Contest Answers

Here are the correct answers for the contest. I’ve even included a brief explanation. (In case you actually care.)

Question #1 - Who is my favourite female vocalist?
a) Betty Davis
b) Ann Wilson
c) Mavis Staples
d) Tina Turner

All great voices with character and all have some great music. But only one could be my favourite. Mavis Staples is that one. Listen to her on The Last Waltz and tell me that’s not the greatest sound a woman has ever made. You read that right. The greatest sound.

Question #2 - What is my favourite fruit?
a) Cherry
b) Banana
c) Grape
d) Honeydew Melon

I prefer cherries. That is all. Not as much as I prefer the artificial cherry flavour that found its way into gum and soda pop, but they are the yummiest of all fruits.

Question #3 - Why is that my favourite fruit?
a) The colour
b) The flavour
c) How I think it resembles a sexual organ
d) It makes me seamen sweeter

Anybody who chose option D, what the heck were you thinking? Even if that was true, that a fruit could make my seed taste sweeter (I’ve heard pineapple does that), why would I care? I’m not going to taste my seed. What do you think I am, some contortionist who likes to blow himself? Cherries are the tastiest of all fruits. Pretty simple stuff there folks.

Question #4 - Who did I vote for in the last federal election?
a) The NDP candidate
b) The Green Party candidate
c) The Liberal Party candidate
d) I spoiled my ballot

I disliked the Conservative candidate in my riding and the Green guy was a former Reform party candidate. I sure as hell wasn’t voting for the commies in the NDP. In hind sight, I should have voted for the Liberal candidate. He won anyway and he earned it. He’s a good politician and a great man.

Question #5 - What was the single greatest baseball game ever?
a) Mark McGwire breaks Roger Maris’ single season home run record
b) Dennis Martinez throws a perfect game
c) Game six of the 1995 World Series
d) Game seven of the 1991 World Series

Even though my favourite baseball team lost that game, seeing a pitcher go ten shutout innings in the seventh game of the World Series was just incredible.

Question #6 - What was the first song I ever slow-danced to?
a) Two Steps Behind by Def Leppard
b) Tuesday’s Gone by Lynard Skynyrd
c) Un-Break My Heart by Toni Braxton
d) Because You Loved Me by Celine Dion

I wasn’t going to dance to no Diane Warren crap, that’s fer sure. It was at some birthday party. My buddy B was being nagged by his girlfriend to dance with her. He kept saying “Only if a good song is playing.” Being his good buddy, I dug through the DJs collection until I found something worthwhile. By worthwhile, I mean, you know, some rock ballad. I found the Dazed and Confused soundtrack. My buddy grabbed his gal and I said what the heck and grabbed the birthday girl. And thanks to Woozie for correcting my poor spelling.

Question #7 - Who is my favourite professional wrestler of all time?
a) Hulk Hogan
b) Koko B. Ware
c) Ric Flair
d) Bret “The Hitman” Hart

The best there is, the best there was, the best there ever will be.

Question #8 - Why do I not partake in aquatic activities such as swimming, diving, etc.?
a) Allergic to chlorine
b) I have embarassing tan lines
c) Near death experience at a water park
d) I don’t want to mess up my hair

I’m never going back to Wild Water Kingdom.

Question #9 - Who is my favourite MadTV cast member?
a) Bryan Callen
b) David Herman
c) Artie Lange
d) Orlando Jones

Question #10 - I have one tattoo, what is it?
a) Barbed wire around my bicep
b) A cross
c) A woman’s name
d) The Tasmanian Devil

Simple and both Christian and Rock & Roll.

Question #11 - When I sleep, which direction do I prefer to face?
a) Up
b) Down
c) Left
d) Right

I don’t know why, it’s just more comfortable that way.

Question #12 - How many piercings do I have?
a) 0
b) 1
c) 2
d) 4

God gave me a certain number of holes in my head and I’d like to keep it that way.

Question #13 - What is my favourite Hallowe’en treat?
a) Rockets
b) Jack O’Lantern gumballs
c) Potato chips
d) Candy corn

I love ‘em! Sometimes, I crush ‘em and grind ‘em and put them in a glass of soda pop.

Question #14 - What actor do people most frequently say I look like?
a) Robert DeNiro
b) Al Pacino
c) Peter Lorre
d) Tony Danza

I don’t see the resemblence. I definetely see it in my father, but not in me. But people have come up to me and said I look like Al Pacino. A former co-worker of mine used to call me Pacino. He’d say “Hey, Pacino. Hey Scarface. How’s it goin’?” He’s dead now. I found out he slept with my sister. So I killed him.

Question #15 - Who did a see throw a can of beer at a cop?
a) Me
b) Bob
c) Juice
d) none of the above

I don’t want to embarass the person who did do it. But I did see a guy throw a nearly full can of beer at a cop. It was a tall boy too.

Question #16 - Why did I watch the Weather Network morning show everyday for a year?
a) The anchorwoman was hot
b) I worked outside and needed to know how to dress appropriately
c) Allergy/pollen reports
d) They do best reporting on road conditions

One day she wore tight leather pants. Yow-zah! I think she’s on CTV Newsnet now. Always behind a desk though. And she’s aged a bit. Not well.

Question #17 - What time does my alarm clock go off in the morning?
a) 5:30AM
b) 5:45AM
c) 6:00AM
d) 6:15AM

Leaves me just enough time to shower and get dressed before Sportscentre.

Question #18 - What is my favourite flavour of tea?
a) Peppermint
b) Vanilla Bean
c) Orange Pekoe
d) Ginger

It’s hard to find a good brand, but it’s wonderful stuff if you can find it.

Question #19 - What do I want to have done to my remains after I pass away?
a) Cremation
b) Burial
c) Stuffed and have my head mounted like a buck
d) Burial at sea

Who wants it after I go?

Question #20 - When I was a small child, which television program did I never miss?
a) Mr. Dressup
b) Romper Room
c) The Friendly Giant
d) The Flintstones

12:00PM, channel 8 in Toronto, the CTV affliate would play it every weekday. I’d get home just before it started from kindergarten and I’d plunk my butt down on the floor and not move for thirty minutes. Yabba dabba doo!

Question #21 - How old was I when I ate my very first hamburger?
a) 5 years old
b) 10 years old
c) 15 years old
d) 25 years old

I found beef to be an acquired taste. I actually spent much of my life as a vegetarian. I very rarely ate any meat as a child and a teen. Obviously, expect for the meat flavouring in McDonald’s french fries that most people didn’t know about.

Question #22 - What is the name I use to describe my usual pizza order (toppings include ground beef, grilled chicken and bacon)?
a) The Eliminator
b) The Widowmaker
c) The Barnyard Massacre
d) Heartattack In A Layby

One of every farm animal I can find. By the looks of this, the vegetarian phase is definetly over. And I’m possibly trying to make up for lost time.

Question #23 - What was my New Year’s Resolution for 1998?
a) Ten pushups, ten situps and ten chinups everyday
b) Read a book every week
c) Regulary attend church
d) Keep my hands off myself (you know what I mean)

Question #24 - How long did I maintain my resolution?
a) Into September
b) Into June
c) Into February
d) January 2nd

Jerry, George, Elaine, Kramer, those pansies. What a bunch of losers! The resolution failed when a buddy of mine brought over a movie called Cheerleader Nurses 2.

Question #25 - What was the first concert I ever attended?
a) Tesla at Kingswood
b) Supernova Battle of the Bands at The Gasworks
c) Eye at The Opera House
d) David Bowie at The Air Canada Centre

Juice’s first band was performing. I had to go to show my support.

Question #26 - Who is my favourite stand up comedian
a) Chris Rock
b) Dennis Miller
c) Sam Kinison
d) Emo Phillips

[Insert incredibly long and obscure metaphor here.]

Question #27 - What substance did my Brother get me to consume when I was a child?
a) Play-Doh
b) Some small pieces of Lego
c) Yellow snow
d) That soapy water solution used to blow bubbles

Amazingly years later, he convinced a friend of mine to do the same. I was 3 or 4 when I drank the stuff. My friend was 20 when he drank the stuff. Yeah, I’ve got some stupid friends.

Question #28 - Who is my favourite Beatle?
a) John
b) Paul
c) George
d) Ringo

Almost everybody picks John. I like George. He’s the quiet one.

Question #29 - Who is my favourite wife of a Beatle?
a) Yoko Ono
b) Linda Eastman
c) Pattie Boyd
d) Heather Mills

Inspired Layla and had the decency not to get involved with her husband’s music.

Question #30 - Who is my favourite Traveling Wilbury?
a) Nelson Wilbury (George Harrison)
b) Lefty Wilbury (Roy Orbison)
c) Charlie T. Jr (Tom Petty)
d) Lucky Wilbury (Bob Dylan)

He sorta started the band.

Question #31 - What is my favourite movie?
a) The Godfather
b) Citizen Kane
c) Scent of a Woman
d) The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Just a fantastic movie; I can’t say enough great things about it.

Question #32 - At which venue did I see the Rolling Stones perform?
a) Air Canada Centre
b) Downsview Park
c) Horseshoe Tavern
d) Palais Royale

Great show, lots of stuff from Let It Bleed.

Question #33 - What is the most exciting thing in basketball?
a) The cheerleaders
b) Kobe Bryant
c) Big sweaty men bumping and grinding in the paint
d) Inflatable Raptor

Bob thinks it’s Kobe and that is a good guess, but it’s Inflatable Raptor. He’s just so cute (therefore possibly deadly) and funny.

Question #34 - What is my favourite musical instrument?
a) Gibson Les Paul guitar
b) Mellotron
c) Fiddle
d) Dobro

Big, ugly and competely pointless in a modern recording studio. But listen to Heart of the Sunrise and tell me it’s not great.

Question #35 - When did my insomnia start?
a) Last night
b) Fall of 1999
c) Spring of 2003
d) Summer of 1996

It’s when I started doing that graveyard shift job.

Question #36 - What is my favourite watering hole?
a) The Madison
b) Panorama
c) Intersteer
d) Archibald’s

For some reason, it’s just more fun to get drunk there than anyplace else. I can’t really explain it. It really sucks when you’re not drinking though.

Feel free to review your answers. I have yet to have the answers verified by my assistant, but the results tentatively look like this:
Third Place… Wiwille
Second Place… Random Chick
and First Place… the Amazing Karnak.

Insomnia Blogging: Things I Miss

Boy Meets World

March Break

Living within walking distance of a community

Music stores that sell music

Ice cream

Being the wise and experienced person at work

Being able to eat a dozen donuts and not give a shit what it does to my body

Belching contests

A basketball hoop in my driveway

Rollerblading

Sleep

Politically incorrectness

That “You want it when” poster

My grandparents

Being the best dressed guy in the room

Insomnia Blogging VI

It has been amazing. I’ve had a decent amount of sleep in the past couple of weeks. But for the past two nights, no sleep.

One of my usual early morning pasttimes, watching CNN hasn’t been doing it for me. All CNN is covering lately has been the primaries. Sure, picking the President is important and people can’t wait to see President Bush take a hike, but it seems like this campaign started a year ago. These campaigns need to take some time off, give use news junkies a break, something else to get all worked up about. I haven’t seen one mention of CNN’s extreme weather. Or how about the fact that Polaroid is downsizing to 150 employees. This is a company that used to employ 21,000. If you ask me, that’s a news story, the downfall of Polaroid.

I ended up watching the west coast feed of Sportsnet Connected. Still, more talk on the Richard Zednik incident. (For those who don’t know, Richard Zednik is a hockey player who took a skate blade to the neck and lost nearly two litres of blood or half a gallon on the ice.) This is the second time in recent memory of something like this happening in the National Hockey League. I’ve seen both incidents and I’m still amazed that neither player collapsed or freaked out. They both immediately covered up and let the paramedics do their job. It was the quick response by the injured players that saved them from dying right there on the ice. I don’t know what I’d do if I was all-of-a-sudden gushing blood from my neck.

Insomnia Blogging V

I haven’t slept much this week. Following Christmas, I managed to get a fair amount of sleep at night. I wasn’t doing anything different, at least, that I was aware of. Oh well. It was great while it lasted. But its over now. I guess its time to go back to my usual insomniac commentary.

Late nights on CNN. Oh yeah, no more Lou Dobbs. Looks like he’s getting pre-empted by the primary coverage. Makes sense, he’s an enthusiastic independant and the primaries are for enthusiatic partisan politics. Unfortunetely, it would make the most sense to put someone who doesn’t want any party of win to cover the results.

Okay, I’m not American, I’m Canadian. I don’t have to deal with these primary dealees. If I explain this incorrectly, I hope somebody corrects me, but it looks like each political party is spending all this time and money trying to rip itself apart. Take for example the Clinton and Obama campaigns. These are two candidates competing for one position. In order to win, one will have to defeat the other. (My apologies to John Edwards and the other Democratic candidates, but I think its pretty obvious the winner will be either Clinton or Obama.) Until the party comes to a consensus on who should be the presidential candidate, these two campaigns are conducting campaigns in an adversarial style. But once that consensus is made, the loser will have to endorse the winner. After months of convincing voters to steer one way, how can they expect those voters to make a U-turn. Maybe I’m viewing this with some ignorance, but shouldn’t they be working together to make the Republicans look like a bunch of incompetant and corrupt bums with no right to be governing a country? (Yeah, like the Democrats have to get out of bed to make the Republicans look bad.)

After watching the Michigan primary results for an hour or so, I gave up and switched over to King of the Hill. What I saw on KotH was more inspiring than any political discourse or rhetoric. Bill, the lonely loser next door said something so brilliant, yet simple and very fitting with his character.

If everybody fried their food, there would be no war.

Sure, he said that while deep frying everything from bananas and candy bars to fried chicken (he was deep frying chicken he purchased already fried).

I cannot agree more with that statement. It is so true. If everybody ate only fried food, the world would be a utopia. Imagine billions of happy, fat people living harmoneously together. That’s the dream folks, people of all colours sitting down together to eat some crispy and warm fried food.

Take the first step, eat some fried food.

Insomnia Blogging IV

I think that a sleep-deprived mind is something akin to a drug high. I heard somewhere that Dali painted the melting clocks (can’t be bothered to get the name of the painting) after being awake for several days. I’ve also heard that Salvador Dali was a drug using sexual deviant. So how can you really be sure if the painting was a result of sleep-deprivation or just a drug-induced hallucination; or just something to get weird chicks to go to bed with him.

The point I’m trying to make is I’ve had some pretty weird thoughts lately. I haven’t painted anything. I haven’t got any paint. Paint is not my medium. Its far too tasty to waste on canvas. My thoughts haven’t really been expressed through any medium. They just float around my mind when there isn’t enough going on for me to focus on.

Yesterday at work, I was quite busy. In that time, I felt very alive. I had energy to burn. My mind was focused on the task at hand. Sure, it was some pointless work task, but still, I had energy and I didn’t feel tired at all. But once I finished work, my mind slumped into the weird thoughts again.

Okay, let me back track a bit. These weird thoughts are not anything dangerous or crazy. I’m not contemplating climbing a clock tower with a rifle or anything. Do you know how far the nearest clock tower is from me?

I’m starting to feel lonely. For me to feel lonely, that’s a weird thing. I’ve been alone for a long time. But there is a difference between being alone and feeling lonely.

Maybe I’m getting a wee bit too personal on this thing today.

In other news, today is going to be pretty hectic again. I’ve got to go pick up my new suit. When I picked out the suit, it wasn’t really what I was looking for. I was thinking a black suit with bright grey pinstripes. What I eventually decided on was a dark blue suit with a vertical blue detail. I really wanted bright colours, but the duller colours seemed to look better. This year’s bright colours don’t work on me as well as I’d like. Its always different when you see a suit on yourself. You never really know how it will look until you try it on and walk in front of a mirror. Its hard not to look good in a nice suit. But you can often be surprised by how great you look in something you wouldn’t have even tried on if not so a good salesman.

Insomnia Blogging III

I spent nearly the entire time of my kettle boiling water to decide what sort of tea to brew in the boiling water. Eventually I settled on a mug of English breakfast tea.

As I drank my tea and slowly flipped around the dial on the television I learned some things. First, it looks like Lou Dobbs may be running for president of the United States of America. Second, it will rain all week in my little corner of the world. Third, I miss sleep.

Television quickly became boring and I slipped into my own thoughts. It is odd the things that pop into my head when I’m semi-awake. Obviously dreams are strange, but what about the thoughts of the conscious mind in a sobre but sleep-deprived state. I started thinking about past events, what I did, what I could have done differently.

I’m regretting my childish behaviour yesterday with my ex-girlfriend. I should have stayed at least long enough to say something more than “Hi, how are you?”

Insomnia Blogging II

I slept even less last night than I did the night before. So I watched even more WUTV late night/early morning sitcoms. They play two episodes of Frasier. I did not know that.

I also sat through much of an episode of Will & Grace. What, if any, was the appeal of that show? I was too incoherent to follow the story but I was still able to see every joke coming. This is where the gay guy calls the short chick a junkie. And boom, he calls her a junkie. Oh, now the slutty chick is gonna call the gay guy a queen. “Will, you’re a queen.” If I can write that crap at 3:00 in the morning on little-to-no sleep, what does that say about the quality of writing that actually went into the show?

So, I flipped around a bit. I stopped flipping when I found something that wasn’t a commercial or informercial. The Nanny starring Fran Drescher was on that one cable channel that for some reason comes in but with a lot of static and snow. Did you know that The Nanny is less worse of a television program than Will & Grace? Hear that Eric McCormick! You’ve been given worse material than Fran Drescher.

All this horrible sitcom crap got me to flip around some more. CNN was playing some debate. Hillary Clinton, I can’t speak for her issues or what she stands for, but she has this look on her face like she’s trying to hide the fact that she’s a total bitch. I’ve never met her. She, for all I know, could be a nice person, a person who is really great to be around. But the look on her face, she’s got face-itude and she was trying to hide it as best she could. I don’t blame her for trying to hide it. Who would vote for a bitch? She’s got a bitch scowl and has not been able to cover it up. No amount of phoney smiling and makeup can hide the bitch scowl.

I learned nothing about the issues from the bit of the debate I watched. War bad. Current administration bad. I’m still waiting for one candidate to say “This is a democracy. You, the voter, tell me what you want me to do if I’m elected to represent you.”

I think the US needs more Austrians to run for government. At least that way we’d all have more comedic material. “Who is your daddy and what does he do?”

Recommended Listening: Death of a Drag Queen by Sponge.