn't met.  That said, I had also been having a bit of regret in the days since we had agreed on the price, that I had broken my vow not to go lower than $7000.  So, when she wanted to pay even less, and I was already hesitant to come down as low as I had, naturally, the deal fell through.  The money had been in my hands - literally - and I had let it slip away.   I've heard of killing people with kindness, but this was self-inflicted.  Kindness suicide.

Begrudgingly, the ad went back up.  By this time however, even the non-serious inquiries were starting to run dry.  Summer was well underway, and most of the people that were going to be riding bikes that year had already bought theirs.  With no real buyers in sight, I started to lower the price once more.  Each week, I would re-post the ad, for one, so that it would appear at the top of the list and not buried way down on page 18, and secondly - as I became more and more desperate - to lower the price by $100 each time.  I crossed the $7000 mark pretty quickly, and soon after that was well past the $6800 offered by the guy from Calgary.  By the time September was nearing it's conclusion, I was seriously considering an offer of $5700, seeing that my only other proposition was: "I have a diamond ring for man,if you interested trade."  That was honestly an email I received.  Verbatim.  I couldn't even make this stuff up.

The ad had reached $6100 by this point, and, much like the $7000 barrier, I was unwilling to dip below $6000 (although honestly, I would have probably shook hands with a buyer at $5900.)  In fact, things were starting to look dire enough that I was even listing the Moto Guzzi for sale as well, knowing that I would still be happy with the Triumph as my lone bike, and willing to accept the fate of selling whichever one I could first.  Finally, I received kind of a funny/odd reply on the Triumph ad.  A gentlemen from Prince George, British Columbia, claiming to have a wad of cash burning a hole in his pocket (not exactly the best bargaining strategy, but I wasn't complaining…) offered $6000 to take it off my hands.  At this point, I was relegated, in my mind, to waiting out another winter and hoping for better luck the following spring, so $6000 was like mana from the heavens.  Maybe I could still get $6500 or more the next spring, but at this point, I just wanted to get a deal done.

Happily, I accepted.

Then a few days later I got a second call.  A young guy that had just moved to town was interested, and was willing to pay the full $6100 for which it was currently listed at the time.  I told him that I was already dealing with the guy from BC, and even though I was under no obligation to sell to him, I thought it was only fair to give him a chance to put a down payment on the bike and make his offer on it official.  I couldn't be turning down offers at this point, unless I knew for sure the buyer was serious.  And cash in hand was the only way I could see setting the bike aside for anyone.  The newest guy understood, and I emailed back the BC buyer, giving him two weeks to get me a down payment, or I would have to consider the offer from the latest buyer.

Two weeks passed, with not so much as a response.  I would like to think that even if the down payment hadn't been possible, he still would have tried to convince me to hold it a little longer for him, or at least say something.  Since that obviously wasn't the case, I could only assume that he wasn't as serious about the sale as he had once seemed.  So, I started making my deal with the latest buyer from Edmonton.  He was a younger guy, who had been moved temporarily to Edmonton for a work contract that would take him till the end of 2012.  And even though summer was at least seven month away, he wanted to have a ride in place well in advance.

He didn't have anywhere to store the bike over the winter, so he was hoping I could keep it in my garage for him, and then he could make payments on it over the winter.  I was sceptical of such an arrangement at first, but aside from being pretty desperate at that point, I also couldn't see anyway he could be working to scam me, seeing as how I would have the bike in my possession until every last payment had cleared on it.  So, we agreed on a non-refundable down payment, and set the first payment date for the following week.

He never showed.

No phone call, no text, no email.  Nothing.  He just never showed, and I haven't heard from him since.  Maybe that's a good thing.  Maybe it shows what a headache it might have been dealing with him in the end.  Regardless, I was able to get over it fairly quickly, because the guy from BC emailed me back, claiming some crazy stuff had come up, which hadn't allowed him to get back to me sooner.  I found it slightly hard to believe, seeing that it takes all of two minutes to reply to an email, but regardless, if he had money, I was willing to listen to him.  He said he could come pick the bike up the upcoming Monday.  That sounded perfect, except for the fact that I would be gone to the Bahamas until after Christmas, leaving that Friday.

Sure, we could try to deal when I got back, but if history had taught me anything, it was that giving this guy any sort of time to consider other bikes was practically like tearing up the cheque myself.  Luckily, he really was serious about making the purchase, as he switched around his plans, and was on my door step two days later, money order in hand.  We loaded the bike up on his truck, and he rode away with her, a mere 18 hours before I boarded my flight.  Sure, it wasn't the $7300 I was expecting, or the $6900 and $6800 that I had been previously offered.  And, yes, counting the $500+ that I had to pay to insure it for another year, I probably lost $1300 by not taking the Calgary offer the previous fall.  But it's done.

That said, as much as I talked about the cold, hard numbers throughout this tale, the truth is, I don't think it was the money that frustrated me as I struggled to make a sale.  The problem is that I get too attached to my motorcycles, emotionally.  They're like the children that I'll never have.  Or at least, a very close pet.  And, it was like, after having loved them for years, suddenly I had to give one of them up.  Only, instead of having child protective services tear the infant out of my arms, crying as they were put in a van and I knew I would never seen them again, instead, it was like I had to stay next to them at the orphanage, as potential adoptive parents walked through the place, eyeing every child, and always stopping at mine just long enough to say 'ugh… no thank you, I'll take the albino one with the lazy eye instead.'

Sure, that's probably not how any of that actually works in real life (I have, perhaps, seen one too many made for TV movies in my lifetime…) There's probably court proceedings and lots of legal crap to go through before you actually have a child taken away.  And, I'm pretty sure no one just shows up at an orphanage like they would at the SPCA, look over the children like merchandise, and then walk away with their new child that day.  But, I'm standing by the analogy anyways.  I grew too attached to my motorcycles, and it pained me to have to part with any of them.  The salt in the already gaping wound was that once I determined that the only reasonable course of action was to let one of them go, not a single person seemed to place the same value on it that I did.  $6000? $7000?  Those were just arbitrary numbers.  The miles we had ridden together, the sights we had seen, you couldn't put a price on that.  Only I did.  And no one else seemed to be willing to pay it.

It was as if my experiences, and my memories were being devalued along with the bike.  Memories shouldn't be able to depreciate.  Luckily, on the sandy beaches of the Grand Bahamas, the pain is already starting to subside.  And, as I think back on my time with the Daytona, I realize that no one can take away the value of those past experiences.  That no one, not even me, could assign them a monetary value.  It was all in my head.  Simply a side effect resulting from my bitterness and frustration over not being able to sell the bike.  So, it is now no longer with sorrow, but rather with a new found sense of pride that I bid my little Trumpet farewell.  May she bring the same happiness to her new owner as she once brought to me.

The Tale of a Boy and His Trumpet (Part I)

I like to think of myself as a non-materialistic person.  I mean, I often sacrifice things like money and prestige for things like enjoyment and comfort.  Not exactly the mindset of a person to whom the almighty dollar dominates.  I've never put much care or pride into clothing choices or haircuts or even the straightness of my oh-so-yellow teeth - things which could all easily be improved with a dollar or two placed in the proper cash register.

And then there's motorcycles.  My pride, my joy, my one and only love.  My weakness.  As the astute follower of this blog that you undoubtedly are, you probably have me pegged as a car guy.  And I am.  Except for the fact that I drive a rusting '99 Chevrolet Cavalier, which is quickly closing in on three hundred thousand kilometres.  How could a self-proclaimed car guy possibly be willing to show his face behind the wheel of that?  Well, the honest truth is, I'd rather spend $5000 on a vacation than I would on having a slightly nicer car.

That, and I make up the difference with motorcycles.

As much as I love cars on paper, in the real world, I love motorcycles that much more.  The exhilaration is much more raw; the thrill much more palpable.  And most importantly, the very pinnacle of it is within my means.  I could never own the best the automotive world has to offer.  Not even close.  But motorcycles?  Maybe not the very best, but I can certainly come close.

And it was in that constant quest for perfection - for finding the best balance of performance, style, and affordability - that came to find me in possession of two motorcycles in the spring of 2010.  I had just been coming off five years of solely sportbike usage, starting with a Yamaha R6 in 2005, before eventually landing on, in my opinion, the best sportbike for use in the real world - the Triumph Daytona 675.  Now when I say real world, I mean, sure, it's not going to destroy the litre bikes in terms of raw power and on-paper performance numbers.  But, honestly, those bikes are pure over-kill, and while being two-tenths of a second faster might mean something on a racetrack, in the real world, on real streets, I'll take slightly less power, far less weight, much more usable (as in, not bouncing the tach needle off of the ceiling on the rev limiter before every shift) torque any day of the week.

Of course, at it's core, it's still a performance oriented machine, and with that comes a compromise: comfort.  Around town, for a couple hours, three or four times a week, it's fine.  But try putting down any sort of distance on the highway, and after a few hundred kilometres, your wrists, your back, and your hind quarters will be screaming for sweet relief.

Which is why my eye started to wander.  And the object of my desire was the sweet middle ground that is the Naked Standard.  In it's essence, the theory is to give you a much more upright (read: comfortable) riding position, while not sacrificing too much of the performance that you would get in a sportbike.  This, combined with the poor American economy, lead me to buy the Moto Guzzi Griso 8V.  A bike I never thought I could afford (even second hand) and oozing with style and sexiness, while still maintaining a good chuck of power and performance.  The aforementioned dip in the American economy opened the door to the possibility, and I sprung at the first chance I got.

This, of course, lead to the favorable dilemma of having two motorcycles parked in my garage.  I ignored sound logic, keeping both for the summer of 2010 - riding whichever one happened to strike my fancy that particular day.  In the end, however, I only hampered myself.  When I finally gave into the cold hard truth that I was a fool to own two motorcycles, especially in a climate such as Edmonton's - that I was living in an unrealistic fairy tale - by the time I finally got around to offering up the Triumph for sale, our economy had, for the most part, caught up with the Americans. Suddenly,  having frivolous toys, such as motorcycles, was no longer as commonplace for the casual rider.  Which was exactly the sort of person to whom I would be hoping to attract.

In the fall of 2010, I listed the Triumph once, just to see what the interest was, fully expecting my best chance for a sale to come during the following spring.  Almost within hours, I was on the phone with my first potential buyer.  A guy from Calgary that had convinced his brand new wife to allow him to buy a treat for himself once they returned from their honeymoon.  In this case, the treat he was after was his own sportbike.  My sportbike.  At the time, I was listing for $7800, expecting $7300, and not willing to go lower than $7000.  After going back and forth for a couple days, his final offer was given: $6800, no questions asked.  No inspection, cash in hand, he'd drive up, load it on the truck, toss me the cash, done and done.  At this point, I was unwilling to consider less than $7000, and I had nothing to hide if he wanted to have the bike inspected.  It was in flawless condition, and an inspection would only come out in my favour.

So, even though he made a strong case, claiming I would be losing the equivalent money by keeping it insured and depreciating in value as it sat over the winter, I stuck to my guns.  This was my first offer - mere hours after I had listed it, no less - and knowing that 80% of buyers don't even start looking until the spring, I figured I could easily get the $7300 I was hoping for once the snow had come and gone.  So, I took the ad down, covered the bike and parked it out of the way.  Unfortunately, I couldn't have been more wrong, and the Calgary buyer had been right on all counts.

(to be continued...)

The Biggest Humblebrag of Them All

You know what a Humblebrag is, right?

Basically, it's when someone is trying to be self-deprecating, or poke fun at themselves, or suggest that they're not worthy of an accolade, but in the process of doing so, they're still kind of bragging about it.  For example, if I won the 'Sexiest Man Alive' award in People magazine (don't laugh… it could happen. I'm a late bloomer) then I would say "Sexiest Man Alive?  Did the million other better looking men than me all die in a horrible earthquake that I didn't hear about?"

In essence, I would be saying "Look, ya, I got this award, but I want you to know that it hasn't gone to my head."  That way, if someone says to me "You're not the Sexiest Man Alive, not even close…" then I can say "Hey, I know, I already said the same thing."  It's almost like beating your detractors to the punch.  They can't hurt you if you've already said it first.  But, more importantly, the Humblebrag is, in it's very essence, a way to point out something that you actually really want people to know about, but don't want them to think that you want them to know about.  You're bragging, but you don't want them to know that you're bragging.  You want it to be subliminal. While they're distracted by the self-deprication, maybe the brag will slip in, unnoticed.

But you can't say something like "How come guys keep hitting on me? I don't even have any make up on today…" without basically saying "I look really good.  Even without any make up on."  The latter being a straight up Brag, and the former being a Humblebrag.  They're both essentially saying the same thing, but the Humblebrag is trying much harder to disguise itself.

I doubt I'm telling you anything you don't already know. Informing you of such wasn't the intent of this post.  But rather, it was to point out what I consider to be the most blatant Humblebrag of them all.  And I'm not talking about some egotistical actor or supermodel here.  I'm talking about something that we all have to deal with in our day-to-day lives.  From our friends.  Our families.  Maybe even the person that we see when we look into the mirror in the morning.

I am, of course, referring to the 'Sent from my iPhone' email signature.

Tell me that this doesn't have Humblebrag written all over it.  I mean, why else would it be there?  Does it serve any purpose other than "Hey, look! I've got an iPhone!!"  But people assume that it is subtle enough that they're not really bragging.  It's almost like they're thinking, "Well, it automatically adds it to the end of my emails, nothing I can do about that..." Guess what?  It's a very easy thing to turn off.  But you don't want it turned off, do you?  If you did, you would.  But, because it's a default setting when the phone arrives, you think that you're getting away with it.  Well, I'm here to tell you: you're not.

Look. I get it.  You shelled out extra money for the iPhone, and you want people to know about it.  But guess what?  It's not 2007.  It's not a product exclusive to the States, and you didn't buy an unlocked one off eBay, import it, slip in a Rogers Sim card and become one of the few people in town that has one.  Everyone and their grandmother has an iPhone these days, and you're not exactly in the consumer elite here.  'Sent from my iPhone' has about as much wow-factor as bragging about having had steak for supper.  Sure, steak is good, but it's not like you just ate unicorn meat or anything.  Anyone can grab a slab from Safeway and throw it on the grill.

Don't misinterpret me here.  I'm not anti-iPhone.  I have one.  I like it.  This isn't an Android vs iOS debate.  I'm not saying you're an idiot for having one.  You're not.  To each their own.  But the thing I can do without is all the emails tagged with the 'Sent from my iPhone' signature.  It's easy enough to turn off.  It doesn't benefit you in any way to have it there.  So knock it off already.

Thank you.
.

Generation Next

I worry about the future.  I really do.

No, not fossil fuels running out, or global warming melting the polar ice caps, and drowning all of our sorry asses.  We're a pretty smart and resilient race, and I'm sure when push comes to shove, we'll figure something out if and when those problems arise.  I mean, I saw Waterworld, I'm pretty sure we'll be fine.  No, I'm more worried about the pussification of America.  The upcoming generation of coddled, whiny, self important, entitled little shits that will be running the show in twenty years.

Now, I'm not a sociologist.  I never will be.  I don't have any charts or research or diagrams to back any of this up.  But what I do have is common sense.  And using that common sense, I am often completely baffled by the stupidity of our society.

We'll begin with sports.

As much as I consider myself a basketball lifer, the truth is, prior to age 12, I hadn't really ever even so much as dribbled a ball.  Like most young kids, I started in soccer.  And it makes sense: any kid can kick a ball, but watching young children try to even graze the bottom of the mesh when shooting a basketball is an exercise in futility.  So, soccer is was.  And of everything I can remember about playing soccer - every single memory - it is that I loved it.

I'll tell you one thing.  I don't remember if we won, I don't remember if we lost.  I couldn't tell you if the team I played for was any good or if we were the worst in the league.  What I can tell you is this:  We kept score.

And guess what?  I didn't ruin me.  I didn't need a participation trophy to feel good about myself.  In fact, I'll go one further, and suggest that a little disappointment in life has made me a much better person in the long run.

Sorry to break it to you folks, but life is disappointing.  Sure, the good eventually outweighs the bad, when it's all said and done.  But along the way there will be some bumps and bruises.  The girl you ask to the dance might say no, the promotion you worked so hard for might go to the other guy, your dog might be hit by a car, and… you might not win every soccer game when you're seven.

That's life, ladies and gentleman.  No one gets through it unscathed.

And I understand the argument, that kids don't need to learn about disappointment so young, that they should get to just be kids for a few years before we crush their gentle spirits with the weight of the world.  Hell, I could even be sold on it.  But that's not really the issue here.  The issue is that we're making an issue out of it in the first place.

It feels like we're taking non-issues and making them into issues.  Whatever happened to 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'?  Is there an instance that I'm not aware of, where some massive overly-competitive kid killed himself because his pee wee soccer team lost a meaningless game?  I doubt it.  This feels more like people that have run out of real problems to solve, coming up with ways to prevent problems on the off-chance that they might arise in the future.  Like, 'well, no one with a peanut allergy has ever died on a plane because the people next to them were eating peanuts, but we should get rid of peanuts on planes anyways, just to be safe.'

Just to be safe.  That's the attitude that's ruining our society.  Everyone is so afraid of being sued, or being labelled irresponsible, that we're starting to try and remove any hint of danger from our children's lives as well as our own.  Don't get me wrong.  As we grow in our abilities and knowledge, we start to learn that some of the old ways were down right dangerous and stupid.  Sure, let's evolve and correct those mistakes, or improve things where we are able.  I'm all for seat belts in cars.  But how about a little common sense, too?  I mean, Pagani is going to be unable to bring the new Huayra to America because their airbags do not have sensors to make them deploy at lesser force based on the weight of the passenger.  Basically, Pagani is planning to sell eight cars a year in America, but  won't be able to now, because their car isn't safe for kids.  What idiot is driving his kids to school in a Pagani?

They built the Zonda from 1999 to 2011, and over those 12 years, made less than 125 total.  I think it's safe to say that a little common sense could go a long ways here.  Ford should be required to have this airbag system in their car, sure, children will be riding in Focuses for years to come.  But a Pagani?  Seriously?  We can't use a little common sense and make one little exception?  You think if a guy crashes his Huayra doing 180 mph on the freeway, with his 12 year old son in the front seat, that anyone is going to look to the government and say 'well, rules are rules, that car needed to have airbags that deployed with less pressure, and that's the reason we're facing this horrible tragedy right now, because you granted them an exemption'? No, people are going to look to the father that was stupid enough to take his kid out in his $1.1 million super car.  But, on the off chance that some clever lawyer somewhere might figure out 'well, we could always just sue the government…' they have to preemptively cover their ass, and just deny the car's approval in the first place.

This is the lowest common denominator bullshit that I can't stand.  Just because someone, somewhere might be stupid enough, doesn't mean we have to make a rule that all people are required to do things a certain way.  Can't we have the decency to judge it on a case by case basis?  I mean, if it's 3 am and the street is empty, and I can see that no cars are coming for miles in either direction, does it really matter if I do a rolling stop at an intersection? Or, heaven forbid, proceed cautiously through a red light that won't change for another 5 minutes... "But, Travis, if I let you off without a ticket, then the next guy will think he can do the same thing, and will burn through the intersection doing 60, during rush hour, and t-bone a mini van full of children…"

Really, I'm being lumped in with that idiot?  Instead of a little common sense, we all get lumped in together, and it becomes the rule - black and white with no grey area - rather than the spirit of the law.  And I'm bitching about this, when I've never even been given a single ticket in my life.  But, there is no case-by-case basis.  People are getting these stupid tickets all the time, because we have to do everything based on the lowest common denominator.  Whatever the stupidest person on the planet might do, we have to be prepared for.  And it ruins it for the rest of us.

And that's the reason that we don't keep score in kids sports anymore, the reason everyone gets a participation trophy and no one gets an MVP trophy.  The reason we have to say 'Happy Holidays' rather than 'Merry Christmas'.  The reason I can't enjoy a bag of peanuts at an Eskimos game.  All of it, complete bullshit, pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Look, I get it.  No one wants to see their kid in pain.  Whether it be physical or emotional.  If your kid is crying because he didn't win MVP, but Tommy Smith did, I can see why you might be angry that they set the stage for such disappointment to transpire.  But what about the kid that cries for 20 minutes because they didn't win MVP, and then wipes away the tears and works his ass off all summer to improve and then wins the award the next season?  Nah, not worth it.  How about we remove all MVP awards and give everyone a participation trophy, instead?  Sure, no kid will be sad, but without the lows, there are no highs either.  No one will feel the pain of losing, everyone will feel equal, but no one will be exceptional.  And is it just me, but what's wrong with having a few people that are exceptional?

Without reward there is no disappointment, but no feeling of achievement either.  Without a little danger no one gets hurt, but everything is a little less fun.  And there are less mistakes to learn from.  Science proves that lead paint is bad?  Good, stop lathering it on action figures and then selling them to toddlers.  Common sense.  Merry-Go-Rounds might result in one in every fifty thousand kids falling off and twisting an ankle?  Quickly, have them removed from every playground in the country!  Panicked over-reaction.

And the more we panic and over react, the more we turn the next generation of kids into complete pussies.  No wonder that Twilight stuff is so popular.

The Comments Section

Wait a minute...this is a great post. Hit all the things I like. Shout out, 'That's what she said joke', real issue, good humor, disclaimer. But, this isn't in anyway directed at me for sending you all those great 'the best of Patrick Stewart' clips is it? "

- R.Sneep          

This is a solid comment.  One easily deserving of a response.  And, as much as the man who posted it tried his best to hint that I should indeed do just that, I held back.  Why, you ask?  Well, because I realized right away that this one deserved a whole blog, and not just a quick one-liner.  You see, despite R. Sneep's best intentions, this comment segued perfectly into the next random musing on my list:

Comments and the jerks that post them.

First of all, let me be clear, I know what the intention and tone of this comment was meant to be.  He wasn't trying to be insulting, and the little bit in which he was, was purely for comedic effect.  In fact, most of what he said was lavishing me with praise, and there's nothing wrong with that at all.  On top of it all, the Patrick Stewart bit was solid.  So pretty good comment, right?  Well, for the most part, yes.  But, you can see how a lesser, more insecure man might have misread it, right?  The shear surprise that someone felt at actually having read a good blog post for once. "Wait a minute… this isn't crap... it's not even terrible… this is the last thing that I've come to expect when I sit down to read Travis' blog."

I took it in the spirit in which it was intended, because I appreciate it and because I know Randy goes out of his way to leave comments on this blog.  He knows how much I like it when people leave comments, so he does just that.  But the truth is, I don't just like getting comments, I love getting them.  There, I said it.  I know I should be playing it cool.  Like, whatever... if people want to comment, I'm not going to stop them.  But, there's no point in hiding it: I love 'em.  And I don't care who knows.

That's why I have to tread lightly here.  Because I don't want to scare anyone away from ever commenting on my blog.  But at the same time, I see so much crap on YouTube and Twitter, that I still have to call these jerks out.

When I first started out doing this, comments were the end-all-be-all for me.  The gauge of how well I was doing.  The litmus test.  If a blog post got two comments, and another post got none, that was like having scientific proof that the post with more was of a better quality that the post with less, regardless of whether I agreed or not.  If a string of posts that I was doing - whether it be Man Crushes, Dunk Contests or Schwarzenegger Films - didn't get a comment after a few posts in a row, I started to wonder if that topic wasn't interesting to people, and if I should just abandon the list mid-stream and move on to something that seemed to resonate more.  I mean, if I was posting a twenty five part list, one entry at a time, once a week, and no one was digging it five posts in, should I really be doing another twenty and losing what little readership I already had over the course of those next few months?  Luckily, right as I was feeling this, without fail, a post would get a few comments, and my insecurities were put to rest.

That said, for all the stock I used to put into the comments section, over time I've come to realize that it doesn't really mean anything at all.  I'm not a great writer, but some of the posts I've been most proud of and would consider 'good writing' have resulted in nary a comment, whereas posts that I typed up in a hurry and put little-to-no thought or effort into have spawned a back-and-forth of 3 or 4 comments.  So, obviously it's less a matter of the quality of a post, but rather the way a person reacts to the subject matter in question.  I can wax poetic all I want about Tegan and Sara, but at the end of the day, nothing I write is going to leave Randy just itching to get his two cents in.  But if I put Predator anywhere but first on my list of Arnold movies, no matter how shabbily I do the write up, Randy is going to have to comment.

That's just the way it is.  And, after reading a few other blogs, I came to realize something:  Everyone that writes a blog wishes that everyone that read it would leave a comment on every post.  And, much like me, not too many people are above begging for it.  I am definitely not alone in my shameless pleas for comments, but I am also not alone in having those pleas fall on deaf ears.  Which is fine.  I don't go around commenting on very many things either.  Me complaining about a lack thereof on my own blog is akin to the pot making racist remarks about the kettle.  Or something like that.  I may have been sick that day in school where they explained the meaning behind that expression.

The point being, I sort of came to accept that I was never going to get a whole lot of comments, and toned down the not-so-subtle pleas for them within the body of my posts.  Don't get me wrong, I still await them with bated breath each week (so definitely keep 'em coming, those that do),  it's just that I no longer cater to it as much as I once did.  For example, I passed on doing another contest to celebrate the blog's anniversary this year.  That whole thing had sort of been a thinly-veiled attempt to see just how many people were actually giving the blog a look-see.  So, aside from never having seen Randy actually wear his prize, and thus losing the motivation to put that same work into it again this year, the truth is that I just don't need that sort of validation any more.  Well, that, and I have a small fear that perhaps I would discover that the five readers I had at this time last year, might have been whittled down to only two…

Which brings me to the issue at hand.  I know, it's been done to death, but what's the deal with the people that comment on the internet.  I mean, I understand that when given the cloak of anonymity, some people turn to complete dicks and post some pretty horrible things.  Sometimes just because they like being troublemakers and stirring the pot, and other times, because perhaps it's socially unacceptable to say the things that they want to say, and doing so in the comments section of a YouTube video is the only chance they ever get to feel the vindication of spewing their bile.

I guess, the thing is, that I was raised under the 'if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all' school of thought.  So, when I see a video on YouTube that stirs up feelings of anger, sure I might think it, but I have never felt the need to debate it in the comments section.  But obviously a lot of people do.  And I'm fine with that, actually.  It's good to have opinions, and even express them from time to time.  I'm more concerned with the people that don't have anything to say, but still take the time to say it anyways.

For example, I love me some Bill Simmons.  If you know anything about Mr. Simmons, it's that he is famous for three things: a love of all things Boston, lacing his sports commentary with an overabundance of clever pop culture references, and for not be shy about how high his word count gets.  But, more than any of those things, from day one, he has been 'The Sports Guy'.  Basically, a fan that's good at writing.  He never pretends to be an unbiased journalist.  He wears his opinions on his sleeve, and writes from the perspective of a sports fan rather than under the guise of being a sports expert.  He pretty much did for blogging what Quentin Tarantino did for Indie Films.  Much like everyone with a film degree has been trying to make the next Pulp Fiction for the last 15 years, everyone with a keyboard has been trying to give their Simmon's-esque opinion on sports.

Obviously, there's a reason Simmons gets paid to write, and there's a reason why most of these other guys live in their parent's basement and write for Tumblr instead of ESPN.  He's just better at it.  The great thing about sports is that every fan has their own unique opinion, and often times fans can be very passionate about that opinion.  There is no right and wrong, just differing opinions.  And one of the best parts about being a sports fan is debating that opinion.  So, for better or for worse, the way Simmons makes his articles feel like he's having a sports discussion with his buddy at a bar, makes a few too many guys feel like they are that buddy, and are therefore entitled to give their opinions back to him.

Which is fine.  So long as you write it back in an equally clever and insightful way.  I mean, Simmons frequently devotes entire articles to answering questions from his 'Mail Bag', so I'm sure he'd never want the fan interaction to stop.  But I bet he wishes it was sometimes a little more civil.  Of course, as we all know, on the internet, that is more than a little bit too much to ask of some people.

So my question isn't 'why do people feel the need to comment on Simmons articles', but rather 'why do people need to feel the need when they have nothing of merit to say'?

I mean, you don't always have to agree with Simmons, but saying "Hey, I've watched Kobe Bryant for the past 15 years, and he's one of the great players of our generation, regardless what you think of him or the team he plays for.  I think you're a little too blinded with hatred because you're a Boston fan." is a much different thing than saying "You suck Simmons, I hope Kobe runs into you in a dark alley one night and kills your wife and children while you watch helplessly from under the car that he hit you with…"  And if you think that's a horrible overexaggeration, I think you'd be surprised.

Look, I'm not saying everyone needs to brown-nose him all the time, but my question is, if you hate Simmons so much, why are you reading his columns?  Why are you even finishing the article if you're so upset with what he's saying?  Why aren't you stopping after the first paragraph, thinking to yourself 'this isn't for me', and moving on to something else?  And worst of all, why are you wasting your time writing him a hateful comment?

Obviously, this doesn't just apply to Simmons.  It's a microcosm for the entire internet.  If you hate Justin Bieber, why are you burning so many calories by going onto every YouTube video comments section you can find and calling him a 'fag'?  Shouldn't you be looking for music you do like, instead?  When a person you're following on Twitter uses a 'their' instead of a 'there', and misses a comma, why are you responding with a 'Hey, dumbass, where did you go to school?'  If you actually think they're a dumbass, why are you following their account in the first place?  And worse, if you actually idolize them, what do you hope to achieve by pointing out their mistakes? 

I've seen far too many times when someone has had to follow up a tweet several minutes later to point out that yes, they know they made a grammatical mistake, or  at the very least lambast all the people that pointed it out to them.  And it boggles my mind.  I've never once felt the need to correct a person on their grammar.  Especially on the internet.  I know what they were trying to say, and I know, if it was a published work for something important, they would have seen their mistake and fixed it before clicking 'post'.  The best case scenario I can see for pointing out a mistake is that the person you're following thinks to themselves 'geez, all these people totally missed the actually point of that tweet and instead fixated on that one little error… why do I even bother doing this?'

Well, congratulations, now the person whose life you're interested in knowing about has just walked away from their computer.  What did you think was going to happen?  "Oh, you know who seems like a lot of fun?  That guy on twitter that pointed out that I said 'your' instead of 'you're'.  I should fly him out to LA so we can hang out sometime and grow this online friendship into something real!"

I guess what I'm saying is, I just don't know what these people are getting out of it.  A feeling of superiority?  "Hey, Simmons, that article sucked, I write way better than that."  Really?  Then how come he's been getting paid to do it for over ten years, and the only time that something you wrote was ever published was when you posted an ad for your used law mower in the Penny Saver?  If you point out to an NBA player that his tweet was riddled with spelling and grammar errors, do you feel better than him, because you're that much smarter?  I mean, it's no secret that NBA players aren't always the smartest dudes in the room.  But they still make millions, and you don't.  Making them feel like shitty spellers hurts their pride for all of 2.5 seconds.  You might be better at grammar than LeBron James, but you're still going to make $30K this year, and he'll have made that in the 5 seconds that it took him to forget about your comment.  Should you really feel an air of superiority about that?

I guess my whole point is, why do people waste so much time worrying about things that have absolutely no affect on their lives.  The only people that should care about gay marriage are gay people.  If you've never even met a gay person in your life, why do you care if they get married or not?  You can have an opinion on it, sure.  But that's no reason to start holding protests and spewing hatred on the internet.  If more people would stop worrying about the things that didn't affect them, I honestly think this world would be a much better place.  That said, that could be a whole other blog post, and I've already gone much to long on this one already.

I'll simply end by saying, please… just leave me a comment already.

YouTube Obliviousness

I had originally started this last batch of blog posts under the theme of 'Getting Old'.  My intention being that I would give my thoughts on a new trend, lament about how I didn't relate to it, and eventually come to the sad realization that this was definitive proof that I had, in fact, gotten old.  I thought the idea behind this would be an endless well of ideas and would have enough legs to fill this blog with content for months to come.

As it turns out, I was wrong.

Not in a bad way.  It's not that I've run out of things to say.  Rather, the topics that I came up with to discuss, no longer have any direct correlation with my advancing age.  I'm hoping that this means that maybe I'm not that old after all, but either way, the topics are now more like random musings than they are any sort of comparison between me and the younger generation.  And therefore, they don't really fit under the heading of 'Am I Getting Old?'

Depending on how you felt about the last few posts, this may be a good thing.  More of the same.  Although, if you weren't digging them, and you're longing for the days of Top 10 lists and dunk contest critiques, then perhaps this is not the good news that I was hoping it would be.  Regardless, the initial brainstorm for ideas yielded at least 16 topics for discussion, two of which have already been covered, and of the remaining ones, I would say at least half are of a usable, discussable nature.  And, although it often pains me to give him his ever-coveted shout outs on this here blog, I would be remiss if I didn't offer full credit to one Randy Sneep, for not only getting the ball rolling on the brainstorm in question, but also for providing ten of the initial ideas.

Even if his are the ones of such low quality that they are considered completely unusable.

Basically, that whole intro was just a really long way of saying that none of this ties in with age, so I've dropped that from the title of each post.  Which brings us to:

YouTube Recommendation Selectivity (or lack thereof).

This is one that I've struggled with for a while.  Randy can attest.  And I also feel the need to tread softly here, less the individuals that I'm singling out in my mind, happen to stumble across this.

I get shown a lot of YouTube videos that I could care less about.  And often,  I can tell right away that I'm not going to like them.  But how do you say that to the person standing next to you that told you to come watch this with such excitement in their voice.  Sure, if they just send a link via email, it's easy to do a quick "nah" and skip over it.  But if they're actually there in person, what do you do?

Well, from my vast experience in the field, it always boils down to one thing: length.  Yes, that's what she said.  Very good.  But more to the point, if a video is two minutes or under, unless it's completely uncomfortable (horrible sports injuries, puppies being tortured, your parent's sex tape, etc…) chances are that two minutes of anything is something you can suffer through. Two to five minutes is sort of a grey area, depending on your level of patience.  And anything over five minutes is when you have to start thinking of ways to get out of it.

But my point is, why should you need to 'get out of it' in the first place?  How can someone be so blind to the complete lack of entertainment value in their recommendation.  And more so, how could they take so little pride in that which they are recommending.  Again, a ten second clip is different from a tedious ten minute student film, so a certain amount of leniency can be given before you start to judge too harshly.  I'll also give a moderate pass to something that might be near and dear to someones heart, that I just don't have the same emotional attachment to.

But some things fall decidedly outside of that window of grace, and I simply just can't understand the mindset behind it.  Personally, I'm always very hesitant to recommend anything unless I stand fully and completely behind it.  I mean, how hard is it to take a good and objective look at something, and then determine whether someone else might enjoy it or not?  It's pretty much common sense that just because you liked something, that doesn't mean everyone else will, right?

Sure, there's a whole other breed of people that get off on showing people stuff that they'll hate.  Like tricking an innocent, church-going, choir boy into watching The Human Centipede, and then laughing as they watch him squirm.  But I'm not talking about those people.  I'm talking about the oblivious.  The people that honestly think you'll enjoy something, and then you sit there the whole time wondering "does this person even know me?" 

I like to think that I'm pretty good at making recommendations with this basic courtesy in mind. If I have even the slightest bit of doubt, I'm probably not sticking my neck out.  And if I am, then your ass is getting a lengthy disclaimer and ample opportunity to politely decline at any point.  I also like to think that I have enough awareness that I can tell, pretty quickly, whether or not the person is getting any enjoyment out of the recommendation.  And if they're not, I don't hesitate to pull the plug.

So, how is it then, that I've sat stone-faced through entire fifteen minute long videos, unable to come up with a decent excuse to leave without insulting the person, purposely giving off the "I'm not enjoying this at all" vibe, and yet have still not felt even a hint of regret from the other person when it's all said and done?  Are they really that oblivious?  I guess so, because a few days later, there's another video queued up, and this time, they're going to take it up a notch.  Not only am I going to watch the video, but they are going to watch me, watch the video.  Yes, this has happened.  Yes, it is as awkward as it sounds.  There's nothing worse than knowing that your every reaction is being observed and judged by another person.  Even if it's something that you're actually enjoying, it's still a very hard way to watch anything.  But doubly so if it's something that you're not enjoying at all.

Then there's that moment of dread, when you look down and catch a glimpse at how much time is left in the video, and realize that it's only just started and yet there's still another ten minutes of this crap to go.  Combine that with the feeling of awkwardness as the person is watching your face, rather than the screen, taking in every reaction and emotion that you display, and chances are, you just want it to end.

So, you're left with a choice:

Choice one: try to fake enjoyment.  Laugh at the jokes, even if they're not funny (especially if they're not funny), force a smile, and, if you're feeling particularly low on pride, you can even applaud a little bit - take that pandering up a notch, son.  I've done it (not the applauding part, but close enough) and it's rough.  You feel shame.  You hate yourself for being such a phony.  And worst of all, occasionally you get caught having the wrong 'fake' reaction to a scene.  Let me tell you, there are few things worse than laughing at something that wasn't meant to be funny.

Choice two: watch the video honestly.  If it's not funny, don't laugh.  If it doesn't make you feel good, don't smile.  This is as awkward as it gets, but you're banking on the hope that it's just as awkward for the other person, and maybe they'll be more selective with the types of things that they choose to share with you in the future.  I've tried this one a few times... with minimal success.

Choice three: grow a pair.  Just say what you're thinking.  If you know it's not up your alley, let your voice be heard.  You'll save yourself the trouble of having to actually see the video in question, but you will undoubtedly hurt the other person's feelings in the process.  I have nothing but respect and jealousy for those that do this, but alas, I simply don't have the heart to do it myself.

Before I leave it at that, I must of course, address my natural paranoia: that perhaps I have been too cavalier with video recommendations myself.  That right now, you're practically spitting out your coffee and yelling "Are you kidding me?  You show me the worst videos all the time!"  So, it is with this in mind, that I offer a heartfelt apology to anyone that has sat through a video recommendation of mine and thought "I would rather have done anything with those last seven minutes then watch that…"  My hope, especially with videos posted to this blog, is that if you're not digging it, you'll turn it off.  But if not, know that I am sorry, and that I understand your pain more than you could ever know.

Am I Getting Old? (Part 2: Internet Memes)

In my last post, I ended with a sentiment along the lines of 'I never thought I would be the old guy that didn't understand what the kids were into at the time.'  And that's true.  I always thought I would be able to keep up with the trends.  Even if I didn't like them, I would still understand them, and accept their existence. 

Sure, there will always be a generational gap.  I understand why my grandmother has literally never even touched the keyboard on a computer before.  She was 80 by the time computers became common in most homes.  And fifteen years later, she still has no use for eBay or YouTube or even Email.  And I understand that when I'm 80, I too may have no interest in what ever the latest technology du jour happens to be.

But not having an interest in something is different than not understanding it.  I'm sure my grandmother understands and accepts that computers make life easier for most people, even if she has no interest in them herself.  That said, I doubt very much that she understands the appeal of techno music.  To her, I can only imagine she thinks it's some kind of joke that people actually claim to enjoy that kind of… noise.

That's why I always thought I would be immune to the condition that seems to come with age, wherein people seem to simply stop understanding the new trends.  Even though I don't care for techno music - at all - I can still see how it might appeal to those that do.  My lack of interest doesn't affect my ability to understand and accept it.  And since I've always been able to separate the two, I thought maybe this would carry on throughout my entire life.  That maybe I would be the exception.  That I would never utter something like "that's not rap music, that's crap music…"

But that dream might be dead.  I may have crossed that threshold.  I might be through the looking glass here, and there might be no turning back.  And it's all because I don't understand planking. 

Or owling. 

Or coning.

And I'm not sure if that makes me old or not.  Is it true, do you just reach a certain age, or point in your life when the stuff that the younger generation does just confuses you?  Or is planking just inherently stupid, and as a sane human being I have every right to not understand it?

Did 65 year old people in the 70's simply not understand bell bottoms, the same way 65 year old people in the 80's didn't understand rap music, the same way 65 year old people in 90's didn't understand Beavis and Butt-head?  Or did they understand it, and just chose not to participate in it?

Actually, I think that might be what it is.  The more I think about it, it's not so much that I don't understand planking, as it is that I just have no desire to participate in it.

If I may give an example, from my youth:  As teenagers (and maybe even into our early 20's) my friends and I invented a new activity that we called 'carting'.  And basically, all it was, was getting a pick up truck, driving to a grocery store, throwing a shopping cart in the box, waiting until it was dark, and then tying a rope from the bumper of the truck to the handle of the cart and dragging it down the highway.  I know.  There's no need to make that face at me.  I know.  It was pretty redneck, small town Alberta, and not exactly the exploits of future Nobel Prize winners.  But we had a blast doing it. 

I guess, the appeal was in the stupidity.  The childlike sense of watching a shower of sparks flying off of a shopping cart was in much the same way a kid might be fascinated by putting one end of a stick in camp fire and then pulling it out and waving it around.  Or maybe it was the small dose of excitement we got knowing we could get in trouble if we were seen by the police, or really any other cars at all.  The danger of getting away with something, if you will.

I don't know what it was that made us think that it was so fun, but when you're having fun, you don't often stop to question why.

And I guess, if I had never done it, and heard about carting for the first time today, as the latest internet meme, I would regard it in the same way I currently regard planking.  I would shake my head and weep for the future.  But, if I took such pleasure at some point in my life, by doing something just as stupid as planking, then I can't really say I don't understand it.  Perhaps it has the same appeal to today's youth that a bunch of sparks on a highway once had for me.  Maybe the stupidity of the whole thing is the appeal.

But that doesn't change the fact that my old ass still wants nothing to do with it.

Am I Getting Old? (Part 1: Texting)

I used to be very anti-cell phone. All I ever heard for years is how I needed one, and how I was inconveniencing my friends by refusing to get one.

If my friends wanted to call me when I wasn't home, they could either leave a voice mail on my land line, or they could call me at work. Not exactly the grave injustice they made it out to be, as I was still very much reachable.

But, as much as they lamented it, I loved having the feeling that I couldn't be reached every second of every day. And thus, I remained without a cell phone for the first 28 years of my life.

Then the iPhone hit, and - as the tag line suggested - it changed everything. I bought an iPod Touch in early 2008, and although it had most of what I needed, when the iPhone finally made it's long-awaited debut in Canada five months later, I couldn't help but think 'man, I could have all the functions of the Touch, without needing a wi-fi connection all the time to do it...' Plus, back then the Phone had features that the Touch didn't.  Like Bluetooth, and GPS, and a camera.  I was able to resist for a year, but eventually I gave in to temptation.

This is how I was introduced into the world of texting.

Prior to this, my lone experience with texting people had been the one time that I had tried on my buddy's phone around 2003.  This was long before the days of touch screens or even full QWERTY keyboards. Three letters were assigned to each number on the keypad, and you slowly cycled through them until you got to the one that you wanted. It was taking me about 30 seconds to complete a single word, and by the time I had finished my message, I knew I was dealing with the stupidest thing in the entire universe.  This was not progress.  This was a step backwards in terms of technology.  And I swore a blood oath to myself that day that I would never touch another text message again, as long as I lived and breathed.

I stood by, as in the subsequent years, it's popularity only grew. I watched as my good friend Art went from condemning the technology with the same disdain as I did, to becoming the biggest texter in the world overnight. I shrugged it off, assuming that it had to do with the teenage women with whom he was cavorting with at the time more than anything else. But he wasn't the only one. Texting was taking over, and I still didn't understand it.

Then I got my hands on the iPhone. If Art had done a 180º on texting overnight, then I did mine in the span of one hour. Quickly forgotten was the old, tedious methods of entering text - replaced now with a simple and intuitive touch screen - and since I was always much better at writing than I was at talking (especially on the phone), suddenly I had a whole new means in which to communicate with people. I was ashamed to admit it, but I was converted almost instantly.

But that's not what this is about. No, this is about etiquette. Because if there's one thing that I struggled with, early on, it was how to not become the one thing that I hated more than anything else. How to avoid turning into the one person that I knew I could easily become.  The darkness I knew lurked just beneath the surface that had kept me scared of the cell phone for all those years.

The person that paid more attention to their cell phone than to the people that they were actually with.

I had watched it happen to Art. One day we'd be standing there talking, engrossed in our conversation with one another, when suddenly, next thing I knew, I'd be talking to him, and his face was glued to the screen of his cell phone. I called him on it a few times, to which his response was always the same: "I'm listening. I can do more than one thing at the same time, you know." Which to me, was him completely missing the point. I wasn't questioning whether or not he could, but rather whether or not he should.

I don't doubt that my dentist could talk on the phone while filling a cavity for me either. But it's nice to sit in that chair and feel like you have his complete and undivided attention. Art and I weren't talking about anything important, sure, but it still made me feel like I was less important to him at that moment, than the $100 piece of electronics in his hand. And I felt, that if his text conversation was so much more important than the one he was having with me, then why wasn't he calling this person and having the conversation over the phone?  How could it be that important if both sides were willing to wait the extra 20 seconds that it would take to type a response?

(Before I go on, I think it's only fair to mention that this is Art circa 2007-08, he has since changed greatly in how he balances typing on his cell phone and dealing with someone in person at the same time.)

Which makes me wonder: what is the priority for different social situations? And how long have they been in place? For example, I would consider the order as such (from highest priority, to least): in person, on the phone, via text, via email, via letter. I'm not saying a letter is less important than an email - not at all, I consider a letter much more personal - but rather that a person doesn't expect a response right away if they wrote you a letter, so you don't have to rush out and answer it that very second. With an email, the person might expect an answer right away, but obviously not that quickly otherwise it would have required a phone call to make sure they got the answer right then and there. See what I'm saying?

That said, as much as I consider an in-person encounter to take precedence over everything, that's not really true, is it? I mean, if you're talking with someone in their living room, and the phone rings, chances are that the person will answer it, and chances are that you won't be offended if they do. But was this always the case? Did a ringing phone always make it ok to pause a conversation and answer it, or was it considered rude at first too, much like I consider stopping a conversation to answer a text rude right now. Did it slowly become more and more acceptable over time, much like it seems that texting is today, or was it always such a cool technology (especially when it was first introduced) that a phone call has always taken precedence? With the way texting is going, could a day come when a person is talking on the phone, feels the vibration of an incoming text, and actually puts the person on hold in order to answer it? I know I've seen people use speaker phone to text while they talk on the phone, so really, it can't be that far off.

I guess what I'm getting at is, am I the old guy sitting on his rocking chair, yelling at the kids to get off my lawn? Talking about how 'back when I was your age…' or 'I had respect for…'? Or am I right, and people are just losing their sense of social grace the easier that it becomes to do so. I mean, was Art right to text and talk at the same time, because that's the way society is heading, or is Randy right, when he gives me an evil eye for even glancing at my phone when the two of us hang out together. I'm obviously not as uptight about it as Randy, but I'm definitely closer to his way of thinking than I am to Art's. (Again… Art's former way of thinking).

I don't want to be the old guy that doesn't accept change. I always thought that I was the young, hip, open-minded guy, that was cool with whatever trends came and went over the years. I never want to be the old dinosaur that 'doesn't understand the kids these days.' That said, I also don't want people texting the whole time that I'm trying to have a conversation with them either.

My Summer of B-List Celebrity Encounters, Part 5

There's no easy way to put this, so I'm just going to say it:  This video is going to make me look a little… crazy.  It's going to make Randy look a little crazy too.  But I'm not crazy, I swear.  The jury is still out on Randy, but I can only speak for myself, and I'm pretty sure that I'm mostly sane. 

I know that the internet is quick to judge - and judge harshly - and as such, if something is less than flattering, perhaps one should not post it.  But here it is anyways.  My hope is that you will have some understanding that we were partially hamming up the crazy a little bit for the camera.  There is some genuine crazy in there as well, for sure, but I'm going to chalk most of it up to either a late night after a long drive, or an early morning after very little sleep (depending on which moment of craziness you are judging at the time).

Either way, here it is, so please… be gentle.

My Summer of B-List Celebrity Encounters, Part 5 (Prologue)

I'm not going to lie.  This post was supposed to be much better than this.  You see, this week's celebrity encounter doesn't just exist as a few poorly strung together sentences describing the lacklustre memories of a man that obviously doesn't get out very much.  No, this week's encounter was captured on video.  Glorious high definition video.

It was my full intention to have that footage edited together into a riveting narrative, and posted here, without so much as a single word to describe it.  Just the title of the post, and the video embedded within to do all the talking.  I even purposefully saved this entry until last in order to make sure I had the necessary time to do so.

But the problem is that I do not possess this footage.  It is currently stored under the watchful eye of one Randal Tiberius Sneep. And I wanted it to be a surprise.  So, rather than say 'hey, I have a bunch of week nights with nothing better to do coming up, why don't you give me that footage and I'll edit it together' I instead tried to drop more subtle hints like 'man, I'd really like to see that footage some time and see how lame we were.'  In hopes that I could get the footage from him, without tipping my hat to the fact that I was editing it as well.

The problem is, I was blinded by my desire to have this post be a surprise.  I mean, obviously he knew I would be writing about this encounter, having been along for the ride with me.  But I was hoping to completely blindside him with a finished video rather than the usual write up.  What I did not consider, was that having something - anything - was better than nothing at all.  And if I had just taken the time to really try to get the footage from him, I would have something to post today, even if it was less of a surprise than originally planned.  Instead I still have the full benefit of a surprise, but nothing to show for it.

I made one last ditch attempt to get the footage last night, dropping the ruse, and basically asking flat out to get my hands on it, in hopes that if I plugged away late into the night and perhaps even this morning, it would still be a complete surprise that I was able to put something together so quickly and have it posted today.  But that fell through, and now, instead, I'm left with this.  The written word.

Sorry.

But, I am not going to give up hope.  I think after reading this, Randy will be very proactive in trying to get the footage into my hands, and I will make it my pledge to you fine people, that this time next week, I will have that video piece edited together, and posted right here.  So, I won't spoil the story of this celebrity encounter now, with a half-assed, heart-not-fully-in-it write up, when hopefully* the footage we shot is good enough to tell the story.  The surprise may be completely spoiled, but the tale… well, as you can probably already tell from this epic tease, that is a story for another day.

*I say hopefully, because for all I know the footage is completely unusable.  In which case, I ain't posting a second of it...

My Summer of B-List* Celebrity Encounters, Part 4

I'd like to think that I don't get caught up in all the allure of celebrity.  That I don't really get starstruck.  That everyone is just another human being, no more or less special than the rest of us.

I'd like to think that.

Obviously this latest series of blog entries has you undoubtedly saying to yourself "Ya, right, this dude is practically a celebrity stalker…"

And I guess I can't deny it.  Because I was pretty excited to meet Russell Crowe.

Russell Crowe?  Surely you jest…  But let me assure you, my dear, blog-reading faithful: I never joke about Russell Crowe.  Ok, that was a joke… but I'm not joking about having had a chance to meet him. That said, before we get into that, I've gone and gotten a head of myself already.  Let's take this back a few steps first.

I'm not a huge Russell Crowe fan.  I loved Gladiator (what red-blooded man didn't?) and L.A. Confidential.  And he's always solid in the many great movies that he has been in (The Insider, A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, etc…) and even the 'lesser' fare (like The Quick and the Dead, which I am actually very fond of) . So, I can't deny that he's a very good actor.  But good actors aren't always great people.  I'm not saying he kicks puppies or laughs at the elderly when they fall down or anything, but he still doesn't really strike me as first ballot Man Crush Hall of Fame material.

So, while I like to think that I am impervious to the phenomenon that is celebrity culture - tabloids, paparazzi, TMZ, Entertainment Tonight… all that stuff -   I still found myself as giddy as a fan boy at the Skywalker Ranch at the prospect of meeting this actor that I really had very little actual interest in.

Ok, I'll spare you the suspense.  I didn't actually meet him.  In case you don't know the back story, the television show that my sister works on was having him on as a guest star during the week that I was in town visiting her, so I figured that crossing paths with Maximus Decimus Meridius was an outside possibility.  I didn't get my hopes up, and I really wasn't that disappointed when it didn't happen.  But still, when I thought about how cool of a picture it might be to post on Facebook, I was a little excited.

And that's what I'm conflicted about.  What is the allure of celebrity?  If I don't really have an interest in Russell Crowe, shouldn't I care less whether I shake his hand or stand next to him while he fakes a smile and someone takes our picture?  I can't figure out what the actual draw is, but it's undeniably there.

I guess it doesn't matter, at the end of the day, because I didn't meet him anyways.  That said, if I was semi-excited to get a picture with a guy that I didn't have any vested interest in, then you would imagine the thrill I would feel to get my picture with a genuine Man Crush.  But of course, that is a story for another day.

(*Yes, I know Russell Crowe is a true A-List Celebrity, and therefore the title of this blog is misleading, but I didn't actually meet him, so I decided to stick with my already established convention.)

My Summer of B-List Celebrity Encounters, Part 3

They say that you should never meet your heroes.  That they'll only disappoint you. Which makes sense, when you think about it.  I mean, how could someone ever live up to the person that you've made them out to be in your mind?  Nobody is perfect, especially for every second of every day.  It's just impossible.  Everyone has a bad day, or says something that they regret.  It's human nature.  When it comes to the people that we admire, we rarely see these moments, because we only ever see their public persona.  The person that they want us to see.  They are aware that they are being viewed and judged, so they try to be the best that they can be. 

We never see them in the seconds right after someone swoops in and steals the spot that they had patiently waited for with their blinker on in a crowded mall parking lot, or after being woken at dawn from a hard night of drinking, when the guy next door decides to start up his chainsaw and do some yard work at 6 o'clock in the morning.  We see them on the red carpet or in interviews, and we see them happy and smiling and witty and charming.  This is how they became the people that we admire.  It might be different if we saw them send back their food for the fifth time at a restaurant, screaming "I said medium-well done!  Don't you know who I am?!"  

Which is why maybe you shouldn't meet your heroes.  Because what if you happen to meet them on one of these off days?

On a side note, when you see a person that is a complete douche, even in their public persona, is that because they just don't care?  Or are they such big douches, that this is them at their best, and it's still deplorable?  Should I be applauding them for not trying to be something they're not, or should I do a bit of mental math and assume that in normal life, they're at least 30 to 60% douchier?  I mean, if that's how they act when the cameras are on, you have to imagine that in the privacy of their own home, they crank the dick meter up to eleven, right? 

Regardless, it was now three days since I had narrowly missed out on crossing paths with Sara Quin in Saskatchewan, and I was once again in the same room with her.  This time we were back in Edmonton, and her sister Tegan was in tow.  Although the term 'hero' feels like a bit much, I would be lying if I said I didn't have a slight infatuation with them.  In fact, I would be down-right devastated to find out that in real life it turned out that they weren't very nice people.  Basically, I was the perfect candidate for the 'never meet your heroes' philosophy to smack me right in the face.

But I didn't care.

For one, I was pretty sure that they're awesomeness was genuine.  But, even if it wasn't, despite the devastation, I honestly think that I would have wanted to know anyways.  And so I stood, patiently waiting my turn.  I had shelled out a few extra ducats for the VIP tickets to their Edmonton show that night, and in this case, it included the chance to sit in on the sound check, receive an autographed poster, and of course, have a brief meet and greet.  I quickly staked out a spot at the end of the line, knowing that if there were people waiting behind me that I would likely feel some sort of self-imposed pressure to 'move it along' and let the next person have their turn, and I was pleased to discover that no one else seemed to have shared this same strategy, and therefore, I was not required to fight anyone for the spot.

And, although I did feel this was a solid strategy for squeezing as much time as I could out of the meet and greet, it also meant that I had to wait as everyone else got their time with the girls first.  Which meant that I was left alone with my thoughts and insecurities.  Particularly, the blunder that I had made in Saskatchewan that was now playing through my mind, wherein I had unintentionally been a dick to Hannah Georgas.  What if I made a similar mistake this time, when it truly mattered?  But I had to shake it off and not think about such things… because it was time.

And it went well.  Granted this would probably still fall under the guise of 'public persona', but they were as awesome as I could have hoped or dreamed.  We even parted ways with hugs all around, which, as you can imagine, warmed the very cockles of my heart.

Then they asked me if I had a song request, and having not really thought about it in advance, that's when I made my blunder.  You see, they released a small four track EP back in 2008, and the song that Sara contributed to it, the criminally under appreciated "I Take All The Blame", is one of my favourite songs in the entire T&S back-catalogue.  That said, apparently not many other fans share this enthusiasm for it and I've never been able to find any evidence that they have ever performed it live.

So, in that moment, when asked if I had a song to request, that was the only thing that came to my mind.  Sure, I could have requested a song that I like more than it - there are 3 or 4 that would easily qualify - but, I had seen them all performed live at previous shows already.  Besides, seeing that these were popular songs,  what was the point of a song request, if they might already  be playing it that night anyways?  I wasn't trying to be unique for the sake of it or anything, but I guess I should have known that there was a reason why they had never played that song live before.

Sure, the argument could be made that because it's not as popular as their 'hits' then they would be doing a disservice to their fans by playing a song that only a few people in the audience might enjoy, when they could play a different song that everybody would like instead.  But, based upon the look on Sara's face when the title of that song left my lips (I'm still undecided as to whether I would describe the look as 'disgust' or 'horror') I think it's safe to say that there might be other reasons why she might not want to perform it.  Which is fair.  But that expression on her face might haunt me for the rest of my life.

I'm still trying to decide if she doesn't like the song, or if she loves the song, but is too emotionally attached to it to perform it.  You see, Tegan and Sara often cater to their fans.  If the fans don't respond well to a song as much as they do another, then they often drop that song from the set list and play the one that everyone will clap in unison over their heads and sing along with.  Which leaves some of the songs that they personally love, often never being played.  So you might think me foolish and deserving of the reaction that I got, for straying from the path and not requesting a 'sure thing', but I would argue that had it turned out that Sara had always wanted to play that song, but it just wasn't popular enough with the fans for her to do so, then the look of joy and appreciation on her face would have easily been worth the gamble.  Obviously it didn't turn out that way, but I swung for the fences, and regret nothing.

Besides, if that was the biggest faux pas I made, then I should consider myself lucky.  She didn't seem mad at me for requesting it, she just obviously had no desire to play that particular song, and we still parted with a hug (did I mention that already?  Well too bad… it won't be the last time).  So, as it stood, my summer of meeting B-List celebrities had come and gone rather successfully.

Or had it?

Perhaps there was some unexpected encounters that had yet to present themselves in the coming days.  But that, of course, is a story for another day.

My Summer of B-List Celebrity Encounters, Part 2

Success is a funny thing.  It's a weird phenomenon where you're obviously rooting for the people that you're fans of, but at the same time, there's a certain level of success, that once they achieve it, you no longer celebrate that success, but instead become disenfranchised by it.

I've had it happen to me twice in sports.  The first was in the spring of 1996, I read a Sports Illustrated article about a young high school player named Kobe Bryant.  By the time I had finished reading, I had decided that I would try my best to follow his career from that point forward.  I was intrigued.  Now, I'm not saying that he was undiscovered or anything - obviously, he was a big enough deal to make the pages of Sports Illustrated - but I would still say that if you asked a hundred basketball fans (not just random people, but actual basketball fans) at that time, if they knew who Kobe Bryant was, I doubt more than one or two would have said yes.  Especially in Canada. 

From then on I followed him closely, or as close as a person could follow a high school player in the seemingly basketball-deprived tundra of Alberta (keep in mind that the internet was in it's infancy at this point, and we were lucky to get more than ten NBA games televised per season back then).  Once it was clear that he would be suiting up for the Lakers, I rolled the dice and bought my first ever NBA jersey: a yellow Los Angeles Lakers home jersey, with the number 8 on the back, and Bryant on the name tag.  And this was all before he had even played a single minute of NBA basketball.

I followed his early struggles; his battle to win minutes from the incumbent starting guard at his position (the criminally underrated Eddie Jones); his air-ball attempt(s) in a playoff elimination game; all of it.  And despite the occasional flashes of brilliance, I was starting to worry that I had put all my eggs into a losing basket.  Then something funny happened.  He won the dunk contest; he got voted in as a starter to the All-Star game in his second year, despite not even starting for his own team; Michael Jordan seemingly passed the torch to him, as he easily had the best highlights of the game.  People were taking notice - more towards the flashy nature of his game, than of his burgeoning talent, but taking notice none-the-less.  And for some reason, this meteoric rise made me like him less.

I preferred to walk down the hallway at school and have people ask 'A Bryant Lakers jersey… who the heck is that?' than have everyone think that I was just another bandwagon hopper.  I liked seeing him crack the weekly Top 10 plays of the week with a bit of surprise than I did when it became commonplace and even expected.  I liked having to go into the settings of NBA video games and move him into the starting line up more than I liked seeing his name in the title of his own game.  My fandom was beginning to waver. 

Eventually, I even grew to dislike him.  I will always respect him as a basketball player, don't get me wrong, but looking back now, I'm glad I didn't remain a life-long fan.  Sure, this means that I missed out on having been along for the ride of the career of one of the top 15 greatest players in NBA history - but he still seems like a bit of a douche, and has always been a me-first player, and that's just not what I look for in a player that I admire.  That said, every year that I rooted against his team, and they ended up winning it all, could have been a year that I threw my fists triumphantly in the air along side him, rather then trying to punch them through a wall in the anger of defeat.

But, there's no point in wondering what my life as an NBA fan would have been like if I had stuck with him, because the truth of the matter is that by the end of the 1999 season, I had already moved on.

In fact, it was in the winter of 1997, that I happened upon a North Carolina Tar Heel’s game one afternoon at my aunt's place (she had satellite, the big dish kind that took up your entire back yard, and I couldn't get college games on my three channels of peasant-vision at home, so I'd go to her place to watch games), when I saw a highlight dunk unlike anything I had ever seen before.  The skinny kid responsible was a relatively unknown player from Daytona Beach named Vince Carter, and I made it my new mission in life to find out every thing that I could about him.  It turned out he was barely even the third best player on his own team, and yet the name managed to stick with me right up until that year's draft.  I remember the very moment that I found out he had been picked by the Toronto Raptors.  I had never before, and have never since, been more excited by a single draft pick than I was about that one.  But even I could not have foreseen what was to come.

Again, I had gotten in on the ground floor, only this time, the meager expectations placed on Vince were exceeded almost instantly, and his dunks came to be a staple on Sportscenter highlight packages almost over night.  I stuck with him for a while, being a Raptors fan and all, and I rode some pretty big highs in those first couple seasons: the legendary 2000 dunk contest, the Raptor's first taste of playoff success, the Freddy Weis dunk in the Olympics.  We did have some good times together, to be sure.  But so huge was his popularity so quickly, that long before he quit on the Raptors and forced them to trade him for pennies on the dollar, I had already begun to look elsewhere in my basketball fandom.

In that case, I had chosen correctly, as Vince will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the most talented players ever that never lived up to his potential, and always coasted by and avoided putting in the work that could have made him great.  Had I stuck with him, I would have experienced far more moments of frustration than I would have moments of fan-bliss.  But that's not the point.  Rather, this is just another example of how success can actually turn a fan off.  And while it is some-what prevalent in sports, the most common example of this has always been in music.

There's nothing people want more than to have known a band before they got huge.  In fact, much like I turned on Kobe Bryant, often times the fans will turn on a band and label them as 'sellouts' as soon as they start having a little success.  Is it really the band's fault that they're selling records?  If they're good, shouldn't millions of people enjoy their music? It's almost like, as a fan, you want them to be good at what they do, but you don't want too many other people to realize it.  I'm sure there were thousands of Nirvana fans that cursed the band's mainstream success the day that Smells Like Teen Spirit started showing up on MTV.  They weren't mad because Nirvana stopped being good (although SLTS is a bit overrated, the album that it came from, Nevermind, is one of the greatest ever recorded), it's just that as a fan, you want to feel special.  You want to feel like you're part of an exclusive club.  And if just anyone is allowed into that club, of course you're not going to feel special at all. 

I know.  I've been there.  In my case it was Nickelback.  Go ahead and laugh, but sadly, that's not even the biggest blemish in the history of my musical fandom (I'm looking at you, Vanilla Ice…)  As much as it puts my complete musical opinion at risk, I will still argue that The State is actually a really good album, but that's beside the point.  Prior to the release of Silver Side Up, and the juggernaut that was it's lead single, How You Remind Me, these local Alberta boys were probably my favourite band.  In fact, I remember being asked at my new job what my favourite band was, and having answered Nickelback, I was met only with blank stares.  And although they really weren't that unknown (locally, especially), that is still one of the great moments you can have as fan: the chance to introduce someone to a band that they might love.

It's funny, because as we've already discussed, by introducing the band to more people, all you're really doing is contributing to the success that might eventually turn you off of them.  Really, if you think about it, people should be guarding their favourite bands the same way some people guard the names they plan to give their unborn children.  You know the ones, that won't even give you a hint as to what the name might be for fear that it's so good that by the time they actually give birth, there might already be a million other Mason's or Madison's running around, because they whispered the name to you at a cocktail party once.

I mention all of this, because currently there are two bands that I feel I have gotten in on the ground floor with.  The first is Sleeper Agent, a sextet from Bowling Green, Kentucky, whose first single is ridiculously catchy, and probably has the biggest chance of turning it into something big.  Whether that ends up turning me off of them or not, remains to be seen, but I've come to realize that, in the end, it doesn't really matter.  So long as I enjoy the time I'm having with the band now, what does it matter if I still like them in five years or not.  And the thing that is the most fun about being a fan of a band in it's early stages is the accessibility and interactivity. 

Tegan and Sara used to sell their own merch at a table in the back of the room after they were finished their shows.  That's because they were only playing to 100 people every night, and hiring a merch person would probably cancel out any profit that they had hoped to make for that show.  Now, seeing that they can sell out 5000 seats, not only can they afford to have a merch person, but they almost need to.  The lineups at the end of shows would be too crazy if they were the ones sitting there handing people CD's and T-shirts.  And they’re not even that mainstream.  Imagine if Bono tried to do this after U2 concerts…

I've sat in on an online Q&A with Bill Simmons, and I feel that I asked some pretty good questions.  Had he seen them, he probably would have responded.  But, by the sheer number of people also online for that Q&A (Simmons has 1.5 million followers on Twitter) there was just no way for him to see every question that was being asked, out of the hundreds that were coming in every second.  It's not Simmons fault, he's just a victim of his own success.  Or, at least, my questions were.  But when Sleeper Agent did a Livestream Video Q&A recently, every question that I asked got a response.  And it was a fun feeling to be interacting with them like that.

The same goes for the other band that I've been following lately.  In this case, a band out of Vancouver that was formed in part by the former bassist and drummer from Tegan and Sara, called Rococode.  Again, having gotten on board in the early stages, I've had a fair bit of interaction with them through Twitter (with everything I've ever @mentioned them in having gotten a response).  And sure, it's just another social media site, and I shouldn't (and don't) read too much into it, but if I'm honest, as a fan, it does make me feel a little bit special.

And this all (sorry, that lead-in got a little out of hand there, didn't it?) leads to the story of my second B-List (although, no offence to Rococode, but in this case, it might be more like D-List) Celebrity Encounter of the summer.  I was still in Saskatoon, and it was still July 3rd.  The opening act for the Tegan and Sara show had been another Vancouver artist named Hannah Georgas, whom I had heard of before, but still knew nothing about.  As she took the stage, her only other band mate was a skinny blond gentleman, who provided her with backing guitars, keyboards and vocal harmonies.  Nothing was unusual about this, except for the fact that I swear that I recognized him from somewhere.  In fact, he looked very much like Andrew Braun, the co-lead singer of this new band Rococode.

As the set progressed, at one point Hannah even acknowledged him as Andrew, thus confirming my suspicions, but in general, the crowd just assumed that he was some no-name hired gun, and he received only a smattering of polite applause.  Not that it wasn't true, the no-name hired gun thing - it's not like he was some big deal, and she had Bruce Springsteen backing her up, and no one had noticed - but it did make her set all the more cool to me, on a personal level, because of it.

That's when, later that night, as I was leaving the bar in defeat (having lacked the testicular fortitude to chase down Sara Quin a mere ten minutes earlier) I found myself face to face with Andrew Braun.  I was getting on the elevator at the same moment that he was getting off.  It's funny how awkward you can be when you're completely unprepared for something.  Had I known I was going to run into Andrew that night, I probably would have come up with a few interesting things to ask him or at least something funny or clever to say.  Instead, I just blurted out that I was a fan, and started rambling - probably incoherently - about how I was enjoying his band, Rococode.

He was perfectly friendly - although I think I had caught him completely by surprise, since he probably hadn't been recognized for Rococode at all that evening - so he did seem a bit shocked and taken aback.  That's when I came to discover the part about meeting semi-famous people that you don't really think about.  Not that they might be dicks to you, as some people might expect/fear, but rather, that you might accidentally be a dick to them.  You see, he hadn't been getting off the elevator alone.  He was with Hannah Georgas at the time, and she had stood patiently by as I had ambushed him and lavished him with praise.  That's when I thought to myself, that as an actual billed performer, it was kind of rude of me to have gone on this long to Andrew, without having really acknowledged her existence.

I should have realized that I was nowhere near at the top of my conversational game, based on the yammering that I had already been doing thus far.  Yet, I still turned to her, in hopes that I could make up for what had thus far been a complete lack of social grace.  And, after having just finished telling Andrew how much I liked his band, I didn't miss a beat as I turned to her and said '…oh, and you were good too.'

Yes, it sounded just as douchey in person as it sounded in your head just now as you read it back.  I didn't mean for it to be.  Her set had been really good, and I genuinely meant it.  But in the way in which I said it, and with the wording that I had used, there's no way it came across to her as anything other than how you might address a special needs child that had managed to tie his own shoe lace. 

“Good for you!!”

The difference being that a special needs child is likely unaware of your condescending tone, and since your heart is in the right place, all you’ve really done is make them feel good about themselves. Hannah Georgas didn’t exactly strike me as Rain Man; so instead of complimenting her, I probably just sounded like a dick.

I got on the elevator, pressed the button to my floor, and as the doors finally slid shut, I smacked myself on the forehead and called myself an idiot.  But I couldn’t dwell on it for long.  I needed to shake it off and regroup, because my summer of meeting B-List celebrities was far from over.  But, as you already know, that is a story for another day…
.