The First Concert

Part of the gravy that comes with living in a city with a population and venues large enough to attract major acts is the opportunity to see the artists we idolize in person without having to travel a great distance to do so. Last night my teenage daughter went to her first ever concert: Muse with Silversun Pickups at Rexall Place. Being the nostalgic sort that I am, this got me reminiscing about the very first concert I attended.

I was 15 when my older brother dropped off my nephew and I at the Coliseum to see Bachman-Turner Overdrive who were my favourite band circa 1976. The 2 opening acts were Charlie Gearheart & Goose Creek Symphony and Trooper. The heavy-guitar loving crowd was in no mood for Goose Creek's hippy-dippy country-rock. Their version of Janis Joplin's Mercedes Benz generated a little polite applause but, for them, that was about as good as it got that night. Not surprisingly, Trooper went over much better even though they only had a couple of minor hits under their belts at the time. I remember lead singer Ra McGuire being particularly energetic and entertaining.

The headliners did not disappoint- me at least. The music was deliciously loud and the band's giant multi-coloured neon light gear logo above the stage was really dazzling. Randy Bachman and Fred Turner looked even fatter in person than on their album covers. Bachman's guitar solos that night were relatively brief but unquestionably brilliant. Meanwhile their other guitarist, Blair Thornton, was almost as good during his own short solos. I found it amusing that Bachman's introduction of the only 2 quieter/jazzy songs in their catalogue (Blue Collar and Lookin' Out For #1) as "two songs that are very close to our hearts" served as a cue for about a third of the audience to go for a bathroom break. They opened with Take It Like A Man, played most of the songs I wanted to hear and threw in a couple I'd never heard before for good measure. Takin' Care of Business opened the 3 song encore which ended with Stayed Awake All Night which is exactly what I did that summer night lying in bed at home with an unwipeable grin on my face and my ears still ringing.

That concert marked the first time that I smelled weed and the first time that I saw glow sticks. I got a really good view of them when some moron pelted my nephew with one that left his neck and upper arm glowing with fluorescent green spatters for B.T.O.'s entire set. I also remember The Edmonton Journal's overly negative review of the show the next evening with the headline "A lot of sameness in banana city" referring to the idiots who were chucking stuff as "dilated hockey pucks"- whatever the hell that means.

Picking up my daughter at the LRT station after last night's concert and reading her posts on Twitter during the show and this morning, I get the impression that her first concert was as thrilling for her as mine was for me. Hopefully over time it will prove to be just as memorable too.

Ugly (VOL. I)

For years and years I've been a sports fan. This may or may not mean that I'm an expert on sports but I'm pretty sure it's made me at least somewhat of an expert on sports fans. Just like the depression-inducing 6 o'clock news does on a nightly basis, accentuating the negative makes for a more memorable viewing experience. Therefore I'm going to conveniently skip over the mundane actions of intelligent/reasonable people such as myself and cast the spotlight on the ugly fans. Does one have to be an ugly person to be considered an ugly fan? No, but it's certainly not a bad thing to have on the resume if that's the way you're leaning.

Here are the ugly ones who irk me the most in no particular order of loathesomeness:

The Contrarian- This is the sad individual who is so desperate for attention that they are more than willing to accept boatloads of the negative variety simply to advance their incomprehensibly misguided and twisted agenda. A person who moves to City B from City A but continues to avidly support teams from their hometown is not a Contrarian. Their attitude actually makes more than a small degree of sense. I'm talking about the bright-light who hails from City A, determines which teams annoy City A fans the most and then loudly and boisterously throws his support behind his hometown rival for perverse reasons that only he can possibly understand.

The Party Animal- Bars are in the business of getting people drunk in public. Liquor stores exist to allow people to get drunk in their own homes. Meanwhile, stadiums and arenas sell great quantities of grossly overpriced, underchilled and watery beer to idiots. Party Animals at sporting events are like the rest of us in that they want to support their favourite team. It usually all goes south however, about 2 hours in when these pinheads get liquored up enough to add stumbling, spilling, bad cheerleading, public nudity/urinating/vomitting and fighting to their list of fun gameday activities. The continual trips to the beer stand and the bathroom are a real treat as well for us poor suckers who simply want to watch and enjoy the friggin' game.

The Showoff (a.k.a. The Know-Nothing Know-It-All)- Some of us call others showoffs due to pure jealousy. That type of showoff has at least a modicum of talent which causes those of us with inferiority complexes to start pulling bushels of green leaves off of the envy tree. The ugly sports fan showoff has no discernable skills but does possess just enough actual knowledge to dupe his gullible/apathetic disciples into thinking he's an expert analyst. As someone who closely follows sports, I can't count the number of times I've wanted to throttle some loudmouthed moron sitting behind me at the stadium or arena who spends an entire game spewing his half-baked theories and factually incorrect information to his wife, his kid, his friend or whoever. The showoff thinks that his little audience is lapping up his dreck because it's just so profound when, in fact, they are simply too blindly loyal, lazy or weak-minded to do us all a favour and tell him to shut the hell up.

Negatron- Don't be fooled by this deeply troubled individual's superheroish monicker. This is a person whose every word and action is a desperate cry for help. How is it that Negatron emerges from his dank and drab lair only to show up at various sporting events? After yet another uneventful week working at a dead-end job where he earns and receives zero respect, Negatron frees himself from his mousy/indifferent wife and his shiftless/overfed kids for a few hours of the only thing that even comes close to bringing some pleasure to his doomed existence: exposing innocents like me to his unending negativity. What irks me the most about Negatron is, as sad and pathetic as he may be, he easily and often sucks me in and therefore 'wins'. As a rule I try not to be critical of my own teams but sometimes they simply make it impossible not to be. On those occasions, I want to let loose some negativity but I can't because Negatron has long since beaten me to the punch. I just want him to be proven wrong even if it means having to vocally defend the undefendable actions of the hapless members of my team. Nobody really wins in this scenario but Negatron gets to 'happily' slink back to his cave until my team provides him with the next opportunity to bring me down.

Gravy Guy- Okay, this one doesn't exist but to uphold the integrity of this blog, I'm going to make it work, damn it! Gravy Guy insists on putting gravy on everything available to him at the stadium: his fries, onion rings, burger, hot dog, pizza, nachos, diet Coke, ice cream, Twizzlers, mini-donuts, coffee, beer etc.. Once I even saw some disgusting pig double dip his corn dog in a vat of the stuff meant for the public before his nephew's wife blew the whistle on him and he was banished from the concession area forever.

My Personal Brushes With Gravy

My mom was a grizzled veteran of the kitchen but far from a gourmet chef. In her lifetime she turned out some of the best and worst gravy I ever tasted. I'm not just being sentimental when I say that my all-time favourite homemade dish by far was Mom's gravy-based shepherd's pie. However it seemed like the older she got, the more hit and miss her gravy became. In the late 80's I began to notice a weird, almost earthy undertone to it which was quite unpleasant. One day, simply by hanging around the kitchen I found out that, in Mom's efforts to darken her gravy (she loathed "white" gravy), she had been adding instant coffee to it. Then there was the time shortly after that when one of the "burnt drippings" in Mom's roast pork gravy that I was eating turned out to be a mid-sized bug. The dialogue went like this: Me: "Gharg! There's a bug in my gravy!". Mom: "That's not a bug!". Me: "Are you nuts? It's a bug!". Mom: "It's a little burnt piece of the drippings." Me: "With legs and a thorax?". Mom: "I don't see a head." Me: (gagging) "Blarrrggh!!!!". Mom: (to my dad) "Hammy, make him stop!".

The first Christmas after my mom died, one of my older brothers decided quite logically that we should make Christmas dinner for my dad and our families at Dad's house. I went along knowing it was the right thing to do but absolutely hating the idea anyway. Besides the obvious sadness the whole situation created for all of us, almost exactly a month earlier my marriage had hit the rocks- hard. In fact this would be the first of 5 straight horrible Christmases that I would experience in the '90's. Everyone except Dad (not yet overwhelmed by dementia but beyond hopeless in the kitchen) and my daughter (2 years old at the time) took on one of the dinner preparation responsibilities that my mom had handled for most of the previous 50+ Christmases. I remember being in charge of the stuffing and that my sister-in-law Sue took on the task of making the gravy. Everything was just about ready as she carefully whisked in water to the turkey drippings/flour mixture on the stove top. The mixture smoothed very quickly and the colouring was perfect but it simply would not thicken. Sue added more and more flour but was still left with nothing more than a roaster full of gravy-hued soup. After several minutes and the addition of about 10 times the normal amount of flour, my brother decided to taste Sue's creation. Instantly he spat into the sink and went straight for the almost-empty canister labelled 'FLOUR'. Apparently some genius had filled the damn thing with icing sugar. It took an hour or so but a Christmas miracle did occur when somehow my brother and his son found a store that was open and saved the day with 2 cans of Franco-American brand chicken gravy.

Surviving my mom's Maxwell House Instant Gravy Cappuchino, her extra protein-infused pork gravy and my sister in-law's insulin shock inducing attempt at turkey gravy did result in some nice reverse karma for me. Since those debacles occurred, I've never had even a hint of a problem banging out non-lumpy, visually appealing and delicious gravy every single time I've been called upon to make the stuff.

I'm aware that at this point there probably should be some sort of profound moral to this tale but this just isn't that kind of blog (and I'm not that bright). I do know that my two favourite nephews each have their own short yarns about gravy as a beverage but I thought I'd let them use those as delightful fodder for their own blogs.

Don't rock the boat...

...because you might get burned. The lumps in gravy can be napalm-like when they contact the skin.

Well my pretties, this is my first try at a blog. I've been almost nowhere, for long stretches I speak to pretty well no one outside of my own home and I have few interests or cool hobbies. I love my family and I like sports. I listen to music a lot but I really don't like to talk about it. For some reason I've really lost interest in movies in recent years. Long periods spent living and/or being alone have turned me into a certified talk-radio junkie and the advent of all-sports radio has only intensified my addiction. I'm really good at certain (what I feel are important) aspects of my job while being mediocre at best when it comes to the parts I don't care about. My employer for 24 of the last 25 years has never bounced a paycheque so therefore I love them. My wife of 9 years doesn't pay me but is among the kindest, most patient people on Earth so I actually mean it when I say I love her. My life has also been blessed by the presence of my 17 year-old daughter who was the only good thing to come out of my doomed first marriage. There's lots more personal stuff I could say, but: 1.)Talking about myself makes me (and probably you) sleepy and 2.) I seriously doubt that too many of those who venture aboard my magical gravy boat will be shrinks.

Thus concludes the "getting to know me " section of our journey. Next time bring along some kind of restraining device for yourself because gravy boats aren't equipped with seatbelts...