Which really just makes it a Tuesday for Axl Rose…but this time there’s video!  From a concert in Sao Paolo Brazil, Axl gets annoyed and unleashes a barrage of swear words at the fans after being hit with a water bottle.

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     The Metal Den has discovered one of the last known Randy Rhoads performances with Ozzy Osbourne.  On New Year’s Eve, 1981, Rhoads played with Ozzy on the second show of the Diary of a Madman tour, the “New Year’s Evil” performance.  He would be dead less than three months later - his final gig was March 18th, 1982 in Knoxville Tennessee.  There are no known recordings of that performance.  Here is 1981’s New Year’s Evil:

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     For some reason, I agreed to run a half marathon May 30th on Ottawa Race Day.  I once ran 10 km every morning, when I was on the high school rowing team.  I thought, I can get back into that kind of shape in three months.  Then I realized that the half-marathon is 13 miles.  Which is not 10 km.  It’s more like 21 km.  If I ran from the station in the southeast end of Ottawa, I would finish in Bells Corners.  It would be almost like running to work from my house in Kanata.  Our promo co-ordinator Esther convinced me to participate in this event.  Her twin sister Judy convinced Esther to participate.  And there will be two other tiny little ladies running with us.  This is now my motivation.  I have to be able to at least complete the 13 mile run on May 30th, if only so I don’t embarrass myself in front of (and alongside) four tiny fitness women.  This video is my training with Esther…day one.

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   That is, Suck, the movie.  Coming out at some point, somewhere.  It debuted in September at TIFF, and is appearing at festivals around the world right now.  It’s a Canadian movie from Rob Stefaniuk, and it stars Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins, Moby and Alex Lifeson, as well as Dave Foley from Kids In The Hall and Malcolm McDowell.  From A Clockwork Orange.  And Caligula.

     These are the only trailers I could put up on my blog.  For the best one though (and certainly the hottest one) click right here.

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     While I was in Vancouver, I stopped into a local burger bar for a few drinks and burgers while we watched the Oscars - nice, by the way, to be in a city where the Oscars started at 5:00, and therefore ended at a reasonable hour!  At about 6:30, there was a weird disturbance outside, and a parade showed up.  Police escort and the whole bit, and a bunch of kids in cow costumes stopped for a moment at the corner to do an interpretive dance about the birthing of a calf.  They had placards that said all kinds of things, and they asked me to write on one to protest…whatever.  Then they moved on.

     While I was outside watching this weirdness, a homeless man came up to us and asked for some money for a burger.  I gave enough for a burger, and he said that he wanted to give me something for the effort.  He asked me what animal I liked.  Of course, the first one that popped into my head was a badger.  I don’t know why.  So he drew me a badger on the back of a cut-up box of Reese Puffs cereal featuring a picture on the front of Alexandre Bilodeau, who just a couple of weeks earlier had won Canada’s first ever gold medal on home soil just a few kilometres away from where we were standing.

     I was impressed by the drawing and how effortless it was for this man, and he told me a tale of woe that I half-heard while watching the bizarro parade continue around the corner.  Only later did I wonder how much of that tale was true.  So I googled his name, John Walkus Green.  He had signed the picture, which made it easier to remember.  Here’s what I found:

     John Walkus Green was the subject of a documentary called To Return: The John Walkus Story.  A synopsis of the film I found online reads as follows: 

     “This powerful one - hour documentary witnesses and celebrates young Kwakwaka’wakw artist John Walkus Green’s journey home to the village he was forcefully adopted out of as a child. This story is also an investigation into the BC Provincial Government’s Adoption policies which had tragic consequences for the children it was meant to protect.

John Walkus was raised in and around Tsulquate, a native Village near Port Hardy. As a young child he was “adopted out” to a non-native family. The traumatic experience of being stripped of his culture and cut off from his birth family emotionally scarred John. He passed through six long years of delinquency before starting out on the difficult journey home. John finally went back to his village but he was rejected for being “white” and had to face the bitter truth: it is difficult for ‘adoptees’ to return to the world they were taken away from. With the loss of family, heritage, language and ceremony, many adoptees grow up feeling different. Torn between two cultures yet discriminated against by both, they often struggle between two worlds. While many non-native foster and adoptive parents did their best to nurture, heal and raise the First Nations children entrusted to their care, the consequences were often disastrous.”

     I also found a story about homelessness, leading up to the Olympics, in the Vancouver 24 Hours newspaper, which said this:

     “It is…behind the Washington Hotel on Hastings Street, amongst the discarded needles and broken crack pipes that Sun Media finds John Walkus Green. A 33-year-old native artist, father of two and junkie, who now lives on the streets.

  When he’s not drawing pictures for cash outside of bars in Gastown, he hunts through the gutters looking for used needles. Lifting a sewer cover he explains how he recently pulled 240 needles out of the hole and traded the stash for clean “rigs” at the Washington Needle Depot.

  Green has been abusing substances since Grade 7. Now that he’s six years into life on the street, he’s a heavy drug user. His arms, neck and chest are littered with scars from needle use. But he wasn’t always this lost to his vices.

  Born on a First Nations reserve near Port Hardy, Vancouver Island, Green was one of five children of a mother who, according to Green’s family, was a heavy alcoholic.

  Green’s sister Myrna died last year from an infection she got living on the streets. His sister Brenda is in jail. Doreen, a one-time fixture of the streets, is in a mental health facility and his youngest sister, Bonnie, has quit drugs and begun a new life.

  The mother of Green’s children, Charmaine Lakey, a non-native and his childhood sweetheart, now lives in Kelowna. Reached at her home, she appears to bear no ill will towards a man the RCMP had to force from her home after repeated drunken rages.

  “He’s a great man and an amazing artist. He’s just sick. No one would be where he is if they weren’t sick,” says Charmaine, now a mental health outreach worker. “But he’s totally in the hands of his demons.”

  Charmaine says Green’s native mother and Irish father abandoned him and his sister Doreen in a trailer when he was just four. Social workers found them two weeks later surviving on dirty water and raw potatoes.

  His family insists he suffers from a version of fetal alcohol syndrome. Far from a monster, Green appears simply as a tragic figure whose abuse began in the womb and continues, by his own hand, today on the streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

  But that complex history and humanity is somehow lost in the statistic he has since become.

  What should society call John Walkus Green? Addict? Vagrant? Monster? Criminal? Victim? Social ill? Blemish on the face of the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games?

  Green says he wants only to be called one thing: “Human”

  Therein lies the challenge.”

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     It’s Jimi Hendrix month on CHEZ - Jimi’s Valleys of Neptune album is out in a week.  And because Jimi has managed to make records from beyond the grave, it would stand to reason that he can also make videos from beyond the grave.  Or, in this case, filmmaker Julien Temple can make a video for him.  This is a video for “Bleeding Heart”, in which Temple imagines a fantasy world where Hendrix plays the Glastonbury festival in England.

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     I like a good basebrawl.  Pedro Martinez making Don Zimmer get out of the way, Nolan Ryan noogieing Robin Ventura - it’s all good.  Sometimes, however, it’s really really scary.  Like this one from the Cuban baseball league.  Don’t stop watching when it appears the situation has calmed down.  It hasn’t.

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     When I came back from Vancouver this weekend, I was exhausted and starving.  So I ate and slept and then woke up and re-acquainted myself with the Wii Fit, which has clearly missed me.  When I stepped on the machine, it was very excited to see me again, although it was a little concerned because it hadn’t seen Muffin in a while.  Muffin is, of course, my dog.  And she has a character on the Wii Fit too, because the kids created one for her.  Muffin being the only dog in the house they can carry onto the board - O.D. is too fat.  I tried to ask the machine what it wanted with Muffin, and what benefit a dog can really get out of the Wii Fit, but it didn’t answer.  It was more concerned with probing me for information.

     You see, over the five days I didn’t use the machine, I gained a full kilogram from weigh-in to weigh-in.  The machine said “let’s talk about your weight gain”, and gave me a multiple choice list.  The words “airplane food” and “sitting on my ass” weren’t valid choices.  So I randomly chose “late night snacking”, because if I didn’t pick something I couldn’t move on.  The machine told me that if I eat after 9:00, I’m at risk of…something…I stopped paying attention.  After all, I’m not up after 9:00!  Stupid machine, it should know that, always chastising me about the hours I keep.

     I have started to move away from the Wii Fit.  I know she will soon get jealous and ask me where I was.  I expect that eventually she will start driving past my house at three in the morning, and go through my garbage when I am at work.  Joke’s on her though - if she comes by at 3:00, I won’t be home!  I’ll be with my new weight-loss companion, running.  I still hate running.  With a passion.  But it doesn’t question and nag me like the Wii Fit.  It doesn’t make me jump through hoops because of a passive-aggressive approach to weight loss.  No, it just accepts me for what I am.  A fat man pounding out three miles every morning in the dark.  I hate to lead “running” along.  I hate to make “running” think that this could be a long-term thing when in fact it’s just a fling, and it has an expiry date. 

     My brief fling with “running” will end May 30th.  Running doesn’t know this yet.  People who run don’t seem to know this yet.  People who run love running.  And they are always asking me if I have the “bug” now.  Like running is some kind of addictive fun time, like frozen lemonade, cheerios or heroin.  I think these people are crazy, and I tell them so.  There is no running “bug” to catch.  There is simply pain to endure, boredom to overcome, and a half-marathon to suffer through two months from now.  The “runners” don’t seem to believe me.  They say “you’ll see - by the end of this, you will love it”.  Running, take it from me, right now.  I will never love you.  Don’t cling to me in the hope that at the end of this, we will have a lifelong relationship.  It won’t happen.  I am simply using you as a means to an end.  Don’t make more of this than there is.

     And Wii Fit, don’t take it too hard.  I realize I am leaving you for a fling with something I don’t even like.  It’s just that running is different, and meets my needs right now.  I’ll still keep you in the loop, Wii Fit.  I’ll check in every day for a quickie - maybe a little post-run yoga, or pre-rowing-machine body test.  With time, you will be able to accept it.  All I want to say is that you can’t change my mind with the trinkets you have been throwing at me.  Upgrading my calorie-counting box from bronze to silver to gold was nice.  But where do I go from gold?  I’m just not that impressed by colours and bling.  And frankly, it just seems desperate now.

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     While we all wildly celebrated Canada’s remarkable victory in the gold medal hockey game, a few miles away my Grandpa was in his hospital room with his children.  They had the game on, of course, in his room.  Mom told me that he looked up at one point, during a commercial, and said “that isn’t hockey”.  The next day, he told my aunt that he wasn’t going to stay at that home any more.  It was time to move on, and he was going to pack his bags.  A few days later, he was gone, having lived an incredible 97 years.  I spent the weekend in Vancouver, attending the memorial service and spending time with my family, learning things about Grandpa that never ceased to amaze me.  Here is his obituary, as it was printed in the Winnipeg Free Press:

     LORIMER, WESLEY - Wesley Crawford. Lorimer O.M. has died after a long and distinguished career in education. He was predeceased by his wife, Myrtle, in 2005 after a long and happy marriage of 65 years.

     He leaves three children, James (Nancy Sewell) Halifax, Rowland (Anne Carscallen) Coquitlam and Elizabeth (Betty) (Larry Dyke) Rutherglen, and grandchildren Eric, Stefan, MifAnne, Conor, and Julia..

     Born 19 April 1913 in Regina as the first of a family of five children, Wes lost his mother at age seven. The family was taken to England by his father. He and his father soon returned to Regina, where they were later joined by Wes’s siblings to live in a “shack on the prairies” on the north edge of the city. After high school Wes went to Normal School where he met Myrtle. He began teaching in the middle of the Depression in 1931 in rural schools in Saskatchewan. In 1935 he was appointed as a teacher in the Public Schools in Regina where he later became a vice principal. Nine years after they met, Wes and Myrtle finally could afford to get married, and did so in Regina June 28 1940. It was the last day of school, and once they were married Myrtle was forced to give up her teaching job. In 1942 he joined the RCAF for training in navigation and became a navigator. He served as an instructor in navigation in Western Canada and later as an administrative officer.

     Following his discharge from the RCAF at the end of the Second World War he was appointed to the staff of the Moose Jaw Normal School. During his service there he obtained leave and with DVA assistance attended Teachers College at Columbia University, New York. Having previously obtained a B.A. and a B.Ed. at the University of Saskatchewan he graduated from Columbia with an M.A. and an Ed. D. Later during his career he received Honorary Doctorates from the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba. In 2003 he was honoured with an appointment to the Order of Manitoba.

     In 1949 he was appointed to the Winnipeg School Board as Director of Research and became Superintendent in 1953. He moved his family to Churchill Drive, a new suburban street along the Red River in a neighbourhood where he and Myrtle made many lifelong friends. It was at this time that there was a tremendous expansion in school enrollments - Winnipeg’s schools grew from 30,000 to almost 50,000 students by 1967 when Wes was invited to become Deputy Minister of Education in Manitoba. He and Myrtle celebrated Canada’s Centennial by building a dramatic modern home overlooking the Red River with the street address of 100 on Agassiz Drive. After service as a member of the Universities Grants Commission he became Chairman and retired in 1981.

     During his career Wes had many opportunities to travel and to participate in the work of Canadian educational associations and bodies often serving as chair. One major appointment was as a Commonwealth Fellow which entailed a three month visit and study of education in Australia and included visits in Japan and Samoa to study educational television. In 1975 he was a member of a team to study education in China.

     After retirement Wes and Myrtle fled Winnipeg at the end of October annually, usually just in advance of the first snowstorm of the season, and made their home in Maple Leaf Estates, Port Charlotte, Florida. There Wes enjoyed a lively social life with friends and neighbours, as well as visits from his family and beloved grandchildren. In Winnipeg Wes’s artistic side found expression in metal sculptures which decorated their home and the lawns around their house. Some are still to be seen in the University Heights area; others are now in Halifax, Rutherglen ON and Coquitlam.

     Only when health concerns caught up with them did they leave behind their treasured Winnipeg home and move to Coquitlam where they lived close to son Rowly and Anne who gave him unstinted love and care. In his final years Wes experienced the decline of old age with acceptance, and in his last days he told his family that he was packing his bags and getting ready to move on.

     He left us with his version of a verse from Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar:

Twilight and evening star

And after that the dark

May there be no moaning at the bar

When I embark

     A memorial service will be held at First Memorial Funeral Services, 1340 Dominion Ave., Port Coquitlam at 2:00 pm, Saturday, March 6, 2010. A subsequent memorial will be held in Winnipeg at a later date, between the snow and the mosquitoes.

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     OK Go is an OK band.  I would likely not purchase one of their CDs.  But I certainly wait with anticipation when I hear they are going to be making a new video.  Here’s their latest, with the most elaborate Rube Goldberg Machine I have seen in a while.

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