Category Archives: Uncategorized

Who Wants to Be a Billionaire?

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It’s time to play everyone’s favourite game, Who Wants to Be a MBillionaire?

Yes, that’s correct. Billionaire. With a “B”. Billion. If you’re the Koch brothers it might just be enough money to buy an election. It’s enough money to give 999 people you know a million dollars and still have a million left for yourself.

It’s a lot of money.

Of course, I’m talking about the upcoming Powerball lottery jackpot of $1.3 Billion. That’s annuitized, though, which means that you would receive thirty equal payments starting with one this year and then for the next twenty-nine consecutive years. I did the math. The day you cashed in your ticket you would receive a cheque for $43,333,333.33. The last space tourist paid $40,000,000 for a trip to space. This means you could buy a spot on a Russian rocket and spend a week on the International Space Station once a year every year from now until 2044 and still have more than three million dollars a year left over to have some actual fun with, you know, in case a week in space every year isn’t rocking your socks.

NASA took this photo

But is it worth it to buy a ticket?

Well, the odds are what the odds are and every draw they’re the same, whether you play every week or once every ten years. In the case of Powerball, the odds are astronomical. I don’t throw that word around lightly, either. I studied a lot of astrophysics when I was in university, so I understand the concept of astronomical. Time and space are mind-bogglingly huge, and the Powerball odds meet the definition of astronomical. To put it the simplest terms possible, you’re not going to win.

But someone is going to win it eventually, right?

Yes. Someone is going to win, eventually, and they will be the luckiest son of a bitch since Billy Joel married Christie Brinkley.

AP Photo/Ron Frehm

I use a bit of simplified poker math to help me make my decision. In poker, there are a couple ratios that you factor in when you’re playing: pot odds and pot equity.

Pot odds are easy because you simply figure out how much you put in and compare it to how much you get out if you win. If I need to call a bet of $10 and the pot I’ll win is $1000 then my pot odds are 1:100 (winning a hundred times more than I’m betting). In the case of Powerball, you put in $2 and you stand a chance at winning $1,300,000,000. So your “pot odds” are 1:675,000,000. These are great pot odds. Matthew McConaughey would love this much pot.

Now in poker, pot equity gets a little more complicated. It’s simply defined as how much you “own” the pot based on the cards you have and the cards that are still available. For the Powerball lottery simple probably math gives us our chances. In every Powerball draw, a single ticket has a 1 in 292,201,338 chance of winning. This is terrible pot equity.

To put that in perspective a lot of people like to use the “hit by lightning” analogy. I prefer to use something a little more personal, so to put this into perspective let me say that your chances of becoming President of the United States (assuming you are actually American and not someone like Ted Cruz) are one in ten million. Which means you are 29 times more likely to hold the Twitter handle @POTUS at some point in your life than you are to win the Powerball lottery.

POTUS on Twitter

Anyhoo… now that you’ve got your two numbers you can figure out if you should play or not. In poker, this helps determine if you should fold, or chase that card you need for a winning hand. You decide by comparing your pot odds with your pot equity. If your pot odds are better than your pot equity, then go for it.

So, for Powerball, our pot odds are better than our equity (by 3 to 1) and I’ll be buying a single ticket (and not holding my breath). It’s a small price to pay for a potentially massive return. I treat it as entertainment. It’s fun, for however short a time, to have a non-zero chance at winning a billion dollars.

Plus, if you don’t play your chances of winning are guaranteed to be zero, and that pot equity is as bad as it gets.

~ Andrew

P.S. I’m Canadian, so I’m going to have to get one of my friends in MA, RI, or CT to buy me a ticket before Wednesday’s draw. I’ll see you next week when I’m in town and give you 1% of my winnings 😉

The Sound of Music – Part 4

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Welcome to the fourth installment of the Sound of Music – My Top Five Albums Of All Time. 

Think of this as a “deserted island” list of albums I’d want to have with me if I were stranded and these were the only albums I had on my iPod at the time (assume a solar charger and necessary waterproofing).

As a reminder, I present my main decision-making criteria:

  • Number of songs I like on the album (the fewer songs I skip over, the better)
  • Composition of the album (are the songs arranged in an order I find pleasing?)
  • Memories invoked when I hear a song from the album
  • Emotional impact of the album (how does listening to it make me feel?)

In no particular order thus far we have:

Today we will add a fourth album to the list:

Source: Wikipedia

Released 1973
Track Listing:

  1. “Speak to Me” – (Intro-Instrumental)
  2. “Breathe” (8/10)
  3. “On the Run” (Instrumental, 8/10)
  4. “Time” (8/10)
  5. “The Great Gig in the Sky” (“Instrumental”, 9/10)
  6. “Money” (8/10)
  7. “Us and Them” (8/10)
  8. “Any Colour You Like” (Instrumental, 8/10)
  9. “Brain Damage” (9/10)
  10. “Eclipse” (9/10)

While the sixties were a time of peace, love, music, and marijuana (and acid, and whatever else those crazy kids could get their hands on). If they were giving out awards for whose fans were the highest it’s no secret that Pink Floyd was likely the first band to hold the title across the Atlantic. With the Grateful Dead having formed around the same time they were leading the way by a country mile in the United States.

 The only track I’ll skip on this album is the opening instrumental intro. Quite frankly, the composition is nothing short of perfection. Opening with a psychedelic instrumental reminiscent of something Monty Python would have written, the album sets the tone with “Breathe” and then moves seamlessly into an instrumental that finishes with a resounding “boom” before we get a jolt of surprise with the sounding of dozens of alarm clocks in “Time”, one of many instances where Floyd makes use of samples to augment their musical stylings. “The Great Gig in the Sky” was the first song where I noticed and really began to understand that a person’s voice was an instrument. The woman singing on this track doesn’t use a single word from the dictionary as she winds her voice up and down with “ooooohhhhhhh” and “ahhhhhhhhh” and “ooooooooooo” and it’s positively hypnotic. “Money” brings more distinctive sound bites and “Us and Them” sits in a natural spot as track seven, leading into another instrumental. The final two tracks, especially when played back to back without interruption, might be the greatest ending of all the albums in my library.

 This album cover is probably one of the most iconic pieces of musical artwork ever created. Every kid who has heard of this album has tried to recreate this effect the first time they got their hands on a prism in science class.

 For years growing up in Thornhill, I would drive past the “Becker’s” convenience store on Aileen Road and there was this big green electrical box with the Dark Side of the Moon album cover spray-painted in white on the side. The box has long since been replaced and is now obscured by a collection of overgrown trees but thanks to the fine folks at Google Maps and Microsoft Paint I’ve been able to recreate the image forever burned into my memory (that graffiti stayed on the side of that electrical box for years):

Aileen Road Electrical Box with Modified Graffiti Courtesy of Andrew

In 1994, I was fortunate enough to see Pink Floyd play at Exhibition Place with a lifelong friend, Jon, as well as a newly formed friend, Riaz (and a bunch of his buddies). As part of their Division Bell tour, Floyd played the entire Dark Side of the Moon album and to this day that remains one of my most memorable live concert performances. 


 How does hearing this album make me feel? Nostalgic, calm, peaceful, relaxed, poetic, introspective, and blissful. Which, I suspect, is just what Pink Floyd was going for. 

Hey, since you’ve read this far if you’re looking to learn how to play guitar like one of the greats, I came across this website that gives you some free tips and tricks. They happen to have a section on none other than David Gilmour. Check it out over at Beginner Guitar HQ.

 ~ Andrew

Coming Soon: 
The fifth addition to round out the list and then a post where I put them in order, explain why, and list a bunch of honourable mentions.

One Word

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One word. 

One word can make all the difference. 

In stark contrast to the more! more! more! approach of National Novel Writing Month, I am going to round out December with a post that will focus on summing it the hell up. Here are fifty questions to which I will respond using only one word: 

1. Where is your cell phone? Couch

2. Your significant other? Genius

3. Your hair? Thinning

4. Your mother? Loving

5. Your father? Wise

6. Your favourite? Kids

7. Your dream last night? Obscure

8. Your favourite drink? Grapes

9. Your dream/goal? Retirement

10. What room you are in? Living

11. Your hobby? Lounging

12. Your fear? Drowning

13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Happy

14. Where were you last night? Home

15. Something that you are not? Alone

16. Muffins? Sometimes

17. Wish list item? Sleep

18. Where you grew up? Thornhill

19. Last thing you did? Write

20. What are you wearing? Comfort

21. Your TV? Flat

22. Your pets? Annoying

23. Friends? Plethora

24. Your life? Incomparable

25. Your mood? Introspective

26. Missing someone? Yes

27. First Car? Gutless

28. Something you usually wear but aren’t? Watch

29. Your favourite store? Hardware

30. Your favourite colour? Green

31. Best book you’ve ever read? Mockingbird

32. Your hero? Avery

33. When is the last time you laughed? Recently

34. Last time you cried? October

35. Preferred flavour of gum? Mint

36. One place that you go to over and over? Facebook

37. One person who emails you regularly? Spammers

38. Favourite place to eat (cheap)? Mozy’s

39. Favourite place to eat (pricey)? Keg

40. One goal in life? Longevity

41. Favourite movie? Tarantino

42. What is your worst habit? Laziness

43. Desired superpower? Teleportation

44. Your favourite food? Steak

45. Favourite Band/Musician? Watchmen

46. Favourite veggie/fruit? Oranges

47. Your driving style? Bad

48. What is special in your bedroom? Love

49. Own or rent? Own

50. Who will comment on this? Nobody

~ Andrew

Twenty-five Things

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Twenty-five things about me:

  1. I am quite fond of art
  2. Red wine is my alcoholic beverage of choice (Malbec, Shiraz, Cab – in that order)
  3. I have only fired a pistol on one occasion and will never own a gun of any kind – ever
  4. I believe intelligent life exists (or existed) elsewhere in the Universe
  5. If I don’t like a book I won’t finish it. Halfway is the tipping point for most
  6. I haven’t had cable in two years but still enjoy watching shows (thank god for Netflix)
  7. I played reasonably competitive hockey until I was 16, but was a third or fourth liner at best (I was a great skater though)
  8. It wasn’t until 2012 that I started to consider myself a writer
  9. I once provided trivia content for a home video game system
  10. My daughter and I were both baptized by the same Anglican minister, at two different churches, 22 years and 100km apart
  11. I am at peace with the fact that there are some questions that seem like they cannot be answered, and encouraged by the fact that it does not stop many others from trying to answer them
  12. In the tenth grade I received an award for achieving the highest Math mark out of 400 students in my year
  13. I can juggle
  14. I accidentally lit myself on fire and ended up in “The Darwin Awards III, Survival of the Fittest” (a dubious distinction, but a distinction none the less)
  15. I was a teacher’s assistant for behavioral English as a Second Language kids between the ages of eight and ten. The teacher spoke seven languages
  16. I used to drive the student safety van at the University of Waterloo
  17. I started smoking in 1987 at age 13, was up to a pack a day by the time I left high school, and quit for good (cold turkey) on March 8th, 1998
  18. For various weddings, I have been a: bus boy, bartender, usher, groomsman, master of ceremonies, and groom
  19. I will not wear a hat when seated at a table for a meal – not even after golf
  20. For three years in school, I played the trumpet (and sucked at it)
  21. I almost failed typing class in high school, but last clocked myself at 80 words per minute
  22. I tend to win a lot of radio contests, with one of the biggest being $500 from best buy and one of the coolest being getting to be “Concert Promoter” for a day and meet Nine Inch Nails and take 7 friends to the show
  23. I enter a lot of hockey pools every year (regular season and playoffs) but have only won money in a few
  24. I received a swimming badge at summer camp – with a full wrist to shoulder cast on my left arm. The duct tape marks (from the garbage bag over-the-cast “solution”) on my shoulder took weeks to heal
  25. March 13, May 19, June 14, and November 6 are days that mean a lot to me
~ Andrew

Proud Papa

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I’m going to take this opportunity to write about how awesome my kids are.

I realize that most parents say this about their kids and many of them are right. All of them should be blogging about it. Kids who are awesome and do awesome things deserve to be praised from the highest mountains. So here’s my story about a weekend that my kids turned from ordinary to extraordinary in a span of less than twenty-four hours.

For those who don’t know, I have two children with my wife of sixteen years: a 13-year-old girl and a 9-year-old boy. Through some weird nickname wormhole, these two fine little humans are affectionately referred to as “Pants” and “Dude”, which are actually short for “Princess Pants” and “Doodle”, which were actually short for “Princess Paloney Baloney” and “Mister Doodle” (he was 10 lb 9 oz when he was born and when you’re that big they call you Mister).

Anyhow, they’re great kids, but unlike a lot of other kids I know neither of them are crazy interested in competitively doing things. Pants stopped figure skating right before it got really serious (phew!) and Dude had shown only mild interest in such things – until bowling, that is (the funny thing is that we were calling him Dude before he started bowling).

Now we’re calling him The Dude.

This is his third year of 5-pin bowling. For the uninitiated, 5-pin bowling is done with a smaller ball (with no holes in it) and there are, appropriately, five pins which are arranged in a wide “V” shape. Unlike 10-bin bowling where each pin is worth one, in 5-pin the head pin is worth 5, the two beside it are each worth 3, and the two end pins are each worth 2. You get to bowl three balls per frame (instead of two), with the same strike and spare rules as in 10-pin (i.e. your strike counts all pins plus the next two balls with your spare counting all pins plus your next ball). A perfect game is 450.

Dude’s best score is 221 but his average is sitting around 127, which is pretty good for a 9-year-old playing with kids a year older than he is (Bantam age bracket is 7-10). This past weekend Dude went to his regular bowling league game on Saturday while Pants and I were hanging with a friend of mine (more on that later). Turns out he qualified to compete in the Zone Championships the next day at some lanes one city over (20 minutes or so by car). So, Sunday morning my wife packed him up and got him registered. Before he left he said to me, “I feel like I’m going to have a good day.” 

Understatement of the year, kid.

With nine frames done in his first game he was below average by enough that it wasn’t looking too good. Then, in the tenth frame he bowled three strikes in a row for his first ever turkey (that’s what you call three strikes in a row in bowling) for a 160. His second game was a 171, followed by a 147 and a consistent 148. After four games he was 92 pins up on the next boy but fatigue started to set in and he rounded out his first five-game set with the only one below his average, carding a 124. His average over the five games was 150.

Even with the sub-par last game, his lead held up and he was crowed the Bantam Boys (Singles) Zone Champion earning him a spot at the Provincial Championships on March 6. We couldn’t be more thrilled. He keeps asking when he can watch the movie The Big Lebowski. If he wins provincials I just might let him.

“The medal doesn’t say first place, but I won, and it’s gold, so that’s okay.” – The Dude

The Dude Abides

Remember how I mentioned Pants and I were hanging with a friend of mine on Saturday while Dude was bowling? Well, this friend is a super rad guy named Jim. Aside from being an all ’round good guy, Jim is also musically inclined. He plays guitar, bass, a little keyboard, and taught himself to play the harmonica the other day – just because. Jim and I played in a little coffee shop trio called Argyle Speedo with our friend Steph a while back. It was fun. I like writing lyrics to stuff Jim creates, though they tend to be on the depressing side, whereas Jim’s wheelhouse tends toward happy fun stuff.

Anyway, Jim was taking an art sabbatical and spending all his non-sleeping time at Kwartzlab and wanted me to hang with him and create stuff one day. I asked if Pants could join us because she recently picked up her guitar for the first time in well over a year (with only 8 months of lessons under her belt) and I thought it would be cool for her to experience the creation of art for no other reason than to create art. Jim being Jim thought this was a top shelf idea and on Saturday around 10:30 in the morning Pants and I met him at the lab. He was upstairs shooting footage for a vlog and had an array of recording equipment and instruments lying around.

We just fiddled with instruments for a bit, with Jim and Avery randomly strumming stuff and me trying to figure out the cajon drum box. After a couple hours of playing some John Lennon, Vance Joy, Axis of Awesome and other random stuff we grabbed a sandwich.

After lunch, we got out the trusty “How to Write a Hit Song” cheat sheets and Avery picked a major key and a chord progression and just started strumming, Jim got the harmonica out and started playing his brand new mouth organ, and I started banging on the cajon. A couple minutes later it sounded like a song.

I was mentioning that I only wrote sad lyrics and this song needed words. Avery, rather shyly, mumbled something. I went to write it down and she was hesitant to repeat it. After some coaxing I got her to give me the line.

“I’d walk backwards to the moon if it meant I could see you smile”

I encouraged her to get more out and Jim reminded us that it didn’t have to rhyme. We played off the action “walk”. What else can you do? Run, jump, leap…

“I’d somersault into outer space if you’d talk to me for a while” 

There was discussion on how to properly spell “somersault”, which distracted Jim from the rhyming. And so it went until we had two short verses of four lines each.

I’d walk backward to the moon
If it meant I could see you smile
I’d somersault into outer space
If you’d talk to me for a while

I’d hang upside down from the clouds
To see your sparkling eyes
I’d hold onto you for some amount of time
If we didn’t have to say goodbye

Against the music it was starting to sound even more like a song. It was a song! It was a song that needed a chorus, so back to the cheat sheet we went. Once we had chords we liked for it Jim played around with it a bit and we got working on the lyrics for the chorus.

We tried a few things and scratched out most of them, and with Jim singing them out loud while tinkering with strum patterns we landed on the following:

Backwards somersaults upside down
Holding onto you
Wishing time would come around
So I can stay with you 

Ink will fade
But memories last
Memories last
Ink will fade
But memories last
Forever

We gave it a run through and decided to play around with the order of things, stitching it together thusly:

Verse 1
Chorus
Verse 2
Harmonica Solo
Chorus
Last Half of Chorus

With Avery and I singing, me on the cajone, and Jim on his guitar we gave it a spin and it sounded pretty good. Did I mention that there were other people in the lab working on various things? This made me feel a bit self-conscious and I thought it would make Pants clam up for sure, but it wasn’t a problem. She was so focused on this song that the room may as well have been empty.

Jim then did a track just with guitar and then the harmonica solo and then Pants was up for the first vocal track. Jim said it would be weird listening with the headphones and singing into a mic but Pants, who hasn’t had a single voice lesson, wasn’t properly warmed up, and had only sung the lyrics a few times stepped up and gave it a whirl. A little off key and a little screw up on the second verse, she plowed through and got the job done!

Then, it was my turn. Jim was right about singing with headphones on into a mic. I found it really weird and after one verse immediately needed a do over. Second time through, a little off key and with the same screw up (not on purpose) on the second verse we were done.

Pants gave the second verse another shot and improved it a little, then Jim put the bass line on it (or maybe he did that earlier, I can’t remember) and crammed it all into his magic music making app and there was a real life MP3 to show for the day’s efforts. Time had run out and Pants and I had to get going, so there wasn’t the opportunity to do any of the vocal tracks over again. This concerned Pants at first but Jim and I explained that most songs she listens to have had hours and hours of recording and editing. She spent probably 8 minutes, as a first timer no less, laying this track down.

Jim has a great saying: Perfect is the enemy of done.

We got into the car and Pants looked over at me with a big smile on her face.

“That was the most fun I’ve ever had. I can’t believe I just wrote and recorded a song!”

Jim did a bit of editing on the song and asked if I’d ask Pants if she was okay with the song being put out into the world. She said yes, and I could not have been more proud. I made sure she knew it, too. It takes some serious intestinal fortitude to put anything that you know isn’t perfect out into the world, let alone to do that and have all the additional pressures of being a teenage girl and wanting to fit in and be cool. Plus, the internet can be a cruel place.

After she agreed, she looked at me with a smidgen of doubt. I told her that no, it wasn’t perfect and we all made mistakes, but it was a first cut of something wonderful and if anyone wants to give her grief over it that she can tell them to stuff it.

Expect a version done by Woot Suit Riot soon, as well as improved vocal tracks from Avery and I at some point, but for now here it is…

Ink Will Fade by Princess Pants, Andrew and Jim:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/236335741″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

~ Andrew

Are You Done Yet? A NaNoWriMo Retrospective

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Another NaNoWriMo has come and gone. I didn’t “win” this year, but I didn’t expect to. As it was I took a few liberties with the rules. First, a little backstory:

As you may or may not know, earlier this year I started writing a serial for the OCH Literary Society. While I had hoped to issue a new instalment every couple of weeks I managed one per month for the first three months and then I got stuck. Call it writer’s block, call it poor planning, call it life getting in the way, call it whatever you want. I wasn’t writing much of anything and it was starting to suck.

In parallel with this I wasn’t sleeping very well either, with most days spent trying to keep my eyes open at work and then coming home and doing family things like cooking dinner and soccer with my son or swimming or whatever activity it was. By eight at night I was too pooped to do anything that required brain activity. I just didn’t feel creative.

Long story short, I did something about it and went to my doctor and she got me on some vitamin D drops and put me back on this sleep inducing medication that I used to take when my insomnia was really kicking my ass. Within a month or so I was starting to feel better and I was getting back into the groove, creatively speaking. After putting a few blog posts together (gearing up for the big Canadian election) I sat down with The Book of Good to write instalment four and realized something.

I was still stuck.

That’s okay, because NaNoWriMo was just around the corner and I would use the thirty days and thirty nights of literary abandon to move the serial forward.

My plan was simple:

Write instalment four, five, six, and seven; completing one every two days. Then, with the thirty-five thousand or so words I had kicking around from NaNo 2013 cobble together another eleven instalments. If I could at least get the bulk of each instalment down so that adding additional plot or character development wouldn’t take me weeks on end, then I would have all the heavy lifting done and cranking out an instalment every couple weeks after that should be easy peasy lemon squeezy. 

Fifteen instalments, thirty days. Go!

Well, it’s been thirty days, so how’d I do? I am happy to report that I made a lot of progress. Instalments four, five, and six were written with relative ease. Instalment seven will probably need to be split into two (maybe four) with each one expanded, and instalments eight through fourteen need to have my main cop character added, but that was expected. Instalment fifteen is giving me grief at the moment so I think I’ll have to come back to it. As for instalments sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen, they’ll have to wait for another day. On the upside, I cranked out four blog posts from November 24 -28 (I really like this short, short story, The Sandwich Artist) and this will be post #5 in the last seven days AND I even wrote some lyrics for a song my friend Jim put together recently.

So, not an all-out victory, but not a loss either. In fact, I see it as being quite successful to have come out the other end with more than I had when you started. I don’t think of it as having failed at writing however many thousands of words, I think of it as having created something before which there was naught. That’s progress, baby!

And to answer the question writers get asked more often than any other question, no, I’m not done yet.

~ Andrew

The Sound of Music – Part 3

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My wife has got a wide range of musical tastes and only occasionally will I hear something playing in her car that I don’t enjoy. Certainly, without her extensive pallet of auditory awesomeness  I would not have been exposed to this song by the Magnetic Fields:

Or this cover of a Magnetic Fields song – and one of my favourite covers of all time – by The Airborne Toxic Event (whom we also saw play live in Toronto a few years ago):

Or even this:

So, whenever she and I enter into a discussion about which album from a band is better than one of their others, it’s common for me to disagree and then after some listening, acquiesce to my wife’s better judgement. Case and point, The Tragically Hip’s Up To Here versus Road Apples. I was always on the side of Up To Here and her on the side of Road Apples, but after a couple listens in the car on the way to work I have flipped sides.

Such is not the case for The Watchmen and their first two albums. McLaren Furnace Room is their first album and is Jodi’s favourite from the band and for a long time I was in agreement with her on it. It’s a killer album and to this day I’m left to wonder why it didn’t vault the band into more rarified air. However, after many, many, many listens of McLaren and their second album, In The Trees, I’ve changed my tune.

Welcome to the third installment of the Sound of Music – My Top Five Albums Of All Time:

In The Trees by The Watchmen

Released 1994

Track Listing:
  1. “34 Dead St.” (9/10)
  2. “Boneyard Tree” (8/10)
  3. “Lusitana” (9/10)
  4. “Wiser” (9/10)
  5. “Calm” (9/10)
  6. “All Uncovered” (10/10)
  7. “In My Mind” (9/10)
  8. “Laugher” (8/10)
  9. “The South” (8/10)
  10. “Born Afire” (8/10)
  11. “Vovo Diva” (7/10)
  12. “Middle East” (9/10)
As a reminder here is the main criteria that went into making my choices:

  • Number of songs I like on the album (i.e. the fewer songs I skip over, the better)
  • Composition of the album (i.e. are the songs arranged in an order I find pleasing?)
  • Memories invoked when I hear a song from the album
  • Emotional impact of the album (i.e. how does listening to it make me feel?)

Looking at my album evaluation criteria seeing this album in my top five shouldn’t come as a surprise. I might occasionally skip over Boneyard Tree and Vovo Diva but even as my least favourite songs on the album I’ll find myself singing along. When listened to end-to-end I find the arrangement of the album to be just about perfect, from the first chords of the hard and heavy 34 Dead St. to the perfect solo bass note played by Ken Tizzard that echoes in your head to end the album, In The Trees, takes me on a journey I never want to end. 

The memories invoked when I hear any song off this album vary, but all begin in first-year university, where in 1993 my friend Riaz introduced me to the band. Naturally, I have oodles and oodles of memories ranging from listening in Riaz’s room to seeing the band play at various clubs and bars around town. Probably the best one, though, is the time Riaz drove me into Toronto to go see them play at The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern.

 

Legen… wait for it… dary.

If you’ve never been to The Horseshoe, you’re truly missing out on a piece of Toronto history. Renowned for being a bit of a dive, it has been home to some of the most amazing musical talents ever known and their walls are adorned with posters, news articles and ticket stubs from all the acts.

The stage at The Horseshoe all decked out for their 60th-anniversary celebrations

This one particular night Ri and I were there early, he liked to make sure he had a spot right up front by the guitarist, Joey Serlin, but after enjoying a few beverages waiting for the show to start we found ourself in need of relieving ourselves. Downstairs to the basement washroom we went. Now if you’ve never been to The Horseshoe you’re missing out, but if you’ve never been to the men’s room at The Horseshoe you’re not missing a thing.

Washroom wall wisdom Probably the nicest part of the washroom
 

We walked into the john and who would we find zipping up just as we were heading in? Danny. Thinking the pisser wasn’t the best place to drum up a conversation we did our business and then wandered out into the hallway, peering into a stairwell on the off chance we could sneak up backstage. Danny was sitting in the stairwell having a smoke. A smoke! (Sorry if I’m exposing a dark secret, Danny). Riaz asked if it was cool if we joined him for a cig, and he said he didn’t mind, so we spent the next cigarette’s worth of time shooting the shit and just enjoying a subdued moment. Three guys having a smoke in a stairwell.

The stairwell. No Danny this time. 

Butting out and stomping on what remained of his Du Maurier, Danny said, “Sorry guys but I gotta get into the moment here before I head out.” Riaz and I nodded and thanked him for the chat and wished him a good show. “Thanks guys. Nice meeting you,” he said as Ri and I headed back upstairs to a now packed floor with a couple hundred folks unaware that we had just had the coolest and most surreal experience of our brief music-loving lives.

The emotional impact of this album is probably stronger than any other. I met my wife sitting in Riaz’s room back in 1993 and even took voice lessons and put a band together to play a Watchmen tune for her for our anniversary a few years ago. I feel so much joy when I hear one of their songs on my iPod (which is often because I have a TON of WM music). On the other end of the spectum, Riaz introduced me to both my wife and The Watchmen’s music and he’s gone now, so hearing many of their songs, even the happy ones, makes me sad. If you listen carefully you can hear In My Mind playing in the background at the beginning of my memorial speech and reading.

So there you have it, the third (in no particular order, yet) of my Top Five Albums of All Time along with some of the reasons why. A dozen great tracks invoking myriad emotions and half a lifetime of memories.

You can find The Watchmen music for sale on iTunes here along with some live show downloads here and some FREE tracks / shows for download here.

~ Andrew

The Sandwich Artist

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I love it when I’m out and about and I see or hear something that kicks off a story in my head. I’ve decided that I’m going to start writing these down. They happen so frequently I figure that, at a minimum, it will ensure that I’m writing every day; forming good habits and exercising the creative muscles, as it were.

This short tale was inspired by an exchange I witnessed between a customer and an employee of a sub shop where I was getting something for lunch. Enjoy!

The Sandwich Artist

Margaret approached the counter of the sub shop as mild-mannered sandwich artist, Dave, washed his hands and greeted her.

“What can I get for you today?”

Margaret thought today would be a good day for something different.

“Six inch BLT”, she said. 

Cutting the bread in half lengthwise and then horizontally Dave kept to his script.

“Would you like that toasted with cheese?” Dave smiled and made waving hand motions toward the stacked dairy slices and the polished chrome industrial toaster oven over his left shoulder.

“No!” Margaret replied using a tone of incredulous disgust she normally reserves for restaurant staff who try to up-sell her gravy for her fries.

Dave continued undeterred.

“It comes with bacon, lettuce, and tomato, obviously.” He fanned out both arms. “Can I interest you in any of our other fresh toppings?”

Margaret snapped back in rapid succession, “Pickles. Onions. Black Olives. Spicy mayo. Blue cheese dressing,” and shot Dave a look that screamed, ‘If I even get the slightest hint that you’re judging me right now I’m going to jump over the counter and shove that bottle of salad dressing so far up your ass you’ll have to pour it out of your ear.’

Dave, ever the consummate professional continued to smile as he wrapped up the sub, surrounded it with a napkin, and placed it in a plastic bag before walking down to the cash register. Dave knew better than to ask Margaret if she’d like to make it a combo so he went for Plan B.

“Will that be everything for today?” Another pleasant smile. 

Margaret, her supply of negativity running dangerously low, rolled her eyes and forced out a dry, almost British sounding, “I should think not.”

Dave rang in the order. “That’ll be five twenty please.”

Margaret went into her wallet and pulled out a wad of singles and handed them to Dave in a tangled bunch. Then, she dug through her purse and after a few seconds came out with a quarter. She put it down on the counter and slid it in Dave’s general direction and held her hand out, palm up, as Dave rung in the order and retrieved her nickel. Placing it in her hand Dave seized the opportunity of a lifetime.

“Everybody loves Nickelback!” he proclaimed to anyone within thirty feet of the counter, which at the time was a good half dozen customers and two staff. 

Margaret only had enough energy for another eye roll before turning on her heels to exit the store. Dave began washing his hands, again, as required by law in between each customer.

“Look at this photograph, every time I do it makes me laugh,” he sang into the towel dispenser before approaching the next customer. “What can I get for you today?”

~ Andrew

Deal With It

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I like poker. I am by no means a fanatic, but I enjoy playing the game, especially with a small group of people, some of whom I know and others I don’t. A nice easy-going house game that ends early even if you win is pretty much as good as it gets as far as I’m concerned. I’ve played in Vegas for a few days a bunch of years ago and that was a great experience, but I found it equally as depressing as I did intriguing and fun.

The thing that most amazed me about Vegas, and any other casino I’ve played in for that matter, were the dealers. Granted, it’s their job to shuffle and deal so it stands to reason they’ve got a fair amount of practice with it, but it impressed me nonetheless. They are always so graceful with the cards. They mix and wrangle and straighten and shuffle, and the cards obey their every command. It’s a lot like watching Disney’s Fantasia with Mickey Mouse using his magic to choreograph all the mop buckets.

I, on the other hand, am clumsy. My fingers are all crooked and my knuckles are all swollen most of the time and my use of them is, how do you say, far from graceful. Whenever we play a home game and the cards come around for my turn to deal I get anxious. Even among friends, the fear of ridicule looms over me as I attempt to organize 52 plastic cards, shuffle them, and deal them out to up to eight players. Maybe the fear is greater because I’m among friends, for I know I’ve dished out a ribbing or two in my day and the return trip for such a thing is not nearly as fun to experience as the delivery.

If someone who has been knocked out is feeling particularly compassionate, they might jump in as a permanent dealer, and for this I am eternally grateful. “Can I get you something else to drink? Maybe top up that plate of nachos?”

So, when my friend David sent me an email saying they were down a dealer at Thursday’s KW Poker Chicks event and would I like to come be a dealer (ladies play, dudes deal) I immediately agreed. Another good friend of mine, Sean, once said, “Andrew sometimes lets his love of attention override common sense,” and such was the case this time.

I’m not the type to let a lack of experience or skill stop me from doing anything I think might be worthwhile. I like poker. I like people. I like people playing and learning to play poker. I like poker dealers. It sounded like it would be a fun experience. (Spoiler alert: it was!)

David told me there was no dress code and I didn’t need to brush up on my jargon but did offer one piece of advice: practice shuffling.

So, when I was done work for the day I grabbed my decks of nice plastic Copag‘s I sat down on the couch and started shuffling, and shuffling, and shuffling. I didn’t bother to count but after about twenty minutes my son looked up from the math game he was playing on his iPad and gave me a look. It was one of these raised eyebrows confused looks like the ones I give him when I see him wandering around the house with only one sock on, a laser pointer in one hand, and some random lego pieces in the other.

“I’m practicing,” I said.

“For what?” he asked, looking back down at his math game.

I explained to him the event and how my friend was short a guy and he asked me if I would help out so I said yes, trying to impart the lesson on him that it’s good to help out your friends.

“Are you any good?” he asked, making eye contact while his game leveled him up.

“Nope,” I said. “That’s why I’m practicing.”

“When’s the event?” His eyes were still on me.

“I have to be there a bit before seven,” I said, trying to shuffle without looking at the cards and spraying them all over the couch.

He looked up at the clock on the wall and then back to me wrangling the cards up again, raised his eyebrows, gave a “wowsers” look, shook his head, and returned to his video game. With adults in the room, this would have been the time I heard out of the corner of my ear, “You’re an idiot.” It’s a familiar phrase I’ve grown accustomed to hearing, usually as I’m applying a bandage to an injury.

The moment of truth came and I met my friend David in the parking lot before the event. Someone let us into the building and was promptly introduced to a few people. There were several small tables pushed together to make bigger tables where someone was putting out chips, two easels with big chart paper at one end of the room, and a table with red and white wine, other beverages, and some snacks that were either purchased or brought in by some of the players.

There were a few people getting tips from the organiser and my friend David gave a quick lesson to a couple beginners about pot odds and pot equity and then the organizer gave a similar lesson to the entire group using the aforementioned chart paper. Then, we got started.

I had been fiddling with the deck the whole time, getting a feel for it and whatnot and the first thing I noticed when I took a couple practice shuffles was that these were not the slippery slidey fancy plastic cards I had at home. They were not plastic. Instead, they were more paper-ish and the really fun part was the room was really warm and humid, and I was nervous so my hands were sweaty. The game had begun though so it was time to get to it.

I introduced myself and explained. like some people at the table I was new to this. Most of the ladies assured me that they would keep the taunting to a minimum. The first shuffle went just fine, though, and so did the second, and the third, and the fourth. I only forgot to move the dealer chip once and everyone got two cards each time! Overconfidence must have set in because on the next deal I totally skipped over a person handing out the first card. No one had looked at their card yet so we just backed the cards up and got it all sorted out. Crisis averted and my first blunder was out of the way.

Play continued for the next 90 minutes and things were moving along just fine. My table was a lot of fun and the women were a good mix of poker experiences. Even though a small amount of money was on the line everyone was still there to just have a good time. The unfamiliar cards mostly cooperated for me, but as the room heated up and the cards accumulated dust, and wine, and hand sweat from everyone pawing at them they got more difficult to handle. Once I lined up a shuffle and thumbed the cards while in the middle of a conversation and looked down and there were still two individual piles sitting in front of me. The shuffling equivalent of an air ball shooting hoops or a whiff at the driving range. Laughs all around. Can’t win ’em all, I guess.

Break time came and they were contracting the group down to two tables and one dealer became redundant. David asked if I wanted to stick around, but I decided I’d bow out. Go out on a high, right? As it turned out I had forgotten to bring my medication with me and if I left right then I’d only be a half hour late with it when I got home, so I decided I’d make my exit.

I said goodbye to my table and wished them all luck. Smiles and waves all around. I hope one of them ends up winning.

So my first “real” dealer experience is under my belt and I can say with confidence that I’m not going to be quitting my day job anytime soon to do it professionally. I will, however, go back and deal for the KW Poker Chicks if they’re ever short another card slinger.

~ Andrew