Paranormal State and a Pussy Named Donnnnnn

SO WHAT DO TWO 50-SOMETHING EXTREMELY SEXY MEN (OK, ONE) DO WHEN THEY GET TOGETHER TO TALK ABOUT WOMEN AND SOLVE ALL THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS?

They watch about five back-to-back episodes of a ridiculous TV show called Paranormal State, of course.

I had never seen this show -- in fact, I rarely watch any TV shows, much to my friend's chagrin -- but Donnnnnn, the blogger formerly known as Homo Escapeons, is a TV junkie if ever there was one.

So I indulged him Monday night in between his gigantic rye and Pepsi's, the mixed nuts I received for buying my new car and his usual treat of smoked oysters, cheese and pickled chili peppers.

Now Donnnnnn, bless his ever-lovin' heart, is a spectacular father, husband, painter, philosopher, bullshitter extraordinaire and informed idealist. But I learned something more about him Monday.

He's a pussy. Or a wussy. He showed me, I bet five times at least, his bare arm and how his hairs were standing on end. He needed me to see his goose bumps formed as a result of his kid-like fear at watching this show.

This show Paranormal State was interesting, but it's nothing but a series of hoaxes perpetrated by two-bit actors in a reality milieu that sees Penn State University students taking on ghosts, goblins and discontented spirits.

The students are contacted by families or business owners who believe their houses or whatever are haunted. They take the case on and conduct interviews, bring in equipment, investigate, research...

It's all pretty clever and, to some degree, captivating and interesting to watch, especially at Dead Time (3 a.m.), when they all sit around and try to contact the spirit or ghost or whatever.

They ask the spirit to show them a sign. A glass breaks or a lightbulb or a bang is heard or a door creaks open. After three or four days, they come to a conclusion and show how they've brought the mystery to a head.

So it's a cool show. But the point here is that Donnnnnn was like a six-year-old. He kept telling me "I shouldn't be watching this. I shouldn't be watching this." And he'd say things like, "Oh, no!"

Here are a few pix...

Look at him, covering himself in his sweater. God. You'd think he was feeling a ghost's cold touch.

Below, I actually got him to smile as I continued laughing at how afraid he truly was. I was considering calling his lovely wife to come and pick him up and take him home, but I opted not to.

So here's the star of the show, the lead investigator who runs this Penn State group investigating these incidents. I can't remember his name. He's pretty sharp, this young kid.

And here's Donnnnnn's favourite character, Chip Coffey, the obviously flaming gay medium or psychic who was brought in for three or more of the episodes to tell the students what he sensed in the house or barn or whatever it was...

BOO!

And here's the two of them together, if I remember correctly, talking during DEAD TIME!!!

So after I had spent about two hours laughing at Donnnnnn, he posed for these pictures -- the ham -- after I told him I had to write a blog post about this.

At around the stroke of midnight, I kicked him out. He quickly ran away, worried that a scary spirit might follow him to his van. Or, worse, that Chip might take a liking to him and be all over his ass.

So this is what we have become. Amazing.

Elections are nothing but bullshit erections

As if all of the world and especially Canada wasn't captivated by the American election in November and that whole circus, now our doofus prime minister is going to call his own election for Oct. 14.

Along with basically the entire human race on the planet, I've railed against Bush forever.

He's a dink of the highest degree, and he knows it, the world knows it, and I bet there's never been so many parodies of a political leader in all of recorded history. He deserves much worse, but it will never happen.

The ultra-right religious establishment and the military complex that he exclusively served for the past eight years will never allow him to face the absolute derision he and his administration deserve.

War on Terror? RIGHT! Texas should refuse him re-entry. But that won't occur.

He will just disappear into history as another total idiot Americans elected who completely fucked up the world and made America out to be much worse than it really is, a nation that standouts like John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King made great.

Anyway, now we're faced with either Obama or McCain. If the Americans elect yet another frickin' Reflublican in McCain, then they deserve everything they get. And the world will have to pay the price.

But over here in a tiny corner of the planet, despite its geographic enormity, lies another democracy. Of course, we're the mouse to the U.S. elephant on our southern doorstep. We're Canada.

And I apologize for us in advance. Because I have always held that we are, politically, much smarter than Americans. And I don't mean that as an insult to individual Americans.

But we are much less influenced by stupid religion power bases and private interests.

We have usually been liberals at heart and our greatest accomplishments, I would argue, have occurred when we have elected Liberal governments. That's when we have most resisted being the U.S. puppets that we have become.

That's when we have truly been a nation, a people, of substantiveness.

We are that no more.

Our peevish, polished and prima donna prime minister, Stephen Harper, was a whipping boy of a right-wing, Alberta-hatched political group called the Reform party, which dissipated because Canadians wouldn't accept its extreme views.

He went off and led a private right-wing think tank organization and then, somehow, managed to meld into a damaged and defeated Progressive Conservative party of Canada, which has been around since Day 1.

He won the leadership of that historic party, which has always been the counter-movement from the liberal party, similar to the Reflublicans and the Democrats in the U.S.

And then, because the Liberals here had been through their own scandals and because they elected a French-Canadian leader whose main issue is the environment, the Conservatives under Harper won a minority government.

Of course, it has not worked. Harper's government, without the support of the majority of Canadians in Parliament or among the voting public, has been rendered impotent. But they brought that on themselves.

Harper is, at best, plastic. He's like the teflon frying pan we all buy, coated with some exterior chemical that's supposed to protect the product.

But it wears down after a while, of course, and when you heat it up, eventually the true value of the product is put to the test. He and his government are shallow. They're shallow, they're unpopular, people can see through his lack of depth.

A recent poll suggested Canadians don't want our troops to be fighting in Afghanistan. We want our troops around the world to be peacekeepers, to be helping people overcome the tragedies that war and conflict bring.

Not Harper and his cronies. He wants us to be some sort of mini-Americans or something, trying to change the world and repair irreparable situations. We don't want that. He does. He is worse than Bush.

Bush is simply stupid, obviously coloured by the religious right and his unmistakeable interest in helping the oil barons earn more and more and more.

Harper isn't as stupid, but he follows the stupid like an automaton, so that would have to make him MORE stupid. As a Canadian, I'm embarrassed and shamed by our political choices out there right now.

My god, I'm caught in a trap, as Elvis would say.

It will be a wasted vote, but I'm thinking the socially left, the New Democrats. They've never had power in our country. But I'm sick of this liberal-conservative crap. There's got to be another alternative.

Where's the Rhino Party?

Chris's Chicanery in Chicagoland

And so, safely ensconced back at home in the OTHER Windy City, we wrap up our trip to the Chicago area with this little travelogue.

Amazingly, I actually was able to navigate Chicago's incredibly complex freeway system and make my way to Joliet, almost an hour's drive southwest.

That's where I checked into this fancy-schmanzy hotel.

Those 3.5 people who were involved in the tedious comments section of my previous post will know that I described a separate room that featured a fireplace and an extremely large soaking tub with jets in it.

This is it.

I suspect that, for whatever reason, they put me in the honeymoon suite. Unfortunately, I had no honey with me in that room to be sweet with. If I had, however, the bed pictured below would have sufficed.

The room, which I stayed in for five days, was great. The hotel was clean. This was all in stark contrast to my next stop -- Gary, Ind. -- but I'll get to that in a bit.

As I joked in the comments section of the last post, what a coincidence, but I stumbled across one of my many business interests, which was right across the street from my hotel.

You can see these pictures are over-exposed. Go suck an egg.

Thankfully, there was a McDonald's very close by. There was a steady stream of baseball players and yours truly making regular stops there. I discovered their premier line of salads and munched on them often.

Below is a shot of my rental vehicle, which had Texas licence plates. I felt like George W. Bush's buddy for a week.

And to follow up on another matter discussed in the previous post's comments section, where I had noted that a praying mantis had appeared at my work station in the press box, and no one believed me...

Well it loved me so much, it flew all the way to my hotel to be with me.

I call her Priscilla.

After my stay in Joliet, our baseball team opened its playoff series in Gary, Ind., on Tuesday.

We drove directly from Joliet to the ballpark and my team lost Game 1 of the best-of-five series. Priscilla stayed in Joliet.

Below is a picture of the team bus. It's parked out in what is obviously the totally empty parking lot of the casino/hotel complex where we stayed. The parking lot was overrun by grass and weeds.

And this was our hotel...

Ha! Fooled you! I have no idea what that building is -- I suspect a steel mill -- but it was on that site. No, our hotel is below.

And here's the casino, which I didn't visit once...

My hotel room in this dump wasn't nearly as nice as the one in Joliet...

Hell, even I could do a better job wallpapering than these guys...

Our team won the second game in Gary and then the bus drove the 16 hours back to Winnipeg.

I stayed overnight in Gary again and then drove through a torrential rainstorm (remnants of Gustav) back to O'Hare.

And wouldn't you know it, while I was there yet more catastrophe occurred when a plane overshot the runway and flew right into Terminal 1. Amazingly, no one was injured. (Below)

So I had a beer at the Goose Island beer stop and waited for my plane, which was an hour late.

A Canadian and America's Pastime

PLAY BALL! (So to speak).

I was, ahem, thrown a curveball in the last week of my vacation when I was told that I would have to travel to the Chicago area to cover our city's baseball team.

I've covered them at times during the season at home, but I've never gone on the road with them. And due to a scheduling snafu, I'll be heading out of town later this week for about a week.

The first destination is Joliet, Ill., a suburb about an hour out of Chicago, where they play their final three games of the regular season.

Then I'll be travelling to Gary, Ind., for the first two games of the playoffs.

So instead of the home confines of home below...

...I'll be covering the team whose logos follow on the road (I'm not writing the team name here because fans could google the name and find this blog post).


I've been to Chicago a few times before to cover Stanley Cup final series. It's a spectacular city. Unfortunately, I won't be there except to land at O'Hare, rent a car and drive west to Joliet, then back east to Gary.



But, such is life. I'd rather be at home, but a road trip is nice every once in a while. It's always good to get out of your comfort zone and your natural environment and open your eyes to something new.

I wonder what kinds of team mascots await in these two cities? Our team's mascot (below) was voted the best in the league. I can only imagine what's in store in these two burgs in the Excited States.

So I'll be around, but I won't be.

I'll be motoring around the U.S. Midwest, covering a team almost entirely made up of Americans who play for a Canadian team in the lowest level of professional baseball.

I hope I hit .500 at least.