Hosted By:
Melting Pot

When:
July 8th, 2009 7pm

Where:
Sunnyside Pavilion Cafe
1755 Lake Shore Boulevard West
Toronto
m6s5a3

Description:
Sunnyside Summer Shows! W/Melting Pot & The comedy of Stephen Cox!!! www.myspace.com/stephencoxcomedycanada We're playing this summer, every second wednesday of the month, starting June 24th at the beautiful Sunnyside Pavilion! We'll be sharing the stage with the infamous comedian Stephan Cox! It's being billed as "An Evening of Comedy and Music by The Lake" what better way to spend those laz

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We will be at the Cadillac Lounge in Toronto on Monday April 6th performing a few songs on acoustic

a sad sad christmas, the "Godfather Of Soul" has passed away (on Christmas Day of course, leave it up to Mr. Brown to go out in style) and the world just won't be as funky anymore. One of music's greatest innovators, songwriters, and performers. Anyone who's ever bobbed their head to a funky beat, tapped their toes, danced all night long in a club to a serious groove, rhymed over a beat, jammed with other musicians over a one chord funky rhythm, or just screamed out, heyyy! i feel good! i knew that i would! Knows exactly what the world just lost. If you don't then go and pick up some James Brown ANY James Brown music and just listen. If it doesn't bring a smile to your face and a bounce to your step, then you're dead inside anyways and i'm not talking to you. To everyone else let's all raise a glass to the man and get ready to count it off...a 1, 2, 3, 4! Get up, get on up! We love you James Brown, rest in peace and thank you for everything.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006


Santa Claus was a mushroom.

Greetings and holiday love, one and all. Not that fake ass holiday love that you get from the aggressive charity collector with the bell and the bucket in front of the supermarket, I offer you all the real shit, just like you get from Grandma.

Christmas is my favorite holiday, and not just because of the fact that you exchange gifts with loved ones, and celebrate, but because I'm aware of the original meaning behind it all.
And what would that be?

Buckle up for a good one...
Santa Claus was a magic mushroom.
What the fuck?
Yup, that's very likely the origin of the original story of Santa Claus; a psychedelic mushroom called the amanita muscaria. I know, I know.. it SOUNDS retarded, but that's probably where it all came from.
The first time I ever heard about this, I was sitting around sacrificing the sacred plant to the fire gods with legendary hemp activist and advocate, Jack Herer, the author of "the emperor wears no clothes."
He was telling me how he was writing a book about psychedelic mushrooms and their forgotten impact on human culture, including the idea that psychedelics were the origins of most religious experiences.
He then went on to tell me about how the story of Santa Claus was actually about magic mushrooms, but how the story had gotten distorted and forgotten over the thousands of years its been told.

Of course, my first thought when those words came out of his mouth was, "Holy shit. How high is THIS guy?"

Then I thought, "How high am I, that this is making sense?"
Well, Jack went deep into the story for me. Here's the synopsis, in my words.

Santa Claus is bright red and white. The amanita muscaria is also bright red and white.




Santa Claus lives in the North Pole, and he has flying reindeer pulling his sleigh through the air.
Reindeer are native to Siberia, and the shamanic use of this mushroom in Siberia is well documented. Now, I know Siberia isn't the North Pole exactly, but it's pretty close, and the earth's magnetic pole is actually shifting away from North America and towards Siberia.
Here's an article about it HERE

Also, the animal most connected with the amanita muscaria mushroom is the reindeer. It's their favorite food, and although I've never talked to a reindeer, I've got to think eating that shit all day must get them high as FUCK.
Like, "flying" high.


Christmas trees are pine trees.
Pine trees are the trees that the amanita muscaria grows under.
They have a mycorrhizal
(which basically means non-parasitic) relationship with that plant and spruce trees.
Their shiny red and white caps blooming under the tree looks very much like the tradition of placing shiny wrapped boxes under there.



When people would pick the mushrooms they would place them on the leaves of the tree to dry them in the sun.
That would look an awful lot like when people decorate their trees with shiny ornaments.

People place red and white socks over the fireplace.
OK, first off, why red and white socks? Because again, that's the color of the mushroom. And why do they hang it in front of the fireplace? Because that was another one of their techniques to dry the mushrooms out for storage.


Santa doesn't come in through the front door, he hops down through the chimney, on the sneak tip, with a fat bag of goodies.
Well, when Shamanic rituals were forbidden by the rulers of the day, (which they ALWAYS eventually were, because rulers throughout history have realized over and over again that the use of psychedelic substances by their people only serves to make it more difficult to feed them bullshit, and keep them scared and stupid) the rituals didn't immediately stop, they continued in secret, like secretly sneaking into the house through the roof with a fat bag of 'shrooms.

Santa lived in a magical place where he was surrounded by elves.

Sounds like a tripper to me.




The idea is that the story of Santa was influenced by or created about pre-Christian Pagan Shamans. A Shaman was a psychedelic adventurer that was the man in the village who was most traveled in the world of the mysteries of the mind, and that he would lead others into this world by conducting rituals with this sacred mushroom.

Now I know to a lot of you, all this shit must SOUND insane.
It certainly did to me when I was first looking into psychedelics.
I thought of psychedelics as "drugs," and "drugs" were for losers.
Period.
My rule of thumb when it came to "partying" was that I wouldn't do anything that was addictive, (except drink, of course) and anything else that I would do, (like pot) I would do very, very rarely, and always feel like an idiot the next day for doing it.
Well, the truth is, that's because I, like most of us, was a victim of propaganda. The "just say no" horseshit that was pumped down America's throat took root in every one of us that didn't look into the issue any further.
Our leaders and protectors got on TV and spoke early and often of this monstrous cause of illness and social woes, and they were very passionate about how they were working hard to make them even more illegal, and punish those who would profit from these horrible killers.
Meanwhile they conveniently ignored the biggest killer in the entire drug-land; cigarettes.
Those fuckers kill 400,000 people a year, every year, and you never hear a politician EVER talk about making them illegal.
When was the last time you heard about someone dying from mushrooms?

And then of course the problem comes up of "what exactly is a drug?"
Because they sure as fuck ain't all the same.
There are some horrible, terrible drugs that turn good people into fiending insects.
But there are also substances that are lumped into that same category that provide experiences so magical, and beautiful, and enlightening that they are thought to be the very origins of religious experience themselves.
That these psychedelic substances which have never killed anyone ever can be lumped into the same group as horrible shit like methamphetamines just shows how misinformed and confused most people are.
And the fact that people aren't up in arms about it, just shows how few people are even aware of the situation.

Let's put it this way .. to lump psychedelic mushrooms into the same group as methamphetamine is like lumping the Bible into the same group as Mein Kampf.
I mean shit; they're both books, right?

Speaking of the Bible, the craziest story about psychedelics and religion EVER has to do with the oldest version of the Bible; the Dead Sea Scrolls.
There was this guy named John Marco Allegro, he was an Oxford scholar and a respected expert of ancient languages, and he was on the international team dedicated to deciphering the scrolls. He wrote one of the earliest books on the scrolls in 1956, and then after 14 years of study in 1970 he dropped the bombshell:
In his book, "The Sacred Mushroom and The Cross" he said he believed through his decoding of the oldest ever version of the bible, that the entire Christian religion as practiced today is originally based on an ancient cult that practiced fertility rituals, and the consumption of psychedelic mushrooms.
He believed that the stories were all in code, and that they were written down to preserve the secrets in the stories, but eventually those secret connections were forgotten, and what was left was all confused.
He even traces the word "Christ" back to an ancient Sumerian word that meant "A mushroom covered in god's semen."
Back then they thought that when it rained God was cuming on the earth, and when these mushrooms would magically appear from the ground after the rain, they would eat them and trip their fucking balls off.
They didn't want anyone to know about this cool little trick, so they hid it. It was powerful, and it became a great secret.

There are also people that believe that was what the whole "halo" thing was about in religious art. The old school halo's weren't those golden Frisbees that you see in today's religious depictions, they were big circles that made it look like the person had a mushroom cap on their head.





Now, I'm not saying John Marco Allegro is right, because I'm way too retarded to understand the argument completely, but it sort of makes sense to me that if you lived thousands of years ago back when they thought the earth was flat, and monsters lived in the clouds, and one day you were hungry and hunting didn't work out so well, so you tried some of those pretty mushrooms, and you ate a ton of them.. well, I could see how that could be the start of something big.

A realization of connectivity, a dissolving of the ego that brings about a fresh perspective, a transformative experience that causes you to want to create guidelines as to how we should treat our fellow humans as brothers and sisters. And it brings a message that we're really all one, and love is the only thing that matters.
Basically, it connects you to "God."


Or.. it could just be some stoned bullshit, and the ramblings of a mad, renegade Oxford scholar. It could be that Santa, and the tooth fairy, and even the Easter bunny are real beings that actually exist, it's just that you're not old enough, or wise enough to know about it yet.
Really, it's all for your own good.
I mean, how would you go about your day and act like everything is all normal when you know for sure that there's a giant magical bunny running around the world once a year sneaking into your house and hiding eggs and shit everywhere?
Maybe that's what a preacher reading your last rites is all about. They hover over you right before you die, and when you got about 20 minutes left, they drop the bomb on you, "I guess I can tell you now.. Santa Claus is real. Say hi to God for me."

Hey everybody, i just wanted to say Happy Holidays to all, whether you follow the holidays or not, it seems to be a time when people pause and reflect for a second. Which can be a really good thing, to see where you're going and where you've been. Whichever way your wind blows i wish everyone peace and good fortunes in the new year...

Check out the new pics on our pics page - we have also added a cool new promotional pic that includes our logo & names.