A FAN’S NOTES

Opening Day

The charm of minor league baseball is its scale. The ballparks, whatever their state of upkeep, are more intimate. Tickets and concessions are affordable (although beer remains as stubbornly expensive as gasoline on the Friday of a summer long weekend). It’s in places like these that baseball exists in its idealized form, as fiction and longform sportswriting and those few instances when filmmakers didn’t drop a flyball, bobble a grounder.

The West Coast League Riverhawks (who should’ve been nicknamed Magpies – those lovely, noisy, strutting, curious popinjays are everywhere) now trot on to the diamond in place of Tigers, Trappers, CrackerCats, Capitals and Prospects. Baseball in Edmonton is akin to W.O. Mitchell’s roses: difficult here. The WCL is short-season and usually savvy enough to elude the darling storms of May. Opening Day was a night game even though the sun stays up awfully late as the summer solstice approaches.

Canada’s Old Age Security allowance secured three senior-discounted tickets. Ann, Stats Guy and I sat close to an aisle (my bladder bleats like a faulty alarm in the middle of a row) along the first base line. Our preferred spot these days. It doesn’t seem that long ago when Stats Guy and I were in our thirties and would-be rakes about town when the ballpark was named for a person rather than a corporate sponsor, made of wood and bordering on decrepit. Back then he and I preferred watching the Pacific Coast League (AAA) Trappers from the third base line bleachers.

Bill Veeck was baseball’s ultimate hustler. Believe it or not, he was Barnum, Bailey and Ripley combined. The Riverhawks marketing people have memorized his methods. Every home game comes with an opponent and a theme. “Paws in the Park” welcomes dogs and feral children. Star Wars night lures incels from the clammy privacy of their mothers’ basements. Opening Day ceremonies at any level are elongated exercises; some will go to any length for the sake of a good intention.

The Riverhawks inaugural 2026 festivities were in the spirit of Truth and Reconciliation. We were gearing up to watch baseball on private property that had been First Nations territory for thousands of years before the establishment of a fur trading post in the latter half of the eighteenth century. An iron horse followed. History cannot be undone. And the gauge of the line separating abashed acknowledgment and pandering tokenism runs awfully narrow. Overwrought earnestness can be cringeworthy. I was however more inclined to applaud the drumming, singing, smudging and speechifying than groan. I’m nothing if not an insensitive and very soft leftist. I supposed it was a minor irony that the staged rituals were to be followed by “O Canada.”

The rendition of a national anthem before an everyday sporting event is an irksome formality. Tonight, there would be two because the visitors were the Wenatchee (WA) Applesox. Anthems pair nicely with affairs of state and it’s not as if Canada is at war with itself or a foreign power. Maybe we are; the nature of that dirty business has changed dramatically in recent years. What has not been weaponized, undeclared or otherwise?

The rain began before I was able to stand and respectfully remove my throwback St. Louis Cardinals road cap. Not the “little drops of rain” from Led Zeppelin’s “Thank You” nor the “silver rain” of “London Town” and “Silver Train.” These were great mercury globules, the short, foreboding prelude to a downpour. Within moments my Levi’s jean jacket was washed for just the fourth time since I bought it in the late 70s. Some of the green grime around the inside of its collar was rinsed away down my back. Ann and Stats Guy were in the same sudden miserable state. Water sloshed down the stairs between sections like some sort of elaborate fountain feature. Our running shoes, socks and feet were sodden. We were soaked through. Seeking shelter became an acute matter of interior warmth.

The capacity of our ballpark is about 9000. Its interior concourse is designed for flow, not corralling near capacity. The ramps leading to cover were awash with people but the only movement was water over concrete. This is the nature of the modern digital mob. Stop and check your phone in the most inappropriate place possible oblivious to your obstructing the people behind you. It no longer matters that the exit doors of every major public venue open outward. The hunchback herd will stop in the frame. That little bandsaw lag symbol is real; common sense downloading: This may take a while.

It was raining inside too. An elegantly choreographed cascade of silver through the ceiling indicative of structural flaws. The crush made me anxious; that woollen wet smell of a Catholic grade school cloakroom in winter. No personal space for shivering. The lines for the toilets and concessions demanded elbows up endurance. The three of us consulted. If the game was delayed there’d be at least another hour’s worth of the chafing, saturated hell of other people – and the anthems had yet to be sung. If the game was called, we’d have rain checks. Pull the goalie for a pinch runner.

Aw, but you know, it was nice to be back in the yard if only for an hour to smell those metaphorical roses. And admire the manicured diamond, red dirt and striped shades of green, poorly designed signage on the outfield wall. I always enjoy the view no matter how long it lasts.                    

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! My latest novel Sunset Oasis Confidential is available in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still in print. Collect the set! 

SAINTS PRESERVE US

W(h)ither Alberta?

Oh, for Christ’s sake. What now?

Alberta premier Danielle Smith last week announced a provincial referendum about holding another referendum. Their subjects are secession. Should Alberta exit the Canadian federation, cede its place in a wealthy G7 country imperfect as every other member of the club?

Smith’s United Conservative Party is a big top operation. The circus analogy is not unwarranted. The blue and white pavilion with its rodeo dirt floor harbours fiscal and social conservatives, special interest groups, “lake of fire” evangelicals and a lunatic fringe who fret about gun laws, chemtrails and replacement theory. Alberta separatists constitute a fifth column within the UCP. They have infiltrated the party, riding associations, Smith’s caucus and ministerial staff. This is all well and good except that separation (or its chicken game threat) was not a UCP platform plank during the last provincial election. Voters may have wished to have been informed. Elections are not raffles, hastily scribbled policy slips drawn from a cowboy hat.

Compare Alberta’s UPC to Quebec’s separatist Parti Quebecois. The PQ does not obfuscate its agenda. The electorate is aware of what is always on the table should it grant the party the privilege of governing. The PQ’s argument is a complaint of distinction, a different nation trapped within a larger one. Very Balkan. The UCP’s fifth column whinge is, in this sense, meritless. Both groups, eastern and western, revel in victimhood and they share words like “oppression” and “humiliation.” Their common enemy is Ottawa. Perception is everything.

Confident and competent governments should just tick along like a home furnace in the dead of winter. It does its job, no fuss, nothing to notice or worry about. Sound policies address the issues of the day. Really good governments may even look beyond the fortunes of the party and the election cycle. Incompetent governments distract from the pressing unaddressed issues of the day by conjuring political phantoms and foo fighters only to botch their needless solutions. Smith leads a party and a government devoid of a single core competency.

Smith is a proponent of “direct democracy.” Referenda circumvent the democratic system. The pro argument is that the people are heard at a pitch beyond the tenor of their legislative assembly member. As Brexit has shown, the people know. Here in Alberta’s capital city, casual morning bus stop conversation always touches on the linguistic nuances of the British North America Act and Statute of Westminster. And federal transfer payments and the fucking hockey team. Madam Premier covers it all on her weekly radio call-in show, unconstitutional plastic straws, encroaching bicycle lanes and everything.

Smith is one of those politicians who transform engaged citizens into cynics. She is a party-jumper and a floor-crosser. Her Quebec counterpart is former PQ premier Lucien Bouchard, once a trusted consigliere of former Tory PM Brian Mulroney’s. Shiny objects, brass rings, are so alluring to political magpies. The penultimate prize, heading a province but not the country, demands backroom politicking: patronizing, pandering and promising.

One suspects Smith is more DENSA than MENSA. She would play Russian roulette with five bullets in the chamber of a six-shooter. The bold timidity of staging a referendum about a referendum to appease the backrows within the circumference of the UCP circus tent suggests some midnight parsing of an AI-generated overview of Machiavellian machinations although dithering and symbolic dog-whistle bones may preclude updating her C.V.

UCP president Rob Smith, no relation to the Banshee of Invermectin, has been quoted in the press as saying the Party has to official stance on a potential Albertastan. The UCP does not stand for anything apparently, ill-conceived and uninformed direct democracy excepted. He was confident that a majority of its members will vote for separation.

The immediate goal of Alberta’s separatists is a Czechoslovakian-style “Velvet Divorce” delivered at Amazon Prime speed. That will never happen. And should this disparate menagerie of malcontents present however unlikely as a unified bloc, the ultimate goal is full admission in to the corrupt and decaying empire south of the Medicine Line (it is easier to move bitumen north-south sans the irksome formalities of international borders). Perhaps they would settle for becoming a US territory, Guam North.

The future is unwritten and often surprising. But the likely outcome of this divisive and nonsensical ploy is the disintegration of the UCP as a viable political entity. And that will be on Smith’s watch. And that will be a good thing for forward-thinking, progressive Albertans.

            

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! My latest novel Sunset Oasis Confidential is available in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still in print. Collect the set! 

THE HUMAN RACE

A Substack Publication

Disruption is a universal constant. Always has been. Even though we have an inkling we never see it coming. A blindside hit. In human terms, it pairs nicely with death and taxes and there aren’t enough tea leaves and gypsy crystal balls in the world to predict its aftermath. Digital technological disruption now hits us harder and faster than “Rip This Joint” (side one of Exile, second song).

Me? I’m still trying to get a handle on why the promise of the internet went nipples north. As for the lightning flash advent of Large Language Models or Artificial Intelligence, I read about it in my morning Globe and Mail and my weekly Economist. Tactile print, how quaint. AI is either a Star Trek boon of ingenuity or Promethean fire. My mind drifts to Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison and weirdly, Dolly the cloned sheep. The prevailing view depends on the day and what section of which publication. This compounds my existing nonfungible token and cryptocurrency mystification; why are there Bitcoin ATMs in fortified liquor stores and shabby little depanneurs that sell cigarettes and lottery tickets? That's some kind of blockchain.

My grandfather Leslie Moore was a very British man, well-spoken though usually quiet, always dignified, very precise. A little Charlie Chaplin moustache – white throughout the twenty-four years I was lucky enough to know him. He emigrated to Montreal in 1912 in search of a career. The family business, a millinery in the Bristol suburb of Fishponds, had been disrupted by the introduction of a bus route to downtown and more shops and more variety. Papa was a Bell Telephone lifer who earned his McGill engineering degree at night. Papa learned French by reading La Presse, the Francophone equivalent of the morning Gazette and competing evening Star; a Larousse by his side.

Nana’s and Papa’s apartment was halfway between my elementary school and home. I ate lunch there frequently because the food was better (Sorry, Mom). I always used the tradesman’s entrance, up the wooden stairs at speed to their kitchen door. One noon hour I trudged up. Nana and Papa asked me why I was so glum. I’d had a brutal grade three morning. Arithmetic class had progressed beyond reciting multiplication tables and drawing upside-down long division Ls. Fractions! Papa sat me down at his drop-down secretary with a pad of graph paper and a blue fine point. He taught me fractions in two-thirds of a minute from over my shoulder. I was so relieved.

IBM introduced the Universal Product Code shortly thereafter. An utterly staggering innovation with no unintended consequences to speak of. One lunch visit Papa’s secretary was down. The pad, a hard lead pencil, a steel ruler and a slide rule were out. And an assortment of UPCs. There must be an obvious relationship between the human readable numbers and the sequence and varying thicknesses of the vertical bars. Perhaps the patterns weren’t discernible to the naked eye? An infrared code. There would be technical journals at the public library.

What Leslie Moore did because of his own interest and curiosity was research. Grunt work. What he couldn’t do at the time and what he wouldn’t have done even if he could’ve is now referred to as “cognitive offloading.” A pithy keystroked answer less the who, where, what, why and how would not have sat well with him. He certainly knew of Alan Turing’s Bletchley Park bombe and IBM’s UNIVAC. He was an analogue empiricist; the mechanics of progress warranted study: circuitry, vacuum tubes and punch cards. Applications and consequences (predicted and otherwise) demanded contemplation. Progress had to be thought through. I frequently wonder what he would make of the advanced digitized dross of the Information Age. Is there any practicality or substance to the function?

Leslie Moore died before Time magazine named the personal computer Machine of the Year. The elasticity of time is important here, in the context of life and the exponential acceleration of technology. I have known my friend Jim Gibson for more than twice as long as I knew my grandfather. Jim wrote a book called Tip of the Spear (I read through a couple of early drafts). Picture a crossroads at twilight, it’s not dark yet but it’s getting there. From one direction comes human culture and behaviour – which ceaselessly mystifies economists, historians, politicians, pundits, artists, members of the clergy, friends and relatives, family pets and sundry wildlife. Heading for the same intersection is (glibly) Silicon Valley, whose high-tech apostolates remind me of America’s nineteenth century robber barons and the bankers on Tom Wolfe’s Wall Street: adherence to laws, regulations, principles and ethics may be deferred (point and click on the X). Our high school math word problem subjects are travelling at different speeds. How far apart are they before they collide? Jim’s overarching message was straight from The Beatles: “Dear Prudence.”

Last week two Ukrainian AI-enhanced military drones programmed to attack Russian energy infrastructure lost the plot. Disrupted by enemy jamming, the drones decided a similar facility in neighbouring Latvia, a NATO country, would do just as well. Close enough for rogue robots, like horseshoes and hand grenades. A Brave New World. Fuck me; my neighbourhood cannabis shop has yet to stock soma. My grandfather was with me the other morning when I took Tip of the Spear down from the shelf. I simply sought some informed context, a foundation to help me get my head around the news story (and the porn industry’s embrace of AI and its early adoption by criminal scammers; the insane possibility of der Trumpenfuhrer spouting truth about fake news; the means of production without actual workers; a dystopian future of machine overlords breeding humanity’s next evolutionary step – whoops! I’ve circled back to porn). Jim’s book was published in 2017. The crossroads are still there, but the signposts (those reflective yellow diamond warning ones) have gone missing.

Jim and colleague Laura Haynes constitute the team behind The Human Race on Substack (Laura narrates The Human Race podcast as well). I’m now living in a world I could not have imagined at the turn of the century. This ain’t no meme. Google Chrome nudges me incessantly to introduce myself to Gemini. Astrology is bogus. Anyway, I’m an Aquarian and so predisposed to discussion and debates that hold water. AI is multivalent. It is quantum, at once elegantly Einsteinesque and batshit crazy. Substack’s format allows Jim and Laura to rationally assess AI (and all of its digital baggage, consequences, implications and unknowns) in real time. They’re constructing a “framework of hope” together. Could be Babel, could be truth, I’m not sure, but they're buffering all the white noise. I do know that The Human Race, whether on Substack or alive in the world, is a subject worthy of at least a modicum of contemplative thought. And a little research. Possibly more than that – just a hunch – because the future has just hit us like Saturday night on a Sunday morning.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! My latest novel Sunset Oasis Confidential is available in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. And while you’re there, listen to some Muster Point Project music. 

HUMAN WRECKAGE

300 Club Confidential

Four-sixths of the 300 Club reunited in the ritzy wilds of West Vancouver last week. If I remember my geometry correctly, I believe that integer may be rendered as two-thirds. Jim, Marty, Tim and I rented a somewhat sprawling, gated, split-level Brady Bunch house nestled on a slope in a cul-de-sac. The view through the window above the kitchen sink was striking. Lush, manicured greenery in the foreground. Water beyond, unladen freighters in the inlet patiently awaiting their turn beneath the port gantries. The horizon was the silhouette of the University of British Columbia’s main campus. The sky was the shade of blue I picture when genuinely settled enough to appreciate “Wish You Were Here.” Cortez the Killer and JB007 were MIA, otherwise AWOL.

Friends all for some 55 years (at least). Our group’s average age now is 66, 65 the fading median on this particular trip. Functionally efficient, well-oiled.  We shared the errands and chores: shopping, meal preparation, clean up and general housekeeping. A very socialist gathering. The sole unaccommodating aspect of our accommodation was the coffeemaker. It was one of those single cup things, four courtesy plastic pods beside it; all the rage. Enough for the first one up. We’d brought a proper package of coffee expecting a proper maker. Christ, back to Safeway to be gouged. Marty did a walk through of the place, recon. He, uh, finessed his way into a secured supply closet. Coffee on the house. Tim and I followed his example: we were deviously clever, concealing evidence of our high school habit on a nonsmoking property.

Jim and Marty are clean livers. That’s to say their livers are unscarred. They went for hikes every morning while Tim and I drank coffee and smoked on the covered and concealed patio outside the sliding doors to my downstairs bedroom. An idyllic interlude with an old friend is always pleasurable. Quiet conversation or comfortable silence, sometimes both, just being, sharing the other’s presence.

Our evenings were mildly regressive. The Negroni, an aperitif, might be Italy’s greatest gift to the world because not much else happened there. Jim was the toxicologist. Listen, bud, if you hold a Negroni up in a sunbeam, you’re examining a sample of Spider-man’s radioactive blood; Madame Curie’s got nothing on you, oh no. West Coast cocktail hour dovetails nicely with EDT Montreal Canadiens playoff games. And Negronis pair well with edibles. Lacking the expertise of Cortez the Killer and JB007, Marty, seeking sterling customer service, said to a pot shop clerk, “My friends and I used to smoke a lot of hash back in high school. What do you recommend?”

Maybe it came with the rental, but I believe Marty had a natural instinct to pack a wireless soundbar along with a cooler and a barbeque. Jim showed me how to swipe songs onto a custom iPhone playlist – three times. We needed an old song soundtrack to tell new stories; all of our lives are very now: death, disease and grandchildren. No more clock-punching unless we want to. And replicating the past, as fondly recalled as it may be, is insanity; we’re all still too young for dementia – excepting gummy induced early onset.

Two, perhaps three bottles of an impertinent if indifferently robust red with legs and a surgically altered nose suggesting delicate hints of leather and tobacco with dinner. Maybe a few were organic white flavour because Jim stirred up a delicious paella one evening. Befitting our vintage, supper was followed by a board game. Marty, this event’s Shitshow Ringmaster, had rustled up a used edition of Trivial Pursuit with a set of updated general knowledge cards. Tim shuffled the deck with a set of Beatles Trivial Pursuit wildcards; they made for a hard day’s night.

I believe I know as much about the Beatles as I do James Bond in the sense that admiration and questing curiosity have eaten up hours of leisure time in a brief and absurd life. I’ve read books and magazine features. I have Anthology of DVD and a pile of other video besides. I have stereo editions of every UK album and more than a few “posthumous” releases. But I’m not nutcase hardcore. I’ve neither the mono boxset nor the American Capitol releases or the Tony Sheridan stuff from Hamburg. Paul McCartney could not win Beatles Trivial Pursuit; the questions might as well be about astrophysics. Actually, it would be fun to play against him: “No, that’s wrong. I wrote it;” “No, that’s wrong. It was my idea;” “No, that’s wrong. I was the avant-garde one.”

(My newish friend Kevin – we’ve been acquainted for a mere 36 years – he of The Muster Point Project, gave me a Rolling Stones edition of Trivial Pursuit I can’t remember how many years ago. It’s still in the cellophane. Not that I’m a hardcore nutcase, a freakazoid, but no one in my circle of family and friends has ever consented to play against me. They’re all too aware I’m capable of kicking even Glimmer Twins ass.)

After the game had been put away and the losers duly shamed and humiliated, plans were hatched. Montreal in the autumn of 2027; a complete quorum required: the 300 Club is going back to high school 50 years later for remedial classes in regressive personal growth. A dog-ate-my-gummy – strike that – homework! excuse to come together again.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! My latest novel Sunset Oasis Confidential is available in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still in print. Collect the set!