The Segarini Interview

I don’t know if you remember me, but I used to write a column or two here back before Corona went from Beer to Pandemic, and I wasn’t nipple deep in depression and writer’s block.

It occurred to me that maybe I should stick my head out of my burrow and let you know I’m okay, but still not ready to write about my favourite subjects like Gardening, Farm Tools of History, The Humour of Carrot Top and Naked Twister. Not to mention my recent discovery of a television host who may be more annoying, desperate for your love, and as shrill as the ongoing King of Late Night Fake Laughs and Maudlin Fawning, Jimmy “Don’t Call Me Jimi” Fallon.

Anyhoo, to remind you of who I are and why I is, here’s a re-run of an interview done with the Fabulous Bill King, a treasured friend and as talented a man as you are likely to ever meet. Not only will it re-introduce me to you, but will allow me to also reassure you that given enough time, Mitch McConnell will eventually die.

Bob – Writer’s Block, and The Story of Malibu Bobby

Dear Diary …

The current case of Writer’s Block continues well into its 2nd month. It is a horrible feeling, not being able to put words into sentences that tell a coherent story, staring at a blank monitor screen for hours on end, wondering if I will ever be able to write again.

It happens to writers on occasion. It is visual laryngitis , intellectual paralysis, which has no known cure. Like the common cold, all you can do is wait it out, taking steps suggested by friends that may have worked for them, but do not work for me. The words cannot be forced, bribed, or cajoled into forming sentences that eloquently, humourously, or intelligently convey what is on your mind.

It is like being trapped at the bottom of a well, unable to cry out for help.

…and rather than leave the page blank, I have, this week, decided to reprint a column from 2011, when the juice was flowing and I could write three of these a week. At least there are some new links and pictures for your dining and dancing pleasure.

There are still more stories to tell, laughs to share, and adventures and opinions to commit to paper …and as soon as I can …I will.

In the meantime ….

GREG SIMPSON – RADIO MAN EXTRAORDINAIRE by Jaimie Vernon

I type this through tears. At this moment my old pal Greg Simpson is on life support in a London hospital. And I fear for his life. Suddenly a flood of memories come back to a 20 year friendship all of which involved good times.

Bob – *Cough* Wheeeze *Cough* (Choke) Gasp! *Cough* *Cough* *Cough* Wheeze (Choke) *Cough* Gasp!

I have a Cold

I Cannot Lie

It’s 10 Times Worse

Cause I’m a Guy

I Cough and Cough

And Cough Again

Just Shoot Me Now

And Make it End

Bill Does Bob – The Annotated Segarini Interview

Bill King is a Legend around these parts. A man of NBA qualifying height who is himself, a top of the key 3-pointer whose skills range from Band Assemblage, to Composing and Arranging, to Husbanding a bright, wine-loving, tolerant woman of limitless good humour and Sire to an equally talented and skilled Son, to Step-Fathering a plethora of tiny fur-covered Yappables, to Author, Photographer, and Archivist of Soul and Groove, Nature and Architecture, Enabler of Song Singers well known and not, Producer of fine Musical Moments both onstage and in studio, and a Master of the 88 Keys of Life, on which every piece of music in the Known Universe can be accessed or added to if one is in possession of the skill it takes to coach the notes out of the Ivories and into the Ether.

That’s Bill in a nutshell …and my longest Run-In-Sentence ever ….

Bob’s Annual Halloween Column and Mandatory Accordion Lesson Rides Again

This was originally published in 2011. It has been updated with additions and is presented here with the full support and co-operation of the “So You Want to Be A Diabetic” foundation and proud manufacturer’s of  Atomic SugarBalls, sweet jumbo compressed Sugar Globes made from 100% Cane Sugar and covered in a thick candy shell made of 200% reclaimed sugar from the bottom of millions of boxes of Sugar Frosted Flakes…They’re GREAT! . Recommended by Dentists, Doctors, and the  American Council on Obesity, Diabetes, and Acne.

The PIG and The PAT Part Deux – THE LITERARY BOONE

By way of celebrating the man’s 85th (!) Birthday this month, not to mention picking straight up where we left off last time after breakfast…

The following Christmas a strange package arrived in the mail from a hitherto unknown address in Burbank, California. “Boone Productions, Inc.,” read the label. “Printed Matter Only,” said the customs sticker.

Gary Pig Gold – My Jimi Hendrix Experience

If I can just get my mind together, the first “real” concert I ever attended as a wee young Canucklehead was The Jimi Hendrix Experience at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens, May 3, 1969.

I’d already been a fervent fan for a couple of years, having spent most of my Grade 8 art class making swirly sketches of Jimi in charcoal. Plus the Are You Experienced album was right up there – almost – with Monkees Headquarters on my 1967 Most-Played List.

Gary Pig Gold on THE PHILOSOPHY Of FIFTY YEARS

On an even damper than usual Spring afternoon in 1969, three guitar-and-drum-beating sisters from tiny Fremont, New Hampshire entered an even tinier recording studio and emerged, just a few hours later, with a dozen original rock ‘n’ roll songs on some quarter-inch tape. These twelve songs were then pressed onto one thousand vinyl records, nine hundred copies of which immediately vanished forever off the face of the Earth. Within a year however, no less an authority than Frank Zappa declared that this album, prophetically entitled Philosophy Of The World, was “better than the Beatles,” and a decade after that the similarly inclined visionaries in NRBQ re-pressed Philosophy briefly on their own Red Rooster label.

Bob, Goddard, and Cosford Explain The Iceman – The Myth, The Legend, and The Bar Tab

I was going to write about the psychological impact of current pop music on housecats compared to the physical impact of dropping an armful of classic rock vinyl on them, when The Universe (in its mysterious and drug-addled randomness) conspired to intercede because (apparently) it was bored and felt like fucking with me.