HUMAN WRECKAGE

Our Tuesday Night Beer Club Dinner with Billy Budd

Our waitress said, “You three guys look like dads, smart.”

Stats Guy and I exchanged glances. Ted, an actual father of two teenagers, raised his eyes from the live meteororological radar app colouring his phone’s screen. And she looked like a woman no mere boy would dare mess with: black, dead caterpillar eyelashes, an impossibly tight black t-shirt sporting an impossibly distorted 49ers logo and tattoos running up her legs from her ankles into salacious speculation.

One of us said, “Uh …. And how are you?”

The Tuesday Night Beer Club has its usual haunts. Stats Guy calls it “the rotation.” One of us always picks up the entire tab. I lose track of who was last and who’s next, not Stats Guy. We patronize particular preferred places, pubs where we’re not invisible to staff and where sports TVs are muted. A modicum of attention and a lot less noise. Perhaps we’re fussy, grumpy or even persnickety.

Stats Guy is something of a snob. Billy Budd’s is strictly south side slumming. It’s situated at a busy intersection with too many lanes to count. It’s a neighbourhood draw, it’s a low-rise industrial area draw. It anchors a strip mall and its fellow businesses purvey pot and liquor (the rubber stamp store space is vacant). There’s a kitty-corner storage facility, and a hotel-hockey rink complex across the street. I wonder how Herman Melville would score in the endless digital quiz game. There are more televisions than Best Buy and Costco combined. Enough pool tables to support recreational leagues; VLT’s and off-track betting; booths, banquettes and tables. The food eschews pretension and associated prices. A decent Monte Cristo sandwich is a rare flightless bird. And none of that soda cracker-thin pizza crust. Side salads are always crisp and fresh. And the men’s toilets? Given our standard Tuesday night rotation, they are Fairmont hotel lobby quality. Beyond blessed relief, all things considered. I may be somewhat impatient, delicate and pretentious, but I’m no a snob.

This Tuesday we figured we were under the gun. Another colour-coded Old Testament thunderstorm approaching. What’s a cubit, Lord? Ted, our American refugee friend, used live in Indiana, Tornado Alley. He’s said he never imagined those conditions this far north. Climate related PTSD is alive and well. We figured Billy Budd’s was a sensible choice, the nearest place in the rotation to get home from.

How was she? A few irritations, she said. Namely mosquitoes.

“That’s a hundred thousand irritations,” I said.

“How come there are so many?”

Stats Guy said, “We’ve had the wettest summer on record. Mosquitoes lay their eggs in standing water. They can survive for as long as a decade; they’ll hatch when conditions are right.”

I added, “The City doesn’t spray for them as much as it used to.” Recalling one of our more idiotic city councillors who advocated nature taking its course, I added, “Bats and dragonflies are their natural predators.”

“I saw a dragonfly today!” she said.

“Of course,” Stats Guy said, “the bat population has been decimated by white nose syndrome.”

“What’s that?”

Stats Guy continued, “It’s a fungus that disrupts their internal clock. They starve to death.”

“How do you guys know all this?”

“We watch the news,” Stats Guy replied.

“We read newspapers,” I added.

“Like delivered to your door every morning?” she asked.

The three of us occupied a square table for four. Ted was to my left. His head was down, the brim of his Under Armor cap obscuring his eyes. He seemed to be absorbed by the oversize menu which hid the rest of his face. I saw his shoulder twitch, something stifled. Beyond him, through the plate glass window, I watched the sky steadily blacken over The Brick mattress store, the Lush sex shop and Latina Cantina.

I said to our waitress, “You know, if you’ve the time to scroll social media, you’ve probably got time to read or watch something, um, a bit more informative.”

“All right, smart dads, what do you know about the census? Someone came to my door and said I’d be fined $500 if I didn’t fill it out.”

Stats Guy said, “Do you own your home? Are you the head of the household?”

She said, “I’ve owned a house since I was nineteen.”

I said, “Whoa, that’s tremendous. Good on you.”

Stats Guy said, “Then you’re legally obligated to fill out the form. The short form takes five minutes.”

“There’s a long form?”

“Have you never filled out a census?” Stats Guy asked her.

She said she hadn’t. “What’s the point?”

I said, “The government doesn’t ask much from Canadians.” I continued, “Accurate statistics help inform policy. There’s a code on the notice you received. You just go online, it’s easy. You may wish to get on that, save yourself some money.”

“I lost the paper.”

Stats Guy and I said, “Ah.” ("Coke on you! You owe me a Coke!" Except I don’t drink the stuff.)

Our waitress poised her pen over her pad of paper. “So, what will you have?”

Ted said, “I haven’t had a chance to look at the menu. Can you please give us another few minutes?”

The window flashed electric blue like a black and white television with a blown vacuum tube. We heard the thunder crack. One of us said, “Here it comes.” Oh well. Just another delay on a night like tonight. I couldn’t decide between a hot dog with Swiss cheese and sauerkraut or pizza toppings into a baked sesame submarine sandwich loaf. Nothing but killer calories and time to kill.                     

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! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com to buy my last couple of books. You can also listen to songs I’ve co-written with The Muster Point Project before scooting over to its YouTube channel.

A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Talkin’ Camrose Blues

The Turquoise Bridesmaid complained about her 34-year-old bones as she shooed her son inside the Days Inn by Wyndham to be halfway useful in transforming the lone conference room into a wedding venue. Part those accordion walls! The frames of her glasses and her hair matched her gown. She was a striking figure on an asphalt stage, the ass-end of a Circle K as a backdrop, a dumpster and a near-distant Kal Tire sign standing in for the sun. She was smoking; we both held burning cigarettes in the baking humidity. I reminded her not to upstage the bride. “Oh, it's just my sister,” she replied. “And it’s her second one.” I said, “If that’s the case, go for it.” 

Ann and I had returned to “The Rose City” or “Cambrosia,” the setting of her high school years and first year of college. Those formative years, the big important ones. In literature and film Camrose is that small town which forces the hero to choose between growth or petrification – should I stay or should I go? I’ve come to know Camrose slightly, what with funerals or reunions short a few attendees. And a couple of Ann’s old gang even remember my name when prompted. I’m no different: “Yes, of course! Nice to see you again …”

This particular weekend sojourn was goosed by curiosity; the 2026 Camrose Blues Festival, evidently the second annual. We’d heard of three of the nine acts and had heard their music on CKUA. The ticket prices dated from Y2K. Maybe the machines really did stall in rural Alberta? (My first bar bill stupefied me: $8 for a bottle of water AND a proper swilling cup of locally brewed draft beer.) The real festival hook for Ann and I was the venue, the refurbished princess of Camrose’s “historic” Main Street.

The gilded and grandiose interior of the Bailey Theatre still suggests the smell of vaudeville greasepaint clinging to the ageless dusty mustiness embedded in the draped red velvet curtains. There are echoes of Social Credit bible-thumping political stumping. Errol Flynn dashing around in synthetic Lulu Lemon leggings and felt Glerups elf booties. There’s an Elvis movie on the marquee sign. The old doll’s crumbling Edwardian exterior was given a slick black and white Art Deco makeover in 1940. The façade reminds me of the theatre on the cover of The Song Remains the Same – the packaging the highlight of the movie’s soundtrack (and the film, frankly). And Led Zeppelin is relevant here because around the time of the band’s debut the blues in all of its iterations sank into the now standard tedium of elongated, painfully extended displays of six-string virtuosity.

The Days Inn on Highway 13 – Ann and I still call it the Norsemen, a name which reflected the Scandinavian roots of the region’s white settlers – was a festival “silver” sponsor. Billeted musicians were easy to clock at breakfast time in Hagar’s Café. Tattoos, black t-shirts and pork pie hats really pop in contrast to the practical sartorial preferences of wizened local folk and Camrose Police Service constables in their smart uniforms.

Our hotel presides over acres of paved-over farmland. Its closest neighbour is Duggan Mall, a contentious 70s development that strangled Main Street. Judging from the existing signage, the space now houses what must be a massive medical clinic. Duggan was once on the outskirts, separated from downtown by Mirror Lake, Camrose’s signature topographical feature. Newer big box retailers plunked on both sides of the highway subsequently choked out the mall. Ann and I were amused that the local Canadian Tire store, a mere unwalkable Las Vegas Strip block way, was more convenient to us than any of the chain’s Edmonton locations. We just happened to be in town.

We both enjoy poking around the Peavey Mart when we stay at the Norsemen. “The rural lifestyle store!” It’s across four lanes of highway, sort of close by because there’s a traffic light. I’ve never seen catch-and-release coyote traps on sale before. A bargain at $129.  Immense sacks of chickenfeed were on special too. The “-cide” aisle also intrigued me, “insecti-,” “pesti-” and “herbi-”: serious Silent Spring stuff, none of that woke Scott’s Weed-B-Gon like I use on our urban lawn.

Our next stop was Harley’s Liquor Store, one of the festival’s designated “friends.” I bought an eight-pack of low-cal, low-carb, low-alcohol beer strung together by a recyclable cardboard collar. The young clerk said the cardboard tended to disintegrate in a hurry. Would I like a bag? And I was eligible for the senior discount – Ann spoke up on my behalf. The clerk was intent on passing the time of day in a friendly way. I was intent on a discreet chilled tin outside in the parking lot beneath the big hard sun. No dice. A major portion of the parking lot was being resurfaced because Harley’s new neighbour, a boutique medical device store, obviously required a wheelchair ramp before its grand opening.

I said to Ann, “Christ, we’re not in bad shape for our age.” Ann said, “We didn’t spend our lives on a working farm.” I said, “Ah.”

Outside the Bailey on a smalltown Saturday night, killing time and smoking cigarettes between sets, we encountered a man whom Ann knew in high school. He’d been a grade or two ahead of her. His knees seemed to be reliable in 2026, no bow-legged semi-crouch. He introduced Ann to his wife as “former Camrose royalty.” Ann’s father was a prominent lawyer and later an Alberta circuit court judge. I’d met this Mr Snark once previously. Funeral or reunion? Pick ‘em. That time he said Ann used to “swan around town like she was Joni Mitchell.” Which means Ann, coerced to play her violin for Glee Club performances and later a member of the Lutheran College Choir (We have the live album from their Scandinavian tour – honest to God) used to lean into open muscle car windows to chat with every other boy except him on summer Saturday nights. Nothing like a blues festival to remind one those little town blues don’t go away by themselves. 

These days there’s a NO U-TURN sign at the foot of Main Street. The key to the highway lays in another direction. But the Turquoise Bridesmaid, though a bit put out, frazzled even, seemed happy enough there.

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! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com to buy my last couple of books. You can also listen to songs I’ve co-written with The Muster Point Project before scooting over to its YouTube channel.

A FAN’S NOTES

Some Old Loves Are So Hard to Shake

Google Analytics paints pretty pictures for me. Graphs and pie charts. Dispatches from the Crooked 9’s readership oscillates between 20,000 and 40,000 pairs of eyeballs per month. I’ve learned that eyeballs don’t buy my books. They tend to read other ones. Before or after I dropped my university microeconomics course, I should’ve dropped one in statistics too. I believed my last couple of titles were good enough to sell more than a few hundred copies. But what do I know about absolutely irrational numbers and logic?

If you’re a regular visitor here, yeah, you with the dusty credit card, Welcome back! You will never scan or scroll alone. And you know by now my marginal propensity to go on a bit about the Rolling Stones. I’ve never contemplated the opportunity cost of my fanaticism. I’m too old, weathered and well-seasoned to be embarrassed by anything anymore. Confidentially, strictly on the hush-hush, I was more sweet 16 than cynical 66 when I lapped up Foreign Tongues on its July 10 release day. I bought the double green vinyl “indie” record store version in support of Blackbyrd, my primary music destination in Edmonton. I bought the workaday CD too because a new Stones album always takes three or four listens to get a handle on. The singles are usually tangential from the guts.

Carbon dating the Stones corporate ascension into irrelevancy is an amusing parlour game. Like discussing old time baseball and hockey in a pub where whiteheads are invisible to an indifferent and poorly trained staff. At some unfixable quantum point in my life the pop culture force that was rock ebbed into a sociological footnote; a fuddy-duddy sub-genre in an upended popular music industry. I read somewhere recently that hip-hop is a dead art form now. Somehow, the Stones – or the ones still alive beneath their banner, the partners too committed to quit – are still standing in the aftermath beside the merchandise tent.

How many tongues can a pair of Nike high-heeled sneakers have? I don’t know, I passed on the fashionable footwear. There must be more tie-ups and tie-ins available in their Carnaby Street department store. The sleeve art of Foreign Tongues is a collage of caricatures by an artist so hip that only Mick has heard of him. It’s not a selling point. My alternatives were FIFA World Cup-themed covers or Marvel Comics superheroes. No surprise though because Hackney Diamonds, their shockingly good studio “comeback” of a few years back, could be had in a dizzying assortment of Major League Baseball sleeves. A sheepish confession: Had they resurrected the Montreal Expos I would’ve given the pigeon gouge some consideration.

I heard my mother shout at me from her Montreal grave last Friday. “TURN IT DOWN!” I spun the CD on the stereo, the amplifier set to my usual preferred volume. A stray cat in a wind tunnel; my ears were pinned like Keith’s pupils in the 70s and what’s left of my hair blew away. Producer Andrew Watt (apt surname) has engineered a sonic boom that punches through iPod docks and whatever subsequent audio technology that rendered them archaic.

Watt is a presence on nearly all of the album’s 14 songs. Mainly guitar, curious for a band with a couple of infamous experts. Watt’s also graced with two co-writing credits (Stones touring party alum, keyboardist Matt Clifford, racks up one). Poor Ronnie Wood, still the new guy after 50 years and still seeking his elusive fourth or fifth hyphen after Jagger-Richards.

The charm of Hackney Diamonds was its undiluted 70s length, about 40 minutes. Foreign Tongues runs for over an hour. It’s no Exile. More A Bigger Bang, an album begging to be pared down to the decent single disc lurking somewhere amid the dross: The moon is yellow/Your tits like Jell-O – ‘nuff said. And it’s a big, nostalgic and certainly foolish cri de coeur to demand that three golden agers – survivors of rock’s golden age – define yet another amphetamine era in western progress when nothing’s making sense to nobody. Expertise is left to influencers and geopolitics to a few old men all whom are just titch younger than Mick and Keith. 

Foreign Tongues is Hackney Diamonds on repeat with less oomph. Formulaic, the new paradigm. Its feel is Mick and Friends (and employees). Not a capital crime because his Wandering Spirit is the second-best non-Stones Stones album out there after Keith’s Talk Is Cheap. Just five keepers on Foreign Tongues for a fanatic like me who now clearly sees the end of the line. “Jealous Lover” may’ve charted 40 years ago, but that was then. My love train’s left the station with blue lights on behind.

Christ. If there’s another Stones album, dregs from the can, I’ll buy it. They can’t leave me. I’ve no solid memories of my life without them in it. Value is an abstract in an artificial market.    

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! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com to buy my last couple of books. You can also listen to songs I’ve co-written with The Muster Point Project before scooting over to its YouTube channel. 

THE MUSTER POINT PROJECT

“That’s How They Getcha”

Kevin Franco of The Muster Point Project and I have co-written about a dozen songs. A modest fraction of TMPP’s growing catalogue. Friends for three decades now, we kind of click: I’m his bit on the side. We work well together because we don’t rely on one another. Kevin’s a complete musician, lyricist, composer, player and arranger. And I’ve got my own stalled novel to nudge forward beyond consternation, pages of notes and five frustrating false starts.

Collaboration between Edmonton and Calgary (and often Santiago, Chile) keeps Messenger humming. Separate cities; separate rooms. My lyrics are block printed on a yellow legal pad. They’re not etched in stone. There’s always a better line or a slicker phrase to sing. My silent songs are untitled, that’s Kevin’s job – not my call. “Stuck in Transit” was the only song of ours where I suggested a sound. I got very, very technical: “I hear this one as kinda Stonesy.”

Our creative relationship has evolved since 2023 when TMPP’s 5 KG EP was released. “Goodbye America” is a fine recent example. Kevin sent me his unfinished lyrics and a short initial demo. He had a little more than half a song. Did I have anything to contribute? I loved where he was going. We’re on the same page politically. The current White House administration (if you can describe chaos and incompetence as administration) reeks of end of empire narcissism. I got to writing. I supplied Kevin with another eight or ten lines, enough to fill out his song.

“That’s How They Getcha” had a similar genesis. Kevin said, “I’ve got a title …. I was thinking about desktop printers, how they’re so cheap, they’re not built to last, but they gouge you for the ink.” Have you ever wondered why mattress store A does not match the price of mattress store B no matter what its flyer boasts? Both outlets sell the same mattress. The convenient catch is that mattress A and mattress B leave the factory with different model numbers. “Can you work with it?”

Oh, yeah. I filled up my yellow page, leaving room for Kevin to add more key lines including the audacious rhyming of “wallet” and “product.” Singers are like hucksters with their patter down cold – they can get away with stuff like that. 

We both spent too much time in advertising and marketing. One of my best friends once called me a whore (he worked for an insurance company). And this was before I became something of a burnt-out case. Still, there was no disputing his barroom assertion. And so, channeling the Rolling Stones (“Get Off My Cloud” and a really obvious one which escapes me), Jonathan Edwards (“Sunshine”) and Tom Waits (“Step Right Up”), Kevin and I wrote a song about manipulation in its many forms; the all-invasive persuasive perversity of the consumer culture mindset. It’s endemic; everything’s been infected.

The audio stream of “That’s How They Getcha” drops Friday, 3 July, in all the usual digital spaces. The video has been up on YouTube for a few days; Kevin crafted a reel that see-saws between hilarious and hysterical. There’s no mouse type in this new TMPP song. No double-talk, no scam. “That’s How They Getcha” is a public service announcement: some fine, fine new music in exchange for a few minutes of your time. Nothing but guitar strings attached.                                

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! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for a taste of TMPP and links to its YouTube channel. You can also buy my last couple of books. And really, buy my books. I mean, fuck Kevin, I’ve addictions to feed.