A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Stuck In Transit 

About forty minutes outside of Edmonton I felt the WestJet flight begin its descent. My ears popped. Ann and I had been aloft for four and a half hours. The Crooked 9 beckoned. Our own bed. More importantly, a merciful cigarette before we collected our checked luggage. Then the pilot announced that WS 619 might be diverted to Calgary because another aircraft was disabled on the YEG runway. Fortunately, he added, no one was hurt.

I didn’t care about other people in that moment. Oblivious to the elderly woman seated by the window and sharing my armrest and the litters of children in rows in front, behind and beside us, I said, “Fuck!” Possibly a titch too audibly. Our homecoming was already a week behind schedule.

We had flown Air Canada earlier in the month to Prince Edward Island. Our intention was to spend eight days with my sister Anne and her husband Al at their farmhouse overlooking Darnley Basin (the view from our bedroom window, including the billowing curtains, was essentially Wyeth’s Wind from the Sea) in Baltic, about ten minutes from the village of Kensington. Ann and I had not been east for a few years. Our national airline, a former Crown Corporation, blessed Ann and me with an extended stay.

You ain’t nuthin’ but a waitress in the sky. Evolving nomenclature has rendered the Replacements and Coffee, Tea or Me? moot. Air Canada’s flight attendants walked off the job protesting ten months of fruitless collective bargaining. Their union then defied a federal back-to-work order. Ann and I got jammed on departure day. The sticky issue was, in industry jargon, ground pay. We did not realize that flight attendants are akin to disc jockeys, paid for air time only. To us, should you be sporting company laundry, whether you’re in an airport concourse, a jetway or a jet, you should be paid for your time. Too many jobs come with hidden duties outside of the official Human Remains description. We’ve all been there. And the union had a lever: domestic travel demand has exploded due to the sorry state of affairs south of the Medicine Line in Trumpistan. It’s no crime to play the hand you’re dealt.

We were inconvenienced. And discombobulated because Ann and I always flip our switches on the day before we’re scheduled to leave someplace else. We start packing. But we were also serene (a state I visit too infrequently). There was no hotel room to vacate. No panic. Just more time to be had on a front porch overlooking a beautiful garden featuring trees named for my brother (Bob’s ashes in the root ball) and my father. Anne said our mother might get a crab (Ha!). My sister and I are the last of our immediate family. Old stories retold from new perspectives; time has passed, a generation is passing. Careening conversations, rants and wit amid sublime company. Al the scientist concocting Margaritas and Corpse Reviver No. 2s at five o’clock.

It's not hard to be a good guest, of course it really helps if you’re welcomed. Ann and I have a strategy. We contribute any way we can without disrupting our hosts’ established routines. Ann cooks. I clean. We try to blend in, otherwise we stay out of the way. We never turn up with special needs, rockstar riders. Diet? Yeah, we enjoy eating. Let us look after this restaurant meal or grocery order. No demands. No complaints.

Ann is the rational half of our dual dynamic. The sensible one. Following the pilot’s announcement, she checked the WestJet app on her iPhone. All YEG outbound flights had been delayed by an hour at least. However, the airport authority declared that the runway would be operational by nine p.m. The time showing on Ann’s phone was eight-fifty. We were cutting another unexpected and much more unpleasant stranding awfully close. 

Most of my advertising career as a production manager was illusory: I under-promised and over-delivered. I suppose my three failed marriages were the reverse. I asked a passing stewardess (Sorry!) if she’d heard any insider information from the cockpit. So polite, so gracious, such an enchanting know-nothing smile. That cigarette dangling in front of me had become some sort of twisted cat toy. An additional hour to dwell on an unavailable nicotine hit. Then I thought, “If I was running Edmonton International, I’d broadcast 'runway clear by nine' knowing my emergency crew would and could do the job by eight, eight-thirty. Give us all a little space to maneuver, unlike these expensive last-minute economy seats.”

Hitchcock never made a movie this suspenseful.        

                                      

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is out now in multiple formats. Visit my revitalized companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer*. Of Course You Did is still available.

*Avoid Amazon Canada as the pricing is beyond fucked. I’ve no explanation. Interested Canadian readers should buy directly from FriesenPress or other online vendors.

NONSENSE VERSE

The Long View 

Bushnell :: Bushmills

Farsight :: Insight

Focused :: Unfocused

Crystal vision :: Double vision

Stare into the distance

The lens doesn’t matter

Stereo :: Mono

Landscape :: Hellscape

Exterior :: Interior

What’s that :: What’s next

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is out now in multiple formats. Visit my revitalized companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer* (Just between you and me, SOC has been an utter stiff). Of Course You Did is still available.

*Avoid Amazon Canada as the pricing is beyond fucked. I’ve no explanation. Interested Canadian readers should buy directly from FriesenPress or other online vendors.

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Date Night 

Ann leaned her shoulder against mine to whisper, “We’re surrounded by whiteheads.”

I’d been peering around, taking in the tableau. Our fellow theatregoers were all getting on. Some struggled with mobility issues. Others were too heavy for their height. The theatre itself was beautiful, brick walls crisscrossed with massive wooden beams anchored with iron joints. Our seats near the top were very close to the stage. I was thinking stairway railings were right up there with cup and mug handles, epitomes of functional design. I was reminded of the gallery of grey seats which hung at one end of the old Montreal Forum. Didn’t matter if the person in the row in front of you was wearing a stovepipe hat, the slope was almost vertical. A long way straight down.

Ann continued, “We fit right in, I guess, but I don’t feel as if we do.”

The play we saw was Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple which debuted on Broadway in 1965. The Edmonton Journal graced this local production with a rave review. That surprised me because the Journal these days pays more attention to Kim Kardashian press releases promoting her signature products which aspire to the stratosphere currently inhabited by Goop and orbiting vaginal stones – I digress. You know the play’s premise: Oscar and Felix, best friends, one slovenly the other fastidious, both divorced, attempt to live together.

I came of age in the early 70s watching the television sitcom on a black and white portable TV with tinfoil scrunched onto the rabbit ears. Jack Klugman played Oscar. Tony Randall played Felix. Oscar had a pretty sweet life, I thought. Drinking, smoking, gambling and writing about professional sports in New York City. There was at least a decade of delay before I finally saw the 1968 film starring Walter Matthau (Oscar) and Jack Lemmon (Felix).

The Odd Couple trifecta realized in reverse order. Enjoying Wednesday evening’s performance (I can’t name the actors, I didn’t keep a playbill), it struck me that I was now older than Simon’s characters and had lived through similar life experiences. I understand the script had been updated somewhat to reflect the mores of 2025 although the only difference I could discern was more slapstick, enough to make clear to the overly touchy and sensitive contingent that The Odd Couple is a comedy of its time. But, you know, a good joke or witty remark however old or whatever its subject needs no apology.

One aspect of The Odd Couple disturbed me, triggered me, made me cringe. Felix’s irrational compulsion to clean, straighten and tidy – all ups – summoned the ghost of my big brother Bob. He nicknamed me “Heloise” after the syndicated columnist who proffered helpful hints to homemakers long before social media life hack memes. It was not a compliment, more an observation. My friend Stats Guy still zings that sobriquet at me from time to time. Other friends call me “Martha Stewart.” Now that Ann and I are grandparents my inner Felix is in overdrive, turbo-charged: I’m no whitehead, I AM FELIX! It’s no gift to see yourself as others might.

The Varscona Theatre is a nondescript building. Its exterior suggests a Nissen hut, something you’d see in a war movie. Its interior is something else, done right, seed money well directed. It’s a staple of the Old Strathcona Theatre District, home to the Fringe Festival each August. Adjacent back alleys have been repaved and power-washed into inviting patio or meeting places amid the dumpsters. The exteriors of the surrounding walls feature murals or flaked and fading ads for long-forgotten commercial brands and services. There’s a jazz club nearby which backs onto Canadian Pacific Railway end-of-steel. A perpendicular boundary of the district is Whyte Avenue, one of those hip main drags whose vibrancy ebbs and flows with playoff hockey and the red or black ink in Alberta’s financial ledger, still too dependent on the price of oil. Whyte Avenue, like Fremont or Bourbon, is one of those streets that look better at night. A film director shooting on location would want to firehose the pavement, reflect all of the lights and signage in a black mirror. Moodiness to evoke either glamour or noir, script dependent.

Ann and I shared a light supper before the performance, an array of tapas. We’ve found that when we dine out, even if it’s just a pub lunch, the nature of our conversation changes when we sit facing one another. There’s no space for the commonplace at a table for two. Upcoming appointments, chores and errands give way to speculation about the fate of those ancient but comfy chairs in the den. What about a sectional instead? New furniture would be different, disruptive – we’d have to dispose of the old stuff and I’d have to repaint the room. Nightmarish, and anyway I've no complaints, always been content. Off topic, perhaps another trip? Where would you like to go?

Bodega serves the type of food Ann cannot prepare in our kitchen although I’m certain scrubbing her used pots and pans would be a lead-pipe cinch for my scour set. It faces the Princess Theatre across Whyte, shuttered since the pandemic. A late night showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show still camps it up on the marquee. Nestled between The Wee Book Inn and the gussied up Strathcona Hotel, Bodega occupies what has been a seemingly cursed, transient space since Elephant & Castle shut its taps something like a decade ago.

Elephant & Castle wasn’t just an overseas Tube station. It was a chain of English-style pubs in Canada. The Newcastle Brown tasted fine in Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary and Edmonton and wherever else. A reliable second choice or fallback. Conversely, if you were randomly teleported into any Elephant & Castle location, you’d have no idea where you were in Canada, an awfully big place. Bodega’s décor blurs lines, a mix of Catholic mission and Inquisition dungeon. Had Zorro wandered in looking to unwind with a bottle of red, I’d not’ve been surprised. The cunning fox would also have a cheroot clamped between his teeth, not that he could light it. Snuff that out, Don Diego, Cardinal Biggles has just arrived with bylaw enforcement. And they’re incensed. Bodega has no brittle surfaces, no fashionably modern minimalist pretension. Ann and I didn’t have to raise our voices as high as our flights of fancy.

We stole a moment in the dirt and gravel parking lot by the jazz club, shared a cigarette before the short drive home. Ann said, “We don’t do this often enough.” We don’t. I’m something of a hinderance. There is stability and comfort in everyday routine. And, saints preserve us, there are other people out there in public places. Mother of God, just look at them. But when we do change the backdrop, change our setting and scene, Ann and I have found that some of our fancies come to fruition. Sparks require switches.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is out now in multiple formats. Visit my revitalized companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer*. Of Course You Did is still available.

*Avoid Amazon Canada as the pricing is beyond fucked. I’ve no explanation. Interested Canadian readers should buy directly from FriesenPress or other online vendors.

A FAN’S NOTES

The Boomtown Rats: A Bittersweet Appreciation 

My memories of the mid-seventies seem to dwell on desperately dire times. The music press’s consensus back then was that no rock band should or could have a lifespan longer than a decade or so. Key members quit or die. Others have troubles with alcohol, drugs and criminal code statutes. The Faces were disintegrating. I reckoned it was just a matter of time before the Rolling Stones shattered into scree. So. I casually began to cast my eye around for a new favourite, ear to the ground. The experience was eerily similar to attending a coed college after five years in an all-boys Jesuit high school. Lots to contemplate.

Some bands looked too stupid to be taken seriously, hair and costumes. Others were a bit too bombastic and flamboyant. J. Geils Band was a potential successor, a great frontman and blues hearts in the right place. I was devastated when they cancelled a Montreal Forum date I’d bought tickets for. Maybe Love Stinks aside, their studio albums never quite lived up to their live reputation (Blow Your Face Out, Full House). Aerosmith almost contended with their three-album run of Get Your Wings, Toys in the Attic and Rocks (their best), but at least half of each of those albums was Zeppelinesque sludge – which is all right to doze off to when you’re picking at your chipped black nail polish and too stoned to roll.

Social media Sunday, 13 July 2025: Facebook reminds me that it’s been forty-three years since Major League Baseball staged its annual all-star game in Montreal’s Stade Olympique. A good night out in the right field bleachers, almost touching heaven but blocked by a pre-fab cement overhang. Sunday also marked the fortieth anniversary of Live Aid, the mother of all telethons: two concerts on two continents to benefit a third one, cajoled and pulled together by Bob Geldof, lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, an Irish rock band.

Rock music has always twinned its premise. Simply put, cars, sex and getting wasted are good; war, poverty, racism and oppression are bad. Live Aid was the absolute pinnacle of rock’s inherent idealism and its somewhat insidious role as a positive force in popular culture. The satellite broadcast of “All You Need Is Love” writ massive. Alas, there’s only one direction from peak toppermost of the poppermost. Live Aid was the last signpost on rock music’s golden highway of hits. More personally, existing footage documents the demise of the Boomtown Rats. The timing was tragically right, they’d been at it for ten years (The survivors, including Geldof, have since reformed and are marking their fiftieth anniversary with a European tour).

There’s a bulletin board on the wall above my round writing table. It displays what you’d expect, ticket stubs, pocket team schedules and the metal badges I used to pin on my jean jacket. The largest item is a 10”x8” black and white Mercury-Polygram promo glossy of the Boomtown Rats circa 1978. They look like a rock band, dressed a little differently from you and me and with better haircuts, but nothing ridiculous. Unforced, perhaps even uncalculated, cool. And the Stones appeared to be done, what with Keith facing down an extended tour of the Canadian penal system. And the Rats had, in my case, pedantic cachet: a double-barreled proper noun name lifted from a legitimate source (Woody Guthrie’s Bound for Glory) and easily abbreviated into a form of shorthand. If you said “the Rats” to somebody who knew, they understood you weren’t referencing the Good Rats or the offspring of Rat Scabies.

My first encounter with Geldof was in the pages of Trouser Press. I’d read the rest of the magazine. All that was left was an interview with some guy I’d never heard of. But he looked cool. This Irish fellow proved articulate, opinionated and contrarian. Hilarious too. He dismissed Springsteen as a pale imitation of Van Morrison and Thin Lizzy, a rip-off artist. I was in the record store the following day to pick up A Tonic for the Troops and the Rats debut, the cover of which showed a shirtless Geldof on his knees in a dingy hallway, suffocating beneath a cellophane shroud.

The Rats hit at a particularly fertile time for rock music. If you bought a record by a new artist in the seventies, I’m thinking Television, Police, Cars, R.E.M., Elvis Costello, Clash…acts not in your older siblings’ collections, you were guaranteed to hear something different. The Rats were no exception. Their songs were urban stories (“Rat Trap”), gritty fables (“Joey’s on the Streets Again”) and slices of teenage wildlife ("Kicks"). Modern girls and death. The lyrics were like clockwork: clever, witty, ironic. I was hooked; I saw my future without the Stones.

My second encounter with Geldof was in real time, the radio perennial of “first caller through.” The Rats were playing the Theatre St-Denis that night, touring in support of their brilliant third album The Fine Art of Surfacing. I had tickets, orange card with black ink. CHOM-FM was Montreal’s English-language hipster station even if it was already exhibiting the early stages of corporate uniformity disease. Geldof was on air, promoting the show. CHOM did not play Boomtown Rats music.

(CHOM did not play Lou Reed either. The deejay hosting Geldof had previously hosted Lou in the same time slot. He introduced “Charley’s Girl” as Charlie’s Angels and, well, you imagine how the rest of the session went.)

Surfacing’s pseudo-North American hit was “I Don’t Like Mondays”, a song attempting to make sense of the senseless, a high school shooting in San Diego, CA. It was controversial at the time because school shootings in the US were not yet part of the curriculum. If the Rats released “I Never Loved Eva Braun” today (Yeah, I conquered all those countries/They were weak and I was strong/A little too ambitious maybe/But I never loved Eva Braun), their taking the piss with Hitler would be far too subtle; the hand-wringing outrage too easy to imagine.

I asked Geldof about his first encounter with Springsteen. In an elevator, an awkward moment for an Irishman with a big mouth. “He said, ‘Are you the guy who’s been saying all those things about me?’ I just sort of… I couldn’t deny it.” The deejay figured it was time to cut me off. Geldof said, “No, don’t. Let him speak. This guy’s interesting.” I was more engaged than the media professional. I didn’t feel like a college kid, my school paper's record reviewer aspiring to a university undergraduate degree in English and Journalism. No, I felt I was bantering with an old friend. I telephoned real friends afterward and gushed like “Mary of the Fourth Form”: “I spoke to Bob Geldof!” It was going to be a great night! I was already high. Years later I was crushed whilst reading his 1986 memoir Is That It? – the bastard had omitted mention of our call; must’ve been an editorial decision, you know, page count, printers’ signatures and whatnot.

I somehow made it home from that show (I would see them again at the St-Denis on the Mondo Bongo tour) with the record company 10”x8” promo glossy intact, uncreased. I remain mystified as to how (and the how of its pristine state some forty years later). The Boomtown Rats were the real deal. They did not go on stage as curious bystanders. Geldof was a frenetic front man, not particularly graceful. A roadie unlocked his cage at curtain. His hands were always very busy, emphasizing lyrics with exaggerated gestures in the manner of an unskilled actor (although he would go on to star as Pink in The Wall film).

How was I to know they were on the standard ten-year rock band plan? Their fifth and sixth albums, V Deep and In the Long Grass, were spotty, indifferent contractual obligations but not without a few gems amid the exhausted dross. They were done by Live Aid, placeholder filler on a very long and busy day. I believe I have all or most of Geldof’s solo albums; hard to find, generally ignored, but very good. He or they will always sell their latest album in this country – provided I’m aware of it. The Boomtown Rats will get their Hot Rocks treatment come September when a double retrospective is due. I suspect I already have everything on it, but I’m all in anyway – you know, new cover art, thorough liner notes and the sequencing might be interesting, even revelatory.

Meanwhile, the Rolling Stones are polishing their follow up to Hackney Diamonds. I don’t understand anything anymore. Not that I did then.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is out now in multiple formats. Visit my revitalized companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer*. Of Course You Did is still available.

*Avoid Amazon Canada as the pricing is beyond fucked. I’ve no explanation. Interested Canadian readers should buy directly from FriesenPress or other online vendors.