A couple Sundays ago (a Sunday when Gordon’s Acoustic Living Room – that wonderful band of which I am a member and whose very existence is the raison d’être for these missives – was not playing) I found myself in Stratford. I wasn’t there for a pilgrimage to the holy sites of that city’s most famous person – Justin Bieber – but rather to see a matinee at the Stratford Festival. You see, in addition to being a music lover, and a bit of a writer (I mean you are reading this, aren’t you), I am also a theatre-goer – I guess you could say I am a real lover of the arts – and I’ve been told it’s not bragging if it’s true.

After the play we strolled the main streets of Stratford (or perhaps more precisely the main street of Stratford) deciding where we would eat. We chose a brew pub which featured local beers and a menu drawn from the local meats and produce of the area. It looked fine and it was, in fact, very nice. I have to note however, that their local vegetable for the month – one that had a place of prominence in many of their dishes – was daikon radish. While daikon radish is certainly a vegetable, it’s not really the one I would want to build a whole menu around.

Hi all!

No rant from Jonathan I am sorry to say (although my poor beaten up bagpipes are glad to have a month off.) He will not be in attendance this month, and Stephanie has a work event, but the rest of us are ready to play and have some fun.

So… come and see us do our music thing starting at 8 pm at the Free Times Cafe at 320 College at Major Street.

See you there!

Hi:

Late last summer I developed a sharp pain in my right knee when I was climbing stairs (‘oh no,’ readers think, ‘this oldish guy’ – I prefer ‘oldish’ to just ‘old’ there’s something about the ‘ish’ I like or perhaps it’s just the ‘old’ that I dislike – ‘is going to spend this whole missive talking about his ailments, maybe I should bail right now, this is not going to be good.’ I know that’s what you’re thinking but just wait a bit, please).

So, I went to my physiotherapist (having just written that I realize that it does seem a bit pretentious – ‘my physiotherapist’ – like I’m some sort of elite athlete who has a whole team of specialists to keep him in peak physical condition for his important sporting endeavours, including his very own physiotherapist. Looking at it in that context I should say that she’s not really ‘my physiotherapist’ as much as she is the physiotherapist I’ve seen twice in the past twenty years.). Anyway, she made me do some exercises and some things in her gym and then told me that the problem was that I wasn’t walking properly and that I didn’t climb stairs the right way either.

Readers of a certain age (old folks) and movie buffs will likely remember the scene early on in the 1967 film The Graduate (and in this context I’m more the film buff than the person of certain age) where a young Dustin Hoffman, playing Benjamin, just graduated from university and unsure of his future, meets Mr. McGuire (played by Walter Brooke – whose real name was Gustav William Tweer Jr.) at a party. Here, thanks to the magic of Google is that conversation: Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Benjamin: Yes, sir. Mr. McGuire: Are you listening? Benjamin: Yes, I am. Mr. McGuire: Plastics (and if you’re wondering, that one word last line is ranked #42 in the American Film Institute’s list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema).

Something is happening next Sunday, June 16, and it’s not just that Gordon’s Acoustic Living Room is playing the Free Times Café (College just west of Spadina) at 8 pm. Regular readers of these dispatches will know that information about our shows is usually found much further down the page, in the fourth or fifth paragraph after a bunch of perambulating around by me, but I thought “I don’t have to write to some template or formula, I’m a creative guy and I will write what I want and if I want to put the date and time of our next gig in the first line then I’m damn well going to do that and if that makes me a rebel then so be it – I revel in the word rebel.” Although I should say that I have no idea on what world outside of the one in my head could this be at all seen as rebellious.

I’ve been travelling the last little while – I’ve been in Ottawa and Vancouver – and I’ve seen the same TV commercial in those cities that I’ve seen in Toronto and I feel compelled to tell you about it.

The commercial is for a dating site called Silver Singles. As you might gather, it is a dating site aimed at older folks – who apparently are all made of silver. Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with a dating site for older people, we all need love and whatever works is fine with me. So it’s not the fact that there is a dating site for older folks that bothers me about the commercial.

The ad opens on two healthy, fit older folks (a man and a woman) having a drink from huge wineglasses. And what it about these gigantic wineglasses by the way? They appear designed to hold half a bottle in a glass but still look like you’ve just had “a splash.” Anyway that is not the issue with the commercial either. These are two adults, if they want to kill a bottle of wine between them on a first date that’s certainly OK with me.

I was a bit confused recently when I read an article saying that the Ontario government planned to legalize tailgating. Why, I wondered did the government want to encourage people to drive too close behind other cars because, after all, that is the definition of tailgating.

As it turns out there is another definition however and it appears that the government wasn’t legalizing reckless driving but rather the practice of barbequing and drinking before a sporting event, which is also known as tailgating. This latter form of tailgating is particularly popular in the United States (as is the first form of tailgating) and the Ontario government’s embrace of this type of tailgating perhaps explains the new motto shortly to be found on our licence plates – “Ontario – more like Buffalo every day.” Makes your heart swell with pride.

Gordon’s Acoustic Living Room was invited to perform their unique style of “extreme folk” music for a private party at the newly opened Annex Hotel, in the heart of downtown Toronto. It is believed they were the first musical performers in the new venue, which features loft-style hotel rooms and a generous common area to eat, meet, and drink.

I was thinking recently about Spiderman. He obtained his superpowers after being bitten by a radioactive spider, which when you think about it is a lot better than what he would have got if he’d been bitten by a regular spider – big blister, rash, headaches, nausea – I mean he really lucked out.

The reason I was thinking about Spiderman was that I wondered where my superpower came from. And what is my superpower you ask? Why I can turn any type of cord into a jumbled impenetrable mass in a ridiculously short period of time. I mean it. You should see my phone cord at work. I always have to use the speaker phone because when I try to lift up the handset the cord is so twisted and knotted that I end up lifting the whole phone. Many people have tried but no one can entangle the phone card. It is a modern day Gordian Knot.

I remember the first time I saw the word ‘stomach’ in print. I was six or seven years old and I was reading a comic book – I can’t remember the comic but I think it was a western. Now I knew the word stomach, although I probably used the word tummy more often. Still, even though I know what the word stomach meant it was odd to see it in print. I mean stomach is just a weird looking word – look at it – really look at it – if you didn’t know that this is how stomach was spelled you wouldn’t think this was the word for stomach.