Pop Culture, TV, Sports, Politics, Movies, Music, History, and Other Stuff

(Don’t read this if you are a cat lover.)

 

Saw an old guy the other day without a goatee….very strange….The most fake person on a TV ad?..... it has to be the bearded guy in the TD Ameritrade TV ads…..just how did he manage to entice his clients into his basement and is it his basement?.....why are the walls and furniture green?.....do all of his clients get to play pool or throw darts in said basement when they buy RRSPs?.....what a suck up!.....Why do some juice companies show a picture of some particular type of fruit on the front of the juice container but when you read the small print you find out other fruits are part of the juice…...they used to call this lying….or bait and switch….. most juices are pasteurized to kill germs so the juice that has been misrepresented might be part apples off the ground that have been rotting……Why does Trump’s wife always look like she is trying to hold a poop in?

 

In 1965 Florence Ballard and Mary Wilson of the girl singing group The Supremes discovered a mixed race soul group called Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers when they were playing a gig in Vancouver…..they told Berry Gordy about the band and Gordy brought them to Detroit and signed them up….. Tommy Chong, later of Cheech and Chong, was one of the band members…..Bobby Taylor was friends with Jimi Hendrix who was from Seattle but spent his summers in Vancouver, BC when he was a kid.....while playing in Chicago in 1968 the band’s opening act was The Jackson Five…..Taylor personally brought The Jackson Five to Detroit and introduced them to Berry….. Taylor produced their first album and then Berry took over……Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers’s only had 1 hit, Does Your Mother Know About Me?, which Tommy Chong co-wrote…..Cheech Marin once worked at the Banff Springs Hotel…..so did singer Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo…..so did I…..twice…..There are programs on TV that tell us about the best places to retire……lakefront houses seem nice but they never show the noise from the many motorboats and seadoos breaking up the tranquility…..houses are built on stilts in US eastern coastal areas for a reason….hurricanes often cause flooding…..white sandy beaches are nice but not so much when there are apartment buildings (condos) in the background…..I tuned in the Toronto Blue Jays on TV and the other team was winning 6-0 in the 4^th inning…..I tuned out the Blue Jays…..maybe another time?..... In the movie “Diner” Kevin Bacon plays a young guy who sits by himself watching Jeopardy on TV and answers the questions out loud…..I’ve done that……”We don’t need no stinkin’ badges.”……Treasure of the Sierra Madre…..I wonder how many guys my age saw their first naked breasts in National Geographic Magazine?……A golf announcer on TV today was talking about a pro golfer who had bought the house his family had rented when he was a kid. The announcer went on to say that back then they also had to pay for electricity……my question is…..when did electricity become free?….did I miss something along the way?

 

In 1970 an American movie came out called Zabriskie Point….. the plotline entailed a college activist who gets involved in a college riot and eventually flees to the Arizona desert in a stolen small airplane….. he meets a hippie chick out in the middle of nowhere who is driving an old car…. they roll around naked together in the sand and are later shot dead by the cops….thousands of young men auditioned for the lead male role in the movie and a guy named Mark Frechette was chosen…..at one point his face was on the cover of the Rolling Stone…..Frechette decided to join a commune instead of continuing his acting career…..in 1973 he and 2 others from his commune decided to rob a bank….one of them was shot dead by the cops…..Frechette was sentenced to a term of 6-15 years in prison….one day while in prison he was doing some weightlifting and a 150 weight fell on his neck and suffocated him…..he was dead at 27…..What’s the deal with all the cat photos on Facebook?....it seems to me there are 2 kinds of cats….#1 the ones that are locked inside their whole lives….”What should I do today? Maybe walk over to the bookcase? Maybe I’ll lie on the top of the couch for 6 hours? Maybe I can mark up the leather furniture some more? At some point I’ll have to defecate in that box by the kitchen which I like to think of as my own desert island…… maybe I’ll walk over to the bookcase again after that?”……#2 the ones that are let out of the home for a period of time so they can dig up the neighbours’ gardens and leave a crap or kill a few small birds and watch them slowly die for sport or scream to high heavens in the middle of the night when they are in heat…..”I would never join a club that would have me as a member.”…..Groucho Marx…..How someone uses a fork and knife tells you a lot about how they were brought up….sorry but it is true…..I believe that almost everyone has some dishonesty in them…..here’s an example…..you are selling a house that you have lived in for 20 years…..at this point you have a good idea what is wrong with the house…..maybe the furnace or the water heater needs to be replaced, maybe there has been a few leaks and some water damage or a new roof is needed, perhaps you have discovered termites or mold, maybe your neighbours are unbearable…..of course you are going to tell the prospective buyers all of this so they know that once they buy the house it is going to cost them a small fortune to fix  it…..right?

 

John Turner and Princess Margaret

John Turner was the prime minister of Canada for 2-1/2 months in 1984….. he was a good looking guy but a dud as a politician…..in the late 1940s he was the fastest runner in Canada…..he once had an affair with Princess Margaret…..he also saved former Canadian prime minister John Deifenbaker from drowning in Barbados in 1965….Turner is in his nineties now and still alive and kicking….I’m not sure of this but I think there might be a race between pharmaceutical pill makers and sci-fi writers and comic book writers for new names for new drugs and  strange characters and the places that they live…….Zoloft is the ruler of a distant undiscovered  planet called Prozac in the galaxy called Lipitor. Zoloft’s nemesis is a nasty guy named Motrin whose meanness stems from a lifetime of drug side effects…..Why do people on TV describe men’s balls as cajones?..... The word “ball” is kind of a happy, playful word isn’t it?..... it shouldn’t offend anyone?…..”Gentlemen you can’t fight in here, this is the war room!”……Dr. Strangelove.



Jerry Seinfeld with the late Jerry Lewis

What’s the deal with Jerry Seinfeld?......lose the suit jacket and mom jeans look, and the white runners while you are at it…..it looks so 80s like when you had big hair……I loved your old show but now you act like you were a 1 man genius who made it a huge success…..you had some pretty decent other writers on the show including Larry David, an excellent ensemble cast, and the best supporting actors ever on TV…..your current show, Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, has proven that a lot of comedians aren’t very funny without a script, that you are very condescending to people who aren’t famous including waitresses, and that you can be very petty at times…..BTW Jerry…..Sarah Jessica Parker, Mathew Broderick, and Christopher Walz are not comedians in cars getting coffee.

The View is probably the most watched daytime TV program in America today….. it is hosted by some women who aren’t very bright…..Whoopi Goldberg claims  that her taxes are too high and that she can hardly afford to go to the movies anymore…..Whoopi Goldberg is worth 50 million dollars!…..Joy Behar believes that the population of the US is about 200 million…..she’s only out by about 125 million people……2 of the other panel members, Meghan McCain and Abby Huntsman, are daughters of famous Republican politicians…..that’s their claim to fame…..Meghan McCain can’t last 1 episode without mentioning her dad, the late John McCain who was a piece of shit. She needs 3 x 5 cards to remember what she wants to say….. The Bachelorette?…..1^st of all, does anyone actually use this word “bacherlorette”? “Let go see if we can pick up some batcherlorettes at the bar?”……I don’t think so…..I have to confess that I didn’t watch this whole series including the final 2 days……this year’s Bachelorette was a gal named Hannah Brown who was a beauty contest winner from Alabama…..is there anything shallower for women than a beauty contest?......she got to meet 30 eligible bachelors and at least 5 of these guys were black…..did anyone ever think she was going to take a black guy home to meet her white family in Alabama?..... the tricky part for her, was not getting rid of the black guys all at one time….. skip ahead to the crazy guy who wouldn’t quit who stood next to the final 3 guys…..the 3 guys all kind of feigned toughness but never got in the interloper’s face or threatened him physically…..why I oughta…..then sweet Hannah told the viewers that she had sex 4 times one night with one of the final three guys….. and then she rejected him…..instead she accepted an engagement ring from a Nashville folksinger but gave it back to him when she found out that he already had a girlfriend back home and got on the program to further his career……she didn’t like his dishonesty…..kind of like her dishonesty in not mentioning to him that she had had sex 4 times with one of his competitors……I think they should change the name of The Real Housewives shows on TV to Catfighting, Over The Hill Bitches, Who Go After Each Other Over Really Petty Shit……just a suggestion…..”You’re breaking my heart, you’re tearing it apart, so fuck you!”......Harry Nillson……Driving across Canada in the early 70s in the middle of winter at night and seeing the flickering lights of Medicine Hat off in the distance from the highway…..Kevin Hart isn’t funny…..I remember those wooden toll bridges in the Eastern Townships of Quebec long ago and the fishing lures wrapped around the power lines….Did you ever drive through a small town and for future reference think to yourself that this would be the ideal place to be on a witness protection program?......This just in…..the quota for aspiring singers in the world has totally been used up…..turns out that 1 in 5 people can carry a tune….. “Learn to work the saxophone, play just what I feel, drink Scotch whiskey all night long, and die behind the wheel…..Steely Dan…..cheery outlook?.....Years ago I knew a guy who flipped houses…..actually I’ve known a few who did some flipping……..one guy bought a house on a hill in North Vancouver but didn’t realize that there was a bus stop out front……every 20 minutes or so he could hear the loud sound of the bus’s air brakes…..must have been a Sunday when he bought the place…..another guy who was my next door neighbor on Bowen Island got into flipping houses with a guy from Hong Kong who was his financier…..the Hong Kong guy believed in paying cash for everything…..my neighbor once showed me 50 grand in cash that he had hidden in his basement…..a drug pusher in a Vancouver hippie club called Rohan’s Rockpile once showed me 10 grand in cash…..So you are out hiking deep in the woods and come across a small wrecked plane…..you open the plane door and discover the skeleton of the pilot….a newspaper is lying on the floor and it is dated 1978….. in the back of the plane you find two large canvas bags……one of the bags holds tightly wrapped packages of marijuana…..the other bag contains about 100 grand in cash…..what would you do?......I would keep the cash and send a letter to the  cops anonymously and let them know where the plane and pilot could be located…..”All the world’s a stage and the men and women merely players.”…..William Shakespeare…..the first time I ever ate sushi was after a Vancouver Canucks hockey game that I went to around 1982 with my family doctor at the time…..we had great seats about 2 rows up from the ice and we were both stoned on pot…..the Canucks beat Minnesota that night 10-9…..there were so many goals it was like watching a tennis match…..the first time I ever ate raw oysters was around the same time when I was shucking them in a basement of a guy who was about to get married at an Orthodox Ukrainian church later in the day…..The word “loose” isn’t the same as the word “lose” for those that don’t know…..The cost of a campsite less than 100 yards from the edge of the Grand Canyon is only 12 bucks a night…..firewood is extra…..there’s always a catch eh?.....just kidding….“You’ve got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend”……Bob Dylan…..Positively 4^th Street. 

Lindsey Graham and Trump

Is there a certain age when a politician should be held responsible for what they say?.....it seems to be fair to give them a pass for what they did and said as kids or even as college students…..as long as criminality or violence didn’t occur……I don’t consider smoking pot as criminality……here is what Tennessee senator Lindsey Graham said about Donald Trump 3 years ago…..”He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values of the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for…..he’s the ISOL man of the year.”…..3 years later and Lindsey thinks Trump is the greatest thing since sliced bread…..who do you believe?.....the 64 year old Lindsey or the 61 year old Lindsey?.....“Pennies in a stream, falling leaves, a sycamore, moonlight in Vermont…..Willie Nelson…..If faith healing really worked don’t you think the healer would be spending every waking hour fixing people instead of once a week in front of a TV camera?.....it should be called “fake healing”……W.C. Fields hated Philadelphia…..his gravestone says “All in all, I’d rather be in Philadelphia”.

Mad Magazine is going out of business….that’s funny…..I thought it went out of business around 1960…..No matter where you go, there you are…..If someone has sex with Nicki Minaj and one of her friends…..is that a Minaj a trois?.....Don’t ask me about video games…..I’m still freaked out about those cyber things in Astro Smash from 35 years ago…..We have been buying loaves of bread our whole lives…..have any of us ever been curious enough to count the slices in the loaf?.....do we just have a rough idea as to how many sandwiches we can get out of loaf?.....Why do men buy pickup trucks?…..they cost about 60 grand or more and are gas guzzlers…..what’s the point of only having seating for 2 or 3 just to make yourself look cool and rugged?......almost all of the time the truck bed is empty…..friends are always hitting on you to help them move something as a favour…..like a piano…..FYI….. Home Depot will deliver lumber to your door for a few extra bucks…..just because you drive one of these behemoths doesn’t give you the right to follow the car in front of you 2” from their bumper because you are pissed off at the world about something…..BTW…..when you are doing that 2” from the car in front of you thing I’m sometimes the guy in that car…..the guy with a smirk on his face pretending I haven’t noticed you in the rear window.

 

”I thought that you’d want what I want, sorry my dear.”….. Send In The Clowns…..Stephen Sondheim…..Subway…..Eat Fresh? The only thing remotely fresh in the store are the bread and cookies…..the veggies all come from California or Mexico by truck, none of the veggies are local……precooked chicken, beef strips, meatballs, and bacon are obviously not fresh…..It must have been a good day for a haberdasher (men’s clothing merchant) 50 years ago when a rock band walked into his store and said “We’ll take 6 of those and 6 of those and 6 of those.”…..Is it square dancing or squares dancing?.....The first thing I ever tried to grow were radishes when I was about 10 years old…..I kept pulling them out and replanting them every few days because I wanted to see if something was going on underground…..It looks like Dave Clark, the drummer for The Dave Clark Five, was a real prick back in the day…..the rest of the group were basically hired help with Clark getting most of the money…..he didn’t take part in any of the song writing but took credit and the profits as a co-writer…..without the lead singer, Mike Smith, nobody would have ever heard of the band…..Regina, Saskatchewan was once called Pile of Bones…..”Hello darkness, my old friend”…..The Sound of Silence…..Paul Simon…..Never ever, under any circumstances, mention Ed Sullivan, Leave It To Beaver, Lassie, Abbott & Costello, to anyone under the age of 50…..they just aren’t interested and have no idea what you are talking about….”Everyone has a photographic memory, some just don’t have film.”…..Steven Wright.

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

One of the first conspiracy theories I ever heard came from an older Jewish guy who grew up in the same neigbourhood as me in Montreal…..I ran into him around 68’……his theory was that CBS (the Columbia Broadcasting System) was an arm of the Catholic Church……he connected “Columbia” to the The Knights of Columbus, a large Catholic based fraternal organization……he went on to list a number of Catholics who had program on CBS TV like Ed Sullivan and Jackie Gleason…..back then I wasn’t sure if he was right or wrong on his premise…..several years ago I did some research on the matter…..William S. Paley, the founder of CBS was Jewish, newsman Walter Cronkite told people that his religious faith was none of their business, and noted CBS war correspondent Edward R. Murrow was a Quaker…..the most recognizable Catholic on TV in the 1950s was Bishop Fulton J. Sheen…..he had 30 million weekly viewers but he was on NBC…..so much for that crackpot theory.

 

I was sitting in a bar in Plattsburgh, NY  on a cloudy afternoon in the summer of 65’ or 66’…..I got into a conversation with a guy sitting next to me…..he said he was a salesman for a local car dealership called Santa Claus Chevrolet…..only in America…..as the afternoon wore on and few beers were consumed he began to tell me a little story……according to him he was one of the American soldiers that wheeled out the atomic bomb, nick named “Little Boy” that was loaded onto a B-29 bomber named Enola Gay and  dropped on Hiroshima in Japan in 1945…..his wife turned up and dragged him out of the bar…..Remember when almost every doctor’s office had a copy of The Reader’s Digest in the waiting area?.....you would get part way into a story you were interested in……and suddenly you would be summoned into the doctor’s office…..never to know how the story ended…..Who doesn’t like bicycles?......I used to love riding them and the freedom that went along with it…..these days some bike riders remind me of Mr.Toad in the children’s story The Wind In The Willows and the glazed over look in his  eyes after he had stolen a motorcar…..a lot of the bike riders I see these days are on the same paved trail where I take my dog for a walk and they seem oblivious to their surroundings…..every few days I have the crap scared out of me when they come up from behind me and don’t bother to ring a bell or tell me that they are on the left or right side of me…..I’m tempted to bring a hockey stick with me on the daily hike one of these days….Never play cards with guys who have nick names like “Hollywood” or “Doc”…..About 15 years ago I was parked on a ferry headed to Vancouver from Vancouver Island…..I got into a conversation with a guy in a pickup truck parked next to me…..I asked him what he did for a living and he told me that he was a storm chaser…..never met anyone else who did that…..we told each other every joke we could remember for close to 2 solid hours and laughed our asses off….. an elephant, a monkey, and a giraffe walk into a bar……they get pretty drunk and when it came to pay the bill the elephant and the monkey both said they didn’t have any money…..the giraffe  said “well I guess the highballs are on me.”…..rim shot…..the ferry pulled into the terminal and the storm chaser went his way and I went mine…..it was a hoot!. 

Sheer and Trudeau

 Tonto’s horse was called Scout….Most people (I think) love going to the beach…..they find a nice spot,  slather suntan lotion all over their bodies, stretch out on their large beach blanket…..then they start reading a book about being somewhere else other than the beach…..America, the land of the free?.....the US has more people per capita in prison than any other nation on the planet…..”It winds from Chicago to L.A., over 2000 miles all the way.”…...Route 66…..Asleep At The Wheel…..Somebody you don’t really know and have never met in the flesh asks to be a Facebook friend…..you think to yourself “what the heck”……the next thing you know you are receiving a dozen or so notifications a day from the guy…..every trite inspirational thought that is out there…..you start thinking…..this isn’t what I signed up for….. I did a lot of hitchhiking in my early twenties…..one guy picked me up in a station wagon in Northern BC in the early 1970s…..every time I got a lift I would always start a conversation with the driver so I could figure out whether or not I was travelling with a psychopath…..I asked this guy several times what he did for a living but he was evasive…..eventually he told me…..he worked for a coroner’s office and had just fished a dead guy out of a river…..the body was resting behind a curtain behind the front seats…..kind of freaked me out!.....Most Canadians will work 40-45 years in their lives…..this fall there will be a national election in Canada…..we will choose to keep our present Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, who is a Liberal, or elect Andrew Sheer, a Conservative, to take Trudeau’s job…..these 2 guys, between them, have a combined working experience in the private sector of less than 5 years…..come on Canada!!!.....is this the best we can do?.....Years ago I was sitting in my living room alone in the dark stoned on pot…...across the room I could see the green and red lights  on my stereo…..the lights looked to me like I was coming into port in a boat…..maybe you had to be there?.....Marlon Brando was 5’9” tall and Humphrey Bogart was 5’8” tall…..Prince was only 5’2”……I finally tore that ugly shag carpet out…..and replaced it with parkay flooring…..cool eh?.....3 people who make a lot more sense to me than most others are…..Joe Rogan, Cenk Uygur, and Snoop Dog…..Darts, bowling, and pool are not sports…..And I am out of here!

Google has dismantled the comments area on Blogger for some reason….if you would like to make a comment on this story or other stories…..send me an e-mail…..colinatcove@shaw.ca

This story has been fun to do…..would like to use the same format again. Thanks for reading!