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Thursday, January 10, 2013

The Leaky Roof Chronicles


This week’s edition of the Thursday Diaries was one that I had a difficult time choosing.  At some point during the brainstorming sessions for this week’s entry, I had three different topics that I could choose from.  And, you know something?  All three topics of discussion had their merits.

At some point (like probably during the rest of the month of January), I’ll be discussing all three topics.  But for this week, I simply couldn’t decide what one to do.  So, I took all three topics, wrote them all on three different sheets of paper, and pulled it out of a baseball cap.

And this was the winning topic for this week.  Enjoy!

January 10, 2013

It’s absolutely mind-boggling to see some of the magazines that are out there these days.  There are some who seem to believe that the publishing industry in regards to monthly magazines and periodicals is on the decline, but glancing at the magazine rack at the retail store I work in, you’d never know it. 

And the best part about magazines is that you can pick up one that is virtually on any subject in the world.  For people who are into cooking, you can read “Family Circle” or Rachael Ray’s magazine.  For teenage girls who are enamored with One Direction or Justin Bieber, there are dozens of teen magazines for you to choose from.  Unfortunately, the only magazine I have heard of that caters to teen girls is “Tiger Beat”, and I really couldn’t tell you if that magazine is still in publication!

For people who love seeing the world, “National Geographic” is a good choice.  For people who love celebrity gossip, “Star”, “People”, and “Us Weekly” are popular choices.  For people who enjoy getting the hottest styles and fashions, there’s “Vogue” and “GQ”.  And for you guys and gals who want to spice up your...ahem...sex lives, I hear that “Cosmopolitan” and “Men’s Health” are popular choices.

As a kid, I grew up reading magazines on a regular basis.  Weirdly enough, the first magazines that I began “reading” were old copies of “Reader’s Digest”, and ironically enough “Canadian Living”!  And, when I say that I “read” them, I was actually looking at the pictures and the ads. 

When I grew old enough to actually read entire articles word for word, I started reading kid’s magazines, such as “Highlights for Children”, “Chickadee”, and “Owl” (the last two magazines I had a subscription to for at least four or five years).

These days, I don’t tend to purchase a lot of magazines, but whenever we have magazines in our employee lounge, I’ll give them a flip through.  I tend to read the ones that are based on pop culture first and foremost (mainly to get some future ideas for this particular blog), but for the most part I’ll read anything that is in there.  I’ve looked at “National Geographic”, “Sports Illustrated” (even though I have almost no interest in them), and yes, I’ll cop to leafing through a copy of a teen magazine that was left behind - if for no other reason but to make fun of the atrocious spelling and sentence structure.

(I am an unapologetic Grammar & Spelling Nazi...especially when it comes to publications that can be viewed by thousands of people.  But, to be fair, if anyone spots a mistake in anything I write, I would want to hear about it!)

There is one type of magazine, however, that I absolutely will not pick up and read willingly.  It doesn’t matter how popular they are, and it doesn’t matter what ideas are presented in them.  I don’t like reading magazines that have to do with home makeovers or changing your living space, or anything like that.


These include “Good Housekeeping”, “Better Homes & Gardens”, and “Martha Stewart Living”, among others.


(Well, okay, I just lied.  I have looked at an issue of “Martha Stewart Living”, if for no other reason but to make fun of it.  I apologize to those who enjoy Martha Stewart, but she just isn’t my cup of tea.  I hope that’s a good thing.)

Surprisingly enough though, the content inside of the magazines is not the reason why I don’t like reading them.  I will admit that some of the magazines do come up with interesting ideas on how to improve a living space.  Mind you, some of the designs that I have seen in these magazines look like what might happen if you swallowed an entire bottle of French’s mustard and spewed it all over the walls, but again, different people have different tastes.

(Of course, the magazine that had the mustard walls could have been one that had a publication date of September 1977...)

No, the reason why I don’t really like looking at magazines in which to improve your living space is quite simple actually. 

It’s because I don’t have a home to decorate.


I suppose I should explain.  It’s not like I’m homeless or anything like that (it’d be fairly difficult to update a blog every day for the last twenty months if I didn’t have a place with regular Internet access).  But my living space isn’t exactly the most glamourous or comfortable, to be completely honest.  In fact, I’ll be the first one to tell you that my current living situation is such that I can’t really call this place my “home”.  To me, it’s just a place with four walls that happens to be the place where I eat, sleep, and shower.  That’s really it.

And, you know something...looking back on my life, I can’t ever recall a place in which I was actually proud to call my home. 

I have talked about how my family never really had much disposable income to their name.  Growing up as a boy, times were really difficult, and my family essentially lived from pay week to pay week.  We certainly weren’t the first family to do this, and we unfortunately aren’t the last family that had to do it either.  But, it was really hard.

You see, in all their years of living, my parents have never been homeowners.  They rented their living spaces.  And, during the early 1980s, finding a decent place to rent was incredibly difficult.  Even as early as 1981, my hometown was making the transition into a community for the wealthy to retire, and as a result, homes in the area were ridiculously overpriced (and still are in my honest opinion).  Hence the reason my family rented.


By the time I was five years old, my family moved to four different houses.  I was a little bit too young to remember all the moves, but I can only imagine how stressful things were for my parents and two older siblings.  To make things even tougher, my family was a single-income family (which actually ended up being a good thing in the long run as there was always one parent who was home in case I or my siblings had to go home sick, or go to a doctor’s appointment in the middle of the school day). 

So, from birth until age 5, I must have been rather confused.  It was like we had moved to a different house each year, and we had to get used to another house layout each year.  Again, I don’t remember much of that period, but as I said before, for my family, it had to have been extremely difficult.

But that was what families had to do when times got tough.  They had to go where the rent was the cheapest because we couldn’t very well live on the streets.  Canadian winters get awful chilly, you know, as I can well attest to typing this out in the middle of January!


Of course, with the cheap rent came the fact that the houses we lived in were real fixer-uppers.  My poor sister, god bless her, got stuck with the bedroom that always had the leaky roof.  She often joked that she must have been born with a black rain cloud over her head, as she spent the majority of her teenage years with a giant rain collecting bucket on the floor next to her bed...

...which she promptly passed onto me the moment she moved out on her own, and I ended up with her old room even after my father tried to fix it so that it would never leak again! 


But, you know, I give him a lot of credit for trying to fix things. In fact, one of the pluses to living in houses that required a lot of tender loving care was the fact that my father became quite the little handyman.  I guess I always liked to compare him to Luis from Sesame Street in a way!  He would fix holes in drywall, wallpaper rooms so that they didn’t look as dingy, repaint walls that desperately needed it, and yes...he even fixed the ceilings in my sister’s room so that the leaks weren’t as severe.  It was all that he could do.  We were renting the property, and the original homeowner’s didn’t exactly raise a finger to actually pay to have it professionally done (mainly because if they had, the rent would have increased, and we would have had to move anyway). 

Still, it was really frustrating to move into a home and wonder if this time you’d actually get to stay there.  You see, in past instances, the decision to move was not ours to make.  They were often made for us in some of the most inopportune times.  In one instance, a wealthy developer bought up all the houses on a city street with the intention to tear them all down to build a mini-mall on the premises.  The house my family was renting just happened to be one of the houses that was sold, and we were forced to move because of progress.

That was back in 1986, I believe it was.  27 years later, a parking lot sits.  No mini-mall.  No corner stores.  Not even a flippin’ gas station.  So, my family ended up losing our home because of “progress”.  Needless to say, there’s a certain furniture store in town that my family and I have boycotted ever since, and I’m at the age now where I don’t care who knows it.  I may have been five years old at the time we had to leave, but I have such fond memories of that house, and I wished that we could have stayed.


(Even though the roof leaked.  J )

And, then there was the house that we moved into when I was five years old.  It could be classified as my true “childhood home”, as I lived there from 1986 until 2000.  We were kicked out of that home after the original landlord died, and their children decided to sell it to someone else.  Guess who ended up evicted with very little notice?

Now, don’t get me wrong.  These things happen to a lot of people.  But, it just seemed to confirm my belief that there was no point in trying to make the place our own if it would just be taken away at a moment’s notice.  Even though my family was there for fourteen years, we never really added our own personal touches to the place until a year or two before we were told to leave because we had such bad luck with living spaces before.

And, I suppose that’s what has fueled my desire to hopefully have a place that I can truly say is my own to do with whatever I please.

I’m not looking at living in the Taj Mahal, or even the Trump Tower in New York (to be honest, both places are a little too garish for my liking).  But at the same time, I do want a place that I can be proud to call my home.  I’m going to be 32 this year, and I STILL haven’t found that place yet.

In fact, I’m going to be telling you all a secret that I’ve never revealed to anyone before.  When I was younger, I never had birthday parties at my house.  I very rarely even had friends over to visit, and whenever I did, they were always kept downstairs (at the time, the downstairs area was a little bit nicer than the upstairs).  I remember in many instances my friends asking if they could go upstairs in my room and play...and I always made up some excuse as to why they couldn’t.  I told them that my room was messy and that I hadn’t cleaned it up, or I told them that it was being painted, or I would tell them that my sister was using it to store some of her stuff (true story, and the friend actually bought it).

Well, here’s the real reason.  I was ashamed of my room.


Before my sister moved out, my room was basically the size of a closet.  Just enough room for a bed and a chest of drawers.  That’s it.  And, then when I moved to my sister’s previous room, the ceiling had leaked again and was partially collapsed, leaving a gaping hole.  You really think that I wanted word to get out that my bedroom was a complete write-off?  At least it wasn’t as bad as the storage room next to my bedroom, which had so much water damage, we actually had to keep it locked up.

Looking back on it, I suppose that it was a little bit silly of me to think this way.  I mean, there were always ways to camouflage the ceiling (like putting up a parachute and stapling it to the ceiling), and if they were my true friends, they would have understood.  But as a teenager, I was so ashamed of my living space that I never bothered to decorate it the way I wanted it.  My room was just bright white walls with no concert posters or bright colours hanging off of them.  It was completely devoid of all personality.

Even now as I look around my living space, it basically has no personality because it’s not really mine to play around with.  And, it’s something that I really want to change about myself, but just as my parents had before me, I don’t exactly have a lot of disposable income to my name, and if you thought rent was high in 1981, it’s almost tripled in 2013!

Still, I can’t exactly give up on the quest to finally have a spot that I can truly call “home”.  I know that the saying goes that “home is where your heart is” (and believe me, contrary to what you might have thought, I do believe that to have some truth to it), but when you have a heart that is easily confused, such as mine, it makes it easier knowing that you always have a place to go where you can feel safe and comfortable being who you are.  And, don't get me wrong...I know that I am lucky compared to some people as I more or less have had a roof over my head (even if I did get wet every time we had a freak thunderstorm),  At the same time though, I've always wanted a place that was never under the threat of being taken away because of the death of a landlord, or because of a shopping plaza that was never built.


I always said that my perfect place would be a writing studio that is built inside of a home.  It would be decked out in various shades of blue and purple (my two favourite colours), and I would design it in such a way that it would bring me instant peace, calmness, and serenity to be alone with my thoughts. 

And, one day, I will get that writing studio.  If I keep telling myself that, it has to come true one day, right?  Until then, it can only exist in my dreams as I try to brainstorm ways in which I can pay for it.  But one thing I can at least say is that in my case, I still have some time left to make it happen.  I have no clue how yet, but I’m cautiously optimistic.

I just feel bad that my parents never had the opportunity to own their own home.  But, lord knows that they worked their fingers to the bone to provide for us.  And, for that, I’m ever so grateful.  If it’s entirely possible for me to do, I wish I could find a way for them to live out their last few years in a house that they absolutely deserve because they never did have that chance.


A house that doesn’t leak!


In fact, I wish EVERYONE had a house that didn’t leak!  It’s no fun, believe me!

Wednesday, January 09, 2013

The Legend of Zelda


You know, it's been well over a year since I did a blog entry on a video game series.

When this blog first began, I had initially designated Thursday blog entries as “Thursday Night at the Arcade”. Throughout 2011, I used the Thursday blog to talk about video games of the past and (then) present from the Colecovision to the Nintendo DS. But at the end of 2011, I realized that not a whole lot of people really took much interest. So, when 2012 came around, I changed the theme day to the “Thursday Confessional”. And, now in 2013, it's called the “Thursday Diaries”.

(Can you tell that Thursdays have been a source of frustration for this blogger?)

Looking back on the original arcade game feature, I don't think that it was that bad of an idea. I did talk about some of the popular games that took the gaming world by storm, after all. I did a couple of entries on Super Mario, dabbled in a little bit of Sonic history, added in Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon as a little bit of a footnote, and had a lengthy discussion on video games that probably should have never been made.



Back to the Future for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Enough said.

Of course, part of my research was made a lot easier by the search button that I added to the blog just underneath the main header. You type in any word you want to, and if the word appears in any of the 599 previous entries that I have done, it will bring up the entry in the search engine.

So, why am I telling you this?

Well, first things first, if you've read between the lines, this is the 600th post in this blog. YAY!

(Self-gratification transmission ended.)

And, secondly, I realized that in the seven months that I kept the video game feature going on, I never did a blog entry on one of the most popular video game series ever created.

I thought to myself...this wasn't right. After all, millions of people have probably played at least one game in this particular series...I know that I played a couple of the games when I was younger. Of course, I don't know if anyone else found this to be the case, but when I was playing these series of games, I was absolutely clueless as to how to play them. I kept dying, and getting stuck, and by the end of it all, I was ready to chuck the controller through the bedroom window.

(In case you can't tell, I never did beat any of the games in this series.)

But for twenty-seven years, this little guy decked out entirely in green has wielded his sword against mythical beasts and creatures, found hidden treasures...and broke into people's homes and smashed up every single ceramic pot in their possession. Oh, but don't worry. You won't get thrown in jail for it. The people just smile and happily dole out little nuggets of information to you anyway, like the Stepford wives they seem to be.



Of course, there's a reason for the mass murder of forest creatures and vandalism of private property. You have to save the princess of Hyrule from an evil being and make sure that the Triforce of Wisdom is restored and repaired in the hopes of bringing peace to the land.

Mind you, our protagonist has done a lousy job of it so far. I mean, he's had twenty-seven years to put things right, and yet Ganon STILL manages to cause mischief. I tell you, Link is just losing his touch.

Yes, we'll be talking about the characters of Link, Princess Zelda, and Ganon in today's blog. As for the game we'll be spotlighting? Why not start at the very beginning with “The Legend of Zelda”?



I know it seems hard to believe, but next month will mark the twenty-seventh anniversary of the “Legend of Zelda” series. The game was released in Japan on February 21, 1986 (just a few months after the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in North America), and since then has been re-released for the Nintendo GameCube, Game Boy Advance, the Wii's Virtual Console, and there are talks for the game to be released for the Nintendo 3DS sometime in 2013.



The game was developed and created by duo of Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka. At the time they were working on “The Legend of Zelda”, the team was also developing the 1985 video game “Super Mario Brothers”. But although both games were being created together, both men intended to make both games as different as possible. As a result, “Super Mario Brothers” became a linear platformer game, while “The Legend of Zelda” became more of a non-linear role playing game.

The inspiration behind the game largely came from Miyamoto's own childhood adventures. Growing up in Kyoto, Japan, he would often be exploring fields, woods, and caves. He would often go off on little adventures without a map or a compass, and be completely surprised and excited over what he would find. He even recalled one story where he came across a lake in his travels that he had no idea even existed before.



And, that's essentially what “The Legend of Zelda” is. It's a game of exploration. Link, our hero, makes his way through different villages to interact with townspeople, and moving through caves and forests in hopes of finding treasure. The whole point of the game is to find a way into the eight secret dungeons hidden throughout the land of Hyrule to retrieve the eight pieces of the shattered Triforce of Wisdom, an ancient artifact representing the essences of a trio of Golden Goddesses. Once the Triforce is fully assembled, Link can then gain entry into the ninth and final dungeon to rescue Princess Zelda from Ganon.



TRIVIA: Ever wonder how Zelda ended up getting her famous name? According to Miyamoto, the name Zelda came from a woman named Zelda Fitzgerald, the wife of novelist Francis Scott Fitzgerald. There was no reason why Zelda was chosen other than the fact that Miyamoto liked the name.



EVEN MORE TRIVIA: Actor Robin Williams is a fan of video gaming. In fact, he's such a fan of this particular game that when his daughter was born in 1989, he named her Zelda, after the video game!

For the record, the origin of Link was designed solely with a “coming-of-age” angle to it. The game progresses in such a way that at the beginning of the game, he is a naïve young boy who probably shouldn't be tackling on a big adventure (at the very beginning of the game, he doesn't even have a weapon), but towards the end, he's matured into quite the hero.

Albeit a hero who has to rescue a princess as many times as a certain plumber with a mustache...

What is interesting about the game was that it didn't exactly have Nintendo's full backing at first. Initially, the management team had concerns that “The Legend of Zelda” would end up being a huge flop. But those fears ended up being unfounded, as the game became a massive success. The game was the first NES game to sell one million copies, and by the end of the 1980s, it had sold more than 6.5 million copies. The game was brought to North America in 1987, which was right around the time that the sequel “Zelda II: The Adventures of Link” was being released in Japan.

The Zelda games also stood out from the rest of the Nintendo cartridges when they first were released because the cartridges were gold in colour. Take a look below.



If only ALL Nintendo game cartridges were that colour. Heck, if they designed a gold Nintendo 3DS, I would totally purchase it.



And, “The Legend of Zelda” was also responsible for the kick off of various video game tip magazines such as “Nintendo Power”, “Game Players”, and “GamePro”. When the game first came out, people who had purchased the game and sent in the warranty card that was included with the game, Nintendo would automatically enroll them in the “Fun Club”, and send them newsletters which contained puzzles and hot tips for the latest video games. Because of the difficulty of the game, Nintendo often included tips on how to find hidden rooms, or how to find various upgrades, or how to defeat a certain enemy inside each newsletter. These tips proved to be a godsend for many video gamers, which in turn caused the mailing list to grow to over one million people. This prompted the company to create Nintendo Power magazine in the summer of 1988, and the magazine provided tips and hints to gamers until it ceased publication in December 2012.

Did you also know that “The Legend of Zelda” also is the holder of five Guinness World Records? Just singling out a couple of them to talk about in this entry, it is the first game to use a battery powered saving feature. Instead of using passcodes and passwords to progress through the game, “Zelda” had a built in component that actually saved your game. Whenever you took a break from playing, all you had to do was select the save file, and you could continue on with the game. The Final Fantasy series also used this technology, but “Zelda” did it first.

The game also holds the record for being the highest-rated video game of all time.



In the years since “The Legend of Zelda” was released, a total of fifteen different games featuring Link and Zelda have been created (the most recent being 2011's “Skyward Sword” for the Nintendo Wii). The characters of Link and Zelda were animated into cartoon form for both the “Super Mario Brothers Super Show” and “Captain N: The Game Master” cartoon series, and the popularity of the game series spawned dozens of merchandising opportunities including sticker albums, lunchboxes, breakfast cereals, and jewelry.



And, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the “Zelda” series in 2011, Nintendo did a couple of things. They re-released the wildly popular “Ocarina of Time” game for the Nintendo 3DS, and they created a special “Zelda” themed level within Super Mario Land 3D, also for the Nintendo 3DS.



(It's World 5-2, in case you're wondering.)

Tuesday, January 08, 2013

January 8, 1998


I’m going to begin this edition of the Tuesday Timeline by letting you all in on something.  This edition of the Timeline will be focusing on an event that I lived through, and what I learned as a result of going through it.  Looking through all of the events that have taken place on January 8, there’s one that actually had an impact on me personally, so I decided to go with that rather than the standard pop culture references.  I’ll be returning to the normal format of the Tuesday Timeline next week though.  So, consider this a reprieve.

Now that I have that out of the way, we can continue.

So, should I talk about celebrity birthdays for January 8?  Why not, right?

Blowing out candles on their cakes today are Larry Storch, Ron Moody, Hanae Mori, Saeed Jaffrey, Charles Osgood, Dame Shirley Bassey, Bob Eubanks, Carolina Herrera, Stephen Hawking, Yvette Mimieux, Charles Murray, Terry Brooks, Kathleen Noone, Jeannie Lewis, Don Bendell, David Bowie, Terry Sylvester (The Hollies), Laurie Walters, Gillies MacKinnon, John McTiernan, Bruce Sutter, Mike Reno (Loverboy), David Lang, Chris Marion (Little River Band), Ron Sexsmith, Michelle Forbes, Maria Patillo, Willie Anderson, R. Kelly, Jeff Abercrombie (fuel), Ami Dolenz, Rachel Friend, Jason Giambi, Sean McKeever, Mike Cameron, Sean Paul, DJ Clue, Josh Meyers, Carl Pavano, Amber Benson, Ron Pederson, Sarah Polley, Rachel Nichols, Jeff Francis, Gaby Hoffmann, Allison Harvard, and Noah Cyrus.

Holy heck, have a lot of celebrities been born on January 8...and those are just the ones who are still ALIVE!

Now let`s take a look at what happened around the world on this day in history, beginning with...

307 – Emperor Jin Huidi, of the Chinese Jin Dynasty succumbs to poison, and is succeeded by his son, Jin Huaidi

871 – Alfred the Great leads a West Saxon army to repel an invasion by Danelaw Vikings

1297 – Francois Grimaldi disguises himself as a monk to lead a group of his men in the mission to capture the fortress protecting the Rock of Monaco

1499 – Louis the XII of France marries Anne of Brittany

1734 – The premiere performance of Handel`s Ariodante is performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

1780 – 80,000 are killed as a massive 7.7 earthquake destroys the city of Tabriz, Iran

1790 – George Washington delivers the very first State of the Union address in New York City

1815 – Andrew Jackson leads American forces in victory over the British in the Battle of New Orleans

1835 – In what would be the only time this would happen in American history, the national debt is $0 on this date (how times change!)

1863 – The Second Battle of Springfield takes place during the American Civil War

1867 – African American men are granted the right to vote in Washington D.C.

1877 – Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle against the United States Cavalry at Wolf Mountain

1889 – U.S. Patent #395,791 is issued to Herman Hollerith for his invention – the punched card calculator

1906 – A landslide in Haverstraw, New York kills 20 people

1912 – The African National Congress is founded

1918 – President Woodrow Wilson announces his “Fourteen Points” for the aftermath of World War II

1926 – Comedian Soupy Sales is born in Franklinton, North Carolina

1935 – Singer/Actor Elvis Aron Presley is born in Tupelo, Mississippi

1940 – Britain introduces food rationing during World War II

1962 – The Harmelan train disaster kills 93 in the Netherlands

1963 – Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” is displayed in the United States for the very first time, at the Washington D.C. Gallery of Art

1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a “War on Poverty”

1973 – Soviet space mission Luna 21 is launched

1975 – Ella T. Grasso becomes Governor of Connecticut, the first woman to serve as Governor in the United States other than succeeding her husband

1979 – Oil tanker Betelgeuse explodes in Bantry Bay, Ireland, in what is known as the “Whiddy Island Disaster”

1981 – A French farmer reports a UFO sighting in Trans-en-Provence, the “most completely and carefully documented sighting of all time”

1982 – AT&T splits into twenty-two different subdivisions

1994 – Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov leaves for Mir space station, eventually staying up there for a record 437 days

2002 – President George W. Bush signs the “No Child Left Behind” Act on the same day that Wendy’s restaurant chain founder Dave Thomas passes away at the age of 69

2004 – The RMS Queen Mary 2 – the largest passenger ship ever built – is christened by Queen Elizabeth II

2007 – Canadian born actress Yvonne de Carlo passes away in Woodland Hills, California at the age of 84

2011 – Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is shot outside of a Safeway grocery store leaving Giffords and 13 others wounded, and 6 dead

Those are just a few of the events that have taken place worldwide on January 8.  And one thing that I have noticed about January 8 was that a lot of both natural and man-made disasters took place on this date. 

And, as it so happens, today’s look back through time deals with a natural disaster...one that I ended up living through.


The story begins on January 8, 1998.

Now, I would imagine that on this date fifteen years ago, many of you were experiencing a rather normal day filled with monotonous tasks like going to work, picking up a coffee at the local coffee shop, and deciding on whether you were going to have spaghetti or lasagna for dinner.


For millions of people in Southeastern Ontario, Quebec, Upstate New York, parts of Maine, and even the Maritime provinces in Canada, January 8 was the beginning of a lengthy struggle without many of the things that we often take for granted.

January 1998 started off with a rather weird vibe, if I recall.  For whatever reason, we ended up getting a ton of snow and freezing rain during the first week of 1998.  I mean, I have grown up experiencing harsh Canadian winters my entire life, so this was nothing uncommon, but there was something eerie about it all.  I think that it all began roughly around the 5th or 6th of January, when we had three non-stop days of really nasty weather.  Buses were cancelled on the second day back after Christmas break, and on January 7, it appeared as though things were beginning to get back to normal after a minor disruption of freezing rain and ice pellets.

Little did we all know that it would be the calm before the storm.

In the early morning hours of January 8, my mom woke me up at around 7:00 in the morning to inform me that school had been cancelled for the day.  This news shocked even me, as I have never experienced a day in which school was outright cancelled because of lousy weather.  In my school district, barring a hurricane, a tornado, or an earthquake, schools usually stayed open.  Bus service to the schools was closed, due to the unfavourable road conditions, but if we walked to school, we were more or less expected to attend.

(And lucky me, being in eleventh grade at the time and living right next door to my school, I had to go to school on EVERY FLIPPIN’ SNOW DAY.)

But for every school in town to shut their doors because of a freezing rain storm?  This was unprecedented.  This was no ordinary storm.


And then the lights went out...and stayed out for several days.

This was what Ice Storm ’98 did.  The weight of the ice that formed due to the system of freezing rain pouring down over my area caused train tracks to snap apart, closed down major highways, and destroyed thousands of trees, which caused them to fall on top of power lines.  The weight of the ice caused nearly one thousand pylons to collapse, knocking out power to over four MILLION customers. 


The hardest hit areas of the storm were Upstate New York, Western New Brunswick, Southern Quebec, and Eastern Ontario.

Guess who lives in Eastern Ontario?  Yep.  Me.


I would say that the first day that the lights went out on January 8 was the hardest one to get through.  On one hand, the scenery outside looked absolutely stunning.  The ice twinkled on the tress that remained standing following the ice storm’s major punch, and if one had a camera available it would have made a fantastic image for a holiday card.  But knowing that millions of people were without food, heat, or in some cases, water, tarnished the possible beauty that was left behind.

My family ended up still having our water, but without any electricity or heat, and not having any information on when power was going to be restored, we knew that we had to go somewhere where there was at least a heat source.

So, the night of January 8, our home away from home became my maternal grandfather’s house.  Grandpa had a gas powered stove, and his home was entirely heated with a gas furnace, so we stayed there so that we could keep warm.

The next couple of days were incredibly hard to get through.  I had the foresight to bring along a lot of books to read, a binder filled with loose leaf paper so I could do some writing by candlelight (yes, at age 16, I was writing), and my Walkman filled with cassette tapes of my favourite music.


(Yes, Virginia, we once lived in a world where iPods did not exist...and apparently I still lived in a world before CD’s... J )

Still, the experience wasn’t the most positive one at first.  For one, we had to go out and brave the elements to pick up some canned foods from A&P (the only supermarket that stayed open during the first couple of days of the ice storm thanks to a back-up generator), and let’s just say that other people had the same idea.  Needless to say, we ended up with whatever we could get our hands on.

On top of all that, because my dad worked for a major railroad at the time of the Ice Storm, I very rarely saw him during the time we stayed with Grandpa because he was at work trying to repair the signals and train tracks that were destroyed from the aftermath of the storm to reopen the rail system as soon as possible.

And, on a purely superficial note (which I’m not exactly proud of), I kept complaining about the lack of lights, and how boring it was at Grandpa’s, and this caused my grandfather to get incredibly crusty and surly with me.  I mean, granted, my grandfather was always naturally grouchy to begin with (at least I thought so), but he was especially cranky.  But then, I suppose we all were.  I mean, the battery powered radio was tuned into CFJR where they were updating people on where they could purchase generators and which gas stations were open, and updated information on when power would be restored.  And, that was really our only link to the outside world at the time.  That was a really unsettling feeling to have.

It actually wasn’t until January 10 that things started to improve.  That was the day that my uncle, aunt, and their two boys came to stay with Grandpa as well.  That helped me cope better, as my cousins were eleven and nine at the time.  It made it easier having people close to my age experiencing this with me.  And when my cousins and I got together, we had a blast.  We played board games like Yahtzee, and we did Mad Libs, and it was a lot of fun.  Made the time pass by a lot quicker for sure.

And we also ended up having lights during that whole time.  My dad figured out a way to power up a floor lamp by plugging it into a charged up car battery.  Sure, it only managed to last four hours at the most, but it sort of helped bring back a little bit of normalcy.


Finally, by January 12, some neighbourhoods in my hometown were beginning to see power restoration, which made every one of us squeal in relief.  For my town, the nightmare was beginning to end.  My family was incredibly lucky in that my neighbourhood was one of the first to get power back (because I lived a block away from the city hospital at the time, it was put on the high priority list), and on January 13, we returned back home. 

But as I said, my family were some of the lucky ones.  The ice storm was so destructive that many places issued a state of emergency, and the disaster lead to the largest deployment of military personnel since the Korean War in Canadian history.

The damage caused by the storm caused entire power grids to be reconstructed in order to restore power to the people most affected by the storm system.  My area was lucky, as the power was 80% restored ten days after the initial storm began.  But some places in Quebec did not get power back for weeks...some places were left in the dark well into February 1998!

Ice Storm ’98 devastated Quebec’s maple syrup industry (the storm killed thousands of trees in maple syrup farms and fruit orchards all across the province), and in total, twenty-five people lost their lives in the storm from various causes including hypothermia, accidents, and fires sparked by gas explosions and unattended candles.

It is estimated that the storm caused $2 billion dollars in damage.

January 8, 1998 was a day that I will never forget as long as I live.  It was probably one of the most frustrating and scary times that I have ever gone through.

At the same time, it was probably one of the events that helped me grow into a better person, and in the progress, it may have even saved my life.



The month prior to the ice storm was a really, really bad one.  December 1997 was a rough month, and I felt as though I had hit rock bottom.  Granted, I was 16, and quite the emo kid because of what I was going through, but it still was painful enough for me to contemplate giving up on life.  I was that depressed as a teen.

But then the ice storm hit, and going through that experience helped make me a stronger person.  If I could survive being trapped in a frozen prison without electricity for five days, then I could get through anything.  In a way, the disaster helped give me a much-needed boost of self-esteem...even if at the time I couldn’t see it.


The aftermath of the storm?  Well, when school resumed, our winter exams were cancelled indefinitely (good thing too as I was in the process of nearly flunking math class), and life eventually went back to normal.  But it took a few days for the radio station to get back to normal, and CKWS-TV in Kingston was knocked off the air for almost a month, as their transmission tower was completely destroyed in the storm.

For those of us who lived through Ice Storm ’98, we’ll never forget it.  I still can’t believe that it has been fifteen years since the storm hit, as I remember it like it happened yesterday.  But, I’m sure that all of us who lived through it will attest to the fact that it did bring communities a little bit closer, and made all of us a little bit stronger as a result.

And, that’s what happened in my neck of the woods on January 8, 1998.

Monday, January 07, 2013

Arthur (The Best That He Could Do)


Hello, everybody!  And, welcome to the very first Monday Matinee of 2013!

For today’s feature, I thought that we would take a look at a movie that is linked to two very important years (well, on a personal level that is).

The years that I am talking about are 1981 (the year that this blogger was born), and 2011 (the year that this blog was born).  Funny how that worked out, huh?

And, here’s the kicker.  This movie was originally released in 1981 and remade thirty years later in 2011!  How’s that for awesome?

Unfortunately, this is where the awesomeness ends.  I have seen both the 1981 and the 2011 versions of the film, and the 2011 is just a shoddy pale imitation of the original.  Not saying that Russell Brand didn’t try his hardest to make a success of it.  I may be alone in admitting this, but there are a few funny moments in the 2011 remake.

It’s just that the 1981 version has more heart and more warmth.

That’s why I’m saddened to have learned of the passing of a couple of the key players of this particular film...and both of them died in very tragic circumstances.

Today’s featured film was directed by a man named Steve Gordon.  Gordon was a figure in the entertainment industry for years prior to 1981, mostly in television.  His name has been linked to “The New Dick Van Dyke Show”, “Chico & The Man”, and “Barney Miller”, and he was the creator of the short-lived 1976 television series “The Practice”. 

And in 1981, he made his directorial debut with today’s film, which he also wrote as well.  It was destined to be the beginning of a great new direction for Gordon, and it seemed as though he was well on his way to a promising career in film directing.  Sadly, in November 1982, Gordon passed away in New York City after suffering a massive heart attack.  He was just 44 years old.

Twenty years after Gordon’s death, the film’s lead actor passed away in March 2002.

Dudley Moore was an actor who had a huge resume of work prior to this film.  Although his height of just over five feet was hardly considered average for a Hollywood leading man, he had enough personality and joie de vivre to make it an asset instead of a problem.  It certainly didn’t keep him from enjoying the company of ladies.  He was married four times during his lifetime, and he was affectionately given the nicknames of “Cuddly Dudley” or “The Sex Thimble” by the press.


Dudley started off his career in the 1965 film short “Flatland”, but over the years his film resume included such memorable films as “Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland”, “Foul Play”, “10”, “Six Weeks”, and “Crazy People”.  But in the late 1990s, he began to display symptoms of the rare terminal degenerative brain disorder “progressive supranuclear palsy, and fought the disease for three years before his 2002 death.

Now, it can be argued that today’s film may not be his most famous work...but it was a movie that helped make Dudley’s star shine a little brighter.  And, since it happens to be my own personal favourite film of Dudley Moore’s, I really wanted to do a feature on this movie.


And, that movie is the 1981 film “Arthur”.


“Arthur” was released on July 17, 1981, and with its total gross of $95 million, it became the fourth highest grossing film of 1981.  The film was also nominated for four Academy Awards, winning exactly half.  John Gielgud was the winner of the Best Supporting Actor trophy, and the song below ended up winning the Academy Award for Best Original Song.


ARTIST:  Christopher Cross
SONG:  Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)
ALBUM:  Arthur – The Album
DATE RELEASED:  August 14, 1981
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS:  #1 for 3 weeks

The above song was a collaborative effort between Cross, Burt Bacharach, Carole Bayer Sager, and Peter Allen.

The film is all about a wealthy, immature playboy named Arthur Bach who spends his days drinking alcohol and demanding to be chauffeured all around New York City.  The last thing on his mind is to become a mature adult with responsibilities. 

But then reality comes along and smacks Arthur across the face so hard his head was left spinning.

You see, Arthur grew up in a very wealthy family, and as a result has been left with a rather spoiled upbringing.  He has never had to worry about not having any money because everything has been provided for him whenever he wanted it.

In fact, part of the reason why Arthur has developed a bit of a spoiled lifestyle is because of the promise of the $750 million fortune that he is set to inherit from his father (Thomas Barbour) once he passes on.


Unfortunately for Arthur, his father’s money will only be his on one condition.  He will only earn the trust fund if he goes through with marrying a woman named Susan Johnson (Jill Eikenberry), a snooty lady whose upper crust upbringing will more than certainly cause Arthur to change his ways and become the upstanding man that his father always dreamed of having.


Now, Arthur is not exactly keen on the idea of entering an arranged marriage with Susan.  He doesn’t love her at all.  In fact, Arthur hasn’t ever really loved anybody in his life...and the only other person who understood him was his valet, Hobson (John Gielgud).

Arthur is not thrilled with marrying Susan, but since it’s the only way that he will be able to maintain his lavish lifestyle, he has no choice but to agree to it.

But then he meets a woman from Queens, who is basically the polar opposite of Susan.  Her name is Linda (Liza Minnelli), and she’s a working-class waitress who dabbles in shoplifting.  Certainly not the kind of woman that would be the ideal woman for Arthur, as far as Arthur’s family is concerned.

And yet, Arthur becomes very enchanted by her, and enjoys her company very much.  Here’s just a taste of the relationship between Linda and Arthur.


You see what I mean?  It’s a very sweet relationship.


Believe it or not, when Arthur spends time with Linda, he ends up going cold turkey on the alcoholic beverages, and begins acting like a responsible human being...something that doesn’t go unnoticed by Hobson.

But as Arthur develops feelings for Linda, he is weighed down by his commitment to Susan.  He tries to discuss the situation with his grandmother, Martha (Geraldine Fitzgerald), and explains his feelings for Linda to her...but Martha shows Arthur the grim reality of what would happen if he makes the wrong choice.  If he decides to not marry Susan, he runs the risk of being disowned by his father, thus making his inheritance null and void.  Still, this doesn’t prevent Hobson from playing matchmaker at Arthur and Susan’s engagement party, informing Linda that she should attend as a guest.  After all, Hobson did always know how to recognize a young man in love.

Sadly, it is shortly after the engagement party that Hobson develops an illness, and is confined to his bed.  Arthur dotes on Hobson, being that he has been more of a dad to him than his own biological father, and does his best to take care of him.  But unfortunately, Arthur’s care is not enough to make Hobson get better, and he passes away.  A heartbroken Arthur immediately goes on a drinking binge, mourning his loss.

Without Hobson around, Arthur is essentially left on his own to make the hardest decision that he will ever have to make in his entire life.  Does he choose Susan, the woman who he has no love for in order to ensure that he lives comfortably on a financial scale?  Or does he gamble it all away to be with Linda, the woman who has ignited his passion for not only love, but life itself?

Or, is there even a way that Arthur can have his cake and eat it too?

Well, if you expect me to tell you the answer, you must be joking.  But, Arthur is available at video stores and Netflix, and I’m sure that there are places where you can download it online.  Just make sure that you watch the 1981 version, and not the 2011 version.  The original one is the superior one.

Now, there’s one reason why I really wanted to spotlight this movie, and it’s a personal one.  It’s true that my family is not worth $750 million.  In fact, I doubt that my family even have $750 on their person at any given moment, to be perfectly honest with you.  And, no, I don’t go riding around Central Park at any given moment...mainly because Central Park is a good nine hours away from where I live currently.

But, I do identify with Arthur in one major way.

We’ve never really known what it is like to fall in love.

I mean, I’ve had crushes before, and I’ve definitely fallen for people.  But to call that love...I honestly can say that I’ve never felt that way about anyone.  And, I can relate to Arthur because the reason why we’ve never really loved anyone before is because we weren’t really very happy with ourselves initially.

In Arthur’s case, he had everything handed to him on a silver platter with silver cutlery.  He never really understood the value of a hard day’s work, and he was never expected to do anything.  He certainly never earned the respect of his own family, and I think that may have contributed to the fact that he thought so little of himself.  Believe me, I can definitely relate to Arthur with that one.

But Arthur was really lucky in that he had his beloved Hobson around to keep him on the straight and narrow.  I suppose you could say that I had that with a couple of friends of mine.  They too kept me on the straight and narrow, and kept me on a path of happiness.

So, when Arthur ended up losing Hobson, I felt his pain, as I ended up losing my two friends within a year of each other.  Needless to say, 2012 was a very difficult year for me, and I am so thrilled to bring in 2013.

But you know, there’s always hope.  Arthur ended up finding it in a person who was his complete opposite...and it ended up becoming something beautiful.  And, I have to believe that the same fate will happen for me...even if there are days when I tell myself that it will never happen.

I guess in my case, I just have to take the lyrics to heart in the theme song for “Arthur”.  Do the best that I can do.