Toronto Roller Derby Championship

So last weekend, the inaugural season of the Toronto Roller Derby league came to a conclusion, with the first Championship match. The Gore-Gore Rollergirls and The Chicks Ahoy! - the two undefeated teams from the summer season - went at it on November 17 up at Rinx in North York. It had been a long time coming - the last public game had been in August - and part of the issue was that most rinks in the city went back to ice hockey use in September. The league was fortunate to get their hands on Rinx, a venue not designed for spectators so much; Rinx features ice rinks, bumper cars, bowling, and a roller rink. But the sweet bonus for all concerned was - provided you signed a waiver - we got to sit on the track, right in the thick of things.

The evening got off to an in auspicious start when the sound system kept crashing during the introductions. It appeared that the DJ's music board kept overwhelming the system, which was a shame seeing as the tunes are part of the whole experience. But they sorted it out, and by sitting on the track and not behind the glass, as it George Bell Arena in the summer, you could hear the announcements and play by play quite clearly. So for those of us who went through the whole summer with ToRD, we were well able to follow the action. I think the newbies who came - and there were plenty, which was very encouraging given the long lay-off - may have still had a hard time, especially when sitting on the rink surface, which of course makes it a bit harder to see things happening on the opposite side of the rink. But overall, I'd say that the crowd went home satisfied.

The match opened appearing to be a massive mis-match. While both squads went undefeated during the summer, the effects of a long lay-off seemed apparent when both sides skated a little slow off the top. This quickly changed as the Gore-Gores kept throwing numbers on the board, and the Chicks kept hitting the penalty box. By the end of the first period, the Gore-Gores had built up a seemingly insurmountable lead, in the neighborhood of 50 to 6. (I'm afraid I didn't write this down.) But the Chicks started to come back in the second, actually outscoring the Gore-Gores in the frame, and closing the gap - a bit. After 2, it was still about a 30 to 40 point lead for the Gore-Gores.

Sure enough, in the third, the hits started coming a bit harder, and while the Chicks made it respectable, they still couldn't get there, and the Gore-Gores wound up winning the first Toronto Championship Boot by a final score of 89 to 53. Led by their amazing jammers, including Bambi and Desmon Deck-Her who both fly through the pack like a hot knife through a baby's bottom, there was no way that the Gore-Gores were going be denied. The Chicks had nothing to be ashamed of, though, and both sides joined, along with the league referees, for a number of victory laps around the rink. Looking forward to next season - I'll keep you posted!

Blue Peter

Back on October 5, our friend Paul and the rest of Blue Peter played their first public show in something like 2 decades at The Mod Club in Toronto. Everyone had a blast and went home with huge smiles on their faces, especially the band, who showed that while they may have moved on with their careers they can still bring it, and bring it they did. The crowd was largely composed of friends and fans from the era - Blue Peter's last album came out in 1983 - but this wasn't some Police-style money grab: the boys just wanted to see if they could still do it, and exceeded expectations in the process.

The night opened with The Spoons, who led their own hit parade as part of the Canadian New Wave scene in the early 80s. They brought out classics like Those Old Emotions, Romantic Traffic and, of course, Nova Heart.
You got the feeling that The Spoons have been doing this a bit longer, and by that I mean the reunion thing - he was a tad slick, with the shout-outs and sing-a-longs, but they were still quite entertaining, and I think we were all shocked by how many of their songs we still knew. The only disappointment was that Sandy doesn't crimp her hair anymore.

But then Blue Peter took the stage, opening with Falling, the title track from their last album. The crowd was hyped, and just about everyone knew all the words - the band didn't forget a one, but we would have forgiven them if they had - and, I don't know if this happened back in the day or not, but the devil horns came out, too.

Here's a somewhat incomplete set list that I swiped from the facebook page for the show:
Falling, Chinese Graffiti, All Your Time, Unchained Heart, Don't Walk Past, Water On The Moon, Equalizer, Video Verite, Radio Silence, Take Me To War, Same Old Place


The order may be a bit off, but no biggee. They ended their main set, of course, with Don;t Walk Past - i am including the video I shot of that below. Forgive the audio quality, it's not the greatest. I understand that that the show was recorded that night, but have yet to hear what exactly will be done with the recording. I'll keep you posted if I hear anything.



In the short term, enjoy, the video and check out the band's site for updates about future shows, as I suspect there be some.



Oh, and check this out, a new Blue Peter compilation is on its way!

A Wedding in Picton

So, a few weeks ago - August 11, to be exact - we spent the weekend out in lovely Picton, Ontario for the wedding of our lovely friends Alex and Meredith. The countryside of eastern Ontario can not be beat, and the weather co-operated to supply a beautiful scene for the weekend. For the venue, they rented a farmhouse for the week, and set up facilities outside. The property features a couple of barns, and the ceremony was held in their shade. A large tent was filled with dining tables for dinner, and an additional tent sheltered the dance floor. There was a bluegrass band, and later on the DJ-stylings of Gabe.

We all go to weddings, and invariably have a good time, but I do think it's rare to have an experience as thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying as this. All the choices were perfect, from venue (a gorgeous house in the country) to the food (locally provided, and delicious) to the drinks (wine from the local Sandbanks winery, highly recommended) and the people. The mix of young and old was perfect, the weather completely cooperated, hey there was even a meteor shower that night around 2 in the morning. You could not have asked for a better weekend.

Oh yeah, and the bride and groom made a perfect choice in each other, as well. Congratulations, and thank you for making us a part of it.

Sorry, my bad

So, I've been rather busy lately, and just haven't been blogging like I ought to. I'm not exactly doing much of anything at the moment, other than saying that and getting ready for bed. But just to show you that I am still committed to this, here's some of the things that I plan on telling ya'll about in the near future:

• I actually broke down and joined facebook. It's not as horrible I expected to be, however it is not nearly as wonderful as everyone else says, either. Once the novelty wears off, I'll be back more often.
• The last 3 roller derby matches have come and gone, and I haven't even commented on them. I've got buttloads of photos to deal with, thoughts - there was a particularly good one a couple of weeks back - and the pending championship bout coming up.
• Last weekend we went out to lovely Picton, Ontario for Alex and Meredith's wedding - it was without a doubt the best wedding I have ever attended. The above photo is not from the wedding.
• Paul Humphrey's new album A Rumour of Angels has been released. Check out tracks at his MySpace page, and buy it at Amazon. I have my copy already, and will post a review soon, and hopefully a little Q & A with the man himself.
• I'm quitting my job.

I'm not even going to post any music with this one, I'll let you hum or whatever. Better yet, scroll down to a previous post and press play on another track. Then come back up here and read that again:

• I'm quitting my job.

Wow, that does feel good. Well, to go with that, I do plan on posting some Quasi next time, as I have been re-discovering them this week. Until then,

A Smashing Time Was Had By All

Saturday was once again Roller Derby night in Toronto, this time the Gold Digger Grudge Match, in which the Chicks Ahoy! simply crushed the Bay Street Bruisers. (I really ought to start writing down the scores at the end of the matches - you can get the scores at Toronto Roller Derby.) Penny Whistler, as usual, was superb as a penalty ref. The game got a little sloppy later on, with plenty of wipeouts - but still nothing deliberate - and to everyone's great disappointment the manager of the Bruisers did not get thrown out for repeatedly arguing with referees about scoring and penalties. Most of us in the crowd were certain that the manager was performing some sort of theatrical bit to fire up his team, or was trying to get himself "thrown out" for fun. Penny assured me that no, he was pretty serious, and that Sir Refs-A-Lot came pretty close to tossing him.

We did a pretty good job of representing - between H and myself, we managed to bring 17 or 18 people, including my folks, as it turns out that the whole family thinks this is pretty cool. My father videotaped some stuff to show to Grandma, and even got himself quoted in a news article. (I guess I wasn't engaging enough as a boyfriend of a ref. Hmph.) Also in attendance was our friend, Paul the Feeder, from Diary of a Feeder. (I have feeling he will not be writing up the arena's French fries, which another friend described as the worst fries in the history of fries.) I have already had a couple of suggestions from friends that I sign up as a ref next season, supposing that H will move out of the ranks to become a competitor. Well, we'll see. Right now I'm very happy supporting her in this thing, which after all is her thing, not mine. But I'll keep it in mind. I will accept suggestions for derby names as well.





Here's Penny with our newest convert to the Derby crowd, Alex. The derby schedulers have very helpfully scheduled the next 2 matches on either Saturday that straddles Alex and Meredith's wedding, so we can all still go, and all still go to the next derby event!

The next match will be Saturday July 28th, again at 8 PM at George Bell Arena, featuring the Death Track Dolls versus the Smoke City Betties. I know Paul will be sporting his Dolls' shirt to support the team - I think he just liked the logo, but why not? Pick a team! Come one, come all, cum on feel the noize. Be there!

End of another era

So on Monday I was downtown getting my haircut. (This woman took an hour to cut my hair, showered me with baby powder at one point, and even cut her fingers on the scissors. But this is not that story.)

Anyway. Afterwards, I walked in to Sam the Record Man, which is, alas, closing its doors for good at the end of the month. I've been going there as long as I can remember going downtown, and have bought probably most of the cassettes that are sitting in a box somewhere, because after the advent of CDs you realized that listening to tapes is such a pain in the ass, so you don't do it anymore. Now CDs are the new pain in the ass - everything's online now anyway.

So I walked in, likely for the last time, and poked around. They've thinned stuff out a bit, but there's the makings of a great sale there. There's a bunch of 99 cent bins - if you need a copy of The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart they've got about 50 of them - but it was an interesting piece of nostalgia to walk around in there. I miss the smell of the vinyl. Once record shops ceased being, well, record shops, they lost a lot of their charm. The sound that those plastic security cases that held tapes or CDs slapping against each other wasn't the same, either.

Sam's was also more of a Canadian institution. Once upon a time there were a couple hundred locations across the country. When I was younger there was one in my neighborhood, near Bloor and Jane. A friend of mine worked there at the time, in an era when the top 30 singles would still be represented by an ordered stack of 45s. There was a community feel to Sam's too - at this location, Trevor was generally the one who got the task of hand lettering little signs for the Top 30, usually with really awful, like Evil Dead awful, puns. One in particular that has always stayed in my mind was for a Paula Abdul song. Trevor drew a little sketch of the CN Tower, and the caption, "The CN Tower goes Straight Up". With any luck, this will be the only mention of Paula Abdul ever in this blog.

There will still be 2 independent Sam's locations left, holdovers from the old franchise days, in Sarnia and Belleville, I think. But losing the flagship store on Yonge Street will be a loss for Toronto, certainly. Those neon records were one of my earliest memories of Toronto, from a 1980 vacation with my parents the year before we moved here. We Stayed at a hotel a couple of blocks away, and our hotel room faced that way. At night I'd sit by the window for ages and watch the flashing lights simulate spinning. They were awesome. A note on the Spacing wire suggests that the sign will not be saved with the building, but will instead be auctioned off with the rest of the leftovers.

So. I browsed around for a while, but there wasn't much that was screaming out at me to liberate it from the shop, but I did pick up this:

Blue Peter's old albums have been remastered and are finally available on CD for the first time. Sam's is selling them for $5.99 each, or all 3 releases for $14.99, I think. I picked up Radio Silence, which comes with the ep Test Patterns For Living and a live track from 1983. It's incredible how well this stuff has held up. Video Verite in paticular kicks, and the title song as well. One of the pre-eminent Canadian New Wave bands of the late 70's early 80's, Blue Peter reassembled for a reunion gig in November that I was fortunate enough to attend, and rumor has it that there will be another in Toronto, maybe later this summer, or in the autumn. If hear anything definitive, I will pass it on asap.


In the meantime, you can get your Blue Peter fix at their site or their MySpace page. The former includes some video and a whole bunch of audio clips from back in the day.

And, to get you started, I'll pass this on to you:



Don't Walk Past was probably their biggest hit back in the day, and this is unfortunately a poor recording of it's video. Watch it more clearly on the band's site. And go down to Sam's before it closes for good - and while you're at pick up some Blue Peter why don't you.

Coming soon: the threatened Linda Ronstadt post.

Where have you gone, Jason Chayka?

When I was a kid I lived on Long Island, in a town called Bethpage. It was pretty much the place between the two malls, or at least that's how I remember it. We lived at the halfway point on a county bus route that literally went from the mall in Hicksville (no, really, that's what it was called. yeah, I know.) and the one in Massapequa (got no smart-ass comment for that one, do you?). I don't really have much of a specific point in raising that tidbit of info, but let's see if I can link it in somehow.

I'm sick today. Leave it to me to get sick on what is normally my day off anyway, and on top of that, it's a holiday too. (Happy May 2-4 everyone.) Well, I'll show them - I'm gonna take tomorrow off. Hang out on the couch watching old Family Guy episodes and maybe some old movies. Daytime TV sucks. Anyway, feeling this cold? infection? syndrome? develop over the weekend I tried to ward it off with meat fest - next time I'll take pictures and post it, H had gone away to Milwaukee for the weekend and took the camera - but that didn't work out so well. I did however decide to watch Star Wars for the first time in years. (One of the many assets that H came with was an extensive collection of Star Wars paraphernalia, including an R2D2 collection.) After not seeing this film for like 20 years or more I'm surprised at how ell it stood up, considering how crap the "prequels" were.

Man, these decongestants and antihistamines are wiping me out. And the tylenols.

Oh, right. The link - and this will all become clear in a moment - is that watching the movie made me think of my childhood. I was old enough to see it in the theater when it came out (I'll bet Grandma took me to RKO Keith's in Flushing, which is no longer there, alas.) Man, when that movie came out, it was, I imagine, bigger than Harry Potter today. Every kid at school had to see that movie as soon, and as many times as possible. I would have been in the first grade, I guess. And I was friends with this kid named Jason. Jason could do (for a six-year-old) a pretty decent imitation of R2D2. He'd walk around the school yard at lunch time whistling and chirping in the company of this other kid, Tim, who would do the best attempt at an English accent a kid from Long Island could do while walking around in a stiff-armed posture as C3PO. I suppose I'm painting these kids as total dorks, but come on, we were all of 6 years old. Or so. Hell, the amount of drugs I've taken today it could have been last week for all I know.

Anyway, Jason and I became friends, and when I moved to Canada at 9, he was one of a couple of kids I stayed in touch with. Every couple of years when I would go down to visit family I would go out o the Island and see him. We shared an affinity for cats and cartoons, The Monkees and Dr Who (although I wasn't the one who made his own Tardis out of a box a refrigerator came in. Again, I guess that was pretty dorky. Somewhere I have the picture he sent me of it. If I get it scanned, I'll let you judge for yourselves.) Anyway, this long distance friendship carried into our twenties, and the dawn of emailing, and somewhere around that time we lost touch. And watching Star Wars the other night all smashed on Neo Citran made me think about Jason again and wonder what became of him. I'm pretty sure that at some point I tried mailing something to his old address and never heard back, but that may be another hallucination. I do know that online searching has turned up exactly nothing about him or, as near as I can tell, his folks. He had a sister named Rachel, and I don't recall his parents' names. I think his father had worked for Grumman. So, if you know Jason, or are Jason, by all means drop me a line.

For anyone else who waded through this, as a little reward, here's a piece of All Time Quarterback, one of Ben Gbbard's many side projects from Death Cab. I first heard this song online a few years ago, and I liked it so much I bought the album, and you should too. You can get the album here. I see they also have another song linked there too.

All Time Quarterback! Plans Get Complex