Anyway, the Jays beat the Rangers. Some home runs. Blah blah blah. We went to a bar called Wide Open, a narrow dark bar, drank more beer, shots of sambuca, Joe went home. Andrew and I looked for somewhere to carry on boozing. We discussed how gross the draught beer at a place called Java House is. One can’t be sure, but it always tastes like they have dirty pipes.

We ended up at Java House. A pitcher and wings for $13. Sweet. That’s what we had. We were sat on the patio, taking shit about baseball. At an adjacent table, I overheard two guys talking about “Love, Actually.” I asked them what they thought. They thought it was great. I agreed. Behind us, another guy chimed in. He thought it was awesome, too. A bunch of dudes all agreeing that an English romantic comedy was ace. Which was as unlikely a part of the evening as was Andrew and I spending the next hour or so chatting to a Croatian woman about baseball. But not as unlikely as the fact that, drunk as hell, I ate salad instead of junk food when I got home.

Drawn using Brushes application on the iPod touch/iPhone.
More of my finger painting in the Much Fuck It’s Drawing section.

We had these forks at home that were only brought out when we had Chinese takeout. They were forks that, I assume, were designed for British people to eat rice with. Chinese takeout was a treat. Whatever my parents had, my sister and I invariably had chicken curry and chips*. Chunks of chicken in that strange MSG-laced, cloying, mucus-y curry sauce, and chips. Big fat chips. Chips that were different from chip shop chips or my Mum’s awesome homemade chips**. And there would always be a brown paper bag of prawn crackers too. It was a kid’s dream: crackers and chips in one sitting!

* How depressing must it be if you move your family halfway around the world to make a better life for yourself, you open a takeaway place and the locals order chips?

** Once, when I was a teenager, and it was my turn to wash the dishes — my sister and I took turns to wash or dry — I thought that I’d be nice and wash out the chip pan. So I poured the still-warm chip fat down the plug hole, washed the pan, and felt incredibly proud of myself. Until my Mum, rather vocally, pointed out my error.

The forks we had were kinda like spoons with a U-shaped notch cut out of the apex to create two prongs. (Actually, they were probably sporks not forks.) The memory of those forks set off a lightning-fast slideshow in my head of other childhood memories…

I lived really close to my school. I could see the sports field from my bedroom window. It was across the street. My school was on the same land as the local sports centre. So we were lucky: we had enough space for four or five soccer or rugby fields in the winter, and space for cricket and athletics in the summer. Inside the sports centre, we had access to badminton, squash, and swimming. The gymnasium was also used for roller skating on Saturday nights. I used to go there when I was around 14 or 15 years old. I only ever learned to skate anti-clockwise. So at the point in the night when the DJ announced that it was time to go the other way, I would sheepishly move to the side and take a break. It was also the place where I learned the power of perfume. There was a girl there who wore Poison by Christian Dior. It was like teenage boy catnip. I’d skate in her wake, constantly in a cloud of mind-bendingly lovely Poison. Later, in my late teens and early twenties, Calvin Klein’s Obsession had the same effect, so much so that I had one of those smelly magazine pullout adverts, (the kind with the smelly strip folded over) Blu-Tacked to my bed head. It didn’t hurt that it had a nice black and white picture of Kate Moss on it. I’d give it a wee sniff before I went to sleep on the nights that my then-girlfriend didn’t stay over, (she also wore Obsession and was fine with me liking Kate Moss). Most of all, though, was the smell of dewberry. I guess dewberry was a Body Shop thing; and to this day it makes me weak at the knees whenever I pass someone on the street and catch a whiff of it.

The nearest part of the school/sports centre to my house, though, were the tennis courts and the gravelly area that was used for five-a-side soccer, and car boot sales on Sundays. I remember one time, some friends and I entered a five-a-side competition, and we chose the team name Cosmos because we thought New York Cosmos and the other NASL team names were really cool. We never saw them on TV, of course; I guess we must’ve seen them in football magazines like Match and Shoot. And we also used to call it soccer. We really, really thought it was a cooler word than football.

In the winter, I guess it was in the month or so before Christmas, they put an artificial ice rink on top of the nearest three tennis courts to my house. I never skated there, though. I would have done, but the first year they did it (1983) I fell ill. I was thirteen years old. One day I had a cystitis-like pain when urinating. It was either later that day or the next day, I don’t remember that clearly. I’d been into town and got the bus home. There were two buses that serviced my suburb of Lincoln: the 24 and the 27. The 27 stopped outside the school, but the 24 went another direction that meant a fifteen minute walk home. On this particular day, I got the 24. Shortly after getting off the bus, I felt like I’d need a poo quite soon. But, y’know, I was only fifteen minutes from home: no biggie. I broke wind. I broke wind with extras. I had a fifteen minute walk home with sludge in my pants. I was a 13 year old boy who had shat his pants, who had a fifteen minute walk home. It wasn’t fun, I don’t recommend it. The next morning my alarm went off as normal. At that age, I was very much a get-up-and-go kid (at least, that’s how I remember it). I got up, and fell over. My legs were useless. Couldn’t move them. My parents were both at work. My sister must have already gone to school (not entirely sure why that would’ve been the case, but my memory is of being alone in the house). I don’t remember much of what happened next. I was taken to see the family doctor, and whatever happened there, I had this horrible chalky medicine to drink. For the next few days my sister and I switched bedrooms. It’s likely that that happened because her room was closer to the bathroom. From her bedroom, I could see the ice rink. From my room — which was slightly set back from the rest of the house — I wouldn’t have had a good view of it. I saw kids skating, I could hear the music, but I couldn’t skate myself. In fact, to this day, I’ve only ever ice skated once in my life, a couple of years previously in Weston-super-Mare, a seaside town with an awesome name in the southwest of England. That time was on artificial ice and I remember being very bad at ice skating. Christopher Dean’s professional relationship with Jayne Torvill was entirely safe.

Some time later — I have no idea how long it took; a few days maybe — an ambulance came and I was taken to St. George’s Hospital. I had this weird thing, and I would have to have it seen to in a hospital. Thankfully, I was thirteen years old and thus was admitted to an adult ward. (A school friend subsequently spent some time in the hospital for diabetes, but he was twelve and had to stay on the children’s ward with the wailing six year olds.) I basically had an arthritic problem, and my legs were Velco-ed into these plaster bandage splints. I only took them off when I needed to use the commode. My memories of my teenage years are kinda hit and miss. I don’t remember much about certain things; a lot about other things. Unfortunately, my memories of my time in hospital aren’t very full. Mostly just bits and pieces. I remember having a crush on a nurse. I remember that I was terrified of injections. I remember enjoying ticking the boxes and choosing the food off the menu that was brought around at the start of the day. I remember my parents would go to a record shop and buy 7″ singles for me with my pocket money. I remember my iron deficiency meant having to drink iron medicine daily, and it being the foulest tasting thing (even typing the words brings back a sensory memory of the taste). I remember the guy in the bed next to me was an engineer with the Red Arrows, which was very very cool. And I remember after several weeks of not seeing Tessa, the family dog, my parents and nurses organised for my bed to be wheeled into the day room, up to the edge of the doors that opened up to a garden, where my parents were waiting with Tessa. I was so happy to see her. And I remember when I was on the mend, and ready to leave, the doctor and nurses helping me stand up. Six weeks in bed wastes away your muscles. I couldn’t support my own weight. When I returned home, I distinctly remember the lounge was hot. All the bars on the gas fire were on. And I arrived home in time for “Diff’rent Strokes.” And, I don’t know if this is true or not, but it’s very easy to convince my memory that we had Chinese food for tea that night.

Back at school, I had special treatment. I was allowed to spend breaks indoors, out of the cold. My mate Tim — the kid with diabetes — was allowed to spend his breaks inside too, to keep me company. For some reason, I used to have a Khmer Rouge-esque relationship with things from my own past. It’s always Year Zero. When I went to art school, I threw out all of my school-era artwork. When I got to university, I did the same with my art school stuff. When I got a job in London working in the music business, I threw out all of the university stuff. I really really wish I had all of that stuff now. Thankfully, I’ve kept everything since the mid-Nineties. But, if I had the stuff I was doing back in those indoor school breaks, I’d have a diary of an invented Craig Robinson. A Craig Robinson that was a pop star. Every year we were given diaries at school. I guess they thought — rather optimistically — we’d use them to keep track of our homework assignments or tests. I used mine to record the day-to-day events of my life as a pop star. I’d record an album in two days, and it would be released a week later. I’d be on the cover of Smash Hits soon afterwards. And every Monday — the pop charts were revealed on a Monday lunchtime back then — my single’s progress up the charts would be recorded. I would have several singles in the charts at the same time for most of the year. I would go on tour quite a lot, too. I’d play in London, New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo all in the same week. I was BIG NEWS! I was bigger than Nik Kershaw.

Tim and I… Well, as school went on we became more casual friends. I remember we had an argument about something and it was never the same again. Our music tastes changed (we were both into Dire Straits, Eric Clapton, Huey Lewis at one point) but when he got a girlfriend (who, I believe, became his wife) and I got into the Mission and the Sisters of Mercy, our separate lives were complete.

But back in the early to mid-eighties, as well as the pop star diary, I made miniature record sleeves. I’d take graph paper and make a record sleeve about two inches square. I’d also make an inner sleeve, and I’d use a pair of compasses to draw a circle and carefully cut it out. I’d draw the front and back cover with felt tip pens. I’d do the same for the inner sleeve (mostly thin horizontal lines to recreate the printed lyrics) and I’d colour the circles black on both sides, with an appropriate coloured centre to make a tiny paper record to slip into the sleeves. I made quite a few of them. I’m not sure how many, but I distincly remember doing “Thriller,” Wham!’s “Fantastic,” and Duran Duran’s self-titled debut and “Rio.” I really wish I still had them. It’s funny that I made miniature record sleeves as a kid, and ended up with a website based around miniature portraits of pop stars.

Beer glass is empty. That’ll do for now.

I typed the above words into my iPod, sat in my local, sat at the bar, over the course of three pints of Stratford Pilsner. The guy who sat down at the empty stool next to mine while I was outside have a smoke, was drinking whiskey and had a really strong smell of feta cheese. Like, really strong. Anyway, what I wrote about, and what I wanted to write about here are two different things. I guess if I’m drunk and in the mood to type, I’ll get around to writing more about what I wanted to write about.

On Queen Street West this afternoon, two women in diagonally matching clothes.

I went to McDonald’s yesterday because — obviously — I wanted a healthy nutritious snack. I had a hamburger. I absolutely cannot ever remember having a McDonald’s hamburger before. I felt like J. Wellington Wimpy. Sadly, though, I had to pay them immediately.

While I was there I took one of the little paper cups that you can pump ketchup into. They are lovely little creations. Something I didn’t realise until I played with it this morning is that there’s no adhesives involved, it’s all origami. Look:

I also took a sachet of pepper. It’s called pepper on one side of the sachet and, being Canada, it’s called poivre on the other side. It’s a good job I didn’t actually want any pepper, cos, well, there’s not much pepper in there: forty one grains to be precise.

Saturday morning, watching a movie from my teenage years: WarGames. 1983. Starring Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy. It’s a very strange feeling to look back on Cold War nuclear armageddon scenarios with a sense of wistful nostalgia. Things weren’t really simpler back then, it’s just that I was simpler, I guess. Ally Sheedy … she really is incredibly pretty.

There’s a sloped wall visible from the front…

But from this side, it gets awesome and slopes downwards towards the back too.

* It was 33°C (91°F) with a “feels like” temperature of 41°C (106°F). I think we need a new name for the “feels like” temperature. It’s kinda clunky-sounding and makes it sound a bit too wishy-washy when, for the non-meterologists of us, the people who look at the weather forecast to determine our clothing for the day, what the temperature feels like is all that matters. Why would I care if it’s actually 33°C if when I walk out of the house it feels like it’s 41°C?

I took his advice
And I kept on truckin’
I kept on truckin’
All night long.

I kept on truckin’
I kept on truckin’
I kept on truckin’
All day long.

I kept on truckin’
I kept on truckin’
And I kept on truckin’
The next day, too.

I kept on truckin’
All the next week
I kept on truckin’
The week after that.

I kept on truckin’
I kept on truckin’
I kept on truckin’
The whole next month.

I kept on truckin’
All through spring
I kept on truckin’
Through summer, too.

I kept on truckin’
Through autumn and winter
I kept on truckin’
And the year after that.

And the year after that
And the year after that
And the year after that
And the year after that.

I kept on truckin’
I kept on truckin’
I kept on truckin’
For twenty five years.

Twenty five years and
Sixteen weeks and
Three days and
Two and a half hours.

Then I stopped truckin’
And I heard on the radio
Another guy was still truckin’
So he won the truckin’ endurance competition.

Wouldn’t It Be Nice by Burro1231

You Still Believe in Me by simonbarget

That’s Not Me by jimfusco

Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder) by troubleclef

I’m Waiting for the Day by JDrevolver66

Let’s Go Away for Awhile by mandobanjoguitar

Sloop John B by bubtulip48

God Only Knows by alpet07

I Know There’s an Answer by posturex1

Here Today by michaelthorner

I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times by ChrisDodgen

Pet Sounds by kobifox

Caroline, No by podonline66

And for the extra track completists out there:

Hang On to Your Ego by sydbarrett5

Helene Humann says: I would really urge people to buy fondue sets, I have possessed a set for quite a while. I purchased it when I was on holiday in Zurich and have got it out ever since. It usually surfaces at parties for chocolate fondue with strawberries. Sometimes we have cheese fondue at dinners as well. Make sure you wash out them after you use them though, otherwise they can be very difficult to washout!
Thanks for the tip, Helene. I don’t own a fondue set, mostly, I think, because I rarely have dinner parties. It’s all I can do to make something warm to eat never mind filling a thing full of molten cheese. and really, it’s a slippery slope if one starts making fondue to eat when one is alone.

Car Antenna says: Where can I find a good car antenna?
I’m pretty much the worst person to ask for a couple of reasons, Car Antenna. Firstly, I’ve never owned a car, and therefore never had any need to buy one. Secondly, you IP address indicates that you are in Phoenix, Arizona, and I’ve only spent about an hour there in my life. As far as I noticed, they didn’t sell them in the airport. I hope you manage to find one. It would be somewhat odd if someone called Car Antenna was unable to buy one. Hang on in there, champ!

Good Abs Workout says: Glenn Beck was the gross kid everybody picked on in school now using his nasty talk to try and get level the score with them. I can’t consider anybody trusts any of the crap that come out of the mouth of this right winged racist.
I agree wholeheartedly, Good Abs.

cash for junk cars says: What will you now do tomorrow because of what you did today?
Well, because I did quite a lot of editing of my book, it means that I can take it easy tomorrow, and go to the Blue Jays-Tigers game, have a few beers, and enjoy myself.

Bryon Toda says: Shakira’s a beautiful person.
Oh Bryon, how right you are, she is dreamy.

Lexus GS says: There’s too much blood in my caffeine system.
Funny man!

Shirley Manners says: The sun and the rain playing a deceiving game.
Shirley, you just blew my mind a little bit. I’m gonna have to think about that some more.

Boston Market Coupon says: I’m a fan of Beck, O’Reilly and others, but Sean hannity is definitely my favorite.
You should have a fight with Good Abs Workout. He’s got good abs; you’re a coupon. He’d kick your fuckin’ ass!

lose weight naturally says: What is the most important thing that happened to you today?
As I was saying to cash for junk cars: editing.

Dario Internet Marketing says: Ahhh the Yanks. Good stuff here. Shame they are this injured this season.
Well, I’m hoping Pettitte and A-Rod will be back soon, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a wee bit worried.

The Network Marketing Guy says: Ahhh the Old Sox. Great stuff here. So sad they are so hurt this season.
As a Yankees fan, I don’t really care about the injured Red Sox players.

Mrs. Anti-Virus says: I bet you wish george bush was still president now
Not really.

Cast iron outdoor fireplace says: i absolutely like your world-wide-web web site. Its really informative. Goodbye!…
Thank you kindly. Goodbye.

Now let’s see how much comment spam this post will produce.

The barber came out, showed me to the chair, asked what I wanted, and the festivities began. Firstly, he spoke like a caricature of an Italian, so when I quote him later, feel free to read it out loud like-a dat. I asked him how his week had been. He stopped snipping, and began chatting with me in the mirror. For the majority of my time in the chair, it felt like the haircut was incidental to the monologue. The inspector is breaking his balls because a customer complained that he cut him, drew blood. Thanks for telling me that, makes me feel quite confident sat here with you behind me holding some scissors. It was the first of at least ten times he said someone was breaking his balls. Although one time he amended it, and said the government was breaking his ass. On a complete tangent, he asked if I knew Errol Flynn.

“That’s the guy who played Robin Hood, right?” I said.
“The original Robin ‘Ood, not like Kevin Costerner (sic) or Russell Crowe: they make Robin ‘Ood look like a fuckin’ idiot!”

He’d been on vacation to Hollywood. He’d seen the graves of Flynn, Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin, Farrah Fawcett. “Look!” He pointed to a photograph of his round pink head in front of the Hollywood sign. Then he pointed to an old black and white photograph of him as a young man; full head of black hair. Then he warned me that hair was like grass; that I should take care of it and cut it more in the summer because “you don’t want to end up like me!”

He reached over to a jar of alcohol, and pulled out a straight razor, and began removing the hair on the back of my neck. He returned to his original point about the inspector, and the customer who’d complained. Turns out the customer was Jewish. So now I wonder: what is the correct way to handle a situation when an old Italian anti-Semite has a cut-throat razor at your neck? Should one take a stand? Or should one, like I did, sheepishly and quietly mutter “uh-huh” to everything he said, and wait for the slightest pause to change the subject? I jumped in and asked him where abouts in Italy he was from.

Sicily. It’s wonderful, apparently. Go in the summer, they have the best fruit you will ever taste.

I’ve not seen a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman. Where the hell are they? Where are you hiding them? I’ve been here for three months and I’ve not seen hide nor hair of ‘em. I’ve had some maple syrup, I’ve had poutine, I’ve hummed along to “O Canada,” I’ve heard people say “eh” and “aboot,” I’ve watched hockey on TV, I’ve admired Don Cherry’s suits, but I’ve not seen a Mountie. Please send one round to stand outside the house tomorrow morning.

Yours sincerely,

Craig Robinson

PS. If I could think of something funny to write, this is where I’d do it.

Anybody a) know what type of bird that is? and b) want to share that information?

I took a map of the contiguous part of the United States, erased all the bits which didn’t have a coastal border, and joined those coasts together to make an island. Labelled version here.

I had a wee laugh to myself, though, on the way back from Starbucks. I’ve walked that route from home to Starbucks and back again virtually every morning since I’ve been in Toronto, and I’d never noticed it before. It’s not original or particularly interesting to point out sign writing mistakes, but at 8.50am on a rainy Sunday, it made me chuckle. And if you ever need some contaracting doing, you now know where to come.

You never hear much about acid rain these days. Does it still exist?

Last night, half-asleep, I leant over the edge of the bed and scribbled some words on a scrap of paper. Took me a while to decode the scrawl this morning, but it said “transcribe Alpha Wave Plastikman mix.” It must’ve seemed like a good idea at the time cos that song (“Alpha Wave (Plastikman Acid House Mix)” by System 7) is nineteen minutes and thirty nine seconds long. Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um …

(go make a cup of tea, come back in eighteen minutes)

… Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um Na-wooh-um weeeh-wahw weeeh-wahw weeeh-wahw weeeh-wahw weeeh-wahw weeeh-wahw weeeh-wahw weeeh-wahw weeeh-wahw weeeh-wahw. There we go. Another successful blog post.

I saw a skunk, too. But that was last week. I’m not gonna pretend it was last night. I could do that, I could lie to you and you’d be the none the wiser. A couple of night ago, though, I smelled a skunk. It was in the early hours of the morning, and at first I thought my one of my neighbours was smoking weed on the balcony. But they weren’t. It was obviously a skunk. Either that or it was a skunk smoking weed, deliberately trying to fry my brain.

Lazy, lazy morning lying in bed watching Weezer and Beach Boys videos on YouTube. Took me until around 2pm to drag my carcass out of bed to go to the shops. At the moment I’m going through all the pages of the copyedited manuscript of my Flip Flop Fly Ball book. I’ve been instructed to make notes on the print outs in a different colour. Makes sense. So I had to go and buy a green biro today. I was a wee bit shocked at how difficult it was to buy one biro. Just one. Not a pack of three of five. One. One pen. If I’d needed a black pen, I could’ve justified buying three cos they would come in handy at some point, but three green pens? I could live to be one hundred and thirty nine years old and I’d still not have used up three pens worth of green ink. In the end, I had to go to an art supplies store, where I found a Pilot pen, one of their B2P range, which are apparently made from recycled water bottles.

While I was out of my green pen hunt, I saw a man taking a photo of a billboard poster with his cellphone. I can’t remember what the poster was advertising, but it had a man and a woman hugging on it. The man on the poster was the same man who was taking the photograph. It was kinda nice to see someone so handsome being a wee bit excited about his face being on a poster. Either that or he was sexting someone, like, “Yeah baby, I’m hot as shit.” Perhaps that’s what the screeching squirrels were doing, too, though, shouting filthy sex talk at each other and fucking in the trees. Where’s David Attenborough when you need him?