FROM VID GAMES TO MUSIC VIDS?

WHEN HE WAS THIS...

ALL HE CARED ABOUT WAS THIS...

Caricature by Donn Coppens (aka Homo Escapeons)

My son was a video game junkie.

He'd play Zelda or Final Fantasy on his Nintendo 64, PlayStation and every other increasingly expensive new generation of game box he could persuade me to buy for him.

BUT NOW THAT HE'S OLDER...

HE WANTS TO BE THIS...

OR THIS...

Yes, my 15-year-old has decided he definitely wants to be a professional rock singer or musician when he grows up (or next week if that's possible, but I told him not likely).

Just like the band Billy Talent (below) and their lead singer (name unknown, above).

And my son came out with this final declaration of his life's calling this week after he and his buddy Alex, the lead guitarist and head of their own garage band, met and interviewed Billy Talent.

And then saw them in concert.

It's confusing, you see, but Billy Talent isn't actually one person. The whole band, the collective four pictured above, ARE Billy Talent. Yes, and my name is Within Wonderful.

Anyway, Evan and Alex take a broadcasting course at school.

They requested and obtained permission to do a five-minute TV interview with the lead singer of Billy Talent, who is not named Billy Talent, and one other band member.

They did that this week, hugged the boys in the band, probably peed their pants, went home, changed and then went and saw them perform that same night.

I have not seen the video. I have not seen the pictures that someone supposedly took.

It was only a month or more ago that Evan met and talked with another one of his idols, the lead singer of a Canadian group called Alexisonfire.

I've only had him in singing lessons for a few months, and I've promised to buy him an electric guitar and pay for his lessons if his school marks pass muster.

But you've got to admit, the kid sure has been getting himself into the right circles.

I've told him the chances of him ever performing professionally are pretty small. He knows that.

I think maybe I should start becoming very afraid...

TRAPPED

I FEEL TRAPPED.

I feel trapped by winter's cold, icy grip and the prospect that it's barely February and there's almost two more months of this to go before Mother Nature gets over her own version of PMS.

That's Pre-March Syndrome...don't get all cranky on me now.

Up here in the Great White North, March would be the equivalent to a woman's time of the month, when all this stuff is going on.

And at the end of it, miraculously, usually by April, it's spring.

By then, all is right with the world.

The cramps are gone (from the lingering, bitter cold), everything gets washed away (the snow), the robins fly back from down south, there's more daylight, more sunshine, more warmth.

But for now, I feel trapped.

And wouldn't you know it, I don't just feel physically trapped by this frigid existence. Like everyone else -- and any who read this might relate -- I feel emotionally trapped too.

I feel trapped by circumstances beyond my control, but also by choices I've made and continue to make.

In some cases, there's a way out and I've even got the key to the door, I just have to decide to use it.

But sometimes there is no key. Or it's been lost.

Or you can see it, but just like in the movies, you can't reach it no matter how long you try to stretch your arm out to grab it.

Not even a pole will do the trick.

In other circumstances, forget the key...there's no door! But you got in...how can there be no way out?

Maybe you didn't build a door because you never thought you'd need or want to exit.

But now you do.

And because there's no door, or window, or even the slightest crack...

Maybe you have to pick up your sledgehammer and make that crack or window or door so you can bust out to get some fresh air..,At least to feel what that feels like.

And maybe once on the outside, you might decide...hey, I want to go back inside again, where I had safety and warmth and security. Or maybe you might just leave that behind.

Or maybe not. Whatever.

The fact is, you still feel trapped. By whatever it might be.

A relationship that doesn't work for you, that leaves you longing or lusting, that leaves you feeling you're not getting what you could be getting...

It could feel like a cage, like a bottle, like any enclosure that cramps your space, your style, that limits who and what you feel you can be or want to be.

And what do you do with that?

There was a recent story here in Canada that detailed a study by a Calgary guy who said that, essentially, bloggers were lonely people.

People who blogged because they had nothing else to do...that was the suggestion.

I've thought quite a bit about this in the past and I agree with some of the premise and I think sometimes I spend far too much time blogging when I could or should be out living among people I can see and feel and hear.


But I've also come to the realization that some of the most intelligent people on the planet blog, and I've been privy to their ideas, at least some of them. And that is good.


Sometimes I think, keeping in this "trapped" theme, that I should be doing something else.


But I can't find anywhere else, except blogging, where a whole bunch of really intelligent people from everywhere voice their opinions because they want to in a free and open and co-operative environment.


Bloggers are beautiful.

And so, for that matter, are people who feel trapped. If the two are one and the same, then that's OK with me. But I suspect that bloggers are more free than anyone else I know.

Can You Read This?

So now that I decided to do a post about my little (big) brother Gerry, he appears to have decided this is his blog.

He's quite enamoured now about blogs, it appears. That's him on the right in a nightie or something, his son Matthew in the middle and me on the left. I can't explain the yellow tinge to this photo.

Anyway, today, I gather, in his super important job as the big poobah and snake oil salesman in charge of luring rich Americans to a place in Northwestern Ontario called Sunset Country, he received this email.

And he says I should put it on my blog.

I had another post almost ready to go, but seeing as I put his image on my last post without seeking his permission, I figure I owe him something besides a kick in the ass.

So here it is...

Can you read this?

You can't spell?
That's perfectly OK.

I Could Read this. Can You?

If yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg.

The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.

The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh?
Yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

If you can raed tihs forwrad it.

---

So...CAN you read it? I actually can and my brother says he can. If you can't, fear not...45 per cent of the population can't, according to this.

Of course, we in the 55 per cent couldn't begin to tell you what difference this might make to our lives, but hell...it's something!

Now it's your turn. What can you do that most of the population can't? Bodily contortions? Recite the Bhagavad Gita backwards? Predict When George Bush will invade Iran?

Do tell...

My Brother is a Bother (OK, not really)

The fellow in the picture below, using my head for a tripod as I snap his picture, is my youngest brother, Gerry.

I hate to admit it, but like me, he is a tease. I wonder where he got that from?

I'm the oldest of a family of six kids. He's the youngest. In between are one other brother and three sisters.

And oh, those three sisters were fodder for the two of us, particularly, when we were growing up.

Me, the Big Bro, constantly haranguing them. He, the spoiled little mini-me, terrorizing them to no end.

We look a lot of like. And we are a lot alike. Deep voices. Opinionated. Jokesters. I'm proud to say I taught him everything he knows. He's about eight years younger than I am.

When I was 14 or 15 out playing hockey every night, he'd tag along and take the abuse that a kid that age should take from an older brother. I wouldn't cut him any slack.

But if my friends hurt him, they were dead meat, and they knew it.

At home, in our basement, he always wanted to be the goaltender. We had a hockey net set up down there and I'd take shots at him for hours on end. He loved it. So did I.

We spent incredible amounts of time together. I'm glad for that. More than glad.

As I grew older and left home, he was left to his own devices in a lot of ways. He grew tall and big, taller and bigger than me, and we kind of lost touch a bit.

In some ways, he became the black sheep of our family.

But when I went on a trip to India, he sent me a typed letter with no paragraphs that mostly contained a bunch of updates on this and that.

Hidden in there, though, was one sentence I'll always remember.

"I miss you a hell of a lot."

So, all these years later, here we are.

He's got two younger kids, I've got two older kids. He lives with his wife and family in a city about 3 hours away, so I see him at Christmas and at some family birthday parties, etc.

And wouldn't you know it, everything I taught him about teasing has come back to haunt me.

I, of course, have become his No. 1 target to tease, the aging older brother, the Titan of Tease, and now it's time for the younger lion to take on the old dominant male sibling.

He's become the King of Kidding, trying to knock me off my big rock, the one I've been perched on so long (think of the movie Lion King).

All the sisters and my mom and dad and my nieces and nephews know to watch out for me with a smile, they always try to catch me off-guard and tease me first, but they know it'll backfire...

And then Gerry turns up to challenge me for top dog, by taking pix like this...

The doink!

He took this pic of me from above, showing what is a much larger bald spot than I ever anticipated!! It's accentuated by the camera's flash...but I figure he got me good and won this round.

For our next family get-together, I plan on getting a closeup of his belly, which you can't see in this pic of him below but which is substantially bigger than mine. Buuu-huuu-haw-haw haw haw!!!!