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

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.

Howl of a Run

Part of what makes me a Cidiot is my uncomfortable relationship with nature. To me the wilderness is a place to visit, to spend a week or two marveling at its sights and beauty and then head back home. In my mind it's sort of Disney World without the 75 dollar price of admittance and of course when I run into a mouse I don't try to get a picture of me hugging it. Magic Kingdom is a nice idea, but you don't move in. The same goes for the country in my mind.

But still something made me think I needed to get in touch with another side of myself. To embrace the small town atmosphere, maybe wake up early on Saturday's and help a local farmer till his fields.

Now I don't quite know what tilling is, but I imagined it'd be back breaking yet leave me feeling rewarded once the harvest was done. In this scenario I also seemed to have magical abs that glistened in the sort of sunlight only Hollywood could light, the farmer's daughters watching from the comfort of a local porch.

And so I went east to Belleville, Ontario when it came time for me to go to college. During my years there I never once did anything productive on a farmers field, unless partying and shortcuts count. The only agricultural crops I grew were mold, and that was a most unfortunate bumper crop.

My brushes with nature were also short lived. Convinced I'd run into a crazed moose or something on the path between my dorm and the college I rarely ventured far.

Then one night my fears seemed to come true.

I like to call it a tale of near death if you will.

I was walking through the forest-y portion of the path late at night as I headed back to place. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed something coming through the trees. At first I passed it off as just a dog and continued on my way. Then I began to think about how strange it was that there would be a dog. In all my time on campus I had never seen a dog, they weren’t allowed, why in the middle of the night would one randomly be walking in the woods?

Slowly turning to look at the thing from the woods again it hit me how much it looked like a wolf, in fact it looked identical to a wolf. I started to walk faster, and as I did the thing started coming at me, every time I went a little faster it went faster.

My mind swarmed with thoughts. Was this how it ends for me? Killed by a wolf?

As it got closer tomorrow’s headlines ran through my head:

“Little Red Robertson’s Corpse,” “An American Werewolf in Belleville” or my personal favourite, “The Boy Who Didn’t Cry Wolf… Because it Ripped His Vocal Cords Out.”

I took off running and it did too.

As I braced for the end a campus security guard came out from the woods.

It's funny, one minute you're fearing for your life, the next your trying to explain very rationally to campus security that the reason you were running away from the drug sniffing dog was you thought it was a wolf trying to kill you.

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Pied and Go Seek

I’d like to introduce to you a small village nestled in Norfolk County, Ontario. Granted they didn’t ask me to make this introduction and they might even be shy or bashful in me doing so, but still I feel the need to introduce you.

So meet Waterford, and Waterford meet… my favorite reader.

Waterford, Ontario is home to 2,500 villagers, and if you are to go by one of the strangest opening paragraphs in a Wikipedia article the Yin Family are notable residents being that they are of the rare Chinese variety of Waterfordian’s. They run a Chinese restaurant there, and (if one can assume from their inclusion on Wikipedia) are the talk of the village with sentences that begin with, “do you’s know what them crazy Chinese folk were up to the other day?”

Originally a railroad town along the Canadian Southern line, trains had all but stopped coming to little Waterford at the turn of the 20th century. The village’s growth was halted, and those that remained turned to agriculture.

That is until someone dreamed up Pumpkinfest.

Ah Pumpkinfest, or as the locals call it “Tricking Cidiot’s into Traveling Hours to Fill Some Guilt Ridden Need to Take in Some Agriculture.”

Some four years ago my sister gave into the need. Little is known of how she came to be aware of the pumpkin harvesting festival, though I suppose a lot would be known if I asked her, but picking up a phone and calling her is far above my duty to this column.

Regardless, she convinced my brother and I to pile into the car, whisked away on several hours of journey to the promises of midway games, pumpkin pyramids, and, as my sister promised, “the best tasting pumpkin pie you’ll ever have.”

The promise of pumpkin pie, and the best of our lives at that, was enough to drag us out of the comforts of the city. Before long we were surrounded by the darkness of country roads, and the eventual, inevitable realization that we were lost.

A dimly lit convenient store appeared about this time, the way such a store spookily appear in a slasher flick, first to the relief of the travelers, but before long between blows by an ax they are wishing they had never stopped.

Not to disappoint a man sat on the old convenient stores wood veranda. Perhaps on break from his local militia duties he donned a skinhead and matching camo pants. He glared at us as we approached the store; I was convinced we were heading straight for shallow graves; our bodies months later would become the topic of town conversation.

“Did you hear about them bodies they dug up in old Roy’s tobacco field?”

“Ah, I imagine he’s mighty pissed, all them fascist cops trampling round there he’ll liable miss the harvest.”

Did I mention I graduated with honours from Small Town Stereotyping School? Though that D I got in ‘Introduction to Alabama Inbreeding Jokes’ nearly cost me my diploma.

Needless to say my Cidiot minded fears were not shown to be true, instead we got the much needed directions as well as several packages of salt and sugar laced carbs.

We were back on the road and before long we had arrived, I could practically taste that sweet pumpkin pie.

Before we could dig in my sister insisted we take in the other sights and sounds of Pumpkinfest, a short-lived plan as it seemed we had missed the fest side of things. After lost induced detours we had arrived to late, the midway was closing up. The much raved about parade had long since marched by.

But we could still have pumpkin pie!

No, we couldn’t.

In all the snack shacks and restaurants, and amongst all the fair tents hawking fake tattoos and your name on a grain of rice, there was no pumpkin pie to be found.

We traveled from end to end of the village, but nothing. Lit in the glow of a pumpkin pyramid I could hear the theme music to The Twilight Zone kick in as we gazed across a field to a sign that read “No Pies Available This Year!” In case the exclamation mark added insult to injury a second sign had been tacked on above reading “Sorry”.

The town was pie dry. It didn’t just say ‘No Pumpkin Pie’, it said ‘Pies’. Apple, Strawberry Rhubarb, or Boston Cream. Why if this sign was correct the odds of finding Chicken Pot Pie or even a Pizza Pie were slim to none.

How had such a thing happened? How had an entire village rallied together to ban a delectable treat that had dated back to 2000 BC? What had led to this decision? Some tragic pie related accident that had shocked and horrified the citizens of Waterford? Not even the Nazi’s, whose bans, restrictions and all around authoritarianism has spawned the annoying quip when faced with some new rule, “what is this Nazi Germany?”, had ever gone so far as to ban a pastry.

It didn’t matter what had led to Waterford’s backlash on pies. There were none.

I tell you this story because we had vowed never to return, that is until now. This Friday we’ll return to Waterford’s Pumpkinfest, curious and anxious to see if the Pie Ban of ’03 has yet to be lifted.

I’ll keep you posted, but at least I know if worse comes to worse I can always visit Yin’s Restaurant, serving “Chinese and Canadian food without a buffet!”

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A Cidiot By Any Other Name

There's a town in Minnesota that my girlfriend calls home.

A town on the banks of the mighty Mississippi, with friendly locals and... I better stop myself before Mark Twain's estate is asking for royalties.

It’s a place built on the history of nearly going to war with a group of Native blueberry salesmen. A town built on the back of the railroad. A town built on the back of the lumber industry.

It’s the kind of place where family and the high school football team are king, a place blessed with scenic wooded areas and more then it’s share of Minnesota's ten thousand lakes (the state actually has 11,842 lakes but they rounded it down to ten thousand for tax purposes.)

The natural beauty of the region calls to the people of nearby cities. Drawing them in every summer they come in their campers, SUV's, and hummers, clogging and congesting the streets, beaches, and ultimately after learning beer and 250 worth of horse power don't mix, the emergency rooms.

Granted when your town swells to triple its size and the end of the weekend means traffic jams at all exits, you tend to regard these visitors with a little disdain.

And so the first time I flew down to Minnesota I was greeted by my girlfriend's family sitting on the porch, musing over the havoc the tourists were wreaking this particular weekend, or as they called them, cidiots.

Cidiot: A city dweller in the country, a fish out of water, or as my girlfriend’s family would more colourfully put it: a person who left what little brains they had back in the city.

I laughed along at the stories of mishaps caused by ghostly pale city dwellers that got their brand new fishing lures hooked into themselves.

Then it hit me.

I was born in the heart of downtown Toronto, largest city in Canada, fifth largest in North America. I grew up riding the subway and eating dinner from a street vendor hocking hot dogs.

Sure for college I suddenly found myself attending a school in the midst of a cow pasture, but not without graduating before fleeing from a drug sniffing dog I confused for a wolf (an explanation for running that only made the campus security guard more suspicious).

To make matter’s worse, I once got a fish hook stuck in me…

Fine, I’ll say it, stuck in my butt.

Being in front of my girlfriend’s parents for the first time, sitting on their front deck as the dog ran around the edge of the woods, breathing in pine scented air (and no, my city dwelling friends, not horrible pine car freshener, I’m talking the real thing.) Sitting there sipping lemonade in a rocking chair… okay perhaps the lemonade part is made up by my big city stereotyping mind, but they’ve got two rocking chairs!

Sitting there I realized, I am a cidiot.

I feed off the hustle of the city, the countless faces with countless stories. The sight of a Starbucks on every corner feels like home, and yeah, so what if I call the smallest of streams a river, at least I understand the difference between a Grande and a Venti.

So maybe I am a cidiot I thought, is that so bad? Is it wrong to not know how to tie a knot or know the difference between poison oak and poison ivy if Wikipedia isn’t a fingers length away?

When you’re from a sheltered little corner of a big city, the world that isn’t a subway stop away may often surprise you. Even more so if it’s beyond taking the subway then catching the 192 bus.

So yes, the world is a misadventure waiting to happen when you grew up in a John Hughes film, but it is a misadventure that I invite you along on every Tuesday for the next few weeks, months, or years.

My name is Derek Robertson, I am a stand-up comedian, screenwriter and director, and these are the Confessions of a Cidiot.

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