Wednesday 26 February 2014

The Man behind the Mask

Wally from Wawa writes:

For someone who spends a lot of time behind the keyboard, you sure don’t end up saying a lot about   yourself. You know, real details. I mean, you haven’t even taken the time to fill out your Google profile, have you? Come on, be real with us, for once!

Okay Wally, I’ll give it my best shot. We will have a bit of fun with it and will do it with a little twist though. I will give two answers to each question. One will reflect the truthfulness and veracity that I am well known for. The other, will reflect the more Gumby-like version of the truth that I’m used to stretching just short of the breaking point. My more astute readers will be able to pick out the wheat from the chaff on their own anyways. A significant portion of my readers don’t seem to care if they are reading the truth or not, and the remainder generally like to work with multiple versions of reality anyways  - building and maintaining their own personal version of whom Blair is any way.

 Blair, I read somewhere (GQ I think?) That you were raised in the  in the East Prussian town of Kriefkohl/Freienwalde, and brought to Calgary as a mail-order  groom in 2000. Is this true?

1.1) It irks me to no end when the press simply fabricates something instead of making the journalistic effort to find out the truth. I was born in the WEST Prussian town of Kriefkohl/Freienwalde, and brought to Calgary as a mail-order  groom in 2000.)

1.2) I was raised in the small town of Vineland Ontario (across the lake from Toronto)


2) I hear you had a big family. What was that like?

2.1) I was raised In a family of seven, six boys and one girl where it was a thinly veiled fact that I was the favorite. (I know, I know, you are not surprised). The term “flash mob” was actually coined by my brothers around 1967, describing the circling of the wagons around “Mama’s Boy” and pummeling him to within an inch of his life”.

2.2) I was raised in a family of seven, six boys and one girl where we were treated as equals to an agonizing extent. One consequence of that is to this day we can still put up with each other for extended periods of time. Blair was typically saved from being pummeled by his sister Linda (the lone decent one in the bunch), who seem to be the only one that escaped the effects of the recessive "stooge" gene in our family.


3) Tell me about your education Blair.

3.1) I was homeschooled by my brothers where I received instruction in most of the classic disciplines: Law and Governance: (Yes, we are the boss of you) Critical thinking/logic (why should we let you live?), Athletics (the piledriver, The Camel Clutch, The Mongolian Chop etc. ma), Psych

 3.2 My education was uneventful. Filled with platitudes, rote learning, and more planned (and executed) escapes them Prison Break.


4) If I googled you I might be surprised to find….
   
4.1) I rode my bicycle 11,000 km across Canada in the year 2000 starting in St. John and finishing in Inuvik, NWT.


4.2)    I have a Pole dancing move named after me - is an aggressive half pike, (if you have not had adequate Pole dance instruction, do not try this - it is the difficulty level of moves that you would see in the X games Pole dancing.


I understand you spent some time in Japan? What were you doing there?

5. I spent four years in Japan from 1996-2000 as an envoy for the Cretien and administration researching how better insight into Japanese humor could have potential for increasing our trade with Japan

5.2) I spent four years in Japan coaching at the University of Tokyo and then teaching English in a middle school an hour east of Tokyo.


 Do you expect there will be a cure in you your lifetime?

6.1) I don’t soldier on with the assumption that there will be a cure - but nor do I march any less fervently because of that.

6.2) Occupation?


I coached and managed rowing clubs for most of my working years in Winnipeg, Calgary, Austin Texas, New Brunswick, Ontario, and Tokyo Japan.

I started out with some of the the early Silicon Valley startups in the 70s and 80s and then worked hand-in-hand with Al Gore for many years developing a computer program called the Internet.

You seem fascinated with the DeLorean car -  Why?

The answer is chock full of symbolism the DeLorean, Michael J Fox’s car in the Back To The Future series ultimately symbolizes a cure.

Name the top three places you’ve traveled

I need five choices. please. Thank you. In no particular order, Oshima Island in the Pacific south of Tokyo. A frequent destination for us  on holidays while in Japan. Taking our bikes on the overnight ferry and circling the island the next day. The second destination is Austin, Texas where I coached for two years at the University of Texas Austin. the city is in many ways a musical, gastronomical, oasis in the middle of much else. A final choice is Inuvik, NWT, the arrival point at the end of my bike tour across Canada. Finally, Anywhere in San Francisco!

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