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.

Rock & Tackle

From the fall of 2002 to the summer of 2003 SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) hit Toronto. The disease developed first in China and was then carried over via a Toronto woman who was back in China visiting her family.


Less then 20 percent of all SARS cases in Toronto were fatal, yet an even bigger fallout occurred. The city's hotel occupancy was cut in half, tour bus business' teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, and everything from shopping malls to major theater productions were hit hard.

The city was in a crisis and the economy was in trouble, enter the Rolling Stones.

Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and... those other two guys came up with a plan to headline a massive concert to help revive tourism and the economy within the city. This is where our story starts.

Let me set the stage for you, July 30th 2003. The former military base Downsview Park was played host to 500,000 audience members and fourteen bands for a day long concert.

My brother Will, our friend Dan, and my girlfriend at the time arrived at 6am.

A few hours later we were all let in, going through security checks we rushed the stage, everyone laying down blankets and beach towels to mark their little piece of the park.

The ground was littered with them, with small patches of grass between. This made leaving your blanket for any pricey refreshment or piece of merchandise a difficult maneuver.

Bounding over blankets you felt like something out of some lame, forgotten, arcade game. Atari's Blanket Dodger 3000.

If you made it over beach towels and blankets you had to face another obstacle, what we dubbed the gauntlet. A crush of people in an incredibly small corridor pushing every which way. If you were to loose your footing, as I nearly did several times, no one would see you again until the poor volunteer who is picking up empty water bottles the next day discovers your body, all smushed to a pancake like Wile E. Coyote on a work day.

So truly there was very little incentive to leave your spot under the scorching sun. Waiting some seven hours before the first act took the stage, waiting over twelve before the big ticket acts like AC DC and The Rolling Stones performed.

The monotony and sweating felt like we were part of some mass sauna sit in. We had packed lunches that were quickly disappearing simply because it was the only thing one could do.

Off in the distance, over on the other side of the stage someone had brought a beach ball, throwing it into the crowd it bounced its way around.


I watched it with fascination, suddenly feeling less judgmental of a cats strange love for a ball of string.

I waited and willed the ball to come over, to have something to do, to see how far into the crowd I could hit it, to see what way the wind would take my mighty volley.

Hours went by, but the ball never reached me.

Several feet (or five beach towels) away from us a group of guys were forming a human pyramid.

Now maybe it was a love for Egyptology, maybe one too many viewings of Bring it On, or perhaps just shear boredom from waiting six hours in the hot summer sun... we may never know for sure, but for some reason my girlfriend was compelled to join in.

"Be back in a second!" she squealed, the idea of doing something beyond controlling the rationing the last juice box bringing joy to her words.

Before I could say anything she was off. Bounding over towel and blanket alike she began claiming her way to the top of the tower of human.

She tops off the pyramid. Like an angel topping the Christmas tree. She's my angel I thought, the sunlight causing her to radiate beauty. I was simply lost in thought until...

"Take it off!" shouted someone in the crowd.

"Take it off!" joined another, and before long we were in full blown chant mode. A crowd of the countries most stoned, the countries most drunk, or simply the nations most sun burnt were all chanting for the girl on top of the pyramid, my girl, to take off her top.

Everyone is chanting, and she, the drama class geek, is soaking in the stardom, toying with the crowd. With me.

So I do the only thing I can think of. I take off running towards the pyramid.

Now I haven't put much thought into what I will do once I get there, and 'there' is fast approaching. I am only a couple of feet away, my eyes locked on my girlfriend like bull on matador. Her top is now off, and with it so am I.

My feet leave the ground as I hurl myself toward the human tower, arms spread.

What happens next I like to think of as a tackle, though onlookers may describe it as a belly flop. The human pyramid collapses like a house of cards, a mass of body parts land atop of me looking, I can only imagine, like a game of Twister gone horribly wrong.

Now somehow this made her view me as overbearing, over protective, and just plain over. As she disappeared into the gauntlet I was prepared to give chase, until I noticed that beach ball heading my way. Deciding I had waited to long not to be a part of this I braced myself, connected, and sent the ball flying into another part of the crowd.

By the time I had finished and turned around my girlfriend was swallowed by the sea of people. Yes bouncing that beach ball had cost me the ability to run after her, you know I guess we all give in to the crowd from time to time.

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