Tonight I went with friends Chad & Tania to see a certain Mr Henry Rollins at the Toronto show of his "50" tour. The first time I saw him was back in the early 2000s (2001?) in Brisbane at the QPAC; here in Toronto was a much smaller venue and the show was engaging and entertaining, because that's how this man rolls.

He covered a great deal of stuff and his meandering tales took us through tales of shows in New York City back in the Black Flag days (where a girl lost an eye due to a misplaced crowd surfer), travel he's done in places like Vietnam, South Africa, Tibet, & North Korea, some of the humanitarian work and documentary stuff he's doing, Monday Night Football at William Shatner's house, adventures in Costco (readings of GWB's Decision Points to an amused audience of one), and general talk and themes of life, politics & just how we are as humans and the way we treat each other. I find I always come away from watching/listening to Rollins with a lot to think about and mull over, and it's a great feeling.

At the start of the show he told us a tale of how a few folks had gotten in touch with him to say (politely) "hey, it's awesome you're coming to town but oh gosh the ticket prices are kinda crazy even with the Ticketmaster fees!" Enough people had contacted him regarding this that he started to ferret out some information, tracking it back through agents and managers and venues etc to the point where he discovered due to "computer error" (benefit of the doubt being given) the tickets were about $10 more than they should have been. So he produced a wad of $10 bills (which you can see below) from behind the magic curtain and then proceeded to come out to the audience and hand us all one personally. What a bloody champ. (I thought I would pass mine on and donated $10 to the Drop in the Bucket charity he mentioned toward the end of his show.)

Thanks for the evening, Hank! (You handsome devil.)

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