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You are here: Home / Archives for Chris

Look who was on The Colbert Report

March 11, 2009 by Chris

To my amazement, an old friend of mine from high school, Carl Wilson, was on the Colbert Report the other day. Colbert had him on his show so he could talk to Carl about his new book. His book is about his hate and then his developing interest in some of Canada’s Celine Dion’s music.

You see he started out a hater and wondered why so many were fascinated with her music … in the end he came to like or at least “be able to listen to” some of her music.

The book is called Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste.

It is so nice to see someone that you know doing so well in his/her related field and then to be interviewed on a popular talk show and have it turn out to be a fantastic hit was a bonus!

When I woke up the other day, my wife put a postie on the breakfast table for me. At first I thought, like most men do when they see something like this is, what did I do now or what do I have to do later? Upon reading the message, I was quite taken back to have read a shocking memo. Before going to bed, she had noticed a familiar name listed as a guest for that nights Colbert Report. She then recorded it on our PVR (TIVO) machine so I could view it later to see if I knew the interviewee. Thank God she did because it was Carl Wilson from my old high school in Brantford, Ontario!

After seeing it for myself that evening when I returned from work, I had to check out Facebook to see if anyone else saw it. As it turned out, a few people did! Then I checked out one of his web sites called Zoilus and found a real neat video of a actor named James Franco being interviewed while on the Red carpet at the Oscars about what some of his guilty pleasures are. He then brought up Carl’s latest book. It seems like the little guy from Brantford does good, way to go Carl!!!

L-R Me, Yuergen Beck, Carl Wilson and Mike McGraw

Keep on Jammin’ Carl




Filed Under: Canadian, Culture, Music, My experiences, Recreation, Television Tagged With: books, Brantford, buddy, Canada, Canadian, Canadian_author, Carl_Wilson, Celine_Dion, colbert_nation, Colbert_Report, comedy_network, friend, high_school, Let's_Talk_About_Love:_A_Journey_to_the_End_of_Taste, lets_talk_about_love, music_critic, music_critic_Carl_Wilson, Stephen_Colbert

Toronto is 175 years old today

March 6, 2009 by Chris

Today marks the 175th year of the creation of Toronto, Ontario! To some, it is a beacon of hope, multicultural existence and tolerance. To others, Toronto is just a hole in the ground!

So to here’s to my new home town! cheers and many more to come T.O.!

Filed Under: Canadian, Culture, Toronto Tagged With: 175_birthday, 175_years_old, Canada, Diversity, ethnic_diversity, good_neighbours, multicultural, Neighourhoods, Ontario, Toronto, toronto_is 175_years_old, toronto_Ontario

How does Youtube make money

February 21, 2009 by Chris

This is a question that has been going through my mind for ages now. I’ve asked this question to many people that use this service that are quite internet savvy and the answer that most of them reply with is they sell adds on their site. Ok, that I understand but what is another monetary generator that they have at their disposal?

My wife, who has the most keen internet mind that I know, always tell me to not watch too many tunes on Youtube. I told her that I use this site in order to find other ways to play a tune, that will help me change it up if I play the song live OR just to to be a more well rounded guitar player. At first I asked her why and she said that we have to keep close attention to the bandwidth that we use watching things on Youtube. If we go over the band width too much, then the our ISP will bump us up to a more expensive package! Really, I said?!

You have a site that has millions of people uploading and downloading daily! They put up anything THAT THEY deem important and it is saved on this site for God knows how long.

First of all, imagine how many hard drives that these guys use? They obviously have many locations that support their servers, that must cost a few bucks. Then, try to wrap your head around that bandwidth issues that they have?! And I’m worried about mine! I also wonder if they use any RAM in their servers? Humm?

Personally, I think that they must get some HUGE kick backs from your local ISP (Internet Service Provider). Your provider makes more money when you overextend your bandwidth and Youtube provides the tool to help you blow by your coverage?!

What do you think about this concept?

Keep on Jammin’

Filed Under: Entertainment, Finance, General Tagged With: how_they_make_money, money, personal_videos, upload_videos, watch_videos, youtube

Beer bottle blues

February 18, 2009 by Chris

I’m not sure, but I think that this form of music is a dying art. Passed on from one musician to another … or maybe drunk to drunk!

The technique looks simple enough. Trying to tune this instrument is another story!

My wife was just asking me if it has a carrying case and I just shrugged my head … I think it comes in a cardboard box with a single or dual handle?!

The bass instrument must be a big silver tube, heavy when full and quite familiar with the frat house institutions.

beerbottleblues.jpg

I wonder what the instruments techie is called, any ideas?

Keep on Jammin’

Filed Under: Entertainment, Humor Tagged With: beer, beer-bottle, beer_bottle_music, drinking, funny, Humor, humour, Music, Musicians, pics

2009 Brenda Carol Renaissance Jazz Fair

February 14, 2009 by Chris

This event, Brenda Carol Renaissance Jazz Fair, seems to be taking the neighbourhood by storm! Believe it or not, my neighbour told me! Once again I found out about this near by extravaganza by leafing through my bi-weekly newspaper called the Mirror! The only thing was I found it this Sunday, about 2 weeks after it was delivered! In the words of my good friend Charlie Brown, Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

This event, the 3rd annual no less, sounded like it blew the lid off the joint. The event was held every night from Friday Jan. 30th through to Sunday Feb. 01. The joint in question is our local Renaissance Cafe at 1938 Danforth Ave. in Toronto. This place is about half the distance from our home, as compared to the Broadview Espresso Cafe, so I can even ride my bike there.

Checking out some of the acts that were held at this year’s event, it looks like Brenda chose a nice collection of jazz bands. I love the fact that they had a one much younger player in this year’s line up. That musician is Sam Dickinson on guitar, at the tender age of 17! Wow, there was even a guy playing there from my home town of Brantford named Kyle McGregor! He played both guitar and piano on Sunday.

Jazz music is a positive and creative genre played from the heart for the sheer love of the art.
This jazz fair is intended to showcase performers giving them the opportunity to perform in front of
peers, a respectful audience and to enjoy this exceptional opportunity. This Jazz Fair is not an open
stage show. All performers are selected and allotted performance time.

This time, I have given myself a reminder of the show next year and God willing, I will be able to give you a REAL critique of the event!

Keep on Jammin’

Filed Under: Concerts, Entertainment, Great Bands, Music, Musicians, Recreation, Toronto Bands Tagged With: 2009_Brenda_Carol_Renaissance_Jazz_Fair, Brenda_Carol, jazz, jazz_bands, Jazz_fair, jazz_show, jazz_toronto, Jazz_trio, renaissance_cafe, renaissance_cafe_Danforth_Ave, The_Danforth, toronto_jazz

Frampton Comes Alive II

February 11, 2009 by Chris

Well if you haven’t heard of Frampton Comes Alive and you were born anytime before 1969 or so, then you must have been living in another dimension. It remains the second best selling live album in the U.S. behind Garth Brooks’ Double Live. Garth Brooks, who the hell is he?!

Anyways, while relaxing in the Hotel Hospital, my great wife brought me her nice wide screen laptop for me to watch some movies on it when I was boring. She brought some great music DVD’s but, the best one was Frampton Comes Alive II. We bought it ages ago and I never really watched it and I certainly had the time to view then!

Peter played some fabulous tunes on this one but, unfortunately he did not cover the whole original set that was from the first one. There was also only one original band member from Frampton comes alive one that performed on the new one. He was the late great Bob Mayo. Man did that guy have talent!

If anyone has this DVD in their collection, you might just want to look at all of Peter’s amplifiers on this one. Look closely at this moving object that is to the right of his 2nd Marshall amp. You’ll see these 2 horn like things spinning at different speeds from time to time. If you were wondering what they are, they are his Leslie amplifier.

So if yo see this gem of a DVD while your shopping pick it up and you can’t go wrong!

Keep on Jammin’
Bob Mayo, RIP

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Frampton_comes_alive, Frampton_comes_alive_2, Frampton_comes_alive_II

What to do when your bored in your hospital room

February 8, 2009 by Chris

While in my hospital room, being bored out of my head, I was desperately trying to find ways to keep myself amused, this was long after my wife and family had left for home.

The first thing I did kind of got me into some minor trouble with the staff, and rightfully so!

Considering that I work there and know practically everyone in the place, a fair amount of staff dropped in from time to time just to see how I was doing. Later on some of the R.T.’s (Resuscitation Team) visited me in my room, which was around 12:00 (00:00). They were just doing their rounds so when they were about to leave and with nothing else better to do, I just followed them.

I was attached to heart monitor that allows patients to roam free throughout the hospital, so I took advantage of it. Besides, if anything were to happen to me, these ladies would be the ones to be with!

We went around here and there chatting away, visiting other floors and talking to other staff on the night shift. This diversion allowed me to change my focus on other things like, what I was in there for.  This REALLY HELPED A LOT and I thank them for it! After 45 minutes we went back to my ward. Upon arriving the nurses there just had this look on their faces. Kinda pissed but, they knew it was me and only gave it to me with one barrel, if you know what I mean.

Now it was around 01:30 and I was back in my little room. My mind was racing, scanning the room desperately looking for anything interesting to get into. I soon found a newspaper called 24 hours right beside my bed and started leafing through it. Since there was nothing really interesting going on musically in the Arts and Entertainment section, I eventually directed my attention to this one installment called Almost Toronto, a 5 part series. It was the Monday Feb. 2nd 2009 edition on page 3.

The article caught my interest because it was all about what Toronto would have looked like if the city had chosen other projects to help define it’s distinct architectural footprint. In this piece, it talked about a book that was called Toronto Pending. The author talked about some of Toronto’s Mega Projects, neat original renderings of these projects as well as public spaces that never made it past the city council.Now this is something that I wanted to learn more about.

So I then slide out to the nurse’s desk, took over a computer and started searching for this book. After locating the book’s site, I started investigating the whole site, leaving no link unclicked! To be honest with ya, it was very simple in it’s layout with fabulous pic’s and incite full facts. Just glaring at some of these revolutionary ideas for the future of our city, I feel that it would have made it an even more exciting place to live!

So that is what I did to keep my sanity during my first night there … not very exciting was it!

Keep on Jammin’

Filed Under: General, Health, History, Toronto Tagged With: 24_hours, hospitals, hospital_stays, toronto_architecture

First day home from the Hospital

February 3, 2009 by Chris

Sorry for not being overly active on this blog for the past while but, I’ve been feeling a bit sluggish!
While at work I was having some small cardiac episodes and had to be checked in for some work ups. I did not what to be admitted in, who really does, but I had to.

I was taking a patient back from our recovery room and then I felt some minor chest pains, feeling disoriented and sweaty. The nurses in the Day Surgery area went nutz when they saw me this way and threw me on a chair, did vitals and ran me off to the ER. They probably did this because I had one of these before and it was almost deadly.

I’m ok now but, I am still feeling a bit off. I hope you understand this and your looking forward to better posts in the future!

Keep on Jammin’

Filed Under: General, Health, My experiences Tagged With: angiogram, chest_pains, doppler, er, Health, heart, hospital, slugish

Need a cheap banjo player

January 30, 2009 by Chris

Now this banjo player is the perfect fit for any band looking for that certain something or for a band that is crying out for more stage presence in their group. If your interested in getting a hold of him, please e-mail me. ONLY SERIOUS inquires will be replied back to!

bandjoplayinganyone.jpg

I wonder if this is Bubbles father?

Keep on Jammin’

Filed Under: Entertainment, Humor Tagged With: banjo, banjo player, funny, funny banjo player, funny pics, Music, music humor, music humour

The new and improved KISS band

January 27, 2009 by Chris

So it looks like the band KISS is about to tour again, this time with a change to their line up. Boy, Gene hasn’t aged a day now has he!

kissband.jpg

Keep on Jammin’

Filed Under: Entertainment, Humor Tagged With: funny_pic, funny_pictures, Kiss, KISS_band, KISS_band_memebers, KISS_humor, members_of_KISS, music_humor

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