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Cover Reveal and More

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As some of you may know, when my daughter and our family were going through her scoliosis journey we blogged about it. Over the course of sixteen months or so, my wife, our daughter, and I chronicled our experiences and told the story in our own words as seen through our eyes.

The blog was wildly successful and more than accomplished its goal of making this experience more visible to families out there under similar circumstances.

Once our daughter’s story was done, roughly one year post-surgery, I decided that this would make a fantastic book, so I added a bunch of backstory and some insight into what was going on in between blog posts, compiled all the posts into the book, and added a lessons learned and some Q&A and Bent But Not Broken: One Family’s Scoliosis Journey was born.

Having secured a publisher and gone through the requisite editing stages, I am pleased to announce that we have a release date for the book as well as an absolutely fantastic cover!

When does it come out? 
January 20, 2018

Where can I see the cover?
RIGHT HERE

You can also see it over at http://bentbutnotbroken.net

Other things happening

Writers often get a lot of questions about our work. It’s a good thing, and we love it when people show an interest in what we create. Some of the most common questions asked are:

  • Where can I get your book?
  • When will your book be out?
  • Are you working on another book?

I could go on, but really it’s just those three questions with the “When will your book be out?” one being asked more often than any other. It’s with this in mind I’ve created a couple pages here on my website.

The first is simply titled “Books“. On it you can find all the books I’ve written or anthologies I’ve been a part of and clicking the links will take you to a page that lists all the places those titles are available, whether it’s in print, ebook, or audiobook.

The second page is “WIP” which is pretty much a standard acronym in a number of industries that stands for “work in progress”. On it you will find all my upcoming projects with a bit of information about the work, what stage it’s at, and what the plan is for it. If there’s a cover for the book, you’ll also be able to see it here before it shows up anywhere else.

Follow me via email, RSS feed, or through Google at the handy links down the right side to make sure you don’t miss out!

Books

WIP

Lest We Forget

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I normally post on Mondays. I start writing the post on Saturday and then I tweak and revise and post it on Monday morning. This is partly because I like to have that New Post Smell for the MondayBlogs hashtag, but also because my writing schedule lends itself to this type of arrangement. Today, however, I’m both writing and posting on Saturday. Why? Because today is Remembrance Day. Americans call it Veterans Day. Serbia and Belgium call it Armistice Day. 
Belgium, as some of you may know (as all of you should know) was where Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae wrote his famous poem In Flanders Fields. 
Poem on Display at the Canadian Vimy Ridge Museum
Belgium is also home to the head office of the company I work for and I traveled there a few weeks ago with three of my coworkers. Our plane landed at 7:00 A.M. and we wouldn’t be able to check into our hotel until much later that afternoon so we decided we would drive to France and visit Vimy Ridge. One member of our party was American, and one a Brit that has spent most of his life in Canada and the other fellow and myself Canadian. 
The battle at Vimy Ridge was a watershed moment for the Canadian armed forces and for Canada as a nation. We were barely a country unto ourselves, having taken the title of Dominion of Canada a little more than 50 years earlier, and Vimy marked the first time that all four divisions of the Canadian Corps fought as a cohesive unit. The battle, which began on April 9, 1917, and ended on April 12, 1917, was won by the allied forces and has come to symbolize the moment that Canada stepped out of adolescence and into adulthood.   
The Canadian National Vimy Memorial was unveiled by King Edward VIII on July 26, 1936, and sits on the highest point of a 250-acre preserved battlefield park. Standing at the foot of this colossal monument you get a real sense of perspective about the battle that occurred there a hundred years ago. If you close your eyes you can almost hear the raged battle cries, the thundering booms of heavy artillery, and the staccato bursts of machine gun fire. 
To say that visiting the monument and touring the nearby museum was an emotional moment would be a gross understatement and oversimplification of what it felt like to be there. I have lived my entire existence at a distance from the atrocities of war. There have always been at least one or two degrees of separation between myself and the places I don’t have the courage to go and the acts I don’t have the emotional strength to carry out. 
Standing there, surrounded by the ghosts of both good and evil, running my hand across the cold Seget limestone and letting my fingers follow the carved lines of the names of the heroic dead brought with it the stark realization that hundreds of millions of people owed their livelihoods, if not their lives, to millions of complete strangers who were as committed as they were brave. 
One of those grateful lives is my own, of course, and one of those committed strangers, a little more than a year after The Battle of Vimy Ridge and a ninety-minute drive to the south, made the ultimate sacrifice. He was my father’s mother’s father, my great-grandfather, and his name was Edwin Byard Hill. He was a private in the 43rd Batallion of the Canadian Infantry (Manitoba Regiment) and was killed in action on August 8, 1918. 
My grandmother was just a little girl when her father left for the war and she spent almost eight decades without him. That fact alone boggles my mind as I have been fortunate enough to have both my parents with me for every minute of my forty-three years here on earth. I had all four of my great-grandparents in my life for at least sixteen of them with the last one passing when I was well into my thirties, so to have lost a parent at such a young age must have filled her heart with more anguish than a child should ever have to bear. 
After our visit to the Vimy memorial, my colleagues agreed to make the pilgrimage to the burial site of my great-grandfather at the Mézières Communal Cemetary Extension in the Somme region of France. To the knowledge of my immediate relatives, I was the first person in the family to visit the war grave. 
Thank you, Great-Grandpa Hill.
Two of my colleagues accompanied me into the cemetery and, after we found my great-grandfather in Extension 4, Plot I, Row B, Grave 16, they let me have as much time alone as I needed. I took a bunch of photographs and stood, and then kneeled, and had a good long chat with him. There were tears, and even as I type this I am welling up with profound sadness for he is just one of millions that gave everything so that others could have something. 
Great-grandpa Hill, everyone who served alongside him, everyone who served before him, and everyone who has served since are owed our gratitude not just on this national day of remembrance, but every single day we wake up, check our phones, create or enjoy art, work, play, eat, live, breathe, and exist under the warmth of the sun and within the almost limitless boundaries of freedom.

To you, we owe our lives, and for this, you have our eternal thanks. May peace reign over your heart and protect your soul. 

~ Andrew

If you’d like to take a look at more of my pictures from my trip I have made the Facebook album public. 
Link List: 

Connections

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I am a writer. As such, I have a lot of friends who are writers. I have even more acquaintances who are writers. On social media (mostly Facebook but also Instagram and Twitter) I would wager that my interactions with writers outnumber interactions with everyone else combined. I have a short list of non-family members that I put into the category of close friends. There are two from my university days and another three that I didn’t even know existed until I started writing, and more specifically, started participating in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as well like to call it, or if we’re being particularly lazy, “NaNo”.

NaNo is a challenge to writers everywhere to write 50,000 words in the month of November. In other words, write a novel in thirty days. That works out to 1,667 words per day, every day, for an entire month. It’s a lot. It may not seem like a lot, but it’s a lot. Trust me, I know. I participated in this challenge six years in a row from 2011 to 2016 and was only successful four out of those six years.

For a number of reasons, I’m not doing NaNo this year. A friend asked me if it felt weird and I said that it did. Other than the fact I’ve done it for six years in a row now I couldn’t put my finger on why that was. I thought a bit about it a bit more and came to the conclusion that it felt weird because NaNoWriMo is a big reason that I am a writer at all.

In early 2010 I started dabbling with some writing. Not simply jotting stuff down and blogging every now and then, but writing with plot and character in mind. Well, sort of. I was blogging somewhat regularly and I had every intention of starting a big screenwriting project, at some point, some time, you know, later. But by some sheer twist of fate, it was the month of November that all that changed.

If anyone out there is a fan of the James Burke show Connections (and Connections 2 and Connections 3) you’ll see that my “path to success” goes WAY back and isn’t exactly a straight line.

That’s Why I’m on This Oil Rig a Writer

  • In 1993 I worked as a clerk at a video store before heading off to university.
  • It was that first year at university that I would have a little girlfriend trouble.
  • While that was going on, Kevin Smith was writing the movie Clerks. It is a movie about a couple dudes working as, well, clerks. One in a video store and one at a convenience store. One of the clerks has girlfriend trouble.
  • That movie came out in 1994 and I saw it when it hit video stores in 1995. The movie changed the way I looked at films and my whole creative process and I was an immediate fan.
  • Later that year I got back together with one of my girlfriends from back in 1993. We would get married on November 6, 1999.
  • Fast forward to 2010. Kevin Smith had made ten movies and was a huge success and doing his Q&A sessions and multiple podcasts. My wife looks out her office window one day and sees a billboard advertising Kevin Smith coming to town just a few days before our anniversary.
  • We attend the show and have a great time and it sparked something in me. Afterwards, I came across this blogger and writer by the name of Robert Chazz Chute who wrote about his experience at the same show. In his post, he mentioned this weird thing called NaNoWriMo. I, in turn, wrote a blog post about getting off my ass and actually writing something. It was going to be a screenplay.
  • In 2011 I started writing the screenplay and I was having a conversation with one of those close friends I mentioned earlier in the post. I was lamenting that I was having a hard time getting my story to fit into the framework of a film. He said that he didn’t want to see an Andrew Butters movie. He’d rather read an Andrew Butters book. So, I switched gears and started to write it as a novel.
  • In November 2011, I attempted my first NaNoWriMo. I was there alongside Robert cranking out words and having a great time. It was on Twitter during NaNo that I met a writer by the name of Jennifer Gracen.
  • Jennifer was a NaNo cheerleader and she introduced me to a whole number of other writers and eventually she invited me into a writer’s group on Facebook. One of these individuals is now one of my other close friends, Gordon Bonnet. We joke that we are brothers from different mothers. Twins separated at birth and by more than a decade and several strands of DNA.
  • One of the Twitter NaNo folks Jennifer introduced me to almost died due to a medical complication and there was an anthology being put together to raise money to help pay her medical bills. I wrote a piece of creative non-fiction about the unexpected death of my wife’s brother and Jennifer edited that piece for me. It was eventually accepted into the anthology and just like that, I had my first published piece.
  • Shortly thereafter I had a photographer friend, Christine Reid, do some headshots for me. If I was going to write books I was going to need pictures for back covers, right?
  • Then, in 2014 my daughter was diagnosed with severe scoliosis and was going to require spinal fusion surgery. Since there was little information out on the web from girls and families that have gone through this, my genius wife decided that we should keep a family blog to chronicle the journey.
  • A year post-surgery the blog was done and I decided that if I could add a bit more context to the blog posts that it would make a pretty powerful book. In October 2016 I finished Bent But Not Broken: One Family’s Scoliosis Journey.
  • In January of 2017, I was talking to another writer, one to whom I was introduced at the same time as my brudder from another mudder. She suggested I talk to him about Bent. So, I did. He was beta reading the manuscript and unbeknownst to me had given it to the Editorial Board at his publisher, Oghma Creative Media (now called Roan & Weatherford, and you should avoid them at all costs. Message me if you want more details). A few weeks later I had my first writing contract.
  • A couple months later, the Oghma founder was asking me for a headshot for an announcement on their Facebook page about my signing. I pointed him to the folder of headshots that my friend Christine did for me.
  • He asked me if I did any acting when inquiring about why I had headshots taken. I told him I had them done so I’d have something for a book cover one day. He said, “Oh, you’ve written other stuff?” and I told him I had a few pieces of almost completed fiction plus bits and bobs of incomplete stuff that will take shape at some point. He invited me to the publisher’s writing retreat in the summer and said we would talk.
  • I returned home in August of 2017 from my publisher’s writing retreat with two book contracts: one for a standalone psychological thriller (short novel) and one for an open-ended suspense series called The “No” Conspiracies (which will be at least five books at this point).
  • Bent But Not Broken comes out on the third anniversary of my daughter’s surgery on January 20, 2018.
  • Hard Truth (the short novel) comes out in September of 2018.
  • No Fixed Address: The “No” Conspiracies Book #1 comes out in March 2019.
  • No Known Cure: The “No” Conspiracies Book #2 comes out in September 2019, which currently sits at about 25,000 words.
    • To bring this all full circle, it’s worth noting that this was the movie I started writing back in 2010 and ended up being the book I started writing during my very first NaNoWriMo back in 2011.
    • In fact, of the seven books I have either written or have committed to writing, four of them have been NaNo projects.
As you can see, there are a whole lot of connections that brought me from A to B on this writing journey of mine. I look at the long list of events above and if you remove any one of them the chain collapses. I see all those events as the kindling and the fuel for my fire. If that’s true, then learning about NaNoWriMo was the spark. The annual challenge for writers around the globe that I found out about at just the right time because the impact that a single Kevin Smith show had on a guy named Robert which prompted him to write a blog post that I happened to read.
Here are tonight’s three stars of the game:
  • Kevin Smith. For writing Clerks, deciding to do a show in Kitchener of all places in 2010, and inspiring writers and filmmakers in ways that only you can do.
  • Robert Chazz Chute. For sharing your fanboiness of Kevin Smith and writing and introducing me to the world of writing (also, for that drive into Toronto to go see Kev’s movie Red State when I was suffering from post-concussion syndrome).
  • My wife. For taking a minute out of her day to look out the window and suggest that a Kevin Smith show would be a good anniversary present, and for being the bond that has held together so many of the links in my chain for nearly a quarter of a century. You’re why I’m on this oil rig, baby. Happy Anniversary!
~ Andrew

Links (I know I linked them above, but it’s always nice to have a list):

Picture Perfect

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I have a friend that is a fan of doing things. If I really think about it, in reality, he’s a fan of learning things. If there is a thing he wants to and he doesn’t know how to do it, he learns it, and then he does the thing. Then he does this thing that is interesting. He stops. If he wants to get better at the thing he obviously doesn’t stop. He picks another harder or more challenging level for that thing and he keeps learning. But for his original purposes, once the thing is done he stops.

You see, my friend uses this expression that speaks to a philosophy that I have found useful when trying to be more productive:


Perfect is the enemy of done.

It’s a wonderful little sentence when you think about it. It has but six words. You could write it with four (perfect is done’s enemy), you could write it with five and fancy up some of the words (perfection runs contrary to completion), or you could bloat it out with a bunch of unnecessary stuff to make it sound more profound than it actually is (when you seek perfection you are competing against your interest of finishing the task at hand). As it is, it takes its own advice. It does its job and it is finished. It’s not perfect, but it is done.

Take note that this is a different philosophy than rushing through and doing something half-assed. That’s just being lazy and in some cases irresponsible. This expression at its core is about getting the job done but not fretting over minutiae that won’t impact the result in any appreciable way.

I often struggle with this in much of what I do creatively, in particular, my writing. When I write I have the tendency to edit as I go in an effort to have it read as I want it to read when it’s done. I am compelled to make it perfect the first time, or at least in as many iterations right then as it takes to get it just right. The end result is nice, but it takes a looooooooong time to get it there.

For National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), I just write. I start at word count = 0 and I write with reckless abandon until word count = 50,000. I get to the finish line in near record time (for me) but the end result is far from noteworthy. I recently opened up a short manuscript (~51,000 words) that took me less than thirty days to write. It’s actually due to my publisher by the end of October. Aside from the fact that I wrote it three years ago, there was so much wrong with it that I was too embarrassed to let it see the light of day. This example makes a bit of a mockery of the “perfect is the enemy of done” expression.

There needs to be a balance. 

I take great pride in my work and never want something to go out into the world that doesn’t meet my standards, but there is a limit to what is practical. For blog posts, I often employ the “good enough” philosophy. By and large, I think they tend to be decent and occasionally pretty good so I think my approach for these is working. For novels, especially since I’ve just landed a publisher, I need to start trusting the process. I need to get the manuscripts done and stop chasing perfection. The editing team will do their jobs and won’t let it out into the world if it’s subpar and I have to trust them.

The catalyst for this post came during and immediately after the latest solar eclipse. I was on a strict timeline to get set up. I had to prepare the telescope in terms of position and focus and get my camera setup and attached to the telescope. I wanted to do a time-lapse composite image that required shots every 15-20 minutes. My goal was a sequence of 8-10 pictures that spanned the range of full sun to maximum eclipse for my geographic location (~80% coverage).

Nature, being what she is, would not wait and I hadn’t taken the day off work to do this so I had limited time to get set up in between replying to emails and whathaveyou. I would have to settle for “good enough” and cross my fingers. Better planning would have helped a lot. Some observations:

  • I did some test shots the day before so I’d know approximately where to have the focus knop on the telescope and what kind of exposure I needed, at least for a full sun. 
  • I didn’t charge my battery (oops!) 
  • I did have a backup filter I could use if I ran into problems. 
  • I didn’t factor in the angle of the sun and realized that I’d need to be lying on the ground to set up each shot. 
  • I did realize that I could set my rig up on a table to help with this. 
  • I didn’t realize the table shook every time I so much as breathed on it. 
  • The clouds did cooperate (somewhat miraculously) and I managed to get shots every 15 minutes or so throughout the whole 2+ hour event

When I got home I opened up the images and found that I got quite a few good ones. I really wanted to get the pictures up on the internet quickly before the hype died down so I opened up the basic image editor for Windows 10 and did an “auto enhance” on each one, cropped it square and then jacked up the warmth to give them a more sun-like colour. However, the exposure wasn’t identical for each of the pictures and the “auto enhance” feature only did so much to equalize them.

I started to muck with them in Windows 10 and then looked at the clock. I was running out of time and didn’t want to be up all night, so I cut bait on that idea and I put them all into GIMP (basically a free PhotoShop). I was pretty sure that most people would do the standing line of images with totality in the middle. I didn’t have a pic of totality so I was thinking of using either the maximum eclipse or full sun as the focal point. I mucked about with the layout for a bit and tried to come up with something different.

Before too long, inspiration struck and I had my layout. The colours were still off, though and I wasn’t completely okay with how it was looking. A quick time check told me I had precious few moments left so I saved what I had and stepped away from it. A few minutes later, I came back and took a look with fresh eyes, and do you know what? I liked it. I really liked it. The imbalance in the colour worked. It looked real. It looked organic.

It wasn’t perfect but it was done.

I have been using the expression, “Be better, not perfect,” as my personal life motto for a while now and it was at this moment in front of my eclipse photo creation I came to the realization that art and people have at least one thing in common.

Sometimes beauty lies within the imperfections.

“La Fleur d’Eclipse” (c) 2017 Andrew Butters

~ Andrew

The 30-Day Song Challenge – Days 25-30

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June 27 – Day 25 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that makes me laugh

I wouldn’t say that there’s any one song that makes me laugh out loud. There are a lot of songs that have parts I’m fond of in a funny sort of way though. A lot of those songs are by the Barenaked Ladies. Certainly, anything by They Might Be Giants should be given consideration. There’s this one song by The Lowest of the Low, The Taming of Carolyn, that has a line, “Her mother’s worst fears were confirmed. She’s taken up with a musician. Holy shit!” and the “holy shit” spoken by a different voice than the singer makes it funny – to me, at least.

For my song challenge choice, however, I’m going with another Lowest of the Low song, Rosy and Grey. It is not a particularly funny song, but it has this line that’s always made me chuckle:

“I’ve kissed you in France and I’ve kissed you in Spain.
And I’ve kissed you in places I’d better not name.
And I’ve seen the sun go down on Sacré-Cœur.
But I like it much better goin’ down on you.
Ah, you know that’s true.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t06Kg3LwyE]

June 28 – Day 26 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that I can play on an instrument

My instrument is my voice and even then I’m not a terribly proficient singer. I learned a little piano a dozen years ago but not much ever came of it. I can’t even work a tambourine reliably. But back in Grades 7, 8, and 9, I played the trumpet and I didn’t totally suck. I wasn’t anywhere near good, but I wasn’t terrible and I somewhat enjoyed playing it. For my Grade 9 music final, I had to play the “Turkish March”. Well, a REALLY stripped down version of it. Have you heard this thing played on a trumpet before? It’s crazy. The arrangement I played didn’t have half the notes that it’s supposed to, I’m sure. Anyway, I think with a little bit of practice I could probably play it again and not scare away small woodland creatures.

Here’s Richard House playing the proper version of Rondo alla Turca (Piano Sonata No. 11. KV 331) “Turkish March” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on the trumpet WAY better than I ever could:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yld4GTwRcPk]

And just for fun, here’s a six-year-old playing it on the piano:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXjbz4TQOyM]

June 29 – Day 27 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that I wish I could play

All of them? I’m sure this changes on a day-to-day basis and it’s also likely dependent on what instrument I wish I could play as well. For this exercise, I’m going with the guitar. While it would be awesome to shred the ax playing some fancy ass diddly-diddly stuff, I’m actually thinking of going with something that has more of an acoustic feel to it.

I’ve always been a fan of Pink Floyd and this one has been a favourite of mine around the campfire since high school. As far as I can tell it’s not a terribly difficult song to play, or at least there appear to be ways to play it that make it look not very hard to play.
The song also sums up how I feel a lot of the time when something good is happening because no matter who I’m surrounded by in that moment there’s always someone missing that I wish was there.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXdNnw99-Ic]

June 30 – Day 28 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that makes me feel guilty

I have a thing for Dana Delaney. I think she was legitimately my first actress crush. I can remember watching her on China Beach, unblinking with my jaw agape. She has done many a movie in her amazing career and plays the part of Josephine Marcus in the 1993 movie Tombstone. In this film, Delaney sings a bit of Red River Valley, oft credited to James Kerrigan though its origins are up for debate. The song has been widely covered including versions by such greats as Woody Guthrie, Jo Stafford, and Bing Crosby.

It makes me feel guilty because my friend, Sean, lent me his VHS copy of that movie at some point and I completely forgot about it. Of course, when he came looking for it I adamantly denied having it. Naturally, it turned up in a box 20 years later during one of my house moves. Sorry, Sean.

Here’s Dana Delaney singing it.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlsBKfhmgZY]

July 1 – Day 29 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song from my childhood

Day 29 fell on the 150th birthday of this great nation I was born into. So, it’s only fitting that for this song choice I pick a Canadian artist to represent. Due to the CRTC’s requirements for “Canadian Content” on the radio, I grew up familiar with a good number of Canadian artists. The Box, Gowan, The Guess Who, Neil Young (and oh, how it pains me to list The Box and Gowan with the latter two), Bryan Adams, Leonard Cohen (RIP), Gordon Lightfoot (who once passed out in my grandpa’s bathtub after my dad threw a party when my grandparents were out of town)… the list goes on.

For this one, though, I’m making an unlikely choice. Back in my elementary school days, I had a crush on the younger sister of a kid in my class. I didn’t dare mention it to anyone out of fear that he would have pummelled me. Anyway, this girl loved two things: The Montreal Canadiens and Corey Hart. Her list of loves is a bit longer today, but seeing as we’re Facebook friends I can assure you that those two are still on it.

Here’s one for Canada’s 150th birthday and my German Mills Public School crush, Laurie 🙂

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcPr2-ipfa4]

July 2 – Day 30 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

My favourite song at this time last year

For me, the last day of this challenge was July 2nd. A year ago I really couldn’t tell you what my favourite song was. Of all-time, maybe, but for *that moment* I don’t think I would have had a clue. I don’t listen to the radio much and most of what is played on it is crap anyway. There was a song that got a bit more airtime on my iPod though and that was Little Red Corvette by Prince.

I used to have my brother-in-law’s old red Pontiac Vibe, which I traded my minivan for to his sister after he died. I then gave it to his mother after I bought myself a brand new red Mazda3 Sport. It’s not much of a mid-life crisis, but hey, it’s what I could afford. Then, in June of 2016 I was in a fairly serious accident and my little red car was totaled. Fortunately, I escaped with only minor injuries (and one doozy of a panic attack).

At the end of June I bought myself another little Mazda3 Sport, only by the time I test drove it to the time I bought one the red one was gone and I needed a new car so I had to settle for the black one. I would put on Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” to remind me of the good times I had in my own version of the classic sports car.

Now, Prince (and now Prince’s estate) was a bit wiggy about his stuff appearing on YouTube so I can’t find any videos of him singing this song. Apparently he had a bug up his butt about it. Anyway, here’s a solid cover.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0DG3C8q94c]

~ Andrew

The 30-Day Song Challenge – Days 18-24

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June 20 – Day 18 of the 30-Day Song Challenge 

A song that I wish I heard on the radio

Back in 1991 I had some wicked seats for the Van Halen show in Toronto. Those were the Sammy Hagar days, but whatever. My friend Jon and I were something like ninth row center and it was at the then named Skydome (now the Rogers Centre). We got to the show early and settled into our seats and the opening act came on. It was Alice in Chains. By the end of the set the crowd was, shall we say, not exactly interested. The lead singer, Lane Stanley, was not pleased with the tepid reception his soon-to-be superstar alternative rock band had received and he yelled into the mic, “thank you Toronto for being the worst fucking crowd we’ve ever played to,” and he dropped the mic (not in a cool mic drop way like people do now) and they walked off stage, never to be heard from again. 

 Well, not exactly. They ended up becoming a bit of a big deal and are the unofficial fourth band in the grunge axis of awesome along with Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Soundgarden. Lane was a troubled soul and succumbed to his addition in 2002 but left behind a musical legacy that helped shape a generation. 

 This is a song I don’t recall hearing on the radio but wish they would play. Don’t Follow, by Alice in Chains.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBB2OS4IoTs] 

June 21 – Day 19 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song from my favourite album

The opening track, “Where the Streets Have No Name” is, in my opinion, one of the most iconic opening tracks on any album ever and is featured as the opening of U2’s movie Rattle and Hum based on their Joshua Tree tour from 1987-1988.

I was lucky enough to see the album played live in its entirety this past Friday night with my fifteen-year-old daughter and it was everything I had hoped for and more. Hearing any song on that album invokes the best memories.

I remember stuffing envelopes as a fundraiser for my hockey team back then and one of the coaches had a company that made binders and other back-to-school type stuff. He was licensed to sell Joshua Tree binders (black with a gold outline of the tree from the album cover on it). The team spent the afternoon listening to that album and stuffing envelopes as mail out promos for 5¢ a piece (or something like that).

I also remember at summer camp there was a counsellor named Roop who wore a black Joshua Tree t-shirt. He was one of the coolest counsellors in the place and him wandering around in that t-shirt is burned into my brain. I can even tell you what cabin he was standing in front of the first time I saw him wearing it.

Most of all, I remember the craft hut at camp. The summer of 1988 I was in cabin 12. It’s the cabin that, due to some large trees in the way, was set back from the others in cabin row. Of course, there were lots of stories about why the cabin was set so far back and they were all some variation of a serial killer / monster story set on scaring the pants off you. That didn’t happen, we were all 14 and very little rattled us, but one effect this did have was to give cabin 12 a sense of uniqueness, rebellion, and outcast.

One day I had a free period and everyone went off to the rec hall to do something silly. It was raining and I wasn’t feeling up to shenanigans so I wandered off to the craft hut. I was a scrawny kid with long blond bangs and still quite awkward. I wasn’t exactly Romeo with the ladies and while not un-cool I never exactly achieved full cool status. The craft hut was filled with some girls from cabin 2 (same age as me) and I just walked in and sat down at a table with five or six of them and started working on a gimp bracelet. Didn’t say a word.

The final riff from The Edge’s guitar on the opening track of Joshua Tree was playing and when track two started playing I started to sing along, quietly, as I made my craft. A few of the other girls started to sing as well, and soon it turned into a full blown sing-along. We spent the rest of the hour singing along and crafting with that album playing. In fact, I can’t recall a single piece of conversation that happened in the hour I was there. I’m sure there must have been some, but it sure didn’t feel like it. It was just me, ten girls from cabin 2, a couple counsellors, and U2.

For 60 minutes in the summer of 1988, I found what I was looking for.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yzojvZwzQo]

June 22 – Day 20 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that I listen to when I’m angry

I, like many other young punks of the time, used to jump into the mosh pit when a Nine Inch Nails song came on and throw my body around with reckless abandon letting out some rage and aggression. Sometimes mosh pits would get a little bit rough and tumble and a good old fashioned donnybrook would break out, but most of my experiences with it were pretty tame. I break easily so I never really got right in the middle of it.

One day I was down at a club in Toronto with a friend of mine and we were wandering around and Head Like a Hole came on and he and I jumped into the pit. It didn’t take too long before bodies were being tossed left and right and limbs were flailing this way and that. There was this one particular dude who seemed to be having more of a seizure than he was moshing and, in a terrible sequence of events, he ended up accidentally elbowing me square in the face.

It was a knockout blow if there ever was one and down I started to go. That was, until my friend reached out and grabbed me by the front of my baggy flannel shirt, yanked me to my feet, moved me out of the pit, and held me up until my eyes uncrossed and my head stopped spinning.

That was the second time this particular friend saved my ass (or my head, as it were) from a mosh pit/crowd surfing debacle (I think I bought him a round but if I didn’t then I owe you one, Kirb).

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao-Sahfy7Hg]

June 23 – Day 21 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that I listen to when I’m happy

There are a few songs that are impossible to not be happy when hearing them and Spirit of the West has a few in this category. Born from the West Coast Canadian music scene, this band has a distinctly East Coast sound with lots of fiddle, foot stomping, and that hand drum thingy you whack with a small stick as you twist your wrist to and fro really quickly.

The song that I’ll put on when I’m in a good mood is one that was the anthem of many a university dorm room, particularly “The Zoo” at the University of Western Ontario, which in its day had earned a five-star reputation for being the partyingest dorm in Canada. It’s also my go-to song for when my house is in such a state of disrepair that there doesn’t appear to be any hope of salvaging it.

“The furniture’s on fire, this house is a disgrace, someone change the locks before we trash this place! Save this house!”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wHDFBZ9YKg]

June 24 – Day 22 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that I listen to when I’m sad

There was a time in my life when I found out someone died or was sick or was seriously ill or just plain stricken with grief and the same song would come on the radio. For a two-year period in the early ‘90’s, without fail, this would happen. Every time I would hear it I would get this impending sense of doom and I would spend the next several hours flinching whenever the phone rang.

Thankfully, the disturbing trend didn’t continue, but if I’m feeling low sometimes I’ll throw this song on just let myself wallow for a bit, because everybody hurts, sometimes.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rOiW_xY-kc]

June 25 – Day 23 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that I want to play at my wedding

Seeing as I was married in 1999 to my beautiful wife, Jodi, there should be songs from our wedding. We didn’t have a “typical” reception, though, and there was no dancing. We had an early dinner at a restaurant and then went back to a friend’s house for some drinks and socializing. We did, however, have some music being played for the processional, recessional, and during the signing of the registry.

When Jodi and I met the organist she sat down and played some snippets of songs asking us if whatever she was playing were the types of thing we were looking for. When she started into “The Long and Winding Road” by the Beatles her operatic voice and emphatic mashing of the piano had both Jodi and me stifling laughter and anytime we hear that song we both do a reasonable impression.

We ended up not using that song, or maybe it was in with the other songs while we were signing the registry, I can’t quite remember what we used in there. Instead, we went for something a little more traditional with Pachelbel’s Canon in D as our processional and Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring for the recessional. I love both those songs and decided that for our fifth anniversary I would secretly learn to play it on the piano and surprise Jodi with a performance.

For this, I also needed to learn how to play the piano.

So off I went and I sort of learned to play it and sort of performed for her on our anniversary. I ended up only being able to play just the right hand and not even all the way through, but it was a fun experience nonetheless.

For our 10th anniversary, I ended up getting the first few bars of it tattooed on my right arm (the right-hand part only, of course), which later became the base for a pretty wicked tree tattoo.

Here’s a fantastic 80’s rock/metal cover of the classic Bach tune:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF2pO7mRYHM]

June 26 – Day 24 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that I want played at my funeral

I haven’t really put much thought into my funeral, to be honest. I’ll be dead so there’s little I can say about it and I guess what happens after I cease to live is out of my control. I think I’d like a low-key service with my family and some close friends. I don’t want any big long-winded speeches where the officiant drones on and on about loss and grieving, and I certainly don’t want there to be any religion. Ideally, people would convene at the beach beside a small fire and everyone would have a beverage of their choosing in hand and everyone would get a chance to share a story about a time when I made them laugh. Around the circle, I want them to go, remembering one thing that made them chuckle or otherwise brought a smile to their face.

After everyone has a turn I’d like to have this song played, because if not for the presence of all those people in my life, I would never have been able to enjoy mine as much as I have, and that deserves a thank you.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88dQn_-5hIM]

 ~ Andrew

x

The 30-Day Song Challenge – Days 11-17

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June 13 – Day 11 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song from my favourite band

Ah! What to do? There are three bands that jump immediately to mind when someone asks me who my favourite band or artist is: Rush, U2, and The Watchmen. I listed them in the reverse order of preference  🙂 Rush was my first fanboy experience, U2 was there throughout some of my most enjoyable and memorable experiences as a teenager, and The Watchmen has been my fave from 1993 onward. Ken is one of the finest folks you’ll ever meet (and one hell of a musician) and I have a truckload of good memories from their shows.

They don’t have a lot of stuff online and my friend Alex loves the band but hasn’t seen them play live in decades. I couldn’t possibly pick a favourite so I’ll pick a song that is his favourite. You can get a feel for how awesome it is to see these guys perform in this video. They don’t play often, but if you can see them I’d recommend going.

“The second night without you is no better than the first. I hope the third one won’t be worse.”

June 14 – Day 12 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song from a band I hate

It really pains me to do this. Even writing their name makes me cringe and all I can think of is the picture of the lead singer standing with his arm around Stephen Harper (coincidentally enough the Canadian Prime Minister I hate the most). Chad Kroeger from Nickelback shares a birthday with a tattoo artist that has done a lot of work on my wife and I. We were getting work done one say and this fact came out and he went on a classic rant about Chad and Nickelback, most of which can’t be repeated.

“And what the fuck is on Joey’s head? Fuck you, you asshole! It’s a fucking yarmulke! He’s Jewish!” – Wayne

June 15 – Day 13 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that is a guilty pleasure

Okay, so here’s the thing. My formidable years were in the 80’s. Big hair, fantastically ugly gym shorts with matching tube socks, and lots of synthesizers and electronic drums. Did I mention the big hair? During that time I had what could only be described as a “diverse” taste in music. The first cassettes I ever bought were The Box (self-titled, 1984) followed by Fleetwood Mac (Rumors, 1977), and Pink Floyd (The Wall, 1982).

The height of hysteria came in the form of Michael Jackson and I was a huge fan and got Thriller on vinyl. I wasn’t alone in this craze, however. Nor was I alone in my appreciation for Culture Club, Cindy Lauper, Corey Hart, Gino Vannelli, Gowan, U2, The Who, Bryan Adams, or the American Bryan Adams, Bruce Springsteen 😉 and of course, Madonna!

To this day, I know at least the chorus to more Madonna songs than any of the other acts I’ve mentioned with the possible exception of Pink Floyd and U2. A personal favourite of mine happens to be Material Girl and you’ll find me singing out loud (chorus only – see a previous post on me not knowing the lyrics to anything)  in my car and then looking around to make sure nobody heard me  with that look on my face that kind of resembles a cat that just fell off the couch while licking its butt and is now strutting across the floor all, “Yeah, totes did that on purpose.”

June 16 – Day 14 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that no one would expect me to love

I don’t know what people would not expect me to love. There are some that stand out that are obvious choices for songs I *do* love but I tend to like a wide variety of music with the exception of gangsta rap and a good amount of country. Jodi is the true music lover and I end up liking quite a bit of what she downloads. I fill my iPod with what I like and then tell it to fill the free space with random stuff from the library.

A few years back we went to see Jason Mraz (we had pretty good seats too) and as is customary with Jodi she had all the music from artists we were going to see in concert loaded into a playlist. So, on the way down to the show (about an hour’s drive) we were listening to Jason Mraz as well as the opening act for the tour, Christina Perri.

Jason Mraz was okay. He certainly did nothing to turn me into a fan, though the guys he had playing the brass instruments were fantastic. Christina Perri, on the other hand, absolutely wowed me. She put on a great show and sounded equally as great. When her songs come on the iPod when I’m driving the volume goes up every time. Avery and I sing this one together if I’m driving her to the bus. It’s my favourite Christina Perri tune and a song I think no one would expect me to love.

 

June 17 – Day 15 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that describes me

Me in a nutshell:

  • I am fiercely and proudly Canadian
  • I love hockey and I married a woman who doesn’t give a fuck about it (and I never saw someone say that before)
  • In grade school, I was a pro at the flexed arm hang
  • My temperament is like a firework. There’s a short fuse that burns too quickly and then there’s an explosion. 

 

June 18 – Day 16 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that I used to love but now hate

I don’t like this category. I’d prefer if it was a song that I used to hate but now love, but rules are rules so I’ll take a crack at it.

I had a hard time coming up with anything that I used to love but now hate. I have found that if I like a song I like a song and that doesn’t change much over time. There are some songs that have lost a bit of luster and a bunch of these songs are Counting Crows songs. Remember how I mentioned that we’d put the Counting Crows on at bedtime? Since there were only so many low key CDs out there the Counting Crows were played a lot. So much Counting Crows.

I guess after so many years their music has just lost a bit of its allure. This song was big when I was in university and I “danced” to it. I’m sure I had a jolly ole time singing along, but now if it comes on I turn it off.

 

June 19 – Day 17 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song I hear often on the radio

In the morning when I’m shaving and in the shower, we will listen to Magic 106.1 out of Guelph, Ontario. Their website says they play “Today’s Best Mix”. At dinner time and other meals spent eating as a family we listen to 96.7 CHYM FM who proclaims to bring us “Today’s Best Music”. If I’m to believe their slogans both of these stations will be playing me the best of music currently being put out by artists, however, he genres are fairly narrow. I think for the most part they can be considered “Top 40” with a few less current tunes thrown in every now and then.

I picked a song that I seem to hear on the radio a lot, but couldn’t pick which station I think I hear it playing on most often. So, I went to the respective websites and looked at their recent songs and lo and behold in the hour before I wrote this post (Sunday afternoon) the song had been played on BOTH stations (48 and 50 minutes respectively). Aside from Sia’s “Cheap Thrills” I don’t think there’s a song I hear more often, and since I like this one better it’s the one I’m picking.

 
~ Andrew
 

The 30-Day Song Challenge – Days 4-10

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June 6 – Day 4 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that makes me sad

Ugh. I’m a very emotional guy (hello, Pisces!) and I feel things quite deeply. There are TV commercials that make me cry, retelling the story of my daughter’s successful spinal surgery makes me cry, and yes, when I hear certain songs an overwhelming sense of melancholy comes over me. Some songs are simply sad. Some have sad events associated with them. Others just happened to be playing when I was sad about something completely unrelated. This song, however, always seems to make me sad when I hear it. It’s a song about loss and how you can avoid the pain of it but only at the cost of not experiencing what you loved in the first place.

“Our lives
Are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I’d have had to miss
The dance”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpwdwbO1uvM]


June 7 – Day 5 of the  30-Day Song Challenge

A song that reminds me of someone

The piss from the cow struck the windshield of the convertible and shot up, hitting Vern square in the face. The fact that he was in the middle of belting out “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” at the time made it all the more unbelievable. Nonetheless, it happened, and that cow could not have picked a better target; not because he deserved to get a face full of cow urine, but because of the way Vern handled it. He managed to keep his dad’s blue Miata on the road and he laughed about it afterwards. Heck, he laughed out loud and proud every time he told the story.

That’s the opening paragraph to the short story “Losing Vern”, my first publication and part of the Orange Karen: Tribute to a Warrior anthology. Vern, in this exaggerated and creative non-fiction piece is actually by brother-in-law, Ryan, and the opening paragraph is true. The rest of the story goes on to explain the unfortunate and bizarre events that followed his unexpected and tragic death.

I can’t hear John Denver without thinking about him and I especially can’t hear “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” without breaking out in a smile and shedding a tear at the same time. I miss you, Ryan. We all do.


[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRuCPS_-_IA]


June 8 – Day 6 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that reminds me of somewhere

I could probably name a hundred songs that remind me of somewhere. There is one that takes me back to two somewheres and I didn’t even know it had this power until I heard it played by the person I was with where these somewheres were. Thinking back, I suppose it could have been any number of tunes that took me back to those spots but this song is familiar to me and it has always been a favourite of mine, from the first time I heard it in the John Hughes flick The Breakfast Club.

Yup, it’s “Don’t You Forget About Me” by Simple Minds and the man playing it is none other than my dearly departed friend, Riaz. Ri played a cover of this tune sometime in 2012, I think, and his friend posted it to YouTube. When I first heard him playing it I was immediately transported back to my first-year university residence in 1993 and Riaz’s basement of the house he shared with some mutual friends in 1994 and 1995. These are places for which my memories are vivid and fond and they involve Riaz with his guitar and me sitting in awe of what he could do with the instrument and me sloppily singing along and undoubtedly fucking up the words to every song he played, including this one, I’m sure.

Whenever I hear the song now, I hear Riaz’s cover and I’m right back in residence in 1993 with a pack of Du Maurier Lights, long blonde bangs, my future wife on one side of me and Riaz on the other, smiling and in love with whatever music he decided to bring to life in that moment.
Don’t worry, Ri, we don’t forget about you.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHds-D9N688]


June 9 – Day 7 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song that reminds me of an event

As with most of these song challenge categories there are quite a few songs for each one that I could pick. A song that reminds me of an event, for me, has dozens upon dozens to choose from. I figure that since I’ve spent ¼ of the first 8 days talking about death that I would take this opportunity to reminisce in the other direction.

It was May 19, 2006, and it was the Friday of the Victoria Day long weekend. Jodi and I had our friends Trevor & Iza and their two kids over for the weekend and Jodi was ten days from her due date. I was working on the other side of the city and a good 45 minute drive from home.

Sometime around 10 am Jodi called me. “I need you to get home now,” she said. I hopped in my car and began the drive home. Fortunately any rush hour traffic had abated and I was able to treat the speed limit as more of a guideline. As I came within 5 minutes of my house the song “The Adventure” by Angels and Airwaves came on the radio. 

The chorus starts like this: “Hey oh, here I am, and here we go, life’s waiting to begin.”

Indeed it was.

I drove my wife to the hospital where I got the paperwork done around 11:30 am. Less than fifteen minutes later our second child was born, all ten pounds nine ounces of him. We were home by 2:30 pm (and that was only because I installed the car seat wrong and then got stuck behind someone who couldn’t work the paid parking machine). We had pizza for dinner and Trevor and Iza spent the weekend with us and our bouncing baby sumo wrestler of a newborn.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMl8cQjBfqk]


June 10 – Day 8 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song I know all the words to

This one is kind of funny because I am TERRIBLE at knowing the words to stuff. I live inside the melody and can tell you how they go for hundreds and hundreds of songs but remembering words has never been my strong suit, which is ironic because I was in a little coffee shop band for a bit and was responsible for, you know, actually singing the words.

So I’m going to take a song out of our repertoire and use that for this category, because I know all the words and enjoy the song 🙂  This also happens to be a song by a band that my “big” sister, Kari, introduced me to way back in the 80’s. She always had good taste in music and even accompanied me to a Rush concert back in the early 90’s. I am pretty sure she was the one girl in the audience.

Anyway, back to the song. Crowded House singing “Better Be Home Soon” (their version, not the Argyle Speedo one).
 
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQOlwMKpmvQ]


June 11 – Day 9 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

A song I can dance to

So here’s the thing: I don’t dance. It’s not something I, what’s the word? Do. I make Elaine from Seinfeld look like Paula Abdul. I have danced before, and on every occasion it hasn’t been pretty. It’s barely been observable as actual dancing. My go-to move is The Sprinkler. That pretty much says it all. Oh, I also almost broke a leg trying to “thread the needle”. Look it up on YouTube and imagine a six foot two inch gangling string bean of a white dude trying to pull that one off in front of the TV watching music videos.

All of that said, there is a song that when played I just have to groove to it. It’s the beat that I love and I can’t stop my toes from tapping whenever I hear it. The original, with its rapey lyrics, pisses me off to no end and I feel super guilty about “grooving to it” so I am glad “Weird Al” Yankovic did a parody with a  set of lyrics that speaks to me and denizens of my friends.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc]


June 12 – Day 10 of the 30-Day Song Challenge 

A song that makes me fall asleep

When I was in university I used to put on music before bed to help me fall asleep. University residence was very loud and I’ve never been the best sleeper and sometimes when you close your eyes and relax a little Pink Floyd is just what the moment calls for. When I started sharing a bed regularly with Jodi, whether it was in one of our apartments or in our bedroom when we first moved in together, we would always have music on to go to bed. There was LOTS of Sarah McLachlan and Counting Crows. So much Counting Crows. It was a lot of Counting Crows. I don’t think I can understate how much Counting Crows we listened to.

When it was just me in bed though, I would often look to something a little more instrumental, a little more transcendental, and a little less Counting Crowsy. Pachelbel’s Cannon in D was always a good one, as was anything from Orbital or the aforementioned Pink Floyd, but one of the first albums I used to listen to at bedtime was the Jurassic Park soundtrack. I’m sure I would still fall asleep in an instant if I lay down and listened to it today.

Here’s the Piano Guys playing the title track originally written by John Williams.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pvci1hwAx8]

~ Andrew

The 30-Day Song Challenge – Days 1-3

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A friend of mine, writer and all-around great guy Gareth S. Young started doing this 30-Day song challenge and after seeing his posts day after day I decided I’d give it a shot. I haven’t blogged much in a while so I thought I’d do it here as a weekly Monday summary to get me in the habit of writing at least something every day. Plus, MUSIC! Who doesn’t love music?

This is the “challenge”:

June 3 – Day 1 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

My favourite song

I have lots of songs that I love. I have even more that I enjoy in specific situations. One song, however, stands above them all. I have yet to listen to a song that captures my attention more than this one. Originally written by the Magnetic Fields, The Book of Love was covered by the Airborne Toxic Event and I first heard it on their live album played with the Calder Quartet at the Walt Disney Concert Hall the week after the death of the lead singer’s grandma.

The lyrics, the emotion, the music… I love everything about this song.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQUZBi-P6Jw]


June 4 – Day 2 of the 30-Day Song Challenge

My least  favourite song

This wasn’t even a contest for the longest time. My least favourite song by a country mile was Paranoid Android by Radiohead. It’s odd because Radiohead isn’t even my least favourite artist. They’re nowhere near the top, but they’re also not at the bottom. That Paranoid Android song, though, grates my cheese like you wouldn’t believe. But it’s no matter because Gwen Stefani wrote the song Hollaback Girl and it instantaneously took over the top spot. Even after the ridiculous amount of airplay it got on the radio I have not warmed up to it. Not even a little.

You know what’s B-A-N-A-N-A-S, Gwen? That hearing your song makes me want to throw my radio across the room.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgjkth6BRRY]


June 5 – Day 3 of the 30-Day Song Challenge 

A song that makes me happy

There is so much about music to be happy about. Whether it’s seeing my wife pour through music on Spotify and see the look on her face when she hears a new song that that she likes, or hearing my daughter singing the same song over and over again because she absolutely loves it and must know how to sing it and play it on the guitar, or watching my son destroy the dashboard of my car because we are on our way to or from drum lessons and the Beastie Boys are playing and he. Must. Play. Along.  For the longest time all I had was the radio and a few cassette tapes and CDs so when I first heard Rush’s Spirit of Radio my mind was blown. Considering when that song first came out I think it was about as meta as you could get at the time. The song is about the companionship and freedom that music brings but how ultimately it’s controlled by commercialization.

“For the words of the profits were written on the studio wall, concert hall… and echoes with the sounds, of salesmen, of salesmen, of salesmen”

When they play it live and hit that “concert hall” line all the house lights go up and the crowd goes crazy. I’ve seen them play that song live at least half a dozen times and it gives me goosebumps every time.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuL_euRslTc]


What would your songs be for these categories? Put ’em in the comments and tune in next week for days four to ten!
~ Andrew

The Good, The Bad, and The Solution

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A little more than two years ago my family got some first-hand experience with the Ronald McDonald House organization. The charity that bears the name of the fast food chain’s goofy clown mascot had been an enigma to me until then. What I discovered opened my eyes to something wonderful that truly makes a difference in the lives of families at times when it is most needed.

Wikipedia

Ronald McDonald houses can be found all over the world. There are over three hundred of them and are usually neighboring a local women’s or children’s hospital. There was one across the street from McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario when our daughter had surgery to correct a pretty bad case of scoliosis.

The houses allow families of children in hospital to have a place to live throughout the ordeal without the added burden of staying in a hotel and eating out for every meal.

We declined the actual Ronald McDonald House offer that was available to us because we were able to have one parent in the hospital with our daughter and the other drove the 45 minutes back home. However, at McMaster Children’s Hospital, there was also a Ronald McDonald House room for people to use. It was outfitted with couches and televisions and had a kitchen stocked with food and beverages. It was a quiet sanctuary away from all the stress of the ward and it was only a hundred steps away.

I mention all this because Wednesday, May 3 is McHappy Day and some of the proceeds from hot beverage sales, Big Macs, and Happy Meals will be donated to Ronald McDonald House charities. Every year since the surgery our family has eaten McDonald’s on that day and sometimes more than once.

I was all set to load up on Mc D’s this year again but then the restaurant I hate to love went and did something stupid: they made it so that their restaurants were no longer safe for my son to eat at by introducing foods that contained peanuts and other nuts. This isn’t normally a big problem, but this decision also came with the fact that the nuts would be open and not packaged or pre-mixed into the food. What this ended up doing was rendering every food they make at risk of containing traces of peanuts.

I still can’t fathom what moron made that decision and how much more money they thought they would be able to make by doing it this way instead of a way that wouldn’t contaminate all their other foods. I know a good number of other parents of kids with nut allergies who were just as confused and just as upset as I was. I even wrote a scathing letter to McDonald’s (and posted it on my blog). I received a form letter response a week or so later saying that they were ensuring my letter made it into the proper hands but since then I have not heard anything. I don’t expect to.

Suffice it to say I’ve sworn off McDonald’s in protest of this asinine move, but with McHappy Day fast approaching I have to admit I have been torn. The good news is I think I have come up with an agreeable solution.

Ronald McDonald House is a registered charity around the world. What that means is that if you donate to them you get a tax receipt. What that means (at least as far as I know in Canada and the United States) is that you can claim that donation on your taxes and you will receive a percentage back.

So here’s what I’m going to do on McHappy Day this year, and I am putting out an open call for people to join me:

On Wednesday, May 3, 2017, I am going to bypass the whole restaurant middleman and donate directly to Ronald McDonald House. Then, with the equivalent of what I’d get back on my taxes from making that donation, I’m going to go straight to Wendy’s and buying dinner.

~ Andrew

Here’s where you can donate to Ronald McDonald House:

Canada:
https://www.rmhccanada.ca/donation  

U.S. and Other:
http://support.rmhc.org/site/PageNavigator/pw/Donation_Landing.html

Related Links: