On this day in 2023, June 16 fell on a Friday. As usual, Grab A Stack of Rock was scheduled to go live that night with our very first Iron Maiden episode (which I shall re-edit and re-broadcast in 2025). It was Iron Maiden rarities with Harrison, Aaron and a cameo by Jex Russell.
It almost got cancelled at the last minute. Why? See below.
I’m glad we re-ran the Adventures in Epilepsy episode last week so you can understand how it effects our lives every day of every week of every year since 2008. She fell, and as you can see, she took a faceplant. She insisted the show go on. She never wants to be the reason a show gets cancelled. And so the show went on.
On a brighter note, on this day in 2024, it was a completely different story. Well, not completely: Aaron was there with me once again, as we embarked to Toronto for our very best record shopping excursion to date!
Check out these episodes of Grab A Stack of Rock, and be sure to like and subscribe on YouTube! WordPress is fun but it doesn’t keep the lights on. If you could support us YouTube, it helps a lot!
Originally broadcast on Oct 2, 2020 as two streams totaling 2 hours and 12 minutes. This new version has been re-focused down to a perfect 50 minute show.
In October of 2020, right in the thick of the pandemic, Jen had a seizure at a local fast food restaurant. She fell and broke her arm. We decided to make that week’s episode of the LeBrain Train all about epilepsy awareness. While we did our best, we had technical difficulties that night, and the episode didn’t turn out like we hoped.
It’s funny to go back and watch live streams from five years ago. So much has changed since then. The original 2020 show was split into two live streams as some viewers reported that the Facebook feed was freezing, so we stopped and re-started. Additionally, the original show was live and off the cuff, and was interrupted several times. This new edit has all the epilepsy content in one stream. As such, Adventures in Epilepsy episode has never been presented as one cohesive video before.
Hear all about missing out on a free U2 concert, having to leave movies and shows early with no refunds, and nearly walking into traffic! Also hear the lighter side of seizures. We learned early on, if you can’t laugh at these things, you’re doomed.
Join us tonight as we educate and illuminate living with epilepsy. Though a lot has changed since 2020, the experiences remain raw and true. Health has improved since then, which we also touch on with additional narration recorded in 2025.
Jen herself appeared in this episode, as good a sport as any. Good friend and author Aaron Lebold joined the show that night to discuss his own experiences with epilepsy, which he seems to have grown out of in his adult life. Rob Daniels from Visions in Sound and Kevin Simister from Buried On Mars also joined the show at the end to say hello. Though most of their parts were cut to shorten and focus the episode (some unboxings and other outdated content were cut), we always appreciate their support.
1. Prince. The royal single-monikered one was born epileptic and suffered a lot of taunting at school. He obviously came a long way from there
2. AdamHorovitz. This Beastie Boy is sensitive to flashing lights, which I am sure they use in their stage show. It certainly didn’t seem to hold him back from massive success.
3. NeilYoung. He was medicated for epilepsy as a child, but didn’t like the side effects of the meds, which can go all over the spectrum depending on you and your meds. Neil chose to make lifestyle changes instead, and has lived without medication since! And, obviously, rocked the world. Good on you Neil.
There were three of you, aged 17-20. You were playing some kind of flashy game on your phones. It was causing my epileptic wife distress. She asked you to stop. She told you she had epilepsy and could have a seizure. What did you do? You angled your phones at her, and she had a seizure.
That’s assault.
You are lucky my wife does not want to call the police.
You are lucky I was not present, or I would have called the police.
RECORD STORE TALES #1084: Ghost’s No Cell-Phone Zone
Those of us over a certain age, don’t we all long for the old days? Wouldn’t it be nice to see an arena full of cigarette lighters instead of cell phones for a change? Ozzy used to scream to the audience: “Let me see your cigarette lighters!” Does anyone ever command an audience to raise their cell phones?
I kid, of course. The real issue is that some bands today, such as Ghost, don’t want to see a show being filmed and uploaded to YouTube. I get it. Bootlegging is far more ubiquitous than it was when I was in my 20s. Back then, if you had the balls, you could try to a record a show yourself, like my sister’s friend did with the Barenaked Ladies in the 90s with a mono microcassette recorder. They were able to get a few unreleased BNL cult classics on tape that way. It sounded like shit, but they had it. It was easy to sneak in the tape recorder, but you had to flip the tape and make sure you had fresh batteries in there. Not to mention, you had to actually own a small tape recorder, which not everyone did! Today virtually everyone has a cell phone, and virtually every cell phone has a hi-def camera built in. You can even record in stereo on some.
Presumably for this reason, Ghost have initiated a No Cell-Phone Zone at their concerts.
The comments on this news were predictable. “I have no problem with this,” said one troll, “since I have no desire to see Ghost.”
What about someone like me? I am a full-time caregiver. My wife has uncontrolled epilepsy and would not be at a concert of any kind with me. I get a call, I leave. That’s it. I need my phone.
Here’s how it works.
Upon entry, your phone will be placed in a Yondr pouch, and locked. You take the pouch and phone with you, pocket it, and enjoy the show. After the show, you can unlock the pouch at an unlocking station. How many of these are available, and where they are exactly, is not clear from the Ghost press release. As long as these are plentiful and easy to access, this situation is not too bad.
If I got an emergency call mid-show, I could feel the vibrations, but I would not be able to answer. However I would be able to step out, unlock my phone, and call back.
If the call turned out to be another air-duct cleaning company, or another scam, I would be pissed off that I exited the show to check my phone. I wouldn’t have a choice. If it rings, it could be an emergency. That’s just my life. That’s just how my life works and has worked for 15 years.
Although this scheme is something that seems new and therefore scary and threatening, it does seem to be workable. You can feel your phone vibrate through the pouch, and still know your phone is getting a call. What happens after that is up to you. In my case, I would need to know what it was, and chances are, I’ll miss a song because of some stupid scam call. In most cases, people will not check their phones at all, and just keep enjoying the show.
No cell phones waving in the air in front of you. It doesn’t seem so bad.
The main factors are two: the unlocking stations must be numerous, and easy to access. Otherwise I’d have problems with this plan.
I’m cautiously on Ghost’s side with this one. It will be interesting to see which bands adopt this, and who are opposed.
I’ve often said that the best day of my life was August 31, 2008.
While that was a truly awesome day, was it actually the best?
I think every day since has been pretty special. The fact that I found my one and only, and grown deeper in love since, is a pretty cool thing. We’ve survived everything thrown at us so far. Death, illness, and all manners of stress have not taken us down. Broken bones, bruised faces, and bad bad days. There were mornings I felt like I could not go on. She picked me up, and we just kept going.
When we met, all was hunky dory. Well, not quite…I was miserable in my dead-end job at the Record Store, but we had no health challenges to speak of. We were dating (sort of) long distance, with her in Brampton and me in Kitchener. I picked her up in Brampton on a lot of Friday nights. She took the train home on Monday mornings. For three years! We made it work. Our families got along. Four months after we met, and with her support, I finally quit that terrible job. I have not regretted it for one moment. I have said it before, but I don’t know if I would have had the confidence to quit if not for Jen.
We knew it was just a matter of time before we had to make it official. We got engaged. With six months to go before the wedding, I started noticing signs that something was wrong. Jen and I loved played Nintendo Wii, and she was very competitive. So was I! When I noticed her spacing out during one of her favourite games, and having no memory of the previous few minutes, I knew it was time to call the doctor. Jen, being the stubborn girl that I love, didn’t want to go, so I called her mom and dad. She was diagnosed with epilepsy, which is what I had suspected.
So say this illness has changed our lives would be an understatement. It would be safe to say that epilepsy has impacted every single aspect of our lives.
It’s only made us stronger, smarter, and more devoted. Maybe we can’t go on movie dates like other couples, and sometimes the days get terribly stressful. But here we are. As committed as we were in that church, on that day in 2008.
RECORD STORE TALES #1075: Epileptics Will Say the Darndest Things
As a person with seizures that cannot be controlled by medication, my wife Jen has an interesting life. The seizures are not as bad as they were several years ago, but they still happen regularly a couple times a week. Lately they’d been pretty mild. There was a series of them recently that left her unconscious for hours, and she fell three times that night (twice off the bed), but those nights are unusual. We always must remain vigilant, and pay attention to any signs of coming seizures. My job is to make sure she’s safe and doesn’t fall or hurt herself.
What is a seizure? Unusual brain activity can be triggered by flashing lights, or even stress. This causes Jen to lose consciousness, and sometimes flail her limbs about. If she’s standing, she falls. She makes utterances that sound like anything from gibberish to laughing to choking. Worse things happen too. It’s scary. Not gonna lie. Some people are surprised how calm I seem when they hit. It’s just experience.
We have learned in our almost 20 years together that you have to have a sense of humour. When funny things happen, they happen and it should be acknowledged. For example, after a seizure, Jen’s vision can be extremely distorted and magnified. She can see details that I can’t, and sometimes things appear incredibly close. So, when she stared at my nose and proclaimed it “pointy and triangle-shaped”, I had to laugh. That has to be written down and remembered, because that’s objectively funny.
Recently Jen had an “aura”. Not quite a seizure, but with similar effects. Jen is conscious, but in a daze, with similar sensory amplification. It can be scary for her so I like to just rub her shoulders and talk her through it. On this particular night, the aura struck just before a hockey game. I tried to have Jen engage with me, instead of staring off at something scary in the distance.
“Who’s playing tonight?” I asked, gesturing to the TV.
“Team,” she responded simply. It was the best she could do under the circumstances.
“I know our team [the Leafs] are playing tonight, but who are they playing against?”
“Shitty,” she answered. I chuckled despite the circumstances.
“Montreal?” I asked her. The Canadiens are her most hated team.
“Other shitty,” she replied.
“Oh! Ottawa!” I laughed.
She nodded in the affirmative.
And so, I’m writing this down so we’ll always remember. You have to laugh! Yes, the aura left her dazed for hours afterwards, but it is important to find the humour in it. You can’t let this disease beat you like that.
So laugh! Find the funny things in life and remember we’re still breathing.
RECORD STORE TALES #1069: A Tale of Three Seizures
It happens every few months. Clusters of seizures, wreaking havoc on our mental health and chaos in the house.
We had a great weekend, but a weekend without seizures of some kind is very rare for us. We made it all the way to Sunday morning without an event. Although I didn’t witness them all, I counted three seizures on Sunday morning.
I figure there was one before 2:00 AM. I woke up around then, and I found my Lego trumpet player smashed. Jen had no memory of doing it, but she did manage to pick up most of the pieces and put them all aside somehow. The final missing piece was found in the morning. They only way we know a seizure happened was because the Lego was smashed, returned, and she had no memory of it. It’s a bit like piecing a mystery together from the evidence left behind.
The second seizure happened before 5:00 AM. I am certain that Jen could not get into the bed, because I was sprawled over the whole mattress. I went looking for Jen. Not on the couch. Not on the spare bed. Not on the parents’ bed. I lit up all the lights in the house and called for her. Not in the bathroom. That’s all the rooms. I went back into the spare room and she was on the floor. I assumed she went to bed in the spare room due to lack of options, had a seizure and fell off the bed. It was very difficult to wake her up and get her into a proper bed. She was uninjured.
Third seizure was the one I witnessed. I was outside working on the porch. In between songs, I heard unpleasant noises coming from the bedroom window. I looked in and Jen was convulsing. It took her approximately three hours to come back to reality after that seizure. And a lot of cleanup that I won’t get into. Suffice to say it was a tiring and difficult morning for me.
For Jen it was a day of sleeping. She spent most of it in bed. I spent the morning watching two of the greatest sequels (with two of the greatest sequel soundtracks) of all time: The Empire Strikes Back, and The Wrath of Khan. I wasn’t in the mood to be outdoors. I wanted to be in where I could better monitor Jen’s recovery.
Incidentally, we have a pretty good idea of what caused the seizures this time. She missed her meds the previous day. That’ll do it.
We try not to let these things ruin our weekends. We had a great five days at the lake, regardless of Sunday being a writeoff for Jen. We made the best of it. We had a tomahawk steak for dinner, but I was just wiped out afterwards and called it an early night.
Nobody said it was easy. But we don’t quit either. We don’t give up on each other. We’ve been through enough this year already. This wasn’t even a roadblock or an obstacle in our lives. Once it’s over and done with, all that’s left is to write the Record Store Tale.
In my 20s and early 30s, I used to think I would love nothing more than I love music.
It’s an easy conclusion when people let you down, but a good song never would.
When love hits you for real, everything changes. You have to redefine everything. What once seemed crucially important now seems trivial. What used to have your undivided attention now competes with something nearer and dearer to the heart. It happens. There’s nothing wrong with that; in fact it’s a good thing to have in your life. I don’t think Paul Stanley will mind that there’s something more important to me now than a collection of songs.
Love is heaven, and love is hell.
Love is hell when the one you care for is sick and it kills you inside every time to see them hurt.
Love is hell when their suffering stabs you in the heart and leaves you in agony.
Love is hell when there’s nothing you can do about it.
Epilepsy is hell.
It’s hell for the person who has it and it’s hell for the people who care.
Epilepsy is hell when you see someone in a seizure and can do nothing until it has run its course.
Epilepsy is hell when someone falls and you’re too late to stop it.
Epilepsy leaves marks. Sometimes, you don’t even know where they came from. “You must have fallen,” I said to Jen. But when? How could she not know? Purple bruises decorate her chest, her arms, even her face. People see bruises and they judge. They assume. They look at you funny.
I would have done anything to catch her fall. But how can I when I can’t be everywhere all the time?
The facial bruise stares back at me, and it makes me turn my head. I can’t look at it. It’s horrible. It makes me want to break down and cry. How could this have happened? But there’s nothing I could have done. I wasn’t there and she has no memory of it. We can only guess and sometimes that leads the imagination to come up with far worse, far scarier scenarios.
Even when the seizure is over, the afterburn can go on for hours. Sometimes it’s like sleepwalking. She’s completely unaware of what’s going on, but she’s able to unlock a door and leave the house. It’s happened before, at least three times. Once I found her wandering the hallway, bumping into a wall. Once she left the house in the middle of the night and I only realized she was gone when the phone rang. She was trying to buzz herself back into the building, terrified. She had no idea how she got out there. The third time, I noticed the house had gone quiet and she was nowhere to be found. I discovered her walking in a daze up King St., in the cold, with no shoes on.
I’m usually able to stop her. No mean feat; she’s strong.
Yesterday was awful.
I was working on a project. I heard her coughing, and I ran out into the living room. She was fine, just something went down the wrong pipe. I admonished myself for panicking. But then, 10 minutes later, there was more noise, like mumbling. I ran back into the living room to find her in a full-blown seizure. Her lips were blue and she was making unintelligible sounds. It passed quickly and she laid down on the couch to rest, completely zonked. Then the worst came. The next sound I heard was the door opening. Sure enough, she was on her way out again, unaware of her situation.
I don’t know how, but I somehow managed to race out there and position myself between her and the already open doorway. It is like a blur to me now and I have no idea how I did that. It was teleportation, or a miracle. I slammed and locked the door and kept myself jammed against it. Even in her dazed state, she kept unlocking the door and reaching for the knob. She kept repeating, “Sweety, I have to go,” but could not respond to questions. She had no idea she had no shoes on. I stood there in front of that door for a solid 10 to 15 minutes, as she tried to move me out of her way. I resisted, but she is strong, and I was terrified that if she pulled at me and I didn’t budge, that she would fall backwards and hurt herself worse.
The neurologist wants me to try and get video of these kinds of episodes. How??
I struggled, wrestling with her, trying to keep her hands away from the door knob. She cried in pain when her wrist twisted in my hands. It was the worst feeling in the world — for me.
After what seemed like millennia, she grew weary or perhaps forgot what it was she was doing. She went back to the bed, to sleep it off. It took almost three hours of sleep for her to return fully to normal. Or at least, whatever passes for “normal” when this is the life you have.
My “normal” now is a constant state of alert. I am always listening. I have to be. It’s a constant state of anxiety that rarely subsides. It is the life I live now. It’s like when the Starship Enterprise is at yellow alert. I’m at yellow alert almost all the time. I go to red alert when she’s in danger. Red alert happens every few weeks. It seems like I’m rarely in condition green. We have a system where she’s supposed to text me every 30 minutes when she’s out alone, which helps keep me calm. It’s not perfect but what else can I do? You could say “just don’t worry about things you can’t control”, but after 10 years of conditioning, my nerves are shot. It’s hard to make a plan for your night, let alone your life, when this happens.
But here’s the thing.
Love is hell, but the truth is, it is also heaven. The good always outweighs the bad. I would not trade my place with anyone. I am where I want to be. With the person I love. Through good and bad. Sickness and health. That’s what we swore to, and that’s the way it is. If this is my life, so be it. I just have to learn to live with it, and I’m trying every day to get a little better at that.
A mid-afternoon swim on Saturday turned into a sleepless Sunday night. The sunburn wasn’t that bad, but we lost track of time in the water and my back was really red. Saturday night I was OK, but Sunday I was not. I feel asleep with no shirt on, on top of the covers, with the air conditioning blasting right onto my back. I woke up in the middle of the night with the worst chill I ever had in my life.
I’ve never had the shivers so bad. It took a Visions In Sound sweatshirt, lots of blankets, and a Jen, but a couple hours later I was warmed up again. I haven’t felt a chill like that since the flu of 2009. I hid under the covers and was sweating for the rest of the night. The lack of restful sleep meant an exhausted Monday.
Birthday Monday, didn’t have any solid plans. Having dinner with my folks was a possibility but I was not feeling well from the lack of sleep and sunburn. Maybe it is age, but it was the second worst sunburn I’ve ever inflicted upon myself. And it was my own fault too; no sunscreen. I’d forgotten how rotten a sunburn can make you feel. Combine that with the effects from the chill the night before, and I was in no mood to be social. A quiet night at home would do.
Except it wouldn’t.
Jen went out in the afternoon to the mall. I wish she wouldn’t spend so long there. We’ve had so many seizures there, usually at the end of her day when she was getting ready to head home. When I started getting confusing text messages from her that didn’t make sense, I knew that it was happening again. I happened to be finished work at that exact moment, so I jumped in the car. It took 10-15 phone calls before she finally picked up. During the seizure she lost her groceries and mobility device. What a nightmare. She recovered all her stuff but…wow.
Not the worst birthday I ever had, but definitely in the bottom five.
The one thing I really appreciated is all the birthday messages. They were the best gift, but the one I really loved was this one from Darr Erickson. Darr wins the 2021 round with this champion of a comment:
Thank you Darr, and to everyone else who wished me a happy birthday this year. And even if you didn’t, thank you anyway, because I know you were thinking it.
This Friday on the LeBrain Train, we’ll have the real celebration. Harrison the Mad Metal Man has chosen to celebrate his own birth on Friday, so it’s a double party! It will be a list show with the theme: Songs that make our skin vibrate! We have have a full panel as well as drop-in guests. Spoiler alert: Brent Jensen will be there! (And he always shows up!)
Help us this Friday to make it a much better celebration. Hope to see you then.
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