Check out this cool Captain Marvel website, if such things interest you.

Saturday Night - Partied for a good cause

Saturday night we drove to Hamilton to attend Glen's "Ride to Conquer Cancer" fundraising/kickoff party. He is going to be riding 200 kms in 2 days in order to raise money for cancer research. This seemed like a very worthy cause to go and party it up for. Glen & Kyoko prepared a lot of good bbq'd food and there was a large supply of homemade beer on hand. I was very happy to donate my money, support and consumption abilities. The race is in June and Glen has been preparing by doing long rides for a few months now.

Of course the next day was a bit...rough.

I ended up going to a meeting with some of the Prom Band to discuss plans for Sarah & Evan's wedding set list. We went to Frugal MacDougall's, and they have a thing there that is guaranteed to scare any hangover (or germs) away. It is a giant Caesar that contains a large quantity of horseradish. The drink also comes with an olive, a hot pepper, a lime wedge and a pepperoni stick in it. This is more than just the hair of the dog. It's the teeth of the dog that bit you and 6 of his mad rabid dog friends. I felt significantly better after consuming one.

FREE BURGER DAY

Aww, no Doctor Who this weekend. It hasn't exactly been stellar this season, but i still wish it was on.

I should point out that it is FREE BURGER DAY at Harvey's this weekend. If you eat veggie burgers, i believe you are righteously screwed (not meaning that it right to screw vegheads over, but rather...oh you know what i mean).

I went last year and it was chaos. I will probably go this year again. We went with the Prom band and hey guess what, we're rehearsing this Sunday...convenient.

At this point i would just like to say that if i HAD to eat burgers from a fast food joint, Harvey's would be my choice. I do this some times, in fact. I wonder if Harv is rolling over in his grave right now.

Hey, wait...who exactly IS Harv??

...

OK. All the important stuff in the world going on, and you've actually read this far? What is wrong with you?! Go! Save some dolphins or something!

Sheesh.

(free burger day!)

You know it's time to clean out your fridge when you realize that you have 4 jars of dill pickles sitting in it, mostly empty.

A World Fraught with Peril

Dungeons & Dragons: ah, a world fraught with peril that awaits all adventurers!

In the 1980s, i used to play with a group of guys in grade 9 & 10. That's actually how i met Marc Nash, for the record. We would take turns playing at each other's parent's houses, usually on Saturday or Sunday afternoons. I remember that one of the guys we used to play with must have done something to tick both the Dungeon master and the other players off.

I will digress for a moment. It should be noted that Dungeon Masters are pretty much God when it comes to the world D&D. They can make or break you. If you are on good terms with the DM, then you may find yourself the proud owner of a singing sword come next game. Perhaps your party will stumble upon a tavern filled with delicious ales and comely bar wenches, who knows! But - if you cheese off your Dungeon Master in the REAL world, their wrath will typically be amplified 10 fold in the world of the Campaign.

One of the fellows (yes, i remember his name but won't use it) did just this. I wasn't around when it happened, but he somehow ticked off the DM and a couple of players during regular school hours. I seem to recall that it may have been an offhanded remark about a girl the DM had a fancy for. The next Sunday, that guy couldn't make the game. That's when all hell broke loose.

Our party got attacked by a horde of troglodytes while exploring an underground cavern. At the same time, we realized that we were cut off from the only exit by the trogs - we were in effect "totally screwed". We began to fight them, but it was a losing battle. At this point our wizard cast a colour spray spell to blind the troglodytes, and it almost worked, but some of them turned away. The dungeon master then did something...illegal. He said, "If one of you were to stay behind and fight, the others might have a chance to get away", as he looked at us gleefully. One of the guys thought for a second, and said, "I vote that Katma volunteers to fight, any objections?" - of course Katma the Cleric belonged to the guy who'd ticked them off, and was conveniently absent.

Well, yes, Katma fought hard but was overcome and killed. This gave the rest of the party time to regroup and begin our escape from the cave. One of the guys, however, felt guilty and said, "Umm...now that we're rested, maybe we should go back and get Katma's body...we can always have him resurrected by a higher level cleric, right?". We all agreed that this was best, some more begrudgingly than others.

Everything was ok, then - sure, we'd essentially forced death upon an unwilling player, but we figured we could just pay someone to cast a "raise dead" spell, and all that would happen would be that our pal would go down a level or two and lose some points. Everything was fine.

Until we encountered the giant rats.

By the Lords of Madness, they were big. Huge! Again, our party was overrun. Our wizard was exhausted, so no spell was forthcoming. I myself had taken wound from the skirmish with the troglodytes, and the others had fared no better. What were we to do? What?

"We have to do it."

"No way!!! We CAN'T do this again!!!"

"Yes, we have to. It's settled."

And with that, the brave Katma made his second sacrifice of the day. He once again saved the group. Now, explaining to his real world counterpart just how his character was not only killed by troglodytes but also eaten by rats wasn't easy. And explaining that we couldn't *exactly* resurrect him, but could reanimate him (think Zombie) wasn't really going to be easier either. We told him on Monday, and he didn't talk to us for 2 weeks. Eventually the Dungeon Master conceded, and allowed us to pass through some sort of time reversal portal to undo what had happened...sometimes, you've gotta bend the rules.

Like i said, a world fraught with peril...

Ninja book

Wow, i was digging through some boxes in the basement and came across a totally deadly book titled "Ninja Warrior: Bujutsu Defense Techniques" written by some white dude who sort of looks like the guy from Twin Peaks. Or maybe that's a disguise...

Here, look at the concentration on my furrowed brow as i study the deadly arts:


Check out how screwed the guy is in the 2nd picture - he's being stretched out like Reed Richards - except he has no cosmic powers! That's what happens when you mess with ninjas.


Can you find me in this picture? No. Because i am applying ninja invisibility techniques. If you want, i can post tomorrow where i am hiding in the picture.

Keep searching. You'll never find me.
If you do, bam, smoke bomb.

Scenes from Freaks & Geeks

How Marc Nash and i met in highschool:


Why Bill Haverchuck is my fav character:

...dentist...

Aww crap, i forgot that i have to go to the freaking dentist this morning.

I began my day with a coffee and just chowed down on some Licorice All-sorts, which means i have black junk lodged in my molars.

Oh well, at least they'll have to work for their money today.

Cassocks & Surpluses

At a lunch party the other day, i ended up talking to a friend of Karla's who has an interesting job. She sells religious garments to churches - all the robes, surpluses, cassocks, vestments, etc that the priests, atlarboys or choir might wear.

Now i don't know much about actual clothing, but i did spend over a decade in the trenches of the Catholic church as an altarboy and lecturn. In other words, i do actually know a thing or two about the garments worn in the Catholic church.

For example, when i was about 14 there was an altarboy who was 17 years old and was about 6 foot 3. It was very difficult for them to find a cassock tall enough for a boy that big. We didn't wear the traditional black and white altarboy gear for some reason. Ours was red and white, but the priests could not find one tall enough for that kid (John something). Instead, he ended up getting a purple coloured one. To a Catholic, this was very confusing as typically the priests only ever wore purple, and only ever during Lent or Advent (slightly different purples for those seasons though). The simple fact of the matter is that these days, kids are getting taller on average...OK, i made that up, but look around - it seems to be true. So i would think that maybe the folks who manufacture altar boy should know that it would be helpful to make the altar boy gear for tall kids too, and in the proper colours.

Another key thing that i remembered as a kid was this: altarboy robes (cassocks) had snaps that went from the neck all the way down to the knees. I don't recall that we had 33 snaps like some priests' did, but we did have a lot. Here is the problem: in church, you have to do a lot of genuflecting and kneeling. If the snaps are down by the knees, often as you kneel, the snaps get popped open by your knee hitting the cloth. This isn't always a huge deal, but sometimes if the snaps are a bit stiff, they won't pop open, and you end up ripping the bottom part of the gown. My brother's was shredded around the snaps because of this. What we ended up doing was getting one of the more seamstressy members of the clergy to reinforce the bottom of the gown, and eventually to replace the lower most snaps with velcro. This way, if the knees did cause the gown to pop open, it wouldn't actually rip. So my advice would be to replace the lower most snaps with velcro.

Anyway, i could go on (and i really could write a book about this stuff) but i won't.

Interestingly, as i did a search on some of this stuff, i came across a guy's site where he talked about some of the altarboys accidentally lighting their surpluses or hair on fire during the Stations of the Cross. To the uninitiated, the Stations of the Cross were basically like the Ironman/endurance test of the altarboy world. If Matt Daniels, the Meiers or Ralph Collusuano ever read this, they might recall similar stories having happened to them...

Freaks and Geeks

Watched a lot of "Freaks and Geeks" this weekend (again).

Why do they always cancel the best shows?? In a way, it's good because the really awesome shows that do get cancelled live on forever in your mind and never get tainted...sort of like "the one that got away" in the world of romance. But Freaks was such a great show, it seems a shame not to have at least 2 seasons of it to watch.

What went on in that show was pretty much identical to my experiences in high school/grade school. They really nailed it.

Anyway, today we watched the one where Bill accidentally ingests a peanut (because some mean guys put it in his sandwich) and he almost dies. It was a good episode. I realized tonight that Martin Starr (the guy who played bill) was in "Knocked Up" as the guy with the beard growing issue. That made me happy because i liked him a lot in Freaks so i will have to search out more of his work.

Wonderful weather

If you live in Southern Ontario (or somewhere comparable) and at THIS VERY MOMENT you are not taking the time to toast this nice weather with a beer in your hand, shame on you.

What kind of an example are you setting?