Day 941: Welcoming Our Alien Friends, Or Perhaps Overlords

originally published July 29, 2014 Presently, our only tangible research into the cultural and societal impacts of extra-terrestrial life arriving on Earth seems limited to the fanciful concoctions from the Hollywood daydream machine. Will aliens greet us with a peaceful hand-gesture like they did to that pig-owner guy in the Star Trek movie? Will they […]

Day 940: The Fists That Punched The Olympics

originally published July 28, 2014 The morning of October 15, 1968, just four days of sun-bathed pomp and cheer into Mexico City’s Olympic games, was perfect for a foot race. Australian speedster Peter Norman blasted through his 200-meter quarterfinal race like a sugar addict in the opening throes of a pixie stick; he finished in […]

Day 939: When Juries Get A Little Bad-Ass

originally published July 27, 2014 When I was asked to serve on a jury back in 2006, my innards were polarized in their response. On the one hand, it would mean experiencing the justice system from the inside out, hearing evidence, steering the waves of someone’s fate, and perhaps getting to reenact the dramatic speech […]

Day 938: Bedtime Tales From Tiki-Topia

originally published July 26, 2014 Hey kids. Your mom normally takes care of story-time, but there’s an engrossing marathon of The Real Housewives of some damn city on TV, and she’s asked me to fill in. I’m more of a freestyler than a page-reader, so I’m going to unfold this tale fresh from my mind’s […]

Day 937: Hollywood’s Hollywood Ending – USA vs. Paramount, 1948

originally published July 25, 2014 For those who wax nostalgic about the Golden Age of Hollywood, who swoon over the catchlights dazzling in Rita Hayworth’s dark chocolate eyes, who are pushed to the brink of their seat cushions by a stabbing violin score, or who treasure a film’s complete batch of credits before the story […]

Day 936: Number One With An Irreverent Bullet

originally published July 24, 2014 Here’s the part where the guy twitching in the hungry crosshairs of 40 tells you how the music topping the charts these days won’t inspire so much as a quiver of his trigger finger. But really, who cares? The purveyors of popular song have no interest in capturing my iTunes […]

Day 935: Ah Yes, But Is There Any Evidence Of Semen?

originally published July 23, 2014 You can have your John McClanes, your Alex Murphys, your Jimmy McNultys. When it comes to picking out the Hollywood super-cops, we shouldn’t look any further than network television’s procedural potentate: the CSI family of formulaic programming. On the CSI shows, the stars are scientific swamis, investigative prodigies, precocious and […]

Day 934: The Forbidden Fried Foodstuffs

originally published July 22, 2014 Every so often, I forget how much I despise fast food. I find myself seduced by the siren scent of McDonalds’ temptress fries, or the dangerously sweet allure of a Dairy Queen Peanut Buster Parfait (though I prefer substituting the hot fudge for caramel – my personal Achilles has remarkably […]

Day 933: The Thin Red Line Of Being An Offensive Jerk

originally published July 21, 2014 As a writer whose surrounding landscape is the unfiltered cessbucket frontier of the internet, I don’t spend much time worrying about offending my audience. Conversely, as a Canadian awash in synaptic decorum and apologetic genetics (or, apologenetics as we call them here), I feel compelled from the meaty core of […]

Day 932: Tornadoing It Right

originally published July 20, 2014 As the summer weeks amble past that first premature sploosh of sun, sweat and network television’s filler programming (the latest season of Fox’s 24 notwithstanding), we are reaching the time when the season becomes entrenched in whichever little cubbyhole we wish to place it. For some, it’s the season of […]