HUMAN WRECKAGE

A Shopping Trip with a (Wait for It) Punchline

All I wanted for Christmas last December was Bob Dylan’s latest book The Philosophy of Modern Song. And because Ann knows me well, she chose Prisoners of the Castle by Ben Macintyre for me too. Ann conducted that particular shopping expedition in Audreys Books downtown on Jasper Avenue. And while she was in the store she spotted a fine gift for our grandchildren, a laminated wall map of the world.

Audreys is Edmonton’s premier independent bookseller. I was delighted to discover it when I first arrived in town 33 years ago. I’ve supported Audreys ever since; I make a concerted effort to avoid purchasing books from Amazon or Canada’s national retail chain Indigo which seems to be concentrating more on housewares these days. Audreys has supported me as well. I’ve held two successful book launches on its premises and it stocks my two most recent titles.

The wall map was a hit, colourful and educational. Ann’s son Harry hung it downstairs in his basement in the kids’ playroom. He later mentioned, a tad too casually, I thought, that similar maps of Canada and the solar system would make fine additions to the wall décor. Ann and I took the hint.

Colditz Castle was the fortress in which the Wehrmacht remanded its most difficult POWs, troublemakers and escape artists, nearly all of whom were commissioned officers. Macintyre’s compellingly readable book is an objective history and a very human story. The most sympathetic protagonist is a former schoolteacher and an Anglophile, a German officer. I said to Ann about the text, “You may not care about this stuff, but if you start reading you won’t be able to stop.” One of the prisoners who passed through Colditz was David Stirling, founder of Britain’s legendary Special Air Service (SAS). While reading Prisoners of the Castle I was thrilled to learn that Macintyre had earlier written a book about the SAS, Rogue Heroes.

The tide of the Second World War on land began its slow turn in the Western Desert. Blitzkrieg (lightning war) tactics required passable roads (the plural is crucial) for armour and mechanized infantry, and clearly demarcated front lines. Conditions in the North African theatre broke Germany’s audacious European warfare model, they shifted like the temperatures between day and night and the sandy terrain (Russia’s botched February 2022 invasion of Ukraine presents a couple of pertinent parallels: a single decent highway and spring-like weather rendering the surrounding terrain so muddy as to be near impassable). The British 8th Army augmented by Commonwealth troops, mainly Anzac, prevented Afrika Korps General Irwin Rommel from reaching the Suez and occupying Egypt. Securing Africa’s Mediterranean coast after the disasters of Dunkirk and Norway provided the Allies a launching pad for the successful invasions of Sicily and Italy.

This dusty theatre of operations looked very neato to a boy in grade one watching The Rat Patrol on a second-hand portable television in his basement in the late 60s. Sand dunes! Jeeps with mounted heavy machine guns! Half-tracks and Tiger tanks! Bullet-riddled Nazis falling from great heights, roofs and watchtowers! My father, a veteran, sometimes sat with me to watch Sergeant Troy and his commandos wreak their havoc. During commercial breaks he’d patiently explain that the American network television show was historically, laughably and painfully, inaccurate. He’d describe the unconventional tactics of the British Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) and the SAS; their exploits being the basis of The Rat Patrol’s cartoony take on desert warfare. We watched movies broadcast on the local television stations too: The Desert Rats starring Richard Burton and James Mason as Rommel (Baby, won’t you take me back: Ann and I screened it last Saturday night); The Desert Fox (Mason as Rommel again); Raid on Rommel (Burton again); and Tobruk - sort of a Hollywood big budget Rat Patrol featuring co-stars Rock Hudson and George Peppard.

These disparate desires combined to bring Ann and me back to Audreys last week: maps and Macintyre. I made certain to greet the gentleman who will likely facilitate my next book launch by name, although God knows where he or I may be two years hence (Of Course You Did has done well by my standards and I now regret not staging a formal launch, but the lingering affects of the pandemic were easy camouflage for my utter lack of confidence). I plucked the lone copy of Rogue Heroes from the military history shelf. While Ann browsed the basement bargain books I went in search of myself: The Garage Sailor was displayed cover out and Of Course You Did’s slim, pale blue spine stood out enough beside it to catch a reader’s eye. On the other hand, they were still in stock. No sales.

The maps were located on the main floor in the rear of the store, that arcane corner where all the shelf signs include the “studies.” They were rolled and stowed in a red wire rack. A header card displayed the assortment of available subjects in miniature. Audreys had the two we were seeking, Canada and the solar system. While Ann reviewed their specs, I noticed a National Geographic map of the universe. Now, that gave me pause. What was its scale? Kurt Vonnegut: “The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.” How accurate and up to date could it be? I know that when I look at the sun I’m seeing it as it was a little less than nine minutes ago; everything is relative to the speed of light. And I thought of those Old World maps showing the edge of the known world and monsters beyond.

The gentleman at the till was older, although not as old as Ann and me. A new employee, Audreys is the kind of place where customers will notice turnover because there’s hardly any. He said to us, “These are the first maps I’ve had to ring up.” Evidently scanning a bar code adhered to a convex surface is fussy business and so he had time to note their subjects.

I said, “You have a map of the universe back there too.”

He said, “Really?”

I said, “Yeah. And I need to know something.”

“What’s that,” he asked me, “the price?”

“No! How’d you fit it in the store?”  

 meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source conspicuous consumption since 2013. The novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com for links to purchase it in your preferred format from various retailers. Visit Audreys at www.audreys.ca.

THE MUSTER POINT PROJECT

“Handsome”

I love Chuck Berry’s music; the Rolling Stones were my introduction. His songs were vernacular poetry, wordplay calculated for mass contemporary appeal yet destined to remain relatable decades later. They always told a story and they always had a lyrical hook: There was a cool young whippersnapper/Who used to love to run and play/But the draft board got him/They inducted him today/It wasn’t me/Must have been somebody else/It wasn’t me. 

A Berry song that has always stuck with me is “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man” because of its baseball verse: Two-three the count with nobody on/He hit a high fly into the stands/Rounding third and headed for home was a brown-eyed handsome man. I don’t care how many pitches a great hitter fouls off, you can’t have a two-three count in modern baseball. In 1886 a full count would’ve been four-three, but I digress. Then again, Berry’s brown-eyed handsome man did leave his mark throughout all of human history; Venus de Milo lost both her arms wrestling another woman to catch and win him and by the close of the song, he, originally written as a brown-skinned handsome man, is cleared of any and all charges by a smitten court. He is free. Needless to say, there’s a whole heck of a lot going on in this catchy allegory.

The Globe and Mail two weeks ago ran a story by its music critic examining the state of contemporary pop. The compositional consequences of streaming in an era of TikTok attention spans are brevity and lack of traditional structure. Taking it to the bridge is best left to the likes of James Brown. I flagged the story for my friend Kevin who writes and records as the Muster Point Project (his latest single is “I Don’t Mind”). We met 30 years ago in the Canada Safeway advertising department (Kevin designed the cover of my first novel, Murder Incorporated). About an hour later I sent him some nonsense verse called “Stream This!” I was thinking anything by the Ramones or “Rip This Joint” by the Rolling Stones, short and fast. He ran with the joke. Another hour later he replied with a demo. He wondered too if I had anything else. Seriously?

I try to read a book about baseball every spring. There’s a quickie one about the Montreal Expos on my night table now. Some old habits are so hard to break. The outdoor chore cap I keep by the back door has switched sports (the Canadiens were done before Grey Cup Day anyway). Berry’s legendary slugger crossed my mind. Stories need twists, words can be twisted and catchphrases can be turned around. If I say, “Leave it to me” and you say, “Leave it to Geoff,” chances are we're talking two very different things.

I sent Kevin an untitled set of lyrics. He wrote music for them and named our song “Handsome.” I never told him, but that peculiar synchronicity blew my mind. Kevin decided the chorus needed brass. Because, you know, Kevin thinks big, always has, and, anyway, it never hurts to get a quote, he got in touch with the London-based Kick Horns who’ve recorded parts for the Stones and Eric Clapton. They liked our song, they got the gag, and they really got Kevin’s dummy horn arrangement. You can listen to the evolving demo here on SoundCloud.

The Muster Point area on SoundCloud features a few of our other recent collaborations, including “Stream This!,” “I Love That Song,” and “Grub Street.” Don’t forget your Muster Point merchandise either! Kevin’s debut album is available as an 8-track tape (I believe a shared offbeat sense of humour cemented our friendship). Certified and genuine Muster Point Project music, including “I Don’t Mind,” can be streamed on Apple Music and Spotify. 

 meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of chartbusting hits since 2013. The novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com for links to purchase it in your preferred format from various retailers.

NONSENSE VERSE

Housework After Midnight

I stay up mopping after midnight

I use a flashlight

That’s what I do, always mopping

After midnight, cleaning up for you

While I was vac-a-q-ming

An attachment whispered to me

Wafting on an upfloat

I heard a silent dust mote

Say I sound like Arlo Guthrie, that hippie

He rhymed motorcycle and pickle

Pronunciation not too fickle

And just like both the Trudeaus

Who lived upon the Rideau

The kid ain’t worth a nickel, a hammer or a sickle

Well I’ve raised the carpet pile

Singing Patsy all the while

Baseboards are drudgery

And I should let the angel be

Time to wash the kitchen tile, shine it up with style       

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of execrable verse since 2013. Apologies to Patsy Cline. The novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com for links to purchase it in your preferred format from various retailers.

SAINTS PRESERVE US

Needless Complications

Oh (insert non-gender-specific noun here)!

Netflix last weekend reimagined the world of entertainment. It streamed live comedy on a Saturday night. The event was a Chris Rock special. The comedian was the host of last year’s Oscar ceremonies which took place in March. You may recall a tame joke careening so sideways that one paragraph in his eventual obituary was able to write itself on the spot.

I didn’t watch the appropriately timed Selective Outrage. I didn’t even know it was on. Contemporary comedy hasn’t, with few exceptions, really resonated with me: The human condition is the constant and better jokes about our absurd state of affairs have been made before. I’m a laughter libertarian, nothing is inappropriate or off limits. Oh my, offense is entirely subjective. And, anyway, with few exceptions, my friends, family and colleagues have always made me laugh harder than any seasoned pro could.

Celebrity sissy fights don’t mean nothing to me. Monday The Globe and Mail published a review of Chris Rock’s Selective Outrage Netflix special. Normally I would’ve just turned the broadsheet page over to the national weather map, but the word “toxic” in the headline caught my eye. The real hook was a mysterious portmanteau neologism in the sub-head: “misogynoir.”

I thought, Qu’est-ce que fuck?

The critic, apparently more woke than a colicky baby boy on Viagra, complained that Rock’s riffing on his schoolyard spat “reeked of misogynoir.” The term was then defined parenthetically: “misogyny against Black women.” A free society is a dynamic society. Thank Dog for that, but sometimes it’s hard to keep abreast of changes, cultural and linguistic. Black women used to be African-American women and before that, black women, no cap. I never thought an ugly blanketing term like “misogyny” would need to be quantified or refined, specialized and personalized like an Amazon algorithmic shopping suggestion.

Does this mean “Brown Sugar” must be consigned to the dustbin more than 50 years after its debut on Rolling Stones Records because it constitutes misogynoir? Could it not merely be a louche and lascivious song about the sleazy underbelly of pre-Emancipation New Orleans? “I got 99 problems, bitch ain’t one,” is the only Jay-Z lyric I know. Seems like a compliment, but then again, “bitch” is definitely a misogynistic pejorative when I use it. Is it even fair to infer the bitch in question is Black?

Portions of contemporary society are hypersensitive, hair trigger. Prickly activists, academics, pundits default to outrage, so much so that even a couch potato can move fast and break things with a few keystrokes. I’m qualified to write about words because I used them frequently, almost daily. I’m qualified to write about arts and culture because I’ve consumed them my entire life. But I’m not sure that I know what I used to know any more. Are Ralph Ellison and Colson Whitehead great American writers or are they now great Black writers? The distinction makes no difference to me because I don’t believe it’s that important. They write what they write about and my life’s been that much richer for reading their prose. I’m not entirely comfortable with Sharpies being taken to lines that are slowly and relentlessly being erased. Did misogynoir really need to be coined for clarity? The root word is definitive, an absolute.    

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of etymology since 2013. The novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com for links to purchase it in your preferred format from various retailers.