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Shepherd Pye: The Beginning


in Animalistic

A few weeks back I prattled on at length about why I’d decided to get a dog. The chewed up, slobber-covered ball is in play, as I visited the breeder at her home in Seeley’s Bay tonight and met the proud parents to be, Oscar and Pixie, in person.

Pixie, Dave and Oscar

Gord, Bonnie and Cousin Norma came along for the ride and we had a lovely time playing with the 6 Boston Terriers on site and meeting Megan and her family. After a quick sock puppet show from the kids we discussed why I wanted one of the next litter. I must have made a good impression because she emailed me later to tell me I was A-OK in their books and was officially on the coveted list. Pixie spent most of the visit sitting on my lap but made the rounds to make sure everyone got a celebratory lick. OK, 272 celebratory licks. She’s a licker.

Oscar is only 7 months old and already poised as Megan’s next big stud. She drove all the way to Michigan to get him and he apparently comes from famous stock as his grandfather was a well known show dog. So basically Shepherd is practically the Frank Sinatra Junior of the dog world and hasn’t even been conceived yet. You can check out more pictures and even a video if you’re so inclined. Damn, it’s going to be a long 4 months.

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3:10 to Yuma


in Movies

“In hard times, Americans have often turned to the Western to reset their compasses. In very hard times, it takes a very good Western.” – Roger Ebert on 3:10 to Yuma

When discussing quality contemporary westerns, it helps to start with one understanding on which everyone is usually in total agreement: There’s Unforgiven and then there’s everything else. That usually levels the playing field to allow for a more objective look at the Silverados, the Young Guns, the Quick and the Deads and the Tombstones. The new, new westerns however – basically anything after the year 2000, have been few and far between and many have lamented the demise of the genre.

3:10 to Yuma

The hope that “Open Range” seeded in me a few years ago was hammered home last night when I saw 3:10 to Yuma – The Western is not dead. Crowe’s warrior poet and Bale’s hard-luck veteran trade bullets, insults and eventually even smiles over miles of beautiful sets and scenery. The characters of the young son, the railway man, the Pinkerton and Crowe’s bloodthirsty second-in-command take the movie from good to great. It’s a tasty, complicated, human relationship study. Father/son, criminal/family man, husband/wife – there’s even a little one-sided Brokebackesque homoeroticism thrown in for good measure. Fans of the genre, the actors or both (or neither) can love this film. Couple all of that with the best movie poster I think I’ve ever seen (I just ordered it for the Winchester‘s wall) and you’ve got one happy chappy.

Ben Foster, made famous by his creepy turns in Six Feet Under and Hostage really impressed me as Ben Wade’s evil cohort, Charlie Prince. He always struck me as sort of a poor man’s Giovanni Ribisi – but he is outstanding in this film. He’ll definitely be pigeonholed as the go-to weirdo for the majority of his career, but he’ll be leading the pack of go-to weirdos. All psychopaths aside, judging from the increasing numbers of Westerns creeping into the Hollywood schedule I think our compasses will be well configured for a while. Even if they’ve become moral GPS systems.

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Monday’s Quotelet: Chicken Break


in

Chicken in Cages

“OK boys. The diversion is set for 6 a.m. – when Clucky starts crowing flap for the fence and start pecking like you’ve never pecked before in your young lives.”

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Don’t Look Back in Anger


in Musical

Back in the summer of 2004 a few of us hit the Perth Garlic Festival with a vengance – follow the link for the write up. In addition to the garlic pies, garlic ice cream and garlic spermicide there was also a caricature artist whom I was quickly convinced to approach for a doodle. She whispered to my sister (I found out later) “What does your brother like?” To which Janet responded, “Beer and trashy women.” Wicked. Anyway, I came across the resulting work of art over the weekend and couldn’t help but be astonished by it’s near perfect resemblance to Noel Gallagher. Maybe he was “Largin’ it!” with a few tasty cloves over my shoulder and the artist got confused. And maybe we’ll just never know.

Noel Gallagher and Dave Pye

I so want to make a Garlic Supernova or You and I We’re Gonna Eat Garlic Forever joke right now, but I have to take my father into town. Feel free to have at it – the new comment system is a lot easier to use than the Blogger one was. Remember the days when every post I’d write would end up with 10 comments? I do. They were wonderful times, and it’s going to be a long crawl back to that level. Possibly straight up a Garlicwall.

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Wednesday Wadio: Happy Mondays “Jellybean”


in Musical, Wednesday Wadio

“It goes without saying that the only people who should be allowed to purchase Unkle Dysfunctional are those (like this writer) who own one copy of Pills n’ Thrills n’ Bellyaches for each room of their apartment.” – CokeMachineGlow.com

For the uninitiated, the Happy Mondays were one of the central bands of the late 80’s “Madchester” movement which also included Stone Roses, Inspiral Carpets, James and the Charlatans. The focal point of the ‘scene’ was the legendary Haçienda club, the colored history of which is available in excruciating detail on any number of sites. To the initiated, if you were already aware that the first Happy Mondays album in 14 years was released earlier this summer, you may well be wondering how it is, how Sean sounds and what it’s all about? As a lifelong fan of the group, who even got to see them in 1990 as a 16-year-old in Boston, I’ve listened to the album a big bunch of times and am here to lay it on you. I have thought of this at long length and can sum up my review in one sentence:

It’s better than I expected, but tragic due to the large number of good ideas hastily thrown together and wasted.

I haven’t bothered to look up the producer, but with more time spent and a different set of fingers twiddling the knobs, the mostly mediocre material could have easily comprised a legendary comeback of biblical proportions. And Sean Ryder was set for it – his cameo on the Gorillaz “Dare” last year made for the best song on an album of very good songs. His cohort Bez recently came back into the limelight after winning Celebrity Big Brother 5 and 50 thousand pounds along with it. Before I talk about the album’s highlight, let me first expound upon the tragedies – I owe it to my 16-year-old self.

Songs with great musical production have god-awful, chanty lyrics. I am thinking particularly of “Deviant” and “Cuntry Disco”. The music in Deviant is funky and wonderful, and I rap along to the chorus with delight every single time I hear it. But the verses, Sean mindlessly rhyming one word throughout – “She grabs it and stabs it and flabs it and…” make me feel like I’m playing some kind of drinking game. And losing. Deviants could have been an amazing song if someone had put the brakes on and said “Right… we’re on the verge here, but the versus sound worse than a Yoko Ono solo album being played backwards through a bullhorn.” Why, oh why, didn’t somebody say that! Give me a day alone with the masters and an unlicensed copy of Pro Tools and I’ll save the world.

The best tune on the record is without a doubt “Jellybean”, and it’s beyond cruel that it’s also the first. I remember driving around Burlington, singing the uber-catchy chorus after I’d heard it just once and wondering if I wasn’t about to experience something amazing – a solid Mondays album nearly 15 years after their last one sank an entire record label. But it “were all downhill from ‘ere” as they’d say in Manchester.

There’s no video as far as I could locate, but I found a decent clip of them performing it in Middlesbrough, England on May 26th of this year. I suppose even just one above average song on an album as unlikely as Unkle Dysfunctional is a pretty good average – so I’m featuring it on Wadio today and that makes me happy. A year ago I’d have bet a lot of money against it. Ecstasy money.

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Migration Fascination


in Pye in the Face

After – no kidding – 2 years of humming and hawing, DavePye.com has finally been migrated from the infantile Blogger to the almighty WordPress platform. The design you see today is not final, and the incredible functionality of WordPress will make this site more interactive and fun for the 13 readers I have managed to retain during this slow summer. It’s time for me to get this old clunker back on the road.

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About

PITF is a personal blog – with a skew towards popular culture – and has been in existence, in several silly incarnations, since 1999. 

This page used to have a lot more information about the author, but he eventually realized nobody cared or was coming here for any of that nonsense.

Instead, please allow me to present, THE FAMILY VON TRAPP!

(Love me some Judy Gold).

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Canadian Assimilation.


in Canadiana

My friend Sean called me over the weekend and left a message to the tune of “Have you been eaten by feckin’ bears?” I realized at that point that it was probably time to update anyone who cares. If not, jog on – no one has a potato gun to your head. This blog will return to it’s regularly scheduled dead hooker jokes by the end of the summer.

Operation Bunkhouse is just a few days away from completion, and my place is wide open for visitors anytime in August/September. If you’re a friend of mine, or a well-medicated stalker, you are officially invited to pick a weekend if that’s at all enticing. Come sleep in the silence, relax in the gazebo, soak up some sun, boat your brains out and eat a lot of corn. There is also a vicious rumor that the Pye family likes a drink or two after 5pm.

Life is good, with obvious exceptions. Here are some bullets as it’s been a while since I spoke to any of you at length and there’s a lot to mention…

– We sold Grandma’s house in July and walked out of it for the final time last Monday. There were no tears shed. I now live full time in Portland, Ontario.
– My reasons behind moving here were spun different ways for different people, but the end goal was to live here with my ailing Father and take some of the pressure off of my Mom. For example, she is on a much-needed vacation in Vancouver this week, as I watch the fort/Gordo. He’s a handful, and my social circle consists of loons and squirrels – but he’s my Dad. And that’s that.
– Gord is manageable if you distract him with things he likes to do/eat/watch/drink. “Give me my f**king car keys now!” “Oh look Dad, Fawlty Towers is on!” “It is?”
– As a result, I am picking up golf very quickly. I now understand people’s addiction to it. Gord is still an excellent player, and we’ll be doing a lot of it. My first lesson is in 9 hours.
– 2 sets of clubs fit very nicely in the back of the Charger. Golf is quite a workout and I currently feel like I’ve been dragged behind a truckful of Nazis for several miles.
– On a related note, I am completely unashamed at how happy I am that Karen Allen is going to be in Indy 4.
– While hardly Grifflet substitutes, my little cousins Jakob, Seth, Thomas, Christopher, Alexandra, Darius, Ben and Carter are enjoying having me around more than once a year. Thomas (19) went to a party with me in Toronto and had a great time with my friends. Darius (6) enjoys when I show up with bootleg Spiderman 3 DVDs.
– Janet was up last weekend and we got a TON done on the Bunkhouse and a ton drankended on the Pontoon boat (see galleries).
– I have connected from so many childhood friends via Facebook it is unreal. I recently had dinner at the home of a girl who was my best friend Freshman year of high school and when I walked in the door it was like no time had passed. Quite an amazing summer in terms of friendship rekindling. Best website ever.
– I have a great group of friends back in Toronto (2.5 hours away), mostly from University, who have made me feel very welcome back in the Great White North. When I start to get jumpy for human contact, I have plenty of places to stay back in civilization.
– I now have a boat license.
– According to Janet, who is a hard sell on this topic, my driving skills have returned. She may have been swayed when I deked a hugenormous deer going 80MPH in her new 5-speed Audi.
– TechTarget went public a month ago and I am very glad I bought all the shares I was entitled to when I left to become an international search marketing guru in 2003. Why am I telling all of you? Cause it’s a jetski, baby, and you may get to ride it one day.
– Speaking of watercraft, we have a 50HP pontoon boat with pimpin’ leather couches on it and an iPod-compatible stereo. I remarked to Janet, whilst cruising slowly through Lost Lake with a Rockstar in my lap and the Pixies blaring through the speakers – “This IS heaven on Earth”. Gord kinda likes it when I play Bolero. Bonnie likes it when I forget to bring the iPod.
– I made my first Portland friend Friday night at a bar called the Galley. I can sail there in about 15 minutes and tie up right in front. He’s a local drunk named Dana, and Janet says “keep looking”.
– I run every morning, and combined with the golf I feel amazing and am dropping weight like a Tijuana crack whore. I only drink when we have company and my Peter Pan on cheesecake days are officially over.
– I have decided to live here for the winter in order to save money, continue the health kick and by doing so lower the insurance charges on the house while my folks are in Florida.
– My friend Gooch (see bunkhouse gallery) is going to leave both his snowmobiles here and we’re taking a trip all the way to Montreal on them come winter.
– Gooch and I are building an ice fishing hut.
– I am talking to Boxer and Boston Terrier breeders. I love the Boss, but he sleeps all day and can’t go outside. I need another addition to the Lakehouse herd for my own winter sanity. Otherwise, I’ll be growing a beard, writing a manifesto and sending C4 through the mail to Al Sharpton before the first day of Spring.
– I am turning into an Ottawa-Valley-accented-hilljack-peameal-bacon-eating hick, and I love it.

I will be in Boston the weekend of September 22nd for a wedding. The wedding is in New Hampshire, but I’ll be extending my trip so I have time to visit my Boston peeps. I hope to see some of you then, and Griffin may have to give up her PS2 room for a night or two – which somehow I think she’ll be fine with . The thought of a genuine Harpoon IPA and some North End Pushcart pizza makes me beyond happy.

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Searching For Peter Grumme.


in Reminiscent

Once upon a time, if you wanted to find someone you’d lost touch with, you’d hire a private detective. In 2007, the first answer my friends and I came up with for this same task was: “Start a FaceBook Group!” That having been said, where the hell is Peter Grumme – a.k.a. Gummer?

Many people who visit this site won’t have any clue, or give a sweet frickin’ tweet, who Gummer is. Simply put, he’s a diamond geezer whom a lot of people would like to get back in touch with. In the age of FaceBook, and it’s fervent Canadian following, not being able to locate him is extremely frustrating.

I’m writing about this today because there are currently next to no hits in Google for Pete’s name. If he, or someone he knows, performs a related query anytime soon they’ll undoubtedly find this post, the FB group and then – salvation. Come home, little shaggy lamb.

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The Belly Of The Beast.


in Sporty

In the middle of all this “I’m so busy… Waaah – I’m moving internationally, change my drawers” bullshit, I’ve gotten a little ahead of myself. I get daily IMs and emails asking me why I have the fucking audacity to stop writing regularly. So, in spite of the imminent re-imagining of PITF, which is truthfully well underway and even paid for – I will continue to write. I am honored that any frigger still cares.

I am truly in the belly of the beast this eve. Less than 100 miles away lies the Capital city of Canada, my place of birth in 1973, whose Senators hockey team is in the running for the first Canadian Stanley Cup since 1993 – That’s 14 frigging years for anyone keeping score. For comparative purposes, that’s like the USA not being the champion of inventing chewing tobacco for almost 15 years straight. Brutal, I know.

The end of my Grandmother’s street (I am living alone at her house with Boss until it is sold) has “Bring it home to Canada, Sens!” written in children’s street chalk at the intersection. At least 5 out of every cars I pass have a little Sens flag waving out the window. Every time my beloved Uncle John and I meet for a beer, there are pubs full of Senator shirt clad fans everywhere. It’s a typically quiet and reserved Canadian event of incredible importance.

Anaheim is now ahead in the series 3-1 as of 5 minutes ago, and the series is returning Wednesday to California – which isn’t great for the odds. Home ice and one more win and it’s over. But I’ll be watching, and I pray for continued serendipity relating to my move home. Go Sens, and go my bid on a Charger tomorrow in the auction.

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Dave, We Hardly Knew Ye.


in Heartwarming

Many, many emphatic thanks to everyone who came to my send off bender at Kennedy’s on Saturday night. The show of support and love really had a positive effect on my sister and I, and will make these next tricky months a lot easier. I couldn’t be more sincere. Highlights included:

  • A genuine pink Red Sox thong from Tony B.
  • A surprise appearance by Moynihan who flew from fucking SWEDEN to be with us.
  • Two philanthropic Harkins brothers and one lovely Heather who allowed us to give out free drink tickets to all the guests.
  • Janet’s brainchild – the photo album – which was passed around and signed by all.
  • The largest assembly of BrainGEM veterans in 5 years.
  • More hugs and kisses than I will probably get for the rest of my life.

Let’s wrap this love-fest up. It’s time to get packing, cracking and plow through the next seven days. See the photo gallery here, and you all have a place to stay in Toronto forever.

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Excuses And More Fucking Excuses.


in Pye in the Face

As anyone in the know knows – I am gearing up for a big, and technically international, move. I am attempting to build a department at work, hand off building management duties and financials to the owners, finish taxes, organize satellite internet access to remote wilderness locations, have a tooth replaced, sort personal accounting, get a new laptop and – oh yeah – blah dee frickin’ blah.

DavePye.com will be back – and better than ever when the dust settles in a couple of weeks. A redesign and move to a different backend will follow shortly after. I look forward to documenting my new adventures in Canada, and will not disappoint. Also, if you’re not already on the Evite for the going away party Saturday night, and feel like you should be, spare yourself the wee dejected sniffle – and just email me for details.

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Trailer Park Boys: Season Fucking 7.


in Television

While most of us are running around filled with glee at the imminent start of the Sopranos’ final 6 episodes, let us not forget that April also marks the start of a new season in Sunnyvale. Season 7 begins with “I Fuckin’ Miss Corey and Trevor” and premieres this Sunday night at 9pm:



“The Trailer Park Boys are back for their 7th season. Cross border dope smuggling, model train hobbyists and Sebastian Bach, ex-frontman of Skid Row collide in these 10 hilarious new episodes.“

It sounds like the boys will have a few run-ins with Americans in this new foray. After a little digging, I found some spoilers. They boys will be selling meat in the LC parking lot to make money. Lahey switches from Liquor to dope. Apparently there’s several new animals in the park, including Sheryl the Crow and some raccoons. Ricky discussing the new influx of critters: “… but I got fuckin’ insects now coming to my trailer, frogs and fuckin these things that look like cats but they got this long beaky nose things , they’re all attracted to my dope …“

As for #7 supposedly being the Sunnyvale’s last hurrah, Rob Wells (Ricky) recently said: “It’s still up in the air,” he said. “We’d love to keep going. A couple of people are a little tired and burnt out and need a break.” It’s no secret who Wells is referring too. Corey and Trevor are apparently completely absent from this series because the actors who play them didn’t want to participate. Which I’m sure they’ll regret in a few years when they’re both living off bar appearances. “We’re definitely up for keeping going, if everyone else is.” In the new series it’s apparently reported that Corey and Trevor have been committed to a mental institution because of all the abuse at the hands of Ricky and Julian over the years.

If you live in Canada, you can watch the entire first episode as of yesterday on Showcase’s website. If you live in the states, like me, it’s blocked. Bugger. But never fear my Yank friends, about an hour after the show airs on Sunday it will be available for download via a torrent right here. If you can’t wait, here’s a poor quality torrent rip of the webstream that is blocked in the USA. Now frig off.

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