Pop Culture Blog: Music, Movie and Humor

Leveraging low-hanging synergies outside the vertical fruit box since 1999.

Shepherd and Rhubarb Pye Move in Tomorrow!


in Animalistic

There won’t be much activity on the blog tomorrow, as I am spending the majority of the day shopping for, setting up for and then going to meet – the puppies! Yes, Shep and Rhuby will be official members of the Pye clan by about 7pm. Here is a photo of Shep taken by the breeder this evening…

shepherd85

He has grown into quite the handsome little weasel, eh? This time tomorrow, their crates will be in my room, my kitchen will – or be about to – smell like shit, Boss will be having a coronary on a piece of tall furniture and no shoes will be safe. So now help me enjoy Rhubarb’s lovely face while it’s still a great idea and not yet a reason I’m praying for death in the fetal position while trying to sleep…

rhubarb

What a pair! I’m incredibly excited and I know all of the hard work will be worth it. They’ll make sure I’m early to bed, early to rise and living a structured and routine life – which can be a challenge for your old pal Dave sometimes. I will also be training them to bite me on the nose anytime I refer to myself in the third person. There will undoubtedly be lots of puppy-related content popping up on here over the weekend, so stay tuned – and perhaps say a small prayer.

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Give me Back my Mills Hall Sweatshirt!


in Reminiscent

When I first got back from England in 1999, I dated a girl I went to high school with for a little while. One night while visiting her apartment I left my Mills Hall sweatshirt in her room (hey now,) and we stopped hanging out in the biblical sense a few days later. Eventually realizing where my prized shirt had gone, I called her up and asked if I could come get it. No times ever worked for her, or she’d tell me how much she loved it and could she keep it, etc. etc. I saw her many times over the next 7 years and every time I’d ask about the shirt. “Are you still going on about that shirt? I love it!” But I never would let up – it meant a lot to me.

mills-hall-sweatshirt

Here is the only picture I have of me wearing it. Mills Hall in the early 90s was the only all-male dorm at the University of Guelph and we were a very proud and misbehaved bunch. I met one of my very best friends while living there, and I still keep in touch with loads of the old crew. Last week I was asked to be in one of their wedding parties this summer. It’s an ongoing bond and the closest thing to a good fraternity (and there were several fraternities at the school) that Guelph had going for it. Long story short, we all had those sweatshirts, the dorm is now co-ed without any sort of culture like we brought to it and if you’ve since lost it – that’s it. It’s gone.

I ran into the young lady in question at a wedding over the summer and said hello to her quickly. A few days later she emailed me to ask why I’d given her such a dirty look. I told her I didn’t remember giving her one, and certainly didn’t mean to and that I was sorry. She wrote back: “You’re still mad about that stupid sweatshirt, aren’t you?” I told her I wasn’t mad, but that I wished I still had it and that I’d pursued it a lot harder before she got married and threw it away. “I wore it last week” she replied.

It took her several months, but when I got home from Florida Sunday night I had a missed parcel slip at the door and I immediately wondered if she’d actually, finally sent me the sweatshirt back. I just returned from the post office, looked at the return to sender address and began doing a little jig in my front hallway. It’s in perfect condition and I’m wearing it as I type. I am ecstatic, I’m going to forward this post to all my old Mills buddies and to she who knows who she is – THANK YOU!

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Rare Archival Silliness


in Heartwarming, Reminiscent

I don’t have a Wadio in me tonight, but I’ve gone and done a little something that will allow you to procrastinate at least equally as long. Have a look at the main navigation tabs at the tip top of the page and you’ll see a new one – “Archives“. If you’ve been with me for a while I have made available literally all of the content from the many incarnations this site has gone through over the years. Have a gander and a giggle, talk amongst yourselves and I’ll get back to invoicing.

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Bromfield Street Revisited… Again


in Heartwarming

I wish I could bottle whatever unlikely element got into my weary system today. Up at 7:30 and closing down work for the day as soon as I finish this post for an early night. Two more days like this one and I might just get myself caught up with work. I almost just laughed when I read that last sentence back.

The Boston stop-over on the way back from Florida was professionally successful and socially silly to boot. I have uploaded a revelrous gallery you can peruse should you feel brave with photos from Friday night appearing near the bottom. Budweiser apparently serves towers of beer, which I figured must hold at least the equivalent of a 12 pack, and we took down a few like antelope on the Serengeti at my old homestead – Sidebar. We then moved on to another staple, Silvertone, and proved to ourselves and the civilians in attendence little more than that we should never reproduce.

group-boston-bw

Saturday night was little Bella‘s 7th birthday party at the new Hard Rock Cafe (good riddance, Rack) and yet another excuse to fire (down) harpoons like a Japanese whaling vessel. Then Sunday I headed back to Ottawa by way of Philadelphia and collapsed in my bed sometime around 10pm. I’m quite sad that the Patriots lost the SuperBowl, but to be honest I don’t think I realized it until sometime this morning. These days, 2 straight nights on the razz wipe me out both physically and mentally for the better part of a week.

I am back home, getting back to normal and doing all the things I’ve neglected for the last 5 weeks like laundry, eating food I prepare myself and not sleeping on a pull-out couch left over from a Spanish Inquisition torture galleon. I pick up the puppies on Saturday and obviously have no idea the type of mayhem I am in for. Life, however, is good. And home is definitely not a relative term to me anymore.

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