“My sister bought a gift for your baby,” a co-worker said to me on Tuesday. I’ve never met this sister. I don’t even know her name. But she remembered that I lend my metro pass to her sister (my co-worker), and knew I was having a baby, so she bought a gift for a person and child she’ll likely never meet. You never know when you’ll encounter the kindness of a stranger, and it’s very heartening to be reminded that there are good, kind, thoughtful people out there.
Monthly Archive for February, 2009
Cadbury has placed an “interactive” billboard at Yonge-Dundas Square. The billboard features a giant Cadbury Creme Egg, a lever and fulcrum, a catch basin and a giant fan. The idea is that as rain and snow accumulate in the catch basin it will raise the egg into the spinning fan blades – thereby releasing the goo within onto the street below.
Check out the live webcam at CadburyCremeEgg.ca!
Now this is a whole different take on promoting an album!
From soundcheck.freedomblogging.com:
$7
* Digital download of Since 1972, including 3 videos
$15
* CD/DVD double-disc set
* Digital download
$50
* CD/DVD double-disc set
* T-shirt
* “Thank you” phone call from Josh for buying Since 1972. You can tell him what you like about the record that you purchased, or what you thought sucked. Ask whatever you want, like “Is Maynard really THAT weird?” or “Which one of Sting’s mansions has the comfiest beds?” or “Are Devo really suburban robots that monitor reality or just a bunch of dads from Ohio?” or “Why don’t the Vandals play more stuff off the first record?” It’s your 5 minutes to yack it up. Talk about whatever you want.
$250 (limited edition of 25)
* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* T-shirt
* Signed drum head and drumsticks
* Go on a lunch date with Josh to PF Changs or The Cheesecake Factory (whatever you’re into)
$500 (limited edition of 15)
* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* T-shirt
* Signed cymbal and sticks
* Meet Josh in Venice, Calif., and go floating together in a sensory-deprivation tank (to be filmed and posted on YouTube)
* Dinner at Sizzler (get your $8.99 steak and “all you can eat” shrimp on)
$1,000 (limited edition of 10)
* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* T-shirt
* Signed cymbal, drum head and drumsticks
* Josh washes your car OR does your laundry … or you can wash his car
* Have dinner with Josh aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, Calif.
* Get drunk and cut each other’s hair in the parking lot of the Long Beach courthouse (filmed and posted on YouTube, of course)
$2,500 (limited edition of 5)
* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* Get a private drum lesson with Josh, or for all you non-drummers, have him give you a back and foot massage (couples welcome)
* Pick any 1 member of the Vandals or Devo (subject to availability) to accompany you and Josh to either the Hollywood Wax Museum or the lunch buffet at the Spearmint Rhino
* Signed DW snare drum
* Take 3 items of your choice out of his closet (first come, first serve)
* Change diapers and make bottles with him for an afternoon (after hitting the strip club)
$5,000 (limited edition of 3)
* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* T-shirt
* Josh writes a song about you and makes it available on iTunes
* Co-direct a video with him for the song about you and throw it up on the YouTubes
* Josh gives you and a friend a private tour of Disneyland
* Get drunk together. If you don’t drink, we can go to my dad’s place and hang out under the “Tuba tree”
* Stone Gossard from Pearl Jam will send you a letter telling you about his favorite song on Since 1972
$10,000 (limited edition of 1)
* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* T-shirt
* Signed DW snare drum from A Perfect Circle’s 2003 tour
* Josh gives you a private drum lesson OR his and hers foot/back massage (couples welcome, discreet parking)
* Twiggy from Marilyn Manson’s band and Josh take you and a guest to Roscoe’s Chicken ‘n’ Waffles in Long Beach for dinner
* Josh takes you and a guest to Club 33 (the super-duper exclusive and private restaurant at Disneyland located above Pirates of the Caribbean) and then hit a couple rides afterward (preferably the Tiki Room, the Haunted Mansion and Tower of Terror)
* At the end of the day at Disneyland, drive away in Josh’s Volvo station wagon. It’s all yours … take it. Just drop him off on your way home, though, please.
$20,000 (limited edition of 1)
* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* T-shirt
* A signed drum from the 2008 Nine Inch Nails tour
* Maynard James Keenan, Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo and Josh take you miniature golfing and then drop you off on the side of the freeway (all filmed and posted on YouTube)
* Josh gives you a tour of Long Beach. See his first apartment, the coffee shop on 2nd Street where his buddy paid Dave Grohl $40 to rip up tile just weeks before joining Nirvana. See the old Vandals rehearsal spot, the liquor store he got busted at using a Fake ID when he was 17 (it was Dave from the Vandals’ old ID). Go check out Snoop Dogg’s high school. For an extra 50 bucks see where Tom and Adrian from No Doubt live. For another $25 he’ll show ya where Eric from NOFX and Brooks from Bad Religion get their hair cut.
* Spend the night aboard the Queen Mary and take the “Ghosts and Legends” tour. (Separate rooms … no spooning.)
* Josh writes 2 songs about you and both are made available on iTunes and appear on his next record (you can sing back up on ‘em, clap, play the drums, triangle, whatever)
* Drum lesson OR foot and back massage (once again … couples welcome and discreet parking available)
* Pick any 3 items out of Josh’s closet
$75,000 (limited edition of 1)
* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* T-shirt
* Go on tour with Josh for a few days
* Have Josh write, record and release a 5-song EP about you and your life story
* Take home any of his drum sets (only one, but you can choose which one)
* Take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from Tool’s Lamborghini OR play quarters and then hop on the Ouija board for a while
* Josh will join your band for a month … play shows, record, party with groupies, etc.
* If you don’t have a band he’ll be your personal assistant for a month (4-day work weeks, 10 am to 4 pm)
* Take a limo down to Tijuana and he’ll show you how it’s done (what that means exactly we can’t legally get into here)
* If you don’t live in Southern California (but are a U.S. resident) he’ll come to you and be your personal assistant/cabana boy for 2 weeks
* Take a flying trapeze lesson with Josh and Robin from NIN, go back to Robins place afterwards and his wife will make you raw lasagna
This afternoon Cameron and I took advantage of the bright sunshine to wander around The Junction and take some photos.
In the final stretch, just before we stopped for a pint at Shox, I saw this little sticker on a billboard:
In grade seven a friend decided that I looked a bit like Vanilla Ice so he created an alter ego for me – Vanilla Kirk. I even had my own comic book – “The Adventures Of Vanilla Kirk”. It was weird then, and still is, but I the amount of work that he put into making fun of me is actually quite impressive. So 18 years later this article in Rolling Stone really catches my attention:
In the journalism game, yelling “Breaking News” is akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater — it better be warranted. But to heck with that: Breaking News! MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice are joining forces for a one-night-only joint show. “Hammer Pants and Ice” goes down Friday, February 27, 2009, at 8:00 p.m. at the McKay Events Center in Orem, Utah.
We can’t possibly answer the inevitable “why” question, but here’s how it will all go down: Hammer is bringing 24 dancers and a full choir; Ice is bringing … himself as far as we can tell. It is evidently the pair’s first show together since the early 1990s, when both were whole-scale radio stars.
I hope that footage from this show makes it to the web.
Why are so many people happy to accept OK, instead of perfect? What part of the brain in a tradesperson fails to recognize that a kitchen without shelves in the cabinets is not complete? Mike Holmes (of Holmes On Homes) says it in every episode but if others did it right the first time, he wouldn’t be a TV star.
People say that it’s the squeaky door that gets the oil, but that’s often just a bandaid solution. The broken door gets fixed. It’s a small difference but it underscores what I think is a failing of society. Both doors need to be fixed. But fixing two doors is twice as much work and in our society that places such a high value on couch time, extra works loses every time.
It’s a rare day that I get what I believe to be adequate customer service. It’s an ever rarer occasion that someone exceeds my expectations, but this is exactly what happened this past week with Crate & Barrel at Yorkdale Mall.
We’ve been in the market for new curtains for our living room. Having completed an exhaustive search in stores and online we settled on the Woodberry Curtains from C&B. Before making the trek up to Yorkdale – and rather than dealing with their always packed parking lot for nothing – I called the store to make sure they had the item in stock. A friendly staffer named Barbara answered the phone and indicated that it wasn’t in stock, but that the folks in the linen department could better serve me. I was promptly transferred over to another Barb (who had been briefed on what I wanted!!!!).
Barb verified that that the item was not in stock but more were on order for delivery in late March. Before I could tell her I wanted to buy them now, she offered to order them and have them shipped directly to me. Using this method I could get the curtains in about a week.
I accepted her offer, gave her my address and credit card details, and was on my way.
Two days later I received an envelope from C&B containing my receipt, a hand written note from Barb thanking me for my purchase, and letting me know that she didn’t have a swatch of the material on hand. Instead she sent along a product catalog, and the tech/care specs for the curtains.
After two more days, to my surprise, Purolator delivered the curtains to me.
I felt like I fell into some time warp and landed in a time where retail sellers are interested in taking care of buyers. Why aren’t there more people in retail like Barb?
The AP Industries Lollipop Crib is now on order for us. It’s the crib we wanted, and considering the sweet deal we got on it, we couldn’t be happier. It was priced wrong but the store said that they would honour the pricing – it was their mistake not ours. It was $100 less than anywhere else – even online US retailers, in US dollars.
Happy to cross this one off our ever growing shopping list.
Come late June or early July that’s what I’ll be confirming when our son is born. This week we had our second ultrasound and were able to confirm that we’re having a boy. Is it coincidence or good planning that our son will be born just in time for me to take a couple weeks off to watch Le Tour???