ISSUE 08-19

Spot the clunkers!
I… I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE TO START WITH THIS ONE…




What lurks inside my mp3 player? Pretense and crap!
THE FRIDAY RANDOM 10



Time to let off some pressure
Time to let off some steam
All your notebooks get thrown away
And you start your diary clean
Crystal glass lined up in a row
Watched over by the G.I. Joes
Sugar in your coffee doesn't taste quite right
Feeling the effects for a hundred thousand nights

Rock Lobster – The B-52s
Stand In Silence - …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead
Shout At The Devil – Motley Crue
Crystal – Husker Du
Mercury Blues – David Lindley
Jesse’s Girl – Rick Springfield
Get Up Offa That Thing – James Brown
Standing In The Dark – Platinum Blonde
Good Fortune – PJ Harvey
Hungry Like The Wolf – Duran Duran

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A few notes before the Gone Fishin’ sign goes up…
SUMMER, AND THE TIME IS RIGHT FOR FOGGING…

My weekly publishing schedule has gone to heck in a gosh-darn handbasket this past month. It is a shame when little things like life and work interfere with my primary purpose – to provide my faithful readers with 8 minutes of distraction each and every week. I fear my ISO 9002 Blogger Certification is swirling in the drain as we speak.

However, here’s one more before we scatter in all directions, headed to the beach, the bar, or perhaps the Frog Folly Days in St. Pierre…

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Regular Joey reader, bon vivant, songwriter, and raconteur Joel Newbury adds ‘playwright’ to his resume later this month. His debut effort, The Fogger, takes place at the Playhouse Studio during the 2008 Fringe Festival. It’s about a mosquito exterminator’s struggles with his work and…pretty much everything else in his life.

Directed by actor, full-time communicator, and part-time pipe smoker Dave Meister, another Joey reader, the play could not be more timely, with our fair city experiencing its worst mosquito infestation in ages.

It hasn’t been this bad since… 2005 (or was it 2006?), and we all remember those dreadful days, when our children had to be locked inside, lest the skeeters carry them off to their slimy pools of standing water. There was a sense that no matter what we did, we just could not control nature... at least within legal limits.

If it helps at all, remember that every time you are bitten, it’s merely part of the innovative multimedia promotion blitzkrieg for the play.

Kudos to Joel, Dave, and the cast. Your trusty scribe will be at the premiere, Thursday July 17 at 3:45pm., and probably for one more show, so e-mail me if you’re interested. Look for a hard-hitting, objective review when the Joey returns in the Fall.

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FOUND HIM! OH, NO...



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Not much from the Judgementalsons or my mother. Mom’s preoccupied with the apology given to (those damn) Aboriginals by the government. She’s determined to have it taken back, and as we all know that would be a very constructive and high-minded thing to do. I wish her the best of luck.

Oh wait, the Judgementalsons did passively scold us on the Canada Day weekend, when, at a little past 10pm, our teenage niece had the temerity to play her saxophone on our deck - for all of five minutes. This, this… violation of all things quiet and, and… decent prompted Mrs. J to flick her bedroom lights with earnest outrage, assuming that we would immediately see her SOS and sh*tcan the music. Luckily for her, we did see the Beeyotch Signal, and bloodshed was averted, for one more day. I hope she has a kid that plays saxophone at all hours of the day. Assuming Todd's reluctant seed can find purchase on her rocky plain, and of course, we don’t know that yet.

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SOMEONE IN WINNIPEG HAS SENSE OF HUMOUR? NO WAY!



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I like to link it, link it
THE FRIDAY TIME WASTERS

If Winnipeg had a mayor with cojones, he might be like this guy…
I was negotiating Knightsbridge with extreme caution when a French tourist walked across the road without looking (you could tell he was French by the noise he made on impact) and, though I sprained my wrist, I felt the real lesson was about teaching tourists to look the right way. If I'd had a foghorn, it might have come in handy, or possibly a cow-catcher fitted to the front of my bike. But a helmet?

Proof that human eyes still have some utility in the editing profession…
Homosexual didn’t get off to a particularly strong start in the first semifinal, but by the halfway mark he had established a comfortable lead. He slowed somewhat over the final 10 meters-nothing like the way-too-soon complete shutdown that almost cost him Saturday. Asked how he felt, Homosexual said: “A little fatigued.”

I like Christopher Hitchens, but he deserved this…
You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The “board” is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered.

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And finally…
THIS PICTURE BEGS FOR A CAPTION…

I was so looking forward to your captions for last issue’s picture of a partially (fully?) unclothed Alex Trebek. But the readers have their limits, I learned, and aside from one odd and homophobic quip and my desperate stab aimed at building some momentum, that picture was DOA.

Can’t you handle a naked game show host? Would you like me to tone it down, perhaps revert to some nice landscape pictures, a bowl of fruit on a rustic framhouse table, sunlight illuminating the bowl? Oh, I know, how about a picture of two small children hugging, one of them holding a daisy…

Doubt I’ll do it? Ohh, just try me…


Yup, every damn week…

This week, I expect you to knock it out of the park. Oh, and have a great summer!