SAINTS PRESERVE US

His Holiness quotes His Bobness

Recently the United States Secretary of Defense, a man who changed his title on his business cards to “Secretary of War,” quoted “Bible” verse as recited by a hitman in Pulp Fiction to members of the US military. Reality is now a nebulous concept, having plunged into some heretofore unimaginable thirteenth circle of Hell far beyond the realm of satire. And I thought actual theocrats were bad dudes.

Meanwhile, his boss der Trumpenfuhrer took on Pope Leo XIV, a fellow American. President versus pontiff! A holy smackdown! A gilded cage match! The odious vulgarian’s Truth Social opening salvo was a pretty good one. The Bishop of Rome is “WEAK” on crime. Fair enough. Every venerated and long-established institution has proved incapable of policing itself. Paradoxically, the Roman Catholic Church, whose rock-solid central tenet is love and mercy, has historically been fanatical in its persecution of heretics. “Thoughtcrime” warranted numerous clauses in the First Papal Bull(shit). The last national leader to grapple with a pope was probably Britain’s King Henry VIII who demanded the Holy See expedite a niggling bit of post-nuptial paperwork.

A war of words or weapons demands an answering salvo. Globe and Mail headline, Friday, 17 April: “Pope denounces ‘tyrants’ and ‘masters of war’ during tour of Africa.” I thought, “My God, Leo’s quoting Bob. It can’t be.”

Dylan released “Masters of War” in 1963. It’s no coincidence that the Second Vatican Council sat from 1962 through 1965. Actually, it is and maybe I’m just messing around... wait for it... But seriously folks, Dylan mines the classics for source material, just as Shakespeare did. Only the future is unwritten and when it happens, chances are you’ll have read it all before. I’ve always assumed Dylan borrowed “masters of war” from an ancient primary text or some oft-quoted colloquialism. I became curious about the phrase’s origin.

My volume of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (third edition) was a gift from my father, Christmas 1982. His inscription reads in part, “Best wishes for 1983. Regards, Dad.” The Moores are not a particularly warm family. And yet, the care and attention devoted to the brief note is unmistakable. The block printing is precise enough to have been set in lead type. A steel rule was employed and a disposable ballpoint just wouldn’t do (I’ve since applied this same discipline to family records). I went through the book’s index with my drugstore readers angled on the tip of my nose. Nothing. My next reference source was his father’s volume of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (tenth edition). Still nothing. My last resort was a reluctant nod to modern times: I scrolled Wikipedia; further investigation uncovered text unworthy of even an inattentive scan.

Vatican II changed the tenor of Catholic ritual. Latin and formal choirs went out the stained-glass window. The “folk mass” was in ascension. My childhood parish was Annunciation of Our Lady. Father Moyle who baptized me, and whom I habitually lied to at Confession, was the top gun priest. The other man was Father Schnell (I’m guessing at his surname’s spelling – I’ve no idea), younger, hipper and given to pinstriped suits. He must’ve been the Svengali behind the parish folk group which was mostly comprised of high school seniors with acoustic guitars. I joined it – this was before my voice broke into its endearing and enduring cigarette croak. I figured hanging out in the choir loft during 11 o’clock mass was a better deal than going mental in the pews down below. I gleaned this from my big brother who had been an usher. He was able to be present but not really there, hanging out in a backroom as opposed to the altar boys who always had to be on.

I can’t recall what the folk group sang with earnest inexpertise to warrant a weekly glare from the pulpit, followed by a back-handed compliment and then a mic’ed throat-clearing. Pete Seeger and spirituals I suppose; psalm sing, sing song sing, good morning starshine, turn, turn, turn. What I do remember is the group’s leader’s anger after Father Moyle banned all songs written by Bob Dylan and specifically “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”

Irony.

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! 

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Cockroaches

I have never joined a political party. I am suspicious of people who actively promote themselves as activists and philanthropists. Corporations with fluffy mission statements are suspect, or worse, inept. Team-building exercises at work? Oh, please. They’re worse than meetings. I’m no plumber or roofer, never been a joiner. Most venerable, long-established human institutions are rotten. In cosmic terms a lifetime is woefully short and ultimately absurd. Dredge your own meaning should you care to; take it where you find it. Stop and smell the dead flowers. And, gee, all things considered, for the most part and way more often than not, it’s fun being on the planet.

Late last century I had a passing acquaintance with a guy whose job was masquerading as Mick in a Rolling Stones tribute band. He called their hardcore fans “freakazoids.” The adjective wasn’t meant as an insult. He spoke it with bemused gratitude; these people paid his wages. I’ve seen his band perform in the three Canadian cities I’ve resided in going back to the 80s; the last time was spring 2022. I’ve seen the actual Stones seven times, dating back to the summer of 1978 but not since autumn 2005.

It's possible I’m a Stones completist. It’s possible I have every album they’ve ever released and multiple copies of maybe more than a few of them. It’s possible there are four or five box sets stashed around the Crooked 9. It’s possible there’s a baker’s foot of DVD and book spines on a shelf in the den; it’s possible some more are down in the basement. It’s possible I have a modest collection of tour posters. It’s possible there may be a couple of Stones t-shirts in my bureau drawer. It’s possible there are some sad sack fanboy “collectible” sundries cluttering other rooms. It’s possible my emotional and intellectual growth, certainly with this particular file, stood on the brakes as I rammed in to puberty. But I am not a freakazoid.

A longtime friend of mine, a Springsteen nut though not an unhinged one, once said to me, “Had the internet existed when we were teenagers, our heads would’ve exploded.” No two-week wait for Rolling Stone’s “Random Notes” tidbits (and porn of course; let’s not forget porn as accessible as guns in the United States). Bless some of the tribes on what Pete Townshend imagined as “the Grid” for the failed “Lifehouse project,” parts of which we know as Who’s Next. There are two internet freakazoid Stones sites I infrequently waste some time visiting. Denizens have been burning up wifi and the wires this week.

“Who the fuck are The Cockroaches?” posters popped up throughout London over Easter like Banksy murals. Freakazoids noted that the type font was the same as the “Who the fuck is Mick Jagger?” t-shirt Keith sometimes wore on the 1975 “Tour of the Americas.” Equally important, The Cockroaches is a not-so-secret Stones pseudonym for secret club shows. Real life “Da Vinci Code” stuff with more gravitas. The pink poster suggested the “Miss You” 45 sleeve. The bottom right, where any graphic designer would place a logo, featured a QR code (those weird pixels – I can’t remember what phrase QR abbreviates anymore). That code led to a static website, a throwback bedroom with a black Bakelite dial phone and Bowie’s “Ziggy” LP visible on a shelf. One click infested The Cockroaches poster on the wall with scurrying vermin.

The Stones embraced the dark art of hype and promotion long ago even though their music and performance did the real talking They morphed into marketing pros with the onset of their corporate era which I date from Steel Wheels in 1989. Clothing lines in IMAX; buy the stemware and cologne; Mick could teach an MBA course. A commercial pop culture juggernaut is very different from an irresistible cultural force. Their last relevant album is the punk-goosed Some Girls dating from the time when Mick realized the Clash could indeed become the only band that matters. And he was right. Nothing the Stones released subsequently defined any of the ensuing decades(!) or any particular era therein. Times changed but the Rolling Stones didn’t.

The Stones are one of those bands poorly served by greatest hits compilations (and good gawd y’all, there’s tons of them). Their magic to me was always the rest of any particular album. To use modern phrases, the “deep dives” into “deep cuts” require patience, repeated plays. The freakazoid demands a couple of obscurities or B-sides in the set in exchange for an expensive ticket and a poor seat – not that I would know. And so… With the release of Emotional Rescue (1980) or maybe Tattoo You (1981) Stones albums had to be picked apart for gems. Inspired individual tracks, never the complete package; the music took a backseat to their status and marketing acumen. And fair enough, the recording industry was flipped on its head in the Information Age. Money-losing tours used to be offset by album sales in the millions.

The Cockroaches yesterday released “Rough and Twisted” in white vinyl in a plain white sleeve. It’s yet to exist in any other format. There’s no other way to hear it. Only available in very limited quantities in certain record shops. Marketing gimmickry up “Andrew’s Blues.” Stones-centric detectives, those internet freakazoids, have drawn comparisons to the “Cook Cook Blues” B-side of the unremarkable and less than memorable “Rock and a Hard Place” 1989 single. (I had to look that one up; flip through the collection not knowing where to start or consult a reference book – it’s possible I own an out of date Rolling Stones encyclopaedia of songs.) The next single may be called “Mr Charm.” The album, slated for a June (or maybe July) release, may be called Foreign Tongues – I can just imagine the deluge of alternate sleeves and related merch. 

I emailed my friends at Blackbyrd Myzoozik hoping for a meaningful and specialized loyal customer Cockroaches trophy in a plain white sleeve, money no object. Seems they’ve ghosted me. All of this makes me feel 16 instead of 66. I have been highly amused this last week and not in a detached way. “Well all right! Are you having a good time?”               

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. Be a completist! Be a happy sad sack! Collect the set! 

A FAN’S NOTES

Len Deighton 1929 - 2026

The Associated Press’s canned obituary for English author Len Deighton employed the perfect adjective to describe his unique contribution to spy fiction: “grubby.” He was a contemporary of Ian Fleming and John le Carre. The espionage thriller genre is such that there was plenty of space for three very different styles: comic book, cerebral and detective noir.

Their common thread is the Cold War and Britain’s secret intelligence services (SIS). Should a researcher examine their dossiers (provided they’ve not been purposely misfiled, destroyed or otherwise tampered with), they will unearth some curious, if frayed, tenuous links. Eric Ambler, more a contemporary of Graham Greene’s, was a major influence on our three authors, as was Greene, who himself was an admirer of Ambler. When James Bond must fly to Istanbul to collect a stolen Soviet cypher machine in From Russia with Love, he packs an Ambler novel for first class BOAC distraction.

Fleming, a working journalist like Greene, spent the Second World War in British Naval Intelligence. It’s been plausibly posited he became an MI6 (external intelligence) asset afterward and remained one for the rest of his life. Greene was an MI6 veteran (Our Man in Havana, a scathing satire, did not play well with Britain’s Official Secrets Act). Le Carre worked for both branches of the SIS, MI5 (internal intelligence) and MI6. Ambler and Deighton, military veterans themselves, sprang from the advertising industry, the former a copywriter and the latter a commercial artist.

My father introduced me to le Carre. Even when I was at my most distant and wayward, we always had something to discuss over the phone; me in Montreal, him in Ottawa. Le Carre wasn’t a magazine masthead, there wasn’t a new novel every month. Still too much of a snob to appreciate Fleming’s prose (His time would come by the grace of Calgary Transit), I’d exhausted Greene and Ambler. I needed an alternative to them and the literature I was studying in university (God, if I manage to read 26 books a year now, two per month, I congratulate myself – I keep an annual list).

A haunt of mine in Montreal that was not a record store was the Classic Bookshop at the corner of Ste-Catherine and Crescent. It was proximate to Concordia University and an easy walk from my studio apartment a little farther west, a block north along de Maisonneuve. The Triad Grafton paperback editions of Deighton’s novels jumped and popped from the shelves, facing out. Lots of white space. The author’s name was bold and black, all caps, a sans serif font – I want to say Futura. The title followed the same template although reduced by a few points and rendered in a contrasting colour. The graphic was always a close-cropped, plot-suggestive collage of dirty work: always a revolver, a bullet or two, a cigarette butt and maybe a champagne cork. Their design uniformity reminded me of Paul Hogarth’s often sinister watercolours on Graham Greene Penguins.

What I read when I took a chance on Funeral in Berlin stunned me. The characters weren’t mandarins in public school ties flouncing about and playing at espionage. Deighton’s style evoked Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald. This was British Invasion prose: detective noir right back at you from swingin’ London, not from Carnaby Street so much as the shadow of a railway arch on a dreary dead-end street on a rainy night. No place for toffs, just hard-bitten operatives with decent vocabularies. It was impossible not to be reminded of the eloquent grit in the gears of Britain’s class system: Room at the Top; Saturday Night and Sunday Morning; This Sporting Life. Kingsley Amis (a favourite of mine) need not apply.

There are no substitutes for Deighton; indeed, neither le Carre or Fleming. Each writer was unique. Ted Allbeury, a former agent in Churchill’s Special Operations Executive, tried. He attempted to touch all the bases. The words didn’t quite work despite his wealth of inside knowledge and field expertise. I can’t remember the plots or even the titles of the few used novels I’ve read by him.  

Horse Under Water, Deighton’s second novel and one of five or six featuring his cynical, anonymous narrator (Michael Caine as “Harry Palmer” in the movies) is on my night table. Excepting his cookbook, I’ve read everything Deighton has written including his fine military histories. These past few years I’ve been revisiting him in increments, a couple of his titles over the course of a year’s reading.

One of the sustained pleasures of my life has been propping myself up in bed and reading before lights out. The post-midnight stamina I used to depend on has dissipated. My eyes are frequently as tired as I am; I need reading glasses. Staying awake is a chore best left undone, yet some ingrained habits are so hard to break. Deighton used to keep me up well in to the wee small hours; he still gives it his best. In these days of pension cheques and senior discounts, some of the pleasure of rereading him after a gap of 30 or 40 years is knowing I’ve neither school nor work to worry about in the morning. Just my bladder, still, thankfully, as regular as any alarm clock.                                       

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is still out there languishing 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!

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Fleeting Crossword Soul Searching

I was standing at the kitchen sink, a waffled tea towel in my hand. I’d decided I’d give Jesus the morning off from drying our breakfast dishes, what with Easter chocolate on grocery store shelves and Facebook’s “memories” function prepping to remind Him of the worst-ever long weekend of His short life. Ann was seated at the counter, the Crooked 9’s command centre: phones, paper, pencils and pens at hand, the bulletin board and wall calendar hanging to her right. She was studying Sunday’s New York Times crossword: always a themed, expanded grid (21x21 as opposed to the other six days’ 15x15) and generally “Thursday” difficulty.

Ann said, “You should know this one, 98-across: ‘Letters on a crucifix.’”

I said, “Four letters?”

Ann said, “Four letters.”

I wiped my Who logo coffee mug dry. Pontius Pilate’s mocking acronym was just beyond the tip of my tongue, floating there by the cupboard door handle. Oh, God, I thought, I should know this one. I really should.

My father’s parents were both British; they met (in church, as it happens) and married in Montreal. My father was raised in the Church of England. Speaking with him late in his life (and much later in my own), I came to understand that any faith that had been ingrained in him did not withstand night fighter sorties over the Continent, nor even the shocking toll exacted on his squadron by training flights over Scotland and the North Sea. My mother grew up in a Roman Catholic family. Her father was of Irish extraction and her mother was French-Canadian. When my parents married in 1950, the in-laws agreed that the grandchildren would be raised Catholic. I doubt my father cared one way or the other.

There were religious icons in my childhood bedroom, co-existing with the bogeyman in the closet and the monster under my bed. My guardian angel was a little boy in a blue robe with unnaturally large eyes. He had wings of course, and a prop, maybe a harp. He never struck me as entirely fit for the night watch. Beneath his portrait was a wooden crucifix with a bronzed Jesus nailed to it. Above his slumped head was an unfurled though curling scroll of bronzed vellum inscribed with some abbreviated Latin. Four letters.

Judas! It wasn’t long before my guardian angel and the decent fellow who died for the sins I committed even before I was born were replaced by an even bigger superhero, rendered almost half the size I actually was. I don’t know who inked and coloured Spider-Man in the late 60s; Stan Lee, I presume. Spidey was coming to my rescue, on the run. His blue, red and black costume popped from a plain white background. Decades were to pass before I came to appreciate the use of negative space in art and design, and to a certain extent, music and writing. Allow the viewer, listener and reader to fill in the blanks as (and if) required.

The web-slinging, wall-crawler’s flaw (because every hero has one, tragic or otherwise) was his inability to skate. He did not appear on the hockey posters I could get by saving up Coca-Cola bottlecap liners nor was he present on the hockey collectibles my father was handed at the Esso station for putting a “tiger in the tank” of our maroon Beaumont. Spidey did not play for the Montreal Canadiens. The hockey players on my wall had short careers – as most athletes do; Mick Jagger was waiting to go on, coked up and jittery.

I said to Ann, “Can you cross it with anything? I’m wracking my brain.”

She said, “No, but I think there’s an ‘I’.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

IRAE: “Dies – (requiem hymn)”; IRIE: “A-okay in some slang”; INXS: “‘Listen like Thieves’ band”; INRE: “Memo abbrev.”; NIHI: “Bygone grape soda”; INTO: “Fan of”; RANI: “Hindu queen” …

FUCK! (Crude, inappropriate and inarticulate exclamation often indictive of poor education and limited vocabulary.)

When the Tuesday Night Beer Club convenes Stats Guy, Ted and I often stump ourselves talking hockey players, baseball standings, epic war movie casts and celluloid Bond girls. Stats Guy always says, “We can googalize it.” Ted pulls out his phone. I always demure; hungover Catholics instinctively understand instant gratification is sinful. Safer in the long term to wait, believe in the payout at Saint Peter’s heavenly wagering window. I can’t imagine a devoted Roman Catholic signing up for Amazon Prime.

Ann said, “Got it!” She’d crossed the rubric. “INRI.”

“That’s it!” I cried.

“What’s it mean?”

Yessir, that’s my unbaptized pagan baby! I said, “Ah….” The ancient Roman alphabet consists of just 23 letters. Perfectly adequate for writing Latin, I suppose (their numbering system is unwieldy – the concept of zero as a digit in Western mathematics was still centuries hence). “'King of the Jews' or something like that,” I continued. A reminder of Rome’s absolute authority in Judea. Cut to Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

I could and still can see the faded green and yellowing Palm Sunday frond up against the wall in my pale blue bedroom, tucked behind the crucifix. I had to googalize INRI: Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum.

INRE to INRI: Unless 98-across comes up again in the next couple of weeks, I’m not going to remember any of this. Storage capacity is limited and there is more meaningful arcana to retain. Like the running order of It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll. Is “Luxury” on side one or side two? I knew that. Or I did.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. 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 remains in print. Collect the set! They're moving faster than gas station hockey posters. While supplies last!