Wrath of Lamb March 30/10

I am quite interested in this BC Human Rights Tribunal involving the comic and the lesbian.  If you haven't heard, this stand-up comic is in trouble for saying some nasty things to a lesbian woman and her partner, after they were heckling and interrupting his show in Vancouver.

This is scary.

I don't know what exactly Guy Earle said to these women, but it doesn't really matter. The fact is, freedom of expression is at issue here. I know some people might call me a hypocrite, because of what I said about Ann Coulter last week, but I never said she didn't have the right to free speech.

I just think she's a bitch.

If a stand-up comedian cannot have the freedom to say what he or she wants, then the entire art form is in jeopardy. All the greatest, boundary changing comedians have said things that people didn't like... Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks. And the main point is, if you heckle and ruin a show, the comedian is gonna say whatever they can to shut you up and make you look the fool.

So, suck it up and learn how to take a joke.

Wrath of Lamb March 29/10

I went grocery shopping on the weekend. I bought a tub of margarine. We like the Becel Olive Oil margarine. Normally, it just comes in a tub, whatever. But this time the tub was wrapped in cardboard.
I looked at it, and the reason it was packaged differently, is it came with a free scarf.

A scarf.

Now, I understand when products come with some free thing, like a case of beer comes with a bottle opener, or barbeque sauce comes with a brush or something. Makes sense. But a scarf came with my margarine. I could understand a knife, or a coupon for bagels or something... but a scarf? So, I bought it, and I brought it home... 'Look what I got you, honey! A scarf!'.

She didn't seem that pleased.

I guess there's something socially unacceptable about heading out to a fancy dinner party wearing, oh, I don't know.... a scarf... that came free with a tub of margarine!!

Wrath of Lamb March 26/10

I get a little disturbed sometimes at how much information about ourselves is out there, and how connected we all are with big corporations. I ordered pizza last night... first time I've ordered pizza in months.

I called Panago... First off, they only have one number you call, doesn't matter what location you're trying to get, just one number... and it's a 310 number, where you don't even need an area code... weird.

The woman answers 'Panago!' I say 'Hi, I'd like to order a couple of pizzas please'. She says 'Sure, are you still at 1545 Dewberry Drive?' 'Um.... yeah'. 'Great, do you want the same thing you ordered last time?' 'What? Oh, I don't know' 'Well, on November 17th you ordered two medium pizzas, one tropical Hawaiian and one BBQ Chicken'. 'Oh, okay, yeah'. She knew my address, my name, my phone number, what I ordered, and what location I wanted. It was eerie. I expected her to say something like 'You still have a wife and one child? And a cat? Hows your mom? Did all those tests work out okay?'

And then the other day I bought some t-shirts at The Gap, and the first thing the clerk asked me for was my email address. Why do they need my email address? Here's an idea - I bring a product to your counter, I give you money and then you let me walk out of here with that product, okay? Call me old-fashioned.

Big Brother is watching.

Wrath of Lamb March 23/10

I had an interesting night last night. After we put our 2-year old to bed around 7pm, I lay down on the couch to watch TV. I must've been tired, because I crashed right out. Around 9:30pm, my wife woke me up and told me to go to bed and said 'Did you hear the car accident outside?'. No. Slept right through it. So did my boy. Then, just before midnight, my wife wakes me up again, this time saying 'There's a guy a the door, he wants us to cal the police!' I get up, and there's this young dude, shaking and obviously very scared, asking us to call the cops, because a bunch of guys in masks just broke down his door and were beating up his roommate.

Holy crap.

We call the cops, and they showed up... they talked with the guy on our front lawn for about half an hour, and we could hear sirens wailing up the street where this guy's house was. Don't know what ended up happening. But our little boy slept through the whole thing.

Like father like son.

Wrath of Lamb March 18/10

So I did a comedy show with Norm Macdonald last night up in Nanaimo. It was in the Port theatre, a nice big soft-seat theatre downtown. There was a sign on the door as you went in that said 'Please no flash photography or videotaping allowed'. I guess in this day and age, those rules don't apply to anyone. I saw flashes going off all night... not so much during my set, but definitely during Norm's. When Norm did his set, I sat in the audience because I wanted a decent view. I counted three people videotaping his show. And they sat there the whole time with their faces pressed up against their little phone cams. 'Wow, you saw Norm Macdonald live?'.... 'Well, kind of. He was standing there live, about 40 feet in front of me, but I watched the entire show through a 3 inch by 5 inch radioacitve screen'. 'Plus I wasn't allowed to, so the whole time I kept looking over my shoulder in case I got caught. It's how I prefer my live comedy experience'. But I guess the good news is, is that now we can all watch a really crappy video with horrible sound of Norm Macdonald on Youtube.

Wrath of Lamb March 17/10

It's St. Patrick's Day today.


I've always thought it was weird that Ireland was given it's own day every year. Nothing against Ireland... my wife is Irish... it's just that... why Ireland? About 4-million people live in Ireland. There's twice as many people in Bulgaria. But I don't see St. Climent of Ohrid Day. But we celebrate St. Patrick's Day. It's amazing how EVERYbody gets into it... whether they're Irish or not... it crosses cultural boundaries. Last year on St. Patricks Day, I saw a guy down in Centennial Square drinking the GREEN cough syrup.

St. Patrick was a Christian missionary in the fifth century who helped convert the Irish royalty and aristocracy and bring in a new age of Christianity. And so to celebrate this fact, we get drunk on green beer and have shamrocks tattooed on our faces. I say great. But lets set aside days for other cultures, too. How about Belgium Day... we can all eat waffles and be boring. Or Slovakia Fest, where we do whatever it is Slovakians do.

In the meantime, I say Happy St. Patricks Day... and may your home always be too small to hold all your friends.

Wrath of Lamb March 16/10

So, the government wants to regulate the use of snowmobiles and other off-road machines. This of course comes in the wake of the two people who got killed in that huge avalanche near Revelstoke the other day. They want to license snowmobilers. Because, at this point, anyone who can afford one can ride one.

I've only been on a snowmobile a couple times in my life. I was up in Yellowknife in the middle of January, doing an internship at a radio station up there, and one of the guys at the station offered to take me out on his snowmobile. I pictured a nice toodle around on a frozen field somewhere. No. After we had a couple beers, I got on the back of this thing and he proceeded to take me out on the ice highway. If you don't know what the ice highway is, it's Great Slave Lake. Totally frozen solid and turned into a major highway. We were doing 110 kilometres an hour, on sheer ice, with semis zooming past us. Did I mention it was 30 below and pitch black darkness? I truly thought I was gonna die.

So, if that's someone's idea of a good time, then I say have at it. I don't think if he had a license it would have made it any less terrifying.

Wrath of Lamb March 15/10

Peter Graves died yesterday.

He was 83 years old, and I know many of you have probably never heard of him. He was mostly known for playing tough guys and spies and stuff in the 60s. But then he did a movie in 1980 that showed him in a whole new light. And it was a movie that had a HUGE impact on me.

The movie was called 'Airplane'.

My parents took me to see it in the theatre when I was 9 years old. It was the first time I heard swearing in a movie, and the first time I saw boobies. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen, and I doubt I even understood half the jokes. 'Airplane' is still one of my favourite movies. It's a little dated now, but it paved the way for all the 'parody' movies that came after it.

So, RIP Peter Graves, you really made me laugh.

Wrath of Lamb March 12/10

I say bravo Pink Floyd.

They have successfully fought in court to stop the sale of their individual songs as downloads. That's because they want to retain their artistic vision of having their albums be one whole piece of music. And the judge agreed, so EMI has been ordered pay damages and stop selling single songs. In this day and age, it's nice to see a band with so much integrity. Anyone who has been a fan of Pink Floyd, and I'm one of them, knows that a huge part of experiencing their music is listening to the entire album from start to finish... on headphones... and preferably in some type of altered state. I'll put it this way... this song playing now is called 'Any Colour You Like'... you figure it out. So, I say, bravo Pink Floyd! Way to stick to your principles.

Now I gotta go stare at my hand for about an hour.

Wrath of Lamb March 08/10

So, Dylan's feeling a little under the weather this morning, after a weekend in Las Vegas with his buddies. It's funny, because I just booked a trip to Vegas yesterday. It was one of my old high school friend's brilliant ideas that since we're all turning 40 this year, we should go to Vegas. So, there's like 7 or 8 of us going. All guys. We're all married, and most of us have kids, so you would think 'Well, it'll be pretty low-key, these guys are responsible family-men'. But that's the problem... and that's exactly why our group is potentially more dangerous than a group of twenty-two year olds going down there.

That's because we're not used to the freedom... we can't handle it.

I predict we'll all go completely crazy the first night, then spend the next two days hungover and feeling guilty for having so much fun. We'll just wander around Las Vegas like zombies, taking turns calling our wives to let them know we're all right.

Good times.

Wrath of Lamb March 05/10

Goodbye and good riddance Ian Thow.

He's the guy who scammed millions of dollars from dozens of people while he worked as an investment adviser here in Victoria. You know you're not a popular guy when your lawyer and the prosecuting lawyer agree that a seven year sentence seems fair, but the judge says... 'Uh, no, I'm gonna give you nine years, two years extra because you're such an arsehole'. Thow hasn't shown any remorse for what he's done. He preyed mostly on old people, many of whom lost their marriages, their homes and their life savings because of this creep. If you see a picture of him, he's this fat, blotchy man with beady little eyes who you just want to punch in the face.

I'm not a religious man, but I really hope there comes a time when he has to truly answer for what he's done. The level of greed and heartlessness... to scam senior citizens out of the money they have spent a lifetime trying to save... well, that's about the lowest of the low. I hope Ian Thow has a horrible time in prison, being someone's involuntary girlfriend. And then I hope he spends eternity in a nice hot place, paying back the ten million bucks by wiping the bums of a million old people with ten dollar bills.

Wrath of Lamb March 02/10

We've all been up to our eyeballs in Canadian patriotism in the last few weeks, and that's great. A lot of  'I Am Canadian' stuff, like the Molson ads, and the stuff they did in the closing ceremonies. I thought it would be nice to localize it a bit. So I present to you:

I Am Victorian!!

My name is Jason and I am Victorian. I will drive for half an hour behind someone doing 20k with their blinker on, and never honk, because they are old and I am Victorian. I know where the Empress tea room, the Wax Museum and Miniature World are, but I've never been to any of them. I understand terms like 'The Colwood Crawl', 'Two-Sailing Wait', 'The Breakwater' and 'Flower Count'. To me, 'Tillikum Maul' doesn't mean a killer whale attack... it means juvenile delinquent attack.

I can't drive in the snow, but I'll still complain about other people who can't drive in the snow. And, finally, if you are a tourist visiting my fine city, I won't laugh when you ask me how far you have to drive to see polar bears or what time the Undersea Gardens sets sail.

Because my name is Jason, and I Am Victorian.