By Adam Bisby, the greatest globe-trotting, child-wrangling, season-pushing and hyphen-abusing freelance journalist in Toronto's M6R postal code.
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#WeedWednesday revisited

10/18/2018

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PictureWould you pay $47 for these cupcakes?
Yesterday was no ordinary Wednesday, and not just because it marked the legalization of recreational cannabis consumption in Canada. In fact, as the afternoon unfolded, Oct. 17 became curiouser and curiouser:

Noon: I join my buddy Joel for lunch on Roncesvalles Ave. The bacon on my BLT is burned, the poutine is seriously over-curded, there are jalapeno poppers mixed in with my chicken wings, and 80 percent of our cupcakes are sloppily iced.

2:15pm: As our server searches for the misplaced payment machine, we overhear two diners planning an art exhibit. When one suggests some kind of naughty Banksy knock-off — “Spanksy” or something like that — the other laughs and exclaims, “Are you high?!?” The reply: “Yes, as a matter of fact, I am high.”

2:30pm: While walking home, I witness the near-collision of three exhausted-looking Uber Eats cyclists and a careening Foodera delivery van.

2:45pm: The dentist office calls to confirm my Oct. 15 cleaning. After clearing that up — oh how we laugh — we eventually come to an agreement that teeth are kind of gross.

4pm: The cable company calls to convince me to upgrade my channel package. We spend the next 19 minutes discussing our favourite Black Mirror episodes.

4:19pm: Inexplicably, the line goes dead. I look at my phone and notice I’ve lost both the cell signal and Wi-Fi connection. Suddenly the power goes out, and seconds later I hear the unmistakable wail of air raid sirens. I run into into the front yard, and stare open-mouthed at the sky as a squadron of Zeppelins blocks out the sun while a flock of heavily-armoured flamingos...

4:20pm: I jolt awake to the sound of the ringing doorbell, check the time, leap from the bathtub and hastily don my housecoat. I'm not expecting a visit from Snoop Dogg, but you never know.

4:22pm: It turns out to be the good people from the Save the Children charity. I donate a few bucks after they stop giggling for long enough to explain that opting not to save even a few children is a "total dick move."

4:45pm: When I ask Google to “play Tragically Hip” — it being the first anniversary of Gord Downie’s passing and all — it plays “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.” When I ask it to play the Grateful Dead, it plays “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.” Ween? “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.” Englebert Humperdink? “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.” And so it goes...

4:55pm: I call Google tech support and am put on hold. The music on the line? You guessed it.

5:15pm: How did all these tumbleweeds get into the toaster strudel aisle at the grocery store?

5:30pm: Everyone in the "12 items or less" line is trying to recover their credit-card passwords.

6pm: On my way out of the store I stop to chat with the two off-duty police officers guarding the ice cream. Coincidentally, both are looking forward to the four-week vacations they just booked.

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QUIZ: HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW CANADIAN PLACE NAMES IN HIP SONGS?

10/19/2017

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Tragically Hip fans know the band's songs are packed with references to Canadiana, and after listening to pretty much the entire catalogue yesterday I was reminded of just how many Canadian cities, towns, prisons, motels and other locales are mentioned specifically by name. So let's have some fill-in-the-blank fun with this, eh? (NB: If you get more than 25 correct you are some kind of Gord-lyrics savant. A perfect score of 30 means you're both a huge Hip fan and a member of an advanced alien race.)

1. Twelve men broke loose in seventy three
From _________ _______ _______
Twelve pictures lined up across the front page
Seems the Mounties had a summertime war to wage

2. Well, there's a rocking little spot next to the _______ _______
And if you want to make the scene you'll make it sooner or later
You're really hanging with the crowd, you know the ins and the outs here
All Canadian Surf Club, denim jackets and long hair

3. The ______ ___ _____ ___
Soft water and colour TV
Oh so consumed with the shape I'm in
I can't enjoy the luxury
The luxury

4. Smart as trees in _____ ____ ____
I can speak my mother tongue
Passing laws, just because
And singing songs Of the English unsung

5. Me debunk an American myth?
And take my life in my hands?
Where the great plains begin
At the _________ ________
At the _________ ________
Where the great plains begin

6. Sundown in the _____ __ ___ _______
Wheat kings have all treasures buried
And all you hear are the rusty breezes
Pushing around the weathervane Jesus

7. When I left your house this morning
It was a little after nine
It was in __________, I saw the constellations
Reveal themselves one star at a time

8. That night in _______
With its checkerboard floors
Riding on horseback
And keeping order restored

9. Thompson Girl walking from _________
Across the icy world with polar bears it's mostly uphill
But when she saw that nickel stack
She whistled hard and I whistled back, Thompson Girl

10. Want to be your wheezing screen door
Want to be your stars of _________
Want to be your roaring floorboard
Want to break the hearts of everyone

11. Of course we're now travelling by plane
If it's not a ______ of a pain
We'll entertain the idea of train

12. I think it was _________ ____
It was so cold and winter dark
A promised hibernation high
Took me across the great black plate of ice

13. A silver jet roars overhead
Rocks the nocturne all everglade and grey sheers
A silver jet, so far off already
Fought the hot spurs off all the way to ____ _____

14. A silver jet, way overhead
A silver jet, evergladed grey sheers
A silver jet, so far off already
A silver jet, _________ _____ to ____ _____

15. In the ulcerating silence perspective comes
The way it always does for it's ransom
So randomly somebody calls
The phone rings and it brings _______ _____

16. In that September off ____ ___ _____
The desultory sea grew more so through the night
And made one think of tawny ports
And aspen tremblin' in tomorrow's thorough light

17. Writing a song about ____ ______________
And tonight I don't believe
There are words to spare and be a tip and a nod
Admitting it's half the defeat

18. It's a time for more to happen sooner
A time to be a person you still know
To float a while on your shore power
Till you say, "______ lost. Go home"

19. There's ________ _____, ____________
There's ________ ______-__-_
There are places I've never been
And always wanted to go
That's right

20. ______ emptied, there was me
Beside you featureless and freezing
Last night I dreamed you didn't love me
You didn't love me

21. Don't you wanna see how it ends? 
When the door is just starting to open? 
When _________ depends? 
Don't you wanna see how it ends?

22. Win _______
yelled the Queen of the Furrows 
This is how we farm 
hens cluck and roosters crow 

23. _____ _____ take me away
_____ _____ take me away
_____ _____ take me away
Away from this
Away from this

24. The ghosts of the ______ _____ start to sing
And patting the grass you said
"Come sit next to me, be my sweetheart"
Over in ________ ____
Over in ________ ____

25. Whenever a man, whenever a man
Tries to be more like a machine
He breaks down, when I broke down
I always thought I'd go to _______

26. ____________
City by the Bay!
There's no denying that
Oh, ____________
You're on your way

27. You're...you're in my heart
It's in my pockets and in my eyes, oh!
In my blood
______, you've been on my mind
You've been on my mind
Oh, yeah

ANSWERS:

1. Millhaven Maximum Security
2. Regent Theatre
3. Golden Rim Motor Inn
4. Sault Saint Marie (burn!)
5. Hundredth Meridian
6. Paris of the Prairies (Saskatoon)
7. Bobcaygeon
8. Toronto
9. Churchill
10. Algonquin (Park)
11. Canada
12. Algonquin Park
13. Cape Spear
14. Clayoquot Sound to Cape Spear
15. Niagara Falls
16. Isle aux Morts
17. Lake Memphremagog
18. Canada
19. Mistaken Point, Newfoundland and Moonbeam Ontari-ari-o (2 points, bonus point for
"ari-ari-o")
20. Canada
21. Athabasca
22. Toronto
23. Speed River
24. Rideau Canal and Skeleton Park (2 points)
25. Calgary
26. Attawapiskat
27. Sarnia

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