microphone mathematics.

Can you handle the pre-shah?

I have never been a YouTube person, and I probably will never be a YouTube person, but being in bed ill with what I can only assume is a modern day form of the Bubonic Plague has led me to explore the never-ending visual abyss that YouTube can provide even from under the covers. Unsure of what I wanted to watch, but very sure that it was not video upon video of drunk fucks drawing penises on their friends' faces, I looked up a very short-lived former flame. You all remember Leroy 'The Grandmaster' Young from Winnipeg Folk Festival 2006?

Technically, I met my old friend Leroy on the first night of the Calgary Folk Festival. I took the trip with my father as a bonding experience; I really just wanted to see Ani Difranco, he wanted to see Macy Gray. Since unlike the Winnipeg counterpart the Calgary Folk Festival does not feature the camping option, we stayed at the Fairmont.. Marriot.. Hyatt? Whatever the nicest hotel closest to the festival was.

Like camping with room service.

We lucked out because it was also the temporary home for hundreds of the festival's performers, and even better, the nightly festival afterparties. On a high from the fairly epic Broken Social Scene (ft. Miss Leslie Feist!) show that ended the first night of the festival, I was smoking a cigarette (or two, or three) outside the hotel before I joined my dad in my room for a drink (...or two, or three) when I met Leroy.

He was handsome, he was black, and he was everything I was looking for that weekend. He also turned out to be my ticket to what felt like endless booze-filled evenings spent partying with some festival favourites. Skipping to the end of the weekend, I was *this* close and very vocal about accepting his invitation to finish touring with him and then relocate to Belize but I decided finishing high school was probably a pretty important move, and after a very informative Wikipedia search, I found out he was 41. I was 17 at the time.

I remembered today that in that weekend together, several hours of footage was taken of me for a documentary that they were filming about Leroy that was intended to be titled "Sex, Drugs, and Poetry". Interview footage, footage of me dancing, footage of us making out... There's no way that all of it ended up on the cutting room floor. I am still, hours later, wondering if this documentary ever ended up being finished. After all, I haven't heard from or about Leroy Young in years. All I have left to remember him by is a roll of NSFW pictures from a crappy disposable camera that I haven't looked at in years (and can't even seem to remember where I put). Oh, and the footage of him on Youtube. Leroy was a true Belizean beatnik- he "had no time for time" which he used to tell me often. He wore a broken watch just to make his point. I sort of wish I kept in contact. Touring Belize with a cute beat poet could've made for an interesting GAP year.

Turns out YouTube ain't so bad. I still can't really figure out why they would reccomend a video called "Pedophile Beards" for me, sandwiched in the reccomendations section between Biggie & Bone Thugs...

But I hadn't watched this one in awhile and figured it was time. Featuring two friends (and another brief former flame of mine) of mine from Winnipeg, I leave you with Pip's Kid by Pip Skid featuring Elliot aka Nestor Wynrush, aka Black N' Roll, formerly aka Satchel Paige.. I still don't know what Ness is calling himself these days.



"Don't wear a condom, 'cuz it will break. This is what that shit will make: Babies! BABIES! Babies babies babies babies.. BABIES! Babies babies babies babies."