The Brew

Tonight's Brew was a standard pale ale done while sampling aged wheat beer and ginger beer... these beers aged a few weeks really taste better, but for some strange reason the beers around here never get a chance to age properly. I mean the blogging has been good and the insanity of screaming children passes come night time, and the pants are getting tighter. Who would have ever thought one could make such tasty beers from their own office. "Never give up on a game Robertson" a man says to himself as he ponders the days events and casts a slurred grin to the hope that tomorrow might bring.

Speaking of hope, i applied to some thing where you get a showcase spot at Canadian Music Week in Toronto this March. In part of the application there was a short essay question regarding "how this showcase will help your career".

I answered along these lines:

It comes down to Hope and Purpose with the emphasis on the latter. What all bands really need is a purpose, some light on the horizon that offers a glimmer of hope that what you are doing is indeed worthwhile. A purpose draws the focus of a band to prepare for the event. In the end a career will be judged by the body of work created (one can only hope) and having a purpose with hope could translate into a productive quarter that ultimately will have a positive effect on the body of work, and in the best case scenario create a "surge effect".

Of course i went off the rails hammering that idea, and it's true. A career is life and life is a journey and a journey needs destinations, or a change in the pathway good or bad... just something to happen! the two times i have had broken hands resulted in some fine songwriting as a result of being forced to keep it simple (if that's even possible to say that for me). The songs "Hey Rock's Livingroom" and "with a damaged Hand" would not have happened if my hand was not broken at the time of conception.

None the less something tells me my answer is wrong...

one for thee old Mule

Like i mean shit, if somebody is going to read it why not?

Funny have been having a few talks with some people lately who say they always read my blog and like my relationship with "failure", although they find it ridiculous but are amused none the less... and then i hit them with "what blog are you reading?" and they look at me like an Alien, or the chat becomes confused. i have a feeling people are reading the Super Robertson Supper Show Blog but of course I'm not too sure because failure is everywhere... I spy with my little eye something that is about to become an unmitigated disaster. Why look on the bright side when the dark side is so rich... or the classic patented WB approach plan for the worst and then maybe, just maybe, you could be pleasantly surprised.

For the record: I feel that my brand of negativity is just more realistic banter that seems so down and out because our world is always trying to squeeze awesome out of ordinary.

I also have a bone to pick with the lies society told me as i grew up... the goalposts of success, why you do things, what you can't do, how you need to dress, what you need to have... all bullshit... well not completely but the rules are not absolute and the game's referee's are as crooked as a big time lobbyist.

Success is in the eye of the beholder and failure is in the eye of society. My poor Mother, when i got a job as a Mailman she in her supportive way said "well with your education you will shoot right up to the top of that company"... which is totally not me for reasons that would need 1000 blogs to make clear and surely i would be dead now as the result of a massive brain aneurysm that would occur at meeting number 1673945 to go over the simplest of ass backwards thoughts. Hanging out with a bunch of people who have more ambition than brains, with the sense of humour of a rhinoceros, and the personality of a garden gnome.... all ready to stab each other in the back and fuck the workers over for a chance to move up the ladder of "success".

No thanks I'll take my failure please. I know what i haven't done (sold a bunch of records and thus made a respectable income which would justify my continuation as a "working artist"). HELL I was such a Failure of a parent that i didn't buy my kids BABY EINSTEIN dvd's to sit them in front of to make sure i aggressively grow their brains from a young age as the promotional material that was picked up by the press clearly stated. For the record they lost that case the other day and have to refund people who bought that shit under those pretences... except in Canada... i think there is a 6 month window. Imagine that nonsense... put your infant in front of a television so they will be able to "keep up" with this ever intelligent society we have... that's just incredible. Hey man i hear eating a shit sandwich makes you smart... get that in the press and then buy manure stocks...

I failed to see the rationalization for various wars, i fail to see why it is more important to let companies continue to produce throw away packaging, I fail to see why the fact that there is an island of plastic the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean that is slowly degrading and irreversibly contaminating the environment, and it's not really an important issue for most living humans that make the key decisions on what to do and what not to do for the sake of our continued "well being".

I am starting to feel an uncontrollable rage coming on...

took the old myspace blog down... not much to miss there


The body is like a fluid mass
But just words that are boundless
Insert symbol
because poetic is easier than making sense
in a world gone wrong with generic responses
to problems caused by the greed of money

It has been said that continuous effort, rather than strength and intelligence will unlock our potential.

I guess you have to buy into that kind of stuff in order to find the strength to do things like this.


By golly gee, another blogaroo... another opportunity for some fine wisdom. Words of advise to others... avoid sitting in a chair staring at a computer. Go for a walk, learn an instrument, read a book... Well now you see that is silly, for if you are to read this you will be sitting at a computer checking out the band 21 tandem repeats... the thing we want you to do... I should talk about how great we are with our riveting live shows, mind bending lyrics, and natural pop sensibilities. Yes indeed 21 tandem repeats puts on the show of shows... nothing short of extraordinary.

Single Parent

Well my wife went to the big smoke (Toronto) yesterday morning (Thursday) and it's now tonight (Friday), and boy am i glad i have a healthy supply of home brew in the house... i was just going to go to bed, but then i thought about the mighty Mule (Rob Hughes), who i had a good chat with the other night at the SRSS (Super Robertson Supper Show)... much more on that next Tuesday night in another blog. Not trying to get off topic, but rather get into a proper Robertson writing flow where the thoughts are not impeded by anything (proper sentence structure, reality)... well i just took a call from Pockets (my neighbour) and we were talking about beds and the idea of me perhaps getting these 2 free single beds from craigslist (for the twins) and then she mentioned BEDBUGS and now we get to revisit paranoia. I mean i have 2 cribs to get rid of, and there ain't no bugs on them, but you never want to be the loser in that game. Good beds are expensive and our family tree's both stipulate good bedding... you are never mad at yourself for buying good beds.

Jeeze i wanted to talk about how insane it must be to be a single parent... but now we are on a bed tangent. My father always subscribed to good beds, and i was a recipient of that fine forward thinking... unless of course we were on a road trip and pulled into a hotel and dad would spend 10 minutes lying on each bed making sure he got the best bed... which of course was all for naught because we had to move rooms at midnight because some "squirrely" hotel desk clerk railroaded us into a room next to some device that made a lot of noise (hotel air conditioner unit). My mom was horrified, and my sister rolled her eyes, i stood by my dad as we moved rooms.. it was at those times you would get those beauty one liners (man thinks the world is against him... he is just an honest paying customer being screwed by lassitude and incompetence). It's always an odd situation when you have relatives who have no regard for quality bedding who are always trying to have you come down and spend the night... It's hard to say "yea i'd love to come but since you don't have a bed that it's possible to sleep in i'm going to have to decline"... i believe therin lies part of the root of some of the famous family feuds... hopefully families don't read blogs written by failed musicians.

OK the word family got pecked on the keyboard... now it's time to crack the wheat beer we bottled last week and get down to business. Of course a tall glass of ginger wine is not the kind of thing one would normally use to cleanse the palate, but you got to do what you got to do.

actually it's pretty good... my last two brews haven't been my best, but this one i believe could be a winner.

Ok single dad... that's what the title alluded to... single dad a few days after Halloween, is not a good combo either... parenting is never good when the kids have a supply of candy... I mean it's good, just not ideal. On Thursday it was raining and we were hungry so i did the unthinkable... i went to that McDonalds by Hastings and Highway 1... it has a big playground. the kids all ate a Hamburger and drank a milk and played around on the slides and climbing apparatus. There was a woman there with 2 boys who i wanted to punch in the face (the woman)... she had the loudest annoying complaining voice... i believe she was a single mom from the many cell phone conversations i was forced to hear... it's a tough go... but one thing you might want to consider is not loading your kids full of sugar and then yelling at them to settle down.

I think eating properly and routine are the key to child rearing and when you become a single parent you have a mighty task... for me i can keep the kids rolling and make a fairly healthy dinner with most food groups present and then CT comes home... everybody is happy to see her and she takes over the 1 on 1 interaction with the kids... at that point is is something she wants. She loves her family and wants to be involved in a positive way, the kids love the mommy and are overjoyed she is there, and i can somewhat shut off from the incessant needling of my wonderful family.

But as a single parent dinner comes and there is no relief and you don't care who eats what and your just praying for bedtime, and you become less in tune with the reality of the true nature of you kids and more focused on their annoying tendencies... you want to will them to do what's right but you have lost the handle on everything. I could see how this could become habitual where the parent and the children draw lines in the sand and operate as enemies. Even in the best intended scenarios, and especially under the way we live as "consumer" humans, it just has to be unbelievable.

In my situation having 3 kids at such a young age i can't imagine being a single parent... it's easy to handle a stretch knowing it's just for a limited time and having a partner, who for the most part, barring tree pruning, is on the same page as you. You could do insane labour, or intense computations, but to be fresh for your kids who need you the most it really takes 2... at least. You need to see your kids with the mindset of "look at you all cute let me give you a hug" rather than "get away from me before i kill you" kind of attitude.

fast food industry

That's what Rodney was singing at the end of "Chicken" and "Chawmin's Head" from the dubious Chicken EP release. He was singing about the music industry of course, which is true... no point fine dining on a sale... get the next one yesterday. And the whole world has kind of gone that way, and the thing that bothers me the most is the lack of understanding the average person has with regard to the big picture. Not trying to say i know everything, and i don't for sure, but the ability to be distracted is almost like an evolved societal response. One of the reasons George W. Bush got elected was because he talked like a grade 5 student, and that is the average level of speak for the voters so they felt comfortable with him as one of them. To me that is just completely insane... would you want the pilot of your airplane to operate at a grade 5 level?

This whole Swine flue fiasco is a comedy of errors... a few weeks ago i heard advertisements about how both governments are working together to have an appropriate response to this health crisis. That's when i knew we were fucked... when a government buys ad space to tell you they are doing OK you know you have problems. Not that i am really worried about swine flu... on that note i have been avoiding taking the twins to "toddler time" at the local community centers where every kid sticks every toy in their mouth. I'll get shots if i can without waiting in line with a pack of paranoid people.

Paranoid people... that was my point when i started this blogaroo... as you know, comedy is everything to me, so the problem with societies with great numbers of "non thinking" persons is that paranoid comedy is hard to enjoy with people because nobody gets it. Indeed you should be paranoid, but you also need to laugh at yourself, and other fools.

what a weird democracy... the government buys ad space to tell the "consumers" that they are dong a really good job, and i'm sure the research proves that that will change public opinion in a favourable way. And any articulate intelligent counterpoint can be countered as "egg headed banter".

Did you know that scientists are now recommending freezing samples of coral reefs for future generations because there is really no hope left for them? and humans are fighting wars and fighting climate change truths. An insane amount of people still refuse to believe in evolution... they will drive a car built on the principles of science but under no circumstances follow the same science because it interferes with religious or economic beliefs.

I think in an ideal society everybody would be educated and they would be required to vote on issues... should be able to be done on some open source computer software. Part of your duties as a member of the society would be to participate. There are countries where it is the law to vote... in Canada like half the people vote on a good day, but everybody complains. And then there is the "swing vote" somebody who makes up their mind at the last second due to some final "momentum" by some candidate. How can you vote and not know what your principles are? Once again that's fucking insane. I guess that's a lyric at best... i heard they have a space program when you speak they can't hear there's no air.

that's why i wrote the lyric "you've got to get what you can while you can" in the song "Never wanted to be anyone"... and why did i write that? shameless self promotion of course. who cares the only people listening know that already and the rest don't care.

on the bright side... never mind

Halloween

drinking ginger wine and roasting seeds and thinking about my late buddy G Force, who happened to love Halloween

What's my bottom line:

The day we went to scatter Gareth's ashes on the old campsite above Joffrey Lakes i had 2 songs take over my brain.

this one



and this one



And the point being was that the day, which was my second out of body experience in my life was surrounded by the art and spirit of people that i know and love in some way.

That's why i know that I'm on the right track... there is always a failure to obsess about but when the cards are on the table and you leave your body, who is there for you? It's not rock radio, that's for sure.


Funny, when i was cleaning up the kitchen from the Robertson Halloween party i was thinking of going on a rage about certain parents in the neighbourhood going AWOL on Halloween... how can you do that as a member of the community? Perhaps it was the ginger wine's and a reflective night of great people that i have met that turned the corner on this rage blogaroo

Updating my web log or BLOG... or of course shocking back a blogaroo

I went to the gym tonight to watch the Canucks blow a game, and get a little sweat going... it's funny how you can find the strength to get into the gym at night if you have threatened yourself with a 6:00AM gym time. For me it's about flexibility... something that happens to my body when it is not used properly... like for example if one were to spend hours on some shithole computer gathering information and commenting on it than that person would need to do something less sedentary that would put the back in a better position.

I'm coming around to the new Ginger Beer that i brewed a week or 2 back. As a brewer you always get this major paranoia about your beer being bad, or perhaps as a Robertson you apply a base paranoia on everything and depending on the issue the paranoia is manifested with the proper "doomsday scenario" angle.

back to the start... why dd i mention the gym? Because on the way back I happened to go by the sanctuary and Shockk was there and we had a little jam with me on the drums and him on guitar... so much fun. I have been playing my neighbours electronic drum kit from time to time which is great... ***note the paranoid application of that last sentence, actually don't even note it... just go check out some other blog... nothing to read here... I'm going to stop after the next sentence

























Did we lose those small minded petty thieves ? What kind of father would i be if i didn't demonstrate a strong reasonable level of paranoia.

One of my greatest moments was in Grand Prairie and we were all tree planters staying in the local lodge for a weekend of binge drinking and laundry servicing. I was coming back to the hotel and i noticed my car was unlocked... i had loaned it to somebody... so of course i grabbed my favourite tape from the cassette deck and then closed the door and made like i was locking it with the key which i didn't have... moments later a woman, one of the cooks for the camp, who i loaned the car to asked me for the keys even though she had them on her person... she happened to be watching me "fake" lock the car and bought it and forgot what reality was. i of course was delighted that my dedication to the slim possibilities had paid reasonable dividends.