There was a time a hundred years ago or more when I believed whatever anyone said in a chat room or online conversation anywhere.

If we all wore nametags mine would read, "Village Idiot".

My life would have turned out so differently if I were born a good-looking guy. Or was rich. Or even smart. Instead I was the funny one that nobody invited to their birthday parties. The life of a clown. While I was the class clown in high school and had no problem cracking up my fellow students I would get extremely shy in front of anyone with a uterus. Especially if they were beautiful. I still have problems with gorgeous women. Not that I don't enjoy looking at them but it's the expression on their face when they catch me staring.

I wonder if George Clooney is shy in front of anyone. Any lady on the planet. Did Brad Pitt clam up in front of Angelina when he first met her? Is it normal to be somewhat of a clod in front of hot women? It is for me.

Life would be so much easier if I could just read a woman's mind. That way when she smiles I'll know if it's a smile that says, "I am being pleasant only so you don't hurt me." or is she about to ask me for help with her resume or her car? Is it ever a smile that reflects an interest in me? Maybe it's better I never know. Life is depressing enough already.

I've dabbled with a few online dating services. It inevitably comes down to one basic fact of life; beautiful women want beautiful men with tons of money and ugly women will settle just for the money. I have neither. What is a Village Idiot to do?

I suppose if God meant for me to have an active sex life he would have blessed me with both testicles. I can't tell you how many times that would have come in handy!

There's no question I'm a slow learner. No matter how many times I am spurned I still continue to give out my business card like they were hits of Ecstasy. Then when she doesn't call I convince myself that it's a waste of time to even flirt and vow never to hand out my card again or even strike up an animated conversation with a beautiful woman. Then the first time I run into some gorgeous nymph I fall back into making an ass out of myself. I don't think I'm alone in that. Why can't I see the reality of my life? I'm 57 years old, out of work, broke and living in the back of a '92 Previa van. What's not to understand?

No matter how much I write about this it always comes down to one reality; beautiful women excite me when they smile. When they breathe. How their hips dance slowly to a Latin beat when they walk. The sound of their voice passing through lips blessed by God. My heart skips a beat when they even turn my way. For just a split second I am George Clooney outside his Italian villa. I am Brad Pitt with Angelina on his arm. I am all men cool and then I am the Village Idiot again. The cycle repeats itself continually. Every day of the year. Every year of my life.

Men and women play the same games. The only difference is women are much smarter than us and play so much better. It's like comparing Anna Kornikova to a chimp with a racket. Getting rejected by a beautiful woman is disheartening but understandable. That doesn't make it any less painful. Just easier to cope with.

It's a wonder women have put up with us men this long.

If the genetic scientists can ever create a penis in a Petri dish we're all in serious trouble.

My name is Tom.

I am the Village Idiot. 

For more comical info on the writer of this blog go to:  WorldHumour.bravehost.com

 

 
           

        

Tom Neuhoff
World Humour
"Funnier Than You"

Hollywood Daze/Blogger

Hollywood Daze/Yahoo 360

 As a child in a dream I spent my free time in the forests  tracking small animals. 

I perused any books having to do with wildlife and it was only a matter of time before I became a biologist. Then I entered Mrs. Rybicke's sophomore English class and by the time I graduated from   Chilton High School   I was no longer a man of the forest. I was a writer with a new dream. Fame and fortune.

Somewhere along the way I failed. Failed as a writer. Failed as a dreamer. While a grad student in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia I was expected to graduate in three years and go on to grand things. Perhaps even my own sitcom. What happened?

A common question I like to ask people is, "If you could do absolutely anything for a living what would it be?"  You'd be surprised how many people are devoid of dreams. Sometimes I envy them.

I've been living in a van on the streets of L.A. for six years and one month. It is a world of the disenchanted and disenfranchised. A world of mad dreamers and disappointed survivors. Show business is not kind to the elderly. For me, at my age, the best I can hope for now is to die in my sleep by the end of the week. And yet every morning I wake to the sunshine blinding me through the windshield. I just can't catch a break. On the bright side my overhead is low. A bottle of Windex now and then.

During my  standup comedian days  I followed some of the greats like Freddie Prinze long before he shot himself on a couch.  I don't have a suicidal bone in my body or I'd be swapping jokes with Freddie right now.

I can't even imagine taking my own life and I can imagine a lot.

Improv comedy caught my attention way back in 1980 while I was a grad student in Vancouver, Canada. We waited in line at midnight until they struck the set from that evening's play and then would enter and compete without any guidelines or rules. Improv was new and exciting. Then it drifted south of the 40^th. parallel and developed a code of ethics.

America claimed improv as its own and mutated all the fun out of it.

I'm not without any dreams. I still want to put together an improv act. "Fortune Man" would be a parody of the psychic hotlines. I would, of course, be Fortune Man along with other improv comics and audience members participating in mock seances, channeling and tarot card readings. A speakerphone to the After World would allow audience members to talk with a dead uncle or JFK .  Comics backstage would be on the other end of the phone playing those roles.

I'm going to level with you. I started writing in blogs only after Bill Gannon from Yahoo suggested I convert a year long string of stories from my newspaper column into blog format after I applied for an editor's position. It took me two and half weeks to convert all 12 stories as well as writing four more, including this one. I never heard back from Mr. Gannon after numerous emails. Don't you just love prospective employers who just leave you hanging? I am assuming that Mr. Gannon either had a massive stroke or just isn't civilized enough to let me know where I stand. If I'm lucky it's both.

As I've said many times I wish I had grown up dreaming of becoming a plumber. There's far more security and better pay in that. Instead I grew up dreaming of becoming a famous comedy writer and comic. I expected to have my own sitcom, own property in Malibu and fly my own plane by the age of 30. Instead, at 57, I'm a bum in a van.

One monumental payoff from writing this blog has been the emails. Not only from appreciative readers but others from my past as well. My first wife, Jessie, whom I hadn't heard from in over 35 years, wrote me her version of how we met in a blog. She followed it the next day with a blog describing her second marriage. Jessie's turned out to be a better writer than me even though she makes her living as an attorney four blocks from the White House. Good for her. She deserves to be finally recognized for her creative brilliance.

Trust me, you don't want to live in a van anywhere in L.A.

I've woken up at 3:00 in the morning to find a crackhead sitting the passenger seat trying to steal my stereo.  

I've had a gang of skateboarders break all my windows while I was sleeping inside. I've been in gunfights, fist fights and hooker fights. And that's just in one night in Echo Park!

Life goes on as I stand still. I'm a bum in a van.

The son that I raised by myself , Tyson, lives only 19 miles away yet he couldn't drive over to visit me on my birthday. I've never been very good at making friends while my son has some of the best people you could ever meet as close friends. The only joy in my life has been my four year old granddaughter but I don't see her anywhere as much as I would like to. Perhaps a common complaint among grandparents everywhere.

I don't envision writing another entry into this blog. I hope I've entertained and amused some of you and perhaps irritated a few. Hopefully those people won't learn where I park my van at night. It's fairly safe to say we all look for a piece of ourselves in everything we read. Maybe you've found a facet of yourself in something I've written here or in any of my other posts in this blog.

In the final analysis we are responsible for the decisions we make. I've been afforded an excellent education and should have made better personal and career decisions. I came from an era of hippies and bohemians who glorified the life of people like Jack Keroac. Today I sold blood just so I could afford the gas to keep driving over to the unemployment office. I sat for an hour with a needle the size of Michael Jackson's penis in my arm just for twenty bucks. Is this truly the life of an artist?

I left a small farming town in Wisconsin to chase my dreams West. Now, a hundred years later, my dreams have chased me into the back of a Toyota Previa with a blown head gasket. What happened? Ain't life full of surprises?

If you don't see another post in this blog I am in jail, dead or both.

Goodbye.

For more comical info on the writer of this blog go to:  WorldHumour.bravehost.com

Tom Neuhoff
World Humour
"Funnier Than You"

Hollywood Daze/Blogger

Hollywood Daze/Yahoo 360

Jessie

I had just completed my freshman year at  UW-Oshkosh  in 1971 and was eager to get back on the road hitchhiking anywhere. My friend, Don, and I set out for a trek west but never got any further than Denver. Don's father was a doctor who taught at UW-Madison's medical school and I guess he was just rebelling against an upper class upbringing. Although many other students said they wanted to join me in my next cross-country hitchhiking trip, Don was the only one who actually showed up.

To be fair, there was one other friend who accompanied me on a hitchhiking trip into Canada. We ended up hopping a "hotshot" (Nonstop freight train) from Tornonto to Montreal and I have to say I've never seen more beautiful scenery. The only problem with freight trains is that, because of the load, there is a constant forward and backward jerking movement which makes sleeping in an empty boxcar quite difficult. 

The next time you're near a moving freight train, listen closely and you'll hear that distinctive sound of the cars banging against each other. No passenger train makes that noise.

It's also advisable not to pick a car close to the locomotive. If you go through any tunnels soot from the engine will make you look like a member of a minstrel troupe.  With our legs dangling out of the open doors of the boxcar, we saw racoons playing in a stream, deer foraging in a clearing and people riding their horse drawn buggies. Trains cut throught the backwoods of the countryside and I hightly recommend them over driving or flying. You might, however, prefer not to hop freights.

It was the best trip I ever took because I met Jessie, the love of my life, on a cool night in Denver that summer. St. Andrew's church in downtown Denver, back then, allowed transients and the homeless to sleep on the church floor but the doors were closed at 9:00 PM sharp. If you came in late you only had the abandoned VW van in the backyard and sleeping space there was extremely limited. It still beat sleeping in the park. Don didn't have a sleeping bag so he brought this cheap, brown, flannel bear suit, which he would wear at night. The Denver cops had a habit of waking anyone sleeping in the park by rapping the soles of your shoes with their nightstick. For some reason they never hit Don's feet. I don't know why but the bear suit probably had something to do with it.

I'll never forget the first time I set eyes on Jessie. Don and I were broke, hungry and hanging out on a downtown street corner one cool evening when three teenagers approached us. Two girls and a guy. As soon as they pitched into their Jesus talk I became impatient. Don, being sociology major, was more receptive and continued talking with them. My mood changed dramatically when Jessie invited us back to their Teen Challenge headquarters for cake and coffee. Free cake? Praise the Lord Jesus! I was ready to be saved.

Now I'll bet all of you can probably look back at the moment you met the love of your life and recall the chemistry that percolated immediately. Jessie and I talked exclusively with each other at Teen Challenge that night and I was impressed by her intelligence, effervescent personality and that smile. A smile that said everything would be okay because she was in the room. A smile that even today is intoxicating. Finally Jessie said she had to leave if she was going to catch the last bus home. Although she was only 17 she had already spent a year at Grand Canyon University, a Christian college in Phoenix. She was spending the summer with her parents in Englewood, about four miles up Broadway from downtown. Her father, an ex-boxer and carpenter, had built a small house in the backyard for Jessie to live in. It was beautiful. We spent one summer together in that toy home.

It wasn't more than ten minutes before Jessie returned and said, with what looked like a mischievous smile, she had missed the last bus and asked me if I would walk her home. Of course I didn't realize how far Englewood was at the time but looking back it wouldn't have mattered. I wanted to be with Jessie from the moment I met her and would jumped at the chance to spend any time with her, even if it meant walking all night long. After more than 35 years later, I sometimes wonder if Jessie missed that bus on purpose. Only she knows.

Sometimes it's a bit embarrassing to look back at what you did as a kid. Don and I were doing our laundry at a downtown hotel when an actual resident there walked in to share the facilities. I whispered to Don that we should stage a mock fistfight right in front of this guy just to see his reaction. As Don threw me back against a white wooden door my hand flew back and to our surprise we discovered that it was painted glass. The upper half of the door shattered and Don took off running. I had to gather our clothes and on my way up the stairs I ran into the night manager. He asked me if I had seen anything and I told him two guys were fighting in the laundromat. When he hurried down there I ran out of the hotel and for the rest of the night whenever I heard a police siren, I was certain they were coming for me.

I didn't see Don for a couple of days. The next day I was crossing the street and asked a complete stranger in the middle of the crosswalk if he knew where I could get a job. He said they were hiring topographical mapmakers at the Federal Center. I took a bus out to U.S. Geological Survey and lied, telling them I had three years of Geology when, in fact, I had only one semester and topographical mapmaking was my weakness. So I crammed at the library for a few hours and barely passed the test a few days later. Within four days I was driving a pickup truck in the back hills of Buffalo, Wyoming.

It wasn't easy telling Jessie I was leaving Denver. She knew I needed a job but leaving someone that just ignited your life is never easy. She cried and I regretted ever asking about a job in the crosswalk. That night I met up with Don in the VW van at St. Andrews. He told me he had met a married couple in the park and they had treated him with nothing less than grand hospitality at their home. They had even said he could bring his me back with him. Imagine my surprise when the front door opened to their apartment and it was the same hotel night manager that I had lied to. What are the odds of that happening?

Buffalo, Wyoming in 1971 was a cowboy's paradise. Many of the residents owned horses and it was still customary to ride downtown and tie your horse up outside the store. I was a hippie with long hair and never felt like I belonged there. One day I was going for a walk when I noticed four or five kids standing around a white horse in their huge front yard. The length of the fence must have been two football fields long. They asked me if I wanted to ride their horse, even though it didn't have a saddle on or even reins to hold onto. The kids said when I wanted the horse to stop to just squeeze my legs. Now you horse-smart people know that squeezing your legs only makes the horse run faster. That was the joke on me. Now it's a shame cars can't stop as fast as horses. When we hit the end of the yard the horse planted its front hooves and I flew over its head and into the fence. I never thought those kids would stop laughing. That's cowboy humor, I guess.

One day I returned from the rolling hills of Buffalo to find Jessie waiting for me in the rooming house I lived in. She had hitchhiked in the middle of the night from Denver to Buffalo! Nobody does that but Jessie did. She was fearless. Always was. Three days later I quit the best job I had and hitchhiked back to Denver with her. That's what true love is all about, isn't it? You can't stand to be away from each other? After all these years I sometimes wish I had stayed in Buffalo because it could have been a career with U.S. Geological Survey.  On the other hand, it would have meant staying away from the love of my life. Heart always trumps brain. No regrets here.

Jessie transferred from Grand Canyon University to my school in Wisconsin so we could live together in Oshkosh. Four months later we were married in Green Bay. Less than a year later we were divorced. I was an immature, unstable lunatic and didn't deserve the fine time I had with Jessie. She deserved so much more.

In 1994 I was traveling from Wisconsin back to Los Angeles when I stopped by Denver to see how the old neighborhood looked. That entire section of Englewood was filled with boarded up houses. It looked like a ghost town. I couldn't even recognize any of the homes and after walking up and down the street, finally guessed which one was once Jessie's. I knocked on the front door. Not that I really expected anyone was living there but wanted to at least give it a shot. Slowly my head turned left to the house next to me and I could see what was once a beautiful toy home in the back yard. A yard of trash and three foot weeds. After decades of neglect our toy home looked more like a corpse of what it once was. Seeing something from your past in such poor condition suddenly makes you feel a thousand years old. I wished I had never stopped.

I wished I could remember that toy home as it was in 1971. But it was too late.

Jessie didn't want anything to do with me after the divorce. Can you blame her? Then during my first year of graduate school in Canada she called to let me know she had remarried, moved back East and gave birth to a baby girl. I had been calling her mother just wanting to know she was okay. Feeling guilty for the way I mistreated her was killing me. She wanted me to know she was happy. But she didn't want to hear from me again. Ever. That would be the last time I would hear her voice. My Jessie's voice.

It's 2006. Jessie's parents have died. She's now a very successful and brilliant lawyer four blocks from the White House. Okay, I Googled her name out of curiosity. And then a couple of days ago I received an email from her informing me that she had found my high school class ring. She asked how I was doing. The animosity wasn't evident anymore and I hoped she had forgiven me for being a bastard a hundred years ago. Jessie will always remain the love of my life. Even if we never speak to each other again. Even if I never hear her voice. Or read her words.

I hope Jessie's happy.

Thank God for the Internet!

For more comical info on the writer of this blog go to:  WorldHumour.bravehost.com

Tom Neuhoff
World Humour
"Funnier Than You"

Hollywood Daze/Blogger

Hollywood Daze/Yahoo 360

An oil boomtown located over a thousand miles north of the Canadian border;  Fort St. John  British Columbia, in 1980 was right out of a John Wayne western. I soon learned that it was worlds away from anything I had ever seen before. It was, for the most part, more like the Old West of this country than anything I had seen in the 20th. Century. It’s not that they didn’t have indoor plumbing and television but that disputes would be settled in large bar fights every night and grudges were never held for long. Broken tables were leveled off with an ashtray beneath one leg.

Fort St. John was the only town I ever lived in that could legitimately boast of having more moose than cattle.

I had been accepted into the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. The University of Iowa had turned me down and I thought a change of scenery might be helpful. It also didn’t hurt that UBC offered writing workshops in a diversity of genres while Iowa was interested primarily in novels, poetry and short stories. Okay, Kurt Vonnegut taught at Iowa and that would have been so cool but Canada was The Great White North and, in the long run, was a much better move for me.

Shortly after arriving in Vancouver I discovered that to get a student visa I would need $3500 in the bank, which I didn’t have. After talking with the Chairman of the Creative Writing Department, it was decided that I would attend the MFA program the following year, which gave me enough time to make the $3500. While sitting in the student union and going through the classified section of the Vancouver Sun, I found an opening for a cabaret D.J. in Fort St. John. When I asked a nearby student where Fort St. John was all they could say was, “Pretty damned far!” It was far indeed. Worlds away from Vancouver. A universe away from L.A.

Now I should mention here that while I was an undergraduate student in Radio-TV-Film at the University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh I had been fired as a nightclub D.J. My experience had been in radio where you don’t see your audience and then, suddenly in a club, I’m surrounded by people watching my every move. I was trying to learn more about the equipment the first night and the second night I found another excuse not to speak. I found myself stuck right in the middle of a mental block. After not talking for four days they decided to fire me. So going to Fort St. John for a job I had already been fired for seemed a bit insane. It’s not as if I had many options. Fort St. John didn’t care about work visas and everyone else in Vancouver did.

The drive from Vancouver to Fort St. John is one of the most scenic trips you’re ever going to take, especially as you near Jasper Park. If you drive into the city of Jasper late at night you’ll find stray elk roaming the side streets and alleys looking for a free meal. It is both surreal and exciting. In L.A. we consider ourselves blessed if we see a coyote eating a squirrel.

The Northland Inn in 1980 was a cabaret, bar, lounge, and hotel all in one. Let me just say it wasn’t exactly the Hilton but it was a job. As soon as I arrived I went straight to the elevated D.J. booth and talked on the microphone. It broke the ice and I went on to become the most profitable D.J. in the 75-year history of the Northland Inn. At least that’s what my boss, Hector, told me when he wanted me to stay.

A different stripper would arrive every Monday from Vancouver on their dancer circuit through B.C. and Alberta. I would play their music while they danced in the bar during the afternoon. Those strippers taught me how to play backgammon. If you’re living in the big city and used to professional strippers you might have been surprised by the occasional lack of talent. My son’s 14 year old rottweiler is a better dancer than some of them and he’s got bad hips. One stripper, though, used hand puppets in her act and I must say I’ve never seen Kermit quite so happy. It was a fascinating place to work. The cook and I made the radio commercials for the cabaret in the DJ booth and for a brief while we were both local celebrities.

My first night in Fort St. John I slept with a native Indian woman. No other woman would have anything to do with me for months after that because I was an outsider and didn't make anywhere near the money the roughnecks on the oil rigs did. Some of the local ladies would walk up into the elevated D.J. booth and let me do whatever I wanted to do with them in the booth but once the lights came up at the end of the night they wouldn't even talk with me. My life changed considerably for the better when I met  a new waitress in the cabaret a few months later. Gypsy had long red hair, double D’s and a voice that could make a dead man hard. She was a gift from Heaven. 

The guys working on the oil rigs would come into town every two weeks with a wad of cash and little time to spend it. There were only a handful of hookers in town but they made out like bandits. I knew all of them because they hung out in my cabaret. I just couldn’t afford them. Stupid me. I was saving for graduate school. If I had it to do over I would definitely have spent the hundred bucks and gone for my personal favorite; Tweety. She at one time even offerred me a discount rate of $99.95.

Now in 1980 hockey wasn’t that popular in The States. Canadians, on the other hand, are the only people who actually love hockey more than sex. If you had a game show that combined both it would be a ratings gangbuster up there. Once, during a break in the cabaret, I was standing around a small group of locals when the conversation turned to Wayne Gretsky, who was still playing for Edmonton at the time. I asked who Wayne Gretsky was and you would have thought I had asked who Jesus Christ was! If you want Canadians to know you’re an American act dumb about hockey.

All the apartment buildings in Fort St. John have small posts with an electrical outlet at each outdoor parking space. With temperatures dipping very low every night you would be able to get your car started in the morning unless you had a heater installed in your engine block.

The cabaret played hard rock until I arrived at which time the manager felt disco would be more profitable. The roughnecks, in town for only a few days, continually threatened me if I didn’t play rock. Who dances to the Doors? I even had to be escorted to parties by bouncers because it wasn’t safe outside the cabaret after hours either. Although those guys off the oil rigs complained, most of them loved to dance to disco. They just would rather die than admit it.

After Gypsy and I had dated for a couple of weeks I ran into her ex-boyfriend. Tim was notoriously violent and was best known for breaking off a beer glass on the edge of a table and then ramming it into someone’s stomach. One night, in a moment of insanity, I approached him with an attitude and started a fight. He said he would be waiting outside for me and then both cowardice and common sense set in. I was to blame for starting the fight and later I told him just that. He walked away but soon the fact that I had backed out of a fight spread around town. Now everyone wanted to fight me.

Duke had partied with my other friends in the small hotel room I lived in. He picked a fight with me and for the rest of the night cabaret patrons would offer me advice on how to win a fight. Some of them said they would wait for Duke in the parking lot. Since Duke was one of the few Blacks living in Fort St. John at the time I could see this was getting racist real quickly. I couldn’t let the fight get outside. At the end of the night and as we walked toward the back door I asked Duke to look at me. When he did I hit him as hard as I could. His head snapped back at an odd angle and for a moment I just stared at what I had done. Then I hit him three more times and it was all over. No one picked a fight with me again. The threats for playing disco never ended.

Most of the city streets in 1980 were unpaved and so it was considered only common courtesy to remove your shoes as soon as you entered someone’s home. To this day I can still remember going to parties and seeing 50-75 pair of shoes in one huge pile at the front door. All this time later and I cherish the memory of all those shoes. That and the last time I saw Gypsy in the shower. It’s funny what you choose to remember.

The TV show, “Northern Exposure” reminds me so much of my experience in Fort St. John. Located right off the Alaska Highway, Fort St. John had much in common with the fictional Cicely. The people were genuine and sincere. Unique and fascinating. It was a time and world I miss often. To this day I wonder what ever happened to all those fine people.

I get email from Gypsy now and then but getting her anywhere near a shower is just another dream. For now.

For more comical info on the writer of this blog go to:  WorldHumour.bravehost.com

Tom Neuhoff
World Humour
"Funnier Than You"

Hollywood Daze/Blogger

Hollywood Daze/Yahoo 360

Fort St. John

If you don't think you're ever going to see The Pearly Gates then you might as well check out  The Sunshine Coast  of British Columbia because it's the closest you'll ever get to Heaven.

It's a 45 minute B.C. ferry ride from Horshoe Bay in West Vancouver to Langdale and you won't see a single ugly piece of scenery the entire trip. I first visited Sechelt on the Sunshine Coast while a graduate student at the  University of British Columbia  in Vancouver, which, incidentally,  boasts the biggest nude beach in North America,  Wreck Beach   . It's right on campus. That's not why I applied to their  Creative Writing program but it didn't hurt. The family of my girlfriend at the time, M.R. Paine (Don't ever call her Mary or Ruth!) owned a beautiful, rustic vacation home right on the beach between Sechelt and Halfmoon on Redrooffs Road. It's so scenic it even looks good on Mapquest!

 

M.R.'s father, Dr. Joseph Paine, died three or four months ago. That man could tell a story better than a drunken sailer and I couldn't have loved him more if he were my own father. (Actually, I wasn't crazy about my father but that's another story.) Doc represented the finest qualities of the Canadian spirit.  Let me tell you something about Canadians, just in case you've either never been there or just spent a couple of weeks fishing in The Great White North.  Many Americans I talk with think Canadians are a lot like cast members from "Northern Exposure", slow and knaive to the ways of the world.  Let me tell you they're quicker than a Wyoming cowboy on Red Bull. Perhaps the reason I love B.C. so much, and especially the Sunshine Coast, is the people remind me of the Wisconsin neighbors I grew up around. And that's paying a might big compliment to anyone.

 

The locals on the Sunshine Coast find it entertaining to pick out the tourists as they first step foot off the ferry at Langdale. The tourists are the ones staring at the eagles flying overhead. I've been vacationing there for over 20 years and I still can't help looking up at these majestic birds. Sometimes I wonder if those eagles are laughing at me more than the locals. I just can't keep my eyes off of them. I mean the eagles, although the locals don't look half bad either.

 

Sometimes even Heaven has a few reality checks. Whenever I vacationed up there I always enjoyed tossing back a few pints at a local pub, The Wakefield, which unfortunately, no longer exists.  I just heard from the Sechelt Chamber of Commerce that the entire section of waterfront was purchased by a developer and they have begun construction on 30 new homes.  I guess that's progress on The Sunshine Coast.  I met a local man, barely old enough to drink, there the last time who asked me if I wanted to meet any local women. My enthusiastic answer probably had something to do with the four pints of ale but I would have been eager even if I was sober.

I drove my van a couple of kilometers south towards Gibsons and stopped outside this huge house sitting atop a hill. The kid suggested I wait in the van until he could talk with the women first. This made sense to me so I pulled over to the shoulder and turned my engine off. And I waited. And waited. Suddenly the ale was having its effects and I wished I hadn't left the pub. Now I rarely drink and can't remember the last time I was drunk so I definately didn't need a Canadian DUI. It was probably no longer than 30 minutes but feeling more like hours when I decided to get back home. I turned the van on and tried to pull onto the road. My back tire started to spin in the muddy shoulder and it was obvious I was going nowhere soon.

 

As I stepped out of the van the R.C.M.P.'s cruiser's flashing lights lit up and I knew the jig was up. . Startled and drunk I fell against my van. The officer asked me if I had been drinking and it was impossible to lie to anyone that courteous. He asked me why I was parked there and so I told him about the kid who was going to introduce me to some local women. He laughed the same laugh as when they catch me staring at eagles. At that point he looked up at the house and asked me if I knew what that place was. He told me it was a Crack House. In Sechelt! It's like finding out there's a brothel in "It's A Small World"! 

 

I still email Laurie McConnell, the webmaster at BigPacific.com, the site covering all of the Sunshine Coast. I continue to beg her for any creative work up there but being an American without a work visa it's doubtful I'm going to be working up there anytime soon. If you're curious what the Sunshine Coast looks like go to BigPacific.com and click away. Use your imagination. Picture yourself getting off the ferry at Landale and seeing your very first eagle. Ignore the laughing.

 

Like everyone else buying lottery tickets I have my big dreams. Lottery dreams. Buying water front property halfway between Sechelt and Halfmoon Bay is on the top of the list. The very top. If I don't win the lottery perhaps my comedy career will finally take off and I can afford to live there although I stand a better chance getting hit by lightning......with a winning lottery ticket tightly clenched in one hand.  

 

If you're looking for a spectacular vacation in a land that takes you back to a better time consider the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia.

They might as well build Pearly Gates right at the ferry landing in Langdale because for most of you that's the closest you'll ever get to Heaven.

As for me I'll keep buying lottery tickets. It doesn't matter if it's Super Lotto or Mega Bucks. Winning either one means I'm heading north to Sechelt. Until then I'll continue writing about my dreams in     

            Hollywood Daze.

For more comical info on the writer of this blog go to:  WorldHumour.bravehost.com

Tom Neuhoff
World Humour
"Funnier Than You"

Hollywood Daze/Blogger

Hollywood Daze/Yahoo 360

Big Pacific