johnrobe

The song driving me crazy as it goes through my head over and over and over is "(Billy) Don't Lose My Number" by Phil Collins.

Why this horrible song is in my head, I don't know, and my ability to figure out why is rapidly deteriorating due to the loss of cognitive faculties associated with a Phil Collins song repeating itself endlessly in your brain.

Why am I writing this as a blog post? Do I think you care what song is in my head? No. What I hope is that by writing this on the blog it will somehow purge me from this pop music hell. Maybe it will go away through some sort of karmic penance, or maybe it will just infect anyone reading this and we'll all go down together.

Last night I had a dream where all my teeth were falling out. I've had it before — it's one of those dreams in the "it recurs every couple of years" category, like the one involving me performing naked with the Spice Girls.

This particular dream was a bad one though… pretty much all my teeth were either falling out or loose, and I remember thinking, "Boy, I'd better go see a dentist!"

So what did I do?

I got to my computer and sent out a mass IM to all my buddies on Yahoo Messenger asking them how much they liked their dentist. Would they recommend him or her? How convenient were their hours? Did they handle electronic submission of costs to benefits providers?

I know what you're thinking — John, you have awesome dreams.

I know what I was thinking — Here's a dream that nobody on earth would have had a few years ago.

Social computing and instant messaging have obviously seriously changed how I think, even in my dreams, and I think that's cool, if nerdy as heck.

So, to continue the trend about social computing and how it has changed traditional trends in life, and hopefully not because my teeth are about to fall out, I ask on my blog — anyone have a dentist they like in Toronto?

I'm not a "watch the news in the morning" kind of guy, so it's odd the number of times in my life that I have happened to turn on the news on days when something monumental is happening. One of the days was September 11, another was the London subway bombings, and yesterday, it was the day that there was a huge fire at Queen and Portland.

Although it's probably not a neighbourhood I'd like to live in, it's one of my favourite neighbourhoods in Toronto, and seeing it in flames was very depressing.

Although my beloved Ghandi Roti was safe on the north side of the street, several businesses with unique and very valuable stock were completely destroyed. Of these, the one that makes me incredibly sad was Suspect Video.

In a world with a Blockbuster and Rogers Video on every corner, Suspect Video was a glorious, shining exception to the rule. I can't imagine a video store less like Blockbuster - in fact, it may have been the complete opposite. Where Blockbuster had dozens of copies of the latest formulaic romantic comedy, Suspect would have none. Where Blockbuster sold candy and chips next to the checkout, Suspect sold Hellraiser and Jesus figurines.

Almost everything in Suspect's collection was rare and unusual, and this is where the effect of the fire will really be felt, though I don't want to overstate it, since all things considered, Suspect was a video store not a museum. Suspect's collection was rare, weird, and wonderful. I know for sure there were titles in stock that won't be easily replaced, if at all (where do you get a replacement copy of Barely Legal Lesbian Vampires (the movie where every word makes the one next to it better (if only something made the movie better)) anyway?) but it's not even the discs and tapes that are the real loss.

Without meaning to be disrespectful to the staff of Suspect, (in fact, meaning to be complimentary) working there was a slacker video geek's dream job, and it showed in the store. I think it's impossible for someone to be intimately familiar with all the weird movies in Suspect, but if anyone was, it was the staff, and they would attach descriptive personal notes to the movies to help guys like me make our choices. These notes weren't mini-reviews necessarily, and they weren't even always positive. Sometimes there would be more than one note on a movie when members of the Suspect staff couldn't agree on whether a movie was brilliant or trash. Even if the movies can all be restocked and even if the crazy decor could be recreated, those notes are lost to the ashes and the ages, and that's what makes me saddest.

At least there is still the Markham Street location of Suspect, so all is not completely lost.

People have been asking me why I haven't updated in a while, and it's time to let you know why.

I'm having marital problems.

That's right. Tonight my wife informed me, via IM no less, that she was leaving me — for a grapefruit.

Sure, she was hungry. She had been shoveling snow non stop and probably was a bit light-headed from all the heavy lifting, but still, we've been married for 10 years. I don't care how tasty or succulent a piece of fruit is, it seems sort of cruel to dump your husband, over IM, for a piece of fruit that could at best be described as a casual fling.

Still, I am willing to forgive and work through this. I don't think I'll ever look at grapefruit the same way though.

A lot of people don't understand why I hate the New England Patriots so much. At first I try and explain that it is because I am a Miami Dolphins fan, but that doesn't seem to cut it for most people, so I guess I have to explain my flavour of fandom.

First, it means unconditionally hating everyone that your team has any sort of rivalry with. Specifically, that means anyone who your team plays regularly, or any team that breaks any record of your team, or any team that has beaten your team in the playoffs. More generally, it means any other team that your team has ever played and not crushed.

New England meets every specific criteria for my fan-based hatred. They are in the same division as my Dolphins, Tom Brady broke a bunch of Dan Marino's records this year, they beat the Dolphins handily this season and worse — they were on the verge of matching the one record I thought no one would ever break, the '72 Dolphins' perfect season. In fact, if they had won the Super Bowl, they would have surpassed the 72 Dolphins, because they had to play more games.

It could not happen. Not on my watch. Not as long as sitting on a couch in Canada screaming at a TV had any impact on the outcome of a football game!

I'm sure you all know the outcome by now, it was a heck of a game, and the Giants outplayed the Patriots to take home the trophy that I will admit the Patriots deserved. I can say that because the world is right and good today.

In other news… be sure to click here to order 19-0: The Historic Championship Season of New England's Unbeatable Patriots from Amazon. It's not yet available for release, but get your order in the queue now!

P.S. Matej, this one’s for you — no more looking at that bajingo couch.