Best of Cidiot, Volume 1

After writing a humour column for the past few years Derek Robertson looked back and selected his favourites for a three volume best-of series, and here embedded for you is a digital copy of Volume 1.

This first volume featurs the stories Bowl-a-Drama, Boobstruck (originally article titled Rock and Tackle), Snowball Effect, Unravel Over Scrabble, Insecurity Sticker (Volume 1's cover story), and Derek's Inferno. Plus 'Ask a Cidiot' and 'What is a Cidiot?'

To read a digital copy of Volume 1 just click on the thumbnail image below.

(Note: for optimum viewing click the 'full screen' option on the tool bar above the magazine)

Read Confessions of a Cidiot - Vol. 1

Check back in a couple of weeks for Confessions of a Cidiot, Volume 2!

Volume 2 is set to feature:

- From Russia with Febreeze  

- The Once and Future Pogster

- Baggage Claims

- Hanging Up is Hard to Do

- Ask a Cidiot

- The Taken Seat

- Gettin' to High off Masculinity

The Younger Woman - A Cidiot Short

Mon Ex et Moi

I have a habit of becoming really close friends with my ex-girlfriends, which is a little strange I know, but it just sort of happens that way. This fact alone wouldn’t be such a big deal except when you combine it with my never failing ability to say the wrong thing to my girlfriend.

I’ve got Relationship Tourette’s.

With a little to fond a look in my eye I can ruin movies, books, even entire towns for my girlfriend Amanda as my remembrance of dates gone by with … we’ll call them all Allison … lingers just a little to long.

So it didn’t help when my girlfriend discovered some photos of one ex-girlfriend, (for the sake of the story) named Allison, who wasn’t exactly dressed to go out… of the bedroom.

“What is this?” Amanda demanded.

The question what is this can have one of two meanings, either you’ve gotten her something romantic or went above and beyond on some chore that needed doing, or you’re screwed.

I hadn’t bought her anything and I certainly hadn’t been helpful without being asked, so I knew whatever she was looking at would lead to trouble.

My stomach dropped when I saw the photos. It wasn’t as though I kept them for some nefarious purpose, I forgot they existed. But here Amanda was, excavating some lost artifact of a relationship gone by, raiding some lost ark of a shoe box, a Holy Grail of trouble, a temple of doom for my relationship. It was as if some high priest of Polaroid paper had reached from the photo and ripped her still beating heart out and she responded with a short round of swearing.

“Allison! Why’d it have to be Allison?” I asked myself, before trying to pretend I didn’t know who this girl was or how I came to own pictures of her. It was a tactic that’d last all of three seconds before my bluff would be called.

The argument quickly degenerated into a discussion over the definition of half naked, an argument I was not aided on by my old friend Wikipedia who seemed to disregard the whole encyclopedic approach to the question and instead opted to strike up more of a The Stranger from The Big Lebowski sort of tone, informing us that “the quantity of skin exposed is not the determining criterion, it's the "quality" that counts” for defining half naked.

My ex's name was icily received from then on, yet somehow my name managed to avoid a similar fate in Amanda's mind. We moved forward.

Yet for some reason I still had the misguided belief that Amanda and Allison would somehow hit it off and become best friends. If only they could meet they'd realize what kindred spirits they were and soon there'd be no more tension! The three of us could go for coffee regularly, or maybe the two girls would go for a day of shopping. We could have dinner parties and Allison could bring the wine, who knows maybe the three of us would all have a little to much of that wine and then...

Right, sorry. Back to the real world.

I had somehow convinced Amanda to come meet Allison over dinner at this restaurant. You may have thought this proposition would've been a battle to get Amanda to agree to, a difficult series of negotiations that could've helped me fill several paragraphs. Sadly she agreed to meet Allison immediately.

My efforts to prepare for the night were a different story. If I spent an extra minute then normal staring into the cotton void of my closet my motives were to be suspect. Apparently my desire to look less like Tom Hanks circa the second act of Cast Away signaled I was trying to hard.

Had I reached for the aftershave I surely would've found myself sleeping on the couch.

When your girlfriend meets your ex-girlfriend its like two worlds colliding, like the planet Theia being flung through space and smacking straight into the side of the Earth. If things don't go just right it could spell utter destruction. If by some astrological miracle though the two collide and it goes well, who knows, you may have inseparable friends. Like Theia becoming the Earth's moon.

That's the desired outcome, I thought as I drove to the restaurant. Allison mooning Amanda.

That probably could've been phrased better.

I was worrying more and more. What if the thing about the photos came up? If hair pulling and biting broke out amongst them would it be inappropriate for me to keep eating? If you knew that I had had to skip lunch earlier that day would you be more understanding if I did? Or what if on the flip side they started to get along a little to well. They started gossiping about me, Allison recounting everything she hated about dating me. Maybe that'd suddenly make Amanda see me in a new late, maybe suddenly the value of Ex would equal 2.

I had decided the whole plan was a mistake, but had only settled on this after we were saying our hello's to Allison.

I sat there, waiting for the first signs of disaster. Yet there were none.

In fact it almost seemed as though the two girls were hitting it off, trading horror stories about work and laughing.

By the time our meals arrived we were in a comfortable conversational rhythm. Things were truly going perfect, and at this rate by the time the waiter brought the bill we'd all be complaining about the price of gas with one another over brunch every Sunday.

Some wine was uncorked.

"This really is going well isn't it?" I said, deciding to launch into a director's commentary on the evening.

"Its funny, here we are with candle light and wine and I've had this fantasy for awhile now that starts off just like this."

"Oh?" my girlfriend asks warily.

"Yeah you know, the three of us all have a little to much wine and we end up coming back to my place and one of us says jokingly..."

I made the mistake of finishing this thought once, I'll try to avoid repeating the error.

In life like in astronomy it's not the threats you see coming that are the risk, its the ones you don't.

For me, my ever forgiving Amanda and the dozen or so Allison's before her, it's my Relationship Tourette’s.

Slippery Rock, PA

I enjoy a good road trip, especially one that can include nights in hotels with American television.

A few weeks ago I was on such a trip, this story picking up with me deep in the heart of Pennsylvania. I've got a surprising amount of Pennsylvania stories, but this one involves very little. Just me driving by a sign for a town named Slippery Rock.

Slippery Rock. What a name.

It amused me as I drove by, my mind filling with images of just how a town could get such a name.

I picture a young village being built, people excitedly moving into their homes as the villages founder sat at his desk, quill in hand and he scribbled out potential names for the town. He needed the perfect one, the kind of name that would inspire the villages' citizens to do great thing. The kind of name that would bring them pride. The kind of name that would see this village grow to one of America's largest cities.

He took his job seriously, sitting at that desk day after day as he burnt away the midnight oil at an alarming pace. It probably would've been smart not to burn the midnight oil during the day, but he had more important things on his mind, so burn it did.

Then one day he had come up with it! The perfect name, one that was classy, that demanded respect, one that captured the spirit of its citizens and the geography around them.

He called all the villagers together, dozens and dozens gathered down by the river. To address them all the village's founder stood up on a nearby rock and he began to speak to them.

"We gather on this momentous occasion to name this beotch of a burg."

Okay, this may not be a direct quote.

"And folks, I have thought long and hard," he continued, "and today I proclaim that our little town shall forever be known as..."

Now the rock that this man had stood upon, being so close to the rivers splashing waves was a little damp, and it was at this particularly inopportune moment that he decided to shift his weight, causing a foot to give way.

He began to loose his balance, on the verge of falling and embarrassing himself. Luckily a panicked flail of his arms had saved him this humility. But still he'd lost his balance and was not looking to graceful, so he begins to laugh it off.

"Slippery rock," he chuckled.

Suddenly the crowd began to cheer. Hats were thrown, a fiddler randomly starts a'fiddlin' and everyone begins celebrating.

Confused the village's founder stands upon the rock trying to understand what was going on.

Then slowly he realizes, he had just proclaimed the town to be forever known as Slippery Rock.

Desperate he tries to tell nearby revelers the real name he had carefully crafted but they are to busy celebrating.

That's how I imagined it went down, but a fact check on this story informs me that it is not the case.

Here's the story those Slippery Rockians would have you believe.

Natives went and attacked Fort Pitt, another unfortunate victim of bad naming. This attack sort of frustrated the folks living in the fort, so they decided to chase the natives. As they did they found themselves crossing a river. They were gaining ground on the group of natives, closing in. But the floor of the river was muddy. This didn't cause the natives any problems, but the Americans in hot pursuit began slipping and sliding in the river, giving the natives a perfect opportunity to get away.

So I guess as a slap in the face people living nearby said, "Oh wow! You soldiers sure are something! In fact to honour your amazing soldering we're going to rename our town after you!"

Missing the sarcasm one soldier probably asked, "really? Like 4th Battalion City or something like that?"

"Oh no, no, no. We were thinking Slippery Rock." And then the town laughed in their face.

Think about that, the soldiers screwed up and a town was renamed after their screw up.

What if your town was renamed after a particularly bad mistake you made?

I believe this is how Enterprise, Alabama got its name. You know, after a guy's girlfriend stumbled across his shockingly large collection of Star Trek Enterprise collectibles, and don't even get me started on the embarrassing incident that led to Spanish Fork, Utah.

I don't live in a small town myself, so I feel spared such a fate as thousands of embarrassing things happen every minute in this city I am sure. I did go to college in a small town though, and I can't help but imagine if a poor choice on my part had been immortalized by the locals.

I once had one to many Canadian Killer Kool-aids, a drink consisting of vodka, amaretto, melon liqueur and cranberry juice as it turns out. The problems included a 'drunk dial' that night, and then a sleeping in and missing the call time I had to be on set for a cooking show... I was directing.

The point of this story was supposed to be thank goodness they didn't rename the town Killer Kool-aid, Ontario but now that I think about it that actually sounds really cool.

Belleville, Ontario you may have this idea, you're welcome... but get on it before Jonestown, Guyana beats you to the punch.

Bowl-A-Drama

The trip didn't get off to a good start.

I was in the middle of directing my first feature film when my good friend, and former manager, came to the small town I was in to visit.


We met up at a diner on the towns main street. It wasn't the fun kind of diner, you know the '50s themed restaurant that can serve you a quality milkshake and food dripping with Americana (sometimes mistaken for grease). This was the other style of diner, the one frequented by men proudly donning John Deer hats who are served by bitter middle-aged women who cigarettes tucked behind the ear and who use the term 'hun' like a period.


The trip didn't get off to a good start as one of these bitter middle-aged servers dumped a pot of coffee all over Dan's lap.

Yet this isn't a story about that, this is a story about what happened afterwards.

We were looking for something to do that night, and a small town doesn't exactly overwhelm you with options when almost everything but the strip club closes at 8pm (6 on weekends!)


We could've stayed at my place and watched an old Paul Reiser stand-up comedy VHS tape I had discovered in town earlier that week, but with the crazy girl I was living with around it'd be hard to listen to Reiser's observations on finding a seat in a movie theater over top of said crazy girl trying to interpret her latest dream.


"Like okay, I get that me being naked at a marina means that maybe like I'll be caught off guard, or somethin', but like why would you and the unicorn die in that car bomb?"

So Dan and I settled on going out to the one place every small town has, or you know, other then a Wal-Mart... we decided to go bowling.

Bowling, I mean it doesn't get more simple then that. You go, rent out some communal shoes that seem to always be some strange mix of red and black with neon green laces, then throw a ball at some pins for forty five minutes. A simple plan. Well, any other night.

See not long before my sister Emily had gotten married and Dan had been there. During the course of the reception the photographer, Ben, an extremely nice man with a limited working knowledge of English had approached Dan and I and asked me if I would like a photo with 'your partner'.

What did he mean? Like a business partner? Did he use the word partner instead of friend? Or did he think we were dating? Like partner partner, like Ellen and Elton (not together, that'd be a little to hetro). And if this man, who barely knew us thought this, then what did everyone else think?

We were pretty good friends, we did a lot of things together, he was even here at my sisters wedding.

Normally we were both pretty secure in our sexuality, I mean hell I had had a guy send me a drink at a bar and I didn't even send it back, though this may have been less my security in my sexuality and more my Scottish penny pinching. But still, I didn't send it back.

But something about the way the photographer said it shook us. Maybe I was giving people the wrong impression, I did cry pretty hard when Tom Hanks' volleyball floated away and that Halloween costume my first year of college probably wasn't helping anything.

So there we were, two guys on a Saturday night going out to a bowling alley. Maybe we were continuing to send the wrong idea to people?

I tried calling up some girls to get them to join us.

No luck, none I knew in town were free.

So reluctantly before my roommate began remembering another detail of her dream (always involving death, sex, or nudity) Dan and I climbed into the back of a cab alone and headed towards the lanes.

“So,” Dan started talking overly loud, “Suzy said she’s meeting us there?”

“Yeah,” I replied, picking up on what he’s doing, “She picked up Julie and is meeting us at the alley.”


We began taking turns elaborating on our plans with 'the girls' creating a fictional back story normally reserved for the geeky kid at elementary school who comes back after summer with a story of the girl he totally kissed at camp.

Now there were three of us in the conversation, the cab driver jumping in. We talked about our girlfriends who were waiting for us at the bowling alley and then about his ex-wife. We bonded with that cabbie, and it was clear there'd be no mistaking us for a couple of guys out on the town looking for a gay old time.

The parking lot seemed oddly empty, but we just attributed that to the fact that well... this is bowling.

We were in for a surprise though as we walked through the door and found the empty, dark, bowling lanes staring back at us.

A scruffy looking man with a ponytail stood behind the shoe rental desk, polishing the counter.

“Are you closed?” I asked, hoping maybe they were just trying to conserve power.

“Yup,” he croaked.

I looked at my watch, 7:30.

“Oh, when do you guys close?”

“Whenever people stop showing up,” he replied.

“Well, we showed up?”

He looked at us, then back down at the counter.

“Sorry.” He continued scrubbing. I had mis-underestimated the nature of a small town again, the Cidiot in me assuming a place people go for entertainment would be open past dusk on a Saturday night.

Dan and I turned to leave but stopped dead in our tracks when we noticed the taxi was still sitting outside, the driver doing some paperwork.

Dan opened the door, ready to head for the cab when it hit me.

“Wait!” I shouted as though all life on this planet depended on him not going through that door.

“We told him we were meeting two girls here. We can’t just leave alone, we’ll look like idiots!”

Dan and I stood there, looking at the cab driver filling out his paperwork. He was just sitting there, happily writing stuff down, as though he was just screwing with us, waiting to call our bluff.

“What if we call the cab company and ask for the taxi a few blocks away? Chances are they’ll send him, right?” suggested Dan.

It was genius, we’d send the driver a few blocks away, call back and get another cab to pick us up before the other cabbie even realizes there was no one to pick up. It was perfect; we were home free… until the plan didn’t work.

“We could walk back to my place?” I suggested. A snowstorm kicked in as if on cue.

It was at that point that pony-tail decided to lock up for the night. Looking at one another, sighing, Dan and I sheepishly climbed into the cab.

“How was bowling?” asked the driver, smiling ear to ear. We had a quiet ride home, then settled in for Paul Resier and his crazy early 90s clothing.

Oh and I believe it was decided by 'crazy girl' around the middle of Resier's act that the unicorn in the dream being blown up symbolized the death of her innocence and me being blown up, well that was because I hadn't vacuumed like I said I would apparently.

Those Dangerous Games

There are politicians who like to preach that we should ban video games, burn them, protect our stupid minds from them because if we don't we'll go on a rampage of carjacking, killing prostitutes, and randomly beating guys on the street with a baseball bat in hopes glowing money will pop out of them.

Grand Theft Auto I am looking at you.

I didn't believe you political fringe types, I thought maybe you just realized you spend a lot of time and money to get elected only to discover you don't really believe in anything and so desperate, you looked for the easiest target to go after. Porn was taken by the Junior Representative from Lackawanna County, and the movie industry was under attack from a Senator out of Utah, so you thought you'd settle for video games.

That's what I thought, I did. Until I realized you were right! It's hit me!

You my dear fear mongering friend of Fox News were right, its happened to me!

One day I am immersed in several hours of Mario Kart Wii (Rainbow Road I will make you mine!) then the next I am driving my Saturn, minding my own business. Suddenly this guy starts riding my tail, he's all up behind me and I don't know what to do.

Perhaps if I was a level headed video game free individual I would have just let him go about his tailgating. Perhaps.

But no, I did something so horrible, so shameful it is hard to admit.

I finished the banana I was eating, rolled down my window and then... then... yes, that's right I did it! I through the banana peel back at his car.

But it gets worse, my slippery slide into mindless, easily influenced video gamer continued.

I don't even want to tell you what happened, but lets just say the turtle I promised my little sister I'd take to the vet, well it never made it.

So you were right and I was wrong. We can not trust video games, we as humans are so stupid. How could I ever have doubted you?

I have to end this here, have to rush to the pet store before my sister gets out of school. I'm kind of cutting it close, but I figure if I pop a few mushrooms it should give me the speed boost I need to make it in time.

HIATUS

Confessions of a Cidiot will be on hiatus from March 18th until June 3rd, when it will begin again.

Over the next few weeks while Cidiot is off why not come out and see
Derek Robertson's stand-up live, or reread old Cidiots.

Check back in June for an exciting new batch of stories
from the misadventure that is Derek.