So eventually I had to kiss the Island good-bye again and drag my tired party-torso out of bed at 4 am and with my sore, pulled tit muscle, drive to pick up Scott and make it onto the first ferry over to Vancouver. We met with the rest of the Troopers at Smitty’s house; got into a new huge van and the 13-hour drive to Edmonton seemed like a tiny cruise. We checked into a hotel, caught some snooze and I was awoken in the middle of the night by an evil spirit.

It was so dark in the room, so there was no point in opening my eyes, and I felt a really thick, awful negative energy of an unwanted entity in the room. It was RIGHT THERE, and I could feel it from my toes to my head, and I knew that it filled the entire room, was very evil, and very aware that I had recognized it. I do not like this type of thing, at all, and I have had enough experience with this type of thing to know that I am more powerful, being on this plane, in the flesh, and that they really can’t get to you unless you collapse to their intimidation (like collection agency people on the phone!)

I get the feeling that the energy was in the hotel, going from room to room, through the walls, checking people out, found me interesting and woke me up. Actually, checking my notes here, I recall that I was actually unable to wake up or talk, in the conventional sense. It was a quite powerful bad vibe.

I am proud to say that I willed the energy OUT of the room, out of the window, away from the building ( I knew that it would go into another room) and I also very strongly willed it NOT to go NEAR Dodie (my Mom) or Tracy (My Gal). I was really open to my intuition, and I just knew that it could travel any distance in a flash and that my loved ones were an obvious choice. Anyway, the thing went away and didn’t come back.

The trick is not to get angry or threatening with the entity. Don’t freak out. Be REALLY strong, deliberate, and with all of your power and being let the entity know that you know what is going on, and that you have all of the power and grace of GOD, humanity and the network of angels on your side, and that the evil entity has absolutely NO business in the room, or near your direct loved one, being very specific who you and your loved ones are, and where they are at that moment. The entity knows very well that the good guys always wins, and that there are other places that it can visit, where there isn’t such resistance. No problem.

Scott slept through my battle of good verses evil, and I don’t know if I have ever mentioned this to him. By the way, if you surrender to the bad energy in these moments, you may have a lot of problems for years and years, perhaps for life, as have some people have known. I bet if you hung out with junkies, you would run into a lot of this type of thing. Yaeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!

Anyway, we’re in Edmonton, ready to do some gigs.

The hotel in Edmonton was right across the street from the famous West Edmonton Mall; the largest mall on earth. We usually stay several blocks away at the one with the nice steam sauna and excellent soaps (I have bags and bags of hotel soaps and shampoos at home, make great gifts for kids!) The entrance to the mall is a walk through a huge food store with the largest inventory of Chinese food products that I have ever seen. Jars and jars of healing herbs, walls of fish, and rows of juices in cans. I found the smell to be somewhat grotesque. Have you ever noticed that the smells are the same on the streets of every major China town in every major North American city? This is a cleaner version of that smell.

Ra bought a bag of shrimp chips, which tasted like that smell. Smitty liked them.

We had a very decent gig, and I signed a banner afterwards that read TROOPER FAN FOREVER, which was quite nice. I see banners at larger shows, and it is always a heart-warmer, for sure. We had a day off the next day, so we all took in some mall culture and I lay around a lot. I lived on sushi and hot and sour soup. I never nap at home and have tons of energy, but on the road I turn into a slug instantly. This is probably a good balance. Frankie went on the roller coaster 7 times. His balance is a little more exciting than mine on the road.

Frankie got up early the next morning and rode the roller coaster again before we split town. I had bought 2 books at a book-blow-out shop: The Al Green Story and Jews who rock. The Al Green story was every awesome and inspiring. I am not really familiar with his music, but now I understand that he came from unbelievable poverty, a sharecropping family in the Southern States, and became very wealthy and famous, because he is such a great great singer. One thing he said in the book that I liked: “You can have all the promotion in the world behind an album, and if people don’t like the music, it won’t sell. On the other hand, you can have a recording of you singing your Grandmother’s favorite old song in total obscurity and it can go HUGE. You never know. And if anyone ever tells you that they DO know what will be big and what won’t, they should get down on their knees and repent for being a liar.”

I don’t know if I believe that or not. The media is pretty powerful these days. As I write this, good luck turning on the TV without a HILLARY DUFF commercial, or a LIVE repeat performance of the song that sounds a lot like the SEARS commercial, not that Zellers seems to mind that. She has one of everyone in her band: Asian girls singing, Black girl drumming, stoner-long-hair rock guitar player, skater-dude, Mr. Normal, Barbie up front……no problem finding someone you can connect with. Is this just by chance that her band is so mixed, or is that part of a marketing scheme? Dunno. Last summer I couldn’t turn on the TV without at least a mention, or contest relating to Shania Twain. This stuff is going to sell no matter what. It is easy for some people to have other people choose stuff for them, be it music, religion or contemporary furniture. This is cool with me, as long as people enjoy music, and music remains important to them, what do I care how they get it?

As far as I can tell, no one has ever made mention of the idea that the HUGE Santana hit last summer had the same chorus as Sweat Dreams by the Eurhythmics. The first time that I heard that song I thought that it was a fancy cover, or that there was some connection. I am not saying that either one is a bad song, just that they are a lot the same as each other, and that the media is OK with this, while reporters will rip apart other people’s efforts for much less. Is the media biased, or is there a $ connection between networks and big music business companies? I dunno, probably not.

Watching TV on the road is fun.

I also read Treasure Island which was a lot of fun. Ra read it when he was a kid. And, you know, all the roads and parks on Protection Island are named after characters and objects from this book. Being that my new address is soon to be 82 Captain Morgan’s Blvd, (next to Smuggler’s Park, up from Cutlass Lookout and Ben Gunn Park), I should have this lingo together. We were discussing my venture into Island life in the van, and I mentioned that I need to get my Pirate image together. Ra suggested that I go step-by-step and not cut one leg off right away until I am secure with the commitment to the new look.