Remember when drugs were illegal and homosexuality was a vice?

The good old days! I got turned on to the weed 'o wisdom in my mid teens by Bernie Marquardt and Brian Vollet, when we were all pumping gas at John's Supertest, out on Waterloo Ave in Guelph. For most of the half century and then some that has passed us by since, I've been on the side of drug legalization. In principle, I'm still there, but in reality, what I'm seeing on the streets today is so far beyond hopeless that we gotta snap back to some sort of common sense right smartly, and fast, or we are seriously fucked! The other learning experience that sprouted outta my John's Supertest years was my introduction to gay culture. We were a gas station in Guelph, circa 1970, and we were selling gay porn! Turned out Brian's older brother was a locally famous poofer, and he offered his personal collection of hard-core gay porn for resale right there alongside the 10w40 and the windshield-washer fluid in our front room at John's Supertest. The drugs thing has gone totally out of control. I was happy enough that they stopped weed possession being a criminal offence, but I was very dissappointed that Justin gave the entire game over to his, or more accurately, his advisors' Bay Street pals. As for the so-called revolution in gay rights, I'm not sure if the rights gained compensate for what's lost. There was a time homosexuality was considered at least mildly subversive. Gay rights crusaders worked tirelessly to normalize homosexuality. And they largely succeeded. Nobody bats an eye at gay marriage anymore, and why should they?... On the other hand, nobody bats an eye when alleged homophobe DJT surrounds himself with Zionist billionaire advisors living in same-sex relationships... and why should they...

The John Goobie Boogie Woogie

As an old guy with nothing much to do other than wander the various overgrown pathways of memory... not so much overgrown as forgotten, I just came off a bit of a blues bender. Yup, I got Smokestack Lightening coming through the headphones right now! You know how it goes... a toke or two and a coupla shots with beer chasers, and before you know it, you're... having a fucking nap! Be that as it may, I had a very pleasant afternoon with Clarence Gatemouth Brown and ZZ Top. No, they weren't in the same music video, but they shoulda been. I was looking for some live footage of a ZZ track from the '70s, and while I never found that exact tune, I got a shitload of related stuff that set aflame the memory banks. For about five or six years of my childhood I was forced to take piano lessons. I had zero desire, interest, or aptitude, but my mother, having come of age in a refugee camp in Denmark post WW2 where she was denied the opportunity for piano lessons, was determined to provide me with the opportunities she had missed. My piano teacher was a dude originally from Newfoundland (I think) who had a bronze bust of Ludwig v Beethoven in his studio along with two pianos, one for him and one for his unsuspecting victims. My half-hour a week piano lesson was an exercise in utter boredom. The highlight was reading the Punch magazines he had in the anteroom. I mean, John mighta hailed from Newfoundland, but Punch was high-brow Brit Lit. Anyway, as I worked my way through the various lesson books, we eventually came to one titled "Jigs, Reels, and Boogie Woogie." I'd been practicing my first boogie lesson for a couple of weeks, and my teacher was getting a little pissy. He was shaking his head and muttering no, no... finally he cuts me off. Then he tears into a boogie tirade that woulda had ZZ struggling to keep up. Holy Jumpin' Jehosaphat, as we used to say... John pretty much set the piano on fire! That John Goobie boogie woogie rocked out like nothing I've heard before or since! Too bad he limited himself to giving piano lessons to no-talent dorkshits like me... he coulda been a somebody!

Happy May Day!

Traditionally, May Day was a day widely presumed to celebrate the working class. In North America May Day was seen as a little too sympathetic to European-style democratic socialism, which is why the powers that were soon cancelled May Day and gave us Labour Day instead. This May Day I scrolled through a few of my usual daily news sites, including CBC, CNN, and Fox, and found not so much as a passing reference to May Day. Even more shocking, most of my usual alt-news sites didn't have anything either! Pretty much had to wait till I got to the WSWS before I found out that millions had taken over the streets and capitalism was on its last legs for sure... Ya, I don't know what's become of the working class. It ain't what it used to be, that's for sure. When my father's generation got off the boat they knew who they were; the working class. They say your personality is fixed in the first five years of life by what you saw your parents doing. My father had one of the best jobs in the factory when I was a kid. All I ever aspired to, as a working class kid, is the best job in the factory! Of course, that all went for a shit when Dad ditched his own working class roots and embraced the manifold opportunities afforded by this great country we'd landed in. Suddenly, the "best job in the factory" wasn't good enough anymore... and for good reason. Between when we disembarked at Pier 21 in the 1950s and what the working class looks like today, things aren't looking great... but they've been worse! Happy May Day!