Bevboy's Blog

Post 1912 - Burp!

2012-02-15T17:09:00.001-08:00

You are looking at today's lunch. Actually you are looking at the second helping of today's lunch.

I was on an Oracle overview course all day, downtown. Usually at these things, you are lucky if they give you 3 day-old sandwiches somebody found in a dumpster and dusted off and presented to you for your eating pleasure. If they have cookies, they are the kind that bakeries sell on a given day because if they don't sell them that day, then they cannot be sold at all. The coffee is the kind of coffee that you wouldn't want to ingest for fear of what it will do to your gastro-intestinal system.

When I got there this morning, they had juice. They had really good coffee and muffins and other things. I saw cereals. Cereal. Corn flakes! Count Chocula. Whatever it was, it was cereal. I don't have that stuff at home!

The lunch was served around 11:15, so that we could reconvene the session at noon sharp. In the above picture, those are cubes of roast beef. Underneath is some kind of potatoes stuffed with what may be cheese. They had steamed veggies. All manner of bread. Some kind of lobster-based side dish.

There was soup, chicken with 7 types of rice. I didn't count them all. I saw the sign next to the soup and took their word for it. Sometimes, you just have to do that. Know what I mean?

I decided to load up a second plate but only managed to eat about half of it. Eyes bigger than belly syndrome affected me.

The afternoon was all about staying awake after all those carbs and all that meat. We finished the session around 2:15 and walked to the car that would transport us to work.

The rest of the afternoon was full of regret over having eaten so much. I know other guys ate as much as I did, and probably more, but I am not responsible for them. I am only responsible for myself. I hate it when people get more food than I do.

I went to TM after work, and it was a good meeting. Of course, the day after Valentine's, there was left over candy. More damned food. Was Bev-Girl trying to kill me? What did I do to her?

Patricia and I met where I told her my car was. I got there by rolling down the hill and hanging a right on Granville and stopping when I reached the legislature. On the way here, she got something to eat at Planet Organic on Quinpool.

Frig, I can't even look at food right now, so I left Patricia upstairs and came down here while she ate her dinner. It is an hour later, and I will shortly move my bloated carcass upstairs and go to bed, sleeping off all the victuals I consumed today.

The moral of the story is, there will always be more food for another meal, so don't stuff yourself at any one sitting. Nothing good can come from it.

Oh, one final thought.

When can I go on that kind of course again? After all, tomorrow is another day.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1911 - A Glasses Rant!

2012-02-14T18:01:00.000-08:00

First of all, Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

I ordered flowers for Patricia last week, and they arrived at her work this morning. She likes them. I just tell them every time, "Send her more of what I ordered last time", and they do. In return, this evening, she made me a grilled cheese sandwich. It was a really good sandwich, with onions and salami, and two layers!

I just had an observation about glasses, the kind you wear over your eyes to augment your vision. I have had to wear glasses since I was 6 years old, which wasn't yesterday. I have become so reliant on them that I need them for nearly everything. I need them for when I evacuate my bladder. I need them for reading. I need them for driving. When I renewed my driver's license 2 years ago, I was asked if I wanted it specified on the license that I must wear "proper visual correction". I told the clerk that she could put it on there if she wanted to, but that I was going to wear glasses whether the wording was present or not. She nodded knowingly, and didn't bother to add that phrase to my license.

This sets me up for my mini rant.

I don't get it how people who don't need glasses for everything, treat their spectacles. They place the lenses on top of their head and walk around as if they had a second pair of eyes up there. Civil rights attorney William Kuntsler did this for several decades. He'd wear his glasses on top of his head and them bring them down over his eyes like a visor when he needed them for some reason, like this:

If you can find me a picture on the internet of Kuntsler actually wearing his glasses, I'll give you a big kiss, especially if you're an attractive woman of child-bearing years on the rebound after your latest failed relationship, and about to ovulate.

Other people fold their glasses up and carry them around in their hand, getting sweat and hand grease all over them. They can never keep them clean. I don't know how they can manage when they do wear them.

And, my very favourite, something that happens in movies all the time, but never in real life, not even once. A man is having a conversation with another person. The first man makes some kind of point. The second man, wearing glasses, to emphasize his own point, snatches them off his face and says something like, "You don't say?"

Here's an example of this:

In my nearly 48 years on this planet, I have never seen the above happen. People who wear glasses all the time, need to. We don't take them off except at night when we go to bed. Why do these silly actors and screen writers get this wrong? Don't they ever wear "proper visual correction"?

In the world of 7 billion souls, hundreds of millions of us wear glasses. We don't want to, but we do. It is a curse of myopia, of our genes, of the eventual macular degeneration which will eventually make the books in my house suitable only for wiping my nose after a good sneeze. Why do people continue to make fun of us, mock us, ridicule us, for something that's not our fault? And, why do the folks who don't need glasses very much, bother wearing them in places other than in front of their eyes? Or carry them around to attract dirt and dust and grease? What the frig is wrong with these people? Makes me want to kick their ass.

As soon as I can find my glasses, that's exactly what I'll do.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1910 - Getting There

2012-02-13T17:33:00.000-08:00

I spent my lunch hour today, and about 2 hours tonight, transcribing a blog interview I conducted more than 3 months ago. I am sorry to my client that it has taken this long. I have quite a ways to go yet. I will get there.

Some of you wonder why some of these posts are so brief. It is often because of the circumstances described in the previous paragraph. When I spend 2-3 hours a day typing my little paws off, it is hard to find the time to turn around and write some kind of decent blog post.

I am getting there, though, with the interview. It is taking nice shape. I hope to be finished it within the next 10 days or so. One audio file is 45 minutes long. It will take me a couple of days to make my way through that one.

After that, I have an interview with Julia Kirkey to crack open and transcribe. Katey Day and I talked for 90 minutes or so a few months ago and we barely scratched the surface of her fascinating life. She's met so many interesting people like Mick and Keith of the Rolling Stones. She will work at Lite 92.9 until she goes off the air on Friday, and then hightail it do a show in Moncton that evening, going on stage at 10 or so. I don't know how she maintains that kind of schedule. I'm looking forward to sharing the interview with you.

Haven't seen Patricia for a couple of hours while I have been down here typing my finger tips off. Guess I'll go see how the old gal is doing.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1909 - Yes

2012-02-12T17:17:00.000-08:00

Yes. I am back in the city. I drove back this afternoon. I wonder: When did it become fashionable not to salt the roads or even to clear them? I had to drive along the middle part of the101 this afternoon to avoid driving in the snow.

It was no better on the side roads. Even the road my mother lives on wasn't plowed or cleared or salted or anything else'd. Once again: when did they decide that doing those things on our roads would not be a wise thing to do?

Anyway.

I got back here mid-afternoon. Patricia greeted me as only she could: She presented me with some rotted vegetation from the back of the refrigerator and "asked" me to throw it in the green bin. "Asked" in the way a woman "asks" a man to do anything. You know what I mean, guys. And you know what I mean, too, ladies. Shame on you all.

I was white-knuckled the whole time driving back to the city. I managed to get on Live 105 with a brief traffic report, which is always cool, to hear myself on the radio. But it tuckered me out, so I decided to take a short nap when I got home. Two hours later, I got up and watched the news and ate something and made my way downstairs, where I've been for the last 2 hours. Time just flies by down here in my home office.

It's the beginning of a shorter work week for me. Four day work week. I promise to think about you on Friday.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1908 - Jump

2012-02-11T19:14:00.001-08:00

I'm back to my mother's on a stormy Saturday night. I was out most of the evening at the Al Whittle Theatre in Wolfville to see the musical Jump.

I really liked it. It was a high school show that featured tons of pop songs from the 1980's. Much of the acting was good. The singing was inconsistent but the girls seemed to be better.

The production was marred by some mistakes that were hard to overlook. More than a few times, people who were micced were cut off as they sang. Voices dropped in and out. Disappointing.

My friend Neil Spence played bass guitar as part of the production's house band. He was great. He's in the accompanying picture.

I really enjoyed Jump. I wish I had gone other years. If it's back next year, I'd like to go. Maybe I'll take you if you're nice to me.

See you tomorrow.

From Bevboy's BlackBerry to BevBoy's Blog!

Post 1907 - Oh

2012-02-10T17:10:00.001-08:00

The final Cub Carson show today was very good. I'm really gonna miss him. Wish him and his family all the best.

Judging from the Facebook page for Cub and Live 105 today, lots of other people will miss Cub as well.

Sniff!

From Bevboy's BlackBerry to BevBoy's Blog!

Post 1906 - Newbie in The Valley

2012-02-10T17:08:00.001-08:00

Welcome to my mother's. Got here about 90 minutes ago. Patricia remains in the city.

Tomorrow, I will be taking my mother shopping. That involves a multi hour expedition to the malls that will leave me exhausted but my mother wanting more. Sigh.

See? Even Newbie has no sympathy for me.

See you tomorrow.

From Bevboy's BlackBerry to BevBoy's Blog!

Post 1905 - Cub Carson: Farewell To Nova Scotia!

2012-02-09T18:02:00.000-08:00

Canadian radio folks have a website to go to when they want their radio news or to hear, officially, of a job opportunity somewhere. It is called The Milkman. I do not understand why it's called that, but here's the website.

In it, I have learned all kinds of things. Who's been hired. Who's been fired. Radio station format changes. My recent favourite story was the radio station in Calgary that decided to fire every one of its on air staff and replace them with new folks they were hoping to hire from ads in The Milkman. The new station would be called Up! 97.7. I don't think it was a very "up" day for the poor sods who lost their jobs that day. But that's the way the radio medium works. And I'm digressing again.

You can imagine my surprise when, 10 days ago, I went to The Milkman and saw that Cub Carson, who has been with Halifax's Live 105 since they went on the air in October of 2010, was going to leave that fine station and return to Ottawa, where his many fans have missed him, where much of his family is. His first day at Bob FM in Ottawa will be February 13th, a scant 4 days from now.

I wrote Cub, and he confirmed it. He was told to keep it fairly quiet until his last day at Live 105, which is Friday the 10th. I have respected that wish and not written about it until now.

Live 105's former PD, Rob Johnson, actually told Cub and Floyd that there was a guy in Halifax named Bevboy who would contact them both for an interview. Rob assured them that I was harmless and meant no ill will to them. I hereby thank Rob Johnson for paving the way for me!

When Cub and I met for lunch at The Pogue Fado in early 2011, he was friendly and gregarious and fulsome as he regaled me with his radio stories. He treated me as if we were old friends instead of the merest of acquaintances, and I will never forget his kindness to me. Most of those stories are in the published interview, which you can find easily by tracing your mouse down the right hand part of the screen and clicking on the Cub Carson label.

A few months later, Patricia and I ran into Cub and Floyd as they were cleaning windows outside Durty Nelly's in downtown Halifax. Cub was a gentleman with Patricia, and she never forgot that.

Not long after that, Brad Dryden from C100 invited me to Durty Nelly's for some appetizers as a way to thank me for something I had done for him. He promised that Cub would be there as well. They are old friends, you see, who worked together for a time in Ottawa. They posed for a couple of pictures with me. I will try to include one with this blog post.

Where was I?

Oh, yes.

Cub Carson has been the driving force behind the success of Live 105. He took a station that interested me from and for Day One, and made me come back for Day Two and Three and a whole lot of days that followed. Halifax radio won't be the same without Cub Carson. I will miss him a lot.

(Of course, Floyd and Christina and Scotty Mars and JD Desrosiers all played a strong role in getting the station off the air as well; not taking anything away from them. New hires Neil Spence (I'd kill to have a voice like his!), Morgan and Dexter have done a great job delivering the Live sound.)

I will come out and state now that, of all the private radio stations in Halifax, I listen to Live 105 the most, by a wide margin. Cub has been a big part of the reason why. Honestly, ladies and gentlemen, if you don't listen to Live 105, then give it a try. Even though Cub is leaving, it will still be around and still be terrific. His successor is my friend Jeff Cogswell, and you will love him, too. Here's the link to their website.

Cub, thank you for your service to Halifax radio over the last 15 months. You have made me laugh and cringe at some of the "Which One and Why" questions, and because of my participation in that contest last year, I won the biggest prize I have ever won on the radio. I wish you and yours all the best in your future career.

Who knows? Maybe you'll want to come back here some day. We'd all love that.

A Bevboy can always hope, can't he?

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1904 - A Long Day

2012-02-08T18:16:00.000-08:00

Is it the weekend yet? I mean, really? Is it the weekend yet?

Been a very long day, and it's not over yet. I have to get up for work in a scant 7 hours.

I had a good TM meeting tonight. The table topics were especially fun. I will tell you about them.

We were presented with 4 envelopes. The first one contained a noun. The second, a verb. The 3rd, a colour. The final one, another noun. The sequence would produce a sentence, and we had to find a way for it to make sense. Mine was "Elvis Presley running gray hair". I likened it to a conspiracy as to how Elvis Presley could make it to the age of 42 years old without getting any gray hair. I started going gray a long time ago, long before 42. Yet, Elvis didn't get any. What's up with that?

Grabbed a slice of pizza on the way home. Got home and fed Cindy and Newbie. Watched a bit of tv. Tried to connect to work via rdp and realized I forgot some information I need to do so. Silly me.

Tomorrow is Thursday, and Patricia tells me that she will be so busy at work that she won't have time to talk to me, probably all day. I'll have to have a liquid lunch to get over this terrible repudiation. Maybe I'll have a good cry. Have a Dr. Phil tear-up-my-pictures-of-her moment. Works for me.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1903 - That's Better

2012-02-07T16:15:00.000-08:00

It's been a funny day for me. Work meetings this afternoon when I don't go to very many meetings. Some people take them for granted. I really don't.

There's a new Chinese restaurant in our neigbhourhood, so we went there after work this evening. It's in the same spot as the previous Chinese place, which pulled up stakes and left town very suddenly. Have no idea what happened there. It had been there for years. Just as mysteriously, another Chinese place opened up in the very same location. The food is better than the old place. The prices may be a bit cheaper. At least at this place, they don't keep a big bowl of cooked rice just outside the Men's room.

We watched the second episode of the current season of Spartacus just now. The new Spartacus is not as compelling an actor as the late Andy Whitfield, but I understand why the producers wanted to carry on with the show.

Later on this evening, "The River" starts, for 2 hours. The New York Times didn't like it much. I am not sure what to expect. I figure, if I'm still awake when it's over, I at least tolerated it. If Newbie is able to convince me to turn in for the evening during the show, then I guess it wasn't meant to be. You know how convincing he can get.

Tomorrow night is Toastmasters night. We're having a special meeting. Come to think of it, all the meetings are special. But this one's extra special because of the bus strike. Patricia will be attending, something that she hasn't done in quite some time.

No. Didn't transcribe anything today. Sorry. Soon. Very soon.

Have a good evening, folks.

Bevboy

Post 1902 - A Long Monday

2012-02-06T18:08:00.000-08:00

It's the 3rd business day of the bus strike. I have to admit, traffic could be a lot worse. Even after work, when I picked up Patricia around 4:40, and a quick trip to a friend's house on the way home, we got home by 5:25, which is not that unusual.

I have done not much this evening. There were a bunch of cardboard boxes in the house that I had to break down and prepare for the recycling folks tomorrow. They make you work so hard for the privilege of taking your stuff. In the good old days, you could take those boxes and throw them out your window or something. Today, you have to break them down and lash them together with string or twine. I am surprised that they don't try to make you use string or twine of a certain colour or length.

Anyway, a bunch of those boxes will go in my recycling tomorrow. Which took a while to do. Which means I didn't have a chance, yet again, to get back to transcribing pieces of the latest Bevboy's Blog interview. Which I know you're wondering about to the point of distraction. Which makes me feel bad. Which makes me want to work on it during my lunch hour. Which means that an email I owe a friend will have to wait. Which will disappoint me for taking so long to get back to him. Which will make him not be my friend any more. Which will made me feel sad. Which will make the quality of the blog go down. Which will upset all ten of you who read it every day. Which will... oh, never mind.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1901 - Another Sunday

2012-02-05T18:28:00.000-08:00

It is relatively late on Sunday night. I will be turning in shortly. Newbie is looking at me with that look of his. Soon, buddy. Soon.

I slept in this morning to a shameful degree. I got up and ate something. Watched a very funny SNL compilation of the best of Alec Baldwin. I hadn't seen some of those skits in 20 years and they're just as funny now as they were back then.

I finally decided to tackle the laundry, which took me into the evening. Whilst doing that, I surfed the web for a while.

Someone else wants a copy of the Ada McCallum documentary, so I made a copy thereof. I am providing these discs for educational and research purposes only. Not profiting in any way, shape, or form. Just so you know.

There is something new to learn in that documentary, every time I see it. I played back a small portion of it last night. Ada bought lots of land during her lifetime, some of it being in parts of Dartmouth. Rumour has it that she named some of the streets she had built, after some of her girls. I looked up some of those streets last night, and they're still there, out past Lake Loon. Angela Drive. Eunice Avenue. Other streets, all apparently named after hookers!

I will watch the documentary many more times. You don't care, but I do.

Back to work tomorrow. Business day 3 of the bus strike. We will leave as early as we can to avoid the heavy traffic. Wish us luck.

Newbie is looking at me again. Guess I'll call it a night.

It's a night.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1900 - It Holds Up. And A Special Blog Announcement

2012-02-04T18:26:00.000-08:00

Welcome to post 1900, ladies and gentlemen!

Being a Saturday, we slept in until quite late. We did get up eventually, though.

I did the dishes. Of course, it took a long time. After they were over, I plunked down on the couch and watched a cooking show with Patricia. Yes, I was that bored. However, the host had such a good idea for a salad, what he called a chicken wing salad, that it inspired me to make something similar for lunch, so I did.

Rolled some cut up chicken breasts, boneless and skinless, in flour. Cooked it, adding some red pepper flakes. Let it rest. To the same frying pan, I added equal parts margarine and Frank's Hot Sauce and fried that with a bit of ketchup.

To the bowl that had the chieken, I poured on the liquid and then added lettuce and tomato and feta cheese. Mixed all of that together, and it was an excellent salad.

I know. You don't care.

Anyway, the emails started coming in requesting a copy of the Ada McCallum documentary. I made some copies of it, for research and educational purposes only of course. Late this afternoon, we watched the thing on TV. It still holds up. It is still fascinating, but at the same time, frustrating. So little is known of Ada, on the record, officially, that they had to work on speculation more than a little. It is intimated that, late in life, Ada bought and subdivided properties which ended up with street names named after some of her best girls. They showed some names. They refused to focus in on the house she lived in and ran her business from, on Windsor Street but indicated it was very close to the Jehovah's Witness Hall. I drive past there every day on my way to work. I still think it's across the street from the hall. Hard to say. Also hard to say whether this is the place where actress Ellen Page currently lives. Another viewing of the documentary will be in order. Many people who knew her, and availed themselves of her services, would not speak on the record. After all these years, I'm sure that they would still refuse to speak on the record. Cowards, all of them.

Watching the documentary is also depressing in that they show many old Halifax structures that simply no longer exist. The whorehouse at the former 51 Hollis Street, across from where the Lt. Governor lives, became a parking lot and will be part of a future development. The Morris Lodge was torn down and is now the eyesore at 1313 Barrington Street. The Dresden Hotel is history as well. They showed a picture of the old Halifax Police Headquarters, probably the one that was part of the section of the city razed to create Scotia Square and the Cogswell Interchange.

It is sad, contemplating the pieces of old Halifax that no longer exist. Which is what leads me to the following blog announcement: I am willing to discuss with anyone, any time, anywhere, aspects of the so-called "old" Halifax. If you have an anecdote to share about a building in the downtown or in the South End or something, then leave a comment on this blog and I'll be happy to publish it. Any stories of interesting old characters forgotten today? Any cool ghost stories or local legends? Send them my way. I want to know about them. Tell everyone that Bevboy wants to hear these stories and will provide a free forum for their exchange!

A couple of rules.

I'm primarily interested in the history of Halifax. I'll go as far as to include Dartmouth and the old County and the like. Also, the Annapolis Valey, where I'm from, would have many interesting stories that I'd love to publish here. Other places? Not so much. I'm sure there are Cape Breton bloggers who would love to write about the history of that fine place. I have to draw the line somewhere.

I am not interested in libellous stories. If you want to write about someone who's dead who was a child murderer or something, allegedly, then in the absence of a conviction to that effect I will not allow that publication here. I am the sole judge as to what I will and will not publish or discuss here. I'm liberal in that sense, but not willing to engage in character assassination. That's why I moderate all Blog comments here.

I am aware of other websites that discuss local history. They certainly are interesting. Most of them, however, feature a lot of pictures without much commentary. I would like to have the opposite: commentary without a lot of pictures.

Every time I run one of these stories as a comment to a blog post or whatever, I will use the "HalifaxAnecdotes" label, starting with this here post.

Well, what are you waiting for? Tell me these stories!

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1899 - Weekend Is Here!

2012-02-03T17:36:00.000-08:00

The weekend is here. I am thrilled.

You will be pleased to know that I have successfully digitized the Ada McCallum documentary. It is a freshly-minted mp4 file that exists on the hard drive of nearly every computer I own, plus my external hard drive and a usb thumb drive. What was once considered to be close to be a "lost" documentary has now been found and can now be shared by the folks who really want to see it.

I have played back a portion of the show. It is as fascinating now as when I first saw it in 1998. If you want to see some old footage of Halifax from during the War, or some reminiscences of what Hali was like back in the day, then you really should see this documentary about Ada McCallum, Halifax madam.

Every morning, I drop off Patricia and drive to my own work. I have found it convenient to drive on Windsor Street. I am sure I drive past one of Ada's old brothels. The house is shown in the documentary, although obscured enough to make it hard to pick out. I'm told it was on the corner of Windsor and Charles Street, probably across the street from the Jehovah's Witnesses Hall, on the same side as the Sobeys. I plan to watch the documentary all the way through this weekend and see if my theory is correct. It may also be the place where actress Ellen Page lives when she's in town. I doubt very much if I will ever find corroboration for that, though. I do remember her saying when she was on the David Letterman show a couple of years ago that she lived in a house that used to be a brothel. Ada had several places in town, but I think Ellen lives in that one. Of course, I will probably never know.

It has been a long week fraught with stress and grief and other things I won't bore you about. I'm glad the weekend is here so that I can recharge my batteries and face the week again.

And so that I can learn more about Ada!

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1898 - First Day

2012-02-02T17:18:00.000-08:00

It was the first day of the bus strike today. Hoo boy!

I just thought you would like to know that, earlier this evening, I found the Ada McCallum documentary, the one broadcast on the History Channel on March 9, 1998. It was in a box of tapes that was on the floor of a closet in my middle bedroom. I had nearly given up searching for it. In the box there was a flap covering that tape. Nearly didn't see it.

I have already dubbed the show, on vhs, to a dvd. I am looking forward to watching it again, after all these years.

I will also digitize the show to an avi file or an mp4 or something.

How many of you want to see this documentary about Ada McCallum, the notorious Halifax madam?

See you tomorrow!

Bevboy

Post 1897 - A Sick Day And A Bus Lament

2012-02-01T16:51:00.000-08:00

My migraines kicked in this morning. I took a sick day.

I pretty much slept the day away. I got up just before noon and got something to eat. 90 minutes later, I went back to bed, where I slept for another 4 hours. Finally got up at supper time and have been up ever since. It's just past 8:30. After I write this, I'll probably have a shower and go back to bed.

There will almost certainly be a bus strike in Hali starting in just over 3 hours. Traffic gridlock tomorrow will be unreal. I do not look forward to driving through that crap. At least I have a car. I have no idea what folks will do who do not have wheels or access thereto. They're usually people who don't make much money to begin with. As much as I feel for the transit workers who will be hitting the bricks, I have sympathy for the people who require transit to get around.

Growing up, my mother didn't drive. My older sister had moved out by the time I was 12 and a half. My dad was the primary breadwinner and driver for the family. The day after my 16th birthday, he asked me why I hadn't applied for my beginner's permit yet. I finally got my license that Fall, much later than Dad wanted me to.

Anyway, before that, I knew all about being stuck at home with little means to get around. We didn't live on a bus route of any kind. Cabs were too expensive. Unless Dad were home, we didn't get out much. We weren't close to our school. We found things to do around the house, in those pre-internet, pre-cable tv days.

So, trust me: I know what it's like to have to rely on someone else to get me around. I didn't like it then. I don't like it now and can't imagine that the working stiffs who will be bus-less in the morning will like it much either. I feel for the people who need a bus or a ride from a third party to get to where they need to get.

I hope the strike, if it happens, is a brief one.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1896 - Looking For Ada

2012-01-31T17:18:00.000-08:00

I am a member of an FB group called Halifax Radio Memories. Every day, people post interesting messages to the group, fascinating pictures, even some videos and audio, from the golden age of radio in Halifax. I visit that group every day.

A recent discussion thread has been about Ada McCallum, the notorious Halifax madam of the post-war years, up until her death in 1986. Known for her discretion, and respected for it, she didn't exactly record her memoirs or anything. Much of what is known about Ada is through rumour and the tales of the older men who visited her girls back in the day. Ellen Page, the actress, when she was on the David Letterman Show a few years ago, let it slip that she lives in an old brothel. I think it was one of Ada's old places, likely the best known one on Windsor Street. I drive past it every day on my way to work.

Another one of her establishments was at 51 Hollis Street, pretty much at the corner of Hollis and Bishop, behind Government House. I don't work downtown any more and can't therefore state if that is still a parking lot, but many years ago, before and during and after the war, it was a brothel. Ada McCallum took over the brothel from another madam named Germaine Pelletier around 1946 and ran her business with aplomb for 40 years. She's buried in Lower Sackville. Say what you want about former Mayor Walter Fitzgerald. He at least had the guts to attend her funeral.

Anyway, I mentioned that not much is known about Ada McCallum, for obvious reasons. But, back in the Spring or so of 1998, there was a documentary on the History Channel which discussed her life and misadventures. We watched it back in the day and enjoyed it a great deal. I moved and packed most of my tapes away and haven't been able to lay my hands on the tape in years. I am 99% sure it is not here in my media room.

Fast forward to this evening.

On this FB group, Duane Lowe, who used to be on tv if you recall, wrote me privately to tell me that she would love to see this documentary. She is friends with Lulu Keating, the woman who wrote and directed the documentary. She did the doc for a production company that no longer exists. Lulu Keating doesn't have a copy of this show!

How many people watched the show in 1998? How many people taped it? How many then watched it, recording over it afterwards? How many others kept it all these years? Probably not very many.

All of a sudden, my search for this elusive vhs tape is becoming important to me again. If Lulu Keating doesn't have a copy, and others want to see it, and the production company is no longer among the living, then how extant is this interesting piece of Halifax history? I don't know. I do know that I wouldn't have recorded over it. We loved the show too much to do that. I just hope that I can find the tape, and that the tape is still playable. Lots of older vhs tapes don't play after a period of time.

Let's hope for the best.

Wish me luck!!

Bevboy

Post 1895 - Two In A Row!

2012-01-30T17:57:00.000-08:00

After work tonight, I did another spin class. I have the aching legs to prove it. I have the sweaty shorts and t-shirt to prove it. I have the pat on the behind from the spin class instructor, henceforth known as Nancy the Spin Nazi, to prove it.

It's funny. Well, not funny ha ha. Funny weird. When I got downtown from work for my spin class, the streets were dry. Cloudy but no precipitation I went inside and suffered the humiliations I described in the previous paragraph. I staggered out from the gym, and out into the evening. Much to my chagrin, I discovered that it had been snowing. I am not sure what time it started snowing, but it is as if God sensed what my feelings would be like after my work out and decided to match the weather. Thank you, God.

Got home. Patricia was cooking pork chops or something. I ate the rest of the salmon from last night and then had a plate of salad. I was ravenous, the kind of hungry that comes from having burned off some calories. But I still wasn't hungry enough to eat pork chops. Pigs. Cloven-footed bastards.

I plan to do a second spin class this week. Maybe not at Scotia Square, but at Park Lane. Probably Thursday night. My good friend John, a faithful blog reader, has suggested I check out "the scenery" at that gym. I think by that he means that there are a lot of windows in the place and therefore I will know instantly of changes in the weather. No more surprises when I walk out of and get confronted by inclement meteorology. Thank you, John. You've always been a good friend.

It's always nice when people look out for me.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1894 - Tom Sawyer

2012-01-29T15:57:00.000-08:00

Have you read Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain? Or are you at least familiar with the portion about the picket fence, where Sawyer tricks people into painting it for him? Kinda like my day.

Slept in. Patricia didn't get up, so I made breakfast. The dish fairy hadn't descended from the heavens and done the dishes, so I washed them, getting a little bit of bleach all over my new fave shirt, which I can no longer wear to work. Patricia still wasn't feeling well, so she remained in bed.

I started watching some episodes of "White Collar" when maybe I should have been transcribing the latest blog interview. Patricia remained in bed.

Around 5pm, I began to hear her in the kitchen, so I went upstairs and saw her, still not feeling well, so I prepared Sunday dinner of broiled salmon and potatoes and corn and tomatoes while she lay back in the living room.

She played me, tricked me into doing all that work today. Just because she was sick.

I'll get her back. I get sick, too.

I know where she lives.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1893 - A Quiet Saturday

2012-01-28T17:55:00.000-08:00

I have spent many hours today downstairs here at Casa Bevboy doing laundry. I only took the last load of towels out of the dryer in the last little while.

We slept in something crazy this morning, not getting up until 11. It was like we were drunk or something. Not so much. Nope. We just didn't want to get up. Our cats wouldn't hear of it, once I had fed them.

While the washing machine was doing its thing, I was in my home office, mostly playing with this computer, the one I got from a neighbor who was gonna throw it away last year until I decided to take it off her hands (don't worry; she got a box of comic books for it it in the Fall). I was running the current version of Ubuntu on it. The current version of Ubuntu is more demanding on older computers like this one than I was happy with, so I turned to my old friend Easy Peasy (version 1.6). The kernel is nearly 2 years old now, but there are plenty of updates and it works extremely well.

I backed up the stuff I wanted first. All the songs and stuff. I then blew away the Ubuntu and installed EP. A few hours later, after copying back the songs I wanted and downloading Chromium and other stuff, and installing Dropbox and syncing everything, I have the machine I want again. Nice and fast on this older machine.

Do you care? No. Of course you don't. You just care about reading a fresh blog post every day. Do you have any idea how hard it is to write something every stinkin' day? Do you think my life is so rich with incident that I can find something interesting to discuss seven days a week, 52 weeks a year? No. No, it isn't. Not by a long shot. Don't be so hard on me.

Tomorrow, it will be more of what happened today. Dishes! More laundry! Watching tv! Playing with Newbie! Calling my mother! Telling Patricia I liked what she made for dinner! Getting ready for another week of work! Fun things like that!

See you tomorrow, assuming you can handle the excitement.

Bevboy

Post 1892 - Storm? What Storm?

2012-01-27T20:25:00.000-08:00

I think I'm being punished for the tone of my Thursday post. You may recall I crowed about being off today and not having to go out in what promised to be an epic Winter storm. I wouldn't have to drive out in that crap.

Didn't turn out that way.

The storm? I swear, I seen more precipitation in my shower. The wind? I've experienced stronger winds after I drank two litres of milk in one sitting that one time before I discovered I was lactose intolerant. You catch my drift. It wasn't much of a storm today.

I was at my mother's a week ago and that was a storm. Mom and I got back to her place mid-afternoon, just as the heavy snow was commencing. I was fixing her door handle as the snow was hitting my back and swirling around me (the door had to be ajar in order for me to get a good grip on my task). Yeah. That was a storm.

Today's... weather. That wasn't a storm. Anyone who thinks that was a storm is a wimp. A wimp, I tell you.

Newbie is giving me that look. Time to turn in.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1891 - Off Till Monday

2012-01-26T17:00:00.000-08:00

Ha ha! I am off work on Friday. The forecast sounds dire. I will think about you guys, struggling to get to and from work, while I am inside my house resting comfortably.

Trust me. I feel badly about this. I regret deeply that my scheduled day off work happens to fall on a day when the forecast calls for heavy snow, during a Winter when the city makes little effort to put down enough salt or sand or "brine" to keep your car from skating carefree across the street into somebody else's.

Yeah. I feel real bad about that.

Hee hee.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1890 - Aftermath

2012-01-25T18:07:00.000-08:00

I left my Toastmasters meeting early this evening so that I could go to the Operation Red Nose wrap up party.

It was nice to see my colleagues again. But, what was of particular importance was something that happened as I was eating a small piece of ORN cake. A woman came up to me and said, "Is that you, Bev?" I replied that I was, indeed, the person she was seeking.

I didn't recognize her, but she recognized me.

My first year of volunteering for ORN was 2005. One set of clients we were driving home lived over in Dartmouth. As I was driving their car across the bridge, a chunk of ice became detached from one of the trusses on the bridge and smashed into the front windshield, caving it in. My navigator was showered with glass; the clients in the backseat were in shock. 25 years of driving instinct, the muscle memory, kicked in, and I was able to calmly drive the car over the bridge to the office on the other side, where we reported what had happened. The clients ended up driving the car with the caved-in windshield home that evening. I remember begging them not to give us a donation for driving them home as they were facing a huge car repair bill, and they were not well off. They insisted on donating 20 dollars or so, thanked me personally, and left. I shall never forget them. I hope they're doing well.

This story has been told over and over through the years, by people in Operation Red Nose who want to talk about the quality of the volunteers. It was the first year of ORN, and they wanted everything to go perfectly. Due to an act of God, that was not the case. But because I didn't panic, nobody was injured that evening.

The person who got showered with the glass? My navigator? It was the woman who approached me this evening. Allison (maybe, Alison) has been telling this story for years, about how this guy named Bev remained calm and potentially saved the lives of the people in the car that night, or at least prevented us all from suffering some degree of injury.

It was nice to see her after all these years. I had wondered what had happened to her, and now I know.

Of course, I gave her a Bevboy's Blog business card and urged her to look me up on Facebook. I need all the readers I can get.

After all, we shared something special that evening, and it's something that we can tell our children about.

Wait a minute. I don't have any kids.

Say, Newbie? Have I ever told you about the time I...

Bevboy

Post 1889 - Home At Last!

2012-01-24T17:46:00.000-08:00

No, I didn't go to the gym after work tonight. I had another appointment. After that was over, I picked up Patricia, and we had dinner at the Young Street Steak and Stein. I am getting to the point where I spend more time on Young Street than I do in my home. Not sure if that is something to brag about.

We got home around 7:45. A scant two hours later, I am getting ready to turn in. Newbie is circling the bed like, well, a dog does before it turns in. Am I sure he's a cat? Not any more.

Tomorrow is Toastmasters day. A member who joined just a year ago, Jessica, is leaving the club to move out West. She will be missed.

A day after my gym return, my legs feel pretty good. But don't take my word for it, folks. Come on over and feel my leg at work tomorrow. I think you'll agree it feels pretty good.

Guess that's it for tonight.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1888 - One Down! More To Come!

2012-01-23T16:47:00.000-08:00

I am home from my first spin class in 21 months. I feel tired, but pretty good. My goal this evening was to survive the thing, and clearly, I did.

After work today, I drove from my work to the downtown and parked the car on Granville Street, in front of the legislature. I walked to the gym from there. I got to the gym, made sure that the men's changing room hadn't shifted from one side of the place to the other (it might have been embarrassing otherwise!) and changed from my street duds to my gym gear.

The bikes are totally different now from when I was last there in April 2010. Good Life must have sold off or threw out the old, rickety bikes that Nubody's had used for years and years (and years!). The new ones look space age. One thing I don't like, though, is how the handle to adjust the tension of the bike is right there for everyone to see. The higher up it is standing, the higher the tension. On the old bikes, you had to turn a knob, and there was no way for a person to tell what tension level you were at. Those dirty so-and-so's!

I figured out how to adjust the bike to my height and taste. I sat there and stretched my legs until Natasha arrived. She was a spin class colleague from a few years ago when I went regularly! She remembered me. I remembered her because she always wears her hair up. I remembered the hair before I remembered her.

The instructor, Nancy, remembered me as well. She recalled the story I'd told her in 2010 about how, several years ago, when I was donating blood one time, the nurse was shocked to note that my resting heart rate was 50. An Olympian athlete might have one of 35 or 40. When I gave blood a couple of weeks ago, the resting heart rate was 83. I have a ways to go to get back to the good old days.

The class began. Peddling sitting down. Peddling standing up. Tension up. Tension down. Faster! Slower! Faster!

By 6:20, we were slowing down. We did some final stretches and it was over.

I don't know what to say. I won't say I enjoyed my spin class tonight. I'm not a masochist. I will state, however, that it felt really good to be back at it again after so long. It was nice to see Natasha and Nancy again. We all miss John Colpitts, who helped me with my first spin class in 2004 (which nearly killed me), and who died a few years ago. It felt like home again, like a family in the best sense of the word.

I will start slowly and do one spin class this week. I hope to do 2 next week and remain at 2 for a few weeks until I can work up to 3. After I am satisfied with my cardio improvements, I will work on my upper body strength again.

But, baby steps.

I'm committed to this, baby!

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1887 - The Night Before

2012-01-22T17:55:00.000-08:00

It is Sunday night. I am back in the city. Newbie is next to me on the bed, breathing heavily, hinting for me to turn in. I will oblige him shortly.

I am using the new Blogger interface for this blog post. I found the last one sparse. This one is positively Spartan. I hope I can go back to the former layout.

Tomorrow, I return to work after a 3 day weekend. After work on Monday, I return to the gym. I have packed my gym shorts and shirt and towel. I have a water bottle around here somewhere. Very nervous about the whole thing. I have been away from the gym for too long.

Had a very nice weekend with my mother. I know she enjoys having me around, and misses me when I am not there. I miss her, too, for that matter. Even after all these years, I still miss living in that part of the province.

Newbie continues to beckon. This blogger layout is ticking me off more and more. And I'm turning in.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1886 - See What I Mean?

2012-01-21T17:48:00.001-08:00

Here's my buddy Newbie, just a moment ago, on one of my mother's kitchen chairs.

Standoffish!

From Bevboy's BlackBerry to BevBoy's Blog!

Post 1885 - Second Day In The Valley

2012-01-21T17:44:00.001-08:00

Here I am, in my mother's kitchen, just past 9:30. Mom discovered that GSN is showing repeats of "Dancing with the Stars" and is trying to stay awake long enough to watch some. I just munched on some more hamburger hash. Will turn in shortly.
I bought Mom's groceries today. She didn't feel comfortable going out in the post storm. This afternoon, I gave away Mom's old rice cooker to a guy at work and napped. Newbie was glommed on to me the whole time.

This evening, Mom and I talked about some mother and son stuff that would bore you. She's discovered her show and is now ignoring me. Even Newbie is being standoffish. What else is new?

Tomorrow I will return to the city. Monday, I return to the gym. Nervous as Hell about it.

See you tomorrow.

From Bevboy's BlackBerry to BevBoy's Blog!

Post 1884 - Valley Weekend

2012-01-20T18:21:00.001-08:00

I drove up to my mother's this weekend. I had some errands to run so I did them, returning to her place around 11.

Newbie was surprisingly easy to get into his carrier. At 6 this morning he nuzzled up to me. I grabbed him and tossed him into the bathroom before I could obtain his carrier and stuff him into it. To get me back, he puked and crapped in the carrier on the way up here. Thanks, buddy!

This afternoon, I took Mom to get her hair done. A woman who also works there bought my father's rental property a year ago. I asked her to show me some pictures she'd taken of the renovations. I won't get into the details other than to say the house is in really good hands and Dad would be proud of the tlc the place is getting. I'll leave it at that.

Mom wanted to go to Wolfville so I took her there. I needed to go to the hardware store to pick up a replacement bolt for the door handle. I got 2 of them, free. I picked up some stuff to help keep the threads in place. After a quick trip to the grocery store, we returned to the house.

I screwed the bolt in the handle, using washers this time. Nice and tight.

This evening, due to the crappy weather, I stayed in.

Tomorrow, it's more shopping. We'll be gone for hours and hours and I'll return here and collapse in a heap on the bed, praying for a quick end.
There won't be any such luck, of course. I'll be here until Sunday.

A whole other day of shopping.

See you tomorrow.

From Bevboy's BlackBerry to BevBoy's Blog!

Post 1883 - A Quickee

2012-01-19T21:40:00.001-08:00

Sorry for the brevity of this post. I have slept the night away. Not feeling well.

Off to the Valley in a few hours. Wish me luck getting Newbie in his carrier.

See you on Friday.

From Bevboy's BlackBerry to BevBoy's Blog!

Post 1882 - It Is Written

2012-01-18T17:05:00.000-08:00

It has been decided that I will go to the gym on January 23rd for my first spin class in the better part of 2 years. Leading up to that I will be doing some long walks to try to build up my tolerance to the hard cardio I will endure starting next week.

Long overdue.

Very long overdue.

I'm sort of looking forward to it.

Sort of.

Remind me to resume writing posts with actual paragraphs, ok?

This is getting silly.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1881 - Help!

2012-01-17T17:38:00.000-08:00

So, here's the deal.

It pains me to admit it, but I haven't been to the gym since before my father died, which was May of 2010. I am woefully out of shape.

I have no excuse for this. I offer none. Nothing I can say or do can justify my laziness in this regard. I just haven't felt right since he passed, and that manifests itself in eating things I shouldn't, and not working out enough. I feel a sense of blah-ness, if that is indeed a word. I have a hard time motivating myself to do much of anything these days. Getting out of bed in the morning would be one of those things, by the way.

Not good.

This is where you come in.

Take a moment, here on the blog, on my Facebook, on my twitter, to convince me, to kick my ass, to find some words that will get me out of this funk and get me to a gymnasium, where I can take up spin classes again. Upper body work outs can come later. I want cardio requirements taken care of first.

This will be an uphill struggle, ladies and germs. But once I crest that hill, I know that I can do this again. With your help.

Go put on your steel-toed boots and practice kicking.

Thanks.

Bevboy

Post 1880 - The World's Worst Joke

2012-01-16T17:52:00.000-08:00

My friend Jeff Cogswell at Q104 (yes, Q104. Not Z103. Not Hal FM. How did that rumour get started, anyway?) is asking his listeners this evening to call in or leave a message on his Facebook page. In order to win 4 passes to see a movie this Thursday night, you have to tell him the world's worst joke.

I have 3 entries, so far, in this far-reaching contest.

Do you want to know what they are?

The first one, Patricia messed up. I called in to the station, 4511043. No one picked up, so I hung up. A moment later, the phone rang. It was Cogsy himself. After I picked up, so did Patricia. She threw off my amazing comedic timing.

Here it goes.

*Ahem!*

Knock! Knock!
(Who's there?)
Bev
(Bev Who?)
Bevore you make decide who had the worst joke, please consider mine.

Patricia didn't get it. Jeff laughed, but I was nervous because my betrothed was also on the line. It could have been delivered better.

Cogsy and I talked for a moment about the amazing "Halifax Radio Memories" Facebook page that you have to join if you haven't already. We rang off.

However, I was undaunted.

Undiminished.

Unwilling to give up!

I put forth two more entries.

Wanna hear them? Or, rather more appropriately, read them?

OK.

Here goes:

2. Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?
Because it was dead!

I was not yet finished. I had to inflict Cogsy's Facebook page with at least one more entry. One more pathetic attempt to win these ticket to some movie I haven't heard a damned thing about.

3. How many women with PMS does it take to change a lightbulb?
WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE??!!!!

So, which one do you think will win, ladies and gentlemen? What is your, er, least favourite joke?

See you tomorrow! Please?

Bevboy

Post 1879 - The Weekend Is Nearly Over!

2012-01-15T15:58:00.000-08:00

It is pushing 8pm Sunday evening. The weekend is nearly over. We didn't go anywhere this weekend, didn't even leave the house.

Friday night, the sink was full of dirty dishes. I did them Saturday morning. Tonight, after dinner preparations, the sink has dishes in it again. Why bother? Sigh. These sisyphean tasks get real old, real fast.

Friday night, there was more dirty laundry in the house than clean, it seemed. Tonight, there are just a couple small loads left to be done, and they can wait until another evening.

We finally got around to watching the movie I borrowed from the Port Williams library 9 days ago, "Slumdog Millionaire". I had somehow missed it when it was playing on my movie channels and had never bothered to rent it because, well, who rents movies any more? Borrowing it at no cost whatsoever the other week was good.

We also watched the original Pink Panther movie today, with Peter Sellers and David Niven and Robert Wagner. Hadn't seen it in a very long time. It still holds up, but I can't help but think that there aren't enough laughs in it to sustain a modern audience, and that "people today" would think that some of the scenes go on for a little too long. Still, I was glad to see it, and Peter Sellers as Inspector Clumseau is still funny. Hard to believe he died nearly 35 years ago.

Another work week yawns before me like a buffet table that's got too much meat on it. Come the weekend, I can't wait for the confines of my house to keep the world at bay.

Time to put on my mask and confront Monday.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1878 - The Weekend Is Here (Yay!)

2012-01-14T16:17:00.000-08:00

It is just past 8pm Saturday. We are still recovering from the effects of that supremely crappy meal we endured Friday night at the Lion's Head Tavern.

Without exception, everyone thinks we should have complained at the time of the offense. Instead, I dragged Patricia and me home. We take no comfort in having not complained. I take responsibility because I did the dragging.

I spent 2 hours today doing the dishes that had piled up during the last few days when we were both sick. Now, I have been chipping away at the laundry. A few more loads tonight and several more tomorrow should just about do it. Then, it will be the beginning of the work week again. It's kinda like Groundhog Day.

Oh, hark! What was that? The washing machine just finished the latest load.

See you tomorrow!

Bevboy

Post 1877 - Worst. Meal. Ever!

2012-01-13T20:35:00.000-08:00

Patricia has an expression I find endearing. When she's hungry she can say, "I could eat the ass out of a dead horse". Or something like that. It's so endearing I can't remember.

Usually, we go to Michael's on Young Street as it is very close to my work, and the food is pretty good. We opted, instead, to go to The Lion's Head Tavern on Young Street.

Big mistake.

Some people from my work had gone there for lunch while I remained back at my work station, transcribing a couple pieces of the latest blog interview to be published sometime in the relatively near future. Inspired by those folks, we went there.

Gross.

Patricia was craving steak. I decided to have the chili Philly cheese steak sandwich with fries.

Ugh.

I guess at some point a cow walked through that sandwich. Otherwise, there was no meat to speak of. The fries were not good at all.

Patricia's steak was dry to the point where she was looking for the chalk. The baked potato was acceptable to her, but that was the only thing she liked. It was "sold" to her as a New York steak, supposedly a bit thicker than a regular steak. Instead, it was so thin it only had one side. I had a bite of it, and I can say it was not the worst steak I had ever had in my life. That would be reserved for a steak I ate at Michael's not long ago.

Patricia was really ticked. We got the bill and left. She refused to pay a tip. All the way home she was going on about the food and the service and how much she wanted to complain to the manager. When we got home, she wrote a pretty passionate message on FB. We tried to call, but nobody there picked up.

All we can do in these cases is let you know about our experience there. We didn't like it. We don't plan to go back.

Some places have a reputation for selling crappy food, but folks go anyway. Maybe the beer soaks up the grease and the fat and makes the food taste better than it has a right to. They may have a desirable location, or people become so enraptured by the nostalgia of the place that people overlook the many faults. I am guessing that the Lion's Head Tavern falls into that latter category, the way that The Chicken Burger in Bedford does.

Folks, there are better places to eat in the North End of the city. Michael's sure is better, if you stay away from the steaks. Check out that place and don't waste your money on the Lion's Head Tavern.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1876 - First Day Back

2012-01-12T16:39:00.000-08:00

I returned to work this morning after being sick for two days. I got through the day, which is good. Still not feeling very swift. Not good,

We had a snowstorm hit us on the way home. Mere metres from the house some so-and-so didn't realize the stop sign he ignored wasn't a four way stop. Despite the inclement weather and the difficulty, I had to stop suddenly to avoid being side swiped. I laid on the horn for a good 10 seconds. He backed up the car and we got home in one piece. Kept expecting the little knob to come after us, but he didn't.

This is happening more and more in this neighborhood. That particular intersection is not a four way stop, but people either think it is, or simply ignore the stop sign. There are a lot of children around here. How long before one is injured, or worse, because people ignore the stop signs around here?

Get me out of here. Get me to the Valley.

Now.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1875 - Another Sick Day

2012-01-11T15:51:00.000-08:00

Still was feeling poorly this morning, so I reluctantly took a second sick day this week.

Slept for many more hours. Got up. Ate something. Rested some more. Was feeling well enough at supper time to make some pasta and meat sauce for Patricia and me.

It is now past 7:30. I am bound and determined to return to work in the morning.

I know that dozens of you have worried about me and sent me your tweets and FB updates and comments on the blog concerned about my health. Please do not worry. I am on the mend and looking forward to returning to work and to writing more extensive blog posts. I know you're looking forward to that as well.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1874 - A Sick Day

2012-01-10T18:08:00.000-08:00

Today was a sick day. I slept until around 11:30 before getting up for "breakfast" and more rest in the afternoon.

There have been colds and flu's going around for a month or so now. I guess it was my turn.

Fear not, blog readers at work. I think I will be able to return to work in the morning. I know you miss me. I miss you.

Back to bed.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1873 - Zzzz!

2012-01-09T19:09:00.000-08:00

Felt tired today at work. A little off. I feel that I am fighting something. We collapsed when we got home this evening and only got up around 9, when The Good Wife was already in progress.

So, how many of you have read the James Taylor interview? Really? Not all of you have? It was only 17 months in the making, folks. Show some respect.

Coming up, I have the first part of a Katey Day interview, a very long Shane Wilson interview, and an interview with Julia Kirkey, late of K-Rock in the Valley, and presently of MBS in Halifax. I just need the hours necessary to transcribe it all. Didn't have the time to do any of that over the holidays, and increasingly, my evenings are getting full as well.

My slow attempts to convert the world away from Windows and over to linux are working. The guy I helped on Friday, best known to the world as Greasy Gary at Q104, is very happy with the version of Ubuntu I put on his desktop on Friday. It went from a computer that pretty much didn't work, to one that runs like the wind. Take that, Microsoft! You suck.

Newbie is giving me that look again, the one that says I'm his bitch for the next several hours. Sigh. Who's the human around here, anyway?

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1872 - Where Did The Weekend Go?

2012-01-08T18:22:00.000-08:00

It is fairly late Sunday evening. Newbie is giving me that come hither look which can only mean one thing. I'll let you ponder that.

I am back in the city after a couple of days in the Valley. Other than Saturday night, I spent quite a bit of time sleeping. I am not sure why. Perhaps it is the time of year in which one wants to hibernate to the expense of being productive. Once again, the weekend went by too quickly.

Sunday morning, I cooked the Atlantic salmon that I bought my mother for Christmas. It cost me 35 dollars, so I was nervous that it wouldn't turn out well. I deliberately undercooked it just a bit because it's so easy to overcook most fish, especially salmon. The garlic and olive oil and red pepper I spread over the salmon made it taste all the better, and Mom claimed she liked it. There is lots left for her to eat over the next couple of days.

I love the Valley, but there is no equivalent to Clearwater or Fishermen's Market down there. The best I can think of is a guy who drives a fish truck up from Digby or Yarmouth every Wednesday. I'm not saying there is anything dodgy about a guy selling fresh fish off the back of a truck, stuff that's better than the crap they sell in the stores. I'm saying that that part of the province is underserved in the fresh fish area. A store specializing in the sale of fish would go over well there. I've stated too much on this topic, one which most of you don't give a poop about. Just saying.

I am not sure what to do here. I have to decide how many vacation days to carry over to the next fiscal year. If I don't, I lose those days. Don't ask me what I think of this policy. It's the same opinion you have. But I am not sure if I should use those last few days between now and year end or carry over at least a couple. What do you think? Don't make me think for myself, folks! Not the Bevboy way.

Time for bed. Newbie is really starting to grow impatient. Coming, sweetheart!!

Bevboy

Post 1871 - A Long Night

2012-01-07T18:13:00.001-08:00

Been here at the emergency department with my mother for hours now. No word at all as to when she can be looked at. Plenty of others here waiting for the same thing. We may be here for hours yet.

Wonderful way to spend an evening.

In 2008 Patricia had to go to Emergency in hospital. It was literally 8 hours of waiting before a doctor saw her.

What's your horror story of a long wait in an Emergency waiting room?

Sigh. And double sigh.

From Bevboy's BlackBerry to BevBoy's Blog!

Post 1870 - A Long Weekend

2012-01-06T15:20:00.000-08:00

It is just past 7pm on Friday evening. I write these humble, pathetic, sub-par words from the Port Williams Library, using my netbook.

I got up around 12 hours ago. I drove to the Valley. Of course, Mom had things for me to do, so I did them. While out, I got a call from a friend who needed some help with his computer. For some reason, he thought I could help him. We agreed I'd go to his place after lunch.

I dropped into the Kentville grocery store and bought a sandwich for my lunch. While there, a woman approached me with an armful of groceries and asked where I had got the basket I was carrying it in. I told her they were by the door. She replied that they wouldn't let her leave with all that stuff. I gave her the basket and helped her load her things in it. From the look on her face, you'd think I had given her a million bucks or something. I also gave her a blog business card. A gentleman saw me do that and thanked me for my hospitality as well. I thanked him for his politeness and gave him a card. The word of the Blog must get around, folks!

I went from there to the Superstore in New Minas. Guess what? That woman was there, too! Do I have a stalker? I've never had one and would like the experience, please!

I returned to Mom's with some of the things she needed. Just before 1, around 12:55, I left to go to my friend's place.

Along the way, at 1:03pm, the format change, for lack of a better word, happened over at Z103. The station is now to be known as Energy 1035. As far as i can tell, the music will be about the same as it was before just with more... energy. More oomph. They are playing up the music, which makes me think they're playing down the on air talent. They fired their on air staff, or most of it, on Wednesday. We already have 2 stations in this market that have no live local presence beyond 10 o'clock in the morning. We don't need another one.

We will see what happens with Energy 1035.

My friend's computer issues resulted in overwriting XP and installing Easy Peasy, the Ubuntu variant, on it. It took a while, most of the afternoon, to install it and then install the hundreds of megabytes of updates and then the drivers necessary to run his printer. The print function works fine; things like the scanner on the all-in-one still need to be addressed.

I got back to Mom's around 4:30 and prepared dinner. The rice cooker we got her for Christmas was still in the box. I uncrated it and pressed it into service. The brown rice along with the meatballs I od'd on made for a wonderful Winter's supper.

Tomorrow is grocery day. Mom will probably stay behind while I run all over the place getting her victuals. I'll return and be like a gibbering idiot. Which is to say, I will return and be normal. My normal.

See you tomorrow, Constant Reader!

Bevboy

Post 1869–Interview With “Shocked and Amazed!”’s James Taylor!

2012-01-05T17:57:00.001-08:00

August 11, 2010

This one was a long time coming, folks. My fault entirely. [Interviewee’s note (and I’ll be doing a lot of these; note the brackets & “JT3”): Weeellll, the delay’s mostly not his fault; what can I say: a week’s an hour to me, and he let me edit this interview, soooo….]

This interview was conducted at the cottage in the summer of 2010. We invited our friends James and Rebecca over for dinner and before you know it, my digital voice recorder was out and recording the ensuing interview. What? You thought I memorized these interviews? Pish posh, little boy.

In a trivial note, this is the first time I’ve done an interview with a person who has his own wikipedia entry. Here it is.

Over the next 3+ hours, we discussed sideshows, performers in sideshow, The American Civil War, minstrelsy, a lady named Thrill Kill Jill, book publishing, and the best approach to transcribing long freakin' interviews. Like I need advice on that or something. [JT3: Bev, the best way is to get someone else to do it, FYI.]

What are you waiting for, ladies and gentlemen? Start reading!!

Bevboy: Why circus sideshows? What is their appeal to you?

James Taylor: I've always been fascinated with the odd, the bizarre, the weird, the strange and the unusual. Years ago, after my father passed away, my mother took up with an old carny. I thought he was the most fascinating, hilarious human being I'd ever met in my life. He was a guy named Jerry Farrow. He was what they call a "forty miler": a guy who never took his carnival show very far on the road. Jerry was a hysterical human being. He was this tiny little guy. Not much to look at. He was one of those guys that laughs like a kind of old Wild West character.

After going with my mother for a couple of years, and me listening to all these outrageous stories that he told about his years on the road (because he had been in the carnival business pretty much his whole life), I asked him at one point, "Jerry, where do you get the books on this stuff?” I'm a writer, and as far as I'm concerned, everything has to be in a book or I don't get it.

He looks at me and says, "Well, there ain't none."

"What do you mean, 'There ain't none'. There's books on everything."

"I know the kind of book you want. That book ain't out there. But you're a writer. Write your own damn book."

It was like somebody giving me permission to do something that never had occurred to me before, because my background's all poetry and fiction and high-end lit, and all the rest of that mess. It never occurred to me that what I could be doing was writing non-fiction and interviewing people to get the types of things that I wanted out of and about a subject. Literally having no experience in interviews, no experience in any sort of journalism, or any of that, I went off and started interviewing old showmen cold.

I realized at the time I started doing this, which would have been the tail end of '92, the beginning of '93, that it was really the end of an era for all the classic sideshow and classic variety and entertainment [performers]. All those old timers who were from the heyday of the business, which would have been between World War I and World War II, were dying. They were all going into the ground. I realized that if I didn't get them, nobody else was.

I got plane tickets to fly to Gibsonton, Florida, just below Tampa, which is where a lot of those people had their winterquarters. Literally hopped a plane, flew down to Tampa, rented the car, drove to Gibsonton, and started hanging out with carnival people. I'd had a lot of people tell me beforehand, “Oh, they're going to freeze you out. They don't want to deal with you. You're media. You're going to be sticking your nose in their business. They're not going to want to talk to you.” Instead, I found them to be some of the sweetest people I'd ever met, and all of them filled with the most outrageous stories I'd ever been told in my whole life. A riot, every one of them. And, it's been pretty much a riot ever since, dealing with the business. The “business”, as they say, is a hard way to make an easy living.

BB: How much work is involved in producing an edition of Shock and Amazed!?

JT: More work than has been committed by all of humanity since the dawn of the species. It’s been appreciably more since my editor-in-chief [Kathleen Kotcher] split the country.

BB: The last one came out in 2007, I think, right?

JT: Painfully, years ago, yes. Yeah, it’s a lot of work. It’s a long story.

BB: Well, how do you figure out what you’re going to put into a volume?

JT: That’s another long story. Because everything’s a long story with me. I have known what’s going to be in volume 10 for a while. In the old days of the sideshow, they called them 10 in 1‘s: Ten acts in one show. Didn’t mean you got 10 performers; it just meant you got 10 acts. Sometimes you got 1 performer doing 10 things. They’re always very specifically honest in the sideshow. You just have to pay attention to what they’re being honest about.

I always knew what “10 in 1” should be in volume 10: the banners, because that’s what everybody thinks about when they think about these sideshows. They think of that glorious line of “pictorial paintings” across the front of the sideshow. Those pictures of the human blockheads, the “Siamese” twins, the two-headed dogs, the fat ladies, the educated monkeys and all the rest of that stuff.

So, I knew it had to be about the art of the sideshow. I had pretty much the whole thing defined for me because there are three principal pre-eminent banner painters alive now. There are a lot of people who do it, but there are really a “Big 3” that I wanted to interview. I’ve got them to work on.

I’ve picked up a lot of information and a lot of archival material on the history of banner painting for the sideshow. The whole thing is going to be devoted to the artwork of the shows.

But, separate from that, most volumes are an exercise in making it up as you go.

BB: If you were starting Shocked and Amazed! Volume 10 today...

JT: I am, as a matter of fact!

BB: ... Well, how long does it take you from conceptualizing an edition of Shocked and Amazed! to when it goes to the printer? I realize the last one came out in 2007. Have you been working on it for the last few years?

JT: Shocked and Amazed! is an exercise in herding cats. It really is. The problem is that nobody gets paid. In fact, in order to be a mover and a shaker in Shocked and Amazed!, you have to part with a lot of your own money. How much am I going to have to spend to be a part of this debacle? That’s the question you have to ask yourself. [JT3: Just ask my partner, D.B.Doghouse; he’ll tell you how much it can cost you.]

BB: I read the piece today about minstrel shows. It’s a long piece. The guy who wrote that was not paid?

JT: No.

BB: Does he get free copies of the publication, or what does he get?

JT: The piece on minstrelsy is from my buddy John Strausbaugh’s book, Black Like You. It’s a great book, too, a great history of the business. As far as he is concerned, it’s just great to be a part of the project. The piece on medicine shows? The same thing. We give people ad space and copies. The number of people who have ever actually been paid have been paid chump money. It’s always been more of a token of, “Well, gee, you have to pay your agent, right? Here’s some money.” It’s always been joke money if anybody got paid out of Shocked and Amazed! It speaks very much to the generosity, if not insanity, of those who work on it and contribute to it. We’ve had wonderful, wonderful friends in the business give of themselves, and very often give of themselves monetarily to make sure that Shocked and Amazed! happened.

But at the core level, it’s gotten longer and longer between volumes, and harder and harder to build them as time has gone on.

BB: Is it lack of interest?

JT: No. People have lives. When nobody’s making any money off of the thing, life gets in the way.

BB: Paying work gets in the way.

JT: Everything gets in the way. Personal lives. Work lives. The lives of your kids. And, not the least of which is the money, because Shocked and Amazed! does not make a lot of dough. We’re in the effort of trying to change that somewhat now. But we’ve never been a magazine that’s been run by any intelligent methodology. The business model has always been nuts. Most publications like [Shocked and Amazed!] are run by ad revenues. That’s what runs all publications. Subscriptions never pay for the continuation of any object. Not newspapers. Not magazines. Not any of that. It’s ad revenues. That’s what pays for it.

BB: And, you’re ceding your ad revenue to the people who contribute pieces, right?

JT: There are people who pay for ad space. The problem is that in order to really sell the ad space, I would have to do things with Shocked and Amazed! that are almost counter to what it is. I would have to turn the publication into less of what it is and more of what you see when you go to any newsstand. It would have to be along those lines. Ads would take over the publication. I’ve never seen that being the way it would go. I’ve done a lot of things to try to make it get enough money to keep afloat. Most of those things have been more work than they were worth. It’s finally ended up with, basically, “Gee, let’s figure out a way to raise whatever money we can by whatever means, but it ain’t gonna be ad revenues.” The idea of making money on Shocked and Amazed! is that we get the printer’s bill back. Everything else is donated. Anybody who’s ever been on the masthead, anybody who’s ever been connected to it at all, has donated a lot of time and very often a lot of their money toward James Taylor’s Shocked and Amazed!: On & Off The Midway. That’s what it’s boiled down to. It’s a labour of love with capital L’s all the way down the line.

BB: Is that your approach with Shocked and Amazed!? You don’t do it for the money, obviously.

JT: It’s like when you say, “Do you do it for the money?” It’s diametrically opposed to that. There’s got to be a degree that’s beyond 180 that doesn’t come around to money.

It’s been a labour of love since day one. It’s one of the reasons why the show people seem to have the respect for it that they do. To them, it doesn’t read as, “Oh, this is about the money.” Everything about it is trying to be true to the spirit of the business and trying to make sure that the business is portrayed with the spirit of fun that is inherent in it. It’s like the way the entertainment business used to be, is how I look at it. The way that the film business must have been in its earliest days, the way vaudeville must have been in its earliest days. Every day, the performers have to almost make it up and figure out how to have it work on a day-to-day basis, and shift from one form of entertainment to another, wherever the money is. Sideshow feels much like the old time end of the business. Maybe it’s all that’s left of the entertainment business in that way. I don’t think the rest of the entertainment business reeks of anything but, “Let’s turn this into a big pay day!” None of these sideshow guys think that. They don’t think they’re going to be in the money. That’s not what’s in the cards for them. But it’s a way of life for them, especially when kids get in the business. The ones that are in it now, it’s like, “This is my way of life. Screw you!” It’s like something out of the Sixties.

I’ve got nothing but admiration for people who are willing to say, “I may be starving to death this time next week, if not today, but, damn it, this is what I’m going to do.” My hat’s off to those people.

BB: Who are your mentors?

JT: At the writing level, probably [poet] Michael Egan. He was like the wild man of the universe. Roaring drunk. So full of bullshit, you wouldn’t believe it. If you looked up b.s. in the dictionary, Michael was there. But he was a phenomenal writer. He is one of the most amazing writers not only whom I’ve met but whose work I’ve ever read. But he was just Hell on the people who knew him.

Aside from him, probably my mother’s boyfriend, after my father passed away, Jerry Farrow. As I’ve written before, as my editor-in-chief Kathleen Kotcher told me one time, “So! Took a lot of guts to put down in print that you hated your father!”

I’m like, “I didn’t hate my father!” I just said that Jerry was the father that I didn’t have. I didn’t mean it to be disparaging to my old man at all. But, with people and their parents, sometimes things click and sometimes they don’t. I think the mark of being an adult is recognising how, as people, you relate to your parents. Just because they’re blood doesn’t mean they’re good or bad or otherwise as people.

But Jerry and I just clicked. Jerry really was my mentor in the carnival business and not because he was a show guy; he wasn’t involved in the sideshows at all. He was rides and games and all that, an owner and a jointee [a carnival man who owns concessions & games]. He really typified the spirit of the business for me. These guys were all life gamblers. I have a reputation for being one of those gamblers, even though to myself, I am not at all. I don’t gamble. I take no risks.

But I look back on my life and try to see through the eyes of the people that have been my inspirations and been people whose lives I’ve tried to imitate or whose spirits I’ve tried to learn and grow from. I do recognise that to a lot of other people I probably look like I’ve had this wild and outrageous and ridiculous and preposterous and hilariously bizarre life, but I think that’s what mentors do: They guide you on that preposterous way, I guess. [laughs] At least mine have.

But, yes, the two principal ones have been Michael Egan and Jerry Farrow.

BB: Tell me about some of the circus sideshow people who have impressed you the most.

JT: There are so many who have been important to me in the business. Probably all the old timers. Jeanie Tomaini, “the World’s Only Living Half Girl.”

BB: You showed me pictures of her yesterday.

JT: Yes. She was in that Ripley’s book. Jeanie really was Mom to me, as far as the business goes. The first time I ever dealt with Jeanie, it was right on the money with her. I’d been given her phone number by another old show guy, George Sanders, who worked the Museum of the Carnival. He says, “You have to talk to Jeanie Tomaini. She’s over there at Giants’ Camp.” It was a camp that she and her late husband Al Tomaini (The American Giant!) had created at Gibsonton (which in its way helped create Gibsonton as a town for show people).

I called her up on the phone. I got her daughter, Judy, and I asked if Jeanie was around. She put her on. There was this little voice, “Hello?”

I told her I had got her phone number from George over at the museum and that I was doing this book and I’d like to talk to her. She says, “Oh, that sounds really great!” She was really sweet. She says, “Well, would you want to come over tomorrow to do that?” I agreed.

She says, “Well, do you want to come by at 9, or do you want to come by around noon?”

I was, like, “Uh, why 9 or noon?”

She says, “Well, CNN is coming by around 9:30 or 10 o’clock, and I didn’t want to have that interrupt you.”

I started laughing. I said, “I got a great idea, Jeanie. Why don’t I come by at 9? I can talk to you. When CNN shows up, we can talk about that afterward, too.”

She says, “Oh, that would be great.”

I showed up at 9. We’re talking. She says, “You know those CNN people? They called me and said they weren’t coming by!” [laughs]

I said, “Well, that was really a bum out!”

She said, “Yeah, but that’s ok. Somebody else will call me tomorrow!”

Sure enough, they always did. Whenever somebody wanted to do a thing on Gibsonton, they always had to talk to Jeanie. Jeanie was a jewel. God, that woman was just lovely. I’d planned on doing a book on her that was going to be a combo with her and Percilla Bejano (Percilla, the Monkey Girl!). It was going to be a flip book, like the old Ace Doubles.

BB: It still happens the odd time. Hard Case Crime did that with a pair of Robert Bloch novels.

JT: I’ve seen them. They’re great.

The Jeanie & Percilla book never happened, sadly. Now, Jeanie and Percilla are both gone. All of the old timers are gone. All of the ones from that era between the World Wars are almost all gone now. I couldn’t rattle off one that’s still around who was from that era. They’d all been born in the Teens, you know.

BB: There was ... The Lobster Boy?

JT: Grady Stiles. I was friendly with his kids.

BB: I heard he was an evil man. He beat his kids, didn’t he?

JT: As one of Grady’s best friends told me, “Grady was a great guy as long as he wasn’t on the bottle.” The problem with Grady was, more often than not, he was on the bottle. He was not a nice drunk.

BB: He was hateful to his children.

JT: He was not a very nice man at a lot of levels. But a lot of it was due to the alcohol, apparently. But I never met Grady. As others have said, the occupational hazard of the sideshow business is boredom, because you’re essentially doing the same act, the same show, every day, over and over.

BB: No variety. No challenge.

JT: Yes. You’re basically doing the same act for 5, 6, 7, minutes, 20-25 times a day. At night, you’re not practicing a new act. You’re essentially crashing because you’re all worn out from the day. The guys who like to drink, drink; the guys who like to gamble, gamble; the guys who are too damned exhausted to do anything, crash. The next day, you get up, and you start it all over again.

BB: Groundhog Day.

JT: Yeah. That’s it. That’s it exactly. If you really want to do it, it’s something that’s in the blood, and that’s the way it goes. If it’s something where it’s all you know how to do, you’re going to be doing it until the day you drop. It’s not like there’s a bigger problem with drunkenness in sideshow anymore than there is in the entertainment business generally or any other form of business, but you’ll find people with alcohol problems or with gambling problems. And, because it’s the entertainment business, it always tends to attract people who are of a certain type personally. They’re entertainment people. They’re prone to extremes personally sometimes. That’s why I love them.

But, yeah, Grady was quite the character. I never met Grady, so I can only speak as others have spoken of him. I know his kids, Grady Jr...

BB: They’re similarly afflicted, are they not?

JT: Yes. Cathy, the daughter, is much more similar in her hands and body make up than Grady, his son. I love Grady Jr.’s hands. The way Grady Sr. was, literally, it looked like just 2 fingers. But his son is just missing the middle digit. What happens is, his hand splays out real wide. His hands aren’t lobster so much. They look like these immense, dramatic hands. But he’s not in the business, and Cathy’s only in the business when she gets pulled out of self-imposed retirement. She and her brother, after the old man was murdered, were, “We’re out of the business.”

BB: I can’t remember the details of his murder.

JT: His wife and his stepson contracted a third guy and paid to have him murdered. The stepson is still in jail; he’ll probably be in jail for years still. Grady’s wife had in her favour the abused spouse defense. I believe that she’s been out of jail for a little while now. But you have to figure: Grady was murdered in November of ‘92. The trial was a horrifying scandal for Gibtown [JT3: That’s the show name for Gibsonton, folks.] because, as far as the carnival people were concerned, “Oh, great. Another thing to make us all look like dirt and garbage and trash.”

The media’s always looked at the business as something odd and somehow sleazy and weird and bizarre. Sadly, the business just feeds into it, too. The business has always been one that, throughout its mythology, has told the media “We’re all weird, bizarre, strange people!” You pitch that long enough, and that’s what the media wants to buy, because that’s what’s sexy. They don’t want to see past that to your real life.

BB: That they’re human, with mortgages to pay...

JT: Yes. And, basically, interviewing any of those people is like interviewing any other performer or any other entertainer. Just because the person doing the interviewing might have a hard time seeing that, doesn’t mean it ain’t the case. It’s like interviewing any other old time Vaudevillian who’s working under canvas. To you, they’re doing a weird and goofy and strange act. But it’s just the entertainment business.

I like it because it takes a certain ... what’s the line? “You don’t have to be crazy to be in the business, but it helps.” That’s one of the reasons why I’ve always loved it. The people are always 3 or 4 degrees off centre in some way. The old show guy’s line is, “Do you think the show’s up there on the platform? Oh, no! The show’s in the audience. The show’s in the tip.” They call the audience “the tip”. When showmen say they “turn the tip,” they’re saying they’re convincing people to come into your show.

One of my favorite show people, a banner painter by the name of Johnny Meah, had a wacky idea for a show that’s going to be called “Them”. It was about the audience. The whole idea of the show was that the people in the audience were the real show. One of the traditional lines in sideshow was, “You know, you had to pay money to see me. I get to look at you for free.”

The times I’ve been in shows, I stand back and watch the audience, because I’ve seen the shows a million times. I sit there watching the audience thinking, “Nothing up there is weird. You people are weird.” The people coming into the show sometimes should be up there on the platform standing there. Some very strange stuff comes trooping through those sideshows, boy. There’s always somebody in almost every tip that wants to show one of these old show guys something they can do, and it’s always something just appalling. “Look what I can do with my butt!”

It’s like, “We don’t want to see that. Get out of the show!”

It’s a great business.

BB: Please say something about the following people

A. Penn and Teller

JT: I can’t tell you anything on the record for these guys. [laughs]

BB: How did you meet them?

JT: Actually, I met them through, sadly, a good friend of mine who passed away a few years ago. It was a woman who was the director of The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. Her name was Gretchen Worden. Gretchen was big buddies with Teller. I met her in the late ‘80‘s, I guess, through John Strausbaugh. She’s like, “Teller’s in town. I told him about the stuff you’re into with sideshow. He wants to meet you. I know you want to meet him.”

I drove up to Philadelphia with Kathleen before she was even married to her husband, Ivan. The 3 of us drove up to Philadelphia and met Teller. We hung out for the night.

About a year later, he and Penn were going to be in town, in Baltimore. I emailed him. I wrote, “This is probably totally out of line, but can I hit you guys up for some comps for the show?”

He’s like, “Yeah! You don’t have to pay to come to a show.”

I’m like, “I’m there!”

They’ve both been very sweet to me. The front cover of The Best of Shocked and Amazed! has a quote from Penn. We couldn’t print the exact quote because then it wouldn’t have made it into the bookstores. The exact quote was, “Great Fucking Mag!”
I think, as entertainers go, they’re top drawer.

P: So, what does Teller sound like, anyway?

JT: Just a guy. He’s very soft-spoken in a way, but the boy can talk.

P: I’d love to know what he sounds like.

JT: There’s a magic documentary that he’s on. It’s hilarious because, if I’m not mistaken, they keep him in the shadows. They identify him as Teller and you can hear him talk. And, if you ever see him on stage, there are a couple of tricks that they do where it’s his voice, but you don’t see him. He’s off stage, but you hear his voice. There are places where you can hear him talk, but if he’s in role, [he doesn’t speak].

Whenever people hear him talk, they respond with, “Oh, you can talk!” His line is, “Of course I can fucking talk!” [everyone laughs]

There’s a network interview with them years ago, right when I was starting work on Shocked and Amazed! It’s an interview with both Penn and Teller. It’s a 15 minute segment on sideshow. They’re talking about the business. Of course, Teller’s not talking, because he’s in character. He’s on screen, so he’s not going to talk. I can’t remember the name of the news guy, but he was fairly prominent in the day. He says, “Oh, you’re doing your Harpo Marx thing.”

Teller lunges at him like he’s going to choke him. You don’t want to say that kind of stuff to the man. [laughs] You don’t want to talk about Harpo to Teller. He gets really lethal when you do that to him. It was all a stunt, but it was a funny bit.

BB: Penn is rabidly agnostic.

JT: No! Rabidly Atheist. With a capital “a”. There are many types of atheists. Penn says, “Hey, this is it. I’m going in the ground.” But there are many atheists who don’t necessarily believe that, afterwards, there’s nothing. They just believe there ain’t no God. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing afterwards to them.

One can argue that some spiritualists are atheists: They believe that there’s something else; they just don’t believe there’s a God connected to it.

BB: So Penn is extremely, rabidly atheist?

JT: Oh, my God, yes. And proud of it. He’s like, “Why should the belief system be otherwise?” [JT3: Want to know more? Check out Penn’s God No.]

BB: Does he tolerate a belief system with people?

JT: Well, one has the ability and the right to believe whatever one wants.

BB: I’ve seen Penn and Teller: Bullshit!

JT: And, they are no bullshit. But it doesn’t mean one can’t bring things to the table that they don’t know or think otherwise about.

When I first met Teller, we were at the Mütter, and we’d just shown up. Somehow, the subject of the Pope came up. I’m not a fan. Teller looked at me and was like, “I rather admire the man for having the strength to carry on his beliefs in the face of the things that challenge it.”

He was stone serious about it. I remember sitting, thinking, “That’s a Hell of a thing for an atheist to tell me.” I’d never have got that out of Penn, I’m sure.

BB: Teller is an atheist as well?

JT: Yes. People believe what they believe. You watch them on their show. They’ll tell it like it is. It’s hard to knock a lot of the arguments.

BB: I realise you want to be diplomatic with your friends.

JT: Yes, I do.

P: Penn strikes me as your favourite uncle that you want to piss off.

JT: Yeah, Penn's fun to piss off. [laughs]

B. Ricky Jay

JT: Inarguably, one of the best card mechanics on the face of the Earth. Ricky is an amazing card mechanic, an amazing magician. He's got a couple of shows out. We saw Ricky Jay and his 52 Assistants. I went to New York to see On the Stem, which means, "On Broadway". The stem is what they called Broadway 150 years ago.

All of his shows involve big hunks of history of the business. Almost all of his tricks involve some aspect of the history of how that trick came to be. Not just him personally, but all the guys who came before him who have fed into that trick and made it possible for him to do it.

Rebecca: If you ever get the chance, you really should go see him.

JT: He's an amazing showman. He's also quite the historian of the business. His book, Learned Pigs, is one of the inspirations for Shocked and Amazed! There were a couple of core publications that were the inspiration for Shocked and Amazed!, and that was one of them. The other was a book called Modern Primitives; it was put out by a publishing house called Re-Search. It still exists, I think, but it hasn't put out a lot of stuff recently. It was all interviews. It was interviews with people who were instrumental when helping create the modern primitives movement. V. Vale and Andrea Juno were the people behind Re-Search.

But Ricky's an amazing performer.

BB: And a buddy of yours.

JT: Ricky and I are a mutual admiration society for each other's publications. I've not been in Ricky's company as much as I've been in Penn and Teller's. Ricky's been very generous with me in his day. But he's a much tougher guy to catch up with and be around, anyway. He doesn't show very much. He did 52 Assistants as a revival show, really, because that was a show of his that went back 15 years. He brought it out of mothballs and toured it around the country briefly. The show that was after 52 Assistants was On the Stem, and that played in New York for about 3 or 4 months. That was it.

Rebecca: He acts, too.

JT: Yes. It's mostly theatrical stuff, TV and movies here and there. There’s also his theatrical effects work he does for films.

BB: He was in Flash Forward, too.

JT: Yes. He was in Flash Forward. The guy's time is tough. Penn and Teller have that, "Gee, we're locked in Vegas" problem, and they don't tour very much now either. But, before that, they were touring their show around constantly. And Teller does a lot of theater work. He just finished up work co-writing a show with another big buddy of mine, a guy by the name of Todd Robins. Todd had done a séance show that was a debunking show. It was just amazing. It didn't have the success he wanted it to have; he wanted it to have a lot more commercial reach than it ended up having. He and Teller go back a long ways, as he and Penn do. He went out to Vegas. He and Teller re-framed the show. It's been re-titled, Play Dead. We're going to try to get up there in November and see that one when it premieres off-Broadway. It should be a hilarious show, and maybe I'll get to run into Teller for the first time in years. [JT3: Play Dead had a successful run off-Broadway, at the Player’s Theatre]

BB: Give him one of my Bevboy's Blog business cards.

JT: I will. I will indeed.

P: That would be cool.

JT: We went to DC to see a version of MacBeth that Teller did, which was fun. It was framed with a lot of magic in it. A lot of people forget, in its original incarnation in Shakespeare's day, all of that theatrical magic stuff was in its infancy, but that was important to stagecraft at the time. The version in Shakespeare's time would have had a lot of that stuff. Subsequent to that, as the ages have gone by, we've lost sight of the wackier stagecraft. It's all ACTING! now. That's what Teller tried to do; he had some pretty funny bits in that show.

BB: Getting back to Ricky Jay for a moment: I remember a number of years ago, there was a show called That's Incredible. There was a feature about a blind guy who was awesome with cards. I can't remember the fella's name.

JT: There have been a number of blind card guys.

BB: He would be lifting weights with one hand, and manipulating a deck of cards with the other.

JT: I should be ashamed of myself. I should know who this guy is. Ricky would know who it was.

BB: Even though he's your friend, you can still say that, objectively, he's the best card guy around.

JT: Oh, my God. You're running into dangerous territory when you say, "the best", but I would say, pretty much inarguably, he's one of the best card mechanics alive. Jamy Ian Swiss is another one. Jamie is an amazing character, an amazing magician. But Ricky, with 52 Assistants, does a trick where I'm not sure if he touches the deck more than once. Everything else is “done” by the volunteer. By the time it's over, there's 3 cards left. That's it. The volunteer picks whatever card they want. The card they pick is their card, the one they picked at the beginning. Basically, it makes it look like, "What? My trick? It was yours!" The mechanism by which that's brought off? I don't have a clue about 99% of the magic in the world as to how it's done. I don't care about the mechanics.

BB: It's the patter and the show.

JT: Yup. It's how the act is pulled off. How do they accomplish what they accomplish? It's one of the things about magic that I really like. It ain't the trick at all. It's the story that the trick is framed inside of that pulls the trick off. If the story don't cut it, the trick is, "Oh, here's your card. OK. Fine." It's all that patter that goes with it. Because, really, you could take almost any card trick; and depending on how good you are, you can reframe, revise, change, alter the story any way you want, and still have the trick and pull it off, and still be amazing. What a lot of people don't realize is that it's that whole framework that makes the trick work.

I saw Melvin Burkhart [the Original Human Blockhead] do that damned trick that Ricky does, where there's 3 cards left, and you pick the card. It's always the card you picked to begin with. The coup de gras of the whole thing is, whoever's doing it flips the other 2 cards over, and they're not the same. It's not like, "Well, gee, the last 3 cards are all your card!" It's different cards. It's like, "It's bad enough that I picked my own card again. But, now, I'm having it proven to me that I had to do it."

Ricky's line about it is, "Can cards be controlled? Yes!" [laughs] You don't want to play cards with Ricky. You lose.

If you want to know about Ricky Jay, there was a big interview in The New Yorker that was just amazing. It was right after the time that he and David Copperfield had their huge falling out.

BB: Oh? Tell me about this.

JT: Well, Copperfield bought the Mulholland Library [of Conjuring and the Allied Arts], which was a huge archive of magic books and memorabilia. Ricky had tried to buy the collection, because he had been its curator and the chief librarian thereof. When the collection came up at auction, Ricky tried to get people together because he knew it was going to go for a tub of money. He just couldn't get the finances together to beat out Copperfield. David's got more money than God. If Copperfield wants it, Copperfield's gonna get it. And, he got it.

He offered Ricky continuing librarian status, if you will, with the collection. Ricky was like, "Uh, no."

BB: Was it professional jealousy, or he doesn't like Copperfield for some reason?"

JT: As far as Ricky Jay is concerned, magic ain't what Copperfield makes it. As far as he is concerned, magic is not the glitz and the hoopla that he sees Copperfield as performing. That's not me saying that's what Copperfield's act is. We saw Copperfield. We thought it was a great show. A great show. The best show money can buy.

Rebecca: We were right in the front row. We were as close you could get.

JT: And, David's another one who's been very good to me. David was in my house before that show, as a matter of fact. He was looking at some of my collection. We'll let it rest with that. He was like, "I'll give you guys front row!"

"You can threaten me with front row any time you want, David! That's fine by me."

BB: He would have displaced two young models from the front row.

JT: We sat next to one of them. She was very sweet. It was a great show.

But Ricky's all about the keys to the kingdom. The muggles aren't supposed to have the keys to the kingdom. Ricky's very much about maintaining that veneer of, "There are keys to the kingdom that you're not supposed to have until you've run through the mill. You're supposed to have had that experience of going through this, and you're not supposed to be given access. That's the way it's supposed to be presented. That's the way it goes."

BB: I can go to Hank Lee’s website whenever I want, Hank Lee's Magic Factory out of Boston. They have a huge online presence. I can order whatever trick I want. And, I'm a muggle.

JT: Well, that's Penn and Teller's angle on it. When they first started to get the fame that they were earning, Penn and Teller pissed off a lot of a certain stamp of magician because one of their m.o.'s is to get out there and say, "Oh, we're going to show you how it's done.” And, then do the trick in front of you; and despite the fact that they told you how it's done, you still can't see how it's done. They literally do a cups and balls act where the cups are transparent. And huge. They show you how it's done. And you still don't see how the Goddamn trick is done. When it's all over, they're still pulling crap out of these damn cups. I said, "Where the Hell was it? I don't get it."

Then, they started that damned rumour that they were banned from the Magic Castle. They were never banned from the damned Magic Castle! The Larsens [who run the Castle] love them. But it was good for press. They got a lot of ink from it. The Larsens thought it was funny, too.

But Ricky's of another attitude. "Look. I love my audience. And, that's the audience. But that ain't up here. I hold secrets that are known only to me and God." It's that whole "Godly magician" thing, despite the fact that ultimately, yes, it's only magic. But, for Ricky, it's magic with a capital M. It's not just a living; it's the way you live your life. That's the way Ricky wants it. There's a fair number of magicians who feel that way.

Rebecca: They just have different philosophies.

JT: Big time.

Rebecca: They're never going to agree with each other.

BB: Is it hard to be friends with two people who don't like each other?

JT: I don’t know these folks don’t like each other, but yeah, I got millions of friends who don't like each other.

BB: He's going to complain to you about him. You have to be in the middle. You have to be like Switzerland.

JT: Well, I just never bring them up with the other ones. I know who likes whom and why. That's not to say that I haven't pissed off talent myself, because I have. There are people in the business who don't want to deal with me. I'm not happy with that, but that's happened. But, usually, with things going to print, it's not like I'm revealing secrets about them.

BB: You'll have a chance to vet this.

JT: I love ya. I love ya for that. I report on the business, but I'm also a promoter of the business. That doesn't mean that I can't be friends with a lot of different people who might not like each other because I like all of them in different ways. They don't have to like each other to have me as a common friend/resource/fan. I can be friendly with all of them, as much as possible. [JT3: Ok ok ok: drunken interviewees note here. I’m NOT saying that any of the aforementioned folks dislike each other. Hell, I’ve never heard any of them even mention each other specifically. Philosophically, though, hey, different folks have their own takes on the biz, and boy howdy, they ain’t gotta agree about it. In the show biz, it ain’t about agreement: It’s about generating audience.]

C. Tyler Fyre and Thrill Kill Jill

Rebecca: [Thrill Kill Jill once] finished the act with blood rolling down her face.

JT: Tyler [Fyre, Jill’s husband & co-performer] did come out and get the snake off of her. She told him to keep the music going. "No matter what, do not stop the music. I’ll keep smiling and don’t stop the music." She got off that stage and thought, "That's it. The career is over." Because she was performing during the Miss Exotic World competition. She wasn't part of the competition because that's all for burlesque queens. But she and Tyler were doing sideshow. She's doing her snake act; she's dancing around.

That snake? I'd have fried and eaten it for lunch. When they're trying to kill you, you exercise the human imperative to put it down.

She's dancing around with that thing. She lifts it up and says, "Uh, oh!" That snake went boom! There's pictures; you can see them online. She's still smiling. The snake has bitten her forehead. Their teeth are such that, once they bite, they can't get their teeth off of you. They're locked on, because the idea is that they're going to bite whatever they bite and pull it in. Every time they open their mouth and bite down, they're pulling you back.

Tyler comes out. He's trying to get the snake off her head. He manages to extricate the snake off of her. She's got blood running down her face. She's still smiling and curtsies and gets off stage.

She's like, "Oh, crap. This is it. I've blown my rep. It's all over. In front of all these burlesque queens, I've screwed my act up."

Instead, after that act, she says, it was instant cred. All these burlesque queens went, "I can't believe you finished the act!" They were all in awe of her. They all back up now whenever she gets introduced. They all have a different mode of what puts you on top, I guess.

Rebecca: Jill's very pretty, too. She's got skin like alabaster. She's thin. Coal-dark black hair.

JT: She's drop-dead gorgeous. They're the Lucky Daredevil Thrill Show. Whose birthday party did they do? Snoop Dogg’s? P Diddy’s? They've done amazing stuff. They're a great act. Top 5 in sideshow, easily. [JT3: The Lucky Daredevils now number three, Tyler Fyre, Thrill Kill Jill & Hank Lightning, who was born July 4, 2011.]

D. David Carradine

JT: Never met him.

BB: Shit. [everyone laughs]

JT: You'll have to talk to that sword swallower friend of mine, Charon Henning. She met him.

BB: He was into some weird stuff.

JT: Hey, it's only weird stuff if you get caught dead. Other than that, it's only weird if you tell people.

BB: He was caught dead, wasn't he?

JT: Yes, he was. Sad, but true. I only know Carradine care of the show [the History Channel documentary Wild West Tech, hosted by Carradine and featuring James as a commentator].

P: There was a little fella with him. His little sidekick.

JT: I don't remember who that was. I know I never met the little guy who was with him either. I know of him just from the show. There's a million and one little people doing entertainment. It's a much more common physical difference than most of the other people with other physical differences who have done sideshow and worked the business otherwise.

Danny Black runs Short Dwarf, which is a talent agency, literally, for little people. That's mostly all he does is little people. Danny's a piece of work; what a character he is. He's funny as Hell.

There's a lot of them getting into sideshow now. It's like the rebirth of the freak show. Everyone says, "Well, it's the pornography of disability!" Well, tell it to the guy over there with the lobster hands that wants to get into the show. There are a lot of people proud to be called freaks getting into the business.

BB: Other than Coney Island, what sideshows are there out there?

JT: There's one called 999 Eyes out of Austin. There's Hellsapoppin which has freaks in it. Whenever Tyler and Jill perform, they always try to get a freak act. Matt Fraser, who did a documentary I was in, which was on Channel 4 in London, did a documentary called "Seal Boy Freak". He's one of the thalidomide kids. He started out as a magician and a sometimes entertainer separate from his band. His first cd was called Short-Armed and Dangerous. Matt's a piece of work, too. A real sweetheart. He's marrying burlesque queen Julie Atlas Muz up in Coney Island last I heard.

E. Oofty Goofty

JT: Everything I know about Oofty Goofty, you saw in [one of the sideshow episodes of Wild West Tech]. The only reason I remembered Oofty Goofty is because I’m a huge fan of [Herbert] Asbury and his books. He wrote a book called, The Barbary Coast. The big book that everybody knows from Asbury is The Gangs of New York. But he wrote a pile of other books. He wrote one called The French Quarter, all about New Orleans, which is a great book. But the one called The Barbary Coast, which is all about San Francisco’s waterfront, that’s where Oofty Goofty and most of what was written about him is from. It’s only 3 or 4 paragraphs. It’s not a lot.

BB: Not a lot is known about him, then?

JT: No. Everything you saw on that show is everything that’s known about Oofty Goofty, as far as I know, except that I have his bat buried in my back yard. [JT3: A great deal more on Oofty Goofty was published recently on-line. See my note below. Sure as hell surprised me.]

BB: You told me that story. It’s apocryphal.

JT: “The apocryphal bat of Oofty Goofty”. I like that.

P: What was his real name?

JT: I haven’t a clue. Nobody knows what his real name was. It’s like anybody who came and went along the Barbary Coast. Good luck believing anything that they told you anyway. It was all these guys trying desperately to escape the law, or guys who fell off from being shanghaied from whatever ship that docked. It was a wild and wooly time, during the heyday of the Barbary Coast in the 19th century.

But that whole hunk of America was just mobbed up with goofball characters that guys like Asbury loved to write about. Oofty Goofty’d walk around with a bat and charge people money to give him a whack with it to show them he could survive any blow, until, of course, he ran into a prize fighter who beat him senseless.

BB: John L. Sullivan, apparently.

JT: That’s right. He breathed rather oddly after that encounter. Oofty Goofty, not Sullivan.

BB: I wonder if John L. Sullivan ever wrote about that incident. I wonder if he ever mentioned that he beat this guy, Oofty Goofty?

JT: You know, that’s a good question.

BB: Because there was a Canadian heavyweight champion 100 years ago named Tommy Burns. John L. Sullivan and those guys from that period would never fight black people. They just refused to do it. They were racist pigs. Jack London wrote hateful things about black people.

JT: Oh, hateful things about all kinds of people. Great writer, but you have to read past that stuff.

BB: He’s revered, but it’s hard to look past that stuff. But John L. Sullivan was that way himself. You’d think that a fairly famous guy like John L. Sullivan must have written a book. He must have had a biography, and I wonder if he mentioned Oofty Goofty.

JT: In all honesty, I don’t know.

Rebecca: Google it.

JT: As soon as you get past using Google for the sake of spell check.

[JT3: John L. Sullivan did, indeed, write an autobiography, entitled Reminiscences of a 19th Century Gladiator. And much more is now available on Oofty Goofty, some of the best appearing at http://www.sfcityguides.org/public_guidelines.html?article=1326&submitted=TRUE&srch_text=&submitted2=&topic=San%20Francisco%20Characters]

F. Zip the Pinhead and Schlitzie

JT: [Zip] is buried in New Jersey. I think he finally has a tombstone. A buddy and I were going to get together and do a fund-raising thing out of Coney Island to raise money to get a tombstone for Zip, but I think somebody already put a tombstone out there.

BB: He has one of those stones that are flush with the ground. Are you saying he has a full-fledged tombstone now?

JT: Not that I know of. There never used to be anything other than barely a marker. The fact that there is something there now is different than it ever used to be.

BB: After working 65 years in the industry, there wasn’t enough money to bury him properly?

JT: He apparently died with a lot of money. But how much of that is apocryphal? I don’t know. He apparently owned a chicken farm; maybe he didn’t. He apparently had an I.Q. that wasn’t moronic. Supposedly, on his deathbed, his last words were, “We sure fooled them, didn’t we?”

Rebecca: But he looked that way.

JT: Well, he looked like a pinhead because he had this funny-shaped head with this tuft of hair on the back. But as [“King of the Sideshows”] Ward Hall will tell you, “I’ve seen lots of pinheads on the midway. Find anybody with a funny head and get him to say, ‘Yeah, I’ll do that!’ Cut their hair funny. Do everything you can to accentuate the weird shape of their head, and get them out there on stage to act like they’re goofy. People will believe whatever you tell them.”

But I think it’s more than likely that Zip was not particularly intelligent and really was microcephalic. Who knows?

Rebecca: Well, somebody had to care for him.

JT: Yes, but the guys who were associated with him never quite went on the record with any of that stuff. Literally, to his dying day, you could find show guys who, in print, would say, “No. Sorry. Guy was a pinhead; he was an idiot. Had to be cared for completely, soup to nuts.”

Other guys would be like, “Nope. Sorry. He was a lot smarter than you think he was.”

That’s one of those legends that won’t go away. How are you going to prove it? Whom are you going to believe, and why are you going to believe them over somebody else? It’s different when you get the guys like Schlitzie. He, inarguably, had the brainpower of an orange.

You know Zippy, the comic strip?

BB: Yes.

JT: Zippy is actually based on Schlitzie.

BB: I thought it might be based on Zip the Pinhead.

JT: No. Not at all, other than the name. Sort of. Schlitzie had quite the career, too. He used to do a magic trick on stage. The magic trick consisted of Schlitzie showing you a deck of cards. You’d pick a card. You’d give the card back, and Schlitzie would pick your card out of there. Well, the deck of cards was all the same damn card. Any idiot could do that trick, and an idiot did.

Zippy is male, but he always wears a dress. That’s because most pinheads were always dressed up as females because it was easier to take care of their bathroom needs by putting them in a dress.

Schlitzie was in a bunch of movies. Boston Blackie is the one you can actually find fairly readily. A “B” detective film.

BB: Boston Blackie was on the radio for a long time, too.

JT: I think the film’s called Meet Boston Blackie. Schlitzie’s in it, as a pinhead, as a sideshow performer. He was in a bunch of other goofy movies, too. He was also in a 1930‘s eugenics film. He was right out of the mental institution, looking not very happy, and looking very male, with about 3 days’ worth of beard. What an embarrassing and horrible movie. “Does this really deserve to live? Wouldn’t it be better to put them to death?” The ‘30‘s was all about that crap. That’s the rise of Nazism, you know. It was a “worthless to the species” attitude. And, what’s Schlitzie going to do to object? “Go walk over there and lay down on that bed.”

But Schlitzie was only happy when he was on stage.

Rebecca: That’s when everybody treated him special.

JT: Yes. He was the centre of attention. He’d get up there and be goofy and nuts. People were laughing and carrying on. He was having a gay old time.

BB: I’ll have to check out that Boston Blackie movie. I used to listen to Boston Blackie OTR shows in the 1970‘s. My favourite threat ever was in a Boston Blackie episode. Someone said to Boston Blackie, “What if he slams the door in your face?” Boston Blackie goes, “I’ll slam his face into the door!” I was 12 years old when I heard that, and I’ve never forgotten it.

JT: [Laughs] I love that. That’s priceless. I’ll have to remember that one.

BB: Has there ever been a book about Zip the Pinhead?

JT: A guy’s writing one now.

BB: Give him my card.

JT: I shall indeed.

I get contacted by people, I swear to God, every week, working on some project or other. Stephen Cox? The guy that wrote the books on all the munchkins of Oz? He’s in the middle of a book on Robert Wadlow, the tallest man in recorded history. I was back and forth with him a couple of months back. He’s a really funny character, too. He just loves that old-time entertainment stuff.

BB: So a fella’s writing a book about Zip the Pinhead?

JT: Yes. But it’s been a while since I’ve heard from him. Everybody’s writing a book about everybody. William Lindsay Gresham, the guy that wrote Nightmare Alley and Monster Midway and a bunch of books on Houdini and scams and cons and stuff, is having a bio written on him by a guy I was back and forth with emailing... oh, it’s been 10 years now. That book’s still not out there.

These guys, they either run out of gas, or they get the book and they can’t get it published after a dozen or two submissions. They get sick of it and let it sit. Or they self-publish it and it goes nowhere. It can be a pretty sad business that way.

BB: Or, even researching that stuff, with all the contradictory information. After a while, you think, “Well, what the Hell do I do here? Do I have a book here? If I can’t take a point of view, if people keep contradicting each other, what am I supposed to do?”

JT: Well, you know, those talk show guys do that all the time. If you can’t argue the facts, argue the argument. Actually, there’s a lot to be said for not being able to say definitively what happened here, here or here. That itself speaks to the nature of the business and the nature of how people ran their lives in terms of that business.

The piece we did on the “Fartomaniac” [JT3: aka Le Petomane], the piece we ran in Shock in Amazed!, was driven by the fact that in the great days of vaudeville and La Moulin Rouge and all the rest of it, he was one of the most hysterical acts in Paris. He outgrossed Sarah Bernhart.

BB: Farts are still funny.

JT: They are. And, if you can get up there and do it to music, more power to you.

My partner in the American Dime Museum had heard a rumour that Pujol was invented, that it was made up, that it was all just like a joke book that had been done back in the late ‘60‘s: The biography, supposedly written by the grandson was out, published. It was an inspiration to all kinds of guys. Ricky Jay. Mel Brooks. All these comics and entertainers and performers who came out of the ‘60‘s and ‘70‘s, all worshipped the idea that there was this guy who made money getting up on stage and farting.

But there was always this rumour running around that the guy never existed, and that’s because there wasn’t anything in English on him prior to that biography. It was all wink-wink, nudge-nudge, it never really happened. My ex-partner in the American Dime Museum was an idea-a-minute character for how we could get attention for the museum. One of his ideas was that we would hold a press conference saying that we had done all this extensive research on Joseph Pujol and come to the decision that it was all made up, it was all a scam, it was all bullshit, and he didn’t exist.

Either way, as he saw it, it was a win-win. We’d get all this attention. If he did really exist, then we’d be all like, “Oh, jeez. Sorry. Our mistake.” If he didn’t exist, we’d be the ones that outted the fact that everybody else had been hoodwinked by this damned biography.

My line to him was, “If we get shown up as having farted in front of the media without good reason, I, as a historian, am going to look like an asshole. You’re just going to look like a guy who makes Feejee mermaids. I don’t think this one’s going to fly, pal!”

I put the kibosh on that. But, in the meantime, I had gotten this guy who was a medical researcher who was out of Philadelphia, and he wrote that piece [in Shocked and Amazed!] as a matter of fact. I said, “Go ahead, and find what you can find.” Of course, what he found was the reason we don’t know much about Pujol in the English speaking world is because Joseph Pujol was French, and he performed in the late 1800‘s and early 1900‘s. Not a lot of that crap about a guy who farted for a living got translated into English. So, what are you going to know? The primary sources are in a language that we can’t easily access. I thought, “I’m glad we didn’t call that press conference; I’d look like an asshole.” No reference to Fartomaniac intended.

G. Harry Anderson

JT: He's huge. He's like 6'9"

P: He looks kind of lanky and scrawny.

JT: He's bigger now because he's older; he's bulked up some. He looks like a damned lumberjack.

P: Is he on steroids or something? The little judge.

JT: "The Little Judge". Nice!

P: I think of him on Night Court.

JT: Before that, he was a con man and a magician. An amazing magician, actually. Funny, funny fella. [JT3: And Harry and his wife, Elizabeth, owned the amazing and now, sadly, defunct magic & sideshow emporium, Sideshow, and the also now-closed variety club, Oswald’s, both in New Orleans.]

H. Willa Mae Buckner

JT: If there’s to be a volume 11, I know that the front cover is going to be Willa Mae Buckner, The Wild Enchantress, who was an African-American Blues singer, Jazz/lounge singer, and sideshow performer and sideshow owner in her day. Willa Mae was a hilarious character; I’ve been promising her biggest fan, a lady from North Carolina, where Willa Mae was based, a cover for a lot of volumes.

When I interviewed Willa Mae Buckner, her house was about the size of these two rooms [the cottage living room and kitchen], probably had about 3 pieces of furniture in it, aside from the stand-up ragtime piano, and what few tchotchkes were sitting around the room were being pushed on the floor by her 25 foot albino python, which roamed around the entire time I was interviewing her. She’s like, “Don’t pay him no mind. He won’t bother you!” Damned if he didn’t bother me, as a matter of fact. I watched him go straight up the side of the piano, the way snakes do, where you can’t believe they’re doing it, but they’re getting all stiff and snaking up the side, literally, of the piano. He got across the top of the piano. Then he moved his eight-inch-in-diameter bulk across the top of the piano. He’s pushing pictures and crap off the top of that piano onto the floor. She’s got no rugs, just a bare wood floor. It’s crawling down the other side and snaking around.

Before I left, she points at her snakes and she said, “Yeah, I just had two of these born, these two right here. I’m gonna name one of them after you!”

I was like, “That’s fine by me, Willa. You do whatever you feel you have to do.”

BB: Willa Mae would have worked all those years. At the end of her life, she would only have had a small house to show for it, with 3 pieces of furniture in it?

JT: The thing about the entertainment business is that we all base what we think the entertainment business is on guys making zillions of dollars a year. The Angelina Jolie’s, the Brad Pitt’s. That’s the “entertainment business”. But there’s 3 dozen of them compared with 3 million of all those other guys who might have a big pay day once in a while. Maybe in their day, they may have been millionaires, but they don’t quite finish their lives like that, usually. Say what you want to about that entertainment crowd, but they’re not all very good with their money and some never made very much more than a living. It’s a boom-and-bust business.

Unless, in the business, you recognize that the attention you’re getting, not just today, but now, you won’t be getting tomorrow, and that includes the money that you’re getting now compared with this time tomorrow, [unless you recognize that, you may be in for a huge disappointment]. Look at your life like, “I can’t spend any more than I have. Everything’s got to be lean, mean, and I have to think about the fact that I have no retirement [pension] in this. I’m essentially self-employed.” You have to think that way constantly, because otherwise you end up like a lot of entertainers: with amazing memories, amazing stories, and not much else. That’s the way a lot of people finish in the entertainment business.

Certainly, most of the ones in the sideshow end up that way. In Shocked and Amazed!, one of the serialized pieces is by an old show guy named Walt Hudson. The first serialized bit we ran with him was I Was A Teenage Blockhead; the next batch is what we’re doing now, which is Coney Island Baby; the third batch, if we keep doing Shocked and Amazed!, will be about his days performing in the amusement parks. He was always a sideshow guy doing these wacky stunts and learning how to swallow swords and stuff. But his line to me when I first met him in the early days of Shocked and Amazed! was, “I got out of school, I knew what I wanted. I wanted to be able to retire.” And he did. He did all that stuff based on, “I do this as a sideline. I do this as a hobby. I do this for the fun. But I’m getting a real job. I’m getting a sucker job. That’s what I’m gonna do, because I’m gonna get a retirement out of this. I’m gonna get a payday when it’s all over.”

Literally, he was a professional magician. He made some money and got attention as an entertainer. He’s always been a writer. He’s written for magic magazines his whole life.

BB: The Linking Ring, or whatever?

JT: Yes. All of that. New Tops was one of them. He wrote for White Tops for a while. And, of course, he’s written for Shocked and Amazed! He wrote for Circus Report for years. He looks at all the “kids”, as he calls them in the business. A lot of them are kids to me. But even guys who are closer to my age... Walt goes, “These kids don’t have any sense. What are they going to do when it comes time to retire? They’re not going to have anything.”

He forgets that what drives people to do that business, drives them to do things most of the rest of us “suckers”, the rest of us rubes, would think was insane. “What are you going to do when you hit 65? Social security? How much is that going to give you? Do you think you’ll be able to live on that? You’ll have nothing.” But you can’t stop them. It’s what they want. They devote their lives to it, and that’s the way it goes.

Even in the old days of the show business, these guys would basically get old and end up in some sort of stumble bum fashion around the shows, and just go out horizontal. Just die on the job. Die, trying to work the last spot. But it’s something that gets in the blood. They don’t know any other way to live their lives. That’s what they do.

It’s something I really admire. I tell people all the time, “Of all the friends that I have and have had, the ones I have always admired the most are the ones who didn’t do the route that I did.”

John Strausbaugh out of New York has always been a newspaper guy. Good luck on making that work for you nowadays. Those guys will get rid of your ass in a heartbeat. He was the editor of New York Press. The guy who owned that press sold it; the first thing the new owners did, they fired Strausbaugh. He had a big job, big money. Totally out of work.

BB: Presently?

JT: What he does now is ghostwrite autobiographies and write his own books, fiction and nonfiction. John’s had a dozen books out. Some great stuff. A friend of mine, Nick Aumiller, has always been a painter and a sculptor. Any job that he has ever had, has been just to keep food in his stomach and a roof over his head, and all the rest went to the art. Nick’s line to me years ago was, “You know, I never did a major painting that it didn’t cost me a job.” He’d get working and get working. Then he’d forget to go to work. He’s an amazing painter. He’s got 2 Master’s degrees. And now he’s a caricaturist; that’s his job. But he’d much rather be making money painting.

Scott Huffines’ another one. He created Atomic Books and was partnered with me on Shocked and Amazed! store sales in the early days. Scott had been a guy who ran food services for a major hospital. He was making huge money. He had the fiancée who did everything in the world to make sure he kept making huge money. And he said to himself, “You know what I want to do? I want to run a wacky, goofy, dirty book store!” He literally walked away from all of it and created Atomic Books. He lost the fiancée. He lost the house. He lost all of it. But he was the happiest SOB who walked the face of the earth. Then he went bankrupt with Atomic Books. But he gave it a shot. If he had had the mind and the backers to do Atomic the way it should have been done, he’d have been Amazon.com now, because Amazon was nothing when Scott was out there, doing online book sales like Amazon was. Amazon was one of his prime competitors. But those guys had a business model that Scott didn’t. Scott wanted to do this wacky, goofy little thing that was based on his own way of doing it. The idea that he’d have to get out there and kiss up to rich people ... he didn’t want to do that.

But, no, my biggest buddies in life have always been guys who were willing to say, “You know, I’m probably gonna starve to death, but I’m going to do this thing.”

BB: I'm fascinated about minstrelsy. There was a documentary on PBS a few years ago about Vaudeville. There was overlap.

JT: There was tons of overlap in the entertainment business.

BB: Burlesque was woven in there.

JT: Some.

BB: But there were African Americans performers --

JT: Bert Williams.

BB: Pigmeat Markham. It’s hard for a 21st century person to look back 100 years and try to understand why a person would dress in blackface.

JT: Well, I’m no expert on minstrelsy, but the origins of minstrelsy in America go back to the early days of the 19th century. It was less about what today we think minstrelsy is. Today, we see it as this horrifyingly racist institution that’s better off dead, forgotten, and not even spoken about. But, in its day, minstrelsy was monstrously successful, for a huge block of time. And it wasn’t because, gee, it made fun of black people. It was because it was entertaining to watch. There were any number of blacks who worked minstrelsy, and worked in blackface. [Bevboy Note: There are songs sung today that began as minstrelsy tunes: Two examples are “Camptown Races” and “Oh! Susanna”. The original lyrics can be had via a simple google search]

Bert Williams, who was probably the most famous black minstrel who ever worked, supported huge numbers of other entertainers because he was one of the most famous entertainers of his day. He literally pulled any number of other show producers out of bankruptcy, out of the goodness of his heart, because he admired them as producers and admired them as fellow entertainers. He knew what he could raise by way of money. When he walked out on stage, he was money walking out on stage. He couldn’t get off the stage unless he sang his song, “Nobody”. If he didn’t do that, the audience wouldn’t leave the theater.

We have a hard time understanding minstrelsy today because we see it, again, as this racist institution. But, in its infancy, in its birth, as John Strausbaugh is writing in Black Like You, it was the early 19th century’s rock n’ roll.

BB: Yes, with performers like Thomas Dartmouth Rice and Jump Jim Crow.

JT: Yes.

BB: African-Americans would dress in blackface. Some would have it so that their faces were darker; some would have them lighter.

JT: Because, you know why? Blackface is a mask. It’s what it is. One could argue that in the oldest traditions of the theater, it was all about playing the role. The role is representative of the man. What’s Oscar Wilde’s line? “The mask reveals the man.” That’s what minstrelsy was. The idea that Bert Williams would ever work out of blackface, Bert Williams’ line was, “That’s the act. Blackface isn’t making fun of me. I know what I am, and I know who I am. It’s not what I am on stage, as that role.” You talk about the End Man, and Bones, and the Interlocutor. All those were roles that represented certain things within that form of theatrics. You broke with those modes of entertainment at your peril because people would be, like, “What’s this? What’s going on with that? I expect to see a certain thing out of this.”

It’s like when you break with traditions in filmmaking. There are certain things that if you try to do in film, even today, people won’t pay to see it. They won’t watch it, because they expect certain things out of certain theatrical modes. And, that’s what minstrelsy was.

BB: It sounds like your fascination is with the entertainment business in general, even more so than with just the “weird” acts. Is that a fair statement?

JT: Whenever someone says, “What’s your favourite volume?”, I always say, “The next one.” That’s the line you use. But, really, volume 9 finally represented for me what Shocked and Amazed! is supposed to be, which was a very big tent. Shocked and Amazed! might have, at some levels, in its origins and inspiration, been driven by, “I want to know what it’s like to work in a freak show.” But, really, at its core, I’ve always been fascinated with the stories and with the way the business worked, less than how you swallow a sword. What I really wanted to know was, “How do you turn that into an act?” How do you turn smearing your face with burnt cork into an act? How does that work? Those mechanics, that stuff, is what I’ve always wanted to have reported on in Shocked and Amazed! That’s why, really, Tim Cridland, the Torture King’s interview, is important. Manuel King is a great interview. John Strausbaugh’s excerpt from Black Like You. And the piece on medicine shows. That kind of stuff is what I wanted to move Shocked and Amazed! in the direction of since volume one, because it talks about all of that other entertainment. All of that stuff that you don’t realize is impacting, how it’s influenced other forms of entertainment.

When you think about it, every time you turn on that tv, you’re watching a damn medicine show. What medicine show was, “Give them a little show. Pitch something to them to buy. Give them a little more show. Pitch something to them to buy.” That’s exactly what [commercial] tv is. All of those forms of entertainment had to get their inspiration from somewhere, and that was a fairly successful form. It was a way to pitch more than just the act. When you try to pitch an act, how do you make money out of, “Well, I’m showing this guy; he’s being entertaining.” Well, how do you get the viewer to pony up when the means of communication are effectively free, like radio was? Or like tv used to be? When it’s free, how do you make money off of it? Well, you make money off of what you’re pitching. You make money off those commercials. And, that takes its cues directly from medicine show. But you talk to most people about where this all comes from, and they don’t have a clue.

The ways minstrelsy feeds into things. The way all that cross-racial stuff still works. Because, really, the whole notion of drag is still really important in entertainment. If you troop some guy out there dressed as a babe, I’m sorry, it’s minstrelsy. That’s what it is. It’s black drag. It’s female drag. And, that’s what acting kinda is from Square One anyway, because anytime you put on a role, you’re in drag. You’re in that character. You’re not you any more.

BB: Is it possible for a white man to have a discussion about minstrelsy with a black man without coming across as racist?

JT: Oh, sure. I think John Strausbaugh in Black Like You does an admirable job of it. There’s an essay at the conclusion of the book by an African-American guy living in Berlin. That afterpiece was John’s way of saying, “Hey, look. We can see this in ways as other than racist. We can see this as an American experiment, if you will, an entertainment experiment in how whites and blacks do and do not deal well with each other, and how it’s been this dance since the dawn of the country.” It was a relationship that might have been born predominantly in slavery, and that makes it problematic and troublesome, but you ignore it or bury it at your peril.

In America, for example, God forbid you ever talk about free blacks. The idea is, “There were white people who were free, and black people who were slaves.” Well, not totally. There was a small coterie of blacks who actually fought for the confederacy. It’s not like it was the overwhelming majority by any means, and it’s it’s a kind of weirdly embarrassing thing to look at, but it happened.

The idea of the American Civil War is that it was all about slavery. Well, yes, but not exactly the way most of us now think. The War of the Rebellion was a war over a way of life, which was upheld by slavery. But it was also a war over your representation in Congress because if, politically, the slaves represent a certain percentage of the vote, but they don’t really have the vote, they represent a percentage of what kind of power you’re going to have in politics in Congress, which is what they did. But they had no vote. You got power in Congress based on their numbers. If what you’re saying is they’re freed, they all get the vote; look how many of them there are. You’re not going to have the way of life you had before when they get the vote. It was all that kind of mix. It’s about slavery in its way, but slavery in quotes, in a way, where it’s simultaneously as brutal and as ugly as it looked, and as subtly octopus-like, invasive and tentacled throughout the culture in ways that you never think about; you don’t even have a conscious notion that it’s going on.

Think about all the things that blacks in America have contributed to that most people, until fairly recently, either didn’t want to credit them with or never really thought about. So much of the music; so much of the theater; so much of all of it. It applies to a lot of the segments of American culture anyway. It’s an argument that makes a lot of black people nuts, in terms of people’s rights and all. A lot of gays make the same argument, “Hey, look. We might not have come from slavery, but the same kind of prejudices get applied to us.” All I can ever think about, though, is Elizabeth Taylor’s line: “No gays, no entertainment business.” She’s got a point. You live your life in disguise. When you become an adult, living a life of pretend, it comes naturally. Why shouldn’t you, if you have any notion of getting in front of people with this difference, and this ability, to be someone else, why not get on the stage and do it?

You have to be careful, when you walk on the terrain of assuming that someone who’s black can’t hear a white’s perspective on minstrelsy, the same way that the assumption can be made that someone who’s white can’t understand a black’s perspective on it.

I think if someone who’s black comes to minstrelsy with a high-bound notion that everything about it is racist, that’s as ignorant of all the facts as somebody who’s white coming to it, looking at it, and going, “Oh, come on! It was just in fun.” Which is also stupid and wrong.

If you look at the really serpentine kind of way that black and white have intermixed and intermingled, since the dawn of the relationship, blacks and whites have always been oddly and perversely fascinated with the ways one another acts and does and is. It’s simultaneously weird and off-putting. It’s sexy, exotic, and odd. Then, when you really get down to it, it’s like, “We’re just people, aren’t we?” When you get to that point, it’s like, “What was all this mess about? What were we upset about?” It’s a funny thing to take part in and be part of. You can’t not.

America’s a black and white exercise. That’s why it was such a huge deal to elect Obama. Then we find out he’s just a politician. Oh, crap! [laughs] What did you think he was going to be? He’s the president. Come on!

BB: There are audio recordings of Jump Jim Crow [the classic minstrel song]. There’s a university in the States that managed to find these vintage recordings, these old cylinder recordings, and digitized them. I’ve played a few of them.

JT: They’re out there. And they’re pretty amazing. You want to go to YouTube. You’ll find three dozen people doing it on YouTube. But the other thing you want to go to is archiphone.com. Archiphone is “sound before radio.” It’s some amazing stuff. A fair amount is recordings of people you wouldn’t even have thought had been recorded. Barnum was actually recorded. Not very much. When he passed away, audio had just started. But they found a recording of Whitman. It’s only one line from “Leaves of Grass”, I think. But it’s amazing, the people who were recorded in the very earliest days of audio: some prominent politicians and performers. But you’ll find Jump Jim Crow out there.

BB: You founded Dolphin-Moon Press way back in 1973. Tell me about how you started your own publishing house.

JT: It’s been a long time since anyone talked about those origins. In ‘73, I and my brother and his girlfriend at the time were in writing classes with my writing mentor, poet Michael Egan. He basically said, “Hey, you guys want some extra credit? I’ll let you set up a class whereby what you do for this class is that the 3 of you create a journal.”

That’s what we did. We created a magazine called CAIM. CAIM, as a name, is actually a name for a fallen angel, one of Lucifer’s minions. But CAIM had a weird lineage. One of the things that CAIM, the fallen angel, was empowered to do was speak with the birds, which we thought was a pretty sexy thing.

We created this literary journal. For the next couple of years, we published this completely lunatic journal that was basically a portfolio with all sorts of loose attachments and wacky enclosures. It was an unbound magazine. We had records in them, and notecards and all kinds of stuff.

After 3 or 4 years of delving into the very bottommost depths of bankruptcy, we finally had that paid off, but the journal was dead.

The Press was dormant for a couple of years after that. I and another writer, Anne Leaver, brought it back from the dead and decided, “You know, it needs to make some money. It needs to get involved in a lot more public media and all of that.” It got tied into a number of writers who had the same ideas. It got a lot more successful in the second incarnation.

BB: How did you come up with the name “Dolphin-Moon Press”?

JT: We didn’t have a name for the press originally. Originally it was just the journal CAIM, but we were looking for a name for the press. My brother had come across a story in a Pacific Island mythological text about a group of islanders who, under a certain phase of the moon, in order to survive, would all go down to the beach. There was a song they’d sing. The dolphins would be attracted to this song, beach themselves and be killed by the islanders for food.

I realize that’s not a very pleasant, happy ending for the dolphins. But, by the same token, the idea of there being a dolphin phase of the moon when these dolphins would provide sustenance for these happy, singing islanders, had a sexy ring to it for us. In the meantime, I came across, in an old Greek text, an illustration from a piece of ancient Greek pottery that had a dolphin in the form of a sickle moon. We stole the image from the ancient Greeks and it became the logo for Dolphin-Moon Press. It was bankruptcy with gay abandon thereafter.

But Shocked and Amazed! came into that later on. I’d been doing all that high end literary stuff for a bunch of years before that.

BB: Can we get back to the journal for just a second?

JT: Sure!

BB: I don’t want to be offensive, but ...

JT: By all means, I’ll be if you’re not.

BB: I find that “literary fiction” is the kind of stuff I don’t want to read because I need to read fiction that has a plot. No offense. Is that the kind of stuff you published? Fiction with no plot?

JT: Gee, I’m not sure how to respond to that.

BB: Stuff happened to people?

JT: Yes. There was a lot of poetry. Mostly, CAIM was poetry. It was actually a combo of poetry and artwork. A lot of illustrations. A lot of photographic work. But, when CAIM died, and the press ended up being reborn a couple of years later, every project had to basically, visually, physically represent what was in it. So, no two objects ever ended up looking the same. We published books that there this wide and this tall; we published books that literally were like what CAIM was, where it was all loose stuff in folders. We published record albums. Books with die-cut holes in front of them, and you’d see parts of what was going on behind them. You’d open them up, and it’s a different thing. Books that read one way this way, and you’d flip them over and read them the other way.

The thing that we didn’t recognize at the time, because media penetration meant nothing to us, was that there’s a reason why books can be fairly boring to look at: They’re all the same basic shapes and sizes. It’s because that’s the way books end up being stocked in stores. That’s why there are standard sizes for things. As far as we were concerned, that was of absolutely no importance at all. It was more important that the object be true to the artistic vision of the people involved with it (us, as well as the authors).

So, the books were just impossible to find outside of us doing direct sales. But they were beautiful objects. They were Art. Fiction, poetry, and a lot of creative non-fiction, which is how it all ended up being for me the entry into Shocked and Amazed!

BB: Did you publish any authors who went on to have significant careers?

JT: Oh, there were authors with careers before we even showed up to ask them to be part of it. William Burroughs. A writer by the name of Peter Wilde had a fairly huge presence in American writing back in the ‘70‘s and early ‘80‘s. John Logan, who had been nominated for poetry consultant at the Library of Congress at one point. Josephine Jacobson, who was poetry consultant at the Libary of Congress [a position now called Poet Laureate of the United States].

Rebecca: Michael Weaver.

JT: Yes. Michael Weaver, one of whose books we did.

Rebecca: Judson Jerome.

JT: Judson Jerome [once poetry editor for Writer’s Digest]. We published one of Seifert’s books, Dressed in Light. Seifert’d won the Nobel Prize.

We published a lot of fairly big deal “name” writers, but we also published a lot of other people who, as far as were concerned, their work, whether or not ... how do I want to word this? We really weren’t after a “polish,” in an academic sense. What we were after was work that spoke unlike anyone else’s, and work that revealed the writer in ways we didn’t care whether it spoke to a writing seminar or some place. We didn’t give a damn about all of that, which unfortunately for us put us on the outside of all of that. All of the channels that you might normally have had to get attention at the media level that we could have been seeking, we weren’t because we were thumbing our noses at all of that. It made for some great publishing, but it was real tough to get anybody to pay any attention to you.

Rebecca: Plus, poetry doesn’t sell.

JT: Yes. Not in America, anyway! We should have been doing this in Iceland. There’s a lot of poetry that sells in Iceland. But we weren’t doing it in Icelandic. That wouldn’t have helped us at all, come to think of it.

BB: OK. So, eventually you decided to revive Dolphin-Moon Press. You published Shocked and Amazed! under that press.

JT: That’s a funny story in itself because, originally, I had New York publishers for it. I had thought that it would be a collection of interviews. I went out and interviewed a whole boatload of these old timers. I transcribed the first of the interviews, which was with an old showman by the name of Ward Hall, "King of the Sideshows". Ward's a funny old duck himself.

I took the transcription of that interview and my introduction to it, and my outro to it, and I showed it to my people in New York. They're like, "These interviews are kind of boring."

"They're not boring to me, and I don't think they'll be boring to anybody else."

They're like, "Look, you're a great writer. Why don't you take [the interviews] and use lots of quotes, and you can fill in the middle."

BB: It's not an interview, then.

JT: No. It's not. I said, "Well, I made a promise to these people. The promise that I made was I'm not going to do that to them, what every other goofball writer has done who's ever told them they were going to remain ‘true to the spirit of the business.’” Because, by the time you finish putting in your 2 cents, you make it look like, "There but for me there would be none of this." That's what happens with these guys who reframe and revise what the interviews have been.

I went into about a year-long writer's block, trying to figure out what to do with this project, because my New York peopled wanted me to do something that I couldn't do. I'd have had no integrity at all, as far as these show people were concerned, to have done this.

I ended up talking to a lot of the showpeople about it. Ward Hall's advice to me was, "Just do your own book. Just do your own thing. You have a publishing house. Self-publish the stuff."

It's not like I hadn't before. A lot of people confuse vanity publishing with self-publishing. They're not the same thing at all. The more I thought about it, I thought, "Well, I like the idea of somebody else carrying this one out of New York. That would have been sweet." But, the other side to that is, I was planning a book. When you do the book, it's over. And I'd fallen in love with the business. The idea that, basically, once the book is done, then what do you do? Another book? But if I turn it into this journal, I could keep reporting on the business and keep associating with it, keep in touch with the people.

That's what ended up happening. I ended up having Shocked and Amazed! being published out of Dolphin-Moon Press. In fact, it's now the principal publication. It's not like we haven't published anything else over the years, but that's its principal publication. I've stayed in tune and in touch with the people in the business and been reporting on it since '95, when volume one came out.

Talk about media penetration. Shocked and Amazed!, in most ways, has ended up being a license to get ink. It's been the project that's probably been the most successful at the public exposure level. Not just for me. I look at it as, it's also exposure for the business. I've been pulled into more things and been allowed to pull more people from the business into things than might have happened otherwise. I'm happy that I've been there for the business for that.

BB: Whenever they do a documentary on television for circus sideshows, you're the go-to guy for that, it seems.

JT: Yes. And I've been happy for it, too.

BB: Do you get paid a fee for that, by the way?

JT: Well, there's getting paid; and then there's getting paid. Nobody makes money off television unless you happen to be David Letterman or somebody. There's some money, but mostly you're not really doing it for the bucks at the tv level. What you're doing it for at the tv level is the exposure for the project. That's what that's really about. That's helped a lot.

But it's always a tough sell. One of the things I learned early on was that, however sexy you want books to be, books ain't sexy. Writers really ain't too sexy. They have to figure out ways and means and hooks to come across that way, to be media sexy, to have the media want to come to them. One of the things I learned early on, care of the show people hounding me about it, was, "You know, books get ink once in a while. But a two-headed dog? That boy, he gets ink every time you bring him out!" [everyone laughs] Bring on the two-headed snakes. Bring on the Siamese Twins. Bring on the guy swallowing the sword. Bring all that stuff out. If you drag that stuff out, the media perks right up. If it's weird, strange, bizarre, odd, it will get [the media] attention.

The guy who writes about that weird, wacky stuff, it helps him with his editor because he gets the byline. Then, everybody starts making the money, the media-attention money. You start getting that kind of payday out of it. That weird, crazy stuff gets you ink. Shocked and Amazed! has been very, very good to me thereby. I've gotten a lot of tv out of it, gotten a lot of newspaper stuff.

I've got other books out of it. Melvin Burkhart had passed away. He was the original "Human Blockhead", so named by Robert Ripley. I was called by the New York Times because I had interviewed him a few volumes back for Shocked and Amazed! The people at the New York Times had talked to me about other things before. But when Melvin passed away, they went, "Look, you did that interview with him. You knew him, right?"

I was like, "Yes. Melvin and I were friends. He was a great guy."

They were like, "We want to talk to you about him." They talked to some other people as well. His obituary was half a page in the New York Times. It ended up, when the New York Times picked their 100 most important obituaries for the 20th Century, Melvin Burkhart's was in the list.

BB: Who wrote the obituary?

JT: Newspaperman named Doug Martin. He’s been pretty good to Shocked and Amazed! over the years.

Melvin was really the patron saint to all the new sideshow guys. All the younger sideshow people look at Melvin and ask, "Did you know Melvin?" Because he was that wacky old guy who could have been anything. He really was. Melvin was a really smart guy. What he chose to be was this crazy variety performer who never made a lot of money in his life. He made enough to get by. But he became the guy that everybody wanted to know in the business. He was just a real sweet character.

I was interviewed for his obituary. They used a couple of quotes of mine. Literally, the day after that obituary ran, I got a call from a publishing house outside of New York City. They're like, "So, you're in the New York Times."

"Yeah, for Melvin Burkhart's obituary. Believe me, I'm second best to the guy that just died. You should’ve talked to him."

They're like, "Well, anybody that's in the New York Times, we want to talk to!"

"Well, talk. I'm here."

"What do you think of a kind of best of Shocked and Amazed!"

"Make me an offer I can't refuse, and I'm there for you."

They threaten you with the money that these guys threaten you with, which you always imagine is going to be so much more, and you listen. But it's great having someone come to you and say, "Hey, do you want to do a book?"

"OK. I think I can do that." As opposed to sending out 9000 manuscripts and getting all of them rejected. That's not a lot of fun. That's dog labour.

So they did The Best of Shocked and Amazed! that sold really well. It immediately sold thousands of copies. Of course, all the returns started coming back a couple of months later.

BB: With the cover ripped off?

JT: They can't do that with the trades [trade paperbacks]. They only do that with the mass market [paperbacks]. The big ones, they don't strip out. You just get them back. I was buying crates of those things for a while. No book ever sells like it sells by the author. Unless you happen to be named Stephen King, forget it. For the author, direct sales is always the best. Buying it directly from the guy that wrote it is always the best way to move the merch.

But, yes, Shocked And Amazed! has been veddy, veddy good to me. And, I like to think, pretty good to the business, too. There's not been very much else out on the business ever like Shocked and Amazed! Which is the reason I wanted to make the book the way I did. There's just not a lot out there like it.

BB: Tell me about the funniest time you were mistaken for the "other" James Taylor.

[JT and Rebecca laugh]

JT: Oh, man!

BB: Don't tell me this has never happened.

Rebecca: Which is the funniest?

JT: You know the funniest, don't you? Let me see. That would have to have been 2005, when I was in New Orleans. Like an idiot, I always assume, “Gee, if you're going to make reservations at a restaurant, why shouldn't you make reservations in your own name? It was at The Court of Two Sisters. We saw Mary Travers down there one time.

BB: Oh, my God. Peter, Paul, and Mary.

JT: Yes, whom Rebecca was mistaken for the other day in the bank.

Rebecca: Of course, she's dead.

JT: Yes. She almost gave the woman at the bank a heart attack.

But, anyway, I make the reservation. I was down doing training with the Feds. I make reservations with The Court of Two Sisters because, every time I'm in New Orleans, I have to go there to get their Sunday brunch. It's a killer brunch.

They have a courtyard behind it that's all wisteria. The ceiling of the restaurant in the back of the courtyard is all wisteria. The birds are flying all around your table. They take the food right out of your hands.

I make the reservations. I go in. The hostess is a few years younger than I am. I tell her, “I have reservations for James Taylor.” She perks right up. She leads me in. She's chatting me up. It's always a friendly place to go. It's New Orleans. Everybody's got to chat you up. It is what it is.

They're asking me where I want to sit. “Do you want to sit over by the band?” They always have a little rag-time band set up in the courtyard.

“No. I'll just sit back here.” I don't want to sit next to a bunch of musicians playing away. I want to eat and be left alone.

So, I'm sitting in the back, and I'm going up to the buffet. The waitress is real happy to be dealing with me. I'm thinking, “This is really friendly today.”

I'm drinking my coffee, and the waitress comes out. She says, “So, Mr. Taylor, I'm really sorry...”

I say, “No, no, no.” I'm figuring she's giving me the bum's rush. The place is not packed, but it's getting crowded. “That's ok. I'm just about finished my coffee.”

The hostess comes out now. I'm sitting there and thinking, “I got a bad feeling about this!”

The hostess says, “Oh, Mr. Taylor. We're so glad you could show up today. We're so glad you came.”

I say, “Well, I really like this place. I try to get by whenever I'm in town.”

She says, “You know, I've always been a fan of your music.”

Inside, I'm going, “You know, there's no way to extricate myself from this that's not going to be embarrassing for me or humiliating for her because she's mistaken me for somebody I'm seriously not.”

I'm thinking, “OK. Similarities. Same name. About the same age. No hair. Big noses. Other than that, I'm working on a blank here. About the same height. This is still not working.”

She says, “But, you know, I've always been a big fan of your music. But, after about the mid-‘70's, it was like you dropped off the face of the earth.”

By this point, I'm getting up, trying to get out. I'm, like, “She has no clue that he's been making music for decades. This is great. She has no idea.” I look at her, and say, “My dear, believe me. The earth's round. You can't fall but so far. It's been great being here. I'll see you guys down the road.”

I ran out. I've never been back.

So, meanwhile, she goes out. I know what she's doing. She's saying, “I met James Taylor!” I think, “Yeah, you did.”

I go back, and I'm talking to the people who are working with me at the federal government. They're laughing. It's hilarious. I'm thinking I'm burned at The Court of Two Sisters. I can never go back. I'll have to go back under disguise. I'll have to shave all my hair or something.

So, it's the last day of the week that we're there. They're still laughing at me about this story. We're loading all this stuff to go back to the airport. I hear this, “Mr. Taylor, Mr. Taylor!” I turn around and it's the waitress!

“Are you getting ready to leave town?”

“Yeah. Just me and my people. We're flying out today.”

She walked past us on way to The Court of Two Sisters. And up steps my boss, actually. Of course, her line to me’s “Your people, huh?” Payback's a bitch. What can I tell you? You thought it was funny to start with. It's not so funny now, is it?

BB: Was this before or after Katrina?

JT: It was right before. It was June of '05. The Quarter manages to stay virtually immune to everything except total inebriation. If you've never been to New Orleans, they have the cleanest streets at dawn you've ever seen in your life.

P: I'd love to go to New Orleans.

Rebecca: Oh, it's wonderful. I wouldn't want to live there, but it's beautiful.

BB: Well, there's the historical link between Nova Scotia and Louisiana.

JT: Right after the bars close, which is 3am, literally the cops are in walls just marching down Bourbon Street, getting people off the street, running them out of the Quarter. Right behind them is this immense street cleaning equipment. They are scrubbing those streets within an inch of their lives. You get up dawn. The streets are wet and clean.

Rebecca: Plus, people come out in front of their shops and spray down and sweep everything.

JT: It's a funny hunk of the planet. You can see it all happen on Bourbon Street. Everything goes. But you try to walk off Bourbon Street with it, there will be cops standing there. Guys walking down the street smoking dope. Cop will just be standing there. But if you try to get off Bourbon Street, they'll say, “I'll throw you in the wagon.” As long as it isn't violent, you're on Bourbon Street, they don't care. It's like 4 blocks of Amsterdam.

Rebecca: A woman walked up to him. Threw her top up. He's there going, “Wow!” This wasn't even Mardi Gras.

JT: Oh, no. It's year round. We were there, it’s 40 degrees, in December. It was brutal. Days were ok. But the nights were all over the place down there at the Gulf. And there the ladies are, showin’ you everything.

BB: What is one thing about James Taylor that would surprise even your closest friends? You seem like a pretty open book.

JT: In a lot of ways I am. You know I really am a freak, but I can’t make any money off my deformities. I have a congenital deformity on my left foot, which has my little toe over my left foot. And, internally...

BB: A lot of people have funny looking toes.

JT: Yes. There’s an actress who has toes like this. My grandfather had it on both of his feet. My mother’s feet were fine. But it jumped a generation. It’s only on my left foot. My heart is sideways.

BB: Your heart is sideways? Oh, my God.

JT: Which I didn’t discover until about 15, 20 years ago. My doctor did a full physical on me. After I got the full physical, a couple of weeks later I go back. He says, “I have something I want to talk to you about.” He draws this little oblong. He says, “That’s your heart. You know we run this electricity through your heart. The vectors are supposed to go a certain way, like a 3D asterisk. If they’re all perfectly in line, that’s fine. It means you’re in good shape. When those vectors start veering off, it means there’s dead tissue in your heart. The vector has to go around that because it won’t go through dead tissue. It’s indicative of heart failure or bad heart tissue. “

He showed me, and I’m like, “Well, that’s not good!” He goes, “Well, they’re still in line. What this means is, your heart’s sideways. “

“Which means... what?”

He goes, “It happens. It’s pretty uncommon, but it happens.”

This is great. Here I am, a freak, and I can’t make a buck off of it! I’m humiliated. This is so sad.

BB: I’ve never heard of such a thing. Has it affected you, health-wise?

JT: No. Well, I’m sure there are many women I’ve been with who would say, “There’s something cracked about that guy!” But it’s just one of those things. It’s like the way some people are born with their internal organs mirrored, where they’re flipped and reversed. When they cut you open, if they have to go very specifically to a thing and they don’t know, it can be dangerous; but with me, if they had to do any work on my heart, they’d be doing tests up the wazoo. And, besides, if they have to cut you open, the minute they cut you open, they see what’s going on. But it’s not going to be anything that’s going to matter one way or another. But it is kind of bizarre.

BB: It wouldn’t be any benefit to you to put it right side up, would it?

JT: No. It would probably be a lot worse because then they’d have to operate on me, and I don’t want them cutting me before they have to.

BB: How do you approach transcribing an interview? It’s an art, isn’t it?

JT: Yeah, it is. Because nobody wants to read the interview exactly as it went down.

BB: “Um, um. Yeah. What I really meant to say was.... Oh, really?” You cut all that crap out.

JT: All the stuttering around. All those verbal devices people use to connect stuff while they’re thinking that otherwise they’re not going to be able to connect. All the “likes” and “um’s” and “You know, it’s kinda like, um, you know what I mean.” And, all the rest of that stuff.

Any transcribed interview, any broadcast interview, is really an exercise in editing. You’re editing to content, and editing to style. And editing to the spirit as opposed to getting any of it literally word-for-word. Which is one of the reasons why people take issue with the way any of these things get presented. “You took that out of context!” It can happen. Sometimes, that’s the way that stuff goes down.

I had interviews where, literally, I think I came closer to capturing the spirit of what was intended than any of the ways anything literally got said. Even some of the interviews I’m working on right now for Volume 10. They’re an exercise in rearrangement to have them make sense. And I’ll tell you, this one, unless you do a lot of rearranging, ain’t gonna make a lot of sense, not with the way I ramble on.

BB: Well, I will be rearranging things....

JT: You have to.

BB: ... but I won’t be misrepresenting you. That’s a fine line, isn’t it, between representing what they say, but you don’t want to take so much out of what they say that you end up misrepresenting them.

JT: Believe me, I’ve read transcribed interviews with me. I’m reading, now, one of the interviews that was originally intended for Volume 10. There’s a quote, supposedly, in there from me. I asked Rebecca, “Read that line. That’s supposedly me! Can you ever picture me saying those words? That was not transcribed directly from what I said.”

Rebecca: You would never have used that word.

JT: It was something about, “Oh, it’s obvious that in your banner painting that gesture is really important.” Excuse me? “Gesture”? Give me a break.

The times I’ve been interviewed by newspaper guys, you read the quotes. You look down there and go, “No. I didn’t say that. I would never have said that. I don’t remember every syllable I utter, but I didn’t say that. Not even close. I’d never have put it that way.”

BB: The way I look at it, we’ve talked for about 3 hours, and 2 hours and 45 minutes of it will end up being published. It’s gonna take me forever to type it all in, but it’ll be there,

JT: I’d suggest investing in those programs that aren’t even developed yet that automatically transcribe.

BB: I’ve talked to people who do a lot more transcribing than I do, and it’s a brutal thing to do.

JT: It IS brutal. The people I ask to do it are always telling me that.

BB: How do you approach transcribing?

JT: Usually I just call up people I hope are going to do it for me and say, “Would you be willing to do this?” I didn’t transcribe any of the 3 interviews I’ve got for Volume 10.

BB: But you trust them to represent the words that the people say? And, the spirit of what they say?

JT: It’s really funny because the one interview with [sideshow banner painter] Johnny Meah, the guy who transcribed that is the principal illustrator for volume 10. The essay on Pujol? The illustrator for that is the guy who did the transcription for Johnny Meah, a artist named James Mundie. There are 7 tapes. But it’s bits and pieces of stuff. Four of the 7 tapes were actual interview stuff, conversations where he was telling me specific stories. What Jim did was listen to all 7 tapes and outline them for me and broke all that stuff out and said, “Look. The things in bold are what I figure would probably be what you’d want to have in Volume 10. The things in italics are really great stories that maybe we can figure out another use for, but he’s talking about other aspects of the business. Then, the other stuff is just straight text and is just funny stuff he’s saying. It’s about you and him talking about Shocked and Amazed! and where you think it ought to go, and what it means to the business and blah blah blah.”

He says, “What do you think?”

I read through the outline and say, “It’s dead on the money.” What he did was, he went back in and took, literally, the stuff he thought ought to go into Volume 10 and that’s what he transcribed. That was it. He rearranged it and built it into an order that seemed to make sense. Spot on. Great stuff. I don’t think I edited 10 lines of 14 pages.

BB: But will Johnny Meah look at that and say, “Geez, I’m sure I said more things than showed up in the interview!”

JT: After all these years, I don’t think Johnny would remember. I sure didn’t remember most of it. [chuckles]

Kris, the wife of Scott Huffines, the guy who created Atomic Books, transcribed the interview with another of the banner painters, Mark Frierson. She went through Hell doing this thing because Mark and I are all over the place. Mark, at that point, was mostly talking about, “Gee, I’m starving to death. I need money. Hey, I’ve got something I want to sell. Do you want to buy it?” And he and I are talking all this wacky crap and a lot less about the business than I should’ve forced along. That left Kris having to guess at what might be necessary to keep and not edit out. Scott was helping her out with that, since he’s a lot more familiar with the lay of the land on Shocked and Amazed! That interview is kind of ... wacky. But it’ll all work out. The other one was the one that [intern] Julia Arredondo did, the one with [Coney Island banner painter] Marie Roberts. She transcribed it, literally, word-for-word.

BB: How much would you cut?

JT: The problem is that Maria’s an educator. Maria’s a teacher. When I ask her a question, what I got was solid blocks of text that I’m not sure what to cut because she knew how to tell that story about what it means at the art level, what it means at the show level. Her family goes back in the entertainment business on Coney Island 3 generations. She has all this history that I’m loathe to cut at all, because it’s great stuff, except that it’s not all about her painting banners. It’s great stuff, but how much of this can I put in here?

Rebecca: Can’t you save the parts on the show if you ever do another one?

JT: Well, I already ran that because I ran the piece that she wrote about her uncle [in vol.7 of Shocked and Amazed!]. Her uncle Lester was “The Professor.” He was the one that had that freak show there on Surf Avenue. We ran that a couple of volumes back, so it’s not that I ran everything she told me because that was a piece that I reprinted, but revisiting it through her is like, gee, couldn’t you run somebody else’s story? How many times are you going to cover this material?

I’m going to have to cut some of it because, out of the 14 pages I’m going to have to cut probably 4 or 5 pages. And, I don’t know where it’s going to come from, because all the stuff she’s saying is spot on. It’s all about what it needs to be. I just have to find out what’s expendable and what’s not. Fortunately, Jim Mundie gave me Johnny Meah’s interview on a silver platter. The one of Mark Frierson’s, the one that Kris transcribed, is actually better than she thinks it is because it’s not unlike what Kathleen would’ve done, where it’s a lot of the text that I’m sure she thinks doesn’t matter, but I can edit from that. I love going in there and going, “I’m just going to cut this piece of crap out. This paragraph’s gone.” It gives me a feeling of, “Get rid of this. They’re just talking about money.” When it’s almost given to me solid, it’s either great when it’s done or it’s totally not. If I cut any of the Johnny Meah’s, for example, I don’t know what I’m going to cut. It’s as tough as the Roberts interview in a different way. It’s still long. It’s tough. You’re right. It’s a real art, figuring out what to leave in and what to cut out.

BB: I figure if I cut too much, if I move too much stuff from one section to another, I’m not representing so much what the person said any more.

JT: Well, I worry a lot less about that, as long as the way the whole thing moves maintains the spirit of what they were telling me and still feels true to the way they could have told it to me. What I worry about, though, is that in the process of doing that, there’s almost no way to guarantee that you’re going to use their exact words and have it still work. And, then, you have to take license with how you got them saying what they’re saying.

Rebecca: You put words in their mouth.

BB: You use the square brackets to add phrases. I hate those.

JT: I try to use as much of what people actually say as I possibly can, but I don’t have a lot of worries about rearranging the way people said things to make them sound like they’re making sense...

Rebecca: People don’t talk in a straight line.

JT: And anywhere upwards of 80% of conversation ain’t in the words, anyway. It’s in facial expressions, and people waving their arms around, and in grunts. It’s all of that that you have to figure out a way to preserve in only the words. That’s tough in itself.

BB: When I started doing these interviews a couple of years ago, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into because now these jocks are contacting me. “I’d love to sit down with you for an interview sometime!”

JT: Well, the first time somebody told me that I was a really great interviewer, I’m sitting there thinking, “You really haven’t been interviewed by me, have you, because I don’t consider myself that good an interviewer, or an interviewee. It is what it is.” God love whoever it is who’s listening to it, or God love when they’re being interviewed by me, if they can put up with my crap in the process of telling me what they’re telling me. When it’s all over, I hope they like what they see because it’s the best I can do with it. But it’s oral history. You’re trying to capture the spirit of what’s said, the best way you can, and take something that is in one form and translate it into another.

People talk about, “Did you like the movie or the book?” Well, that’s not a very good question. We all ask it, but it’s not a really good question. A movie’s not a book, and a book’s not a movie. They’re meant to accomplish the same thing, which is to entertain and inform you by totally different means. They’re never going to be the same because they don’t get where they’re going the same way. There’s never going to be any kind of comparison except, well, “Gee, I feel as good about the movie as I feel about the book.”

BB: That’s really about the only answer you can give.

JT: What else are you going to say? You don’t read a movie, and you don’t watch a book. Well, you could watch a book, but it’s pretty Goddamn boring.

Rebecca: They might come lock you up.

JT: Believe me, there’ve been some that I would rather have watched than read. What’s Dorothy Parker’s line? “It’s not a book to be tossed lightly aside. It should be thrown with great force!”

BB: I just don’t get a chance to talk to many people who do this thing.

JT: Believe me, we could talk shop. Not tonight, apparently, but we can talk shop any time you want. I love talking shop.

BB: You ask me a question.

JT: Of all the gin joints in all the world, what was it made you decide you needed to interview people?

BB: That’s always the question people ask me.

JT: Good! Then I don’t mind asking it again.

BB: I don’t mind answering it. Most of the people I interview are on the radio. They always ask me, “Why do you do this?” It’s just because I have a life-long interest in radio. I got my first radio when I was 10 years old.

As for interviewing other people: I’ve interviewed some writers. I enjoy talking to people. I don’t have my own tv show or my own radio show. My only forum to present their work and present their words is on my blog. But I have this insatiable interest in talking to people. The more I talk to people, the more questions I come up with and the more people I want to speak with, and the more I want to learn.

I have this unique opportunity to ask people whatever I want. I don’t want to take cheap shots. I don’t ask cheap questions, like, “Whom did you sleep with in 1978?” I don’t give a shit whom you slept with in 1978.

JT: Oh, man! I thought that was going to be the next question!

BB: I just want to talk to people and find out what makes them tick and why people do the things that they do. It just makes them more of a complete person to me. And, people who are on the radio and people who write for a living or people who do what you do. You talk to some extremely interesting people.

JT: Boy howdy.

BB: And, I’m two degrees of separation away from Penn and Teller.

P: I didn’t know you knew Penn and Teller. This is the closest I’ve been to Penn and Teller!

JT: Well, if they play Halifax, you might be a little closer. It’s a great show. And, they’re funny as Hell.

BB: But talking to you guys is a very interesting thing for me to do, and I have this forum through which I can ask whatever I want and present their words and their work. As well, as you know, the long-form interview is not something you see much of any more. You do it, and there is a magazine called the Comics Journal that publishes long interviews with people who work in comics.

JT: I know that one.

BB: And, then, there’s me. Hardly anybody else does long-form interviews. I think it’s just because they’re so damned much work, and there’s not a whole lot of market for it. I think that this is a noble thing to do. But it’s an awful lot of work.

BB: Thank you very much for the last six and a half hours of your life. [laughter all around]

JT: Even if it’s only been 3, it certainly felt like 6. Or more like 9!

BB: You came at 5:30. We had a nice meal. And we’ve been talking [on the record] since 8:15. That’s 4 hours of talking.

Thank you so much. I hope the lady folk weren’t too bored. Thank you once again, James Taylor!

JT: Thank you, Bev. It’s been lovely.

[The women folk applaud]

Post 1868 - The Latest Norm Riley Post

2012-01-04T17:48:00.000-08:00

I should have written this post before the holidays, when these marvelous digital images were emailed to me. I am sorry about that.

This is my fourth or fifth email about Norm "Pearshape" Riley, the seminal Halifax radio broadcaster from the late 1940's.

This has been a rocky road for me. I will tell you how I got on that road.

Back in the year 2000, Patricia and I attended the memorial to the Capitol Theatre, which was in Maritime Centre in downtown Halifax, which building now occupies the space where the theatre had been. Back then, it had been 25 years since the theatre had been torn down, and there was a new book to celebrate this old movie palace.

We wandered through the display, fascinated by this piece of Halifax history unknown to us. My eyes alighted on the following caricature:

Why was there a picture for this radio guy whom I'd never heard of, here, signed by these folks who owned or managed a bunch of other movie theatres that no longer existed?

I got a little closer and noticed the CJCH letters on the mic label. Apparently this man named Norm Riley, nicknamed "Pearshape Riley" because he wasn't a svelte man, had worked for this station. I remarked as such to an older woman standing next to me, who smiled, and responded that she fondly recalled listening to him on CJCH back in the day.

I had to know more about this man! Current jocks like JC Douglas doubted Norm's very existence. Another guy, not in radio, was convinced that Norm Riley was in fact Norm Perry, a much-later broadcaster better known as having hosted Canada AM for several years, a long time ago. No matter what I told him, I couldn't convince him otherwise. Maybe I can, now.

Over the years, I'd learn little dribs and drabs. I'm sorry to report that much of what I heard about Norm Riley wasn't positive. Of course, even more recently, thanks to these photographs, much of what I've heard has now been successfully contradicted in my mind, which puzzles me all the more, frankly. Why were people so hard on Norm Riley?

First of all, in these pictures, Norm doesn't look that fat. I would describe him as quite slim in some of these pictures, to be honest with you. Why the disparaging nickname, then? I do not understand. Was there some professional jealousy at play? After all, Norm Riley's ratings were through the roof, apparently.

Second of all, Don Tremaine told me in 2009 that Norm Riley was kept behind the scenes, out of the public, because his physical appearance did not match the perception people (mostly young women) had of him. They heard his wonderful voice -- which I have never heard of course as he left town many years before I was born and died when I was five -- and imagined him to be some physical specimen that he was not. Once again, in these photographs, I cannot say he was a homely man. Not an Adonis like me, of course, but not a bad looking man at all.

If anything, these pictures of Norm Riley show off a playful side that I find charming. Dressed as a maid for a woman who won a "Maid for a Day" contest on CJCH in 1948 or so, he is kidding around with the man he is there with in a way I find amusing as he doggedly tries to clean the woman's carpet. Who is that fella, anyway? I have a larger version of the newspaper clipping. By zooming in and squinting at the fine type, I can see it is Harry Norris. Because of Halifax civic addressing changes over the years, I do not know if the buidling still exists where Norm played maid for that day. Does anyone reading this know about how the new civic numbers correspond to the old ones?

Norm is visiting local schools. He is interviewing Miss Canada 1948. Our man got around!

I had heard that Ronald Reagan was in Halifax during the late 1940's. Reagan, while President, once met some children from Halifax and mentioned he had been here once, after the War, to visit his first wife, Jane Wyman, who did a movie here called "Johnny Belinda". I am guessing while visiting her here, Norm ran into him and said hello, presumably at the airport in the West end of the city, the airport that has not been there for a long, long time. The timeline fits, as Norm was working at CJCH back then, as evidenced by the dates on some of the clippings in this post.

Norm is front and centre in an early photograph featuring many other 1940's-era radio broadcasters. I had heard much about Don Loughnane. Now I know what he looked like as a young man. In the picture as well is a very young Clive Schaefer. Clive at some point was Norm's co-host at CJCH; maybe they were at this point. I don't know, but want to find out.

I do not know when Norm Riley left Halifax. I just know, from the original caricature, that when he left town, he was feted by many local movie theatre owners. I know from other reading that he owned a record store on Spring Garden Road. He was a manager of yet another movie theatre. He managed Hank Snow for a time, and that relationship ended badly, apparently.

I must thank Norm Riley's grand daughter, Rachel McCormick, her brother Mike, and Norm's son, for taking the time to write me and tell me about their grandfather and father, and for sending along these amazing pictures. Trust me when I tell you, and them, that I want to know more and more about him. I feel I am just scratching the surface.

To Norm's family: Thank you for giving me a chance to tell part of his story. I would be delighted to interview any of you, all of you, and learn more about Norm Riley!

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1867 - First Day Back

2012-01-03T19:14:00.000-08:00

The first day of work in 2012 is behind me. Two more days of work this week. I will be in the Valley at my mother's as of Thursday night. Please don't tell Newbie; he will be coming with me but doesn't travel well.

I got Patricia a new kindle for Christmas last week. This morning, I saw a one year old Kindle on kijiji for a very small amount of money. The ad claims that the device was seldom used. Some people aren't into them. I think they're pretty swell. I may touch base with the guy on Wednesday.

There's little to report. The two most important women in my life are doing ok. Cindy's ok. Newbie's ok.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1866 - The Day Before The First Day

2012-01-02T17:34:00.000-08:00

It is Monday evening, around 9:25. Once again, I have done as little today as possible.

I did watch the season ender of Dexter. I didn't see that coming until the very end. I have no idea how they will resolve things for season seven, and can't wait to find out. It was kind of a drab, boring season with not enough twists and turns, but the finale made up for most of that, and in particular, the very end, where Deb finds out Dexter's secret.

I cooked dinner this evening, left over chicken and potatoes from Sunday.

I didn't have another nap, either, which surprises me a bit.

I didn't transcribe anything today, either. I will get back to that for sure on Tuesday during my lunch hour.

Just a heads up that an interview I conducted nearly 18 months ago has been nearly vetted at long last. You may see it here in the next few days. I hope that the worth will have been worth it. There may be a few edits from the freakishly long type script I sent him to read over back in June of 2011. We will see. This interview is not with a person in radio, either. You will see soon enough!!

Tomorrow is the first work day of 2012. I work 3 days this week and have Friday off. I plan to be at my mother's this weekend doing whatever it is she wants me to do, which will be a lot, I'm confident. I'm sure she's sitting at the kitchen table now, writing a list in small script on a legal size piece of paper. Both sides. With half inch margins. I'll see soon enough!!

I guess that it's from this front.

You take care of yourselves and I will talk to you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1865 - Bevboy's Resolutions For 2012

2012-01-01T21:07:00.000-08:00

Once again, it is late at night, only now it's late at night on January 1st, 2012. Weren't we supposed to have flying cars by now? I'm just saying is all. Don't judge me.

I had a quiet day. I didn't have my usual Sunday afternoon nap, so I was a little cranky a couple of times today. We watched the rest of season 2 of "Boardwalk Empire", and I watched a few episodes of season six of "Dexter". 4 more to go. I guess there is a big shock ending or something. I will find out soon enough, perhaps on Monday.

I have also given thought to the new year and will briefly list a few things about it that I ought not to repeat in 2012.

I need to lose weight. I do not like being so big. Even my fat jeans feel tight on me, and that is not a good thing. Eat better, exercise more.

I have completed two years in which I tried really hard to update this blog every single day. I hope to do that again this year.

I have a major interview that will go up as soon as this week. Two more need to be transcribed; one of those is huge, and the other is big but not as big. I will try to get those done in the next 6 weeks. I admit now that there have been times when I could have been transcribing and chose not to. Not good for me or my reputation. Will work on that this year.

I have been growing more and more impatient with people, but especially with myself. It can have an effect on people in my life, and that is not good. I will never have the patience to put together a jigsaw puzzle that has more than, say, 12 pieces; but at least I can resist the urge to drive my car over my mp3 player every time its database balks at too many files and refuses to play all of them. Patience is a virtue, and I need more of it. Where do I buy some? Now! Now, you bastard!

I need to spend more time being nice to people this year.

In recent years I have volunteered less and less. Perhaps I will do more this year.

I need to forgive those who trespass against me and mine. Literally. I continue to seethe at the very thought of the trespassers at the cottage last summer. If I let myself think about them, I think certain thoughts that are unhealthy to me. I must forgive these assholes, these uncaring, unthinking Troglodytes, these mentally retarded nincompoops. If I don't, then that is not good for me.

I need to rein in the sarcasm. I have been that way my whole life. My avatar image for this blog is based upon a bit of sarcasm at a very early age. It is a caricature of my Grade 5 class photo. The photographer was having a hard time getting me to smile. My teacher, Miss Goodine, told me to think of something sarcastic. I did, and that was the moment captured for all eternity. Perhaps it is time to control that sarcasm. Nothing good can come from it.

I need to wash the dishes more than twice a week in 2012. How about.. three times? At least. Maybe more if Patricia bitches about it enough. Yeah. Let's go with three.

Maybe do my laundry more often. Wearing my underwear inside out and upside down because they're all dirty is a temporary stopgap that accomplishes little in the long run, even the medium rum. Let's try to avoid these sartorial improprieties in 2012, shall we?

Read more books. I have a lot of books in my house and would like to get through more of them. That means less television. Life is all about making choices, after all.

I guess that's it for this evening. I can't think of anything more. If you have any suggestions, then please let me know.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1864 - One Hour Left

2011-12-31T19:04:00.000-08:00

It is just shy of 11pm on Saturday evening, December 31st, 2011.

I have spent the last couple of hours watching a couple episodes of season six of Dexter. Before that, I washed most of the many, many dishes in the kitchen sink. Patricia has spent the evening watching "Mary Poppins" on CTV. Not my cuppa.

I began the evening, at six, tuned into Live 105. My friend Neil Spence has been hosting a six hour request show, and it's been a blast. Live 105 continues to delight me every time I tune in. It is new rock, so much of the music is unfamiliar to me. However, I enjoy it a great deal. It is a great pleasure not to hear certain songs and certain artists. I can't express to you in polite terms how tired I am of certain groups and certain tunes!

I wrote a love letter to Live 105 several months ago, and my only regret is in the names of the jocks I did not mention in that post. I will correct that now. I love everyone who works at that station. You heard me. Love. Christina. Scotty. Neil the Rock Star. Morgan. Dexter. Cub and Floyd. Anyone else who fills in from time to time. They all have an enthusiasm for their craft that is hard to overlook, and the music they play entertains me every time I tune in. I'd tell them all to keep up the good work, but that would insult them, because they get better every day anyway.

Today was going to be the day when I looked back on 2011 and wrote about the things that I liked and disliked about the year. It's not quite over yet. Some good things, some bad things, can still happen in the next 60 minutes, and I can't assume otherwise. Tomorrow, I will write that overview of 2011.

See you tomorrow.

And, happy new year!

Bevboy

Post 1863 - Another Long Weekend

2011-12-30T19:25:00.000-08:00

It is Friday night, comparatively late. Newbie wants me to turn in. I will indulge him shortly.

It was a long day. Patricia took a sick day, and I wish I had as well. I think I am coming down with what she has, which is not a good thing. I hate being sick on a weekend.

We plan to do little this weekend. We were going to visit my mother this weekend, but we decided to remain in town after all. That means we will be parked in front of the old tv watching the ball drop and eating too much and sleeping... how can you sleep too much? I mean, really! How can you? Never heard of such a thing.

Tomorrow, I will write of this year's end and what I think awaits me in 2012.

See you then!

Bevboy

Post 1862 - Another One Bites The Dust

2011-12-29T17:39:00.000-08:00

After work this evening, I drove downtown and killed 30 minutes before having dinner with the latest in the long line of blog interview subjects. It was the lovely and talented Julia Kirkey, late of K-Rock in New Minas and presently part-time at MBS in the downtown.

She regaled me with many stories of the early days of K-Rock, funny behind-the-scenes anecdotes involving the people she's worked with over the years, and so much more. I can hardly wait to share this interview with you.

Of course, there is still the Shane Wilson interview to get out of the way. There is a partial Katey Day interview.

I wish I had a second set of hands. I could get so much more work done.

One more work day in 2011, followed by a 3 day weekend. Then, a 3 day work week before another 3 day weekend. This is the life!!

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1861 - The Early Bevboy - Part Nine

2011-12-28T16:16:00.000-08:00

And, here we are, barely a month after the previous entry in this series.

This series, which has all the regularity of a guy who eats cheese for a living, is about my early life, up to about the age of 25 or so. I write about this early period of my life to help me remember those early years, whether I want to or not.

This evening's entry is about my first bicycle. Actually, my second bicycle. Keep reading.

As you can see, I am very young on this bike. I am in my parents' drive way. The neighbour's house is across the street; he would one day teach me to drive, and I wonder where his front door is in that picture. This picture was taken when I was around 9, which would have been 1973. But, I remember another bike, which I used to ride to my elementary school, by myself, at the age of 8, to get that bike inspected. My parents lived, and my mother still lives, in an area that is not close to any school. In order to get to my school, any school that I ever attended, I had to take the bus, or be driven, or ride a bike. Having a bike was important.

So, I went to that school on that bike. It was pronounced to be in decent shape. I drove it back home, on Sutton Road and was barely able to stop it in time when it became necessary to do so.

I needed a newer bike, one with decent brakes.

My parents decided to get me a girl's bike. Cross bars are evil things for boys, ladies and gentlemen, especially when the bicycle is too big for you to begin with. To get around this problem, and to make the bike last longer so that I wouldn't grow out of it sooner, they got me a girls' bike. So, that's me standing with my bike, which was for a girl, and I had a girl's name to begin with. Identity issues much?

I had learned, poorly, to drive a bike with the training wheels off the previous year. There was just enough of a slope in the drive way to allow for me to coast and drive and do that safely. The training wheels came off, and I fell off the bike a few times and now I can't imagine how it's possible to forget how to ride a bike.

This new one, the girls' bike, was far too big for me. The seat was up around the small of my back. When I was on the bike, my feet never touched the ground. It seemed like I was riding one of those Penny Farthing bicycles rather than a traditional one. I had more than a few mishaps.

A couple of times, I drove that bicycle into a ditch. I just couldn't figure out how to do turns sharp enough to negotiate the turn into my parents' drive way.

Another time, I was driving down the road from my parents' place. There was no traffic behind me. I decided to do a U turn. I misjudged the turn. Instead of going back to where I came from, I was going into a much deeper ditch, with rocks in it, than the other ones had been. My life flashed before me. I was 9, so it didn't take long. The ditch yawned open before me, as if welcoming me. At the last possible second, the front tire found purchase on a small ledge of sediment, and I was able to negotiate that turn. It was the closest I ever came to serious injury up to that point.

(It was two more years before I was hit by a car, but that is a tale for another time.)

After that little incident with the ditch, I felt I could do no wrong, and I seldom did. I had got the hang of riding that bike. I couldn't drive it without my hands on the handle bars like other guys could on their bikes, but I could drive it really fast, at least as fast as little kid could drive his bike. I took it everywhere. The fact that it had no crossbar gave me some individuality back when I didn't care what others thought of me. That a boy was driving a girl's bike didn't bother me, and I'm not sure it would now.

I kept that bike for.. I dunno. Two years? Three? I went through another bike, and the derailer fell off that one when I was driving it home from a late night baseball game. That bike was replaced by yet another one that I drove for several years and may have been the last bike I drove for a very long time, because I got my driver's license when I was 16.

I seldom ride a bike any more. The closest would be the spin classes I used to do, but which I have been neglecting shamefully since my father died. But now you know that my bike riding goes back many, many years, and some of the times I nearly got killed riding them.

Next time in this series: The first time I ever won something off the radio.

Bevboy

Post 1860 - A Tribute to Bill Ozard

2011-12-27T16:10:00.000-08:00

I got the re-tweet just as we were leaving my mother's today. Bill Ozard had died.

Most of you have no idea who he was, but he was a seminal radio broadcaster in Halifax. He was the host of Phone Forum in the late 1960's before leaving the show in '69 to oversee the remaining development of the then-new Scotia Square; his article in that paper remains a firm justification for the existence of open line radio programs and their importance to democracy. Phone Forum eventually morphed into The Hotline and remained on the air in some form until CJCH went off the air in 2008. Of course, that station is now The Bounce. On a personal note, I listened to CJCH-AM for more than 30 years and its loss still hurts a little.

I don't have a personal story to tell about Bill Ozard. I never met the man, but I found him on Facebook and gently asked for an interview. He didn't say yes or no, which is the kind of response I should be used to by now.

There are more of these anecdotes in the story and in the Globe and Mail obituary. You must read about the time he was fired from a job after 2 hours. Both it and the story referred to the Bill Ozard article I found in a 1969 issue of The 4th Estate newspaper. At least the tweet and the story linked to two different blog posts, and referred to me as "the author". Appreciate that.

Here is the link. Go ahead and read it and I will be here when you get back.

To the family and friends of Bill Ozard, I offer my condolences and my best wishes to you during this difficult time. Rest in peace.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1859 - Boxing Day

2011-12-26T17:18:00.001-08:00

It's the day after Christmas. Patricia and I remain in the Valley. We had every opportunity and intention to return to the city today but we haven't. Instead, we took a long nap. I lay down around 4:30 and didn't get back up until just before 7.

We watched Lisa Laflemme's interview with Stephen Harper. We went for a walk afterward and returned to my $other's after that.

Tomorrow morning, we return to the city for sure and take advantage of the annual Boxing Week sales. There a few things I want. Patricia wants a cover for her new kindle. We both want to get rid of our new gift cards.

It's been a good Christmas, the second without my father. His presence is all throughout this house, which he built. We all miss him a lot. We visited his grave this afternoon and said hello and told him how much we missed him. At a certain level, I think he heard us.

See you tomorrow.

From Bevboy's BlackBerry to BevBoy's Blog!

Post 1858 - Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T14:54:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas from Bevboy's Blog. I hope that this day is full of fun and family and frivolity for you.

The year has been tumultuous to say the very least. It is the second Christmas without my father, and my mother has her own challenges that are coming to the fore. I won't get into that here. Not the time and not the place.

Christmas doesn't hold the cache for me that it once did, and I am not sure if it will ever have that magic for me again. I am not into the things that I was before and I am not sure what I can do about it. However, I am trying to make it work for me and for people in my life.

I mostly bought gift cards for folks. Just wasn't into buying stuff this year. Sorry. Will try harder next year.

Patricia started working on Christmas dinner on December 24th at 7am. It was delicious. Worth every bit of time we had to wait for it. First time Mom had not been actively involved in Christmas dinner preparation. A change in generation.

Patricia loved the kindle I bought her and probably will never buy another physical book again. If she continues to love it, I will get my own. I don't need a physical keyboard, but this model doesn't have 3G, just wifi. 3G is perfect for when I'm at the cottage or my mother's. I want such a device.

My sister and niece and brother-in-law came up and visited us in the afternoon. We went out to the garage and found some things that should have gone to my brother-in-law when he bought my dad's truck last year. The garage has a lot less stuff in it now. Not sure how to feel about it.

Once again, my friends, I wish all of you the best of the holidays. I will see you again on Boxing Day!!

Bevboy

Post 1857 - Christmas Tie 2011 - Epilogue

2011-12-24T16:52:00.000-08:00

These pictures were taken just now at my sister's place in the Valley. We have just returned from a Christmas Eve service. My mother and other sister are at my mother's and having a great time, one presumes.

We have reached the end of the road, folks. The last Christmas tie of 2011. I hope you have enjoyed this series of pictures as much as I have had preparing them for you. I do not know if there will be a 5th annual edition of this series or not. Depends on demand and my own interest. Start begging in August.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1856 – Christmas Tie 2011 – Day Fourteen

2011-12-23T07:15:00.001-08:00

We have reached the end of the line, ladies and gentlemen. The final day of the Fourth Annual Bevboy Christmas Tie Extravaganza!

All these years, I’ll bet you have wondered one thing. With Santa granting the wishes of the world’s children, year after year, who grants his?

Well, now the truth can be told.

Bevboy does.

Every December, just before Christmas, Santa visits Bevboy and sits on his lap and tells him what he wants. Some of those wishes… well, they’re not things children should ask for. Let’s put it that way. My jeepers.

Anyway, it’s a pleasure to have been your host for another year in this amazing Christmas tradition. I hope you have enjoyed these pictures, these posts, as much as I have putting them out there for you.

There may be yet another edition of the Extravaganza, on Christmas Eve. Keep reading the blog, folks.

Off to the Valley this afternoon. I promise to think about you from time to time. Or not. Probably not. I mean, why should I? You don’t think about me!

See you later!!

Bevboy

Post 1855 - Blog Problem

2011-12-23T05:59:00.000-08:00

Hi. It's not lovely JAX's problem, of course, but Windows Live Writer messed up the blog format somehow. It is an older version of WLW that I use on this computer, and something got frigged up royally behind the scenes.

I have changed the layout of the blog to no avail. I am not sure if I will be able to recapture the previous format or not since Blogger has revamped its template and layout app to the point where there are so many permutations and combinations of blog layouts that going back to an old one is not easy at all.

I will do what I can to fix the problem with the huge letters on the right hand side of the screen. Note, however, that I leave for the Valley in a few hours and must spend the bulk of that time packing and finding a way to stuff Newbie into his carrier without him stuffing me into it. It will require finesse and time and patience, 3 traits I'm rapidly running out of this morning. Fixing a blog that isn't broken in the strictest sense is not that high on my list of things to do. But it will be fixed, if not today, then in the days to come.

Have a good one, my friends!

Bevboy

Post 1854 – Interview with The Bounce’s JAX!

2011-12-23T04:20:00.001-08:00

October 6, 2011

Patricia and I arrived at Michael’s Bar and Grill about 5 minutes before Jax did. Patricia excused herself and went to the lady’s room. That’s when Jax showed up and did the same thing. Patricia and Jax met in the lady’s room. I’m a little jealous.

We all sat down and ordered our food and began to talk about radio and Halifax and the time she nearly told JC Douglas where to go and what to do when he got there. I’ll shut up now, so go ahead and read this already.

1. How did you get your start in radio?

Jaclyn Irwin: I went to NSCC for Radio/Television Arts. I took early graduation in April, 2010. I started working for Z103 in 2009.

Bevboy: This would have been the waterfront campus?

JI: Yes. But, before that, Floyd had a show on CKDU. She asked me to co-host it with her. We did that show together, a silly little show where you could do 8 minute talk sets. We started with that. And, we ended up going to school together.

BB: I love Floyd.

JI: She’s a sweetheart.

BB: So, Z was your first professional job?

JI: Z was my first professional radio job, yes.

BB: This was in 2009. What shifts did you work?

JI: I was just working weekends because I was still in school. But, I was their swing announcer, so slowly but surely, I started having to take more and more time off school. I covered for mid-days. I covered lot of nights. I did Production. I did writing. I did reception. Pretty much everything.

BB: Did you ever think of yourself as full-time there?

JI: At points, yes. I was working over 40 hours a week sometimes. If K8 was sick or something, then I’d work K8‘s shift at night. I was working a lot of hours there. But during ratings, since I was still in school, I had to do my classes. I was Swing. Sometimes it’d be 2 shifts a week; sometimes it would be 7.

BB: You were THE Swing person?

JI: Yeah

BB: There was no other back up. If you got sick...

JI: No. I didn’t get sick there. I never called in sick at Z.

BB: OK. That was your first professional job. I’m not sure how this happened. Jessica Rankin left the Q and went to BC. She worked for your sister station, right?

JI: Well, she worked for my sister station and my station. She was Creative Writer. Before she went to Q, she worked for our competition in Prince George. She knew Prince George. She loved it. So, she came back.

BB: We’re getting ahead of ourselves just a tiny bit. You left Z to go to Prince George?

JI: Yes.

BB: Why? You’re a Dartmouth girl. You love it here. But you went to Prince George. Why is that?

JI: Well, it was getting close to graduation. I wanted a full-time job. Nothing was really opening up in the market. Beforehand, I wanted to go out West. I had a lot of friends out West. I’d been born and raised here, so I wanted to see how far I could go across the country. I had a job offer in Medicine Hat, one in Fort Mac, and one in Prince George. I chose the Prince George one.

BB: That’s as far away from here as possible.

JI: I wanted to see BC, because BC’s beautiful from what I’ve heard.

BB: What was the station you worked for in BC?

JI: 94X FM.

BB: Ah, yes. When Jessica Rankin left Q104, she went there, and it was through her that I became acquainted with you on Facebook. I’m not sure how that happened now. It’s one of those things.

JI: Networking things.

BB: It’s almost like Linked In, only more fun. Patricia doesn’t know this, but I mailed Jax some Bevboy’s Blog business cards. Did you distribute them?

JI: I did. I handed them out to my PD, a bunch of my sales folks, and some people around the station.

BB: Well, thank you for that.

JI: Not a problem.

BB: Did they ever follow up on the blog at all, or did they care?

JI: I think the Swing announcer of my other station, Mike Erickson, started reading your blog. He found them really interesting. I haven’t seen anybody who does what you do, focusing only on radio people. He found that very interesting, so we would read them sometimes.

BB: Perfect. I appreciate that. I was corresponding with you several months ago, after this stuff happened. You were coming back to Nova Scotia because.. I thought you were going back to school this Fall.

JI: I was originally going to be going back to school. It’s tricky. Because I took early graduation from the radio program, and then I moved to BC, according to student loans, I was still out there. It was all jumbled. I was still a resident of British Columbia, so I couldn’t be financed to go to a school in Nova Scotia. It was a mess. But, it worked out, because I’m working a bit more at The Bounce. I’ll probably go back next year.

BB: You came back to Nova Scotia without a job or even being able to go back to school.

JI: No. I had a job when I came back. I was hired by Chris Duggan at The Bounce when I came back.

I was planning to come back to Nova Scotia because some family stuff was going down. I wanted to be a bit closer. They asked me to re-sign my contract in Prince George. I loved it in Prince George, but I wanted to come back East.

K8 actually mentioned that The Bounce was hiring. I got in touch with Chris Duggan, who is the Program Director. He said, "Yes, indeed. We are hiring." I sent them some of my stuff. He said he liked what he heard. We set up a meeting for when I came back.

I’d grown up listening to C100 and wanted to get in with Bell Media. I knew Katie Kelly pretty well. I said, "Listen. I’ll do Promo. I’ll mop the floors."

I’m working there 4 days a week. I work Promo on the side and Production.

BB: Do you consider yourself full-time there?

JI: If I have the availability, I can make sure I get full-time [hours]. I’m not full-time on air, but I work Production and Promo on the side.

BB: It becomes a full-time job?

JI: Yes. It’s 5 or 6 days a week.

BB: What kind of Promo?

JI: Going out for Promotions, events, contesting and things like that. We go out and go around the city to events. We’ve done the Run for the Cure kickoff. It’s just a way to make hours. I want to get involved in any way I can.

BB: And, you’re having fun?

JI: I’m having a blast. I love it. I love The Bounce.

2. Being on the radio, you have a degree of anonymity. At the same time, yours is a well-known voice. How does that feel, to be known yet "unknown", if you "know" what I mean?

JI: Sometimes, it’s really beneficial because people don’t know what you look like. People sometimes think that I’m a blond, tall girl. Sometimes, they think I’m older; sometimes, they think I’m younger, which is funny. It’s interesting, because sometimes they have no idea what you look like. That’s kind of cool. Also, my name is actually Jaclyn Irwin, obviously. When I say "Jax", nobody really connects the two, which is funny.

BB: You can tell K8 I’m saying this because, when I hear K8 on the radio, her voice reminds me of Kathleen Turner’s.

JI: Kathleen Turner?

BB: The actress. "Romancing The Stone".

Patricia: We’re showing our age, aren’t we?

BB: Yeah. Have you seen that movie, with her and Michael Douglas?

JI: No. But, Michael Douglas is a babe, though.

BB: Ask you parents about "Romancing the Stone".

JI: I was born in ‘88.

BB: Jessica Rabbit from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" is voiced by Kathleen Turner.

JI: Oh, the sexy voice!

BB: So, tell K8 I said that.

JI: All right. I will, for sure.

3. What percentage of the buttons and levers and switches on the board that you run, do you actually understand? I hear that most of you guys only use a few of them, most of the time.

JI: I’ve opped and everything, so I know what is mostly going on. At the same time, it would be easy because you don’t use a lot of the buttons. We have 5 or 6 mics in our room, so we have 5 mic pots. That’s for morning show or guest, but I’m always by myself, right? I don’t have to use those mics.

I think you could get away with not knowing a lot of them, but I think I would say I know about 80% of them. There’s a couple of buttons I wouldn’t mess with. There’s some buttons you want to know, but you’re too scared because you’re always live. But, radio people usually know most of the buttons.

BB: Jordi Morgan told K8, because K8 was a Q Cop years ago [when Jordi was working at Q104], that he didn’t know what most of those buttons did. That made me want to ask that question.

JI: What did K8 says she knows about the button? Most of them?

BB: Most of them, she doesn’t know what the Hell they are.

JI: Most of them, she doesn’t know what the Hell they are?

BB: Yes.

JI: I’ll put it this way: I know all the channels that I need to know. But, there’s some things on there that nobody uses. There’s a couple pots there that I don’t know why they’re there. After my shift on Friday nights, we go live to air, so I usually set them up for when the Board Op come in.

BB: "Pot" is short for potentiometer, right?

JI: Yes. The "Pot Up" kind of thing.

BB: Chris Mills told me about pots.

JI: Not the bad pot. [laughs]

4. The Megan Edwards question. You lose your iPod. I find it. What songs on it would surprise me the most?

JI: You would probably find it stock-piled with David Bowie.

BB: Really?

JI: I have a lot of David Bowie on there.

P: All right!

JI: You would probably find some weird House stuff, some house music. Electronic music. You may find some Country in there. I have a soft spot for The Dixie Chicks.

BB: There’s nothing wrong with that.

JI: You would find Justin Timberlake on there.

P: Oh, Lord. I just lost a little respect for you.

JI: Tina Turner. And, a lot of Fleetwood Mac. There’s some Classic Rock there, too. I weirdly love Bowie.

BB: Older stuff? Newer stuff?

JI: I like Ziggy Stardust, that era a lot. But, I love all Bowie.

BB: Have you seen any of his movies?

JI: "The Labyrinth" is actually one of the first movies I ever saw. I can probably watch that and reiterate all the words.

BB: "The Man Who Fell To Earth".

P: What’s that vampire movie?

BB: "The Hunger".

JI: Should I saw more? Is that enough?

BB: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

JI: Take The Dixie Chicks off there. That’s embarrassing.

BB: Oh, come one. What’s wrong with The Dixie Chicks?

JI: Have you ever seen Bowie and Mick Jagger? Why can’t I ever think of the song that they did together?

BB: The one for Live Aid?

JI: Go home and watch it. It’s weird. They’re both on something. It’s a weird video.

BB: They’re in each other’s face.

JI: Yeah. That one. It’s a bizarre video.

BB: "Dancing In The Streets".

JI: That’s what it is, yes.

BB: That was for the original Live Aid in 1985. Years before you were born.

5. Please say something about the following people.

A. Dan Barton

JI: Boss Dan! Dan was my first boss; Dan hired me. It was funny, because after my first year of college, I moved up to Toronto just because I wanted to be there and see some shows. Dave Bannerman emailed me and said, "Dan Barton from Z103 is looking to hire someone. Get in touch with him."

I’ve never actually seen a voice mail like this, but but you could press "OK" if the voice mail was good, or you could restart it. I think I called him 3 times. I was so nervous. I re-did the call and kept re-leaving the message.

He called me back and said, "Leave me some stuff." I sent him stuff; it was really, really rough. I sent him more stuff, and it was still rough. He said, "Listen. When are you going to be home?"

I said, I said as soon as possible kind of thing . and seeing really good concerts I So, I went back. I walked into his office and met Boss Dan!

He’s a treat. I want to talk about him, not me. He’s my first boss; he’s got a lot of patience. He’ll put up with you and he’ll spend the time with you. He’s a busy guy, but he’s a doll. He gave me my first break. He’s funny as shit. He’s really funny. He’s got some good voices and some good characters. He’s smart; he knows a lot about music. He’s a big sweetheart.

BB: I was at his house. I met his wife. She’s a lovely person.

JI: Cass! I also worked with Cass, and she’s a doll.

BB: She works at Kool now.

JI: She works at Newcap, yes. She’s a doll. They’re good together.

BB: Where did you work with her?

JI: At Z. She worked at Z before she worked at Newcap.

BB: I didn’t know that. That’s where they would have met, I guess.

JI: She’s a good girl.

B. K8

JI: K8 took me under her wing when I was this stupid little chattery person coming in. When I went into Z, I expected that she wouldn’t even give me the time of day. I went in, and it was her and Sarah Parrott. We had a blast She made me Op the news, the first day I got there. I had no idea what she was doing, but she just threw me to the wolves and made me go at it. That’s the kind of person she is: She’ll teach you and give you a shot. We’ve been buddies ever since.

Sarah’s a doll, too.

K8‘s one of my favourite people that I’ve met in radio. We kept in touch when I was out West. I consider her a big help if not the reason I got in with Chum. She’s my buddy. She always has the time of day for me. She’s my really good buddy; I love her to death. And she gave me the name "Jax".

BB: How did she derive that name?

JI: The first day I walked into the Z studios, because my name is spelled really weird, K8 said, "Well, you need a different name. You should be... Jax!"

At first, it was going to be 3 X’s. Boss Dan was like, "That’s too complicated. One X!" I think people think I don’t have a last name any more. I was called Jax when I went out West...

P: Well, there’s Madonna. Cher. Jax!

JI: When I went out West, they asked me, "Do you want to be ‘Jaclyn’ or ‘Jax’? Don’t worry. We’ve already made the decision, and you’re going to be ‘Jax’". When Chris hired me, he said, "Are you going to go by ‘Jaclyn’ or ‘Jax’?" Before I even got it out of my mouth, he said, "‘Jax’ sounds cooler!" And, K8 gave me the name!

BB: But, to this day, you don’t know what thinking process went behind coming up with the name ‘Jax’?

JI: I don’t know if she liked Mortal Kombat a lot, because there’s a character by that name in it. K8‘s pretty edgey, so I think she looked at me and said, "Jax!" It’s funny, because my mom and dad and my entire family call me ‘Jax’.

P: It’s a one syllable name: Jax!

BB: It’s simple, right to the point.

JI: It’s simple. She gave it to me. I haven’t been able to live it down. And, God bless her, because it’s a radio name.

One more thing I want to say about K8 is she has her following. They followed her from Z to The Bounce to C100. It’s really good that she’s on C100 now.

BB: I’ve always wondered: When people move from one station to another, are people listening to the music and they want to stay with whoever takes over; or are they going to follow the personality?

JI: It depends. I used to listen to her when I wasn’t even in radio. Floyd and I listened to her show in the car. "K8‘s so cool!"

Some people stay for the music. Some people stay for the personality. Anybody who listens to K8 is like, "I’ll go where she is.", because she’s funny. She’s quirky. And she’s where she belongs now. She deserves that spot.

BB: She wants to be there for a long time.

JI: She sounds good.

C. Neil Spence

JI: It’s funny, because he was the Imaging guy for CCKC, NSCC’s radio station. We always used him, because he has that deep, Neil Spence voice.

BB: I’d kill to talk like that. [Bevboy note: Not literally!]

JI: I emailed him one day because I wanted to get some new liners done. We just started talking back and forth. We go for coffee every month or two months. He’s friends with Floyd and all those guys. I know him pretty well. He’s a really good guy. He’s got good chops. He’s made moves that he needs to. He even went back to school, but he stayed in radio. I think he’s really happy with where he is now. And, he sounds great.

BB: He does sound really good.

JI: He works really hard. He’s young. He’s talented.

D. JC Douglas, because everyone knows him.

JI: JC’s a cool guy. I’ve always known who he is. When I was going through college, I had a little programmer crush on him because I thought he was really cool. We ended up talking because Jessica moved out West.

BB: Jessica Rankin.

JI: Yes. We started talking; we still talk once in a while. I met him for the very first time face-to-face, though, at the Lion’s Head. I was working in Production. Mark Fraser. the Production Director, asked me to come out to lunch with him and Ms. Williams, who’s Terry Williams’ wife; she works Traffic.

BB: Christine?

JI: Yes. I went out to lunch with Mark, Christine. And, JC was there.

He was like, "You’re JAX, right?" I didn’t know you were coming back to the East Coast.

I said, "Yes. I’m back."

We had lunch together. He’s so cool. He knows what’s up. He has these eyes; they’re very penetrating. He just looks right at you.

But, the funny story was, I was playing basketball off Gottingen Street. This was 3, 4 months ago. I was playing with some friends. I was walking back home. I was all sweaty. I had little shorts on and a little t-shirt. I hear these 3 honks. I thought, "Some guy’s being a jackass."

I’m not a girly girl, so I didn’t know if he was just razzing me. I turn around because I’m about to just the guy the dirty look and tell him to fuck off. Just as I’m opening my mouth, I see that it’s JC. "Hey, JAX! How are you? Just wanted to say hello."

I say, "Oh, hi, JC!" I wrote him an email after that and we laughed quite a bit. I was about to tell JC Douglas off because I thought he was a creeper, driving down Gottingen, trying to hit on me! But, he’s the programmer I thought was so cool for most of my life. I was so humiliated.

He’s a cool guy. Everybody knows JC Douglas, right? He’s a good programmer; he knows his stuff. He’s an encyclopedia of rock.

BB: Not just rock. Any kind of music.

JI: Oh, any kind of music. I’ve seen some pictures of his mullet back in the ‘80‘s. It was pretty sweet. I’d like to get to know him more for sure.

BB: Do you see yourself traipsing over to the Q sometime?

JI: I’m very happy with where I’m at right now. I definitely want to try to work up the CHUM ladder and see where I can get.

BB: That’s a damn good answer.

E. Peter Harrison

JI: Ah! The voice of my childhood. C100 was the only station I listened to when I was growing up.

BB: It would have been Kelly, Peter and Moya.

JI: Before Kelly moved out West; now, it’s Brad. But, Peter actually talks like that. That’s his voice! It’s unbelievably deep.

The first time I ever met him, I was working Promo at a charity golf tournament. Moya and Peter were there. Peter was just so sweet to me. He and Moya were really nice to the new girl on The Bounce.

He’s a great announcer; he’s got great chops on him. He’s very cool. That voice on him is wicked. Whenever I’m working Production, and have to ask him to do a commercial, he’s always really nice, and really chill, and very approachable.

BB: When you work Production, do you ever have to ask Peter Harrison to repeat something?

JI: No. He’s been doing it for so long. He can usually get them done first go. If there is anything that I want him to re-do, or if it’s too long, or if it’s too short, or he slurred a word or something, I can just say, "Peter, can you repeat that?" I’ve only produced for him a couple of times. But, he’s not hard to approach, no.

BB: He’s a pro, but not egotistical.

JI: He’s not like, "Who is this kid asking me to repeat this?" He’s not a problem. But, at the same time, he’s on another station, and we work totally opposite shifts. I see him once in a while. But, he’s always a nice guy.

F. Floyd

JI: My best buddy? Oh, Floyd! Floyd is stupidly talented. She’s so good. She sounds wicked on the morning show, when I’ve listened.

I’ve known Floyd for 5 years. We did the CKDU show together. We’ve had a couple of drinks sometimes and listened to our old shows. She was always confident and really cool; I was always like, "Hey!". I would always agree with her.

Floyd’s one of a kind. It broke my heart when Floyd moved out West. I ended up moving out West a month after her. I think a lot of people were sad when she moved out West. She’s awesome. She’s a sweetheart. She’s so good. She has her eyes forward. She knows where she’s going and what she wants. She’s extremely driven. She’s bizarre sometimes, but in the best way possible.

BB: I saw her Facebook status. "I’m PMS’ing, so I made a salad with ringolos in it!"

JI: Oh, my God. We have a weird little friendship. We’re quirky. We’ve had some awesome times together and partied a lot.

We did our first Summer Rush together, with Z103. We were on this high together. It was a cool time. We’ve had some nice radio moments together.

When I first started working for Z, she started as an Op, and then did part-time news. I think, once or twice, I would fill in for K8, and she was filling in for news.

BB: I know "Op" means "Operator", but that’s like Production, isn’t it? Is there a distinction?

JI: She was Op’ing live-to-airs down at Reflections. And, God bless her because that’s a tricky shift to do and not want to go dance. And, Floyd’s a good dancer.

She was brought back here to do mornings. Floyd’s an entity in herself. I love her to death. She’s a really good girl.

BB: There are days I regret I only have one set of ears, because I can only listen to one station at a time.

JI: I hope she pays for my bills one day, when she’s rich and famous.

G. Megan Edwards

JI: If you ever do a shift after her, the room will always smell really pretty. That’s what I’d like to say about Megan. She’s such a girly girl.

Megan is wicked. Megan’s a really good girl. We didn’t really know each other, but we went to the same high school together. I always knew she was on Z; she graduated 2 or 3 years ahead of me.

We’re very opposite. I’m not super girly. But, we’ve had some wicked times together. She’ll do really well. Is she doing tv yet?

BB: Well, she does The Moment for EastLink.

JI: I watch that quite a bit.

BB: I’m not sure what she’s doing. They laid her off at Z. [Bevboy note: This interview was conducted prior to Megan’s leaving Halifax and moving to Vancouver.] I’m not sure if she’s pursuing radio work or not.

JI: That girl will be on the tv in front of you, soon. She’s so pretty.

P: We’ll probably see her on E-Talk or something.

JI: She’ll do excellent, whatever she does. And, it’d better be on tv because she’s too pretty not to be on tv. She’s got herself together, and she knows what she’s doing. I don’t know anything about the Z thing, but she’ll find another opportunity and will totally rock it. I can definitely see her do something on tv, like Patricia said, some sort of entertainment reporting. She’s bubbly, smart, and funny. She’s not just pretty with no wit about her; she’s witty and silly. I like that.

BB: I enjoyed meeting her last year. She was really nice to me.

JI: I like Megan Edwards. We had some good times.

BB: I presume you haven’t seen her in a while.

JI: I haven’t seen Megan for a while, no. We briefly talked when I moved back to Halifax; but no, I haven’t seen her around. I’d love to see her, though.

H. You choose a person you would like to say something about.

BB: Is there a broadcaster you admire whom you haven’t met yet? Is there a person in radio you listened to when you were growing up whom you just haven’t met yet. Is there such a person?

JI: I think Griff and Caroline’s morning show is really good. I think that’s a really cool station. I love the music that 96.5 plays. I think they’ve got a really tight morning show. I think they’re funny.

P: No holds barred.

JI: No. And, I’ve never met them, face-to-face, but I think they’re a really solid morning show. My folks always listen to 96.5, and I always hear it in the car. Any other job I’ve had out of radio, such as restaurants and stuff like that, always has 96.5 on. It’s just really feels good. They don’t have any other announcers, but the morning show’s solid. I’d love to meet them.

BB: I’m sure JC Douglas could make that happen.

JI: We’ll see. Maybe I’ll just meet them in passing.

7. What is your greatest unfulfilled goal in radio? I realize you have all of 2 years' experience. Is there something you really aspire to?

JI: I’d love to get into music directing. That will come with time. I’m super young. I’d eventually like to get into Evenings [full time]. I’d like to get into Mid Days and then go to Music Directing one day. We have a wicked Music Director/Mid Day host. Have you ever met Mel?

BB: I have not met Mel.

JI: She’s awesome.

BB: Tell her I said hello.

JI: I will for sure. She’s really cool. Eventually, I’d like to do the same sort of thing she’s doing, whether it be here or Winnipeg, Vancouver, Port Hawkesbury. I’d like to get my Music Directing chops one day. I was doing Assistant Music Directing in Prince George.

BB: So, you would have met with music labels and so on?

JI: I was more a librarian at that point, because the Music Director I had out there was doing all the meetings.

So, I’d love to get into Music [Directing]. But, I’m super young. I’m just going to work my asso off to get there.

8. Tell me about a couple of on air mistakes you have made. Have you ever said "poop" on the air, or something like that?

JI: When I was in Prince George, we had our news come on at a specific time. We had to be totally done and ready to go on at that exact second. I was 15 seconds early, so I put on the news. Our news girl was sitting in there singing to the other station’s music. It was awful. It was terrible.

Anyway, I put her on the air. I didn’t realize it for a couple of minutes because I had to pot it down because I thought she was going to the news cue. She was not impressed with me because everyone in Prince George heard her beautiful singing voice.

The biggest thing was that I slurred a couple of things pretty hard sometimes, or talked in circles. I’ve never sworn. That’s my biggest fear. I’ve come close a couple of times. I said "funked" one time. It was "defunct". I don’t even know why I would say that word on air. It’s too tricky. But, I almost said "fuck". It was not a good situation.

BB: Was that in town?

JI: That was on Z. Sorry, Boss Dan.

9. You have worked on the West coast, and in Hali. Which one do you prefer, and why?

JI: Both of them have their advantages, for sure. Both of them are really good markets. Prince George is a bit smaller. It’s considered a "small medium market".

BB: What’s Halifax referred to as?

JI: Medium Market. But, there’s something about Halifax. Some people say there’s too many radio stations here. I just think it just means more competition, and more fun. Especially with Top 40 and CHR, there’s quite a battle going on. It’s really interesting to watch.

P: Keeps you on your toes.

JI: That’s exactly right, Patricia. It keeps you on your toes because you never who’s listening; and you never know who you’re up against. You never know who’s trying to take from whom.

Halifax is really diverse. There’s even more musical tastes that stations could cater to. It’s very interesting to see the ratings books. The ratings are a big things here because there’s so many stations. Everyone’s fighting for a piece.

BB: They’re changing formats and adjusting them so that the listener wouldn’t notice.

JI: Yes.

BB: Take Lady Gaga. When you hear Lady Gaga on 4 different stations, at that point, it comes down to who’s playing the music, the personality. Right?

JI: Yes. I would absolutely hope so. Some people just want to hear the songs that they want to hear. They’ll flip to the station that they want to hear. But, I hope that the more personality takes over, the better. You’re right. With a lot stations playing the same kind of music, that’s a lot of overlap. You have to have your leg up in some aspect. Personality is definitely what I would go for, to keep the listener hanging out. I just like having fun. I have a weird sense of humour. Sometimes it translates. Sometimes it doesn’t. But, I think the listener likes it.

10.

Tell me 4 things about Halifax that you really like.

JI: Just four? I can think of 20 things that I love about Halifax. Radio wise, or in general?

BB: The culture. The people. Whatever you want.

JI: I would definitely say the culture. Some people hate the fact that there’s a lot of university students here. I love it. I think it’s a lot of fun.

BB: Wait until you’re 40.

JI: I like nightlife in Halifax quite a bit. There’s so many options to choose from.

P: I remember what it was like when I was her age in Halifax.

JI: It’s a lot of fun. I missed this shit when I was out West. You never realize how much you miss home until you’re gone, right?

I would definitely say the night life and culture. The people here are untouchable. The people of Halifax are great. Everyone pretty nice here and accommodating. I obviously like the water, not the harbour. It’s gross and sketchy. I like the fact that you can go 20 minutes outside the city and you’re at the ocean.

Finally, I would probably say that I like the fact that it’s a city, but there’s also a lot of green around. You can go lay on the Commons on a hot day. I like the landscaping of Halifax, the way it’s laid out. I don’t like the fact that’s it’s really hilly, sometimes.

BB: Wait until you’re 40.

JI: I’m a chubby kid trying to get up the hill. That’s tough.

And, again, like we were talking, I love the North End. I love it to death.

BB: It’s growing on me.

JI: It’s a good place. I was only gone for a year. It’s boomed even in just the year, especially the Hydrostone area. It’s nuts. It looks like little Montreal in there.

11. A special series of questions courtesy of... K8 via Dan Barton!

Would it be too lengthy to put the Bernard Pivot questionnaire to her that James Lipton uses on Inside the Actors Studio? I've always loved the questions, and the answers are typically very brief:

a. What is your favorite word?

JI: Oh, my God. Any word?

BB: Any word.

JI: That’s so hard. These are really hard questions! What is my favourite word? "Bloated". I love that word.

BB: All right. You don’t have to justify your answer.

b. What is your least favorite word?

JI: Moist. I hate that word. I fucking hate it.

c. What turns you on?

JI: Sexually?

BB: Not necessarily. We don’t have to go there.

JI: When a really good beat drops. I get shivers through my spine. You’ll hear it on The Bounce. It gets really going, like LMFAO songs. Not LMFAO, because I don’t like them very much.

BB: Can you give me an example of a song that does that for you?

JI: Deadmau5. But it’s spelled...

P: [Patricia correctly spells Deadmau5]

JI: Oh, look at this! Anything by Deadmau5 definitely turns me on.

P: Don’t let the gray hair fool you, honey.

d. What turns you off?

JI: Sneaky people. If you’re sneaky, it turns me off.

e. What sound or noise do you love?

JI: These are hard, Patricia! I love the sound of the air brakes on a bus.

BB: Really?

JI: Yes. I do.

P: That’s bizarre.

JI: It means that somebody’s getting where they need to go. It’s very satisfying. I know it’s weird.

BB: Do you take the bus very much?

JI: Yes. I sold my horse, so I have to take the bus.

f. What sound or noise do you hate?

JI: Balloons popping. It makes me panic. It makes me think of gun shots. I hate it. Thunder, at the same time. Both of them.

g. What is your favorite curse word?

JI: Oh, it’s got to be "fuck". It’s definitely got to be "fuck". I put "fuck" in the most inappropriate places, where it’s not necessary.

BB: You mean, at church?

P: It can be used for negative, and it can be used for positive. "That’s a fucking great song."

h. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

JI: I’d like to be a pilot. Why?

BB: We have a moment. Sure.

JI: I like to fly, and I think that pilots get the best view. I love the sky, so I’d like to be a pilot. I think it’d be really scary, and probably really sketchy. I think it would be beautiful. The pay off would be nice.

BB: Are you watching that Pan Am show?

JI: I haven’t seen much of Pan Am.

i. What profession would you not like to do?

JI: I wouldn’t be a cop. I think it would be scary. It must be rewarding pay-wise, and when you help someone; but I think that the negatives are too much there. I wouldn’t be able to do that. And, I hate confrontation. I wouldn’t be able to tell someone to stop shooting up heroin on the side of the road or we’re going to arrest you.

BB: "Please".

JI: Yes. Plus, I can’t run. I couldn’t pass the physical. I probably wouldn’t be able to go for that.

j. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

JI: "Good job!"

BB: Do you consider yourself a good person?

JI: Some days. I think I always have good intentions, but I don’t know if I’m always a good person. I try to be. I think I’m getting better as I get older.

BB: You’re, what, 24?

JI: 23.

Wrap Up:

BB: Jax, thank you so much for the last hour and a half of your life. It’s been most interesting. K8 said what a great person you are. She was not kidding around. I had a lot of fun meeting you.

JI: I had a lot of fun.

BB: Thank you for your time.

JI: Thank you very much. Thank you for the good company, and the onion breath. I appreciate it.

Post 1853 – Christmas Tie 2011 – Day Thirteen

2011-12-22T10:35:00.001-08:00

Welcome to the penultimate edition of the Fourth Annual Bevboy’s Christmas Tie Extravaganza!!

This is a special one that I wanted to save for the (almost) end. It features moi, little old me, yours truly, on the desk of my executive director, Miriam. She claims she has been looking forward to this day as well, for a couple of weeks now, ever since I broached the subject with her.

The thing is, I wasn’t comfortable just going into her office when she wasn’t around. She’s often in meeting and away from her office, you see.

So, I bided my time until it was right. I am a patient Bevboy. I learned she would be in the office today and would actually be getting her hair done, one presumes in anticipation of this great tie event. At least, I have convinced myself that that is why she got her hair done this morning. Please do not do anything to disabuse me of this perception. Deal?

There is a solo shot of me, of course. I did this for the ladies, who have been clamouring (yes! clamouring) for such a photograph of me during this month. “Please, Bevboy! You must reveal your legs from the top of your sock to the bottom of your pant leg. Life will not be worth living if you don’t!”, was the refrain I heard and saw over and over. Finally, I was unable to resist this torrent of pleas and have acquiesced to their demands. I hope they’re happy now. Of course, the glimpse of my leg is in more than one picture, so they should be beside themselves right about now.

Tomorrow is the final official day in the 4th Annual Bevboy’s Blog Christmas Tie Extravaganza. It is all planned out. It will be awesome. And notice I said “official”. There may be an epilogue! You never know, folks. Just be nice to me and you’ll never know where it will go.

See you tomorrow.

Post 1852 - Christmas Tie 2011 - Day Twelve

2011-12-21T14:28:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the antepenultimate edition of the 4th Annual Bevboy's Christmas Tie Extravaganza!

This was a pretty fun one. Jamie and Lisa of Lite 92.9 invited me into their Master Control Room, the studio from which they broadcast their morning show, 5 days a week. Their musical format is all Christmas, all the time, from December 1st through the end of the 25th. It is great fun, listening to this station at this time of the year.

Jamie gently chided me for not having interviewed him yet. I assured him that 2012 is coming and that I would be delighted to sit down with him sometime early in the new year. That appeased him.

Of course, I interviewed the lovely Lisa Blackburn in 2010. I will add the label to her interview as part of this blog post. It is a good one, and you should read it.

Let's see here. I gave Lisa and Jamie each a clementine this morning. Jamie dove right into it. I am guessing they get pretty hungry after being on the air for a few hours. And, can you find the Bevboy's Blog business card in the second picture? Well, can you? Hmm?

It was very interesting, discussing radio with Jamie and Lisa this morning. I do not have access to the BBM ratings book, so we spoke about that for a moment or two. Lite held its own, but other stations have suffered declines, apparently to an unexplained loss of adult males in the polling samples. Hal FM still had a good book, though. Live 105 is incrementally improving its ratings. Other stations didn't do so well. I'd love to see a copy of the book, people. If anyone reading this can make that happen, I'm interested.

I have lined up Thursday's picture situation, and Friday's is pretty much decided as well. You should be excited for me.

If not for yourself.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1851 - Christmas Tie 2011 - Day Eleven

2011-12-20T17:05:00.000-08:00

The preantepenultimate edition of the 4th Annual Bevboy Christmas Tie 2011 Extravaganza!

This first set of pictures was taken right after work this evening. I climbed up on a window sill at work and had my buddy Steve take a few pictures. That's my other buddy (my only 2 friends in the entire world! Feel my pain!) Michael next to me.

An hour or so later, here I am with Patricia at Michael's on Young Street in Halifax. Today was our 20th anniversary. We got the server to take these pictures, and she agreed, because it meant a nice tip I guess. Laura was very kind and patient with us as she took the pictures of the two old timers. She also cut up our food and fed it to us. So sweet.

It has been a busy day. Christmas shopping is nearly done!!

And, there are a scant 3 days to go in this extravaganza. Tomorrow's is booked. Friday's is firmed up. Still not sure what I'll do for Thursday just yet. Accepting suggestions.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1850 - Christmas Tie 2011 - Day Ten

2011-12-19T15:50:00.000-08:00

We're in the home stretch, folks!

Here I am at home, after a hard day of doing whatever it is I do, standing amidst some of my book collection.

The second picture, the one where you can out authors like Brian Keene and J.F. Gonzales and Graham Masterton, shows the bookcase that my father built me more than 20 years ago. When I got my first apartment, back in the day, I needed a bookcase. My dad built me this one. Other than having to reinforce the backing once or twice, the bookcase remains in excellent condition. I would expect no less from my father.

The other bookcase, the one I'm resting my left arm on, was built by a person in the early 1990's. I needed more bookcases. The template he used only had 4 shelves and I needed 5. He built me 3 such bookcases, and I love them. I spent hours in the boiler room of my old apartment building finishing them, rubbing sandpaper over all of them and then applying a varnish. I didn't do a bad job; it is still rough in places.

On the wall are additional shelving units which presently hold vhs tapes, 99% of which will disappear during the Winter months. I have said it other years, and this time, I mean it. Dad built those for me as well, just a few years ago. Thank you, Dad. I still miss you and think of you every time I am in this room, and I'm in this room a lot.

That's it for tonight, folks.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1849 - A Long Sunday

2011-12-18T19:05:00.000-08:00

Slept in this morning after the very long and trying day in the Valley on Saturday.

Today we got on a cleaning kick, so we cleaned the bathroom and I tackled the laundry room. I applied a bit of bleach and Mr. Clean to an area that I think Cindy has been weeing in lately. Her scent should be pretty much gone from that spot now, at least we hope so.

For dinner, we had some mussels that we bought at Clearwater or Fisherman's Market on Friday. Apparently, mussels are an aphrodisiac. Apparently. I mean, I didn't notice anything different, and I know Patricia didn't, because I didn't get that come hither look from her, the one I get when I pull a 20 dollar bill out of my pocket and leave it on the nightstand.

This computer I am using is currently burning a dvd for a guy at work. He gave me a dvd on Thursday full of hundreds of songs that I will never have time to listen to. The least I could do is return the favour, and will present him tomorrow with a dvd full of hundreds of Old Time Radio shows from the 1940's and 1950's that he will never listen to. I downloaded, ordered, copied these shows years and years ago for the most part, but some of them were purchased more recently from this website. It's probably the biggest OTR website in the world, with many thousands of shows. They will sell you collections of cd's (don't know why they haven't moved over to dvd yet, or charge for download), for a very reasonable price.

(Yeah. I know. You can get torrents. You can download the various mp3's. But that's work, finding and organizing that stuff. Why not order from these guys? They're nice, and charge very little. Don't be such a cheap bastard.)

A lot of that old OTR stuff is pretty corny, but the comedies can still be very droll and entertaining. There is a timeless element to these old comedies that will make them funny a hundred years from now. I don't have enough of them in my collection. Of course, there is a whole binder of these shows that I haven't been able to find lately, and therefore they aren't on any of my computers, so I can't share them with my friend or anyone else. Such is life, and such is the fate of these discs if you misplace them. They will turn up one day.

5 more Christmas ties this week, and that's it. I hope you're looking forward to them as much as I am.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1848 - Christmas Tie 2011 - Day Nine

2011-12-17T11:41:00.001-08:00

More to come, on this special bonus edition of the Christmas Tie Extravaganza!

This is a minister named Barbara Durling whom we ran into at the hospital. I gave her several Blog business cards. She promised to check out the blog. She's a religious person, so I trust her word.

I apologize for the quality of this picture. It came from my BlackBerry, and was taken in front of a stained glass window. Poor combination, I guess. Barbara deserves to be in a better picture, especially one with Bevboy. Perhaps we can do this again sometime, Reverend Durling?

More pictures were taken today. They will be added to this post, later. Watch for them.

8 hours later...

We're now back in the city, so I can fill you in on the details of our Valley trip pictures!

Here we go.

This morning, when we drove up from the city, we decided to check out the Wolfville Farmer's Market. We love it there. It is just the right size for a Farmer's Market. Yeah, there are huge ones in Halifax, but so what? A lot of the vendors who go to Seaport or the Historic Farmer's Market come from the Valley anyway. Why not just go to the source?

We wandered around. We saw Pete Luckett, who never saw a camera he didn't like. We asked him if he'd pose with me, and he agreed. Of course, the ice wine that Patricia bought from his vineyards didn't hurt with his decision.

Pete was kind enough to pose with me in two pictures. Thank you very much.

Later on, late in the afternoon, after the picture with the minister, we went to my mother's house and decorated her tree. Afterward, proud of the work, Patricia got these 2 pictures of me by the tree.

It was a whirlwind trip to the Valley with little time to do anything else than the things on our list, which was lengthy. It is now just shy of 10pm, and I think I will call it a night.

It's a night.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1847 - A Day Off

2011-12-16T18:56:00.000-08:00

It is comparatively late on Friday night. We had a day off work. Yay!

We were gonna go to the cottage today, but we slept in instead and decided to stay in town. We had lunch at Cora's in Lacewood and then repaired ourselves to Fisherman's Market and Clearwater on the Bedford highway to get some fish. Hadn't been to either place in years. Even though Clearwater is a cleaner place, and larger and brighter, we still prefer Fisherman's Market. It looks and smells the way a fisherman's market should look and smell.

We continued down the Bedford highway and ended up at Pete's Frootique and other stores in the Bedford Mall. We also hadn't been there for quite some time.

We returned to the house mid-afternoon and napped for a time. Turned on CBC radio and heard Meaghan Smith. This morning, I had her on Lite 92.9 when she was in studio with Jamie and Lisa. The girl gets around.

Tomorrow, we will go to the Valley and spend the day down there. There are a number of things that need to be done to prepare for the holidays, and tomorrow is a good day to do them. As breaking news, if you're nice to me, if you tell me you love me, there may be a special weekend edition of the Christmas Tie Extravaganza. It will consist of pictures taken in the various parts of the Valley where we will be on Saturday. Look for it.

See you tomorrow. Be excited!!

Bevboy

Post 1846 - Christmas Tie 2011 - Day Eight

2011-12-15T18:01:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the 8th day of the 4th Annual Bevboy Christmas Tie Extravaganza.

This one was taken in front of the Chapters store in Bayer's Lake. It was taken around 5:30 this evening, or about 4 and a half hours ago. We killed some time there (and I got some books) before we both went to see "The Artist" in a special sneak preview courtesy of the United Way. We figured the theatre would be packed, so we got there in plenty of time, to find the place in darkness. I doubt if there were more than 30 people there.

A fantastic movie, deserving of all its acclaim.

I hope you liked day 8. I'm off on Friday and back to work on the 19th for day 9. Looking forward to it. I hope you are, too.

A quick trip to the cottage in the morning to check the joint out. Haven't been there since Labour Day weekend!

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1845 - Christmas Tie 2011 - Day Seven

2011-12-14T17:55:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the 7th day of the 4th Annual Bevboy Christmas Tie Extravaganza.

A bit of context. Today was our annual Christmas potluck lunch. Participants were asked to prepare or purchase some item and take it in. We would then dig into these items and scarf away until the food we'd eaten was oozing from our ears and the very thought of eating just one more morsel would send us jumping out the windows to our deaths. Something like that.

After that lunch, about half of the chili I mentioned last night was left over. I took the freshly-washed ladle and taped the piece of mistletoe at my desk (a long story!) and held it over my head, in the vain, pathetic, doomed-to-failure wish that someone would kiss me. Today was like junior high school, all over again.

My thanks to my friend Adam for taking the photos today!

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1844 - The Plot Thickens!

2011-12-13T18:43:00.000-08:00

First of all, no Christmas tie picture today. I was sick today. Expect another cool tie tomorrow.

I slept in very late this morning. When I did finally get up, I stumbled into the kitchen and considered the dishes in the sink. I cooked some breakfast and tackled the dishes. After that, I decided to cook the chili for tomorrow's potluck lunch at work.

The beans, all twelve different kinds, had been soaking since Monday night. I boiled them for about 90 minutes. At the same time I cooked a couple pounds of hamburger and emptied several cans of tomatoes into a crockpot, following it with the cooked and drained hamburger.

When the beans were boiled sufficiently, I added them to the crockpot. I found some cans of tomatoes and some dried onions. Chili powder, maybe a bit too much, was added. When Patricia got home this evening, she brought home some fresh onions, so I added two more.

This is going to be a cool chili. A really good one. I hope that people at work tomorrow, like it.

In other news, I got an interesting comment on blog post 901, written more than 2 years ago. It was from Dennis Riley, son of Norm Riley, the seminal CJCH broadcaster from 6 decades ago. He thanked me for having written that post but pointed out that much of what I had written was wrong.

I left a comment on that post indicating that I would love to learn more about Norm Riley. When did he join CJ? When did he leave? Why did he get involved with managing movie theatres? Everything. I want to know it all.

I am in receipt of 10 or so pictures of Norm Riley, and I want to run them here on the blog, and soon. Arranging all those pictures in one post without much text would be a challenge, though. I'd love to have more to say about the guy, and now, I may get my wish.

I am willing to disbelieve all the negative things I have heard about Norm Riley. They are second and third and fourth hand. To get stuff from his son about his dad excites me.

Whenever you're ready, Mr. Riley!

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1843 - Christmas Tie 2011 - Day Six

2011-12-12T14:47:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the sixth day of the 4th Annual Bevboy Christmas Tie Extravaganza.

It was a very long day following a long, troubling weekend. I needed to get this tie picture taken as much as you need to see it. No. I don't want to talk about the why's and wherefores. Sorry.

This picture is taken in front of my house, just about 30 minutes ago. Patricia did the honours, for which I thank her.

I am still accepting suggestions for locations in which to get my picture taken, and people with whom to pose for these Christmas tie pictures. Please send these suggestions along. 3 more days this week, and 5 next week, and that will be it. Help a fella out!

See you tomorrow!

Bevboy

Post 1842 - A Fruitful Day

2011-12-11T18:13:00.000-08:00

For reasons I don't want to get into, mostly 'cuz they're boring, I didn't get to bed until 3:30 Saturday morning. I got up a scant 6 hours or so later. I napped briefly in the afternoon, but kept going, doing what I should be doing. until I decided to turn in around 8:30 Saturday night. I didn't get up until 9 Sunday morning.

Today I did some laundry and, around noon time, went out to my mother's garage (which is a phrase I find very hard to type) and put fuel stabilizer in the lawn tractor there in and ran it for 20 minutes or so. I removed the battery from said lawn tractor and took it into the house for warm, safe keeping for the Winter.

I talked to my mother for a little while. She sheepishly asked me to pick up a couple of items for her, in a way that made me think it was my idea. You have to see her in action to believe it.

I got those items and returned to the house. It was Newbie's turn for my attention. I couldn't find him. Finally, I located him under Dad's old hospital bed. In order to get to him, I would have to take the bed apart, piece by piece, so I did. He gave up and wandered toward his carrier, dejected.

We returned to the city, arriving around 6 and in time for Patricia's supper. I spent a delightful evening preparing stuff to toss out for recycling day on Tuesday, watched this week's The Good Wife, and showered and shaved and muffed and buffed and prepared for my work day tomorrow.

You're all caught up on my life.

Tell me about yours.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1841 - A Quickie

2011-12-10T18:25:00.001-08:00

I had a lot of plans for this Saturday evening. I did manage to do most of the dishes and most of the laundry. Then, I got into my jammies around 8:30 with the intention of reading for a while, perhaps finishing the zombie novel I've been reading.

No such luck.

I decided to close my eyes for a few minutes, but fell asleep for 2 hours. Went from part way through an excellent edition of Vinyl Tap featuring stuttering songs to nothing. The clock radio turned itself off after 59 minutes. Too asleep to notice.

I just woke up for a few minutes. Turning back in before I re-fall aslzzzzzz.

From Bevboy's BlackBerry to BevBoy's Blog!

Post 1840 - Wolfville Bloggin'

2011-12-09T11:31:00.000-08:00

These pathetic, humble words come from TAN Coffee in downtown Wolfville. It's the second time I've ever been here. The first time, last year, it was not a good experience. The coffee, whatever it was I ordered, was pretty gross. Today's latte is much better and I am feeling alive again. An hour or so ago, not so much.

I spent a few hours today shopping for my mother. Some of you will be happy to know that I have purchased the Christmas turkey for the family. At $1.27 a pound at Superstore, it's a steal. Dad always favoured the Butterball variety of turkey, the type injected with... something and stuffed with... something else. Last year, our first year without him, we bought a utility turkey and enjoyed it much more than we ever had the ones Dad liked.

Life continues to be interesting. There are days when it feels as though my life is closing in on me. It's like an episode of The Walking Dead, where one minute all is well, and the next, I'm being assailed by all sides without regard to my feelings or some of the crap I've had to endure over the last couple of years. There are times when it is not fun, being everyone's punching bag.

I spent more time today scanning in articles clipped from newspapers 25 years ago. I still wonder why the Hell I clipped some of those articles in the first place, but yet, I did. Some of these articles are fascinating to me even today. Others, like a picture of a 4-H meeting in April of 1982 featuring a girl I had a crush on at the time, mystify me. Unless the hormones were raging back then such that a picture like that comforted me in a certain context, that is. Who knows?

My, women had the big hair in the 1980's, didn't they? Is that why there's a hole in the ozone layer? All that hair product used to keep the follicles in place. What was the point, anyway?

Guess I'll let you guys get back to what you were doing.

See you tomorrow.

Bevboy

Post 1839 - A Long Weekend In The Valley

2011-12-08T19:45:00.000-08:00

I drove here to my mother's this morning in order to take her to the doctor's. Of course, afterward, she had to have lunch some place, so I paid attention to her hints and took her to Swiss Chalet.

Returned here and napped before preparing supper. I went to New Minas to get some meds for Mom and came back here and confronted a long- neglected chore.

As a young fella, I clipped articles from the local community newspaper, The Advertiser. For some reason, lots of those articles are about local sports. Don't care a lick about sports and didn't then. No matter.

I spent several hours this evening sifting through these articles and scanning some of the most interesting ones. Scanned a few dozen articles. Some will make dandy future editions of The Early Bevboy. Others will be emailed to an old professor of mine who expressed an interest in seeing the ones related to Acadia. Others yet are fascinating glimpses into some of the cool history around these here parts.

Tomorrow, I hope to find some time to complete this task, except perhaps for the items that won't fit on the flatbed scanner. Not sure what I'll do for the oversize articles.

Also tomorrow, Mom has several plans for me. I will be kept busy.

Better get to bed. Lots on the agenda tomorrow.

See you tomorrow.

From Bevboy's BlackBerry to BevBoy's Blog!

Post 1838 - Christmas Tie 2011 - Day Five

2011-12-07T14:36:00.001-08:00

Most fortuitous. We're here at Empire Theatres in Bayer's Lake. Was going to get my picture taken around here some place when lo and behold, we ran into Kate Peardon, late of K-Rock and now doing some stuff for Kool and Q104.

It's her birthday today, so this must be a special thrill for her.

I know it's one for me.

No more tie pictures until Monday. Taking a couple vacation days in the Valley.

See you tomorrow!

From Bevboy's BlackBerry to BevBoy's Blog!

Post 1837 - Christmas Tie 2011 - Day Four

2011-12-06T11:00:00.001-08:00

Day 4! Amazing.
This picture was taken at the Metro Deli on Young Street this morning during coffee with the boys. There's always more coffee and always more boys to enjoy it with. Circle of life stuff.
See you tomorrow, me hearties!

From Bevboy's BlackBerry to BevBoy's Blog!